Tabitha said that would be fine, and turned away as Miss Whittaker closed the door. It had taken just fifty seconds to instil the thought. The girl’s name wasn’t Tabitha and she wasn’t from the residents association, but Miss Whittaker had no way of knowing this or of knowing what had just happened.
Closing the door, re-attaching the chain, she looked across her lonely flat at the bookmarked novel on the table. The first three chapters had hooked her last night. She wished she’d started it sooner. Miss Whittaker finished refreshing the flowers and returned them to the table and picked up the book.
It was still dark out. More ice and freezing mists to come, the forecasts said. Not a day to be out and about, she thought, and it wouldn’t be wise to carry this cold – she sneezed again as she thought it – all around school, and risk spreading it to the children and other members of staff.
She checked her watch. Ten past eight. The office wouldn’t be open yet, so she’d call in half an hour and then unplug the phone. If she had to miss her first day ever, so what? She’d feel much better tomorrow. Besides, the best books of your life were those you read when you were sick and at home in bed on school days. Kicking off her shoes, Miss Whittaker snuggled fully clothed under the duvet and opened her novel to the start of chapter four.
Thirty-five minutes later, the principal of Mercy Road school had a visitor. A woman in a houndstooth coat arrived at reception, introduced herself as Polly from the Hackney Gazette and asked to see Mr Hatcher. As it happened, Mr Hatcher was free.
As she entered his office the phone rang on the desk and the receptionist lifted the receiver to take Miss Whittaker’s call. The meeting between Polly and Mr Hatcher lasted exactly three minutes.
We were passing the cold spot, Becky and Sukie and me, when Polly came marching down the corridor towards us. I hadn’t known what her particular talent was until now. She had a confident, purposeful walk and her eyes were fixed straight ahead. She flicked a stray strand of hair from her forehead and winked as we passed.
‘Job done. It’s up to you now. Good luck.’
She was turning off the corridor when Mr Hatcher stepped out in front of us from the reception area, staring after her with a bleary-eyed and distracted face.
‘Mornin’, sir. What’s up?’ Becky said.
Mr Hatcher gradually brought the three of us into focus. ‘Pardon? Oh, nothing. We find ourselves short-staffed today, that’s all. Three teachers have called in sick and our usual supply staff have commitments at other schools.’
‘Our mate’s a supply teacher,’ Becky said, introducing Sukie. ‘A really good one, too.’
‘Lucky she has a free day,’ I said. ‘She only came along with us to pass the time.’
Mr Hatcher gave Sukie the once-over. She hadn’t given school dress codes much thought and wore a black motorcycle jacket over a Motorhead T-shirt, frayed blue jeans and brown cowboy boots. She couldn’t have passed for a teacher in a million years, but the meeting with the woman whose name was not Polly had made Mr Hatcher docile, easily manipulated.
‘A supply teacher,’ Mr Hatcher said. ‘Someone must have been reading my mind. And you are?’
The three of us looked at each other. We hadn’t thought a lot of other things through, including Sukie’s supply teacher name.
‘Hurd,’ Sukie said at random.
‘Miss Hurd?’ Mr Hatcher said.
‘That’s right. That’s me.’
‘And what’s your area of specialisation, Miss Hurd?’
‘My what?’
‘What do you teach?’
‘Oh, this and that, anything, everything, really. What have you got?’
‘It’s mainly PSHE today,’ Mr Hatcher said.
Sukie sniffed as if that presented no problem at all. ‘Sure. I could do that easy,’ she said.
‘Fantastic,’ Mr Hatcher said, and then he became more businesslike. ‘I don’t suppose you have references with you? Commendations from other schools, certificates of qualification and so forth.’
‘Not really, not on me,’ Sukie said. ‘I was just keeping my mates company, that’s all. Didn’t really expect this.’
‘Neither did we, and I realise it’s all a bit short notice. I suppose . . . yes, I suppose we could sort out the paperwork later. Is there any chance you might take Miss Whittaker’s classes before and after lunch, say eleven and one-thirty?’
