The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School

by Kim Newman

  Amy was consumed by horror and pity. And was angry.

  If it weren’t for Larry’s pocket, she’d be dead… and so would most of the Remove, caught in the blast.

  Instead, the Remove met the Black Skirts with defiance. Numbers might tell in the end, but the Unusuals would go down fighting.

  Frecks fetched mighty whacks with her cricket bat and the others fought the horde with scavenged weapons or teeth and claws. Gould twisted around, throwing off half a dozen girl-bugs. She met chittering with war-howls.

  Devlin pounded heads with ham hands and caught four or five throats with an outstretched arm slam. Light Fingers had altered her blouse, adding in pleats and folds which gave her the freedom to exercise her Ability to its limits without compromise.

  Light Fingers’ gentlest taps, repeated swiftly, were hammerstrikes. Speed into mass.

  Marsh dived off the jetty and slid into the water, floundering Black Skirts on her tail. She turned and dragged them under one by one, letting them go only when they passed out. Most floated face up.

  Had this been a trap?

  Or had Paule brought the Remove here because here was where they needed to be?

  Amy was twenty feet in the air now, steadying herself with her arms.

  There were bursts of flame and blasts of cold icy air as Thorn and Frost put up a spirited defence. Spars of ice crashed through the rotten wood of the Johanna Pike and cobwebby sails caught fire.

  Lamarcroft was in a battle now, even if it wasn’t her battle. Her arrows fixed Black Skirts to the timbers, spearing through clothes and soft flesh. She was accurate enough to immobilise rather than kill, but there would be painful unpinning to do before her targets were freed.

  Before she could nock another shaft, Lungs was rounded upon by Pinborough and Ker. They came in kicking and punching and ducking and dancing. Soldier Ants, dauntless and deadly. Lamarcroft wielded her bow like a quarterstaff, knocking both their heads for them… but they came back at her. An Amazon beset by Ants. Girls would be talking about this fight for generations, though it was but a small part of the mêlée.

  Even Paquignet made seaweed rattle and pop under the foe, tripping a wave of ants and dragging them into the water – where Marsh struck without mercy. The long-calm harbour was afroth with the battle.

  Palgraive stood a little way off, uninvolved – somehow the Black Skirts didn’t bother her, as if they saw her as a post or a rock rather than a person. Amy wasn’t sure bringing her – and her brain-maggot – was a good idea, though she was happy that the full force of the Remove was at this scrap.

  They were outnumbered massively, but fought for glory.

  ‘Just and true!’ shouted Frecks. ‘Just and true!’

  The foredeck of the Johanna Pike was in good repair. It had been fixed up recently – by the clever carpenters of Viola? The planking was inscribed with the now-familiar spiral.

  Rayne stood on the Flute.

  Though her followers crawled, the Queen Ant was upright. She took out her rope and began skipping, looking up at Amy with that blank expression.

  Lights sprang from firepots placed around the foredeck.

  Through rifts in the ship, Amy saw Black Skirts swarming over each other. Some were entwined like rat-kings, elbows hooked together to make bodies into barrel-staves, braids tied in a tangle to lump heads together like a bunch of coconuts. A choir-like section raised their arms and chittered, attempting to imitate the ululation of the Purple.

  Another oblation was to be made!

  Hatches raised and shock troops appeared. The Cerberus and the Ghidorah – together! Brown, Crowninshield II, McClure, Martine and Wool shinned up the masts, coming for Amy. She floated back, out of their reach. Missiles flew up. Chunks of wood torn from the ship. A marlinspike. A hammer. Tennis balls. She easily batted away the volley, using her mentacles like lacrosse sticks. In the thick of the fight, with her blood surging, she was enough in command of her Abilities to be accurate at twenty or thirty feet.

  Shoshone Brown reached a crow’s nest and took a careful aim.

  She hurled her javelin at Amy. Strikes-Like-an-Adder slipped past Amy’s tries at getting a hold with her mind… but she struck it aside with her sheathed sword. She felt the jarring impact in her arms and shoulders, but was not impaled. The deflected javelin spanged against rock, but the sword fell and she was left holding a hilt with a blunt, useless two-inch tang stuck out of it.

  Brown raised her arms and did the antenna wave.

