The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School

by Kim Newman

  ‘Young Larry’s taking a turn for the better,’ said Frecks.

  Amy was suddenly tired. She hadn’t slept all night… again.

  At least this Game had a happier Finish than the last.

  ‘What about that?’ said Little, toeing the discarded Broken Doll mask.

  On the floor, it seemed a flimsy thing. Plaster, not china. Perhaps just paper. It didn’t shrivel in sunlight, but was dead as a shed snakeskin. Someone – preferably Frecks or Knowles – should quiz Laurence on how she came by the accoutrements and the idea of the Broken Doll.

  Amy picked the mask up with mentacles. It didn’t sting any more.

  Little was still unnerved by the floating face.

  ‘It’s all right, Gillian,’ said Wax gently – though that was probably part of his latest disguise, not an actual admirable trait. ‘It’s only Amy showing off.’

  She had a good mind to clap the mask on him and see how he liked the role of Broken Doll.

  But she didn’t. All Wax’s faces were masks anyway. Including this one, which was more detailed every time she looked his way. He’d dug out Harold Lloyd spectacles. A new dot by his nose was more pimple than beauty spot. A forelock stuck up like an unwashed paintbrush. His Drearcliff tie was swapped for a flashy job with a St Cuthbert’s crest.

  Other hands took the mask. Speke’s.

  Amy had known this was coming. She flicked a glance at Miss Kratides, who was watching Amy and Speke closely. The flying hands put the mask down on a desk.

  Speke raised her stumps. Her hands circled the room, fingers fluttering, and came back like birds to a nest. They settled on the ends of her wrists. A clicking sounded, like bony plates meshing. Speke was pleased. She twisted one hand off and let it fly away and back. She caught it as if playing with a rubber-stringed cup and ball toy.

  ‘You’re her who I’m supposed to blame,’ she said to Amy. ‘For not telling what you know?’

  Amy agreed.

  ‘That annoyed me,’ Speke said, half-turning to the teacher. ‘I think it was supposed to. Other girls’ secrets were different. She is right to be afraid of the Broken Doll. That’s not just true. It’s sensible. Can’t argue with it. My secret wasn’t that I was right to blame Thomsett for not telling what she knew. It said I would. That’s not a prediction or a suggestion. That’s telling me what to feel. Which you can’t, Miss. No one can. It’s like when you had Frost and Thorn’s seats mixed up. You are only mostly right… and you’re wrong this time.’

  Amy raised the mask off the desk and turned its face to Miss Kratides.

  ‘I don’t blame Thomsett. She didn’t mean harm. She’d have warned me if she’d had the chance. So I don’t blame her for what happened with my hands, Miss… I blame you. Thomsett knew, but you knew better.’

  Amy settled the mask on the desk.

  ‘Not exactly an apple for the teacher,’ said Miss Kratides, picking it up.

  ‘Put it on, Mori,’ said Wax. ‘You know you want to.’

  Miss Kratides didn’t immediately rise to her brother’s bait.

  Amy squeezed Speke’s shoulder. The younger girl laid her crab-hand over Amy’s for a moment. Amy didn’t cringe.

  The girls approached the teacher’s desk. It was ridiculously large for such a small person. She had to have pillows on her chair to get her elbows above her blotter.

  ‘You’re wrong about us all,’ said Amy. ‘None of this was necessary.’

  ‘Wasn’t it indeed?’

  ‘It was futile and cruel.’

  ‘You are improved, Thomsett. You are closer to what you can be – what you will be. You’d fly rings around the Aviatrix. Knowles can remember what she crams. More than that, she understands what she learns. Speke – you are a marvel, not a fluke. Harper can do something useful for the first time in her life. Light and De’Ath are new best friends. Laurence has been saved from herself. That’s all in my first week as your teacher.’

  ‘Please don’t tell us we’ll look back and thank you,’ said Amy.

  Miss Kratides shrugged tensely. ‘I’m here to bring out your potential. It’s not my job to be your friend.’

  ‘Good thing too,’ said Wax. ‘Mori’s not much of a one for friends.’

  ‘Which runs in the family,’ snapped Amy. ‘I’m not thanking you either, you sneak!’

  He was hurt. Or, rather, the boy he was pretending to be was hurt. That imaginary lad would be stung by such a remark. So he simulated a wounded expression. Beneath the mask, he was carved ice.

