Ghostscape Read online

  Ghostscape

  For Marianne

  Ghostscape copyright © Frances Lincoln Limited 2008

  Text copyright © Joe Layburn 2008

  Illustrations copyright © John Williams

  First published in Great Britain in 2008 and in the USA in 2009

  by Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 4

  Torriano Mews, Torriano Avenue, London NW5 2RZ

  www.franceslincoln.com

  First paperback edition published in 2009

  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, electrical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the United Kingdom such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available on request

  ISBN 978-1-84507-768-6

  Set in Bembo

  1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

  Ghostscape

  Joe Layburn

  Illustrated by John Williams

  BOMBS AND BULLIES

  When this all started I was just a girl in a headscarf in a strange new world. I’ve seen war, dead bodies too, but you don’t see ghosts every day. Not even in Somalia.

  “You’re making it up,” the girls in my class complained. But how could I? I knew nothing about history – not English history anyway – when I first came to this land of rain and snow, and when I first saw a ghost I could reach out and touch. Well, first he touched me – and I’m happy now that he did.

  ***

  I was crying and I’d locked myself in one of the toilet cubicles. The place stank. Girls were always saying, “Miss, can I go toilet?” to get out of lessons, but believe me, you wouldn’t want to spend any longer than you had to in there.

  Outside, I heard a cough. I thought they must have sent Fadimo because they always did when I got upset. It was a pain to Fadimo because she didn’t want to be Somali or speak our language at school any more. “What is your problem?” she would hiss.

  My dad’s dead, my mum doesn’t understand me, I’m being bullied – where do you want me to start?

  But it wasn’t Fadimo. I opened the cubicle door, my eyes bleary with tears. It was a boy. A boy in our toilet! Sometimes they’d get dragged in by a gang of the noisy, flirty girls from Year Six. But this one just stood there. I didn’t recognize him.

  “Blimey, look at you!” he said. He stretched out a pale hand and touched my headscarf just above my left eye. “What the hell have you got on your head?”

  I actually laughed. It wasn’t as if I was an unusual sight – there were lots of girls like me who kept their heads covered. He didn’t sound like he was being unkind though. He seemed genuinely amazed.

  “You know you shouldn’t be here?” he said. “Dickie-bird’ll kill you.”

  “Who’s Dickie-bird?”

  It was his turn to look baffled. “Dickinson. Mr Dickinson, the Headmaster.”

  It seemed this boy was mad or had emotional problems or something, because our head teacher wasn’t called Dickinson and she wasn’t a man either.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Aisha.” I just said it. I was having a conversation with a boy in the girls’ toilets. So?

  He was wearing shorts, but not like PE shorts. These were grey and hung down to below his knees. He had a grimy white shirt with a big collar and scuffed black shoes as well, but it was the spiral of curls on top of his head that I noticed most. His hair was cropped close at the sides but up above it was crazy like spaghetti.

  “You don’t say much, Aisha,” he said with a wink. “Are you scared? Of the bombs? They scare me all right, I don’t mind telling you. Boom, boom, boom.” He chuckled, then coughed.

  “I hate even thinking about the sound of guns,” I said.

  “Is that what you was crying about?”

  I shook my head. “Do you know Chevon?” I asked.

  He screwed up his nose, which was speckled with orangey freckles. “I thought I knew everyone in this school, but I don’t know you and I’ve never heard of Chevon. What class?”

  I waved in the vague direction of my classroom, but, for the first time, I noticed that things around me weren’t right. The walls, which until now had been painted snot-green, were covered in shiny white tiles. The sinks were different too and the door to the corridor was in the wrong place. One of the taps was dripping incredibly loudly – the sound echoed faster and faster. I felt frightened and dizzy.

  “Are you ill or something?” the boy asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  That’s when the floor seemed to lurch up and hit me on the side of the head. Next I was falling through blackness and when I opened my eyes again, the pale, blond boy was gone and I was back in the girls’ toilets of Trentham Primary School.

  ***

  The first person I saw when I got back to class was Chevon. She was just inside the door, waiting. Everyone else had stampeded out for break. Taller than me, older looking, Chevon wore make-up even though girls at school were not supposed to.

  “Miss said she couldn’t hang around any longer for you,” she explained when she saw me peering past her in search of Miss Brown. Chevon – pronounced Sheh-von – used a thumbnail to tease out a drawing pin that was stuck in the pockmarked wall.

  “You’re well out of order, Aisha. I’m going to get you for what you did to me.”

  “What did I do?” I protested, angry but fearful.

  “You know what you did.” She flicked the drawing pin at me. “You cussed my mum.”

  “Oh, Chevon, I never. I’d never say anything bad about your mum.”

  “You’re evil, you are.”

  “Chevon, can’t you just leave me alone?”

  Her eyes widened. “Why should I? Witch!”

  She came to slap me and though I saw the blow coming and ducked, it caught me in the mouth.

  “Urrrrr, you spat on me. You cow,” she said, pushing me hard against the door.

