Grim Hill: Carnival of Secrets

by Linda DeMeulemeester

  “So it was you hanging around in my room when I slept – it wasn’t a nightmare?” I said in surprise. “That’s why I had a creepy feeling someone was watching me. That’s why I always found a crumpled blanket on my floor.”

  Sookie nodded. “Uhhuh, I’d use the key Mom keeps under the mat. Then I’d steal a blanket from you. I… got lonely at bedtime. I also had to make sure you were feeding Buddy properly.” Then her lips twitched into a mischievous smile. “You’d have known it was me if you didn’t pull the covers over your head.” Sookie giggled. “Scaredy Cat – you’re still afraid of the dark.”

  Clive snickered.

  I glared at him and he looked away. “We’d better get home before Mom gets worried,” I said.

  “But, Cat …” Sookie’s face became guarded.

  Then Lea walked through the back door. “Tell her,” Lea said folding her arms across her chest. “Little one, this is no time to keep silent.”

  Sookie’s face flushed red. “It’s not my fault this happened! Cat, you shouldn’t have reversed fairy time. That was a big mistake.” Her wheedling sounded a lot more like my kid sister. “You … you should’ve listened to me, and now …”

  Sookie’s wretched expression looked frightened and guilty.

  “Come on,” I said consoling her. “Whatever’s wrong in this town, at least now we can work together and concentrate on getting rid of those fairies. It’s got something to do with that stupid carnival, I just know it.”

  “But …”

  Mitch pointed to the open door. “We must have been knocked out for a while.” Sunlight filtered in from the porch.

  “Have we been gone all night?” Mom would kill me.

  “My parents will be frantic,” Mia said in alarm.

  “Tell her,” Lea commanded looking fiercely at my sister.

  “We think it’s … um … worse than being away all night.” Sookie walked out of the kitchen and waved us onto the porch. “Cat. About that mistake you made when you commanded the Grimoire …”

  “Little one,” Lea said. “Tell them.

  Sookie got that stubborn look. “Why? It was Cat who commanded the Grimoire, not me.”

  But Sookie didn’t have to tell us anything. We could see for ourselves something had changed.

  The garden Sookie had tended was gone. The fairy wind must have torn it up. But how did the grass grow so much longer – it was up to my knees.

  “Why does the apple tree look smaller?” asked Amarjeet. Trepidation tinged her voice. “And the hedge shrank. What’s going on? I can see why some bushes got ripped out in the wind, but how could anything grow smaller?”

  “Not only that, but everything’s disappeared inside the house.” Mia joined us in the garden. “Once you leave the kitchen, it’s as if this place had been empty for years. How’s that possible?”

  “Does the air smell different?” asked Jasper wrinkling his nose.

  “Yeah, it smells like …”Clive frowned trying to remember. “Like when we first moved into our gran’s house. She still had a coal furnace back then.”

  Skeeter sniffed the air. “Yeah, you’re right, that’s coal smoke.” Then he pointed to Grim Hill. “Look at the leaves.”

  A bubble of dread started spreading in my chest. How could the leaves start turning red and orange and brown overnight?

  Mitch waved his arm and pointed. “What happened to the other houses on the street?”

  My heart leapt to my throat. “The fairy wind must have destroyed some,” I cried. “We’d better all get home!”

  We spilled out of the yard and scattered, bee lining toward our own homes to make sure our families were safe. Sookie and I ran to the end of the block. Fewer houses stood on all the streets in our line of sight, but I didn’t see damaged homes or the kind of refuse you’d expect if the tornado had torn them up. Not to mention, there weren’t any emergency vehicles.

  The road was now gravel and no longer asphalt, and an old-fashioned looking flatbed truck drove along it.

  “I don’t like this,” Sookie’s voice rose in alarm. “Let’s get Mom.”

  Our house was still standing, and I choked up with gratitude. Then I slid to a sudden stop. My stomach twisted. “Sookie, we’ve been gone a lot longer than one night.”