  Amy flew over the crow’s nest and grabbed Brown’s wrists, pulling her up into the air. Her shoulders hurt as Brown’s weight dragged. Amy dropped the girl, and she plunged, long legs kicking, into the harbour. A great splash was raised. Amy saw Shoshone floundering, squirting water through her mouth and nose.

  Black Skirts swarmed about Paule, who kept a circle free by scything around with her long-poled axe. Light Fingers zigged and zagged, whooshing audibly, beaning bonces with fast, heavy knuckle-taps. Knowles protested that the map in her head was changing and that it hurt. Frost and Thorn formed a protective ring around Knowles, singeing and icing off attackers.

  Rayne kept to her skipping.

  ‘Ants in your pants,

  All the way from France…’

  And so on.

  There were Hooded Conspirators on the foredeck. The Professor – a proud parent? Red Flame. Ponce Bainter. Gogoth was there, bent over almost double. And newcomers to the coven, Fossil Borrodale and Digger Downs – with discreet veils rather than full hoods. Amy couldn’t tell who had volunteered and who was just drawn into the spell.

  That rhyme was in her brain, throbbing painfully.

  ‘Send reinforcements,

  We’re going to advance.’

  The firepots flared and burned sickly violet.

  The tug of gravity, which Amy felt differently anyway, shifted. The water tipped, as if in a jug being poured out.

  She remembered a riddle heard in the dorm. ‘Have you heard about the Dim who wanted to try water-skiing? Gave up because she couldn’t find a sloping lake.’

  Well, here was one. A sloping lake.

  An iceberg slid into a patch of fire and steam hissed. Frost, scalded, screamed. At that, a white bulk gathered from seawater and took golem form – Captain Freezing was back! Huge snow fists pummelled Black Skirts who came near.

  As water climbed the cavern wall, the harbour bottom was revealed. Amy saw a rusted anchor, a discarded chest (treasure?), fish bones, a mass of glistening weed with girls struggling in it, Marsh dripping wet and panting through gills, Brown scratching her head as if she’d just woken up and wondered how she got here, long-sunken stones carved with runes and signs.

  There was a spiral in the sea, a Runnel underwater. Amy found herself pulled through the air in wide circles, struggling against unseen currents. Water rose up to splash her. She got wet shoes and socks. Squelchily uncomfortable, and a drag on her flying.

  The Johanna Pike, long grounded, shifted with a vast creak. Water poured in through its sides, washing more chittering Black Skirts out on to the wet jetty. Timbers strained and broke. Another mast snapped and crashed down on top of the skirmish around Paule. The battleaxe was lost and Paule went under a human surge, only to bob up on top of the crowd. Many hands supported her struggling body and bounced her from perch to perch, carrying her towards the ship as an army of ants might convey a leaf across their many backs as an offering to the queen.

  The roof of the cavern was glowing now. Purple.

  Amy fell upwards.

  Rayne skipped back from the Flute, which was opening at the centre of the Runnel. A bright Purple circle grew there, as hard to look at as the sun. A hole in everything. Beyond were the things Paule was worried about and Mauve Mary had guarded against, the tendrils which yearned to reach through into the Back Home, into the place Amy lived, and take an inhuman, cruel grip. She saw what was to come and knew it was her place – her purpose – to put a stop to it.

  She took hol
d of herself, refusing to be blown and batted hither and yon by swirling winds or the siren call of the Purple. She ignored everything and found her place in the air.

  Calm, she had control.

  She fixed on Rayne and swooped.

  Red Flame – Kali’s father – took a revolver out of his pocket and thumbed the hammer. He drew a bead on Amy. The hole in the end of the barrel was her own Flute. Her death would issue from it.

  She veered to the side but – a practised marksman – Red Flame kept his arm steady as he swung round, keeping his aim true. He didn’t fire. The nearer she was to him, the better his chance of potting her. She hoped his hood impaired his vision more than her mask did hers. She was close enough to see he had one eye closed and his thumb was tensing.

