The Ghost Box

Extract

Sarah screamed and sat up in bed. Matt jumped back. “Whoa! What’s wrong with you?”
For a moment she had no idea where she was. Then she saw her bedroom, quiet and normal, the windows full of morning sun-light.
“What are you doing in my room?” she snapped.
Matt gave a shrug. “Waking you up. Your mum called, but you were dead to the world. It’s nearly nine o’clock.”
He wore black jeans and a black top. He was always in black, she thought, a creeping shadow in the bright house. Now he said, “I won’t bother next time.”
“No. Don’t. Get lost.”
Half-way to the door he said, “Where did that come from?”
She looked where he was looking.
The silver box stood on the bedside table, next to the lamp. It looked heavy and expensive. She stared at it, astonished, and the dream of
the tree came back to her in all its brilliant colour. Matt reached out his hand to it but she snapped, “Don’t touch it! It’s mine!”
The cry was so sharp she even shocked herself. Matt stood very still. She could sense his anger. His eyes were dark and bitter.
Suddenly he said, “Look, Sarah, I didn’t want our parents to get together either. Dad and I had a good place of our own – we didn’t need to come to this posh dump. But don’t worry. I won’t be sticking around to mess up your pretty life. Next year, when I go to college, you won’t see me for dust.”
He slammed the door as he went out and her dressing gown fell off the hook on the back. Sarah stared at it, lying in a heap on the floor. Just for a moment she felt bad about being spiteful to him. Then she swung her legs out of bed and took the box on her lap.
It was real. Silver, by the look of it, and very old, its lid made of silver leaves over-lapping each other. Oak leaves. Around its rim were words in a strange language. She couldn’t read them. She ran her fingers over them, feeling the cold metal. How could she have brought the box out of a dream? Or had Mum put it here last night, perhaps from the gallery, and forgotten about it, and Sarah had dreamed of it? It didn’t seem possible.
There was a key-hole but no key. She tried to open the lid but the box was firmly locked. Feeling let down, she shook it.
Something rolled and rattled inside.
She held it still, afraid what was inside it might break. From downstairs her mother called, “Sarah! Breakfast!”
There was no school because it was half term. Gareth had gone to work and she didn’t know about Matt. In the kitchen the dogs, Jack and Jess, lay sprawled on the mat by the door, looking in hope at their empty food bowls. They sat up as Sarah came in but she shook her head at them. “You’ve already been fed.”
“Let them out, will you?” her mum said.
As she opened the door a gust of wind blew wet leaves against her feet. Drops of rain spattered from the gutter. “It’s autumn,” she said, surprised, because the storm of the night had stripped the trees, and a new carpet of leaves clotted the lawn.
Mum smiled, and turned as the phone rang.
“Go on,” Sarah said to the dogs.
Jack growled. The sound came from deep inside him. He bared his teeth, and Jess barked, two sharp, worried barks. They were looking at the corner of the barn towards her bedroom, but there was nothing there apart from the leaves, whipping up in the wind.
“Oh, go on!” Sarah pushed them out.
Then, after a moment, she walked down the path and stared at the glassy corner of the building. The windows here were floor-to-ceiling. Through them she could see Mum on the phone, talking and laughing. She could see her own reflection too, looking cold and puzzled.
And there was a shadow.
It lay on the grass behind her, and it wasn’t hers. It was small, and close, and for a moment she felt a chill at her back, and turned quickly.
The lawn was empty.
Inside, Mum said, “I have to pop out to Marston. Will you be all right?”
“Fine. No problem.”
“I don’t know where Matt’s got to.”
Sarah plugged her ear-phones in. “Who cares!”
She read and then went on-line, and then phoned her friend Olly and ate some cheese and apples and crisps, but by the afternoon she was bored and fed up with being on her own. At two Mum rang.
“I’ll be another hour. Has Matt come back?”
Sarah gave a shrug. “No.”
“Well, you’re not scared there, all on your own, are you?”
“Of course not.”
Putting the phone down, she wished her mother hadn’t said that. She hadn’t been scared, but now the house seemed dim and gloomy, with the rain pattering on the windows and the early October gloom closing in. She went around putting all the lights on. Then she stopped. A door had closed upstairs. Standing still, she listened, her heart thudding.
A floor-board creaked.
Then she was sure.
Someone was walking across the floor of her room.