I remembered how much Crawler had stared whenever he’d visited the cottage, how his eyes had seemed to scrape every corner. Now I knew why. He’d been taking notes. It had everything. Same type of bed, same duvet cover, same rug. The bookshelf and desk and curtains were the same. One thing was different though.
On every single wall, hung in different types of frames, were pictures of the sea.
‘Just in case,’ Crawler said, ‘you wanted any motivation.’
I looked around. I felt a fluttering in my chest I couldn’t recognise.
‘Ask your father …’ I tried to keep my voice steady, ‘what he expects me to do in here.’
Scanlon repeated my question to Crawler, who laughed.
‘I want you to wreck it. Over and over. That’s your job. You’re a poltergeist, aren’t you? So act like one.’
Crawler got out of the ghost train and began to open drawers and things.
‘I’ve got it fully stocked for you,’ he explained. ‘There’s linen to rip, pictures to destroy. Feel free to tear the doors off the wardrobe and bash these walls. That mirror there is made of especially brittle Venetian glass that makes a delightful tinkling noise when it breaks, so do try to throw something at that a few times a day.’
I blinked.
‘This is all mine …’ I tried, but failed, to keep the unsettling emotion out of my voice, ‘to smash?’
Scanlon looked at me oddly, and then repeated my question to Crawler, who smiled.
‘All of it. As much as you like. You’ll never run out of things to destroy. Because at the end of every ride, we’ll clear it all away and replace it with a whole new kit. Endless fun, won’t cost you a penny, and the best thing of all: you’ll have a supportive audience cheering on your every move.’
My thoughts pushed and pulled against each other. I didn’t like Crawler, or what he’d done to me and the others and to Scanlon, but … I had to admit, he’d certainly gone to a lot of effort. And it did look … strangely tempting.
Besides, Crawler had a point. I was a poltergeist, wasn’t I? Over the last few weeks, I’d never felt quite as alive as when I was losing my temper. Also, I was good at it. And let’s face it – what else was I going to do? Back at Sea View, no one welcomed my anger. But Crawler did. Crawler wanted it to walk in through the front door, sit in the best chair, and put its feet up on the coffee table.
Why not just do what he asked? It almost seemed … beautiful. Like easing into a warm bath.
On the other hand, I remembered how he’d trapped me, the sneaky stalking around the cottage. A flame of resistance glowed inside me for a second.
Half-formed words of protest rose and died.
‘I don’t … You can’t make me. I could just walk out of—’ But my voice got feebler every time.
Because, suddenly, there seemed no point in fighting back. Abruptly, I had a clear, matter-of-fact realisation about what my options were. I wasn’t somebody’s daughter. I wasn’t somebody’s sister. I wasn’t Frankie any more. Hadn’t I scraped myself empty, back in that can? Here was my replacement – a simple, straightforward role – and all I had to do to make it permanent was say yes. And then I could throw that old life away, like a snake shedding its skin. A clean start. A fresh slate. Who was I to refuse?
As if he could sense my confusion, Crawler threw a confident smile in my direction. ‘Come on, girl,’ he said. ‘Face it. If you left now, where would you go? Back to smashing light bulbs in a place you’ve grown too big for? You’re better than that, and you know it. Don’t you want to play with your considerable skills? Show off what you can do?’
My limbs twitched then – a small but perceptible movement, like a puppetmaster had pulled my strings.
And then, with an eerily confident glance, Crawler seemed to stare straight at me, and for a fleeting second, I felt as if his shadowy eyes had looked right into my churning heart and picked out the one thing I was trying to hide.
‘Don’t you want to be seen?’
Crawler turned to Scanlon. ‘Well?’ he demanded.
Scanlon’s eyes raked my face and I gave one tiny, brief nod.
‘She’ll do it,’ said Scanlon in a flat voice.
Crawler’s face blazed in triumph. ‘Rehearsals start tomorrow.’
WHAT FOLLOWED NEXT was a month of gruelling drills. While Scanlon was put, reluctantly, in charge of rehearsing the others, Crawler appointed himself my coach.
This consisted mostly of him urging me to smash up my room in increasingly inventive ways. He pushed me to my limits. If I merely tore the duvet or pulled down the framed pictures, I’d be rewarded with a sneer. ‘Don’t be so pedestrian, Poltergeist. You can do better than that.’
He liked it when I pulled all the pictures off the wall, crying, and then made them fly across the room at his head. He liked it when I ripped all the linen and emptied the pillow of feathers and made the wardrobe fall over. ‘Rip into it, Ripley,’ he’d urge. ‘Unleash the beast.’
He pushed me to work on my stamina. ‘You’re going to be doing this for eight hours a day, every day,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to learn to pace yourself, and keep the rage going as long as you need.’
Sometimes he’d take Ghoul Aid himself, so he could speak to me directly. If I got tired, he’d tell me that ghosts didn’t get tired. If I felt wobbly or weak, he’d shake his head in derision.
‘You have to do it without thinking,’ he said. ‘Without feeling. Like a machine. It’s just who you are. Empty your mind of everything. Get rid of your frailties. Forget your memories. Stay in the moment.’ Then he’d check the timer. ‘Five hours and thirty-three minutes. It’s not bad. But it’s not
