Gated II: Ravenhill Academy

by Matt Drabble

  “What the hell is CSI?” Donald asked honestly.

  “Where’s that young lad of yours? I’m sure he can operate it.”

  “He should be here any minute. But when he gets here I’m more inclined to send him out looking for Edna Bailey. Whatever she may have done or tried to do, I need to have a chat with her in a more formal capacity,” Donald said seriously.

  “Well judging by the weather outside I can’t believe that she’s gone any further than her own front door. I mean, I’ve never seen a storm like this; there just seems no sign of it breaking,” Monroe said, as he stood and wandered over to the window. The snow was still falling thickly and the winds were thrusting large drifts seemingly in every direction.

  ----------

  Edna Bailey got out of the 4x4 and made her way slowly through the treacherous conditions. The wind was whipping the snow viciously into her face and it was hard to walk, but her driver had assured her that this was as close as she could be taken; the rest was up to her.

  Her heavy heart seemed to be weighing her down as much as the storm was. She knew that she had failed in her duty and it gnawed at her very soul. She had been entrusted with a mission from God himself via the lips of his trusted emissary on earth. The false prophet had to be destroyed and she had failed; all she had left was to throw herself upon his mercy.

  She fought her way through the deep snow across the fields. Just in the distance she could see her destination, her possible salvation and she doubled her efforts.

  ----------

  “What’s going on with this cold?” Stuart said as they left the dining hall. “Don’t tell me that the boiler’s playing up again.”

  “Sure feels like it,” Sarah agreed. “Have you seen Maurice yet this morning?”

  “No,” Stuart said unsurely. “You don’t think…”

  “I know that he always seems robust enough, but he’s no spring chicken and with this weather…” She didn’t need to finish the sentence.

  “So let’s go check,” he said decisively.

  Sarah grabbed her coat from the hallway closet and shucked on a pair of boots; or “Wellingtons” as they called them here and she still had no idea why.

  Stuart quickly joined her but they stalled at the front door. The ancient wooden door was stuck fast and frozen to the frame. She had a sudden moment of panic as the normally huge building closed in around her and felt like a tomb.

  Stuart strode over to a window at the side and peered out and around. “The snow’s piled up pretty high against the door,” he said, leaning out of the window and braving the cold.

  “How are we going to get out?” she asked, trying to hide her rising panic.

  He looked at her like she was mad. “Sarah, this place has more doors and windows than you could shake a stick at.” To illustrate his point he opened the ground floor window as wide as it would go and scooted through the opening. “I’ll go and find a shovel to clear the door,” he shouted back in through the wind.

  “Hang on, I’ll come with you,” she shouted back, annoyed at having to play the helpless female, no matter how temporarily.

  She followed him out through the window and shoved it closed behind her. The wind was still strong and the snow was somehow still falling despite the heavens surely being empty by now.

  They held onto each other and trudged towards the caretaker’s cottage. She could barely see anything, so dark was the day, and every time that she looked up she was greeted with a cold slap in face. Maurice’s home was only a hundred meters or so from the main building but it felt like she was running a marathon. She kept her head down and used Stuart’s large frame to shelter her from the worst of the weather.

  Eventually he stopped and she ran into the back of him. When she looked out, they were mercifully under the wooden porch that jutted out from the cottage and sheltered from the raging wind.

  Stuart banged hard on the front door with a gloved fist and they waited for movement inside. He banged again as loudly as he could manage, but there was still no answer. Sarah’s heart started to beat a little faster. She liked Maurice and the last thing that she wanted was to find him dead inside his home. The winter was a cruel bitch towards the elderly and showed no mercy.

  “What do you think?” he asked her loudly over the storm.

  “Break it down,” she answered quickly as her mind couldn’t help but picture the caretaker lying helpless on the floor.

  “What if he’s on the bog or something?”

  “Bog?”

  “You know, the bathroom,” he replied, explaining the British colloquialism.

