The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School

by Kim Newman

  Knowles’ hair stood on end like spun candyfloss. Amy’s scalp prickled too. Little laughed for a moment, then got scared again. The girl needed to get a grip on her fraidy cat tendencies. Speke’s hands stilled. Dogs alert to a silent whistle.

  ‘What’s that when it’s at home?’ Frecks asked.

  ‘An electric pentacle,’ said Knowles.

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Frecks, flapping her hand over her head. ‘No wiser now. Elucidation would be appreciated.’

  ‘It’s a pentacle,’ said Knowles. ‘But electric.’

  ‘Spook-spotting equipment,’ said Amy.

  ‘For spotting spooks, naturally,’ said Frecks.

  ‘Not only that,’ said Knowles. ‘For safety. Ours. This Broken Doll is a malign entity… an oddity entity and trippety trumpety entirety malignity of malicious magnitude. The pentacle inhibits the ability of enemy entities to alter eternities.’

  Amy didn’t see how the pentacle could ward off evil any more effectively than crossing your fingers behind your back and saying ‘white rabbits’. She supposed it couldn’t hurt. Unless it gave the operator an electric shock. Or exploded and set fire to something. Which, thinking it through, meant it could hurt quite a lot.

  ‘Does it have to make that noise?’ asked Speke, pained.

  ‘What noise?’ asked Little, concerned.

  ‘That!’ said Speke, clapping carapace palms to her ears. ‘Can you really not hear it?’

  Speke practically shouted, as if trying to be understood over a cacophony.

  Amy listened hard. Maybe she heard a faint screech. Wind scything through pampas grass.

  Frecks and Little strained too.

  Knowles was so taken with her toy she didn’t notice any ill effects. Her attention still inclined to the skirting board. Half her hair frizzed like a dandelion clock.

  ‘I have a bonnet trimmed with purple,’ she keened. ‘Shall I wear it with my kirtle? I shall wear it like a noose, going to the butcher with my fat goose…’

  ‘Knowles,’ said Amy, ‘Miss Memory…’

  Amy stretched a mentacle towards the crackling device. She could reach so far and no further. She came at it from the side, but was still stopped. From above – the same thing. Less confident about working blind, she stuck a mentacle through the floor, feeling past dangling light fixtures, and sensed the curve of a barrier around the pentacle. Spongy but resistant. A sphere around Knowles’ gadget was proof against her mind’s touch. She’d not come across that before.

  ‘I have a bonnet trimmed with red,’ Knowles went on, ‘shall I wear it when I’m dead? I shall wear it for bad luck, going to the blazes with my young duck… ’

  With trepidation, Amy walked across the room.

  She stood over Knowles. She touched her shoulder.

  A tiny shock stung her fingers. Miss Memory looked up.

  The bluish, crackling light of the pentacle was in her eyes too.

  ‘There’s someone else here,’ she said, not sounding like herself.

  ‘Someone not… at all… kind… Someone cruel!’

  II: Infernal Cakewalk

  ON A GHOST conductor’s cue, a phantom orchestra started tuning up. Brasses burped, strings twanged, woodwinds wheezed. No human hand was involved. Lid firmly shut, the piano produced unnatural chords. Eerie glissandi emanated from the harpsichord. Gongs bonged and triangles tinkled.

  Little and Speke had reported night-time sounds.

  All around the Music Room, instruments levitated. A trombone stood in its velvet-lined case, then wobbled aloft, aiming its slide at Amy. Mr Moony-Face Minstrel unhooked from the wall and plunked.

  Ducking to avoid a cor anglais, Little backed into the waddling double bass. It fell over and sprang up again like a roly-poly doll.

  ‘Is this you?’ Frecks asked.

  ‘No,’ said Amy.

  ‘Some other geist is poltering.’ She extended mentacles and tried to still the instruments. She anticipated the firm resistance she’d met in Stephen Swift. This was more like trying to make a hole in water. With her Talent, she could do that better than most but still not well. She easily moved the levitating instruments around but couldn’t make them stay put. She wore out mental puff swatting piccolos and recorders. Amy was forever telling non-entomological friends that flapping in a panic didn’t make bees go away but did make them more likely to sting. She should listen to her own advice.

  Frecks fished her coif out of her satchel.

