The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School

by Kim Newman

  ‘It,’ Sparks insisted, almost crying again.

  Sparks wasn’t wearing her glove.

  Without thinking, Amy reached out and felt Sparks’ hand… not with her own fingers, but with mentacles. It was as if she cast a net which attached to Sparks’ nerves. Amy could feel what the other girl felt.

  Nothing broken.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ Amy asked.

  ‘No,’ said Sparks, as if something were wrong.

  ‘So… what’s your problem?’

  ‘It should hurt. It’s always hurt.’

  The Draycott’s girl was confused, but not unhappy. Poll Sparks had been let go, set free. Amy pulled back her mentacles.

  Sparks made a fist and patted it with the fingertips of her left hand – as if checking to see if a smoothing iron was hot – then grasped it fully. Weeping again, but not with pain, she touched her face with her right hand. Hesitantly, she reached up to her crown and rubbed her bruise – smiling in astonishment at the simple relief. She kissed her right hand. She looked from Larry to Amy and back again… at Sterlyng and the cripple… at Swift, knocked out on the pavement, and the circle of dazed witnesses. She gazed up into the fog.

  ‘Are you… cured?’ Amy asked.

  Was that possible?

  Admittedly, some Unusual Attributes – Dyall’s mind-blotting haze, Gould’s pelt, Lamarcroft’s nightmares – were as much curse as blessing. Poppet might be useful to the team, but couldn’t be friends with anyone without driving them mad. Amy always felt sorry for her, for she was naturally a kind, helpful soul. Shrimp Harper was worse than Dyall. The Tamora Sixth deliberately sapped anyone she talked to, doing something she called ‘breathing in’. Though it didn’t excuse her leechery, Harper was a tragic case. Without meaning to, she’d nearly killed her own mother.

  A dip in Larry’s pocket might help these unfortunates, and even be a boon to not-much-use Unusuals who only wanted to fit in. Should Amy try to persuade her to refine the Application? What might seem a cure could be an injury. Laurence once put a mouse away, and decided her pocket wasn’t for living things. The mouse came back not well. By Unusual standards, a gloveless Glove might be a sick, broken thing – no matter how happy Poll Sparks was to be able to scratch an itch or wash one hand with the other.

  ‘It might not be permanent,’ Amy told Sparks. ‘Be careful.’

  ‘If I’m not the Glove,’ Sparks said, shyly but with a gleam of incipient joy, ‘can I be expelled?’

  She scratched her blazer, as if trying to get the arrows off. Larry was quiet but shaking. She got like this if she held something in her pocket for too long. Drops of sweat flew off her forehead.

  Normally, Amy would suggest someone fetch a bucket.

  Larry bent backwards at the waist and threw her arms out.

  A rip opened up in front of her stomach, and a shaft of violet light burst through. Oohs and ahhs came from the onlookers.

  ‘Lumme, it must be magic,’ said someone.

  ‘Seen better at the Astoria,’ said a cynic. ‘The Great Edmondo. Now there’s a conjurer and a half…’

  Poll Sparks had just enough time, caught in the purple spotlight, to be jolted out of surprised happiness. Then, a purple toby jug belched out of the rip in space and smashed against her head.

  ‘Ow, my crown,’ she exclaimed, and fell down senseless.

  VIII: H’Alfie ’Ampton

  MORE DUPLICATE TOBIES shot out of Larry’s pocket. The projectiles had gory, satyr-like faces with pointed Spanish beards and bulging dead eyes. Laurence wheeled around stiff-limbed, possessed by her Talent. China missiles shattered against walls. Shards rained onto the pavement.

  Spectators hastily cleared the firing line. Some got tangled with each other.

  The crowd broke and ran off in all directions, dwindling to indistinct shapes in the fog. Even their running footsteps were quickly swallowed. A few knocked-off hats remained.

  Laurence calmed and her pocket closed.

  She held her stomach as if she’d just eaten a whole cooking apple by mistake.

  ‘All better?’ Amy asked.

  Larry nodded, but didn’t say anything.

  ‘How many jugs do you have in there?’

  Larry held up three fingers.

  ‘The originals?’

  Larry nodded again.

  Three out of five was a narrow win. But a win.

  Headers Haldane would accept it. Sausage Gossage would be pleased…

  But Amy knew it wasn’t good enough. After the rout of last year, only a clean sweep would restore the school’s honour. Victory must be complete. Preferably, the House of Reform should take the wooden spoon and be shamed out of hog-grunting.

