When she’d gone I crawled out again and caught a flicker in the eyes of a nearby painting. “Did you see that?” I muttered. “I think the painting in here is watching us too.”
Aiden jerked his head to the right. I went the other way and we tried to sneak up on the painting from opposite directions. The weird eyes belonged to a little painted girl with an umbrella. As I got close, the eyes moved and I heard a sudden click. “That was creepy. It did that before.”
“It’s like a different set of eyes snapped into place.” Aiden peered at the canvas and started knocking on the wall beside it. “Hear that? The walls are hollow.”
“You’re kidding me!” My stomach turned over.
Aiden moved along, still tapping the wall. “There could be a room behind here – maybe even a passageway.”
“Then there’ll be a way in somewhere.” I ran my hand along the wall until I got to a dusty old tapestry of Wendleton in the olden days. I lifted it to find a door set into the plaster with a sunken latch.
“Look at this!” I held back the tapestry. “This is our way in.”
Outside, the whistle blew for the end of lunchtime. A wave of noise surged towards us as a hundred children ran back into the building.
“There’s no time,” Aiden said. “We’ll have to wait till tomorrow.”
“No way!” I pressed the latch frantically. “I can’t wait that long.” The latch clicked and the door swung open. A narrow, dark corridor lay on the other side.
“Robyn, we can’t! We don’t know what’s down there and that groaning isn’t exactly a good sign. Anyway, if we disappear Perez will have us in detention for a month.”
“I wanna know what’s going on! Come on, we need to get inside before anyone comes.” I stepped in and the floorboards creaked. It was too dark to see very far.
The pounding of kids’ feet grew louder and I leant out and pulled Aiden inside. Then I yanked the door shut behind us. At once all the noise from outside became muffled. I put my hand on the wall to stop myself falling over. It was pitch black with the door shut and I couldn’t see a thing.
A light bulb flicked on. Aiden was beside me, his hand on the switch. “This is crazy! Now we can’t get out until everyone goes home.”
I hadn’t really thought about that when I’d pulled him in. “You don’t know that. Maybe there’s another door.”
“Knowing our luck there won’t be!”
The voices of the little kids were really close now and I could hear Annie’s among them. Creeping along the passage, I found a little round knob on the wall just above my forehead. When I touched it, a small rectangle of wood slid sideways and two holes appeared in the wall. Standing on tiptoes, I peeked through.
There was Annie’s class, all gathered round their teacher. I suddenly realized I must be looking through the eyes of the painting. “You can spy on people,” I whispered. “Someone’s been watching us.”
“It must be Cryptorum.” Aiden peered through the eyeholes. “He never wanted the school to come here in the first place. He must be checking to see whether we’re behaving and following his rules.”
We crept further along. The passage branched off in three different directions. The right-hand corridor led straight to a set of stairs leading up. We took the middle passage and heard Mrs Perez’s voice from the other side of the wall. Finding another round knob, I slid back the panel to look.
Mrs Perez was organizing the class into a circle. A woman I’d never seen before stood in the centre. She had flowing blonde hair and a fancy red-and-silver scarf around her neck. Her make-up made her look like a doll with very white skin and red lips.
“This is Miss Mason, everyone,” said Mrs Perez. “She’s our new music teacher and she’s going to come here three or four times a week. Today she’s come to teach you all the recorder.”
I pulled a face and whispered to Aiden, “We’re missing the recorder lesson.” Miss Mason turned as I spoke and for a second I thought she’d looked right at me.
“Robyn, stop mucking around,” Aiden hissed from further down the passage. “I’ve found the stairs to the basement.”
The stairs were steep and we couldn’t see the bottom. As we stared down into the darkness, I suddenly wanted to change my mind about the whole thing. I was just about to tell Aiden when the floorboards creaked. Aiden nudged my arm and jerked his head. Something was coming up behind us.
It was too late to turn off the light. Either we could descend into darkness or wait here for whatever it was. As if to point out the problem, a long moan rose from the depths. The creature below sounded hungry.
