Nocturnes (Mary Hades Book 3)

by Sarah Dalton

  Get a grip, Mary.

  I pull in a deep breath and square my shoulders. No one here knows my story. I am just a girl, a boring teenage girl. With burn scars and a ghostly best friend. No. I shake the thoughts away and I’m preparing myself to enter through the main entrance when a familiar sensation makes me stop. My blood runs cold. I feel a prickle at the back of my neck. I turn, slowly, sensing that something isn’t right.

  On the left side of the car park is a pretty lawn with a tall oak tree rising high up to the sky. On the lowest branch swings a rope. My stomach lurches. A body is hanging from the rope. Young teens run around the tree as the rotten body swings back and forth. My heart sinks. I should have known.

  “What is it?” Lacey asks.

  I whisper quietly to her. “Thing.”

  “Shit,” Lacey replies. Her head whips around as a sudden gust of cold breeze rushes down the steps. The last of the kids make their way into the school, leaving us standing alone. “This place is haunted. Big time.”

  Chapter Two

  We hurry up the steps and through the heavy swing doors into the large entrance hall. It’s a lot smaller than the city school I left, but it’s busy, with uniform-clad students milling around. When they see me, most move out of my path. I’m obviously a sixth former due to my clothes, and it seems that the younger kids are a little in awe of the ‘almost adults’ who have stayed on to take their A-Levels. They scatter, looking up at me with wide eyes, making me remember what it felt like to be a nervy thirteen-year-old. Not much has changed, I can’t help but notice. Seventeen years old and I’m still strung out and awkward.

  “Where are we going, then?” Lacey asks.

  Without meaning to, I bristle at the word ‘we’. Sometimes I feel as though Lacey lives vicariously through my life and it can make things difficult for me. How am I supposed to look normal when there’s a ghost following my every move? But, of course, she’s my best friend and I would be lost without her. Where the balance lies between those two conflicting feelings, I have no idea.

  I let my eyes linger on a sign that says ‘School Administration Office’ and Lacey nods.

  “This place is really posh. Look at those screens.” She gestures towards the small monitors placed intermittently along the hall walls. They show photos of a recent trip to France, before changing to announcements like Form 10 to classroom 2. “Those would have got nicked at my school.”

  “And mine,” I whisper.

  I hurry on towards the School Administration Office, slipping through another heavy swing door into an empty, narrow corridor. It runs alongside what I can only imagine is the Assembly Hall, which seems oddly small without students or chairs. Somehow I can’t imagine how everyone fits into the space. I hasten, trying to ignore the empty echo of my footsteps and the beating of my heart.

  “If this place is haunted by a student, I can’t imagine it being so bad,” Lacey says. “I mean, this school is so posh, they’d probably apologise for haunting you.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” I say. “Emmaline told me about the poltergeist of an old duke who threw a ten-year-old girl out of a window.”

  “Sick,” Lacey says, screwing up her nose in disgust.

  At the end of the corridor, there’s an office partitioned off by a front desk. The laughter of middle-aged Yorkshire women floats down the hall, reminding me of the ladies who worked in my old school. When I arrive at the desk, a slim woman with her glasses halfway down her nose is showing pictures of her grandchildren to a chubby woman with spiky hair.

  “What a little charmer,” she coos. The chubby woman turns to me with a smile. “You all right there, love?”

  “I’m Mary Hades. It’s my first day in year twelve.”

  The larger woman limps over to the desk, rubbing her knee. “There’s rain coming, let me tell you. I can feel it in me knee, y’know. Now, then, I know all about you. Was it St. Vincent’s you went to school before?”

  “Yes,” I say. “We moved into Ravenswood.”

  There’s a little stir in the office as the two administrators attempt to hide their shock.

  “Oh, well, I hope you’re settling in okay,” she says, not meeting my gaze.

  Lacey hops onto the desk and laughs. “I love watching you freak people out like that.” She pretends to tap dance over the desk as the woman rifles through some papers.

