DEAD GOOD by D A Cooper Read Free Book Online

November.’ he says matter-of-factly.
     
    I nod my understanding but it’s very difficult, especially when you can’t see who it is you’re nodding at. To. It’s like hearing a voice in a fog.
     
    ‘Tell me, tell me, tell me!’ Amber is insistent. She’s clasped both my hands now like some crazed lunatic who needs a shot of something to calm her down.
     
    The disembodied voice chuckles again in front of me and I’m very tempted to join him. Amber is getting scarily carried away with all this supernatural shit.
     
    ‘Uuu-ummm… Maddie said a swear word!’ he sings into my right ear. ‘Maddie said a swear word!’ My mouth forms a half- grin as I remember silencing poor Davey last night. A ghost is making me smile. Now this I didn’t expect.
     
    ‘Was that you?’ I say into the room. And then kick myself about a second after it’s left my stupid mouth.
     
    ‘Was what me?’ Amber squeaks. ‘What Maddie? What? Was what me? What do you think you heard?’ Amber is squeezing my hands so hard I think she’s cut off my circulation. I try to prise my fingers out from her grasp and she grabs them back as soon as they’re out.
     
    ‘Amber, bloody well let go, will you? You’re hurting me!’ I pull my hands away from hers and rub my fingers furiously. ‘Jeez! What is up with you?’ I frown angrily.
     
    ‘What’s up with me?’ she says a little bit quieter now. ‘What’s up with me? Maddie, don’t you see what’s happening? Can’t you see what’s going on? ‘
     
    I shake my head. Nope. I can’t.
     
    ‘You have been chosen,’ she says. Seriously. She says I’ve been chosen. Like she’s some kind of Messenger from Other Parts and suddenly I’m wondering if I ever really knew this girl at all. She’s more of a nutter than I was worried I was earlier on. Chosen? Is she mad?
     
    ‘Not all mad.’ The boy says. ‘She’s got some redeeming qualities although common sense isn’t her greatest one I have to say.’ He even has the cheek to snort derisorily at the end of his declaration of my friend’s insanity.
     
    I ignore him although I do think he has a point.
     
    ‘Chosen.’ I repeat.
     
    ‘Cho…sen..’ I hear a sarcastic echo.
     
    ‘Chosen.’ she repeats back at me and I think if I don’t soon change the word, then we’ll both be sitting here on her bed chanting like a couple of mad old mental patients in an asylum for … well, mad old mental patients.
     
    ‘Ok - Explain.’ I encourage her and she grips my hands back again deliriously.
     
     
     
    An hour later Amber has just about rehashed all the maddest, most mental, most ridiculous cliché’s I’ve ever heard in every supernatural film I’ve ever seen. Not including The Exorcist – which I’m proud to report I still haven’t seen because it’s an Eighteen and mum and dad said it freaked them out when they saw it so I think I can wait for that one. Oh, and the original Nightmare on Elm Street. Mum reckons if I’m anything like her then I won’t sleep for a week if I watch that and it could have disastrous effects on my school work. Of course I’ve watched the other Nightmare’s but they’re just stupid. Not the least bit scary. I don’t know why they bother making sequels if they’re not going to be as good as the first one. Look at the ‘Final Destination’s. You have to admit the first one was the best and the rest just got stupider and stupider – surely?
     
    ‘More stupid, you mean.’ The voice corrects me.
     
    I refuse to be picked up on my English by a ghost but feel I’m in no position to argue – especially with mad-Amber sitting right in front of me. If she knew I was having an -okay, one-sided, but hey - conversation with a ghost, she’d want to, I don’t know – posses my body or something. She’d want to experience what I’m experiencing. Don’t you think? I think so. Look at her – she’s cracked.
     
    ‘So you have to teach them not to be scared of the light…’