The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School

by Kim Newman

  Frecks, who sometimes murmured Latin phrases in her sleep, said something Amy couldn’t catch and turned over, pulling a pillow over her head.

  Amy lay on her cot, arms across her chest.

  It must be near dawn. Light seeped in through the curtains.

  Would she be able to sleep? If she dropped off, would she be able to wake in however many hours’ time it was? Missing Chapel was an infraction she couldn’t afford. How had she floated out of the cell and not woken anyone up?

  She had night eyes. She looked at the ceiling, which she must have scraped… the pictures above Kali’s cot – film stars with hats and guns… the stained patch of wallpaper above the door that sometimes took the shape of a disapproving owl and sometimes of car headlamps. Just now the stain was a big-eyed face with a crack across. Amy shut her eyes and wished for sleep.

  Something about the picture of the cell was askew.

  She opened her eyes again. The stained patch was definitely an owl now. A relief, but neither here nor there.

  The askew thing was that the door was open a crack.

  Amy didn’t think she’d done that. It had been shut firmly when they went to sleep. Kaveney would have made sure of it.

  Someone had looked in on them. Who? And to what purpose?

  Amy breathed slowly and stretched out a mentacle.

  Gently, she pushed the door. With a click of the latch, it shut.

  VII: Chapel and After

  WITH THE POST of chaplain vacant, Sunday Chapel was given over to inspirational readings and devotional music. Dull after Reverend Rinaldo’s fiery, swoon-inducing sermons – but, on the whole, safer. No girls were smitten with the vapours or suffered hysterical palpitations. A briefly popular theory had it that the Reverend was Harper’s real father. What she did to girls on their own, he could do to a whole congregation. Unlike Harper’s victims, many girls said the swooning was worth the draining. It turned out that Rinaldo was not the leech, but only the lure for his hungry wife.

  The Ariel Sixths Teller and Terrell stood up and intoned yards of Old Testament tedium. Auditors were lulled into such a stupor no one cried foul when they impudently made bits up… ‘And so the sons of Ara were Uz, and Hul, and Turpentine, and Meshech, and Aphaxad begat Shillaleigh, which himself engendered Eber… and to Eber were born two sons – the name of one was Brontosaurus Maximus, for the land was parted in his days; and the name of his brother was Joktan… and Joktan begat Almodad, and Heffalump, and Parp, and Hadoram, and Bovril, and Diklah, and Havabanana, and Sheba, and Fido, and Jelleebaibee.’ Joktan, evidently, was a busy begatter.

  Fagged from her poor night’s rest, Amy kept nodding off. Frecks saw to it she didn’t slide off the pew, nudging her to wakefulness with elbow jabs.

  Whenever her head snapped up sharply and she opened her eyes wide, Amy saw Miss Kratides. She sat in the raised staff pew, in an apparent yogic trance. Her colleagues must remember the mischief she’d wrought until recently, but accepted her without obvious rancour. Unlike most beaks, she wore no academic gown or mortar board. She hadn’t had time to earn a university degree in the two and a half terms she’d been away from Drearcliff Grange. Staffroom opinion last year would have Moria Kratides more likely to end up with numbers after her name than letters.

  How must Miss Borrodale – who had famously got bloodied putting an end to the Kratides-Stonecastle fight – feel sharing a pew with the former terror of her classroom? Dr Swan, architect of the extraordinary appointment, sat in her elevated throne – plumped on the only cushion allowed in Chapel – as blankly imperturbable as ever. Yet again Headmistress had set a scheme in motion to teach the school a lesson it wouldn’t enjoy one speck. The Swan method made Machiavelli seem like Squirrel Nutkin.

  Teller and Terrell were hooked off the lectern. Miss Dryden sat at the wheezy organ to play ‘Gladly the Cross I’d Bear’, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ and ‘Rescue the Perishing’. Girls opened fifty-year-old copies of Hymns Ancient and Antediluvian and raised voices – like generations of pew-sufferers before them – to risk mass infraction by singing ‘Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear’, ‘Roly Poly Goalie’ and ‘Rats Chew the Paraffin’. Beauty Rose silently opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish. Ten or twenty caterwaulettes scattered throughout the flock would have done well to follow her example.

