The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School

by Kim Newman

  Amy could. Laurence had sustained bruises in the last week – as if she’d suddenly grown clumsy. She’d reckoned the sulking girl was getting careless about her appearance. Now she wondered whether Ariel had its own Good Sports? What with her second secret – which Miss Kratides was clearly not going to explain – Amy had chewed over the Larry question so much it hadn’t occurred to her that the girl might have problems with her own dorm-mates. That made Amy feel even guiltier.

  ‘The Worst Girls in School,’ said Miss Kratides suddenly. ‘Name them. Don’t think about it. Just say the names.’

  ‘Gryce is passed out. No one after that is as bad, but… Crowninshield II, Harper, Ziss, Nobbs, Inchfawn…’

  ‘Pfui. Inchfawn. She annoyed you once and you won’t let it go.’

  Amy was struck. That was true. Four Eyes had steered clear of the Moth Club this year. So far as Amy knew, she’d not done anything wrong in ages.

  ‘Your other picks are shrewd though. You’ve not noticed Esther Stuckey, but there’s no reason you should. She hides her dark under a bushel. Ziss is well spotted though. She’s a cold creature. Even Gryce had friends, of a sort. Ziss is always by herself – unless she spots a stray. Then she sits down next to them and whispers. She walks off, leaving her victims to tears and nightmares. Not just Firsts and Seconds either. She used to do it to older girls. Now she has braid and tassel, it’s an infraction to run from her. She loves being a whip.’

  Ziss, a Tamora Sixth, had never spoken to Amy. She sat next to Light Fingers once and whispered things Light Fingers wouldn’t repeat even to the Moth Club. Amy’s friend was upset and shaken at the time and – no matter what she said – not really over it now, whatever it was.

  ‘The Ziss family own hotels in Germany, Holland and Belgium,’ said Miss Kratides. ‘I’ll never stay in a Zisshof. They’ll find bodies in basements one day. Anyone who’s seen Ziss dissect a dead frog knows she’d prefer a live one… and she’d not stop at frogs. In the staffroom, they shudder at her name. She’s an acceptable eighth or ninth in most subjects and has the bare minimum of infractions. Yet she’s a prodigy of awfulness. If you, as School Paladin, want to pick an arch-nemesis, I recommend her. She’s not your Broken Doll though. That’s another lesson altogether. I was up to my frillies in hot water from the time I arrived at Drearcliff to the time I passed out, but Ziss has technically done no wrong. Dr Swan has never thought of Removing her. We swam in the same pond. I a minnow, she a pike. Yet I was the Wrong ’Un. Think about that.’

  After telling her not to think so much, Miss Kratides gave Amy a lot to think about. Being confusing wasn’t unique to her. Beaks contradicted themselves all the time. With Miss Kratides, Amy suspected it was deliberate.

  Were Heike Ziss’s whispers that different from Moria Kratides’ red-ink couplets?

  ‘If you’re in it for the goodness, Amy, be sure you know what goodness and badness are. Moreover, be ready for the time when those terms aren’t useful any more. If you go by the files of the Diogenes Club, my mother is a dangerous criminal… though they’ve hired her twice. Ask women whose husbands and fathers and employers can’t or won’t hurt them any more. Ask the parents of dead girls who’ve been avenged. They won’t call Sophy Kratides a paladin. They might call her an Angel. If Mitéra had noticed Barty Gunt early in his career, several foolish women would be wealthier and happier. If I didn’t do that much bad as School Wrong ’Un, ask yourself if you’ve done that much good as School Paladin.’

  Tertius

  Night of the Broken Doll

  I: Night Watch and New Clothes

  AFTER LIGHTS OUT, Amy floated across the Quad on her new, dark wings.

  She had a fine aerial view of the Heel, a huge foot dug out of a rubbish dump in Thessaly. Moonlight gave its marble toes a heroic ghostliness. Its job was to get dirty in the week. Every Sunday a party of infracted girls cleaned it with toothbrushes. Moria Kratides must have spent more hours scrubbing the Heel than the unknown sculptor did fashioning the original colossus. From sorry experience, Amy knew the point of the punishment was its Sisyphean pointlessness.

