‘What are you doing?’
I blink and look up at Ma. It’s the second of October. My birthday. And two whole days since I found out that the Castle is haunted.
We’re in the classroom. The walls are so crumbled they look like they have chickenpox. I’ve tried to cover the holes with pictures of castles and forests and drawbridges, but there are more holes than pictures on the walls.
Right now I’m supposed to be learning poxy maths but I can’t concentrate. It’s no wonder. Who can concentrate when they know that their house is haunted by a ghost that drags its mangled body around?
Ma taps my notebook with her fingernail. ‘Finish this up and then we’ll see about this birthday of yours.’
Maybe all castles are haunted. I think the real problem is knowing if it’s a good ghost or a bad ghost.
‘Here, you, concentrate!’ Ma says.
I look at Ma. I don’t think I should tell her about the ghost. ‘Ah, Ma, it’s my birthday, can’t I have the day off?’
‘No one gets a day off just cos it’s their birthday,’ Ma says. She leans back in her chair, which is a black one with a lever on the side so you can change the height. Ma found it on the side of the road when she was bargain hunting. She was real proud of herself when she dragged it through the front door one day. Lucky it had wheels cos it was so heavy it took both of us to carry it up the stairs. Then Ma stood there for ages looking at it and saying, ‘Not a thing wrong with that,’ over and over.
Ma sighs and I know she wants to be outside, not teaching me. She can’t concentrate neither. She looks out the window like she’s staring at the ocean and not at the wall of the Silo. Then she does this shiver thing where she shakes her shoulders and goes, ‘Brrr! Someone just walked over me grave.’
She does that sometimes and I don’t know what she means. ‘Ma? I think there’s a ghost in the mill,’ I say, and I’m surprised cos I didn’t think I was going to tell her.
Ma drags her eyes away from the window. ‘What?’
I try to look at her but I’m too embarrassed, cos now I’ve said it out loud I know how stupid it sounds, so I stare down at my copy book instead. ‘I heard something yesterday when you were out. Something was shuffling around and walking up the stairs and it . . .’ I stop cos I don’t want to tell her about the coins. I don’t know why, I just don’t want her to know, so instead I say, ‘And it sounded like a ghost dragging its mangled body around.’
I look at Ma now, even though I’m real embarrassed that I told her that I think there’s a ghost. I want to see if she laughs or if she believes me. But I can’t tell.
She lifts her foot up onto the chair and rests her chin on her knee. After a while she says, ‘A ghost? Hmm. You know, when I was a young one, around your age, there was this old church at the back of our street.’
I picture the church I can see from the roof with the skinny steeple and the big clock that dongs every fifteen minutes.
‘It wasn’t used any more,’ she says. ‘It was locked up and there was this ivy that had grown all over it.’
Now I’m picturing ivy creeping up the walls of the church, sneaking through the windows and crawling up the steeple till it’s completely covered and you can’t hardly see the clock any more. ‘Like an octopus with long fingers,’ I say.
Ma turns her head towards me so her cheek is resting on her knees. She looks at me for a minute. She’s trying to figure out what I mean. When she cops on, she says, ‘Tentacles, an octopus has tentacles. And yeah, it was kinda like a massive green octopus eating the church.’
I stay quiet so that she’ll go on with the story.
‘It was real scary-looking, that church,’ she says. ‘But the scariest part?’
‘What?’
‘A witch lived there.’
‘Ah, Ma!’ I say, and I throw my eyes up to the ceiling.
‘What?’
‘A witch?’
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Are you listening or not?’
‘Sorry,’ I say.
‘Right. Well, they said the witch used to sleep on the altar at night, lying there, stiff as a corpse. We were all real scared of that church and that witch. Still didn’t stop me and me mates from messing with it every chance we got, though.’
I can’t imagine Ma being my age. And I never liked any of Ma’s mates.
‘We used to bury eggs in the park beneath this big tree. We’d wait till they were rotten and real stinky. Then we’d dig them up and go over there to the church and open that creaky gate and stand on the path and throw the rotten eggs at the front of the church.’ Ma sits up straight now. ‘Jaysus, they stank.’
‘Like what?’ I ask.
‘Like your farts on a bad day, that’s like what.’
I laugh and Ma nods like she’s dead serious.
‘Anyway, this day we were all standing there on the path and we decided that one of us had to go in there and smash an egg right on top of the altar.’
‘What, inside the church?’
‘Yeah.’
I imagine the smell of farts filling up the church. ‘Ugh.’
‘Damn right! I’m the one who drew the short straw. Had to go in there all on me own.’
‘How did you get in if it was all locked up?’
‘I was a skinny yoke back then,’ Ma says, as if she’s not still mad skinny. ‘A few of the windows had fallen in and I could squeeze through the iron bars. So that’s what I did. Then one of me mates handed the rotten eggs in through the bars and they all stood there to watch me.’
Ma pauses for dramatic effect. All good stories need dramatic effect. I wait cos that’s what I’m supposed to do.