‘Dunno. I’ll have to think about that.’ Sukie thought about it for all of five seconds before saying, ‘All right. I’ll do it. Do you pay cash?’
Mr Hatcher didn’t bat an eye.
‘I’m sure that can be arranged,’ he said, ‘even if I have to break into the school piggy bank. If you’d like to join me in my office, Miss Hurd, we’ll get something on paper to make this official.’
‘Why not?’ Sukie said. ‘I wouldn’t say no to coffee and biscuits either. See you later, you two.’
Leaving her there with Mr Hatcher, we hurried off to registration with Miss Neal.
Nothing had changed. The tension still gripped Miss Neal’s class, and 8C were again quietly obedient while Miss Neal remained terse and snappy. As registration ended I looked outside, following the flight of a raven which sailed across the yard to perch on the climbing frame and fluttered its wings as Miss Neal clapped her hands.
‘Harvester! I see that three days of suspension have taught you nothing. Keep this up and I’ll be having words with your mother.’
‘His mother ain’t around anymore,’ Raymond Blight gloated, and I shot him a warning look before it struck me. There was no way he could possibly know. That wasn’t Raymond speaking but the Whisperer speaking through him. At the back of the room, Simon Decker wiped his mouth and looked away.
The lockdown was still in place, so at break we sat by the window in the school canteen, under observation, not daring to speak. The strain tugged at Becky’s lips as she stirred her tea and the table vibrated under my fingers. I was wondering if the soul train had set out early when Becky trapped my hands on the tabletop.
‘Keep your cool. That’s not the train making things shake, Ben, it’s you.’ With a quick look around the canteen she added, ‘Let’s hope Sukie can pull this off. Otherwise there’ll be a lynching.’
It seemed fitting for Sukie to take Miss Whittaker’s class in the room where Dad and the fire children Mitch and Molly Willow had first shown themselves. If I hadn’t known about the cold spot and what lay underneath it I might have thought this room was the heart of everything, the place where the departed made their way in and out.
For the first five minutes there was no sign of Sukie. 8C were subdued, the Whisperer keeping them in check. All eyes were on the unoccupied desk at the front and the pile of magazines and newspapers Miss Whittaker always kept on it. Becky frowned at me as if to say, ‘Where is she?’
We didn’t have long to wait, though. When the door crashed open and Sukie marched in, the whole class caught its breath. She clattered across the floor in her cowboy boots and creaking leather jacket, seized a marker pen and squiggled her supply teacher name in big capitals across the board. There were confused looks and shrugs as Sukie grabbed a broadsheet newspaper off the pile, fell onto the chair and plonked her feet up on the desk.
‘Your teacher’s feeling a bit blah today,’ Sukie announced, ‘a bit under the weather. So she’s staying home to read a book, and I’m her replacement. That’s my name right there on the board.’ She scanned the room, her kinked gaze landing on Decker, causing the two pupils either side of him to shrink down on their seats. ‘Now I’ve not been here long,’ Sukie said, ‘not even a full minute, but already I can tell there’s a bad influence in this class, a very mal . . . mal. . . What’s the word I’m looking for?’
‘Malign, Miss?’ I offered, raising a hand.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘A very malign influence, and it isn’t who most of you think it is, either. Look, I’m only here for one day and you’ll probably never see me again, but I’m not putti
ng up with any nonsense in this lesson. I just won’t stand for it, all right?’
‘Yes, Miss Hurd,’ the class mumbled.
‘So anyway, I don’t have much of a lesson plan,’ Sukie went on. ‘This was all sort of sprung on me, unexpectedly. So instead of an actual lesson you’re having an hour of silence. You can read, catch up with your homework, do what you like, I don’t really mind, and I’m going to sit here and read my paper without interruption. Are we clear?’
‘Yes, Miss.’
Sukie opened her newspaper and the quiet hour began. Every so often she would look up from reading, narrowing her eyes at the rustle of a book page, the clearing of a throat, the rasp of a pencil sharpener. At the back of the class Simon Decker stared sullenly at the street, and for once his lips were sealed and unmoving.
