by Liz Kessler
“What — what the — ? What is happening?” she asks. I see she’s pointing at the window now, and, if it’s possible, her face has drained of even more color.
I look where she’s pointing.
The curtain is flapping. I’m about to tell her it must be a breeze from outside, when I remember the window is still painted closed. I’ve been meaning to get Dad to fix that, but I haven’t gotten around to it. So there’s no breeze, no draft. The air is completely still. So still and tight, in fact, that it feels as if the air in the room is running out.
Then the window starts to rattle.
Mum is staring at the window. “Erin,” she says in a hoarse whisper. “What the hell is happening?”
That’s another thing I’ve never seen my mum do. Swear. At all. Even use the word hell.
I don’t know how to answer her.
“I thought —” she begins, then she shakes her head and stops.
“You thought what, Mum?” I ask.
“Look, don’t be angry,” she begins. “I came in here the other day, just to see if you had any clothes that needed washing. And, well, there was something odd then.”
“Odd? Odd how?” I ask. I can feel my body stiffen. I don’t like the idea of Mum rooting through my things, but that might be the least of my worries right now.
“I don’t know. I can’t explain it. Like it was colder than the rest of the house. It made me shiver. It was weird.”
I turn to Joe.
“Tell her it’s the wind coming through the cracks,” he says. “That’s why they’re rattling. That’s why it was cold.”
“What cracks?”
“What?” Mum asks.
“I . . . I was just talking to myself,” I say stupidly. “Thinking aloud.”
“Yes. And that,” Mum says. “I’ve heard a voice up here. I’ve assumed you’ve been talking on the phone to your friends, but once or twice, I noticed your phone was downstairs. I thought maybe you were talking to yourself. I didn’t want to say anything, make you feel bad about it or anything, but . . .”
“Tell her it’s just a drafty room. Tell her you were doing your homework out loud,” Joe insists. “Tell her anything — but say something. It’s getting worse. I can’t control it.” His face has turned gray, and he’s shaking. He looks as though he’s about to throw up or faint or something.
“Are you OK?” I ask before I can stop myself. “You’re not going to —”
“Of course I’m not OK,” Mum cuts in. “Your windows are rattling, the room is about ten degrees colder than the rest of the house, something just electrocuted me, and I’m worried about my daughter talking to an empty room. How can you even ask if I’m OK?”
“I wasn’t —” I begin, then stop myself.
“And that’s another thing,” Mum goes on. “The bumps.”
“Bumps?” I don’t even want her to go on. I just want her out of here, want Joe to be OK, want to get back to where we were before Mum came in.
“I’ve been hearing them for weeks when I’m in the living room. I put it down to the water pipes or something, but . . .”
Mum’s voice trails off.
“Erin, get her out of here. Please,” Joe begs. “The more I’m freaking out, the worse it’s all getting. I can feel it. It’s going to start going berserk, and I don’t want your mum to see it.”
Joe’s right. I have to distract her, have to get her out of my room, before things get even worse. I need to tell her something. It’s not just the window rattling now. Joe slumps down onto the bed; two seconds later, it starts to shake as well.
Mum claps a hand over her mouth as she watches the bed. “Erin,” she says through her fingers. She reaches out to me with her other hand. “The — the bed. It’s moving.”
“Mum, it’s . . .” I can’t finish my sentence. There is absolutely nothing I can say to explain away what she’s seeing with her own eyes.
“Erin, come with me. Come on. We need to get out of here.”
I don’t move. I’m not leaving Joe, not in the state he’s in. But I can’t stay here with him. I can’t exactly tell Mum I’d rather stay in a room where the furniture is shaking and the windows are rattling than go with her.
I take Mum’s hand. She starts to turn. “Come on,” she whispers.
“Why are you whispering?” I ask.
“I don’t want — it — to hear me.”
“Mum!” I drop her hand.
“What? What is the matter with you, Erin? We need to get out of here!”
