Free Close Your Pretty Eyes by Sally Nicholls Page A

you’re dead?” I said. “Does she turn people into zombies? Wouldn’t people have noticed?”
    â€œDon’t count on it,” said Grace, from the sofa, where she was curled up feeding Maisy.
    Daniel sighed. “There weren’t any zombies, and there weren’t any rampages,” he said. “It’s just . . . this is an unlucky house, that’s all. There are lots of stories about Amelia Dyer haunting it. People say you can hear babies crying, and there’s this kid as well – a little girl she’s supposed to have killed. People heard her running down the corridors. And there’s 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 wasn’t possessed, though. She was just sad. Or mad. Or both.”
    â€œYou don’t know that,” said Harriet. “Amelia could have possessed her! Anyway, it’s not just her, there’s another story too.”
    â€œYes. . .” said Daniel. “But the other story is even more stupid. There’s 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 wouldn’t, so she had the baby, and then she had to leave her job. She didn’t have anywhere to live, so she had to sleep under hedges, and the baby was cold and sick and she couldn’t look after it. So she strangled the baby and left it on the doorstep with a note, to shame the boy. But Amelia didn’t kill her. She got hanged for baby murder. It wasn’t anything to do with being possessed. People just say that because it’s a good story.”
    â€œWell, she might have been possessed,” said Harriet. “And, anyway, that’s three murderers in one house – how many houses have three murderers in them?”
    â€œIt’s an old house,” said Daniel. “And the suicide lady wasn’t a murderer, ’cause her husband stopped her. And we don’t even know the other story’s true. It’s just something the guy who runs the pub told us. He also said the pub’s 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€œI bet he didn’t,” said Harriet. “I bet it’s true!”
    â€œIt isn’t true , ” I said. “Ghosts aren’t real. They aren’t !”
    Â 
    But after Harriet and Daniel told me about Amelia’s ghost, I started to notice even more creepy things which didn’t make any sense. I am a very noticing sort of person. I’d been living in Jim’s 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. It’s very useful when you’re trying to wind someone up to know whether they care more about how fat they are, or how good a mother, or how late they’re going to be for work, or whatever.
    â€œYou don’t have to watch us all the time, Olivia,” Dopey Graham used to say. “You’re safe here! Nobody’s going to hurt you.” 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 weren’t Maisy. The first time, Maisy was asleep. The second, she and Grace weren’t even in the house . And