by Chris Ward
Wilhelm hurried after her, with Benjamin coming last, holding one hand with the other. The back of it was red and sore, maybe infected, and the scratch had begun to sting again after Miranda had used her … whatever it was.
Miranda didn’t seem concerned at all by the prospect of being attacked by a strange beast as she led them through parts of the school Benjamin had never seen. On the way they passed classroom-lined corridors, and he wondered if he would even survive long enough to take a class.
At the top of a long flight of stairs that left all three of them puffing, Miranda stopped. She pointed at a door at the far end.
‘That’s the way into the teachers’ apartments. I’ve heard there’s a gatekeeper, but I’ve never seen him. Any ideas?’
Wilhelm lifted a hand as if addressing a teacher. ‘I’ve heard there’s one, too. There’s a way on the outside, a kind of fire escape. Perhaps we could try that.’
‘And go outside with all those scatlocks and heaven knows what else? Are you crazy?’
Benjamin looked from one to the other. ‘Why don’t we just knock?’ he said.
‘But—’
‘You can’t disturb the teachers!’
‘Why not?’
Miranda waved her hands, then slapped them against her sides. ‘Okay, fine. But I’m staying here.’
‘Me, too.’
Benjamin shrugged. ‘I’ll do it on my own, then.’
He marched toward the door. Great shuttered windows leaned in over him, candles flickering in alcoves between. The wooden floor creaked beneath his feet as the walls projected their cold onto his arms and legs; only the scratch on his hand felt warm. He was sure this must be a causeway between one part of the headland and another, and the enormity of some great chasm that began just below his feet was enough to make his knees tremble. All of a sudden, nothing mattered—where he was and why, what had happened to bring him here. All that mattered was that the people around him were in some kind of danger and he had to do what he could to help.
Footsteps echoed behind him. Miranda’s fingers closed over one arm, Wilhelm’s over the other.
‘It’s creepy back there,’ Miranda said. ‘I think we should stick together.’ She indicated Wilhelm with a nod. ‘I told him to keep watch, but he’s a coward.’
‘You keep watch,’ Wilhelm said. ‘I’m not staying back there on my own.’
Benjamin smiled. ‘Well, thanks.’
The door rose in front of them. Up close, it was at least ten feet tall. Benjamin lifted a hand to knock … then stopped.
His feet had begun to tingle.
‘I can’t move,’ he said as his feet began to sink into the floor, the wood having taken on the consistency of mud. It felt like the riverbank near his house after a particularly heavy rainfall, squelching around his ankles, but when he tried to pull his feet out, the wood hardened, trapping him.
‘What’s happening?’ Wilhelm cried, scrabbling at Benjamin’s shoulder. ‘I can’t get out!’
‘We’re in trouble now,’ Miranda said with a resigned sigh, tugging on one knee and then giving up. ‘The floor is reanimating. I’d guess this is the gatekeeper you were talking about. We’ll be stuck here until they find us, and then we’ll be sent straight to the Locker Room. Anyone want to wager on how many thousands of cleans we’ll have to do for this? We could be gone for weeks.’
Benjamin patted her arm. ‘Calm down. There must be some way out.’ He tested the consistency of the surrounding boards with his finger. ‘It’s hard over there, around the edge. There must be a safe path that the teachers use. If one of us can just get free—’
‘Too late.’ Wilhelm’s voice was hollow, hopeless. ‘The ghoul. It’s found us.’
Benjamin twisted to look over his shoulder, hips aching as his stuck legs resisted. At the far end of the corridor, standing at the top of the steps, was the thing he had seen in the lobby. The ghoul. It lowered its head to the floor as if searching for a scent, then swung it toward them. Twin orange lights flickered under its hood, and it started into a run.
19
Memories
‘Blast it!’ Wilhelm screamed at Miranda. ‘Like you did before!’
‘I’m trying! I can’t just switch it on and off! That’s the whole problem!’
Benjamin, in between his friends, didn’t and couldn’t move. The creature ran straight toward him, its glowing eyes and the bleached white of its clacking jaw flickering in the corridor’s gloom. He stared it down, knowing he could do absolutely nothing other than wait for it to rip his body away from his trapped ankles and leave his severed feet stuck in the floor, twitching and lonely.
