by Anne Fine
PUFFIN BOOKS
STEP BY WICKED STEP
Anne Fine was born and educated in the Midlands, and now lives in County Durham. She has written numerous highly acclaimed and prize-winning books for children and adults. Her novel The Tulip Touch won the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year Award; Goggle-Eyes won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award and the Carnegie Medal, and was adapted for television by the BBC; Flour Babies won the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children’s Book Award; Bill’s New Frock won a Smarties Prize, and Madame Doubtfire has become a major feature film.
www.annefine.co.uk
Other books by Anne Fine
Books for younger readers
CARE OF HENRY
COUNTDOWN
DESIGN-A-PRAM
THE DIARY OF A KILLER CAT
THE HAUNTING OF PIP PARKER
JENNIFER’S DIARY
ONLY A SHOW
PRESS PLAY
ROLL OVER ROLY
THE SAME OLD STORY EVERY YEAR
SCAREDY-CAT
STRANGER DANGER?
THE WORST CHILD I EVER HAD
Books for middle-range readers
THE ANGEL OF NITSHILL ROAD
ANNELI THE ART HATER
BILL’S NEW FROCK
THE CHICKEN GAVE IT TO ME
THE COUNTRY PANCAKE
CRUMMY MUMMY AND ME
HOW TO WRITE REALLY BADLY
A PACK OF LIARS
A SUDDEN GLOW OF GOLD
A SUDDEN PUFF OF GLITTERING SMOKE
A SUDDEN SWIRL OF ICY WIND
Books for older readers
THE BOOK OF THE BANSHEE
FLOUR BABIES
GOGGLE-EYES
THE GRANNY PROJECT
MADAME DOUBTFIRE
THE OTHER DARKER NED
ROUND BEHIND THE ICE-HOUSE
THE STONE MENAGERIE
THE SUMMER HOUSE LOON
THE TULIP TOUCH
ANNE FINE
step by wicked step
PUFFIN BOOKS
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
www.penguin.com
First published by Hamish Hamilton 1995
Published in Puffin Books 1996
23
Copyright © Anne Fine, 1995
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-14-192791-6
Even before they reached the haunted house, the night had turned wild. The face of the minibus driver flickered from blue to white under the lightning. Each peal of thunder made the map in Mr Plumley’s hand shiver. And the five leftover pupils from Stagfire School peered anxiously through the rain-spattered windows into the storm and the black night.
‘There!’
‘Where?’
‘Over there. See? Up that overgrown driveway.’
As the driver swung the minibus into the looming hole between the wrought-iron gates, the three on the right-hand side of the bus read out the words on the peeling sign.
‘Old Harwick Hall.’
‘Absolutely private.’
‘No hawkers. No circulars.’
Colin, who had been quiet the whole journey, suddenly spoke.
‘Friendly! Don’t even want you coming up their garden path to give them a free paper!’
‘Some garden path!’
Everyone stared out, flinching as the twisted fingers of trees scraped at the glass. After the terrible journey, somebody might have said, ‘I’m glad we’re here,’ but no one was sure they were. If they’d been lucky enough to travel on the bus with everyone else, they might have felt more of a crowd; they might have had fewer misgivings. But just the five of them, picked out by Miss O’Dell after a quick glance at her list, and herded in the minibus with Mr Plumley like leftovers shoved in the fridge – well, that was different.
Another brilliant flash lit up a jagged stone tower, strangled by ivy.
‘Is that it?’
‘No, that’s the old chapel.’
They’d all heard about the ruined chapel. It was forbidden ground, and if you were caught climbing on its perilously steep slopes, you were sent home, even though this was a school week. All they could see of it from the minibus as they swept by was a dark silhouette of tumbled stone.
‘Cripes!’ the driver said suddenly, stabbing at the brakes.
Everyone turned from the side windows and stared ahead.
‘There it is!’
‘Strick!’
Through the arcs of the wipers, they could make out a towering mansion with dunce-hatted turrets, standing black against storm clouds. Moonlight flickered eerily against its dark windows.
‘Creepsville!’
‘Maybe it really is haunted…’
(No one had truly believed it, up till now. It was just something the last group always came back with: tales of strange shadows and footsteps, and eerie figures in white gowns melting through walls. Each year, at least three people in every class swore – spit and hope to die! – that they had seen a ghost.)
The driver swung round in her seat.
‘Well,’ she asked Mr Plumley. ‘Are you getting them all out?’
Not giving him time to answer, she took charge herself, sliding open the side door. Everyone spilled out. They took the luggage from the back of the van (‘Don’t stop to look for your own bag!’ the driver ordered. ‘Just take the nearest!’) and splashed through the puddles to the shelter of the steep-roofed porch. Here, out of the driving rain, they exchanged battered rucksacks and brand new holdalls as the driver took off in a spray of wet gravel, and their teacher stared miserably at the huge oak and iron door.
