The Secret of Grim Hill

by Linda DeMeulemeester

  Jasper took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and put the glasses back on. He looked sick with worry, but I could tell he was trying hard to think of anything that would help.

  When I pushed aside Mom’s papers so Jasper could join me at the computer, some of her files slid off the desk and landed with a thud. Jasper bent over and picked them up.

  “Eureka!”

  Only Jasper would say “eureka.” But I felt a gush of hope. “You found a file with Cindy’s name on it?”

  “No,” said Jasper. “But I finally found Alice’s old journal. It must have been mixed up in your mother’s work stuff.”

  Why hadn’t I thought of searching through the files before? Mom had been working a lot up in the attic, and her papers were always scattered all over the desk.

  Jasper opened the journal. We turned back to the entries after Alice’s sister, Lucinda, had left to play in the Halloween soccer match. We flipped through the pages.

  November 1, I was picked to sing in the school concert, I read again. Mother was pleased.

  Why hadn’t Alice mentioned that her sister’s team won the soccer match? The question still haunted me.

  November 20, I got an invitation to Valerie Cromlin’s birthday party.

  December 25, Mother, Father, and I went to Grandma’s for Christmas dinner. Faster and faster,

  Jasper and I turned the pages.

  February 14, I got twenty-six Valentines at the school party today. One valentine was trimmed in red lace and signed “anonymous.” I hope it was from Jimmy Mason. Flip, flip, flip, we raced through the journal.

  As I turned the pages again and again, a terrible dread made my head spin so badly, I had to stop reading and sit down on the old trunk. “Alice never wrote in her journal about who won the scholarship game,” I said, but it was more than that. And now I knew what had bothered me so much about the journal.

  “Right. It was as if …” Jasper didn’t finish. Instead, I did. “Alice never wrote about her sister again.” My voice cracked as I said it.

  Jasper turned to me, his brown eyes deeply troubled. “I was going to say, it was more like Alice never had a sister in the first place.”

  I began to shiver as if I’d just dunked my head into a tub of ice water.

  What if Sookie wasn’t the first girl to disappear and be forgotten? What happened to Alice’s sister? Did she turn up later? Or were all the girls on her Witches team erased from everyone’s memories? That just couldn’t be.

  Jasper said, “Look at this.” He pointed to the back cover of the journal. Alice Greystone. “I didn’t really pay attention to the name the first time we found this journal, but there’s an old lady on my paper route, and I’m sure her name is Alice Greystone.”

  What were the chances this was the same Alice Greystone who owned the journal and who might have lost a sister a long time ago? Actually, for such a small town, pretty good. Besides, it didn’t matter. It was the only lead we had.

  “Where does she live?” I asked.

  “27 Fairlane Street,” said Jasper. “Not far from here.”

  Jasper tucked the journal under his arm, and we rushed out the door and down the leaf-littered streets.

  CHAPTER 14 The Ghost Girl

  FORTUNATELY, THIS LEAD had given me more energy, and I beat Jasper up to the wraparound porch of an old-fashioned house with stained-glass windows.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t get our hopes up,” warned Jasper.

  I didn’t listen to him. Before he could say anything else, I hopped up the steps and banged three times on a brass knocker shaped like a lion’s head. No one answered. Just as my heart started to sink, the door opened, and an old woman in a brown tweed suit stood in front of us.

  “Why hello, dear,” the old lady said, smiling past me and at Jasper. “Have you come to collect for the paper?”

  “No, um, Mrs. Greystone, may we come in?” asked Jasper.

  “It’s ‘Miss,’ dear. I’ve just made a pot of tea. Why don’t you join me?” Miss Greystone waved us through the door.

  Her house had dark wood paneling that matched the floors. Rose-and leaf-patterned rugs were scattered under old-fashioned furniture. Lace doilies covered every chair and table, and the warm rooms smelled of lemon wax and tea.

  Miss Greystone bustled in the kitchen while Jasper and I fidgeted on the red velvet couch. Before she could even pour the steaming tea into our cups, I blurted out, “Do you have a sister?”

