Out of the Depths Page 9

  But Mac was doing his best still to annoy me. I hoped Aisha wasn’t stuck on him. He didn’t deserve her. He didn’t deserve anybody.

  We were in the school cafe at lunchtime, and Jazz had told the boys that she and Aisha had been with me for two days and nothing had happened.

  He tapped his chin thoughtfully and stared at me. ‘Funny that, eh? Nothing happens except when you’re on your own. Isn’t that strange?’

  I’d had enough of Mac. I leapt at him. ‘Why is it so hard for you to believe me? What have I ever done to you!’

  It was Callum who stuck up for me. ‘Leave her be, Mac.’

  Mac stepped away from the table. His eyes didn’t leave me. ‘You know what I think? You all pussyfoot around her – you, Aisha, ‘cause you’re too nice to offend her, and you, Jazz, because you love ghost stories. What you should be doing is telling her she’s talking rubbish. Talk some sense into her. She’s making a fool of you both.’

  Did he always mean to hurt me so much? And why did I let him?

  But I wouldn’t let Mac spoil my mood. I had Jazz and Aisha, and I didn’t need his approval.

  Even when Jazz came in the next day with her granny’s prayer book and told me she’d found out what the chanting I had heard meant, it didn’t bother me. It was as if that had happened to someone else.

  She flicked through the well-worn pages of the old missal until she found the page she wanted.

  ‘De profundis … that’s what you heard.’

  I shrugged. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Look there.’ She pointed triumphantly.

  De Profundis

  The Prayer for the Dead

  De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine

  Domine, exaudi vocem meam.

  And on the opposite page the translation.

  Out of the depths I have cried to Thee,

  O Lord,

  Lord, hear my voice.

  Out of the depths …

  Once again I could hear words chant in my head. So clear now. De profundis clamavi ad te …

  But I shook the memory away. ‘Doesn’t matter what it means, Jazz,’ I said, remembering I had passed the responsibility on to someone else. ‘Because it’s over. Nothing is ever going to happen again. It’s over.’

  But something did happen.

  28

  It was halfway through the afternoon. The bell had rung and we were hurrying from one class to another, the three of us, laughing. The corridor was buzzing with people, classes on the move, pupils bustling against each other.

  I stepped ahead of Jazz and Aisha to avoid a crush. ‘Come on, you two!’ I turned back and called to hurry them on. And when I swung round again, there he was. Standing right in front of me.

  Ben Kincaid.

  Couldn’t miss the dark hair, the deep-set eyes. So close I could have kissed him. His face, his form as solid as my own.

  Things like this were only supposed to happen when you’re alone. In the dark. With shadows all around you. Not on a bright day, in a noisy corridor surrounded by other people.

  For a second I couldn’t breathe. As if I’d forgotten how. I stared at him, and then turned back towards Jazz and Aisha again, for they must be able to see him too. But though I could still see them, it was as if they were lost in some kind of dream world. The buzz in the corridor was muted. My friends were moving towards me as if they were in slow motion, yet never getting any closer. I could hear their voices, drawn out as if the sound too were in slow motion. As if time itself was being slowed down.

  I turned to look ahead down the corridor and he was still there, so close. And behind him, the statue of St Teresa. Her hands seemed to be reaching down to him; the flowers clutched in her fingers were almost touching his black hair.

  ‘What do you want?’ I yelled at him, expecting Jazz or Aisha to hear me, for everyone to hear me, but no one did. ‘Leave me alone!’ My voice was a scream.

  His face moved closer. ‘Help me, Tyler.’ It was all he ever said, and his voice seemed to come from down a dark tunnel, from the other side of death, an echo of a voice, and his breath was as cold as the grave. ‘Help me.’

  He began to reach out to me, ghostly hands, yet they appeared as real as my own. I was terrified. Terrified that if he touched me, if I, for one moment, felt the cold touch of those icy fingers I’d be dragged further into this nightmare. Dragged perhaps into his time. His past. ‘Help me, Tyler,’ he said again.

