DEAD GOOD (22 page)

Actually when Leo was here earlier helping us with our homework it kinda felt like I would imagine it would feel being at college and sharing digs with other students – whilst still making sure our homework was done on time and to the best of our ability, of course. It feels slightly lonely now that Leo’s gone and I’m stuck here with only Amber for well… company.

‘What was that?’ Amber twists her head to the door.

‘What was what? I didn’t hear anything.’

‘I think your mum’s back,’ Amber says. ‘I definitely heard something in the kitchen… like cutlery or something… hey – weren’t you supposed to start dinner too?’

‘Oh sh…. it!’ I am! I quickly check my watch, leap up from the swivel chair like my pants are on fire and just as I get to the kitchen door, my spook-radar cranks up big-time and the hairs start to lift off my neck. There’s a drawer open. The utensils drawer. That’s what Amber just heard. Alright, it might mean nothing. But it could mean something. But it’s way earlier than it happened last time. Surely it’d happen at the same time wouldn’t it?… ah… wait a minute – what was it Leo said about His Time? It’s not the same as ours, he said, didn’t he? That they have no real concept of time – it’s all one long endless thing for them – sounded horrible when he told me. Still does actually. I turn to go fetch Amber but I don’t need to – she’s right behind me.

‘So, chef, what are we supposed to be….he-ey…’ she says delightedly, sticking her nose through the kitchen door. ‘Mmmm… smells like someone’s already been doing some cooking in here – what is that – oooh it’s yummy!’ and she sniffs the air like she could totally stick it in between two slices of bread and satisfy her stomach with it. I must admit, it does smell wonderful. But it also reminds me of what happened the other evening after Nonna had helped me cook that pasta dish. And putting this smell with the disappearance of Leo just now is making me wish I had a supernatural calculator because it feels like I should be adding some things up.

‘Call Leo,’ I tell her flatly. She frowns at me and looks like she’s about to start saying something like “what am I? Your servant?” but I don’t give her time. ‘Just do it!’ I snap.

Amber heads for the stairs and yells his name two, three – four times and then I hear a door slam shut. I stop my exercise in drawer-shutting in the kitchen and freeze, listening. Amber spins on her heels.

I turn from where I’m standing in the kitchen and even though I shouldn’t be, I’m stunned to once again watch as drawers open v-e-r-y slowly and the insides are sifted around; metallic noises chinking and getting louder and louder as each drawer is systematically dragged open. It doesn’t seem to be happening quite so quickly and madly as the other night and I’m wondering if this is really how it starts and whether things will start to hot up or whether this is like ‘take two thousand and ninety nine’ of the scene that keeps repeating itself over and over and in slightly different ways every time.

‘This is IT!’ I very nearly squeak with excitement, ‘it’s happening NOW!'

‘Oh my god. So… who’s – what’s doing that?’ Amber points at the fifth drawer to open. I shake my head.

‘I think it’s Leo’s granddad but I’ve never actually seen him – apart from dead on the landing the last time. I don’t understand why he’s the only one I haven’t seen properly – in the flesh I mean…’ I stop, appalled at my idiocy. ‘well, not the flesh –oh, you know what I mean!’

Amber smiles her understanding, her eyes still focussed on the kitchen drawers and their seemingly unaided performance.

‘Amber? Choice…’ I say trying to distract her and keep us engaged on the task in hand. She lifts her eyes to me instantly. ‘Stay and watch - or go find Leo,’ I urge her.

My door is pretty much closed. Not how I left it this afternoon during our little homework session. But then Leo has been back here, hasn’t he? The reconstruction has taken him back to where he would have been at the time the fire started. Nonna’s in the living room, Nonno – presumably – is searching for something – the key we think – in the kitchen and Leo and Mia are both upstairs. Mia… I think. Mia… Maybe I should think about moving her first, so Leo has less to do. Or maybe I need to get Leo up and out so that there’s more than one of us trying to handle this nightmare. I can smell smoke now and it’s getting heavier up here. There’s no actual visual of smoke, nor are there any flames or smoke downstairs and I can hear Amber squeaking ‘Ow! Ouch!’ every now and then as she tries to get a hold of the fiery door handle.

I don’t have time to yell anything down to Amber but I tell myself to remember to soak a tea towel in water and try opening the door handle that way once I get back downstairs. Of course if it’s anything like the last time it’ll be shut fast and nothing will move it.

Once my eyes adjust to the dim light inside my room I can see that Leo is sitting on the side of the bed. He’s coughing with all the smoke that’s up here and staring around like he hasn’t the first clue as to what’s happening. I go over to him and put my arms out to shake him and get him standing but my hands go straight through him as usual – as if he’s made of mist and nothing else.

‘Leo!’ I yell above the noise of the crackling fire and the banging drawers and now the taps I can hear gushing water downstairs. ‘Leo! You have to open your eyes but don’t breathe too hard.’

