youâre dead?â I said. âDoes she turn people into zombies? Wouldnât people have noticed?â
âDonât count on it,â said Grace, from the sofa, where she was curled up feeding Maisy.
Daniel sighed. âThere werenât any zombies, and there werenât any rampages,â he said. âItâs just . . . this is an unlucky house, thatâs all. There are lots of stories about Amelia Dyer haunting it. People say you can hear babies crying, and thereâs this kid as well â a little girl sheâs supposed to have killed. People heard her running down the corridors. And thereâs one woman who used to live here, who killed herself. And before she died she kept saying Amelia Dyer was talking to her, telling her to kill her husband and her little boy. She turned on the gas in the oven and tried to poison everyone in the house, but her husband woke up and turned it off, so she was the only one who died. Dad says she wasnât possessed, though. She was just sad. Or mad. Or both.â
âYou donât know that,â said Harriet. âAmelia could have possessed her! Anyway, itâs not just her, thereâs another story too.â
âYes. . .â said Daniel. âBut the other story is even more stupid. Thereâs supposed to be this girl who lived here years and years ago. She was a servant, and she was in love with one of the boys who worked on the farm, and he got her pregnant. She asked him to marry her, but he wouldnât, so she had the baby, and then she had to leave her job. She didnât have anywhere to live, so she had to sleep under hedges, and the baby was cold and sick and she couldnât look after it. So she strangled the baby and left it on the doorstep with a note, to shame the boy. But Amelia didnât kill her. She got hanged for baby murder. It wasnât anything to do with being possessed. People just say that because itâs a good story.â
âWell, she might have been possessed,â said Harriet. âAnd, anyway, thatâs three murderers in one house â how many houses have three murderers in them?â
âItâs an old house,â said Daniel. âAnd the suicide lady wasnât a murderer, âcause her husband stopped her. And we donât even know the other storyâs true. Itâs just something the guy who runs the pub told us. He also said the pubâs haunted by a mad highwayman who shoots you if you go to the loo without buying a drink. I think he just made it up.â
âI bet he didnât,â said Harriet. âI bet itâs true!â
âIt isnât true , â I said. âGhosts arenât real. They arenât !â
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But after Harriet and Daniel told me about Ameliaâs ghost, I started to notice even more creepy things which didnât make any sense. I am a very noticing sort of person. Iâd been living in Jimâs house for less than a month, but I could always tell when Grace was in a bad mood or just an at-a-good-bit-in-my-book mood from the way her shoulders hunched. I could always tell whether Zig-Zag was really asleep or just pretending. Noticing things is another one of my superpowers. Itâs very useful when youâre trying to wind someone up to know whether they care more about how fat they are, or how good a mother, or how late theyâre going to be for work, or whatever.
âYou donât have to watch us all the time, Olivia,â Dopey Graham used to say. âYouâre safe here! Nobodyâs going to hurt you.â But then he dumped me with Liz and never even came to visit, so that shows how much I could trust him . I always watched everyone, always. I never felt completely safe, ever.
That next month, I heard three babies crying who definitely werenât Maisy. The first time, Maisy was asleep. The second, she and Grace werenât even in the house . And