What We Saw

What We Saw - By Ryan Casey



Chapter One

‘Mrs Jeeves has to be a robot, Liam.’

‘Not this again. I told you—I saw her dip her feet into the sea the other day on the beach. If she were a robot, she’d have electrocuted herself or something.’

‘Yeah, and that’s what rubber coating’s for—protecting her.’

‘Sure, Adam. Sure. Whatever you say.’

Adam glanced at his watch. He sighed and looked up at me, defeated. ‘Look, I know what you’re thinking, Liam. But just because I’m younger doesn’t mean I’m any worse at solving these things than you.’

We were bickering again. This was the first time we’d argued in our new den, the two of us hidden away from the outside world.

‘I didn’t say that,’ I said. ‘Just sometimes you come up with crap just ‘cause you want to find something.’

‘You just think you’re the best, Liam. You always put me down whenever I say something. It’s only ‘cause you fancy her.’

My cheeks got warmer.

Adam grinned. ‘See, you’re going red.’

‘I’m not going red,’ I said, rubbing at my cheeks to hide the evidence. ‘Emily’s only a friend. She’s both of our friend.’

Adam giggled as he got up from the decaying log seat. He wrapped his arms round a tree and started rubbing his hands up it. ‘Emily… Emily… I’m Liam, and I love you.’

‘Shut it, Ad.’

‘Well, I know it’s true. You need to chill more, though. She’s a decent girl. I’ll have her if you don’t. She’s ten, too, so probably more my age.’ Adam winked. I cringed at the thought of them together. A cheeky grin crept across Adam’s face, tormenting me. His grin had suffered many victims since we’d arrived at the site a week ago.

Adam gazed past me out onto the street as the breeze swept across the road. ‘Anyway, tell me about the ghosts, Liam. Tell me about the one with the old man who flew.’

I frowned back at him. ‘Oh, so you’re all friendly when you want to hear a ghost story? That’s how it is, eh? Maybe you should find yourself another buddy if that’s how it’s going to be.’

‘Come on, cuz,’ he said, the smile dropping from his face. ‘I’m only messing. Just tell me about the ghost.’

Adam’s particular favourite ghost story was a story Granddad had told me a few years back, much to Gran’s despair. Gran was a devout Christian; even a mutter of something which didn’t quite align with her beliefs sent a shudder down her spine. She reacted as if she’d been plugged into an energy source too powerful for herself, which was scary to watch considering she was constantly edgy anyway.

‘Well, Gran and Granddad were walking the dogs one day when they saw this man. Real old man, could hardly walk. And they realised he needed to get across a stile to go ahead. But they crossed the stile, passed him, and wondered how he was gonna get over, y’know. So Gran turned round to tell Granddad that they should give him a hand, but when they looked round he wasn’t there. They turned back around, looking for him, and he’d got way into the distance. He’d got miles in a few seconds.’

Adam grinned again. His eyes, as brown as the tree bark behind him, widened. It was good to see him smile, properly, after everything he’d been through. Gran said I should make sure I keep his mind off things. Even though she’d hate me telling him this story, it seemed to do the trick.

‘So, we got time to go hunting for more weirdos, cuz?’ Adam asked.

‘Gran wants us back for six. Tea-time. Can’t be late or they’ll go ape.’

‘Shit. We’ll have to come out later and get Emily to come along. She said she heard a rustling in the bushes the other day. Her dad told her it was probably just a deer, but she said she’s never heard a deer make such a fuss in one place. Unless it was you watching her?’

‘Shut it, shorty,’ I said.

Adam’s grin crumbled like an unstable rock face at the front of the caravan site. ‘Oh shut up about my height, Liam. Pick on someone your own size, lanky.’ He arched his back upwards and stretched his neck.

I grinned. ‘Just teasing!’

Adam tutted and shook his head, brushing past me to take the lead. ‘Yeah, well, don’t.’

*

We headed back towards our caravan. Although the old residents liked to pretend to their friends they were roughing it, most of the caravans had televisions in them, and I could hear the chatter of the sets as Adam and I walked by. One elderly couple sat in the makeshift garden around their place. Down the way, some old people had gathered to play bowls. I looked at Adam and he raised his eyebrows.

‘Don’t these old people do anything different?’ he asked.

‘Seriously. I hope I’m not this boring when I’m 60,’ I said. ‘Hopefully we’re still hunting mysteries when we’re older.’

Adam tutted as he looked up towards Mr Rogers, who sat with his top off reading Harry Potter. ‘What about him?’

‘Hello, boys,’ Mr Rogers called.

I smiled while Adam puffed his chest and nodded his head at me: a signal to remember the contact so he could put it in his book of mysteries when he got back.

