Amanda Lester and the Red Spider Rumpus

by Paula Berinstein

  “Excuse me?” said Amanda. Ivy couldn’t be talking about the clock Nick had broken when she’d complained about its ticking. That didn’t make sense.

  “The Baddeley Memorial Clock in Windermere. In the tower. He’ll be there.”

  That made about as much sense as the loud wall clock. “I don’t understand,” said Amanda. “What makes you think that?”

  “It’s easy,” said Ivy. “You’re the only person in this world he trusts, right?”

  “I’m not sure he trusts me,” said Amanda, failing to see what that had to do with anything.

  “He does.”

  “What does that have to do with the clock?”

  “Nick would go someplace only you would think of. That means no tunnels, no quarry, no anything other people might associate with him.”

  “But I don’t see what that has to do with—oh.” Gosh, Ivy was a genius. She had ways of seeing connections no one else would ever in a million years come up with. “The clock he broke because I said it was loud. It’s kind of a thing between us, isn’t it?”

  “Yep,” said Ivy.

  “Isn’t that a bit of a longshot?” said Amanda.

  “Well obviously if Blixus has him he won’t be there,” said Ivy. “But you have nothing to lose by checking, do you?”

  “Do you really think he’d expect me to figure that out?” said Amanda. “Especially given that he thinks . . . well, you know what he thinks. That I don’t love him.”

  “Can you suggest something better?” said Ivy.

  “Not really.”

  “Well then go and look. Call me if he isn’t there. I’ll think of something.”

  “I know you will,” said Amanda.

  The tower stood literally alone in the middle of a road. If the hour had been any later, traffic would have been whizzing around it and Amanda would have had a devil of a time getting to it. But now there were just a few cars.

  The tower had been constructed in the early 1900s to commemorate, of all people, a guidebook writer. The clock on its front was reached via a heavy wooden door that spanned almost its entire side. Would Nick really have retreated to such a place? It must be absolutely freezing inside, not to mention cramped. And what if the clock people came to do maintenance? As much as Amanda respected Ivy’s wisdom she had her doubts about this one.

  She surveyed the area. Seeing no one close by, she crept to the door and put her ear to it. Nothing. Of course the absence of sound didn’t mean anything. She cupped her mouth and said,” Nick” in a hoarse whisper. Silence. She tried again, louder. “Nick!” Nothing. She grasped the handle and tried it. It moved easily. She pulled the door open and looked inside. It was dark and dank and hard to see, but there he was, battered and bruised and wrapped in what looked like a brand new navy blue parka, staring up at her from his seat on an old crate.

  “Amanda!” he cried.

  “Oh Nick!” He attempted to get up but wobbled. She rushed to him and threw her arms around him, then remembered that he was injured and backed off, but now he was holding her too, as tight as a boy can hold a girl. Then he let go and pushed back.

  “You found me,” he said. He looked terrible, all bruises and cuts.

  “Are you all right?” She reached into her bag for some alcohol, which for some reason she’d remembered to collect on the way out. She lifted it out, dumped some on her sleeve, and touched a cut.

  “Just the usual battering,” he said. “Ouch, that hurts. I’m getting pretty used to it by now. I was asleep when the boat blew up. I managed to jump in the water and get away. I have no idea how it all happened.”

  “You were lucky,” she said. “The wreckage looks pretty bad.” She took hold of his sleeve. “Where did you get the jacket?”

  He looked down at the garment as if seeing it for the first time. He obviously wasn’t himself. “I’ll tell you, but first, have you seen Blixus?”

  “No, have you?” She touched another cut. He flinched.

  “No, but he has to be the one behind this.”

  She continued her ministrations. “Of course. Do you think he knows he didn’t get you?”

  “Oh yes. By now he’s got to be scouring the entire Lake District looking for me. Of course he wouldn’t be doing that personally. Too risky.”

  “Who would it be then?”

