Sagging tents and warped wooden kiosks surrounded him. The funfair! He had wandered right into the middle of it.
“Fancy a ride, sonny?”
The speaker was an old man in a shabby coat, a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth. He was standing beside the ghost train. Three carriages – blue, green and yellow – stood on the curving track in front of the swing doors.
“A ride?” David glanced from the ghost train to the sea front. There was no sign of Gregor.
“A test run.” The old man squeezed his cigarette and coughed. “Bit of luck you turning up. You can have a free ride.”
“No thanks…” Even as David uttered the words, Gregor appeared again, shuffling into the fairground area. He hadn’t seen David yet, but he was searching. The knife was still in his hand, held low, slanting upwards.
David leapt into the carriage. He had to get out of sight. A couple of minutes on a ghost train might be enough. At least Gregor couldn’t follow him in there.
“Hang on tight.” The old man pressed a switch.
The carriage jerked forward.
A second later it hit the doors. They broke open, then swung shut behind it. David found himself swallowed up by the darkness. He felt as if he were suffocating. Then a light glowed red behind a plastic skull and he breathed again. If the skull was meant to frighten him, it had had the opposite effect. It reminded him that this was just an entertainment, a cheap funfair ride with plastic masks and coloured light bulbs. A loudspeaker crackled into life with a tape-recorded “Awooo!” and David even managed a smile. A green light flicked on. A rubber spider bounced up and down on an all-too-visible wire. David smiled again.
Then the carriage plunged into a chasm.
It fell through the darkness for so long that the air rushed through David’s hair and he was forced back into the seat. At the last moment, when he was sure he would be dashed to pieces at the bottom of the track, it slowed down as if hitting a cushion of air.
“Some ride…” he whispered to himself. It was a relief to hear the sound of his own voice.
Another light flashed on – a light that was somehow less electric than the ones that had gone before. A soft bubbling sound was coming out of the loudspeakers, only suddenly David wondered if there were any loudspeakers. It sounded too real. He could smell something too; a damp, swamp-like smell. Before the fall, he had been able to feel the tracks underneath the carriage. Now it seemed to be floating.
A figure loomed out of the darkness – a plastic model in a black cloak. But then it raised its head and David saw that it was not a model at all but a man, and a man that David knew well.
“Did you really think you could escape from us?” Mr Kilgraw asked.
The ghost train swept forward. Mrs Windergast stepped out in front of it. “I never thought you’d be so silly, my dear,” she twittered.
David flinched as the carriage hurtled towards her, but at the last moment it was pulled aside by some invisible force and he found himself staring at Mr Fitch and Mr Teagle, both of them illuminated by a soft blue glow.
“A disappointment, Mr Fitch.”
“A disaster, Mr Teagle.”
The ghost train lurched backwards, carrying David away. Miss Pedicure waved a finger at him and tut-tutted. Monsieur Leloup, half-man, half-wolf, howled. Mr Creer, pale and semi-transparent, opened his mouth to speak but sea water flowed over his lips.
He could only sit where he was, gripping the edge of his seat, scarcely breathing as, one after another, the entire staff of Groosham Grange appeared before him. Black smoke was writhing round his feet now and he could make out a red glow in the distance, becoming brighter as he was carried towards it. Then suddenly something clanged against the back of the carriage, just above his head. He looked up. Two hands had clamped themselves against the metal, the fingers writhing. But the hands weren’t attached to arms.
David yelled out.
The ghost train thundered through a second set of doors. The red glow exploded to fill his vision, a huge setting sun. A cool breeze whispered through his hair. Far below, the waves crashed against the rocks.
The ghost train had carried him back to Skrull Island. The yellow carriage was perched on the grass at the top of the cliff. There were no tracks, no models, no funfair.
It was the evening of his thirteenth birthday and the darkness of the night was closing in.
THROUGH THE MIRROR
The school was deserted.
