by Lois Lowry
“Why?” Jessica scowled and her rosebud mouth pursed to a sulk. Lavinia was far too bossy. “They can't see us.”
“Some can,” Lavinia replied.
Jessica skipped away to play with the others. “All the more fun!”
Sadie threw the card onto the kitchen counter. “I can't be-lieve she couldn't get our names right. I've known her for years!”
“Is she the one who interviewed you?”
“No, that was Derek. Didn't even know she was working for the National Trust. Last thing I knew, she was volunteering at the local museum. You do think you'll like it here?” she added, changing the subject. “It's just that it's perfect for me to finish the book, and with our house not ready …”
After her marriage broke up, Sadie had wanted a complete break. She had accepted a job at Michigan State University, teaching creative writing. Jules had elected to go to America with her. They'd spent a year there and come back in July. Sadie had found a house, but it needed work. They wouldn't be able to move in for months and months.
“We could always go back to Granny's.”
“Not another day! Staying with my mother is not an option. She treats me as though I'm still your age.” Sadie sighed. “I'll take that as ‘I don't like it,’ shall I?”
Jules went over and gave her a hug. “No, don't do that. I'm fine with it. It's just a tiny bit creepy.” Jules felt an un-easiness she could not define. “The house …”
“Is not creepy!” Sadie hugged her daughter back. “Just different with nobody in it. I'll prove it. Come with me.”
The wood of the door was weathered silver and opened onto the porch. The Trust had tried to keep a flavor of how the house used to be. It had been owned by an eccentric old lady who had run her own tours: sixpence for children, one shilling for adults.
“Totally batty, by all accounts,” Jules's mother commented. “Place was inches thick with dust, and totally infested with cats.”
“What happened to her?”
“She got too old to manage the place. Gave it to the Trust. Lives in a nursing home in Cheltenham now. Not far from your old junior school.”
They had lived in Cheltenham before the year in America and, although the house was only about twenty miles away from where they used to live, Jules had never visited it before the summer.
“It was shut up for a long while after the old lady moved out; then the Trust were doing it up. Must say, they've done a good job.” Sadie sniffed, her nose wrinkling. “Pity they couldn't have done something about the cats.”
“Perhaps they come with the house.”
They both laughed, although Jules's words were truer than she knew.
It was like the old lady had just stepped out. The hand-painted signs were still there. An old raincoat hung in petrified folds; umbrellas, their cloth tattered like crows' feathers, rusted in a worm-eaten stand; a pair of perished wellington boots lay keeled over in the corner, as if they had tired of waiting for an owner who had walked out years ago and never come back. Pots of geraniums and pelargonium were ranged along the windowsill: a jungle of writhing stems and straggly blooms raining the last of their red petals like showers of blood. They filled the stuffy space with their peppery, lemony scent, and behind that was a strong smell of cats.
“You don't have to come round with me.” Sadie sensed her daughter's reluctance as she opened the front door.
“What's that?” A last shaft of sunlight, striking low through the porch windows, showed a circle divided by more circles to make a looping petal pattern scratched into a wooden panel. Jules put out a finger to trace it. “It looks like the hex symbols that we saw in America.”
“A witches' sign? Put at the threshold to guard the house?” Sadie bent forward to take a closer look. “Could be. Why does this house need protecting?”
Jules shivered. Sometimes the signs were not to keep something out, but to keep something in.
They continued down the passage into the Great Hall. It was late in the afternoon and high windows made it as gloomy as a cave in here. The chill room smelled of freshly applied beeswax polish, but underneath that was a distinct, dusty tang of ancient coal fires. The white dust sheets, shrouding the furniture, glimmered in the half-light. Above their heads, the threadbare colors of some long-forgotten regiment stirred and fluttered. The banners were cobweb thin and probably disturbed by their coming in, although the draft of air seemed to come from above, as if the house, or something in it, was stirring, waking to their presence.
Mother and daughter drew closer together.