  “Here you are, love, a map of the school and your timetable. You’ll have plenty of free time for studying and as you’re sixth form you can come and go as you please. There’s a common room just for year twelve and thirteen at the end of the cafeteria. Now, you’ve got registration with Mrs. Blake in classroom 12. That’s on the third floor. You’re a bit late, but she won’t mind. Not on your first day.” She smiles warmly as she passes me the papers. When her hand passes through Lacey’s tap-dancing ankle, she retracts her arm a little too quickly and then laughs nervously.

  “Thanks for your help,” I say, backing away.

  “That’s quite all right, dear,” the administrator replies, rubbing her wrist. Her face has turned pale and she bumps into the desk behind her, almost upending a mug of tea.

  I shoot her a guilty smile and hurry back down the corridor.

  “Oi,” I hiss at Lacey. “I’m never going to make friends if you keep scaring people off.”

  “Oh, come on, like you were going to be best buddies with the office staff.” She snorts and floats down the hall, flickering on and off like an old TV.

  I stare down at the map and timetable, realising that my slightly sweaty hands have already left marks on the paper. The sound of the swing door squeaking open makes me start, and a stern-faced slim woman in a skirt suit whooshes past me, holding a pile of folders. When I stand there open-mouthed she turns back to me.

  “You should be in registration,” she barks.

  I mumble an apology and hurry through the door.

  With the majority of the students gone from the entrance hall, I can slow down and take a good look at my new school. It appears as though the old building has had some attempts at modernisation. The floor is hard linoleum in a murky grey colour, probably an attempt to hide the stains from so many shoes crossing the ground on a daily basis. There are more pillars inside, but they’re painted bright pink and lime green and are plastered with leaflets. I stop and read a few: Bonjour! French club 12:30 Thursdays in the Language Lab. Friday Pi day – Year 10 Maths club 3:30 in Classroom 5. There are more: badminton, art and crafts, even yoga. I glance at the map and find the stairs at the end of the entrance hall and to the right, next to a monitor telling students that it’s registration time.

  Lacey bounds up the stairs in front of me and I hurry to catch up with her.

  “Lace,” I hiss. “Lace.”

  “What?” She leaps down a full flight of steps, almost floating. “How cool is that? I’m getting the hang of spectre movement.”

  “This is serious. I need to know where the ghost is. Do you sense anything?” I ask, hating to say the words out loud. I don’t really want to admit that there’s a ghost in the school—dealing with regular anxiety is bad enough—but having to think about getting randomly haunted at any time or place isn’t appealing either. The only way I’m going to get through this is by dealing with the ghost once and for all.

  But Lacey shakes her head. “I sense a bad atmosphere. You know how I didn’t know about the ghosts in Ravenswood? How they hid from me? Well, it’s a bit like that, except… except that whoever it is, is kind of everywhere and nowhere. It’s like, I know they’re here, but I couldn’t tell you where. Like oxygen.”

  I sigh. “Okay, they’re like oxygen. This day is not going how I expected it to.”

  “Neither did my life,” Lacey retorts. And then she cracks up into a laugh that chills my blood. “What’s the matter? Never heard a bit of dark humour before?”

  “We’re at floor three now. You can’t keep talking to me once I get into the classroom,” I whisper. “This is serious, Lace. I
… I can’t go through what happened at my last school.”

  Her face softens. “I know. I’m sorry. Hover hug?”

  I glance around me, but the stairs are empty. “Quickly.”

  My skin tingles as her ghost energy wraps around me, almost touching. Lacey’s hover hugs are pretty cool. Not only do they show me she cares, they fill me with a weird sensation, a little like feeling completely alive, and completely calm, in equal measure.

  “In fact, I think I’ll leave you alone for a bit,” she says.

  “Are you sure?” I try to hide my relief. “Where will you go?”

  “Oh, you know, people to haunt, places to haunt.” She offers me a smile that I can’t help but think of as sad and resigned.

  “I’ll catch up with you after school,” I say.

  “Sure.”

  “No, better. Come find me at lunchtime. We’ll go somewhere quiet and chat.”

  “Okay. You’d better go before anyone sees you talking to yourself on the stairs.” She flashes a brighter smile and disappears.

