The Four-Fingered Man

by Cerberus Jones

  As soon as Amelia arrived at school the next morning, she saw what Charlie had meant about being in the same class. At her old school, there had been nine kindy classes, five year sixes, and all the years in between were just as big. She’d assumed school would be the same here. Maybe not quite as many kids as that, but enough that she’d wanted Mum to come with her on the first day.

  As they’d walked together, Amelia had tried to say something to Mum about Tom sneaking around after Miss Ardman last night, but Mum told her not to be silly. It was like her parents just couldn’t (or wouldn’t) see how strange and suspicious he was.

  Maybe they’re right, Amelia thought. Maybe I am just imagining it all.

  James had left super early to catch the only bus into the city an hour away. He was going to the high school there, because Forgotten Bay was too small to have its own. That should have tipped Amelia off, but she was still surprised when she and Mum came around the last bend and saw a metal fence around an ordinary-looking house.

  Not that ordinary. It was painted pink and blue, and the playground was a sloping lawn that ran all the way down to a sandy beach, but it certainly wasn’t a normal school building.

  Amelia walked through the open gate, scanning her new surroundings and following the path towards the school office – always checking her mum was close, but not too close.

  They’d only made it halfway along the path before Charlie bounded up, exactly as joyful and noisy as he’d been the day before.

  ‘Amelia! You’re here!’ He ran up and grabbed her arm. ‘Hi, Mrs Walker,’ he added, dragging Amelia away with him. ‘Come on, I told everyone you’d be here today.’

  She ran with him, but faltered slightly as they turned the corner of the building and she saw the garden behind the school, full of children. Charlie yelled out, and everyone turned to look.

  In a split second, Amelia knew two things: that thanks to Charlie, she was now the centre of attention for about forty kids who were complete strangers; and – judging by the looks on some of their faces – Charlie might not be the best person to be doing the introducing.

  ‘So,’ Charlie beamed, apparently oblivious to the fact that Amelia had stopped dead behind him. ‘Everyone, this is Amelia – her family got here on Saturday. Amelia, this is everyone – so, um, that’s Dean, and Callan, and –’

  ‘Hi, I’m Sophie T,’ said a girl about Charlie’s height, standing at Amelia’s side and totally ignoring Charlie. ‘This is Sophie F, and Shani,’ she added, indicating two girls behind her.

  The three girls smiled at her, waiting, and Amelia blinked and realised she hadn’t yet said a word. ‘Uh, oh – hi! I’m Amelia … like Charlie said.’

  Sophie T ignored the mention of Charlie. She didn’t so much as glance at him as she asked, ‘Did you just move into the hotel?’

  Other kids had started to cluster around, listening as Amelia said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not the one on the hill?’ a boy gasped.

  ‘How many other hotels do we have, dummy?’ his friend scoffed.

  ‘But no-one lives there – it’s haunted!’ said someone else.

  Amelia stood, dazed. Dozens of questions were flying at her now – about Tom (Charlie was right, Tom seemed to be a local legend – a sort of cross between Bigfoot and the bogeyman), about ghosts, about why they’d come, where she’d come from, how long she’d be staying, and most of all, over and over again, ‘Aren’t you afraid to sleep there?’

  At some point a bell rang and Amelia supposed Mum must have left. She was nowhere to be seen when they started lining up for assembly, anyway.

  Assembly was on the lawn under a huge sail tied up as a shade cloth. Forgotten Bay Primary had two classes: upper and lower. Mr Whitlock took the lower class, and Amelia was with Ms Slaviero in the upper.

  ‘Good morning, everyone!’ said Ms Slaviero. ‘I’m sure you’ve all noticed by now, we have a new student starting today. Amelia Walker, won’t you come up the front and introduce yourself?’

  Amelia would rather have made a run for it into the bushes, but she walked from her place, past all the kids, and up to Ms Slaviero.

  ‘Settle down, thank you,’ said Ms Slaviero, waiting for quiet. ‘Now Amelia, tell us about yourself.’

