Shiver by Alex Nye

is my father’s, of course. But he is no longerhere,” she finished sadly.
    “Where has he gone?” Fiona asked.
    Eliza put her head on one side, quizzically, and appeared to be perplexed.
    “I know not!”
    “And your mother?” Fiona added.
    Suddenly Eliza’s face was transformed. Her eyes gleamed with pent-up fury.
    “I have no mother.”
    “Surely,” Fiona murmured. “Surely you must have a mother. Everyone does.”
    “Not I.”
    “Why not?”
    Eliza stared hard at Fiona, her eyes suddenly desperately sad.
    Then she whispered in a small voice “She left us to die.”
    At that moment the kitchen door burst open and Granny appeared, grappling with the Hoover. Fiona glanced back over her shoulder.
    “Blast this wretched thing,” Granny was muttering under her breath.
    When Fiona turned back, the girl had gone. Vanished into thin air before either of the two adults could see her. But not before Fiona had had time to ask her some essential questions. She felt as if she was getting somewhere, at last. She had to tell the others.
She found the boys upstairs, gathered in the drawing room. Samuel could instantly tell from her expression that something was wrong.
    “What is it?” he asked.
    “I saw her,” Fiona burst out. “I saw Eliza. I spoke to herthis time. She told me what they’re doing here. She said …” but then Fiona hesitated. She wondered exactly what Eliza had told her, wondered what to make of it exactly. It was all a bit muddled. “… she said it was 1604.”
    The boys stared at her, uncomprehending.
    “That’s what she said,” Fiona insisted. “She said … it was the year of Our Lord, 1604.”
    “She’s stuck in time,” Charles said. “In her own time.”
    “But she can see us,” Fiona finished.
    “Where does that leave us?” Sebastian said.
    “It leaves us with a very confused and troubled ghost girl. Two troubled ghost children,” Fiona added, “who feel as if they’ve been abandoned by their mother.”
    “How do you know that?” Samuel asked.
    Fiona’s brow wrinkled and she looked pensive and sad for a moment. “It was something she said, that’s all.”
    “What?” Samuel was insistent.
    Fiona hesitated a moment. “She said … she said that their mother had left them to die.”
    All four children fell silent, allowing the facts to digest.
    “How horrible,” Samuel murmured.
    “Isn’t it?” Fiona said.
    “What did she mean?” Charles added. “Their mother left them to die? How? What happened?”
    “Now that,” Fiona sighed, “we don’t know. Not yet anyway.”
    “How do we find out?” Sebastian said.
    “I know,” Samuel put in quickly, catching Fiona’s eye. “There’s an old friend we haven’t visited in a while.”
    “Mr MacFarlane,” Fiona muttered.
    “He might know something,” Samuel said. “He knows lots about the history of Sheriffmuir. And maybe there’s another family ghost story that he hasn’t told you about.”
    Charles was sceptical. “But he can’t know everything.”
    Fiona rolled her eyes. “You’re only fourteen so you definitely don’t know everything. But Mr MacFarlane’s … well, he’s …”
    “Old?” Samuel supplied the word.
    “Exactly. He’s ancient.”
    “He’s not
that
ancient,” Sebastian put in. “He’s fit enough to look after himself, anyway.”
    “I suppose it’s worth a try,” Charles admitted finally.
    Their voices faded away into silence.
     
    A child sat alone in the darkness. No one knew he was there. On the floor before him was a group of clumsy-looking toy soldiers, roughly carved from wood. The red paint on them was faded and peeling, but the boy didn’t notice. He moved them around, dragging them through the dirt, pretending to march them across an imaginary battlefield. It was a way of keeping his misery at bay. He was pretending, entering a world of make-believe, where his only comfort was to be found.
    They were primitive-looking toys, scarred and marked by their great age.