  During the hymns, Amy scanned the pews for her fellows in the Remove. She hadn’t cracked her second secret. Who would blame her for not telling what she knew about Laurence? Whenever she met a classmate’s gaze, she suspected the girl trying to pin their own second secret on her. Someone must be wondering who was right to be afraid of the Broken Doll.

  Every few minutes, after her glance had roamed around Chapel, she couldn’t help meeting Larry’s voodoo stare. Amy couldn’t imagine what was churning in the girl’s mind, and worried about what was boiling in her pocket. Telling – warning? – the Moth Club about Laurence’s new Application had been a relief, but nothing had really changed… except Light Fingers would now be cautious about sticking her swift hands into Larry’s pocket.

  Light Fingers was saved from being turned into a slowcoach. Her personal private sneer had expanded from being a less polite way of saying Ordinary. Now she meant anyone who couldn’t keep up with her, which was everyone… Unless she was due for a shock like Amy had when she ran into Stephen Swift. There must be other fast folk. Lesson of the day for paladins and Wrong ’Uns alike: there’s always someone quicker, stronger, cleverer, purer – find a way to best them!

  Where had that come from? Amy looked at Miss Kratides.

  Somehow she was being taught – all the time, unconventionally, by methods she didn’t understand. Even her dreams were lessons.

  After the hymns, Miss Dryden was allowed to indulge an enthusiasm for the baroque school. Wringing something close to spiritual beauty from her ill-maintained instrument, she played selections from Telemann’s ‘Twenty Little Fugues for Organ’.

  Amy drifted again and Frecks’ fingers stuck her in the ribs.

  Smarting, she opened her eyes wide and was bedazzled. Larry’s voodoo stare filled her vision as if the small girl’s face were inches from her own, mouth a thin line, brows knit, eyes glinting like dagger points. Laurence’s head seemed inflated to fluke size. Pressing fingernails into the heels of her hands, Amy dispelled the illusion. She closed and opened her watering eyes, and all was normal.

  But Larry was still giving her the evil eye from across the Chapel.

  She has cause to hurt you all.

  Frecks’ second secret was about Laurence.

  Amy was certain she was right, but not sure she should tell Frecks. Not yet.

  The Moth Club had put cards on the table. But, despite her qualms, Amy was already accumulating fresh secrets. She’d not told her friends about her involuntary night flight. Doubt and guilt inclined her not to share her insight about Laurence’s secret – though keeping quiet didn’t help Frecks get her prep done. Whatever Amy decided, she would be blamed by someone. For not telling what she knew about Laurence. And now for not telling what she only suspected.

  The real culprit was their new teacher.

  Moria Kratides used to make mischief by passing notes. Her copperplate red-ink couplets could turn an obedient class into a tank full of sharks in a feeding frenzy. While the beak struggled to regain control, Kratides sat back, half-smiling. As a teacher herself, she had refined the tactic. The mischief was now the lesson. At the end of this exercise, the Remove would know a lot more – but the knowledge would make few of them happier.

  Her turn finished, Miss Dryden invited Harriet Speke to play.

  Hissing rose from some pews. Disarmed by her unassuming manner, girls in Speke’s year liked her. Others couldn’t see past the crusty hands. The whips called her Spook Speke – pronounced with sinister sibilance Sssspook Sssspeke. She bore the handle with good humour, infuriating fluke-haters all the more. If monsters roamed the Quad, they should have the decency to act the part – growling like Gou
ld under a full moon or slinking like Marsh at high tide.

  Speke nodded pleasantly as if hearing polite applause rather than mocking susurrus and sat at a dainty harpsichord. She held up her hands, for inspection. The hissing turned to groans of revulsion. From a distance, Speke’s hands resembled crabs: each with rows of pointy-tipped spiny ‘fingers’ at the sides and thicker, slightly bifurcated ‘thumbs’ where the pincers would be. Amy admired arthropods of any description, but even she found Speke’s Attributes unattractive. The Second took a deep breath as her hands hovered over the keyboard. With considerable front, she tore into ‘Funeral March of a Marionette’, the piece some girls whistled when an Unusual passed. The anthem of flukes. As a rule, Gounod composed for musicians with the normal complement of fingers, but – using all sixteen digits – Speke added extra notes.

