The Other Alice

by Michelle Harrison

  He was thin and tall, but stooped, with long hair that hung past his shoulders. He glared up at the attic window with one eye; the other was hidden beneath a ragged bandage wound round his head. Even though it was dim outside, I could see it was stained with a dark mark. A streak of blood? Something was thrown over his shoulder. A long, thin rope. A noose.

  Despite the suffocating heat, I shuddered and, at the jerking movement, he tilted his head sharply, bird-like. He whistled again, long and low, then slid further behind the hedge, out of sight.

  I dropped to the bed, heart thudding. There was something incredibly eerie about the man, like he had stepped right out of a horror movie. He didn’t belong on our nice, normal street.

  ‘You saw him, didn’t you?’ Alice whispered. ‘You saw him, too.’

  ‘Who is he?’ I kept my voice low, even lower than Alice’s. The night was so still that I imagined each word carrying down to the stranger in the shadows.

  Alice shrank back further into the corner. ‘The Hangman.’

  The words sent a horrified shiver down my spine. ‘The Hangman?’

  ‘No one knows his real name,’ Alice said hoarsely. ‘But he knows your worst secret. The thing you’re most ashamed of . . . the thing you would die before you let anyone find out. That’s how he does it. How he kills people.’

  ‘K-kills people?’ I stuttered. ‘Is that what the rope he’s carrying is for? He hangs you with it?’

  Alice shook her head, her eyes glassy. ‘By the time he’s through with you, you do it yourself.’

  ‘But why?’ I asked. ‘What would this person want with you, Alice? How does he even know you?’

  She gave a short laugh, more of a bark. ‘Because I made him up.’

  I stared at the film of sweat glistening above her eyebrows. She had to be in the grip of some kind of fever, although that still didn’t explain who the man outside was. ‘Alice,’ I said gently. ‘I think you need to—’

  She shoved the notebook at me, scrabbling through the pages. ‘You don’t believe me? Look. It’s here! It’s all here!’

  And it was. The word jumped out of the pages, over and over again; at first, neat and tidy, like a coiled rope, and then, later, pushed into the paper, breaking it like a neck as Alice’s writing changed, as the story went beyond her control.

  ‘The Hangman is a character from your story?’ I said incredulously.

  Alice nodded, her greasy hair veiling her face like a curtain. ‘He’s not the only one. There are others. I’ve seen them. They’re looking for me . . . looking for this!’ She brandished the notebook.

  ‘But . . . what do they want?’ I shook my head, bewildered. ‘They want to know how it ends?’

  ‘That’s just it,’ Alice whispered. ‘There is no ending! That’s why they’re here. Because I don’t know how to finish their story.’

  ‘So . . . they want to . . . ?’ I struggled to understand.

  ‘To take control of it. To make their own endings . . . unless I can figure it out first.’

  I blinked the memory away and found I was holding the notebook very tightly. A different notebook, a different story, but with one similarity: it was long, just like the story with the Hangman had been. I began leafing through it. Pages and pages of Alice’s writing. Months and months of work. This was not a collection of little stories like Alice usually wrote: it was one big story and the list at the front was a list of chapter titles.

  It was a novel. A proper, full-length book . . . although it wasn’t yet finished.

  Unexpectedly, a lump came into my throat. ‘I knew you could do it,’ I whispered proudly. ‘I knew you’d write one someday.’ I could almost see it now, a fat hardback with Alice’s name on the cover. I had no doubt that at some point she would get her stories published. That they would be in bookshops everywhere. That Alice would be famous and I’d be the luckiest brother anyone had, because I’d get to read all her stories first.

  I flicked to the start, past the character notes and a few pages in. There it was. Chapter One: The Storyteller.

  I began to read.

  Every day, hundreds of people sit down and begin to write a story. Some of these stories are published and translated, and sold in bookshops all over the world. Others never make it past the first chapter – or even the first sentence – before they are given up on. And some stories are muddled, and half-written, and struggled with until eventually the writer stuffs their creation under the bed or into a drawer. There it lies, forgotten for months or years . . . or perhaps for ever. Even if it could have been the most magical adventure that anyone would ever read.

