Nan has three rules for Halloween. She says them every year while she’s doing the washing-up, without turning round, the way other people say ‘mind the step’.
One. Never leave washing out on the line.
Two. Always leave the last sweet in the bowl.
Three. If something follows you home, don’t look back. Just keep walking.
I used to think she made them up to stop Alfie asking questions. Alfie is my brother. He’s six, and he’d just learnt the word ghoul from a library book, and he was using it for everything. The hoover was a ghoul. The man in the chip shop was a ghoul. His own feet, when they were cold, were ghouls.
This year Nan wasn’t there to say the rules. She was in Benidorm with Auntie Pat and the ladies from bingo, and she kept sending us photos of plates of chips.
Then, on the Saturday before Halloween, the tumble dryer packed in. It made a noise like someone dropping a tray, then a smell like burnt toast, and then nothing at all.
So Mum pegged the sheets out.
‘Nan says—’ I started.
‘Nan’s in Benidorm,’ said Mum, with a peg in her mouth.
It rained every day that week, so the sheets were still out on Halloween, all four of them: Mum’s flowery one, the two blue ones off our bunk beds, and Nan’s old white one from the spare room. I know, because I counted them when we went out the back way. I don’t know why I counted them. I just did.
Mum said we could do our road and the next road, and Kingsley Street as far as the postbox, as long as I held Alfie’s hand the whole time and we were back by seven.
Alfie wanted to be a ghost, but all the sheets were on the line, so he went as a vampire instead. The cape was from last year and only fitted if he didn’t lift his arms. I went as a witch, because I always go as a witch, because the hat is good.
We did all right. Mr Okafor at number fourteen gave out full-size chocolate bars, which is the best thing a grown-up can do. The lady at the end with all the cats gave out apples, which is the worst. By quarter to seven my bag was heavy enough to swing, and I’d already picked out the best sweet and put it in my pocket to save: a big chocolate coin in gold paper.
The quickest way home is the ginnel. That’s what Nan calls the alley that runs along the back of our houses. It’s got bins all down one side and one street lamp halfway along that buzzes like a fly in a jar.
We were nearly at the lamp when I heard it.
A soft flapping. Like when Mum shakes out a duvet. Behind us.
Alfie heard it too. He squeezed my hand. ‘That’s a ghoul,’ he said. But not in his everything-is-a-ghoul voice. In a small, quiet one.
I looked back.
There was a white shape at the far end of the ginnel, by the Patels’ bins. It was about as tall as me. It wasn’t moving. It was just standing there, the way a sheet stands when there’s someone underneath it, with a sort of head and a sort of shoulders.
‘It’s someone dressed up,’ I said. ‘It’s one of the Year Sixes, messing about.’
We kept walking. Flap. Flap. I looked back again.
It was by the street lamp now. Still not moving. Still facing us. Closer.
I knew this game. Everybody knows this game. You play it in the playground: one person stands facing the wall, and everyone else creeps up behind them, and whenever the person at the wall turns round, you have to freeze. If they catch you moving, you go back to the start. It’s called Grandmother’s Footsteps.
I didn’t want to play. And I remembered Nan’s third rule.
‘Don’t look back,’ I told Alfie. ‘Whatever you hear. Just walk.’
So we walked. It’s very hard to walk, and not run, when something is behind you. Your legs want to run. Your neck wants to turn round. We didn’t let them. Flap. Flap. Flap. The sound stayed just behind us, never any further away and never any closer, all the way along the ginnel to our back gate.
I got the gate open and pushed Alfie through and slammed it, and we ran up the garden and in at the back door. Mum shouted ‘Shoes!’ from the front room, and we said sorry, and that was that. Mum hadn’t heard anything. The telly was on.
When I went to pull the kitchen blind down, I counted the sheets on the line.
Three.
I didn’t tell Mum. What was I going to say? A sheet followed us home?
On my way up to bed I passed the bowl by the front door, the one Mum keeps for trick-or-treaters. It was empty. There was a wrapper on the stairs.
‘Alfie,’ I said. ‘Did you have the last sweet?’
Alfie pulled the covers over his head, which means yes.
I had a sweet, of course. The chocolate coin was in my dressing-gown pocket. But it was the best one, and I’d been saving it, and it was only one of Nan’s rules. So I kept it.
I woke up in the middle of the night because the house was too quiet. You know when the heating goes off, and everything goes tick, tick, tick as it cools down? It was like that. I got out of bed and looked through the gap in the curtains.
Our garden isn’t big. There’s the washing line, and the shed, and a bit of lawn that Mum says she’ll sort out in the spring. The street lamp in the ginnel shines over the back wall and makes everything orange.
There were three sheets on the line.
And one standing on the lawn.
It was right in the middle of the grass, facing the house. Facing my window.
I let go of the curtain. I counted to ten. I looked again.
It was halfway to the back door.
Grandmother’s Footsteps. It only moves when you’re not looking.
I thought about waking Mum. Then I thought about Nan’s second rule, and the empty bowl, and the chocolate coin in my pocket.
I went downstairs in the dark. I didn’t look at the kitchen window, not once, not even out of the corner of my eye. I fetched the bowl from the hall, put the coin in it, and opened the back door just wide enough to put the bowl on the step. The air smelt of wet leaves and bonfires. I kept my eyes on my slippers the whole time.
Then I shut the door, and locked it, and went back up to bed, and lay there with my eyes shut tight until the birds started.
In the morning there were four sheets on the line. Nan’s white one was pegged at the end, perfectly dry, even though it had rained in the night. There were two holes in it that hadn’t been there before. Small and round, about as high up as my eyes. As if someone had wanted to see out.
The bowl was still on the step. The chocolate coin was gone. In its place was a conker: the biggest, shiniest conker I have ever seen, so shiny it looked wet.
Alfie looked at the holes in the sheet for a long time.
‘It was dressed up,’ he said. ‘Like us. It was being a ghost.’
I said yes, that was probably it.
‘So what was it really?’ said Alfie.
I didn’t have an answer for that. I still don’t.
Nan rang on Sunday from Benidorm. The line was crackly and there was music in the background.
‘You never left the washing out on Halloween?’ she said.
I looked at Mum. Mum looked at the ceiling.
‘Course not, Nan,’ I said.
‘Good girl. And the last sweet?’
‘I left the last sweet.’
‘That’s all right, then,’ said Nan, and asked about the dryer.
I keep the conker on my windowsill. It hasn’t gone dull and wrinkly, the way conkers do. And some nights, when the heating’s gone off and the house is going tick, tick, tick, I put my hand on it, and it’s warm.
Mum’s bought a new dryer, so the washing doesn’t go out much now. But next Halloween I’m going to peg out one old white sheet, and leave the best sweet in the bowl on the back step.
Just to be polite.