  Intent on her virtuosity, and not a little pleased with herself, Speke had the sense to play something short. The funeral march was over inside a minute.

  She finished with a flourish.

  Tuttlety-tittlety-tootly-tum-titty-tum-tum! CRASH CRASH TWANG!

  On the front row, Gillian Little thumped her hands together and hooted ‘bravo’.

  The Moth Club clapped. So, Amy suspected, did the rest of the Remove.

  All flukes together…

  Viola were happy to claim the virtuoso as one of their own. Others were won over in every corner of Chapel. Miss Dryden was proud. Even whips applauded. Girls enjoyed a good show and admired a good sport. That was School Spirit too. General opinion was a see-saw. The reversal of the Great Game devalued the stock of the Remove and the Unusuals. Speke’s performance didn’t restore them to glory – what could? – but it was a start.

  Amy saw who wasn’t joining in the applause.

  Laurence. She kept up her voodoo stare.

  Frecks clapped loudly and shouted, ‘Encore!’

  ‘You were right about Sssspook’s ivory-tinkling,’ Frecks said to Amy. ‘I’ll never doubt you henceforth. You are a spotter of hidden Talents and a generous soul who should be rewarded with bon-bons and balloons.’

  ‘She really is very good,’ said Light Fingers.

  ‘And smart,’ said Kali. ‘They slung that tune at us like mud, and she’s caught it and made it ours. It’s the “Battle Hymn of the Remove” now.’

  Speke resisted calls for an encore.

  She held up her hands again, for all to see. Her cuffs, sizes bigger than her sleeves, fell away to show her wrists, where carapace turned into regular skin. She finger-wiggled, making octopoid shadow puppets. She touched her boater with a cheery salute and trotted back to her pew.

  Mrs Wyke took the lectern and made the regular announcements: who was in the Infirmary and uninfectious enough to visit; what flickers were to be projected in the afternoon (something soppy with Mary Pickford, something funny with Charlie Chaplin); who could collect freshly censored letters from the outside world; and what lost property was held by Keys, the custodian.

  Chapel was over for another Sunday.

  Dr Swan descended from her throne and left, followed by a crocodile of staff.

  Miss Kratides said something to Fossil Borrodale, who stifled a laugh. They were like Captain Skylark and Hans von Hellhund joking together. After all the dogfights, they had more in common with each other than with folk who only read about the War in the papers. Moria Kratides’ conduct as a girl no longer told against her. Judging from what she was like now, Violet Borrodale must have been a perfect savage as a pupil. When a girl passed out of Drearcliff Grange, her Time-Table Book was torn to confetti. Black Notches were expunged. An Old Girl who came back as a new Miss started afresh in the enemy camp.

  A Kratides-Borrodale collaboration was an alarming notion. What tribulations would they visit on girls under them? Would Dr Swan’s next bright idea be giving Crowninshield II a whistle and putting her in charge of calisthenics?

  Once the staff were gone, girls filed out pew by pew, house by house. Whips eagerly watched for sooners or dawdlers and slapped infractions on them. One or two always fell into the net. Amy left with her cell-fellows, not too soon, not too late. Outside, it was a bright, crisp day. After a single night of London fog, she had become grateful for Drearcliff weather. The air only tasted of sea salt. And she could see across the Quad.

  Two hours stretched until Sunday Dinner.

  Smells of slow roasting fowl emerged from the kitchen. The birds were at their best, fresh and crisp and delicious – but would stay in the ovens till they were tough as infantry boot leather. Only Aconita Gould’s teeth were sharp enough to bite through Drearcliff chicken, and she’d prefer her dinner raw – bones and feathers and all. Spuds and gravy took some of the taste away. No one minded if you scraped the swede into the slop bin.

  Girls milled about, forming activities clubs or prep groups, or beetling off on solitary pursuits.

  Tamora Seconds played marbles on the fives court. Goneril Firsts got competitive at leap frog. On the steps of the Playhouse, Violas with sheets tied over uniforms rehearsed the assassination of Caesar. Gallaudet made such a meal of dying that conspirators Pulsipher and Hailstone deemed throttling the tyrant – with the side effect of stopping her soliloquy – preferable to further stabbing.