How can I tell her what’s really the matter with me? How can I explain how much it hurts me to hear her refer to Joe as it while he’s actually sitting there on the bed, terrified and shaking?
I need to give him some sort of signal, to check if he’s OK, but I can’t speak to him again without Mum thinking I’m losing it.
“Mum, what do you mean by ‘it’?” I ask, partly to buy myself some time before she drags me out of the room, and partly, yes, because I don’t like it.
“What?” she hisses. “Can’t you see what’s going on here? The place is — I can’t even say it.” She puts her hand out for me again. “Please, Erin. Just come with me. We’re not safe. There’s something evil here. A poltergeist or something.”
“For God’s sake, Mum!” I can’t help it. I know I should stop myself, but I can’t. She’s insulting my — well, I guess, my boyfriend. He’s the nearest thing I’ve ever had to a proper boyfriend, anyway. And she’s calling him evil while he’s in the room. He’s right here, listening to every word! She might not know it, but I do.
“Erin, will you please stop arguing with me and come out of this room? It is clearly haunted, and I do not want to be in here a moment longer!” Mum is talking in a way that I’ve never heard before. All clipped and staccato and breathless. I know she’s not deliberately insulting Joe. She’s not purposely being mean to me. She’s scared.
I risk another glance at Joe. “Just go with her,” he says. “Please. Go. I’ll be fine. It’ll stop. Don’t make things bad with your mum. Please, Erin.”
I let out a heavy breath and shake my head. It’s not fair.
“OK,” I say eventually.
“Good,” Mum and Joe say in unison. Ironic that they are in complete agreement on this.
As Mum turns to leave, I look at Joe.
“I’ll be fine,” he whispers, but his eyes are dark and terrified. His hands are clutching the bed. He’s making himself look as OK as he can, for me, to make me feel better.
I’ve never had a boy care enough about me to do that before.
“I’ll come back as soon as I can,” I whisper. And with that, I reluctantly follow Mum out of the room.
The door closes behind them. The second they leave, it gets worse. It was bad enough when they were here, but I was doing my best to hold it back. Rein it in.
Now that they’ve gone, there’s no reason to hold anything back, and the dam breaks.
I’m freezing cold, boiling hot. I’m sweating, shaking, ready to drop with exhaustion and wired like a live electric cable — I don’t know what I am. Everything and nothing.
I try to get up from the bed. I don’t even know where I’m trying to get to. Maybe the window seat. I struggle to my feet, but my legs won’t hold me, and I collapse on the floor.
Is this it? Is this the actual end? Have I been in some kind of semi-dead waiting room up to now, and a place has finally opened up for me on the other side? Is this the point where I disappear forever?
For a moment, the thought terrifies me.
Then it strengthens me.
No. I’m not going to let it happen. I’ll fight it. I’m not ready to go. Not now. Not yet.
I’ve got a reason to stay here. I need to see Erin again. Need to be close to her, to hold her. I need to kiss her. We came so close. I want to feel her breath, hot against my cheek. I want to see her smile again.
The wanting is stronger than everything else.
I focus
on thoughts of Erin, being with her again. Her smile. Her lips. The things she says to me.
She is like a life preserver, drawing me back to safety. I drag myself to the window seat. Our seat. Pull myself up. Collapse on the seat and close my eyes.
I don’t know how long I sit there. Eternity? Minutes?
Eventually, the furniture stops shaking. It’s OK. I’m still here. The worst is over.
Mum marches downstairs and through the living room, passing Dad without saying anything. He’s watching sports on the telly and doesn’t look up. I don’t think he even notices us come through, let alone picks up on the mood Mum is in.
I follow her into the kitchen. She grabs her laptop from next to the fridge, puts it on the kitchen table, and powers it up.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Dealing with it,” she answers in a clipped voice.
I watch her in silence as she logs in and waits for her laptop to connect to the Internet.
