The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School

by Kim Newman

  II: A Different Form

  TEMPORARY CLASSROOM TWO was a former greenhouse, converted from horticultural use by painting thickly over the panes – except for a few left clear so they could pretend to be windows. Previous convicts had scratched hieroglyphics into the glass walls. Sunshine beamed through the arcane signs, so mystic lights crept across the floor like an alchemist’s clock. TC2 was heated – if not well – by a smoky stove. Mismatched furniture was salvaged from all over School. The chairs had wonky legs and skirt-piercing splinters. The desks were nailed shut and inscribed with the names of long-gone girls. The blackboard was new, but the room so damp chalks crumbled before much could be written up on it.

  Amy and Light Fingers found places near the front of the class. Amy’s too-high chair jammed her knees up under her too-low desk. After a night in the same room as Poppet and Shrimp, she was exhausted and befuddled… Was this what one of Mother’s ‘heads’ was like? She hoped that curse was not hereditary.

  Harper was bright and sparkling this morning.

  Light Fingers had taken Amy aside and said they had to get out of the leech’s cell or else they’d be skeletons by the end of the week while the sharp-toothed Shrimp would be plump, pink and blooming. At least, Amy thought she remembered Light Fingers saying something like that. With Dyall around, she couldn’t be sure.

  She had either not slept or suffered night terrors. She couldn’t have had both conditions, but this morning her memories of the night were vague and ill-formed. She had aches from the lumpy cot and the impression of a hungry, ballooning face looming over her.

  The rest of the Remove were too concerned with their own woes to be sympathetic. Why didn’t Poppet and Shrimp cancel each other out? Would their peculiar Abilities affect Palgraive? She might not have a mind left to cloud.

  Lamarcroft, a Sixth, had been a whip. Her piping was unpicked when she was removed. She still tried to wield authority and came over to tithe the new girls. She said it was customary to pay rent on desks in TC2. Arrant extortion, but there were no real whips here to stop such piracy.

  Unfortunately, Amy came impoverished to the Remove. She had no tribute to yield. She pulled out empty pockets.

  The Amazon Archer glared and cracked her knuckles.

  ‘I shall make an example of you.’

  ‘To whom?’ put in Light Fingers.

  ‘It speaks,’ said Lamarcroft.

  ‘It speaks, and it spits!’

  Light Fingers pressed her lips together but did not spit. Lamarcroft backed away, though.

  ‘Made you flinch.’

  Light Fingers passed her hands in front of the Sixth’s face very fast, making her cringe again. In the Remove, there was little point in keeping Abilities secret…

  ‘We shall resume this discussion later,’ said Lamarcroft, striding back to her desk.

  A cracked bell sounded. Miss Kaye came into the room, carrying a stuffed briefcase and the register. A small potted plant stood on the teacher’s desk. A winter-flowering polyanthus.

  ‘Thank you, Paquignet,’ she said.

  Green Fingers stretched out her skirt in a seated curtsey. She seemed to thrive in the Remove. Amy supposed she’d been ill at ease in Ariel, most toffee-nosed of Houses. And TC2 retained enough of its former atmosphere to suit the gardening girl.

  Amy would not thrive. Plants were hardier than moths.

  ‘We have new girls today,’ said Miss Kaye, examining the register. ‘There has been an influx lately. I can’t think why.’

  At least the Remove was taught by someone who’d never wear a black ribbon or an ant brooch. Amy always thought Miss Kaye the fairest and most humorous of the Staff.

  ‘If you please, would you introduce yourselves to the Remove. Naisbee and, ah, Thompson.’

  ‘Close enough,’ said Know-It-All Knowles dryly, from the back of the room.

  Miss Kaye frowned. She knew she’d mistaken the names, but couldn’t call the proper ones to mind. She’d known who Amy was last term. They’d had long conversations.

  Front and centre in class sat that menace Poppet Dyall.

  Miss Kaye was uncharacteristically distracted. Her hair-band was awry and she had chalk marks on her blouse. She was thinner, paler and more fluttery than Amy remembered. Removal affected teachers too.

  Amy stood and announced, ‘Thomsett, Amanda,’ then stopped herself before she proudly added ‘Desdemona’. ‘Third Year,’ she concluded weakly. She sat.

  ‘Nais-bitt,’ said Light Fingers, without standing.

