Charley by Tim O'Rourke Read Free Book Online Page B

and that had been Natalie. I hadn’t known her that well before the bullying started, but that changed when she found me crying as I waited for the bus home from college.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. ‘Are you hurt?’
    ‘Kinda,’ I said, sniffing back my tears.
    ‘You’re Charley Sheppard, aren’t you?’ she said, coming to stand next to me. She clutched an armful of text books to her chest.
    I nodded, waiting for the taunts to start.
    ‘Okay,’ she said.
    ‘Okay, what?’ I said glancing at her through my tears, waiting for the punch line to come.
    ‘Okay so far,’ she said with a kind smile. ‘It’s just that I’ve heard all this weird stuff about this girl called Charley Sheppard and so far I haven’t been melted by the laser beams that come out of your eyes and the lightning bolts you shoot from your arse.’
    ‘Is that what people are saying about me?’ I gasped.
    ‘Yep,’ she said, with another smile. ‘And unless you have it stuffed up your sweater, I can’t see your broomstick either.’
    ‘They’re saying I have a broomstick now?’ I cried.
    ‘And that you’re followed around by dead people – I think someone said you talk to zombies or something,’ she added.
    ‘Are they being serious?’ I breathed. ‘They really believe that stuff ?’
    ‘They sure do,’ Natalie said. ‘And they say you’re the one with issues. That’s what’s so funny, don’t you think?’
    ‘I guess,’ I said with a frown.
    ‘So why look so sad?’ Natalie said. ‘The next time any of the others give you any kind of crap, shoot ’em down with your exploding farts or set your dead friends on them.’
    I didn’t feel like laughing, but Natalie’s unusual view of the bullying I had been subjected to made me chuckle.
    Then, giggling herself, she said, ‘What I don’t understand is, if you really are a witch like the others say you are, why are you standing around in the cold waiting for a bus when you could be home already by using your broomstick?’
    ‘Beats the shit out of me,’ I shrugged with a wide smile.
    And that’s how Natalie and I became friends. She just believed me. She believed in me.
    But if I ever wanted my father to have such faith in me, I would have to prove my flashes were real. I would have to try and locate the place I had seen and find the man who had killed the girl named Kerry.
    I swung my legs over the side of the bed, deciding now was as good a time as any. I’d go in search of the tiny building I had seen on the hill and the narrow dirt road Kerry had been dragged along. As I pulled on a sweater and a pair of jeans, I wondered where I should start my search.
    I remembered hearing the sound of trains. So, wrapping up warm in my coat, I crept out of the house and headed in the direction of the nearby railway tracks.
    With my hands thrust into my coat pockets, I headed across Marsh Bay and towards the railway line that cut across the fields on the outskirts of town. It was cold, and the faintest glimmer of wintersunlight was making the early morning sky look turquoise in the distance.
    Reaching the edge of town, I followed the winding country roads in the direction of the track. I didn’t have an exact location to fix on. Everything I had seen in my flashes had just been a snapshot of information, but I could remember seeing a tumbledown building with a broken chimney pot on top. Could it be the same outhouse I had hidden in at Natalie’s funeral? No, that hadn’t had a chimney. It had barely had a roof and it hadn’t been on a hill. But there had been trains running close by. I had heard them.
    It’s just a coincidence , I heard my father breathe in my ear. You’re putting two and two together and coming up with five. You only saw an old building in your flashes because of the outhouse you discovered at the edge of the graveyard. Charley, your mind is just trying to make sense of the traumatic experience you’ve been through .
    I pushed my father’s words from