The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School

by Kim Newman

  She wove a way between boxes.

  She almost didn’t notice one of the caskets was occupied. It was leaned against a pillar. A girl in a Draycott’s uniform lay inside, beret over her face, arms crossed as if to protect her heart from a stake.

  Cautiously, Amy lifted the hat.

  A girl she didn’t know was conked out. Her eyes were open and blank, like Jennifer Fire’s. She had the biggest mouth Amy had ever seen on a person. Bloated and engorged, like two leeches stuck together. Was that supposed to be attractive? She’d heard of ‘bee-stung lips’, of course. It was part of the flapper look, along with beauty spots and kohl eyes. The Draycott’s girl might actually have injected venom into her face. Spooning with her must be like kissing someone’s weeping bruises. Yuck.

  She heard the sleeping girl’s steady heartbeat.

  Something was off. Dyall and Knowles were caught and cuffed by Quell – Poppet said as much – but Floozy Fire and Miss Lush Lips had also been put out of the Game. By whom? Surely not their own Captain.

  There were others in this.

  Trude Smarthe of the Brain-Boxes wasn’t trapped in the Amphibaeopteryx with her teammates. The little pataphysician might know a magic slogan that put people into comas. It was even possible the Humblebumblers had joined the fray – though this was too subtle for them. If they played, the lads preferred straight bat and raised dukes. Amy couldn’t imagine the Sons of the Humble and Pious clamping chloroform pads over girls’ faces.

  Who was to say that this was even to do with the Game?

  The Count DeVille might be gone, but he’d still resent violation of his abandoned domain in the cause of what was, after all, just a schools sporting event? Things left behind could act on his resentment.

  The cats, rats and bats Knowles muttered of… and the persuasive black thing on her back.

  Amy floated from vault to vault like a diver exploring a sunken temple.

  More boxes. More dirt. Broken furniture. Chairs smashed so sharpened legs could be put to use. The remnants of generation after generation of Transylvanian ground cricket. A shell Amy could have sworn used to be an armadillo. Money chests, empty but for one or two old coins. From the antiquarian ghost stories Frecks read aloud by candlelight after Lights Out, Amy knew not to take souvenirs from a place like this. Each and every token would be cursed. She had worries enough without ticking off wraiths and spectres.

  The chalk line, broken and scratchy, led her into a larger chamber.

  A square of trestle tables was set up here, arranged so a person could duck under and stand in the middle. A miniature train set linked several realms. A toy castle was defended by lead knights in armour. On a papier-mâché hillside, ragged skeletons were impaled on sharp lolly sticks. Someone had gone overboard spotting red paint around the bases of the stakes. In contrast, an English country halt from the last century was populated by a half-inch stationmaster and plump little painted passengers. Tiny trunks were unloaded by wooden porters. At the end of the line was an H.G. Wells city of the future where bullet-nosed, tube-shaped scarlet trams ran on a single gleaming rail. Panther-eyed, long-limbed, hairless utopian humans wore togas made from cellophane sweet wrappers and had little dried squid creatures for pets instead of cats and dogs.

  A long coat bearing the insignia of the North Eastern Railway Company hung on a hatstand in the centre hole. A peaked hat and a guard’s whistle completed the uniform.

  It was said the Count DeVille had a ‘child-brain’. His library bore that out: occult tomes, saucy pictures and railway timetables. Still, Amy generally pictured him crawling head-first down a crumbling wall, cloak spread like bat wings. Or as a mist pouring over a windowsill into a maiden’s boudoir, coalescing as a red-eyed, sharp-toothed lothario. Had the Demon King really spent his happiest hours with a railway cap perched on his oversized head, solemnly toot-tooting as toy trains chuffed through Bufflers Halt?

  Even monsters were not simply one thing.

  A ‘child-brain’ wasn’t necessarily sweet-natured. The Brain-Boxes proved that. The Count might play with trains, but that didn’t make him a charming eccentric like Uncle Cedric with his battalion of painted Hussars. Perhaps Count DeVille saw no difference between people and toys. He had no qualms about sticking either on sharpened poles. Little boys and girls could be cruel. Children with Abilities – and, though she was loath to admit it, the Count had been as much an Unusual as she – could be monsters.

  She floated close to the train set.

