“Save who?” I looked up at Ariadne and Nadia desperately.
“They grabbed your friend Rose,” Nadia said. “And then she screamed and ran away.”
Rose had made that sound? I could barely believe it. “What did they do to her?”
“They hurt her and tried to take her necklace,” Ariadne said, her voice shaking.
Suddenly, all the fear and panic that had been building inside me turned into something else. It was like a burning sensation, starting from my heart and spreading through my skin.
The old Ivy would have run, or cried, or hidden. But I wasn’t that person any more. I had become something so much greater than that. Instead of turning my anger inwards, I channelled it, and used it.
As Ariadne helped Scarlet up, I marched over to the rock, and climbed up on to the lower part of it, beside the group of girls yelling at each other about Rose.
“What was that scream?”
“Did she do that? Make the lightning happen?”
“We should go after her!”
“ALL OF YOU, SHUT UP RIGHT NOW AND LISTEN!”
The rabble descended into stunned silence, until there was nothing but the wind and the rain and the horses’ snorting breaths and stamping hooves.
“You’re all despicable!” I yelled. “You’ve bullied a frightened girl and chased her off into a storm! And hurt my sister for trying to defend her! All while our headmistress is injured and needs our help!”
“But—” Cassandra started.
I pointed at her. “I don’t want to hear one word from you, Cassandra! All of you should be ashamed of your-selves. We need to help Mrs Knight and find Rose and get inside!”
I didn’t know how we were going to find Rose, or where she might have gone, but at least she wasn’t injured. I jumped down off the rock and was amazed to see everyone running over to Mrs Knight. What I’d said had worked!
I bent forward, catching my breath. “That … was amazing …” Scarlet said.
“No time for that,” I said. “We’re in danger out here. You saw the lightning! And not just that, whatever scared the horses …”
“You’re right,” said Ariadne.
Helping Scarlet, we hurried back over to Mrs Knight. Mrs Hunt was helping her up. “I’m certain her arm’s broken, girls. We need to get back.”
“Are you all right, Miss?” Elsie asked, her simpering tone returning.
“Oh, so now she cares?” Scarlet muttered.
“I’m … fine …” Mrs Knight managed, but her face said otherwise. “Is … everyone … here?”
A few more girls appeared through the trees on horseback, but I wasn’t sure if everyone had returned yet.
Mrs Hunt decided to take charge. “If you can get on your horse, do it. If you can’t, lead them back. Someone take Mrs Knight’s horse, please. We’ll just have to hope that everyone has the sense to go towards the hotel. We need to move quickly now.”
The rain pounded on my helmet. I was soaked through and shivering, the warmth of my anger starting to wear off. It seemed like the clouds were endless, pouring their contents into the valley.
“But Rose …” I started to say.
Another flash lit up the sky, and we heard the unmistakable crack of a splitting tree trunk.
There was no time. We had to get to safety.
I’d managed to climb back on to Whisper with help from Ariadne, and Scarlet got on behind me. Ariadne raced along beside us, leading Shadow by the reins. All of us sped through the driving rain, the horses’ hooves clicking on the road. I was clinging on desperately, not wanting to go fast, but wanting even less to be out in the storm. Scarlet was clinging on even more desperately to me.
The horses seemed to know where they were going, sensing the way out of danger. I was terrified that they would slip on the wet hill, but Whisper managed to keep her footing as she followed the others. Mrs Knight was on the back of Mrs Hunt’s horse, holding tightly, her other arm still clutched to her chest.
Soon the hotel was in sight, but I couldn’t breathe a sigh of relief just yet. There was another roar of thunder and flash of lightning, merely moments apart. Some of the horses broke away, but everyone managed to rein them back in again.
Rose is still out there, I reminded myself. I just prayed that she would hide somewhere safe and then find her way back to the hotel.
Finally, we came up on to the driveway, the gravel spraying from beneath the horses’ hooves. I saw the stable girls anxiously waiting for us beneath the eaves of the stables.