  ‘Bless you,’ said Knowles. She paused for titters, which didn’t come. Miss Kaye didn’t upbraid her, either. Know-It-All slumped, unsatisfied.

  ‘Today, we have…’

  It was on the tip of Miss Kaye’s tongue, but she couldn’t produce the words.

  ‘Ancient History,’ prompted Lamarcroft.

  Miss Kaye smiled, gratefully.

  ‘Arctic Geography,’ piped up a voice from the back.

  ‘Aramaic Composition.’

  ‘Advanced Thinkology.’

  ‘Black Marketeering.’

  ‘Murder.’

  ‘Mayhem…’

  ‘…and Magic Beans.’

  Miss Kaye was distressed by the ragging. No one laughed, not even the jokers. The suggestions were tossed with venom rather than in play.

  Amy looked at Light Fingers, who shrugged.

  Things were different in the Remove. It was like the jungle.

  ‘If you will open your exercise books,’ Miss Kaye suggested.

  Amy raised her hand.

  ‘Miss,’ she said.

  ‘What is it, Thompsomething?’

  ‘I don’t have an exercise book with me. We weren’t told what to bring…’

  Howls of crocodile sympathy.

  ‘Pretend you have one and try to keep up, there’s a dear.’

  Amy realised she was unlikely to prosper academically in the Remove. Thorn openly read Girls’ Paper, Frost raised a sparkling black stalagmite from her inkwell and Lamarcroft sharpened a pencil with a penknife as if making a shiv. Palgraive, Dyall and Paquignet smiled vacantly, keeping quiet rather than paying attention. Devlin craned her neck, her extra vertebrae creaking, so she could look at drawings Knowles was making in her exercise book.

  Lessons were baffling and pitiful. Miss Kaye got into more and more of a tizzy as she struggled to keep a train of thought. She snapped at the form, though few maintained the energy to snap back. When Light Fingers dozed off during a discourse on the obliquity of the ecliptic, Harper leaned over and snuffled, inhaling her victim’s breath. Was that how she did it? Amy shooed the pest away and Shrimp showed her teeth. Light Fingers jolted awake and fell off her chair. Miss Kaye didn’t even tell her to sit properly.

  While Miss Kaye dealt with a dispute between Frost and Knowles, Amy felt a finger poking between her shoulder blades. There was an empty desk behind her. She turned round and just caught Stretch Devlin pulling back her long arm.

  ‘What can you do, dearie?’ asked Devlin.

  Amy knew what she meant, but shrugged as if she didn’t.

  ‘You’re a fluke like us. Your pal’s fast, but you’re… a mystery of the sea. Come on, Thomsett, out with it…’

  Trapped by her desk, Amy wasn’t in a position to float, even if she’d wanted to show off. But there was the other thing.

  Amy popped her pencil into the dry inkwell of the empty desk and left it there. Then, inviting a headache, she concentrated, feeling for the pencil with thoughts, stretching her mind as Devlin could stretch her bones.

  The pencil flipped from one angle to another.

  Devlin’s eyes widened. ‘Stap me vitals,’ she said, admiring.

  The pencil stirred, like a teaspoon gripped by invisible fingers. Round and round.

  Amy was getting better at this, but there was a catch. When she was floating and in her Kentish Glory guise, her Ability was off the leash. She could expertly shift all sorts of things within eyeshot. But, if she were j
ust her ordinary self with her feet on the ground, she could only move small items which were within reach anyway. There was no point getting a headache turning the pages of a book or picking up an apple when she could manage perfectly well with her hands.

  She took her pencil back by reaching for it.

  Devlin gave her a salute, though. At least, no one took against you here just for being a fluke. She wasn’t really an Unusual in TC2. Everyone had Abilities or Attributes… though having a brain-maggot puppeteer like Palgraive or being a tick like Harper or Dyall removed them even within the Remove.

  Her head wasn’t aching and her nose wasn’t bleeding. She was finding it easier to use her Abilities without suffering.

  By the end of the day, Amy was bored as well as absent-minded, sick and dejected. Miss Kaye dismissed them without even assigning prep. Cause for celebration in any other form, but here just another sign that they were abandoned and outcast.

  Trudging back to Remittance Man’s Rest, Amy found the next exile waiting outside the old stable, sat on her trunk.

