Midnight Blue

by Pauline Fisk

  'No, it's not.'

  'You're awake,' Arabella said.

  She stared at the spare bed where Bonnie sat scratching her neck. 'The necklace woke me up,' she said. 'It really hurts and it doesn't do that for mice, does it? Grandmother Marvell's in the attic. Can’t you hear her scratching with her fingernails?'

  As Bonnie spoke, Arabella heard a gnawing, picking sound. Pick, pick, pick, up in the ceiling. Much too loud for mice. The sound reached out for her through the darkness of the half-opened wardrobe door. 'Don't be silly.' she hissed at Bonnie. 'Of course Grandmother Marvell isn't up there. There's no way she could get into the house.'

  A chunk of plaster fell inside the wardrobe. It may only have been a small piece but in the darkness it sounded enormous and, in the darkness, too, it wasn’t hard to imagine Grandmother Marvell making a hole and trying to slide the mirror through.

  'You know what she's doing, don't you?' Bonnie whispered. ‘She’s going to set that mirror up at the end of the bed, or inside the wardrobe when you open the door, or over the dressing-table mirror…’

  'Stop it, Bonnie. Stop it right away. You only think that because it's dark. It's because you’re tired. It makes everything seems bigger and more frightening. There are only mice up there. What you’re thinking isn’t possible.’

  'Like getting that old car up the track wasn’t possible? She did it, Arabella. She brought it right up into the yard with that huge mirror on top of it. She can do things, Arabella.'

  'You're imagining it, Bonnie. You're tired. There are always mice in the attic at this time of year. Dad'll go up in the morning and put poison down. He'll send up the cats. I'll shut the wardrobe door. That'll make us both feel better. And then…’

  ‘Then what?' Bonnie watched as Arabella slipped out of bed.

  'Well, we're both awake. We could spend the time talking. We've got to plan for what happens next.'

  Arabella padded across the floor, but when she came to the wardrobe door curiosity got the better of her. She’d intended to shut it but she took a quick peep inside instead, anxious to prove there really was nothing to worry about.

  'Arabella, don't!'

  The interior of the wardrobe was pitch dark. Arabella pulled the coats and dresses aside, and stepped in. Her feet stumbled over chunks of fallen plaster. She rubbed up against dresses she’d half-forgotten about and glanced up between them. Unexpectedly, a face stared down at her. It was herself reflected.

  Bonnie heard the stifled scream. She heard hangers flying, dresses falling everywhere. Then there was silence.

  'Arabella, are you all right?'

  There was no answer.

  'Arabella!'

  Bonnie got out of bed. Cautiously tiptoed to the wardrobe door. Opened it and looked inside. She could see nothing. Nothing. 'Arabella!' she called again, but no one answered her and no one moved. She too stepped inside the wardrobe and put out her hand. 'It's me. It's Bonnie. What’s wrong?’

  She began to feel about. No one was there. No one was there! Bonnie explored the wardrobe from one end to the other. Still no one was there, but she heard a sound above her head and suddenly - in a flash of inspiration - the words came into her head: Don't look up.

  Bonnie stood very still. She heard the dragging sound of something heavy being pulled away. Something like a mirror in an ornamental frame. The sound faded and Bonnie stood in the silence and knew what had happened. There was a hole in the ceiling above her head. The attic was full of holes, and this was one of them. She didn't need to look up to see it. She could imagine the mirror lain across it and Arabella sucked up into it...

  Grandmother Marvell had won. Grandbag had won too. You couldn't run away from the clutching grasp of hate and greed. Arabella was gone.

  PART SEVEN

  Midnight Blue

  26

  Bonnie climbed over Arabella's bed and looked out of the window, knowing there was only one thing she could do. Thick fog still wrapped itself around the hill and her mind went to the even greater darkness of Batholes. She thought of crawling down there, shutting herself away beneath the soft skin of the body of the earth, discovering its secrets, not like the busy surgeon with his knife, but like the shocked layman who never knew all those passages, tunnels, chambers, orifices, were even there…

  Bonnie shuddered. She didn't want to go. But what else could she do? She peered through the clouds, towards the holly grove.

  'There is a choice, you know.'

