Rare Sight

Chapter Ten

There was a long silence, while Gideon pretended to concentrate on the road. They got back to Joe’s gran’s with only one more near miss – a motorcyclist who overtook just as Gideon decided to turn right without signalling – and Joe let go of the handle and relaxed as his father pulled into the driveway, switched off the engine and turned to face him.

“It was all a long time ago, you know, Joe. I’m not the boy I was then.”

“Go on,” said Joe, holding his breath. But Gideon shook his head and got out of the car. Joe followed him to the house with clenched fists. As Gideon walked across the doorstep, Joe took a deep breath and tried again. “Come on, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on, Gideon,” he said. “We’re all being attacked by ghosts, and you’re just walking round as if it’s got nothing to do with you.”

Gideon turned round and Joe took a step back – the man filled the doorway and looked quite intimidating now he was riled. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Gideon, speaking quietly but with great emphasis on every word. “You are a schoolboy, with no experience of the real world. There are people out there with no morals, who don’t care about anything but themselves, or making money. Stuart Tansley was one of those people even when I knew him, all those years ago at school. He would have dared another boy to walk on broken glass if it gave him a thrill. He doesn’t know empathy, compassion, humanity – they’re all just words to him.”

He looked at Joe for a moment, then turned and went upstairs – he’d been promoted to a proper bed instead of the sofa, and Joe was now having to share a room with his mum. Joe wandered through to the kitchen, where he found his gran taking a cake out of the oven. She placed it carefully on top of the cooker, then looked at Joe.

“So – what did you think of Gideon’s new car then? It must have been nice to get a lift home for once? You’ve been a while – did he take you out for a spin?” She smiled at him, but he couldn’t smile back.

“What’s wrong?” She walked towards him and put a hand on his arm; she still had the oven mitts on.

Joe sighed and looked at her. “It’s Gideon, Gran… Everything that’s happening is to do with him.”

“What do you mean?” She took off the mitts and put a hand on Joe’s shoulder. “What’s going on, love? What are you saying?”

He made himself meet her eye. “…the ghost stuff. Your ring… me getting carted off to the Land of Spooksville… Georgia making trouble. All the stuff with Yousef’s family…”

“You mean the writing on the mirror?”

He shook his head. “Well, that too, but now they’ve had a ghost leave a dead pig in the house, with its insides all spilled out everywhere.”

His gran put a hand to her mouth in horror. “That’s disgusting. It must be even worse for them – aren’t they Moslems?”

Joe nodded. “Yeah – it’s like the worst insult. You know… like what Georgia did to that Hossein family.”

His gran froze. “Oh… I can’t believe Georgia was really responsible for that.”

“Mum says she did it.”

“Oh… but she can’t have understood what she was doing – not really.”

“Gran, she was like twelve or thirteen – the same age as me.”

She patted her hair into place, but it was a distracted gesture – she was somewhere else in her mind. “Oh…” she said again, and she was in such evident distress that Joe felt bad for insisting.