‘But the Stain is coming … we only just managed to get away from it. And if you think we’ve only been away for twenty minutes, it could be here before we know it.’
‘Get these children through the wallpaper,’ said Mrs Crawford. ‘I’ll wait here with Epiphany for as long as I can.’
‘I can’t leave you here,’ said Jessica. ‘I can’t leave Piff, either.’
‘If you take her back and you can’t get an ambulance for her, she’s going to die.’
‘I can’t leave her! What am I going to do?’
It was then that the stone angel said, ‘You were told before, Jessica. You have to wash away the Stain.’
‘How can I wash it away? There’s much too much of it!’
‘Where do you think this land came from? These trees, these hills?’
‘The pattern on my bedroom wallpaper. What does that have to do with it?’
‘So where do you think the Stain came from?’
Jessica stared at the angel, and suddenly she realized what it was trying to tell her. ‘The Stain came from my wallpaper too. There’s a stain on my wallpaper, that’s what caused it, and all I have to do is wash it off!’
‘Go, then,’ said the angel, with a gentle smile. ‘Go as quick as you can, and you can still save your friend.’
Jessica stood up. As she did so, however, Renko laid a hand on her shoulder.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I think we’re too late.’
Between the cemetery and the overgrown garden which led to the wallpaper, a thick black tide was already pouring across the grass, a tide that carried sickening carcasses, tangled ribcages and heaps of stinking, hairy slime.
‘It’s the Stain,’ Jessica told Mrs Crawford. ‘It’s cut us off.’
Screams in the Dark
‘What can we do now?’ asked Elica. ‘We can only pray.’
‘Can’t we wade through it?’ said Martin.
‘I’ll go,’ David volunteered. ‘It’s only muck, isn’t it? I put my hand down the toilet once, when I dropped my watch.’
‘The Stain will drag you down and drown you,’ said the stone angel. ‘It is deeper and darker than the worst deed that any man can commit.’
‘Then what can we do?’ asked Jessica.
‘We’re all going to die,’ said Phoebe. ‘I knew we would, as sure as clocks are clocks. Tickity-tock, tickity-tock!’
Mrs Crawford stood up and said, ‘I’ll have a try. I’ve already had a very long life.’
‘No!’ Jessica protested. ‘You heard what the angel said: you’ll be dragged down and drowned, and all for nothing!’
‘There is one way,’ said the stone angel. ‘Every statue has a gift – a gift that was given by whoever carved it. If a statue so wishes, it can move, just once, but only once. Many statues never use that gift; they prefer to stay still forever, happy in the knowledge that they could move if they wanted to. Some statues give their gift to people who need it more than they do. That’s why disabled people touch the statues of saints, in the hope that they can walk again.’
‘I don’t know what you’re trying to say,’ Jessica interrupted impatiently. ‘Look, the Stain’s pouring into the garden!’
Joel started to cry again, and Margaret picked him up, but Jessica could see by the expression on her face that she was just as frightened as her baby brother. A crackling fork of lightning hit a nearby tree and set its branches alight, like a terrible candelabrum, and then the sky was split by a deafening rumble of thunder.
‘I have a gift which all angels have,’ said the stone angel. ‘I can fly … just once, if I want to. Or else I can give that gift to somebody else. To you, Jessica, so that you can cross the Stain and reach your wallpaper again.’
‘What?’ said Jessica, in disbelief.
‘Come here,’ said the stone angel. ‘Stand in front of me, and let me fold my wings around you.’
‘I won’t be able to fly,’ said Jessica.
‘How many things have you seen here that you didn’t think possible? Did you think that roses could talk to you, or that your wardrobe could try to eat you alive? Come here, child, there isn’t much time.’
‘Go on, Jess,’ Renko urged her. ‘What else are we going to do?’
Jessica felt a brief warm surge of happiness that Renko had given her a nickname. Jess. Hesitantly, Jessica walked up to the angel and stood in front of it. The Stain was pouring thickly into the cemetery now, between the gravestones, and there were screams and groans and sickly wallowing noises.