  The relic protected her from evil, but not from looking like a medieval lamp post. Wearing her magic helm for any length of time resulted in frightful hat hair. That was not the least reason she kept it tucked away most of the time.

  The double bass hopped at Frecks and stabbed her toes with its spiked endpin. She winced and let go of the enchanted silver.

  ‘Creaking crocuses,’ she exclaimed.

  Amy reached but the silver mail dropped through her mentacles as if they weren’t there. A new, uncomfortable sensation. Amy considered picking the coif up normally, but held back. She didn’t want burned fingers. The Lady of the Lake might not approve of her Death’s Head look. Frecks was right about that personage being excessively hard to please.

  Meanwhile, the bass aggressively bumped Frecks, pushing her against the old joanna. She couldn’t draw her legs back far enough to kick it in the belly. Her opponent dodged from side to side. A thin-necked boxer avoiding jabs.

  Amy got a mentacle hold of the instrument and tripped it up.

  Frecks took a good swing and punched the bullying bass, slicing her knuckles on the strings but smashing the bridge.

  ‘That’s for my foot, you fat fiddle!’

  The bass went down. Frecks didn’t give it time to bounce back again and stamped, crushing polished wood under her heavy heel. When the instrument was spread on the floor in pieces held together by strings, she realised her hand was bleeding badly. Gouts spattered the carpet.

  Amy fought across the room, swiping a darting flute with a cloak fling. Reaching Frecks, she took out her first-aid kit. No time for liniment. She wound a bandage round her friend’s bleeding paw and tied it off. Not a top-marks dressing, but up to battlefield standard. Nurse Humph would understand.

  Even in the middle of this infernal cakewalk, Amy gave herself a head pat for adding medical supplies to the Kentish Glory gear. She instantly regretted the twinge of smugness. Of course she hadn’t wanted Frecks hurt just so she could show off her forward thinking, but still…

  Something bashed the small of her back. She wheeled around to face it.

  Mr Moony-Face danced in the air and twanged.

  ‘Is that “Deutschland, Deutschland”?’ asked Frecks.

  ‘Or “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken”,’ said Amy.

  Whatever words went with the tune, it was not a natural minstrel number.

  Amy lashed with her fists, her mentacles and her cloak but couldn’t land a blow. The banjo’s mocking aerobatics flustered and frustrated her.

  This wasn’t poltergeist phenomena. This was directed.

  Some Wrong ’Un – Stephen Swift? an unknown Talent? – was nearby, puppeteering. Probably spying on the scene. Were there peepholes in the walls? Eyes cut out of one of the portraits of frowning composers?

  If Amy set her mind to it, she could do this. She’d experimented with mass floating of objects in other rooms. But it didn’t seem sporting. A paladin should show her face to the foe. Even when she’d bashed them with A.H. Wax’s prop crutch, the Draycott’s girls could see her. They had a chance to fight back. Miss Steps might pull off this sly attack – the Orful Orchestra! – but Amy judged the boastful thug wouldn’t conduct her sinister symphony from concealment. She’d stride through it all, showing off.

  ‘Gloria stings of tiaras poke in…’ muttered Knowles, along with the possessed banjo.

  ‘Miss Kratides made a row sing that song,’ said Speke. ‘Dyall, Laurence, Bok and Harper.’

  ‘Well remembered, but not terribly us
eful,’ said Amy.

  The trombone advanced, hiding behind the banjo, stabbing out the slide when it had a chance.

  Knowles’ electric pentacle glowed and fizzed. The animated instruments kept shy of it. They couldn’t touch the dropped coif either. Totems of mystic or scientific protection did a good job of looking after themselves. Meanwhile, the invisible band belaboured the living members of the team. Amy got bopped on the nose by the slide several times.

  Music stands pranced on tripod feet to surround Knowles, but were too flimsy to do real damage. Penned in with her crackpot box, Miss Memory recited nonsense hymns and bowed her head as sheaves of sheet music poured on her.

  Little covered her face with meaty arms. Cymbals flew at her like discuses, but bounced off her sturdy shoulders.

  Speke’s hands put up a fight. Speke herself was on her feet but in a daze. She’d been thumped on the head by a guitar, which let her hands off the leash. They tore drumskins, wrestled keys off flutes, snapped strings.

  Frecks wielded the neck of the smashed bass like a cricket bat. She always was one for a good old slosh. When she connected, smaller instruments were knocked for at least a boundary.

