The Boy Who Lived With Ghosts: A Memoir Read Online Free Page A

strangled me a little bit before she pushed me in. Strangling is when you put your hands around someone’s neck and squeeze so hard that they can’t breathe and then their eyes nearly pop out like marbles.
    I don’t always curl into a ball. So I’m pulling my knees up to my face and rocking back and forwards on the stone floor. Backwards and forwards. Backwards and forwards. Backwards and forwards in the dark.
    And the thing in the corner goes drip, drip, drip. I don’t know why it makes that sound.
    Drip, drip, drip.
    I’m shivering now. But I’m keeping my teeth shut tight so they don’t make a noise. Tight like my eyes. I don’t want that thing to know I’m here. But it knows I’m here. And it’s not very nice.

7
    T oday did not start well. Just after I arrived at school, my best friend Tommy dared me to climb over the wall of the knackers yard which is right across the road from our school. Everyone knows that the knackers yard is haunted, and they take dead horses and their headless riders in there and boil them down into glue. It’s a terrible place.
    Then the others joined in with Tommy and dared me, so I had no choice but to climb up the wall. There’s a bomb site beside the knackers yard so we piled up some old bricks against the wall, and I climbed on the bricks and pulled my head over the top to look.
    That’s when I saw it. It was the skeleton of a horse’s head with no body. So that proves it.
    “There are skeletons and dead horses and dead men with no heads! Aieeee! Aieeee!” I screamed.
    And Emily screamed and then the other girls screamed. Everyone turned and screamed and ran so I had to let go of the wall and the pile of bricks gave way and I slid down on the front of my shoes and now they are ripped and I know for sure my mum does not have money for new shoes, so my toes will be sticking out the bloody ends for God knows how long because there is no way I am going to show her what I have done to my shoes.
    And then things got worse when we ran across the road to the school gate. All the other children were gathered around the front window of the assembly hall because someone had set fire to it. It wasn’t still on fire but the big window was smashed and the wall was black.
    Daisy was lying there on the ground all broken with one of her eyes hanging out and her hair was matted down on her head like a swimming cap. And her lips were on the wrong side of her face. It made her look like she was trying not to kiss someone. She was beautiful before she was burned like that and the girls took turns to brush her hair. There were lots of toys and books lying beside her, black and burned. But Daisy made the girls cry.
    “That’s what happens when you play with fire! Do not ever play with fire!” Miss Jones said.
    Miss Jones is our schoolteacher. We love Miss Jones. She said it was Teddy Boys who set fire to the front of the school by throwing a petrol bomb through the small open window that Mr. Clegg the caretaker only left open to let some fresh air in.
    “Yes, indeed. That’s what happens when you play with fire. So let that be a lesson to you all!” she shouted.
    We have an open fire in our classroom and we don’t even need a fireguard. Mr. Clegg makes the fire for us in the morning and Miss Jones has taught us a rhyme to help us remember that unguarded fires are extremely dangerous around small children.
    Wee Willy, all bows and sashes,
Fell into the fire and was burned to ashes.
Now the room grows cold and chilly,
For no one wants to poke poor Willy.
    I have asked around but no one knows who Willy was or when he fell into the fire. I also do not know why he didn’t just climb back out because it’s not a very big fire. There is no way that I will stay in that classroom on my own because the ghost of Willy will climb out of the fireplace, all black and crispy, and pull me back into that bloody fire with him. I just know it.
    “So, children. Today we will continue with our sewing. I am