The gym door opened again, although this time with an almost supernatural hush. A grey figure crept in, and while I was sure it was Bea, her head was completely covered in a black veil. She let out an unearthly howl that sent me shivering until I pulled Lea’s scarf one more time around my head and covered my ears. As the banshee screeched, the dancers pulled away from each other until they’d cleared a spot in the middle of the gym. Bea moved slowly to that spot – her long grey cloak dragging on the ground as if she was floating.
The dancers spun around her as they continued their frenzy. I rubbed my eyes as I saw a white glow flow from Bea’s outstretched arms.
“Jasper, it’s time!” I shouted.
But Jasper had disappeared.
CHAPTER 22 - Dance of the Dead
BLOOD LEAKED FROM Clive’s fingers as he frantically strummed his guitar strings. His eyes widened with horror as the dancing madness spun out of control. “Oh crap.”
Clive took the words out of my mouth. What was I going to do? I’d searched in desperation for Jasper, but he wasn’t here. The banshee stood in the center of the gym cackling wildly as she sucked the life from the dancers, and the dark moon rose in the night sky. All I had to stop Bea was wolfsbane and rue, and I wasn’t even sure how I was supposed to use it – walk up to Bea and throw the stuff in her face?
Her horrible screeching broke into cruel laughter, and I realized I had to act fast. I grabbed my backpack, pulled out the baggie, and dumped its contents of wolfsbane and rue into my hand – and then yelped and dropped the herbs. I forgot wolfsbane was poisonous, and the flowers and roots burned my palm. Then I grabbed the baggie and wore it like a glove as I scooped the crushed plants from the gym floor.
Moving toward the shrieking banshee took forever as I pushed through the dancing dervishes. Bea saw me coming, but she only cackled.
“I see a cat was in my garden.” Her hand moved to lift the black net that hid her face. “Would you like to see under my veil? Will curiosity kill you, Cat?”
Dread spiked my heart. I got ready to throw the herbs just as Bea lifted her veil off her face. Then I froze.
Her face morphed into the image of a girl around my age, and in that fleeting second I knew it was the girl I’d seen in the newspaper article that had wrapped the foil hearts. It was Lucinda’s friend Ann, the girl who had lured Gordie away and killed him. Then the face morphed into the one I’d come to know as Lea’s aunt, and then, as if a wax mask sat on the stove, it melted into a pool of horror. Worse, her eyes were slashes of red light that glowed like a menacing jack-o’-lantern.
I couldn’t force my own eyes off her – and I couldn’t move.
Bea cackled, and its harsh cruel tone rattled against my eardrums as I stood unable to move. “It will take more than a few plants to stop me,” she shrieked.
“Fortunately, we have more than a few herbs,” a familiar voice said quietly. Alice and Sookie rushed toward me carrying the mortar and pestle that held smoking wolfsbane.
Of course there was no way my little sister would miss this calamity.
Sookie came beside me and stood on her tiptoes as she whispered, “Sorry, Cat. I forgot that burning the wolfsbane is what stops the banshee.” A waft of the sharp, pungent smoke drifted toward Bea and she screamed before sinking to her knees.
Alice began circling behind the banshee and used a plant mister to spray salt water on Bea.
Sookie waved the smoke from the incense toward her, asking, “Should I use a bit more wolfsbane?”
The banshee’s face melted into the young girl’s image of Ann again before Bea shoved the veil back over her face and screeched.
But everyone still danced in a tortured fury.
Alice said, “This is only slowing her down.”
Iciness flooded through my veins. The dancers would keep dancing until they died and Bea could then claim their souls for her own and regain her youth. I only had until the dark moon rose – after that, it would be too late. I wanted to slump to the ground until I woke up from this nightmare. Then a small voice inside me said, “You can’t give up, Cat – you can’t.”
“More wolfsbane!” I shouted and threw my crushed blue flowers into Sookie’s smoking mortar bowl. We waved the thick smoke right under Bea’s nose. The banshee wailed and shrieked, making our skin crawl, and I had to fight the overwhelming urge to run and hide.
