“You must remember! Nobody remembers him! Not even Mr. Kirby!”
Mrs. Hawkins pushed the rest of the sheets of paper into her bag and said, “Well, I appreciate you doing it on your own, dear. Don’t forget to wipe down the working surfaces, before you go.” And she went, closing the door behind her.
The science labs were old. There were long, dark wooden tables, with gas jets and taps and sinks built in to them, and there were dark wooden shelves upon which were displayed a selection of things in large bottles. The things that floated in the bottles were dead, had been dead for a long time. There was even a yellowed human skeleton in one corner of the room: Mo did not know if it was real or not, but right now it was creeping her out.
Every noise she made echoed, in that long room. She turned all of the overhead lights on, even the light on the whiteboard, just to make the place less scary. The room began to feel cold. She wished she could turn up the heat. She walked over to one of the large metal radiators and touched it. It was burning hot. But still, she was shivering.
The room was empty and unsettling in its emptiness, and Mo felt as if she were not alone, as if she was being watched.
Well, of course I’m being watched, she thought. A hundred dead things in jars are all looking at me, not to mention the skeleton. She glanced up at the shelves.
That was when the dead things in the jars began to move. A snake with unseeing milky eyes uncoiled in its alcohol-filled jar. A faceless, spiny sea creature twisted and revolved in its liquid home. A kitten, dead for decades, showed its teeth and clawed the glass.
Mo closed her eyes. This isn’t happening, she told herself. I’m imagining it. “I’m not frightened,” she said, aloud.
“That’s good,” said someone, standing in the shadows, by the rear door. “It seriously sucks to be frightened.”
She said, “None of the teachers even remember you.”
“But you remember me,” said the boy, the architect of all her misfortunes.
She picked up a glass beaker and threw it at him, but her aim went wide and it smashed against a wall.
“How’s Nick?” asked Bod, as if nothing had happened.
“You know how he is,” she said. “He won’t even talk to me. Just shuts up in class, goes home and does his homework. Probably building model railways.”
“Good,” he said.
“And you,” she said. “You haven’t been at school for a week. You’re in such trouble, Bob Owens. The police came in the other day. They were looking for you.”
“That reminds me…How’s your uncle Tam?” said Bod.
Mo said nothing.
“In some ways,” said Bod, “you’ve won. I’m leaving school. And in other ways, you haven’t. Have you ever been haunted, Maureen Quilling? Ever looked in the mirror wondering if the eyes looking back at you were yours? Ever sat in an empty room, and realized you were not alone? It’s not pleasant.”
“You’re going to haunt me?” Her voice trembled.
Bod said nothing at all. He just stared at her. In the far corner of the room, something crashed: her bag had slipped off the chair onto the floor and when she looked back, she was alone in the room. Or, at least, there was nobody that she could see in there with her.
Her way home was going to be very long and very dark.
The boy and his guardian stood at the top of the hill, looking out at the lights of the town.
“Does it still hurt?” asked the boy.
“A little,” said his guardian. “But I heal fast. I’ll soon be as good as ever.”
“Could it have killed you? Stepping out in front of that car?”
His guardian shook his head. “There are ways to kill people like me,” he said. “But they don’t involve cars. I am very old and very tough.”
Bod said, “I was wrong, wasn’t I? The whole idea was to do it without anybody noticing. And then I had to get involved with the kids in the school, and the next thing you know, there’s police and all sorts of stuff. Because I was selfish.”
Silas raised an eyebrow. “You weren’t selfish. You need to be among your own kind. Quite understandable. It’s just harder out there in the world of the living, and we cannot protect you out there as easily. I wanted to keep you perfectly safe,” said Silas. “But there is only one perfectly safe place for your kind and you will not reach it until all your adventures are over and none of them matter any longer.”
Bod rubbed his hand over the stone of Thomas R. Stout (1817–1851. Deeply regretted by all who knew him), feeling the moss crumble beneath his fingers.
“He’s still out there,” said Bod. “The man who killed my first family. I still need to learn about people. Are you going to stop me leaving the graveyard?”
“No. That was a mistake and one that we have both learned from.”
“Then what?”