The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School

by Kim Newman

  She turned… and the Broken Doll wasn’t there.

  Though Amy was sure she had been.

  Secundus

  Moria Kratides

  I: Goodbye, Miss Gossage

  FOR ONCE, AMY felt heavier than air. Hauling herself aboard Rattletrap was a labour, as if her pockets were stuffed with lead shot. Jouncing on her bench in the back of the charabanc, she unpicked the Great Game in her mind. The more she thought about it, the worse it seemed.

  Around Micheldever, she fell into a doze against Frecks’ shoulder.

  Her purplish dreams were peopled by nimble marionettes and leg-dragging dolls. Men with red toby jug heads and handles for ears sat in judgement. Amy was in the dock, but no one would explain the charges. The presiding magistrate wore a thick veil over her cracked white face. A Humblebumbler in a straw hat jumped up to speak in her defence, but spieled nonsense Latin verses. He concluded his address to the court by trying to plant a wet smacker on Amy’s face. His tongue was a two-foot worm. The judge banged a giant gavel… and she started awake with a crick in her neck. Stirred from her own dreams by Amy’s convulsion, Frecks groaned. Others joined in. Even before Amy opened her gummy eyes, she knew where she was. With the roof retracted, she tasted the salt air of North Somerset. The smells of school rolled in, unmistakable as London fog. A melange of chem-lab stink, carbolic soap, chalk and custard.

  ‘Burned f-f-feathers,’ said Miss Gossage with feeling.

  In the dead of night, assured the team had secured three tobies, the Sausage spoke to Dr Swan from a public telephone box. She must have been overwhelmed by delight to fritter away shillings on an after-hours trunk call.

  As Rattletrap rolled through Girls’ Gate and settled into the ruts of the driveway, it must have fallen on Miss Gossage that she had been rash in declaring premature victory.

  In the aftermath, the Sausage swallowed her own disappointment, determined the team not feel demoralised and take an honest pride in their secundus. She made sure girls showed proper gratitude as Miss Oh of the Undertaking handed each a ninepenny book token. She told them to pay no mind to the Humble College showoffs, who took advantage of being temporarily proof against whatever their school’s equivalent of being infracted was. Bottles of contraband champagne popped and they played conkers with their gold medals.

  What with this distraction, Miss Gossage forgot to ring up and tell Dr Swan the final result. Amy sympathised. If it were her duty to report failure to Headmistress, she might ‘forget’ too. Flickers of expression seldom registered on Dr Swan’s mask of a face, but she made her displeasure felt throughout school. Staff who did not come up to snuff were known to disappear. When Smudge Oxenford reported an absentee was suffering far from home – digging ditches in a Sumatran leper colony or cultivating snowdrops in the Antarctic – the notorious exaggerator was disbelieved less than usual.

  As Rattletrap crawled up the drive, the stricken face of the Sausage was tragic to behold.

  Amy’s teammates were roused from uncomfortable, uneasy sleeps by the blare of the Viola Fifth brass band launching into Miss Dryden’s setting of A.E. Housman’s ‘Soldier from the Wars Returning’. The piercing contralto Paço sang ‘Soldier from the wars returning, spoiler of the taken town, here is ease that asks not earning… turn you in and sit you down.’ The soloist Tallentyre puffed red-cheeked into a euphonium bigger than she was, furiously fingering stiff keys.

  The sparsely leaved trees were hung with bunting and streamers.

  The whole school – pulled out of lessons and assembled on the playing fields – raised glorious, raucous exhilaration as the charabanc hoved into view. Their cheers drowned Housman’s later, more problematic verses. Joxer had added hours to the journey by taking one of his celebrated short cuts, so the marshalled ranks had been standing about for most of a chilly afternoon. Stamping life back into their frozen feet, girls flung boaters to the skies and flapped scarves like banners.

  Not for the first time, Amy wished her Talent was turning invisible.

  ‘Put a mute in it,’ shouted Frecks at the hooting throng, ‘some of us are trying to get some kip.’

  Joxer braked in front of the Crush Hall, and dozing girls rolled off Rattletrap’s benches. The driver wrenched the door open and unbent his old bones to get free of the hated conveyance and sloped off sharpish. A supply of scrumpy was kept in the shed behind his cottage, under lock and key and mystic sigil. Joxer obviously intended to turn him in and sit him down and get him sloshed.