  It was only Monday. Absalom hadn’t yet adorned the Heel with her weekly graffiti. The dedicated anarchist always waited till later in the week to daub the slogan she would have to scrape off at the weekend. A wag had sloshed red paint over the ankle stump. The foot looked freshly severed.

  What girl would dare such a gruesome prank?

  Recalling scarlet specks on a certain pair of shoes, Amy laughed in admiration. Whips couldn’t make a beak scrub the Heel. Had Miss Kratides indulged in satirical vandalism?

  The Main Building was dark but Amy saw where the Music Room was. Speke had marked its window by making a death’s head with sticking plaster. Amy floated close to the ivy-covered wall and gripped a web of well-anchored branches. Relaxing, she felt the drag of her weight return. She hung among bitter-smelling leaves. Her new cloak settled on her shoulders, heavier than her old wings. She climbed up to the window and peeped over the sill.

  Torchlight flashed. The death’s head leaped out at her.

  Startled, she let go of the ivy but did not fall. Someone gasped in fright. Little. The big girl had seen a dark figure looming at the skull-marked window.

  Amy was sorry but also gratified.

  She wanted to be frightening. Though she needed to aim the effect, so only the right people were afraid. The wrong people, rather. Not big softies like Little, but guilty parties. Culprits, crooks, boors and bullies. She needed to reassure and inspire the innocent. Though she wasn’t altogether sure there was such thing as a comforting death’s head.

  The torch beam waved all around the room – was that a white face in the corner? – then shone at the floor, lighting only the carpet and several sets of feet.

  Amy heard whispered, annoyed debate. Frecks was telling someone off for showing a light that could get them all infracted. While kerfuffle continued, Speke came to the window. She impishly put her face to the skull design, staring through eye sockets. Her peculiar hands fussed with latches and sash cords. The window lifted.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ said Frecks. ‘Every other bod has.’

  Amy rose, cloak folded back from her shoulders to present a slimmer shape. She slid through the open window without touching the frame. She hovered for a few moments and stepped down to the floor without pranging her ankles.

  If she expected applause, she was disappointed. She’d floated into an argument.

  ‘Amy, back me up,’ said Frecks. ‘We agreed on a rota.’

  The torch-wielder was Knowles, whose glance kept skittering away from the telling-off. According to the coin toss, Miss Memory wasn’t supposed to be here until tomorrow night. Knowles was in a state, and intermittently distracted by something fascinating in the region of the skirting board.

  ‘There must be scientific method,’ she said. ‘Equipment, measurement, verified record. Or else it’s just superstition… airy-fairy ghost stories.’

  Frecks confiscated her torch and aimed the beam at the floor.

  ‘We agreed,’ she insisted.

  Knowles ignored her. Amy had a chill as she realised what was wrong.

  Miss Memory couldn’t remember. She hadn’t recovered from discombobulation by Dyall. What she put into her head by cramming had always faded. Now her other memories were in the same sinking boat. What they’d discussed yesterday was partially blotted out. If this went on, Knowles would become a human goldfish – constantly surprised at bumping her nose against the bowl.

  Speke closed the window and let down rattly Venetian blinds.

  Little turned up an oil lamp. The Music Room was warmly illuminated.

  It smelled of rosin and brass polish. The white face Amy had seen was a man-in-the-moon painted on the head of a banjo. Instruments were everywhere, hung on stands or stored in cases. Instead of a desk, Miss Dryden had an upright piano shoved against a wall. From her revolving stool, she could conduct, critique and chastise a whole class with
flicks of a baton. Portraits of composers frowned down on the classroom. Wagner scowled as if every duff note tooted, plunked or sawed here gave him earache. Liszt’s nasty smile suggested to Amy that he was winding piano wire around his hands below the frame, intent on throttling Allegra Bidewell next time she murdered his Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.

  A dais reserved for star performers was kitted out with a truncated Grecian column, a waxy aspidistra, and a backcloth representing an overcast Arcadia. The fauns had itchy hoof rot. The nymphs were cheesed off about their last shampoo and set. Ladymeade’s double bass was propped against the plaster column. Risking infraction, she hadn’t properly stowed it in its big black case after her last performance.

  Little and Speke, in nighties and dressing gowns, stood together.

  Knowles wore a white coat, pockets deformed by scientific instruments. She dangled a whirring little gyroscope on a watch chain. Black waterproof gloves stretched half way up her arms. Her hair was a mess.

