Lilian's Spell Book

by Toby Litt

  ‘Place looks empty,’ he said. ‘Are you sure someone’s here?’

  I was too fuzzy to think of excuses. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Even though I knew it would be locked, I went up to the front door.

  Mike was watching me closely.

  I put my hand on the knob and heard a click as the lock drew back. I turned the handle and the door opened.

  ‘Okay,’ said Mike. ‘You can pay me another time.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  The pain in my head was worse even than when I cracked it open. I was squinting, though I didn’t want to.

  I closed the door behind me and held onto the knob as I listened to Mike drive away.

  Then I slumped to the floor for I don’t know how long.

  The next time I opened my eyes, I felt a little better. My vision was the same, but I didn’t feel so dizzy.

  I stood up and then lifted myself off the ground – flew.

  Flying’s a lot easier than walking, when you know how.

  Silently, I glided up to the landing.

  The house was very quiet and dark. I didn’t want to turn any lights on.

  I quickly checked each room, making sure the place was empty.

  I knew I didn’t have all that long. They would discover pretty quickly I had run away from the hospital. Margie’s excuses wouldn’t deceive them. She would probably tell them I’d called a cab.

  Back in the hall, I began to examine the ceiling up close. I couldn’t see anything, though. I needed a torch.

  Once I’d fetched one from the kitchen, things were a little better. I scanned from one side to another. Where to start?

  I decided to inspect each of the panels, one by one – the panels with carvings on.

  My headache was slowly clearing.

  I started in the far right hand corner.

  About five minutes had passed, and I’d examined about that many panels, when I heard the smashing of glass.

  I turned off the torch.

  There were voices, coming from downstairs. A male voice and a female voice.

  I flew down to the doorway into the passage and peeked through.

  The tapestry curtains parted, and I saw Matthew step in, followed by Gracie. He was wearing a dark tracksuit but with three white lines up the sides of his legs and arms. Gracie was in something very tight, a black leotard perhaps. She had her hair tucked under a small peaked cap.

  They headed straight towards me.

  I panicked, flew straight up and almost hit my head again on the ceiling.

  As they came into the room below me, I zipped across to the landing – towards the main bedroom.

  Matthew went into the kitchen. ‘All clear,’ he said.

  ‘Upstairs,’ said Gracie.

  In the bedroom, I thought about climbing onto the top of the four poster, before realising there was a much better place to hide.

  I risked shining the torch on the wooden panelling, trying to remember where Mrs. Forster had shown us the secret catch.

  Matthew and Gracie’s footfalls had reached the top of the stairs.

  I felt the priest’s hole door open, jumped inside and – just as the bedroom door started to open – pulled it shut after me.

  ‘Clear,’ said Matthew.

  For a moment, the light from his torch seeped through the gaps between the panels.

  I heard the door to Jack’s room open.

  ‘No one in here,’ said Gracie.

  ‘Let me just check,’ said Matthew. He went off for a few moments.

  Gracie’s torch came closer and closer. I heard her fingernails scratching against the wood.

  ‘Where are you?’ she asked.

  I could hear her breathing, right up close.

  Matthew came back.

  ‘I’ve found the library,’ he said, sounding incredibly excited. ‘It’s got everything – Mary the Hebrew, The Emerald Tablet. Everything.’

  ‘I’m trying to find the priest’s hole,’ Gracie said.

  ‘We’ll have time for that later,’ said Matthew. ‘They say she’ll be in hospital for weeks.’

  The torch turned away.

  ‘We’ll have all the time in the world,’ said Gracie.

  ‘But we haven’t got any time this evening,’ Matthew said. ‘It’s… quarter to eleven. That gives us an hour and a quarter.’

  ‘We don’t need that long,’ said Gracie. ‘We don’t need more than an hour.’

  I heard the smack of a kiss.

  ‘Look at this bed,’ said Matthew.

  ‘It seems a shame not to,’ said Gracie.

