Mrs. Proctor nearly jumped out of her skin and stumbled backward before regaining her composure and managing a thin smile.
“No! Um … no. Just checking on you before we go to bed. Did you drink your hot chocolate?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Belladonna politely.
“Right. Well, then, off you go back to sleep. It’s a school day tomorrow!”
She gave an unconvincing little chuckle and left the room. Belladonna didn’t move as the door clicked shut and Mrs. Proctor’s feet scurried away down the stairs again. Then she leapt out of bed and peered through the gap in the bedroom curtains into the center of Shady Gardens.
Mr. Proctor was there, setting something out on the ground as Mrs. Proctor ran out of the house. They spoke together, quietly at first, but soon their voices betrayed anger and accusation, although Belladonna couldn’t hear exactly what was being said.
She smiled to herself—it might only be a small triumph, but at least now she felt a little more in control of things. She slid back into bed, intending to stay awake all night but drifted off into her first proper sleep for a week.
* * *
Breakfast the following day was tense and silent. The Proctors glared at each other over the toast and cereal, and it was clearly only with much effort that they managed a cheery smile and good-bye to Belladonna as she headed out to school.
It was another gray day, but Belladonna felt as though the sun was gleaming as she strode along the familiar streets. History was first and was interesting as they finally left the confines of monasteries and convents to venture into the much more exciting world of kings, knights, serfs, and feudalism. Then French (boring), Math (confusing—she’d never really got the hang of it since missing all those classes last term), and Biology (clipping bits of paper onto geraniums).
As the lunch bell rang and the assembled hordes charged toward the cafeteria, Steve passed quickly by Belladonna and pointed upward. She nodded and followed him upstairs, past Miss Parker’s office to the top floor and the attic.
Elsie was already there.
“Did the Wild Hunt come?” she asked eagerly. “What did they say? Had they seen her?”
Belladonna and Steve filled her in on the events of the previous night as Elsie sat, rapt.
“How did you get out?” she asked, when they had finished.
“As quickly as I could,” said Steve. “Before the police car reached the end of the road.”
“What about the Proctors?”
“They weren’t pleased, but I don’t think they suspected anything. Well, until last night.”
She told them about pouring the chocolate down the sink and Mrs. Proctor’s reaction when she discovered that she was still awake.
“Yowza!” said Steve. “Could you see what they were doing outside?”
Belladonna shook her head. “No, I was too far away.”
“We really have to get the nine thingies. They’re the only thing we’ve got to go on.”
“Absolutely!” said Elsie. “I mean, really, if you can’t trust people to make proper hot chocolate, what is the world coming to?”
“Right,” said Steve, delving into his bag. “Train passes! Well, season tickets, really.”
He held up two laminated cards triumphantly.
“Where on earth did you get those?” asked Belladonna, genuinely amazed.
“My Dad gets them every year. One for me, one for him, and one for my Mum. For when we visit my Gran in the Lake District. My Mum left hers behind when she left, so you get to be her. I’ll be me.”
He handed the card to Belladonna, who stared at it in admiration for a moment, then looked more closely.
“Hang on,” she said. “This has her date of birth on it.”
“That’s alright—they never look at them properly. I think we should go tonight.”
“What? Tonight? I can’t.”
“You have to get out of there, Belladonna, and we have to stop the Shadow People getting in.”
“I know, but the Proctors are on alert now and we don’t even know what we’re looking for. And even if we do get them, I’ll still have to go back. Plus we don’t know who the ghost with the true heart is.”
“The what?” Elsie looked from one to the other, confused.
“It’s what we think the second rhyme means,” explained Belladonna. “Find one with a heart whose time is through / Yet constant holds with brightness true.”
“Wouldn’t that be a monk?” asked Steve.
“A monk?”
“Well, they spent all their days praying, didn’t they?”
“Yes, but if you’d been paying any attention at all in History, you’d also know that knights and lords who’d spent their lives rampaging over the countryside, killing and maiming all and sundry, often took holy orders for a few years at the end of their lives to try and rack up some divine goodwill.”
“Oh. I missed that part.”
“Obviously.”
“Well, then how are we supposed to find him/her/it?”
Belladonna shrugged. It seemed like such a ridiculous requirement.
“Umm … actually,” said Elsie, “I think it might be me.”
“What?” said Belladonna and Steve in unison.
“Look.”
Elsie opened the purse that was built into her sturdy Edwardian school uniform belt and took out a small silver locket. She opened it and showed it to them.
On one side was a small sepia photograph of two people who Belladonna assumed were Elsie’s parents and on the other an engraving in a formal, spidery script.
“I can’t make it out,” said Steve. “What does it say?”
“It says ‘For Elsie, Our True Heart,’” said Belladonna.
“I lost the chain,” explained Elsie. “They gave it to me on my tenth birthday. I thought it was a bit soppy at the time, but…”
“It’s brilliant!” said Steve. “Let’s go tomorrow. What do you say?”
“How?” said Elsie. “I haunt the school; I can’t go anywhere else. I can’t even go into the garden.”
“Oh. Right.”