“I don't think we have to explore any more, do you?” Sadie said. Jules shook her head. “Let's go back to the flat and put the kettle on, shall we?”
Jules settled in reasonably well. The flat was comfortable, the fully modernized conversion tastefully done. She liked her new school and made friends quickly. She would have been quite happy with her new life if it hadn't been for the house. And the cats. She didn't mind cats in general; in fact she quite liked them, or had done until now. She was in charge of feeding them: Aloysius, the big amber tom; a gray female; a white and ginger; a tortoiseshell; and two black ones, the smaller one almost a kitten. They were a vicious crew, milling round, spitting and snarling, tails whipping, ready to start on her when they had finished the Whiskas. Jules just emptied the cans and ran. They were not allowed in the house, although that prohibition didn't seem to stop them. They had the run of the place.
There had always been cats, Susan, one of the girls on the school bus, said. They went with the house. They'd be-longed to the old lady. “They've tried all sorts,” she said. “They just come back. She was a bit of an old witch, by all accounts. Maybe she put a spell on them.”
Susan laughed, but Jules couldn't see what was funny.
A maze filled one half of the garden. Four paths led through archways and then branched out into a pattern that had been cut into the turf. The paths turned in circles in and out of each other. It was hard to see from ground level, but from Jules's window the pattern looked very like the witch mark scratched on the panel in the hall of the house. A circle of huddled topiary stood at the middle of the maze. Each bush was clipped, but it was impossible to see what the shape had been originally, or what it was meant to be. This was the cats' favorite place. There were always some here, chasing each other, or lying in wait for birds under the odd collection of strange, bulbous shapes.
Jules liked the maze. It wasn't one of those where you couldn't see over the hedges. You didn't need to take a pack of sandwiches in case you got lost, but that didn't make it any less intriguing. The pattern looked simple, but it took a surprisingly long time to walk, and you only got to the middle if you started at the path that led to the little grave-yard and the family chapel.
One particular day, it took longer than usual for Jules to get to the center. The sun had disappeared, sinking below the level of the surrounding hills. Jules looked up, orienteering herself by the bulk of the house to the right and the church to the left, its squat tower just visible through a thick fringe of holly and yew. It felt as though she had traveled a long way.
Down at ground level, eyes stared—every shade from deepest orange to pale yellow. The cats did not run away, as they normally did, but edged nearer, tightening the circle. They walked around, nose to tail, in the most disconcerting way, and then they were gone. Their place was taken by a ring of children with Jules standing in the middle. They began circling round her, moving faster and faster, faster than real children could ever go. Jules began turning with them, Ring a ring a roses, the tune started in her head, in-consequentially. Perhaps they had all died of plague. But no, wrong century. These were dressed in the clothes of a hundred years ago or so. Not now, that was for sure.
All fall down!
An older girl dragged them down, left and right, and then stepped over the prone bodies.
“Hello, I'm Lavinia.” The girl looked at Jules. The children round her were rising. “This is Jessica, Heat
her, Fred and little Samuel.”
The children all stared. The girls curtsied. The boys bowed.
“That's the way we come.” The girl nodded in the direction of the little gate that led into the graveyard. “We're all in there. We come through the troy town.” She described the pattern with a thin finger. “That's the old name for the maze. It's been here a long time. Longer than the house. That's how we came back.”
Jules tensed, ready to make a break for it. A hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. The girl might be ghostly, ethereal, but she had a grip of steel.
“You can't go yet!” Lavinia said. “We've been looking forward to playing with you. We so want for different company. But you have been rather standoffish.”
“Thrice the brindled cat hath mew'd …” the words came into Jules's head. Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 1. They were studying the play at school.
A boy stepped out from behind one of the shapeless, bulbous bushes. He was about twelve or thirteen, with auburn hair a deep shade of amber, and slanted green eyes under brows like thick black bars.