  “I can see that for myself, Cat.” Sookie sniffed. Then in a worried voice, she added, “Mom’s had time to build a new fence and get our house painted.”

  We raced up the front steps, but then I grabbed Sookie’s T-shirt. “Hold on. I don’t think it’s right to just burst in after who knows how long. It’ll be a big enough shock just showing up on the doorstep.” Instead I knocked gently on the door.

  We waited.

  The door opened and a blond girl about my age stared back at us.

  “Who are you?” Sookie shouted in alarm.

  “Alice Greystone.” The girl stared at us with a suspicious frown and then asked, “Who are you and why are you standing at my door in your underwear?”

  CHAPTER 14 A Horrifying Twist

  There had to be a mistake. How could this girl be Alice Greystone? This girl was thirteen or fourteen years old. She had a short blond bob. She was young. The Alice Greystone I knew was a very old lady.

  An old lady who lived in your house when she was a girl, said that voice in my head. This was confusing

  “I want to see my mom,” demanded Sookie, not particularly caring who we were talking to. “What do you mean we’re in our underwear?” she complained.

  “Come in quickly before somebody sees you,” said Alice whisking us inside.

  We stood in the foyer of our house and yet it looked so different. The French doors were gone and heavy green velvet curtains sectioned off the hallway from the living room. Inside the living room there was fancy dark wood furniture, a camelback couch and wingback chair. They were velvet, too.

  With growing alarm I surveyed the differences in my home. Elegant oriental rugs covered both the living room and dining room floors. The dining room had a big cabinet, and the window behind it was lined with flowerpots of blooming geraniums. Silver candlesticks stood on the table. Vivid paintings of exotic birds and flowers hung everywhere.

  Where did Mom get all the money? This place looked so much fancier than it used to.

  As if I were a bobble headed doll, my head kept swerving on my neck as I strode through the rooms and examined all the changes. I knew it was rude but I couldn’t help myself. I stormed into the kitchen.

  Our blue curtains were gone. They’d been replaced by yellow floral curtains. The floor was different too, covered in checkerboard linoleum. There was a deep sink and a tiny fridge that stood on legs, and which had a weird contraption stuck on the top of it. I opened a cupboard. I don’t know why – maybe to find something familiar, even a box of Sookie’s favorite Frosty Oats cereal would do.

  “Are you hungry?” Alice’s voice brimmed with concern. She’d been silently following Sookie and me as we raced through the rooms. “Has something awful happened to you?”

  I nodded because I knew something terrible had happened. I just had no idea what. Sookie poked me sharply in the ribs.

  “What?”

  Sookie pointed to a calendar on the yellow kitchen wall. The calendar had a picture of an old fashioned looking family standing in front of a vintage car. I let out a low whistle.

  Under the picture the calendar page was turned to September. I gasped and muttered, “That explains it – somehow we’ve traveled weeks ahead in time.” Eyes as wide as saucers, Sookie shook her head and pointed to the calendar year.

  “Nooooo,” I whispered. “This is a mistake.” The date showed September almost seventy years ago!

  Sookie ran into the living room and staggered back a few seconds later. She was gripping a black and white photograph in a silver frame. “Who are these girls?” she asked Alice.

  “Me, when I was about your age,” said Alice. “And a cousin, I think. Though I don’t remember her, I think she stayed
with us for a while.”

  In horror, I stared at the very same photograph that the elderly Alice Greystone had in her parlor. It was the same picture of her and her forgotten sister, Lucinda.

  “I want Mom.” The evil witch who had menaced our town had turned into a sad little girl with a tear trailing down her cheek.

  “Guess you should have thought about that before you decided to terrorize everybody,” I snapped. I’ll admit I wasn’t very understanding. This time my sister’s meddling had gone too far. “What are we going to do? How are we going to get out of this!”

  Sookie’s face crumpled and she began to wail.

  CHAPTER 15 A Perilous Dilemma

  I stood inside a house that was no longer my home. We’d been violently torn from our own time and had landed back seventy years in the past. Alice was now my age. Her face grew alarmed at Sookie’s sobs and my shouts. I took a deep breath.