  She admitted this little skirmish was a Drearcliff gain.

  Two Draycott’s girls out cold, sleeping the sleep of the unjust. A third tied to a lamp post by her own hair. Amy glanced at Sterlyng. She was stoic, but alert. Even with her back against the post, she had to stand on tiptoes or suffer painful yanking.

  The lame lad who’d presumably blundered into this skirmish with gallant intentions was up and about again, lurching in a circle around his crutch. He stamped his good foot and hitched his shoulders as if trying to wriggle his cuts and bruises away. Again, Amy wished she’d added first aid supplies to her kit. She wasn’t getting much use out of her magnifying glass or compass.

  She’d always thought of Kentish Glory as a knight, not a nurse. Given how she felt about fighting, maybe she should reconsider? Though, as non-fighters went, she’d given a fair account of herself in a scrap with a triad of terrors who were much more predisposed to settling things on the battlefield.

  The chimes of Big Ben sounded.

  The hour was tolled. Twelve green bottles hanging on the wall. Midnight.

  The Great Game was played until dawn. In six hours, the teams would gather at the Finish, in the shadow of the clock tower – those that weren’t lost in sewers or tied to lamp posts.

  Just being up and about after midnight was exciting. Miss Gossage had tried to get the girls to nap on the charabanc so they would be alert later, but the benches were too uncomfortable for a snooze and everyone was overwound anyway.

  Involuntarily, Amy yawned.

  ‘Pardon me,’ she said, not to anyone in particular.

  Thinking about getting tired produced symptoms of tiredness the way looking down from a great height brought on vertigo. Best to put those feelings away in a locked trunk, behind a crimson door…

  With the worn-out toys…

  And forge ahead. School Spirit.

  She took stock. Two more tobies to collect for a clean sweep.

  She was reasonably confident the girls sent to Lauriston Gardens were on the right track… but ‘Villa DeVille W1’ was still a mystery. Even Miss Memory hadn’t got a clue about that puzzle.

  A squeaking set her teeth on edge.

  The cripple’s crutch-end slid on the wet pavement. He tripped and began a nasty fall. Amy spread her life net and held him up. He was tilted at an impossible angle.

  ‘Oo’s got me?’ he exclaimed. ‘Some blighter ’as me ’eld, but I can’t see ’im!’

  ‘It’s a her,’ Amy said. ‘Me.’

  She walked up to the lad. He twisted unhappily in her mentacle hold. If he fought free, he’d smash his face against the street. She hooked her arms under him and carefully withdrew her invisible grip. His full weight pulled on her but she didn’t crumple – thanks again to the gym mat – and was able to get him vertical.

  When she got hands on him, she was shocked by his thin, filthy clothes and the bony scrawn beneath. Her imaginary arms could hold things, but mentacle tips had no feel for hot and cold, wet or dry, dead or alive.

  The boy wasn’t bleeding much, but she worried he’d got dirt in his wounds.

  She pulled a flask out of the big side pocket of her waistcoat and unstoppered it.

  The smell burned her nostrils but brought tears of delight to the patient.

  ‘Ye’
re a life-saver, luv,’ said the cripple, smiling through pain. ‘A drop o’ pick-me-up’s just the ticket fer restorin’ vitality ter the vitals.’

  He reached out eagerly.

  ‘You’ll be disappointed,’ she said. ‘It’s water and carbolic.’

  He wasn’t deterred.

  ‘Any porter in a storm.’

  She laughed.

  He raised the flask to his lips – nothing she could say would put him off – and had sense enough to take an experimental sip rather than a full-throated swig.

  He was aghast.

  ‘Arggh, yer’ve pizened me!’

  ‘I told you,’ she said, smiling. ‘It’s for cleaning the outsides, not warming the insides.’

  He handed back the flask and spat out more than he could have drunk.

  Amy spilled the cleaning liquid onto a patch of scarf…

  Did she imagine a scowling Larry aiming a purple duplicate jug at her then thinking better of it?

  And raised a wad of wool to the lad’s face.

  ‘Back, away wiv yer, yer ’eathen ’arridan!’

  ‘I’m going to wash your wounds. Don’t be such a fusspot.’

  ‘Ye’re not tikin’ me dirt, miss. ’Tis the thing what keeps spirit an’ sinew together. An ’onest dirt layer is a comfort in this fog an’ chill. More tonic fer abrasions an’ abrusions than any o’ yer fancy sticklin’ plasters or badinages. If Ma learned me nuffin’ else it’s ter keep me dirt good an’ even an’ filthy all over. Blast the old besom an’ the blokes she puts abaht wiv.’