  Byrne of the Sixth, whose jolliness was welcome at most times, eagerly boarded the bus with a party of smiling whips. ‘Hurrah for the heroines of the age,’ she shouted. ‘Let jubilation rip! Slaughter the goats and oil the pageboys!’ The welcoming party handed out garlands of paper flowers. Amy knew that when the truth came out, the team would be wearing sackcloth and barbed wire. Byrne set a cardboard laurel – sticky with fresh paint – over Haldane’s boater… then gathered something was awry. Her twinkling eyes frosted as she correctly interpreted the team’s downcast, gloomy, sullen, exhausted expressions. The bubble of joy deflated like a punctured bicycle tyre.

  ‘Oh, not again,’ said Dungate bitterly.

  ‘Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory,’ commented some wag.

  Unkind, but not inaccurate.

  The whips weren’t sure whether to take back the garlands. After huffing, they decided – with exquisite cruelty, in Amy’s opinion – not to. Groups of Seconds had cut out flowers and gilded laurels all morning. The band must have been rehearsing ever since the team set off yesterday. Glorious welcome was planned and would jolly well be executed, even if it was now hideously inappropriate.

  Amy bet Haldane regretted rooking Byrne out of the double braid now. Head Girl and Team Captain wasn’t going to be a comfortable office for the next few hours. This wasn’t the Army, where Cuckoos could shovel blame onto lower ranks. If anyone faced a firing squad for this humiliation, Headers was elected piggy on the rifle range… though Miss Gossage would be offered a blindfold and a last gasper beside her.

  The team disembarked with the enthusiasm of a coffle of political prisoners clanking off a train at the end of a long, long ride to Siberia.

  Miss Tasker, a particular chum of Miss Gossage’s, was on the steps of the Crush Hall. Her little boy was dressed in velvet, with an Eton collar and floppy bow. Eric’s portwine face stain was powdered white – an effort made only on the most special occasions. At the sight of the Sausage, Miss Tasker’s smile convulsed and died. Catching the mood change, her son scraped crimson stripes down his cheek.

  Shrouded in shame, Amy walked past flag-waving Firsts and Seconds. Her feet dragged as if she were wearing diving boots. Eager hands shoved her onwards and upwards. Her knees gave out, and Kali supported her. She felt like an invalid. Wherever the stricken team passed, the reception stilled.

  From the Crush Hall, they were hustled into the Refec.

  At the far end of the vaulted chamber, Dr Myrna Swan sat. An Empress in full academic robes. Her gown was a riot of stripes, tassels, orders, badges and decorations from the many institutions which had awarded her degrees. Her mortarboard was as simple and unadorned as the black-silk caps judges wore when issuing death sentences. Laid before her on the High Table were bowls of trifle and jelly, bottles of pop and pots of tea, crumpets and cream, jams and biscuits, candied almonds and Turkish delight. Drearcliff Grange Refectory hadn’t seen so voluptuous a feast since Founding Day. On any other occasion, just dreaming of such tuck would be a Minor Infraction. For the victors of the Great Game, no treat was out of bounds. By decree of Headmistress, they must stuff themselves.

  Amy would rather have gone to the guillotine.

  Nellie Pugh, chief cook, stood by with her kitchen staff – two severely underfed girls from town with whom Amy now had a strange sympathy she didn’t have time to think about – in newly cleaned and starched aprons. They had excelled themselves in preparing this highest of high teas.

  Nellie was the
only person who’d benefit from the catastrophe. As school bookie, she’d dutifully taken many, many bets. Pennies and thruppences, sixpences and shillings, postal orders for even greater sums. All on Drearcliff Grange to win. Even at the shortest odds, she must have worried her capital would be wiped out – but couldn’t afford to turn anyone away and lose future custom. Her book was full of bets now irretrievably lost. She’d get scant pleasure from her windfall profit. Last year, after the rout, she’d bought a smart new bonnet with her takings. The hat mysteriously disappeared, then turned up – with holes cut out of the brim – on the head of Joxer’s nag Dauntless.