  The Remove were no different, though Amy noticed her classmates stood out because they tended not to mill. They stood in ones and twos. De’Ath and Light plotted together. Larry talked to an unengaged Bok, all the while shooting her stare at Amy and Frecks. Speke was with a proud Little and a small circle of new fans, signing autographs four at a time. She let Firsts touch the backs of her hands then shocked them into giggles by wriggling her crusty fingers. Frost and Thorn, on opposite sides of the Quad, experimented with unsatisfactory new best friends – Dyall and Paquignet. Knowles and Devlin were absent from Chapel – and only Devlin mentioned on the sick list.

  Shrimp Harper sidled over to the Moth Club.

  At first Amy thought Harper was bleeding, then she realised she’d got splashed with cold tomato soup by Gallaudet’s death throes.

  ‘Here,’ said Shrimp, giving Frecks her card. ‘Read the beastly thing. I don’t care.’

  Amy, Light Fingers and Kali crowded around.

  You have done many good and kind things people don’t kno about.

  Her mother is alive.

  Ah-ha! Harper’s second secret was Kali’s.

  Her first didn’t match any of theirs, though.

  Kali was on the point of owning up, when Light Fingers plucked the card from Frecks’ fingers.

  ‘The writing is different,’ she said, ‘and the ink’s still tacky. It’s not the same red either. Oh, and there’s an egregious spelling error.’

  Harper cringed.

  Amy felt the leeching touch.

  Kali spun and put her shoe sole an inch away from Harper’s soup-dripping nose. The draining stopped.

  ‘It’s not even a convincing false secret,’ said Light Fingers. ‘Who’d believe you’d ever done good and kind things?’

  ‘That people don’t know about… because they’re secret.’

  Amy almost felt sorry for the Sixth, but the icy tickle of her Talent brought her up sharply. Pathetic as she might be, she was a Wrong ’Un in the making.

  ‘Push off, Shrimp,’ said Frecks.

  Light Fingers tore the card – which wasn’t the same size as the real ones – in half and gave the pieces back to Harper.

  ‘Don’t try that again,’ said Frecks. ‘We’ll warn the others.’

  ‘You wouldn’t snitch! What about the Code of Break?’

  ‘Warning isn’t snitching,’ said Amy.

  Harper sloped off. As always, she made everyone feel better by leaving.

  ‘She only faked her first secret,’ said Light Fingers. ‘Her second’s Kali’s.’

  ‘Which she ain’t hearin’ from me,’ said Kali.

  Amy had pondered the practicalities of getting the Remove together like the Moth Club and prevailing on everyone to share
secrets. It would mean dealing with some difficult, even frightening girls – but the prep would get done. Maybe that was what Miss Kratides wanted them to do. She foresaw embarrassment and uncomfortable explanations, but assumed a balance of shame would emerge when everything was out in the open. Thanks to Shrimp, she saw that wasn’t going to work.

  Passing the Playhouse, Harper got another dollop of soup on her blazer.

  Gallaudet was splattering pedestrians on purpose. Cowper-Kent, a pedantic whip, swooped on the troupe and infracted them for historical inaccuracy. She infracted them again for cheek when they argued for artistic truth over mundane reality. At this rate, Joan Hone – waiting at the foot of the steps in her toga – would never deliver ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen…’

  Leaving the Quad, the Moth Club were accosted by Gawky Gifford.

  ‘Another pest,’ said Frecks. ‘Quite the day for gnats and leeches.’

  ‘I was told you’d pay a penny for this,’ she said, holding up an envelope.

  ‘Who’s it from?’ asked Frecks.

  ‘Such information costs,’ said the Second.

  ‘Ach, it’s a racket,’ said Kali, raising her hand to cuff the carrier.

  ‘No, no, pax, pax,’ said the Gawk. ‘This is the God’s Honest. Cross my heart and hope to marry a policeman.’

  Amy was sceptical, but Light Fingers produced a halfpenny from her purse and held it between thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Half price bargain offer,’ she said. ‘Take it or leave it.’

  She and Gifford did a back and forth dance, then exchanged. Gifford looked at her empty palm and pouted, then tasted something bad. She spat out the halfpenny Light Fingers had pushed into her mouth.

  Light Fingers held the envelope. The junior cadger scarpered before a refund could be solicited.

  ‘You shouldn’t encourage her,’ said Frecks.