by James Dawson
Danny smiled, letting her words sink in. ‘Oh. I didn’t know if you liked me or not.’
‘Are you kidding?’ Lis snorted. ‘The question on everyone’s lips is what do you see in me? The whole school thinks I’m a total freak. I am a total freak.’
Danny got to his feet, took Lis by the hand and pulled her up to join him. They stood just inches apart.
‘Well, I must be into freaks then,’ Danny said. ‘I have a freak fetish!’ He grinned, brushing her hair back from her face. ‘Can we just forget what happened earlier?’ he went on. ‘You’re not like any other girl at school, Lis. You’re a one-off. I love it.’
‘Yeah. OK.’ She retreated under her hair again, her face burning.
‘I do! You’re awesome. I mean, look at you, you’re gorgeous!’
She made a little huffing noise at that madness.
‘Come on, you are . . . Well, I think you are. And you’re clever, really clever and funny – even funnier than my mates. And you don’t let people change your mind. And I love how you look out for your friends. I could go on . . . It’s quite a long list of stuff I like!’
Lis looked into his eyes, knowing how dangerous that could be.
‘I don’t want you to leave, Lis. I only said that because I was upset. I want you to be my girlfriend. Like properly.’ This time he didn’t need an invitation to kiss her. He took her face in his warm hands and leaned towards her.
As if they belonged together, their lips locked effortlessly. Danny’s kiss was skilful and gentle. Heat radiated from his fingertips across her cheeks, fuelling a fire inside her that felt so good. Lis wanted him to warm her all over, cleansing her of everything bad that had happened in Hollow Pike.
With his free hand, Danny reached around to the small of her back and pulled Lis towards his body, closing the inches between them. No other thoughts clouded her mind, she was too aware of Danny’s touch, every magnetic point of contact between them. She traced the lines of his shoulders, then ran her hands down over his chest until she found the smooth skin just above his belt.
He grinned, grasping her wrist. ‘That’s bad!’
‘Want me to stop?’
‘No.’
They kissed again, with more urgency. This was the most alive Lis had ever felt. Tangled in each other’s arms, they fell onto the bed.
This is how it happens, Lis realised, no planning, no games, just the moment.
She lay back as Danny kissed her neck. She was almost completely lost in him, but something caught her attention: why was the outside security light on?
Her eyes snapped open as Lis was shocked back into reality. She stared at the French windows. Beyond the fine muslin curtains, a hooded human shape glided across the terrace. The movement was precise, effortless and fluid as a shark fin cutting through waves – and just as deadly.
Danny sensed Lis freeze. Confusion spread across his face as her body went rigid. Unable to find the words, Lis jabbed a finger towards the figure, who darted away from view.
Danny was up and over to the window in a heartbeat. ‘What the—’ He peered out of the window, then turned back to Lis, his eyes alive with fire. ‘There’s someone out there!’ He started to open the doors, but Lis seized his arm.
‘Stop!’ she gasped.
‘Let go, they’re getting away!’ Danny cried.
Images and words tangled together in Lis’s head as her brain caught up with what was unfolding in her room. ‘You can’t go out there, Danny!’
‘Why not? I’ll kick the sh—’
‘Because you’ll get yourself killed!’ Lis spat through gritted teeth. She didn’t know who was out there, but she was pretty sure they’d killed before and that she was next on their agenda.
Danny continued to tug towards the doors and it took all her weight to stop him. ‘What are you on about?’ he demanded. ‘It’ll just be some stupid kids, and now they’re getting away.’
This was not the time to play hero. ‘I wish it was, but it’s not. Danny, sit down!’
He stopped dragging her across the carpet and she let him go. Hands on hips, he waited for an explanation.
‘Sit down,’ Lis repeated. Danny cast her a dark glance and sat on the bed, waiting for an explanation she couldn’t provide.
Lis sat next to him, shoulders hunched. ‘You know how I’m a bit weird sometimes?’
‘I had noticed, yes!’
She tucked her hair behind her ears, trying to remain as matter-of-fact as possible. ‘Well, it’s all to do with Laura’s death.’