  “I don’t care,” she snapped. “Just break it down.”

  She watched as Stuart took a short run up and charged the door shoulder first. The only thing that shook was him.

  “Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed, rubbing his shoulder. “I almost dislocated it; how the hell does that work in the movies?”

  “Alright, alright,” a shaky voice said from inside.

  “Maurice is that you?” Sarah leaned down and shouted through the letterbox.

  “Who else would it be?” he barked with his usual charm.

  “Then open the bloody door!” Stuart shouted.

  “Or what? You’ll break your other arm?” Maurice spat back.

  “Maurice Duncan, you open this door right now!” Sarah ordered in her strongest “put that down” voice that she kept for special occasions.

  There was a long pause before the silence was filled with the sound of a bolt being dragged across and the door opened a crack. Sarah peered in as Maurice’s face poked out of the darkness within.

  Sarah folded her arms across her chest impatiently. “Are you going to let us in out of this storm?”

  Reluctantly Maurice opened the door wider and Stuart motioned her in ahead of him gallantly. Once they were inside, Maurice took a quick check outside to make sure that they were alone and slammed the door shut again. Sarah couldn’t help but feel a little concerned as he slid the large bolt back across. Her little concern grew legs and sprouted when she looked at the man close up. She had always assumed that he was a healthy and hearty 60-something-year-old, but now he seemed to have aged a couple of decades overnight.

  “Maurice, you look terrible,” Stuart said indelicately.

  “Just a little under the weather,” the caretaker replied, adding a couple of sniffs and a small cough as if trying to back up his own story. “Come through, the fire’s going and it’s warmer in the lounge.”

  They followed him into the cozy room and both had to immediately take their coats off as the heat was immediately stifling from the roaring fire.

  Sarah watched as Maurice leant over and stoked the fire. He stood back and rubbed his hands as though he was having difficulty getting warm despite the intense heat.

  “Have you got a temperature?” she asked, leaning forward to feel his forehead but he jerked away from her touch.

  “It’s just a bug or something,” he snapped.

  “Well, bug or not, the boiler is out and the whole school is like an icebox,” Stuart said a little testily. “There’s no heating and no hot water.”

  Just then the overhead light in the lounge dimmed and flickered before settling down again.

  “And perhaps no power at this rate,” Stuart added.

  “Do you need anything? Is there anything I can get you?” Sarah asked the caretaker, playing good cop. She had known the man long enough to know that he didn’t take sick days and he never seemed ill. A few years ago there had been an outbreak of food poisoning that had spread through the school like wildfire and struck down everyone who had eaten dinner that night. Everyone, that was, except Maurice who had merely called his constitution ironclad.

  “We need you to get the boiler going again,” Stuart said firmly. “That is your job after all, isn’t it? Your responsibility?”

  “Not my problem,” the old man sulked.

  “The hell it’s not,” Stuart snapped.

 
; “Look Stuart, if Maurice isn’t feeling up to it then stop badgering him,” Sarah said defensively.

  “Don’t you go treating me like one of your bloody kids,” Maurice barked.

  “Then stop acting like one!” Stuart barked back.

  “What is going on Maurice?” Sarah probed gently. “In all the time I’ve known you, you’ve never been sick a day in your life and you’ve never shirked your responsibilities. Now if you are unwell then I’m sure that between the three of us we can get the boiler up and running again.”

  “Hey, hang on a minute; I don’t get paid for messing around in the basement,” Stuart said nervously.

  Sarah flashed him a stern look and he shut up quickly. She took a long look at Maurice. The man looked old and haggard, but he didn’t look unwell, he looked…, well he looked scared and that was a look and an emotion that she knew only too well. “Stuart, why don’t you go and make us all a nice cup of tea? Isn’t that what you guys do in times of trouble, pop the kettle on?” she said lightly.

  She waited until he had left the room before she turned her attention back to the caretaker. “Ok, Maurice, out with it.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” he pouted.