The angel smiled down at Jessica so blindly and sweetly that Jessica felt a lump in her throat. Then it folded its wide wings around her and embraced her, and even though its wings were carved from stone she felt as if they were real feathers, soft and gray, and that here in the angel’s embrace she was as close to heaven as she would ever get while she was alive.
‘Now,’ said the angel, and took its wings away. Jessica turned, and all of the others were looking at her expectantly.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ said Jessica, in desperation. ‘Do I flap my arms? What?’
‘My darling, you just fly,’ said the angel.
Jessica slowly extended her arms, as wide as she could, and it was then that she felt the most extraordinary fizzing sensation passing through her, from her head to her toes. At the same time, she literally shone, like one of the Light People, and she could see her light illuminate the faces of all the Pennington children, and Renko, Elica and Mrs Crawford, as if they were witnessing a miracle.
Which, in a way, they were. Jessica rose silently from the grass, with her arms still outstretched, and glided over the cemetery gardens, over the Stain, a golden kite without a string. She flew toward the overgrown garden, and without stopping she flew straight toward the wallpaper pattern. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and when she opened them again she was standing in her bedroom.
Immediately, frantically, she started searching for the stain. It wasn’t behind the curtains. It wasn’t behind her dressing-table mirror. She dragged out the closet and shone her flashlight behind it, but it wasn’t there, either.
‘Please, please, please,’ she repeated. She knew that the others had only a few minutes left before they were all engulfed.
She pulled out her bed and looked behind the bedhead – and there, at last, she saw it: a wide brown stain in the shape of a pig’s head, but she knew that it wasn’t really a pig’s head. It was Mrs Pennington’s blood, from the evening fifty-two years ago when her husband had stabbed her to death and left her looking as if she had been daubed all over with red paint.
Jessica opened her bedroom door and ran downstairs. Grace was in the kitchen, polishing the range. ‘You children back already?’ she said. ‘Where’s Epiphany? Upstairs? You tell that girl to come down here and start her homework!’
Without saying a word, Jessica hurtled into the scullery, picked up a zinc pail and noisily filled it with hot water. ‘What you doing there, Jessica?’ Grace wanted to know. ‘If there’s anything needs cleaning up, I can do it!’
Jessica opened the cupboard under the sink and found a scrubbing brush and a pack of scouring-powder. She limped through the kitchen and back upstairs, leaving Grace standing by the range shaking her head. ‘You just tell Epiphany to come down and make a start on her math!’
Back in her bedroom, Jessica pushed her bed further away from the wall and sloshed half the hot water onto the wallpaper. Then she sprinkled scouring powder on the brush and began to scrub at the stain as hard as she could.
‘Jessica!’ cried a voice. It was Mrs Crawford. ‘Jessica, can you hear us? You have to hurry!’
‘The Stain’s almost here!’ shouted Renko. ‘Please, Jessica! Faster!’
Jessica scrubbed at the wallpaper, holding the brush in both hands, but the stain was so old that she couldn’t make any impression on it. As she scrubbed, however, a small ribbon of damp wallpaper was rucked up and torn away, then another. She dropped the brush and began to tear the pap
er away from the wall, until the stain was completely ripped away. She crumpled up the stained wallpaper, opened the bedroom window and threw it out into the snow.
‘I’ve done it!’ she shouted. ‘I’ve got rid of it!’
She listened, but there was no answer.
‘It’s gone!’ she called. ‘I tore it off and threw it out of the window!’
Still no reply.
She didn’t know if she ought to go back through the wallpaper. She was frightened of what she might see, and what might happen to her if the Stain had taken over everything. But she couldn’t leave Renko and Elica and Epiphany behind, nor Mrs Crawford, nor the Pennington children.
She hesitated for a moment, and as she hesitated she heard the phone ringing in the hallway downstairs. The lines must have been repaired, which meant that she could phone for an ambulance for Piff. That decided her. She jumped up onto her bed and threw herself through the wallpaper.
At once, Jessica was almost blinded by lightning, and deafened by the most hideous roaring and screaming she had ever heard. Rain was lashing onto the overgrown garden, beating down the rose-bushes and flattening the grass. In an instant she was soaked, and her hair was plastered to her face.