  I stumbled back, away from those fingers, from those hands. I lost my footing and fell back hard on to the floor.

  And suddenly everything began to speed up again. Jazz was running to help me, really running, out of the dream, rushing towards me.

  ‘Are you OK?’ She bent down to me, concern all over her face.

  My shaking hands pointed to the dark recess of the corridor. ‘He was there.’ My voice was shaking. ‘You must have seen him.’

  But Ben Kincaid wasn’t standing in the shadows now. ‘He was there, I swear. He said … “Help me, Tyler.”’ I looked at both of them. ‘I shouted back at him. I screamed at him. You must have heard me shouting.’

  And I knew from their faces that they hadn’t. Aisha said, ‘Tyler, we were right behind you, you were just running so fast, and you turned round and … you just fell.’ She looked at Jazz and raised her eyebrow.

  ‘He was there!’ I screamed again now. I glanced again to where Ben Kincaid had been standing, and there was my proof. The statue of St Teresa, gazing down at me. Her eyes open, watching me. Her hands still outstretched. ‘Look, the statue’s moved. Her eyes are always closed. Her hands are always locked together, you know that. Now look at her! Her eyes are open. She’s not praying. The statues move. The statues always move!’ I grabbed at Jazz’s jacket, stared deep into her eyes. She had to see, believe me.

  Jazz turned and looked up. A crowd had gathered and they all looked too.

  ‘That’s the way she always looks, Tyler,’ Aisha said. Her voice was stiff with resentment, as if I was making a fool of her. ‘They’re only made of plaster. That means they can’t move.’

  And when I looked back too, she was right. St Teresa was standing as she had always stood, hands clasped, eyes closed in prayer.

  I scrambled to my feet, threw off their hands trying to help me. ‘No, she moved. I see them move all the time. The statues move.’

  ‘This is a new one,’ Aisha muttered. And I knew then, by mentioning the statues, that I had lost her too.

  And I didn’t care. Why should I? ‘I’ve seen them move from the beginning! From that very first day! The statues move. And Ben Kincaid was there.’

  ‘Maybe Mac’s right. Maybe you are making all this up, like you did in your last school,’ Aisha said.

  ‘But maybe you can’t help it. It’s not your fault. Maybe you do need help, Tyler.’ This was Jazz, and I so didn’t want Jazz to stop believing me.

  ‘No … don’t say that.’

  ‘But we’ve been here all the time, and nothing’s happened.’ Jazz was trying to understand it, I could see that. ‘We were watching you. We were right behind you, Tyler. There was no one there. You didn’t talk to anyone. We would have seen you. Nothing happened. You just tripped.’

  ‘So, you decided to make something happen.’ Aisha’s voice was cold.

  ‘You just want to agree with your boyfriend!’ What made me say that? I was losing the only friends I had here. I looked at Jazz. ‘I don’t understand how it happened. Ben Kincaid was there and the statue moved! He said, “Help me, Tyler.” That’s all he ever says. Help me, Tyler.’

  Everyone was muttering about me, sniggering about me. All looking at me, all with that same look on their faces. The look that said I was weird, the crazy girl. I couldn’t take it. I pushed them out of my way, so roughly they began to get annoyed at me.

  ‘Hey, watch what you’re doing!’ someone shouted.

  ‘No wonder you were chucked out of your last school.’

  What was the use of having friends anyw
ay? Even if they stayed by my side every instant. No matter what I did, I couldn’t stop what was happening. I couldn’t change it. Ben Kincaid could still get through. Still reach out to me through the mists of time.

  I was so afraid. Afraid to be in the school, and afraid to leave it.

  29

  I don’t know how I got through the rest of the afternoon. I had never felt so miserable. Jazz and Aisha didn’t even try to talk to me. And when the bell rang at the end of the day, I hurried out of school and down the long drive, lined with elms. I could hear the other pupils whispering all around me, giggling as they went past me. I didn’t want to see them or be near them. I turned away from them and headed for the lake. I would stay there, I thought, till they had all gone home. Then at least I would avoid all their snide comments.

