by Liz Kessler
“You got everything, sweets?” Dad asks as I pull my schoolbag onto my shoulder.
I nod.
He unfolds his arms, slings an arm around my shoulder. “Come on, then,” he says. “Hey, don’t look so worried. We’ll get rid of it, whatever it is. And until we do, you don’t need to come back in here again.”
As we leave the bedroom, he puts his hand in his pocket. Gets something out.
No! That was what he was getting out of the kitchen drawer! A key! I didn’t even know my bedroom had a key!
He pulls my bedroom door closed behind us and puts the key in the lock. “Whatever’s in there, it isn’t coming out now,” he says as he turns the key.
“Dad! You can’t do that!”
He looks at me, genuinely puzzled. “Why not?”
“I — because — you —”
Because you don’t need a key to keep him out. He’s confined to that room. And because you’re stopping me from getting to the one thing, the one person, I want.
“Because what, sweetheart?”
“It’s my bedroom,” I say weakly.
Dad joins me on the landing, stands in front of me, and lifts my chin. “Not for now, it isn’t, darling. I’ve told you, it’s my job to protect you. And no, if there really is an evil poltergeist in there, then I guess a locked door probably isn’t going to protect us from it, but — who knows? — I’d feel happier with the door locked.”
He says this last bit with a smile, Dad the Affable Defender, not absolutely one hundred percent convinced it’s real, but erring on the side of caution and looking after his little girl. I’m stumped. I can’t even reply.
“Plus it’ll stop you from accidentally going back in there without thinking about it. I’m not having anything bad happen to you,” he adds. “We’re going to deal with whatever is in there,” he goes on, utterly oblivious to how all of this is making me feel. “And once we’ve done that, we’ll redecorate, make it lovely, paint it any color you like. We’ll make it really special for you, OK?”
I’ve got nothing to counter his argument with. I’ve got nothing.
From where he’s standing, it makes total sense. He doesn’t know that each lick of paint will wipe out a line of Joe’s beautiful words. He doesn’t know that when he says he’ll deal with whatever is in there, he might as well be stabbing me with a knife. He doesn’t know that the only thing I want is the very thing he thinks he’s protecting me from.
He doesn’t know any of it. And unless I want him to think I’m losing my mind and need dragging back to hospitals and therapists, that’s the way it’ll have to stay.
I reach up and give him a hug. “Thank you, Dad,” I say. “Thanks for everything.”
He hugs me back. “We’ll look after you,” he whispers into my hair. “I promise.”
I grit my teeth and force myself not to show my real feelings. I’m good at that. I’ve done it enough times before. I just have to be nice to him and Mum, show them how grateful I am. Play along. I can do that. And in the meantime, all I’ll really be doing is trying my hardest to figure out a way to get the key and be reunited with Joe.
If I thought this existence had been like a prison before now, I was kidding myself. Hearing someone turn a key in a lock and walk away is pretty much the moment you know you’re in a prison.
A prison where you are invisible to everyone.
Where the last you saw of your family was when you watched them drive down the road in a moving van.
Where the only person who can see you has been banned from coming near you.
Where all of these things are about keeping everyone else safe, and there is no one to worry about keeping you safe.
That’s when you start understanding words like prison.
I need to write. My songs are the only way I have of picking the lock on my cell.
I can’t even hold a pen in my hand.
I have an idea. The floor. I can feel the floor. Maybe . . .
There’s a big rug covering most of it, but it doesn’t go all the way to the walls. I stumble to the corner near the walk-in closet and scratch my fingernail along the wood. It works! It marks a line in the wood.
What if they hear me?
I nearly laugh. I don’t care about that anymore. I need to get these words out.
I manage to lift one tiny corner of the rug. Then, keeping my hand tight, my letters small, I scratch out my words with my fingernail.
I’M LOCKED IN A PLACE THAT YOU CAN’T EVEN SEE,
A PLACE IN MY MIND WHERE IT’S HARD TO BE ME.
YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO BE FREE.
JUST GO. LEAVE ME HERE. SHUT THE DOOR. TURN THE KEY.
I’ve managed one verse. How long has that taken me? Best part of an hour? Longer? I don’t even know. It’s getting dark out, though, and I’m exhausted from the effort. I drag the corner of the rug back over my words.
It’s helped. A bit.
Body and mind utterly drained, I heave myself onto the bed, curl into a ball, close my eyes, and settle in for what I know is going to be the longest, loneliest night yet.
Dad won’t let me in my room on Friday morning. I feel like I’m being punished. I want to tell him I haven’t done anything wrong, but what’s the point? He and Mum are so intent on this idea that they’re protecting me, if I so much as suggest anything different, they won’t even hear it.
I spend most of the day going through the motions at school while trying to figure out ways of getting my bedroom key back and being reunited with Joe. I have to see him — even just for a few minutes. I need to know he’s OK.
What if he’s gone? What if he’s in pain? Can he feel pain?
I’m riddled with questions I have no way of answering, and in the meantime, I have to get through the day as if I’m happy, as if there’s no problem, as if they aren’t taking away from me the only thing in my life that I want.
By the time I get home, I’ve hatched a plan. I’ll get Mum to accompany me to my room. I’ll tell her I need to get some stuff for the weekend. Then while we’re in there, I’ll get Phoebe to call her downstairs, tell her there’s an emergency in the kitchen or something, and she’ll have to leave me alone for a few minutes while she checks it out.
It’s not the most sophisticated plan ever, and it relies way too heavily on an eleven-year-old who has nothing to gain from it and whose social life will probably get in the way of it anyway — but it’s all I’ve got.
Except, when I get home, it turns out Mum has other ideas.
Phoebe runs into the house ahead of me.
“Hi, Mum,” she calls before disappearing up to her room to change.
I follow her inside and close the door behind me. Mum is in the living room, sitting on the sofa with some woman I’ve never seen before.
She jumps up as soon as she sees me. “This is Erin,” she says to the woman. “Erin, darling, this is Rose.”
I look at Rose. She’s small with a round face, short gray hair, and brown-flecked eyes shining out from behind thick black-rimmed glasses. “Hi, Rose,” I say slowly, aware that my words sound like a question.
“Rose has come to help,” Mum says. She looks as embarrassed as I must look bewildered.
Rose takes a sip of her tea. Mum’s put out the best china for her. Why?
“Help with what?” I ask.
A tiny bit of me knows what she’s going to say before she says it. The rest of me doesn’t want to listen.
“She’s going to see if she can get rid of the . . .” Mum’s voice trails away.
No!
“You’re going to do an exorcism!”
Rose looks at me. “We don’t really use that word nowadays,” she says seriously. “We prefer to call it an expulsion.” Her eyes lock on to mine as if she can see inside me. Does she know what’s in there?
I turn to Mum. “But that’s what you’re going to do. Get rid of him?”
“Or her,” Rose says, a smile in her eyes, like we’re all
on the same side, like we’re all friends, comrades. “Let’s not be sexist, now.”
I stare at her.
“Rose is going to see if she can help us to get rid of it, yes,” Mum says calmly.
It.
“What if I don’t want you to?” I ask. I can’t stop myself. I can’t believe they’re doing this to me.
Mum takes a couple of steps toward me. “Erin, are you all right, darling?” she asks. “You look —”
“I’m fine. I just don’t see why we have to leap into doing something so drastic over a few odd noises in the house. I mean, it could have been the pipes or — or — or anything,” I say, faltering. “Who says it’s a ghost? I mean, why rush into doing something so extreme?”
“Erin, you know it’s more than a few odd noises,” Mum says.
Rose puts down her cup, gets a hankie out of her pocket, and dabs at her mouth. “It’s honestly nothing to worry about,” she says. “You don’t need to be scared.”
“I’m not scared.”
