by Meghan McCarthy
2005 Sense of Mischief winner
11 - 18 age group
"Anything today?" asked Finn as she approached him at the corner where they always met. "Not yet," she replied with a sigh. "Just a postcard from Aunt Lisa. Maybe they didn't get my letter." Anne shrugged her backpack further onto her shoulders and they continued towards school.
That evening, Anne stared frustratedly at her paper. How could she enter the competition if she didn't even have any ideas, let alone half the information? She sighed, put down her pen and turned to her CD rack, looking for her favourite music.
It wasn't there.
In fact, random empty black slots punctuated her normally immaculate rack. Furiously, she looked around the room. If Aggie had been wrecking her stuff again, she'd - the CDs were lying on the floor in a tumbled heap next to Aunt Lisa's postcard of the latest haunted castle she'd visited. It must have fallen off her wardrobe door, where she stuck every postcard she received. Anne picked it up and put it back, squashing down the Blu-tack to make it stick.
As she turned back round to pick up her CDs, she noticed that someone had knocked over her glass tumbler of flowers, and written swear words on the back of her door in what looked horribly like permanent marker. If the same person had done all this, it certainly wasn't Aggie. Her parents would never do anything like this, and the door and the flowers were too high for Aggie to reach. Anne was more than puzzled; she was rather scared.
Anne was not the sort of girl who played tricks on anyone. In fact, the other people in her class thought her far too boring to bother with. Finn, two years older, was her only real friend - though he had more than enough liveliness and mischief for the two of them. So Anne didn't know anyone well enough for them to joke with or play tricks on her except Finn, and he never did anything like this.
That night, small noises in her room kept her frozen beneath the quilt, pressed tightly against the wall even though she'd locked her bedroom door and closed the windows so that no one could get in. All in all, she got about four hours sleep.
In the morning, there were holes in her paper lampshade, paint all over her mirror, and the poster she'd stuck over the swear words (which did seem to be written in permanent marker) was torn. Anne dressed quickly and almost ran out of the house as soon as she could, reaching the corner long before Finn.
When he arrived, he knew something was wrong straight away; she didn't even react when he teased her for looking like she'd had a rough night. Finn immediately demanded to know the problem and she told him all about the noises and vandalism as they walked, Finn looking thoughtful as he swished a stick at thistle heads in the grass verge. "It sounds," he said, "as though you've got a poltergeist - you know, a mischievous ghost.
"I know what one is, but how can one suddenly appear in my room?" Anne demanded. Finn's forehead creased in a frown. "I don't know... hang on, maybe I do. That postcard you got; your Aunt's visiting haunted places, right?"
"Yeah, but what's that got to do with it?"
"Maybe the poltergeist came through the postcard!" Finn turned in the middle of the path, triumphantly swinging a thistle head into the path of an oncoming car.
Anne carried on walking. "First of all, who says poltergeists exist? And secondly, how the heck is one getting into my room through a postcard? It's impossible!"
Finn looked at her. "Why?"
It was dark not long after they came home from school. Anne's parents didn't get in 'til after six, and they picked Aggie up from the childminder's on their way. Anne and Finn stood at the window nearest the wardrobe, looking at the stars. "Go on," Finn prompted. "Wish upon a star."
Anne looked at him. She'd always known he was different, regarded as a weirdo and a hippy by his classmates. But a lot of what he said seemed to make sense in a bizarre sort of way, when you thought about it carefully.
"Go on," he repeated. "I'll wish with you." And they both wished furiously for a way to stop the poltergeist.
Nothing happened.
Anne turned away from the window and sighed. "I wish we could actually get into its postcard - we might be able to trap it somehow," she said, looking at the postcards. Finn was just beginning to turn towards her when they both found themselves staring at the poltergeist's postcard. Strangely, it seemed to be rushing towards them - that didn't make sense at all, until Anne's perspective shifted slightly and she realised that they were rushing towards the postcard, surrounded by a kind of roaring wind.
Abruptly, the roaring stopped and they could no longer see the postcard, each other, or anything else for that matter. There was a sort of sucking sound, and a "pop!" and they found themselves standing in an old, narrow stone flagged corridor with a row of glassless windows on one side, and a wall covered in drab tapestries on the other. The air was dry, tasted dusty and smelt like those really old books you sometimes come across in charity shops or your Grandma's house.
Anne leant across towards Finn. "Are we - "
"I think," said Finn slowly, "that we're in the castle." He grinned suddenly. "You got your wish!"
Anne looked around warily. "Then where's the poltergeist?"
