I’d like to open the curtains and let some light in, but she obviously keeps the room dark for a reason.
‘You’re the ones who bought the house then?’ she says. ‘John and—’
‘Ruth. My mum. Yeah.’
‘I love that house. So does Tilly. It was hard leaving,’ she says, looking down. ‘I lost my job after she went missing. So I had to sell, move here. Not too far away, though.’ She smiles. ‘So what did you come here for?’
‘Just to talk about Tilly, actually.’ Now that I’m here, though, I’m not sure any of this is a good idea. ‘Where do you think she’s gone?’
‘Off to find her dad.’
‘Oh right. And where’s he?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘So would she know where he was?’
‘Probably not.’
‘Right.’
She sits up straighter, sharpening herself. I guess I assumed because she was grieving she might answer whatever I asked, but I think it’s made her more wary. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘It’s just that living in your old house – I just wondered about her,’ I say, not quite sure I can tell her after all.
Her eyes find mine. ‘Wondered what?’
‘I sense her sometimes,’ I say softly.
‘Like a ghost?’
I just nod.
She looks at me again, her eyes sad. ‘Like she’s dead?’ Her voice is so little, I almost don’t want to answer.
‘I guess.’
‘You think she’s dead?’
‘Maybe.’
She nods, rapidly, like she’s not going to stop. Maybe she’s processing what I said, or maybe she’s preparing to throw me out.
‘So do I.’ She moves quickly along the couch until our knees are almost touching. ‘She wouldn’t just disappear. I know that. We used to fight – a lot. But this whole thing about going off to find her father, I don’t know where Danny got that from. It never made sense.’
The mention of his name makes me feel vaguely sick. ‘Danny said that?’
She nods. ‘You know Danny?’
‘Yes.’ Why would Danny make up a story like that? Maybe Tilly told him that’s where she was going and he kept it a secret from everyone except her mum. But it doesn’t make sense. What’s he playing at? ‘So what did Danny say exactly?’
‘He said that’s what she told him: that she was going to find her father. She was pretty wild and she did do crazy things sometimes, but I don’t think she’d run away for this long. Do you?’
She looks me straight in the eye. I’ve walked in on someone’s grief and now I’ve given her answers that she’s been too terrified to consider. I’ve got no right to be here, telling this woman things I don’t know are true. I’m just guessing. Just playing at being a detective.
I try to stand up, but she clutches my hand, pulls me back down onto the couch and now she’s crying.
‘Oh, Mrs Sarenson, I could be wrong.’
But she doesn’t hear me. She’s sobbing, she grips my hand and all I can think about is the stale smell of cigarette smoke on her clothes. ‘Look, really, I could be wrong. She’s probably with her dad,’ I say, sounding pathetic.
Everything I’m saying just makes it worse. Why did I come here? I break free of her hold and stand up. I’m allowed to go, I don’t owe her anything, I don’t have to be here to make her feel better. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.’
I hurry to the front door and rush out onto the street, breathing madly, terrified she’s going to follow me. I grab my bike and ride.
I can’t look at my parents. Or Max. They’re chatting happily through dinner and I keep cutting the same piece of steak smaller and smaller, seeing Mrs Sarenson’s face as she allowed herself to consider Tilly’s death. I deserve to feel like this for meddling in someone else’s business, some poor mother’s grief. What does it matter whether Tilly’s dead or missing? Either way she’s not here.
Dad’s staring at me.
‘Yeah?’ I say.
‘How was your day?’
‘Oh, sorry. Fine.’
‘Like happy fine or sad fine?’ he says, chewing.
‘I didn’t know “fine” had a double meaning. I just thought it meant everything was bearable and okay.’
‘Well, my day was great,’ says Mum, waiting for one of us to ask why.
‘Tell us more,’ Dad says politely.
‘I met a couple of town mothers and they’ve invited me to be on the committee for the local show. I’m going to be helping with the craft shed.’
‘Craft?’ I laugh.
