Grim Hill: The Secret Deepens

by Linda DeMeulemeester

  “Please,” I cried. “Mom, please say something.” I lifted her fingers from her coffee cup and began rubbing her hand and arm.

  Mom looked at me; she wasn’t frozen, or even unconscious. But she wasn’t herself, either. Slowly she blinked her eyes as she stared at me, and her words came out as cold and as stiff as she looked.

  “Almost didn’t make it back in … phone lines are down… and there’s been an avalanche on the edge of town. No one is getting through … and … the school bus with the soccer team is turning back … they are stuck in the snow … but they should be back soon … Looks like you didn’t miss the game after all … Cat.”

  “Why would you say that, Mom? Who cares about soccer, you must see what’s going on now, right? You must know something really bad is happening here with all the sick kids and the blizzard. Look at Grim Hill, can you see …”

  My words died on my lips. Mom was staring out the window all right – she was staring up at Grim Hill. But I realized she wasn’t seeing anything, or at least anything I would understand. It felt as if my stomach was going to heave up everything I’d eaten during the day. I watched my mother’s indigo eyes fade until I was looking into two pools of pale ice.

  “Where’s Sookie?” I asked suddenly. “Mom, where’s Sookie?” Then I spotted the small boot prints denting the snow on the floor and leading to the door.

  “Where did Sookie go?” I asked in even more alarm.

  My mother kept looking out the window and up at Grim Hill. “Sookie said she had to go find Jasper and Skeeter … she couldn’t wait for you any longer …”

  “What do you mean?” My heart lurched in shock. “You just let her walk out into this weather? Mom …”

  But my mother didn’t say another word; she only stared out the window.

  CHAPTER 23 Vanishing Act

  OF COURSE I had to chase after Sookie, but the red kitchen clock ticking away distracted me. Forenza had said the winter solstice was a perilous time for humans, when fairies from the otherworld could break through to our world and wreak havoc. But the clock hands kept ticking, as if they intended to race through the darkest day of the year and not give me any time to stop the fairies.

  Something was happening to the grownups around me; it was as if the cold and ice had wrapped around their minds and hearts. No one noticed what was going on, and worse, no one seemed able to care. The first thing I had to do was get my sister, and maybe having that one clear plan would keep me from freaking out.

  I ran upstairs and got the quilt from my bed and then went back down and wrapped it around Mom. Then I opened my backpack that contained the rowan branch Forenza had given me – the branch she said had power over fairies. Its red berries stained the inside of my pack in what looked like blood. What else had she said would give someone fairy protection? Oh yeah, I took my mother’s china dinner bell and some slices of bread from the cupboard.

  Grabbing the flashlight and the garden shears from the kitchen closet, I said bye to my mom and told her I’d be back soon. Then I shut the back door as if I was just going off to school or to visit a friend, except my mother didn’t answer.

  Instead, she sat frozen in her chair. I ran down the porch steps and headed toward the last place on Earth I ever wanted to go – Grim Hill.

  The path I used to climb every day in October was a lot narrower now. The trees had grown in closer, hugging the edges of the path, their huge evergreen branches reaching out as if to grab me. The light from my flashlight bobbed along the path and out past the trees. I almost expected a wolf to come waltzing out looking for Red Riding Hood, or if I went off the path into the woods, I thought I might stumble across a gingerbread house with an evil witch inside. I shoved those thoughts out of my mind, kept my head down, and focused my flashlight on Sookie’s footprints.

  As I climbed the hill, the snowflakes became larger until first they were as big as my fist, and then they grew almost as large as the doilies on Alice Greystone’s coffee table. The air was thickly scented with cedar and pine. Except, instead of being invigorating, it was as if the smells clogged my brain, and a voice kept whispering, “Don’t worry, Cat – it’s all fine. Just have fun, make snowballs, and play in the snow.” I took my gloves off, clasped my white feather with one hand and loosened my scarf to let the bitter air help me keep my focus.

  When I reached the top of the hill, what had once been Grimoire School was nothing but rubble. Brambles already covered a lot of the decayed stone. This is where Sookie’s footprints disappeared. She must have climbed onto the rocks and made her way to the middle of the brick and stone.