A moment later, Dad shouts from the lounge. “Erin!”
I call back. “Yes?”
He gets off the sofa and lumbers into the kitchen. “Oh! You’re in here. I didn’t see you come down. Are you OK?”
“Yes. Why?” I reply, too quickly.
Dad points back through to the living room. “I heard a loud bump. Thought someone had fallen over upstairs.”
“Not me,” I reply.
Dad shrugs. “Must’ve been Phoebe.”
He starts to walk away.
Mum looks at me, then says to his back, “Phoebe isn’t here. She’s at a sleepover, remember?”
Dad turns around again. “Oh. Well, someone’s up there.”
He says it so calmly, so casually, so sure that there’s nothing particularly weird about hearing noises in the room directly above the living room. My bedroom. So unquestioning of why there might be a loud thump coming from a bedroom that we’ve just pointed out is empty.
Mum and I both know that there’s nothing calm or casual about it at all.
What did Dad hear? What’s happened to Joe? I want to go to him. I need an excuse to leave the room.
I start to edge away, but Mum puts a hand on my arm. “Erin, please stay away.”
“Stay away from what?” Dad asks.
Mum takes a breath. How’s she going to explain this?
“We’ve got a poltergeist,” she says.
Dad stops for a second. A split second before he bursts out laughing. “We’ve what?” he asks. “Thought you said we’ve got a poltergeist for a moment there.”
“That is what I said,” Mum replies.
Dad’s still laughing. Then I see him clock Mum’s face, then mine, then think about what he heard upstairs. I can almost see the cogs in his brain turning, one by one, as he processes each piece of information. Puts it all together. Realizes what it adds up to.
“What are you talking about?” He laughs again, but it doesn’t sound quite so natural this time. “You’re messing around, right?”
“Do I look as if I’m messing around?” Mum asks. “There’s been something funny going on for weeks.”
“Something funny?” Dad asks. “What kind of funny?”
Mum shakes her head. “Noises. Voices. Just . . . just a feeling. I tried to brush it off. Told myself I was being ridiculous.” She glances at me, then back to Dad. “But if you’d seen what we’ve just seen,” she says in a whisper. She shakes her head again. “There’s no room for doubting it anymore.”
Dad steps toward us. “What do you mean?” he asks, his voice lower now. “Is this for real?”
Mum nods. Then she tells him what happened while we were up there.
I try not to take it personally as I listen to her describing what happened, but I wince each time she says poltergeist or evil or ghost. I try not to butt in.
It’s hard, though, because all the time she’s talking, I want to jump in and say, “It’s not like that.” But how can I? I can’t tell her it’s not the way she’s describing it without telling her exactly how it is. And that means telling her about Joe and me. And I can’t do that. After everything I put them through, there is simply no way in this world that I can tell them that the evil spirit she is describing in hushed tones is actually my boyfriend and that he’s the only thing keeping me sane right now.
Because what if I’m wrong? What if he isn’t keeping me sane? What if he is the thing that will send me over the edge? How can I be choosing a ghost over holding my family together?
I can’t answer any of the questions lining up in my head. And I can’t say anything to Mum. Ever. I know that.
Instead, I watch her typing words into her computer while she talks. She’s looking up “how to get rid of a poltergeist” on Google.
“Mum, really?” I ask.
She looks up from her laptop. “Really, what?”
“I — I don’t know. It just seems a bit . . . extreme.”
“Your bed is shaking; the windows are rattling. Wouldn’t you say that is the extreme thing?” Mum asks.
“Yes — I mean — no. I mean, look, nothing like this has happened before,” I flounder. “Maybe there’s some kind of explanation.”
“I’ve already told you,” Mum says, her voice set. “It has happened before. I’ve wondered a few times what’s going on up there. I wasn’t going to say anything to you because I didn’t want to worry you. And yes, when it was just a bit of a draft and a couple of bumps, I told myself that maybe there was an explanation.”
She holds my eyes.