  Miss Greystone laughed. “Why no, dear, I am an only child.” At that, Miss Greystone lost her smile. The skin around her eyes crinkled and she seemed a bit sad all of a sudden.

  I couldn’t hide my disappointment because I had to find out what happened to the girl in the journal – it was all too similar to what happened to Sookie. But the journal could have belonged to some other Alice Greystone.

  Jasper pulled out the journal, which he had tucked in his jacket. Holding it out, he asked, “Did this ever belong to you?”

  Miss Greystone’s eyes lit up. She eagerly reached for the journal. “Wherever did you get this?” Miss Greystone gently flipped the pages. “My goodness,” she said laughing.

  “In my attic,” I said and then told her where I lived.

  “My family lived in that house until we moved here,” Miss Greystone said wistfully. “I had happy times there.”

  “But you wrote about a sister,” Jasper said politely and pointed to several journal entries.

  For a few seconds, Miss Greystone was quiet. Then she sighed and patted the journal affectionately. “Back then I considered myself a budding writer,” she said. “I wanted to publish stories, and I made up fanciful tales to make my life all the more interesting.” Her smile slipped. “I used to imagine what it would be like to have an older sister. Being an only child is a lonely thing.”

  Jasper nodded in agreement.

  I got that feeling again – like when the picture on the T.V. fades out and the room gets darker. It made perfect sense that she would have made up her sister. It sounded exactly like something Sookie would have done if she’d been an only child. As it was, Mom, Dad, and I had to put up with an imaginary brother until she was five. I clutched the two feathers in my pocket. Sookie, Sookie, Sookie, I whispered to myself. It didn’t matter if we were wrong about the journal. Things didn’t add up, and my sister was still missing.

  “Thanks for the tea,” I said even though I hadn’t taken a sip. “We’ve got to go.”

  Jasper offered to help Miss Greystone carry the tray back to the kitchen.

  “Don’t worry about the tea tray, just go ahead. It looks as if you have important things to do,” Miss Greystone said kindly.

  As I stood up, I noticed a black-and-white photograph on the mantel. I went over and peered closely at the faded picture of two girls. It was a close-up photo of their faces. The first girl was quite young and wore her straight, blond hair short, the same as Sookie. The first thing I noticed about the older girl was that she wore an unusual barrette in her hair. A ruby spider weaving its silver web! The older girl in the picture looked like the same goth girl who had hung out with Sookie on the soccer bleachers during my soccer practices, who had worn the strange mask at my party, who had spoken to me about ancient Celts – and who most likely had taken my sister somewhere!

  The other girl was Cindy. My adrenaline surged.

  Grabbing the picture in my hand, I almost shouted, “Is this a relative or friend of yours?”

  Miss Greystone studied the photograph. First she pointed to the little girl with blond hair. “That’s me when I was eight.” Miss Greystone then pointed to Cindy. “For some reason I have always loved this picture, even though I’ve long forgotten who that other girl was.”

  Cindy was in a picture taken over seventy years ago. How could that be? How could the girl I’d spoken to at my party be over eighty years old? The room spun. Basically, I faced an impossible situation … unless I’d been talking to a ghost – no, there had to be another explanati
on.

  Then I got an idea. I pulled out the third feather from my pocket and handed it to Miss Greystone.

  “It’s lovely, dear.” She stroked its silky tip.

  The feather shimmered silver and gold, but it didn’t stop there. The feather began to glow, and I worried that it might burst into flames.

  Miss Greystone stared at the photograph I held in my hand. After a few moments, a tear trailed down her cheek.

  “Please, dears,” she almost whispered. “Sit down again and tell me why you’ve come here.”

  ***

  Our tea grew cold as I finished telling Miss Greystone what Cindy had told me about Halloween traditions the other night at my party and how my little sister had disappeared.