  “Guys who work for him. I don’t even know what they all look like.” No surprise there. Blixus had a zillion minions. Amanda had met a few of them but they were scattered all over the world. The perpetrator could have been any one of them. But that wasn’t her main concern.

  “We have to get you to Legatum.” She moved to take his hand.

  “Let’s think about this before we do anything,” he said, accepting the offer. His hand was freezing. She squeezed to warm it up.

  “I’m worried about you. How do you feel?”

  “As I said, a bit battered. But I’m completely functional.”

  “You stole the jacket?” Nick wouldn’t have been shy about doing what he needed to survive. It was a logical assumption.

  “I had to. I couldn’t be out in this weather in a t-shirt. I’ll pay them back.”

  “Okay, we can talk about that later. Let me just call Ivy.”

  “Not yet. Please. I want to think this through.”

  “There’s nothing to think about. Thrillkill will protect you.”

  Nick gave her a sidelong look. “Seriously?”

  “I see it hasn’t gotten through to you that the teachers aren’t completely against you. They may not like you, but if nothing else you’re a goldmine of information. They’re not going to let anything happen to you.”

  Nick pondered this for a moment and said, “You’re right. It’s my only choice. I can’t go to my aunt and uncle. They’d turn me over to Blixus in a heartbeat. I can’t go to Celerie Wiffle. I suppose I could go abroad . . .”

  “Oh, Nick, no,” said Amanda, taking his hand in both of hers. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “He’d never find me,” said Nick.

  “I’d never see you again,” she said.

  Nick looked at her sharply but didn’t say anything.

  “Please let me ask Thrillkill,” she said. “He’s already agreed to let you in provisionally. He isn’t going to turn you in.”

  Nick sighed. “I guess you’re right. The worst that can happen is that they’ll send me to jail. I’ll probably end up there anyway. Have you got your GPS turned off?”

  “Here,” she said, fiddling with her phone. “I’m doing it right now.”

  “Not that that’s any protection against them finding us,” he said.

  “No, of course not. But just let me . . . it’s ringing.”

  Nick looked uncertain. For a moment it seemed that he was going to reach out and grab the phone, but then she saw defeat in his eyes.

  When Thrillkill answered, Amanda told him she’d found Nick and he was okay. Before she could continue he said, “We’ll protect him. Tell me where you are.”

  Amanda looked at Nick. He shrugged. She turned back to Thrillkill and said, “The clock tower.”

  “Give me five minutes,” he said, and hung up.

  Because he had no other place to go and because they wanted to make sure Blixus couldn’t get to him, the detectives let Nick move into Legatum. He would be admitted provisionally but they insisted that he wear an electronic tracker. Amanda was outraged and thought they were trying to humiliate him, but Nick took the limitation with grace and composure.

  He had lost everything he had—except for the things he had stashed in secret places. With the ever present threat of Blixus hanging over him, it would have been folly to keep anything of real value on the boat, so for months he had resorted to burying things, secreting them in crawl spaces, under buildings, in barns, all protected by layers of plastic. And so he moved into Legatum and started his new life with a clean slate.

  RAMON

  The first time Amanda saw Ramon Splunk, a new student in her year,
she immediately labeled him weird. Pasty like a ghost, gangly, and completely full of himself, he looked like a refugee from a bad horror story. And wouldn’t you know it, Amphora was already hanging all over him. Truth be told, Amanda was glad because the girl had obviously recovered from her breakup with Holmes, for which she felt responsible, even if her new beau was a questionable choice. But she knew trouble lay ahead.

  His looks weren’t the half of it. Ramon’s behavior was even stranger than his appearance. Within two seconds he was telling everyone he was psychic and planned on being a paranormal detective. He was also a ghost hunter, which was not something you normally associated with Legatum, where logic was supposed to reign supreme. He was already making enemies.

  “I cannot believe there’s no class in paranormal phenomena,” he said in front of everyone. “Considering the assistance the police get from psychics, it’s unprofessional.”

  “We should start a petition,” Amphora said.

