The Ghost Behind the Wall Read online

  He could see everything. A tank of goldfish turned all green. A sofa strewn with clothes, including various pieces of underwear. There were wrappers to candy bars and a greasy bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, with the chips spilled onto the floor. There was a puddle of tea or coffee or something on the coffee table that had dripped down onto the badly stained red-and-yellow carpet. Mary always dressed in neat clothes and looked prim and proper. But she wasn’t. Her place was a complete pigsty.

  David was thrilled. Her apartment wasn’t anything like you’d think. Who knows what she got up to on her own—and he’d be able to watch her at it.

  The grille was just the same as the one in his apartment. He could move it aside easily enough with his fingers, but he wasn’t sure when she was coming home, so he didn’t go inside. Not this time. Instead, he crawled back the way he’d come. There was a nasty moment when he had to push his legs out unseen into the main duct—he could just imagine something horrible sitting in the darkness watching him. But of course there was nothing there, just his own fear.

  Looking farther along the duct, David could see other patches of light coming in from other ducts leading to other apartments. He thought—Just one more. Next door but one lived Alan and Jo Winsome with their little boy, George. That would be interesting.

  David crawled along to their duct and peeped down to where it ended in another grille. The light was on. He could hear the television muttering away—children’s TV. They must be in. He just had to have a peek.

  He went as quietly as he could, but it was impossible not to make some noise. He got around the corner into the duct that led to their apartment quietly enough, but as soon as he tried to crawl forward his knees rattled on the metal. David paused, frozen, waiting to be discovered. But it was the voice of a small child who called out,

  “Who is it?”

  David stayed very still. After a long wait in which nothing happened, he began to edge away, but as he did, he made more noise. Poor George—he was only four—called out again tearfully, “I’ll tell my mum when she comes home.”

  So—Georgie was on his own. David stopped crawling and waited a while, listening. He wasn’t scared of any little kid who hadn’t even started school yet. He took a deep breath and he went, “Ooooooooo ooooooo oooooo…,” in a long ghostly voice. In the apartment George whimpered. Sniggering to himself, David crawled farther backward until he got to Mary’s offshoot. He sat there for a bit, feeling guilty. Poor kid! A voice coming out of the wall! So he crawled forward again, made a bit of noise, listened, and then said in a more gentle voice, “It’s all right, George, it’s allriiiiiiiight.” Then he scurried backward again, snorting with laughter. He knew what he was doing. Having a ghost behind the wall telling you it was all right was definitely not all right.

  He crawled back until he came to the shelf over the big duct and he sat on that a bit more. It was a good place. He could see right into his own apartment, and he could sit or even stand upright because the big duct carried on up overhead. It felt private. It felt great. It felt safe.

  Haunted indeed! He’d been right inside and there was nothing. He began drawing a little map of where he’d been, but he could remember it all so clearly, he didn’t bother. Instead, he sat there daydreaming again about all the things he could see and do in these secret ways.

  Next time, he’d go farther. Next time, he’d go right into someone’s apartment—Mary’s probably. Who’d have thought what a dirty old bag she was. Maybe he’d tidy her apartment up. That would give her a shock!

  3

  Mr. Alveston

  It was just great. On the very first time he’d ghosted out a little kid and seen Mary Turner’s underwear lying around on her sofa. You bet that little kid believed in ghosts now! Mary was a teacher at a high school. If David had gone to that high school, he’d have said to the kids in her class, “Do, you want to know what color underpants she wears?” And he’d be able to tell them. If he got there early enough in the morning, he might even be able to watch her put them on.

  David spent the next couple of days at school daydreaming about the fun still to come. He was going to watch people walking around half dressed, men shaving and singing to themselves out of tune, like idiots. Picking their noses, probably. People talking to themselves. It was great; he’d be like a hidden camera. He could take photos and blackmail people. He could watch women with nothing on. He could see Mary Turner with nothing on. He knew she had a boyfriend. Maybe he’d be able to spy on them together.

  All thoughts of catching thieves and being a hero had gone by this time. Being good just wasn’t practical, he realized. As soon as he came out of the ducts to do his good deed, he’d give the game away. If he saw a strange man robbing an apartment, he’d just have to watch. If he went and told, the police would ask him, “What were you doing in there, anyway?” Then they’d find out how he’d been spying on people. No—good deeds were out.

  Anyway, there was something about the ducts that made David feel bad. He didn’t know what it was, but every time he thought about it, he felt bad, thought bad, and wanted to do bad. In fact, David was looking forward to behaving worse than he ever had in his whole life. It was just great. He couldn’t wait to get back in and have another go.

  * * *

  As David was walking home from school that Thursday, thinking about things to come, an old, old man who lived on the floor above him was daydreaming about things that had already happened. The old man was called Robert Alveston. He’d been born in London in the year 1904 and he remembered so much that it was hard for him to concentrate on what was going on right now.

  Mr. Alveston had grown up in London, but he’d lived all over the world. The last time he’d lived in London, when he was sixty-four, he’d fallen in love with a handsome, plump florist, whose name was Rose. They got married within a month. She was his second wife and he loved her more than anyone. He called her Tulip for fun.

