Bella Bright and the Ghost Game by Carolyn Ward & Beatriz Castro

Author:Carolyn Ward & Beatriz Castro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Welbeck Flame

My whole body seized up like I had been flash-frozen into place. My teeth clenched together even harder as my brain urgently told me to get out of there.

She was grey-ish, like the odd light in the room, and also flickering in and out of focus like the piano. But as I watched, I saw her get stronger until she was right there with me, as real as I was. I shook my head, because this was impossible. A thousand feelings rushed through me like a waterfall.

Alice was here… but wasn’t here… she was real… but not real. The room looked like a museum – like the past had become the present? Oh my… this was utterly crazy.

The room started to spin as my mind caught up with what my eyes were seeing. Alice was from the past, and wasn’t alive… she was a… ghost…? I tried to keep breathing as I considered this and stared at her in front of the fireplace. Utter terror was flowing through me like ice water.

The fire she stood by hadn’t been lit, but somehow now there were orangey-grey flames jumping on the logs. My confused brain tried to figure it out and I stared at it, mesmerised, before pulling my eyes away and gazing back at her.

She was facing me now. Tall and thin, she was wearing a brown pinafore. Her feet were bare, and dirty. One of her legs was hanging at a strange angle below the knee. Something about her expression was absolutely awful.

‘Are y…you r…real?’ I whispered, and my eyes opened wide as I waited to see if she would answer.

Then she smiled at me. I jerked backwards at the sight of that smile. It was the most terrifying thing I’d ever seen. All I could think was that that smile was a bad thing pretending to look good.

‘Practice makes perfect, Pa used to say. The piano belonged to Ma, so very long ago.’ She sighed. ‘I like knowing her fingers played the same keys.’

The words she spoke ran a little slower than her mouth appeared to move, which made it hard to hear, and I frowned as I concentrated on her.

‘How nice that you have friends here for Halloween! I didn’t really have any friends of my own, you know. Pa threw me a party one year for my birthday, but the girls found my compendium and were afraid of me after that. Elspeth and Verity tore it.’

I blinked at the word ‘compendium’, seeing the ripped pages in the red book in my mind’s eye.

‘So I caught a few creepies to scare them. Pa said I could never have a party again.’

‘You… scared them?’

‘And then I heard you and your friends at your little party, declaring a game of hide and seek. On Halloween eve of all nights, and it gave me an unusual strength.’

Gave her an unusual strength? Hide and seek? I remembered the odd vibration that the house had made, and I swallowed hard. My dry throat clicked.

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