  “Calm down, Sookie. I’m sorry I yelled.”

  “You turned back the pages in the Grimoire, not me,” Sookie blubbered.

  She was right. I had turned the pages. And I had to stay calm for both of our sakes. “Stop crying, Sookie. We’ll figure this out.”

  Alice opened a tin on the kitchen counter and grabbed a fistful of cookies. She handed a raisin oatmeal cookie to my sister and me.

  “Please,” Alice pleaded looking out the kitchen window. “My mother will be home soon, and I’ll get into a lot of trouble for inviting strangers into the house. These are hard times. There have been suspicious riffraff drifting into our town. People here hold them responsible for all the bad things happening.”

  I wanted to ask about what kind of bad things she meant, but it was urgent to get back to the others. They’d all be reeling from the shock of landing seventy years in the past. We shouldn’t have split up so fast.

  “We’ve got to go.” I grabbed Sookie’s hand and led her to the back door while she sniffled and chomped on her cookie.

  “Land sakes, you can’t go out dressed like that,” said Alice. “Wait one more minute.” Then she raced out of the kitchen and up the stairs. We heard some banging and crashing before she returned and tossed my sister and me each a dress.

  I looked down at the shorts and T-shirt I was wearing. “For the record, this isn’t underwear.”

  “Well, I don’t know where you’re from, but here we call those vests and knickers – which is underwear.” Alice took the sailor dress she’d handed Sookie and pulled it over my sister’s head and buttoned up the back. “This way you won’t attract too much attention.”

  Alice looked thoughtful for a moment before saying, “I don’t know why. But I think that’s what you want, isn’t it – to not draw attention.” I nodded. “There,” she said to Sookie as she adjusted the bow in the front. “This was my favorite dress when I was your age.” Alice turned to me. “And that dress,” she hesitated, “… belonged to my … cousin – the other girl in the photograph. For some reason Mother never cleared out the things from her room or her closet.”

  I shrugged on a lavender printed dress that smelled faintly of moth balls. Turning out the white collar, I smoothed out the wrinkles and tugged the loose material down past my knees. While I wanted to be polite, I thought it looked pretty lame. “Ah, thanks for your help, Alice. Come on,” I said to my sister.

  “One more thing.” Alice shuffled through the kitchen closet. “Again, I don’t know where you’re from, but you’ll be the talk of the town with those green stripes in your hair.” She pulled out a brimless straw hat and clamped it on my head, tugging it over my ears.

  Right. Even more lame, although how I dressed was the least of my worries. A car rumbled up the driveway. Alice opened the back door and urged us to leave. “Please, whatever it is that’s the matter with you, I do want to help. Come calling when my parents are here. I’ll, I’ll say you’re my new friends. Then you can tell me what’s going on.”

  We raced through a backyard that was no longer ours. Outside, Grim Hill loomed and I could feel its magic vibrate in the air as if we were standing under an electric transformer.

  “Look,” said Sookie. “The road up to Grim Hill is open again. Check out the old-fashioned car driving up to the school. Cat, the fairy school is back.”

  Sookie flushed red as she remembered the old school on the hill. She’d hated that place when we’d first spotted it at Halloween. Wincing, I recalled that was before she’d been lured by magic.

  “Not back,” I said. “Judging by Alice’s age, Lucinda and her soccer team were captured a few years ago. They are dancing right now in that diabolical fairy ring and keeping the link between the fairy school and our world strong. I can’t imagine how crazy it must be in the town with Fairy having so much power.”

  “It will be perilous,” gulped Sookie. Right. The terrifying witch was scared – very reassuring.

  Sookie was right to be terrified. I thought about poor Lucinda. How at this moment she was dancing around that fire, dancing even though she and her teammates wanted to drop with exhaustion as they were being robbed of seventy years of their lives.

  “Cat. I want to go home.”

  “Well, let’s go,” I said. “I’ll just use my feather to turn the pages in the Grimoire back to our own time.”