David had gone to bed, too depressed to do anything else. His escape had come to nothing. He had been unable to find Jill. He had just had the worst birthday of his life. And if things went the way he was expecting, it would probably also be the last.
But he couldn’t sleep. Where was everybody? It had been about six o’clock when he had got back to the school. In four hours, lying in the dark, he had neither seen nor heard a soul. Not that there were any souls at Groosham Grange. They had all been sold long ago – and David knew who to.
A footfall on the bare wooden planks of the dormitory alerted him and he sat up, relaxing a moment later as Jill walked in.
“Jill!” He was relieved to see her.
“Hello, David.” She sounded as depressed as he felt. “So you didn’t make it?”
“I did. But … well, it’s a long story.” David swung himself off the bed. He was still fully dressed. “Where is everybody?” he asked.
Jill shrugged. It was difficult to see her face. A veil of shadow had fallen over her eyes.
“What happened to you after I took the boat?” David asked.
“We can talk about that later,” Jill replied. “Right now there’s something I think I ought to show you. Come on!”
David followed her out of the dormitory, slightly puzzled by her. She looked well enough and he assumed that nobody had punished her for her part in the escape. But she seemed cold and distant. Perhaps she blamed him for leaving her behind. David could understand that. In a way, he still blamed himself.
“I’ve found out a lot of things about Groosham Grange, David,” she went on as they walked down the stairs. “And a lot about the staff.”
“Jill…” David reached out to stop her. “I’m sorry I had to go without you.”
“That’s all right, David. It all worked out for the best.” She smiled at him, but her face was pale in the gloomy half-light of the hall. Breaking away, she pressed forward, moving towards the library. “All the staff here are … well, they’re not quite human. Mr Kilgraw is a vampire, Mrs Windergast is a witch. Mr Fitch and Mr Teagle are black magicians. They used to be two people until one of their experiments went wrong. Mr Creer is a ghost and Miss Pedicure has lived for ever.”
“But what do they want with us?” David said.
“They want to teach us.” Jill had reached the library door. She turned the handle and went in. “You’re a seventh son of a seventh son. I’m a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter.”
“What about it?”
“It means we’re witches. We were born witches. It’s not our fault. It’s not anybody’s fault, really. But like all the kids here we have powers. The teachers just want to show us how to use them.”
“Powers?” David grabbed hold of Jill and swung her round so that she faced him. She didn’t resist, but her eyes seemed to look through rather than at him. “I don’t have any powers. Nor do you.”
“We’ve got them. We just don’t know how to use them.” Jill was standing in front of the mirror. She reached out and rapped her knuckles against the glass. Then she turned to David. “Use your power,” she challenged him. “Go through the mirror.”
“Through the glass?” David looked from the mirror to Jill and back again. He remembered his dream, how he had walked through the glass and into the underground cavern. But that had been just a dream. Now he was awake. The glass was solid. Only Jill, it seemed, had cracked.
“You can do it, David,” she insisted. “You’ve got the power. All you have to do is use
it!”
“But…”
“Try!”
Angry, confused, on the edge of fear, he wrenched himself away from her, hurling his shoulder at the glass. He would smash the mirror. That would show her. Then he would find out what was wrong with her.
His shoulder sank into the glass.
Taken by surprise, thrown off balance, David almost stumbled. His head and his raised palms made contact with the mirror – made contact with nothing – passed through the barrier as if there were no barrier at all. It was like falling into a television set. One moment he was in the library, the next he was breathing in the cold air of the tunnel, leaning against the damp and glistening rock.
He looked back the way he had come. The tunnel seemed to end with a sheet of steel. That was what the mirror looked like from the other side. Then Jill stepped through it as if it were a sheet of water and stopped, her hands on her hips.
“You see,” she said. “I told you you could do it.”
“But how did you know about it?” David asked.
“I know a lot more…”
She brushed past him and continued down the tunnel. David followed, wondering if he was still asleep after all. But everything felt too real. He shivered in the breeze, tasted the salt water on his lips, felt the weight of the rocks hemming him in. The passage dipped down and his ears popped as the pressure increased.
