Once we were sure Kerry wouldn’t come back, we told Mum we were going to listen to music in my room. And as soon as I was sure she was sitting in front of her favourite TV programme, we closed the door, drew the curtains and set up our altar. Candles, skull, incense, a handful of graveyard earth. The knife.
‘You should offer some of your blood, like I do,’ Zoe said.
I shook my head. ‘Too squeamish. Remember what I was like when we just talked about blood in biology? I nearly passed out then.’
‘It’s a couple of drops,’ Zoe argued. ‘The point is, you’re giving something to the spirits to thank them for helping you. It’ll take a few seconds. Come on. You have to take this more seriously. We’re not messing about here.’
I stared down at the skull, which was a sickly yellow-white in the candle light. It still had a couple of brownish smears of Zoe’s blood from the last ritual. I couldn’t say to Zoe that actually, I only wanted to mess about. It was the seriousness of the thing that scared the life out of me.
We started the music again, not too loud because I wanted to keep an ear out for Mum. If she opened the door and caught us, she’d have a fit. I held my hand over the skull, as Zoe said her ritual words. It started with her saying some names and calling on the spirits to help her. The names were her dad, she said, and the woman from the grave nearest to where she’d taken the soil. Then she read out more lines that sounded like a sad poem. She’d written it all herself. I had a second or two of sharp pain as Zoe dug the tip of the knife into the tip of my index finger and pressed it gently so that three drops of blood fell down onto the skull. They trickled slowly across it, like dark tears. She did the same to her own finger and the drops of blood fell onto mine. Zoe pushed my clammy hands down onto the cool smoothness of the skull. She placed her hands on top of mine and held them down. Her eyes were closed and her eyelids trembled like black moths on the pale flower of her face.
‘Ask for whatever you want, now,’ she whispered. ‘It will happen.’
The music sighed sadly in the corner of the room. I tried to tell myself I was just imagining the dark shapes moving around in the corner of my vision, and the way the room seemed to be deathly cold. I squeezed my eyes shut and thought about Mum and Dad. I pushed away any thoughts of Luke.
15
Shadows
Mum got engrossed in some film on TV and forgot Zoe was here. She jumped when we came down the stairs at almost midnight.
‘Zoe! I thought you’d gone ages ago. I can’t send you out on your own at this time of night. I’ll walk you back and apologise to your mum.’
‘There’s no need,’ Zoe tried to insist, but Mum wasn’t having any of it and steered her out of the back door. I cleaned my teeth, then pushed open the door to my room, flicking the light on as quickly as possible. This was supposed to be my private space, but now I hated to be alone in it. Even in the brightness, I was sure those shadows were moving just out of my line of sight – with nothing there when I turned my head to look. The air in the room still seemed thick with scent; sandalwood, vervain and lavender from the incense and that sweet, waxy smell candles leave behind when you’ve put them out. And apart from the odd car shushing past outside, there was no sound.
I threw myself into bed and pulled the duvet up around me. I reached for a book. Zoe had lent me Gormenghast, because she’d been doing some drawings inspired by it, but I was finding it hard to get into. I settled for some poems we were supposed to read for English. It wasn’t long before my eyelids started to feel heavy, so I pushed the book aside and lay down. I drifted off, but dreamed the bed was full of filthy, grey soil, filling up my nose, ears and mouth, suffocating me.
I jumped upright and blinked hard. When you wake up after sleeping under a bright light, your eyes feel sore and your head hurts. It felt like there was no air in the room and I could barely breathe. I pulled my legs up towards me, hugged my knees and started to cry.
At some point in the small hours of the morning, with a pinkish sunrise sending little glowing shafts through the gap in my curtains and with the bedroom light still burning, I slept again, lying on top of the duvet. I only woke up when I heard Mum tapping on the door. I sat up, rubbed my sore eyes and padded to the door.
‘You OK?’ Mum handed me a mug. ‘Your light’s been on for ages so I thought you were awake. But you didn’t come down.’ She glanced at my face. ‘You look awful.’
‘Thanks.’ I rubbed sticky sleep out of my eyes and yawned. ‘Did you get Zoe home all right?’
Mum pulled her dressing gown belt a little tighter. ‘I got her home,’ she said. ‘As to whether she’s all right –’ Mum sighed and shook her head.
‘What do you mean?’
‘That mother of hers. She’d latched the door and wasn’t going to let her in. She made her stand on the doorstep in the rain for ages and just shouted some horrible names at her out of the bedroom window. I thought I was going to have to bring Zoe back for the night.’
Zoe still wouldn’t be dragged into talking about her mother, even after the horrible scene at Parents’ Night. Most of the time she
