Out of the Depths (7 page)

There were spots in front of my eyes. My legs were like jelly. I began to crumple. I was going to faint. I let out a gasp. Jazz was on her feet in an instant. She grabbed my arm. Just as well, because I was sure I was about to collapse.

I couldn't take my eyes from that photograph. Jazz followed my gaze. ‘It's him, isn't it? The boy you've been seeing in class every day?' Her finger stabbed at the photograph. ‘That's Ben Kincaid.'

‘Is that who you saw, Tyler?' Jazz had lowered me into one of the chairs, but she couldn't contain her excitement. Her long-nailed finger pointed him out again. ‘That's Ben Kincaid. Are you saying that's the boy you saw in class?'

‘You can't really think the boy you saw was … Ben Kincaid?' Aisha had that disbelieving look on her face.

What could I say? If I was Aisha, I wouldn't believe me either. I didn't answer her. Because it couldn't be true. I couldn't have seen Ben Kincaid. He'd been dead for years. And Mac was there too, looking over Aisha's shoulder, his face grim, shaking his head, and I knew he would never believe me.

‘No. I didn't see him. I didn't. I didn't.' My voice was rising, on the edge of hysteria. Aisha stepped back.

‘It's OK, Tyler. Calm down,' Jazz said. She dabbed at
my brow with one of her wipes. ‘We believe you … don't we, Aisha?'

And I turned on her. ‘Believe me! Believe what, Jazz? That I saw Ben Kincaid in class every day? But why should you believe that? It's crazy. What I'm saying is crazy.' My voice was rising with every word. ‘I saw a dead boy sitting in class day after day. Of course I'm crazy.' Mac smirked behind her. I turned on him too. ‘I just like attention, isn't that what you said, Mac? Everybody knows about me, don't they? I see dead people. I saw Ben Kincaid sitting in class every day. I must be crazy.'

His smirk disappeared. He looked angry.

Jazz didn't answer me. She was looking behind me. I swivelled round and the Rector was there. His face was stern. His beard was quivering. How much had he heard, I wondered. ‘What's all this commotion about?' he yelled at us.

Mrs Craig stepped out of the office behind him. ‘They've all been fighting, Mr Hyslop.'

Mac leapt in. ‘No we weren't! We weren't fighting.'

Mr Hyslop turned on him. ‘When I want you to speak, I'll ask you.' His eyes fell on me. ‘What were you saying, Tyler, about Ben Kincaid?'

My mouth dried up. It was Aisha who rescued me. ‘Tyler writes great stories, sir. She's going to write a story about this school, sir, a ghost story.'

He looked back at me, sterner than ever. ‘I've had to speak to you before about this, Tyler. I don't want to have to speak to you again. I think we can do without you using us in a story. The school has a sad enough history. We want to look to the future.' His face was white, strained with anger. He took us all into his office and gave us a telling off for fighting, didn't give anyone a chance to explain anything. And he gave us a warning. My first in this school. And I thought …
it's all happening again
. At last he was finished with us, dismissed us all. All except me.

‘I want to have a word with you, Tyler,' he said. He waited till the door was closed before he spoke again.

‘Tyler, I heard the cleaners suggest you pretend you'd seen a ghost so you could wind your friends up the way they did you. But to pretend you've seen the ghost of Ben Kincaid of all people is just a step too far. I will not have it.'

This was so unfair I could have cried.

‘I know your reputation from your last school,' he said, and that only made things worse. ‘I don't want a
repeat of any of that nonsense here. I will not allow it, Tyler.'

Everyone knew about me. I bit my lip, tried to speak, but I was too afraid I would burst into tears. So I only nodded.

Keep my imagination for my stories – how often had I heard all that? But here I was in the middle of a story I couldn't understand … it made no sense. It was so unfair.

I'd never felt so alone. There was no one I could confide in. Not my parents, or my brother, not even Jazz. Jazz loved the idea of me seeing a ghost, but did she really believe me? I didn't think so. There was no one.

My friend Annabelle phoned me that night. And I knew I could never tell her what was happening either. ‘How's the new school?' she asked.