They began to walk quickly along the passageway, their footsteps echoing loudly on the aged stone. "How on earth do we find it?" Anne whispered warily, looking around them. Finn glanced round too. "Not sure," he replied. Then he stopped suddenly, pointing at a tapestry. "Look. That tapestry's ripped. None of the people who lived here or who work here now would do that. Maybe the poltergeist did it." "I don't know," said Anne dubiously. "It could have been an accident."
Finn shook his head. "Look," he repeated. There were marks all along the wall, as though someone had deliberately run something sharp along it. They followed the scratch markings and found more possible evidence of the poltergeist: graffiti, damaged tapestries, the occasional small pile of broken pottery as though something had been smashed against the wall.
This is great, thought Anne, but where's the actual poltergeist? And surely they'd be running out of corridor soon. Just as she thought this, Finn came to a sudden stop. She tried to peer round his shoulder but he pushed her back until they were hidden in a corner of the wall that was part of an archway. "What - " she began, but Finn 'shh!'ed her. "I think that's it!" he whispered. "I think the poltergeist's in there!"
Anne peered through a half-open door that led into a small room rather like a fourteenth century broom cupboard. There was a pile of ripped cloth and broken pottery in the middle of the floor, with a small, vaguely human-shaped creature lying in the centre. As she looked at it, it moved slightly, snoring, and she realised that although it was asleep, it was not solid - more a semi-transparent sort of colour. Finn pulled her back round. "I've got an idea. We wished to be in the postcard, right? And we got transported here. So surely it would work the other way round - wherever in the castle we were."
"Well, you'd think so," said Anne cautiously.
"Of course it would!" Finn whispered frantically back. "So all we have to do is wake the poltergeist, trap it somewhere it can't escape, then wish ourselves back!" He was worked into a frenzy now; Anne could tell his brain was working furiously on an idea. "So then, what's your plan?" she asked. Finn pointed at a huge sort of metal chest, bigger than Anne and rusting slightly in places but still looking strong and impenetrable.
Anne suddenly thought that she knew what he meant. She crouched down by the chest. "I bet it's iron!" she said, quietly but excitedly. "Poltergeists and things aren't supposed to be able to escape from iron - it takes their magic away." And she heaved at the heavy lid until she realised it was locked. "Now what?" she asked herself- then suddenly provided her own answer. She pulled out the hairgrip that held back her growing fringe, took a deep breath and put it in the lock. This sort of thing always worked in adventure books, but would it work for real? She jiggled it some more and there was an awful screech of disused mechanisms, then a decisive click.
Finn knelt down next to her and together they heaved the lid. The inside was empty except for a bit of dust and dirt. Making sure that the lid was propped back against the wall. Anne leaped up towards the archway. Finn tried to keep her back but she tugged out of his grasp and flung open the door, which hit the wall with an almighty crash, sending clouds of dust everywhere. The thing in the centre seemed to run like liquid mud off the pile, then it somehow unfolded itself upwards until it hovered about four feet off the ground, glaring horribly and breathing out a foul stench of mould and decay.
Anne screamed at it in words she was never allowed to use at home, hoping to anger it. She succeeded.
The thing came at her and she ran back down the corridor to the chest, looking back to check that it was following. It wasn't.
She stopped and turned to face it. "Come on!" she scoffed. "You're not afraid of a girl, are you? Don't you want a chance to cause some more mischief?" And she ran again, slower this time, with the poltergeist gaining on her.
As she jumped into the chest, she felt what must have been its hand on the back of her shirt. "Shut it! Wish!" she screamed at Finn, and wished to be back home as hard as she knew how. The lid was closing, it wasn't working. There was a metallic clang like a prison door shutting, then total musty blackness, oxygenless and silent except for the blood roaring in her ears.
Then the blackness seemed to change consistency and she realised that the darkness was getting lighter; although her ears were still roaring with the fury of a thousand lions she could see the dim outline of her bedroom furniture. Then there was the gloopy sucking sound and pop, and she was aware of a presence at her side.
The poltergeist! They'd brought it back - her heart and knees simultaneously sank.
"Hey!" A hand caught her and pulled her up and she realised it was Finn, not the poltergeist. "We did it!" They cried together. "And now I've got something to write about for that story competition - if they ever do get round to sending me the rest of the information," Anne added. "By the way, thanks for helping. If it wasn't for your idea, I'd never have known what to do!"
Finn looked at her like she was crazy. "What do you mean? 1 never told you my idea."
Anne looked back at him, uncomprehending. "But what about the chest, and - " "That wasn't my idea; at least not exactly. You did the whole thing all by yourself - all I did was close the lid, just like you told me to." He clapped her on the shoulder and grinned. "I always knew you had a sense of mischief in there somewhere!"
A Sense of Mischief © Meghan McCarthy 2005