‘Yes. Craft. I showed Julia Taylor some of my scarves and she was very impressed.’
‘Julia Taylor? As in Danny’s mother?’
‘Yes. She told me she’d met you.’
‘She’s a painter. Did she tell you that?’ I know that I should stop, but I can’t help myself.
‘Yes. She’s won some awards. Apparently she often wins the prize at the show for best local talent.’
‘Does she? Is her husband the judge?’
‘Lil!’ Mum snaps. Maybe she hasn’t seen the prize-winning artworks.
At this point she and Dad start talking about how friendly everyone in Gideon has been and I have nothing to add. The idea that Mum’s going to be in some knitting circle with Danny’s mum is depressing.
‘What about you, Max? What was the best thing that happened today?’ asks Dad.
We’ve been doing this whole best-thing-in-the-day since I was little. It used to be me saying something about Ruby and I speaking at assembly or learning a tricky new origami design, and Max talking about another new friend he’d made, and Mum and Dad eating their dinner and enjoying the idea that we had these robust family discussions. I don’t get asked much anymore, though, because now I just say the day was fine. I mean what else is there to say? They don’t really want to know all about my day, any more than I want to bore them all by going over it.
‘I’m the new captain of the basketball team,’ Max says, grinning. Dad claps him on the back, as proud as punch.
‘Oh, Maxy, that’s great. I’m so proud of you,’ says Mum.
Maxy? I haven’t heard that since he was four. What is going on with my family? After Mum drills Max on every aspect of his sudden success on the court, she turns her attention to me. It’s like waiting for a teacher to notice you’re writing a note to your best friend, instead of copying down the algebra solutions. She checks my plate, looks at me, and back at the plate again.
‘Lil, you haven’t eaten a thing.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Is this teenage not hungry, or genuine not hungry?’
I hate it when Mum raises the fact that I’m a teenager, like it’s some big surprise.
‘I’ll eat it.’ Max reaches across the table to grab my plate.
‘Lil? You love steak,’ says Mum, as she stops the plate going anywhere.
And again. Another statement I already know that I’m supposed to find a surprise. Mum is totally outdoing herself tonight. ‘Max can have it. I’m not hungry.’
‘Right. Well, next time I won’t bother cooking you a piece,’ she says.
‘Mum, don’t do that. I’m not dissing your food. I’m just not hungry.’
She starts attacking her plate with this ridiculous anger, cutting the steak like it’s still alive and then shovelling it into her mouth. Even Dad’s a bit freaked out by her attempts to prove to me how great the meal is.
‘Well, even if I’m not hungry, I’ll still eat the dinner that someone’s cooked for me,’ she says through a mouthful of meat.
‘But you cooked it yourself, so that doesn’t make sense.’
Max laughs, which is surprising, because he doesn’t normally side with me. And Dad raises an eyeb
row, which is his way of saying to lay off and leave Mum alone. Mum pushes her chair back with such force that she flips it over, swears, and then starts banging the plates and grabbing all the cutlery, while people are still eating. I must have really touched a nerve tonight.
‘If you’re not eating dinner, Lil,’ she says, ‘then go to your room.’
I start panicking at the idea of going to the attic. I don’t want to be there with Tilly. ‘Sorry, Mum.’
‘I don’t care if you’re sorry. You need to learn some manners.’
Sending me to my room is basically the worst thing Mum can do tonight. Tilly will be waiting for me, and I was hoping I could hang down here till it’s really late and I’m so tired I’ll fall asleep.
But she’s stacked up all the dinner plates and I know there’s no arguing with her when she’s made up her mind. The only way I might be able to stall a bit is if I tell them I think there’s a ghost in the attic, though Mum will probably assume I’m mucking around anyway.