  What did that mean? Bonnie swore blind that she didn’t know. Even so, she got off the bed and dressed in warm layers topped with waterproofs. Then she crept through the house to the kitchen. Cream cats stirred and stared at her, but the sleeping, uncaring Jake-thing never moved. She found a torch on the pantry shelf, and spare batteries for just in case. She found a block of cooking chocolate and took it too, imagining the need she'd have for it underground in some nasty passageway where there’d be nothing else to comfort her.

  'There is a choice, you know…'

  It came from a voice inside herself. But what did it mean?

  'In the holly grove…’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  'Oh yes you do ... '

  Bonnie let herself out through the scullery door. Out on the hill, the fog was thick as ever. As she felt her way up through the orchard, memories crowded in. Mum collecting plums, Florence crawling in the long, summer grass, Mum telling them about another baby, Jake bounding happily between the trees and Arabella chasing him…

  Bonnie climbed over the stile into the meadow. Being on her own again was a return to the old days and the girl she used to be. It felt really strange after getting used to doing things with Arabella. Bonnie’s feet found the ridges of the sheep's path. She began to follow it, moving as hurriedly as possible. Did Jake and Arabella still exist somewhere beyond that awful mirror? Were they dead, or could they be brought back? Even if she found Edric and Godda, could they save the situation? Or was it already too late?

  'Oh, where are you, Arabella? What are you going through now? What are you feeling?'

  Bonnie came to the outer hollies of the grove. Here a thud caught her attention, followed by the crackling of branches. It would be a sheep, she thought, its fleece tangled up in holly leaves. She pushed her way through, careful not to get caught up herself. Entering the grove, she felt its stillness and strangeness as she did every time. She heard the sound again. But it wasn’t a sheep. She let out a cry.

  'Jim!'

  A trench had been dug between the same two pits she’d discovered earlier. Staves had been erected and Jim was breaking fresh logs to pile up, so engrossed in what he was doing that he failed to notice Bonnie’s approach. Her voice made him drop a log and flush - not like a flickering shadowboy but a human one.

  'What are you doing?' Bonnie said.

  Jim looked completely lost.

  'So, let me get this straight,’ said Bonnie. ‘You’re the one who dug these pits, and now you’re stocking them with fuel. But fuel for what? Fuel for a launch? Surely not. I thought you liked it here. I thought you didn’t want to leave!'

  Jim hung his head. He didn’t want to leave, he said. He didn’t know why he was doing this. ‘I don't understand, myself,’ he said. ‘I just feel as if I have to. I can't sleep at night. I have to come here. Something keeps making me.'

  Bonnie stood over the firepit. She wanted to pull out all the logs and throw them away. Jim's voice kept saying 'I'm sorry' over and over again. But she couldn't bring herself to answer him.

  Surprised at herself, Bonnie began to cry. She thought of Arabella lost, and the pain that Mum was going to feel when she found out. She thought of the whole hill and everybody on it in danger from whatever Grandmother Marvell might do next, and her faced with the choice of doing the only thing that might save them - crawling down into the one place in the whole world she'd never choose to go – and all the time, behind her back, Jim doing this as if the time had come for them to leave.

  Jim c
ame to her. He put his arms round her and held her tight. He didn't feel like a shadowboy. It was as if he really was a son of Mrs Onions. He didn't seem embarrassed the way some boys might be. He didn't mind Bonnie’s tears. He just stood there and held her tight for a long, long time while she struggled with the knowledge, unrecognized until now, that it was she who’d triggered Grandmother Marvell's arrival.

  ‘You won't understand,’ she said. ‘I'm not sure I do myself, but it should have been me in that mirror, not Arabella. My coming here has turned Highholly Hill upside down. There's another me here, another Michael, another Maybelle. There had to be another Grandbag too. If I were to fly back home, my guess is that everything here would go back to how it was. Arabella would be set free, and so would Jake. And Grandmother Marvell would lose her power. She’d just be some old fairground crone. She wouldn’t have the power that she does now.' Bonnie looked around her, at the logs and pits. 'That’s why you're doing this. Because you know, somehow, what I have to do.'