Lightning struck again and again, walking across the clouds like fiery stilts, so that it was hard to see what was happening. But as she struggled across the overgrown garden, one hand lifted to protect her face from the rain, she saw that the Stain looked as if it were boiling. Great gouts of oily black liquid were jumping into the air, and bits and pieces of bones and bodies were jumping up with them.
Jessica saw a headless skeleton spring up and perform a jerky, broken dance before scattering back into the Stain in disassembled pieces. Something that looked like a rotting dolphin was thrown up too, in a ghastly parody of a live dolphin leaping through the sea.
But, for all its screaming and grinding and furious boiling, the Stain was crawling away. It had already drawn back from the hedges around the cemetery, and as Jessica made her way back across the grass she saw that it was ebbing faster and faster. It had left the ground covered in greasy, stinking slime, but she knew that she had washed it away.
She reached the cemetery. The Pennington children were clustered close together, holding each other’s hands, and although they looked so pale they were clearly relieved. Mrs Crawford was stroking Epiphany’s forehead and Renko was kneeling beside her too, feeling her pulse.
Elica said, ‘You are the bravest. You have said to the Stain, out!’ And she came up and put her arms around Jessica and held her tight.
Jessica said, ‘The phones are working again … we can take Piff back. And we can call Dr Leeming, too, to bring five doses of doxycycline.’
Renko stood up. ‘You did it, Jessica. You beat it. We’re all real proud of you. I mean it.’
There was a last grumble of thunder and the skies began to clear. It was morning again, and the sun was shining. High above them they saw a V-shaped formation of nutcrackers, flying who could only guess where.
‘Come on,’ said Mrs Crawford, ‘let’s be as quick as we can.’ She picked up one corner of her raincoat, while Renko, Martin and David took hold of the others. Led by Phoebe and Joel, they left the cemetery and began to walk toward the overgrown garden.
Jessica turned and looked at the stone angel, its wings still wet with rain.
‘Go along,’ said the angel. ‘Your future’s waiting for you.’
‘I’ll come back,’ Jessica promised.
‘I don’t think you’ll ever need to. What you have done here – the things that you have seen and experienced – they will stand you in good stead for the rest of your life.’
‘Goodbye,’ said Jessica, and followed the others toward the wallpaper pattern. Mrs Crawford had already carried Epiphany through, and only Margaret was left.
She never knew if it was a freak accident, or if the Stain were capable of wreaking its revenge, but as she came up to Margaret there was a devastating crack of lightning, and she was flung, stunned, toward the wallpaper.
Waking
She opened her eyes. The sun was shining in bars across the ceiling, and it was so bright that she could hardly look at it. Her head was throbbing and her mouth felt as if somebody had spooned sand into it.
Dr Leeming leaned over her bed, the sunlight gleaming on his bald head. ‘Good, you’re awake. How are you feeling?’
‘I don’t know.’ She tried to lift her head from the pillow and look around. There was a jug of water next to her bed with bubbles in it, and a vase of red chrysanthemums. ‘Where am I?’
‘You’re in hospital. You had a very nasty fall at school. Banged your head.’
‘School? How long have I been here?’
‘Since yesterday afternoon.’
‘Where’s Epiphany? Did you manage to save Epiphany?’
Dr Leeming blinked at her. ‘Epiphany Russell? Grace Russell’s girl?’
‘That’s right. Did you manage to get her to hospital?’
‘Why would Epiphany need to go to hospital?’
‘She was knocked over by a car … she was dying.’
Dr Leeming smiled and shook his head. ‘I think I would have heard about it if she had been.’
‘What about Renko and Elica and the Pennington children?’
‘I think your brain must have been making up stories. That often happens when you suffer a severe concussion.’
‘No, I couldn’t have made it up. I couldn’t.’
Dr Leeming said, ‘What sometimes happens is, little subconscious anxieties get blown up into quite believable dramas. It’s the same mechanism as dreaming, except that the patient is totally convinced that these dramas really happened.’
