The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School

by Kim Newman

Amy instantly thought of Miss Kratides.

  Is hurting wicked people so wrong?

  ‘If you’re in it for the goodness, Amy, be sure you know what goodness and badness are. Moreover, be ready for the time when those terms aren’t useful any more.’

  Ask yourself if you’ve done that much good as School Paladin.

  Shrimp had spent an hour with the tutor too.

  Amy recalled the persuasive, funny, sympathetic Moria Kratides but also the small, pettish, shrill child who said ‘I won’t be told not to be horrid…’ All these girls – in Draycott’s as well as Drearcliff Grange – had been taught the same lesson but learned different things from it.

  Miss Memory came out of her tutorial more muddled than she went in. She was only clear-headed now Harper had blown away all her cobwebs. Gould was running wild… Light Fingers wasn’t talking… and Speke and Little had sucked the pops off their lolly sticks.

  Knowles pressed her point. ‘Is making someone do things they don’t want to right or wrong?’

  ‘Depends on the person; depends on the thing,’ Amy replied.

  Knowles picked Frecks’ coif up off the floor and held it out.

  ‘Could you put your hand in this and say that?’

  Amy hesitated. She did see Knowles’ point… but Harper deserved a limp, or floppy limbs, or a bad cough. She should atone. Suffering would be good for her in the long run. But should she be ill for the rest of her life so others could be cured? How badly sick should she be? How much punishment – really? – would be a fair reckoning for her many sins? Mumps, hives, runny nose, splitting head, weeping boils, leprosy?

  If forced to think about it, Amy felt sorry for Harper. After giving birth to twins, Mrs Harper was struck by a wasting disease that baffled doctors. The invalid recovered when she and baby Jacques took a long voyage without baby Jacqueline. Since then, Harper had barely seen her family. They knew exactly what she was and took measures to avoid the ill-effects of having her in the house. While she was sent away to school, her brother was coddled at home. His Talent ran the other way. Everyone who met Jacques Harper came away full of vim and perked up no end.

  So…

  Amy didn’t take the chainmail. She slipped her hands under her belt, reaching for pockets her costume didn’t have.

  ‘I’ll clutch the silver,’ said Speke. ‘Happily.’

  She reached out, but her fingers tucked up tight, withdrawing into the shells of her hands. Only the nails peeped out. She hesitated to touch the coif.

  ‘They’ve never done that before. The blessed things have minds of their own.’

  ‘Blessed?’ asked Miss Memory.

  Speke considered her hands.

  ‘Blessings aren’t always all good,’ said Amy. ‘That’s why Frecks isn’t wearing hers. Maybe curses aren’t always all bad. This isn’t that cloak, Knowles. The Count’s. I know what that was doing to me and got rid of it. This is a Light Fingers special.’

  ‘After all we went through last year, I wouldn’t have thought you’d ever wear black.’

  ‘Black is flattering,’ said Amy. ‘I like black. I’ve always liked black. This is a costume. I can take it off.’

  ‘Be sure you can, Amy. You, of all of us, can go so far.’

  Miss Kratides had said something similar.

  ‘Just be careful,’ said Knowles.

  ‘Boldness and mistrust?’ said Amy.

  Knowles smiled wryly. ‘I admit it didn’t work out last time. Best to find a balance, but err on the side of boldness. Prefer silver to black. You too, Speke. You’ve a heart as well as hands.’

  Miss Memory put the coif on the piano lid. She wasn’t that comfortable holding the blessed thing, but also reluctant to let go of it. After smoothing the mail into the shape of a flattened crusader’s head, she found the strength to leave it alone.

  Speke’s fingers slid out of their shell-sheaths.

  With their little brains, her hands knew things. If only the things all small creatures knew – fingers out of the fire, don’t bother anything that bites or stings, put up a fight if you have to.

  Harper groaned but didn’t wake.

  ‘Is she the Broken Doll?’ asked Speke, nodding at Shrimp.

  ‘No, but she listens to the Doll,’ said Little.

  They turned to the First. She didn’t often pipe up.