  Miss Greystone kept clutching the feather, stroking it as she stared at the old photograph. “When I hold onto this feather, I remember now, all those years ago,” said Miss Greystone. She dabbed her eyes with a hanky. “Lucinda was my sister; everyone called her Cindy. She was in a big soccer match at Grimoire School. Her team won and – and after that, I don’t remember anything about what happened to her. I know she existed, but it seems as if it were all a dream.”

  As she handed me back the feather, I shook my head and didn’t take it. “Hold on to it, or else you’ll start to forget again.” Even with the feather, it took everything in my heart to believe Sookie was real.

  “Over seventy years,” Miss Greystone said thoughtfully. “If you really think you talked with my sister, she couldn’t be young. She’d be older than me.”

  Impossible or not, I knew I’d been talking to Miss Greystone’s sister the other night, and she was my age. “All I know is that the last time I saw Sookie,” I said, “she was talking to your sister. That can’t be a coincidence, considering Cindy – I mean

  – Lucinda’s been missing all these years, and then my sister goes missing.” Again I was close to tears.

  Jasper shoved his glasses up on his head. “Lucinda’s disappearance and reappearance has got to do with Grimoire School and the soccer game. She vanished seventy years ago after the school’s first scholarship game. Cat, your match is on Sunday. Lucinda showed up at your pre-game party. There’s definitely a reason.”

  With all that was going on this morning, I had forgotten the game was this coming weekend. Shivers crept up my spine. I swallowed and said, “There’s something else. I know Sookie is with Lucinda, because I feel it in my heart. She came and got Sookie and took her away. But why? She was trying to tell me all that stuff about Samhain, so it’s got to be important.”

  “We need more information,” said Jasper. “We should leave and split up. I’ll go up to Grimoire myself and see if I can slip into the office and find out anything about the original soccer match.” He looked at me. “Cat, you could search for Celts and Samhain online.”

  “I’ll do a search, too,” offered Miss Greystone.

  They had a good plan, except for one thing.

  “You should be the one to go online,” I told Jasper. “It makes more sense for me to search Grimoire School.” He shook his head no. Before he could say anything, I reasoned, “Mom’s working tonight, and all I have to do is pretend I’m visiting her at the school, and then I can sneak around and try to investigate.”

  He couldn’t argue with that. They both agreed I had a point, but Miss Greystone appeared extremely nervous when she said, “Cat, you be very careful up at that place. I’ve lived in this town all my life – Grim Hill and that school have never seemed safe to me.”

  That’s exactly the way Sookie felt. She always said how much she hated that school on the hill. If only I’d listened to her.

  I had to hurry and find her. As I left Miss Greystone’s house, Jasper called out to me, “By the way, you do know what the word ‘grimoire’ means, don’t you?”

  I had no idea, so I shook my head.

  “It’s a word I’ve read in horror stories, and it means ‘a witch’s magic spell book.’ It’s what witches use to conjure spirits and demons. So be careful.” Jasper sounded worried.

  “It’s just a name,” I said, but I swallowed and a hard lump sat in my stomach as I kept going in the direction of Grim Hill.

  CHAPTER 15 A Wicked Revelation

  I CLIMBED UP Grim Hill, past the blazing woods of crimson and yellow leaves, up to the school at the top. The sun was hanging low, and it was almost early evening. At least the fog had lifted. Mom had told me she’d be working past dinnertime, so it made sense that I would pretend to visit my mom and then search the school. Simple. Then why was I completely terrified?

  Forcing my legs forward, I approached Grimoire School. Despite its dark mystery, I couldn’t help but think that the building itself was beautiful. It was as if some giant had dropped a fairy castle on top of the hill. Red ivy hung from the school’s walls and brick turrets. Clusters of oak and hawthorn trees surrounded the school and thickened to woods that crept down the hill to my street.

  But something made me slow down and stop in front of the wide wood doors of the school. The iron handle felt icy cold as I tugged it open and stared into the dim, cavernous entrance hall. I stepped into the shadows.

  The empty halls of black-and-white checkered floors stretched out endlessly, and I walked along until I noticed a sign that said “administration” pointing up one stairway. On the first landing, I found my mom’s cubbyhole of an office. Mom was hunched over a desk stacked up so high with files, you could barely see her. As far as I could tell, she was the only person in the whole place.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said finally. She hadn’t even noticed me standing there.