  A blur slammed into Red Flame and pitched him off the foredeck. Light Fingers, running faster than Amy had ever seen. She and Red Flame slammed against a rotten railing. Both went over the side, though Light Fingers skimmed the surface of the water and was back on the dock in a trice. The gun went off but fired wild. Red Flame fell into the water and floundered – the Kafiristani bandit chief couldn’t swim! He had to be pulled to safety by a couple of Firsts barely out of water-wings.

  Amy had no time to think.

  Paule was being anthandled over the Flute. Her middle stretched as if she were Devlin – though it was different, a warping effect of being caught between a here and a there.

  This time, she was to be the oblation. A creature partly of the Purple, sacrificed to bring the Other Ones here.

  Amy got her hands around Rayne’s throat and pulled her up into the air.

  She was close enough to see the girl’s face. No trace of expression, even at this impertinent interruption.

  The Professor howled a protest. Bainter chanted – ants in your pants backwards?

  Amy’s hair whipped her face. Rayne’s boater came off and her fringe flapped.

  Amy whirled around and around, fighting against the spiral. Rayne took hold – not of Amy’s wrists, but of her face. She pulled off Amy’s mask and let it fall. No longer Kentish Glory, Amy blinked and tried to adjust her vision. Rayne opened her mouth, wider than Amy thought possible, and made a tube of her throat. Tiny crawling things poured up from her gullet, over her tongue, between her teeth.

  Ants spewed into Amy’s face, getting in her mouth, her eyes, her nose. The insects bit and stung. A thousand pinpricks of venom.

  Amy’s face was on fire. She had no sense of what was up or down.

  Together, Amy and Rayne collided with the last standing mast of the Johanna Pike.

  They fell out of the air in an embrace of enemies, and hit the deck.

  Amy felt something break – it was only wood!

  Purple lightning struck, making glass clusters in the sand and jagged streaks on the cavern walls. Some Black Skirts were shocked by the flail of electric discharge.

  The smell of burned hair and baked skin!

  Rayne, queen demoted to worker, crawled towards Paule and the Flute. Amy hung on to Rayne’s blazer.

  She was still choking on and spitting out ants.

  Rayne shrugged off Amy’s hands but couldn’t get away from her mental hooks. Amy was dragged across uneven planks, scraping her knees. She pushed herself up until she was on her feet, but kept invisible reins on Rayne, trying to hold her back. Inch by inch, Rayne got away from her.

  Paule’s legs were pulled into the Flute, but she held fast to a chain. Below her waist, she trailed off into a shimmer.

  The Professor and Bainter struggled to get to Paule, but the spiral swirl pushed them away. The maw of the Purple closed around what it wanted and Paule was stuck. She wouldn’t be swallowed but she couldn’t escape.

  ‘Gogoth,’ shouted Professor Rayne. ‘Stop that girl!’

  Amy realised the ‘that girl’ was her.

  The chauffeur loped across the deck with an ape-gait. He seemed expert in getting about in high winds and with topsy-turvy gravity. She couldn’t let Rayne go and turn her mind to the problem of him.

  So that was it then.

  The brief, inglorious flare of Kentish Glory!

  Gogoth picked up pace, but stalled as three girls jumped on him, gripping his knees, his arms and his chest and toppling him over.

  Frecks, Light Fingers… and Kali!

  The spell, apparently, was lifting. This close to the oblation, the Queen had cast off all the inessential workers… Amy had a sense that, all around, Black Skirts were coming to their senses, then losing them again as they discovered they were in a deep dark cavern where the world tilted and all around were monsters.

  Only a few recovered presence of mind to do anything.

  Kali was whipping Gogoth’s swollen skull with her skipping rope.

  ‘Go away, mi-go,’ she shouted. ‘You’re not wanted, yeti.’

  Evidently, she recognised the chauffeur and knew what he was.

  Kali, awake, was in a righteous fury. Gogoth was beaten down. A sodden Red Flame, hood torn away, loomed up.

  Kali uttered a long stream of insults in several languages.

  ‘You did this to me,’ she said. ‘You’re the dirty rat that killed my ma! And you tried to kill me!’

  Mr Chattopadhyay’s face was stretched and pale. His eyes were watery. Amid all this, he was shocked and upset…

  ‘Kali, no,’ he said. ‘I tried to spare you this. I tried to get you away from this place before this started. You are my best beloved, and this – what I do here – is for you. I will give you an empire, an empire on many worlds. You should not stand with them.’

