Cold Fire: A Paranormal Novel Page 4

  “People can do that?”

  “With the right technology, it seems, people can do anything these days.”

  “So this ghost I’ve been seeing?”

  “I believe someone tasked it to spy on me, for whatever reason, but my interest in you has tipped it off. I thought if I skipped school for a week or so, it would leave you alone, but evidently not. I’m starting to worry that it’ll figure out—”

  Abruptly, he stops. I frown. “What? Is something wrong?”

  Class has already started and the teacher stands in front, droning on about the Second World War. But Caden grabs his things and stands. “I’m sorry,” he says. “This was a mistake.” And when he rushes from the room, zigzagging between desks and shoving the door loudly open with his palm, no one—not even the teacher—blinks at his departure.

  Chapter Four

  The dream starts like any other.

  I’m in a field on a sunny, clear-skied day. The long grass swaying in the warm breeze, tickling my ankles, and the wind brushing against my cheeks, warming them. I’m walking towards my house—my childhood home, surrounded by yellow rolling hills—when Sara skips into my view, smiling.

  “Hey, Melly,” she teases, knowing how much I hate the nickname.

  I don’t let her see my annoyance, instead opting for a happy reply. I’m in a good mood today. “Hey, Sara!”

  “Mum said that we can have a sleepover,” she says excitedly, “but that we have to wait until the weekend…” Her little, chubby face darkens uncharacteristically as she tilts her head back. “Until after the storm has passed.”

  I look up, and sure enough, large grey clouds have swept in over the horizon, blotting out the golden rays of afternoon light. The field abruptly grows gloomy. The yellow grass pales and turns white. The wind blows harsh and cold. Houses rise up around us on all sides—it’s a time lapse of urban development, fast-tracked—and we’re in the suburbs.

  Now I’m seventeen and so is Sara. Her face has matured, the chubbiness sinking inwards to reveal prominent cheekbones and a slightly pointed chin, and her blonde hair has darkened to a light brown. Her eyes have darkened too, the blue turning first hazel, then brown, then black as coal.

  She extends her hand for me to hold as if we’re still five and carefree. I take it, shocked by the cold that seeps into my skin where our hands touch.

  “You’re cold,” I gasp. “Sure you don’t need a jacket?” I cast a look down at her arms, pale and goose bump free, and shiver in the icy breeze.

  Her dark eyes blink at me, slow, mechanical. “No. I don’t feel the cold.”

  Then I wake up.

  ***

  Caden and his ghost are both gone for a week. Then a week and a day. Suddenly it’s a Tuesday and I still haven’t seen either. I’m in chemistry—a subject I’m likely to drop considering how spectacularly bad I am at it—and the cold washes over me for the first time since that day in the hallway.

  I take my eyes off my work, neglecting my pen and mentally preparing myself for what I’m about to see.

  But all the preparations in the world wouldn’t have helped for the grey man is standing just outside the window; so close that I can see the blemishes in his skin and the wrinkles in his desaturated clothes; so close that I can see through him the road beyond; so close that I swear I can hear his breaths, laboured wheezes that whistle in and out of his pale and rotten mouth.

  I can see that rotten mouth: the way the flesh looks swollen and wrinkled with water; the grey gash in his wet bottom lip; the edges peeling back to expose an ugly, unhealed wound; the crooked teeth inside his mouth which appear grimy with mould; and his fat, spongy tongue flopping like a dead fish against the bottom of his palette.

  He’s looking at me with an intense gaze, and one of his eyes is lighter than the other—foggy, milky as if he’s going blind. His whole appearance is clearer than I’ve ever seen it, sharp with closeness, the blurry quality he used to don suddenly and startlingly whisked away. My heart beats faster and louder until I’m sure the whole class can hear it. My whole body is tense; it wants to jerk away, to move, to run, to get as far from this man as possible. But one of the many disadvantages of being the only person able to see him is that I can’t. I’m not Caden. I can’t just storm from a room without notice—not without getting in trouble, at least.

