The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School

by Kim Newman

  The Cosy Coffin popped like a soap bubble. Amy floated of her own accord. Gravity took hold of Stephen Swift. The distraction of pain switched off her Talent.

  Amy spat out Miss Steps’ hand. She blotted the salt taste of blood on Frecks’ scarf.

  She extended her cloak and lowered herself to the street.

  Swift got there first, thumping at the feet of her teammates. She screamed and held her broken wing. Veiny whites were exposed around her pinprick pupils. In the back of her hand was a deep, bleeding crescent.

  Amy knew she only had as long as it took Miss Steps to get hold of herself.

  She could have used Pinborough’s knock-out punch.

  Or Poppet Dyall’s mind-scrambling presence.

  She got her hands under Miss Steps’ arms and hauled her upright. She was, as expected, a thimbleweight. A dance partner who could be cakewalked backwards into a wall.

  Amy thought of holding Swift up as a punchbag and prodding the Glove into laying out her own teammate…

  Was that going too far? Would Miss Steps be injured or worse?

  Some wouldn’t care, but the Lady in the Lake would. A paladin couldn’t be held to a lesser standard than a Pendragon.

  Miss Steps would soon snap back. She had no scruples to overcome.

  Sparks raised her shining fist. Larry’s worried little face was lit by the Glove’s glow.

  Swift’s tantrum didn’t abate. She wriggled in Amy’s arms, like a small angry child. She was blubbing, with howls and sobs. She hit out with tiny fists, thumping her own thighs as she tried to break Amy’s grip.

  ‘’Old ’er up, luv,’ said an unfamiliar voice.

  The cripple.

  Tottering on his good leg, he had his crutch drawn back like a golf club.

  Swift wailed at the sight of the abused urchin hopping towards her.

  Amy heaved Miss Steps up in her embrace and tucked in her own head. The cripple swung. The padded end of the crutch connected with Swift’s dimpled chin.

  Whistle whistle whistle… kerr-SNAP!

  Stephen Swift went limp.

  Now she’d be a skivvy in the Purple House and be there when the Wrongest Wrong Door opened…

  Amy dropped the Draycott’s girl.

  She’d meet the Broken Doll.

  ‘Luv, luv,’ said the cripple, snapping his fingers in front of Amy’s nose. ‘Where’d you go?’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ said Amy honestly.

  She had lost something – again. She’d nearly had it, but it was gone.

  It was a distraction.

  Was this her leaf?

  That dream she couldn’t remember. Did it want her back?

  She thought too much. That was more like her leaf.

  A space in her mind was like Larry’s pocket. Not always there, but ready to expand. It was behind a Wrong Door. An extra place, for storing and sorting… and wondering what to do with things that didn’t fit.

  ‘One dahhn, two ter go…’

  The lad had his crutch in his armpit, hands free to make fists.

  Miss Steps snoozed in the gutter. Drool poured from her mouth.

  The Glove and the Knout had Larry.

  Amy judged Sterlyng more dangerous than Sparks.

  The Glove had a Talent, but was a stubby little thing. Shocked to see Miss Steps taken out of the Game, she was lost. She needed someone to look up to and tell her what to do. The Knout, a nastier piece of work, was just more determined to do someone an injury.

  Sterlyng left Larry to Sparks and unwound her braid.

  She scraped the fish hooks on the cobbles. That put Amy’s teeth on edge.

  The flail darted and Amy pushed herself up into the air, above the lash.

  Oh for a giant pair of scissors!

  ‘Sterlyng,’ she said, floating above her, ‘didn’t you hear? This season, all the smart girls are wearing their hair bobbed?’

  The Knout made an underarm whipcrack and Amy swum herself backwards, but let the hooks snag in her cloak.

  She reached out with a mentacle and latched onto the lamp post.

  It lurched – had all the hammering and blasting unmoored the post from the concrete? – but held.

  Amy swung around the pole, drawing closer in a diminishing orbit.

  The cripple jumped up and down and patter-sang the rude words of ‘There is a Tavern in the Town’ vivacissimo. The Knout was astonished and – yes! – distracted for vital seconds.

