"Hob," Mary whispered. "Help me."
There was a silence behind her. Not a normal night-silence, but a complete lack of sound, deep and dead and horrible.
"Hob!" The back of Mary's neck was growing cold, and the room was getting darker. The torch was dimming and she couldn't see the letters anymore.
Mary felt behind her and couldn't find the back wall. She reached for the floor, touched rough cold stone instead of carpet.
The torch went out.
She didn't know where to look. The darkness sucked her in.
"Mary?" Hob was calling, and she opened her eyes. The covers were wrapped around her knees, and it was daylight outside.
Hob looked at her from beside the window. "Why were you sleeping sitting up? It can't have been comfortable."
"Is there anything behind me?" Mary asked him. She rubbed at her eyes, which were bleary and sore.
"Nothing but the door and the wardrobe." Hob bucked his head and rustled his mane.
Mary yawned. She was still shaking, but the images were vanishing fast.
"Let's go and have some breakfast," said Hob. "That'll wake you up."
Dad had gone to work for the day, so there were only three of them at breakfast. Mum was reading a book, and turned the pages over while she ate.
Mary tried to tell Mum about the dream and the crack and the bruise on the side of her head, but none of the words came out right, and Mum just smiled at her and made unhelpful noises.
Mary gave up and left the table, dragging Hob with her. "I had a bad dream last night," she told him.
"And what happened in it?" There was concern in Hob's beady eyes.
Mary thought about stone, and the dark. "I think it was about the crack under the house."
Hob made a sound that was half-sigh, half-snort. "I imagine you'll want to go down and check."
"I think I should." Mary didn't feel as sure as she sounded. She took Hob to the basement door, ready to slam at the slightest sign of anything.
There were only the same old steps. Mary pressed the light switch, but nothing happened.
She flicked it on and off a few more times, and there was a faint ping from somewhere down in the darkness, but still no light. "The bulb must have gone." Hob tilted his head up at her. "It's probably safest to wait for your Father to fix it."
Mary shook her head. "You're acting all grown-up again." Her voice wobbled, and she hoped Hob didn't notice. "Wait here while I get the torch."
The stairs were full of shadows again. The torch light was brighter than in Mary's dream, and she felt a little better as they crept down.
When they reached the bottom and turned the corner, Mary tripped on something low and solid. She managed to catch herself on the wall, nearly dropping the torch, and looked down at the ground.
The slab of concrete that made up the bottom step was tilted, one side raised up. Mary stepped carefully over it.
The room was smaller.
Mary moved the torch around again. She couldn't see the crack at all, but what had happened to the shape of the basement? Where had the piles of furniture gone, and why was everything so cramped?
Her hand shook, the light and shadows shifted, and everything was suddenly clear. She could see the crack now, running along the base of the wall, the huge wall that was cutting across the middle of the room.
Mary couldn't breathe. She wrapped her arms around herself, sending the torch-beam sideways.
"Look there," said Hob.
Mary made herself point the torch forwards, and the wall seemed even taller, broken stone jammed against the ceiling. Angular letters were carved along the top, in a language she couldn't understand.
There was an archway in the centre of the wall. The top was jagged and uneven, and steps led beyond it.
Mary took a shaky step forward and pointed the light through the arch. The steps went down as far as she could see, into a darkness so thick it looked solid.
"Mary," Hob was saying. "Come away from that! Get back upstairs, get out!"
She staggered backwards, eyes on the wall. Once round the corner, she turned and ran full speed upstairs, slamming the basement door behind her.
Mum was still reading in the kitchen, but looked up when Mary ran in.
"What is it?" Mum used her finger to prop the book open.
Mary struggled for breath.
"The house is breaking, Mum. Walls are coming out of the ground!"
Mum shook her head, but marked her book and got up from the table.
"Your uncle told me about yesterday," she said. "Your Dad had a look last night, and he said it was just a crack in the concrete. Nothing to be worried about."
Mary stared frustrated. She hugged the torch and Hob close to her, feeling her chest pounding.
"Then can we go out? Please? I don't want to stay in the house."
Mum sighed and hesitated, then smiled. "Okay, Mary, how about going into town? We've got some shopping to do anyway."
Mary worried at first in town, wondering if there'd be anything left of the house when they got back. However, the sun was bright again, and there were so many things to look at that the basement soon seemed small and far away. Before long she was chattering away to Hob, pointing out things in shop windows.
Hob, however, stayed worried.
"We didn't imagine that," he muttered to Mary. "There's something sinister going on downstairs. Be very careful when we get back."
"I will be." For once, Mary agreed with him. When they got back, she jammed the doorstop in the bottom of the basement door while Hob looked on approvingly. Now nothing could possibly get out.
That evening, Mary found her old rabbit night-light and plugged it in. She put the torch on the bedside table, and her coat and shoes on the floor beside the bed, in case she had to escape in a hurry. She found the rusty nail from yesterday in her coat pocket, and put it down beside the torch.
After that, Mary climbed under the covers, telling Hob to call her if anything happened. She lay there for a long time, eyes and ears wide open, but grew so tired she couldn't stay awake any longer.