The dancers’ faces were carved in agony. Mr. Keating was gasping for breath and clutching his heart all the while spinning Esmeralda as if she was an Olympic figure skater. Mr. Morrows’s knees crumpled, but Ms. Dreeble dragged him along, sweeping the dance floor with her exhausted dance partner. Zach linked arms with two girls who had linked arms with three other girls, creating a deadly chain that whipped around the gym. Mitch kept tossing a frantic Mia up in the air and catching her like she was a football.
“Stop us, please,” Amarjeet gasped as she and Rabinder jumped up and down in a punishing pace.
Several dancing couples slumped to the floor, and I watched in horror as they pulled themselves up again like marionettes on strings and stumbled into a tortured and tangled dance. I threw whole buds of wolfsbane at Bea and she hissed like a cornered leopard. Then Bea let out an eerie, ear-shattering wail, but all the dancers kept dancing.
How could I have ever thought that creature was cool? I’d even wished my own mother was more like her. Then it hit me, a moment that seemed so long ago when we’d all been having fun hanging out together and digging Bea’s garden.
“I have a special job for you,” Bea had said, and she handed Skeeter a drum.
I ran for the stage. As if the drum sensed my intentions, the beat reached inside me and thrummed through my blood. Don’t think, my brain commanded. Just dance – and I began swaying to the beat.
Promise you’ll wear my scarf, Lea’s voice whispered again, and I wound the length of scarf thickly around my ears. The scarf muffled the pounding in my head, and I ploughed across the stage like I was wading through mud. When I reached Skeeter, I grabbed his drum and pulled against it with my weight until I yanked it out of his hands. His drum beat was spurring on the dancers – the drum Bea had given him was part of the spell. I threw it to the floor and used both feet to stomp on the drum, puncturing the skin and breaking it to pieces.
Everyone in the gym collapsed, including the musicians. Silence gushed like a soothing salve until the gym door burst open in a gust of wind, and Sookie uttered a small cry. I saw the tail end of a black veil fly out of the gym as if the wind had scooped it up and tossed it outside. I jumped off the stage and joined my sister and Alice on the dance floor.
“Bea has escaped.” Alice’s voice sounded exhausted, and she looked so frail I wondered how the wind hadn’t knocked her down.
At first I didn’t understand why there was a slow desperation rising inside me, except that I knew Bea would be a hungry creature on the hunt. That should have been frightening enough … except there was a tiny thought trying to work its way through my panicked mind.
Then Sookie said in a puzzled voice, “Where is Jasper?”
Jasper was somewhere out there – possibly right in Bea’s path.
“I think he might have gone to save Lea,” I said in a worried voice.
“Lea?” asked Alice. “Who is that?”
“Bea’s niece – we were worried what would happen to her if we tried stopping her aunt.”
A tremor crept into Alice’s voice when she said, “When Lucinda and I did our banshee research we discovered Beann shee has a sister. Her name is Leanne shee – the dreaded sweetheart fairy. She always wears green, and Cat …
But I’d stopped listening because I now realized that Jasper had held that part back, the part about Lea and her name. Why? Did he not believe Lea could be evil either? Or was he trying to spare me? But I heard the last part of Alice’s words.
“She lures poetic young men to their deaths.”
CHAPTER 23 - A Deadly Sweetheart
MY STOMACH LU
RCHED and for a minute I was sure I would be sick. My friend couldn’t be that wicked, even if she was a fairy. I didn’t believe Lea would harm anyone, but could she stop herself if her aunt forced her to do a terrible thing? I shook my head in confusion. “No – Lea’s kind. I think she tried to help me against her aunt,” I said stubbornly
“A dog can be a gentle companion, but it can also be a cold-blooded killer to rabbits,” said Alice. “Lea’s a fairy; she isn’t human. And like an animal, she must obey her nature.”
“Everyone has a choice,” I said. “Even a dog …” Doesn’t it?
“Don’t you see?” urged Alice. Under the glow of the lanterns she looked almost ghostly. “This is how Lucinda lost Gordie. He was a dreamer and a poet, and Ann lured him to his doom when she swept in after Lucinda had turned Gordie down. Now the grown-up Bea has tricked us. She was probably using this deadly dance not only to feed herself, but to divert us while Lea leads a boy to his doom.”
