DEAD GOOD Read online

  Everyone’ll think it’s genetic. They’ll think we’re all nutters. Me included. Oh my God the shame – I could die. Literally. Of shame. Can you die of shame? I think one of Shakespeare’s heroines did – or was that the Lady of Shallot? I always get her muddled up with King Arthur’s wife and Romeo’s Juliet. They all wore the same kind of dresses anyway. Does it matter?

  And it’s not only Amber I’ve got to convince that I’m perfectly normal, I’ve still got the huge task of persuading Ed Loake that I even bloody well exist outside of extended wet break. My chest deflates with the weight of my woes but thankfully Brother Nutter has made it to the landing in one piece and not a chip in sight.

  ‘In here.’ I drag myself to the top step. He lurches towards the room which is mum and dad’s. ‘No, Davey – in here… here. See?’ I walk past him and open his bedroom door. ‘See? This is your lovely new bedroom…. Come and have a look. Here.’ I push the door wide open and watch as he bounds through the open doorway.

  ‘There – this is great, isn’t it?’ I lie convincingly as he leaps straight onto his bed and starts to bounce. Great. Really great. It’s all just a new and exciting adventure for Davey, isn’t it? I wonder if nothing much bothered me much when I was his age?

  ‘Maddie?!’ Dad’s voice echoes up the stairs.

  I leave Davey to his bouncing and go to the landing and wait. He’s standing with his hand on the banister rail and it looks like he has bags under his eyes. Although it could be the darkness.

  ‘What?’ I say huffily.

  ‘Don’t let Davey get too excited after he’s eaten, Maddie – that’s all. There’s every chance that after the upheaval of today and everything, that he might...’

  Just then there is a strangulated croaking noise and something that sounds like water rushing over rocks and some splashing and I roll my eyes. Great. The day just got better. Who’d have thought?

  Dad sighs and turns slowly back in the direction of the kitchen. I hear a tap running downstairs and sense the thick heavy smell of vomit upstairs even before Davey meets me tearfully on the landing.

  ‘I sicked up,’ he says sadly.

  ‘I know, kid,’ I ruffle his hair. ‘Let’s get you in the bathroom, yeah?’

  He smiles back up at me and takes my hand just as mum and dad meet us on the landing armed with dishcloths, a bowl of disinfectant and fresh sheets. I roll my eyes and shrug and think that possibly today has been just as shitty for them as it has been for me.

  ‘I sicked up,’ Davey repeats.

  Dad ruffles his hair the way I just did and watches as mum heads for his bedroom. Dad can’t stand the smell of sick, it makes him want to vomit too and mum just puts up with it. She says someone has to do it. It’s usually her. I don’t think I could be a mum if that’s what they always end up doing – all the shitty, stinky, smelly jobs. I couldn’t work as a nurse or as a playgroup teacher or in a nursing home – all those horrible smells and stuff – I’d spend all day in the toilet throwing up myself.

  After I’ve made sure Davey’s face is cleaned, I watch him pull his pyjamas on, clean his teeth and open his mouth for me to check he’s done them properly.

  ‘See?’ he asks eagerly.

  ‘They’re good,’ I nod. ‘Now let’s get you into bed, yeah?’

  I pull the fresh covers over him and Mum and Dad kiss him goodnight. Mum whispers to me they’ll be back soon so that Davey can’t hear and get all anxious and then I sit on the edge beside him as they leave the room.

  He looks at me, grinning and then slaps me with his hand.

  ‘Hey!’ I say. ‘What was that for?’

  ‘Me ah… sitting there,’ he beams.

  ‘You...ah not, silly!’ I say back. ‘Me are sitting here!’ I bang his mattress. ‘And it’s I am, not me are…okay?’

  Davey slaps me again. ‘Not you, silly-Maddie… Mee ah… Mee ah…Mee ah…she’s sitting there… see?’

  He’s worrying me a bit now but I shuffle over towards the end of the bed just to humour him. What’s he jabbering on about? Has he got his pretend friend in bed with him now or something?