‘Help!’ all three screamed together. The ghoul had covered half the distance. Arms with bird’s talons instead of hands emerged from under the folds of its cloak, vicious clacking claws ready to start tearing into human flesh.
‘Help!’
The door flew open with a loud crash, slamming against the wall hard enough to snap one of the hinges clean through. The room inside looked like a small, cozy library where shelves of books filled every wall space, and comfortable chairs upholstered in faded, red leather sat in quiet alcoves. In the centre, a cast iron staircase spiraled into the ceiling.
And standing right in the doorway, dominating everything, was the most terrifying woman Benjamin had ever seen.
Her hair was a chessboard of black-and-grey—the black strands straight, the grey curled—so it appeared as though some poor animal had been thrown onto her head in sacrifice. Her face was pinched, her nose so thin to be near invisible from straight on, her eyes black with piercing blue pupils like a mutated snake. The motley patchwork of black-and-white quilting that hung to her ankles couldn’t hide the plaster cast on one leg that appeared longer than the other. She leaned on a gnarled metal staff that glowed as her eyes flared like an extension of her own anger.
‘Out!’ she roared at the ghoul, which skidded to a stop and started to turn back. ‘Leave!’
The woman jabbed the end of her staff into the floor. Around Benjamin’s feet, the wood liquefied again and he pulled them free, scrambling to the safe section of floor, then reached back to help Miranda and Wilhelm. As the three of them cowered against the wall, the woman lifted her staff and jerked it in the direction of the ghoul. A waft of warm air brushed past Benjamin’s face.
The ghoul wailed, its feet yanked out from under it, and it spun around in midair as if caught on some invisible wheel. The woman scowled, stomping a few steps forward, her plaster cast landing heavily on floorboards jellified just moments ago. The still-spinning ghoul tried to reach her, but she jabbed her staff into its midriff, and there was a sudden burst of blinding light. Benjamin flinched, and when he opened his eyes, the ghoul was just a few steaming pieces of cloth and bone that quickly began to dissolve into the floor.
‘Who is she?’ Benjamin hissed into Miranda’s ear.
The girl’s smile was full of adoration. ‘That’s Ms. Ito,’ she said. ‘The art teacher.’
Wilhelm was also staring at Ms. Ito, whose stern, almost disdainful gaze had turned on them. ‘Magic,’ he said.
‘Idiot boy,’ Ms. Ito snarled. ‘That’s a thousand cleans right there for breaking the Oath. There’s no such thing as magic. People once thought fire was magic. Then electricity. Phones. The Internet. Space travel. No! No magic! There’s only science, fool.’
Then she stumped away, back to the stairs as three other teachers appeared, Captain Roche among them. An older, slightly hunchbacked man on his left, with huge, tufting grey hair pressing out from beneath a brown Christmas hat, snarled at the sight of Wilhelm. The third, a younger man with neat brown hair in a centre parting who looked almost normal compared to the others, waved them to come inside.
‘You’re letting out all the heat,’ he said in exasperation, as if that explained everything.
Miranda grabbed Benjamin’s hand, and he in turn took hold of Wilhelm’s, before the smaller boy could entertain any serious thought
s of fleeing.
Captain Roche dragged the heavy door closed, frowning at the broken hinge and muttering something unsavoury about Ms. Ito. The woman, for her part, had already headed back up the stairs, the clanking of her plaster cast on the metal steps echoing down from above their heads.
‘Well, what do we have here?’ the thin, brown-haired man said, waving the three of them toward a leather sofa. ‘Three little Indians, looking for smoke signals, no doubt. Miranda Butterworth, she of sky and fire. Wilhelm Jacobs, king of reluctance. And who might you be?’
Benjamin covered his scratched hand with the other. ‘Benjamin Forrest, sir.’
‘Came in this morning,’ Captain Roche said. ‘Miss Butterworth failed spectacularly to bring him here safely, after which the knock-on effect got him into all sorts of scrapes. Isn’t that right? Not yet here a day, and already with a thousand cleans hanging over your head. Quite the start, isn’t it?’