  Kali turned her back on her father, and slammed two Black Skirts’ heads together. She started kicking Gogoth in the hump, tears running down her cheeks, more ashamed of her father now than ever, more ashamed even than angry.

  ‘Kali,’ pleaded Red Flame weakly. He lost his footing and fell back into seaweed.

  ‘I don’t want an empire,’ said Kali. ‘I want my mother.’

  Amy focused everything on Rayne and Paule. Her temples throbbed.

  Rayne had crawled up on to the foredeck and was within grabbing distance of Paule. She was still muttering…

  ‘Ants in your pants, take… another chance…’

  She got her hand on Paule’s forehead and pushed…

  It was as if she were shoving the girl underwater. Paule lost her grip on the chain and slid into the shimmer, her body trailing off and twisting like a hundred-foot scarf. Amy ran over and tried to take hold of Paule’s hands, but was too late. Paule’s fingers brushed Amy’s palms as she was sucked downwards by a powerful undercurrent.

  Paule looked up, eyes infinitely sad, and her face sank through the shimmer. The Purple light closed over her.

  The oblation was made.

  ‘No,’ Amy shouted. ‘No. This will not happen.’

  The Flute was whirling, irising wider open. Through the hole in everything, she saw Dora Paule tumbling away like a rag doll.

  Like Marsh diving into the water, Amy dived through the shimmer.

  Into the Purple!

  XIII: A Reunion of the Moth Club

  DREARCLIFF GRANGE HAD gone to War. The cricket pitch was a dig-for-victory potato field. A tarpaulin was battened down over the Heel. A poster outside the Playhouse read ‘be like Dad – keep Mum!’ Sandbags were packed around the Budgies and the Swanage windows blacked out.

  Everything was smaller than Amy remembered… though she knew that was because she’d been small herself when she was first at School. The place hadn’t changed much but she had. An Old Girl rather than a girl. A Sixth in a braid-trimmed blazer sauntered past and Amy went tight inside, worrying whether her seams were straight. Then she remembered she was grown up… and relaxed. Whips couldn’t notch her. No prep, no swede, no Removal. Things she’d hated she now thought of fondly – except Sidonie Gryce, of course.

  The smell from Hypatia Hall was an acrid mnemonic, taking her back to scrapes, stinks and the time Francesca Stone sent half the
Fifth to the Infirmary by concocting mustard gas ‘by accident’ in the Chem Lab. Three children – Firsts? – skipping in the Quad chilled her to the bone. Good grief, there was that rhyme again…

  …ants in your pants, all the way from France…

  It had been extinguished, for obvious reasons, after the Fall of Rayne, but must have lingered in the collective memory of Drearcliff to be revived by girls who had no idea what it had once meant. A whip with an ARP armlet – she looked twelve – came along and broke up the skipping circle, which was a relief. Amy trusted the words had lost their power. Without an Ant Queen, the rhyme could no more breach the Purple than ‘Ring-a-Ring-a-Rosy’ could spread the Black Plague.

  Walking from the car park – School had a car park! – she had strayed near the woods and found no trace of the Runnel and the Flute. That was done with three or four wars ago. It wasn’t even in Kentish Glory’s Top Five Worst Perils. Since then, they’d all been busy… the Wizard War, the Dawn of the Kali-Yuga, the Water War and the Current War…

  It was late afternoon, night falling fast thanks to the blackout. Girls walked by in groups, chatting and joshing. Their short skirts, smart-fit blazers and rakish berets were more stylish than the scratchy, baggy uniform stuck on her generation by the long-out-of-business Dosson, Chappell & Co. Drearcliff kit was now supplied by Tanqueray – For Girls, who streamlined skirts and padded shoulders.

  As was proper, the girls didn’t know or care who Amy was.

  Had she even noticed Old Girls when she was a young one? Ex-convicts must have pitched up at School on missions like this, grown women invisible to growing girls. Even in her day, there were reunions and state visits. Some of these children might be the daughters of her contemporaries. She knew Hannah Absalom, Charlotte Knowles and Marigold de Vere had girls in School… was there a new Radical Rita or Miss Memory, defacing the Heel or coming top in every scheduled test?