  “Bullshit you don’t, old man.”

  “You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you,” he said in a small voice that touched her deeply.

  “Oh Maurice,” she said in a low voice to avoid Stuart in the other room hearing her, “you’d be surprised at just what I would believe.”

  ----------

  Donald hiked his way through the wind and snow. He knew that at his age he should be safely tucked up by the fireside with a tumbler full of whisky. He had left the good Father Monroe back at the station waiting for Paterson to finally drag himself into work.

  The young PC could tap away on the computer and try to figure out the strange words that Monroe claimed to have heard. Donald had little use or interest for the vagaries of modern technology outside of a TV remote but whatever was going on in Bexley Cross was far outside his experience. All he could do was to wait for the storm to break and the cavalry to arrive.

  He was on his way, albeit rather slowly, to Edna Bailey’s cottage. Monroe had claimed that his housekeeper had tried to poison him for some as yet unknown reason; it was not a claim that he could ignore. Monroe had proudly produced a chunk of sausage from his pocket like a magician making a bunch of flowers appear from thin air. But Donald had no way of testing the piece of meat for nefarious content and could only place it in the freezer for safe keeping.

  Fortunately, the village was relatively rather small and Edna’s home was a short walk from the station, or at least a short distance.

  The snow was banked up high along the pavements and the roads were impassable save for the most determined of vehicles kitted out for just such an occasion. Even the police’s own 4x4 would struggle to make it out of Bexley Cross. Along the road, curtains were drawn tightly against the storm as residents cowered behind closed doors. Donald knew that the power wouldn’t last much longer. The sheer weight of snow and strength of wind would start bringing down lines and cables any time now. For the first time in his life he started to feel that they were isolated from the world beyond their narrow borders.

  He reached Edna’s cottage as his legs burned with lactic acid unused to such heavy exertion. His heart fluttered worryingly in his chest as he felt every month of his age.

  The pathway had at least been cleared sometime in the near past, but now the concrete was slippery with ice. He wobbled his way cautiously up to the front door and hammered loudly on the wooden panel. He tried the bell and heard the shrill ring echoing inside the cottage but there was still no answer. He tried the handle and found the door locked firmly to his touch. He peered in through a front window cupping his hands against the glare but he could see no movement inside. He stopped and thought for a moment. He had no probable cause to affect entry to a private and locked residence. He had come to interview Edna Bailey to investigate an accusation, but nothing more.

  He made his way around to the rear looking to hopefully discover another entrance but he found the back door secured like the front. Again, he cupped his hands to peer in through the kitchen window but there was still no sign of life.

  He wandered back around to the front of the property whilst he weighed up the odds of Monroe’s words and Edna’s age as the snow continued to fall and the biting wind blew. It was not inconceivable that a woman of Edna’s age may well have had a fall or been taken ill. The storm was certainly far too strong for the woman to be out wandering the countryside, so surely she had to be home.

  The front door’s feeble lock thankfully gave on the first kick. He wished that he had a set of lock picks and the knowledge to use them like the cops on TV seemed to have but all he was equipped with was a trusty pair of size ten boots.

  The stench hit him hard the second that he put his first foot inside the door.

  A number of years ago he had been out on his rounds visiting some of the surrounding villages. It was always a good idea, he had found during all his years in the service, to maintain a cordial relationship with those under his jurisdiction. A stern or kindly word went a long way in his book and a lot farther than a swinging truncheon. He had been paying a visit to Paul O’Connell’s farm several miles away. The farmer had been in a dispute with his neighbor, the bank, the Inland Revenue, and pretty much everyone else that had the misfortune to cross his path. O’Connell was a heavy drinker with a short temper and quick fists. When Donald had walked through the man’s front doors he had been struck by the same pungent odour that assaulted his senses now. O’Connell had taken his trusty shotgun and put both barrels in his mouth. His headless corpse had sat undiscovered for a couple of weeks whilst the flies and then the vermin had gone to town.