  ‘Um … well,’ said Amelia, thinking this was somewhat ridiculous. She’d done nothing but tell people about herself since she’d arrived, but anyway … ‘I’m Amelia, and my family just moved into the Gateway Hotel.’

  To her surprise, the kids were all listening, rapt.

  ‘That’s nice,’ Ms Slaviero said, encouragingly. ‘Did you live in another hotel before coming here?’

  ‘Um, no,’ said Amelia. ‘My mum is a diplomat, and my dad is a scientist. Or was. I don’t know.’

  ‘A scientist!’ Ms Slaviero was suddenly more excited than the kids. ‘What sort?’

  ‘Some kind of astrophysicist,’ said Amelia.

  Ms Slaviero let out a little yelp of delight. ‘An astrophysicist? My favourite! We’ll have to invite him to give a talk! We could show him our telescopes! Oh, this is too good!’

  Amelia was eventually allowed to rejoin her class. For the rest of assembly, kids kept turning around to stare at her. Some of them looked at her with curiosity, others with pity, and some with a strange sort of dread. It was becoming pretty clear that living in the Gateway Hotel was a massive deal in Forgotten Bay.

  As they walked to class, Charlie was begging, ‘Can Amelia sit with me, Ms Slaviero? Can she? Please?’

  Amelia hadn’t thought about this, but now Charlie had brought it up, she was worried. She liked Charlie, she really did. She could already tell that he was funny and kind and generous. But she could also tell that being stuck with Charlie at school would make it harder for her to make friends with other people. Even saying that to herself felt disloyal and mean, but she knew it was also true.

  Luckily for Amelia, Ms Slaviero said, ‘Sorry, Charlie, we’ve already got ten kids on the Dark Side of the room, and only nine on the Light Side. I need to put Amelia with the Sophies and Shani to bring balance to the Force.’

  Amelia saw disappointment on Charlie’s face, but she couldn’t help a little guilty sigh of relief.

  As she unpacked her pencil case and put her books into her desk, the three girls whispered at her over the top of one another: ‘How old are you?’, ‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’, ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’, ‘What year were you in at your old school?’, ‘How many –’

  Smiling to herself, Amelia chanced a quick look across the room at Charlie. He caught her eye and sadly shook his head, as if profoundly sorry for her.

  By recess, Amelia had learnt that Sophie T’s sister’s rabbit was having babies, that Shani had a twin brother (Dean), and that yoyos and skipping were out, but trading cards and handball were in. And she had told them in return about doing gymnastics, and that she had a seventeen-year-old brother. With no encouragement from Amelia, all the girls had decided that he was probably gorgeous.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Amelia saw Charlie with a group of boys. She heard them joking around, talking about someone.

  ‘My dad reckons he’s a criminal,’ said one boy. ‘Why else would he spend his whole life hiding out at that dump?’

  ‘Maybe because he’s so ugly he’s embarrassed for anyone to see him?’ suggested Dean.

  With a thrill of horror, Amelia realised they were discussing Tom.

  ‘No,’ said another. ‘It’s because he’s gone crazy. My brother went up there once at night on a dare, and he heard Tom shouting to himself – like a real argument – but no-one else was there.’

  ‘I know what he is,’ said Charlie. ‘Isn’t it obvious?
Eye-patch, missing finger, he walks with a limp – he’s a pirate!’

  The boys recoiled as Charlie spoke, and Dean snorted, ‘A pirate? Are you six years old?’

  The other boys laughed. Not really cruelly, not really to be mean, but just because, Amelia could tell, they thought Charlie was an idiot. She winced in sympathy, but was soon drawn back to the Sophies’ conversation.

  The rest of the day was a blur until after the final bell, when Amelia was free to walk with Charlie back to the hotel.

  ‘Sucks that you got stuck with the Sophies,’ said Charlie as they walked along the beach road.

  ‘They’re all right.’

  ‘Sophie F’s all right, maybe. When she’s on her own. But Sophie T is so bad.’

  ‘Well, she was nice to me.’

  Charlie made a disgusted sound. ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Amelia, puffing slightly as they began to climb the steep road up to the headland. ‘Guess what happened last night? A guest arrived.’