“Here comes Aloysius. He wants you to stay, too. We all do. Well, not you so much.” Her tone became more confiding. “There are plenty of children. What we need is a mummy to look after us.”
She lisped her words between tiny teeth, widespaced and splayed. She'd be wearing an impressive set of braces if she lived now, Jules thought.
“We had a mummy who used to live here,” the girl went on, “but she went away.”
She must mean the old lady.
“How?” Jules's mouth was so dry, she could hardly get the words out. “How did you get here?”
“There was an accident. Out on the lake. When we were all children.” She frowned. “I told Aloysius the ice would crack! She wouldn't come out with us. Aloysius called her a scaredy-cat!” Lavinia sighed. “We were put in there.” She pointed to the lichenencrusted wall of the graveyard. “She grew up, but then she missed us. Her brothers and sisters, and cousin Aloysius. She was lonely, so she called us to her, through the troy town. She called us back. She kept us as cats, but we prefer to be children. She's gone now.” Her mouth pouted in momentary sadness, then settled in a thin determined line. “So we need another grown-up to look after us. Someone who won't go away. Ever!”
“Soon! Soon!” one of the little ones cooed. “Soon we will have a mummy!”
Lavinia frowned. “Shut up, Sammy!”
Jules didn't stop running until she reached the flat. From the window, she could see darkness at the center of the maze, a pool of shadows taking on shapes, now children, now vague huddled humps like the surrounding topiary. The outlines lost their fuzziness and gathered like inky mist, blacker than the surrounding darkness, forming and reforming into things malignant and horrible. We have been here a long time, we will be here forever and you will join us, the shapes seemed to tell her, before they coalesced into a line of cats and slid off into the graveyard.
Jules was nervous about visiting the graveyard, but she knew that she would have to go. She chose a sunny day when there were no cats about. She found a row of little graves, all with the same date: 21st December, 1929. Jules went back to the kitchen and looked at the calendar. It was halfway through December now. It would happen on the twentyfirst. That was the date that they'd chosen, Jules just knew. It marked the solstice, and their special anniversary. That was when they would want their new mother. The only way to get her was to kill her.
Jules had no idea how they would do it, but they were clever and malevolent. They would find ways. Jules didn't go into the great house, but her mother did. The lighting was subdued, so as not to damage delicate wall coverings and fabrics; in some places, in the upper stories, there was no electric light at all. The stairs were tall, twisting and narrow, easy to lose your footing on—tripped by a cat, for example. The road leading to the house was steep—perilous in icy weather, and no gritters came out here. She had to get Mum away. The sooner the better.
Jules went through the possibilities. The truth was not an option. Sadie didn't believe in ghosts. A full-on “I don't like it here” would get a dusty “Neither do I, but we've got to get on with it.” She could try: “I hate the school. I'm being bullied.” But her report was going to say: “Julia has made lots of friends and fits in well.” Anyway, Sadie would say, “See how it goes in the New Year.” Except there wouldn't be a New Year. Jules could feel their malice accumulating like the fog that crept along the valley. Whatever she did would have to be quick, but every plan she came up with came to nothing, or had a great big hole in it. Even if she and Mum did get away, they weren't too fussy about who was going to be their mummy; they'd soon find someone else. Monica, for example. She'd have to come and feed them…. Monica might be all kinds of a cow, but Jules wouldn't wish that on her. And she had a daughter, Katie…. No. There had to be another way.
Jules watched from her window, trying to see if there was a pattern in their behavior. They came out as cats in the morning, streaming in a line down the path from the graveyard to be fed. They went back in the evening, disappearing through the little gate, tails in the air. A plan began to form in her mind.
Now came the scary bit. Jules steeled herself to do it, following them as closely as she dared, dodging round the hunched humps of the topiary, keeping to the shadows. Their sinuous shapes slithered like eels round the gray wood of the gate. She waited, counting the beats of her heart, giving them time to get “home.”