  ‘Ashes, ashes,’ said Paule. ‘I’ve fallen down.’

  III: Remittance Men

  PAULE WASN’T THE only fresh removal. Marsh came over at the same time, back from the sea but turfed out of Goneril. Devlin greeted her like a long-lost shipmate, but she wasn’t cheered. Marsh muttered darkly of ‘surface-dwellers’, the rising of sunken cities and dreaming squid-gods in the depths. The Gill Girl couldn’t have spent all her time away under the briny since she returned to School newly marcelled. Having her dark hair set in stiff waves might be a declaration of allegiance to the tides, but also made her look like a flapper from the flickers.

  With no whips to stop them, Amy and Light Fingers changed their sleeping arrangements. Light Fingers worked her magic on a rusty lock – exciting admiration from Lamarcroft and Knowles, who evidently had larcenous ambitions – and opened a disused tack room which smelled of leather and liniment. A two-tier rack could pass for a bunk. Amy shifted two sets of bedding from their cell and Light Fingers dragged along two trunks.

  ‘Moving out so soon?’ asked Harper.

  ‘No,’ said Light Fingers. ‘You are.’

  For the first time in her life, Amy was in a position to push around girls smaller than she. She felt guilty about exercising the power, but desperate measures were required. Another night with Shrimp and Poppet and she’d be broken in body and mind.

  Lamarcroft stood by as Harper and Dyall were forced into the tack room. Light Fingers had bribed her before striking. This, it seems, was what it took to get by in the Remove. Ruthless practicality… and boiled sweets. Lungs was a slave to gob-stoppers. Light Fingers advised Amy to spend her tuck ration on placatory offerings. So long as the Amazongeld was paid, they’d be left alone.

  In the Remove, there was more freedom than in dear old Desdemona. A dizzying, daunting prospect. Even if you bridled at some School Rules – official or off-the-books – there was comfort in knowing what was expected. Beyond the law were delights and terrors, but a girl had to make choices and live with the consequences.

  Shrimp yelped as she was shoved into her new cell, but Poppet went quietly. Amy didn’t know whether Dyall’s eagerness to be useful was a pose. The ticks couldn’t help their Abilities, any more than Amy could help hers… but Harper’s predatory inhalations were slyly malicious, while Dyall seemed not to notice the befuddling effect she had on others. As Light Fingers shut the tack room door on the menaces, Amy saw Shrimp getting angry and ready to complain then lose track of her thoughts and seem puzzled, almost afraid. So she wasn’t immune to Poppet.

  ‘Emma, are you sure…’

  ‘Let ’em drain each other empty,’ said Light Fingers. ‘Do us all a favour.’

  Amy was uncomfortable with that sour thought. This wasn’t Desdemona and this wasn’t the Moth Club. Girls did not look after each other in the Remove.

  Drearcliff was more and more like home every day. Amy’s home, that is, where Mother’s moods were like the weather and she was always a disappointment… not that ideal idyll some meant when they said a place was like home.

  The freed-up cots in Amy and Light Fingers’ cell went to Paule and Marsh.

  The Gill Girl took to her bed immediately, a net protecting her precious and slightly whiffy hair. She was still in a sulk.

  Amy tried to talk with Paule, but the Sixth was too much in the Purple. She spoke about violet lights and spring storms and something she called the Scrambling. Light Fingers listened to her, for the first time… for confirmation of what Amy had told her. She had to admit things were happening at School beyond mortal ken. With ants crawling all over girls’ faces, it was impossible for anyone not in Black to pretend this was a normal term – but Light Fingers wasn’t quite ready to swallow Amy’s whole story.

  Also, she remembered Paule as a Murdering Heathen and wasn’t as inclined as Amy to forgive her part in the ancien regime of terror.

  Just because the Queen Ant was worse didn’t mean Gryce wasn’t bad.

  Would Gryce wind up removed? She wasn’t a fluke and had made a token concession to Black, so the Sisters Dark might keep her around the way potentates paraded defeated enemies in court or held rivals’ children hostage to make a point.

  Amy couldn’t believe Head Girl had just given up.

  She was almost disappointed in her old enemy. But also in herself. Rayne had done what she said she would – changed Drearcliff. She had never said change would be for the better, though in whatever she had for a mind she doubtless believed the present situation an improvement on the old ways.

