In the hallways of Marlock High School, all the talk was about the latest teenage murder victim. Callum shoved his rugby boots into his locker and pulled out his maths books as the gossip echoed around him.
‘It’s got to be something to do with vampires!’ said one girl.
Someone laughed. ‘Don’t be stupid. We’re not in a movie!’
‘Honest. They said there was writing in blood.’
‘Or maybe it’s gangsters,’ said another voice. ‘A drug ring, taking revenge . . .’
The laughing girl put on a ghoulish voice: ‘Where will they strike next?’ Her friends broke into nervous giggles.
Callum banged his locker shut.
Hugh Mayes, a boy from Callum’s class, gave his own locker door a sympathetic slam. ‘Girls, eh?’
‘Too daft,’ Callum agreed. Gran was right about the media, stirring up rumours and panic.
The morning passed even more slowly than usual. Callum almost dozed off in maths and geography after the horror-filled race in his dream and the sleepless night that had followed, but Hugh and his mate Andrew kept giving him helpful pokes in the ribs with their pencils. He managed not to fall asleep over his books, but he was feeling pretty exhausted by lunchtime.
Callum dumped his books in his locker again after his final class of the morning and headed to lunch. The stairwell outside the cafeteria was crowded as usual. One girl, coming down the stairs towards Callum, was dressed in flowing Victorian mourning clothes, her long black skirt glittering with sequins.
Callum had just stepped aside to let the ghost float past when he realised that it wasn’t a ghost at all, just that ridiculous New Age girl, Melissa Roper, her black school uniform accessorised with tasselled Indian silk scarves and assorted healing crystals. Other girls wore foundation and eye-shadow; Melissa tattooed the backs of her hands with henna. Today she had on a jingling collection of shiny crucifixes on a silver chain. Protection against Dracula?
Callum grinned in spite of himself. Of course – it was her voice he’d heard that morning by his locker, suggesting that the serial murders were done by vampires. Trust Melissa. His grin faded, though, as she met his eye and smiled back shyly. Melissa, with her alternative dress sense and her goofy ideas, hadn’t learned the art of keeping her head down. She attracted attention – the sort of attention Callum worked hard to avoid. He felt a bit sorry for her, but not enough to want to talk to her. With a half-hearted wave, he turned to head into the cafeteria.
‘Hey, wait, Callum!’
Callum groaned inwardly. It didn’t look like he had much choice now.
‘You were there when Chloe was going on about those murders being done by a drug ring, weren’t you?’ Melissa asked, stopping halfway down the stairs as a boy pushed his way past her. ‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know,’ Callum answered shortly. He didn’t have time for Melissa’s latest conspiracy theory. He was hungry, and the tips of his fingers were tingling annoyingly, as though his hands had fallen asleep.
‘It’s scary, though,’ Melissa said.
‘They’re telling people not to panic.’
Melissa looked down at Callum and rolled her eyes. ‘Of course that’s what they tell you!’
The rush of kids finally stopped. There were just a few people still queuing for lunch, and now Melissa was the only person on the stairs. Except for that idiot Ed Bolton, crouched behind the railing at the top . . .
Callum looked up. From where he was standing, his view of the landing was obscured. What made him think Ed was there?
The tingling in his hands was worse now, real pins and needles, and suddenly he could see Ed quite clearly, as if he was standing right next to him. The older boy was crouched behind the railing at the top of the stairs, with a squeezy dispenser of tomato sauce from the cafeteria. He was dripping ketchup in a steady stream over the railing, waiting for Melissa to walk beneath it.
Callum looked back at Melissa, but she was no longer standing on the stairs. She was stepping towards him . . . Stepping into a puddle of ketchup on one of the stairs. Slipping . . . Her foot sliding out from under her . . . Falling . . . Her head cracking against a concrete stair . . . Sliding . . . Until her body lay at the bottom of the stairwell in a limp tangle of silk, her head twisted at an unnatural angle, her eyes glassy and dead . . . And a dark pool of blood spreading out from her shattered skull . . .
Then, as quickly as it had come, the tingling in his hands was gone.
Callum blinked, and there was Melissa, perfectly upright and unhurt, coming down the stairs. He shook his head. What he had seen hadn’t been real. It couldn’t have been.
But the red puddle at Melissa’s feet was.
She was stepping towards it.
It was ketchup.
A blob of sauce hit Melissa on the cheek and she looked up, frowning, one foot hovering over the treacherous concrete step where the slippery pool waited.
Callum didn’t hesitate. Leaping forward, he grabbed Melissa and yanked her towards him, so that she fell on to him instead of backwards on to the hard steps.
Melissa fell heavily, taking Callum down with her. They both collapsed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs in the sloppy mess of spilled tomato sauce. One of the boys in the lunch queue gave a whoop of delight.
‘Roper and Scott! Woo-hoo!’
A couple of other boys laughed as Melissa untangled herself from Callum and wiped ketchup from her face, blinking and confused.
But she was alive. Callum closed his eyes. For a split-second he saw the vision again – Melissa lying on the stairs with her skull split wide open. When he opened his eyes, the scene vanished.
Callum’s head reeled. But it wasn’t just the thought of what had almost taken place that sent his heart racing, it was what he had done. He had seen it coming. He had stopped it happening.
Chapter 6
‘What the devil is going on here?’
It was Mr Gower, the deputy headmaster, his shining bald head red with outrage.
Melissa gave a wail as she realised she was covered with tomato sauce. She looked up to see where the drips were coming from and pointed. ‘Someone’s pouring ketchup down the stairs!’
‘It’s Ed Bolton,’ Callum burst out, before the bully had a chance to flee the scene. No one could see him from down here, but Callum was so certain it was Ed that he didn’t even think about the consequences of naming names.
‘Bolton!’ roared the deputy head. ‘Get down here!’
Ed came skulking down the stairs. He gave Melissa a smirking, disdainful glance as he carefully skirted the mess of sauce on the steps, and shot Callum a meaningful look of warning. Finally he stood scowling before Mr Gower.
‘This isn’t a circus,’ Mr Gower snapped over his shoulder at the gathering bunch of onlookers. ‘Get to your class. Get to lunch. Get out of here. Not you, Scott, you seem to know it all. What happened here?’
Callum swallowed. Anything he said now would make a mortal enemy of Ed.
‘I think it was an accident . . .’ Callum began. Then, disgusted at his own cowardice, he straightened his shoulders. Ed was less frightening than the thing in the woods; Ed was something Callum knew how to fight, if he had to.
‘No, I’m sorry, it wasn’t,’ Callum said boldly. ‘Melissa was talking about vampires this morning, and Ed thought he’d tease her by dripping ketchup on her head. But I saw -’
Callum pulled himself up short. He couldn’t tell Mr Gower what he’d seen; he didn’t even properly understand how he had seen it. And if he said anything about his vision of Melissa lying dead, they’d all think he was deranged.