  But what happens when stories with real magic, that were supposed to be finished, never are? What becomes of the story’s heroes . . . and its villains?

  And what would happen if they were disturbed from their dusty hiding places, woken from their slumbers? And collected and put on display for the world to see?

  This is the tale of a museum.

  The Museum of Unfinished Stories.

  I stopped reading, the warm feeling from moments before slipping away. The pancakes in my stomach suddenly felt stodgy and unwelcome and there was a bitter taste in my mouth that I knew wasn’t from the lemons I’d squeezed over them.

  My talented, brilliant sister, who was obsessive, almost scared, about leaving a story incomplete, was writing about unfinished stories. Now she was gone and somehow at least two of the characters from that story had been unleashed. They were here, in our world . . . but were they heroes or villains? What would they do to Alice, the creator of their story, if they found her? Could they have found her already?

  ‘Alice,’ I whispered to her empty room. ‘Where are you? What have you done?’

  5

  The Other Alice

  I LEFT ALICE’S ROOM AND dressed quickly, pulling on my smartest jeans and the least scuffed trainers I could find. I emptied my rucksack and placed Alice’s notebook and purse inside it and, after hesitating, a pair of Dad’s old glasses that had no lenses. I’d had them for years, and started out by wearing them when I was playing dressing-up games, like being a doctor, or a detective. I didn’t wear them now, but carrying them somehow made me feel smarter, like they were a good luck charm. Alice had always told me that if you looked clever, people would treat you as if you were clever, and that was what I needed to be now if I was going to find out what had happened to her.

  I went downstairs through the living room, where Mum was laughing at something on the television.

  ‘Mum, I’m going into town,’ I called, heading into the kitchen. ‘I need a few things for my Likeness.’ The room was still warm with the scent of sugar and lemon. I rooted around under the sink and found a pocket torch and stuck it in my rucksack, then unplugged Alice’s phone and put that in, too.

  ‘Shall I come with you?’ Mum answered, appearing in the doorway, still in her dressing gown, with a guilty look on her face.

  ‘No!’ I squeaked. The last thing I wanted was for Mum to tag along, not before I really knew what was going on anyway. ‘I mean, you stay here and relax. Catch up with your soaps. I won’t be long.’

  ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Mum asked. ‘We’ll all go again later for the Summoning.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ I said. ‘You should enjoy your day off.’

  Mum yawned, not noticing anything was amiss. ‘Well, don’t be long.’ She turned and shuffled back into the living room. ‘I’ll have a nice cup of tea in a minute, I think . . .’

  I mumbled a goodbye, then zipped past her into the hallway, snatching my keys from the hook and shrugging into my coat before stepping outside. It was a crisp, bright morning. My breath misted the air as I walked, trying to put my thoughts in order. At the moment, there was no evidence that Alice was definitely missing. All I knew was that she had left in a hurry, and that it must be linked to the story, which meant one of two things. Firstly, Alice could have gone somewhere to hide until she figured out what to do. She had vanished a few ti
mes in the past after arguing with Mum, sometimes for a few hours and once for an entire night.

  The other possibility was that one of the characters had caught up with her. I felt a nasty little twist somewhere deep inside and pushed this thought away. I had to stay calm and use my head. I had to treat this like it wasn’t Alice I was trying to find, like it wasn’t someone I cared about. Like I was a real detective.

  The first thing that a real detective would be thinking is that, when someone goes missing, the first two days of the investigation are the most important. This is because any clues are still fresh, witnesses can still remember things, and the missing person might still be close.

  Missing. The word made me feel a bit sick. Missing people belonged on the television or in newspapers. It couldn’t happen to someone like Alice. It couldn’t happen to a family like us.

  I reached the shop on the corner of our street and stopped outside. This was where I’d seen the girl, Gypsy. Finding her might also lead me to Alice, and I was hoping that she might have gone into the shop before I’d spotted her.

  A bell jangled above the door as I went in. Gino, the shopkeeper, was stacking tins on a shelf near the counter. He looked up and smiled. He was a large, red-faced, friendly man, though Mum said he was a gossip.

