The Glass Children Read online

  Aladdin and his parents left the houseboat and moved back into their house. Aladdin had to go to school in Åhus as usual, and he and Billie didn’t see each other as often. But they called each other every evening.

  ‘We have to find out more about the house,’ Aladdin said. ‘We can’t stop now, not until we’ve managed to persuade your mum that it’s dangerous.’

  Their house in town hadn’t yet been sold, and Billie was hoping that they would be able to expose the secret of the house in Åhus before someone bought it. Then they could simply move back home. Aladdin looked sad when she said that.

  ‘I’d come and visit you,’ Billie said. ‘Often!’

  But it wouldn’t be the same, and she knew it. If she moved away from Åhus she would lose Aladdin, and if she stayed she would drift away from her friends in town. She noticed that Simona behaved differently towards her when they went back to school.

  ‘Would you like to come home with me one day after school?’ Billie asked. ‘Mum says you can stay over.’

  Simona snorted. ‘Oh, so you’ve got time for me after all, have you? I thought you were only hanging out with Aladdin these days.’

  Billie was hurt. ‘That’s not fair,’ she said. ‘It’s just that so much has happened over the summer. And you’ve been away for several weeks!’

  Eventually Simona stopped sulking, and at the end of the first week she went home with Billie on the Friday afternoon.

  ‘What’s happened to the paint?’ she said in astonishment as they cycled up the path and she saw the house.

  ‘I’ll tell you all about it!’ Billie promised.

  They sat on the patio having a snack, while Billie talked and talked about everything that had gone on. She explained what she and Aladdin had done after Simona went home.

  ‘Oh, I wish I’d been here!’ Simona said. ‘It must have been so exciting!’

  But Billie didn’t really agree. She thought it had all been terrible, rather than exciting.

  ‘So what’s your next move?’ Simona asked, taking a bite of her cinnamon bun.

  ‘We thought we might go to the library in Kristianstad to ask if they know where you can get information on old houses.’

  That had been Aladdin’s idea.

  ‘The library?’ Simona said. ‘Couldn’t you find anything on the internet?’

  ‘We’ve searched and searched, but we didn’t come up with a thing,’ Billie said. ‘I think this is all too far in the past to be on the net.’

  ‘If you’re going to the library, then I want to come too,’ Simona said firmly.

  She didn’t want to be left out again, and Billie said she was welcome to join them. Simona’s friendship was important to her, and she didn’t want to fall out. She had enough problems already.

  And there were more to come. It all began when Simona had gone home on Saturday. Mum had a headache and went to lie down in the middle of the day. Billie was left alone with Josef, who had come to look at the paint.

  ‘You have to take care of old houses,’ he said. ‘And I don’t think the previous owners did that. Look at this.’

  He showed Billie. ‘You can’t just repaint a house over and over again. Sooner or later you have to strip off all the old paint, and start again from the beginning.’

  Start again from the beginning. That was exactly what the house didn’t want.

  ‘You ought to get back some of the money you paid for this place,’ Josef said. ‘The previous owners should have told you about the paint.’

  Billie was delighted. She hoped the problem would be so big that Mum would want all her money back, not just some of it. Then they could move back home again.

  Aladdin came round and they played games with Josef. Mum wasn’t well enough to join in, and stayed in bed.

  ‘What’s the matter with her?’ Aladdin asked.

  ‘She’s got a headache,’ Billie said.

  Josef looked anxious. ‘I think it’s more than that, Billie,’ he said. ‘She’s starting to get a temperature, just like you had.’

  Billie couldn’t help worrying when Mum was ill. She had felt that way ever since Dad died.

  Josef made something to eat, but Mum wasn’t interested. At ten o’clock Aladdin had to go home.

  ‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ he said.

  Billie was about to go to bed when Josef said: ‘I can stay if you like. If you’re worried about your mum.’

  She hesitated. Where would he sleep? The spare room was still full of stuff.

  ‘I can sleep on the sofa,’ he said when he realized why she hadn’t answered.

  Billie really wanted him to go home, but she had a strong feeling that she would regret it if she turned down his offer.

  ‘I’ll go and find you some bedding,’ she said.

  It was almost midnight, and Billie was still reading in bed. She was wide awake. Every time she tried to put down her book, her mind started spinning. She thought back to what someone had written on the drawing she had found in the spare room.

  Stop looking.

  But she had carried on digging into events and people from long ago. What if something terrible happened because of what she had done?

  Eventually she must have fallen asleep, because when she woke up it was still dark, but the house was full of noise. Someone was whimpering, and a man’s voice said: ‘Be careful, the stairs are pretty narrow!’

  Billie flew out of bed and ran onto the landing. Two men were carrying something down the stairs. It took a moment for Billie to realize that it was a stretcher, and that her mum was lying on it.

  Josef caught Billie and wrapped his arms around her when she tried to run after the stretcher.

  ‘Let go of me!’ she screamed.

  ‘Everything is all right,’ Josef said, but she could hear that he was afraid. ‘It’s just that your mum was in so much pain with her headache that I had to call an ambulance. I couldn’t drive her to the hospital myself and leave you here on your own. Your mum didn’t want me to do that either.’