  “Stop that! Both of you. I won’t stand for it. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

  It was Mr Franks, a fat, wheezy supply teacher with a grey goatee beard, who waddled around the school in a mist of bad breath. I could smell it now – a dead animal rotting.

  “What kind of example is this for younger children?” he added, though there were no younger children around. “I’m giving you three days’ detention. Both of you. No arguments.”

  “But, sir, she cussed my mum,” Chevon said. “I’ve got a right to defend myself and my family if someone cusses them.”

  Mr Franks looked uncertain. He wasn’t entirely stupid and he knew something of Chevon’s tricks.

  “And then the dirty cow spat at me, sir.”

  Mr Franks turned to inspect me. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “In that case, you can have four days’ detention. If you won’t even think about what you’ve done wrong, you give me no choice.”

  “And she tried to jack my pencil case, sir,” Chevon added.

  Mr Franks looked quizzically at Chevon. The suspicion was apparently growing within him that he was being taken for a fool. “Did you try to steal Chevon’s pencil case, er…?”

  I realised he couldn’t remember my name. “Aisha,” I said. “No I never.”

  “Don’t push me too far, Chevon,” he muttered. “Now go out and play.”

  Chevon brushed past me, head held high. “Shame,” she said loudly.

  ***

  I sought refuge in a corner of the playground under a skinny de
ad tree with Leyla and Sufia. About twenty boys were playing football, all shrieking “pass it, man!” at Sufia’s big brother Omar. But he played like he was possessed, never looking up to pass to anyone. The other kids couldn’t understand how he’d picked up their game so quickly. Of course, in Somalia, he would have run around in a cloud of dust with a ball at his feet any chance he’d had. He didn’t let on to these boys though.

  Gooaal, he shouted, a flash of white teeth, proud brown eyes, a glance towards where we were standing. Leyla and I smiled shyly, but he ignored us. Typical.

  I was telling Leyla and Sufia about the boy in the toilets.

  “I reckon you was seeing things cos you’re so stressed out by Chevon,” Leyla said.

  I picked at the bark of the dead tree. “I was talking to him like I’m talking to you.”

  I noticed that Sufia was getting her spacey look that meant she was about to say something weird.

  “I see giant helicopters sometimes, coming through smoke. Their noise fills my head and I want to scream.”

  No disrespect to Sufia, but Omar, her brother, reckoned she got a lot of this stuff from a Hollywood war film about Somalia called Black Hawk Down. Their uncle said it made Somalis look like wild animals. He got even more upset about a video game version of Black Hawk Down. Western children would be blasting away at evil Somalis in their bedrooms, he said – kerpow, pow, pow. It made their uncle so miserable he pulled bits of his beard out. Seriously.

  Poor Sufia was not right in the head either. Under our tree, Leyla and I made some soothing, pigeon style noises, just to show we were paying attention, then we got back to my story – my ghost.

  “Was he fit, Aisha? You say he’s got hair like spaghetti – what else?”

  “Leyla, this was basically a very scary moment. Not like a Romeo and Juliet thing.”

  Leyla made a face as if to say Who? But I knew she knew because Miss Brown had shown us some parts of a film with Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo because it was “artistic and beautiful” even though it “wasn’t exactly age-appropriate”.

  “I feel like I will see him again,” I said.

  “So it is a Romeo and Juliet thing.” Leyla giggled. “You and Mister Spaghetti-Head are star-crossed lovers.”

  I started to laugh too but then a cloud passed across the sun and I suddenly felt cold. From nowhere, Chevon had appeared.

  “You got a lover then, Aisha? I didn’t think Somali girls was allowed to have boyfriends or nothing.” Chevon stood with one hand on a hip, chin jutting out at me.

  “I wasn’t talking to you, Chevon.”

  I stepped away from the muddy base of the tree on to the cracked concrete of the playground.

  “You’re talking to me now and you can show me some respect.”

  “OK, I respect you. I’ll give you respect. Whatever.”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “Chevon, Miss Brown said she couldn’t make us all be best friends but we had to get along together. That’s all I want.”

  “That’s just circle-time talk, innit? I don’t have to get along with no one. Ain’t no one going to tell me what to do.”

  “Chevon, I wouldn’t try to tell you anything. You’re bigger than me.”

  “You saying I’m fat? You diss my mum and now you tell me I’m fat?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  A strange smile animated Chevon’s sullen, pouting features. “What if, Aisha yeah, what if I tell your mum you’ve got a boyfriend? I bet it’s Omar? What if I tell your mum that I seen you with Omar?”

  This I feared far more than physical hurt. Would Chevon really approach my mum and say something about me and a boy? I thought that she might and it made me tremble.

  “Just don’t. Please. Don’t.”

  “Stop me.”

  I’m not proud of this next bit.

  I tried to slap her around the head, but she leaned backwards and I found myself clawing at her neck instead. Her skin was moist with sweat but not so slick that I couldn’t dig in and hold on with my fingernails. I yanked her downwards. She writhed and shrieked at me to let go. But how could I? I had to keep her there. I had to grasp this slippery fold of skin until the broken nails on my fingers were snagged in it like fish hooks. She was hunched over on the uneven surface of the playground now, head bent as though in prayer. Her screams were truly awful. But how could I let her go?

