CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
'So …' I awkwardly filled in the void left by Chris' disappearance, 'he's spitting chips.'
'Yup,' agreed Shane. 'Think he wants to kill us.'
Shane's anger towards me temporarily dissipated as we contemplated the common enemy we faced. Without Chris to distract me, I suddenly felt overwhelmingly drained again. I closed my eyes. I could hear Shane scurrying around the garage searching for an escape route. Hopefully he would have more success than I'd had. After a few minutes, he flopped down next to me with a hopeless sigh. I had a thought and prised my eyes open.
'Why don't we call out to Sharelle to open the door for us?'
Shane shook his head hopelessly.
'Sharelle's addiction to sleeping pills might make that difficult for us.'
'You mean—' I began.
'Yup,' Shane answered. 'She's dead to the world right now. She's just enjoyed her two favourite things—screwing, and knocking herself unconscious.'
Yuck. I didn't need him to remind me of what he'd been up to with Sharelle. I shut my eyes again. Shane shook my arm.
'How long have you been able to see ghosts?' he asked me in a grumpy voice. His curiosity was grudgingly winning over his desire to remain hostile towards me. I opened my eyes and looked at him. He was gazing at me with a reluctantly hopeful expression that I'd never seen on him before. I tried to shake the haze out of my head.
'My whole life,' I replied. Shane gave a start.
'Really? Your whole life? I only started seeing them since this summer!'
I was shocked. Shane had only recently acquired his abilities. I didn't think it was the sort of thing that you wake up to one day. I wondered what had triggered his new skills.
Before I had a chance to interview Shane further on the subject, we were interrupted as the door swung open violently and a screaming blonde blur rushed through.
It was Carly.
Unfortunately, my relief at seeing a non-ghostly form was short lived. Carly lunged at me in an uncanny re-enactment of this afternoon's psycho-tantrum.
'You skank!' she screamed. She grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled it painfully. Still weak from Alan-sympathy pains, I didn't have the energy to defend myself.
'Stop it,' I begged weakly, as my skull stung from her violent attack.
'What are you doing here with Shane?' she yelled, switching to slapping my face now. I cowered from her blows. They impacted painfully on my already bruised limbs. It was lucky for me she was such a weakling, or I'd have been in serious trouble at that point.
'Quiet!' Shane hissed. 'Get off her Carly. You don't understand. We have to get out of here … now. We're in danger.' He pulled Carly away from me and restrained her in a bear hug. She squirmed vigorously, making his job difficult.
'Of course you would defend her. You're disgusting!' Carly screamed, at an even louder pitch, if that was possible.
'For God's sake! Shut up! Please!' Shane hissed. He dragged Carly towards the door. 'Come on Fiona, let's go!' he urged me.
Gritting my teeth, I forced myself onto my feet and followed Shane and Carly's writhing figures towards the door. Carly was seriously inhibiting Shane's progress. My head was still stinging from her attack. I felt like suggesting that we lock her in the garage and leave her to Chris' devices.
Bang!
Click.
The unthinkable happened. Barely a metre away, the door slammed shut and locked. Chris must have heard the commotion and re-locked it.
Shane pushed Carly away from him in disgust.
'I told you to shut up!' he said. 'What are you doing here anyway?'
Carly stumbled forward out of Shane's grip. Her shirt was rumpled from their tussle. She smoothed it down huffily.
'What are you doing here?' she said to Shane, annoyed. 'You're supposed to be my boyfriend! You just took off from Bateman's Bay after one glance at this skank …' she flicked her hand at me dismissively, '… and then I followed her, to find out what on earth is going on …,' her voice started climbing to a hysterical pitch, '… only to find both of you together in the house of your dead classmate?' She was really screeching now. 'I mean, what are you doing? Why is it so hard to find a decent Grammar boy to take to the year ten formal!'
I sighed in exasperation. Carly was so self-obsessed that she hadn't even registered that the door had mysteriously slammed shut and locked all on its own, or that Shane and I were bruised, battered and shaking with fear for our lives. Her obsession with hunting down her next formal date seemed really trivial to me right now, when we were about to be murdered.
'Who cares what we're doing here? We're all going to die anyway, thanks to you,' I said. 'Get your facts straight before you attack me again. Shane's not secretly seeing me. He's been seeing every mother in town!'
Carly looked taken aback by my accusation. She narrowed her eyes and looked at Shane accusingly.
'What mothers?' she asked.
'He gets money from them,' I tattled. 'That's what he's doing in this house. He's been sleeping with Chris Reynolds's stepmum.'
Carly's face flinched in disgust as she registered this information.
'Eww! Yuck!' She looked at Shane. 'That's so gross. What's wrong with you? I don't want to take a filthy prostitute to the formal.'
Shane shrugged his shoulders dismissively and sniggered. 'What can I say? Older woman are so desperate. You can get them to buy you anything. It's way easier than slaving away in an ice cream parlour,' he took a stab at Carly.
Carly just raised her eyebrows at Shane contemptuously. Now that she didn't want him anymore, her old self-control and confidence had returned.
'Shane, you're such a loser.' She flicked her hair back in her trademark look of disdain and superiority. 'You're disgusting. You're a dirty ho. I can't believe I ever wanted you. You and the old women can have each other.'
Shane's face flickered in annoyance at Carly's rejection. He was used to her throwing herself at him, and he didn't like the new balance of power. Before he could say anything a shimmering form materialised between him and Carly. My stomach pitched in fear.
It was Chris.
Chris raised his eyebrows. 'Well, well, well, what have we got here? Carly too? You really do have a knack for luring women into dangerous situations,' he said to Shane.
