by James Dawson
‘Please!’ Bobbie cried. ‘She’s coming for me.’
Price seized her arm. ‘You need to pull yourself together. We have to talk about my father. I will not have you going all over telling people what he did. You have no proof.’ The teacher dragged her away from the exit and towards the silent, oncoming Mary.
‘No!’ Bobbie snapped. Snatching her arm back, she did something she wouldn’t have thought herself capable of. She pushed Dr Price into the dead girl’s path. The teacher was expecting it even less, her mouth falling open in shock. In true haunting style, Price fell through Mary as if she were made of smoke and straight into the nest of paperwork Bobbie had left all over the floor. One step onto the loose leaves and Price’s court shoe slipped out from under her, sending her clattering into the open cupboard. With a shrill cry, her forehead clashed with the second shelf down and then the third as she fell.
Price lay in an untidy heap, half in and half out of the cupboard. She moaned slightly, hovering somewhere close to unconsciousness.
Bobbie backed away, not taking her eyes off Mary. There was only one problem: Mary now stood between her and the only exit. ‘Mary, stop!’ Bobbie pleaded, trying to stay cool. ‘Where did he put you? Do you even know?’ Bobbie’s bottom collided with the desk, knocking an overturned coffee cup to the floor. Bobbie felt her way around the desk.
The pain in her sock-clad foot when she stepped on the glass was excruciating. It shot up and down her spine and red flashed before her eyes. Howling, Bobbie stepped back further, only to tread on more shards. The pain was acute, intense, throbbing all the way up her legs. She leaned against the hole she’d made in the centre of the huge mirror, with Mary still edging towards her. Bobbie raised her left foot to examine the damage: a little-finger-sized glass sliver stuck out of her sole. Her white sock was quickly turning red. Gritting her teeth, she pulled it free – her own blood now dripping onto the carpet.
The wall beneath her shoulder felt strange – too flimsy to be a wall. It was wooden. Office walls aren’t made of wood. That was when Bobbie noticed the outline. It wasn’t a wall at all, it was a door: a small hatch concealed behind the mirror. Of course! Another secret passage, or a priest’s hole – one of the legendary priests’ holes.
Whatever it was it didn’t matter. With all her might, Bobbie pushed on the hidden panel and it swung inward. The space behind the door was pitch-black, but Mary was only centimetres away. A blood-stained hand reached for Bobbie’s face, and, with a gasp, she ducked to avoid it, clambering through the hole.
Ignoring the pain in her feet (which now seemed to burn), Bobbie reached up and slammed the hatch in Mary’s face. It clicked shut but Bobbie had no idea if secret doors could stop ghosts. Leaning back against it, Bobbie strained to see in the darkness. Feeble grey light bled around the edges of the panel and it was just enough to recognise that she was at the top of a staircase, which had to lead somewhere. That meant it was more than just a hidey-hole; it could go anywhere in the school.
The penny dropped. This was exactly how Kenton Millar must have moved Mary’s body all those years ago. There’s no way you could have a secret passage behind your mirror and not know about it. That made her mind up. Her only option was to follow the passage and pray it hadn’t been bricked up over the decades. If she ran into a dead end, it was game over.
Bobbie hobbled forward, her feet stinging with every step. She left ketchup-red, sticky footprints as she went.
The stairs were steep, slick and icy cold. With each pained step, the air became staler, like she was descending into a cellar. Bobbie felt her way along the walls as the darkness crept closer. By the time her foot found flat slabs, she couldn’t see at all; it was almost like being back inside the awful abyss of Mary’s realm.
The echoing drops of water that fell from the ceiling – real this time – suggested she was in a confined space: a tunnel or cave – nothing like the functional servants’ passages. She must be underneath the school from the sheer number of stairs she’d taken.
Something crawled over her toes. Bobbie cried out and kicked it off, the thing giving an angry squeak before tiny paws scurried away. The passage was infested with rats – Bobbie grimaced and set off into the shadows. Trying to run, but only managing a feeble limp while clinging to the walls, Bobbie hoped there was nothing in the darkness to cut her feet. Oh … wait a sec … Despite everything she laughed. Was that actually funny or was she hysterical? Either way the evil doll giggle she was making was more than a little creepy. Stop. You have to keep it together. Keep going.