Danny immediately tensed and inched away from her. ‘Go on . . .’
‘Danny, we were there,’ Lis breathed, the words trembling on her lips.
‘What?’ Arctic cool fell over the room.
‘It’s not like that. We didn’t do anything!’ Lis exclaimed. She hated the distance growing between them on the bed. She just wanted to feel his body against hers again.
‘So what is it like?’ Danny asked.
‘We were in the woods that night,’ Lis went on. She decided to omit some vital details, unable to let Danny think of her as a monster. ‘We saw Laura, but there was someone else there and I think they saw us.’
All the colour drained from Danny’s face as he processed that information. ‘You think . . .’
‘I think they’re after me now. Whoever it is.’ She knew she shouldn’t be saying any of this. If Kitty ever found out, she really would kill her.
Danny looked away, frowning as if he were trying to answer the hardest Maths question ever set. ‘Who’s “we”?’
‘I can’t say,’ she replied firmly, although she suspected it was more than obvious. ‘Do you get why I have to leave now?’
He said nothing for what felt like a month. ‘I guess. But why don’t you go to the police?’
‘Because we were there . . . And everyone knows Laura and I hated each other. It looks really bad! I can’t tell them, Danny. I just can’t.’
Again, he had no comeback to that.
Lis went on, ‘But Laura had these diaries: five flowery diaries. We think she might have written about whoever killed her.’
‘Really?’ Danny looked intrigued. ‘Where are the diaries now?’
‘That’s the problem. We know where some of them are, but the latest one’s missing. We think it might be at school somewhere. If we can find that, and work out who’s after me, things might be different, but . . .’ She didn’t want to give him false hope.
‘You should have let me go after whoever was out there. I could have stopped this!’ Danny told her.
Lis slid across the mattress to where he was slumped. She took both his hands in hers. ‘No. Because if anything happened to you, I wouldn’t want to be in this world, let alone this town, got that?’
He blushed and nodded. Lis picked a bit of fluff out of his hair and took a moment to memorise his incredible face. Soon, she’d never see it again and she didn’t ever want to forget. ‘I’m leaving Hollow Pike. It’s the only way I’ll be safe.’
He didn’t say anything further, but laid her down, pulling her into a tight embrace. He held her from behind and Lis felt his warm breath on her hair. She closed her eyes to commit every last second to memory.
From the tangled bushes at the end of the garden, a figure watched the house intently. Pale fingers pulled leaves aside, seeking a better view of the building. Only one light was on. Through the thin curtains over the French windows, the figure could see a young couple holding each other tenderly. Enjoy it while it lasts. Did they know what was coming? Did they know how little time they had left?
The figure took one last look before melting into the infinite darkness of Pike Copse.
Head
Lis had almost fallen asleep in Danny’s arms – a rare moment of perfection. It was refreshing to know such moments were still possible and could happen to her. She’d been starting to think they only occurred on TV. She would never say the ‘L Word’, but she was kind of thinking it.
She walked to school alone, feeling the solitude acutely. Witches are not real. Witches are not real, she told herself repeatedly, like it was her own personal mantra. Looking through the trees, shrouded in morning mist, the idea of witches seemed almost plausible. The scenes from The Crucible wouldn’t be out of place in these woods – the girls dancing around tongues of fire, dark spirits emerging through the smoke. Lis could almost hear the low chants.
Lis promptly filled her head with thoughts of Christmas in an attempt to distract herself. There was a glistening frost on the ground and misty lanterns of her breath hung in the air. If she could get through the last few weeks of term she’d be free of this town. God only knew what she’d face back in Bangor, but Bronwyn and her bitches had to be better than the murky figure who watched her, violated her room and sent her sinister threats.
The morning roads seemed quieter than normal. Why wasn’t there anyone around? Every time a leaf rustled, Lis’s head whipped to face it and she didn’t dare put her iPod on in case it masked footsteps behind her. She couldn’t shake it – the feeling of eyes staring at her. It was as if the trees themselves were watching, waiting.