  The racket would have started a riot in a pre-war Paris concert hall. Amy would love to see Nijinsky dance to it.

  If they lived through the night, they’d be Black Notched for this.

  Extensive destruction of School property. Major Infractions all round. A whole term of scrubbing the Heel.

  What would Speke’s hands make of that gritty task?

  At least they were holding up against the foe.

  Only that drat banjo and its trombone familiar stayed in the game.

  The puppeteer was concentrating on them.

  Amy tried to discern a personality in their dance. There must be clues.

  Or was this the Broken Doll? The delight in smashing things… The musical anarchy… The capricious cruelty. All Broken Doll traits. Knowles had mentioned the cruelty most of all. The nasty-minded scorn of the attack bothered Amy more than cuts and bruises.

  She was still sparring with the banjo and dodging the slide.

  The plunking pest wasn’t carrying its tune well. One string snapped, so every fourth or fifth note was silent. The swinging trombone couldn’t fill in. No breath went through it.

  ‘You can tell a bogus spirit medium from a real one by musical instruments,’ said Knowles, almost coherently. ‘Gifted psychics have spirits bang drums, because ectoplasm can thump but not blow. Fakers toot trumpets, because an assistant with lungs and a mouth does it for them.’

  Interesting, but not immediately helpful.

  Then she saw the leaf. Mr Moony-Face Minstrel bobbed up and down, but always jumped aside at the end of the verse to give Mrs Slidey-Bones a clear shot at her head.

  Amy hummed under her breath, trying to synchronise with the plunking.

  ‘Fading is the worldling’s pleasure,’ she mumble-sung,

  ‘All his boasted pomp and show…’

  The banjo tensed, ready to make its move…

  ‘Solid joys and lasting treasure

  ‘None but Zi… on’s… child… ren… know!’

  Then Mr Moony-Face Minstrel feinted…

  Amy, seeing where it was going, matched its sidestep and stretched out her cloak. Remembering Valentino coaxing a bull into killing range in Blood and Sand, she made a curve of her body and a curtain of her cape. The tooting trombone charged and slid past her side. She trapped the slide with her arm, then wrapped her cloak around it. Yanking the instrument free of the unknown fluence, she whirled like a dervish. Toes six inches off the floor, she floated, shifting most of her weight into her arms.

  The trombone smashed the banjo.

  Amy threw the wrecks of both instruments away.

  ‘Goodnight, ladies,’ she shouted. ‘No encore!’

  ‘Well played, that girl,’ said Frecks.

  They almost had a moment to catch their breaths.

  The lid of the double bass case was flung upwards from the inside. Scarlet velvet lining glistened like an open wound. A stocky sylph in a mauve body stocking leaped out of the makeshift coffin and bounded across the Music Room, singling out Frecks and pressing her cloth-covered face to her chosen victim’s throat. Clinging tenaciously to the struggling Frecks, the Purple Peril chirruped like a frenzied bat. Amy stepped towards them, but was driven back by a flash! of violet light and a pop! that hurt her ears. Knowles’ pentacle fizzed and the light tubes shattered, making a smoky stink.

  In the embrace of the Purple Peril, Frecks went cross-eyed and slack-mouthed then slumped. Unprepared for total victory, her assailant buckled at the knees and collapsed with a panicked squeak. Frecks’ unconscious deadweight pinned the Peril. She thumped the carpet, grunting in fury as she failed to shift the heftier girl off her.

  Amy had a tiny stab of relief. Wrong ’Uns made stupid mistakes too.

  Then she was overcome by worry and concern.

  Who was this and what had she just done?

  III: The Purple Peril – Unmasked!

  ‘THAT WASN’T SUPPOSED to happen,’ said Knowles, poking broken tubes with her pentacle key. ‘I have the manufacturer’s guarantee.’

  Pages of sheet music strewn around the device caught light. Regarding the potential inferno with mild interest, Knowles nudged a smouldering sheaf of score closer to the fire until it burst into flames. Miss Memory had now forgotten her first nursery lessons about playing with coals fallen from the grate.

  Amy had to leave Frecks and the Purple Peril to their pickle while she tried to stamp out the flames. As she vigorously trampled burning paper, her flapping cloak fanned the fire.