  The grey-man-slash-possible-ghost is still staring at me as I look back down at my work. Have you ever tried to ignore someone who’s fixedly staring at you? What about a horrifying, rotting grey ghost, leering like a drunken man outside your all-too-near window? To say it’s difficult to concentrate on my work is an understatement. A big one.

  Fear is swirling through my bloodstream and I’m sweating. I’ve picked up my pen again and I’m gripping it so hard there’s a chance it might snap in half. When I press it to my workbook, the nib digs straight through the first couple pages, the pen’s black blood bleeding outwards. I can’t think of anything to write. What class is this again?

  I look up. I look sideways. The ghost is still at the window, and seeing him there, even after I’ve looked away, is like a punch to the gut. Aren’t the scary things meant to disappear when you glance back a second time?

  My heart is pounding. I can feel it everywhere. But now I can’t stop staring at the ghost. Shivering and staring. My breath comes in and out in stuttering, audible bursts.

  Please leave me, I think desperately. Please, please, please!

  I’m thinking at the ghost, but it’s a ghost, not a telepath. And we’re still looking at each other, locked in an awful staring contest that I fear this ghost can’t lose.

  God, doesn’t this guy blink? Does he even have eyelids?

  “Melissa? Care to rejoin the class?” It’s the teacher, her voice distant and muffled, but I can’t answer her. Something of a smile forms on the ghost’s lips, one side edging upwards slowly and shakily in contempt. I want to chuck my pen at it. I want to claw off its ugly smug lips. I want to pull the fire extinguisher off the wall and blast it to hell.

  JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!

  The glass window separating us explodes inwards. I scream and bring my arms up to my face, shards of glass raining down on me, slashing my skin.

  There are other screams as well. I hear chairs scraping, shoes slapping against the carpeted floors, cries of “Oh my god!” The entire class has herded itself across the room to the far wall. But I remain rooted in my seat, too afraid to move, to do anything other than focus on my breathing as it rushes in and out of my nose and mouth.

  “Melissa!” comes the teacher’s panicked voice. “Are you hurt?” I lower my arms, which are already covered in thin lines of bright blood, and see her standing before me. She reaches out to touch my arm before thinking better of it and pulling back.

  I’m surrounded by glass. The shards are littered over everything—the floor, the desk, my lap. I look down at my workbook to see them glittering across the page. On the other side of the room, the rest of the class is talking in hushed voices, but a few jagged sentences reach my ears:

  “…saw her. The freak did it…smashed the window with her eyes…”

  Of course, it’s all ridiculous. I didn’t smash the window. Not with my eyes, not with my hands, not at all.

  My gaze snaps back to the window. But the cold is gone, and the ghost along with it. I take a deep breath and blow it slowly back out.

  “Melissa?” the teacher asks, and I realise that I haven’t answered her question yet.

  “I’m fine. It just stings.” A lie, but I couldn’t exactly tell her I don’t feel pain.

  She nods, trying to remain calm for the sake of the class, but I can tell she’s more than a little freaked out.

  Because of me, I think, and I know I’m right. She believes that I did it too—that I smashed the window. Consciously she thinks it’s crazy, but she still believes it. These people will believe anything. Caden should have picked one of these gullible fools for his test.

  “Yo
u’re bleeding,” she tells me. Well, gee, I hadn’t noticed. “You need to go to the office.”

  “Good idea,” I say, and get up. The glass falls from my clothes, and I brush the last of it off with my hands.

  “Do you need someone to accompany you?”

  I step over the glass and start zigzagging through the desks on my way to the door, my steps shaky and hurried. “I’ll be fine.”

  I walk halfway down the empty hall before I stop and lean against the wall. I heave a sigh and momentarily close my eyes. My hands are shaking, and I can feel blood rolling down my skin and dripping off my fingertips, creating fat red circles on the floor.