‘We become those with whom we keep company,’ the older man said, glaring at Wilhelm. ‘I’ve already set the sin keeper the task of setting up a bunk down in the Locker Room for you, my errant lad.’
‘Well, I’m glad you’re still alive.’ The brown-haired man pointed long, piano fingers at his own chest. ‘My name is Robert Loane; Professor Loane to you. You’ve met Captain Roche, and this is Professor James Eaves.’
Professor Eaves just grunted, eyes briefly flickering across to Benjamin before returning to Wilhelm, who was positively squirming.
Captain Roche finished his assessment of the door, then went over to a corner table and picked up the receiver of another ancient phone. He dialed a number, spoke into it for a few minutes, then hung up.
‘The rest of them are accounted for,’ he said to Professor Loane. ‘I’ve commanded those in the Locker Room to have today’s punishments waived and be escorted back to the dormitory. All night classes are canceled. We’ll do a flushing of the school tomorrow.’
Professor Loane didn’t look convinced. ‘Where there’s one, there will be more,’ he said. ‘The situation is worse than we thought.’
Miranda raised a hand.
‘What is it, Butterworth?’
‘What was that thing, sir?’
‘A ghoul, as your friend said. A rather base creature. They hail from the forest to the west. They are scavengers, hunting for reanimated mutations, upon which they feed. They smell them like we might smell fresh bread in the morning. They’re nearly mindless, which is what makes them deadly.’
‘Reanimated mutations?’
Professor Loane looked from face to face, his gaze eventually settling on Benjamin. ‘Young Master Forrest. Let me see your hand, if I may.’
Benjamin held up his good hand, but Professor Loane smiled and shook his head. He held up the other, and the three teachers gasped.
‘How did this happen?’
‘I got scratched by a reanimated cat statue.’
‘How?’
‘I was in the Locker Room. I wasn’t sure what to do. I picked it up, and it swiped me.’
‘What were you doing in the Locker Room? You had no punishment. No one is ever given cleans before receiving thorough instruction on how to clean safely and successfully.’
‘I wanted to see Miranda. To apologise for getting her into trouble.’
Professor Eaves snorted. ‘Miss Butterworth finds her own trouble, don’t you? Forrest, didn’t you read your information manual? All of this is explained.’
‘It fell into the sea.’
The two professors exchanged a glance. ‘Quite the catalogue of disasters, you’ve had, boy,’ Professor Eaves said. ‘I guess we’ll have to figure out a plan for you, won’t we?’
Benjamin wondered if it involved any time in the Locker Room. He looked from one teacher to another, but didn’t say anything.
Professor Loane looked about to say something else, when a clanking rang out again from overhead and the crunch and thud of a plaster cast on metal steps announced the reappearance of Ms. Ito. The other teachers appeared to shrink back from her presence, even Captain Roche.
Ms. Ito leaned on her staff and glared at Benjamin.
‘Come here.’
He did as he was told. He was tall for his age, but the wizened old woman with the wild hair and the plaster cast seemed like a giant.
‘Kneel, boy.’ As he squatted down, she turned to the other teachers and said, ‘Should we make him take the Oath in the Grand Lord’s absence? I know Sebastien always does it, but—’
‘A bit late for that,’ Professor Loane said.
Professor Eaves replied with a groan, while Captain Roche looked at his feet.
‘Well, let me just see what I can. See if I can figure out what’s going on, why that thing was after him.’
‘They always—’
‘Quiet, James. This is not an ordinary situation.’
Professor Eaves opened his mouth, then closed it again. As Ms. Ito glared at him, he tugged at his collar, then shrugged and wandered off, idly picking out a book from a shelf and turning it over in his hands.
Benjamin glanced at Miranda and Wilhelm. Neither returned his gaze. They were staring at Ms. Ito as though she had sucked all the light out of the room.
A cold palm fell on the top of his head. Too afraid to look up, he stared at her plaster cast, the surfaced lined and scored, the colour dulled with age. Whatever ailment she suffered from, she wasn’t likely to recover soon.