  ‘She doesn’t know what night it is,’ said Frecks.

  ‘The night has a thousand eyes, and the day but one,’ said Knowles, ‘yet the light of the bright world dies with the dying of the sun.’

  ‘She’s digging up Second Year poetry. Francis Bouillabaise…’

  ‘Bourdillon,’ corrected Speke.

  ‘My point is proved,’ said Frecks. ‘By a Second.’

  ‘The mind has a thousand eyes and the heart but one,’ Knowles went on, ‘yet the light of a whole life dies when love is done.’

  ‘Very cheery I don’t think,’ said Frecks. ‘But popular. Half the class bicker about who gets to be the one to recite it from memory.’

  ‘It’s the shortest poem in the book,’ said Speke. ‘So it’s a doddle to get off by heart.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ said Little. ‘Those night eyes. I know what they are. Peeping through chinks into the cupboard that smells of tennis balls. Cat’s eyes, rat’s eyes and bat’s eyes.’

  ‘Pfui,’ said Frecks. ‘The fathead poet means stars. Those are the night’s eyes. Twinkling. It’s cheery. The day’s one big eye is the sun. It’s an astronomy lesson.’

  ‘And all the eyes a mind has,’ said Little, not calmed, ‘I don’t like that either. A big, pulsing brain with eyes all over it, thinking wicked thoughts.’

  ‘That’s not what the poem’s about,’ said Speke fondly.

  At last Frecks really looked at Amy.

  ‘Sherry trifle,’ she exclaimed. ‘What are you wearing?’

  Amy put her hands on her hips and stuck her chest out.

  ‘I had Light Fingers make a few changes to my costume,’ she said. ‘For night-work. I needed a warmer cloak… and black, to blend with the shadows.’

  Something like Count DeVille’s cape but less debilitating.

  Frecks walked around Amy, considering the new outfit.

  ‘It’ll take getting used to,’ she said. ‘Are you sure about the mask?’

  Amy’s domino covered her forehead, nose and most of her cheeks. Moulded to her face. Black, with a white death’s head where a third eye would be. She’d wondered about painting it with phosphorus to show a frightening skull to her enemies. Light Fingers said that was ‘a bit too Gwendolyn Nobbs, if you know what I mean’, and Amy had to admit she did.

  ‘We might have to conceal our true identities,’ she said.

  Frecks laughed. ‘Amy, you are a clot sometimes! Remember when we saw The Mark of Zorro. You said any halfwit in the hacienda could tell Don Diego and Zorro were the same person. That mask didn’t even cover Fairbanks’s grin.’

  ‘The teeth and the moustache,’ Amy admitted.

  ‘Unmistakable! But even if he wore a mask to cover his ’tache and gnashers, they’d know him by the way he stands and holds his sword… or the pong of his hair oil, or any number of other tells. Imagine if flickers could speak. Don Diego would have to spend his whole life as a lisping weed, then put on a low, growly voice as Zorro. Even then, anyone who wasn’t an utter Dim would recognise him. Who knew it was Amy straight off?’

  Speke and Little stuck their hands up.

  ‘We don’t know another floater,’ admitted Speke.

  Amy didn’t want to bring up Stephen Swift. She also wasn’t sure about ‘floater’ and hoped the expression wouldn’t catch on.

  From now on, she’d admit it. She could fly.

  One vote on the mask had yet to be counted.

  Knowles was fiddling with her gyroscope. Cloak spread dramatically, Amy awaited her verdict.

  Granting Amy a sliver of her attention, Miss Memory said ‘Oh yes, it’s you, all right. There’s a thing you do with your bottom lip when you’re fed up but don’t want to make a fuss… and you’re doing it now.’

  Amy could have swallowed her lips.

  Even with her mind in a muddle, Knowles saw through the mask.

  ‘Exactly,’ agreed Frecks. ‘The Thomsett pout. Much admired in certain quarts, I can tell you. A correspondent writes you were recently voted Third Most Spoonable Girl in the Great Game. Modesty forbids mention of who came Second… and the sort of cold fury that leads to abrupt cessation of correspondence prevents me from naming the Draycott’s tart who tops the poll. Oh, the pout’s evaporated. Now you’re just a grump. Unspoonable in all quarts.’