  I got a bottle of lemonade out of the chilled cabinet, then took it to the counter. A moment later, Gino got up, ringing up the drink on the till. A straw Likeness with black hair in a little bun and button eyes was propped next to the charity tin.

  ‘Who’s this?’ I asked.

  ‘Is my mama,’ Gino said, patting the doll with a beefy hand. ‘She die many years ago without sharing her best lasagne recipe.’ He rubbed his tummy wistfully. ‘I try to make myself, but is never the same. If she come tonight, I ask her secret! And who do you make?’

  ‘I haven’t decided yet,’ I said.

  Gino wagged his finger. ‘You’ll run out of time!’

  ‘I’ll get my sister to help me,’ I said, hoping the mention of Alice would jog his memory of the other girl. ‘She’s always got good ideas.’ I pointed to some jars behind the counter. ‘Can I have a pound’s worth of rhubarb and custards, too, please?’

  Gino beamed and weighed out the sweets, giving me an extra one ‘for luck’ as he always did. ‘Your sister, she is in here earlier,’ he said, his smile fading. ‘I ask her who she make for the Summoning, but she act like she don’t know what I’m a-talking about. Like she never hear of the Summoning before.’

  My heart quickened. The real Alice knew all about it, as did everyone else who lived in Fiddler’s Hollow. It had to be Gypsy.

  ‘Then she ask me directions,’ Gino continued. ‘Very strange.’

  ‘Directions to where?’

  ‘The library,’ said Gino. ‘So I tell her, then I ask if she is a-feeling all right.’ He scratched his beard. ‘She say yes and give me a funny look, and that she just got lost. And the strangest thing is, she don’t speak. She write everything in a notebook and show me.’ He shrugged. ‘And so I think to myself that maybe she is playing a trick on me. And I have a busy morning, so I forget about it until you come in.’

  I paid him and left, turning out of Cuckoo Lane. If I hurried to the library, perhaps I could find her. I headed for the town centre. Saturdays were always busy, but the weekend of the Summoning saw it packed out, the square near the town hall especially. The library was at the back of the town hall and, as I neared its huge doors, I slowed a little. They were shut and the board displaying the library’s opening hours confirmed it had closed fifteen minutes ago.

  I felt a little of the wind leave my sails. My first lead and I’d lost it! I shrugged the bag higher up my back. There were still other clues and my biggest one was the notebook. If there were anything else I needed to know about Gypsy, I’d find it there. Plus, I had another place in mind that I wanted to go – but there, instead of Gypsy, I would be looking for Alice.

  I cut through the centre of town to the church, taking the path that wove through the gravestones. At the back of the churchyard, there was an overgrown mass of trees and shrubs. I stopped, taking a quick look about to make sure no one was watching me, before pushing through a gap in the greenery. Twigs and leaves brushed against my cheeks as I crawled between them, the winter ground dampening my hands and knees.

  The Den was a short way in and a bit of a scramble through what appeared to be a dense thicket. Once you were through, though, there was a hollow space like a leafy cave beyond. It was completely hidden from view and, if you were quiet enough, no one would ever know you were there. Alice had shown me the spot a couple of years ago, but made me promise not to tell anyone.

  I came to a halt and spat out a leaf, searching the ground for any sign that someone had been here recently. Last year, Alice and Mum had argued and Alice had stormed out of the house. She hadn’t returned until the next afternoon and wouldn’t say where she’d been, but the next time I came to the Den I found Alice’s name traced over and over in the soil. Later, she told me she’d been there all night.

  Now, however, there was no sign of her at all. I reached into my bag and popped a rhubarb and custard into my mouth, then took out Alice’s phone and notebook. I tried the phone first – perhaps there was a message on there, or maybe a call from someone Alice had gone to meet? I was quickly disappointed, for the phone was locked with a password to stop anyone from looking at it. I put it back in the bag, frustrated, then opened the notebook.