  I listened to the sounds they started to make. Gracie made loud groan almost as soon as Matthew began touching her.

  ‘Oh God,’ she moaned. ‘That feels so good.’

  I heard the whole thing – every last grunt.

  Chapter 53.

  ‘What’s that?’ Matthew asked, soon afterwards.

  That’s when I heard the sirens and the engines.

  One of them banged out through the door, then hurried back in. ‘It’s the bloody police,’ he said.

  ‘What are they doing here?’ Gracie asked.

  There was a lot of scrabbling and swearing as they hurried to put their clothes back on.

  They padded out of the room.

  I heard the front door open and Peter call my name.

  I needed to get out of the priest’s hole. I didn’t have long.

  With the torch on, I found the catch – it was a lot easier to see on the inside.

  I hauled myself out of the priest’s hole and shut it behind me.

  Loud footsteps were coming up the stairs. Boots.

  I couldn’t think of anywhere better to hide, so I flew up on top of the four-poster. It was quite high up, leaving only a small gap between the top of the bed and the ceiling.

  Someone rushed in and turned on the light.

  ‘Where are you?’ said Peter, his voice quite desperate.

  He went through into Jack’s room and the bathroom. Then he paused for a moment.

  He found the priest’s hole much quicker than I had. But, of course, it was empty.

  ‘Damn,’ he said.

  ‘Found anyone?’ I heard P.C. Hollerhan say.

  ‘No,’ said Jack.

  ‘Sarge!’ shouted a voice from the hall. ‘Sarge, there’s a broken window here!’

  Everyone rushed off to see.

  Then I heard more shouting and a woman shrieking, ‘Get off me! Get off me!’

  I moved to be closer to the door.

  Gracie and Matthew were brought into the hall, where the lights were all on.

  ‘Where were they?’

  ‘Up the chimney, Sarge. They were trying to climb out, I think.’

  ‘Good work. Have you searched the rest of the house?’

  ‘Still looking, Sarge.’

  ‘Carry on.’

  ‘We were just trying to help,’ said Gracie. ‘We heard something was wrong.’

  ‘What did you hear?’ asked the voice of the Sergeant.

  ‘We’d like to speak to our lawyer,’ said Matthew. ‘Before we say anything else.’

  ‘Fine,’ said the Sergeant. ‘Hollerhan, read them their rights and then put them in the car.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  I wanted to shout out, ‘Search their house!’ But I kept quiet.

  The police continued their search.

  I went back inside the priest’s hole and waited there.

  I heard them searching our house from top to bottom. They shouted their progress. ‘No one in the cellar!’

  ‘Have you tried every room?’

  ‘There’s one we can’t get into. No key. The others are a bit bloody weird.’

  After about half an hour, during which people came and went from the room, once with a dog that sniffed around and barked, the house started to go quiet. Cars were driving away.

  I heard something. It was Peter was calling my name again.

  I ho
vered down and risked opening the hatch.

  ‘I know you’re here,’ Peter shouted. He was in the hall. ‘I know you’re hiding somewhere.’ I crossed to the door. ‘I hope you’re right.’ I peered through the crack where the door opened.’ I hope you know what you’re doing.’ I could see Peter’s outline, standing in the middle of the hall. ‘I love you.’

  He went out and locked the door behind him.

  Chapter 54.

  I waited until all the cars had driven away. I waited until the house had been quiet for a good ten minutes.

  I’d flown down from above the bed and was about to walk into the hall when I heard a loud creak. It seemed they’d left at least one person behind.

  I learned who it was soon enough. P.C. Hollerhan’s voice echoed loudly through the hall as he said, ‘Hello, Sir Douglas. It’s Richard. I’m in the house.’ He explained to the person at the other end what had happened. ‘Yes, I know,’ he said. ‘She may be away for several days. They’ve left me to watch over the place. I thought you might like to come and keep me company.’ There was a very short pause. ‘All right, I’ll expect you in ten.’