  ‘The Doll tries to talk to me too,’ she explained. ‘I don’t listen. You shouldn’t talk to ghosts. It encourages liberties. The Doll lives in the cupboard that smells of tennis balls. It has other homes. Places I don’t at all like one tiny bit. A tin in the larder which says biscuits on the lid but has dried figs in. Cook put it out for orphans because the figs went funny and no one eats them anyway but it was at the back of the shelf the next day. A railway carriage where the light doesn’t work if the train goes into a tunnel and the clickiticlick goes faint so you can hear her voice in it. That path through the copses no one walks if they can help it. Upper-School girls call it the Runnel. An attic in Windward Cottage where an anchor on a chain swings like a pendulum though there’s no window to let in the breeze. You can tell where the Doll lives because the doors are all the same. Even the lying lid that says biscuits is the same door only smaller.’

  It was the most Amy could remember Gillian Little saying at once.

  ‘That girl listens,’ Little went on, meaning Harper. ‘She was led up the garden path. She does what the Doll wants. Things I wouldn’t do. She wanted to hurt you anyway but she’d stay in her dorm if she wasn’t talked to.’

  Amy agreed, but didn’t think the voice in Shrimp’s ear was a ghost.

  ‘The thing with the musical instruments wasn’t her,’ said Amy.

  ‘Are you sure it wasn’t you?’ said Knowles.

  ‘Why does everyone think that? I’m not the only poltergirl in the world…’

  Behind Knowles, Beethoven came away from the wall. Amy had thought of using her Ability to get rid of the ugly picture. Was she doing this? Speke’s hands ran away with her. Harper didn’t mean to heal Knowles. She used to float in her sleep. Could mentacles develop a mind of their own? Act on ideas she only toyed with?

  No. This wasn’t that.

  The picture didn’t fall off a hook, but folded out on a hinge. One of Little’s doors. A Wrong Door. Beyond it was the Broken Place…

  A cracked white face appeared in the square behind the picture. High forehead, tiny chin, blood-kiss lips. Live eyes like unshelled eggs – raw and wet, not poached – fixed Amy with a gaze she recognised at once.

  The voodoo stare.

  Larry Laurence was the Broken Doll!

  On her, a mask was no disguise. It was hostile display. Not to hide her identity, but to add to it.

  Larry had lifted the instruments. Had she kept an Application secret like Harper, saving the surprise for when she could do the most harm? Even an angry, hurt, hurtful Larry wasn’t that calculating. Was the Talent in the mask? Laurence wasn’t the first Broken Doll. The face and the name – and the Abilities? – had been around for a long time.

  Where was Larry? Drearcliff Grange was riddled with secret passages, but she was further away than inside a wall.

  Knowles caught sight of Amy’s expression. The others noticed violet light spilling onto the carpet. Slowly, reluctantly, they turned to look at the wall, the light, the Doll.

  Speke’s hands hid behind her back. Little’s fist went up to her mouth.

  Knowles was too stunned to check her spook-spotting gear.

  ‘She’s not a ghost,’ said Amy.

  No one listened.

  The wall rippled. Shimmering light filtered through patches where the plaster was thin. Fleur-de-lis designs on the wallpaper – long since faded in daylight – sprang into relief against the glow. Paper flowers bloomed darkly.

  The corners of the Music Room grew ill-defined. The walls might have been close as the sides of a cupboard or a hundred yards away. The floor undulated. Quicksand under carpet. The harpsichord played a slow,
tinkly ‘Funeral March of a Marionette’.

  Amy felt weak and rubbery.

  When Larry wanted to post large items, the Purple reached out. Objects squeezed and the pocket stretched. Laurence said things turned to jelly before she put them away.

  Amy was jellying.

  A fissure opened below the Beethoven door. Larry’s pocket extended into the Music Room. A seam in the wall unbuttoned like a shirt. The edges pulled apart. Millions of cilia wiggled inside.

  The soles of Amy’s feet felt wrong. She tried to wiggle her toes. She was inches off the floor. Lifted, but not by her own Talent. Off-balance, she couldn’t right herself in the air. Her jellied weight was unevenly distributed. Her ears roared as if seashells were clamped over them.

  She was sucked towards the Purple.

  Larry would do to her on purpose what she’d done to Polly Sparks by accident. Kentish Glory or Death’s-head Hawk – it wouldn’t matter. After a dip in Larry’s pocket, she’d be Ordinary Amy. Light Fingers would call her a slowcoach. Without her Abilities, what would be left of her?

  For the first time, she really was afraid of the Broken Doll…

  V: She Will Blame You…

  EVERYONE WAS FLOATING.