  Dr Swan kept a degree of Supreme Infraction – vastly more serious than a Black Notch – on the rule books covering Arson, Treason and Unlicensed Assassination. A girl who burned down a school building would be expelled without refund of fees, but only after a succession of imaginative punishments. Dosson, Chappell & Co. of Tite Street still had Amy’s measurements on file. Her arrow-emblazoned ensemble would be ready when she had to report to Lobelia Draycott.

  Little ripped the backcloth down and used it to smother the fire. Coughing on dust and smoke, Amy saluted the First for her quick thinking. As Miss Kratides said, the Little Girl was young not stupid.

  The Arcadian scene was ruined. No tragedy there. A less gloomy vista might be an inspiration to play better. A pity one or two frowning composers hadn’t fallen off the wall in the excitement. Replacing craggy Beethoven with dreamy Chopin would add oomph to the orchestra. She could give Ludwig Van Beetlebrows a mentacle nudge…

  ‘Walmergrave doesn’t half weigh a ton,’ said Speke. ‘Does she wear chainmail undies too?’

  Speke tried to hoist Frecks off the Mauve Mystery Menace.

  The crab-hands scrabbled all over Frecks’ back, failing to get a purchase. Did that tickle or just make flesh creep?

  Frecks was still breathing.

  She’d been sent to Bedfordshire, not Gravesend.

  The Purple Peril wasn’t Aurelia Avalon. That unpleasant Unusual also had the habit of jumping out of cases like a jack-in-a-box, but her party piece was different. She sent folk to Bedfordshire with her hands, not her face. Nightcap was small and lissom, not small and thick-waisted.

  This girl might be imitating Nightcap. If responsible for the levitating instruments, she might be imitating Amy too.

  Familiar Talents manifesting in unfamiliar ways.

  Amy and Little knelt with Speke by Frecks and her pinned assailant. Fight squashed out of her, the Purple Peril glared through mesh-veiled eyeholes. Her featureless hood shaped into a peeved, resentful expression.

  Knowles was still playing with the pieces of her bashed-in, burned-up box.

  ‘I have a bonnet trimmed with black,’ she hummed. ‘Shall I wear it like a sack? I shall wear it thin or fat, going to the dogs with my young cat…’

  Amy tried to rouse Frecks.

  It was usually the ot
her way round. Frecks and Kali were the bound-out-of-bed-before-the-bell brigade, given to boisterous exercise and hearty pre-breakfast conversation. Amy would happily swap any number of bowls of Drearcliff porridge for twenty extra minutes in her cot – not even asleep, just lying quiet and warm. Frecks would whip off Amy’s coverlet. ‘Stir your socks,’ she’d say, ‘wonders await.’ Even on Monday mornings, when the only wonders awaiting were French tenses.

  ‘Wonders await,’ said Amy, shaking her friend.

  ‘Unhand me, varlet,’ mumbled Frecks.

  Relieved, Amy hugged her.

  Added weight made the Purple Peril squeak again.

  That mousey noise was familiar. Amy began to have more suspicions.

  Not fully conscious, Frecks started to come round. She opened her eyes and Speke waved sixteen crab-leg fingers over her face. That made her open her eyes wider and bump her head cringing away from the dangling spiny tips.

  ‘What bounder slipped a Mickey Finn in my cocoa?’ Frecks asked. ‘I’ve got the woozes.’

  She sat up and held her head. The Peril yelped as Frecks’ full weight shifted onto her.

  ‘This Wrong ’Un did something to you,’ said Amy.

  ‘I feel like Bro Ralph after a three-day Gay Paree bender. Have I got engaged to a poule from the Follies Bergère and gambled away my gaiters at ecarté?’

  Frecks heaved herself off the Violet Viper. She staggered in a small circle and sat down again, cross-legged. Her head was still foggy.

  ‘I didn’t think to bring smelling salts,’ Amy admitted.

  ‘You should carry miniatures of brandy for occasions such as this,’ said Frecks.

  ‘I am not a St Bernard,’ huffed Amy.

  Frecks chucked her under her chin and made ‘good doggie’ noises.

  Little and Speke laughed.

  ‘You’re not just woozy,’ said Amy. ‘You’re… squiffy!’

  Frecks giggled inappropriately.

  The hooded girl was still laid out flat, breathing heavily. She must be bruised under her body stocking. Serve her right.

  ‘This is Knock-Out Nora, then?’ said Frecks.