Ways to See a Ghost (15 page)

“I think maybe it
is
time for us to go home,” Cally said coldly.

“Please, don’t worry about this,” said Philip. “Sometimes people react in odd ways to a cleansing. I’m sure she’ll think about it later, and see this is the right thing for her.”

“Come
on
,” said Isis.

Cally didn’t answer, her face was grim.

They walked back to the car, not speaking. The trees seemed menacing now, and Isis kept looking up, watching for a shift of hue. For the leaves to change colour, and gather into a shadow.

It was Saturday evening when Stu came round. I know because Mum had only just dropped me off, and Dad was still grouchy after talking to her, like always. When the doorbell rang, he swore and said, “What else does she want to nag at me about?” yanking it open. His face morphed from cross to surprised.

“Keeper!” he said. “What are you doing here?”

Stu the Keeper shoved straight in, clutching this massive bag.

“I can’t hang around out there!” he snapped, “Why didn’t you tell me this is a neighbourhood watch area?”

Dad shrugged. “It’s only local busybodies, checking who doesn’t pooper-scoop after their dog.”

“Don’t be fooled!” hissed Stu. “Haven’t you read the forums? You know MI6 is going through neighbourhood watch reports, checking for so-called terrorists? What they mean is people like you and me, those of us searching out the real truth in this world.” He put his bag down, shuffled out of his anorak and dropped it on the sofa. “We’re living in a surveillance state, my friend.”

“Right,” said Dad. “And the reason you’re here is…?”

Stu tutted at him. “The
interview
. For
The Database
.” He opened the bag and started pulling out bits of a camera tripod. “I thought we could start with your observations, and work through to your most recent calculations.”

“What, now?” asked Dad.

Stu nodded, pulling out this really old-looking camcorder. “Of course now.”

Dad pointed at me. “But I’ve got Gray.”

“And
Doctor Who’s
on in ten minutes,” I reminded.

Stu stopped getting his stuff out, and shrugged a bit.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, carelessly. “Well, we could watch that, then do the interview after we’ve talked about the episode.” Me and Dad looked at each other. Dad’s told me before how Stu doesn’t really have any friends; Dad’s about the closest he’s got, and they never do anything
together apart from UFO stuff.

“I can interview Gray as well,” Stu said, sort of pleading, “as an additional witness?”

I was trying to beam thought messages to Dad –
no, no, no!
But he wasn’t listening.

“Yeah, fine,” Dad said to Stu, who looked really happy, his face going all crinkly under his grey stubble. He pulled this fat, tattered book out of his bag.

“Doctor Who Encyclopaedia,
1978 to 1999. Let’s see if there’s any cross references in this new series.”

“Can’t we just watch it?” asked Dad.

Stu flicked a look at me. “Your dad’s not really a fan, is he?”

Which made me laugh, cos Dad’s the most obsessed person I’ve ever met about aliens,
Doctor Who
and stuff. Apart from Stu.

Anyway, we settled down to watch telly. Me, Dad and Stu the Keeper. Once the programme started, I nearly even forgot about the smell of him smoking all the way through.

As soon as
Doctor Who
finished, Dad and Stu started talking about it. Like, all this boring stuff about what happened in the show thirty years ago, and picking holes
in the science. They really got into it, and Dad ended up asking Stu if he wanted to have dinner with us. Even though I was beaming Dad the biggest thought message ever.

Of course, Stu did want to stay, especially when Dad said it was shepherd’s pie and chips. Dad went in the kitchen, and got the shepherd’s pie out of the fridge. I heard the crackle as he sliced open the cellophane on the packet, the oven door open and close. He shouted through to Stu, “Did you ever get any further with those deaths? The ones like Norman Welkin?”

That got my attention, but Stu shook his head. “Not really.”

“No pattern then?” Through the door I saw Dad at the freezer, opening it to get a bag of chips. He clattered them onto a baking tray, putting them in the oven too. That was his cooking sorted.

Stu went into the kitchen and I followed, hanging around the door.