  One length of line passed a square-fronted doll’s house which was out of proportion with the rest of the set. Its nine-inch mistress would be an ogress among titchy model folk. The mansion seemed abandoned – doors broken from the inside, fist-sized dents in its walls. A ship-shaped weathervane was wonky, as if a storm had blown down its masts. The windows were ovals with white crossbars.

  Amy couldn’t see why such a thing was tolerated in this pretend empire. So far as she knew, the Count didn’t have a younger sister. This arrangement smacked of a governess trying to make peace between warring siblings. She imagined a small princess beaming smugly as a place was found on the table for her doll’s house, while her brother insisted it made no sense to have stupid big dollies mixed with sensible consistent-to-scale puff-puffs.

  The chalk line curved around the other side of the train set. Amy set down on the floor and followed it.

  She looked down on the ruin of Contention City, Arizona. Nestled in the remains of the station house, a rat gnawed on a matchwood cowboy. When Amy’s cloaked shadow fell, the rat scarpered with a panicked squeak. A gouge in the prairie showed the bare wood tabletop. Earth spilled into the central well of the trestle square.

  Amy had an idea what had been dug out of the Wild West Lilliput. She scouted about for a toby jug.

  In one corner of the chamber, a tarpaulin lay over something that writhed feebly.

  A hand – or something like a hand – crawled out from under the tarp. Elongated inchworm fingers pulled across the floor, trailing a boneless pink python.

  Amy hooked the tarpaulin with a mentacle and tore it away.

  Honor Devlin was tied in knots. Her arms and legs were ropes of putty. A yard of drum-tight skin showed between shirttails and skirt waist. She raised her head on a cobra-neck column, face a yard long from crown to chin. Mouth, nose and eye sockets pulled as if by hooks. Only her panicked eyes were their proper size, peas a-swim in raw oysters.

  Amy was about to say ‘pull yourself together’ but realised how that would come out.

  Stretch opened her vertical mouth. Someone had yanked her tongue and made a messy bow of it. Yes, she was tongue-tied. Amy was tiring of the pawky, mocking humour which seemed to be the dominant trait of whoever was felling her teammates.

  She didn’t know where to start untangling Devlin.

  Headers Haldane was still unaccounted for.

  Even by a charitable estimation, the Captain was the least formidable girl in the Game. Snitching, toadying and observing each and every rule was no protection in the crypts of Villa DeVille.

  Stretch tried to draw in one of her arms. She usually snapped back into normal shape like a rubber band. Now her elastic had perished. She was sweating – though it was ice cold in the cellar – and sickly. Amy didn’t want to touch her unstrung teammate, but tentatively extended mentacles. Perhaps moulding her like clay would help? Devlin uncoiled her legs enough to stand. She had to bend her neck in a place where it wasn’t supposed to bend so as not to scrape her head on the ceiling.

  ‘Good work, Stretch,’ Amy said.

  Devlin smiled at the encouragement. Her mouth made a man-in-the-moon crescent, sticking out either side of her thin face. She looked like the Longity-Leggity Raggedy Man’s Daughter.

  Someone kicked the lid off a coffin and jumped up.

  A Draycott’s girl with stiff braids.

  A First or a Second. Just a child.

  Agile as a monkey, she hurled herself into the air.

  Am
y raised her cloak, cushioning the impact as the girl landed on her.

  Amy’s ribs hurt as her chest was gripped by bony knees. The impertinent snip tried to clap her palms over Amy’s ears.

  With a mentacular shrug, Amy repelled boarders. The little hands slammed to a halt inches away from her head and her assailant was frustrated not to be able to squeeze. Then, Amy expanded her mentacles and shrugged the pest off her. As she was tossed onto the train set, the girl’s face was a picture of shock and resentment.

  She was young enough for it not to have sunk in yet.

  She wasn’t the only Unusual.

  Clockwork mechanisms were triggered and trains began running. Clicketyclick clicketyclack. The wheel of an Arizona gold mine turned. Buried Indians burst from sands on mousetrap springs and fired teeny arrows. Flags emblazoned with a D-shaped dragon winched up over the mine, the castle, Bufflers Halt and Utopiopolis.

