Grim Hill: Carnival of Secrets

by Linda DeMeulemeester

  “You can come too,” Lea said to Sookie.

  Sookie budged in front of me and scurried up the steps.

  “It was Lea’s room first,” I yelled after her. Maybe boys weren’t the only ones who skirmished. It felt just like old times when I felt a stab of resentment that my kid sister was horning in on my friend. Then I wished that sibling rivalry was my only problem. I bit back a sigh.

  “Tomorrow’s a new day.” I tried to smile, but my lips didn’t want to move as I trudged up the stairs. We were all soon asleep, exhausted from the tornado, the magic, and finding ourselves in old times – still with Fairy in control and the Grimoire lost.

  ***

  When I woke, I could tell I had twisted myself into a pretzel during the night and given myself a charley horse in my leg. During the night, the wood floor in the ancient house had turned icy and now I felt cold and clammy. Sitting up, I tried to rub some heat into my cramped leg.

  Sookie’s soft snores buzzed from the other side of the room. She’d snuggled next to Lea, and I’d half a mind to crawl against her other side – my sister was usually as hot as a furnace. Then I heard the music.

  A calliope cranked out a mournful tune more suited to a funeral march than a carnival. One by one, the hairs prickled on the nape of my neck and I shivered. The music seeped in from the back of the house. I got up and crept along the dark hallway and down the stairs. My heart stayed in my throat, as I’d always believed if there were such thing as a haunted house, it would be Lea’s – I mean, Sookie’s – place.

  Even in the dark, shadows gathered in menacing shapes and lingered in the corners. The walls felt as if they’d close in at any second. I wanted to run back to the bedroom, but I could almost hear my little sister chide me, “My goodness, Cat. Are you still afraid of the dark?” Funny, for a fairy fighter, I was afraid of a lot of things.

  When I made it to the living room, the two mighty guards lay fast asleep on the floor. I tiptoed past them so I wouldn’t disturb their sentry duty, and went out the back door.

  Standing on the porch, the eerie music echoed from the river up to the house. It was late; surely the carnival had closed. Wasn’t it disturbing the other neighbors? Then I remembered how Alice Greystone had told me she’d always hear the carnival music late at night, both back in the old days, and in our own time.

  Did she and Lucinda know we’d disappeared? Did Mom? I fought down a wave of homesickness. It had gotten to me when I’d stayed with my aunt once in Sweden, but here, I was even farther away. My eyes burned with tears.

  Through the haze, I couldn’t help but notice a glow of white light behind the hedge dividing Sookie’s yard from the cemetery. I wiped away my tears, but the glow didn’t disappear. Slowly, reluctantly, I stepped off the porch and moved toward the hedge. My heart thumped in my ears as blood rushed to my head.

  The eerie light couldn’t be from the moon’s reflection. The crescent moon, only a sliver of bone, barely shone in the midnight sky. The ragged hedge was shorter in these olden days, and there were gaps between the bushes. I pulled away a branch and stared into the graveyard.

  He was waiting for me. His ghostly image glowed softly in the dark. My slow and muddled brain thought, how had the ghost followed me back in time?

  The ghost boy beckoned me. “Heeeeelp us, pleeeeease,” he begged.

  I stepped into the hedge. I wondered if Sookie would call me a scaredy cat now as I pushed my way through the branches. It was as if I’d moved past scared, past panic, and into a numbness where any feeling, bad or good, had been drained from me.

  He appeared more solid this time. I could see smears of dirt on his face and that his brown hair was mussed and matted. He was dressed in rags. Begging me pitifully, he cried, “Help meeee.” My hand reached toward him, my fingers outstretched. Then I snapped my hand back, horrified that I’d even considered touching a ghost.

  “We waaaaant to go home.” His whispery words evaporated as quickly as he spoke. “Help us escape. The graaaaaaaveyard is the key …”

  The calliope music surged and I realized it had been quiet for a while. The ghostly figure groaned and doubled over as if in terrible pain. Again, I instinctively reached out my hand to help the mournful ghost.