It was pitch-black when Mary opened her eyes. She opened and shut them a few more times, just to make sure she was awake, but nothing changed.
She didn't know what had woken her. The room was completely silent, and she couldn't hear Hob snoring, or the wind outside, or the bubbles and thuds of the pipes and boiler.
The night-light wasn't there. Mary tried not to panic, and fumbled for the torch. She slid the switch.
Nothing happened. No sound, no light. She could feel the weight of the torch in her hand, but it wasn't working.
Mary scrabbled around frantically and came across the nail. She pricked her finger on the point, but this didn't wake her up either.
"Hob?" she whispered, then tried again louder. "Hob!"
No answer came.
She could hear her own words at least, and that gave her something to hang onto. Mary felt around again. She found the bedclothes, tangled around her in frantic knots, and the mattress, and the sticky wood of the bedside table. She reached out further, and touched stone.
Cold stone on both sides and above her. She was trapped in a box of it, a tiny room.
Something broke inside Mary's head. She threw herself around, fighting against the bedclothes, scraping her knees and elbows on the walls. She struggled and thrashed until she was out of breath, until her eyes were sore from crying. The dark and the silence remained.
She clung to the torch and clicked the switch back and forth, and this time something happened. Light flashed for a split-second, then the torch pinged and died forever.
Mary made herself breathe slower. She'd seen something in that flash. There was nothing in front of her but slabs of stone, but behind her, out of the corner of her eye, she'd seen what looked like a hole. A way out.
Her elbow was bleeding, and the sting of it helped her to concentrate. Mary inched her way out of bed and onto the stone floor, staying on
her hands and knees. She crept forward, using her hands to feel her way, and told herself that she was still in her bedroom, and that the edges of this doorway led to the landing.
Mary kept telling herself things as she crawled along. This cold empty room was the landing, and to the left was her parents' room, and ahead of her here were the stairs down to the hall.
The stairs were as cold and hard as everything else, but they curved the way they ought to. Now, Mary told herself, this was the hall, and if she crawled right she would reach the basement door.
This door felt normal, wood against her fingertips. It was half-open, and the doorstop had disappeared.
Mary stood up and walked, certain where she was now, picking her way down the concrete steps. She hesitated at the bottom. It was still completely black, but Mary somehow knew the archway was in front of her, steps stretching into forever darkness.
She dropped back to her knees and forced herself forward, crawl by crawl, not knowing why, wanting to be anywhere else. Cement scraped painfully along her knees, and Mary gritted her teeth. She reached out, and there was nothing in front of her.
She felt to her sides and found rough stone, two lines of it running around and above her.
The edges of the archway.
Mary froze. The only thought in her head was Down, and she had the idea that if she moved she'd fall headlong.
"Mary!"
That was Hob's muffled voice, somewhere nearby.
"Mary!" he said again. "What are you doing? Get out! Run!"
Mary bit her lip and shook her head, even though he couldn't see her. Her fingers found the top of the steps, and against it, one edge of the crack in the floor, the crack that everything had come from.
The nail, Mary realised, was still in her hand. She made herself loosen her grip, and her hand stung and bled.
There above the stairs, on the edge of the crack and the darkness, Mary became aware of what she had to do.
She gripped the nail in her right hand, point-down, and felt for the crack with her left. Lining the two up in her head, she stabbed, twisting the nail into the floor.
The room screamed, a tearing grinding noise as if the world was falling around her. Mary screwed her eyes closed, holding down the nail with all the strength she had.
The scream faded to a whine, and then not even that. When Mary opened her eyes again, the lightbulb was on overhead, and the floor was smooth and unbroken. She opened her hand and the nail was still under it, embedded in the concrete.
Mary sat herself up from red sore knees and turned around. Hob was leaning against the wall. "How did you get there?"
"I walked," Hob said. Mary looked blankly at him, then managed a smile. "I didn't know you could."
"But never mind that," said Hob, "how did you get rid of it? What in the worlds did you do, Mary?"
Mary shuffled aside so he could see the nail sticking out of the floor, and tapped it with her finger.
"Metal beats stone, remember?"
She started to laugh.
Chapter Three
Mary was lying on her back and her chest had cramped up, felt like there was a bubble of air in it. She rolled onto her side and coughed until she could breathe.
Her arms and legs lay at odd angles, felt awkward. In her head she was still half-grown.
The window was open again, and sounds came in with the summer air - the shrill piping of birds and the distant grumble of the motorway. Mary listened until she came back to herself, to this day and this body.
She found Diana in the front room. Her mother was struggling heavy-eyed with a pile of papers and envelopes, and Mary wondered if she'd even been to bed.
"What are those?"
Diana looked up and wilted.
"Oh, these are the documents that came from the solicitors the other day. There's the death certificate, the faculty for the gravesite, that kind of thing."
"Is there anything else?" Mary could see more than two papers in the pile.
"Well, there are lots of bits and pieces." Diana shuffled the papers over each other. "This one's a certificate that said we were allowed to bury him. They call it 'disposal' - imagine!" She laughed, but it turned into a sigh.