‘So there I am, creeping up that aisle towards the altar. Never been so scared in me whole life. It was weird in there. Dead still. I get about halfway up and I stop. Decide to chuck them from there. Lift me arm over me head –’ Ma lifts her arm – ‘and was about to throw one when suddenly, from the door behind the altar, she came flying out at me!’
‘Who, the witch?’
‘Yep.’
‘Jaysus – what did she look like?’
‘All I could see was flapping black rags and mad hair racing towards me. And, Jaysus, was she shrieking. I’m just standing there like an eejit. Mouth hanging open. I drop the eggs on the floor and they smash everywhere and they smell worse than hell.
‘She comes roaring around the altar and down the steps. Me mates are there at the window behind me, screaming at me to move, and finally I snap out of it and I turn to run but I slip on the broken eggs. Slap!’ Ma claps her hands and I jump in my seat. ‘Straight down, face first into those rotten eggs. Well, between the smell and the fear, I puked, right there in the aisle, on top of the eggs.’
‘Gross,’ I say.
‘Bleeding right. I’ve got puke and rotten egg all over me, and me mates are still screaming at me, and she’s right behind me, so I jump up and run. But I’ve lost me shoe! Slipped off me foot when I fell.
‘So I’m sprinting down the aisle with only one shoe and as soon as I get to the window, me mates are grabbing me and pulling me through, but I turn for a second and I see her. Grey face, grey eyes. Snarling at me, she was. Then I see her fingernails. They were real long, like claws, and she has my shoe in her hand. And you know what?’
I sit up straight and say, real proud of myself, ‘She comes up and hands it to you!’
I know what Ma’s doing. She’s telling me a Moral. There’s always a Moral to Ma’s stories. And the Moral is that she wasn’t a witch, she was a nice old woman. I’d bet the winning lotto ticket on it, if I had it.
Ma shakes her head. ‘Nah. She chucks it right at me and hits me in the face.’
‘Oh.’
‘No word of a lie,’ Ma says. ‘Then I’m outside and we’re all pegging it for the gate. Scariest day of me life.’ Ma sits back and nods at me. ‘I was battered for losing that shoe.’
I wait.
‘Ma?’ I say. ‘What’s the Moral?’
Ma crosses her arms behind her head and leans back. ‘Don’t break into a witch’s house.’
‘Ah, Ma, that’s not the Moral, she probably wasn’t even a witch!’
‘Why?’ she says.
‘I don’t know. Witches boil kids’ bones or something. They don’t just throw shoes.’
‘Yeah? What would you do if someone broke in here and threw rotten eggs at ye?’
‘I’d bleeding batter them,’ I say.
‘’Zactly.’ Ma’s still leaning back with her arms behind her head. But there’s a joke in her eyes and I know that I was right. I know there’s a Moral coming. ‘She was probably just as scared as me,’ she says. ‘Worse, cos it was her home. She felt safe there. Or expected to. And I broke in and tried to throw rotten eggs at her. ’Course she was mad. Mad as hell.’
‘So she wasn’t a witch,’ I say, and I’m nodding cos I knew that all along.
‘No. Just some weird, lonely auld one.’
I think about it. Ma’s right. I’d hate it if someone broke into our Castle.
‘But what about the ghost?’ I say.
She laughs. ‘Look, she thought I was a robber or a murderer or something, yeah? And I thought she was a witch. Neither of those things were true. We just made them up cos we were afraid. I mean, in the end, we were exactly what we were supposed to be. A stupid girl and a scared old woman. That’s all.’
‘So . . .’ I say, and I’m saying it real slow cos I’m trying to figure out what Ma’s point is. ‘So when you’re scared, you make things up?’ And I know what she means. She means I didn’t hear a ghost, I just thought I did. She doesn’t know about the coins, though. ‘But . . .’ I say. That’s all I say though cos I still don’t want to tell her.
‘But nothing,’ she says. ‘Just a stupid bleeding pigeon stuck in one of the rooms, that was all.’ Ma says it real gentle, though. And she smiles. And she nods. And she lifts my hand and she kisses the top of each finger, one by one, like she used to do when we were on the streets and I was scared.
‘Now, can we please get on with maths?’ Ma is pushing my book in front of me again.
‘Ah, Ma, come on, please? It’s my birthday. Can’t we finish early, just for today? This isn’t even a real school, Ma.’
She looks at me. ‘And you’re better off for it. Real school is poxy.’
I think of arguing but she’s already giving me her egg-sucking face. I decide on a different tactic. Bargain.
‘Tell you what, Ma,’ I say. ‘I’ll finish this whole page of sums – every single one of them – and I won’t look up till I’ve finished and I won’t say anything unless I need help. And when I’m finished, I’ll take a science book outside with me and I’ll read it while you sit in the sun.’ I shove my head into my book till my nose is almost hitting the page and I don’t look up again.
I hear her sigh and I know that sigh. It means I’ve won.