  I could go to the office and have them call my parents to take me to the doctor. But these are minor cuts and they’re going to heal. I can already feel my flesh shifting around the glass. By the time I get to the doctor, my skin will have sealed over the top, and they’ll have to cut the glass shards back out again. Good luck explaining that to a local town doc.

  Which means I have to pluck them out myself.

  I head to the girls’ bathroom and check if it’s empty before sitting down on the tiles. It’s bloody work. The blood gets under my nails, coats my fingers, drips over the floor and onto my uniform. It dribbles and smears over my arm. The shards are difficult, slippery things. By the time I get to the last few, my skin has already begun healing around them, and I have to split the cuts wider using the sharp edge of a pair of scissors from my pencil case.

  It’s at times like these that I’m damn grateful for my faulty pain receptors.

  When I’m all done, I wash myself off as best I can in the sink. There’s not too much I can do about the blood stains in my clothes—I’ll just have to hope I can get them out in the wash later. I reach for the paper towel dispenser and yank out a big wad. After wetting them under the tap, I get down on my hands and knees and start mopping the blood up off the floor. I can’t get it completely out of the grout, but once the blood dries it’ll turn brown and it should blend right in.

  Finally, I flush the towels down the toilet, give my hands one more wash, check to make sure the cuts have clotted and won’t drip anywhere, and leave. I wander the desolate hallways aimlessly in an attempt to fill time. I can’t go back to the classroom—as far as they’re concerned, I should be halfway to a doctor by now—and I don’t want to either. The only thing worse than having a window shatter all over you is having to listen to the rumours that come after. All I want to do is go home and lock myself in my room for the rest of the week.

  When I turn the corner, Caden’s there, leaning by the emergency exit. My steps falter and I think, This is how it’s always going to be with him, isn’t it? Disappearing with no warning. Cropping up again in places you wouldn’t expect him like a ghost invading houses that don’t belong to it.

  He hasn’t seen me yet. He’s staring off down another hall, his hands in the pockets of his school trousers. I ease up on his other side and stop. “What are you doing here?”

  Now, I’m going to be honest, I was aiming to startle him. I figured it was only fair, considering he’s done the same to me. But he doesn’t jump. He slowly turns his black eyes my way, only moving his head, like a robot that can only handle one slow function at a time. I shiver.

  “It’s a Tuesday,” he answers casually, completely unfazed by my sudden appearance, almost as though he was waiting for me. “Last time I checked, Tuesday is a school day.”

  I don’t let his indifference faze me. At least, I don’t let it show on my face. “You’ve been gone.”

  “I know.”

  “Then you should be in class. You said it yourself, it’s a school day.”

  “I know.”

  “And so you just loiter creepily by the emergency exit instead?”

  He shrugs.

  I cross my arms. “What are you doing here, Caden?”

  He exhales. “I’ve been waiting for the ghost to show up.”

  “He already has.”

  Finally, Caden’s eyes trail down to take in the cuts on my arms and the bloodstains on my uniform. His face darkens. “What happened?”

  “I was in class,” I explain, “and he showed up outside. One moment I was staring at him through the window and the next, the glass blew up in my face.”

  He frowns. “It just…broke? Just like that?”

  “Just like that,” I confirm. “He didn’t touch it. He didn’t throw anything at it. It just shattered.”

  He shakes his head, the gears in his mind turning. “That’s not right,” he murmurs, and I know he’s talking more to himself than to me.

  I go on anyway. “You’re telling me. And the worst part is everyone thinks I can smash windows with my eyes. There’s going to be rumours for days.” In spite of myself, I let out a soft, shaky laugh. “Crazy, right?”

  He just stares at me, serious and pensive. My stomach drops. Not him too.

  I change the topic. “Where have you been, Caden? You just left.”

  “I’ve been around. Does it matter?”

  “It does matter. You tell me stories about spirits and ghosts. Then you just get up and disappear for a week? I deserve an explanation—a proper, honest explanation—but instead, you’ve left me to deal with your fucking ghost issues. You do know I had to dig nearly two dozen pieces of bloody glass from my skin this afternoon with nothing but my fingers and a pair of scissors, right?”