“Girls!” Mrs Hunt cried out. “We need help! See if you can find a doctor! Help these girls off and get the horses safely away!”
There was a flurry of nods and “Yes, Miss”es, and the girls got to work. One of the Emmas ran for the hotel.
I managed to pull Whisper to a halt, but as Scarlet and I ungracefully dismounted, the horse headed straight for an open stall to get in the warm and dry. I didn’t blame her one bit.
Miss Bowler came charging out of the hotel like a cannonball. “GIRLS!” she boomed. “WHAT’S GOING ON?”
She caught sight of Mrs Hunt helping Mrs Knight off the horse, and thudded over. Soon she was helping Mrs Knight shuffle inside. I gulped at the sight of the headmistress’s arm. It really didn’t look good.
“Do you think Rose will come back?” Ariadne said as we hurried for cover.
“She will,” Scarlet said. Always the confident one.
But as another lightning strike washed the sky, I began to feel more and more afraid.
Warmth. That was the first thing I felt as we all huddled inside the hotel reception area. It was warm and dry, a fire roaring in the hearth. We all collapsed in a heap, drenched and dripping.
“What is the meaning of this?” I heard Mr Rudge demand. He marched out of the door to the office. “You can’t just come in here all—”
“We will come in here however we like, my good man!” Miss Bowler boomed. “We have an injury here!”
Mr Rudge looked like he was about to argue, but then his wife appeared, accompanied by the man with the monocle and the walrus moustache. “This is Dr Davies,” she said. “He’s retired, but he can take a look at you.”
Mrs Knight smiled, weakly but gratefully, as the doctor took her away, Miss Bowler and Mrs Hunt trailing behind them.
As we sat, leaning against each other, feeling exhausted, I saw Phyllis walking in. She was wearing a fetching green raincoat. “Oh goodness, girls!” she said to the whole group of us. “Caught in the storm?”
Everyone nodded. The rain was battering the windows of the hotel now. I didn’t think I’d ever felt so relieved to be inside.
“At least we’re going home tomorrow,” said Nadia wearily.
“What?” said Phyllis. Her face slipped into a frown. “You are?”
She seemed disappointed, but I had no idea why. Did she enjoy our company so much?
“I just … I’d hoped I’d have more time to get to know you all!” she said. “And to teach you some more orienteering. I don’t get students often.” She smiled sadly. “Well … it was nice to meet you.”
She turned as if she were about to leave, but walked into Miss Bowler coming back into the reception area.
Miss Bowler started counting everyone. “Are we all here?”
I stood up. “No, Miss. People were picking on Rose and she ran off …”
Miss Bowler froze in her counting. She looked like she was about to explode. “WHAT? SHE’S STILL OUT THERE?”
Phyllis stopped in her tracks and turned, looking worried.
Scarlet and Ariadne scrambled up beside me as well. “We’ll go and look for her, Miss!” Scarlet said.
“No, you will not!” said Miss Bowler. She grabbed a hooded raincoat similar to Phyllis’s from a hook on the wall. “Right, I need to go out there …” She looked through the window just as another flash of lightning tore across the sky. I gasped and Ariadne flinched.
“I’ll help you search for her!” Ph
yllis said. “If we split up we can cover more ground. I’m sure I can track her down.”
“Right, right,” Miss Bowler muttered. “Let’s go. No time to waste!”
And then they were both out of the door of the Shady Pines Hotel, and into the oncoming storm.
“I hope they find her,” Ariadne whispered. There was a tear rolling down her cheek.
“They will,” Scarlet said decisively.
I didn’t feel so certain. In fact, deep down, I was very afraid.
Chapter Twenty-eight
SCARLET
may have seemed confident on the surface, but beneath I was starting to panic. I tried not to, but every time I looked out of the window I saw Rose drowning or trapped under a rock or struck by lightning, and my heart started pounding in my chest.
She’ll be fine, I kept telling myself. Miss Bowler and Phyllis will find her. I said it to the others too. I hoped if I could convince them that I could convince myself.