“I’ve checked against all the standard variables,” said Stu. “Unusual weather, distance to a nuclear power plant, meteorite strikes, UFO sightings, chemical spills and so on. I even checked government activities, ours and all the other countries operating their secret services over here…
Big fat zero, I’m afraid.”

Dad nodded towards me. “Maybe Gray was right then?” he said. “Maybe it was just coincidence?”

Stu leaned back against the sink, folding his arms. “Coincidence is what the government want you to think. It’s what they say when they don’t want you to know what’s
really
happening.” He looked at me. “I’ll find the pattern, Gray, I just need to get the right data.”

Before, I would’ve thought Stu was talking rubbish. But I’d seen so much, you know? I’d stopped believing in coincidences too.

It took about twenty minutes for Dad to get dinner ready. Nowhere near as good as what Mum makes, but on the plus side Dad doesn’t care about me eating vegetables. We were a few mouthfuls in when I got up the nerve to ask Stu.

“You know The Database?” I said to him.

He stopped eating, fork in the air, and his eyes flicked towards the living room, where the laptop was. Like he had to check it was okay.

“Yes,” he said.

“Well, you know it has all those UFO sightings, and unexplained phenomena and stuff?”

“Unexplained to current science,” said Stu, waving his fork. “Current, blinkered, government science.” He lowered his voice. “What’s
really
happening… that’s in The Database.” He pulled his eyebrows together, glaring at me. “All triple locked, with password protected encryption.” Like I wanted to break into it.

“I just wondered about something that might be in there,” I said.

Stu looked pleased. “You know, you’re a lucky boy,” he said. “Growing up with your dad. You aren’t being brainwashed by the government and corporations, like most kids.” He turned to Dad. “You haven’t let him have a mobile phone?”

Dad shook his head. “I stopped Jenice from giving him one as well.”

Jenice is my mum. I’ve had loads of fights with her and Dad about getting a phone.

Stu pointed his ketchupy knife at me. “You should thank your dad for that. All those downloads and ringtones, you know there’s messages inside them? Hidden ones, designed to stop you thinking about anything important. Stop you questioning what’s really going on.” He shoved in a forkful of shepherd’s pie, carrying on with his mouth full.
“You know what I see, when I look at you kids, all wired into your phones and MP3 players? Zombies! Brainwashed and consuming whatever you’re told to. They’ve got your generation licked – you’re just lambs to the slaughter.” He reached for the ketchup, and squirted a load more on his plate.

“The thing is,” I said, trying to get him back on the point, “I was just wondering if you had anything on The Database that’s… paranormal.” Stu scowled at me, so I carried on quick. “Like, stuff about… ghosts.”

I knew by their faces I’d gone too far.

“Ghosts?” said Dad coldly. “Are you trying to be funny, Gray?”

“The Database isn’t a joke!” shouted Stu, spraying gobs of chip onto the table. “It’s for holding evidence about the
truth
, not superstitions!” He’d gone red, and the veins in his neck were sticking out.

“Sorry, I was only asking.”

“You should be sorry!” said Dad. “I’d have thought you’d know better!”

Stu calmed down, and put his hand on Dad’s arm. “It’s all right, Gil, you don’t need to fight my battles. Combating ignorance, distinguishing the real, that’s what I do this for.”
He looked at me. “If you want to know about ghosts, they’re the effect on our brains of natural variations in the earth’s magnetic field.” I opened my mouth, but he didn’t give me a chance to answer. “They did an experiment a few years ago, where they strapped magnets to people’s heads. Half the people taking part thought they’d seen their dead relatives, floating around in the room. Which proves it.”

Dad smiled, but his frown at me wasn’t gone. “Why did you even ask, Gray?”

I shrugged. “I was just wondering, that’s all.” Trying to keep it casual.

But Dad wasn’t put off so easy.

“It’s Cally and Isis, isn’t it? You’ve been listening to them.”

I shook my head.

Stu looked a question at Dad.

“Cally’s my new girlfriend,” Dad said.

Stu smirked. “How long has she been around then?”

Dad went a bit red. “A couple of months.”

“Five,” I said. “Five months.”

Stu whistled. “Serious.”