  She’d never heard such a thing. Dirt is good.

  Nurse would be shocked. Amy didn’t doubt the lad could gather a following if he preached Ma’s gospel of filth to some Firsts and Seconds of her acquaintance. That tribe, however, were more likely to dye themselves blue as Boadicea with school ink than dirty up like a ragamuffin with soot and smuts.

  Rather than force the issue, Amy took the scarf away.

  ‘Who are you, boy?’ she asked.

  ‘H’Alfie ’Ampton, H’Esquire,’ he said, managing a strange curtsey by tapping his good knee with his bad leg and hunching over his crutch while lowering his head. ‘Nimed fer H’Alfred the King and ’Ampton where ’e ’ad ’is court. H’At yer serveece, marm. Flotsam o’ these streets. Jetsam o’ this wicked ’ard life. Rescuer of middens fair, no matter ’ow much pizen they tries ter dose me wiv.’

  ‘I’m… Kentish Glory.’

  ‘Yer wot?’

  ‘Kentish Glory. It’s a… trade name? Call me Amy.’

  H’Alfie ’Ampton shrank. ‘Ooo, I can’t call yer that. T’d be disrespectful, an’ the ’Amptons is a most respectful breed. H’All the way back ter the Newman Cornquest and Mangy Carter.’

  ‘You’ve earned the right to some familiarity with your gallant intervention.’

  ‘You don’t ’alf talk rum, Miss Glory.’

  She wondered if he wasn’t sneakily joshing her. His big eyes seemed too clear for deception. He wasn’t like anyone she’d ever met. Truly, an original. And a Tragic Case.

  Scrubbed and dressed properly, he might be presentable in a stick-thin, angular way. He had a noble nose and sharp cheekbones. His longish hair had a natural waviness where it wasn’t thatched with dirt.

  She would make him her Cause.

  When the Game was won, she’d find him a position where he could at least learn about proper washing and sleep with a roof over his head. Despite his gammy leg, he was nimble and handy.

  ‘This is…’ Amy struggled to remember Larry Laurence’s real name.

  ‘Venetia,’ Larry said, extending her hand.

  ‘Delighted ter meet yer. Call me H’Alf.’

  He tapped Larry’s fingers and she giggled.

  ‘You don’t want to know who these other girls are,’ said Amy. ‘They’re nasty pieces of work.’

  H’Alfie rubbed his bloodied chin. ‘I did get that impression, as it ’appens. Neversomatter, they booted me fair an’ square from the front. None o’ this roundabout pizenin’ sneakery, nor no antigravitational owsyerfather neither.’

  Amy was offended. ‘I am not like them.’

  ‘I don’t know, beggin’ yer parsnips,’ he said. ‘Yer seem to be like ’er in particular.’

  H’Alfie pointed at the unconscious Stephen Swift.

  Amy hoped her dreams were plagued by…

  …what was that crackface thing?

  No matter. Try never to think of it.

  …the Broken Doll.

  ‘Was yer on wires? Like Pansy Peter in the show?’

  ‘Were you?’ Amy asked.

  H’Alfie was frightened again. ‘Ye’re one o’ them! A fl—’

  Amy put her finger to H’Alfie’s lips.

  ‘Do not say that word. It’s extremely rude. And gives offence.’

  If H’Alfie ’Ampton said ‘fluke’ in Light Fingers’ earshot, he’d find out what it was like to get punched sixty times inside ten seconds.

  ‘—ying girl,’ H’Alfie got out around her finger.

  Once, when particularly aggrieved, Light Fingers admitted she wished there were an insult tossable at Ordinaries in the contemptuous way they called Unusuals ‘flukes’. She jotted a list of likely expressions in her exercise book – ‘dulls’, ‘plods’, ‘heavies’. None sneery enough for general use, though she underlined ‘slowcoach’ several times. Amy had qualms about the project, but her friend would not be reasoned with.

  In the meantime, she had misjudged H’Alfie.

  ‘More like floating,’ she admitted. ‘And I don’t know what she calls it. Stepping, I think. She’s better at it than me.’

  H’Alfie prodded the senseless Swift with his crutch-end.

  ‘Don’t look better’n nobody now,’ he said. ‘You don’t ’alf talk yerself down.’