We couldn’t stay in our drenched clothes, so we went up to our room and got changed. Ariadne fretted about her camera being wet, but she’d had it underneath her jumper and she didn’t think the water had got into the mechanism.
I decided that the best thing we could do was to light a fire, so I went and found some logs from one of the fireplaces downstairs. I wasn’t sure if that was stealing or not, but since nobody was using them at the time, it seemed a good idea. It was mad how quickly the weather had turned. The sky outside was as dark as night-time.
Ivy and Ariadne were sitting shivering in our room when I returned with an armful of logs. I set them down on the carpet.
“Where did you get those?” Ivy asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” I replied. I got down on my knees beside the draughty fireplace. It was a little dusty, and didn’t look as if it had been used recently.
I stuck my head in to peer up the chimney and check it was clear, but I lost my balance and fell forward …
Through the fireplace.
I sat up. I’d fallen past the grate, and through the board at the back of the fireplace that had looked as though it was solid.
“Scarlet!?”
“Scarlet, what happened?”
That was a good question. I looked around. “I seem to be in the fireplace,” I said.
Ivy’s concerned face appeared in front of me. “Are you hurt?”
I peered out at her. “No, but … what is this?”
I seemed to be in some sort of crawl space, sitting on the board. It was dark, and chilly, and smelt of soot. The walls were rough stone under my hands. But it was quite big – I could move my arms, and there was space above my head.
“Can you see anything?” Ivy asked.
“Not really – hand me a candle?” I stuck my arm back out.
She lit one and gave it to me, and pulling it back in, I used it to illuminate the small space in both directions.
“I think it’s a secret passageway!” I hissed out at them.
“What?” I heard Ariadne say. “Really?”
But now I was entranced. This had to mean something. Holding the candle out in front of me, I crept forward through the dust. I could feel the draught now, and I swore I could feel a few spots of rain dripping down on me. As I looked up, I could see that the chimney rose above my head, with a cap on the top to keep most of the rain and the birds out.
I crept a little further, hearing Ivy calling behind me, but her voice faded away into nothingness. I felt like something was drawing me on. I just kept going forward, and soon I noticed another board like the one I had just fallen through. That would be the fireplace of the next room, I guessed. I put my hand on it and felt it wobble slightly. If I’d pushed it or moved it aside, I could’ve got into the room easily.
A realisation began to dawn on me. Whoever had been trashing the rooms, stealing things, writing words on the walls … they could have easily got around unseen this way. But did that mean it was someone from inside the hotel, or was there another route into this passageway?
I kept going, past more fireplaces, trying not to breathe in too much dust. And then, eventually, I came to the very end. I held the candle up and I saw … a ladder. It went upwards into the darkness.
To the roof, I thought. That had to be it. If there was a ladder on the outside of the hotel as well, then someone could easily get up there and then climb back down. Or perhaps somewhere else there was a passage that led down to the basement … There were any number of ways someone could sneak in and ‘haunt’ the place.
I had to turn back. I squeezed myself into the end of the passage so I could twist round and crawl back to where I’d come from. I emerged from the fireplace, coughing, and handed the candle to Ivy, who was waiting anxiously.
“Where did you go?” she said.
I pointed as I tried to brush some of the soot off my clean dress. “I crawled along it. It goes to the other rooms, and there’s a ladder to the roof. I think we’ve found how our ghost is getting in here.”
“So it wasn’t Rose,” Ariadne said. “It was never Rose.” She sat on the bed, and I wondered from the look on her face if she felt guilty. I think she’d had her doubts as well.
I felt the fire swell inside me. None of this was Rose’s fault, and now she was in danger. And we were supposed to just sit here and not help? This wasn’t right.
“We have to do something,” I said. “We have to find Rose, and we have to work out who’s doing all of this. What if they get to Rose before we do?”
“Miss Bowler and Phyllis might come back with her, mightn’t they?” Ariadne said, her face contorted with worry. She fiddled with the controls on her camera nervously.