Shane fixed his gaze onto Chris. 'Chris, let Carly go,' he said evenly. 'She can't see you, she has no idea what's going on, and I promise, if you let her go, I won't touch her again.'
If I hadn't been so scared, I would have laughed. Of course Shane wasn't going near Carly again. Carly didn't want him anymore.
Carly looked from Shane to me in confusion. She was unaware of Chris' presence and the exchange that was going on. Chris hesitated and looked at Carly longingly. I could tell he was tempted to let her go, but any chance Carly had of escaping the perilous situation of which she was blissfully unaware was ruined by her next words.
'Why do you keep talking about Derrick's dead loser friend?'
The soft expression on Chris' face suddenly contorted to rage.
'You just signed your own death warrant, you selfish, foolish girl,' he spat. He lunged at Carly. 'I can't believe I ever loved you!' he yelled as he ploughed towards her. Completely unaware of what was going on, Carly made no attempt to defend herself. However, instead of delivering the crushing blow that he'd intended, Chris' ghostly form simply passed right through Carly. She shivered.
Chris spun around in anger. His shimmering form was now glowing blue with the intensity of his rage. I'd never seen a ghost so worked up before.
'She can burn with the rest of you!' Chris yelled. Then once again, he disappeared.
Talk about melodramatic. The boy had obviously watched too much television when he was alive. Without the distraction of Chris' threats, once again I was floored by the overwhelming nausea that was overtaking me. I flopped to the ground. We were going to die.
'What on earth is going on here?' Carly demanded. 'You guys are freaking me out! I
feel like someone just walked over my grave.'
I had to give her credit, the girl was more perceptive than I'd thought. I wondered what we should tell her. A part of me felt that if we were going to have any chance to get out of here alive, we had to reveal to Carly what we were up against, but I'd never told anyone about my skills. It was a secret part of me that I'd never shared, and the last person in the world that I wanted to open up to was Carly. If she didn't believe me, it would take her only seconds to convince the whole school that I was a weird freak. Of course, all of this was irrelevant if we didn't get out of here alive.
I took a deep breath.
'Carly, I'm only telling you this because we're in mortal danger. You know Chris Reynolds, the guy who died this summer?'
'Of course I know that loser. He was always tagging along like an annoying puppy when I used to hang out with Derrick. We couldn't get rid of him!'
'Well, he's a ghost, and he's locked us in the garage. He's planning to burn the house down and kill us all.'
Carly gasped. Then she laughed coldly.
'You're joking right? Please tell me you're joking.'
'Check the door,' I replied. 'Don't you think it's strange that it suddenly slammed shut and locked, when there's no breeze?'
I watched while Carly checked the door. She was losing a bit of colour.
'And you know that cold feeling that you had a minute ago, when you thought someone had walked over your grave?' Shane said. 'Well that was Chris, trying to strangle you. Luckily for you, he can't touch you, so he passed right through your body.'
Carly really blanched now. Her internal struggle was written all over her pale face. Her brain was telling her that this was all crazy, but her instincts knew that something creepy and supernatural had passed by her a moment ago.
'Oh, and by the way, he got really mad when you called him a dead loser, and he's quite keen to kill you too,' Shane added, ever the trouble maker.
Carly's forehead was starting to shimmer with nervous sweat. I could tell she believed us.
'Okay. So assuming you're telling the truth, then how do you know all this, if Chris is a ghost and we can't see him?' she asked weakly.
'Well, that's the thing, Carly,' Shane glanced at me for permission. I nodded reluctantly. 'You see, Fiona and I, well, we can see ghosts, but other people can't.'
Carly's eyes narrowed at me. The existence of ghosts, she might be able to buy, but me sharing a special talent with Shane? That was preposterous. I babbled at high speed to fill in the silence before she could argue.
'I can see ghosts because I had a telepathic connection to my identical twin sister, but she died when we were two and became a ghost, so ever since then I've been able to see them.'
I took a deep breath. Carly stared at me incredulously.
'Uh huh. Well, then how come Shane can see them? He doesn't have a dead identical twin.'
I shrugged unconvincingly. It didn't make any sense to me either.
'He's only been seeing them since this summer—' I stopped abruptly as my brain went into overdrive.
Chris had died this summer. Shane had been seeing ghosts since this summer.
Suddenly snippets of conversation and snatches of previously dismissed thoughts flashed through my mind.
The resemblance between Shane and Chris, their similar cocky mannerisms, their identical height, big noses, matching almond shaped eyes, square jaws and defined curve of their eyebrows. They had the likeness of brothers.
The newspaper article: Home Wizard Entrepreneurs Add Sons to Partnership. Shane and Chris shared the same birthday, and their parents used to be close family friends. The photo of Chris' dad had looked nothing like Chris, yet Shane's dad showed a striking resemblance to both boys.
Chris' mum had been mesmerised by Shane during his rugby game and had burst into hysterical tears at the sight of him—like a mother who'd been separated from her son.
Chris had said he had two brothers to kill. I'd thought he was deranged, but maybe he was telling the truth.
Then there was the overwhelming piece of information: Shane hadn't been able to see ghosts until Chris died. Which was exactly how I'd inherited my pesky talent … when Ella passed away.
It had to be true.
'Chris and Shane are twins,' I said hollowly as the realisation sank in.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
I heard the sarcastically slow applause before I noticed the glistening air materialise into Chris' form.
Shane gave a start in shock. Carly was still glaring at me, oblivious to the interruption. Chris turned pointedly towards me.
'You might be incredibly stupid, but you're right about that,' he snarled. 'Shane and I are twins, and that's why I'm doing this.'