  Amy didn’t like being told that, but he was right. She’d beaten Miss Steps – admittedly by going against the Code of Break, which forbade biting. She had earned the right to crow over the vanquished.

  ‘Alfie tried to stop them when they chased me up the lamp post,’ said Larry.

  ‘Then they showed me what for. Me lumps ’as got lumps.’

  The House of Reform had a different Code of Break, which let three girls kick one cripple. Amy suspected biting was allowable at Draycott’s.

  Larry knelt by Stephen Swift.

  ‘Do you think she’s pretty?’ she asked. ‘She has dramatic hair and eyes.’

  Larry touched Miss Steps’ chin dimple with her little finger. The Draycott’s girl dribbled in her sleep. Unjustly, she seemed to be having pleasant dreams.

  No purple drudgery and porcelain spectres for her.

  ‘Best leave her be, Larry,’ said Amy.

  The last thing the team needed was Laurence developing a new crush. Especially on a Wrong ’Un.

  Larry stood. She played with her own hair, sweeping it up like Swift’s. It collapsed when she took her hands away.

  ‘I climbed high, didn’t I, Alfie?’ she said

  ‘Yes, yer did. Touched the moon. Leastways, touched the lamp.’

  He put his hand in her hair and fondly scrunched.

  She smiled at him.

  That was better. If Larry needed a new idol, H’Alfie was a better bet than Stephen Swift. Though, with a little stab of shame, Amy cringed at the thought of his grubby fingers in the poor girl’s hair. What if she got nits?

  H’Alfie stood over Swift.

  ‘’Orrible lot,’ he said. ‘What ’ave they got against yer?’

  Amy didn’t know how much to explain. Outsiders were not to be involved in the Great Game. It wasn’t strictly against the rules, though Humble College were disqualified for five years after the scandal of ’87 when the boys stayed home and sent servants in their place.

  ‘They was rabbitin’ about some gime,’ H’Alfie went on. ‘When they was lampin’ into me, they was goin’ on about mugs an’ somethin’ ter do with the Vanilla Devil.’

  Amy couldn’t believe her luc
k.

  ‘Villa DeVille?’ she prompted.

  H’Alfie nodded. ‘Vanilla Devil.’

  ‘W1?’

  ‘Piccadilly,’ he said. ‘Number 347. Big ’ahse, boarded up. They was gonna snatch some mug called Toby from there. Poor blighter. Don’t fancy ’is chances what with them loonytick females after ’im.’

  Amy was astonished.

  It couldn’t have worked out better. Draycott’s had let slip the final answer.

  And H’Alfie ’Ampton – Alfred Hampton on his birth certificate, she presumed, if he possessed such a document – had paid enough attention to pass it on.

  Life rewards those whose cause is just. That was the lesson.

  If only Miss Gossage would buzz now.

  She waited a moment, in the vain hope her wish would be granted.

  No. Two enormously convenient turns were too much to hope for.

  Stephen Swift moaned. Amy had a moment of concern. She’d put the Draycott’s girl out of the Game once, but doubted she could again. Miss Steps wouldn’t be surprised twice. She’d wake up angry and watermouthed at the prospect of trying out ideas nastier than the Iron Maiden and the Duck Press.

  Had Kentish Glory acquired an arch-nemesis?

  Amy reckoned such a figure was on the cards. Every paladin had a dark shadow. Captain Skylark had Hans von Hellhund, Dr Shade had Achmet the Almost Human, Captain Adonis had Duke D’Stard, Shiner Bright had the Slink. Even Clever Dick had a nasty-minded cousin called Wicked William. When Amy first donned her moth mantle, she knew she’d attract nemeses. Already, there were pictures in Kentish Glory’s Rogues’ Gallery. Antoinette Rayne, Mrs Rinaldo, Rex Rowland, Uncle Ewald. But a true arch-nemesis was an equal, or more than an equal. A better in everything except what really matters – devotion to a just cause. Persistent enough to come back time and again. Never quite defeated – even if shoved over a waterfall. If an arch-nemesis went to jail for a long time or died, their grudges were inherited by disciples or children or strangers who picked up their names and masks.

  If Stephen Swift were awake and she lying unconscious, Amy had no doubt Miss Steps would have the same thought but – being who she was – would tip over the board before the match was begun. She’d lower a twenty-ton step on Amy and blame a passing steamroller. Then pick another enemy to pester. Perhaps Grace Ki, the Ghost Lantern Girl. Or Captain Adonis’s brawny sister Phoebe, who went by the showoff handle Golden Dawn.