Feet tapped on the wooden floor. Was this a spiny creature, a skeleton or a totally new and even deadlier kind of monster? A scratching sound added to the tapping, like a whole bunch of bony fingers scraping along the wall. How many monsters were there? We could be surrounded in seconds. The hairs on my arms rose as the floorboards creaked again – closer this time. I clenched my fists, eyes fixed on the bend in the passage.
Fingers curled around the corner . . . and I was pretty relieved when I saw they were human. A girl with two dark brown plaits and freckles appeared. She was the same girl that had been trying to look in the bat barn yesterday. She wasn’t from our class but she looked tall enough to be from year five, the class below. Her eyes widened when she saw us. “How did you get in here?” I said. “You nearly scared the life out of us.”
“Sorry!” The girl gave an uncertain smile. “I found a door upstairs. It’s behind a mirror – the one with birds all around the frame.”
“See! I knew there’d be another door,” I told Aiden and he rolled his eyes at me.
“I was following a weird-looking creature and then it just disappeared,” the girl went on. “That’s when I found the hidden door. I’m Nora Juniper.”
“I’m Robyn and this is Aiden,” I said. “What did the creature look like?”
“It was small but covered in lots of spines.” Nora shook back her plaits. “I guess it looked a bit like a goblin—”
“Crossed with a porcupine,” I finished. “So you can see freaky stuff too.”
“And did you eat anything funny?” Aiden said eagerly. “Or did you leave something that everyone else was eating? Or did someone try to hypnotize you?”
Nora paled. “Er, I don’t know! The vegetable soup my dad made for dinner last night tasted pretty strange but we all ate it, and I don’t think I’ve been hypnotized.”
“Yeah! I bet every hypnotized person says that.” Aiden started pacing up and down. “I don’t get it. Why can we see these weird creatures? Why us?”
A smooth voice cut through the darkness. “It was destined for you to see these things from the moment you were born.” Miss Smiting glided up behind Nora, her green eyes unblinking. “And that isss why we need you so very much.”
“Need us for what?” My heart started thumping.
Miss Smiting didn’t answer. Slipping past us, she descended into the dark. “Come!” she told us.
I exchanged looks with Aiden. Would it be completely crazy to follow Miss Smiting to the basement? Probably. But we had to find out what she knew. We went down the steep stairs to find a large wooden door at the bottom. Miss Smiting pressed some numbers on a keypad and the door swung open. Beyond that was another door. Miss Smiting took out a thick bunch of keys and turned them in three different locks. Beyond that was a gate made from metal bars which she carefully unbolted.
I’ve never liked being underground and I was already starting to sweat. “You really don’t want us to get out again, do you?” I tried to joke.
Nora cast me a look of alarm.
“The doors and locksss are not for you,” Miss Smiting said. “Well, not precisely.”
That didn’t exactly make me feel better.
Before I could ask what she meant, Miss Smiting flicked a switch and a row of fluorescent lights pinged on one after the other. We were in a massive stone cellar, littered with glass boxes and metal ca
ges. The nearest cage contained nothing but a small pile of bones. I gulped. Had Miss Smiting let something die in there?
“Welcome to the dungeon,” Miss Smiting said.
A chorus of growls and whines rose at the sound of her voice, ending in the long, low moan we’d heard before.
“What is that?” Nora’s face turned even paler.
“That is a boggun.” Miss Smiting pointed to a dark shape inside a glass case. “Try not to be afraid or disgusted. They feed on negative emotions.”
I crept a bit closer and the creature unfolded into a tall, black figure. It had no face, just a flicker of eyes now and then. I shivered.
“JUNELLA!” Mr Cryptorum burst through the doors like thunder. His face was flushed and his hair was wilder than ever.
“Be calm, Erasmus,” Miss Smiting said. “They’ll hear you in the town square.”
Cryptorum paced up and down. “What does it matter whether they hear me when you’ve brought half the school down here already?” He pointed to us. “Out! OUT!”
I decided no one had told Crytorum about the boggun feeding on negative emotions. “There’s three of us,” I told him. “So it’s not half the school.”