  I glance at my watch and realise that there’s only ten more minutes left for registration. At my old school, the sixth formers never bothered much with registration. Most of us would go in and wave at the teacher and then leave. Sometimes our teacher didn’t even turn up and we marked ourselves in the register. There’s something invigorating about learning how to make that little mark on a register. Contributing to the strange rows of slashes feels like becoming a grown-up in some way.

  The third floor corridor isn’t quite as bright and inviting as the entrance hall. For one thing, it’s a lot darker. The strip lights flicker above my head, some not even working, and others so dusty that they let out a dull glow. Light filters in from the surrounding classrooms, most of which have large glass windows so you can see into the rooms. Registration looks quite lively in some, and a sombre occasion in others. I fold my arms across my chest and look out for classroom twelve. My echoing footsteps are swallowed by the background noise of bellowing teachers versus rambunctious teens.

  Before I enter my new form room, I peek through the glass window at the students inside. My first glimpse of my new peers makes me feel glad that I decided on smart-casual. This is not a jean-shorts and flip-flops kind of sixth form. Most of the girls are like teenage Kate Middletons in heels, mid-length skirts, and cardigans. They all seem to have the same bouncy hair in the same caramel shade, only a shade darker than their subtle spray tans.

  One girl sits in the centre of the languidly relaxing girls. She flicks a few stands of the blonde mane of volumised waves that frames her perfectly made up face. She smiles at me, tilting her head down so that she can get a better look at me. Her lips, glossy and beige in Kim Kardashian style, part slightly. Her peaches-and-cream skin has the kind of glow that’s either genetic or from really expensive foundation.

  When I open the classroom door, the twenty or so students immediately hush. They turn to stare at me with blank faces. A flush of heat spreads through my body and I pull at the collar of my shirt. My eyes follow on from the grouped girls to the lads hovering around them. There’s a marked split between two groups of guys. On one side are the athletic, sporty kind, bulked up beneath their rugby shirts; on the other side are less athletic and more University Challenge contestant type, in V-necked jumpers and thick-rimmed glasses.

  “Can I help you?” says the teacher, who I assume to be Mrs. Blake. “Oh, wait. You must be Mary Hades.”

  She pronounces my name like the Greek god, and without thinking, I say, “It’s Hades,” saying my name as though it rhymes with shades.

  A bearded rugby shirt lets out a snort. “Princess doesn’t like her name being said wrong.” His group bursts into hyena laughter. The guy closest to him slaps his palm.

  I turn my face away, hoping my sweep of dark hair will cover my bright red cheeks.

  “Mr. Vance, may I remind you that this is the beginning of year twelve, and not junior school?” Mrs. Blake says in a bored, sardonic voice.

  Vance and his crew return to whatever it was they were doing before I entered the room. Mrs. Blake gestures for me to come closer to her desk.

  “The thought of some of these imbeciles driving scares the crap out of me. They don’t seem old enough to look after a pot plant, let alone control a ton of moving metal,” she says, pulling her bra strap back into place. I like her. She has her hair pinned back into a messy bun, is wearing a plain white shirt, and has wrists lined with chunky bracelets. The lines around her eyes tell me she’s at least forty, but her attitude is younger. “Let’s see your timetable. Oh, that’s right. Your dad is a teacher, too. He arranged the transfer.” There’s a pause, and I stiffen. This is the moment where she’ll remember I’m repeating the year after spending time in hospital. Her eyes flick up to the scars on my neck, but to her credit, they don’t linger. “Well, you’re in most of the same classes as Grace. Grace.” She raises her voice as the bell chimes. Grace makes her way towards the desk as Mrs. Blake says quietly, “She’s one of the good ones. She’ll show you around.”

  The girl coming over is the girl with the mane of blonde hair. As Mrs. Blake relays the message, my palms begin to sweat. All I can think about is my old school. If I could run away now, and never have to go to a single lesson again, I would.

  “Sure,” Grace says with peppy enthusiasm. “It’ll be fun. Are you in English Lit next, too?”

  I nod.

  “Cool. Follow me.”

  Before we leave, Vance, the bearded pig, slaps Grace on the backside and calls out, “Later, Sugartits.”