Bobbie froze. She leaned against the wall, which, this far down, was slimy with damp. Even over her unsteady, heaving breaths and chattering teeth she heard unsteady footsteps scraping down the stairs behind her.
That wasn’t rats … Mary was on the stairs.
The hysterical laughter swung into a sob. Bobbie pushed off the wall and continued her excruciating run. At least the freezing stone tunnel went some way towards numbing her feet. She tried to stay on tiptoes to keep the pressure off the cuts in her soles and heels. Hobbling as fast as she could, Bobbie didn’t even look back.
Mary was advancing in the darkness. She wouldn’t see her until she felt those fingers.
The tunnel seemed endless. There were no bends, no corners, the blackness stretching on forever. Bobbie wondered if it was already over and this was Hell – one infinite, black tunnel.
She wheezed as she ran and her breathing switched to panting. Pausing for a moment, she heard feet shuffling behind her. Way too close. Bobbie ran on, hands outstretched. Within seconds she realised she could see brickwork up ahead. The fact she could see anything meant there was light entering the tunnel. With renewed vigour she charged forward, only for her spirit to wilt: there was a dead end up ahead. No, it wasn’t a dead end, it was a wall. A wall with a ladder.
Bobbie threw herself at it and looked over her shoulder. If there was something moving back down the long corridor it wasn’t close enough for her to see. Looking up she saw the light was filtering through a vent at the top of a narrow shaft. A way out. It felt like dawn breaking at the end of her longest night.
She grabbed the rung of the ladder at eye level. The wooden rungs felt wet and greasy, covered in moss or mould. Bobbie feared the wood was rotten, still it felt sturdy enough. Gripping the ladder with the tips of her toes, she started to climb. Jolts of pain tore through her body every time she tried to put weight on her feet, so she tried as hard as she could to pull herself up the ladder, utilising all the strength she had in her arms. It hurt so, so much, but all she had to do was get to the vent and at least she’d be out of the tunnel and (hopefully) in fresh air.
There came footsteps from the bottom of the ladder and out of the corner of her eye Bobbie saw a shadow shift in the meagre light. She climbed faster.
The rusted mental vent overhead was within reaching distance, although God knew what was on the other side. Bobbie stretched for the final rung and heaved herself up.
There was a sickening crack and the rung broke off in her hand. She dropped it, scrabbling for something else to grab. The second the weight went onto her feet, she howled in pain and, in reflex, let go.
She fell. She fell fast, like a stone dropping down a well. All she could do was brace for landing. The end was mercifully swift. Bobbie hit the floor with a thud, her feet (her poor feet) taking most of the impact. At first she was too shocked to register any pain. She lay flat on her back, staring up at the shaft, blinking like an idiot. Then the pain really hit. If she thought lacerated feet had been bad, it was nothing to the agony that started to spread through her ankles like lava.
It hurt so much she couldn’t breathe. Nor could she move.
Something warm dripped onto her cheek. Like a teardrop. There was another, then another.
Drip, drip, drip.
Bobbie was mobile enough to tilt her head back an inch on the cold stone slabs.
Mary stood over her, blood running from her fingers ont
o her face. ‘No,’ Bobbie muttered. After everything she’d done. After fighting so hard … it had done her no good.
Mary’s cold, impassive face leaned towards Bobbie’s own. Bobbie felt her shallow, raspy breaths on her skin, as if the other girl’s lungs were filled with fluid. ‘Please … ’ she begged.
A freezing, dewy hand touched her cheek. A bloody lock of her hair grazed Bobbie’s lip. The stench of her breath was overwhelming – like the girl’s insides were rotten. Bobbie whined and tried to wriggle away, but she was pinned down; Mary was right on top of her, leaning in. All Bobbie could do was close her eyes and wait for it to end.
Chapter 28
Tales from the Crypt
‘Bobbie?’
She dared to open her eyes a fraction and came face-to-face with a leering skull at her side. She recoiled, only to remember that every inch of her body was battered and sore, like her bruises went all the way to her core. Her fingers brushed against something smooth and hard – bonelike. So bonelike, she realised it was, in fact, bone. More bones. She brushed it out of her hand, disgusted, as she became aware of someone leaning over her in the gloom.
