The Prankster and the Ghost Read online

  The Prankster and the Ghost

  R. L. Stedman

  Contents

  Tayla

  1. The Accident

  2. Letter-Writing

  3. The Inspector

  Jamie

  4. Jamie is Bored

  5. The Caretaker

  6. First Day

  Tayla Again

  7. Distraction

  8. Off to School

  9. Stink Bombs

  Jamie and Tayla Take Turns

  10. The School

  11. Stinging Nettles

  12. Superpowers

  Jamie Makes a Friend

  13. Ghosts in the Machine

  14. Taking on Longridge

  Extra Stuff (Just for Fun)

  Practically Joking Challenge

  About the Author

  Also by R. L. Stedman

  Acknowledgments

  To Tessa Duder and Libby Limbrick

  - thank you for your support and commitment

  to children’s literature.

  * * *

  The world of story would be poorer without you

  I

  Tayla

  1

  The Accident

  Dad found the old Ford, a Zephyr, in a wrecker’s yard. Tayla helped him paint it. It was like magic, the way the red paint came out of the spray gun and turned the car shiny new.

  Later, they took it for a drive. When they rumbled through the little towns Tayla felt like a movie star, because everyone stared at them.

  In Kurow Dad stopped for ice creams. Two men came up to him and asked about the car.

  ‘You should talk to my son. He’s the mechanic.’ Dad winked at Tayla. This was kind of true, although helping with the paint wasn’t really the same as actually fixing the engine.

  Carrying their ice creams, Tayla and Mum got back in the car. But Dad kept talking to the men. He didn’t seem to notice Mum and Tayla, waiting. Tayla sighed. This was boring.

  Mum put a finger against her lips, and holding her ice cream away from her in case it dripped, rummaged around in her bag. She pulled out Tayla’s whoopee cushion and put it down on Dad’s seat. Tayla tried not to laugh, but he couldn’t help the giggles shaking him. Dad was always playing his stupid jokes on him and Mum. Wouldn’t it be great if they could get Dad back, just once?

  Dad, still talking, opened the door and sat down. Smack onto the cushion.

  FAAART!

  Dad jumped like he’d been bitten by a snake, and fished the cushion out from underneath his bum. His face was red. The men he’d been talking with went suddenly silent. Tayla didn’t say anything either. He couldn’t. He was laughing so hard he could hardly breathe. Mum was grinning, too.

  ‘You!’ Dad said to Tayla, and thumped the cushion on his head.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ gasped Tayla, when he could speak. ‘It was her!’

  The men outside were laughing too, great belly laughs.

  ‘Gotcha!’ Mum grabbed the cushion off Dad.

  ‘You guys!’ Dad wagged a finger at them. He started the car, and revved it hard, so it roared. ‘Can’t take you anywhere.’ He waved to the men as they pulled away from the curb. ‘Bet they don’t forget us in a hurry.’

  ‘Bet they don’t forget you,’ said Tayla. ‘You and your farty bum.’

  Dad laughed. ‘I’ll get you back, one day. Just you wait!’

  Tayla grinned and stuck his head out the open window, feeling the wind comb his hair with giant fingers. The engine purred and throbbed.

  ‘Car’s going well, isn’t it?’ said Dad.

  Mum laughed, and put her hand on Dad’s knee. ‘Aren’t I lucky? Two mechanics in the family!’

  Next: chaos. Crashing, tearing, the sound of metal wailing as it was ripped apart. A feeling of being in a washing machine; spun around and around until he couldn’t see straight. A voice, speaking fast in a funny accent. Then, nothing.

  ***

  When Tayla opened his eyes it was dark. He was lying on his back. An annoying beeping sounded in his right ear. He shook his head. Too loud. Then he felt the pain. Lightning-fast, it stabbed into his body: his chest, his head, even his toes. It was agony. Like he’d taken hold of an enormous electric fence and couldn’t let go.

  He tried to scream. But there were tubes into his throat and he couldn’t move. The torture grew and grew and grew until Tayla thought he would throw up. And then, suddenly, it stopped. Like a switch had been thrown. And there was no more pain.