  ‘Oops…’ I try to laugh breezily, ‘I don’t want to sit on…Mi-a, now do I? Hello Mia,’ I say to thin air, playing along with him, ‘how are you? I’m Davey’s big sister.’

  Davey starts to giggle and rolls over in bed, pulling his pillow over his head and laughing madly. What now? What the f…?

  ‘Maddie silly now!’ he laughs, showing me his beaming, rosy face. ‘Mia gone – see? She gone again… Maddie talking to nobody… Maddie talking to nobody….’ He starts chanting in a stupid singy-songy voice that’s really irritating and I want to stick some sellotape right across his stupid annoying laughing mouth.

  ‘Alright! Alright! Shut up!’ I scream. ‘I get it! Your stupid little pretend friend is gone – so bloody what?!’

  Davey’s face stills and his mouth falls open in an ‘o’ shape.

  Uhhh-mmmmmm……’ he moans. ‘Maddie said a swear word….Maddie said a swear word… mummy? Mummy!’ his voice gets louder. ‘Maddie said a swear word!’

  It’s no good, I have to stop his stupid, whining, singing, irritating annoying voice and so I slap my hand over his mouth to stop his chant then twist my neck round to the door to make sure mum or dad haven’t crept back into the house with his squealing and are witnessing the silencing of their lamb. He squirms but still, somehow giggles.

  ‘Maddie said a swear word!’ I hear chanted again right in my ear and I spin back to Davey to see how the hell he managed to say that whilst my hand is still firmly clamped over his mouth (without involving any real danger of suffocation of course). His eyes shine back at me excitedly.

  Then I gulp, realising he couldn’t possibly have said anything without a few years training in ventriloquism and as my hand moves away from his mouth, he grins broadly and points to the doorway.

  And once again the hairs on my arms start to rise.

  three

  Davey’s just drifting off. It’s probably only about five minutes since Mum and Dad left and I hear a noise like a door or a drawer or something shutting really loudly downstairs. Although it could just sound loud because the house is empty and quiet. I’m not quite sure what room it was from. Maybe it’s the front door and they’ve come back for something they’ve forgotten. I get up from Davey’s bed and go to the landing, lean over the top a little and stand as still as I can to listen and see if it’s them or not. I don’t suppose they’d call up in case they might wake Davey. I even try not breathing too hard so I can hear better. Would that help? I don’t know.

  I tilt my head like a dog does when it’s listening, and I hear another bang. Followed by another. And then another until my head is in danger of twisting itself off. This time the sound is a kind of metallic rattly bang and sounds like it definitely came from downstairs. Shit. I hope Mum hasn’t left the cooker on or anything and something’s blown up. Bravely – in fact extremely bravely for me, I decide to be bold and avert a potential disaster before it has a chance to take hold. And it would show Mum and Dad how responsible I can be when I’m on my own. They’ll appreciate that, especially now.

  I take the stairs two at a time, speed across the hallway to the kitchen and then stop dead in my tracks and stare at the sight in front of me. Every cupboard door in the kitchen is open. And I mean every one. Every drawer is open, every lid is off, everything that can be opened up, unscrewed, twisted off, lifted up – is off. Open. Up. Everything. Even the kitchen windows are pushed wide apart. I actually gasp, clamp a trembling hand over my mouth and turn to head back upstairs. But then I stop. Think. What would that achieve? Would running away and hiding seriously help? And so, as much as I hate to admit it, I’m going to do exactly what I yell at the actors in the creepy horror films NOT to do, and I’m going to Go In. To the place that’s scary. Because actually there’s a part of me that does not believe this is really happening. And there’re always heroes who come and save the day anyway. Well ar
en’t there?

  V-e-r-y, v-e-r-y slowly I walk cautiously into the kitchen and push one of the wide open drawers shut. It stays shut. I don’t know what I expected would happen but it’s not open anymore. I do the same with the next one and the next and the next and then make a start on the cupboard doors and the pots and lids.