‘It's good.' I was determined to sound cheery and normal and as if everything was fine. ‘I've made some nice friends.'

She giggled. ‘Not seen any dead teachers lately?'

It would be with me for ever, that reputation. I'd
always be known as the crazy girl who saw a dead teacher. Now a dead boy in class. I snapped at Annabelle. Didn't mean to. But I couldn't help it.

‘Of course I haven't. That was all a silly mistake.'

I could hear the friendliness in her tone change. ‘Keep your hair on. I was only joking.' There was a cold silence on the line for a moment. But Annabelle could never stay silent for long. ‘So … who's the boy who was asking about you?'

Mac, she was talking about Mac. ‘What boy?' I asked anyway.

‘He's gorgeous … Asian. He was playing football at our school at the weekend. He was asking all about you.'

‘And I suppose everybody took great pleasure in telling him all about me and all the crazy things I said.'

She let out a long exasperated sigh. ‘I certainly didn't tell him anything.' She was going to hang up in a minute if I didn't stop talking to her like this. ‘Look, some of the boys told him … you know what boys are like … but, I've been dying to ask … is he your boyfriend?'

‘No!' I snapped at her. ‘I don't even consider him a friend. He thinks I'm weird. Now he'll think I'm even weirder.'

‘Oh, Tyler, I wish I could come and visit you … but because of this girl going missing, my mum and dad won't let me out of the house after dark.'

I would have loved in that moment to confide in her, tell her everything that had happened. Annabelle and I had been good friends once, going to sleepovers in each other's houses, whispering secrets to each other. All that had stopped when I started seeing things. Her parents had made sure of it. So how could I talk to her now? And again I realised there was no one I could tell.

‘Debbie Lawson didn't go missing,' I said. ‘She just ran off, didn't she?'

‘On the telly tonight the police said they are beginning to think she never left the area. That something might have happened to her here in the town. They've warned everybody to be extra vigilant, young girls especially … that was the words they used. Extra vigilant.'

I spent a lot of time thinking after Annabelle's phone call. Mac hated me. Mr Hyslop had heard all about me too. I would soon lose Jazz and Aisha as my friends if things went on like this. But I still had the power to change things. Make it all right. And I vowed tomorrow,
I
would
make it all right. I was going to forget the boy I had seen sitting in the back of the class. I'd tell Jazz and Aisha … and Mac too. Especially Mac, that I had been mistaken.

And my common sense told me I probably had been. I mean, how could I have seen a dead boy? Ben Kincaid. That was too stupid to be true. No wonder no one believed me. I had kept quiet about the statues. Why hadn't I kept my mouth shut about the boy I'd seen? Well, I would keep my mouth shut from now on. I wanted friends and fun. I didn't want this.

Maybe, I thought, having an imagination like mine could drive you into madness. Into believing things that were impossible.

I wanted to prove that I wasn't mad. That I didn't want to be the centre of attention. I was going to end this.

Before I went to bed, I wrote everything that had happened down in my diary, as if it was a story I was writing. But I finished this story off. The boy never came again. He disappeared from my life. And I woke the next morning to discover it had all been a dream, a terrible nightmare.

And by the time I closed my diary, I felt so much better. Ben Kincaid was dead again.

I woke just after midnight. Alert immediately. I could see the time illuminated on the clock beside my bed.

12.01.

Something had awoken me. In an icy second I knew what that something was.

Someone was in the room with me.

Not just in the room. Someone was sitting at the foot of my bed.

‘Mum … ?' my voice croaked out in a whisper. And why was I asking that? It wasn't Mum, I knew that. I tried to pull my duvet up around me and it wouldn't move. Trapped by the weight of whoever was sitting there.

Ice cold.

I was ice cold. The bed was ice cold. My feet, my hands, my whole body shivered with cold. I didn't know
what to do. I lay facing the clock. 12.01. Too terrified to turn, too terrified to peer over the covers and see who was there.

And yet, somewhere inside me I knew who it was.

Him.

Ben Kincaid.

The boy with the pale face. His dark eyes always watching me. Not scary in the classroom. In daylight. But here, in midnight dark, in the black silence of my own bedroom, too terrifying to think about.