  ‘You’ve put us on our guard, Miss Kratides,’ Amy continued. ‘Your method, such as it is, won’t work any more. We shan’t let it. We shan’t be broken.’

  Frecks and Speke stood by Amy. Little hesitated. Miss Kratides hadn’t claimed all this was good for her. She was learning Dr Swan’s old lesson – mistrust. Larry was still serene in the aura of Frecks’ blessing. Paquignet thought plant thoughts. Wax was halfway between the girls and the teacher’s desk.

  ‘From now on, you won’t Test to Destruction… for we’ll stop you. We’ll make up our own minds about whether we want to be improved. You’re on notice, Miss. Mend your ways or else you’ll get the Full Treatment. When you were here as a girl, you only had the staff and the whips against you. Now you’ve us. Girls. This isn’t the Count’s trainset or the Broken Doll’s house. We won’t let you hurt any one of us. We want none of your little hints that we should be what you want us to be so you can feel better about who you are.’

  ‘Thomsett, you are a wilful girl,’ she snapped, not looking at Amy. ‘Impertinence Infraction. Mark it in your Time-Table Book.’

  ‘See, now you’re a beak,’ said Amy.

  Miss Kratides, sly and proud, paid her attention. The fixed side of her mouth tried to complete her smile. She pressed the Broken Doll mask to her face. When she took her hands away, it stayed put. She was a new Doll, with different cracks. One of her eyes was glass and green. The dull white cracked visage perfectly fit with her glossy black upswept curls and crimson hairband. Her slender neck wasn’t up to supporting the disproportionately heavy mask, so her head hung to one side as if she’d survived the gallows.

  Girls sat at their desks. Others filed in, fresh from a night’s sleep and breakfast. Kali and Light Fingers sat behind Frecks and Amy. Devlin and Knowles – who wasn’t quite as fresh as the others – sat in front. After some shuffling – and giggles at the presence of Wax, who had no desk to himself and had to bunch up with Paquignet – every place was occupied.

  Miss Kratides looked at the class through her mask. There were murmurs of disquiet. Everyone knew who the alarming apparition was though. No doubt about the identity of this Doll.

  She winked her unconcealed eye at Amy and opened the register.

  ‘Aconita Gould,’ she called. Her voice was deeper and issued from unmoving lips.

  ‘Present,’ barked the Scots girl.

  ‘Alfred Wax.’

  Laughter and amazement all round, quadrupling at his ‘present and correct’. Hubbub continued. De’Ath launched a paper plane, which Amy deflected before it speared onto Wax’s head. She’d no idea why she bothered.

  Miss Kratides raised a hand for silence. She wore old white lace gloves with ruffs. They were new. The Remove settled.

  ‘Amanda Thomsett…’

  Amy let the moment linger.

  ‘Still here,’ she said, at last. ‘Still glorious.’

  Coda I: A Week Later – Break

  AMY HOBBLED OUT of the gym, aching from indoor flying. Stopping short to avoid bumping into a wall or the ceiling was more of a challenge than weaving between climbing ropes or zooming through hoops. Miss Borrodale had devised a system of aerial exercise to develop her Talent. Miss Kratides helpfully suggested weaving hooks into the ropes and setting the hoops on fire. Fossil baulked at that.

  Outside the gym, a louche girl leaned against a wall. She beckoned Amy.

  Heike Ziss. No fear.

  Amy would not be whispered at.

&n
bsp; ‘Hop off, Ziss,’ she said.

  The menace wasn’t offended. She went back to her leaning, eye out for less wary souls.

  Ziss was a future cause for concern. She wasn’t in the league of Antoinette Rayne, Ariadne Rinaldo or the Broken Doll. Yet. But she bore watching. Miss Kratides had said as much. Though suspicious of any intelligence from that source, Amy suspected it made sense to suggest Miss Memory investigate Whispering Ziss and share anything worrying that came to light.

  School was the same as ever, yet completely changed.

  Alfred Wax caused an unprecedented stir. Interest in the sudden, strange appearance of a boy in their midst tapered, then flared again when he changed his face – and indeed, everything about him, including his height and weight – and seemed a completely different boy. Amy was tired of him all over again. At least he stuck to his own name for now. He was on the register of the Remove and sat at one of the five exchange-student desks added to the classroom. The other four places prompted useless speculation. Some in the Remove had far-fetched notions of who might be joining them.