“Where does this lead to?” he asked.
“You’ll see.”
When it seemed that they had walked half a mile, David became aware of a strange, silver glow. There had been no light bulbs or torches to light the way and he realized now that the tunnel had been filled with the same silvery glow as if it were a mist rising from a subterranean lake. Jill stopped, waiting for him to catch up. He hurried forward, out of the tunnel and into…
It was a huge cavern, the cavern of his dream. Stalactites and stalagmites hung down, soared up, as if carved from the dreams of Nature itself. One entire wall was covered by a petrified waterfall, brilliant white, a frozen eternity. In the middle of it all stood the sacrificial block, solid granite, horribly final. Mr Kilgraw was standing behind it. He had been waiting for them. Jill had led him to them.
David spun round, searching for something he knew he would find, something he should have seen from the start. And there it was, on her third finger. A black ring.
“Jill…!” He shook his head, unable to speak. “When were you thirteen?” he demanded at last.
“Yesterday,” Jill said. She looked at him reproachfully. “You never wished me a happy birthday. But I don’t mind, David.” She smiled. “You see, we were wrong. We were fighting them. But all the time they were really on our side.”
The despair was like quicksand, sucking him in. There was no more fight in him. He had failed – failed to escape, failed to do anything. Jill had been taken. She was one of them. At last he was finally alone.
And now it was his turn.
They had come for him.
As one, the pupils of Groosham Grange moved out of the shadows at the edge of the cavern, forming a circle around him. The rest of the staff appeared behind Mr Kilgraw. David walked slowly to the granite block. He didn’t want to walk there. But his legs would no longer obey his commands.
He stopped in front of Mr Kilgraw. The other pupils had closed the circle, locking him in. Everyone was looking at him.
“You have fought us long and hard, David,” Mr Kilgraw said. “I congratulate you on your courage. But the time for fighting is over. Today is your thirteenth birthday. Midnight is approaching. You must make your choice.
“Listen to me, David. You are the seventh son of a seventh son. That is why you were brought to Groosham Grange. You have powers. We want to teach you how to use them.”
“I’m not a witch!” David cried. The words echoed around the cavern. “I never will be!”
“Why not?” Mr Kilgraw had not raised his voice but he was speaking with an intensity and a passion that David had never heard before. “Why not, David? Why do you refuse to see things our way? You think ghosts and witches and vampires and ghosts and two-headed monsters are bad. Why? Do you know what that is, David? It’s prejudice. Racial prejudice!”
Mr Fitch and Mr Teagle nodded appreciatively. Mrs Windergast muttered a brief “Hear! Hear!”
“There’s nothing bad about us. Have we hurt you? True, we had to see to Mr Netherby, but that was no fault of ours. You brought him here. We were only protecting ourselves.
“The trouble is, you’ve seen too many horror films. We vampires have never had a fair deal on the screen. And look at werewolves! Just because my good friend Monsieur Leloup likes the occasional pigeon salad when there’s a full moon, everyone thinks they’ve a right to hunt him down and shoot silver bullets in him. And what about Mr Creer? All right, so he’s dead. But he’s still a very good teacher – in fact, he’s a lot more lively than quite a few living teachers I could mention.”
“But I’m not like you,” David insisted. “I don’t want to be like you.”
“You have power,” Mr Kilgraw replied. “That is all that matters. And the real question you should be asking yourself, David, is, do you really want to stay with your parents and follow your singularly unpleasant father into merchant banking? Or do you want to be free?