While she and Dad are busy talking to Max about basketball positions or something equally boring, I dash into the lounge room and grab the laptop. If she’s going to banish me upstairs, then I can at least do a bit of research. As I trudge up the stairs, the cold is worse than ever. The room’s freezing and as I move closer to my bed, looking for my pyjamas, I see the red hoodie. It’s lying there, dirty and marked from the muddy banks of the river. How did it get back here? I start to sense it: there’s something in the room with me. Jasper scurries in, but just as he gets near my bed, he stops and hisses wildly. I bend down to scoop him up under his soft belly but he lashes out and claws my face. Swearing, I drop him and he bolts out of the room. There’s something here that I can’t see, and now my face is smarting from the swipe of his sharp claws.
I don’t know where to start, so I Google ‘ghosts’. There are hundreds of websites with all sorts of entries with everything from ‘real’ photographs to reasons why ghosts would haunt you. Nothing’s much help. Most of the photos look like someone has just tricked a shot to seem like there’s a shadowy presence, not the sort of full-bodied girl that met me at the river. I click on the feed of stories about hauntings and start reading. There are lots of mentions of cold air, the sound of breathing, objects being moved and pets being too terrified to enter particular rooms. It’s pretty much everything that’s been happening to me since I came here, but no one can give me a reason why a ghost might be haunting me.
I type in Tilly’s name and start searching. Aside from all the pages about her missing, there are only a couple of mentions of her from before. There’s one photo of her with her netball team after they won the Under-12 final, and Julia’s right next to her, with her long shiny hair pulled back in a perfect ponytail. Tilly’s the only one not smiling at the camera. She looks like she did down at the river, but alive. Sad, though. Her eyes are glazed. Maybe she had a feeling something was going to happen to her and she couldn’t stop it.
I had that feeling. The morning before I drowned. I remember looking at Mum, her stomach all swollen and pregnant, the skin so tight it looked like it would burst, and thinking something was coming, but I didn’t know where or what. Afterwards I realised it wasn’t that I was scared about the baby coming, but that I knew something bad was going to happen to me.
I stare at Tilly holding the netball, the only unsmiling face in the middle of a team of grinning girls, and I wonder what it was she knew and why she feels she has to come looking for me.
I must fall asleep because when I wake up, it’s really dark in the attic. Straining to see out the little round porthole window, I notice the sky is moody with clouds and that’s why it’s so black in my room. I listen for the night noises. But outside is quiet. The whole of Gideon’s sleeping except me. And maybe a ghost, but then I guess ghosts don’t sleep.
Fidgeting in my bed, I try to get comfortable. Waking up in the middle of the night is never good; often it means I’ll lie awake for hours until I drift off just as the sun’s rising and I’m supposed to be up for school. I don’t want to be awake in this room at night.
Before sleep comes, noises flood up from downstairs. It’s like someone’s talking. I check my clock and it’s 3.00am. I’m not sure why I want to go down there, but the idea that someone’s talking loudly at this hour is strange – to say the least.
The stairs creak as I tread on them. The TV’s still on but it’s faint and all the lights are off. When I reach the bottom of the stairs, I walk down the hall to the lounge, past Max’s room. His light’s off and I peep in to catch him reading under the doona, but he’s snoring. I can hear him even before I can make out his shape in the bed.
Mum and Dad’s bedroom door is open, too, but no light’s coming from there either. Dad’s snoring loudly like a train and Mum’s making little groany sleep noises. Maybe she’s dreaming about how annoying her daughter is.
I keep heading for the lounge, feeling more and more terrified as I tiptoe along the floorboards. The lights are off, so the room looks dark, but the TV light spills across the floor. I don’t know what Dad was watching when he forgot to turn it off, but it’s Tilly’s face on the screen! Big and animated and the voice belongs to a reporter, who explains that she’s missing. It’s the clip I watched on Mum’s computer. Why would it be playing at three in the morning, nine months after she disappeared?
I grab the remote, flick the TV off, but nothing happens. The reporter’s walking around the showgrounds where Tilly was last seen. It’s creepy watching footage of somewhere I’ve been. That’s never happened to me before. As I move closer to the screen, I realise how close the river is to the back of the oval where the show was. What if that’s where Tilly was off to that night?