  “Less misogyny, you unevolved walking hormone,” Mrs. Blake says with a sigh.

  Chapter Three

  After about thirty minutes, it’s clear that repeating the year is going to be both a blessing and a curse. At first, I’m relieved to know the plot and basic language of A Clockwork Orange, especially when I see the faces of the other students reading the opening passage: “There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim and we sat in the Korova milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening.” I can’t help thinking Vance and his droogs would fit pretty well into Burgess’s nightmare society.

  On the other hand, I now have a few months of working on a book I already know, waiting for the others to catch up with me. It’s going to be pretty dull. I almost want the ghost to show itself to spice things up a bit.

  As the lanky, fifty-something Mr. Almeida drones through the opening chapter of A Clockwork Orange, Grace diligently takes notes. My book remains empty, and instead I let my mind drift into thoughts of dark shadows and monsters with empty eyes. I wonder what sort of ghost walks the halls of Ashforth Secondary School. In this old building it could be anything.

  The prickling sensation of being watched gathers at the base of my skull. When I turn around, Grace is staring at the scars on my neck. Her gaze drops, and she goes back to taking notes.

  Classes finish at ten minutes to the hour, leaving us a few minutes to change rooms. Mr. Almeida sweeps up his papers and strides out of the room without bothering to dismiss us.

  “Miserable fucker,” Grace says. Her accent-less voice sounds strange using the ‘F word’. “He gave me a C for my oral presentation in year nine. I’ve hated the bastard ever since.”

  I laugh whilst packing my books back into my shoulder bag.

  “Love your skirt, by the way,” she says. “Is it Marc Jacobs?”

  “No, it’s H&M,” I reply, trying not to sound embarrassed. These girls wear Marc Jacobs to school?

  “Oh, you’re so clever to go high street. I’m always too lazy to trawl through the sales, but you pick up fantastic bargains.”

  We follow the tide of students back into the hall. On the whole, my lit class seems fairly quiet, and mostly female. I always think it’s a shame there aren’t more young men interested in reading. I learned empathy from books. I learned about places I might never go. A girl bumps my shoulder and put
s her hand up in apology as we squeeze through the door. She moves so fast that she’s almost a blur, but something about her seems familiar. I’ve seen that blurred shape before. She disappears around the corner with a swing of strawberry blonde hair.

  “We don’t need to go far,” Grace says. “Sixth formers stay on the third floor most of the time. The science block is near the assembly hall; art and music are in a separate building near the rugby pitch. You’ll have to go to biology on your own this afternoon. I’m not taking it.” She pauses as a troop of hurrying kids clatters past us, their shoes beating a tattoo against the hard floor. “Look, I’m sorry about what Trav said to you earlier.”

  I frown, not knowing who Trav is.

  “Travis Vance,” she says. “He’s my boyfriend.”

  I try not to react, but inside I’m screaming: That’s your boyfriend? “Oh.”

  “He can be an arse, I know. But he can be kind of sweet, too. You just have to get to know him.”

  I think about him slapping her behind and calling her ‘Sugartits’ and wondering how sweet he can actually get.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Look, you’ve hardly spoken since you got here, and we’re almost at maths now. I’m sorry if I’ve offended you in some way—”

  “You haven’t.” I lean against the hall wall outside our maths classroom and let out a sigh. “I’m sorry if I’ve made things awkward. It’s just that… I’m nervous. Things didn’t turn out so well at my last school, for reasons I won’t go into. It’s hard, coming to a new place when you have that hanging over your head.”

  Grace shakes out her magnificent hair and raises a finger. “Say no more.” She places her palm on her chest and leans in like she’s speaking to a child. “I’ll take you under my wing. You’re going to love it here. We’re super friendly.”

  *

  Mrs. Blake was right. Grace does seem nice. She’s a little patronising at times, and first impressions scream shallow, but then I can’t say anything about first impressions after coming across as an uptight mute for the first few hours. But as we settle into maths—Grace spends the lesson taking more notes; she is a resolute student—I begin to like her. And before long, lunchtime comes along.