  Mom peeked over her files and smiled, but she looked distracted. “Cat, what are you doing here?”

  Up until that second, I hadn’t thought about an excuse, but I said, “Um, I went to the library and forgot my key. I’m locked out of the house.”

  Mom sighed and said, “Well, at least you remembered your head,” like she always said when I forgot stuff. Part of me wanted to break down over how normal her reaction was. It made me realize just how strange things had become. But I bit my lip until I felt more in control, and then I smiled back at her.

  She grabbed her purse and dug out her key. “You’re lucky I always carry a spare.”

  Saying “Thanks,” I pocketed the key, but instead of leaving out the main doors, I started exploring the halls on the second floor. There had to be another office, a bigger one that had more information about the first Halloween soccer match.

  I kept walking along the tiled floor. The stained glass near the ceiling let in blood-colored light, which gave the place a spooky atmosphere. And although the school appeared deserted, with the exception of my mother, I thought I heard the echo of footsteps behind me or hushed voices in a classroom. But when I opened the heavy arched oak doors and peeked inside, I saw nothing.

  Hanging in the hall was a series of portraits of teachers and former students. I studied their faces. They all showed a strong resemblance to one another

  – it was as if they were from the same family. But there was something else. The Grimoire girl who had been the goalie at the

  soccer tryouts looked just like the people in the portraits. Then I realized that she and the other students in the paintings were slightly smaller versions of our soccer coaches. The coaches, the girls, and the teachers in the portraits all had pointy chins, odd eyes that seemed almost too large for their faces, thin noses, and long, straight hair. They weren’t identical, but they were eerily similar to one another. At practice, I’d never really paid attention to the coaches or the occasional Grimoire girl, but seeing all these same faces lined up together on the wall, you couldn’t miss the resemblance.

  Following the portraits to the end of the hall, I spotted the library. At least that’s what the sign above the door said. When I stepped inside and closed the door behind me, I saw that the room was tiny and ancient. The scene could have been a picture from an old-fashioned book. There were tall, skinny shelves
and long, narrow windows to the floor. And while it had the same papery smell of a library, there was only one book – a gigantic, fat book that lay open on a pedestal and was surrounded by the same wispy fog that crept down the hill to cover the town at night. When I took a closer look, though, the fog was streaming from the book and drifting out a nearby open window. I kept telling myself that this couldn’t really be happening. Then the pages began to flip by themselves! I jumped back.

  When the pages stopped turning, a white feather bookmark, identical to the one in my pocket, marked an open page. My heart pounded in my ears as I edged closer to the book. What did Jasper say ‘grimoire’ meant? A magic book? I was now convinced that’s exactly what I’d discovered.

  The page had opened to a section titled “Lesson 439: Protection of Fairy Hills for Creatures of the Netherworld.” There was a large illustration. Suddenly I didn’t care that the book had been turning the pages all by itself, and I bent down to take a look.

  Strange creatures filled the page – some of them resembling those figures in puzzle books that are divided in three sections, and when you flip the pages, the bodies, legs, and heads never match up. Shivers ran up my back. Other creatures looked a lot like, well, the students and teachers of Grimoire. They had the same pointy chins, long noses, and straight hair – like the coaches and the portraits in the hall. The passage underneath said:

  Fairies and creatures of the netherworld: You must always use your glamour to avoid being discovered by humans. Only the most powerful spells will trick humans into believing that their haunts have not been invaded by fairies. Deceive their ears, trick their eyes, and make them think that carrying out your commands are their own desires.

  But creatures of Grim Hill beware: Young children can be resistant to glamour. At times, they can see through the spell and recognize creatures from the netherworld. Most often, their adults will consider this the product of a child’s imagination, but in some cases, you must employ other enchantments to remain safe. Most importantly, NEVER let any human possess any item from Fairy, because that human cannot then be enchanted.