  Standing in Edna’s hallway, he smelt that same rotting perfume again; it was blood and death.

  His first thought was that perhaps Monroe’s story was true and that the woman had taken her own life in failure. His second, and rather more unpleasant thought, was that perhaps the priest’s story was made up to cover his involvement in Edna’s death.

  The hallway was dark and empty and he knew that he had to venture further into the cottage despite every sense telling him not to. He tried the light switch on the wall to illuminate the proceedings and the hallway was suddenly bathed in brightness but it did little to alleviate his sense of dread.

  He passed through into the lounge and felt on the wall for another switch. The smell was stronger here and he had to clamp his hand over his mouth to stop himself from gagging.

  The kitchen was through an archway and he could hear the collective buzzing of flies drifting through the gap. He steeled himself and strode purposefully around the corner determined to carry out his duty without soiling himself in the process.

  His first thought was she actually sat down and ate in this, his second was to spew his own breakfast across the room.

  The table was laid with a cereal box, a tablemat with a bowl sitting on it, a spoon laid beside on a napkin and the severed head of a chocolate Labrador proudly displayed in the middle. His stomach churned further when he approached the table and discovered that her bowl was stained red; apparently, she hadn’t been using milk on her cereal.

  ----------

  Sarah listened to Maurice’s tale of being hounded in the middle of the night by the children and found it difficult to believe. She knew these kids and just couldn’t picture them carrying out such an act, but Maurice was obviously scared of something. She had enough experience in her own life to not dismiss anything out of hand.

  “And you saw the new boy, Joshua?” she probed gently.

  “They were all following him. There’s something off about that boy Sarah,” Maurice said quietly. “Something is wrong here, very wrong. I know this old girl inside and out, but now it’s like she’s a complete stranger to me, and it’s all ever since he arrived.”

  S
he sat back and pondered the new kid. He was certainly popular with the others and she had even seen Alex Thompson deferring to him and that kid always wanted to be top dog. “I’m sure that it’s just the new guy phenomenon. He’s a bit different, from a different country with a different accent.”

  “You can’t be serious?” Stuart suddenly said from the doorway. “I’ve seen him around the rugby team. Sure, he’s got a kind of charisma that draws people to him. I’ve got a group of wannabe alpha males and they all turned to Joshua almost immediately, even Thompson. He’s just a leader I guess.”

  “He’s a fucking Pied Piper,” Maurice said bitterly.

  “Look, this is all starting to sound a little odd if you don’t mind me saying. This is just a boy that we’re talking about here, just a 13 year old child,” Stuart said, as though he was speaking to his class.

  “Bollocks,” Maurice spat as he cleared his throat.

  “A very informed and rational debate I’m sure,” Stuart said haughtily. “Sarah, surely you’re getting a little carried away here?”

  Sarah thought back to the dining hall earlier at breakfast: the way that the kids had all sat in silence with Joshua at the head of the table; the way that they had all suddenly stood and filed out of the hall as though operating with one thought and one mind. She had known a man back in Eden a lifetime ago that had exerted a similar influence over an entire town. She desperately wanted away from Ravenhill as soon as the weather broke. Perhaps she wouldn’t even work out her notice; perhaps when the snow thawed she would just leave and put as many miles between her and this place as possible.

  “Maybe,” she replied unsurely, “and maybe not. I’ve seen enough things in my life, Stuart, not to just dismiss such things out of hand; trust me it can be very dangerous to do so.”

  She stood up quickly, determined not to get dragged down into another pit of madness. Whatever this was, it wasn’t her business. She wanted the caretaker to get the boiler running again and nothing else from the man.

  She was almost out of the door when she saw the photograph. She wanted to scream and throw a tantrum. She had almost been out free and clear. She had almost been able to convince herself that she had no part to play here, but a small silver frame and a 6x4 image changed everything.