“Well, whatever you are, don’t worry — it’ll be fine. Nothing to be nervous about,” Rose carries on, oblivious of the fact that I want to scream at the top of my lungs and tell her to get the hell out of our house and leave me and Joe alone. “It’s perfectly safe. Very low-key.” She turns to Mum and smiles. “And look, I don’t want to brag, but I have a very high success rate.”
Success rate? Where is this woman even from?
“Rose came into the shop with her leaflets this morning,” Mum says, as if she heard my thoughts. Did I accidentally say them out loud? “She’s been doing this for a long time. She knows what she’s doing, Erin. It feels like it was meant to be.”
At this, Rose rummages in her bag and pulls out a leaflet. She holds it out to me. Grudgingly, I step forward and take the leaflet.
I think I’m going to be sick.
Mum reaches out for my hand. I pull away. I don’t want her gentle reassurance; I just want them to stop talking about getting rid of Joe as if they’re discussing throwing out the trash. And I definitely don’t want to hear about high success rates.
“You don’t need to be involved,” Mum says softly, ignoring my rejection.
“Involved? What d’you mean? What exactly are you going to do?”
Rose gets up from the sofa. “We’re going to see if we can get rid of it. No time like the present.”
“Rose is willing to give it a go,” Mum adds. “She’s not going to charge us or anything. Said she wants to help us settle into the community. Which is nice of her, isn’t it?”
“Nice of her?” My words come out like nails.
“I often find that a few stern words and burning some white sage is all that’s needed.” Rose reaches into her bag. “Sometimes it takes a couple of sessions. I won’t know till I get started.”
I shake my head, as if it’ll make her words fall into place in my brain in a way that I can make sense of. This woman has come into our house with a bag of white sage and wants to have “a few stern words” with Joe. She thinks that’ll get rid of him?
I’m torn between derision and fury. But actually, right now mostly I feel relief. For a minute there, I’d seen fire and brimstone and preachers denouncing Satan and things like that. Instead, we have a round-faced middle-aged lady who wants to shake some herbs around the house.
“The spirit usually resides in a place that has the strongest physical or emotional connection for them,” Rose is saying. “The stronger the emotion, the stronger the link. Such a link can keep a spirit tied to a place. Break the connection and we’re halfway there.”
“Well, I don’t know about any of that,” Mum says. “But it seems to be happening in Erin’s bedroom, so I suppose that must be the place with the . . . connection.”
“And then what?” I ask. “Supposing you do get rid of him — it. Then what?”
“It’s hard to tell. If a spirit has unfinished business, I’ve found that it can linger a bit.”
“Linger where?”
“It can often move to a place that holds the next strongest emotional connection. I’ve seen a spirit disappear from a house only to reappear in a church, for example.”
“Evil spirits haunting a church?” Mum says with a shudder.
“Oh, no,” Rose says. “It’s not about evil. And what we’re doing isn’t about punishment. It’s about helping them to move on to where they need to go. I’m not here to stand in judgment. I merely help to untangle the lines and keep everyone where they’re meant to be.”
She makes it sound so simple, so benign.
“So, are you . . . ? Can you . . .” Mum falters.
“Can I sense something in your house?” Rose asks with a smile.
Mum nods. “Can you?”
Rose holds her hands up and closes her eyes. “I can, yes,” she says, her voice a shade deeper. “I don’t think it’s a bad spirit.” She opens her eyes and looks at me. “But it is troubled. And it needs to go.”
I can’t speak. Her words have clogged up my throat.
“Come on, then,” she says, handing Mum a piece of what I guess is the white sage. “Let’s get started.”
Speechless and numb, I watch them make their way up to my room. What else can I do?
I’m asleep on the bed when it begins. Maybe that’s why it gets me. The unexpectedness of it.
It starts as a tingle. A bit like having pins and needles. Wakes me up. My first thought is that I’ve been asleep on my arm, so I shake it out. But the pins and needles aren’t just in my arm. They’re in my hands, my fingers, my toes, legs — they’re in my neck, my face.