  “That’s right. We could do that.” My sister managed a tearful smile, nodded vigorously and took the last bite of her cookie. I handed her the rest of mine which she also finished off. I had a feeling she hadn’t been eating right during her witching days.

  We hustled to the house by the graveyard, passing peculiar cars and people on wooden sidewalks dressed in old-fashioned clothes. When we went through the back gate, everybody except Clive and Skeeter was waiting on the porch. Nobody looked too happy.

  “Somebody called me a foreigner,” Amarjeet complained.

  “My house doesn’t even exist,” said a very pale looking Mitch.

  “Cat, we have to get out of here.” Mia looked furious. She checked out my dress and raised her eyebrows. Then she pointed to her own T-shirt and Capris pants before saying, “Somebody pointed to my clothes and told me to go put on something decent.”

  “I was told to go back to where I came from.” Jasper took his glasses off and examined them thoughtfully. “But I was born here.”

  I explained to my friends about how we’d gone back to an August almost seventy years ago. Mitch yelped. Mia began muttering and Amarjeet whispered, “How? Why?”

  “When Cat said to turn back fairy magic and time, we arrived backwards in time,” explained Lea.

  Jasper nodded. “I figured that. And I can tell you one thing,” he said. “I always imagined it would be cool to live back in history, but I think there’s a downside.”

  “But why now?” I sputtered. “Why didn’t we just go back a few months before Sookie opened the door to Fairy?”

  “I … I’m not sure,” said Lea.

  “We won’t be here long, “I promised my friends. “Let’s go in the kitchen, and I’ll reverse the spell in the Grimoire.”

  Then Skeeter ran into the yard. He was howling.

  “What’s wrong?” But already my heart was sinking to my sneakers. Skeeter wasn’t exactly a wimp.

  Skeeter dragged his arm across his nose. Then he pulled up the front of his T-shirt and wiped his face. With a sniff he said, “A policeman started chasing us. Clive pushed me into a hedge and he ran ahead. The policeman caught Clive.”

  “Policeman? Why?” What could they have possibly done wrong? We’d only been here an hour.

  Snuffling, Skeeter said, “He was calling us gypsies. He said he was a truant officer.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve again. “What’s a truant officer?” he sniffed, “Is Clive ‘rested?”

  Jasper patted his shoulder. “No, the officer has taken Clive in for not being in school.” Great, just great.

  “They must start school early during this time,” said Amarjeet.

  “Yea,” said Mia, “and if we go looking we’ll
be caught too! None of us are in school!”

  CHAPTER 16 Trapped in Grim Times

  We all trailed into what was left of the kitchen to sort things out.

  “If the policeman puts my brother in jail, I’ll break into the place and get him out.” Skeeter pounded his fists together.

  Jail? They wouldn’t put Clive in jail for missing school, would they? But these were the olden days, and I didn’t know anything for sure.

  In the kitchen, Jasper fiddled with his glasses. Mitch sat quietly on a chair. Skeeter wept softly in the corner while Sookie held his hand. Amarjeet folded her arms and looked cross. Mia paced the floor. I had to admit, all of us had gone through strange and dangerous times together, but never had we felt so off kilter. Being swept into time and landing almost seventy years ago had shaken the group up badly.

  Mia stopped pacing. “You know, I’ll bet some things never change.”

  “What do you mean?” I glanced at the old-fashioned dress I’d taken off as soon as I was back inside the house. “We were only outside for about half an hour and everything’s gone wrong.”

  “Work with me here,” Mia urged. “What would happen if you got in big trouble at school, Cat. What would the principal do?”

  I’d had enough experience in that department. The answer flew from my lips. “Call my Mom.”

  “Well, maybe principals or truant officers did the same thing in the olden days. We should tidy this place up in case the school sends the truant officer here to talk to Clive’s parents.”

  All of us broke into an argument debating what to do next. Doing housework only got Mia’s vote. When someone pounded on the front door we jumped. Lea opened the drape. “Mia was right. It’s the truant officer with Clive in tow.”