by Emmy Ellis
Gary jumped up. “Race you!”
He dashed in the wrong direction. I chased after him, wanting to tell him Belinda wasn’t over that way, but he continued to the far end of the playground, his tooth-finding mission obviously his main priority.
“Gary, wait!” The wind dashed into my open mouth, wrapped around my tonsils, and robbed my tongue of moisture. I snapped my lips closed and swallowed. The dryness of my throat—if I didn’t know better I would say it audibly crackled—made me think of the deserts Mrs Draper had told us about the previous week, and the need for a cool drink of water overrode any desire I had to play out the fantasy of collecting my dead friend’s teeth. I stopped running after Gary and turned to my right to see Belinda had gone. I switched direction once more. Making my way towards the waterspout under the awning above our lair, I noted the pipe that the spout was attached to had rusted since the last time I’d used it.
I frowned, and I know I did as I remember my forehead hurt from the concentration. Hadn’t I used the waterspout just last week? The pipe hadn’t been rusty then; I’d studied myself in the shiny silver, saw how my features changed. Last time I did this, Gary said I looked like a face in one of those mirrors at the funfair. I didn’t know what he meant—I’d never been to a fair before—but took his word for it. It brought to mind me staring at myself in Belinda’s gold bathroom taps, and a pang of sorrow wrenched my guts. I inhaled sharply and whimpered.
I stood in front of the rusted pipe, bent down slowly, and moved my head towards it, a tortoise bringing its head cautiously from its shell. I peered at the pipe. A burnt-orange, flaky substance covered the metal. A slight breeze danced against me; some of the flakes dislodged and flew into the air and filled with…blood?
I stepped back. It was blood, fresh and bright red, and it dripped down the pipe to the concrete slabs. Another breeze snapped past me, snatching the blood in its invisible hands. Droplets coasted through the air, only to land in splatters when the small gust of wind abated. Those splatters reminded me of fat raindrops, the pattern of them a circle with several streaks pointing from the arced edges.
A drop of wet landed on my hand, and I looked up. No rain clouds drifted above. The sky, a beautiful blue, obviously didn’t harbour any bad weather. I stared at the back of my hand. A spot of blood, the size of a one pence piece, blared its redness; it had landed on the webbing between my thumb and index finger.
“Blood on your hands. Blood on your hands, you little bitch.”
I whirled round to face the voice. Belinda, a red eye socket for a head.
“You’re nothing but a scab-bag, Carmel. A killing scab-bag.”
I clamped my teeth shut, catching my tongue between them. Blood seeped inside my mouth, the sensation similar to times when hunger gripped my guts and I saw and smelled food I wouldn’t eat—cakes in the corner shop, pizza in a red satchel on the delivery guy’s back—and saliva filled my mouth.
“They’ll find out it was you, Scab-bag.”
I stared at Belinda, aware that her voice came out of that red eye socket but from no discernable mouth. Translucent liquid coated the socket and drizzled down her neck. Tears?
“You’re a cry baby, Belinda,” I said. “A cry baby who probably screams for her mam every night, hammers against the coffin lid hoping someone will hear you, when no one will, because no one cares that you’re dead.”
The clear liquid dried as quickly as it had appeared, to be replaced with more blood—blood that dripped so quickly it drenched Belinda’s dress. The dress she’d probably been buried in, for it was a pretty baby pink with ruffles round the neck. A human red shape, she lifted her arms before her, fingers twitching, maybe wanting to grab at my hair and hurt me, drag me to wherever the hell she came from.
“Little scabby bitch.” The words came out garbled, a liquefied parody of her former voice. Her colour began to fade; the rich red of fresh blood changed to pink, changed to nothing as she disappeared.
I blinked and looked down at the paving slabs where she’d stood and caught a glimpse of swiftly drying, bloody footprints before they, too, vanished.
I swallowed the blood in my mouth. Gary called my name, breathless.
“Where did you get to?” He panted. “I went over and picked up all her teeth by myself. Got them in my pocket.” He stuffed his hands into the opposing sleeve of each arm of his coat.
“I came over to get a drink, but the pipe…”
I turned back to the waterspout. The pipe no longer blood-rusty, it winked as it caught a reflection of the sun.
