The following morning he awoke to his mum rattling on the door.

“Charlie. Charlie,” she called in her deep voice. “Are you decent?” She lumbered in pulling the vacuum cleaner and shielding a hand across her eyes.

She was the caretaker of an old lighthouse that backed onto their property. It had fallen out of use about seventy years ago, but in a dying town, it still brought enough tourists each year to put a meal on the table while giving his mum more than enough free time for her favourite hobby—lying on the couch watching reruns of old soap operas.

“Go away,” Charlie said in a groggy voice. “What time is it anyway?” It felt like his head had just touched the pillow. He squinted at the frog clock on his wall, waiting for his eyes to slip back into focus.

“It’s some time after seven.”

Groaning, he pulled the blankets over his head. They felt so warm and so cosy. “Do we have to do this now? It’s the first day of the holidays. Can’t I sleep all day like a normal teenager?”

He had been having such a wonderful dream about flying carriages and magic, and he wanted to get back to it and pretend it was real. The dream reminded him of the strange girl and the ring, and she made him feel all giddy inside.

He had fallen asleep with the ring still on his finger and for some reason couldn’t bring himself to take it off just yet. Besides, he didn’t want to lose it before he could give it back to her.

“Please don’t argue Charlie.” She plugged in the vacuum cleaner, looking exhausted. “Normal teenagers help their poor mothers. You know I’d do it myself if I could, but I’ve got a bone in my leg.”

“Really?” That excuse worked when he was five—okay ten, max!

“And there’s still so much to do before your aunt gets here.”

“Wait, what?” Charlie sat up.

She drew the curtains and light streamed into his room, blinding him. “Aunt Patty’s coming around for a few days and I need to get the place straightened out.” She sighed, taking in the mess around her.

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She lifted a pair of trousers as though to fold them but then, with an overwhelmed look on her face, shoved them under the bed instead.

“Wait. Why’s she coming here?” The fingers of panic began closing around his throat. He couldn’t ever see her again after what happened the last time she visited.

He wasn’t about to admit to anything, but the night before she left, he may have pinched her false teeth from the glass next to her bed to show Allie.

While waiting for her to arrive, he began playing around and somehow managed to sit on them and bust out one of the front teeth. He looked everywhere for it, but it just up and disappeared. So, desperate and out of options, he glued a Lego block in its place and dropped them back in the glass and hightailed it out of there.

Unfortunately, a few days later, she started a protest outside the proposed Bengleton mental health care facility and even appeared on a small news segment shouting that she wasn’t about to let no damn loony tunes into their neighbourhood.

The cameraman went close in on her angry face, and Charlie’s mum sat up in surprise. “What in the world,” she said, climbing off the couch to get a closer look.

Charlie made a beeline for the door, feeling a sheer panic rising inside.

The clip eventually went viral, and two days later his mum found the tooth wedged under one of his shoes. He had to mail it back to her with an apology and then clean out the yard for a month. He hadn’t seen or heard from her since.

“She sent a postcard saying she was in town for a few days to inspect some of the local school’s kitchens and that she would love to come and visit.”

That was all he needed. “Can’t she stay in a hotel like a normal person? You know what she’s like.” She was adamant that red meat would rot your brains because red is the colour of the devil’s trident. Yes, she was going to kill him. He was dead.

He slapped his hand around the nightstand looking for his phone. Having just woken up, his fingers felt like sticks of jelly, but he managed to tap out a message to Allie: ‘H-E-L-P...’

He clicked send and fell back into his pillow. He had such high hopes for these holidays especially after the last evening at the manor, but all those plans were slowly slipping away.

His mum proceeded to make the bed with him still on it. She wasn’t the most focused of people. Within a few minutes she had vacuumed up his sock, dusted what was left of his sandwich—getting feathers all over it, and sprayed his head with wood polish; all the while, Charlie tried every excuse he could find to keep Aunt Patty away and to get out of work.

He spent the morning cleaning the windows and bathing the cat, getting his hands shredded. He dusted out the spare wardrobe and cut lemon slices into the toilet cistern.

He got through his jobs as quickly as he could so that he wouldn’t be anywhere near the house when Aunt Patty arrived.