Feeling tightly wound, Lis finally arrived at Fulton High. Entering the main gates she noticed Nasima and Fi buzzing around Harry, their new queen bee. There must have been a coronation over half term or something, because Harry had taken Laura’s place. Her hair was bigger, her skin more tanned. Without Laura around to knock her down, she even appeared to have grown taller, although Lis figured that was purely psychological.
‘Y’all right, London?’ Harry sneered. ‘Nice shoes, where’d you get them? The market?’
Lis couldn’t be bothered with this today. ‘No, Harry, I stole them off a tramp, right after I shagged him. Satisfied?’
Harry had no comeback for that one and Lis felt suddenly smug. Kitty would have been proud of that. Don’t act bothered, but don’t ignore them either – stand your ground. Maybe she was going back to Wales stronger after all.
Jack, Kitty and Delilah were already in G2. Lis slipped into her seat next to Jack, waiting for registration.
‘Hey, how come you weren’t on the bus?’ he asked.
‘Missed it again.’
Kitty obviously wasn’t going to apologise for her stroppiness yesterday, but she did act as if nothing had happened, which was fine with Lis.
‘Morning. What did you get up to last night?’ Kitty said.
‘Nothing,’ Lis fibbed. She wasn’t going to tell them about her conversation with Danny just yet – especially the fact that she’d given away their darkest secret. ‘What did you get up to?’
‘Just hung out at Jack’s,’ Kitty said absent-mindedly.
‘All of you?’ Lis didn’t want to seem like she was interrogating them, but she needed to know.
‘Yeah,’ Jack answered. ‘I sent you a text but you never replied.’
That was true, she did have an invitation from him. Their story checked out.
Mr Gray, who probably liked Lis a lot less after yesterday’s performance, bumbled into class sporting a large tea stain on his pinstriped shirt. He put a mug down on his desk and looked around the class, his eyes falling on her. ‘Ah, Lis. Could Ms Dandehunt see you in her office please?’ Her face must have fallen all the way to the floor, because he added quickly, ‘Oh, I don’t think you’re in any trouble.’
‘Oh, OK.’ Still, she frowned at Jack, feeling anxious.
Delilah wagged a finger at her admonishingly. ‘Good luck, darling,’ she said and winked.
She’d never in her whole life been summoned to a head’s office. Wasn’t that fate usually reserved for terrorists and stuff? Even when things were really bad at GCC, Lis had always dealt with her class teachers. Slipping out of G2, Lis made her way down G corridor. Halfway down the hallway, she stopped at Ms Dandehunt’s room and found the door standing open for her.
‘Ah, Lis,’ called the head teacher. ‘Do come in and take a seat. You won’t mind if I finish my Ready Brek, will you?’
‘No,’ Lis replied, entering the office and ignoring the bizarre spectacle of a grown woman eating mush from a plastic bowl. It was a simple, square room with one wall of shelves filled with an enviable collection of snow globes.
Enviable if you’re a mad woman who collects tacky ornaments, that is, thought Lis.
Hanging from the walls were various photos of Ms Dandehunt with pupils of Fulton. Some of them looked old, like Antiques Roadshow old! How long had Ms Dandehunt worked in Hollow Pike?
Lis seated herself at the grand central desk as the head popped the last of the goo into her mouth.
‘Yummy!’ she declared, letting the spoon clatter into the bowl.
‘Mr Gray said you wanted to see me?’
‘Yes. You’re not in any trouble,’ she echoed Mr Gray’s sentiment, ‘but I have had a phone call from you sister.’
Ah, that explained it then. ‘OK, what did she say?’
Ms Dandehunt rested her chubby chin in her hands. ‘She said you were dead set on leaving Fulton High School. Is that right?’
‘Yes. I’m going back to live with my mum.’
‘I see. I imagine you’ve missed her terribly.’
‘Yeah. It’s been hard.’
‘And it hasn’t been easy for you here at Fulton, either, has it?’ Ms Dandehunt regarded Lis with owl eyes, full of knowledge. Lis remembered that Mr Gray had told her weeks ago that the teachers were always listening – what did Ms Dandehunt know?
‘Sorry, I don’t know what you mean,’ Lis said carefully.