  What the…? Tumbling in the air, Tayla looked around. He saw his body stretched out on a bed below. Beside him, machines squeaked, beep beep. They had strange, flickering lines on their screens.

  This was totally weird. How could he be staring down at his own body? How could he be in two places at the same time? Was this what he looked like? Brown hair, spread out on the pillow like a mop, a dimple on his chin. Mum teased him about it, said it made him look like Superman. On one of his arms were five moles, scattered randomly, like brown stars.

  ‘A constellation on your arm,’ Mum had said. ‘You’re a galaxy, all by yourself.’

  People dressed in blue tops and trousers hurried about. They had stethoscopes around their necks. Stethoscopes meant hospitals. Was he in hospital? Had there been an accident?

  Hope the Zephyr is okay. Where’s Mum? Where’s Dad?

  Carefully, Tayla checked his floating body – tummy, legs, toes – just in case something had gone missing. But no, everything seemed normal, except that he could see through himself. He looked exactly the same as the boy on the bed below, just … emptier. Like a tracing.

  An old lady in another bed opened her eyes and stared up at Tayla. ‘Are you an angel?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What are you then?’

  ‘Just a boy. I think.’

  But normal boys don’t float around hospitals. Maybe he’d caught a germ that made him fly and turn invisible. That would be pretty cool. Like getting a superpower or something.

  ‘Oh.’ She sounded disappointed. ‘Pity.’

  Apart from the old lady, no one else seemed to notice Tayla, stuck up on the ceiling. It was like being in a room with a one-way mirror; he could see them, but they didn’t look at him.

  Tayla concentrated. When he thought hard, his hand was easier to see. More solid. Could he move around?

  He drifted along the roof. Try again.

  Tayla bobbed up and down against the ceiling like a little party balloon that wanted to reach the sky.

  He wafted slowly along the room. The hospital ward was shaped like an L. When he stopped at the corner he looked along the short arm of the L, into two other rooms. Their doors were made of glass, so it was like looking into a fish bowl. One of the rooms was empty, but the other had someone in it. Her face was pale, but familiar. It was Mum!

  She didn’t move, didn’t even blink. She couldn’t be sick, could she? They’d been in the car, all of them, laughing, just driving along. They shouldn’t be in hospital. They should be in the Zephyr.

  He stared in at Mum. The glass was cold against his nose. She lay so still. Was she even breathing? A doctor stood beside the bed, writing on a clipboard.

  Tayla tried to turn the door handle, but his hand went right through the metal. A nurse with a stethoscope around her neck came up behind him and opened the door. Tayla was just about to get out of her way when … she walked right through him.

  How dare she? He wasn’t air. He was a person. ‘Hey!’ he yelled. ‘You could at least say excuse me.’

  But the nurse shook her head, as though a fly had bothered her, and ignored him.

  The doctor looked up when Tayla came into the room, but her eyes moved around him, like she couldn’t see hi
m.

  ‘How is she?’ the nurse asked the doctor.

  ‘Not so good. Pulse forty-five, BP one-ten over fifty-four, pupils normal, no response to pain.’ The doctor sounded like an air traffic controller.

  ‘And the boy?’

  I’m here! Look at me!

  ‘He might make it,’ said the doctor. ‘With a bit of luck.’

  ‘I hate car accidents. One moment, everything’s fine, the next …’

  ‘Everything changes.’ The doctor fiddled with the controls of the machine.

  Tayla felt sick. There had been a car accident. And now Mum and he were in hospital … Dad! Where was Dad?

  ‘Is that your mum?’ It was the old lady. She was transparent now, just like Tayla, and looking very pleased with herself. Tayla nodded.

  ‘She’s very ill,’ said the old lady. ‘But then, everyone’s ill in intensive care. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here, would we?’

  ‘This is intensive care?’ But intensive care was for really sick people. People that might die. Granddad had been in intensive care, after his operation.

  The lady nodded. ‘But I’m leaving,’ she said cheerfully, and looked up at the ceiling. It opened, slowly, like a door on a spaceship opens before the alien comes out. There was a bright light behind it. ‘I’m off home.’

