After four weeks – when I was able to wreck and kick and scratch and break for exactly nine hours without a break – he even broke into a smile.
‘Bring in the mannequins,’ he said one morning.
‘Mannequins?’ I stammered, pushing some matted hair out of my face.
Scanlon silently wheeled in a trolley full of stuffed dummies, some child sized, some adult sized.
‘Of course,’ said Crawler, panting slightly from the poison in his system. ‘You didn’t think you’d just be chucking plates about, did you? People are paying for some fun here. You’ll be throwing punters across the room at least twenty times a day. Now, try to pick one up.’
Heaving and grunting, I tried to pick up the nearest one. ‘What’s it stuffed with, lead?’
‘Sand. Should make you feel right at home.’ He gave me an evil grin. ‘Try again.’
This time, I succeeded in picking up the smallest dummy by half a centimetre.
‘Oh dear,’ he sighed. What a weakling you are, Frances. Totally puny. Call yourself a poltergeist? Think anyone’s going to be applauding that? You’ve got star billing here, so try not to embarrass yourself.’ He looked closely into my face.
‘I can’t do it,’ I said, feeling beaten. ‘I just can’t.’
‘What a defeatist you are. Do you want to leave? Is that it? Well then, go. The exit’s that way. If you can’t be bothered, I’d rather you went, so I can go and find a poltergeist who really wants this.’
‘No,’ I stammered. ‘Y-you don’t have to do that—’
‘Were you this much of a deadbeat when you were alive? No wonder your parents didn’t bother coming back for you – if they would’ve been welcomed by an attitude like that …’
‘Shut up,’ I snarled.
‘Try again,’ said Crawler, smirking.
This time, I picked up that tiny child-size dummy and managed to hurl it as far as his feet.
‘Take it back,’ I muttered. ‘Take it back.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It works. Look at you. You’re trembling all over with rage. You needed that.’
After a few more days, I could throw the biggest dummies across the room with ease. The most surprising thing of all was that I didn’t even need to make an effort any more. I was doing it automatically.
‘It’s better when you don’t feel anything,’ Crawler told me, and I believed him. ‘Too much emotion can make you hysterical, and renders you useless. You need to learn to make it happen without even thinking about it.’
One day, Crawler said, ‘Frances? Can you throw your bed across the room?’
I stared at him blankly.
Then he said, ‘Throw that bed across the room, Poltergeist’, and I did it immediately, without question, without thinking.
He gave me a satisfied smirk.
‘I think we’re ready to open.’
‘ER, WHAT IS this?’
The guest list had been drawn up, the invites had been sent out, the bookings had been taken. Every centimetre of the ghost train had been decorated with fake cobwebs and fresh splatters of artificial blood. From outside the Haunted House came a human mumbling sound and it was growing louder by the second.
Tonight was the premiere. I’d been primed and trained till I was destroying my bedroom with my eyes closed. And now Scanlon was standing in front of me and spraying something sticky and synthetic on to my face.
He had the grace to look ashamed. ‘Spray-on cobwebs,’ he muttered. ‘For the atmosphere. Crawler’s orders.’
Strands of it clung to my hair and eyelashes. It made my nostrils itch.
‘Is this an actual joke?’ I said.
‘Sorry,’ he muttered, trying to wipe some of it away, and failing. ‘If it makes anything better, everyone’s got to have this, even me.’
I met his eyes reluctantly and a little shyly. I hadn’t seen much of him over the last few weeks, apart from a few awkward moments during my training when Crawler shouted at him to bring in a cup of tea and an extra shot of Ghoul Aid.
‘Have you seen the others?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see them every day. I’ve been putting them through … their moves.’
‘How are they?’
‘They’re …’ Scanlon hesitated. ‘Well, they were quite stunned at first, but now I think they’re just happy to be out of their cans and to have something to do. Isolde isn’t that thrilled, I don’t think, but it’s hard to know what she’s telling me. And I think the little girl is … just confused, and upset. She keeps trying to hug people, but no one has the time. And she’s always asking for her mummy. But the boys and Vanessa can’t wait to get started. They keep telling me how grateful they are, to have a bed and board and a job. It’s … it’s awful.’
‘Maybe you should have thought about that before you hunted us.’
‘You’re never going to forgive me for that.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘Does it matter?’ I said. ‘We’re here now. Perhaps Vanessa and the boys have a point.’
It felt as if my head was full of dust. Tired all of a sudden, I moved away. Outside, the excited chatter of the crowd swelled and burst.
‘You’d better leave,’ I said. ‘Go and do your thing.’
He moved towards the double doors and looked back over his shoulder. He’d smartened up for the occasion and was kitted out in a red tuxedo, like something a lion tamer might have worn. It made me almost miss his horrid lime and pink T-shirt.
Scanlon bunched up his lips and gave me a flash of those ratty teeth. ‘Good luck, Frankie.’
For a moment, there was a responding flicker of something inside me, something softer. I could just leave. Wait for the door downstairs to open, and slip out, into the woods. And I could take Scanlon with me. Neither of us was in chains. Really, when you looked at it, we could leave any time we wanted. That was the genius of Crawler – he’d persuaded us all to stay because it was best for us. But we