  How this all came to be about spooning was beyond Amy.

  The debut of her new look wasn’t going as hoped. Light Fingers had talked Amy out of the glow-in-the-dark motif, but otherwise fulfilled the customer’s requirements without offering advice or criticism. If Frecks were Moth Club seamstress, she’d have been blunt. Amy realised she’d seen the expression on Light Fingers’ face during the costume-making before. On shop assistants who sold Mother dresses she wound up wearing only once. They all mysteriously shrank two sizes between fitting and delivery.

  Any crest Amy’s death’s head might have was fallen.

  Her cloak hung heavy. It took mentacle muscle to puff it out. She let it settle and slumped, round-shouldered.

  Spotting Amy’s dejection, Frecks – perhaps a little late – backpedalled.

  ‘That smart tunic is a huge improvement on the lumpy waistcoat,’ she said.

  Amy used to stick things into whichever pouch they almost fit, the way Knowles distended her pockets with anemometers and the like. This time she selected the items she wanted to carry and had Light Fingers modify a leather jerkin – worn by Handsome Helena Mansfield as principal boy in Dick Whittington two pantomimes ago – with sleek, concealed pockets for each. She’d added a Sam Browne belt with hooks for larger gear, including a medical kit, a clip-on lamp and her battered old hip flask.

  ‘Please take off the scary face,’ said Little quietly. ‘I know it’s you but I want to be sure.’

  Reluctantly, Amy undid the cord and pulled off the domino. Gummy from perspiration, it hurt a bit coming off. She felt cool air on her face.

  ‘Ay caramba, ’tis that spineless milksop Don Diego!’ said Frecks. ‘Surely the dashing daredevil who carves Zs wherever he goes can’t be that powdered prawn! Who’d have thought!’

  ‘Stop talking like an intertitle, you ginger nit,’ said Amy.

  ‘Zounds! Fie! Gadzooks! Amidships!’

  Amy couldn’t help laughing.

  She rolled up her mask and slipped it into its pocket. She’d have words with the costumier about modifications to the modifications.

  Light Fingers was ‘off’ this evening. When Amy called on the Sewing Room, the girl handed over the new outfit as if she just wanted rid of it. Light Fingers had been in a mood since her afternoon tête-a-tête with Miss Kratides. Amy couldn’t recall her friend being as quiet since the time when Ziss whispered at her. Frecks and Kali, whose appointments were set for noon and four o’clock on Wednesday, were agog for details, but Light Fingers was close-mouthed. Experiences of the tutorials varied.

  Knowles had been seen after Bizou De’Ath. She’d gone in almost recovered from her dose of Dyall but came out babbling worse than ever. Li
ke feral Gould and shaken Light Fingers, Miss Memory was deeply affected by an hour with the teacher. Little and Speke didn’t seem fussed either way. Mostly, they were happy to be given lollipops as if they’d been brave at the dentist. Amy tried to picture Miss Kratides as a kindly young auntie. Handing out sweets with fake blood on her shoes.

  Frost, Paquignet, Bok, Devlin and Harper had also been out to Windward. Amy hadn’t seen them since. At least Miss Kratides must have talked Paquignet down from her tree.

  No one was talking about the famous secrets.

  The prep now seemed meaningless, though Amy knew Miss Kratides didn’t just throw rocks in a pond to admire the lovely splashes. There was a point to each secret. Sharpened and dipped in asp venom.

  While Amy and Frecks bantered about masks, Knowles paid closer attention to the skirting board. Her gyroscope whirled. She got down on her knees to investigate and rolled a bass drum into a stack of cymbals. Everyone froze at the crash.

  ‘Have a care,’ said Frecks.

  ‘You’ll wake the whips in their dorms. This night watch is a hush-hush mission…’

  Knowles couldn’t seem to remember whether shaking or nodding meant agreeing or disagreeing and in any case wanted to do both at the same time.

  She opened a leather valise and exposed a contraption. A music box crossed with a conjuring set. Leaves folded out to reveal a twisted shape of incandescent tubes. Miss Memory twisted a key several times. The shape glowed like an advertisement. A five-pointed star in a circle, electric blue and pulsing. The device pinged and whined and crackled. Amy smelled roses and ash.