‘Don’t you dare,’ Sukie said, not looking up. ‘You can’t fool me. I know what you’re doing. Any more thoughts like that and you’re out on your ear.’
The pupils looked at each other, bewildered. The silence grew, the tension stretching towards snapping point. It was a different tension, though, not the same thing we’d felt in Miss Neal’s or any other class. For once, the hostility wasn’t directed at us. Instead it was passing between Sukie and the hidden enemy.
The next half hour went the same way. As long as Sukie was in charge the Whisperer was gagged. It needed to make itself heard but couldn’t. At times I could almost hear it trying to send out its thoughts, and whenever it did Sukie would rattle the newspaper and glare.
‘Quiet,’ she said, although no one had spoken. ‘Don’t think I can’t hear you. You’re coming through loud and clear.’
I’d never seen Sukie at work in the field, but now I saw what made her such an asset to the Ministry. It wasn’t only her ability to hear what no one else could but the way she used her gift to draw the enemy out.
‘You!’ she said suddenly, speaking directly to Decker, and what she said next left Becky and me reeling. ‘Yes, I’m talking to you, Simon Decker. Don’t sit there looking sorry for yourself. It won’t be like this forever. I know you’re miserable and scared, you’ve been miserable and scared since you came here, all because of the bad seed in this place. But it’s nearly over. It can’t hurt you now.’
Decker’s eyes widened in surprise. His face cleared, and for the first time I saw him for what he was – just a vulnerable kid who knew something was wrong here, something was bad, a kid who felt the malign influence too and muttered to himself in fear. He stared at Sukie, a tear draining from the corner of his eye. Someone understood. At last someone understood.
‘It’s all right,’ Sukie said gently. ‘There are others in this room –’ she sent an accusing glance our way ‘– who think you’re the cause of everything, all the bad feeling here. And who put that idea in their heads, I wonder? Who convinced them it was you?’ She took in the class with a long sweeping look. ‘You may as well come out and show yourself. There’s nowhere for you to hide anymore.’
So I’d mashed Decker’s nose and split his lip in two places for nothing. If he wasn’t the Whisperer, then who? Not Raymond Blight, who was too dumb to manipulate anyone. Not the Ferguson twins, who shared so many unspoken secrets. They’d been at Mercy Road long before I started in September, and nothing like this had happened until recently. It hadn’t begun until the week Simon Decker and Fay De Gray joined the class.
Sukie slapped down the newspaper and took to her feet in the same instant two chairs crashed aside and two girls, Mel Kimble and Francine Hart, squealed and leapt clear of the desk they’d been sharing with Fay De Gray. A stunned silence held the room, and then the panic spread like wildfire as the enemy inside Fay began to come out.
Fay gripped the sides of her chair, quaking and jerking as if an electric current were running through her. There was a crunching sound like splintering bones and another chair screeched behind mine. I couldn’t take my eyes off Fay, whose whole body was cracking apart like a pupal case while the creature – the thing hiding inside her – came scuttling out.
It was almost the size of Fay herself, fuzzy brown-bodied and spindly-limbed, and it scurried to the desktop to orientate itself, pumping blood through its papery wings until they expanded like sails with intricate skull and crossbones emblems at their centres. Its face was unmistakable – a Deathhead face, eyeless dark sockets and shorn-off lips. It stared dazedly around the room, a rattlesnake vibrato in its throat.
The entire class was screaming, huddling in corners, diving for cover under desks amongst a shriek and crash of furniture. The hypnotised look had left their eyes, which were now filled with fear and wonder.
‘So there you are,’ Sukie said. ‘So that’s what you look like. Even uglier than you sound. Ben?’ she called, but she didn’t have time to finish before the moth-thing took flight.
With a stiff beat of its wings the Deathhead went airborne, slamming into fluorescent ceiling lights, spraying hot slivers of metal and glass. Then it dove straight at Sukie, careering into her with such force she collapsed to the floor, a grey-brown cloud of wing dust rising around her.
‘Ben,’ Sukie cried. ‘It’s up to you now. . .’
‘Stay down,’ I said, and to Becky, ‘You too!’
