The door was flung open and yellow light from the landing swept in. Mum ran over to me and pulled me into a hug. I grabbed her and sobbed into her shoulder, gulping in her familiar safe smell of soap and toothpaste and tea.
She took me downstairs and made me hot milk, like she used to do when I was very little and wouldn’t settle. She assured me there was no one in my room. ‘I’ve even looked under your bed. You silly thing – you’ve scratched yourself on the face. It was just a very bad dream.’ She even sat in the chair while I tried to sleep on the sofa, promising not to leave me on my own.
Even with Mum there, though and knowing I was safe from whatever nightmares might be in my room, I couldn’t rest. Every time I almost fell asleep, pictures kept running through my brain. Zoe and I doing our ceremony this afternoon. The knife digging into the smooth flesh on our arms and the squeezed-out drops of blood. Kerry and creepy Dave and something about the way he looked at her. Zoe acting like someone I hardly knew.
17
Flat 1413
I couldn’t believe it when Zoe knocked at the door at about nine the morning after Jodie’s party, looking like nothing had ever happened. She waved her hands at me. ‘Like the new perfume? It’s disinfectant,’ she said. ‘I stink.’
I sniffed. ‘Yeah, you do, a bit. How come?’
Zoe told me that she’d been to the empty flat and cleaned it up. ‘I felt like a prat after last night,’ she said. ‘So I thought the least I could do was to go and mop up the mess. I bet it looks cleaner than it ever did in there.’
‘It was never going to win a Beautiful Homes award,’ I said. ‘But yeah, the pile of vomit didn’t really add to the atmos. I can’t believe we left the key with you, the state you were in. I thought Kerry had it. How are you feeling?’
‘Good.’
I had to admit she wasn’t displaying any ill-effects. ‘Shouldn’t you have a stonking headache or something?’
‘Apparently not.’
Zoe kept going on about what a laugh it had been and how she’d felt really amazing and liberated. It made me wonder if we’d actually been at the same party.
‘Yeah, I went a bit far with the booze,’ Zoe went on. ‘But Anna, it was like – I don’t know. It was like suddenly we could do whatever we wanted and no one could stop us.’
You, I thought. No one could stop you. There wasn’t really an ‘us’, last night.
‘We made that happen,’ Zoe breathed. ‘We asked for something to happen. And look what did.’
‘It was just…’ I didn’t want to damp her down. But it hadn’t felt so special to me. Except that, maybe, Kerry came into her own, didn’t she? She went against all her rules, for us, but mainly for Zoe. There was a chance things would get better between them. ‘Kerry was cool, wasn’t she?’
Zoe ignored this. ‘We got a gift, didn’t we? Think about it. We got the keys to our own place.’
‘Huh?’
‘We’ve got somewhere to go, just the two of us. You’re always moaning about the magic gear in your bedroom. We can store it there, can’t we? And we can escape there, whenever we want to. It’s the best thing.’
‘I’ll be glad to get rid of that stuff, that’s for sure. It gives me nightmares.’ Should I mention this to Zoe? Would she laugh at me? ‘I keep thinking that… that someone’s there, in my room.’
Zoe sat down on the stairs. ‘Someone, like who?’
I shrugged, struggling to find a way to explain it. ‘Maybe I mean something, not someone. But I feel all cold and –’
‘Fix the heating.’ Zoe smirked.
‘No, it’s a weird kind of cold. I think I can feel things touching me. Stop smiling at me like that. I mean it. I’m scared out of my head, every night.’
Zoe took my hand and squeezed it. ‘Sorry. You’re right – what we’re doing is really powerful. I can feel things in your room too. But that’s what’s so exciting. It’s not a bad presence or anything evil. It’s just the spirits, getting us things we ask for. They’re on our side.’
She pulled me up towards my room. ‘Come on. I’m with you. Nothing’s going to happen that you don’t want.’ I didn’t even want to go in, but I followed Zoe and watched as she drew my curtains drawn and lit an incense stick.
“We need to get your dad back, for good,’ Zoe announced. ‘And I’ve got one or two people I want to take care of, just for me.’
This time Zoe had downloaded some meditation CD with strange, unearthly sounds on it and we stared and stared at the candle flame until my brain pounded and everything felt unreal. Even when I closed my eyes, I could see flickering and dancing, behind my eyelids, right inside in my head. Zoe started to chant, over and over again. And then she asked the spirits to banish anything bad from our lives. It was a warm morning, but I started to shiver. Painful little goose bumps rose all along my arms and the cold prickling down my neck and back felt as if tiny, sharp fingers were playing across my