  They ran a florist’s shop in Chiswick for ten years. Then, in their midseventies, they decided to go and live in France before they were too old to do it. They went to Paris and enjoyed a happy marriage of over twenty years before Tulip died of a stroke at the age of eighty-two. Mr. Alveston didn’t want to stay in the house they’d shared together. London was where he’d been born, where he’d met his beloved Tulip, and that’s where he decided to end his days.

  So he came back, but he soon found out that he’d made a bad mistake. Most of the people he and Tulip used to know had moved on, died, or else become so old themselves that they barely ever got out.

  So it was that despite having lived a life filled with people, he’d somehow ended up with no one. His children, a boy and a girl, had already died of old age. His grandchildren and great-grandchildren lived in Australia. He had friends all around the world. Someone wrote or telephoned him every day, but that wasn’t the real thing. He used to sit for hours in his armchair, wondering what on earth had happened. How was it that you could be surrounded by people for more than ninety years and then suddenly have no one at all to drop by on for a cup of tea and a chat?

  To make matters worse, he was going a bit crazy. He knew he was going a bit crazy because the neighbors worried about him and the social worker kept stopping in to check on him and offering to put him into a home. He kept forgetting what he was doing. For instance, there was the day he’d spent all morning wandering about his apartment looking for his false teeth when they were actually in his mouth the whole time. There were other times when he forgot what road or even what town or country he lived in, and he’d get all panicky about finding himself in a strange apartment, even if it did have all his own things in it.

  When this happened, he told himself that he was having a “senior moment” and laughed at himself. But there was no one to share the joke, so what was the point?

  There were the neighbors, they were very kind, but they all seemed to have full lives without room to make a new friendship with the likes of him. Even so, Mr. Alv
eston made the best of it. He joined a bridge club; he went out every day to do his shopping and chatted with the shopkeepers. He called on his neighbors and they called on him. But one thing above all kept him going—the brilliant, crystal-clear memories of his past lives, of which there were so many.

  He could remember everything. His childhood. His two elder brothers, both of whom had died in the Great War; his sister, Susan, who had lost her sweetheart at the same time. She’d cried for a month. His first wife, Greta, whom he had married in 1926. They lived in Germany together. They had huge window boxes full of geraniums that needed to be watered three times a day in summer. Greta used to boast about it. Each winter they used to go skiing in the Alps. She was miles better than him. She used to shoot past him and spray him with snow. He could still hear her giggle as she sped off downhill and he could remember every snowflake that flew up from under her skis.

  On weekends in the summer they often went swimming in great, cool, wooded lakes with their two children, Alex and Nadja. Mr. Alveston remembered every day at every lake, whether the water was soft and cloudy and warm, or crystal clear and icy cold. He could remember every hair on his children’s heads from the ages of zero to twenty, when they finally left home. He could remember the day Greta died in a car accident, how the police came to the door, and how he’d wept for the first time in front of his children. A few months later he’d gone to live in Australia with the children, to get away from the war in Europe.

  He spent all morning one day reliving the time he’d been a smuggler and taken a hundred gallons of brandy in a small boat over the sea from France into England with his friend Alain. They’d been chased and caught by the customs boat and had to pour the brandy overboard. While the customs men were questioning them, a dolphin started banging into the boat and Alain swore it was drunk.

  And of course there were the times with the wonderful, wonderful Tulip. They used to go to the flower market together to buy roses, lilies, chrysanthemums, and other flowers. They dowsed them in water, drove back to the shop with them, and arranged them in huge, splendid bunches on the pavement outside their shop. He could remember those days second by second, and the petals in every flower. How he had loved the flowers! How he had loved Tulip!

  Robert’s memories were so clear that they took over his life. As he walked along the streets he talked to people long dead. As he sat in his chair he believed he was ten again, or seventeen, or fifty or sixty or only three years old.

  On this very day, this same day when David was walking back from school with an evil thought in his hot head, Robert Alveston sat down in his armchair under the ventilation grille on the wall and remembered. His memories were solid things; he could hear them, smell them, taste them. He was at that very moment remembering when he used to play with his friends on the streets of London, when he was a child, back in the days when you could wander for miles, and the roads were heaving with horses and you hardly ever saw an automobile, and the whole world was there for your fun, so long as you never got caught.…

  * * *

  David banged open the rattling grille door on the old elevator in Mahogany Villas and ran down the gloomy hall to his apartment. His father was working late and David had hours of spying and wickedness ahead of him.

  He wasted no time at all changing his clothes, getting the sofa over by the wall, and then taking off the grille. Once again, that eye of darkness in the wall was staring at him, and once again, he stood on the back of the sofa and shivered. Why did he forget every time what it was like in there? So dark, so narrow. Just looking in, he felt as if the darkness could squeeze him to death.

  But David wasn’t going to be put off by things he couldn’t even see. He turned on his flashlight, pulled himself up, and wriggled inside the walls of Mahogany Villas.