  'I don't understand,' said Jim

  'Nor do I.'

  'I don't want either of us to go anywhere.'

  'Nor do I, Jim, nor do I.'

  Bonnie wiped away her tears. Incongruously, she remembered the cooking chocolate in her pocket. She took it out, broke it up and offered some to Jim, then ate the rest herself. It comforted her. It gave her what she needed to raise her head and look around. There was no fog in the holly grove. Everything was clear, and yet she could feel it waiting for her outside. She looked up into the sky. What did she want - the darkness of the sky and a long flight home, or that other darkness - the darkness of Batholes?

  'Look, I'm going to take a chance,' she said. 'I’m not leaving here unless I really have to. I’m not giving up Highholly Hill unless I’m absolutely sure there's no other way.'

  'What can I do to help?' Jim said.

  'Do you mean it?'

  'Of course I do.'

  ‘You’re telling me you want to stay?'

  Jim looked round at the pits he'd dug and the logs stacked up. It mightn’t look like it, he realized, but he nodded his head. Bonnie brushed the last few crumbs of chocolate off her hands. 'If you do want to stay,’ she said, ‘then come with me.' But she couldn’t bring herself to name the place.

  'Come with you where?' Jim said.

  'Follow me. I'll show you.'

  Jim followed Bonnie out into the foggy night. They climbed up through the top meadow and over the gate. They found the sheep's path between the bracken, and Bonnie insisted that they stick to it. Every sound in the fog - a sheep running away, a stone dislodged, a distant farm dog somewhere barking – seemed magnified a hundred times. The ground smelt raw and dank. Eventually they found themselves at Batholes. The warning notice loomed out of the gloom.

  'There,’ Bonnie said, looking at the black hole beyond the notice. 'That’s what I’m on about. It's the only hope we've got. You won't understand and I don't have the time to explain, but Arabella's gone and we've got to find Wild Edric — and if he's anywhere, he's down there.'

  She shivered. Jim shivered too, and looked up. 'You’re saying that if we don't find Wild Edric,' he said, 'then it's back up there for us. Back home for you. Back to how things used to be for me.'

  'I’m not telling you anything except what I’ve got to do.' Bonnie scrambled over the tangle of brambles in the cave's mouth. Got out her torch and flashed it into the darkness. Everything she was doing felt so unreal. So dreamlike. This couldn't be her, could it, embarking on this ridiculous course of action?

  'I don't want to, but I've got to. Will you come with me?'

  'Yes,' said Jim.

  27

  They tore down the spiders' webs which had festooned themselves like strings of pearls across the entrance. Even then, barring their way were the bones of a dead sheep. Bonnie stepped around it with a slight shudder. Batholes' roof sloped steeply down. She stooped. Her torch shook as she got onto hands and knees. She crawled forward. The dark hole seemed to suck her in like a hungry mouth, and she wanted to turn tail. But she forced herself to crawl on instead, until she knew that the sky and the great open world weren't behind her any more and she was underground.

  The hole turned into a long, thin tunnel. It turned sharply downwards and narrowed some more. There was no way Bonnie could turn round now. No way of getting out again unless she came out backwards. She wanted to be out, but Jim behind her blocked her escape. She could hear him breathe. She wanted to be sick.

  'You've got a torch, haven't you?' he said.

  'Of course I've got a torch!'

  'Well, hold it steady, then!'

  Jim’s human boy's voice comforted Bonnie. She held the torch up so that the light cut through a misty atmosphere. The ground beneath her was cold and muddy. The rocks shone with the hidden moisture of the hill. The tunnel sloped downwards.

  'I think it gets a bit wider down ahead,' Bonnie said, and her words came out in clouds of condensation. 'At least I hope it does. I feel like the weight of the whole hill's on my back. I feel like I can't breathe… '

  They crawled downwards and the ground beneath them became boggier. Bonnie was glad for waterproofs, but even through her layers of gloves her hands became numb. She found it hard to crawl and at the same time hold the torch. The roof of the passage sloped towards the floor and she realized, with horror, that she was going to have to lie down in the mud in order to get along. What would happen if the passage continued sloping downwards? What were the chances of them being able to slide up it again? Would they — again she wanted to be sick — would they get stuck?