His eyelids grew heavy. He had never wanted to sleep like he did now, and he found his eyes closing, while everything he thought he understood about the world disappeared—
It’s very cold. You lie there on the ground, feeling the hard press of the concrete beneath your calves and heels. You no longer remember where you are, or how you ended up here. White markings among the tufts of grass suggest an old tennis court. You try to lift your head, but nothing happens, so instead you turn it to the side and there you see the creature, crouched at the edge of the forest, watching you. Twin orange lights glow beneath its hood. You can’t see anything of its face other than a white jawbone.
If it has come to kill you, you don’t want to know. You turn your head to the other side, looking away, and you see a bicycle lying in the weeds. It’s new, the blue paint of the frame not yet flecked with dust. On some of the spokes, luminous clips that you got out of a cornflakes packet just this morning slide up and down as the front wheel continues on a seemingly endless spin, and you remember your dad oiling up the mechanisms as you prepared to take it out for its first ride.
That’s it, it’s your birthday. You’re twelve years old.
Behind the bike, the other half of the old tennis court has been torn up. In its place are a series of earth mounds and kickers, tangled with brush, but with clear bicycle trails on each. Of course. The old bike park. You came down here to test out your bike while all the biggest kids are at school. Your parents have let you pull a sickie because it’s your birthday. You feel a momentary surge of regret that you didn’t just go to school, and it takes a moment to remember why you didn’t.
That’s it. The other kids would have pulled some nasty stunt on you. Some special birthday treat. You still remember the pain from last year when a couple of big kids tried to stick a melted candle to the top of your head. The little scar took weeks to fade.
No, all alone down at the old bike park in the forest is your idea of a great birthday.
Except for the fall.
You can hear a hissing sound. You’re sure the creature is still there, but you don’t want to look. The top of your head hurts, and you know you landed on it. You might even have drawn blood. You wonder if the creature might be attracted to it, like one of those forest cats that can smell a wounded animal, but on another level you sense that it has been watching you for some time. Not just today, but for years and years. Perhaps even all time.
It’s been waiting for you, waiting for its moment to reveal itself.
In the end, you have to know. You turn
your head, squinting just in case, and there it is, looming over you, its face a skull with metal robot eyes that glow orange, the teeth still stuck in its jaw, jagged and sharp. It snaps at you, a growl coming from its throat as it reaches down toward you, bony fingers closing over the crest of your head, then at the last moment, you hear David, your brother, your kid brother who goes to the special school that you feel at times both envious and embarrassed about, you hear him shout—
‘Stop!’
Benjamin opened his eyes. Ms. Ito had pulled her hand away, staring him as though he had just tried to bite her. With his body soaked with sweat and his heart racing faster than a boulder bouncing downhill, he looked around him. The room was dim, lights turned down low. Captain Roche was nowhere to be seen, though Professor Loane and Professor Eaves sat on wooden chairs in a small semi-circle around where he crouched in front of Ms. Ito. Over in the corner, Miranda and Wilhelm slept soundly, curled up on two sofas and covered with blankets.
Ms. Ito looked up. ‘They were hunting him,’ she whispered. ‘Ghouls. Somehow they got across … and they were hunting him. He escaped, but how?’
‘Someone must have helped him. Someone who could—’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Robert. You’re starting to sound like that fool, Caspian.’
‘Perhaps they’re still looking for him? What else could explain why that ghoul was inside the school?’
‘There’s more,’ Ms. Ito said. ‘I lost my hold on him before he revealed how he got here, but he’s extremely important. I can feel it.’
‘What could they want this little boy for?’
‘We’ll have to see what Sebastien has to say,’ Ms. Ito said. ‘Only that old fool will have any answers, but they’ll be as vague as ever. Whatever happens, we mustn’t forget our duty. The school, and the pupils in it, are too important.’
‘This boy is a pupil like any other,’ Professor Eaves said. ‘He deserves the same treatment as the rest.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘What do we do?’ asked Professor Loane. ‘Now that the Grand Lord—’