  ‘But we’re not open yet.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So how come –’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Amelia interrupted. ‘But that’s not the weird part.’

  She told Charlie about Tom running back and forth to the hotel before the guest arrived, and then how jumpy and strange the woman had been, and then how Tom had been spying on her through the door.

  ‘Spying on the guest, or on your mum?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘I don’t know, but he was definitely spying and not just looking.’

  Charlie thought about that. ‘If Tom is a pirate, he’s probably planning to rob her.’

  Amelia almost rolled her eyes. They turned off the road, and up the long gravel driveway to the hotel. Past the overgrown rose gardens, Amelia nudged Charlie. ‘That’s her.’

  Miss Ardman was lying on an old sun-lounge by the fountain, her face turned up to the hot afternoon sun.

  ‘Hope she’s wearing sunblock,’ said Amelia. ‘You really would expect an adult to be more sensible about their skin, wouldn’t you?’

  But Charlie wasn’t listening, let alone looking at Miss Ardman. He’d been distracted by something glinting in the grass on the other side of the driveway and had gone to investigate.

  ‘Hey, check this out,’ he said.

  It was a black cylinder, with brass rings at each end and more rings in the middle.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Amelia.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It looks like lipstick for a robot.’

  Charlie looked at her scornfully, which irritated Amelia. She’d been far more polite about his stupid pirate comments. He played with the thing for a minute, then shrugged and slipped it into his pocket. He took two more steps up the hill, glanced over at Miss Ardman (at last), and froze.

  He gazed for a long while at Miss Ardman. Then he looked up at the hotel. Then down the driveway they’d just walked up. Then back at the hotel.

  ‘So, where’s her car?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If she arrived last night, how did she get here? Where’s her car?’

  Amelia shrugged. ‘Taxi?’

  ‘In Forgotten Bay?’ Charlie laughed. ‘What taxi?’

  ‘I don’t know, I didn’t hear any car.’

  ‘Well, then how did she get here? Parachute? Bicycle? She can’t have walked …’

  Amelia realised it wasn’t just the car. The whole scene seemed weird – wrong. Who would come to a hotel before it was open, or even clean, just to do some sunbaking? The beach must have been just a short walk away, why not go there?

  They trudged up the steps to the main entrance. Amelia was sweaty and weary, and didn’t care about how Miss Ardman had travelled. All she could think about was getting an ice block, pronto.

  But once they had their ice blocks, something very strange happened.

  Amelia and Charlie had both kicked off their shoes and socks in the common room on their way to the freezer, so their bare feet were soundless on the marble staircase. They were so busy sucking on their ice blocks, that Charlie (amazingly) wasn’t talking. And Amelia, who was secretly very curious about Lady Naomi and looking for any excuse to go past her room, had taken Charlie up the staircase on the guests’ side of the hotel. So they were in exactly the right place at the right time to see Tom come out of a guest’s bedroom.

  Amelia gripped Charlie’s arm and silently pointed at Tom. They watched him ease the door shut behind him and limp along the corridor to the back of the hotel.

  Amelia’s scalp prickled. She knew which room Tom had just snuck out of.

  Miss Ardman’s.

  Charlie opened his mouth to shout, but Amelia clamped her palm over his face.

  ‘Mmph, get off!’ Charlie hissed, pulling Amelia’s hand away. ‘He’s stealing or something!’

  ‘Maybe, but you can’t just –’

  She broke off, watching as Tom limped around a corner and out of sight. Amelia’s chest tightened. Tom was meant to be working for her parents. He was meant to be mowing the lawns, trimming the hedges and keeping the tennis courts swept. He was not meant to be letting himself into the hotel and prowling around the guest quarters. She tried to be logical, and not give way to the anger swirling inside.

  ‘He could just be doing some repair work,’ she whispered. ‘Maybe there was a pipe in that room that needed fixing or something.’

  ‘Then where were his tools?’ said Charlie. ‘And why be all sneaky about it? Come on, let’s see where he’s going!’