  The footsteps seemed to come closer as P.C. Hollerhan walked across the landing.

  Again, I waited – back in the priest’s hole but with the hatch open – I waited until I heard the footsteps creaking away, and then, a few minutes later, the unmistakable sound echoing up through the house: the click of our kettle as it reached the boil.

  Sir Douglas Longbone must have raced over. He arrived just in time for a nice hot cup of tea. P.C. Hollerhan met him at the door.

  ‘Thank you for this,’ said Longbone.

  They went into the kitchen.

  I flew out into the hall. A light was spilling sideways out of the kitchen but the hall was still in darkness.

  I landed on the opposite side, near the door to the dining room. From here I thought I would be just about invisible.

  P.C. Hollerhan had made himself very much at home. Not only had he brewed up but also he’d also cracked open a new pack of digestives.

  The policeman and the M.P. sat down and started to chat. They seemed quite settled, which was both good and bad for me. I could explore the hall roof but if I made a sound or they suddenly decided to go on patrol, I would splat straight down onto the floor. The area up by the ceiling was very dark, though – as long as he didn’t turn the lights on, I was probably okay.

  But the darkness worked against me in another way. I could hardly see anything. My hands ran over smooth panels and intricate carvings that I wished I’d had more time, and light, to appreciate. I searched for catches around the edges. I tried pushing the panels to see if they lifted up. Nothing worked.

  Even if it had been broad daylight, and I’d been able to make as much noise as I wanted, it would have taken me a couple of hours to check the whole ceiling out. Without all that, I needed to do something else – I needed to read the code of the house. I pictured what I’d seen, lying on the floor directly below me – the constellation of Sagittarius, picked out in wood. And then, on top of this, I thought of the image of the centaur with the bow and arrow from the tapestry. Where was the most important point? What did your eye look at without you even thinking about it?

  The answer seemed to be in the question. It was Sagittarius’s eye – it was the fieriest part of him, glinting as he took steady aim.

  I crossed to what I thought was roughly the right area. P.C. Hollerhan gave a laugh from the kitchen. There were no carvings where I was looking. The panels were all equally smooth.

  That’s what I thought, but I was wrong. Because one, when I ran my fingers across it, felt as rough as sandpaper. It didn’t look any different, but in this feeble light that mean almost nothing.

  I tried pushing the panel up. That didn’t work. I tried feeling around the edges. No catch there. What else was there I could do?

  I remembered the bricks in the Air room. How they’d expanded and contracted when I’d asked them. Perhaps I’d come to the end of the line. Perhaps I just needed to ask Lilian directly what to do?

  ‘Lilian, please,’ I whispered as quietly as I could. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  Nothing happened.

  ‘If you want me to help, you’ll have to help me.’

  I thought this was it. I was faint, exhausted. I’d ruined my family. I didn’t know enough to solve these puzzles on my own.

  ‘I don’t know what you want me to do,’ I said. ‘I give up. I don’t want any more of your secrets. I don’t care about them. I just want my family back to how it was.’

  Perhaps those were the magic words.

  I felt something happen to the air around me. It began to stir. It began to swirl. The vast room was silent but it was far from still.

  Chapter 55.

  I moved back onto the landing – a safer place – and watched as the air in the room began to twirl round and round. There wasn’t very much dust, but what there was began to glitter as a swaying column of twisting air began to climb up from the floor.

  P.C. Hollerhan and Longbone would see – surely – they would come out to find out what was happening. But they didn’t seem to have moved, and now the whirling tornado – that’s what it seemed to be – had almost reached the roof of the hall.

  This wasn’t a beautiful sight, like the ice statue of Lilian, and it wasn’t terrifying, like the whirlpool drowning Jack. This was something else. This was a practical vision. It was telling me what I needed to know, right now. It was showing me what to do. And because of that, it was the most fantastic, welcome sight I could have seen.

  The top of the air-spout reached the rough panel. It began to intensify, narrowing down and spinning faster and faster against the plain surface.

