Trust Gran to come up with a rational explanation. She’d never had any time for what she called ‘hocus-pocus’. But she hadn’t felt the eerie, freezing wind, nor seen the huge black shape that had appeared and then vanished at the gate. Callum didn’t know what it was, but he knew it hadn’t been a farmer’s dog.
‘Well, thank goodness you’re home safe and the rain hasn’t come on yet. Listen to the wind rising out there. I was starting to worry! Trains late again, I suppose.’ Gran pointed to the grate. ‘Supper’s not ready, I’m afraid. I’m doing jacket potatoes in the fire and they take forever. Why don’t you have a bath? The water’s hot, I put it on an hour ago. I thought you’d need it after your match. Go on and fill the tub and I’ll fix you a drink to keep you going till the spuds are done.’
Callum smiled weakly. ‘Thanks, Gran.’
He stood up again, relieved that he was no longer shaking. He took off his coat and hung it on the narrow row of coat hooks by the door, and left his boots on the mat beneath. Gran’s cottage might be tiny, and the furniture old and battered, but she ran a tight ship. As long as everything is in its right place, there’s plenty of room, she liked to say.
While Gran set the kettle on the gas ring in the lean-to kitchen, Callum moved into the bathroom and began to fill the bath. Much as Gran’s fussing annoyed him sometimes, he loved this little house. One small sitting room, a miniature kitchen and a bathroom tacked on the back, two even tinier rooms upstairs: that was all there was to it. It was like a cocoon, small and safe. Callum had always loved it, even before it became his home. He wondered why he felt that way. Maybe it was because he knew his dad had grown up here too.
Callum ran the water scalding hot. Waiting for the tub to fill, he studied his face in the mirror for a moment, trying to see if there was anything in his own features that made him different from anyone else. But no, he looked pretty average: the broad cheekbones that Gran insisted were ‘dashing good looks’, smeared with mud from the match, and his tangled brown hair, too long and standing up at the back as usual. His face was a little anxious around the eyes, with a crease of worry between the eyebrows – but it was just a face. A normal face. Nothing to give away the fact that he was a freak who saw ghosts round every corner.
Gran tapped on the door. ‘Bovril or hot chocolate?’ she called.
‘I don’t mind, Gran,’ Callum sighed.
What would she think if she caught him staring at himself in the mirror? That he was admiring himself, probably.
Undressing quickly, Callum lowered himself into the tub and tried to pull himself together. The last thing he wanted was for Gran to start digging for the real reason he’d been scared. He never talked to her about his strange abilities. Gran might be eccentric and old-fashioned, but she didn’t have a superstitious bone in her body and Callum didn’t want her to think there was anything wrong with him. All the things that made him different – his Luck, the ghosts – these things weren’t new to Callum. When he’d been very small, he sometimes hadn’t been able to tell the ghosts apart from the living. In the first horrible weeks after his mum’s accident, Callum had tried to console himself with his strange ability. At least I’ll see her again, he had thought. Even if she won’t be able to talk to me or hold me, at least I’ll see her.
But he never did. He only ever saw the ghosts of strangers. And what’s the use of that? Callum thought as he ran more close-to-boiling water into the bath. What’s the point of being able to see ghosts if I can’t see the ones I care about?
‘Callum?’ His grandmother rapped at the door again. ‘Your Bovril’s waiting in your room. Don’t let it get cold! Hurry up now; I put the heater on for you, and you know I don’t like to leave it when no one’s there.’
With another sigh Callum washed quickly and drained the tub.
Up in his room, he dressed again. He had the bigger of the two small bedrooms. The one that had been his dad’s, for the same reason it was now his: he had more stuff than Gran. The room was crammed with football and rugby boots, cricket bats and tennis racquets, a guitar and music stand, and a large portable CD player that had belonged to his mother. On the floor was a growing pile of books. Gran joked that she and Callum went in for competitive book-collecting.
Well-trained by Gran, Callum kept his things in good order, and by the standards of the other kids at school he didn’t have much – there was no desk, no computer, no telly, no games console.
No ghosts, either. No ghosts ever in this room. No ghosts in the whole cottage. For the first time, Callum wondered why.
The wind whistled sharply under the loose tiles above his window, reminding him of the howl of the creature in the dark. He shivered. What had it been? He could think of one way to find out, but he would have to be careful.
‘Callum? Supper’s ready!’ Gran called up the stairs.
Callum dutifully switched off the electric heater and went back downstairs, pulling the drop-leaf table away from the wall behind him. The room was so small that, opened out, the table blocked the narrow stairway.
‘Better?’ Gran asked kindly, fishing the charred potatoes out of the grate as Callum laid the table.
‘Yeah.’ He gave her a little smile.
‘You should keep your torch in your bag this time of year.’
‘Probably,’ Callum replied. She was right about that. He wouldn’t be caught out again.
Gran continued to fuss over him as they ate, giving him the two biggest potatoes and most of the baked beans to go on top of them, but Callum didn’t mind. After the horror of the woods, it felt OK to be looked after for a while. Gran seemed to relax too, laughing as she recounted the latest gossip from the town.
Finally, after they had both finished eating, Callum plucked up the courage to ask the question he’d been brooding on all evening.
‘Gran, do any of your books mention ghosts in Marlock Wood?’
Gran raised a surprised eyebrow.
‘Ghosts? I thought you didn’t read about anything but music and sport.’
‘Well, it’s for a school project,’ Callum improvised, trying to throw her off the scent. ‘On, um, local history.’
‘I haven’t got anything like that. There’s a book of old photos of Stockport,’ Gran replied, shaking her head as she glanced around at the shelves that lined the room, sagging under the weight of the hundreds of books they held. ‘But I’m not sure where.’
‘Never mind,’ Callum said with false brightness. ‘I’ll try the library.’
*
Lying in bed that night, listening to the rising wind rattling the old window in its frame, Callum tried again to make sense of what had happened earlier. Something was different, that much was certain. Something had changed in the spirit world around him, but what it was and what it meant for him, Callum couldn’t tell.
He shifted restlessly. Gran had gone to bed half an hour ago and the cottage was silent, but he still couldn’t get to sleep. His brain kept playing tricks on him, telling him there was something moving in the darkest corner of the room. Creeping towards the bed.
Callum froze. He wasn’t imagining it. Something was slinking slowly across the tattered old carpet, low and secretive, keeping to the shadows but getting closer and closer . . .
Without warning, a dark shape sprang from the floor, and landed on Callum’s chest. Sharp claws pierced his skin and a pair of eyes flashed in the moonlight. Heart pounding, Callum scrambled into a sitting position, sending the creature flying. It tumbled down to the foot of the bed with an outraged yowl.
Callum let out an explosive breath of relief. It was only Cadbury, Gran’s kamikaze black-and-white tomcat.
‘Cad!’ he laughed. ‘You made me jump out of my skin!’