Eglantine Read Free Page A

be the same,’ Mum said plaintively. ‘Not exactly the same.’
    ‘I can’t see much difference,’ Ray replied. ‘Compare the capital E in Eglantine with the one on the wall. There are a lot of ways you can write a capital E. These have the same loops. The same thickness of line.’
    There was a long, long silence. No one wanted to come right out and say anything stupid. Not at first.
    It was Bethan, of course, who finally couldn’t resist.
    ‘Do you think it’s a ghost?’ he squeaked.
    ‘Oh, Bethan,’ said Ray, and Mum remarked, in hollow tones, that there were no such things as ghosts – just concentrations of negative chi sometimes associated with past misfortune.
    ‘If there’s a ghost in this room,’ Bethan went on, sulkily ignoring her, ‘I don’t want to sleep here.’
    ‘It’s highly unlikely, Bethan,’ said Ray, in his gentlest voice. ‘I’m sure there’s another explanation.’
    ‘Like what?’ said my brother, sharply. He was really nervous, or he wouldn’t have talked like that. Not to Ray. With Ray, he usually mumbles.
    But Ray didn’t take offence. He rarely does.
    ‘Like maybe the squatters found that book,’ he suggested. ‘And maybe one of them was a bit – you know – odd, and copied the writing, and now the writing is soaking through the paint for some reason -’
    ‘I’m still not sleeping in here,’ Bethan said, at which point alarm bells began to ring for me.
    ‘Well, he’s not sleeping in my room!’ I protested.
    ‘A bit of writing isn’t going to hurt you,’ Ray sensibly pointed out, laying a hand on Bethan’s shoulder.
    Mum, however, was beginning to freak. ‘Negative energy, Ray,’ she said. ‘The balance in here can’t be good, surely?’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Well . . . I don’t know, but -’
    ‘I won’t sleep in here,’ Bethan declared, looking sick. ‘It’s giving me nightmares.’
    That really made everyone sit up and take notice. Mum hissed through her teeth, and Ray asked, ‘What kind of nightmares?’
    I quickly pointed out that everyone had nightmares, I had them myself, and it didn’t mean I had to move out of my room – but Mum shushed me.
    Ray repeated his question.
    ‘I dream that I’m choking,’ Bethan mumbled. ‘And then I wake up.’
    ‘Just that?’ said Ray. ‘Nothing else?’
    ‘I don’t think so,’ my brother replied, vaguely.
    ‘And is that the only dream?’
    ‘Yes,’ Bethan admitted. ‘But I’ve had it every night since we came. And,’ he added, ‘I’ve never had it before.’
    Choking, I thought. Yuk. But I didn’t let my sympathy get the better of me.
    ‘We’re each supposed to have our own bedroom,’ I remarked. ‘That’s why we moved -’
    ‘Oh, stop it, Alethea!’ Mum snapped. She was worried, I guess, but she made me jump. ‘Don’t be so selfish!’
    ‘ You can sleep in this room, if you want to,’ Bethan said to me, but Mum informed him that no one would be sleeping in his room that night. He would be sharing my room until the mystery was solved – or until the writing stopped.
    ‘And I don’t want to hear one more word out of you ,’ she told me, ‘or you’ll be sleeping on the sofa.’
    Which is how I lost my bedroom, almost before I’d had time to enjoy it. Boy, was I mad. It was so unfair! But I have to admit that, if I hadn’t been so keen to get Bethan out of my room, the problem might never have been fixed. Because I might never have concentrated so hard on helping to solve it.

CHAPTER # three
    That night, Mum did three things.
    First of all, she phoned her friend Trish. Trish is a masseur, and even more of a hippy than Mum is. They’re both into tofu, and yoga, and Feng Shui, but Trish has a much wider circle of vegetarian Buddhist astrologer friends. So it didn’t surprise anybody when Trish said that she knew a woman who was a member of a group called PRISM (Paranormal Research Investigation Services and Monitoring). If Mum didn’t mind, Trish said, she would ring this