“The pipe what?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said and walked over to the spout. Turning the circular tap to make sure the water was indeed water, I leaned forward to take a sip. Belinda’s face stared back at me from the metal water bowl—her real face, not the eye socket—where my face should have been reflected.
“Bitch,” she said.
I told myself it was a hiss of air escaping through the spout and not her omnipotent voice.
“What did you say?” asked Gary.
I let go of the tap, swallowed the last of the water, and paused for a beat. I turned back to face Gary. “Nothing.”
The bell signalling the end of playtime rang. I skipped towards our classroom, images of Belinda dancing in my mind’s eye. I hoped she would appear again. I found her presence…fascinating.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I’ve told you before, it just isn’t possible to waltz over there and do what you say. People might see me. I’m quite happy to wait for an opportune moment. All good things come to those who wait, so the saying goes. What? You’ve never heard of that one?
I came close to being caught last time. That isn’t something I want happening again. Nor do I anticipate anyone even suspecting it’s me. We’ve made the plans; we just have to wait before we execute them—sometimes longer than we have in the past. Patience. I wish Mam had called me that, for, as an adult, don’t I have plenty of it?
No. No, I’m not going to listen. I want this one to be done right, no mistakes. There is no way I’m going to put myself out there in a crowd and risk being spotted.
What? The crowd affords me a better chance of doing it undetected? Are you insane? No, don’t answer that one.
Let me think about it. Give me some space, and I mean space. Don’t speak to me for a few hours, preferably not until the morning. I’d like to weigh all the pros and cons without your voice twittering in my bloody ear.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mam aged considerably over the next few months. Her teeth grew blacker, her veins more collapsed, and the wrinkles on her face were more ravine-like. Mid-twenties, and she could easily have passed for two decades older. Hard living does that to a body.
One time, as a teenager, I wondered about her, you know, properly wondered. Did her parents know she’d had a baby girl, know where she lived and what she did for a living? I suspect they did—probably why I never saw them during my childhood. I pondered on the fact that if she’d been outcast by her kin, she’d know how it felt to be unloved and lonely. This begged the question in my adult life: Why did she treat me as she did? Perhaps she really did think I was the blight on her existence, that my presence caused her pain. Yet, it can’t have all been bad. I made her lots of money.
My friendship with Gary continued, as did our Belinda obsession. We progressed from being worms and rats to Ghost Catchers and, as Gary obviously didn’t see Belinda like I did, I constantly veered him in her direction in an attempt to catch up with her. I wanted to touch her, see if she felt as real as she looked. But Belinda evaded the grasp of our small fingers every time, usually with a gleeful peal of laughter normally reserved for real children, children who played tag.
Despite her ghastly appearance, Belinda acted as though she were indeed still alive. On the odd occasion she turned malicious—spat blood, grew teeth as long as a rabbit’s, leapt forward to sink those teeth into my neck—but for the most part she was one of us, the third per
son in our gang, albeit with an eye socket for a face. And the latter didn’t disturb me one bit.
One particular day, the sun came out from its winter hibernation and shone down on the playground during morning break time. Blonde-haired kids looked blonder, brunettes’ tresses shimmered myriad hues, and cheeks held the glow only kids’ cheeks can. The shrubs and bushes that lined two edges of the playground seemed to have flourished overnight—I was sure yesterday their branches jutted out like blackened, arthritic fingers—and bright green leaves, the new growth of spring, still dew-laden, almost glimmered in the sunlight.
It was warm enough to shed our coats like snakes. Piles of them dotted the playground, and those heaps of material made me to think of a mountainous range.
“Gary, look! Belinda’s standing on top of that mountain,” I whispered.
We’d taken to whispering, convinced that if anyone else overheard our fantasies, or if Belinda herself got wind of what we were up to, our playtimes would be ruined. The spell would be broken if outsiders became aware. So adamant were we on this, that when we did whisper, our voices came out so low we had to strain to hear one another amid the shrieks and laughter of the other school kids. Gary’s ears must have grown accustomed—mine were already sharp, what with having to listen out for Mam creeping up on me—and he turned to me and smiled.