  Miss Kratides didn’t wear the mask in lessons, but the Broken Doll was active by night. Knowles collected and collated sightings. A spate of mysterious vandalism – which began with the red paint tipped on the Heel – continued. Moustaches appeared on portraits of distinguished Old Girls. Soap mixture was poured into organ pipes, so bubbles filled Chapel when Miss Dryden played ‘Nymphs and Shepherds’ – not, as Amy recalled, Miss Kratides’ favourite ditty. Whips sought the phantom culprit, but no one in the Remove was inclined to snitch on their beak. Not even Harper.

  An underground trade sprang up in contraband items like itching powder, coal soap, marked cards, and wickedly potent sherbet. The epidemic of not-terribly-amusing practical jokes led to vendettas, accusations and ill-feeling. The Moth Club were sure their teacher was behind it, but had no proof. The name of the Broken Doll was invoked by all sorts, but mostly as a mythical creature who could usefully take the blame for unattributed infractions. Miss Kratides might not even be the only Broken Doll at Drearcliff Grange.

  Stories circulated about what happened on the Night of the Broken Doll. Light Fingers, over her moodiness but now a fiend for finding things out, kept pressing Amy and Frecks for details, alternately interviewing them together and separately like a policewoman intent on breaking an alibi. The fact of Alfred Wax’s presence was so colossal everything else – including the sorry state of the Music Room the next morning – was swept under the carpet.

  The whole school had an epidemic of the giggles. Which only served to make Amy not see the funny side of anything. Especially japes involving itching powder and coal soap. Make-up infractions were on the rise. The most unlikely girls – Inchfawn, Pinborough, Marsh, Spikins – painted themselves like flagrant houris and contrived to be in the way whenever Alfred Wax was out and about. Others were so crippled with blushes and shyness they fled his presence. Amy sympathised more with the second faction. She had to tolerate the sneak’s presence in lessons, but otherwise could well do without him. Infuriatingly, he found a place, invited by the newly hussified Inchfawn, at the Desdemona Fourth table.

  He was perfectly civil but she didn’t believe anything he said.

  His latest appearance was rumpled and athletic, with a slight hesitation before certain words as if he’d conquered a stammer. He was suddenly a demon stamp collector – which got him in with the Philately Phellows – and full of yarns about relatives who sent mysterious missives from far corners of the world, with fabulous rarities gummed to their envelopes. If Amy had Miss Kratides for a sister, she’d make up relatives too.

  A cold spell had come.

  Amy reached the Quad. The rest of the Moth Club were milling about with hands in their blazer pockets, breathing plumes of mist in an attempt to talk with smoke signals. The project wasn’t going well. Kali and Light Fingers were still at odds over a basic vocabulary.

  Light Fingers puffed ‘hello’ at Amy and Kali told her she wasn’t doing it properly.

  Frecks shrugged. Amy noticed her I’ve-got-a-secret air. Her beauty mark was newly applied. Her hat hair was tamed and smoothed. Using only water and a mystery ingredient, Frecks managed a fair approximation of a permanent wave. She looked more flapper than ragamuffin. Her coif was locked up in a tin box and shoved to the back of a drawer.

  Wax, as ever, loitered nearby – exciting more interest than a one-legged juggler but less than a Martian Giant Squid. Among Firsts, a craze for pestering him had caught on. He was surely getting fed up with it. Every few minutes, some tiny girl would boldly dash close to him. The aim was to grab his knobbly male knee then run off screaming. No one outside the year understood the game, but it was great larks to the infants. Amy was weary of telling Wax to push off and wearier still of being told he wasn’t such a bad sort and should be given a second or third or eleventh chance to make it up.

  He tried to catch her eye. She turned away and huffed, exhaling a signal that made Kali laugh.

  As long as the play-actor was lurking, Laurence stayed away. Still vaguely attached to Bok, she sometimes drew Frecks out of the Moth Club circle for precious moments à deux. Amy and Larry hadn’t exactly become friends, but several things drew them together. That they were the only girls not willing to mark ‘forgive and forget’ in Wax’s Time-Table Book gave them common cause. Yes, excusing Larry’s Broken Doll doings while holding Wax’s trespasses against him was inconsistent. But it made sense to her. And to Larry. They also shared the cloak. No one else understood what wearing the thing was like. What it made them find out about themselves.