“Join us, and you’ll be rich. We can teach you how to make gold out of lead, how to destroy your enemies just by snapping your fingers. We can show you how to see into the future and use it for yourself. Think of it, David! You can have everything you want … and more. Look at Miss Pedicure! She’s lived for ever. So can you…
“All right, I admit it. We are, frankly, evil. My friends Mr Fitch and Mr Teagle are more evil than any of us. They’ve won awards for being evil. But what’s so bad about being evil? We’ve never dropped an atom bomb on anyone. We’ve never polluted the environment or experimented on animals or cut back on National Health spending. Our evil is rather agreeable. Why do you think there have been so many books and films about us? It’s because people like us. We are actually rather pleasantly evil.”
While Mr Kilgraw had spoken, the sixty-four pupils of Groosham Grange, novice witches and young adepts all, had tightened the circle. Now they were moving closer to David, their eyes bearing down on him. Jill was next to Jeffrey. William Rufus was on the other side. Sixty-four black rings glowed in the underground light.
Mr Kilgraw held the sixty-fifth.
“I have enjoyed the fight, David,” he said. “I didn’t want it to be easy. I admire courage. But now it is midnight.” He reached out with his other hand. Gregor scurried forward and gave him his knife.
“Here is your choice,” he went on. “The ring or the knife? You can reject us one final time. In that instance, I regret that I will be forced to plunge the blade into your heart. I can assure you that it will hurt me more than it will hurt you. And we’ll give you a decent burial in the school cemetery.
“Alternatively, you can accept us, take a new name and begin your education in earnest. But there can be no going back, David. If you join us, you join us for ever.”
David felt himself being forced down on to the granite block. The circle of faces spun round him. There was the ring. And there was the knife.
“Now, David,” Mr Kilgraw asked. “What do you say?”
SEVENTH SON
“When I was a boy,” Mr Eliot said, “I had to work in my holidays. My father made me work so hard I’d have to spend three weeks in hospital before I could go back to school.”
“But David’s only got one day’s holiday,” Mrs Eliot reminded him, pouring herself a glass of gin.
“I am aware of that, my dear.” Mr Eliot snatched the glass out of her hand and drank it himself. “And if you ask me, one day is much too long. If I’d been expelled from Beton College my father would never have spoken to me again. In fact he’d have cut off my ears so I wouldn’t hear him if he spoke to me accidentally.”
The two parents were sitting
in the living-room of their house in Wiernotta Mews. Edward Eliot was smoking a cigar. Eileen Eliot was stroking Beefeater, her favourite Siamese cat. They had just eaten lunch – ham salad served in true vegetarian style, without the ham.
“Maybe we should take him to a film or something?” Mrs Eliot suggested nervously.
“A film?”
“Well … or a concert…”
“Are you mad?” Mr Eliot snapped. He leant forward angrily and stubbed his cigar out on the cat. The cat screeched and leapt off Mrs Eliot, its back claws ripping off most of her stockings and part of her leg. “Why should we take him anywhere?” Mr Eliot demanded.
“Perhaps you are right, my love,” Mrs Eliot whimpered, pouring the rest of the gin on to her leg to stop the bleeding.
Just then the door opened and David walked in.
He had changed since his departure for Groosham Grange. He was thinner, older, somehow wiser. He had always been quiet. But now there was something strange about his silence. It was like a wall between him and his parents. And when he looked at them, it was with soft, almost merciless, eyes.
Mr Eliot glanced at his watch. “Well, David,” he said. “You’ve got seven hours and twenty-two minutes before your holiday’s over. So why don’t you go and mow the lawn?”
“But it’s a plastic lawn!” Mrs Eliot protested.
“Then he can go and wash it!”
“Of course, dear!” Mrs Eliot beamed at her husband, then fainted from loss of blood.
David sighed. Seven hours and twenty-two minutes. He hadn’t realized there was still so much time.
He lifted his right hand.
“What’s that you’re wearing?” his father demanded.
David muttered a few words under his breath.
There was no puff of smoke, no flash of light. But it was as if his parents had been photographed and at the same time turned into those photographs. Mrs Eliot was halfway out of her chair, slumping towards the carpet. Mr Eliot was about to speak, his mouth open, his tongue hovering over his teeth.
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