  Frecks and Harper hovered in their sleep. Knowles, too surprised to take notes, turned in mid-air like an hourglass – refreshed brain heavier than her dainty feet – and flapped her hands to right herself. Speke and Little were torn between panic and delight. Amy remembered how that felt. Little struggled to hold her nightie down over her knees. Speke’s hands lunged ahead of her like pilot fish.

  Larry’s open pocket exerted a steady pull. Amy lashed mentacle grappling hooks to the walls and tried to fly backwards, fighting the drag. Inch by inch, she was drawn to the Purple. Looking into the cold, pulsing fissure hurt. She shut her eyes but still saw it. Numbness spread up her arms and legs. Flesh become fluid.

  The Purple hummed soothingly. And spoke with a human sound.

  Not Larry’s voice. Or not only Larry’s voice.

  Amy heard the coaxing, wordless lullaby of the Broken Doll.

  She wanted to let go and disappear.

  The wall was translucent now. A magic lantern slide projected on fog. The peephole eyes of gnarled composers were small exploding stars. Fleurs-de-lis burned.

  The Broken Doll stepped through the wall, lurching with shoulder and hip. She and the bricks were jellied. The wall swelled and popped, then re-formed behind her. Solid and with her feet on the floor, the masked girl stood in the Music Room. Hands apart, she stretched the sides of her pocket like a cat’s cradle.

  ‘Larry,’ said Amy, struggling to speak, ‘you don’t have to be broken.’

  ‘Larry?’ exclaimed Knowles. ‘That’s Laurence?’

  Miss Memory found handholds on the wall.

  ‘I didn’t guess,’ she admitted. ‘I was sure it was you.’

  Amy had thought as much.

  ‘Larry,’ she shouted. ‘I’m sorry. Frecks is sorry. We’re all sorry.’ The Broken Doll’s old-fashioned dress was thick lace with big stitches and a floppy bow. Marionette clothes made to a human scale. Her long midnight-black skirt flared to a dragging train. A dancer’s thigh slit showed a rind of scarlet. Larry wore Count DeVille’s cloak, belted around her waist with its wolf’s head clasp.

  Amy had left the bat thing in Number 347 Piccadilly and thought good riddance.

  But here it was. Turning up like a bad penny.

  The Broken Doll kinked her neck sharply… then kinked the other way… then angled up at the coving where Knowles clung. The voodoo stare was undimmed, but a tear crawled out of the crack in her cheek.

  ‘But you have to stop,’ Amy said. ‘You’re hurting people who don’t deserve to be hurt. You’re hurting yourself.’

  The Doll aimed her pocket at Amy. An invisible octopus in the Purple gripped her with arm after arm and hauled her towards its beaked maw. The force was too cold to feel, too strong to resist.

  One by one, her mentacles failed. The waves in her ears pounded shingles.

  The choir of lost girls called to her.

  It would be easy to let go. To let it all go.

  Mother would be pleased, at least. To have her grounded.

  Nothing would be Amy’s fault any more. Her responsibility. Her duty.

  She could let others take care of the just causes.

  Who knew? Maybe Ordinary Amy would be happy…

  The pull was overpowering. The octopus was a small planet. She was a falling meteor. Tyrant gravity reasserted its rule over the rebel who so often defied God, Newton and propriety to soar free of its iron shackle. She lost her grip, lost her hold on the air, and tumbled top over tail towards the dazzling rift… but bumped into something.

  Someone – Harriet Speke – was diving like a seabird, hands ahead of her, aiming at the Doll’s bread basket, determined to get in the first strike.

  Amy opened her mouth to warn her. No words came out.

  Speke shot across the room. Her crab-hands punched into Larry’s pocket.

  Indoor lightning struck again.

  The pull of the pocket was suddenly gone. Amy shot backwards and slammed against the wall, then fell towards a tangle of twisted music stands. Instinct took over and a mentacle mattress formed between her body and the metal tines. Knowles landed with an ‘oof’ – but on flat carpet rather than spears.

  The violet flash seared Amy’s vision.

  She blinked away squiggling light-worms.

  Larry screamed, full-throated and high-pitched. Her unmoving mouth shook with the noise.

  Speke was down on one knee, arms sunk up to the elbows in Larry’s midriff, trapped by a shining seam. The pocket had closed on Speke’s hands. The girls were locked together. Speke didn’t scream, per se, but sang in terror, ‘Oh oh oh oh oh oh… no John no John no John no!’