  Bonnie lay down in the mud, and it was the worst moment in her whole life. She began to slide down head first, realizing what a mistake she’d made when she first entered the tunnel by not going in the other way round. The blood pumped to her head. The roof came down lower. The passage became steeper. Then, when she thought that she could bear no more, it opened out. The roof rose starkly. The walls on either side of Bonnie were swept away.

  'Oh, Jim, oh help, oh no... '

  Bonnie was propelled, gasping and unprepared, into a huge, dripping, terrifying void. Jim tumbled after her. She caught his face in her torchlight as they both hit the ground. Like her he was breathless. His eyes bulged with the rush of blood and his whole face was bright red. Slowly he got to his feet and looked around in the thin beam of Bonnie's torch.

  'But this is beautiful,' he said, his voice full of surprise, too astonished to be scared. 'Look at these rocks. They've look scrubbed clean. And here… ' He directed the torchlight. 'Look at these drops of water in the air. They look like jewels.'

  Bonnie followed his gaze. She wanted to cry because it wasn't beautiful to her. It was awful. This whole place was awful and she wanted to get out of it. She thought of Godda and Edric and her heart went out to them that this should be their home. She'd rather die than have to live down here. She almost hoped, for their sakes, that they weren't real after all. If they were, how did they bear it, sleeping down here through the centuries till they were needed above ground? Did rocks encase them, hold them fast? Were there fossil marks where their beds had been? Had Godda looked at the blue enamel sky, at the diamond stars of her necklace, and longed for the open air? And did she now miss her precious necklace which was still fixed - as tight as ever - round Bonnie's neck?

  Bonnie found it hard, now that she could see the squalid inside of the earth, to believe that anything could live down here amongst the wet rocks and the blackness. She listened carefully. There was no tap, tap, tapping like the miners used to say they heard. No shaking of the ground. Nothing.

  Nothing? Bonnie strained to listen. Something was there. What was it?

  'I can hear it too,' Jim said. 'It's water.'

  'Water?'

  'A river or something. Let's go and see.'

  Bonnie shone the torch up through the void. Jim stepped forward and she followed him. The mud beneath their feet turned into a stream. They splashed through it. Water ooze
d out of the rocks all around them. The sound ahead of them grew louder and Bonnie took Jim's hand.

  'At least we haven't got to crawl any more,' Jim comforted her.

  'But how long for?' Bonnie replied. The void was narrowing into a passageway again. She didn't like the way those rocks closed in. They turned a corner. Suddenly the rushing sound was very loud and close. It sounded like a torrent's roar. Bonnie had a picture of them both swept away in the path of a great, unbounding, underground river. She turned to run, but Jim held her tight.

  'Look Bonnie, look… It's all right. Look!'

  He got her hand with the torch in it, and pointed the beam. Ahead, in the thin light, the stream became a dark pool into which a huge, white, foaming waterfall fell.

  'Oh!' cried Bonnie.

  It was like an unexpected wedding veil hanging in the dark back of a wardrobe, a ballerina's frock flickering upon a television screen.

  'You can't say that's not beautiful,' Jim said.

  Bonnie stood transfixed. She couldn't, could she? Then, as if one shock wasn't enough, a fleck of something fluttered out of the darkness at her. She caught it briefly in the torch light, then it struck her cheek and flew away again. An albino moth!

  'Oh,' said Bonnie again. Hope stirred within her. Maybe Edric and Godda were down here after all. There was life in this place. There was beauty. There could be hope…

  'Come on,' Jim said.

  They waded round the edge of the pool and followed the river path on its other side. The passage was long and thin again. Even shining the torch up high, they couldn't see a roof to it.

  'I wonder what bit of hill we're under now?'

  The passage sloped up. The stream slid away from them. They found themselves squelching through mud again, and realized that the walls on either side of them were folding in over their heads. Bits of rock seemed to have become dislodged and fallen in their path. They found themselves scrambling. The passage, like a roller-coaster, plunged back down. They found more boulders, turned a corner and stopped. The way was blocked with a great pile of stones. As Bonnie looked at it, her brief, brave hope faded again.