Eglantine Read Free Page B

woman and see if they could all get together.
    Mum replied that it was okay by her. The more help we had, the better it would be.
    The second thing that Mum did was ask me to make a note of every word scribbled on Bethan’s wall. She explained that it would help us to determine whether anything was added overnight. She also asked me to underline every word on the wall with a red pen, for the same reason.
    So I got out my journal, and copied down the mysterious script. Ray had to bring a ladder before we could work out what was written on the ceiling: it was more strange stuff about kings and sailors and seaports, and it didn’t make much sense. But I wrote it all down, and underlined it in red, and tried not to think about it again for a while (because I had to finish my homework).
    I thought about it that night, though, when I was lying in bed. I thought about the writing, and about Eglantine Higgins, 1906. If there was a ghost in the house (which there probably wasn’t, but if there was), then it was almost certainly the ghost of Eglantine Higgins. During the daytime, this hadn’t worried me. After all, a bit of ghostly writing never did anyone any harm.
    At night, however, I have to admit that it freaked me out. I didn’t like the idea of Eglantine Higgins drifting around in the next room while Bethan and I were dead to the world. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t sleep very well. I didn’t have bad dreams, but I kept waking up with a start. I think I was half-expecting to find Eglantine Higgins hovering over my bed.
    The third thing that Mum did, that night, was to take a long red hair from her head, stick one end of it to the bottom of Bethan’s bedroom door, and stick the other end onto the base of his doorframe. She didn’t tell us what she had done until the next morning. But she warned us, before we went to bed, that no one was to enter Bethan’s room again before summoning her – and in the morning we found out why.
    ‘Look,’ she said, as we stood around Bethan’s bedroom door in our dressing-gowns. ‘See that hair?’ We didn’t, at first. She had to show it to us. ‘That hair is unbroken. Which means that no one went through the door last night.’
    We gazed at her in admiration.
    ‘Wow, Mum,’ Bethan exclaimed. ‘That’s really smart.’
    ‘Good work, Mum.’
    ‘Clever,’ said Ray.
    ‘So if there’s anything new on the walls,’ Mum went on (pointing out the obvious), ‘whoever put it there didn’t come through this door.’
    ‘Unless you did it yourself,’ I volunteered, and she made a face at me.
    ‘Very funny,’ she said.
    ‘Well, it’s true, isn’t it?’
    ‘Come on,’ Ray interrupted. He sounded almost keen, though he doesn’t usually get very excited about anything. ‘Let’s have a look.’
    He pushed at the door. It creaked slowly on its hinges, like something out of a horror movie, revealing Bethan’s light, bright, echoing room.
    We saw the new writing at once. We couldn’t have missed it: there were new lines everywhere – twenty-four, to be exact. (I counted them afterwards.)
    ‘My God,’ Mum breathed.
    ‘This is so unbelievable.’ I was the first one over the threshold. Timidly I advanced, clutching my journal and my blue fountain pen. I am the proudest of my line was new; it was inscribed at eye level, above the chest of drawers. I didn’t recognise I have the wherewithal to defend myself , either. Quickly I opened my journal, and began to copy out these most recent messages.
    Ray went to the window. He rattled it. The catch was firmly in place. ‘No one could have come through here,’ he declared. ‘Not without leaving the catch open when they left.’
    ‘What’s happening, Ray?’ Mum asked quietly.
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘It doesn’t seem possible, does it? I mean, it doesn’t make any sense unless – well, you know what I mean.’
    ‘I’m sure there’s some chemical explanation,’ he replied – but not with any conviction, I