  I couldn’t see traces of Sookie’s footprints anywhere else, but I knew where she went. Forced to admit the enchantment of Fairy had never quite left Sookie after Halloween, I knew she could still hear sounds and haunting music coming from that hill – sounds that no one else heard. I bet she had no trouble finding her way back into Fairy. I thought I’d just be able to follow her path, but I should have realized getting into Fairy would require a little bit of magic, or at least a connection that I didn’t have.

  “Sookie, what have you done?” I muttered, sick with worry. But the big question was, What was I going to do?

  I slumped down onto what had once been part of Grimoire’s wall, but currently the rocks looked like a flattened grave stone. As I sat in the cold dark, I heard a faint chirp. Next to me on the stone sat a bird – a robin. It was shivering and I could see its little red chest puffing in and out.

  “Oh, poor thing,” I said. “What are you doing here in the middle of winter? Why didn’t you fly south with the other birds?” I reached into my pack and took out the bread I had brought with me for fairy protection. I had never figured out exactly how I was supposed to use it anyway – what, throw a slice of whole wheat at a fairy? Instead I tore the bread up into tiny pieces and fed it to the robin. He gobbled greedily and flew into my hands to eat the last crumbs. Briefly I covered him to warm him up, and when I opened my hands he flew up on my shoulder. When I turned my head we gazed eye to eye. Then the robin flew into the branches, and he sang as he flew. His song gave me a new surge of energy. When I got up from the stone, it was as if my head cleared.

  There was another way into Grim Hill and the fairy world. There was also a group of people who might be able to help me. I needed to get to the high school where the spirit cabinet sat on the gym stage – it had to be a link to the fairy world. If my mother had been right about the bus turning back from the game, then it would be arriving at the school any minute.

  I had a feeling there would be kids on that bus who could help me – kids who hadn’t fallen under the mysterious winter spell … yet.

  CHAPTER 24 Entombed in Ice

  I HAD TO hurry to meet the school bus before all the kids on it scattered. With a burst of energy, I jumped off the stone and left the rubble of Grimoire School behind. Then I set out toward the other side of Grim Hill. That side led back to the center of town and close to the high school. Using my backpack as a make-shift toboggan, I slipped and slid all the way down the hill, hitting low branches as snow fell on my head and left an icy trail down my neck and back.

  At the bottom of the hill the snow stopped falling. But as I walked toward the high school another icy blast put everything in a deep freeze. Ice was now coating my eyelashes and any hair not tucked in my hat grew stiff. I worried that those strands might snap. My frozen breath floated behind me like a ghost.

  In the sky, a few purple clouds parted, allowing the waning moon – white as a slice of bone – to come out and cast shadows over the main street of town. Silence hung like a blanket muffling any sound, even the whispery swish of my boots as I half-skated on the frozen snow. Twice I stopped to lead adults into their shops if they were unfortunate enough not to get inside before the enchantment took over. Like Mr. Keating, they stood frozen in the eerie grey light, but they would follow me if I led them inside. Then, like Mom, they shut down and their eyes stared blankly out toward the sno
w-covered streets.

  I now realized Forenza understood quite a lot about fairy enchantment, even if it terrified her so much that she refused to admit that she believed. She hadn’t been telling me simple fairytales. She’d been warning me that if I didn’t stop the fairy enchantment before the end of the solstice tonight, our town would be locked in an icy prison and would be frozen in time. I bet no one on the outside would even notice us slipping away from this world. Now it wasn’t only about finding Sookie or rescuing Jasper and the other children. I thought back to my dream of dancing skeletons – these fairies were turning our town into an icy tomb. I had to stop this winter spell.

  What other Celtic tradition had I seen Forenza use to protect herself during the solstice? I tried remembering … Celts had used bells and lanterns and burning Yule logs to keep them safe. One thing I’d learned at Halloween was that Celts were proactive against fairies, so I trusted they knew how to protect themselves on the longest night of the year. Light seemed important, and I would make sure I used a lot of light.