“We must ride our horses up the mountain, then. Catch her and take her back to headquarters.”
We playacted our ascent onto our horses’ backs—mine was black with a white star between its eyes, the same as the mare in the TV programme Black Beauty—and kicked our steeds into a canter. The act of galloping across the playground gifted freedom to my mind and body. The warm wind flicked its tongue through my hair, caressed my face like Mam’s hand didn’t. My heartbeat quickened, throbbed, dashing blood through my veins that I felt arrive at every avenue of my body. I tingled all over; giddy excitement flared within, and I let out a squeal. A squeal of happiness? I’m sure it was.
Belinda stood on top of the mountain farthest from us, but Gary stopped at the first pile of coats.
“Whoa, you horsy beast,” Gary shouted at his transport (a white one with a black star on its face).
A sense of belonging spread through me when he’d told me that, back along when we’d first introduced the horses to our game. Gary had chosen the opposite colours to my horse—an honour, surely? And, of course, that he called it White Beauty was the small blob of icing on the mouldy cake that was my life.
Deciding not to stop and coax Gary to the far side of the playground, I cantered past him shouting, “She’s legged it. See? She’s over there now. That mountain far away. Quickly, before she disappears again.”
Gary’s trotting footsteps resumed behind me, the spaces between them meeting the asphalt growing shorter. I guessed he would catch up to me quickly, would want to overtake so that he was the first of the Ghost Catchers to reach our ghoul.
He’d said once, “Why don’t you ever let me choose where Belinda is?” I’d answered that he was always allowed to reach Belinda first, and that the way we played it was fair. He’d shrugged, his pixie features sullen, and dashed his long mousy fringe away from his eyes with thin fingers topped with bitten, dirty nails. Still, he’d conceded defeat on that one, but never failed to be the first one to say where we could find Belinda. Give the boy a round of applause for persistence.
Gary overtook me, his hands poised in front of him as if he held the reins of White Beauty, and he glanced to his right at me, his smile as broad as an elephant’s width.
“Race you!” he yelled, his voice falling behind him, carried by the wind as he surged ahead.
I picked up speed, gripped Black Beauty’s reins more tightly, and laughed. “I’m catching up, Gary.”
A harsher gust of wind slapped my face, bringing with it a bug of some kind. It splattered on my right eyeball. By instinct, my eyes closed, and I galloped valiantly onwards, despite my eye leaking and sting-itching.
I saw the layout of the playground in my mind, knew I had a way to go before I’d meet with the corner of bushes where the two rows met. I didn’t anticipate the arrival of a new mountain in the scant seconds my eyes had been sightless, but upon opening my eyes, that mountain seemed as tall as a real one, blurred by my watery vision. Black Beauty didn’t have a chance to change course, and she jumped to avoid the obstruction. Her hoof caught the mountaintop, and I launched out of the saddle and into the air. Three or four seconds—and those seconds seemed like minutes—saw me airborne. I windmilled my arms in an attempt to bring myself to an upright landing. A boy streaked past me to move out of my way, his startled shriek sounding like a girl’s. His arm whumped into my stomach and turned the direction my body had been taking. I sailed downwards, past the soft landing the mountain would have given, and crashed to my side, hipbone first, onto the unyielding ground.
Laughter, gasps, and shouts applauded my fall. I kept my eyes bunched closed. A yell of, “Miss! Miss! Carmel’s hurt!” gave a small nugget of comfort—someone cared—and it sustained me through the pain that throbbed in waves down my leg. I didn’t cry, didn’t let the building sobs leave my mouth. I’d endured worse in my time, and this pain would soon leave my body, a big purple bruise the only evidence it had ever been there in the first place.
Heavy footsteps bounded behind me. The sound of someone gasping for breath—and those breaths rasped and whistled—grew louder along with the footsteps. I opened my eyes to see numerous feet shod in different styles of shoes. T-bars, closed toes, trainers, even a pair of Wellington boots, green in shade with yellow eyes complete with black pupils—a frog? The largest pair of shoes, black sturdy lace-ups, belonged to Mrs Judd, the playtime supervisor.
