‘Fight her, Daniel! Fight!’
That’s Si’s voice saying that. And, despite what I said to Mary about surrendering, I decide I should at least try to defend myself. Somewhere inside my blasted brain, I put up my mental dooks and get ready to rumble.
But it’s no good. Mary’s spirit invades my mind like a bulldozer in a china shop and I’m simply barged to one side. In a second it’s all over.
If my body is a spaceship, then Mary is now in the captain’s seat, twiddling her fingers over the fancy buttons, wondering which one to try first.
And me? Well, weirdly, I’m still in there somewhere, squashed in a corner of my head, helpless. Mary becomes aware of me, and blasts at me again and again, but for some reason she can’t get rid of me entirely. Maybe it’s not possible to completely evict someone from their own brain. Not that it really matters. As far as my body’s concerned, Mary is now calling all the shots.
As I watch, helpless, through eyes that used to be mine, I see my arms raise as Mary lifts her new hands to inspect them.
‘Boy’s fingers,’ she says, wonder in her voice. ‘On boy’s hands. I’m alive again! And I’m a boy!’
Mary starts to chuckle. Then, from my tiny hiding place in the corner of what used to be my mind, I sense my whole body start to quake with triumphant laughter.
‘I’m back! I’m alive! And this time I won’t be pushed around. This time it will be different, so different…’
She raises her right arm and gestures into the air. An arc of electricity springs from my – sorry, her finger tips, and explodes the peak of one of the Shard’s spires with a BOOM of destruction. Amidst the roar of the wind and the sound of crashing glass, there is a piercing scream.
It’s Mary, doing the screaming. Using my lungs and vocal cords, of course, but the pain is all hers. She raises the hand that just fired the electricity and we both see it is bloodied and charred.
Hey, that’s mine! I shout out in my mind. I can’t feel any pain now I’ve lost control of my body, but boy, that’s gotta hurt! There’s still smoke coming out of it.
‘No,’ gasps Mary aloud. ‘It’s mine! But it burns, aagh…!’
What did you expect? I shout again. Living bodies and lightning don’t exactly go together. You have to leave your powers behind, Mary. You can’t use them now you’re alive.
‘Silence!’ Mary screams. ‘This body is mine! But it’s your fault if its flesh is weak. So, I will harden it with fire.’ And she raises her hand again.
No! I shout, suddenly panicked. If I do ever find a way to get my body back, I’d like it to be returned in the condition I lent it out in, not charred to a crisp. But Mary isn’t listening to me. She’s too busy screaming as she flings a new bolt of electrical energy from my bloodied hand, taking out another chunk of the Shard. My hand is a blackened claw now, and my sleeve is on fire.
Oi! I shout. You’ve damaged my coat!
‘I… don’t understand…’ Mary gasps through the pain.
You’ve won, Mary. I hate to admit this, but it’s true. You’ve got your new life, your second chance – take it. This is what you wanted, isn’t it? Leave your spook powers behind, stop hurting people and just… live!
Mary is on her knees now, sobbing. And that’s not nice because all I can hear is me. Then she raises both her hands, and her whole body tenses.
Mary, what are you doing? Mary?
‘Just… living isn’t enough,’ she says through gritted teeth. ‘I need to be stronger than everyone else. Stronger even than grown men! I need this power for revenge…’
Mary, stop!
I can feel a massive electrical charge building around us now. Small arcs of energy are creeping up the remaining spires of the Shard and discharging into my body. My hair is standing on end, and the air feels like it will explode.
Mary!
‘I will… make… this body… STRONG!’ Mary gasps, and then screams a scream beyond anything I have ever heard before as she releases enough electrical power to light up Belgium. The summit of the Shard explodes as my body erupts into light.
And I’m a bit cross now. I mean, I basically gave her my body – and the rest of its life – for free! And here she is, a few seconds later, turning it into toast. All because she can’t bear to give up her supernatural powers and accept normal life again.
Unfortunately, since the body of a fourteen-year-old boy isn’t meant to be used as a light bulb, it looks like we’re both about to die in its ashes. And for Mary, this’ll be the second time.
Ah, crapsticks.
Well, at least I can’t feel anything.
I only ever wanted to help you, I say in my head, while I still can. But Mary doesn’t answer.
And that’s when I notice she’s gone.
From my mind, I mean. Gone! The captain’s seat is vacant! In a moment I’m back in command of own dear mind and body again, and…
PAIN
Somehow I manage to open my eyes…
PAIN
I slump down onto my back, in a cloud of smoke and the smell of a badly singed psychic detective. My ruined, burnt-out fuse of a body won’t move, but at least the electricity has left me now. Instead, it’s lifting Mary’s ghost up into the storm above, wreathing her in electrical fire. She reaches down to where I lie in the twisted ruins of the spires, but she’s already too far away.
In fact, with the top of the building now completely destroyed, Mary can no longer be said to be on the Shard at all. And if Si – and the Great Poojam – are right that it’s the building giving Mary all this extra power, then that means…
With a shocking suddenness, the electrical charge dissipates, and darkness falls over the summit of the Shard. The wind whistles through steel wreckage and shattered sheets of glass and ice. The snow swirls around Mary’s ghost. She floats in the night sky above me, a slim teenage girl once again, with a look of sadness and confusion on her face.
As I watch, there’s a sudden ripple in the ectoplasm of Mary’s spirit. I recognise the signs.
‘What’s happening?’ she says. ‘I feel so… I feel… nothing.’
‘You couldn’t have what you wanted,’ I manage to croak. ‘In the end. A new life wasn’t enough for you. Not if it had to be an ordinary one. So now there’s nothing left to keep you here. You’re free, Mary.’
‘Free?’
‘Wasn’t that what you really wanted all along?’
‘I’m fading?’ she says, looking down at herself. She seems quite calm about it, but then they always are. ‘Why am I fading?’
‘I’m happy for you, Mary,’ I say, still lying on the concrete platform. ‘Really. It must have been horrible stuck here on earth all those years, after everything they did to you. But you can go now. To the Hereafter. You deserve it.’
Mary’s ghostly hair ripples in an invisible wind that’s got nothing to do with the weather. She’s already getting hard to see.
‘But what will I find there?’
I shrug. And yowzers, it hurts!
‘I have no idea,’ I say. ‘That’s not my department. But it’s where we all go in the end. It’s where you should be. Rest now, Mary. Goodbye.’
Mary’s ghost looks at me.
‘Dan,’ she says, using my name for the first time. ‘I’m so sorry.’
And she smiles – a proper, genuine, warm smile this time. It’s the first time I’ve seen her do that too. Then the spectral wind takes the little wisp of golden light that remains of her ghost and whips it away to nothing.
‘Ah, don’t be,’ I croak to the empty sky above. ‘It’s all in a night’s work.’
Which is a pretty cool thing to say in the circs. Shame there’s no one there to hear it.
‘I’m here, Daniel.’
Si floats over me, looking distraught.
‘That’s good, Si.’ I barely manage to whisper the words. ‘Because I’m not sure I will be for much longer.’
And I close my eyes at last.