  Tayla stared up at the light. Seemed a funny place to live. ‘Is your home in the roof?’

  The lady laughed. ‘No, of course not.’ She was growing more transparent, almost invisible against the white walls. ‘Do you want to come?’

  Tayla hesitated, looking up at the warm light that seemed to beckon him onwards. Then back at Mum, so pale and still on her bed. He shook his head.

  The lady kissed him on the cheek, which normally he wouldn’t have liked, but didn’t mind today.

  ‘Good luck, my dear.’ She smiled. ‘Don’t hang about too long. Or you’ll forget your body.’

  Like a fish in an aquarium she swam up to the light, lifting higher and higher, fading as she went, until she vanished.

  Evaporated, said Tayla to himself, because no one else could hear him. That’s the word.

  2

  Letter-Writing

  Uncle Richard, Dad’s brother, came to the hospital. Mum was still asleep, but the machine on the wall went ‘beep, beep,’ matching her heart rate. Tayla wafted around Mum’s room.

  ‘She’s in an induced coma,’ said Doctor Margaret, the Specialist. ‘It helps her body to heal, keeps her out of pain.’

  ‘Will she get better?’ asked Uncle Richard. His eyes were red, like he was tired.

  Doctor Margaret took a moment to answer. That was not a good sign. She should have said “of course”, straight away. But instead she took a deep breath, as if trying to work out how to say something Uncle Richard might not want to hear. ‘We think so. But she lost a lot of blood in the accident and her pelvis was broken. We’ll know more in a week or so.’

  ‘What about Tayla?’

  ‘Twelve, isn’t he? He should be okay. Children recover faster than adults.’

  Uncle Richard sighed. ‘Seeing him lying so still – it’s not normal. He’s always on the go.’

  Sharon, the receptionist, came into the room. ‘Are there any others in the family you’d like me to call?’

  Uncle Richard shook his head. ‘There’s no one else.’

  ‘What about Mrs Johnson? Does she have any relatives?’

  Uncle Richard smiled sadly. ‘Mrs Johnson? Everyone calls her Jenny. Or Tayla’s Mum. No, she’s an only child; she doesn’t have any other family. Only us.’

  ‘You live out near Longridge, don’t you?’ Sharon sounded kind, like she really wanted to help. ‘It’s a big drive. We can give you money to help with the petrol.’

  Uncle Richard sighed, stroked Mum’s hand for a moment. ‘Tayla and Jenny – they don’t know I’m here, do they?’

  ‘Probably not,’ said Doctor Margaret.

  ‘I’ve got a lot to do.’ Uncle Richard stood up. He was a lot taller than Sharon and the doctor. ‘Keith’s funeral, for a start. Sarah, that’s my wife, she’s doing the flowers. She wanted to come here, but I said, best not, she’s not good with hospitals.’

  ‘I’m really sorry about your brother.’

  Uncle Richard pinched the top of his nose, took a big breath, and walked over to the double doors. ‘You’ll call me? If there’s any change? Tayla and Jenny, they’re all we’ve got.’

  ‘We’ll call you,’ said Doctor Margaret. ‘Don’t worry.’

  Tayla stared after him. What does he mean – all he’s got? What’s that about a funeral? Keith is Dad's name. Why isn’t Dad here? You’d think he’d come and visit us.

  Then he clicked. In one, awful, split second Tayla realised: he's talking about Dad. Dad's funeral.

  It was like a dark, empty hole opened and swallowed him up. Dad!

  Tayla lay on his bed, cuddled next to his body, like it would keep him warm. His mind churned like an overactive printer. All day the doctors listened to his chest with stethoscopes and shone torches into his eyes and watched the machines around him, but Tayla didn't really see them. All he could think was: Dad!

  Next morning he tried to climb back into his body. But stepping inside his skin felt terrible; everything hurt. So he gave up. It seemed kind of pointless to get so sore without Mum or Dad to comfort him. Without Mum or Dad, he had no centre. Nothing mattered.

  Instead, he hovered about in the air. Floating about like a cloud made things feel unreal, like he was in a dream. And up in the air were distractions from sad thoughts – the machinery in Intensive Care was kind of cool. And the other patients were interesting, too.