  He suddenly straightened up and stood stiffly like a tin soldier at attention. His eyes had rolled back in his head, and he stared at me with white lifeless orbs. I couldn’t help but scream. I leaped backwards, crashing against the hedge.

  With board like arms and legs he took one step toward me, then spun around on his leg and began marching away as if straining against invisible ropes.

  I let out a yelp when several hands grabbed me from behind and yanked me through the hedge. I tumbled to the ground.

  “Cat.” Clive leaned over me. “What were you doing?”

  “There … there’s a ghost. He needs help. He’s … he’s in terrible pain.”

  Clive peered over the hedge at the marching figure. “He’s no ghost – he’s just a raggedy boy. Cat, you let your hysterical girl’s mind get the best of you.”

  “He is a ghost,” I argued. “You walked straight through him the night we rescued Lea from the carnival.”

  “I did? I walked through a ghost?”

  It was a bit satisfying to hear the rise in Clive’s voice.

  Lea said, “Whoever or whatever he is, he’s going in the direction of the carnival.”

  “Should we go after him?” Clive had already parted the branches.

  Before we could decide, the boy marched through the open wrought iron gate at the other end of the cemetery, and we lost sight of him.

  “What did he say?” asked Clive.

  “He wanted help, and … something about the graveyard and a key.” But the raggedy boy’s words, like wisps of smoke, hadn’t stuck in my brain.

  Lea’s mouth tugged into a puzzled frown. “I’m having an odd feeling, as if I’ve had this conversation before.”

  “It’s called déjà vu,” I said. “It’s supposed to be some trick of the brain.”

  “Not when you know what I know.” Lea’s puzzled voice lost some of its lilt. “Not when you’ve experienced fairy time snapping back and forth like an elastic band.” She seemed lost deep in her own thoughts, and wandered back toward the house, “I’m going back to bed.”

  “There’s a mystery to solve here,” said Clive.

  I was still staring into the graveyard. I agreed. “And it’s tied to the graveyard boy who shows up whenever the carnival is around. I’d say that carnival has more than a few secrets.”

  Clive yawned, “Well, we don’t have to figure out everything tonight.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “True …” Maybe sleep would help.

  We all went back in the house to find our makeshift beds. As I climbed the third step to the bedroom, Clive called after me. “Cat, you do realize we have to go to school tomorrow.”

  “I’m sure glad the truant officer didn’t see us. Um, sorry, Cat.” Amarjeet smiled sympathetically.

  “We will hide out here and try to come up with plans,” said Mitch.

  Lea nodded.

  “And I’ll keep an eye on these two,” said Mia cocking her head slightly in the direction of Sookie and Skeeter.

  School. I groaned. Suddenly, those marshmallows I ate petrified into lumps of stone in my stomach.

  CHAPTER 19 Away With the Fairies

  A riotous chirping woke me up at sunrise. I’d never heard so many birds in the yard before. I opened the window to look outside, and fresh air rolled in. I couldn’t help but feel more optimistic under such a blue sky. I dressed quickly in the old-fashioned dress, thinking I might as well get the school day over with so we could work on our plan of escape.

  Combing my hair, I left the comb dangling halfway through the tangles. “What am I going to do with these green stripes?” I used the broken mirror stuck to the bedroom wall, but no matter which way I parted my hair, green stripes still stuck out.

  “Try this.” Le
a stepped lightly across the floor so as not to disturb a snoring Sookie. Taking a satin ribbon tie from a tattered curtain, she shook off the dust then tied a bow in my hair. Then she put another bow on the other side.

  Well, it did cover the green …

  Downstairs everyone was still asleep except for Clive, who was chomping through a bowl of dry Frosty Oats. “The fridge doesn’t work in this time zone, and the milk’s gone sour.”

  I poured myself a dusty bowl. It was better than an empty stomach. “Hey,” I complained. “What are you staring at?” Self-consciously, I fiddled with the huge, dingy yellow bows in my hair.

  “Noth … ing …”Clive pushed the cereal box in front of his face and began reading as if it were the most interesting story in the world, but he couldn’t hide his snickering.