  Billie started to cry.

  The ghost had got what it wanted. Mum was ill, and had to go to hospital in an ambulance. What if she didn’t get better?

  Who would look after Billie then?

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘Meningitis,’ the doctor said to Billie and Josef.

  Billie was so scared that she slipped her hand into Josef’s. He squeezed it hard.

  ‘But she will get better, won’t she?’ she said.

  ‘I’m sure she will,’ the doctor replied. ‘But it’s going to take some time. It’s just as well that you came in as quickly as you did. If you’d waited until morning, things would have been much more serious.’

  ‘How long will she have to stay in hospital?’ Josef asked.

  ‘Hard to say. We’ll wait a few days and see how she’s feeling then.’

  The doctor looked at his papers and asked: ‘Has she been ill much lately?’

  Both Billie and Josef shook their heads.

  The doctor shrugged. ‘In that case it’s just sheer bad luck,’ he said. ‘It’s unfortunate, but these things happen.’

  Billie wanted to open her mouth and yell that it definitely wasn’t sheer bad luck that her mum had been taken ill. She was ill because they lived in a dreadful house. But enough was enough. As soon as Billie got home, she would call Aladdin and Simona. She and her mum had to get away from that house before something even worse happened; there was no time to lose.

  ‘Shall we call someone, or will you be taking care of the child?’ the doctor asked Josef, glancing at Billie. ‘As I understand it you’re just a friend of the family.’

  ‘We’ll sort it out,’ Josef said. ‘There’s no need to call anyone.’

  Josef and Billie had already discussed the matter in the car on their way to the hospital. They had decided to get in touch with Grandma and Grandpa to see if they could come over and look after Billie.

  They were allowed to sit with Billie’s mum for a little
while, then they drove back to Åhus.

  ‘We need to get some sleep,’ Josef said.

  Only then did Billie realize how tired she was. When she felt the cool sheets against her skin, she relaxed and closed her eyes. The last thing she heard before she fell asleep was the birds, scampering about on the roof.

  Grandma was ill too, so she and Grandpa couldn’t come and look after Billie.

  ‘It’s nothing serious,’ Grandma said. ‘It’s just an ordinary cold, and I’ve got a bit of a temperature. But it’s probably best if we don’t come into contact with you and your mum at the moment; what if I were to pass something on to her, and she got even worse?’

  Billie agreed, so they arranged for Josef to move in and sleep on the sofa while Mum was in hospital. Aladdin came rushing over with a message from his parents to say that Billie was very welcome to stay with them instead, but she preferred to stay at home. Josef gave her a lift to school in the mornings, and in the afternoons she went to the hospital to see her mum. Josef picked her up from there when he finished work.

  Aladdin came round to see Billie every evening.

  ‘We have to go to the library,’ he said when Billie’s mum had been in hospital for three days. ‘We can’t wait any longer.’

  ‘We’ll go tomorrow,’ Billie said firmly.

  ‘We need to find out why the paint is peeling off,’ Josef said over dinner. ‘Or, to put it more accurately – why it was peeling off. It seems to have stopped now. We’ll get someone who knows about these things to take a look at it.’

  Billie didn’t say anything. First the paint was falling off, and then it wasn’t. She hadn’t heard any tapping or other noises at night, and there had been no more messages in the spare room, even though she had gone and looked two nights in a row. It was as if the house was holding its breath, waiting for what was going to happen next.

  ‘How are you getting on with Josef?’ Mum asked when Billie spoke to her on the phone that evening. She sounded tired and anxious.

  ‘Fine,’ Billie said. ‘But I still want you to hurry up and get better.’

  ‘I’m doing my best, sweetheart,’ Mum said.

  That was probably true, because the doctor said that Mum was improving and would be allowed home soon. He had told Billie several times how badly things could have gone if her mum hadn’t been brought into hospital.

  Billie tried to imagine what her life would have been like if she had lost Mum too, but it was just too painful to think about. If Mum died, Billie would be the loneliest person in the world.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The library in Kristianstad was square, with big blocks of stone on the walls.

  Billie and Simona met Aladdin off the bus from Åhus and walked to the library. It was much bigger than the one in Åhus, but Billie didn’t think it was anywhere near as appealing.

  ‘There’s someone we can ask,’ Aladdin said, pointing to a young man who was sitting there sorting books.

  There was a sign above his desk that said INFORMATION. He looked pleased to see them. ‘Please sit down,’ he said, gesturing towards three chairs in front of his desk. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘I’d like to find out more about the house I live in,’ Billie said.

  Aladdin and Simona were just as keen as Billie.

  ‘It must be possible,’ Aladdin said.

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ said the young man. ‘Is there something special about the house? I mean, is it famous? Is it a palace?’

  Billie looked at her friends. She wasn’t sure whether famous was the right word. Everyone in Åhus seemed to know about it, but before Billie moved there, she’d never heard of it. And it definitely wasn’t a palace.

  ‘Strange things keep happening in the house,’ Aladdin said. ‘That’s why we want to know more.’

  Billie hesitated, but eventually she said: ‘We think it might be haunted.’