“But this,” she insists. “Come on, Erin. You know there is no explanation for what just happened there. No other explanation.”
She’s right. There’s nothing I could say that could convince her that what just happened up there was normal. Normal to her. Normal to normal people. I turn away.
“Where are you going?” Mum asks instantly.
“I’m just going to get my stuff. I’ve still got homework to do.”
“You’re not going up there.” It’s Dad this time. He’s gone from disbeliever to big protector in two minutes. I decide against pointing this out. I don’t want to cause trouble, don’t want to make waves.
I just want to be with Joe.
“Dad, I’ll be fine. Please. I’m just going to get my schoolbag. So I can do my homework.” If I play the homework card, perhaps they’ll let me go.
Dad glances at Mum.
“Mum, I’ll be fine,” I insist.
Dad squares his shoulders. “I’ll come with you,” he says.
I sigh. “Dad, you really don’t have to come —”
“You’re not going up there on your own,” Mum interrupts.
Dad’s opening kitchen drawers, scrambling around. He grabs something and shoves it in his pocket. I don’t notice what it is. Then he opens the tall cupboard at the end of the room, rummages around a bit, and pulls out a tennis racket.
“Ideally, I’d have preferred a bat, but this’ll have to do,” he says.
I stare at him. “Do for what?”
“Just in case,” he says.
If my mind wasn’t filled with images of Joe sitting on the edge of the bed, shaking, white and terrified, I would find this funny. My dad is going to protect me from my dead boyfriend with a tennis racket.
I mean, is there any situation, any scenario — any universe — in which anyone might ever have imagined a scene like this being an actual thing?
“Dad. Seriously. We’ll be fine.”
Dad tucks the racket under his arm and goes ahead of me. “Come on,” he says.
He leads the way up the stairs and gingerly nudges my door open a crack. “Hello?” he calls.
This time I do stifle a laugh. I have to stifle it. If I don’t, I’m in danger of getting hysterical.
There’s no reply. Obviously.
Dad pushes the door fully open, and we go inside.
Joe is curled up on the window seat. He looks calmer now but still shaken. All I want is to go to him. T
he effort of stopping myself makes my chest ache. His eyes meet mine and I can see he feels the same way.
“You OK?” he asks.
“Seems all right to me,” Dad says, looking around.
“Yeah, fine,” I answer — hoping it will do for them both.
“Well, you’re not sleeping in here tonight, are you? Get your things. You can sleep in Phoebe’s room till we figure out what to do next.”
“Dad! Really, it’s fine!”
“It’s not fine at all,” Dad replies.
Joe gets down from the window seat. “Erin, just go along with it. I’ll be OK,” he says.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
Joe nods.
“ ’Course I’m sure,” Dad says. “No question of it. I’m not having you sleep in a haunted room. Come on. Get your stuff. I’ll stay here.”
“Really, Dad, I don’t need you to wait for me.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Dad folds his arms. “Sweetheart, in all we’ve been through as a family, have I ever let you down before?”
He’s playing the after everything we’ve done for you card, but so subtly I don’t think even he realizes that’s what he’s doing. Which means I can’t be annoyed with him. And I can’t think of any way around this. I’m beaten.
He waits, arms folded, tennis racket tucked under his arm, standing like a prison officer guarding the room, studying it intently as I pick up clothes, books, and whatever else I might need till I can sneak back in.
At one point, I hold out my hand toward Joe. I do it really carefully so Dad will think I’m just reaching out for some books.
My hand is on his arm. Joe closes his hand around mine. For two seconds, I can breathe, and the world rights itself.
“It’ll be OK,” I say to Joe before I can stop myself.
“ ’Course it will,” Dad replies. “I told you, we’re in this together, sweetheart. We’re not going to let anything happen to you. We’ll figure it out.”
Joe smiles. “We’ll figure it out,” he echoes. I smile back. Then I let go and join Dad in the doorway.