“They might,” Ivy agreed. “We should wait for them to come back, at least.”
I stood up and slammed my fist into the fireplace. “We can’t just do nothing! There must be something!”
Ariadne suddenly looked up. “My camera …” she said.
“What about your camera?” I snapped. It was wrong of me, I know, but I was so frustrated. I felt like a coiled spring, and I was fed up with her obsession.
She didn’t seem to notice how sharp I’d been. “I’ve taken lots of pictures,” she said. “Around the hotel and the lake. Perhaps we should take a closer look? We might be able to see something that could help us …”
“I don’t see what good it will do,” I muttered. I longed to run, to do something.
“Scarlet,” Ivy chastised. “Ariadne’s right. We should look. We don’t have anything else to go on.”
Hurriedly, Ariadne pulled out the little stack of photographs that she’d developed. She even retrieved a magnifying glass from her convoy of suitcases. Then she spread the pictures out all over the bed, and I watched as she and Ivy pored over them. I stood, arms folded, the anger still burning on my skin.
“Hmm,” I heard Ariadne say. She started picking up some of her photos of the lake, and putting them in a line. “Look at these,” she said suddenly.
That pricked up my interest. Had she really found something? I leant closer.
“There’s someone crossing the lake,” she said, the familiar excitement back on her face. “Look, in the distance! Heading for the tower!”
I grabbed the magnifying glass off her and peered closer. She was right! There was someone there, and not in one of the hotel’s rowing boats either. It looked like some sort of canoe.
Ivy leant in and had a look too. “It’s a man, I think,” she said. “He’s got a man’s hat on.”
“I’ve not seen any of the men in the hotel wearing a hat like that,” I mused.
“It could be someone who lives nearby, couldn’t it?” Ariadne asked. “Going fishing or something?”
I held the magnifying glass over it again. “There’s no equipment or anything in the boat that I can see. And he’s definitely heading right for the tower.”
Ivy picked up another photograph from the bed. “I thought I could see something in this one too. I think there’
s a man there.” It was a photograph of all of us, standing around by the woods, and someone appeared to be watching us from the bushes. Just a tall shadow, and a glint of glass. I shuddered at the thought of it. It gave me the creeps.
“I bet it’s the same person.” I frowned at the picture. “Some freak who lives nearby and wants to spy on the guests.”
“We don’t know anyone from outside the hotel, though,” Ivy began. “Except …”
We all said it at the same time: “Bob Owens!”
Chapter Twenty-nine
IVY
h my goodness,” Ariadne said, backing against the bed. “That could be it! He was the one who told us the story about the village and the restless spirits. And I think he had a hat in his bag when we first met him.”
She was right! I remembered seeing it fall on the ground.
“And he didn’t seem to like the hotel very much, did he?” Scarlet pointed out. The idea had gripped her now, I could tell, and she was going to run with it. “Let’s say it was him. He wants to scare people away from the hotel. So he tells everyone this ghost story and makes scary things happen. He could be behind everything!”
“But why?” I asked. I felt a little lightheaded. “Why do it? Whoever it is seems to be targeting us.”
“Perhaps he’s just angry,” Ariadne suggested, putting down her magnifying glass. “Perhaps he was around when the village was destroyed. The way he talked about it … it was like he really loved the place. That could be enough to drive someone to revenge.”
I remembered what Emma from the stables had said. “It wasn’t that long ago, apparently. He’s definitely old enough to have been there.”
Scarlet snapped her fingers. “And we know how he could get into the hotel at night – the secret passageway.”
“But how did he get hold of the relics from the church?” I asked. “I can’t imagine he stole them and kept them this whole time. They really looked like they’d come from the bottom of the lake …”
Scarlet wrinkled her nose, annoyed that I found a flaw in her theory. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But if it is him, we need to find out, and we need to stop him before someone gets seriously hurt. What if it was him that scared the horses earlier?”
The Lights Under the Lake Page 15