They sat in gloomy silence for a while.
“There has to be a way,” said Belladonna.
“You can only haunt the school?”
“Yes, I said I—”
“What if we take a bit of the school with us?” said Steve.
“What, like a brick?”
“A brick?” said Elsie, her voice rising in indignation. “How am I going to manifest on a brick? I’m a ghost, not a circus performer!”
Steve laughed. “I’d pay money to see that! But it probably shouldn’t be anything too heavy. I was thinking more along the lines of the front-door mat.”
“D’you think it would work?” asked Belladonna.
“No,” said Elsie.
“There’s only one way to find out!” said Steve, jumping to his feet. “I’ll meet you outside. Round the back, by the bench you go to when you sulk.”
“It’s not sulking, it’s thinking!” said Belladonna, but Steve was already halfway down the stairs.
“Just kidding!” he yelled back.
“This won’t work,” said Elsie.
“How do you know?” asked Belladonna. “Anyway, why not try?”
Elsie shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“It’s not like you to look on the dark side. You’re always Miss Can-do-gung-ho-let’s-go.”
“Well … maybe I don’t want to go anywhere.”
Belladonna looked at her. For the first time since they’d met, Elsie looked genuinely worried.
“You don’t have to,” she said finally. “Not if you don’t want to.”
Elsie looked at her for a moment, then smiled.
“Yes, I do,” she said. “This is important. I’m just afraid that if I leave the school, I won’t be able to get back. Or that if I try to leave, I’ll vanish into … I don’t know … somewhere. But that’s the sort of thing soldiers have to cope with eve
ry day, isn’t it?”
“Well, not the vanishing.”
“No. But you know what I mean. The not knowing. And if they got all whiny about it, Britain wouldn’t have an empire, would she? And then where would we be?”
“Well, like I said before, we don’t actually have a—”
“Right-ho! Down to the garden. Last one there’s a rotten egg!”
And with that she vanished. Belladonna sighed. She hated to see Elsie unhappy, but her lows were so brief and her boundless enthusiasm the rest of the time was so … bouncy, it was really exhausting just to be around her.
She made her way down the stairs and out to the bench under the bushes. No one else was there, so she sat on the bench and tried to pretend that everything was fine and she would be going home to her parents on Lychgate Lane after school and her Gran would be coming for dinner and then they’d all watch Staunchly Springs and she’d go to bed in her own room with the curtains that didn’t quite meet and she’d watch the stars through the gap until she fell asleep.
“Hello! What are you thinking about?”
Elsie’s face protruded from the wall like a mask, her former gloom now completely gone.
“Nothing,” said Belladonna, smiling.
At that moment the door crashed open and Steve appeared with the school’s front-door mat rolled up under his arm.
“Sorry it took so long,” he said. “I had to wait until no one was around.”
He unrolled the mat and lay it on the ground near the bench. It wasn’t the usual thick fiber front-door mat but a rectangle of old carpet that usually sat in a sort of trough just inside the front door so that the piece of carpet was level with the floor. Belladonna had always imagined it was left from when the house was just a home. There was something about going to all the trouble of making a trough for a front-door mat that seemed so quintessentially Victorian.
“Right,” said Steve, stepping back. “See if you can appear on that.”
Elsie nodded and vanished from the wall. There was a long pause and Belladonna and Steve looked at each other in the manner of people who are just about to admit defeat, when all of a sudden Elsie, in all her Edwardian glory, was standing between them in the garden.
“Ta-da!”
“It works!” yelled Belladonna, breaking into a broad grin and then realizing she’d been a bit loud. “Oops, sorry.”
“Yes!” said Steve. “Right. I checked the railway timetables this morning at home—”
“Railway timetables!” gushed Elsie. “This is just like Sherlock Holmes!”
“What?”
“He was always checking the railway timetables. Well, the ones he didn’t know by heart.”
“Riiight,” said Steve. “Okay, so there’s a train at ten that should get us there at about eleven thirty.”
“Can’t we go earlier?” asked Belladonna.
“No, the passes are for off-peak. Oh, and we’ll have to change at Lancaster.”
“Change?” Belladonna’s heart sank. She hated changing trains—she was always sure that she wouldn’t be able to find the right platform and she’d get left behind.
“Can I sit by the window?” asked Elsie eagerly. “I love trains.”
“Erm … well, I suppose. If the train isn’t crowded.”
“So,” said Belladonna, “are you taking her home tonight?”
“What?!”
Belladonna grinned. Steve clearly hadn’t thought this through.
“Well, someone has to take the mat home and it can’t be me.”
“I’m … um … I suppose.”
“Oh, this is getting better and better!” Elsie was so excited her curls had started bobbing up and down as she bounced with glee. “We can watch television! I’ve only ever seen school programming, you know.”
“Well, I’m not sure that my Dad—”
“Oh, go on,” said Belladonna mischievously. “He won’t be able to see her.”
Steve glared at her and was about to speak when the bell for the end of lunch sounded.
“Oh, that’s you!” said Elsie. “See you later!”
And she was gone. Steve rolled up the carpet and shoved it into his bag.