I was about to say this was different, that Lea hadn’t taken Clive away from me, but the words died on my lips.
All along I had thought there was a connection between the two dances, and that a boy might die like Gordie did seventy years ago. I thought the spurned boy who was in danger was Clive, but Mia had also rejected a boy – the most poetic boy I knew.
“Oh no,” I cried becoming convinced that my friend might not only cross paths with the deadly banshee, but that he was falling directly into her trap. He must have suspected that Lea was a sweetheart fairy, but he went off to find her anyway. Why would he do that? Because she understood his pain, a small voice whispered inside my head … when you paid no attention.
“We’ve got to find Jasper.” I couldn’t stop shaking as we headed for Alice’s car, even when Sookie and I slid into the backseat.
“Where do you think Jasper and Lea are?” Alice sounded almost frantic as a cold urgency shrouded us.
“There’s one place a fairy would be,” Sookie said quietly, her face crumpled with worry.
No one had to say Grim Hill. We just knew.
Alice stayed close to the speed limit, but our town was small and in no time we pulled up behind the cemetery next to Lea’s place at the foot of the hill.
“I want to come,” said Sookie while I climbed out of the car.
“But I’ll need your help if Jasper or Lea return to the house,” said Alice. Sookie folded her arms across her chest and scowled, but she stayed with Alice.
I crossed through the graveyard, picking my way through the gravestones and crumbling statues, and even when I felt a tug on my dress and the sound of a tear, I didn’t jump or shriek. I simply stopped and pulled my dress out of a tangle of brambles. I wasn’t frightened of this place anymore. There were far worse things to fear than ghosts. When I made it to the trees, I remembered what Alice had said in the car.
“The sweetheart fairy is a lonely creature who is burdened with a terrible sadness.”
I was forced to admit that sounded like Lea. Despite what Alice had told me, I truly believed Lea was sad because she didn’t want to be wicked – and because she cared about our friendship. I heard a rustling and crept closer, hunkering down behind a bush and spying through a small gap in the leaves. I saw Jasper’s back and Lea facing him with her arm outstretched. I dived through the bushes and jumped into the clearing.
“Jasper, come back to the dance with me,” I said, trying to sound calm and not alarm either of them, even though my heart now pounded in my throat.
Jasper reached for Lea’s hand, but he hesitated as I placed my hand on his shoulder. Then he shook me off.
“Lea needs me.”
Lea said nothing but held her arm out to take Jasper’s hand. Her eyes were bloodshot from crying.
“Let Jasper go,” I begged her.
Lea said nothing as tears streamed down her face. Jasper stepped toward her and their fingers brushed. “Sorry, Cat,” his voice strained.
“Please, Lea,” I begged.
Lea kept weeping as she tried moving her mouth, and that’s when I knew she was being forced to obey her aunt. Lea wanted to be good – and to prove me right, Lea lifted her arm as if she was lifting a heavy anchor. With great effort, she pointed to a book that bulged in Jasper’s back pocket.
Speaking to Jasper, I said, “Lea’s given you a way out.” My thoughts raced. “She’s a fairy and she’s given us both fairy objects to resist the banshee’s spell.”
I unwound my scarf and dangled it in front of Jasper’s eyes. “Jasper, Lea has given you a gift, a greater gift than you know. But you have to choose to use it.”
As if in a dream, Jasper slowly reached into his back pocket and pulled out the poetry book Lea had given him.
“See?” I said. “Lea gave you poetry, and me a scarf. In her own way, she is trying to help us.”
Lea chocked back a muffled sob and nodded.
“Fairy objects help us resist their glamour and break free of fairy spells. Lea’s been trying to save us from her aunt and …” my voice caught, “and … trying to save us from herself.”
Jasper clutched the book to his chest, and as if an invisible rope had been cut, he managed to stumble back from Lea.
Lea dropped her arm and lifted her green cloak to reveal the soccer shirt I’d given her. Then she shook herself and coughed before saying in a breathless, whispery voice, “You have been such a good friend, Cat, but now that I’m free, I have to leave.” Then her voice lowered with despair, “I’m sorry to have caused you all this trouble, though I promise you, I will cause no one harm. Except there is one thing I cannot do – and that is stop my aunt.”