  “Sounds unhygienic.”

  “No shit.”

  He doesn’t speak again.

  “So that’s it, huh? Nothing else to say?”

  “I’m not your friend, Melissa. I’m not here to make conversations.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I already told you. I’m here for the ghost.”

  “Right.”

  “You’re sure he didn’t touch the window?”

  “Positive.”

  “And what about you? You didn’t touch it?”

  “You’re joking,” I laugh. “You don’t seriously think I did this?”

  He looks away, and all I can do is stand there while his silence does all the talking. He thinks I did it. He thinks it was me.

  “You’re an arsehole, Caden.”

  “There are worse things.”

  God, I want to punch him so bad.

  “You should get back to class,” he tells me.

  “Go to hell,” I spit, and stride off.

  After walking the length of a few hallways, I find I’m still jittery and full of nervous energy. It’s as if my body can sense that something’s not right. And something isn’t right. The world has suddenly widened to include ghosts and self-shattering windows and creepy, teenage douches with the audacity to believe the crazy rumours of my peers over me. But there’s no way that window could have smashed on its own. Someone or something did it. Things like that don’t just happen.

  The bell goes and I head off to lunch, promising to forget the incident in chemistry. But I can’t, nor can I completely convince myself that it was the ghost who shattered the window. It’s hard to explain, but something deep down started flashing red alarm bell when I heard my peers whispering I smashed that glass with my eyes.

  And I just know: there’s a lot more to this story than there seems.

  Chapter Five

  The following day the cuts on my arms are gone—no scar, no redness, no hint of my run-in with a ghost. I send up a prayer of thanks to Side Effect Number Four. I can almost pretend that the window never got smashed, and it’s a good practice for later. In chemistry, I’ll have to sit on that same chair again, right next to the broken window, and pretend like I don’t remember the blood running down my arms just yesterday.

  There are worse things.

  Caden’s voice enters my mind, unbidden. He’s at school today as well, and the last time he attended two days in a row was over three weeks ago. But in class, everyone treats him like he’s been here the entire time. I’m starting to wonder: is it everyone else who’s delus
ional or just me? Occam’s Razor would say it’s just me, so I derail the train of thought before I can take it further—it sails over a cliff and into an abyss. Much better.

  I pass Caden in the hallway before recess. He sees me and looks away without any semblance of acknowledgement. Dick. But when I walk into history for third period, he’s already sitting in the chair next to my usual spot. I have to blink a couple times to make sure I’m seeing it clearly. I’m telling you, this boy makes zero sense.

  I dump my books on my desk and stare pointedly at him. “That table is for friends only.”

  “You don’t have any friends.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Look, Melissa,” he says, and I sink into my chair with a sigh, “it was never my intention to hurt you.”

  “You think this is how I look like when hurt? Boy, do you have another thing coming.”

  He goes on. “I just want you to be aware of the world you live in.”

  “Which is?”

  “It’s not safe for you to be kept in the dark like this.” Okay, this ignoring-me-when-I-speak thing is really getting old.

  “Why are you telling me this, Caden?”

  “It just needed to be said.” He manoeuvres his whole body to face me and the entirety of his dark gaze is focused in my direction. I feel pinned down and examined. I feel itchy and unsettled. But strangely, more than any of that—and for the first time in my life—I feel noticed. I’m still trying to understand how all these feelings can be possible at once.

  “I don’t want you to hate me, Melissa,” he says.

  “I don’t,” I reply, without missing a beat.

  A couple of seconds later, I realise that it’s true. He’s frustrating, nonsensical and an arse. Sometimes even a little scary, but I don’t hate him. I just don’t get him.

  A draft brushes past my arms. Caden says, “Good, I’m glad.” Then the air starts to spin around my shoulders. Dread and dismay settle into the pit of my stomach like a stone, and I suppose I should have seen this coming. I’ve managed to go weeks without a heat surge in class. I’m overdue.