  The first thing he did was crawl along to have a look in Mary’s apartment. Once again the crawl was dirty and frightening, and when he finally got there—what a disappointment! She’d cleaned up. Everything was neat and tidy; the only personal thing he could see was a towel hanging over the back of a chair. He thought about taking the grille out and going in, but he didn’t dare. Not yet. Sometimes Mary came home early.

  He crawled down to Alan and Jo and Georgie’s place. He could hear voices. Jo Winsome was there with a friend. Their voices boomed and echoed in the narrow ducts. It was no good at all. David knew at once he could never get any closer to the grille without attracting attention. Even so far away, they could hear him. As he was creeping quietly off he was sure he heard Jo ask, “What was that noise?” and he had to lie as still as he could for minutes on end before they left the room and he was able to make his escape.

  David was furious. He crawled back to his place on the board over the duct and cursed silently. Why was nothing ever as good as it should be? He clenched his fists and hissed in frustration. He didn’t dare make a noise, but all he wanted to do was roll over onto his back and kick until the whole place rang out. Mahogany Villas would be filled with noise and nobody would know where it came from. Kids would have nightmares! The apartment building would be haunted; everyone would believe in ghosts then! But he didn’t dare for fear of being caught.

  That was when he stood up. You could do that in the big duct. Under him were the dark places below. Around him were the close sides of the duct. Above him was the next floor. If he shone his flashlight up, he could see where the duct opened up into another duct going across. That would lead to all the apartments on the fifth floor. Maybe he’d have better luck up there.

  David looked at his watch. He had two hours still to go. He bent his knees and arched his back and wedged himself tightly into the big duct. He could climb up, no problem! He lifted his hands and began to climb.

  It was hard going, but it wasn’t far. The way up wasn’t as dirty as the way along. He had a good grip and didn’t slip once. The worst thing was the dark. He needed both hands to climb with and had to tuck the flashlight, still on, down his jeans. Flickering shadows writhed and twisted up the duct like phantoms, but he didn’t dare turn it off.

  He pushed and shoved as fast as he could, and at last he was able to get his hands into the duct running along the next floor and heave himself up. He hung with his arms over the edge, pulled the flashlight out, and shone it along the new duct.

  It was just the same as the one below had been before he crawled along it. It was covered with an even, smooth layer of greasy dust. It reminded David of a fresh fall of new snow.

  David pulled himself along the duct. He didn’t like being so far from home, but he wouldn’t give in. Under him the new dust turned black against his chest and legs. Another few feet and he was at the first offshoot to an apartment on the fifth floor. David looked down the duct to the apartment and saw that at the end of it, the grille was missing.

  He ducked back quickly out of sight. The grilles were like locked gates. Why was this one off?

  After a little while, when there was no noise, he poked his head cautiously around to have another look.

  Inside the apartment it was dull. Maybe it was being decorated. He remembered how his dad had taken the grille off once when he was decorating. He waited a long time but heard nothing—no voices, no radio or television—so he plucked up his courage and slid like a snake down toward the opening to try and see inside.

  He tried to be quiet, but some scufflings had to happen. At one point he forgot himself and banged hard on the metal. He froze—but there was still no noise. It must be that no one was in. He got to the lip of the duct, waited just to be sure there was no noise, then pulled himself forward on his stomach and peered in.

  Right down below him was an old man sitting in an armchair. As David stared, the old man opened his eyes and looked up. David yelped. For one horrible moment they stared straight into each other’s faces, and then the old man opened his mouth and said,

  “Jonathon!”

  David couldn’t turn, so he pushed himself back, shoving with his hands, scooting bac
kward the way he’d come. He went as fast as he could, but he didn’t go fast enough. In front of David, framed by the end of the duct, there now appeared a floating face, but not the man’s face. It was the gray face of a boy. The boy’s mouth was open, he was yelling, but there was no sound. Then, right through that face, another face appeared—that of the old man. He must have got a chair to stand on. David yelped with terror. He could see through the boy! He buried his own face in his arms so he couldn’t be recognized and pushed with his elbows to scoot himself the final few feet back into the main duct.

  “Come back!” pleaded the old man. But David was going fast. He scuttled backward to the junction as the old man waved and grinned and begged him not to go. David popped out into the big duct, turned around, and shot like a ferret toward the duct. He was clanging and banging away like a spanner in the works. He got to the way down and paused, hanging over it, holding himself up on his hands and legs like a spider, ready to drop. But before he went, he had to look back, he just had to, so he stopped, ducked his head, and peered back from between his legs.

  The ghost was rushing forward toward David. As he came he grew bigger and bigger, until he was like a truck charging through the ducts. David screamed and the ghostly boy opened his mouth and screamed back. But his scream wasn’t the scream of a child. It was the scream of an old, old man. “Come back, come back,” screamed the ghost in his cracked old voice. “Don’t leave me. Don’t go!”

  David let go and fell like a stone three feet down to the board below. He lay panting for seconds, listening to the old man’s desperate calls. He twisted and looked up just in time to see the pale frightened face of the ghostly boy looking down at him. The mouth opened.

  “Don’t leave me,” came the voice of the old man from far away. David screamed again, “Go away!” Then he pushed himself out of the duct and plopped into the safety of his own home.