  I closed my eyes and my ears filled with the sound of her wailing. It was then that I felt his hand resting gently on my wrist.

  “We’ve got to go, Aisha. That’s the sirens going off. We’re in danger.”

  The wailing sound no longer seemed to come from Chevon’s throat. It was mechanical but not like the electric scream of police cars. This was deeper, a ghostly yowling as if to announce the end of the world.

  “I can’t go,” I said, my eyes still screwed shut, my hand clenched, holding on to my tormentor.

  “We’ve got to leave. You should see the damage they done in my street last night. There was nothing left of this one house but a pile of bricks with a bathtub sitting on the top. It looked quite comical in a way, but the people that lived there was all dead.”

  I opened one eye.

  “Look, I don’t know who you are, but I’m staying here and this evil witch is staying with me.”

  I looked down at my right hand. Across the palm was a jagged line of blood oozing from four gouges I had made with my fingernails.

  “There ain’t no evil witches,” the boy said. “Just Hitler and his Nazi bombers.”

  As he spoke I felt the ground shake. It was as if a lorry had been dropped from the top of the block of flats down the road from the school. But that particular tower block hadn’t been built yet. My class wouldn’t be learning about the Second World War until Year Six, but I was starting to get the idea of what was happening here. Chevon was gone, so was the modern version of my school, which had been replaced by a soaring Victorian building of sooty bricks and tall windows. Trentham Primary it said high on one wall in flowery old writing. The name was the same, but as I looked around I could see so much that was different.

  “Some quick questions,” I said, as the air raid sirens continued to wail. “Just answer them, then we can go.”

  The boy looked dubious, but he nodded.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Richard.”

  “What year is this?”

  “1940.”

  “Do you know somewhere we’ll be safe?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then let’s get out of here.”

  The ground shook again. He took my hand in his and we ran.

  I’M INVISIBLE!

  We sheltered, breathless, under an arch of a railway bridge. The sound of the bombs as they crashed upon the shuddering earth was not just something I experienced with my ears – my face tingled, my legs trembled, my insides seemed to be dragged down towards my feet. For a few seconds, my whole body was possessed by the noise.

  Looking back the way we had run, I saw more planes, like a flock of huge silver birds droning towards us. They glinted in the pale sunlight, their wings spread wide. Just across the street I could see the destruction they would bring.

  The whole front of some poor family’s home had been ripped away leaving the rooms and staircase exposed like a doll’s house. I almost felt ashamed to see their personal things: the wallpaper they had chosen, a woman’s lilac dressing gown still hanging behind her bedroom door. There was debris and broken glass everywhere, but the mirror of her dressing table was still in one piece, as though she might yet brush out her hair in front of it before settling down for the night.

  We huddled together under the arch, his arm around my shoulders. Water was seeping through the blackened red bricks above my head and splashing down on to the ground beside me. I could also hear the chattering of gunfire from a few streets away.

  “Those guns sound close, Richard.”

  “They’re ours. Ack ack guns. To
me they don’t seem to do no good at all, like gnats attacking a rhinoceros. But I suppose it shows we’re putting up a fight.”

  “In Somalia the bad guys used to ride in jeeps firing off bullets into the sky, into people’s homes. They’d be whooping and shouting. It seemed like a game to them.”

  “So British Somaliland is where you’re from?”

  Despite everything I smiled. British Somaliland was a really old-fashioned name for part of my country. It hadn’t been called that for years. “Yeah, but I’m never going back.”

  “Good for you, Aisha. Once the war’s over, this country’ll be a great place for everyone. If it ain’t been bombed completely flat that is.”

  “It doesn’t bother you that I’m different?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, we’re all in this together,” Richard said. “Bombs’ll land on you just the same as me. It don’t matter you’re a different colour – or that you’ve got a towel round your head.”

  I pinched his arm. “It’s called a hijab...,” I started to say, but the planes were almost upon us now and the words caught in my throat.

  “You really reckon this place is safe?” I whispered finally.

  He shrugged. “It ain’t perfect. And if they score a direct hit we’re done for. But there’s plenty of people use railway arches. And after spending a night in a public shelter I ain’t never going back to one. There was people singing all sorts of soppy songs all night long. Little kids whimpering and crying cos of nightmares. And worst of all was the stink. Pretty much everyone had a dicky stomach and them that weren’t trumping all night, like some big brass band, were fighting over the toilets so they could dump their load.”

  I giggled nervously.

  “Where are the rest of your family, Richard?”

  “It’s just me and me grandad and he refuses to leave the house whatever’s happening outside. He pulls the bedclothes over his head and stays there till they sound the All Clear. He won’t even sleep under the kitchen table, which I’ve told him would be better than nothing cos it’s downstairs and he’d have a bit more protection. He just says when your number’s up, your number’s up. The last war took years off him, he reckons, and he ain’t getting out of bed for this one at all.”