Tamsyn Murray-My So-Called Haunting Read online

  Tamsyn Murray was born in Cornwall in the Chinese Year of the Rat. This makes her charming, creative and curious (on a good day) but also selfish, restless and impatient (v. v. bad day).

  After moving around a lot during her early years, she now lives in London with her husband and her daughter. At least her body does. Her mind tends to prefer imaginary places and wanders off whenever it can but that’s not necessarily a bad thing in a writer.

  When she isn’t making things up, you might find Tamsyn on the stage, pretending to be someone else. She occasionally auditions for TV talent shows. One day she might get past the first round . . .

  Find out more about Tamsyn at her website:

  www.tamsynmurray.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2010

  by Piccadilly Press Ltd,

  5 Castle Road, London NW1 8PR

  www.piccadillypress.co.uk

  Text copyright © Tamsyn Murray, 2010

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any

  means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,

  without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  The right of Tamsyn Murray to be identified as Author of this work

  has been asserted by her in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  A catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library

  ISBN: 978 1 84812 092 1 (paperback)

  eISBN: 978 1 84812 174 4

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Printed in the UK by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon, CR0 4TD

  Cover design by Patrick Knowles

  For Lisa, Cathy and Alison,

  who made growing up so much fun.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  I knew the woman on the bridge was going to jump a split second before she did.

  ‘Wait!’

  The word was out of my mouth before my brain kicked in and my fingers stretched towards the window of the bus as though dragged on invisible strings. Conversations around me stopped mid-sentence and curious stares shot my way, but I couldn’t wrench my gaze away from the woman on the parapet, and everything else faded into the background. Casting one sorrowful glance over her shoulder, she launched herself into the air and plummeted to the roaring traffic below. I waited for a scream to shatter the chill morning air. It didn’t come. My ears strained for the squeal of brakes and the grim crunch of metal on bone, but there was only silence. Somehow, that was worse. My eyes closed and I swallowed a wave of sick horror. I’d just watched a woman leap to her death. The fact that I couldn’t have stopped her didn’t make me feel any better.

  Gradually, the sounds of London’s rush hour filtered through to my numbed brain. I opened my eyes to see that the traffic was on the move. The engine of the bus roared and we lurched forwards along Hornsey Lane Bridge. Around me, passengers steadied themselves and resumed their activities as though nothing unusual had happened. My outburst had been dismissed. Dotted among the random mixture of age, nationality and dress-sense were several kids in the same Heath Park C of E Secondary uniform that I wore, but it was only my second week at the school so I didn’t recognise any faces.

  As I gathered my jangling nerves and peered around the packed bus, one thing was obvious; not a single person had seen the woman jump. I ran a shaky hand over my face and sighed, wondering why I was surprised. They were normal people, going about their everyday lives. None of them were like me. None of them saw ghosts.

  It’s not as interesting as it sounds, being born into a family of psychics. OK, so your mum is much more likely to believe that there’s something lurking in the cupboard at the bottom of your bed, but she’ll probably encourage you to have a chat rather than chase it away. Since my mum was the only non-psychic in her family, I didn’t even have that luxury. She accepted that ghosts existed, of course; it’d be hard not to when her sister and parents talked about them non-stop, but she couldn’t see or hear them, and I don’t think she ever really understood what it was like to see things other people didn’t. I suppose that’s why she became a biologist, because science dealt only with hard evidence and facts.

  My dad died before I was even born. Mum didn’t talk about him much, but I got the idea he hadn’t been psychic. It was my aunt that I turned to when I was trying to make sense of my strange gift as I grew up, in spite of the fact that she lived in London and we were in Scotland. Blond-haired and blue-eyed like me, Celestine looked more like my older sister than my aunt, and the gift we shared meant we were on the same wavelength most of the time. When Mum was agonising over a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to spend a year studying sea horses in the Great Barrier Reef, it was a no-brainer for me to stay with Celestine while she was away. Since GCSEs began in Year Ten, we’d decided I’d stay until I’d done my exams. Sure, I’d miss my life in Edinburgh, but I’d always been a bit of a loner, and there was always MSN for the few friends I’d had. At least I wasn’t leaving a best friend behind, and as for boys – ha! Maybe a fresh start at a new school was just what I needed, and this time I planned to spend less time worrying about the dead and more time on my social life. Seriously, how hard could it be?