  I couldn’t tell what was happening until the whole panel, in one instant, seemed to collapse.

  The tornado spilled dark particles out to either side.

  I flew forwards and reached out to grab some of them. They were hard, sharp. I felt them scratching against my fingers.

  The panel hadn’t been sandpaper at all, it had been made of very tightly packed sand! This now spilled out on all sides of the spout, like melted chocolate from a chocolate fountain. It would surely rain down on the floor, alerting Hollerhan and Longbone.

  I should have become used to marvellous things. The sand never touched the ground. The sand never reached the ground. Instead, it was sucked into the tornado and carried back up the twisting column. It went into the oblong hole where the sand panel had been, and then it was gone. Pretty soon the tornado was gone, too. It didn’t die out, just seemed to pop sideways in all directions when its work was done.

  As quickly as I could, I felt my way across to the dark hole that had been left behind.

  When I stuck my hand inside, into the dark, the space looked strangely familiar. It was just like the priest’s hole, but raised so high off the floor no one could ever have reached it. Not unless they could fly. I managed to heave myself inside, keeping a few inches above the tops of the ceiling panels, though I felt fairly certain they would support me.

  I couldn’t see anything. I had to turn my torch on, if only for a second. The double click resounded through the hall. The light flashed on and off, but I saw something I knew I’d been expecting – another phoenix.

  Below me, I heard Hollerhan and Longbone hurry out into the hall. ‘What did you hear?’ Hollerhan asked.

  ‘Some kind of scratching,’ said Longbone.

  Hollerhan turned his powerful torch on and scanned the room with its beam. I moved back, away from the hole. The light flashed past, then returned.

  ‘I can’t remember that gap,’ said Hollerhan.

  ‘Was it there when you arrived?’ Longbone asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Hollerhan. ‘You’d think I would’ve noticed it.’

  I heard their footsteps getting slightly louder as they came and stood directly below me. The beam of Hollerhan’s torch got brighter as it l
it up the gap. I forced myself further and further back into the corner.

  Then I heard the two of them coming up the stairs. ‘What’s directly above here?’ Longbone said. ‘It must be part of the attic, mustn’t it?’

  The torch shone in from a new, sideways angle.

  Then I heard Hollerhan and Longbone going into the upstairs living room and then clanking up the spiral staircase.

  Now was my chance.

  I grabbed hold of the phoenix and tugged.

  In an instant, the panel floor had dropped away from beneath me and I was falling down.

  I had tumbled ten feet at least before I realized I was being dragged down by the weight of the bird. It was so heavy it must have been solid brass.

  Fear shot through me – the memory of the awful crack as my head hit the stone floor of the Air room.

  I slowed us up, and we landed right in the middle of the hall – totally exposed to view.

  A glance upwards showed me the four wooden panels that had opened like a trap door – they were now folding back into place, leaving only the one hole.

  The phoenix was attached to a piece of hard, dark wood. It had a heavy handle, dangling from its beak. And suddenly I realized what it was – a doorknocker – and then just as suddenly I realized which door I must knock on.

  Chapter 56.

  When I went into the kitchen, the keys weren’t hanging from the brass hook.

  I thought Peter had taken them away, or one of the policemen, but then I saw all of them lined up in a row on the table, in between the mugs and the biscuit crumbs: the original front door key, Mrs. Forster’s keys, Robert Mew’s, Father Trovato’s keys to the chapel. They were like the story so far, and if I took two of the four away P.C. Hollerhan was bound to notice. They were probably coming back right now. Their mugs were only half empty.

  A glance at the clock showed me it was seven minutes to midnight. I didn’t have a choice – this might be my only chance to see what was behind the Fire door – I grabbed the two bunches I needed.

  I heard heavy footsteps coming down the spiral staircase as I swooped across to the cellar door. I had the keys scrunched tight, to try and stop them from jingling, but the door-knocker came loose and gave a loud clack-clack.