Before eitherof them had time to react further, Mrs Smith stepped forward andwalked between them, completely oblivious to their presence. Theywatched as the bobbing circle of light on the lawn passed away fromthem and then back towards the house, before disappearingaltogether. “I can’t understand how she didn’t see us.” whisperedJackie “She walked right past us and the torch was shining straightat me.”
There was noresponse from Ben and when Jackie turned to look at him, the sightof him shocked her. His face was bone white, his eyes wild and hislips were quivering silently. He was clearly in a worse state ofshock than she was in herself and so she tugged at him and justsaid his name over and over “Ben, Ben, come on we have to get homenow.”
Eventually heresponded just enough that she could coax him along and slowly,together, they crawled to the fence, scrambled through the gap inthe panels and started on their way home. As they walked along thelower village lane in almost total darkness, Jackie kept asking Benwhat he had seen. Eventually he told her; one word at a time andeach punctuated by a shuddering intake of breath, he gasped, “I sawtwo bodies lying in the room.”
“What do youmean?” was all she could say, but he continued regardless of herinterruption. “I could tell they were dead. There was a young womanand she was really pretty and then there was a man holding her andhis arms were wrapped right round her and they were kind of lookingat each other but they were dead.” His voice choked on the finalword.
“How do youknow they were dead, maybe they were just…”
“I just knewthey were. Anyway when I screamed they didn’t move at all. When Isaw them, I couldn’t help myself screaming and I couldn’t bear tostay there, it felt so horrible. I just ran as fast as I could.Then Mrs Smith came out but she couldn’t see us, perhaps she’s aghost.”
“But how can she be a ghost? We saw her before and spoke to her andshe seemed completely real to me.”
“I don’t know, or maybe she has really bad eyesight?”
Jackie responded, “Yes, maybe she has bad night vision, that couldbe it.” But she didn’t really believe it.
Both childrenthen trudged on in silence for a while and then Ben said, “What arewe going to do?”
Jackie replied“Well we’ve got to talk Mum and Dad out of buying that house forone thing.”
“Yes.” said Ben“but how can we tell them about it? They’ll never believe us.”
At last theyarrived home exhausted, only to find themselves in huge troublewith their parents for being out so late and no amount ofprotestation did any good.
As Ben lay inbed waiting impatiently for the oblivion of sleep, all he could seein his minds eye was the waxen face of the young girl. She was verypretty he thought, very pretty, actually even quite beautiful. Herface was turned in his direction and he could make out every littlefeature in exquisite detail, from the long brown eyelashes to thewidth and shape of her cheekbones, the fineness of her nose and thegentle arc of each eyebrow. Finally, how had he not noticed itbefore? How dark and beguiling were her eyes and how inviting hersmile. How could he have missed how very alive she was and that hersmile was for him and for him alone?
When Ben awokethe next day, the exploits of the previous night seemed briefly tobe nothing more than a bad dream, but then he remembered and hisheart sank. He went and woke Jackie up and each confirmed to theother the reality of what had happened, although, of course, Jackiecould only take Ben’s word that he had seen dead bodies in thehouse.
Finally theydescended the stairs for Breakfast and found their parents sittingat the kitchen table drinking coffee.
“Hi Kids.” saidtheir mother. “We’ve just had some fantastic news, the housebelongs to us now and tomorrow we’re moving in. Isn’t itexciting?”
*****
The followingday the removal van turned up bright and early and soon a constantprocession of boxes and furniture were being ferried from house tovan. To keep them out of the way, the children were stationed intheir bedrooms and charged with boxing up the last remnants oftheir possessions. They carried out this duty with a palpable lackof enthusiasm. Most of the time they couldn’t even bring themselvesto talk and so the hours passed in virtual silence, with just theodd coded glance at each other from time to time. Their parentswere far too preoccupied to notice any of this and if they readanything into the children’s behaviour it was that they were tiredand maybe feeling a little unsettled. It was, after all, quiteunderstandable for children to take a little time to adapt to achange of circumstance.
Eventually thehouse was empty and they all took a ceremonial final walk aroundthe house, which had been their home for the past few months andthen slammed the front door shut for the final time, climbed intotheir car and followed the removal van up the road to their newhouse.
It looked justas fine as ever in the late afternoon light and the slanting raysof the sun lent to it a warm glow, whilst the well manicured flowerbeds set the house off to perfection.
“Well children, here we are at last.” said their mother. “We won’tfully unpack today. We’ll just get everything into the house andthen we’ll all get an early night and sort it all outtomorrow.”
The removal vanwas emptied surprisingly quickly and at last they were alone intheir new residence with heaps of labelled boxes and stacks ofdisarrayed furniture for company. They sat at the kitchen table andate soup and bread in a silence that spoke of mental and physicalexhaustion, for it had indeed been a long day.
“Ok, children, you look absolutely done in.” said their motherfinally. “Ben, I’m afraid you won’t be able to sleep in yourbedroom tonight because we have had to use it as a temporarydumping ground for all the boxes that will be going up into theloft.”
“So where am I sleeping then?”
“Don’t worry; you’ll