Dad went even redder. “She’s got something about her, you know?” He glared at me. “But she also believes
in ghosts, fairies and any nonsense that comes her way.” He sighed. “She even joined some club, where they all get together and talk about contacting the spirits. A right bunch of nutters, if you ask me.”

Stu rolled his eyes. “Women!” Like he knew anything about them. He turned to me. “So, that’s where you got this ghost stuff?”

I hunched down in my chair. All I wanted by then was to get out of the kitchen.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It was just a question.”

Stu studied me, pressing his finger onto one of the bits of chip he’d spat on the table. Popping the smear of chewed-up food into his mouth.

“Ghosts aren’t real, Gray. All those ghosts hunters and mediums, they’re just spooking themselves in old houses. Bumps in the night, that’s all it is. They’re always going on about having evidence and taking pictures, but the best they get are those ‘orbs’. Circles of light, floating in shot, which anyone can tell are just camera glitches and reflections.”

Stu ate another bit of sprayed chip.

“Whereas what you and your dad filmed, now
that’s
real. And real film of it too, not just some wobbly little blob of light.”

Dad nodded. “Don’t listen to all Cally’s stuff about ghosts.”

It’s funny really, because Isis had said ghosts can look like balls of light, and Stu had just agreed with her even though he was saying they didn’t exist.

Dad took the empty plates and dumped them in the sink. He raised an eyebrow at me. “Washing up?”

I sighed and got up, while Dad went to the fridge and took out a couple of cans of beer, handing one to Stu, who pulled a fag out of nowhere and lit it up. They cracked the cans open, gurgling the beer into their mouths. I started running the water into the sink.

“Ghosts and the afterlife,” sneered Stu. “It’s just fantasy. Wishful thinking.”

Dad did a long burp. “People should focus on what’s real.”

Stu burped back. “It doesn’t even make sense! If you can get ghosts of people, why not cats, dogs or whatever? Animals die too, but you never see those TV mediums contacting a dead orangutan. If there’s really ghosts, the spirit world ought to be crammed to bursting with the ghosts of all the pigs and chickens we’ve killed, and the trees we’ve chopped down!”

They finished their cans – both of them could really pour it down – while I scrubbed the plates and stacked them on the draining rack. Because Dad doesn’t even have a dishwasher, if you can believe it.

Stu put his empty can down on the table. “I mean, we’ve caused as many species to go extinct as an asteroid hitting the planet.”

Dad got up and went to get two more beers from the fridge. “I wouldn’t blame them if the aliens didn’t want to come down and talk to us. Probably waiting to see if we wipe ourselves out too.”

“They’ve
tried
talking to us,” said Stu, taking a can. “That’s the problem. America, Russia. Plenty of evidence they had secret alien contacts. But it all gets hushed up by the military.”

“I’m going to try and start communications next time,” said Dad.

“Good idea,” said Stu, nodding. “That’s what the lights in the sky are – they’ve got to be trying to tell us something.”

I was standing there with the washing-up sponge in one hand, a ketchupy spoon in the other, and what Stu said just… slotted it all into place.

He was right about the extinctions, I’d read loads about it in my wildlife magazines. We’re making hundreds
of species go extinct, every year. Like that giant tortoise, Lonesome George, from the Galapagos Islands. He was the last one of his kind, living all alone. When he died, his species went extinct.

They all died, that’s what Isis said.

I mean, Lonesome George died in a zoo, but most wild animals get killed when a forest’s chopped down, or a river’s being polluted, or they’re hunted or whatever. Thousands and thousands of deaths, and when the last one goes…

Both times we saw all these tiny lights, coming together into one.

“Do you think?” I asked, my words coming out slow. “Do you think when the last of some kind of animal gets wiped out, and it goes extinct, there could be a ghost for its species?”

Stu and Dad both looked at me.

“Well,” said Dad. “I suppose if you believed all that stuff. A species is kind of alive, so extinction is a kind of death.”

Stu nearly choked on his beer. “I just explained why ghosts don’t exist! And even if they did, a species is millions of individual organisms, living over millions of years.”

“That’d make it a big ghost then,” said Dad, grinning at him.

Stu glared back. “Oh yes, and what would it look like, this ghost of a species?”