  Miss Gossage was in tears – presumed by many to be tears of joy – and trying to tell Miss Tasker what had happened. When the news got across, it spread through the throng like the Red Death. Whispers passed and shouts rose. Calamity! Failure! Secundus! Worse than the wooden spoon! Those book tokens would be wisely spent on How to Change Your Identity and Disappear From the Face of the Earth or Thirteen Appetising Recipes Involving Bitter Ashes and Sour Lemons.

  The brass band outside coughed to a merciful halt as Tallentyre ran out of puff and signed off with a raspberry. Hallelujahs and hosannas subsided to stunned silence. A few small sobs were heard and some cynical laughs. Girls safe in the anonymity of a crowd made unkind remarks. It was little comfort that the sneering brigade would have done no better themselves.

  So far as Amy was concerned, this was all her fault.

  She had trusted… and been gulled.

  Was Alfred Henry Wax now her arch-nemesis? A boy whose face she wouldn’t know if she ever saw it.

  An ache for revenge ran deeper than her abstract desire for justice. It was not the spur of a paladin. It was personal and intimate. An impetus to emerge from a cocoon as a darker moth with skull markings on her back.

  Wax was not alone. Stephen Swift. Primrose Quell.

  Eventually, word reached Dr Swan… who decreed that the team must still have their feast. Ostensibly in reward for the not inconsiderable achievement of secundus.

  Amy faltered. Frecks and Light Fingers steadied her.

  Only Dyall was unshaken. She scrambled up to High Table like a monkey.

  Amy sat next to Poppet as penance, inadequate though it might be. At this awful juncture, losing concentration – and her memory – would be a blessing.

  Haldane had no option but to sit on Dr Swan’s left-hand side, just as Miss Gossage must take an honoured place on Headmistress’s right. The rest of the team shuffled to whatever chairs they could find. Kali, Frecks and Light Fingers – who had, after all, brought home an unbroken toby from Lauriston Gardens – made a show of holding heads high and sneering back. Bok was colourless with pain and Devlin alarmingly rubbery. Knowles muttered crooked rhymes. Laurence’s face was knotted tight with resentment.

  The view from High Table was usually the privilege of staff only. From here, a beak could survey all the girls’ tables. Amy scanned the Refec. She saw many faces and few smiles. Here and there were smirks from girls with particular reasons to see one or all of the team done down – likely prospects who hadn’t been picked for the side, mostly in Goneril… old foes or false friends, including the persistent sneak Inchfawn… and many trampled or infracted during Prima Haldane’s rise to Head Girl. Even these contrarians were just finding scraps of comfort in a cloud of despair. Amy saw her own numbed misery reflected back a thousandfold. There were glints of sympathy even – which was no comfort. She understood why the Regiment of the Damned was never short of volunteers.

  Orders were given that the team should eat.

  It seemed the whole school watched in sullen silence as Amy forced spoonful after spoonful of trifle into her mouth. Only Dyall tucked in gratefully.

  ‘Smashing tuck, what?’ she said to Amy, with jam on her nose.

  Devlin crammed her portion down in one go, like a small python swallowing a wriggling piglet. She excused herself and rushed out to be sick.

  Amy ate on.

  She felt the beginnings of what she recognised as a Poppet headache but didn’t forget anything.

  Larry offered Frecks her bowl of candied almonds, her own favourite treat. Frecks half-heartedly tousled her admirer’s hair – a supreme effort, considering Laurence was The Girl Who Gave Away the Game – but spurned the tribute. Larry tipped the almonds on the floor behind the table. She looked at Amy with bright, hard eyes. A voodoo stare.

  Someone else would agree that it was all Amy’s fault.

  Larry coughed up the tobies because Amy told her to trust a lad who wasn’t even real. She should not be blamed for what she had done.

  And nobody did blame her. Not out loud.

  Dr Swan said nothing. She dissected a small glazed roast pigeon with a skewer and a scalpel and consumed every scrap of flesh.

  No one else at the table was given a bird.

  At last, the meal ended. Nellie and her girls took away the plates.

  Here, Dr Swan would have made a speech… and Miss Gossage would modestly have hemmed through her own remarks. The medals would be shown. The tobies would be cooed over, then reverentially placed in the trophy cabinet.

  The team’s one jug was left back on Rattletrap, Amy realised.

  The moment stretched.

  There was a scraping sound as Miss Gossage pushed her chair back. She stood up, at first defiant, then bewildered, finally terrified.