  It was hard to see in the gloom, but I remembered the pocket torch and shone it at the paper. There were three pages of character notes on Gypsy, mixed in with doodles, diagrams and even little pictures of outfits that had been cut out of fashion magazines. At the top of the page, a word had been written in capital letters: CURSED.

  ‘Just like Alice,’ I whispered to myself.

  A flowery doodle had been drawn heavily round two words: Gypsy Spindle. I traced it with my finger, remembering the night Alice had first mentioned the curse. The day she’d come back after going to search for her father. She’d been looking at the book of fairy tales: Sleeping Beauty about to prick her finger on the spindle of the spinning wheel. About to fall under the spell. Alice had always liked using weird names, and Gypsy Spindle was straight out of a fairy tale. I read through the notes. Some of it was very familiar: her mother was a Romany traveller and her father had worked with a bookbinder. It sounded a lot like our mother, who had worked in a bookshop before going into publishing, and Alice’s father.

  I continued reading, discovering more. There were lots of notes about Gypsy’s favourite music and books. She had a tattoo of a scorpion on her neck, just below her ear. She had been betrayed by a boy she once loved. She had lived with her curse, which was Silence, for six years.

  ‘That’s why she didn’t speak to me,’ I murmured aloud. ‘She couldn’t.’ I reread the profile, lingering over the scorpion tattoo. It seemed such an odd choice for a young girl. Had Alice secretly got a tattoo? She couldn’t have – it would be too difficult to hide from Mum – and besides I was sure she would have told me if she had. The more I looked, the more convinced I became that Gypsy was a mixture of who Alice really was and who she wanted to be. Even the curse tied in with it all. She had never told me what her own curse was, but I knew it must be something to do with her father. It made sense that part of the story would be about Alice’s character finding a way to undo her own curse.

  I scanned the rest of the notes, and then I saw something that made my heart hammer: Lives on a narrowboat called Elsewhere. I snapped the notebook shut and put it back into the bag, squeezing out of the Den. If I hurried, perhaps I could still find Gypsy.

  The canal ran just on the edge of the town, behind the shops and alongside the train station. I left the churchyard and went along Buckle Lane. From there, it was a five-minute walk down a couple of side streets, then the canal was in front of me. Green, sludgy water glugged at its sides, moved only by a flock of swans. There were a couple of na
rrowboats moored further up. I headed for them, the air damp on my face.

  The two boats were on the other side of the canal just past a bridge. Was one of them Gypsy’s? I wasn’t close enough to see the names yet. I crossed the bridge, but hesitated as I drew nearer. What would I say to Gypsy if she were there? I had no idea how much Gypsy was aware of. I knew that she was a character from Alice’s story, but did she know that? I doubted it.

  Gypsy probably thought she was a real person. If she discovered she wasn’t, what would she be capable of? She’d be afraid, confused, unstable even. A shudder rippled over me. All those things could make her dangerous. One wrong word from me might blow it . . . and if there was a chance Gypsy could lead me to Alice then I couldn’t afford for that to happen.

  I took out the notebook again. Perhaps if I could skim some of the story and get more information it would help me know what to say to her. I looked past the notes on Gypsy and the cat. There were several other characters: a boy named Piper who was some sort of street performer, two other girls listed on the same page – Dorothy Grimes and Dolly Weaver – and another character called Sheridan Ramblebrook: the curator of the Museum of Unfinished Stories. I flicked past these. I could come back to them later. For now, I needed to get to the actual story itself . . .

  I never got the chance, though. I looked up as a moorhen started to squawk and saw that, on the bridge behind me, a familiar figure was crossing the water. I squinted, unsure for just a fraction of a second. Was it my sister?

  No. It was her. The other Alice. My heart raced again. She was coming towards me, heading for the boats. I watched as she came closer, seeing things I hadn’t noticed this morning. Unlike Alice, she walked tall, carrying herself with confidence. She was dressed differently to Alice, too. My sister lived in jeans and shapeless T-shirts, but this girl’s clothes were daring and colourful. Under her black leather jacket she wore a long, sea-green dress with a crimson sash tied at her waist. On her feet were scuffed boots that went right up to the knee. The sort of boots that looked as though they had walked many roads and had many adventures.