  The Draycott’s girl saw the batwing-shaped cowcatcher of the Count’s Special aimed straight at her. The smoke-belching engine was black, with red trim, its carriages coffins, its funnel a crenellated tower, its lamps lit-up skulls and wolf heads. The girl jumped off the table and grabbed Stretch’s lapels, shinning up her thin body. She took hold of Devlin’s neck – which bent like hanging bread dough – and clamped with her knee-pincer hold. Stretch’s torso squeezed like a tube of toothpaste clutched in the middle.

  Both girls panicked.

  Devlin’s spine gave out and she flopped heavily on the train set. One of the trestles gave way, and a fourth of the Count’s railway company was suddenly on a sharp incline. Sand, buildings, cowboys, Indians, a miniature hanging tree, and yards of narrow-gauge track poured onto the struggling girls. Devlin, irked, wrapped an arm around the other girl and began constricting. The younger girl didn’t have a flexible ribcage.

  ‘Not fair,’ she squealed.

  With an effort, the Draycott’s girl twisted in Stretch’s hold until she was looking her in the face.

  Smiling nastily, she clapped her hands over Devlin’s long-lobed ears.

  Amy heard a pop.

  Devlin’s eyes rolled up and showed whites. She slithered in a jumble on the floor. A model train barrelled off the edge of its world and soared in an arc, dragging five full carriages and a baggage car into an abyss. The train slapped down on Stretch’s head in a crooked tangle. Devlin didn’t react to the battering.

  She was out of it like Jennifer Fire and Miss Lush Lips.

  The Draycott’s girl peeped out from under the unconscious human jelly and wriggled free as if out of a collapsed tent. She stood and shook earth out of her sleeves. She flicked a frontiersman off her shoulder.

  Amy knew to keep her distance from the menace.

  Her cloak collar grew stiff as an Elizabethan ruff, protecting her ears. She didn’t know if that was her doing it or the cloak.

  The Draycott’s girl hopped up onto the hatstand, winding legs about the column, leaving her hands free.

  Her party piece was the ear-clap trick. She was a living Knock-Out Drop. The Niece of Mickey Finn. The bouncing around was a learned skill. She needed to be an acrobat to get close enough to her enemies to clap them to sleep.

  ‘Who are you?’ Amy asked.

  ‘Aurelia Avalon,’ she said. ‘They call me “Nightcap”.’

  She clapped her hands and made a loud noise.

  Apart from setting off an echo, it didn’t do anything.

  ‘Not “Nightclap”?’ said Amy. ‘That’s clever. You don’t want to give too much away in a handle. Retain the element of surprise.’

  ‘When I’m older and stronger, it’ll be “Deadly Nightcap”.’ She clapped again and showed sharp little teeth. ‘Then I won’t just send people to Bedfordshire. I’ll send them to Gravesend.’

  ‘What a horrid thought,’ said Amy.

  ‘I like to be horrid. I won’t be told not to be horrid. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t…’

  Amy had an idea Nightcap was off her team. She’d clapped out at least two of her own side.

  ‘Did your friends tell you not to be horrid?’

  ‘My friends?’

  Nightcap said the word as if it had come up in a Latin vocab test she’d not crammed for. She had no idea what it might mean.

  ‘The girl on the stairs and the other girl in the box.’

  ‘Oh, them! Fire and Purdie. They’re not friends. They’re pills. As much as any of you Drearycliff sows. Upper Schoolies think they’re so clever. And rough! Fire notches her comb handle every time she draws blood. Purdie kisses boys and makes them scream. But I dropped on their necks, from behind. When they weren’t expecting it. And clap! Pop!’

  She clapped again.

  Did the walls shake a tiny bit?

  ‘They got sent to Bedfordshire,’ she said, smugly. ‘Like your friend, the India-rubber girl.’

  ‘Why did you put them to sleep? Aren’t you on their team?’

  Nightcap poked her tongue out. ‘They wanted to play their horrid game. They wanted me to do things for them. Send people to Bedfordshire. But when they wanted. I can’t stick being bossed about. I have a Talent, so I shouldn’t be bossed about. It should be me, bossing Upper Schoolies about. Stands to reason.’

  This was a lesson. Picking only wilful, selfish Unusuals for your side was a bad idea. Wrong ’Uns might be formidable in ones and twos, but a whole team will turn on each other. That was the Draycott’s leaf. At Drearcliff Grange, things were otherwise. School Spirit. Boldness, over mistrust – no matter what Dr Swan said. It worked. After all, whatever happened in this cellar, the Great Game was won.