“It’s sticking out,” said Belladonna. “Can you fold it?”
He sighed deeply, took it out, rolled it more loosely, and bent it in half. The bag looked ridiculously packed (particularly when you considered that this was Steve Evans and he didn’t usually carry much around in the way of books or homework).
“Okay?” he said testily.
“You should’ve seen your face!” grinned Belladonna. “Are you going to keep it in your bedroom?”
“No, I am not,” said Steve. “It’s going to be rolled up in my bag by the door ready for morning.”
They walked into the building and on to the art room, where they spent the afternoon trying to draw a vase with some flowers and fruit. Belladonna thought hers wasn’t too bad until she got a glimpse of Lucy Fisher’s version. Her vase looked shiny and the flowers were perfect and delicate, while Belladonna’s looked more like Amazonian trees. On the other hand, Steve’s looked like an office building being attacked by huge plant monsters, though she suspected that was probably on purpose. Miss Barnstaple, the Art teacher, tried to stifle a smile when she saw it, but without much success.
At the final bell, everyone handed in their drawings and headed for the exits. Belladonna looked around for Steve, but there was no sign of him. She smiled and wondered if Elsie was going to get to see any proper TV.
14
Trains and Treasure
THE NEXT MORNING, Belladonna felt terrible. The Proctors hadn’t offered her any hot chocolate before bed, but they must have slipped whatever it was into something else because the dreams were back, only this time they were worse and she felt as if the Shadow People were pulling her into the standing stones and away to the Darkness and oblivion that the Leader had talked about.
She dragged herself from bed and went down to breakfast, feeling as if she hadn’t slept at all. The Proctors, on the other hand, were extremely cheery, joking with each other about the length of time the building was taking but that it would all be done soon and wouldn’t that be nice. For the first time, Belladonna realized that they weren’t really talking about the building at all.
She finished her breakfast as quickly as she could, then grabbed her bag and headed off for town and the train station. With every step, she half expected Mr. Proctor to pull up in his car and ask her why she was heading in the opposite direction to Dullworth’s, so when she saw the old station and the entrance to the waiting room, she dashed inside. She was far too early, of course, but there wasn’t anywhere else to go and the station was comfortingly crowded. She stood back for a while and watched the commuters anxiously checking their watches or chatting eagerly on cell phones while they waited for the trains to take them to work.
As soon as there was a seat available, she settled down to watch the waiting room television and wait for Steve.
As it turned out, he was early too.
“Oh, you’re here!” he said, as he marched through the door, leaning slightly to one side with the weight of his bag. “Whoa, you look awful! Did you drink the hot chocolate again?”
“No, but I think they put it in something else. I thought you’d sleep in.”
“Huh! You must be joking! We watched TV all last night, then this morning my Dad found the mat in my bag and had it spread out on the sitting room floor, so she was right there again, wasn’t she? And … honestly, Belladonna, I like cartoons as much as anyone, but it’s all she wanted to watch.”
“What did your Dad say about the mat?”
“Nothing much. He didn’t know it belonged to the school or anything, he just thought it was odd.”
“Which it is.”
“I told him it was something to do with an art project.”
Belladonna never failed to be impressed by how good Steve was at thinking on his feet. If it had been
her in the same situation, she knew she would have ummed and urred and then she’d have got that look on her face, the one that she could always feel whenever she was about to lie. The one that she was sure telegraphed to anyone looking at her that she was not to be believed.
“Did he believe you?”
“Yeah.” He dropped his bag on the floor and sat down next to her. “Actually, he’s not really bothered that much anymore. Since Mum went, it’s like he can’t really concentrate.”
Belladonna smiled. What she really wanted to do, of course, was tell him her suspicions about his mother, but common sense told her that it wouldn’t go down well, so she pretended to watch the waiting room TV instead.
The crowds of commuters slowly thinned as train after train arrived and departed, taking them to offices and businesses all over the region. Then, after what felt like hours, the train for Fenchurch finally arrived, and they clambered on and found some seats in an empty carriage. The train heaved out of the station and picked up speed as it whizzed past office buildings, schools, and row upon countless row of houses. Then it was out in the countryside and past an endless patchwork of wintry fields punctuated by drystone walls and skeletal bushes and trees.
The conductor came by and they flashed their passes. Belladonna was ready to try to explain why she had someone else’s train pass, but the conductor barely glanced at them before he continued on into the next carriage. Steve waited until he had gone, then leaned forward across the table.
“It’s usually better if you don’t act so surprised.”
“Sorry. I’ve never done anything like this before.”
She’d certainly never been this far away from home by herself and couldn’t believe that no one was surprised to see two twelve-year-olds traveling alone. And she couldn’t shake the anxiety over what exactly they were going to do if they did get caught—neither of them had any money to speak of and certainly not enough to buy two train tickets.
Steve clearly had no such worries. Instead, he shrugged off his coat, reached for his bag, and produced two large books.
“Look,” he said, pushing them across the table to Belladonna, “they’re books about stone circles. I thought if you looked at some of the pictures, you might see the one in your dream.”
The Midnight Gate Page 14