  Dr Swan flicked a glance up at her.

  If the Sausage wanted to explain, Headmistress would not stop her.

  Amy didn’t know what Miss Gossage could say.

  And neither did she.

  Someone with a soul blacker than Count DeVille’s cloak started clapping. Slowly, rhythmically, with a mocking beat.

  Clap… clap… clap… clap.

  Others joined in, till each shared clap was a thunderstrike.

  It was the toll of a death bell… The drum of a slave galley… The stones tossed at an accused heretic… The hammer blows on the end of the stake…

  The Sausage was blubbing. Not silent tears, but actual sobs.

  Then she buzzed.

  Amy felt a shock to the brain. Her teammates were similarly stricken.

  Sorry, that’s all.

  Sorry.

  The buzzing became a howl.

  The slow clap continued.

  Miss Gossage left High Table and ran from the Refec.

  As she kicked up her skirts, the pace of the clapping sped. When she made it to the Crush Hall, the applause became voluminous and rhythm broke.

  The noise drove the Sausage away.

  ‘Resignation accepted,’ said Dr Swan quietly.

  Everyone somehow heard what she said.

  Even Amy, mind still buzzing, caught the words.

  The whole school was silent now. Even the echoes shut off.

  ‘I have thought, for some time, we were not bringing out the best in our Talents,’ said Headmistress. ‘A new attitude is required. A new approach will be taken. New staff will be engaged. This assembly is concluded. Disperse.’

  II: Ghost Moth

  THE NEXT MORNING, awake early, Amy hid under her blankets.

  Light Fingers was already up and half-dressed.

  ‘Remember those dolts who said things wouldn’t seem so bad after a good night’s sleep? They lied.’

  Frecks sat up in her cot and swore to corner any utterer of platitudes and prevail upon her to eat her own hat.

  ‘Put pepper on it from me,’ said Kali.

  Light Fingers whipped off Amy’s top blanket, exposing her to air and the new day. She wanted to shrink and scream when sunlight fell on her and had a flash image of herself shrivelling to dust and maggots. She hoped that was the last scratch of the cloak’s influence, being burned out of her.

  ‘Show a leg,’ said Light Fingers. ‘Whips will be out to infract us for anything they can think of. Tucking into that ghastly mess in front of the whole school won us no friends.’

  ‘I feel sick,’ said Frecks. �
�I’ll never touch trifle again.’

  Aching and unrefreshed, Amy got up.

  The worst part was that nothing had changed.

  It was a normal school day. She had to get dressed, wash and be presentable, then turn up for everything listed in her Time-Table Book. Rise, Breakfast (Refec), Assembly (Chapel), Double Geography (V4), French (D4), Dinner (Refec), Calisthenics (Gym), Break (the Quad), English Composition (K4), Tea (Refec), Prep (Library), Supper (Refec), Activities (Common Room D), Lights Out.

  Sleep, when it came, was troubled – again. Then the next day would be the same. And the day after that. And so on, until the last syllable of recorded time or the end of Summer Term – whichever merciful release came first.

  The boxes in the grid were filled. Amy’s presence was always required. In body and – strictly – spirit too. She had to pay attention. She was more liable than ever to be infracted for misbuttoning her blouse or tying an asymmetric knot in her shoelace. Light Fingers was right about predatory whips. The whole team were dogged by witches eager to mark a Black Notch in their Time-Table Books on the flimsiest of pretexts.

  Being a ghost was no excuse.

  And she was a ghost – a ghost among ghosts.

  There were reminders.

  At dinner, taking her pew at the Desdemona Fourth table, Amy reached for her glass tumbler and found a miniature toby jug in its place. Glancing around the Refec, she saw her teammates were similarly mocked. Instead of the usual lunchtime libations – thick milk or thin apple juice – the tobies were brim-full of cold custard.

  Amy pushed the gunge away, until a whip – Bewe-Bude of Tamora – came round on inspection.

  ‘Drink up, Desdemoaners,’ she drawled. ‘No one rises from the trough till you’ve emptied your jugs.’

  Frecks gargled the custard down in a single quaff.

  She gave a theatrical belch and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  ‘All of you,’ insisted Bewe-Bude.

  Light Fingers raised the toby in a mock toast and did something fast – then angled the jug to show the whip it was empty.