  Everything stays shut, closed, fastened. Then I stand like a soldier in the middle of the kitchen and stare cautiously around me, waiting for something to happen again. And as I start to head back out of the kitchen I do another quick turn to see if anything’s happened. Nothing’s moved. I wonder how long I’ve been holding my breath because now that nothing seems to be happening anymore, I’ve given myself permission to breathe again.

  But as soon as my back is turned and I’m feeling the tiniest relief that this is an end to the madness I’ve just witnessed, I hear a tap turn itself on behind me. I twist round slowly and watch as it hisses faster and faster into the sink; the force of the water banging loudly on the steel and out onto the floor in big arcs. I swallow and freeze, watching the water pressure mount and mount and then the other tap turns on. Then the washing machine starts to rumble; the cooker fan turns on and whirrs faster and faster and the fluorescent strip light on the ceiling starts to flicker on and off. I’m standing right next to the control and although it’s not actually switching on and off, the bulb above still fizzes like there’s lightening inside it.

  I move back inside the kitchen just as guardedly as I did before and go over to the sink to turn off the taps. I go really slowly as though I don’t want to upset anything – anybody – whatever’s making all this happen I mean. Then I lean over and gently pull the windows shut. I switch off everything electrical that seems to have jumped into miraculous life and then I start to retreat backwards from the room as slowly, if not slower than I entered.

  As I walk silently back into the hall, almost on tip-toes, I just reach the bottom of the stairs when I hear the bangs start up again in the kitchen behind me. My heart picks up speed once more and I freeze to the spot. I don’t even bother turning back round. I know what I’ll see. I don’t know whether I want to laugh manically or cry. I also wonder if I might pee myself, I feel so out of control.

  ‘Maddie?’ I gasp involuntarily as I hear Mum call out from the front door which I now realise has flown open straight ahead of me. ‘What’s going on? We could hear noises from outs-’

  My head spins towards her and I watch her face fall. I must look crazed. ‘What’s happening?’ she yelps, crossing the floor worriedly. ‘What’re you standing like that for in the middle of the…’ she stops and tilts her head to one side just like I did earlier, listening as the noises start to overpower her voice. ‘Who’s here? What’s that noise? And what’s that smell? Is something burning?’

  I see Dad arrive behind her and watch him stop too, waiting at the doorway with two white carrier bags. When he sees me frozen to the spot he puts them down and walks over to me. I think I might have lost the ability to speak and I can’t feel my legs. But I’m so glad to see them, I start to laugh. Maybe I’m hysterical. He puts his arms round me and pulls me to his chest. I still feel frozen, though.

  Mum strides straight past us and into the kitchen where most of the noise is emanating. Gradually Dad follows with me still clamped to his side. We watch as she goes over to the cooker and she peers inside the already-open door, sniffs deeply then shakes her head. She twists every gas knob one way then another and makes sure they’re all switched off. Then she turns back to us. ‘The smell isn’t in here,’ she says confused. ‘It’s in the living room. What could be burning in the living room?’

  And that’s when the screaming starts.

  I’ve seen horror films like this. I know I haven’t seen the really, really scary, Eighteen rated ones but I’ve seen films where things like this take place and usually I’ve just thought ‘yeah, yeah, things like that wouldn’t really happen’ but they do. They have. They are. See?

  As if the drawers opening and the lights flashing and the water running and everything else that happened in the kitchen isn’t bad enough, there actually is a really strong smell of burning coming from the living room and when Mum instinctively goes towards it, the door slams shut right in her face. And I mean right in her face. Like someone pushed it hard from the other side.

  The screaming is ear-splitting now. Mostly it seems to be coming from the living room – which we still can’t get the door to open to. And we can’t even touch the door knob now because it’s red hot. It’s times like this you wish you had a camcorder because no one’s going to believe this is happening. Nobody. Even I wouldn’t.

  ‘Where’s Davey?’ Mum suddenly yelps.