  Ramon smiled at her with condescension. “Unnecessary. I will simply speak to the headmaster.”

  Amanda couldn’t believe her ears. This newcomer thought he was so important that Thrillkill would do anything he said. What nerve. But what Amanda saw as conceit Amphora seemed to view as authority and she fawned all over him.

  “You’re absolutely right,” she said. “Coming from an expert like you, he’ll jump on the idea. I do hope you’ll guest lecture.”

  “Absolutely,” said Ramon. “I should be teaching the course, but I’ll be too busy with other projects. Perhaps a workshop from time to time.”

  Simon’s comment upon hearing this falderal was, “I thought we just finished with all this magic nonsense.” Holmes told Amanda that when he first saw Ramon he was tempted to blurt out “What a dork!” as she had when she’d first seen him. But Ivy was more charitable, arguing, “If he makes her happy, that’s the main thing.” Later, however, after all the fuss the boy caused, she was ready to eat her words.

  It came as no surprise that Ramon and Nick took an instant dislike to each other. Their feud, if it could be called that, looked and felt like a completely animal thing, as if their pheromones clashed. From the moment Ramon set foot in the Holmes House common room, where he did not belong, he and Nick butted heads, the light and the dark boy in deadly opposition.

  “Your aura is black,” said Ramon when he saw Nick one morning.

  Nick laughed.

  “I wouldn’t make light of such a thing if I were you,” Ramon said.

  Nick laughed again.

  “You think it’s funny?” said Ramon.

  “I think something is funny,” said Nick.

  “You’re disrespectful,” said Ramon. “And damned. You need to be careful.”

  “Bugger off,” said Nick.

  “You need my help,” said Ramon. “Someone like you cannot afford to ignore the spirits.”

  For a moment things got really tense. Nick buttonholed the boy and brought his face close to Ramon’s. He looked as if he were about to say something, but let go and walked off.

  Watching this nuttiness, many of the students wrote Ramon off as a fake and a flake. But Amphora saw none of his flaws. By the second day of his residence she was completely smitten and by the third he had got her ghost hunting. Always malleable, she embraced his mission with a passion Amanda suspected had been heightened by having recently been dumped. Ramon seemed to take her interest as a sign of his potency though, because he strutted around with his arm in hers and his skimpy chest puffed up as far as it would go spouting nonsense like, “To be eerie is divine,” and “Invisibility is no defense.” Then Amphora would say, “We are going to give a seminar called Ghost Hunting for Detectives” and gaze into his eyes as if he were an angel. The first time Holmes saw this little performance he almost pulled an Amanda and threw up. Amanda wondered if he might be jealous. After all, Amphora had been his girlfriend. Maybe he missed her. Or maybe he was insulted by her poor taste in rebound boyfriends. Whatever it was, he was as disgusted with the guy as everyone else.

  What was particularly interesting about Ramon’s arrival and Amphora’s instant conversion was that it actually caused Nick and Simon to bond. Considering Nick’s history this was not something anyone would have expected, and in fact the other students, especially Clive and Holmes, who had spent time as Blixus’s prisoner, gave him a wide berth. But the boys’ individual skepticism about the supernatural in general and Ramon in particular seemed to precipitate a whole new phase in their relationship.

  “What bollocks,” Simon would say.

  “Boooooo!” Nick would answer.

  “Excuse me, I think I left my head in the toilet,” Simon would say.

  “You’re so transparent,” Nick would respond.

  And then the two of them would laugh so boisterously that Amanda would have to shush them. She did love seeing them do it though.

  But Holmes didn’t. While he agreed that Ramon was a fraud, he did not bond with Nick over this issue or anything else. In fact, in un-Holmes-like fashion, he went completely ballistic when Nick moved into Legatum.

  The first thing he did when he found out Nick would be in residence was ask Thrillkill if he could monitor Nick’s tracker, a request so galling that Amanda wanted to brain him. When Thrillkill told him the teachers would assume the responsibility but that he could get the tracking signal on his phone, she thought she’d die. But when he lectured her about how the device worked and told her the only way to remove it was to saw off your own foot, she’d had enough and punched him in the arm.