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ said Amelia. ‘But quietly. We don’t want him to –’

  Charlie, though, had already bolted along the corridor. Amelia followed, heart pounding. They ran past a dozen or more closed doors before the corridor turned and they were in the servants’ end of the wing. Here were the linen cupboards, a storeroom for brooms and mops, and the start of narrow stairs that led down the back of the hotel. And Tom.

  His hand was gripping the banister, one foot out in space and ready to descend. He started at the sight of them. None of those gold tooth-flashing smiles now. Just a glowering one-eyed scowl.

  Charlie and Amelia stopped abruptly, then Charlie said, ‘What are you doing, sneaking around up here?’

  Amelia thought that was brave, but also extremely rude, seeing as Charlie had never actually met Tom before.

  Tom’s eyes widened for a moment, but then his face crumpled back into an angry grimace. ‘I could ask you the same question.’

  ‘Us?’ said Amelia, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘I live here! What about you?’

  Tom raised an eyebrow. ‘I live here too, and I have done for far longer than you have, Amelia.’

  Amelia swallowed, suddenly wishing they’d never come up here.

  ‘So what?’ said Charlie. ‘You think that gives you the right to –’

  ‘To do my job? To attend to hotel business?’ said Tom calmly. ‘Yeah, I think it does.’

  Charlie glanced sideways at Amelia. She felt the look but refused to return it. She was too busy trying to will herself invisible.

  ‘Now,’ Tom continued, ‘why don’t you kids move along? I don’t think your parents would be too happy to find you snooping around the guest quarters, do you?’

  And with that, he limped heavily down the stairs. Amelia closed her eyes, stomach twisting. If she’d been on the wrong side of Tom before, what did he think of her now?

  ‘Amelia?’ Mum called from the other end of the hotel. ‘Is that you home? Have you got Charlie with you?’

  They ran back to the gallery end of the corridor and leant over the railing to see her looking out from the library, a phone pressed to her ear. The phone cord stretched tight behind her, so she couldn’t come out any further.

 
‘Mum!’ Amelia was flooded with relief. ‘Tom was up here – in Miss Ardman’s room!’

  ‘Tom? Really?’ Mum frowned.

  Amelia and Charlie glanced at each other.

  ‘I hope you two didn’t bother him while he was working,’ said Mum, taking away any thread of hope she’d be on their side. ‘Oh, err, hang on.’ She turned her attention to the phone. ‘I’m sorry, could you just give me a moment? Well, yes, I know I was waiting on hold for you, but now I just need thirty seconds to – right, very kind of you, I’m sure.’ She covered the mouthpiece, and turned back to them. ‘Look, never mind, I’ve got to take this. But don’t distract Tom, OK? You can see how much work this place needs before we can open.’

  ‘But, Mum –’

  Mum held up a finger. ‘Not now. Go on – scoot. I’m busy.’

  ‘Come on, Charlie,’ muttered Amelia. ‘Let’s go to my room.’

  ‘Hotel business,’ Charlie sneered, following her across the gallery to the family wing. ‘Yeah, right! As if that’s what Tom was doing!’

  ‘Yeah,’ Amelia breathed. She crept into her room and over to the bay window, beckoning Charlie to follow. ‘That’s why I want to see where he goes.’

  ‘Why are you whispering?’ said Charlie, in his usual voice.

  ‘Shh!’

  Amelia crouched on the window seat, and saw Tom trudge down the steps, then pause and glare at the hotel. He took a step back towards them, then thought better of it and continued across the grass in the direction of his house.

  ‘Go on,’ Amelia murmured. ‘Keep going … don’t hang around here …’

  Finally, Tom stomped off down the driveway and across the lawn to the magnolia trees.

  Amelia breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘You know,’ said Charlie, ‘Tom must have seen that woman sunbaking. We did.’

  ‘Miss Ardman? So?’

  ‘So, if Tom knew she was out there, then what did he want in here? If it were really hotel business then he would have just told her, right, and come up and down the front stairs like a normal person. But he was sneaking. And the only reason I can think of to sneak is because he’s a thief. He wants to go through her bags.’