  ‘Hey, Skye,’ Celestine greeted me as I slouched into the kitchen after school and dropped my bag on to the floor. ‘Bad day?’

  I slid on to a seat at the breakfast bar and scowled first at her and then at her boyfriend, Jeremy. ‘Is it that obvious?’

  She finished drying the cup she was holding and dropped the tea towel next to the sink. ‘Yep. Your mood is greyer than your skirt.’

  I stared at her. She’d been able to second-guess my emotions for as long as I could remember. ‘How do you do that? Am I the only person you read more easily than last week’s Heat?’

  Jeremy rinsed his hands under the tap. ‘No, she does it to me too. You get used to it after a while.’

  Celestine smiled. ‘I can see your aura – it’s like a glow around you, reflecting your emotions. Everyone has one, and yours is telling me you’re Grumpy McGrump.’

  I had read about auras before but hadn’t realised my aunt could see them; no wonder her people skills were so good. She was spot on about my mood too. After the horror of the journey to school, I’d been followed off the bus by three kids who’d taken it in turns to shout out,‘ Wait!’ in the worst impersonations of my Scottish accent I’d ever heard. I’d scurried inside the school gates with scant minutes to spare and found that Megan, the only girl in my registration group I’d broken the ice with, was off sick. With the horrible image of the suicide ghost on replay in my brain, I’d had the attention span of a toddler on Jelly Tots in my lessons and finished the morning with a stern ticking-off from Mr Evans for daydreaming. By the time he’d let me go, there was nothing left in the canteen except for curled-up sandwiches and an overcooked sausage roll. Then, to round off the perfect Monday, I had an essay on the human reproductive system to write. Was it any wonder I wasn’t doing a happy dance?

  ‘Why can’t I see auras?’ I asked Celestine, trying t
o ignore the intense, slightly cross-eyed stare Jeremy was aiming just above my head.

  ‘Not every psychic can. They’re a bit like the faint blue glow you see around ghosts, but they’re much stronger in the living and more colourful.’ Celestine tilted her head and Jeremy gave up trying to see my aura. ‘Why don’t you tell us what’s bugging you?’

  I didn’t need a second invitation. When I’d finished, both she and Jeremy were solemn.

  ‘I’m not surprised you’re feeling grey,’ Celestine said. ‘What a terrible thing to witness.’

  My head slumped on to my folded arms. ‘What I don’t understand is why she would jump again when she’s already dead. Why put herself through that?’

  ‘Well, assuming that’s how she died, she’ll be tied there and probably hasn’t worked out how to leave. The rest is just force of habit, I suppose,’ Celestine said, her voice filled with sadness. ‘Think about it – we’re supposed to go straight to the astral plane when we die, but if there’s something holding us here then we don’t. Some ghosts can’t cope when they don’t pass across, and suicides tend to find it the hardest.’

  ‘What happened when she – you know – hit the ground?’ Jeremy asked, interrupting my train of thought.

  ‘I didn’t see,’ I answered, frowning slightly. ‘I suppose she just sort of disappeared, but maybe she came back to the bridge and did it all again. What if she’s a serial suicide?’

  Oh God, I really hoped she wasn’t. Settling into a new school was hard enough without seeing someone throw themselves off the bridge every time I crossed it.

  Jeremy shuddered. ‘Imagine what it must be like to take your own life and wake up as a ghost – you’re expecting your problems to end and instead things get a thousand times worse.’