  The first ghost hunting expedition took place even before classes commenced—the boy was that keen. Everyone wanted to see him fail, and despite the distraction of Nick and his notoriety to keep them occupied, they all gathered for Ramon’s pre-quest presentation.

  Before the event began, Amphora came up to Amanda and suggested that she make a film of Ramon’s exploits, a prospect that filled Amanda with vomit. Fighting the urge to tell her exactly what she could do with her ghosts she said, “I don’t do horror movies,” after which Amphora sniffed and left her alone. Considering their history, the exchange was a virtual love fest.

  Ramon began by explaining what he and Amphora would be looking for: signs of ghosts in the dining room. When someone asked him why there, he said it was one of the most heavily frequented areas of the campus and that everyone who had ever come to Legatum had to have gone there. It wasn’t a glamorous explanation but there seemed a certain logic to it, although Amanda thought if the ghost was an introvert, that definitely wasn’t the place it would go. Of course Simon and Nick sat there whispering about the spirits of people who had choked to death on the institutional food and making other irreverent observations, but Ramon didn’t notice and no one else seemed to mind.

  After that Ramon presented a dog and pony show about his methodology and equipment. Simon kept making remarks about the poor design of every device he demonstrated, and Nick kept whispering back about his faulty logic. Amanda found this sudden camaraderie between the two so welcome that she sat there beaming, which really seemed to get Amphora’s goat because at one point she interrupted and said, “I see you don’t appreciate our efforts to be transparent, Amanda. Why don’t you just leave?” That, of course, was Simon and Nick’s cue to go into the hall and laugh even louder. Finally Professor Kindseth stuck his head into the room and said, “What’s so funny in here?” and Amphora said, “Some people just don’t appreciate our equipment,” which caused the entire room, including Professor Kindseth, to lose it. Then Professor Feeney came by for a cup of tea and said, “Miss Kapoor, will you please remove your equipment from the dining room,” and the place exploded like Guy Fawkes Night.

  After a half hour of what Amphora called a “humiliating debacle,” things calmed down enough that she and Ramon were ready to begin the search. They insisted they not be watched, which annoyed the cook, Derson Peeson, and his assistant, Sam Hangingshaw, because they had to go in and out of the dining ro
om to attend to their kitchen duties. Finally the two students appealed to Thrillkill, asking him if they could have just one hour alone, a request Thrillkill actually granted, although in what spirit no one knew.

  While the ghost hunting was proceeding, half the school camped out in the Holmes House common room, the hall outside the dining room, and adjacent areas waiting to see what would happen. People kept listening at the dining room door, which the two had insisted be closed, but no one heard anything. Finally someone—Amanda thought it was Polly Pogo—suggested that Ramon had engineered the whole thing so he could make out with Amphora with no one watching, and the crowd exploded into so much noise that said ghost hunter stuck his head out and told them to shut up. The resulting set-to brought the décor gremlins running and the whole situation devolved into such chaos that Professor Buck came and broke the whole thing up.

  Afterwards, Ramon walked around looking smug. He wouldn’t reveal the reason, but Amanda had seen that look before. He was up to something, and whatever it was it wasn’t good.

  THE INQUISITION

  Nick’s return to Legatum may have started off on a more positive note than expected—at least someone was talking to him, even if it was Simon—but the gloom Amanda had anticipated set in again the second week of classes. Professor Feeney announced that she would debrief him about his criminal activities in front of the entire criminals and their methods class, which Amanda’s year was taking for the first time. Technically this public spectacle was not in violation of the agreement Thrillkill had made with Nick, but Amanda was still outraged. She felt that if the teachers were going to interrogate him, they should at least do it privately.

  Nick was tough, but because she knew him so well Amanda could see how painful the experience was for him. Feeney, who was looking gothier and scarier than usual, was relentless, examining and cross-examining him like a grand inquisitor.