The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School

by Kim Newman

  Her eyes were panicked.

  Amy wiped away ants with her hands, but they came back.

  She didn’t even think the insects here were properly alive. They were little sand golems in the shape of ants. Tiny Black Skirts with pincers and poison.

  ‘Ants on your face, what a great disgrace,’ she said. ‘Spend two and sixpence on cleaning up this place.’

  Paule heard her and closed her eyes.

  She was part of the Purple, living in two worlds. She could no more be consigned here than she could be kept Back Home.

  Amy felt the changes coming.

  Paule didn’t need mentacles. Everything here was connected to her.

  ffolliott sat up, eyes alive. Bugs poured away from her, clearing a circle. The bare ground was more like bone than rock.

  Amy heard water and shouts and fire. An air-raid siren went off.

  A newspaper seller shouted ‘Starnewsnstandard Starnewsnstandard Starnewsnstandard!’ Headlines floated…

  MAGISTRATE DECAPITATED – HEAD STILL MISSING! KENTISH GLORY CAPTURES DIAMOND GANG! A NATION MOURNS – DR SHADE FEARED LOST! A NATION CHEERS – DR SHADE RETURNS! WHO IS THE KENTISH GLORY?

  She was dizzy from it all.

  A phantom ship, a broken hulk, appeared around them. On every deck, phantom girls were scrapping, silent and see-through and juddering. It was like the flickers when the projector went wonky and Miss Dryden ran out of music to play… pale ghosts in Black and Grey, swimming through mud or slipping on ice, mouths open but mute.

  The figures became more solid, recognisable.

  Lamarcroft knocked out Pinborough and wrestled with Ker.

  Frecks had Bainter on his knees, crooking her arm around his neck from behind. His bald pate was going red.

  The Purple faded. Amy and Paule were Back Home.

  It was noisier here.

  Amy held Paule, who was exhausted. By force of her will, she had withdrawn the oblation. The shimmer was gone. The Runnel and the Flute were ruined.

  ‘I might not be able to go back, Amy,’ said Paule, terrified.

  Amy tried to comfort her.

  ‘…oh, and I can’t feel my legs.’

  Paule was heavy in her arms. Amy set her down on a coil of old rope and arranged her as comfortably as possible.

  ‘Wiggle your toes,’ she said.

  ‘I am,’ insisted Paule.

  Amy looked – the Sixth’s feet were like dead fish.

  They were on the foredeck, the most solid part of the ship.

  Kali’s father sat nearby, sobbing. Tears soaked through his hood, making damp sticky spots over his cheeks. Kali stood over him, his revolver in her hand… she didn’t shoot him in the hood, though Amy could tell she was in two minds about it. She wanted revenge, but not to be an orphan.

  Amy looked around, wondering how the pieces had fallen. She stood up, to try to get a better view.

  Rayne, furious, ran at her – charging along the deck. Dead ants fell from her clothes and hair. She had compound eyes and mandibles. She shrieked and chittered, mouthparts working weirdly, ropes of spittle flying.

  Amy tensed, ready to fly at the deposed Queen Ant and join battle.

  Someone – Palgraive! – got in the way, and Rayne was slammed aside. The fight was knocked out of her.

  Palgraive, head lolling like a hanged man, held Rayne up. Inside her brain, a maggot was hatching.

  Into what? A fly?

  Rayne hung limp, an empty suit. Palgraive’s head shifted, with a crack as her neck settled back in place. Something looked out through her eyes and into Rayne’s slack, vacant face.

  ‘Good girl,’ she said – rather, the thing in her brain said. ‘One should be a good girl.’

  Palgraive let Rayne go. The girl crumpled on the deck and the Professor – her mother – snarled in disgust. No tears from the author of Formis.

  A Queen falls, and a Princess rises.

  Amy really really hoped they wouldn’t now have to go through this whole thing again with Palgraive’s brain-maggot instead of Rayne’s skipping rhyme.

  The fight was mostly gone out of the Black Skirts. Captain Freezing had cooled a lot of them off before dissolving in the harbour. But they had a last ditch – what was left of the Cerberus and the Ghidorah, and a few others. Most – like Brown, Ker, Pinborough and Manders – woke up and laid down arms, wondering what on earth they were doing in an underground inlet with the remains of an old-fashioned ship and a lot of other soggy girls. But Euterpe McClure, Henry Buller, the Crowninshields, Angela De’Ath, Snitcher Garland and Stheno Stonecastle had no better senses to come to… they’d gone Black entirely of their own accord and come into themselves as Soldier Ants. Together, they held the deck of the Johanna Pike, and could still do an awful lot of harm.