Aiden gave me a shut up sort of look and Nora hid behind him, which was easy for her as she was small.
Cryptorum glared from me to Miss Smiting. “After years of secrecy – carefully keeping everything to ourselves – why would you open this dungeon to anyone who wants to see? They’ll lock us up as criminals. We’ll be hounded out of town!”
Miss Smiting sighed. “They’re not just anyone. There is a reason for everything, Erasmus, if you will just sssee some senssse!”
I was starting to get very nervous about why Miss Smiting wanted us down here. I glanced at Aiden. He and Nora had both edged closer to the door.
There was a clicking noise and something touched my sleeve. A bony arm had slid out of the nearest cage and stiff fingers closed around my wrist. I yelped and pulled at them with my free hand. The bony fingers tightened, crushing my skin.
Aiden dived in and together we prised each finger open, but as soon as we got one loose the others clamped down even harder.
Suddenly, Cryptorum drew a silver blade out of nowhere and aimed a massive blow at the skeletal arm. It drew back through the bars of the cage and I glimpsed a scrawny white figure crouching there before the whole thing collapsed into a pile of bones again. Cryptorum tucked his blade into a sheath beneath his coat.
“What is that thing?” Aiden’s hand shook. “It’s the same creature that was in our classroom, isn’t it?”
“WHAT?” Cryptorum roared. “You let a scree sag loose upstairs, Junella? Have you gone completely out of your mind?”
“I wass close by the whole time, watching them.” Miss Smiting said.
I exchanged glances with Aiden. So it had been Miss Smiting watching through the eyes in the paintings.
“I had to know if they were Chimes,” she continued. “I had their recordsss but I still had to be sure.” She produced some sheets of paper. The top one had my name on it.
Miss Smiting handed Cryptorum the papers and he rifled through them, shaking his head. “Time of birth – it’s hardly conclusive.”
“That’s why I checked.” Her green eyes narrowed. “Tell them, Erasmus. You must tell them.”
Another low moan rose from the glass case with the boggun inside.
“Tell us what?” I asked.
Cryptorum looked at me, Aiden and Nora from under lowered eyebrows. His face softened a little. “You were born as the clock chimed midnight. That’s why you can see the creatures of the Unseen World. You are Chimes – like I am.”
Mr Cryptorum Follows the Bats
he words went round and round in my head: You were born as the clock chimed midnight. Mum had once told me I was born in the middle of the night but I’d never thought much about it before.
“Wait – what did you call us?” I said.
Cryptorum’s eyebrows lowered. “Chimes.”
“Can I look at those?” Aiden took the papers from Mr Cryptorum. He passed me the one with my name on it and I stared at the squiggly writing: TIME OF BIRTH: 12:00 A.M.
“So we were born at midnight,” I said. “What difference does that make?”
“No one knows why being born at that exact time gives you special sight, but your powers were dormant until you heard the midnight chiming of a Mortal Clock.” Cryptorum frowned at Miss Smiting. “I shouldn’t have let you persuade me to have it mended. I expected an adult – maybe a teenager – not a bunch of kids.”
“I’ve been through most of the records of birthsss and found no other adult born at midnight,” Miss Smiting replied. “And children will be more – how do you say? – open of mind.”
I stared at Cryptorum in disbelief. What did he mean by a Mortal Clock? I was about to ask when the clock on the tower began striking two. It was a deep, powerful sound.
“You mean that clock outside has something to do with this?” Aiden asked.
“You have special sight because you were born at midnight, but you must also be called to your abilities on the strike of twelve,” Cryptorum told us. “Only a Mortal Clock has the power to do that, and there aren’t very many of them in the world. The clockmakers of Prague discovered how to make them and passed the craft on in secret, one Chime to another, for hundreds of years.”
I rubbed my aching forehead. This was so strange – almost too much to take in. But I knew I’d woken up and heard the Grimdean clock strike midnight a few days ago. I remembered going to the window and seeing the spiny thing for the first time that night too.