  When we started for school, Clive smacked his forehead. “I forgot. I can’t go to school in these shorts and T-shirt. At first, the truant officer thought I was heading for a track meet. Somehow I don’t think these clothes will fit in.”

  “At least you weren’t accused of walking around in your underwear.”

  Clive’s eyes flickered in surprise. “Still,” he looked down at his shorts. “I can’t go dressed like this. Maybe you should tell them I’m sick.”

  “Right. Like that won’t bring the truant officer back to the house,” I shot back.

  Clive shrugged his shoulders. “What am I supposed to do?”

  I thought for a minute. “C’mon, I know someone who might help us out with proper clothes.” I led Clive back to my house, which was Alice’s in this time.

  ***

  “Wait here.” I situated Clive behind an oak tree. Then I walked up the sidewalk of the neatly trimmed lawn and knocked on my, I mean, Alice’s, front door.

  A woman dressed in an old-fashioned blue knit suit opened the door. Her lips were drawn in a tight disapproving line as she stared down at me.

  “Hello, I’m Alice’s new friend,” I said politely. “I was wondering if we could walk together to school.”

  “Alice has been sick,” her mother said brusquely. “I was going to drive her on her first day.”

  Then Alice poked her head through the door. “It is a beautiful day and not at all chilly. The fresh air and exercise will do me good, Mother.”

  Quickly, I stuck out my hand and introduced myself to Alice’s mother. “Hello, Mrs. Greystone, my name is Cat … Caitlin.”

  Mrs. Greystone shook my hand although she didn’t exactly smile. “Where do you live?”

  “Just down the street,” I said cheerily.

  “See, Mother, she’s not one of those riffraffs you keep telling me about. She goes to my school.”

  “What did you say your last name was? Do I know your people?” Alice’s mother inquired.

  “We just arrived here.”

  “We’d better go if we don’t want to be late.” Alice rushed through the door and I said, “Goodbye, Mrs. Greystone.” We hurried off before her mother could ask any more questions.

  As soon as her mother stepped inside, Alice asked, “How do you know my last name?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Lucky guess.” Then Clive stepped out from the tree. Alice did a double take. “What’s going on?”

  “Could you help my friend? He needs some clothes for school.”

  Alice crossed her arms. “Not until you explain what’s going on. My mother warned me about travelers and carnival riffraff.”

  “We’re not with the carnival,” said Clive. “But you wouldn’t believe me if I told you where we are from.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.” Alice stared at Grim Hill at the end of the street. “I’ve seen things stranger than most folks would believe.”

  I don’t know what got into me, except maybe I’d become used to confiding in the elderly Alice. I blurted out how Grim Hill was a fairy hill and how we’d got caught in a tangled web of dark magic.

  Clive’s eyes grew wider and wider and he started shaking his head. Still, I babbled. I told Alice about us landing backwards in time, and how I thought her mother was correct: that there was something just not right about the carnival. I left out the part of the story that Alice’s own forgotten sister, Lucinda, was a prisoner in Grim Hill. She didn’t need to know a hurtful thing like that.

  Alice said nothing for a few moments before laughing nervously. “You two are away with the fairies.”

  I nodded and said, “That pretty much sums it up. We’ve been swept through time from fairy magic.”

  But then Alice fixed us with a wary gaze. “That’s what my granny calls crazy people. She also says lunatics deserve acts of charity even if they are cuckoo. So I’ll still help you.”

  “I can live with that,” muttered Clive.

  Any further explaining would only dig us in deeper, so I kept my mouth shut as Alice led us around to her backyard, and pulled off a pair of pants and a sweater vest from the clothesline.

  “If you roll up my father’s pants, they’ll look like britches,” said Alice, handing Clive the sweater vest to pull over his T-shirt. “I recommend that when the teacher asks where you’re from, you don’t repeat the wild story that you told me. Just tell him your address.”

  After Alice helped us with the clothes, she met up with some other girls and hurried away from us. Not that I blamed her.

  Clive went to change and when he stepped out from behind the bushes it was my turn to chuckle. The pants were rolled up three or four cuff lengths, and the overlarge sweater was cockeyed.