Her legs, clad in black hosiery, bent at the knee. She lowered herself onto her haunches and peered at me. The sun shone behind her, her head creating an eclipse, and the urge to giggle, despite the pain, jiggled in my belly.
“Are you okay, Carmel?” she asked.
I nodded, my head grating against the ground. Small stones dug into my scalp—the kind of stones that usually found their way into my shoes and viciously bit the soles of my feet.
“Shall we try and get you to stand?” she said.
I nodded again and took the hand Mrs Judd offered. Her palm felt surprisingly rough. A cat’s tongue, that’s what it was like, damp and coarse. I’d expected it to be smooth to match the softness of what her cheeks promised. I looked at those cheeks, with their fine white blanket of tiny hairs, the sun enhancing their presence. She could almost be classed as having a beard.
Fear lurked in the back of my mind and whispered, its tone ethereal: Wonder if you’ve broken your leg? I hope you have. It’d mean you couldn’t come to school for a while, and you’d have to stay at home with your wretched mam…
I blinked and batted the thoughts away, stood, and took one or two steps. Although I hobbled, I smiled with relief. I hadn’t broken any bones.
Damn, I was almost sure you’d…
“Well done, Carmel,” Mrs Judd almost yelled. “Let’s get you to the nurse’s room so she can take a look at you. Maybe you’ll want a little rest on the bed there? You look too pale for my liking.”
She stood by my side and placed her right arm across my back, clasped my elbow with her hand, and guided me towards the front of the school. The sea of children parted, and their hasty footsteps let me know the show was over; they were going back to whatever game I had interrupted.
“Carmel? You all right?”
Gary skipped along beside us, crab-like, his hands still out in front of him, holding on to White Beauty’s reins.
“Yeah,” I said.
“We’ll play again later. After lunch.”
“Okay,” I said and allowed Mrs Judd to steer me into school.
* * * *
The school nurse wasn’t comely, buxom, and motherly like the TV hinted all nurses to be. With a body as thin as a hosepipe, her features sharp and pointy, n
urse Helen reminded me of a ferret, her arms and legs short like the latter, too, her forearms fuzzed with brown hair. Surely she hadn’t been made right. I stood in the medical room doorway. Mrs Judd ushered me inside then left. The faint tinkle of the big brass bell sounded; she must have collected it on her way back outside, ready to ring it to signal the end of playtime.
Nurse Helen gazed at me, her head cocked to one side, and sniffed. “So,” she said. “Did you have a tumble, then?”
I nodded.
“Sit up on the bed. I’ll take a look at you.”
Her voice brought to mind the sound chalk made on the blackboard when Mrs Draper wrote out words. Wavy, it went up and down. She didn’t come from around here; she had an accent, one I’d heard on the radio. A female version of Terry Wogan. He was on TV too; he hosted the game show Blankety Blank. The microphone he used looked like a giant matchstick.
“Ouch,” she said. “You’ve grazed your knees quite badly.” She turned to her medicine cabinet. Bottles clinked against one another, and the rustle of polythene sounded.
I looked down. Both of my knees sported angry scrapes, the redness dotted with grit. As if it wanted to be the chief source of upset, my hip protested. A sharp pain, followed by an angry, dull throb attacked my hipbone, and I imagined if my hip had a face it would be grimacing.
Nurse Helen returned to the bed with a small bottle of Dettol. Next to it, she plonked a large polythene-encased roll of cotton wool; it made a dull thunking sound, and a hiss of air escaped the hole in the top of the bag.
“Right, let’s clean your knees first, shall we?” she said. The lilt in her voice calmed me but didn’t match her appearance. I’d first heard her voice when she’d visited our class to discuss nits, and I’d expected her words to sound tinny, as if spoken through a megaphone, and sharp, sharp as broken china.
Nurse Helen bent to retrieve a metal bowl from a lower shelf. She placed it on the top next to the cotton wool. The resulting clang made me jump, and my ears buzzed. Her small arms moved in front of her, and I became entranced by the way her short, stubby fingers opened the bottle of Dettol and poured a little into the metal bowl. Quickly, she opened the cotton wool bag and snatched off a chunk; it squeaked.