‘Ring the bell, Mr Plumley,’ prompted Claudia.
‘What bell?’
Quite right. No bell that anyone could see.
‘Try knocking, then.’
Robbo knocked the hardest. But it was clear to everyone that, if they could barely hear his fierce hammering over the whine of the wind, no one inside would even notice it.
‘Try the handle,’ suggested Pixie.
Obediently, Mr Plumley twisted the heavy ring handle, and pushed. The door grated open, over a black and white tiled floor that looked like a huge checkerboard glazed with storm water.
‘Try the lights’
None of the switches did anything. Ralph and Pixie took turns at flicking them up and down. But no lights came on anywhere.
‘Storm damage, I expect,’ said Ralph.
Mr Plumley was horrified.
‘You don’t suppose that they’ll be off all night? It’s not going to be easy settling you all in one of the dormitories in the pitch dark.’
The thunder crashed so loud that nobody cared to mention they’d all made plans to sleep in different rooms.
‘We’ll go up these stairs here – ouch!’
Poor Mr Plumley had marched straight into a giant floor-to-ceiling looking glass that reflected the wide curve of stairs sweeping out of the shadows behind them.
He turned to face the other direction.
‘This way,’ he said.
The five of them trailed up the vast staircase after Mr Plumley. Each livid flash of lightning through the stained glass above their heads lit their way further up, and further on, through the huge, echoing mansion. Fronds of strange plants stretched from their pots and fingered them as they passed. Disturbed ornaments chattered on mahogany sideboards. And grim Harwicks of all ages stared down at them through hardened, oil-painted eyes.
‘Let’s try up here.’
It was yet another staircase, narrow and bare. They’d left the portraits and the carpets behind them now. Their footsteps clattered on the wooden steps as they spiralled up and up.
‘Ah! This will do.’
He had pushed open a door, and found a little tower room with beds pointing neatly towards the centre from five of the six walls.
‘But, Mr Plumley –’
Pixie nudged Claudia, hard. Claudia might want the two of them to go off on their own, up some other lonely dark tower, rather than break one of the strictest of the rules: Each bedroom is for either girls or boys. But on a night like this, with Miss O’Dell and the others still not here, Pixie preferred safety in numbers.
Mr Plumley turned back.
‘What is it, Claudia?’
Claudia’s heart stopped, as sheets of rain lashed at the window panes, and the wind howled.
‘Nothing, Mr Plumley.’
It wasn’t their fault if he didn’t know the rules.
‘You settle down. I’ll go and see if I can find what the housekeeper has left us for supper.’
A peal of thunder stopped him at the door.
‘Anyone want to come with me?’ he asked them hopefully.
‘No, thank you, Mr Plumley,’ everyone said.
He set off bravely down the narrow stairs.
Pixie sat on a bed.
‘Horrible!’ she said. ‘Horrible! Horrible! Horrible!’
Nobody knew if she meant the bed, the house, the storm, or all three. Nobody asked. Robbo propped the door open with his bag, and went on a prowl, up two or three more stairs and round another bend. His voice echoed cheerfully through the next roll of thunder.
‘There are two more beds up here, and a bathroom. The bath’s enormous. It has feet with claws.’
‘I know what I need,’ said Claudia. ‘Is there a –?’
‘Yes!’ More lightning flashed. ‘And it has a gold chain with a china handle that says “PULL”.’
Claudia was out of the door in a moment. Pixie ran after her. And Colin went up too. Ralph made sure that Robbo’s holdall stayed in the doorway, propping it open till they were all safely back again.
Then they sat in the dark with their legs dangling over the ends of the beds: a tight little circle, like campers round a dead fire.
‘Should we unpack?’ asked Robbo. ‘We three could stay here, and Claudia and Pixie could have those two beds up the stairs.’
‘What’s the point?’ Ralph asked. ‘We all have plans to share with other people. We’ll only have to pack up and move when Miss O’Dell and the others come.’
‘If they come…’
‘What’s the time?’
Ralph held the face of his watch towards a window, waiting for lightning.
‘Nine forty-five,’ he told them, at the next flash.
‘Lights out by ten-thirty,’ Claudia reminded them.
‘That’s all right,’ Pixie said bitterly. ‘They probably still will be.’ She hugged herself as another brilliant flare of light ripped open the sky, and flooded the tower room with incandescent silver.
They all looked paler in the dark that followed. But Colin was pointing at the wall, just behind Claudia’s head.
‘Look!’
Everyone turned.
‘What?’
‘I can’t see anything.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Look!’ Colin said again. ‘In the wall. It’s a door. There’s a door hidden in the wall.’
‘Where?’
‘There’s nothing there, Colin.’
‘Oh, yes, there is. I saw it.’
He crawled over Claudia’s bed. In the dark, they could barely make out the shadow of his hands running up and down over the broad stripes of ancient wallpaper.