  I made my way to the little arched bridge. Darkness was already falling. I stood and gazed down into the murky depths of the water, and tried to make sense of all that was happening.

  Help me, Tyler … It was all he ever asked of me, but how could I help him? And help him to do what? Pass to the other side? That was what Jazz thought. He needed help to pass on. I had tried prayer and that hadn’t worked. He was still here. He still needed me to help him. But how was I supposed to do that?

  The trees around the lake were hung with a mist that settled around the branches like dark grey cotton wool. It seemed to muffle the sound of the world. I could hear nothing, see nothing beyond the trees, and no one could see me.

  Except Ben Kincaid. Was he watching me now? From the long windows in the school, perhaps? Or from somewhere in his dark past.

  ‘I don’t know how to help you,’ I said aloud. It was a plea.

  For how could I possibly help a long dead boy? A boy whose body had never been found …

  Whose body had never been found …

  Help me, Tyler.

  Did it bother him so much that his body was lost somewhere, that he had had no proper burial?

  And was that what was holding his spirit here on earth?

  Was that possible?

  A few weeks ago I would have dismissed it as nonsense, but now, after everything that had happened …

  But how could I find his body when all those years ago the police, the professionals, had been unable to find a trace of it?

  They’d even dragged this lake.

  I looked again down into those murky waters. They had dragged this lake, and found … nothing. Divers had been sent down into the depths and they had found … nothing.

  The depths.

  Out of the depths …

  Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord,

  Lord, hear my voice.

  Ben Kincaid’s prayer?

  It had to mean something. And if that lake hadn’t already been dragged, I would have been sure I had found the answer.

  Ben Kincaid’s body would be down there.

  But the lake had already been dragged.

  My thoughts were racing in my head, so fast I couldn’t keep up with them.

  Because, I was thinking, wouldn’t the lake be a perfect place to hide a body after … after it had been dragged?

  Who would look for a body in a place that had already been searched?

  And it seemed to me in that moment I knew the answer to everything.

  He wanted me to find his body. He wanted to have a burial, so that his spirit could leave the earth.

  I remembered his plea that dark night in my bedroom. Help me, Tyler.

  The tumbler marking out the same words, again and again. Help me, Tyler.

  Why had it taken me so long to figure it out?

  De Profundis. The monks’ ghostly prayer, another clue for me to follow. Out of the depths. They had been telling me to look here, in the lake, for Ben’s body. To have it lifted … out of the depths.

  Trying to help me, to help Ben, to make up for the terrible sin one of their brothers had committed.

  Everything that had happened had been leading me here. To this lake. Ben Kincaid’s body was down there in the depths of that murky water.

  The only thing I didn’t know was … how on earth was I going to get the police to drag this lake again?

  30

  I thought perhaps Jazz or Aisha might phone me that night. But no one did. And why should they? They had done their best to help me, and yet I still claimed something had happened, right in front of their eyes. Something they hadn’t witnessed, something impossible. No wonder they really couldn’t believe what I was telling them.

  I hardly talked to anyone when I came home, and when Mum came up to tell me dinner was ready I almost asked if I could have it in my room.

  ‘Something’s happening at school, isn’t it?’ she said, sitting down beside me. ‘Don’t you think I don’t know you’re unhappy there. You look so pale, you’re never smiling any more. Now tell me what’s wrong.’

  ‘I don’t want to worry you, Mum.’

  ‘I’m your mother. It’s my job to worry.’ She put her arm round my shoulder. ‘If you’re really that unhappy at the school, I don’t want you to stay there. I told your dad that.’ Her eyes had filled up with tears. I didn’t want to make my mum cry.

  ‘Tell me what it is that bothers you. I really want to know.’

  I shook my head. She’d have me in therapy if I told her. I was sure of it.

  She sniffed back a tear. ‘You thought you saw someone who was dead at your last school … is it something like that again?’

  I remembered how she would walk out of the room whenever I mentioned it. How could I tell her it was happening again?

  Yet, I didn’t have to answer her. She saw the answer on my face.