  ‘What’s the matter, sonny?’ An old man, sitting propped up in a big chair, stared at Tayla.

  ‘How come you can see me? No one else does.’

  The old man smiled. ‘I was in the war. Learnt to see things different, then.’

  ‘What was it like?’

  ‘The war? Terrible business. Lost a lot of friends. I was a POW. You know what that means?’

  Tayla shook his head.

  ‘Prisoner of War. I was in Thailand. Saw a lot of people killed. In that camp, the line between life and death was pretty thin. I learnt to see things that normal folk ignore. That’s where you are, son. Between life and death.’

  ‘I’m not dead,’ said Tayla, indignant. ‘I just don’t want to be in my body.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It hurts.’

  The man snorted. ‘Hurting,’ he said, ‘is part of being alive.’

  * * *

  Tayla wondered about heaven. Was Dad there? There will be geniuses in heaven, like Steve Jobs. And if Steve Jobs was in heaven, there would be computers in heaven too. Yeah. Somewhere in heaven, maybe next to the angels and stuff, there would be a room full of computers. And if heaven has computers, I can send a message to Dad!

  But it wasn’t that simple. When Tayla tried typing, his fingers went right through the keys, into the plastic keyboard. Electricity tickled against his ghostly fingers, like that time he’d put the terminals of a nine-volt battery to his teeth because Dad had dared him to.

  I’m part of a circuit! I wonder where the terminals are? Is Dad part of a circuit too?

  Tayla practised making his fingers harder – the secret was to think hard thoughts – and managed to push down a key.

  Yay! All I have to do now is … hey!

  A nurse sat on him.

  Tayla oozed through the chair, landing on the hard vinyl floor with a thump. He pushed himself up. How dare she do that! Disrespectful, that’s what these people are.

  The nurse clicked onto Facebook.

  What a slacker! She should be working.

  Hovering behind her, Tayla read the password: 1234. Such a crappy password. Why, anyone could hack that. Anyone … Tayla grinned.

  Just then, a machine began to beep. With a sigh the nurse got up from her chair and went to check that the patient was still breathing. Tay
la plonked himself down on the still-warm seat, and began to type: Dad, I can feel electricity through my fingers.

  When the nurse got back to the computer she stared at the screen, a worried look on her face.

  And, like a light bulb going on in his brain, Tayla got a Wonderful Idea. He already knew heaps of practical jokes: whoopee cushions, cling film across the toilet, a bucket of water on the classroom door. But now, he had an advantage. He was invisible!

  He, Tayla Johnson, would be the best practical joker EVER! Dad would be so proud.

  3

  The Inspector

  The old man had been taken to another ward. He had waved goodbye to Tayla. The nurses thought he was waving at them.

  ‘What a nice man,’ Sharon said. ‘So polite.’

  Tayla was kind of pleased that the old man had gone. Although he had liked having someone to talk to, right now Tayla preferred to be invisible. Because he, Tayla, had plans.

  He began by putting salt in the sugar bowl. It was hard work, because he could only move a grain at a time. But gradually, the nurses started to notice. At first it was just the tubby ones, the ones who had lots of sugar in their tea, but eventually others began to complain.

  ‘Can’t figure it out,’ said Angela, the charge nurse, to Doctor Margaret. Tayla liked Angela. She reminded him of a rubber ball, because she was small and round and moved very quickly. ‘Here, try it. Does it taste salty to you?’

  The doctor shook her head. ‘No thanks. I don’t drink tea.’

  Doctor Margaret was a coffee-holic. She walked everywhere with a metal coffee cup with a black plastic lid. Now, getting sugar into that would be a challenge.

  She also had a swipe card that let her into every ward in the hospital. Tayla decided to steal it. He followed her around Intensive Care, flying above her like a little foggy angel.

  When Doctor Margaret wasn’t there, Tayla practised tricking the nurses. He knew all their names, and even though they didn’t know him, he kind of thought of them as friends. The sort of friends he had on Facebook, the ones that read his posts and replied with lol or something, but who hardly ever spoke to him in real life.