"What about that?" Mary pointed to the bottom of the pile, where a corner of thick paper was sticking out. She could see a fragment of important-looking text.
Diana cleared her throat and started to hide the tell-tale corner. "That? That's -" she looked at the floor, then back to Mary - "that's the will. I didn't want to tell people until it's been properly dealt with."
"The will?" Mary tried to sound calm, but the word conjured images from the adventure stories she used to read growing up - hidden legacies, secret passages, wicked uncles.
Besides, why would her mother hide it?
She stared at Diana, and Diana kept talking.
"It's just... not that I want to keep it from you, Mary, of course I don't, but the rest of the family are going to be upset enough as it is, and I didn't want to make it any worse by telling you before them, don't you see?"
"Tell me what?" said Mary.
Her mother drummed her fingers on the pile of papers, then slowly extracted the will and handed it to Mary. "It's probably simplest if you read it."
The cream paper didn't want to stay folded, springing open in Mary's hands.There were elaborate titles at the top, and signatures at the bottom, but surprisingly little text between the two.
Mary skimmed the dry clauses, came to a stop at her own name. She read and re-read that sentence, word by careful word.
"To my daughter, Mary Spindle, I leave my property at Chambers on Nether Street in Barnet, and all that it contains."
"My property?"
Diana curled her mouth, trying to smile. She said nothing.
"A house." Mary understood, but putting words around it made it real. "He's leaving me a house."
Her mother nodded. "A house in London. I never knew he had it, but I suppose he must have been living somewhere."
"Oh."
The words 'a house' were bouncing around inside Mary's head.
"What else did he leave?" she asked, handing the will back to Diana.
Diana turned the papers over in her hands. "Not very much. The solicitors said he'd left a few items with them, and there's a bank account."
The other thing hung invisible between them, and they went quiet. Mary looked at the will, then her mother, then the window outside, then back to her mother's face again. She said the other thing.
"Mary Spindle. That's not my name."
Diana shrank into herself, nearly dropping the papers. Words came out as if they hurt.
"Well... you can't change a birth certificate, Mary, you see, and we've - we've never been abroad, have we?" She glanced hopefully at Mary, crumpling the will in her hands. "That means we never needed passports, and, and you can use any name you like if it's not for legal purposes –"
"So it is my name," Mary interrupted. "My legal, real name."
Her mother sat down. Papers fell from her hands and scattered. It was a sticky silence, and Mary couldn't bear it.
"I'm going out."
Diana didn't answer, but her gaze followed Mary to the door.
Mary tried to leave the name behind, but it followed her on the back of the wind, tugging at her hair and laughing in her ear. Spindlespindlespindle.
She stopped halfway down the lane, and breathed. Her name. Not her name. She'd been Martin as long as memory would take her, and the change was too vast to make any sense.
-spindlespindle-
She pulled out her pocket mirror, and a stranger looked back at her. Her fingers tightened. Mirror-edge bit and her hand turned red. She listened to the new girl's voice - I am not you, I am me.
-spindlespindlespindle.
The house, the name. Indoors they'd nearly crushed her. Out here -
- out here, under the blank-sheet sky, they shrank.
She was cold, standing. Rain-threat clammy on
her skin. New girl looked to old girl and their eyes met.
A house, and her name. Two scraps in her head.
Mary Martin put her mirror away.
Mary Spindle let her feet carry her downhill.
Lily and Dan were at the Green already, but this time Lily was absorbed in her own thoughts and twiddling her fingers. Mary crept up on them, wrapped her arms around Lily and said her name.
The other girl jumped and shrieked and squeezed Mary back when she realised. Dan's mouth was half-open, and Mary hugged him too before he could react. Quick, assertive. New Mary was both these things.
She pulled back and half-smiled. "Hey."
Lily flustered, hand up. "Mary." She hesitated, patted Mary on the arm. "Are you all right?"
"Hey. How'd it go? The funeral, I mean." Dan ignored the look Lily gave him.
Mary shrugged. "It was pretty dull - lots of words, not much happening. Did I miss anything yesterday?" The things in her head wanted to follow, and she shut her mouth on them.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Lily asked.
"Right now I'm fine," said Mary. "Tell me about something you did."
Silence. It was as if she could hear them thinking.
"Actually," Dan brightened up, "there is something. It's kind of big, I suppose."
"Dan's dropping out of school." Lily folded her arms. "Go on, tell her!"
"Hang on, that's not fair." Dan scratched his head, leaving a wisp of hair sticking out. "It's not really dropping out if you've got a reason, right?"
"Depends on the reason," Mary said, watching him carefully. "It's the band, isn't it?" He flickered with surprise, and new Mary was glad of it.
"Yeah. There's a bloke who said he might be interested, but we need a lot of practice first." Dan gave a half-grin, a flash of pure excitement.
"But you've only got a year left," said Lily. "You can practice afterwards."
"He'll have lost interest by then, though." Dan was growing more animated, the most excited Mary had ever seen him. "You can't put something like this on hold, you've got to grab it." He snatched at the air to demonstrate.
The Stickman's Legacy Page 4