  She blushed as she spoke. Surely nobody of her age actually believed in ghosts these days!

  ‘I understand,’ said the young man. ‘What’s the address?’

  Billie told him, and he thought for a moment.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said, getting to his feet.

  He led them to one of the bookshelves right at the back of the library.

  ‘This is where we keep books on what we call spirits, which is roughly the same as ghosts. Perhaps you could start by having a look through this one?’

  He took down a thick volume and handed it to Billie. She read the title: Haunted Houses from North to South.

  ‘That means that spirits and ghosts won’t leave these houses in peace,’ the young man explained. ‘This book tells you about the most famous haunted houses in Sweden, but to be honest I’m not sure the one you mentioned is in there.’

  Billie leafed through the pages. Most of the houses described in the book didn’t even look like houses; they were more like palaces or castles.

  ‘I think it might be better if you searched our archive of articles,’ the assistant said. ‘With a bit of luck some magazine or newspaper might have written about the house, and if that’s the case, then I can help you get hold of the article.’

  Billie thought that sounded like a good idea. They agreed that Simona would look at the book more carefully, while Billie and Aladdin checked out the archive.

  The young man showed them to a computer, and they sat down.

  ‘You can enter different search words here,’ he said, pointing.

  Billie and Aladdin looked at one another. They had no idea what to put.

  ‘Try “haunted houses in Åhus”,’ Aladdin said, and Billie quickly typed the words into the box.

  No matches.

  ‘Try the street name,’ the young man suggested.

  Billie typed in Sparrisvägen and waited. The computer showed that there were ten articles in which Sparrisvägen was mentioned. Billie was excited.

  ‘There you go,’ the assistant said. ‘I’ll get those for you.’

  He went off to look for the articles, and Billie and Aladdin went to sit with Simona.

  ‘Have you found anything?’ Billie asked.

  ‘Look at this,’ Simona said, pointing to the page she was reading.

  The heading was Mysteries in Åhus, and the text was all about various houses in the area where the owners had insisted they were haunted. Billie gave a start when she was halfway down the page:

  There are not very many haunted houses in Åhus, but one which experts definitively regard as being of interest is situated in the area known as Täppet. It is a small wooden structure where a young woman is said to have hanged herself in dubious circumstances a number of years ago. Rumour has it that the woman remained in the house after her death, and has malicious intentions towards all those who move in.

  The house was used as a children’s home in the 1920s, when it was known as Sunshine House. The woman who hanged herself worked as a children’s nurse in the home.

  Billie took a deep breath. Obviously they were talking about her house; this was almost exactly what Ella had told her and Aladdin. But Ella had said that it had been a school, not a children’s home.

  ‘Could she have got it wrong?’ Billie said.

  ‘Well, she is pretty old,’ Aladdin said.

  Billie read the section again. ‘It doesn’t say anything about the glass children,’ she said with a sigh of disappointment.

  The young man came back. ‘The articles are only available on microfilm,’ he said. ‘Do you know what that is?’

  ‘No,’ said Billie.

  ‘It means you have to sit at a special machine in order to be able to read them. A microfilm is like a mini-photo which the machine enlarges, so that you can read the text on a screen. It’s down in the basement if you want to have a go.’

  Billie tucked the book about haunted houses under her arm and followed the young man downstairs. Aladdin and Simona sat down on either side of her in front of the screen. The man switched on the machine and showed them how to
work it. It was a bit tricky at first, but once they had grasped what to do, it was pretty straightforward.

  The first few articles they looked at had nothing whatsoever to do with Billie’s house; they were about two families who had fallen out, missing cats, and other stuff that none of them wanted to read.

  ‘There seems to be plenty going on where you live,’ Simona joked as they looked at an article about a boy who had invented a new recipe for strawberry jam.

  Aladdin changed the film so that they could read the remaining articles.

  And there it was.

  All three of them fell silent when they saw the picture next to the text. It was in black and white, but there was no doubt that it was Billie’s house. It looked as if there had been a fire.

  5 May 1940

  Last night there was a serious fire at a house on Sparrisvägen in Åhus. At this stage the police are not prepared to reveal what they have discovered, but early indications suggest that the fire was a terrible accident. When the blaze took hold, there was a young couple in the house along with their son. The woman died in the flames, but her husband, Manne Lund, managed to save himself and his son. The boy escaped without injury, but is suffering from severe shock. It is not yet clear what will happen to the house.

  So the house had been a children’s home first of all, and then it had belonged to a family. And it wasn’t only the girl who had hanged herself who had died there. Another person had lost her life in that house, but her husband and her child had survived. Imagine if they could track down either of them? They were bound to have lots of information about what had happened after the fire. Perhaps they even knew something about the glass children.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The house was filled with the smell of fried meatballs. Billie was sitting on her bed reading and Josef was busy cooking when the phone rang. Billie quickly dropped her book and ran downstairs to see if it was her mum.

  ‘That’s very kind of your parents, Aladdin,’ Josef said. ‘I was just frying meatballs, but we can easily have those tomorrow.’

  He turned to Billie. ‘Aladdin’s parents have invited us to dinner at their restaurant this evening.’