Aloysius. He was the most dangerous. She'd start with him, and then move on to Lavinia. She squatted down above the short oblong, marked out in stone, which contained his bones. Her hand shook as she scratched the circles onto the headstone with a chisel. Keep them in as well as out, the words chanted in her head like a mantra. She had no idea if it would work or not, but it was the only magic she knew. When she had finished, she laid a sprig of holly on the mossencrusted gravel, and went on to the next. Her hand shook even harder as she heard the sound, muffled but loud. A deepthroated yowl rose up from beneath her, strong enough to vibrate the ground. She nearly dropped the chisel and ran, but made herself continue. Aloysius was calling to the others. She had to work fast. The cry was taken up by one, then another; a highpitched yodeling, an unearthly pleading, somewhere between anguish and anger, halfway between cat and child, in no language known to man. The calling rose in a crescendo as she worked on the last grave, then subsided, the voices dying away one by one, silenced forever. Jules rested back on her heels, her whole body shaking. It was only then that she noticed the gash in her wrist, the blood springing in bright beads, as red as the berries on the sprig of holly that she had just laid on the last grave.
“What are you doing, out here in the dark?”
Jules almost toppled over with shock.
“I was, um, collecting holly,” she mumbled as her mother helped her to stand. “For decorations. Deck the halls, and all that.”
“What happened to your arm?”
Blood showed against the white of Jules's wrist.
“Brambles. Have you seen these?” She pointed down at the small graves at their feet. “Children. All died in an accident.”
“How do you know?” Sadie bent down to look at the inscriptions.
“I just assumed,” Jules said hastily. “Because they all died on the same day.”
“How tragic! And tomorrow is the anniversary! We ought to do something. How about Christmas roses?” Sadie stood up. “We could plant them by their graves.”
“Yes.” Jules took her mother's hand. “I think they'd like that.”
Malorie Blackman
My hands slowed, then stilled on my book as I listened. I turned my head and sniffed at the wind. Mum always said I had ears like a bat, but if it wasn't for the wind blowing in my direction I doubt if even I would have heard this particular conversation. I listened for a few moments until I'd heard enough, then returned to my book—which was far more interesting. Nine pages on and I was interrupted. I'd thought I'd get at lea
st twelve pages further on before he plucked up the nerve to come over.
“Hi, Amber. It's Kyle. Kyle Bennett.” He didn't have to tell me his name. I recognized his voice. Kyle Bennett—the new boy in my brother Matthew's class. Well, when I say new I mean he'd been in Matthew's class for over a month now. Kyle had been to our house once or twice with some of Matt's other friends, but this was the first time he'd actually said anything to me. I sniffed the air. I could smell a lie. Not lies. Just one lie. Even if I hadn't heard, I would've known.
“Can I sit down?”
“I don't know.” I shrugged. “Can you?”
“Huh?”
I smiled. A teenytiny smile for a teenytiny joke.
“No, I … er … I meant, d'you mind if I sit down?” Kyle's voice was anxious, eager for me to understand.
“Help yourself.” I carried on with my book.
“What're you reading? Is it good?”
“Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. And yes, it is good. I've read it before.”
“If you've read it before, why're you reading it again?” asked Kyle.
“It's one of my favorites.” All the time I spoke I carried on reading, my fingers skimming over the page. But then my fingers unexpectedly touched Kyle's and an electric shock like a bolt of lightning flashed through my fingers and up my arm.
“Ouch!” Kyle exclaimed.
With his touch still humming through my fingers, I snatched my hand away. “Are you OK?”
“Yeah, I just got a shock.” Kyle dismissed it easily. I could hear that he was still shaking his sore fingers. “I don't see how we could've been shocked just sitting on grass.”
I said nothing. It was there in his touch too. The touch of a lie. Not a liar, but a lie. But there was something else there. Something that stopped me from telling him to get lost.
“Sorry about that,” Kyle said. “I just wanted to see what Braille was like.”
“Why?” I could smell his surprise at my question.