  ‘Do you miss it?’ Larry would ask.

  ‘Crumpets, no,’ Amy would respond.

  ‘Me neither.’

  Then they’d look at each other and mouth the truth.

  They both still had disturbing dreams. The cloak would be on them again, stifling and demanding. They woke up terrified, relieved it was only fancy. Then they missed being able to see in the dark. The nap of the collar against their throats provoked a sickly elation which reoccurred at odd moments. They crooked little fingers together and swore to be resolute if the cape reconstituted and came for either of them.

  Frecks nudged Amy and pointed at Muriel Lavish. The excessively ineffectual Viola Third Captain didn’t know why a pack of Seconds were hopping up and down around her and braying. Lavish had ‘lick me’ chalked on the back of her blazer. Amy presumed the japester was either in too much of a hurry to get her message right or had a peculiar idea of fun. The mocking mob stuck out their tongues but didn’t actually go so far as to lick the victim. Amy would have gone over and patted the chalk off the poor girl’s back, but Lavish’s cellmates Featherstowe and Phair reluctantly stirred themselves to defend the honour of their Captain and told the perishers to push off.

  A kite drifted across the Quad, pursued by Speke’s hands.

  Second only to Wax as an item of interest were the flying hands. The little miracles made Speke the Star of the Second Form. She accrued an active coterie – sly-eyed minx Alison Hills, peppery scrapper Hazel Hood and chirrupy intellect Yung Kha. The Magic Hand Gang had Little as a mascot and a Secret Lair in the Green Room (which everybody knew about). Young, intrepid, enthusiastic, the Magic Hand Gang were forever rushing around having their own adventures. The sophisticates of the Moth Club were jaded by comparison. A baton had been passed. Again, Amy felt loss and pride in equal measure.

  The Magic Hand Gang, not the Moth Club, were in the front-line of the battle against the Plague of Not-So-Funny Japes. They had acquired an arch-nemesis in the Tamora Third Stuckey, ducesa of the Club Mussolini. An admirer of the Italian Prime Minister, Stuckey and her shrill mollies were given to marching around the Quad in black jodhpurs and peaked caps, constantly declaring the complete success of a phase of her master plan. Stuckey’s aim was nothing less than domination of the school by the time she was a Sixth. The Moth Club would have passed out by then, so it was as well the Magic Hand Gang w
ere joining the fray. Experience taught Amy that if someone had a master plan, someone else jolly well better thwart it.

  Knowles and Devlin walked up to the Moth Club.

  ‘Rattletrap’s back from the station,’ said Knowles.

  ‘With the other exchange students,’ explained Devlin.

  Miss Kratides had announced that the four remaining exchange-student desks would soon be taken, as part of a programme Dr Swan had negotiated with other schools. All anyone wanted to know was whether that meant more boys. The presence of a solitary specimen created an appetite for variety. Amy said the one boy they had was quite enough. He was variety all by himself. Did Wax ponder the loss of his unique status with dread or relief? Or both, depending on who he was that day?

  No one wanted to be the one to suggest it, but they would have to go to the gates to eye up the new arrivals.

  Word spread and the Quad emptied. Whooping girls swarmed away.

  Speke’s hands flew in circles then took after their owner.

  The Moth Club ambled along in the wake of the exodus, making a point of not showing too much interest. Amy noticed Larry creep out from behind the Heel – where she had been playing jacks with Bok and Dyall – to join the throng.

  An assembly of Thirds and Fourths broke and ran, leaving Stuckey stood on a plinth, fired up to make a speech. Few fascistas were committed enough to listen to her announce Phase Omicron rather than nip off to goggle at new arrivals. Unhappy with the desertion, the little ducesa hopped down to scurry after her followers. She hadn’t got the hang of goose-stepping in jodhpurs. Amy hoped she’d have a better reason for devastating a continent within the next ten years.

  A cheer went up from in front of the main building. The brass band played ‘Entrance of the Gladiators’.

  Gawky Gifford ran at them, so excited she blurted out the news without asking to be paid for it.