David's Revenge
By mark_yelland-brown
- 469 reads
I suppose I never believed in ghosts until I became one. Now it looks like I’m going to stay 12 forever. I live in the house I died in on Conway Street, number 42 to be exact. Officially I died after a long illness, I know now I was poisoned; by my mother’s boyfriend.
I’m not able to leave the house, there’s a kind of invisible barrier that stops me, like those force fields you see on any generation of `Star Trek`.
Being a ghost is very like all the books you’ve read and the films you’ve seen, they’re quite accurate really. I can walk through solid objects and bodies as well, like that film `Ghost` except that people don’t feel me do it. Oh, except my granny Elsie, but she just shivers and says that someone has stepped on her grave. I can move things but I’m holding back at the moment. I’m saving that little trick for John, he lives at number 42 now and I’m going to kill him.
I’d better fill you in on what happened and why.
My real dad had left when I was 10 and it was just my mum and me. My mum was really depressed for a while, I tried to cheer her up, but eventually she did get better, she said that time was a great healer.
My dad didn’t keep in touch with us, I missed him at first; not because he was a nice dad or anything, he never had any real time for me; but I expect it was because I was used to him around. He liked a drink, which always made things awkward.
John came on the scene a year after dad left. I didn’t like him from the first. He was so creepy to mum, you know, buying her things and all `lovey-dovey`.
He even tried to be nice to me but I just ignored him, I was sorry that it upset mum when I did that, but I knew he was no good for her.
Anyway, I started to get ill; I was throwing up all the time and starting to lose weight. The doctors were worried because they couldn’t find anything wrong; I was getting weaker and weaker.
Mum was frantic with worry and John was brilliant at pretending he was worried as well, now I know he had been faking it.
Finally the doctors said there was no hope, it must be a type of cancer because although they couldn’t identify it, it was destroying my body like one.
And what was I doing all this time? I was busy dying.
I wasn’t in real pain, which was strange, I was just so sleepy.
They decided that I should stay at home for the last weeks.
They made me as comfortable as they could. Mum and John fussed around me the whole time; I was just a very dozy onlooker.
On the day I died I was lying with my eyes closed but just aware of what was going on around me.
Mum and John was there and our GP, Doctor Patel. I remember it being very quiet. Mum was quietly crying and John had his arms around her shoulder. That bloody hypocrite was crying too, I could hear a low sob now and again.
I remember the exact moment I left my old/young body.
I seemed to swoop upright and then suddenly I was standing right next to mum, watching them watching me.
When Dr Patel pronounced me dead mum and John both burst into tears and hugged each-other, like they would never let go. I felt confused and in a deep state of unbelief, how could there be two of me?
“Mum, mum, I’m here, look at me.”
I started to panic and began trying to pull her away from John; they couldn’t see, hear or feel me.
I’m not going to bore you with what happened afterwards. I suppose there was a funeral; two men in suits had taken my body away.
People came later, it might have been days later, time is all mixed up when your dead. They were dressed in suits and miserable, which was comforting.
They must have just buried me because they were talking about what a wonderful funeral it had been. They may have been sad but it didn’t stop them scoffing all the food.
So, how did I know that it had been John who had killed me?
When everything had settled down and John had moved in with my mum, very cosy! I spotted him one day sitting on mum’s bed.
I should say their bed, but it sticks in my throat. He was looking at a bottle, the kind of small container that you keep pills in.
Suddenly he heard mum coming up the stairs and he panicked. He ran across the room and put the pills in his small travel case on top of the wardrobe.
By that time I had settled into a routine of wandering around the house, just walking up and down the stairs, staring out of windows, lost and aimless.
It was if my heart had been removed and I was in a waking dream. The only feelings I had were of a kind of dazed confusion. I knew now I was dead, I also knew that I was invisible to everyone.
I wasn’t really bored because time seemed different. It always seemed to be now.
I watched mum when she came in from work. I followed her around the house as she cleared up and sat next to her when she watched the television.
Sometimes I would stand in front of her and look into her face, not wanting to believe she really could not see I was there; that she couldn’t sense the presence of one she had supposedly loved so much.
I went somewhere else when John came in.
I never went into their bedroom when they went to bed, never.
So what was John up to?
It started with the pills and then I found a scrap of paper, a note addressed to him.
“2 a day, powdered, mixed in with food, remember to wash hands afterwards”
I don’t know who this is for John but it’s highly toxic.
Gone off the cat eh? HA!
Steve.
I suppose I put two and two together and judged John a murderer. After the initial shock, which made me feel dizzy, I then began to feel strange and even more isolated.
I began to dwell on my thoughts about John from the beginning of my relationship with him.
I had never liked or trusted him, he’d always wanted to break up me and mum, he’d wanted her for himself; I could see that now.
I wanted revenge, and I had time to plan it.
I was going to terrify him to death.
I had discovered I could move things.
It had taken a lot of concentration but I was getting the hang of it. I had to dig up powerful emotions; hate and rage seem to help.
Because I wasn’t naturally feeling anything
I had to learn to by picturing things and filling in the emotional blanks. I would imagine John with my mum and begin to create an appropriate response.
I practiced on a small vase on the mantle piece when no one was at home, it took me 20 minutes but it eventually smashed on the grate.
Soon I was getting faster and by the time I was ready for John I could move large objects in seconds.
So John is home alone tonight. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.
Epilogue
It’s nearly time to go. They’re coming for us when it’s dark so I’ll tell you what happened with John.
He had had his dinner in the kitchen, some left-overs from the day before, and had taken a can of beer into the sitting room.
I stood opposite him while he sat watching the television through me; he was laughing loads at some ancient sit-com.
I knocked his beer off the arm of the chair. After he cursed he ran into the kitchen to get a cloth for the mess on the carpet.
I concentrated on the can and put it onto the mantel piece where the vase had stood.
He came in and began wiping up the beer. Suddenly he stopped and began looking for the can.
When he spotted it on the mantel piece he stared, shook his head and carried on wiping.
Five minutes later and I knocked the television flying across the room; the plug was torn out of the socket as it smashed into pieces against an opposite wall. He was transfixed in horror then ran out of the room for the front door.
I got there first and stopped him from opening it while all the time breathing icy cold air on his face.
“Oh God, help me!”
With all the effort I could muster, with all the hate and despair that this man had caused me, I shouted through the supernatural distance into his world.
“Murderer!”
Boy did he hear me. His ears began to bleed and he fell down, I knew he was dead.
Now he was beside me.
First confusion, then horror, then confusion again.
“David, that was you, you’re, you’re dead!
“And now so are you!”
“But why? You poor boy, why? Were you lonely? Oh my God you’ve killed me, why?”
“Because you killed me so you could have mum!”
“What? No David, never, I loved you like my own son, but you always hated me. Why would I ever want to hurt you? What about Liz? I love her so much. Why would I do anything to hurt her?”
I put my hands over my ears then began shouting at him, while he had slumped on to the floor in deep trauma.
“I saw the pills, I read the note from Steve, you poisoned me!”
The pills, the note from Steve, what note?”
The note about powdering the pills and mixing them with food, and washing your hands because they were toxic!”
“Oh David, you idiot, you poor sad idiot, that was for the rats in my flat. Oh David, David, what have you done?”
So they’re coming for both of us, to take us to the `Next Place`. I don’t know where it will be, but the man in the blue suit said we would be going there together, forever.
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