  Amy unhooked the whip from her wings, gingerly so as not to get barbs in her fingers. She wound Sterlyng’s hair around the lamp post above the crossbar, then tied it in a rolling hitch. Miss Borrodale, who taught yachting, would not award Amy’s knot highest marks, for it was uneven – but couldn’t deny it’d hold fast.

  Sterlyng knew she was caught. If she ripped free, she’d lose her hair… and most of her scalp. She stood down and left it to Sparks.

  Amy landed in front of the Glove. The littler girl was panicky. Which made her dangerous. Her fist was close to Larry’s face.

  ‘Amy,’ said Laurence, alarmed.

  ‘It’ll be all right, Larry. This girl will let you go now.’

  ‘Shows how much you know,’ said Sparks.

  ‘You’re not going to be made to do anything,’ said Amy, trying to sound soothing. ‘You’ll let her go of your own accord. It’s your choice.’

  ‘I choose… not to!’

  The thumb knuckle of the glove brushed Larry’s nubbin nose. The skin blistered. Larry yelped.

  ‘You’ll reconsider. Think it through. You don’t want to hurt her.’

  ‘Maybe I do want to hurt her. Maybe I want to hurt her lots!’

  Amy nodded to Miss Steps, dreaming in the gutter, puffball of snot swelling from a nostril… and the Knout, stood against the lamp post, a sacrifice bound to a totem pole. She saw Sparks’ glance follow her gaze.

  ‘It’s just you now, just you and your choice.’

  The Glove might not even have been a Third.

  Could she be a Second? Without her Talent, what would she have been? How was she treated at Draycott’s? A little fat girl with a funny hand.

  Drearcliff Grange whips were horrors. What were Draycott’s Silver Arrows like? Did they hang hammocks from pillars made out of the skulls of Seconds?

  Tears cut through the dust on Sparks’ chubby cheeks. Her pudding chins wobbled.

  ‘Choose, Sparks… choose…’

  The cripple lurched lopsidedly, circling behind the Glove, readying his club for a second stroke. Another drive to the green. Sparks wasn’t stupid though.

  ‘You, horrid thing, stay still! No cracking my crown. Not any more.’

  The cripple hopped back – deftly, Amy noticed – into Sparks’ line of sight.

  ‘I’m Amy,’ she said. ‘What’s your first name?’

  A long pause. ‘Poll.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Poll Sparks.’

  ‘No, it’s not! It’s not nice to meet me. It’s never nice…’

  With her left hand, Sparks – the Glove – pushed Laurence at Amy.

  Larry tripped and turned halfway round. Amy caught her with mentacles and drew her into her arms for an embrace. Amy pushed her face to the top of Larry’s head and kissed her hair.

  The Glove stepped forward, snarling and shouting…

  ‘It’s never nice… to meet the Glove!’

  She punched. Her glowing fist sunk into Larry’s stomach.

  Amy felt the force of the blow and there was an explosion.

  VII: Tummy Trouble

  VIOLET LIGHTNING STRUCK. Not from above, but from all around. Cold light flashed, dissonant bells sounded.

  Amy was dazzled and deafened.

  At the heart of the purple starburst was a white, cracked face.

  Her again.

  The Broken Doll.

  The explosion was over and done in an instant. Instead of puffing out, flame folded away.

  But it coloured everything.

  Amy had a panic
spasm. Would she see through purple specs for the rest of her days?

  The bells were distant now… as if Amy were knocked out of herself, and far away from the street corner.

  Noise rushed in again – shouts, clattering feet, smashing glass.

  She rubbed her teary eyes to get rid of purple squiggles.

  A high-pitched screech assailed her ears. Someone in agony. Someone terrified.

  She was afraid it was her. Concentrating, she felt almost no pain. She wasn’t even cold any more.

  That was how you felt just before you died of cold, she remembered.

  She’d been holding Larry Laurence. She wasn’t now.

  The crippled boy was on all fours, coughing and choking. He was within kicking distance of Sterlyng, but the tethered Knout – could she still claim the handle when her hair was tied away? – was not taking a chance. The hard-faced Draycott’s girl was horror-struck. What had she seen in the moment of explosion? What did it take to chip through to her flint soul?

  Did anyone else see the Broken Doll? Did everyone?