Could I hear him breathing? Did ghosts breathe? Or was that the breath of the wind outside. I longed to leap to my feet, throw the covers back, confront him. If I'd been writing this in a story, that's what I would have done.

But I was too terrified to move. And what would I see?

And why was he here? And even thinking it, I answered my own question. He knew what I had written in my diary, that I had made him disappear; I had killed him off, and he wasn't going to let me do that. He had come here to warn me. To let me know he wouldn't leave me be.

A movement, the covers grew taut. As if whoever was
sitting at the end of my bed was leaning towards me. I imagined his face coming closer.

Please, let me have the courage to look!

But there was no courage in me. I wanted to sink deep into the bed, sure I could feel his dead breath on my face.

Did I hear a voice? Was it only in my mind?

Help me, Tyler.
A whispered plea. And again.
Help me, Tyler.
Words that seemed to drift like an icy breeze against my ear.

I could take it no longer. I had to get out of that bed. Had to see for myself who was there. If I thought about it a moment longer, my courage would leave me. With my eyes still closed, I threw back the duvet, I rolled from the bed, away from him, expecting at any second his cold hand to clutch at me, pull me back. I hit the wall. Curled up there for what seemed an age of time. My hands balled into fists, pressing against my eyes. Terrified to look. Imagining when I did, his face close against my own, his dead eyes staring into mine.

But I had to see. I finally had to look.

And he was gone.

The room was empty. No one here but me.

Had he ever been there? Had anyone?

Or were moments like these more signs of my madness? I scrambled ever further into the corner. I drew up my legs, hugged my knees. My eyes scanned the room. I expected something to leap out from every corner. Every shadow a threat.

There was no one here. This was my bedroom. I knew every inch of it. But I needed the light. The dark was making me too afraid. My quaking hand reached for the lamp to switch it on.

I blinked at the sudden light. My bed was crumpled, the window closed. I looked at the clock again.

12.01 …

The time I had first woken up … but that couldn't be right. Minutes, many minutes had passed since then. How could time have stood still?

Or had it all been a dream? A nightmare?

I looked all around the room, and my eyes came to rest on my keys hanging where I always put them, on a hook beside the door. They were swinging back and forth, back and forth, as if someone had just moved them. Just touched them.

I watched them all the rest of that night.

And they never stopped swinging.

Mum said I looked pale next morning. ‘Pale as a ghost' were her exact words. They made me shiver. No wonder I was pale. I hadn't gone back to my bed. Stayed crouched in that corner. Had hardly slept all night, and when I did drop off, my head falling on my knees, my sleep had been filled with dreams – dreams of dark figures standing in the shadows of my room, long fingers reaching out to me, and whispers in the dark.

Help me, Tyler.

I would leap awake and focus my eyes on every dark recess, sure I could see something moving. I so wanted to run into Mum and Dad's room, crawl into bed between them, just as I had when I was a little girl. But I didn't even dare to move from the room, because those keys never stopped swinging, and I was sure if I opened the door someone … something would be there waiting for me.

‘Are you feeling OK?' Mum asked once again.

I wondered if I could ask to take the day off school – but immediately decided against it. She would want me to go back to bed, tuck me in there, and I could not bear the thought of going into that room again.

I walked to school in a daze, and Aisha and Jazz caught up with me as I stood on the little arched bridge over the mist-covered lake.

‘It's eerie, isn't it?' Jazz said, taking me by surprise.

‘I've never even seen the other side. There's always been a mist hovering over it.'

‘You're the writer,' Aisha said. ‘If this was one of your stories … what would be on the other side?'

And I imagined another world, another dimension, another time. Nothing of this world at all.

Jazz nudged me. ‘Don't look so scared. There's only trees and bushes. Nothing mysterious at all.'

‘It's lovely in summer,' Aisha said. ‘We go round there and have picnic lunches.'

My imagination wouldn't let me picture it in summer, in sunshine. The water was too dark. The winter bare branches hung too low, their bony fingers scratching the surface of the water menacingly.