Sitting up, she first saw Caine. He crouched by her side, helping her up. Her ankles throbbed – for now, she’d settle for sitting upright.
This had to be a mirage. If he weren’t so grimy and dirty, Caine could be an angel. He cradled her head in a strong hand and kissed her hard on the lips. They didn’t need words. There wasn’t a word big enough for how it felt, and she knew that he felt exactly the same. Perhaps this was the big reunion in heaven, although Bobbie liked to imagine that, in heaven, she wouldn’t ache quite so much. ‘You’re alive,’ Bobbie whispered.
‘Only just,’ said another familiar voice. Naya! Tears, the good kind, suddenly flooded the cavity behind her nose. Naya was alive. They were all alive. It was too good, more than she could have dared hope. Dizzy, Bobbie’s head spun, bits of silver glitter swirling in her peripheral vision.
Naya sat on some shallow stone steps that lead to an ornate metal door – a door Bobbie had seen before. Well, at least the other side of it. It was the forgotten mausoleum in the graveyard at St Paul’s. In Naya’s arms was Sadie, barely conscious. Oh how stupid they’d been. Two days ago they’d been metres from Sadie and left her there.
‘Oh my God,’ was all Bobbie could think to say. She tried to stand to get to her friend, but the pain in her ankles was too raw. ‘Naya … I … ’
Naya shook off the big, heartfelt reunion, there clearly wasn’t time. ‘She’s going to die, Bob. She’s been here for days.’ Sadie looked in a bad way, her usually outdoorsy face sunken and her eyes hollow.
Bobbie examined her surroundings. They were in a dank, mossy chamber, infused with green-tinged light where vines and trees had smothered the tomb. Rainwater drummed on the roof. There was a grand stone sarcophagus in the centre of the room with smaller caskets lined up the walls in beautifully carved alcoves.
‘When I got here and found Naya,’ Caine said, ‘I called for you … ’
‘I heard,’ Bobbie brushed a cobweb out of his hair. ‘I heard you say my name.’
Caine’s brown eyes glistened. ‘I thought you were lost in that … place.’
‘And I thought you were … ’
‘Ahem!’ Naya interrupted them. ‘This is super-cute, you guys, but what do we do?’
‘Do you have a phone?’ Caine asked Bobbie.
‘No, it’s still by my bed from this morning. I didn’t think to grab it.’
Caine nodded. ‘Mine’s up in your room too.’
Bobbie took a closer look at their tomb. The floor was strewn with bones. Human bones. Like some sort of hilarious mass grave, maybe half a dozen skulls grinned at each other, scattered around the floor like drunk students at a house party. Naya was wearing someone else’s clothes. An old-style Piper’s PE hoodie that hadn’t been regulation uniform for about ten years.
And it all made sense. ‘Help me up?’ Bobbie asked Caine. He offered her a hand, and even though it made her ankles, back and hips blaze with pain, she allowed him to heave her upright.
‘Are you okay?’
Bobbie ignored the pain and just said, ‘I’m okay, but we have to find Mary.’
Caine frowned. ‘What?’
Bobbie looked around the nightmarish space. It had the same awful, ghoulish feel as the catacombs in Paris where her mum had taken her on an ill-advised trip when she was about eight – the walls of skulls had given her nightmares for weeks. ‘She’s in here somewhere.’ When Caine continued to look at her blankly, she said, ‘Kenton Millar accidentally killed Mary and hid her body.’
‘No way,’ Naya chimed in.
‘Way. There’s a secret passage from Price’s study that leads here. It must do … that’s it!’ Bobbie scanned the floor of the crypt. ‘There!’ Sure enough, underneath a weeping Virgin Mary statue in the corner, there was a partially hidden metal grate – the very same one she’d almost escaped through.
There were so many light bulbs going off above her head, it was like a paparazzi moment. ‘Millar must have used the passage too – that’s why he and Mary always met here. The tunnel leads under the field to the church. It was a priest’s hole – or a priest’s passage anyway. It let the priests who were hiding out get between the school and the church without anyone seeing them.’
‘This is where we were dreaming about?’ Caine said as Bobbie started to kick through the bones.