Ms Dandehunt smiled knowingly. ‘Well, first of all there was trouble with Laura Rigg, God rest her soul. I heard about her little internet rumour.’
‘Oh, that was nothing.’
‘Nonsense! It was a very cruel thing to do to a newcomer,’ Ms Dandehunt insisted. ‘And then you fall in with Miss Monroe, Miss Bloom and that quiet young man they hang around with. Charming, clever pupils, but . . . not the easiest of friends, I’d hazard.’
‘They’re fine. Really.’ This was excruciating, worse than Mr Gray’s little chats.
‘Good. I hope so, because I’d hate to think that your decision had anything to do with problems at Fulton. That’s not the kind of establishment I want at all,’ Ms Dandehunt said seriously.
First-period Maths was suddenly more tempting than it had even been before. ‘My friends are awesome, really.’
Ms Dandehunt walked over to her shelves and gave one of her snow globes a shake, making the glitter swirl and sparkle around the kitten inside. ‘We never spoke about the bird in your locker, did we?’
‘The raven?’
‘Crow.’
‘What?’
‘Crow, dear. It was a crow. They’re different. Ravens are a type of crow, but not all crows are ravens. Do you see?’
Lis nodded, although wasn’t entirely sure she understood.
‘Strange business that, wasn’t it? You know, many hundreds of years ago, the crow had much greater significance than it does today. It was a very powerful symbol; an omen, too.’
Lis’s palms felt sweaty all of a sudden. ‘OK . . .’
‘You know, many witches had birds as familiars. Do you know what a familiar is, Lis?’
Lis felt panic setting in. She couldn’t look Ms Dandehunt in the eye, so she focused on the cluttered desk before her instead. There were more snow globes, a photo of Ms Dandehunt with a furry black cat, and about a hundred files overflowing with paperwork.
‘No, I—’ Lis broke off, her jaw locking in horror, because underneath some of the paperwork, only visible because she’d accidentally moved a file with her hand, was a hardback notebook covered in apricot flowers and tied with a yellow ribbon.
; Laura’s final diary.
Lock-in
‘You what, dear?’ Ms Dandehunt looked for her to finish the sentence.
Lis dragged her eyes away from the diary. It had to be Laura’s. She’d seen Laura with it that morning on the rugby pitch, and it was the same one. Why did Ms Dandehunt have it? Why wouldn’t she have handed it over to the police? Why? Why? Why haven’t I answered her question? Lis thought frantically.
‘I was just going to say that Fulton High has been great,’ Lis gabbled, ‘but I didn’t realise how much I was going to miss Wales. I’m Welsh through and through at heart, I guess.’ She knew she sounded like a crazy person, but she felt like she had to get out of the office in the next ten seconds or the scream building in her chest would burst from her lips. Because the only reason Ms Dandehunt would be hiding that diary was if she had a secret to protect.
And that was when Lis saw it. On the second shelf from the top of the wall, almost hidden in the museum of snow globes, was an inconspicuous sprig of lavender bound with a black ribbon.
Lis almost fell off her chair. The old woman was a witch! As insane as it sounded, it suddenly made sense. After all the weeks of whispers, rumours and ghost stories, Lis found herself living in a world that contained witches: a new, impossible reality.
‘Lis, are you all right, dear?’ Ms Dandehunt asked, fixing her in a hawk-like glare from behind her thick glasses.
‘Yeah. I, er, just saw the clock and thought I’d better get to class,’ Lis replied. ‘I don’t want to miss Maths.’
‘Good girl. What a dedicated student you are. If only they were all like you.’
Wasting no further time, Lis sprang out of the chair and made for the door, almost tripping over her own legs in her hurry. ‘Thanks, Ms Dandehunt. Bye.’
‘Take care, Lis,’ the headteacher called after her. It could have almost been a warning.
As soon as she left the office, Lis spotted Kitty’s purple hair bobbing towards the exit at the end of G corridor and, ploughing through the stream of pupils, she raced to catch up with her. Knocking a group of Year Eight boys out of the way, Lis was relieved to see Jack and Dee alongside the taller girl.