  Amy folded her arms. The cloak settled like armour.

  She extended mentacles throughout the chamber, feeling for something thrown away.

  She halted trains in their tracks. She felt around the doll’s house, but drew back as if stung. That wasn’t what she wanted.

  Looking at Nightcap, she thought of Violet – the sickly little girl in the Purple House who broke all her toys.

  But she didn’t know any Violet or any Purple House… even as she stood on a chalk line.

  ‘I’m Amy,’ she said. She held up her hands as if they were the only things she could wrap round a person’s throat.

  She found what she wanted and lifted it from the floor. Steadily, silently.

  Nightcap’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Now you’re being reasonable,’ she said, ‘but you don’t mean it. You’re pretending.’

  ‘How can you say that? You’ve only just met me.’

  ‘When pills are being reasonable, they never mean it. I know. They’re just trying to put me off my guard. They have tricks up their sleeve.’

  ‘Funny you should say that…’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Look up, look down… look all the way to town!’

  Nightcap looked up and saw what Amy had done.

  The tarpaulin that had been over Devlin was unrolled on the ceiling above Nightcap’s head. Amy saw it had old writing stencilled on it. S.S. Demeter. Goddess of the Harvest.

  She let go.

  The tarp fell on Nightcap and flopped round her. The hatstand fell over and the Draycott’s girl crawled between trestles, wrapped in thick, slick material. Amy took hold of the struggling bundle and gathered the trailing edges in her fists. She twisted them into a knot.

  Nightcap could probably breathe… but it would do her good to be sent to Bedfordshire for a change.

  Amy shoved the bundle into a corner and checked on Devlin. In her sleep, Stretch was slowly shrinking into her proper shape.

  Nightcap squealed. She kicked and screamed.

  ‘Any more nonsense and the sack goes in the river,’ said Amy.

  Through the muffling of the cloak collar and with the echo of the cellar, she didn’t recognise her own voice.

  It was lower than normal, and curiously cadenced.

  There was little light down here, but she could see clearly.

  She heard heartbeats – Devlin’
s and, inside the oilcloth, Nightcap’s.

  And someone else’s. Two more someone elses.

  ‘Come out, you,’ she said, in the direction of two rapidly beating hearts. ‘You can’t hide there.’

  A section of the wall wrinkled at the touch of a mentacle and was drawn aside. A curtain, painted like brickwork, hid a recess. A fixed ladder led up to basement windows. A way out into the garden.

  Prima Haldane was in the alcove, bent over uncomfortably, fingers scratching at a thin wire noosed around her bulging neck. She’d lost her boater. Her blazer pocket was torn. Serious uniform infractions.

  Standing with the tugging end of the garrotte in one hand and a toby jug in the other was Primrose Quell.

  The names were close together. Prima and Primrose. Martine, the humorous whip, mentioned that long ago, ‘sometime between the Peloponnesian War and the execution of Perkin Warbeck’, when today’s crop of jaded, seen-it-all Sixths were blinking new bugs, Haldane and Quell used to be sat together. They were known as ‘Prim and Proper’. Martine didn’t recall which was Prim and which Proper. No wonder they hated each other later on.

  Quell’s Silver Arrow shone.

  As Draycott’s Captain, she ranked a silver pin that was actual silver – not paint.

  The shine made Amy’s flesh creep. The cloak hated silver.

  Quell tipped the toby. Arizona sand poured through the china Spaniard’s gouged eyeholes and over his stuck-out tongue.

  ‘Looking for this, dimmie?’

  Quell let the jug go. It fell slowly…

  Amy reached with a mentacle, but just knocked the prize off course. It landed on the platform at Bufflers Halt and cracked into three pieces.

  ‘Oops,’ said Quell. ‘Butterfingers.’

  She gave a cruel twist of the garrotte. Headers winced as the wire cinched.

  ‘No one gets the point then,’ said Amy.

  Quell snickered.

  ‘You’re not still playing that Gormless Game? Deuced dogs, but your clock’ll be red at the Finish. Not ’alf it won’t.’

  After a term at the House of Reform, Quell had changed her manners to match her modus operandi. Her father was an archdeacon in Haslemere, but she spoke like a tough scruff from the mean streets.