  An odd tone had crept into his voice, filling me with shame at my selfish thought. It was almost as though he was speaking from experience. I knew he was part psychic, and had got to know a ghost once, but I thought she’d been a murder victim, not a suicide. Maybe there’d been other ghosts he didn’t talk about.

  Celestine squeezed his arm, nodding. ‘Sometimes it’s easier to repeat the same actions day after day than try to work out what to do next. I’ve seen it at the Dearly D from time to time.’

  Part of her job as a psychic at the Church of the Dearly Departed, a spiritualist church in Kensal Green, involved trying to help ghosts contact their loved ones and find their way to the astral plane. I’d been with her a few times and I knew the atmosphere there was often emotionally charged. What I’d seen that morning might all be part of a day’s work for her, but I knew she cared about each and every spirit she met and felt duty-bound to do whatever she could for them. It was something else we had in common, which I guess is why the woman on the bridge had affected me so much.

  ‘She seemed so young. I wonder who she was,’ I said, remembering the desperation etched on to her face.

  ‘We’ll probably never know,’ Jeremy replied, his tone subdued. ‘It’s a popular place for suicide.’

  Perfect, just what I needed; my route to school passed through a haunting hotspot. Who knew what I’d see tomorrow?

  ‘I could give you a lift sometimes, if you like?’ Jeremy said, clearly picking up on my worried expression. ‘Save you getting the bus every day.’

  I threw him a grateful smile. He might have the fashion sense of Mr Bean but he was all right, really. ‘That’d be great, thanks.’

  I’d just have to pray no one saw me getting out of his deeply uncool Nissan Micra. In fact, maybe it’d be better if he dropped me off round the corner. I chewed my lip doubtfully. Actually, it would probably be safest to walk.

  My stomach rumbled mid-thought, reminding me of my unsatisfactory lunch. A missed meal might help my waistline, but I’d never been one for diets.

  ‘OK,’ I said, jumping down from my seat and heading towards the fridge. ‘Is there any of that banoffee pie left? Maybe a slice would help with my bad mood.’

  Celestine raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Oh, your aura is fine now. Besides, you wouldn’t want to spoil your dinner, would you?’

  ‘And there’s only one piece left and it’s got my name on it,’ Jeremy put in. ‘So don’t get any ideas.’

  I stared wistfully at the wedge of cream-covered pie for a full five seconds before heaving a melodramatic sigh and closing the fridge.

  ‘I suppose I’ll make do with an apple for now then,’ I said, reaching a grudging hand towards the fruit bowl. ‘But I’m not sure you’re going to want that pie, Jeremy. I saw Mary licking it earlier.’

  Celestine and Jeremy didn’t live alone. Their house was in a leafy street in a posh bit of Highgate and it had been built on land that once upon a time had been a farm. We had the dubious pleasure of being haunted by Mary Drover, a sixteenth century witch with an attitude that was over four hundred years out of date. Since I’d moved in two weeks ago, we’d grown an instant hate-hate relationship and she never missed a chance to stir up trouble for me. Naturally, I returned the favour whenever I could.

  My aunt wasn’t buying it this time, though. She looked at me closely and grinned. ‘No, she didn’t.’

  Oh great, so now she could tell from my aura if I was fibbing? Sighing, I snatched up my bag and went up to my room, making a mental note to save any little white lies for text messages in future. Like I said, sometimes having a psychic family sucked.

  There’s a lot of rubbish out there about ghosts. Like the idea that being dead somehow turns you into some kind of psycho – if I had a pound for every time I’ve heard a story about an evil spirit luring unsuspecting tourists over a cliff, I’d be sorted for mascara money for the next few years. The truth is that ghosts generally have their own problems and don’t have the time or the inclination to go around bumping off the living. There were one or two exceptions, but weren’t there always? It didn’t mean Paranormal Activity was a fly-on-the-wall documentary.