Jessica lay back; she couldn’t think what to say. She had gone through the wallpaper, she knew she had. Telling her that it was nothing but ‘quite believable dramas’ was ridiculous, like telling her that her whole life had been nothing but a ‘quite believable drama’.
‘Listen,’ said Dr Leeming. ‘You get yourself some sleep and I’ll go call your grandparents and tell them you’ve come round. They’ve been very worried about you. Would you like anything to drink? Coke, maybe?’
Jessica whispered, ‘No … no, thank you.’
After Dr Leeming had left she lay and stared at the ceiling and quite unexpectedly she began to cry.
She left hospital the following afternoon at three o’clock. It was much gloomier outside, and it was snowing again.
‘You’re quiet,’ remarked Grandpa Willy as he walked along the corridor with her.
‘It’s going to take Jessica a few days to readjust,’ Dr Leeming explained. ‘Bring her in to see me again on Monday, so that I can make sure she’s OK.’
Halfway along the corridor, a door opened and a nurse came out, smiling at Dr Leeming as she did so. Jessica glanced into the room, where a very pale young girl was lying in bed watching television. With a jolt, she saw that it was Phoebe.
She stopped, and Grandpa Willy said, ‘What is it, Jessica? Are you OK?’
‘That little girl – who is she?’
‘We don’t know her name,’ said Dr Leeming. ‘That’s one of the kids who were found wandering around near Allen’s Corners yesterday afternoon.’
‘I heard about that,’ said Grandpa Willy. ‘They were all sick, weren’t they? And they all had amnesia. Didn’t even know what their own names were.’
‘That’s right. They were all suffering from RMSF … that’s Rocky Mountain spotted fever. It can be pretty nasty if you don’t treat it in time.’
‘But you had some doxycycline,’ said Jessica.
‘Yes,’ said Dr Leeming, in surprise. ‘How do you know about doxycycline?’
Jessica didn’t answer him, but went to the open door. She stared at Phoebe for a long time and then, when Phoebe eventually looked across at her, she said, ‘Hello.’
Phoebe frowned. She didn’t say anything and it was obvious to Jessica that she didn’t kno
w who she was.
‘Are you better now?’ Jessica asked her.
Phoebe nodded.
Jessica turned to Dr Leeming. ‘How many others were there, apart from her?’
‘Four – five altogether. We think they’re all brothers and sisters. The police are trying to find their parents.’
‘It’s time for me to go now,’ Jessica told Phoebe.
‘Tickity-tock,’ said Phoebe, and went back to watching television.
They drove back to the house through the softly falling snow. Grandpa Willy was chattering away as usual, but Jessica stayed silent. They passed the cemetery where the stone angel stood over the Pennington children’s memorial. They passed Mrs Crawford’s house, half buried in snow, and Jessica saw Mrs Crawford standing at her window, illuminated by orange firelight, just about to draw the curtains.
Mrs Crawford saw her and waved, but she didn’t wave back.
In the kitchen, Grace was washing dishes and Epiphany was sitting at the kitchen table, braiding colored wool.
‘Hi, Jessica, how you feeling?’
‘I’m OK. Still got a headache.’
‘That was a terrible thing that happened to you,’ said Grace. ‘Why, you could have been killed. I hope your grandpa takes that school for all the money they got.’
‘I’m OK,’ Jessica repeated. Then, to Epiphany, ‘What are you making?’
‘Tassels, to put in my hair. Beninese women believe that they keep away evil thoughts.’
‘Piff—’ said Jessica.
Epiphany stopped braiding and looked up at her.
‘Nothing,’ said Jessica. ‘Just be careful crossing the road.’
As Jessica left the kitchen, Epiphany turned to Grace and pulled a bewildered face. ‘Now what was that all about?’
In the back garden, cloven-footed in the snow, the statue of Pan looked slyly up at her bedroom window.
She tugged out her bed a little way. She had to see if there really was a stain on the wallpaper in the shape of a pig’s head. But a large triangular piece of wallpaper had been torn away, so it was impossible to say.
The Hidden World Page 16