  As I got closer to the schoolyard I could see the school bus. It looked as if it had spun out and fishtailed in the snow. The side of the bus had hit the school gate, toppling down the chain-link fencing and cutting off the exit from the bus. Even though my lungs burned and my side ached, I began to run.

  When I reached the bus, the emergency door crashed open. Kids began to wrestle themselves out of the tilting bus and land on the snow outside.

  “Wait!” I heard Clive call from inside the bus. “There’s something wrong with the bus driver and the teachers – they aren’t moving.”

  Or they’re beginning to freeze, I thought. One thing I’d come to understand about fairy enchantment is that adults succumbed to spells first, never quite realizing the otherworld sometimes overlapped ours. Children noticed boogey men, invisible friends, fairies, and magic until adults convinced them otherwise. I wondered if I would be able to make my friends realize what was happening – we weren’t quite adults, but we weren’t children either. Watching how slowly some of the kids were moving around outside, I figured it could go either way at age thirteen. Tossing my pack on the ground, I climbed onto the school bus.

  “You’re a little late for the soccer game …” said Clive, but his words drifted into a whisper. He rubbed his eyes and looked at all the snow outside, and then back at the teachers. “What’s going on?” he asked, and this time he didn’t even try to sound remotely sarcastic.

  I waved my white feather in front of Amarjeet and Mia. “Remember what happened at Halloween,” I said. Amarjeet stroked the feather with her fingers, and her eyes widened in surprise as she looked at the ice-covered town and at our teachers frozen in their seats. Then Mia touched the feather, looked around, and gasped.

  “What?” asked Clive.

  “Fairy magic,” whispered Mia.

  “Don’t you mean Santa and his elves?” said Clive, now sounding more like himself. “C’mon, we’ve got to get an ambulance for Mr. Morrows and Ms. Dreeble.”

  “No ambulance will come,” I said. “But I think the teachers will be okay – well, okay as any other adult in town tonight. But we’d better get everyone inside the school where it’ll be warm,” I said, reaching out for Ms. Dreeble’s arm. It was Clive’s turn to look surprised as I led Ms. Dreeble from her seat. Mia and Amarjeet followed my lead and helped the bus driver and Mr. Morrows from their seats. They meekly followed us out of the bus, and Ms. Dreeble didn’t object when I fished through her pocket and found the keys for the school.

  We brought the adults inside and sat them in the front office. Already most of the kids from the bus had slowed down and began sitting in the hallway. It was getting colder in the school as the furnace tried to keep up with the frigid temperature outside. Zach and I grabbed emergency blankets out of the storage closet and began covering everyone. I started passing my white feather around to the few of us who were still moving.

  “Hey,” I said to Mitch and Emily. “Grab the flashlights from the utility cupboards and pass them out to Clive, Mia, Amarjeet, and Zach. Tell them to meet us in the gym.

  When the others arrived, I’d been standing rooted to the gym floor, staring up at the spirit cabinet on the stage.

  “So what’s the plan, are we … ” Mia’s voice faded as she caught sight of the cabinet.

  No one needed a magic feather to see the light pouring out from behind the cabinet’s star and moon curtain, and wrapping itself around the trunk. The other kids gathered at the bottom of the stage and stared in bewilderment at the glowing cabinet.

  I gulped and said, “Guess I’m going inside that trunk. I need one of you to chant these words once I’m inside.” Reaching in my pack, I grabbed the Celtic incantation that Sookie had written in purple crayon, the words Forenza had translated for me, and I handed it to Amarjeet.

  Amarjeet held the paper in her hand, looked down at it, and then up at the mysterious light flowing from the spirit cabinet. “My brother went into that trunk, and when he came out I thought he got sick. But something else happened to him, didn’t it, Cat?

  “The fairies got him,” I said quietly. “They bewitched a piece of wood so that we thought it was Raj, but it wasn’t. He’s really in Fairy.”

  Mia let out a moan. “And my sister?”

  “In Fairy,” I said. “So are Jasper and all the other kids who were Sookie’s apprentices.” Then I looked at Clive. “Skeeter, too – the fairies took your brother and left a fairy changeling in his place.”

  Clive stared at me in disbelief.

  “Huh? Changeling? What about your sister?” asked Emily.