I’m frantic. My heart is hammering and I’m starting to feel sick with apprehension at this whole horrible nightmare. I try to grab his hand again, repeating over and over in my head “Please, please, please try. Please”. This time I meet with a little bit of resistance – unless it’s my imagination - and then his head turns to face me. He squints a bit and then he rubs his eyes. There must be more smoke from his dimension I’m trying to figure. Of course, all we are able to make out is noise and smell but I’m guessing there would’ve been a heck of a lot of smoke – maybe too much for him to see properly beyond his nose right now.

I take the front door key off the bedside table and with all the determination I posses; I push it into his hand.

‘You must take this,’ I urge him.

He frowns and coughs, staring at the key as if it’s something completely alien. ‘Hold the key, Leo – Take it!’ I almost scream. His hand and my heart virtually takes flight as I watch his fingers begin to curl curiously around it. But then his shoulders start to slump, his eyelids sag slightly and the key starts to slip through his mistiness and I realise he’s drifting away again. He mustn’t!

‘LEO!’ this time I scream, trying to force the key into his palm. ‘You have to get Mia! Come on! Come with me!’

He frowns strangely at me but he’s focussing more and this time the key stays inside his fist. ‘Wha- what’s happening…who…?’ he squints. He’s clearly delirious. But I don’t care what he says, I just need to get him moving and out of this gas chamber and into his sister’s room so he can get them both downstairs and open up the door with this damned key.

‘Just come with me!’ I urge, and slowly, curiously, he follows me out of the room, across the landing and into Mia’s room.

She’s curled up in her bed and whether she’s breathing still or not is difficult to tell and impossible to verify because Leo’s clearly found strength he didn’t appear to have much of before; he’s scooped Mia up and out of her bed and now he’s relying on me and me alone to be his eyes as I we make our way cautiously down the stairs. About halfway down he stops and I coax him on, urging him to hurry.

‘I can’t get the door to open, Mads. I’ve tried, honest I have. It’s like it’s on… oh…fire….obviously…’ she trails off, ashamed of her realisation. She looks at my face and must read something encouraging in what she sees.

‘Where is he? Has he got the key?’

I nod madly and point. ‘Leo…’ I urge, right up into his ear. ‘Leo – use the key. Use it now – get out! Come on, come on!’

He fumbles around the door with the key and eventually finds the opening, then pushes the key in a little way. I actually gasp in astonishment as I watch him draw it back out again, his shoulders slumped. What?

‘What’s the matter?!’ I yell.

‘I can’t,’ he says. ‘I can’t do it. It won’t work.’

‘What do you mean; of course you can do it!’ I scream. Oh god, we’ve come this far, I feel my whole body start to tense. Please god, please don’t let this not work now – not now!

Amber squeals and bounces up and down on the spot in encouragement. ‘Come on Leo, you can do it,’ she says over and over. His personal cheerleader.

He takes the key out and holds it in the palm of his hand – staring at it like it’s the most useless thing in the world. It must work. It’s got to work. Surely! I cannot get my head round this. I shake my head, my eyes darting frantically from Leo’s misty eyes, the door and then to the key and back again in a horrible game of rounders.

He doesn’t seem to realise that the door is open. So I push it wider, and wider until the houses across the road are just about visible through the….ah…and then it all makes sense.

The odd numbered side of Ferndale Way is very visible through the quite clearly, but at the same time quite vaguely misty door of the old house. Leo’s house. His old door. The door that burned down with the rest of the flammables and was replaced with a new door. The door we have the key to right now. But a key which will in no way, shape or form, fit the original door – Leo’s door. Which is still quite firmly shut and still quite plainly staring him in the face and not going to open anytime soon using this method of escape. Wrong key.

I turn to Amber and swallow miserably, just as the door is suddenly flung even wider open and as bright as the day still outside, Dad comes briskly bounding through, closely followed by Mum with Davey wedged at her hip. I sigh. Oh god. This was probably the stupidest idea I’ve ever not thought through properly.

‘We need Leo’s key,’ I say flatly. ‘The original key to the original door. How could I have been so thick?’

And Leo of course, along with Mia, evaporates the minute my returning family step through them.

I sigh again. A huge sigh. The biggest for the biggest dumbest idea I ever (nearly) had in my life. And in Leo’s death. I let my head drop heavily as I fight tears. Just typical. Why are shitty things happening in my life so much right now? Why? Why can’t something nice happen for once in my stupid, dumb life?

‘You can’t beat yourself up about it,’ Amber says for the hundredth time, stroking my arm as we sit, deflated on my bed later. ‘We’ll just have to work out how to get his old key, that’s all.’

thirty

I probably slept for about half an hour last night. Tops. So that this morning I’m knackered as well as miserable. And I don’t even bump into Leo before I get to school. I wasn’t even listening properly when Dad was trying to tell me about the Restaurant and how badly Leo’s Uncles accounts system has been set up. I don’t think it’s majorly relevant to our quest right now anyway.