‘Yeah. The forest was their place, I guess. He must have taken her body down the tunnel and hidden it here. Mary didn’t want to kill us! I knew it! I knew she just wanted help. On the fifth day she brings you to where she was hidden. Here!’ One touch from Mary and you were transported to her final resting place.
Naya scanned the human remains. ‘But they all died, Bob.’
‘I don’t think she can help it – it’s not like she sealed the tomb, is it? And the other girls didn’t know what they were looking for. We do.’
Caine shook his head. ‘So all that time … all the girls that went missing. They’ve just been in here the whole time?’
Bobbie sighed, weary from the tunnel – almost too tired to go on. Still she tried to understand. ‘Yeah. Think about it. Abigail and Taylor vanished from miles and miles away. Maybe the others did too. Why would the police think to search the graveyard? And you saw it. It’s been derelict for years. Who ever comes here other than kids?’ The more she thought about it the more it made sense. ‘We know that Millar brought Mary here to make out … I guess he had access to a key – there’d have to be one for the priests, right? Does that make sense? And Naya … you dreamed that Mary was in a dark place. What’s darker than a coffin?’ Looking around, Bobbie wondered which skeleton was Taylor Keane’s, which belonged to Abigail Hanson and whose clothes Naya had borrowed. ‘Come on, Mary has to be in here somewhere.’
Caine threw his hands up. ‘Bobbie, any one of these could be her! And we’re locked in. Even if we do find her … ’
‘No!’ Bobbie snapped, refusing to back down. ‘This is all about laying her to rest.’ She looked at the skeletons. ‘There’s no way he’d have left her lying around. He would have wanted to hide her in case anybody came looking. Check in the coffins. I bet anything one of them has two bodies in. Naya, help us.’
Naya rested Sadie’s gaunt-looking head on the stairs. She’d been in here for three days with no food and only whatever rainwater trickled in. How long can you survive without food and drink? Bobbie guessed, from the look of her, not much longer. With little ceremony, Bobbie dragged the nearest coffin out of its alcove and it smashed to the stone floor. It was heavy, but the wood was rotten and old. Initial panic at seeing the coffin lid was nailed on turned to relief as she realised the nails would slide out of the sodden wood. Bobbie shook the lid off and let it fall. Only one grinning inhabitant lay within.
On the other side of the crypt, Caine and Naya pulled open their own coffins. ‘Anything?’
‘No!’ Naya called, her hand over her mouth. ‘God, this is sick!’
‘Keep looking.’
‘I can’t get the lid off this one,’ Caine moaned.
‘Well, then neither could Millar,’ Bobbie said, and then stopped. ‘Wait. We’d be able to see if he’d tampered with one of the coffins, right?’
Caine and Naya stopped searching. ‘Yeah.’ Caine wiped dust on his thighs. ‘I guess.’
‘Well, that means … ’ All eyes fell on the grandiose sarcophagus in the centre of the room.
‘No nails in that one,’ Caine said, which was precisely what she was thinking.
‘Help me.’ Bobbie knew, just knew that this was it. She could see it now: sweating, panicking and desperate, Kenton Millar had carried Mary’s body through the tunnel. He’d somehow got her up the ladder and into the mausoleum. Rather than risk taking her outside to bury her where he might be seen, he’d put her in the most secure of the graves – the most ancient.
Caine and Naya hurried to her side of the stone coffin. ‘After three,’ Caine suggested, reminding her of the last time they’d counted down as a group. It had been in front of a bathroom mirror five days ago. ‘One, two … ’ They all pushed together. It was heavy, but not as heavy as Bobbie might have feared. There was a lip to the slab, so they had to lift and slide.
There was nothing on her body that didn’t hurt. Bobbie had to let Caine and Naya do most of the lifting, but the slab came loose. ‘Push!’ she cried and they slid the granite lid all the way off the tomb.
Bobbie’s hand flew to her mouth. Naya screamed and jumped back.
Mary lay in the sarcophagus, perfectly preserved. Still flesh, still covered in blood. Eyes closed, she looked almost peaceful. She could so easily be sleeping. Alongside Mary, looking somewhat cramped, was the original occupant – mere bones.