  ‘Oh god –‘ I gasp, ‘I left him in his room when I heard the noises down here. I don’t know… I’ll go and check on him. He can’t be sleeping through all this noise.’

  Mum’s face is white and frowny and she’s a bit jittery. I supposed that’s to be expected under these circumstances. I wish I could tell her not to worry but then she’d think I was a part of it or something. The screams have started to become more muffled inside the room now but we still can’t get hold of the door handle.

  Dad is trying to get a signal on his mobile and can’t understand why it won’t work. We can’t get to the landline phone ‘cos it’s in the living room. Mum is still holding onto my hands and then it looks like she suddenly realises she is and drops them.

  ‘Go!’ she says urgently. ‘Check on Davey!’

  I force my body to move and run full pelt up the stairs, noticing that there’s a thicker smell up here of smoke. Downstairs it’s more hot and burny but up here it feels heavy… like if it was proper smoke, it’d be really hard to breathe properly. Heat rises. It comes back to me from a science lesson. So I’m guessing that upstairs is going to be just as bad as downstairs. And – wait a minute – don’t people die in their beds of smoke inhalation? I think I’ve seen the adverts for it on the telly. Oh god. What the hell am I going to find up here?

  four

  Just as I round the corner to Davey’s room I make a sudden, almost instinctive leap over something and then look down to see what it is. Beneath my feet is what appears to be a heap of clothes lying on the landing. I peer more closely and realise it doesn’t look right. It looks kind of hazy, ghostly. I reach down towards it and before I’ve even touched it, I make out the body of an old man. My hand flies back like it’s been stung and with my heart hammering so much I think I might be sick, I pat my chest to the rhythm of its racing beat and try to convince myself to calm down. I take a deep breath like Mum tells herself to when she gets all stressy. In. Hold it. Out. Everything is fine. Mum and dad are downstairs, this can’t be really happening and nothing can hurt me. I put a brave face on, shut my eyes, step over the … over it and carry on into Davey’s room.

  The feeling of smoke is stronger in here than on the landing and I’m guessing it’s because the room is small and the smoke is trapped or whatever. I walk over to Davey’s bed and something catches the back of my throat as I take in the sight before me.

  Davey, strangely, is still fast asleep, one arm lies on top of the bedcovers and his cheeks look a little red but that aside, he is peaceful. I check to make certain the bedclothes and his chest are rising and falling, so I know he really is asleep and breathing properly and hasn’t been suffocated by ghostly smoke fumes. I knew he wouldn’t be. This is something that’s happening around us not to us.

  But it’s the something.. .I mean somebody else that’s lying beside him that makes my heart freeze. There’s a misty figure of a girl curled up along the length of Davey’s body – spooning, isn’t that what’s it’s called? Her arm is looped over his chest and her face is as angelic as Davey’s although it’s paler. It’s a kind of grey-white. Well, it would be – if she’s a ghost, then she’s dead, isn’t she? So, obviously, she’s not breathing. But a part of me feels that she is looking after Davey and comforting him and I thank her sile
ntly for doing so. I wonder if this is the girl he was calling ‘Mia’ earlier on. She doesn’t look scary, like I thought a ghost would be. In fact, it’s quite a poignant sight. But one which I’m not entirely sure my mum is ready to see right now so I turn and leave, all the time working out what to tell my parents when I get downstairs.

  I am just about to put my foot on the top step when a thought occurs to me. Is there anything happening in MY room? I walk to the doorway and then stop because suddenly I don’t know if I want to see what’s in there. The door is slightly open anyway so I push it a bit more and peer inside. I can’t see anything because it’s dark and the curtains are closed and then my eyes start to adjust to the darkness.

  There’s the hazy outline of a male body sprawled on the floor of my room, face down. His arms are reaching out towards the door. I can’t see his face properly and I don’t think I want to. It looks like he was either trying to get to the door or else he just fell over with the fumes from the smoke when he got out of bed. I am slightly grateful that it looked as if the girl – Mia - in Davey’s room didn’t even wake up to the nightmare that was going on in the house before dying in her sleep.