  Amy and Paule were not alone on the foredeck. Kali fired wild, emptying the gun. Then she threw it in the sea. Her father bowed, thumping his hooded head against the deck in submission or worship. This was the dawning of the Kali-Yuga, the Age of the Demon. Frecks let Bainter go. He gargled and slumped, making strange gestures he couldn’t get right. Light Fingers’ hands were invisible because she couldn’t stop buzzing – if she touched wood, it flew into splinters. Gould and Marsh stood back to back, fur bristling and gills flaring. Devlin made big stretchy fists.

  From the ruins of the Black Skirts, Beryl Crowninshield rose – a pretender to the throne. She rallied the diehards.

  ‘We can still win this, Black Skirts,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve read that book,’ shouted Devlin. ‘Ridiculously Overconfident, by Victor E. Gloating!’

  Crowninshield can’t know what this had really been all about…but her lust to win, defined as giving the flukes a right drubbing, was strong as ever.

  Amy was exhausted.

  Crowninshield’s Corpse Corps advanced across the deck.

  An explosion in the side of the ship scattered the Black Skirts. Stonecastle and Garland went over the side, flopping into a shallow pool. Buller yelled rage in the middle of the mess. Another explosion went off.

  Amy, astonished, saw Gogoth lope across the burning deck, snatch Buller over his shoulder, and scale the remains of the rigging to get her safely to the dock. Even more astonished, Buller made ‘my hero’ eyes at her surprise saviour.

  Another explosion.

  ‘Look,’ said Light Fingers, pointing at the jetty.

  Amy saw where this was coming from.

  Lamarcroft and Knowles held Larry Laurence’s shoulders. A shimmer, with visible violet lips, was open in front of Larry’s chest, held apart by her fingers.

  A purple-pink cannonball burst out of the pocket and popped amidships.

  When Larry’s duplicate cannonballs went off, there was no shrapnel… just a popping of energy like lightning. The ship was further damaged, but people were just thrown around.

  Crowninshield tossed back her fringe, showing both eyes.

  It was her way of signalling surrender.

  Amy raised her hand and accepted pax.

  Relieved and worn out, Laurence stopped firing.

  ‘Hurrah for the Remove,’ shouted Frecks. ‘Hurrah for Amy!’

  ‘…and everybody else,’ Amy said, not sure she could be heard over the hearty, if ragged cheers.

  The water was back where it should be and what was left of the Johanna Pike was sinking under it, coming to bits. Cap’n Belzybub’s ship was going down at last.

  Amy floated over the drink. Others got their shoes and socks wet.

  Frecks had more hurrahs to stir up, but Amy thought it best they get out of this cavern before they all drowned.

  Luckily, Knowles knew the escape passages.

  Limping, bedraggled, bloodied, puzzled, elated, wet and aching girls made their way through hewn rock. Some started to ask questions. Some were already making excuses. Not a few had complaints.

  Frecks started on her brother’s version of ‘Blow the Man Down, Bullies’ but her sacred coif didn’t feel the ditty qualifie
d as Just and True and got very hot. Frecks took the thing off before it burned her ears.

  Some were lost, some left behind.

  When the register was next called, who would be Absent? Rayne, Sundle, ffolliott… others?

  But most were in reasonable shape.

  ‘Hurrah for Kentish Glory,’ whispered Light Fingers.

  ‘Hurrah for a mug of tea, a hot bath and a good night’s sleep,’ responded Amy, ‘then Nurse in the morning to get scratches ointmented and sick notes signed.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ said Light Fingers.

  The secret passage came out in the cricket pavilion, where a whole wall pivoted on a hidden hinge.

  Dr Swan was waiting for them, with a deputation of other teachers.

