But was it what I wanted?
I felt a vast, nameless longing. I had known, once, but I didn’t now. This place had wiped it out of me.
‘Scanlon?’ I said, throwing out his name like a lifeline.
But in the split second before he turned around, I’d already rejected of the idea of breaking free. Where would we go? Where would be right? I’d seen how little either of us fitted in out there. Besides, it wasn’t like we were friends.
Anyway – I thought about all the training I’d done – I was kind of looking forward to putting on a show.
Scanlon lingered at the doorway. ‘Did you say something?’ he said gently.
‘Nope,’ I muttered.
A few moments later, he had gone.
Then all the lights in my room went out, and the spooky organ music started up. Somewhere from the depths of the building came the clatter of the ghost train as it brought me my first audience.
In the dark, I felt my lips stretch back, and heard a strange, dry chuckle, which scared me for a second till I realised it was mine. I moved my neck to the left, then the right, rolled my shoulders, circled my wrists. Felt things
pop and snap
and
tweak and wake.
DESPITE THEIR FINE clothes and fancy handbags, the crowd at the Crawler Lane Haunted House and Ghost Train™ (with Real Ghosts! And Live Performances from the Dead! Every Night!) all seemed quite ugly, somehow, and not just because they were often grey, bleeding from their eyeballs and vomiting over the side of their carriages. No: it was the delight in their eyes as they came clattering in, fresh from spearing Isolde and ogling orphans and watching people die for their viewing pleasure. They just seemed like not very nice people.
But they were a total picnic compared to the sad ones. The ones who’d lost relatives and loved ones, who stared at me with their desperate eyes, seeking comfort from me. I grew tired of them trying to grab me from their seats, begging me to tell them if I’d seen their little boy, or had any word from their sister, or come across their best friend anywhere, anywhere, had I? Could I possibly look for them? Would I mind? They’d be ever so grateful.
‘Leave me alone,’ I wanted to snap at them. ‘If you’ve lost someone, they’re lost for ever. Deal with it.’
I ignored them instead. No way would they interfere with my performance – I was too trained, too slick for that. And eventually they’d leave, with terrible strained smiles of grief, dabbing tears away, and I’d think, Phew. But then they’d come back. It was a nightmare. They wouldn’t give up.
In the end, Crawler, never one to pass up on an opportunity, made me lie to them, and say I had seen their loved ones. And, for an astronomical fee, I’d relay a message for them from their great-auntie Barbaronka Majonka or whoever. (Which I’d make up.)
Yes, I much preferred those who just wanted to stare at me, who treated me like a firework display of sorts, went oooh and aaah in all the right places. They wanted me to perform – that’s what I did, and then they left me alone. Nice and straightforward. Dead easy.
And Crawler was right about something else as well. I loved being seen. Whenever I heard that announcement over the speakers that let me know the ghost train was winding its way up the track towards me (‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, the star of the show, the ghost with the most, your very own ghoul with the killer-watt act, it’s POLTERGEIST TIME!’), I’d get all excited and shivery. And once everyone had gone, I’d lie on my bed and stare up at the ceiling and go over my performance again and again, working out what went down well, and refining what wasn’t so effective.
Within a couple of weeks, my whole attitude towards Crawler changed. Whereas before I’d thought of him as the very devil himself, now he seemed more like a benevolent benefactor. After all, before he’d come along, my whole existence had been about what I couldn’t do. My temper had been a curse – it had made people cry, not to mention wet themselves.
I mean, in essence, ever since I’d been born, and certainly since I’d died, everyone I’d ever known had seen me through a filter of can’t. ‘You can’t lose your temper at your little sister, Frankie. You can’t set fire to the village hall. You can’t scowl at Thea Thrubwell like you hate her guts, even if you do. You can’t roam around unaccompanied if you’ve died.’ Even my so-called friendship with Scanlon only started once he’d told me what I couldn’t do.
But Crawler wasn’t like that. He wasn’t interested in limits or what I couldn’t do. All he was interested in was what I could do. I was allowed to get angry. It was my talent. It was the big draw. He saw me through can. He saw me through the filter of do it again, and do it worse. He saw the storm inside me, and he encouraged me to let it out.
It was kind of refreshing.
Even the spooky organ music that played all day, every day, began to sound quite jaunty and welcoming, in its own eerie, discordant way. I hummed it when it wasn’t on. I missed it when it wasn’t playing. And I only really felt like myself when it began again. It was my soundtrack. It was my theme tune. It made me come alive.
After a couple of weeks, I didn’t recognise the people in the photo on the wall. I knew I’d lived somewhere else, once, and had a life, once, but that meant nothing to me now. There was nothing, absolutely nothing in my heart, apart from the ambition to make even more of a mess the next time that ghost train came clattering through