  Awake again, less chirrupy than her usual sprung-up-from-a-sleep wont, Frecks mumbled, ‘Eh what, now, what’s this, what?’ Little got Frecks’ feet on the floor and was there to be leaned on.

  Amy floated herself upright – the trick was to imagine her head as buoyant and her feet as weights – and stepped down to the floor. The carpet was springy. She worried that her knees might give out. She needed to do more bicycling exercises, to maintain strength and flexibility in her legs. Flying too much could lead to atrophy of the leg muscles. She walked unsteadily over to Larry and Speke.

  The Doll mask was attached like a limpet. She couldn’t remove it without ripping Larry’s face off.

  Larry, Amy perceived, was in a right state. Which was no excuse.

  Amy took gentle hold of Speke’s shoulders. The girl was held firm. The pocket closed like a vice. Speke didn’t pull for fear of hurting herself.

  ‘Larry, please let go,’ Amy said.

  Her bones weren’t fluid any more, but the feeling of jelliness lingered. It would take a while to get used to being unstretched. Her voice didn’t sound right in her ears.

  The mask angled down. She saw Larry’s angry eyes.

  ‘Are you all right, Speke?’ Amy asked. ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘I can feel my hands.’

  ‘Phew, what a relief.’

  ‘No. It isn’t. I’ve never felt my hands.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Amy was fascinated by the mesh of Speke’s arms and Larry’s middle. They could have been born like that, clothes and all. They fit together like the puzzle of the twisted nails. She saw no way of disentangling them.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Frecks, starting to focus. ‘Who? Where’s Larry?’

  ‘That’s Laurence,’ said Knowles. ‘The Broken Doll.’

  ‘No,’ said Frecks, scornful. ‘That’s never young Larry. That’s an apparition, an apport, an abomination…’

  ‘You shouldn’t have listened to the ghost,’ Little told Larry. ‘You shouldn’t have opened the wrong door.’

  Amy felt along Speke’s arms, all the way to where they vanished. She avoided brushing L
arry’s new skirt.

  She understood how Larry floated things. The cloak had leeched Amy’s Abilities. Whoever put it on next inherited a portion of her Talent just like Amy had been infused with the senses and desires of the unspeakable former owner. It wasn’t a gift, but a bad bargain. No one could wear the cloak and stay as they were. You weren’t you with a new Talent, you were a Talent with a new you. A you who wasn’t entirely you any more.

  ‘What’s happening to my hands?’ Speke asked quietly.

  ‘Ah,’ said Amy, understanding her second secret at last. ‘I should have told you. What I know about Laurence. I told some of the Remove, but not you, Speke. I’m sorry. I know you’ll blame me.’

  ‘It’s letting up,’ Speke said, not hearing Amy. ‘I’m coming loose. Give us a haul, fellows.’

  Amy didn’t, delaying the fulfilment of prophecy by moments…

  Little stumped over and gripped her friend’s waist. She tugged her away from the Broken Doll.

  Speke’s arms pulled out of the pocket.

  The violet seam pressed shut and disappeared.

  Larry relaxed and staggered back.

  ‘Oh oh oh oh oh oh,’ exclaimed Speke, ‘no John no John no John no!’

  Her crab-hands were gone. Her arms ended in glazed stumps.

  The Broken Doll was impassive. Amy was seized by the horrors.

  Then – another flash!

  VI: A Final Moment’s Dream

  WHEN A. LOOKED up, she saw not ceiling but sky… She was accustomed to the Purple House… outdoors was as alien to her as dry land to a sailor after years at sea… Without walls, the world was too big to take in… Her legs couldn’t remember how to walk on uneven, uncarpeted earth.

  The moon was a mauve circle in the violet sky.

  Night-time eternal… Day had forgotten to break for longer than she could remember.

  Sensing danger at her back, A. pressed on… With her senses of up and down and forward and back scrambled, she was torn between urgent haste and excessive caution… Boldness and mistrust… Though she knew the notion foolish, she was afraid that if she lost her footing she would fall upwards, tossed to the winds… Up in the air, she would be torn apart.

  She walked a straight path through twisted woods… Treading on powdered chalk spread on beaten earth… Eyes turned in knotholes as she passed… Her pace picked up.