  That said, for some reason Mary Drover was determined to be my own personal banshee. I’d tried being nice to her but she still took massive delight in tormenting me. She’d also developed a seriously inappropriate habit of walking into my bedroom unannounced. Like if she decided it was time I was up on a Saturday morning when my body had other plans. Or when I was trying to decide whether shortening my skirt would help me win friends at Heath Park. I’d never got to the bottom of why she hadn’t passed across centuries ago, but she was a major pain in the arse to me.

  ‘How many times do I have to ask you to knock?’ I yelled at her as she drifted through the door of my room on Tuesday morning and looked me up and down. Like most ghosts, she floated a couple of centimetres above the floor, as though she was sticking up two metaphorical fingers at us mere mortals bound by the laws of gravity.

  ‘Thou resemblest a strumpet,’ she said, staring pointedly at my thigh-skimming skirt. Sometimes I had trouble understanding Mary’s weird cross-century babbling but in this case I was getting her loud and clear. She didn’t approve of my uniform adjustments and was threatening to grass me up.

  ‘Everyone wears them like this now,’ I announced, eyeing my reflection in the mirror and wondering if the extra inches of leg on view would earn me the nickname Thunder Thighs. ‘If you had your way, I’d go to school wearing a smock.’

  She sniffed. ‘It would be more seemly.’

  Never at my best early in the morning, my patience evaporated. ‘I don’t have time for this, Mary. What do you want?’

  ‘Thy aunt made mention of a spirit who throws herself from the bridge of the horseless carriages.’

  I stared at her, wondering why she was so interested. ‘That’s right.’

  She raised a finger. ‘Thou should not meddle with unwilling spirits. Not all are ready to pass across.’

  I couldn’t help wondering whether she was speaking from personal experience. Maybe someone had tried to get rid of her in the past – I could certainly sympathise if they had. Squeezing past, I yanked open my bedroom doo
r. ‘Just because you’re not ready to move on doesn’t mean no one else is.’

  Scowling, she followed me along the landing. ‘Heed my words, leave well alone!’

  I went into the bathroom and reached for my toothbrush. It wasn’t there. ‘Whoever this woman is, she threw herself off a bridge. How exactly am I going to make things worse for her? And where is my toothbrush?’

  She leaned in closer. ‘There are those who would seek to hurt even the most tormented soul. Thy well-meant efforts may drive this spirit to further harm.’

  I sighed. Could she be any more cryptic? ‘I’ve got no idea what you’re on about. Have you seen my toothbrush?’

  She raised her chin defiantly. ‘Promise me thou wilt desist in thy efforts and I will reveal the location of thy mouth-scourge.’

  I counted to ten under my breath and, not for the first time, wondered about exorcism. ‘I will not,’ I said firmly. ‘But if it’s any consolation, you’ve made me late so I probably won’t see her today anyway. Now give me the toothbrush.’

  Her gaze slid towards the toilet bowl. ‘It is behind the privy.’

  Urgh. I wouldn’t be putting that in my mouth again any time soon, then.

  ‘Fine. I needed a new one anyway.’ Stepping back, I closed the bathroom door in her face. ‘And don’t even think about coming in here or I know one spirit I’ll be seriously meddling with. Haven’t you ever heard of privacy?’

  I half expected Mary to follow me to school. I mean, technically it was possible for her to do it; ghosts weren’t completely tied to their haunting zone – the place where they’d died – as long as they carried an original item from that place with them. Mary favoured an antique silver letter-opener, honed to a wicked point through decades of use, and was prone to brandishing it like Lord Voldemort whenever she lost her temper. I’d never got close enough to find out if she could actually cut me with it and could only hope she never encountered a psychic mugger. Even with the letter-opener tucked under her ragged clothes, she couldn’t stay away from home indefinitely. Since I knew for a fact that her Monday nights were spent with a ghostly witches’ coven in Finchley, I also knew she’d have to spend some time at home the next day to recharge – ghosts could leave their haunting zone for up to a day at a time, but they needed to return at regular intervals. Whatever the reason, there was no sign of Mary as I walked along Hornsey Lane.