  Amy had taken things as they were and not tried to change them.

  Rayne’s example proved her wrong. The Moth Club should have done more. Their original charter was too limited… from the first, they should have acted for change. Once Kali was saved from the Hooded Conspiracy they should have found new crusades, rooting out larger ills, righting accepted wrongs. If they’d made School a fairer place, then Rayne – who had stood up to bullies and whips, after all – might not have got so many to follow her.

  How would the Aviatrix or Dr Shade deal with the Queen Ant?

  Amy considered posing this question to ‘Stargazy’, editor of Girls’ Paper, acknowledged expert in the field of modern-day heroes and heroines. A new rule meant all letters had to be handed to Keys, unsealed. She read them before they were sent on, and blacked out anything deemed ‘inappropriate or unhelpful’. School set up the system after a petition requesting vigilance over outgoing post was handed in by a Black Skirt deputation. Light Fingers said they’d ask for longer detentions and harsher beatings next. After all, good little girls wouldn’t object to rules that only applied to bad little girls.

  The Remove didn’t have meals in the Refectory, but had to sit in a basement known as the Crypt. By the time food got to the Crypt, it was barely warm. Sometimes, their fare was partial because supplies ran low. If all the roast spuds were scoffed by Black Skirts, the Remove got extra boiled swedes instead.

  Drearcliff boiled swedes had a well-earned reputation for vileness. If too many were scraped into the tub Joxer hauled off for swill, farmers complained their pigs turned their snouts up at the feed. Most girls would rather scrub the Heel with their own toothbrushes than eat extra boiled swedes.

  In the Crypt, Amy and the others could hear the rhythmic crunch of Black Skirts at their troughs in the Refectory proper. The horde ate to the same rhyme as they skipped, stamping under the long tables. It wasn’t a human sound.

  For lessons and meals, the girls of the Remove were escorted to and from Remittance Man’s Rest by Downs and an ennead of Black Skirts. A register was taken over and over again to make sure flukes weren’t roaming free. Marsh, after her little dip in the sea, was on a short leash. Amy noticed key positions around School were always occupied by triads, skipping together like figures on Swiss town clocks. They stood guard in shifts, all through the night. Sometimes, Downs or Bainter supervised. Mostly, th
ey got on with it by themselves.

  It was plain now who ran Drearcliff Grange.

  IV: The Invisible House

  WITH NO PREP and shut out of Black Only activities, the Remove had to amuse themselves of an evening. Lamarcroft tooting scales on her horn offered limited entertainment. Thorn’s Girls’ Paper was passed around. Amy had read the number already. All that was left was chat.

  Reluctantly, the flukes got to know each other.

  The consequences of having Poppet Dyall nearby were well known, so she was told to stay in the tack room. Uncomplaining, she retreated to her cupboard-sized cell with a candle and Uncle Satt’s Miscellany for Boys and Girls. Amy felt a twinge of pity, but hardened her heart. Poppet seemed perfectly happy with her lot… unlike everyone else in Remittance Man’s Rest.

  The girls found perches in the common area, as near as possible to a stove. Most draped coats and blankets around their shoulders.

  Amy and Light Fingers huddled up on three-legged milking stools left over from when School had its own farm.

  ‘I shouldn’t be here,’ said Thorn, not for the first time. ‘It’s a mistake. I’m Without an E. They were supposed to remove the Other One. With an E.’

  Susannah Thorn, formerly of Tamora, was often mixed up with Susannah Thorne, of Viola. They were stuck with each other’s exam results, assigned each other’s prep and received each other’s post. The Chimera had even duffed up Thorne – not, apparently, a fluke – by mistake. Though both Fourths, they looked nothing alike. Understandably, they weren’t the best of friends.

  ‘With an E should be here, and I should be…’

  They had heard this song before. Misjudging her audience, Thorn was affronted by a lack of sympathy from the justly removed.

  ‘Come off it,’ said Devlin. ‘A body doesn’t get here by mistake.’

  Stretch prodded Thorn with an eight-inch finger.

  ‘What colour is your skirt?’ asked Amy.

  Thorn had to look down, but her uniform was still grey.

  ‘And what colour’s hers? With an E?’

  Since the beating, Thorne was Black Skirt in good standing.