  “She’s also in Fairy now.” I didn’t bother mentioning that Sookie went there by choice. “We’ve got to get them all back. I think when we do, we can also stop what’s happening to the town. We can break the spell and end this deep freeze.”

  Before anyone could say anything, I pulled back the curtain. I shielded my eyes against the blinding blue light. “Once I’m inside, read the words on the page, and make sure you pronounce them the way they were translated,” I said.

  “Wait.” Amarjeet had put her hand on my shoulder. “If you disappear, then we lose the only one who knows how to fight the fairies.”

  I didn’t feel like much of an expert. “But I have a plan,” I said. “Once I’m on the Fairy side of Grim Hill, I’ll ring the bell I’ve brought with me. Celts used bells, and I think it’s because their sound can break through fairy enchantment. I bet fairies don’t like the ringing. You should then be able to climb the hill and follow the sound of the bell. The ringing should lead you to a door buried under the rubble of Grimoire School.” This was the door I had discovered just before the Halloween match and I’d hoped I would never have to pass through it again. “Once you open it, there will be a passageway leading into Grim Hill and out to the Fairy side.”

  “Let me do it,” said Amarjeet. “I’ll take the bell, and I guarantee you, I won’t stop ringing it until you come and find me.”

  “But …” was all I could say.

  “Amarjeet’s right,” said Mia. “It should be one of us.”

  I had forgotten that my friends had been brave when we battled the fairies before. “Okay, maybe …”

  “It should be me,” Amarjeet insisted. “My brother’s been gone the longest, and I’m so worried – I need to see him.”

  I handed Amarjeet the bell. “Remember …” I began.

  “No kidding,” she said, and she began ringing the bell as soon as she stepped inside the trunk.

  CHAPTER 25 Celtic Magic

  MITCH, EMILY, MIA, Zach, and Clive watched as I chanted the first part of the incantation, the part about taking away the child.

  “Fuadaigh an leanbh,” I said. I waited a moment and tore open the curtain.

  Amarjeet had disappeared.

  Everyone gasped and Mia let a small cry escape. Even though they had seen Sookie do the same thing on the night of the talent contest, we understood now it w
asn’t an illusion. This was black magic – something supernatural – just as Jasper had said. And Amarjeet was in Fairy now.

  “Okay, we have to move fast.” I headed for the gym door.

  “Wait a minute.”

  Clive stood on the stage. His arms were crossed and he had a scowl on his face. “How did you make Amarjeet disappear? I never figured out how your sister managed to make Skeeter disappear either.”

  Okay, almost everyone had it figured out. There wasn’t time to explain, so I said, “If you want to help us get your brother home, then follow us up Grim Hill.”

  “My brother is sick in the hospital … he …” Clive seemed confused. He looked outside as Mitch opened the door. Snow blew in. Clive stared at the snow, and then he looked back at the cabinet. “Except … there is something creepy going on, isn’t there? That light shining out of the cabinet … and the weather and our teachers … this isn’t … normal …”

  Clive had run out of smart remarks as I led Mia, Zach, Emily, and Mitch out the gym door and into the freezing wind. Then he shouted, “Wait!” and ran to catch up with us.

  The streets were deserted, and all the cars, fences, and signposts were buried in white as if a volcano had erupted in a fountain of snow, covering everything in its path. Sound froze, too. For a while, we didn’t hear anything as we walked along the empty streets. But as we began climbing Grim Hill, first we heard the snapping of twigs, then the moaning of the wind, and I began to wonder if I heard baleful mutterings. Then we heard howling ahead of us on the path and a horrible shriek, so we huddled closer together and moved faster. No one turned back.

  When we got near the top of the hill, I began to move even faster because I began to hear a faint chime. “C’mon!” I shouted. “I hear Amarjeet’s bell.”

  We followed the chiming to the rubble of what was left of Grimoire school until the bell grew louder and there was a definite clanging underneath the rock and brick. Mitch and Zach cleared away the bigger stones, and we saw the door and yanked it open. A stone staircase led below the ground, and I recognized that staircase as the one I had discovered in Grimoire’s library. Those steps led to Fairy.