  I put my hand over my mouth to stifle my last laugh, and then in a more serious voice said, “I’ve got a bad feeling that no matter what we do and say, we’ll just make mistakes around here.”

  “Well, we look like a couple of farm kids,” Clive said. “We’ll just pretend we are like those sharecroppers in the Depression.”

  I decided to take Mr. History know-it-all’s word for it. “Maybe, but I still say if we go like this, we’ll stick out like sore thumbs.” If only we had known the half of it …

  We trudged toward school. When we reached the bottom of the hill, we came to a sudden stop.

  We’d arrived at Darkmont School. And it hadn’t changed a bit. Not the drab paint, not the dingy windows, not the scraggly school grounds. The place still gave me the shivers.

  We straggled up toward the entrance just as the morning bell rang, A lot of kids were still out in the front yard, but we did not care to stay and meet them. We climbed the wide steps to the large front door, but when we put our hands on the door handles we heard laughter behind us. We turned and saw that all the kids had lined up in two separate rows in the yard. Alice was in line too. She frowned and shook her head. The kids were all staring at us and laughing and tittering at Clive and me.

  I got a bad feeling that one day in this school wasn’t going to be any easier than storming Grim Hill …

  CHAPTER 20 A Torturous Day

  “You two there, what are you doing!” barked an angry looking man. He wore a tweed suit, a sweater vest, and a bow tie even though it was a warm September day. He pointed at Clive and me, broke through the student lines, and blustered toward us at a menacing pace.

  Clearly, we were both doing something wrong, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

  “We’re walking into the school?” I raised my voice into a question.

  “Miss.” The teacher leaned over me and began spitting his words. “How dare you be so impertinent.”

  I wiped a drop of spit from my eye. This seemed to make him angrier. His face had gone from pink to stunning chartreuse making the bald spot on top of his head glow. Clive furtively checked out the other students, who were trying to get a glimmer of what we were doing wrong.

  Some students were looking alarmed, and a few others’ faces had a lean, hungry look – that expression some kids got when another person got into big trouble. I tried to think of the right thing to say, but it was difficult because the teacher kept yelling about impertinence.
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  “Please excuse us, sir,” said Clive. That seemed to help. The man stopped sputtering and took a breath.

  “Well, that is a bit of a problem, isn’t it,” the teacher shot back. “First of all, you bold brats are flagrantly disobeying the rule for an orderly assembly before entering the school. Instead of lining up separately in the boys’ line and the girls’ line, you both just waltzed ahead and right up to the front door together.”

  He said that last word as if we’d committed a capital crime. “Sorry, um, sir, but there’s a reason we didn’t know that rule.”

  “Don’t speak again unless you’re being spoken to,” the teacher snapped at me. Then he crossed his arms and fastened Clive with a scathing look. “So, explain yourself young man.”

  Wait a minute – what was wrong with me answering the question? I was about to ask, but Clive quickly stood in front of me.

  “Sorry, sir, but it is our first day of school here, and we didn’t know we were supposed to line up separately.”

  “Well, you must have come from a backward schoolhouse indeed that didn’t follow the most basic rules of an orderly assembly,” said the teacher. He snapped his fingers right under our noses. “Both of you get to the back of the proper lines and file in quietly.”

  Clive and I hustled, but I couldn’t help saying to Clive, “Why wouldn’t he let me answer the question?”

  Clive’s face broke into a mild smirk. “These are the olden days, Cat. Where guys rule and girls drool.”

  I put my hands on my hips, “Right, well if he thinks I’m not as good as any stupid boy, I’m going to …”

  “Quiet!” The teacher shouted so that my ears rang and my heart jumped. I stole into the back of the line, but not before noticing that I was being stared at under the increasing scrutiny of Alice Greystone.

  Finally, the door opened and we were all allowed to enter the school. Clive and I were directed to the main office so we could register. In the office, we were told to wait by a stern looking secretary (and let’s just say I’d never think our vice principal Ms. Severn was mean looking again compared to this secretary). After attending to some other new kids, the secretary assigned Clive and me to seventh form – whatever that was.