Something seemed fake about the caravan site. The normality of everything. People were too kind and too smiley. I’d love for them to be all in on some big secret, but I couldn’t see how. A man whose name we didn’t know watered his sunflowers in his tight swimming trunks. If people like him were hiding something, they were doing a good job of it. Perhaps more criminals should think about wearing swimming trunks.

In the centre of the caravan site there was a derelict area which Adam and I called the ‘wasteground.’ It was empty, and people only used it to cut through to other parts of the site. One end led to the gate to the beach–where we were strictly prohibited from going. The other end contained a forked junction; one side took you up to our side of the site, the other took you to a walkway along the rock face. Gran didn’t like us going this way, but we did anyway. Gran didn’t like a lot of things, and the things she did like were mainly shit.

Adam picked up a stone and threw it at a large piece of metal propped up against the trees, the sound echoing through the emptiness like a big steel drum like they played when I was on holiday with Mum and Dad in the Caribbean. ‘Oops, forgot to tell you to run, bony-legs,’ he said, as he sprinted off into the distance like a bullet.

I tried to run after him and catch him up, but my knees began to ache as Adam already passed through the gate to our site. The last time I’d tried to run, before summer started, I’d finished next to last in the sports day race at school. Even Fat Dave finished in front of me. Adam probably won his sports day race. Another thing he’s better at than me.

He pelted up the left route, so I decided to take the right, alongside the cliff, where I could pretend I’d fallen or tripped up or something. Getting the sympathy was my only real chance. I ran as fast as my bony knees would take me, rabbits parting and returning to their dens. I prepared to turn the corner and take the hilly route when I spotted Donald walking along in front of me.

‘Hello, Liam. Still racing that cousin of yours, I see?’

I stopped running because I didn’t want to be rude. At least I had my excuse. ‘Hey, Donald. Yeah, just a bit…’

Donald chuckled. ‘He’s a quick lad isn’t he? Well, don’t you stop for me, son; you’ve got a cousin to beat!’

I nodded at Donald as I panted and took off to catch up with Adam.

Donald wasn’t like the other old people at the caravan site. He always came here on his own, which was weird because everyone else seemed to be with their families. He had black, slicked back hair, like a wave of chocolate, and wore small glasses, not like the thick-rimmed goggles the others wore. His eyes were metallic grey, like the sky. He was nice to Adam and me, and often let us plan our mystery solving in his garden. One day, he even took us out to look for ghosts, but we didn’t find anything. It was good to be friends with one of the grown-ups, though. He was the only one who seemed to understand us and all the conspiracies of the site. Perhaps one day he’d help us crack a big case. It was good to have someone on the inside to help us.

I lumbered up the stones on our caravan driveway and caught up with Adam, who stood and smirked with his arms folded. He shook his head and eyed me up as I approached. The stud in his ear looked dull without the sun to reflect from it.

We went in through the side door of the caravan. Granddad relaxed in his favourite spot: a round stool directly in front of the telly, with the volume up high. He watched intently, disconnected from the world, as if he had been plugged into the Matrix, or whatever that film was that Mum had been watching. I didn’t really get the movie, but I thought the idea of being in another world was pretty cool and something Adam and I should probably think about sometime. The caravan site was like another world, a gateway to something dangerous. Maybe it was heaven, and all the old people had died? I remembered to make a note of it in my A4 mystery pad later.

‘Adam, get that disgusting thing out of your ear. My goodness, if Emily’s parents see you like that, I dread to think what they’ll think of us. You look like nobody owns you. Doesn’t he look a scruff bag, Liam?’ Gran was a nice lady. She always treated us kindly and fussed over us, but she hated Adam’s jewellery.

‘I… I guess so, yeah.’

Adam laughed. ‘You always say you like it. You’re just jealous ain’t you, cuz?’

‘Well, I’ve not exactly said I like it.’ I took my eyes away from Adam and shuffled my feet.

In truth, I did quite like it, but, of course, I wasn’t going to admit it. Earrings and things like that were probably why Adam was more popular than me despite his height.

The familiar smell of salty carrots and bacon cut through the air. Gran had a way of making her vegetables really salty, which wasn’t something Mum did. I didn’t know which I preferred: the salty mush of Gran’s veg which melted as it touched my tongue or the hard crispiness of Mum’s. Either way, Adam didn’t like any. He ate a chicken sandwich which Granddad had picked up from the club shop, as usual. Adam didn’t like the food we ate, something my granddad was convinced was all in his head. Last week, Granddad backed down from forcing Adam to eat whatever Gran had cooked after Adam threw a plate of beans all over him. Adam got himself grounded for the next day, which deprived me of a mystery solving teammate. We both agreed he’d keep his temper in check after that.