  XV: The Start of a New Term

  ASIDE FROM A chilly weekend with Mother and Uncle Nugent, Amy spent the Easter hols at Frecks’ family home in the Lincolnshire Wolds. Walmergrave Towers was a greater pile than Drearcliff Grange, with enough secret passages, abandoned chapels and fairy dells to keep the young explorers occupied. Light Fingers and Kali were unable (Light Fingers) or unwilling (Kali) to spend time with their own parents, and also came along… so the Moth Club ran riot throughout the Towers, across the grounds and over half the countryside. In a hidden chamber, they found a cache of British Intelligence ‘gadgets’, which Light Fingers tried to get working. Several went off at once. Fortunately, only one under-butler was hurt and him not badly. The Moth Club made up for it by nudging the tweeny he was sweet on into noticing he was much more dashing and romantic than the strapping yet obviously cloddish groom she’d been walking out with.

  Frecks got quite ticked off with her friends when all three of them met Viscount Ralph and didn’t at once perceive the double-dyed rotter she’d told them he was. He had quite a nice smile and a funny way of talking to them that led to a certain degree of swooniness that Frecks was appalled by. But that didn’t last. Amy added seventeen new species to her Moth Book – more than in two whole terms at Drearcliff.

  They didn’t talk much about the last term, but a lot about the next.

  Grey was back to being the only uniform option, but new designs from Dosson, Chapell & Co. were smarter. Light Fingers had ideas for small, within-the-rules alterations which made the kit more chic. It was all to do with smart lines, apparently. And sheerer stockings.

  Amy exchanged letters with Knowles. Know-It-All’s father had agreed to write a book about Dennis Rattray, but called it off because he thought Blackfist was a bounder when he met him. Light Fingers, who still harboured resentment against the Captain, was glad to hear it. She asked Amy to pass on the suggestion that Knowles’ father stick with the book but expose the heroic adventurer as a brutal hypocrite.

  When time came to go back to Drearcliff, Ralph was persuaded to drive the pack of them across country. His Bentley was racing-green and the fastest thing in three counties, except for Light Fingers on foot (not that she mentioned it – she was more interested in thinking quick than moving fast these days). Ralph insisted on having the top down, because some of the girls – naming no names, but he meant Kali and Amy – had rather overdone experiments with scent. They’d found Frecks’ mother’s stock of intoxicant perfumes, and other tricks of the espionage trade. The lesson of the exploding fountain pen hadn’t sunk in enough to prevent them sampling posh pongs.

  It was possible, Amy conceded, that Viscount Ralph was the Complete Cad Frecks made him out to be… but the back of his head was perfectly formed, and when he turned back to talk to them, his eyes twinkled with attractive mischief. He would bear watching, of course.

  The Remove was, for the moment, dissolved, though the girls who had been consigned there – with the exception of Palgraive and (for no reason Amy could see) Devlin – were expected to take special lessons with Dr Swan from next year. This term, an afternoon a week was set aside for an introductory course to prepare for this honour. Frecks and Kali were expected to attend, as were several other non-Unusual, non-Removed individuals – Shoshone Brown, Muyun Ker, Jocasta Upton, Zenobia Aire (!), Sally Nikola, Winifred Rose and Hjordis Bok. Headmistress evidently saw qualities in them.

  The Moth Club stirred up some excitement when they arrived at School – mostly because of Ralph’s Bentley, though also because of Ralph. A crowd gathered and had to be dispersed by Miss Borrodale with a whistle. Fossil was one of those who could barely remember being Black Skirt, though Amy would never forget what the teacher had been like in Rayne’s thrall. Ralph radiated his charm at Miss Borrodale, who shot him down. His ‘I like a challenge’ smirk punctured girlish hopes and made Amy suspect the Viscount really was a rat after all. She hoped Fossil crushed his heart like grapes in a press.

  Girls were everywhere, all in grey, chattering and flocking. A few faces were missing – some parents heard rumours about last term and didn’t want to send their darlings back into danger. Several prominent former Black Skirts couldn’t bear to return to the site of their defeat and had manipulated parents or guardians into sending them to other schools on flimsy pretexts – though plenty who’d skipped and rhymed like automata had managed to forget the whole thing and went about being as matey as you could like.

  Amy thought that was for the best.

  She wasn’t even sure if poor, lost Rayne could be blamed.

  Outside the Desdemona dorms – to which Amy and Light Fingers could now return – they ran into Smudge, Peebles and Inchfawn.

  ‘Have you heard?’ began Smudge. ‘Ponce Bainter popped his clogs over hols. Massive blood vessel exploded while he was on the pier at Brighton. He wasn’t coming back, anyway… but this saves Headmistress the trouble of sacking him.’