Becky peered out from under our desk in alarm.
Sukie had driven the demon out, but the next part wasn’t her strong suit. It was mine. But I had no time to fit it together in my mind before the Deathhead was on me, its gaping mouth missing my face by a fraction.
The shrieks and sobs were deafening. Everyone had gone to ground except Fay De Grey, whose outer shell sagged on her chair like a reptile’s cast-off skin. Drawn by the daylight, the moth-thing thudded the window before flexing its wings and turning, letting loose a full-blooded scream as it came again.
Above us the shattered ceiling lights puffed smoke and sparks. As the demon swept down, I pushed a clear, bright thought out towards it – a picture of how this would end – and the Deathhead moth rocked in mid flight, jolted off course and straight upwards.
It struck the exposed guts of the broken light fitting. Another dust cloud showered down, and a cascade of sparks belched from somewhere inside the ceiling. There was a rushing noise and a crackle of electricity rolled through the air as the creature burst into flames.
Its cries were the worst thing, drowning out even the howls of the kids. The wing-beating ball of fire tapped and thumped its way across the ceiling, scorching the white paint black before dropping like a heavy sack to the floor in front of Miss Whittaker’s desk.
Sukie rolled clear as it landed, then scrambled to her feet and stood back to watch as the creature blackened, twitched and stopped moving, and the fire steadily burnt itself out.
Before long there was nothing left but ashes. The classroom filled with dense black smoke. Becky wriggled out from cover to open a window, and gradually, one by one, the rest of 8C reappeared too. Their faces were rigid with shock and their eyes skipped nervously between the Deathhead’s remains and me.
Oh no, I thought. Now they know.
‘So what do we do?’ Becky said. ‘They’ve seen everything. They’ve seen that thing, they saw what you just did. What do we do about that?’
Sukie glanced at the door a second before it opened. The woman in the houndstooth coat peered in through the smoke at the cremated heap on the floor. It could have been anything by now, a torched bundle of rags or newspapers, offering no clue to what it had been before. The woman looked at it dispassionately, not a trace of emotion on her face, and turned her striking emerald eyes on the class.
‘Hello 8C,’ she said, crossing to the teacher’s desk. ‘A quick word, if I may. . . This won’t take more than a minute of your time.’
The rest of 8C returned obediently to their seats and sat to attention, all ears. As the woman cleared her throat and began, Sukie signalled us to follow her out.
Soon they’d forget everything they’d seen. The next time they saw us they’d know us, and the W
hisperer wouldn’t be telling them what to think. The last thing I saw, leaving Miss Whittaker’s room, was Simon Decker listening, enthralled, no longer muttering to himself, a normal kid with nothing more to fear.
24
LUTHER VILEHEART’S MAZE
ith roaring engines and blazing headlights the convoy crossed the cobbles of Eventide Street and sped through the narrow passageway into the night.
From Upper Street the procession split three ways, one deployment heading the short distance south-east to Mercy Road, another north to Harrow, while ours set out for the Vileheart residence in Belsize Park.
‘I’m not sure Becky should come,’ I told Mr October as Lu wove the rickshaw through the high street traffic. ‘If the maze is guarded like you said, she’ll be at risk.’
‘I’m inclined to agree,’ Mr October said. ‘She may be talented but she isn’t made for combat. Perhaps we should drop her here. Lu?’
Lu slowed, steering us closer to the curb.
‘Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,’ Becky said. ‘Don’t I have a say? So I can’t fight, I can’t do what you lot can, but I’ll find what we’re looking for faster than anyone else.’
‘Possibly,’ Mr October said, ‘but if and when the fireworks begin we’ll be too stretched in battle to carry you. Which makes you a liability.’
Becky stood her ground. ‘Then give me a weapon, one of those DEW things the Vigilants use. Give me something like that and I’ll do my bit. Just because I’m a girl doesn’t make me a risk.’
‘Whether or not you’re a girl is neither here nor there,’ he said. ‘You’re a healer – or will be when your skills are fully developed – that’s your nature. You’re not a destroyer of agents of darkness.’
The Great and Dangerous Page 21