‘The weird thing is,’ said Scanlon, ‘you always seem totally fine when you come in for a briefing. You always nod and say you understand, but …’ His voice spluttered out and he looked away.
‘What?’ I urged him.
‘I just feel like there are parts of you that are shu—’
He didn’t even have to say it. It was easy to guess the rest.
Parts of you that are shutting down.
Hadn’t I been warned? Someone had told me. I couldn’t remember who, but I remembered their words: ‘You won’t rot. But your memories might.’
Now I realised there was nothing the rot wouldn’t touch. Blankness was falling inside me, and one day my mind would become completely buried.
‘Don’t blame yourself,’ said Scanlon gruffly. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s happening to the others.’
‘The others?’ I said thickly.
His eyes grew wide then. ‘Yeah. The others. The other ghosts. Back at the Haunted House?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ I said, suddenly afraid.
‘They keep switching off too. Right in the middle of shows. They just stop whatever they’re doing and stare into space. It’s happening more and more. Dad’s not happy about it, obviously, but it’s not their fault.’ He rubbed his eyes and said, sounding oddly self-conscious, ‘It’s a challenging time at work, to be honest.’
Work?
Carried softly through the air just then came the sound of the boys singing ‘Happy Birthday’. It was the saddest version I had ever heard, but it at least injected a jolt of energy into my sluggish thoughts.
‘Scanlon,’ I said, caught up within a strange realisation. ‘If two years have gone by … does that mean you’re fourteen now?’
He looked taken aback, but shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s three and a half years since we opened—’
We? I thought distractedly.
‘—so I’m going to be sixteen next month.’
Whoa.
Like a pebble rolling down a beach, a memory slowly spun out of the haziness in my brain. ‘So why aren’t you at school?’
‘What?’
‘Well, didn’t you tell me once that only rich kids go to school now?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Yeah.’
‘And you love Skool Tools,’ I went on with a sluggish determination.
‘Well—’
‘I never saw you look so happy as you did when you shared your plug-in lessons with me. So if you’re rich now, why aren’t you making the most of it? Going to college, like you always wanted to? You can more than afford it, right?’
He shrugged. ‘Yeah.’
‘So why aren’t you there then? Why are you here, with me?’
There was a movement beneath his skin, as if he wanted to bring something huge within him to the surface. But then it dropped back down quickly, like it was an anchor too heavy to lift.
‘What’s with all the questions, Frankie? Why do you care all of a sudden?’
I was taken aback by the emptiness in his voice. ‘Just wondered.’
‘Yeah, well, don’t.’
As if aware of how harsh he sounded, he produced a mollifying smile.
‘You just concentrate on getting better, okay?’
Abruptly, he fished a pair of keys out of his trouser pocket, beeped a button, and fidgeted until a flying car came to a hover just next to us.
‘You drive now?’
‘Yep,’ he said, grinning for the first time that day. ‘I do. Perk of the job.’
He opened the passenger door for me. I moved to get in, and stumbled on the way. Accidentally, I tripped into Scanlon, and winced with discomfort as his upper torso moved through mine before popping out again.
That was when I finally discovered what that rotting smell – the one that had been emanating from Scanlon since the day we’d met – was coming from. And realised, at last, what it meant.
THAT FESTERING, STALE smell which had bothered me ever since I’d met him? I’d tasted it. It came from inside him. And it was the worst thing in the world – the rancid taste of a life going bad. Scanlon might not know it, but he was dying inside. He was wasting his life away.
We got in the car. Scanlon pressed buttons and we slowly rose into the sky. Clouds and cars whooshed past us.
As a light drizzle began to fall past our windows, I threw him a puzzled look. What’s in your brain, Scanlon Lane?
Scanlon wouldn’t go to school. That stubborn look on his face made that clear. Even though learning stuff had been the only thing he’d ever talked about with any enthusiasm.
What would he do instead?
Well, now I knew. Scanlon would work for Crawler until Crawler died. And then Scanlon himself would take over the Haunted House. He’d become the Lane in Lane and Son, and probably have kids himself, and they’d all follow in his footsteps. I would watch him grow old, and his kids grow old, and I’d work for them all.
I understood all of that as plainly as if it had happened already.
What I couldn’t understand was why. For the first time ever, Scanlon had opportunities. If he went to school, he could do anything he wanted … he could learn in classrooms, not from that battered old laptop … have proper friends for the first time in his life. And in time he could do something he loved, if he was lucky, something more rewarding than taking poltergeists to birthday parties and spraying fake cobwebs on ghosts.
Why was he turning his back on all of that?
That terrible taste of him squandering himself away.
I noticed the glint of satin on his trousers, the shine of gel on his stubble. He negotiated the clouds quite skilfully, it seemed, a small smile on his lips, like he was enjoying it.
I went very still as an unsettling idea uncurled in my mind. Was he staying for the money?
Was he staying for the car?
Maybe he wanted to take over the business. Maybe he loved the idea of being in charge.
