Possessed

Chapter 15

I woke to a tune. It was nice at first but then it wouldn't stop. It was my phone.

Reaching over to my bedside table, I answered, "Hello?"

"Morning, Annie," Zach said.

"What happened last night?"

"You fell asleep on the bench so Javan carried you home. I'm still in hospital but I'm about to leave. No one noticed I was gone, they thought I was just resting. So I went back and pretended to be asleep. It's all fine."

"Good," I said rubbing my eyes free from sleep.

"Anyway, I'm sorry for what I said."

"Huh?"

"I did listen to your story. And I want to talk to you about getting this 'Jacob' off your back. So can we meet up some place?"

"Sure. Where's Javan?"

"Oh, Javan had to go to a dinner party or something today. He said he tried to get out of it but it's a Christmas Lunch thing since he missed it last night. So it'll just be you and me. Unless you think that's weird...."

"Don't be stupid. I'll meet you in the field by your house in half an hour."

I hung up and stretched my arms out wide. My Mum's head poked round my door.

"Morning." She wasn't smiling.

"What is it?"

"For God's sake, Annie." she boomed already in full-blow. "I prepared a massive Christmas dinner last night. I waited for you to come back for hours. You wouldn't answer your phone. I had to call Steven over to eat it with me."

- Just in case you didn't know, Steven's my Mum's work friend. He lives just down the road and he's awesome. That's all I need to say about Steve -

"I'm so sorry, Mum. Zach was in the hospital and I tried to call but -" I did a little fake sniff because that's how good of an actress I am.

"Oh honey." Mum's expression suddenly changed. "You should've said. That's terrible. What happened?"

"Javan punched him in the face. It was an accident," I repeated with extra emphasis on the 'accident'. "He's fine now though. Still in hospital but he's just been discharged. He'll be out very soon."

"Oh good."

"Because he wants to meet me in half an hour. Can I go?"

"Sure, ask him if he's -"

"Okay, thanks Mum." I shut the door in her face because, with one look at the clock, I knew I had five minutes to get changed before I'd be late.

So I hurriedly slipped on my red checked shirt , vest top and jeans and wrapped myself up warm, learning from last night.

This time I cycled to the field. It was my old bike but I didn't have time to walk and I'd been running enough recently.

"Hey," Zach said to me when I got there. He was lying down in the corn field that was now white all over. He must be getting soaked.

"Hi. So, any ideas?" I asked, still stressing about his shirt getting wet. It left a pretty good image in my head ...

"No. But, I am just thinking statistically. Jacob wants to know that Frederick is sorry, right?"

"Yep."

"We need to get Frederick and put him together in a room with Jacob and they can resolve their differences."

"Zach, their dead."

"I know. Of course they are but we can find Frederick's ghost."

"That's not gonna ....actually that's not a bad idea. In fact it's great. But how do we find Frederick?"