  Amy lost the image again. She could only recall – from seconds ago – a white smudge. Eyes? No sex, no age.

  A broken what? Something from the nursery.

  The screeching hadn’t stopped.

  Fast footsteps told Amy people were running up the alley towards them. A distant police whistle shrilled.

  All this commotion attracted attention.

  A Great Game convention was that players dodge the constabulary – and civilian bystanders – as well as rival teams. The Undertaking did not have a quiet word with the Metropolitan and City police to get teams wriggle room with the law. Previous games led to players spending a night in the cells, on suspicion of offences from affray to impersonating a member of the clergy with intent to procure immoral services.

  The proverbial quiet word was had the next morning and charges were dismissed, but being jugged meant being no use to the team… except that year when the tobies were hidden in police stations, black marias and courts. The final jug was tucked under the helmet of a bobby on the beat – ensuring an orgy of tossed bricks and cricket balls and swung hockey sticks and skipping ropes in the quest for the copper with the golden head. That naturally led to a deal of scarpering as bruised, bareheaded, non-prize peelers gave chase.

  Amy tried to clamber to her feet.

  Only she wasn’t standing on the ground.

  The explosion had tossed her into the air and she had stuck.

  She stood as if on one of Miss Steps’ steps – but one of her own making. Had she picked up the party piece from Stephen Swift? Sometimes a demonstration was all the lesson she needed.

  She looked down.

  Smoke, fog and a swirl of crimson-purple vapour made it difficult to see what had happened. The lamp post flared. The electric bulb burst, the filament caught fire.

  Stephen Swift remained conked out. A blessing.

  The cripple and the Knout were in the flickering circle of illumination.

  The screech must be Laurence.

  Amy dreaded telling Frecks. If Larry were hurt, she’d feel awful.

  No – it was Poll Sparks, keening like a mortally wounded animal.

  Amy had seen – was still seeing, in her mind’s eye – the white-hot, pulsing Glove punch into Larry’s unresisting midriff… like a coal tossed at a wall of butter.

  The Glove’s arm went into Larry, up to the shoulder.

  Tendrils of something slimy and alive streamed from the breach, splattering Sparks’ contorted face.

  Larry must be dead.

  Amy despaired.

  There hadn’t been a fatality in the Game in more than fifty years. None of the current teams – except Humble College, smugly resting in last place for centuries – were in the lists then. A lad from Grimes’ Aquatic Institute got his gills clogged with river filth while diving for a submarine jug and drowned. A finny cherub was set in the Thames wall in his memory. Tradition was that the winning team sacrifice one of their tobies – smashing it against the brickwork above the statue’s alcove – to poor Walter Whep.

  What memorial would Larry Laurence have?

  Amy parted fog and smoke with her mentacles and kept people back.

  She could do that now. With cold fury came precision.

  Larry stood on her own two feet – alive! Sparks was on her knees in front of her, howling. Her shoulder was wrenched and pulled up at an uncomfortable angle. Her arm disappeared up to the elbow… not into Larry’s stomach, but her pocket. If her punch had connected, her gloved hand would be stuck out of Laurence’s back. Her glove was somewhere else. Waves of purple stuff radiated from the split seam in space, spilling onto the Draycott’s girl’s back and hair. Larry was concentrating. She was also learning more about her Talent. Amy had never seen Larry put a thing – or a person! – partially away before.

  This was the point of the Great Game. Not the competition – though Amy wasn’t prepared to give up on the school’s honour just yet – but the education. Players had to work together, show initiative and imagination. They learned to be better… or, in more than a few cases, worse. Without a just cause, a player could become a Wrong ’Un. That was all too obvious.

  In this situation, it was down to Amy to find a way out.

  She lowered herself to the street.

  People – men, smelling of cigarettes and beer – gathered, but stood back. Amy put a fence up around the girls. Not as unyielding as Swift’s steps, but sturdy enough. She could maintain it without even concentrating. As if she’d nailed the planks together. The crowd didn’t even realise there was a barrier. They just pressed only so far forward and were stopped.