“Then these creatures are definitely real,” Nora said in a small voice.
“Of course they’re real!” Cryptorum strode down the cellar, pointing to each cage. “Scree sag, boggun, kobolds.” One of the kobolds growled and I recognized them as the spiny things I’d seen outside my house. “Some monsters, like the kobold, are little more than an annoyance, but others are deadly.”
“Which ones?” I asked.
“There’s no need for you to know. There’s no need for you to have seen any of this.” He scowled at Miss Smiting who gave a faint hiss.
“What about all the other people in the world who were born at midnight?” Nora asked. “We can’t be the only ones.”
“That is true. But many people never hear the sound of a Mortal Clock and those that do often put their new sight down to an overactive imagination. They tell themselves that their mind is playing tricks on them, that a spiky kobold is just a prickly bush or an oddly shaped dog. A boggun seems like just another shadow.” Cryptorum folded his arms. “You will stop seeing monsters after a while too. Go back to your normal lives and forget all about today.”
“I can’t!” I burst out. “We had a kobold in our kitchen. It could’ve hurt my family!”
“For goodness’ sake, girl! Kobolds can do little more than bite and scratch. They are the least of my worries.”
I scowled. The kobold had seemed pretty scary at the time, especially as none of my family could see it.
Cryptorum shook his head. “Go back upstairs, all three of you, and do not breathe a word of this place or what’s in here to anyone!”
“No one would believe us anyway,” Aiden said. “And how can we forget about all this when we don’t know what monster we might see next?”
“I know I won’t forget.” Nora bit her lip.
“You must!” Cryptorum turned to Miss Smiting, saying fiercely, “Take them out of here, Junella. I will not be part of this ridiculous scheme.”
Miss Smiting hissed and a thin green tongue darted out of her mouth. “See reason, Erasmusss! You are too old to be doing all thisss on your own – tracking monsters and fighting. Remember when you hurt your leg last month chasing after a scree sag? You are not as young as you used to be!”
For a minute I thought that Mr Cryptorum was going to storm out, but then he sank on to a wooden crate. His
shoulders slumped. “It’s the responsibility!” he muttered. “It’s been my sacred duty to protect the town. I cannot ask anyone else to do what I’ve done all these years.”
“Then show them what to do and let them choose for themselves.” Miss Smiting put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s time!”
He nodded slowly. “You’re right. I’m getting too old. But these are just children.”
I stiffened. I was still annoyed that he’d snapped at me about the kobold in my kitchen. How was I supposed to know it wasn’t that dangerous? How many other kids had been scared by some creature while everyone told them there was nothing there? It didn’t seem fair. My head ached. It didn’t help that the kobold really stank.
“They need air.” Miss Smiting eyed me closely. “Take them to your study, Erasmus. I will tell your teachersss. . . What shall I say? I need a good excuse. Something that they will like.”
“Tell them you’re setting us a special project to be done after school,” Nora said. “Teachers always like the sound of that.”
*
We heard Miss Smiting speaking to Mrs Lovell as we followed Cryptorum through the hidden door behind the mirror on the first floor. “You see, Mr Cryptorum has been wishing to monitor the wildlife in the grounds for years,” she was saying. “We have selected three pupilsss to assist us. . .”
Cryptorum led us through the upstairs rooms and corridors. There were long galleries hung with paintings leading to parlours with grand pianos and flowery sofas. Everywhere we went, there were mirrors on the walls. We climbed another flight of stairs and came to a landing where the corridor branched off in two directions. On the right, tropical plants in reddish-brown pots stretched their fan-shaped leaves to the ceiling. The left-hand corridor looked very bare.
“Those are Miss Smiting’s rooms.” Cryptorum nodded to the passage with the plants. “And these are mine.” He opened the first door.
The room was a large study, with shelves full of books and a musty smell of paper. Above the fireplace was a painting of a man and a woman in posh clothes. The man looked so much like Cryptorum that I guessed they might be his parents. Next to the painting was a small white cupboard with a key in the lock.
The Midnight Chimes Page 4