  ‘She is actually telling the truth,’ put in Inchfawn. ‘It was in The Times.’

  After last term, it seemed silly holding Inchfawn’s crimes against her. So much worse had happened… and, as Amy understood it, the first phase of the Hooded Conspiracy had been Kali’s father’s attempt to whisk his daughter out of harm’s way. So they were at least talking to Inchfawn again.

  ‘Funny thing,’ said Smudge. ‘Witnesses said he seemed to be running away from something, but no one saw what it was. Dashed the whole length of the pier and dropped just as he reached the railing at the end. Nowhere else to go.’

  ‘There’s a new chaplain,’ said Peebles. ‘Wait till you see him… a real Latin lover type. Valentino in a dog collar. The Reverend Luca Rinaldo. His wife, if she is his wife, is a stunner… Ariadne. She’s so fair her hair looks white, and she plays funny, oriental music on the organ. You’ve not heard the likes of it. They’re thick with Headmistress. I’d volunteer for Double R.I. if it meant gazing into his eyes and listening to his voice all term.’

  The last weeks of last term, Bainter had been in School but not at lessons or chapel. He’d looked worried and harassed, as well he might be. Sometimes, he had glanced over his shoulder and up into the sky as if a predatory bird were stalking him. Had he imagined Kentish Glory had his number? If so, he’d been wrong – she couldn’t be bothered to keep tabs on him, believing him a spent force. Amy had assumed Dr Swan would get rid of him at once, but he had stayed on, ever flimsier, as if his days were numbered – which, it turned out, they were. That blood vessel must have been swelling all the while. Paule told Amy the botch of the Runnel and the Flute would have consequences, and Professor Rayne and Kali’s Father had already been paid back with the literal (the Professor) and in effect (Red Flame) loss of their daughters. Invisible tendrils from the Purple were hooked into Ponce and would tear him apart for the failure.

  Dora Paule was more in her own mind, now… but her legs were dead. Amy was resolved to help. Paule assisted Dr Swan in teaching her class of Unusuals and Others. It was a way of finally leaving the Sixth but staying on at School. She had become Staff.

  Amy looked out for Paule – she was becoming adept at getting around on crutches – but didn’t see her in the milling crowds.

  A poster outside the Drearclif
f Playhouse advertised a Summer Revue entitled Balmy Daze! and an Arthur Wing Pinero Players production of Dandy Dick. By the Heel, a whip was notching Absalom before the anarchist had even prised the lid off her new tin of red paint. Firsts who might once have skipped were playing hopscotch instead. Frost and Thorn palled about together, having discovered hot and cold made tolerable partners in crime. They brought out the mischief in each other.

  Dauntless clopped up the drive, pulling the school cart with Joxer on the box. A woman Amy didn’t know got down. She wore an old-fashioned long coat and a hat with a gauzy veil and a dramatically stuffed bird attached to it.

  ‘That’s Mrs Edwards,’ said Light Fingers. ‘Back in harness. Watch your split infinitives around her. She likes to bruise your knuckles with the ruler.’

  So Amy had that to look forward to. What had happened to Miss Kaye? At the fag-end of last term, she’d rallied round – taking up slack as other teachers got over their Black Skirt moods. Now, she was back where she came from – though she’d left Amy and Frecks her card, which she said bore secret messages under the right light. They hadn’t cracked that yet, but probably would.

  ‘Bonjour mes filles,’ came a chillingly musical voice. ‘I do so hope we’ve enjoyed our hols, for beaucoup improvement is required to spruce up School. Toujours gai, remember, toujours gai…’

  Sidonie Gryce, large as life and twice as objectionable, was back in office. Head Girl and Boadicea of Bullies. She had a new pack of Murdering Heathens, drawn from several houses and years – an All-School Rogues Gallery. Her coterie included Beryl Crowninshield, Euterpe McClure, Netta Kinross and Polyphemus, and – in Snitcher Garland’s old role of general toady, spy and informant – Shrimp Harper. A formidable bunch.

  ‘You still here, Sid?’ said Frecks. ‘Weren’t you last seen hiding under a pew during the Battle of the Jo Pike?’

  ‘One doesn’t have to be at a battle to win it, Walmergrave. En fait, it’s preferable to be elsewhere as the têtes get blessé.’

  Amy burned and concentrated so as not to float.