Gran served the food and once again told Adam to get the piercing out of his ear if he wanted anything for pudding. He went through the kitchen to our bedroom at the back of the caravan.

‘God, get off my bed, you smelly thing!’ he shouted.

Carla, our golden Labrador retriever, ran through into the front room wagging her tail.

‘Adam Whitlow, do not blaspheme in my caravan,’ said Gran, rooted to the spot as if a bolt of electricity had been sent down her body.

‘I don’t know what ‘blas veem’ means for one, but if that silly dog doesn’t stop sleeping on my bed I’m gonna boot it off, god.’

Gran grabbed his ear where he’d taken his piercing out and shook him, like she was trying to get apples to drop from a tree.

Adam scrunched his nose up and tightened his eyes together. ‘Okay, okay, it’s just she always sleeps on my bed, don’t you, smelly?’ He turned to Carla and played around with her ears. She licked his face and rolled onto her back, paws upright.

We all sat around the table, except for Granddad, who continued to gaze into the screen. Adam nudged me and half-smiled.

‘Dean, turn that racket down, your tea’s ready,’ Gran said.

No response.

Gran sighed. ‘For goodness sakes, Dean!’

Granddad’s eyes stayed fixed on the telly. Gran said he had selective deafness. I didn’t really blame him. He got nagged enough, that’s for sure.

‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ Gran said. She walked over, blocking the view of the telly, and stared Granddad in the face, hands by her side. He suddenly lit up, life returning to his eyes, and took a moment to adjust to the world around him.

‘I thought you said not to blas veem, Gran.’ Adam’s face was painted with false innocence.

She turned round to him and frowned, and I tried to cover the smile on my face with the glass of juice in my hand.

Once we’d finished our tea, Adam and I went to our room. Seven o’clock meant one thing: mystery recording. We poured all our days’ work onto the page—people we’d seen acting suspiciously and any potential paranormal activities. If someone looked strange, they went in the pad.

‘I don’t know why you bother going through and organising your pad like that,’ Adam said.

I shrugged. ‘I just like structuring things, I guess. Maybe you should try it some time.’

Adam scoffed and continued scrawling things down on the pad in front of him. ‘My way works fine. Wouldn’t have solved the rabbit case if it wasn’t for my notes.’

I raised my eyebrows. We did solve the case of the missing rabbits a few days ago with help from his pad. It turned out Mrs. Dawson from two caravans down had been pinching them to give to her daughter as a present. Martin, the campsite owner, soon got full wind of this when my cousin and I delivered our full report, and Mrs. Dawson got a slap on the wrist. The case was a success and probably our proudest moment so far. Deep down, though, I wished for something more.

That was our problem. Every little mystery we had solved in the last week seemed to spur us on to solve another. And that’s how we met Donald Stanton. He helped us solve our mysteries, and he understood us.

I finished with writing my mysteries for the day and turned to Adam, who had fallen asleep on the spot. It had been tough for him lately but he seemed to be doing alright. We had to keep an eye on him, Gran said. Make sure he’s okay. It must have been tough for all of them.

I went out into the kitchen area, tiptoeing across the padded floor. My gran slept stretched across the warm brown sofa, which spiralled all around the outside of the room under the window. Granddad sat upright, reading the paper. Four digestive biscuits sat to his side, untouched. Usually he would forget about them and fall asleep. Gran usually took the opportunity to pinch them after she broke her sleeping façade. He probably thought he’d eaten them, but perhaps he was keeping up the comedy. Feeding our imagination. That was, of course, if Carla didn’t get to them first. She slept on a pillow in front of a fan heater.

I poured myself a glass of strawberry milkshake. When I added the milk, it smelled a little like the inside of toenails, but it didn’t matter much to me. The strawberry would mask that.

‘I’m off to bed now, Granddad,’ I called.

He turned from his paper and nodded. ‘Night, son, sleep well. Anything you and Adam fancy doing tomorrow?’

I edged towards my bedroom door and moved further away from the living area and the warmth of the fan heater. ‘Oh, I’ll ask him. But we’ll probably just end up solving mysteries or something. Go meet up with Emily at our den.’

‘Okay, well let us know if you fancy it.’ Granddad paused. ‘Is he… okay?’

‘I dunno, I mean—well, I think so yeah. Nothing serious. You okay?’

Granddad stopped rustling his papers together. ‘Good lad, good lad. I’ll grab you both a chocolate bar from the shop tomorrow morning. It’ll go alright with your toast. Night, kid.’

I smiled. Selective deafness. Now I knew what my gran meant. Granddad buried his head in the paper and took a bite out of his digestive.