They’re everywhere.
I jump up from the bed and blink a few times as I adjust to the light.
I can hear mumbling outside the room.
Rubbing my arms and legs to try and relieve them of the weird feeling, I stumble over to the door. I don’t even try to open it. I gave up trying to do that ages ago — even before Erin’s dad locked me in. If I could have spoken to him, I’d have told him not to bother. I’d have told him I’m already locked in here, without his help.
I press my ear against the door and listen to the voices outside on the landing. They’re coming closer.
“What do I do with this?” That’s Erin’s mum’s voice.
“Here, let me light it. . . . Good, now just hold it in all the corners. Wave it a little, and shake it, to release its aroma and potency.”
I don’t know the second voice. It’s a woman. Sounds quite well spoken. The kind of person my mum would have had over for tea, maybe.
“Even out here on the landing?” Erin’s mum again.
“Look, like this,” the other voice replies. “I surround myself with the white light of protection. I fill this house with the white light of protection. I welcome the white light of protection.”
What the hell?
The tingling in my body is getting stronger. It feels like tiny knives are stabbing and poking me. And there’s a cold feeling snaking around my body, wrapping itself around me, working its way toward my neck.
A key turning. Then the door opens.
“This is the main place it’s happened,” Erin’s mum is saying. “Actually, it’s the only room where any of us have seen anything.”
“What did you see?” The other woman is behind Erin’s mum. Small, slight. Thick-rimmed glasses. She looks harmless enough.
I guess looks can be deceptive.
She holds out a bunch of something that could be cooking herbs and lights the tip of it.
My neck constricts a bit more; the snake wraps itself tighter around me.
Is she doing this to me?
Erin’s mum purses her lips. “Things moving. The curtains were flapping. The — the bed was shaking.”
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.
The other woman nods. “Poltergeist,” she says smugly. As if she’s seen it all before. As if she knows all about it, all about me. As if she knows anything.
&nb
sp; This woman is not pleasant. I don’t like her.
She shuffles over to a corner of the room, starts waving her herbs around. There’s smoke coming from them. She’s muttering; same kind of stuff she was saying out on the landing. Then she breaks off, turns back to Erin’s mum. Gives her some of the herbs. It looks like a bunch of lavender or something.
“Here. Take some more of the sage. Light the top of it and repeat after me,” she says.
Erin’s mum takes the sage and a box of matches. She lights the sage and holds it awkwardly in front of her. To be fair, she looks like she feels a bit stupid doing it. Good.
“Are you sure it’s OK to do this?” she’s asking. “There won’t be any . . . retaliation?”
The other woman shakes her head. “Like I said, we’re not punishing it.” Like hell you’re not. “We’re just helping it to move on.”
She goes back to her sage. “I surround myself with the white light of protection,” she mutters. Then looks at Erin’s mum and nods to her.
“I — um — I surround myself with the white light of protection,” Erin’s mum mumbles.
A pain stabs at my side. Youch. “I cleanse this room with the white light of protection,” the woman says, waving the sage around.
Erin’s mum gives her sage a shake. “I cleanse this room with the white light of protection,” she repeats awkwardly.
The pain stabs me again. Harder this time. I clutch my stomach. Really? A handful of herbs can do this to me?
The woman moves around the room. Her eyes are glazed over, like she’s in a state of ecstasy or something. She indicates for Erin’s mum to follow her.
Together they keep going on about white light and protection. Every word is a sharper and sharper knife, stabbing harder and deeper into my skin. I’m doubled over, pain jabbing at my body, my insides on fire.
I want to scream. I need to scream. I can barely think, never mind utter any sound. It’s as if they are surrounding me, as if there’s an army of them. Jabbing me with knives and arrows and spears, poking me. Prodding me. Shoving me backward, edging me to the wall. Knocking me down.
“I cleanse this room with the white light of protection.”