  Without understanding what they were seeing, the curiosity seekers knew not to interfere. People – she hated even to think the word, but Ordinaries – were like that. When they encountered the extramundane they didn’t get mixed up in it but watched quietly. Not boys excited to see a shiny new locomotive steam by at top speed, but motorists waiting at a level crossing for the annoying train to be out of the way so they could drive on. Later the diamond-sharp images would go fuzzy. They’d convince themselves they’d had a couple of pints too many. Even if pals agreed they’d seen the same incredible things, it’d be dismissed as a will-o’-the-wisp or something funny in the pie.

  All Unusuals seemed to emit a low-level version of Poppet Dyall’s Talent.

  It was also a mercy, and a convenience. The Undertaking, who cleaned up after goblins and fairies, relied on folk not taking wild tales too seriously – even folk who’d just seen a dragon burn down the town hall or an Egyptian mummy win the Charleston contest. Must be the drains. Or students playing silly beggars.

  Without this effect, the world would be full of screaming, panicking people. Amy sometimes wondered why it wasn’t anyway.

  ‘Larry, are you all right?’ she asked.

  The girl nodded. She was smiling, calm but excited.

  It was such a relief, Amy knew, when you stopped being frightened… when you realised you were frightening. She’d worry about Larry turning into a Wrong ’Un later.

  Sparks’ screech wore ragged. She made a high, cracked dog-whistle sound as if she’d torn something in her throat.

  ‘Poll, can you hear me?’

  The Glove was white with agony.

  ‘Larry is to let go and you’re to pull your hand out.’

  Sparks was ashen, scared to imbecility.

  ‘Nod if you understand.’

  Sparks bobbed her head and winced.

  ‘What hurts?’ Amy asked. ‘Your hand?’

  A headshake.

  ‘Your shoulder?’

  Vigorous nod, which made the pain flare.

  ‘Can you try to stand up? Larry, help her…’

  Laurence put out a hand, which Sparks took. Awkwardly, she stood – arm anchored in the violet rift. With the back of her left hand, she wiped her face. She had finished crying.

  Amy felt Sparks’ injured shoul
der and regretted nodding off in Nurse Humphreys’ First Aid lessons. Was this a sprain or a dislocation? She seemed to remember the best way to tell the difference was the pitch of the screams that came when you prodded the problem area. Humph didn’t reckon much to differing degrees of crybabiness. When a girl went to the Infirmary with a scratch or a sniffle, Nurse told her about a grievous injury she’d treated in the War. The treatment made patients feel guilty, if not noticeably better.

  The purple traceries spilling out of Larry’s pocket were impossible to look at straight on, so Amy didn’t have to see the blurry cut-off point where Sparks’ sleeve disappeared into nowhere. A dried-rose smell was all around.

  In the Purple – another realm superimposed on the everyday world, which some Unusuals could reach – was a bodiless hand with a big fat white glove on it wagging? Would that attract some croc-mouthed creature to bite it off? Best not worry till it happened.

  ‘Are we comfortable?’ Amy asked.

  That was something stupid Nurse said after her Vimy Ridge horror stories were out of the way.

  Larry and Sparks both nodded. So maybe stupidity was soothing.

  ‘I’m going to count to three… Larry, relax your pocket… if you can, let go of this girl’s hand… maybe give a little push. Poll, don’t wrench… draw your arm back normally, as you would if pulling it out of a sleeve. If possible, turn down the wick on your Glove. Can you do that?’

  Sparks was doubtful.

  How furious would Larry be if the scarf she’d lovingly knitted for Frecks got ruined when used as a tourniquet? Amy didn’t have anything else at hand to treat a pulled-off limb.

  ‘One…’

  Sparks tensed and Larry breathed out.

  ‘Two…’

  Larry put her hands in her pockets – her blazer pockets. Sparks frowned and shook her fringe out of her eyes.

  ‘Two and a half,’ Amy said quickly… ‘Three!’

  Sparks took her arm out of Larry’s pocket.

  Amy saw her sleeve appear, then her wrist, then her hand…

  Larry gasped in relief – it had been an effort to hold Sparks – and stepped back.

  ‘Where is it?’ Sparks asked.

  ‘What?’ said Amy.

  ‘It.’

  Amy looked at the girl’s big, pale hand. She had polished nails and very blue veins.