  ‘I thought it might be something like that.’ She pulled me closer. ‘I know I wasn’t much of a help to you that time … But you have such an imagination, Tyler. Perhaps what is happening to you is just your imagination again?’

  I pulled myself away from her. ‘I knew you’d say that. It’s what everybody says. Always the same thing. Well, if this is my imagination, I must be mad.’

  She clutched at my hand. ‘Tell me then. Tell me everything.’

  ‘I thought I must be seeing things at first. But I’m not. Too much has happened, is still happening. A boy died in my school, long ago, and I keep seeing him. He was murdered. He keeps asking me to help him, and I don’t know how.’ I buried my face in her shoulder. ‘I know, this sounds crazy. I’m sorry.’

  I heard her sigh. She was going to tell me I was going mad, I just knew it. Why should she believe all this? But now that I had told her this much, I realised I might as well tell her the rest.

  ‘And the statues … Mum, the statues in the school keep changing. One minute their eyes are closed then they’re open, watching me. One minute their hands are locked in prayer, and the next … they seem to be pointing … reaching out to me.’ I buried my face in my hands. I really was going crazy. Saying it aloud, it sounded absurd.

  At first I thought she sighed again. But this time it wasn’t a sigh. It was more of a shocked gasp. I looked up at her. Mum was staring at me. ‘Tell me about the statues,’ she said.

  ‘They’re everywhere in the school. And they watch me, they look at me, then they look away. Their fingers point at me, then when I look again, those same fingers are pointing somewhere else. But no one else sees it, only me. Am I going mad? Tell me if you think I’m going mad.’

  She was quiet for a long time. ‘There is another explanation …’ She spoke slowly and softly. ‘Perhaps you have a gift. Some people do … maybe you’re one of them.’

  I could hardly believe what she was saying. Was Mum going crazy too?

  ‘What kind of gift?’

  Mum closed her eyes, took a moment to answer me. ‘A gift for contacting the dead.’

  Now it was me who gasped. Mum didn’t believe in things like that. She had always dismissed ghosts and witches and the occult as the daftest things she’d ever heard of. And I’d always thought she dismissed
them because they scared her too. Now, here she was suggesting that I could contact the dead? Jazz saying it, I would have expected. But not my practical, sensible mum!

  ‘What would make you think I have this gift, Mum?’ Now I was the one who sounded as if I didn’t believe her.

  ‘The statues,’ she said. ‘You talking about the statues … it’s made me remember something. Something that happened a long time ago, to my mother. I think she had a gift and didn’t realise it. Or was scared to talk about it. I think perhaps you might have the same gift, Tyler.’

  ‘My gran … had the gift … ?’ My gran had been like Mum, down-to-earth, not given to wild fancies. She was dead now. I still missed her.

  ‘I’m going to tell you a story, a true story, about your gran,’ Mum went on. ‘And it’s because Gran was such a down-to-earth person, I know you’re going to believe it. It’s the reason I believe it.’

  31

  ‘You remember I had a brother?’ Mum asked me. She was fingering her chain as if she was nervous.

  I nodded. ‘He died, didn’t he? He was only weeks old?’

  She never talked about this brother, Joseph, who had been born ten years before her. ‘He was the first boy born into the family. Everyone loved him. It was all girls in our family till he came along. The golden boy, they all called him.’

  She paused for a moment. I said nothing.

  ‘Your gran was living with your grandad’s mother when he came along. And your great-grandmother was a really holy woman. She was Catholic. She had statues all round the house … and holy pictures. On every wall. One of them was above the bed where your gran and grandad slept. A picture of Jesus.’

  I felt the room grow cold.

  Mum spoke as if she was in a dream. ‘Your gran said she’d never really looked closely at the picture before, not until after little Joseph was born. She would be lying in bed, with the baby in the crib by her side, and she’d look up at that picture … and He’d be looking down on her, very gently, and holding out His hands to her. And she’d shiver and turn away from Him, because it looked to her as if He was saying, “You can only have him for a little while. But I want him back.”’