‘I can’t see anything.’
‘Wait,’ Colin told them. ‘Sit and wait. You’ll see what I saw.’
They sat without speaking. Around the tower, the wind still howled, but not so dolefully as before. The storm was moving over.
Five seconds. Ten. And then another flash shot generously across the sky.
And they all saw. The vivid sliver of light picked out the lines where, cleverly, but not quite cleverly enough, the wallpapered door met the wallpapered wall.
Robbo rushed over to give it a push. Nothing. Claudia ran her fingers over the place, half-way up the wall, where any hidden handle should have been. Nothing again. And Colin said:
‘Sit back. And watch again.’
Since he’d been right before, everyone obeyed him. They stared through one weakening flash after another, till, just in time, Robbo had the sense to step across and tug Claudia’s bed a little further from the wall. As the last, far-away burst of light speared through the freshly-rinsed panes, each of them finally saw, just where the frame of her bed had hidden it, the strange little tell-tale pock-mark on the wall.
‘Go on. Try it.’
The peal of thunder chased its bolt of lightning across the sky as Robbo leaned forward and pressed.
The door sprang open.
Everybody stared.
It was the tangled veil of stretched and broken cobwebs they noticed first.
‘Nobody’s been through this door for years and years.’
‘Who’s coming in?’
‘Not me!’
‘Nor me!’
But, as if Robbo had cast the spell of his own courage on them, they all crept after him into the tiny room. A tower off a tower. Through the six delicate vaulted windows, as narrow as the ones that archers used, the storm-washed moonlight poured in pale blue shafts. The dust lay thick – on shelf and desk and chair, on lantern and candelabra, on books and cushions – even on the floor, where the brash patterns pressed by the soles of their shoes made them feel even more like trespassers. It was quite obvious to every one of them that no one had stepped in this room as long as anyone alive could possibly remember.
Claudia stretched out a finger towards one of the window ledges, where a tiny carved wooden cow balanced forlornly on three legs. Just as she stroked its nose, trying to comfort it for all those years and years of loneliness, she heard a soft whirring behind her.
‘What’s that?’
Robbo had set a huge varnished globe of the world spinning on its axis.
‘Robbo! Don’t!’
He put out a hand to stop it. Claudia was right. Like a museum or a church, this was no place for idle fun and games.
Ralph gazed at the cobwebs glinting in the moonlight.
‘Whose room was this, I wonder…’
The heavy drapes, the plain dark coverlet, the framed old maps – surely even his frail and nodding great-grandmother had spent her childhood in a brighter room than this. All he could tell from looking round was that, when it was left to spiders all those years ago, the last child to sleep in that high, ornate bed came from a family with a mint of money.
Claudia was peering at the spindly desk.
‘This was a boy’s room.’
‘How can you tell?’
Claudia pointed to a dusty green album. As they watched, she leaned forward and, just as if the dull-looking binder on the desk was a delicious birthday cake, studded with candles, she took the most enormous breath, and blew.
Dust flew in clouds. And suddenly all of them could see what, up till then, only Claudia had noticed in spidery writing on the cover.
‘Cripes!’ Robbo said, echoing the driver without thinking. But this reminder of the minibus raised in Ralph’s mind an explanation other than dying wind for the faint rumble outside.
‘Is that the bus?’
Pixie rushed to the window ledge, and peered down.
‘It’s in the courtyard. They’re getting their stuff out.’
Ralph snatched up the album.
‘Quick!’ he said. ‘Pixie and Claudia – upstairs! Try and look fast asleep. Robbo and Colin – into bed, quickly!’
Robbo stared.
‘Why?’ he demanded. ‘If Miss O’Dell thinks we’re asleep, she’ll leave us here, and I won’t get to share with my mates.’
Pixie turned in the doorway.
‘He’s right. It was bad enough being taken off the bus. But this way I won’t even get a bed next to Shreela.’
Ralph pointed round the little tower room, drowned in moonlight and lost time.
‘Listen,’ he begged. ‘If we come back to read this tomorrow, everyone else will find out. And Miss O’Dell will take charge of the album, and lock the tower room.’ He spread his hands. ‘You know that,’ he told them.
They knew that. Nobody argued.
‘But we could just pretend to be asleep, and read it tonight. Our friends won’t be upset. They’ll just think Mr Plumley told us to stick together in the storm. And by tomorrow we’ll be back with them.’
Robbo still looked unconvinced.
‘But why?’
‘Why?’ Ralph held the album out towards him with both hands. ‘Robbo, how often do you get a chance like this?’
He ran his fingers over the spidery writing.
‘Richard Clayton Harwick. Read and weep,’ he said softly. ‘How many people are brave enough to tell you their story?’ He was practically begging now. ‘Robbo, how many chances do you get to peep into someone else’s life?’