There’s a surge of power or something and the screen plunges into black. The room’s so dark I can barely see my hands. Then there’s a laugh, like someone’s playing a trick on me. I jab at the remote, trying to turn off the sound, but still the laugh pours out of the black TV screen. Tilly’s laughing at me. With a sick feeling in my chest, I pull the aerial cord out, disconnecting the TV completely.
For a second the laughing stops and I let go of the breath I’ve been holding. Then just as I’m about to go upstairs again, there’s a flash of coloured light and she’s back. Tilly’s face bright and smiling – and staring straight at me.
I run back upstairs, throw myself on the bed and turn on all the lights. She can’t find me in the light. I lie as still as I can, knowing I won’t sleep now. She’s dead, dead, dead. She is a ghost. I don’t understand what she wants. What do ghosts want?
Suddenly the overhead light clicks off. I look around, desperately trying to see what’s caused it, but there’s nothing.
Then the bedside light. On, off. On, off. On – like some crazy morse code. Then it snaps off and the room is thick with black. Darkness creeps into every space and I’m lying like a pin, so frightened that I can’t move a muscle. Then my door slams shut and the cold pours in as I feel someone tightening the sheets over my chest. I want to scream, but even that’s gone. I’m too scared to do anything. The sheets are being tucked in all around me, until I’m still and snug, and rigid in my bed.
‘What do you want?’ I whisper. ‘Tilly, what do you want?’
Is this because I went to see her mother? Is she angry with me? ‘Tilly, tell me what you want? Please!’ My voice is tiny. Terrified. I can hear her breathing. So lightly, just near my face, like she’s sitting too close. And then something wet presses onto my cheek. I think it’s her hand. Her freezing wet fingers are touching my face and it’s all too much.
‘Dad!’ I scream so loudly, that her hand releases me. The weight’s gone from my bed. ‘Dad! Dad!’
Finally I hear footsteps rushing up the stairs. There’s a crash, the door swings open and he bursts in, flooding the room with light. ‘Lil? You okay, honey?’
‘Yep.’ But I’m not okay, becaus
e big fat tears are rolling down my face. My sheets are still so tucked in that I can barely move and he grabs me up and out and clutches me like he did after I drowned. I’d forgotten how nice it is to feel safely squashed between his strong arms, although all it does is make me cry even harder.
‘Sweetie, what’s wrong?’
‘Bad dream.’
I sob against his t-shirt, smearing it with snot. ‘Dad, do you believe in ghosts?’
‘Nope.’
‘Not even a bit?’
‘Is that what’s wrong? You think the house is haunted?’
‘I don’t know. Where do you think people go after they die?’
‘Lil, is everything okay?’
‘Yeah. I just wondered. Do you think they can talk to you, or send messages or make you feel a certain way?’
‘Well, after my mum died, I believed she was talking to me for a long time. I could hear her voice whenever I was about to make a decision.’
‘Really?’
He nods. ‘Mmm. I’d be buying socks and just as I was about to pick up the green pair, I’d hear this little voice reminding me to be practical. Before I knew what was happening, I was buying the black ones.’ He grins and I realise how much I like him, even if he has dragged me away from everything I love. Or nearly everything.
‘Does that help, Lil?’
‘Does it mean you do sort of believe in ghosts?’
‘Not really, no.’
That’s as much as I can let on, because he pushes me away slightly so I can see that he’s smiling.
‘Darling, there’s no ghost here, I promise you. It’s just a new place. Hard getting used to – and I should know because the blokes at the pub asked me to come rabbit shooting and I had to pretend I was suffering from one of those city-fella migraines.’
Dad’s always been able to reassure me, but I can still feel the cold air thick around me and I know that she’s here, somewhere in this room.
‘It’s so cold in here,’ says Dad as though he’s noticing it for the first time.
I jump on his words. ‘It is, isn’t it, Dad? It’s so cold.’
‘We should get you one of those bar heaters – as long as you promise not to run it day and night. They chew up electricity, those things.’
Haunting of Lily Frost Page 14