Then Lea turned and began walking away. “But the dark moon is almost set in the night sky. If you can defeat the banshee soon, she will be forced to slink into some filthy hole and burrow her way back to Fairy, and she will not be able to return.”
Defeat the banshee? All I wanted to do was run as fast as I could with Jasper and get back to the gym. Maybe we could get reinforcements.
Before Lea disappeared into the trees, she turned one more time and mouthed the word, “friend.” Hanging my head, I almost turned away myself, except a flash of silver on the ground that shone in the dim shadows of the dark moon caught my eye. I spotted a mirror where Lea had been standing, and somehow I didn’t think Lea had dropped that mirror by accident. I walked over and picked it up noting how the mirror was silver and carved with peculiar-looking plants and strange creatures. As I tucked the mirror into the belt of my dress, the hair on the back of my neck rose just before an eerie wail cut through the trees.
“Jasper, I think we’d better …”
I turned to see the legs and feet of my friend being dragged behind the bushes and into a dark copse of trees as his poetry book lay in the dirt. I began running.
I ripped through the bushes as branches jabbed my legs and arms and shredded more of my dress. Between the trees, the banshee had wrapped her arms around Jasper and pulled him against her in a crushing grasp as another horrible, hungry wail escaped her ancient melting face.
My heart raced as I remembered Jasper saying, “Do you think someone is going to die?”
I knew the red glow of the banshee’s eyes radiated a power that could freeze my heart and stop me in my tracks, so I averted my face as I ran up and tugged Jasper away. She shrieked; one of her arms shot out, and her clawed hand dug into my wrist. Something hideous tugged inside me as my soul was wrenched from my body, and I wondered if the person who was going to die might now be me.
Jasper scrambled to my side. He’d managed to break from her deathly embrace, and I heard him gasping for air as he tried to pull me. My whole arm ached from the cold as if I’d plunged it into a tub of ice, but I couldn’t break away.
“C’mon, Cat.” Jasper threw his weight back and tugged me harder, but the banshee spit and hissed and quickly clamped her other claw around my throat.
Iciness crept up my neck and into my jaw, and my teeth clacked together like a wi
nd-up chattering skull. Soon my brain would freeze, and I wouldn’t be able to even think.
“Don’t give in.”
I wasn’t sure if that was Jasper or my own mind trying to rally me. But now my eyes ached from the cold and I wanted to just shut down … when I suddenly wondered … was there a way to freeze her like she’d first stopped me back in the gym?
An agonizing ache ratcheted up my arm, but I gritted my teeth and kept moving until I pulled the mirror from my belt and shoved it in front of the banshee, reflecting her own nasty eyes back to her.
Blood-red light shot out from the mirror as a piercing scream shattered the night, and Bea released me from her gasp. I stumbled back as Bea stood frozen to the ground.
“Keep the mirror in front of her,” Jasper gasped as he forced air back into his lungs. “I have an idea.”
As the dark moon set in the sky, Jasper gathered leaves and dried branches and made two piles, one on each side of the banshee. Suddenly I realized Jasper was using the tools of the ancient Celts. During Imbolic, to protect themselves, the Celts would build two bonfires and pass between them to invoke good luck and to leave ill fortune behind. A banshee was about as bad as fortune could get, I thought.
“Since the winter solstice, I always keep matches on me,” said Jasper. We had both learned back then that Celtic people battled fairies with light and fire.
“Throw some holly on the fire as well.” We’d also learned that certain plants, like holly, had strong fairy protection.
“I’m way ahead of you,” said Jasper. Finally I could smell the pungent, reassuring scent of wood smoke and burning leaves. Then Jasper grabbed my free hand. “Let’s pass between the fires.”
The flames greedily licked the leaves and branches as I pulled away the mirror and ran past the banshee where I felt the fire’s welcome heat on my frozen skin. Once we’d passed between the two bonfires, we turned and watched in horror as the banshee shrieked and wailed while she slumped to the ground and began digging through the dirt at an amazing speed until she crawled into a hole in the ground. Once she disappeared, Jasper and I pushed and shoved dirt and moss and everything we could get our hands on into the hole.
Grim Hill: The Forgotten Secret (Grim Hill Series) Page 13
