Frozen Charlotte

by Alex Bell

  We’re going to burn to death in this house, I thought hopelessly. Perhaps we should have stayed on the roof after all.

  But then cold fingers curled around mine and I knew that Rebecca was there, even though I couldn’t see her properly through the smoke. I held on to her hand and followed her down the stairs like a blind person.

  As she led us through the house I could hear Cameron’s laboured breathing in my ear and tried to comfort myself with the fact that at least that meant he was still alive. When we got down to the landing, the flames from the rooms on either side seemed to reach out to us like hot grasping hands, but the cold fingers around mine led us safely straight through the middle to the front door.

  We tumbled out on to the porch and the hand suddenly vanished as Rebecca seemed to disappear into the smoke.

  As we went down the steps to the garden, I looked at Cameron and my heart turned to ice. Lilias was no longer holding his other hand. She was still back there inside the house. At some point in all the noise and the smoke we had lost her.

  “Where’s Lilias?” I asked.

  Cameron looked confused in the firelight, and his eyes struggled to focus on me. “Lilias?” he said, and his voice was slurred. “But … isn’t she holding your other hand?”

  “No! That was Rebecca showing us the way.”

  “Oh God.” Cameron tried to go back to the house but he could barely stand up by himself and it wasn’t difficult for me to shove him back into the garden.

  “Wait here, I’ll find her!” I said.

  I ran back up the steps to the front door. As soon as I stepped into the hall I saw Lilias hurrying towards me with Shellycoat clutched to her chest, the old cat covered in ash.

  “Come on!” I called. Through the crackle and hiss of the flames I could still hear the Frozen Charlottes snarling and hissing in the walls and the sound sent a chill down my spine. We rushed out of the burning house, taking huge thankful gasps of the cool sea air outside.

  But it was far from over.

  We had found ourselves right back where we started. Piper was still there in the garden, and she still had the knife.

  The next few minutes seemed to happen in slow motion. I heard Dark Tom’s voice first, squawking from his cage: “Monstrous!” he said, just like he had done my first night at the house. “Monstrous! Monstrous!”

  I turned round and saw Cameron struggling to climb back up the front steps towards us, sweat running down his face, making trails in the ash staining his skin. And Piper was right there behind him, already reaching for him, already grabbing the back of his T-shirt before I had time to scream out a warning.

  She yanked him back and he fell on to the grass, his head falling back against the ground with a crack.

  “You’ve ruined everything!” Piper screamed over him, and in the flickering firelight she no longer looked beautiful, or even pretty, she looked exactly what she was – a snarling, soul-sucking monster. “I hate you, Cameron! I’ve always hated you!”

  She raised the knife and the blade shone silver in the firelight. Cameron tried to prop himself up on one elbow, his good hand stretched out defensively in front of him.

  “Piper,” he said weakly. “Please … don’t…”

  I was running towards them. It felt like I’d been running towards them my whole life. I could hear my own voice screaming at Piper, but it was like moving through tar, and I knew I wouldn’t get there in time to stop what was about to happen. All Piper had to do was bring the knife down and it would be over.

  But then, just as she was about to do it, her head jerked backwards as if she’d been struck. I heard her cry out, and saw the knife fall from her hand to land in the grass as she clutched both hands to her throat. Blood trickled through her fingers and, with a thrill of horror, I realized it was the necklace.

  I could only see the back of the doll’s head because its face was turned towards Piper, but I was sure it must be biting her throat because a thin ribbon of blood ran down from it. And the white fingers of all the broken hands were curled into her flesh, as if they were choking her.

  “What—” she gasped, clutching at the necklace with both her hands.

  “Save us.”

  The dolls’ voices poured out of the house over the roar of the fire.

  “Forget about them…”

  “And help us!”

  Her hands still clasped to her neck, Piper looked towards the house and, for the first time since I’d known her, I saw fear in her eyes – real, raw, ugly fear.

  “But I can’t!” she cried. “I can’t get you out in time. It’s too late!”

  “No!”

  “We’re by the door…”

  “You can reach us…”

  “You can…”

  “You better…”

  The doll’s head at Piper’s throat seemed to nuzzle deeper into her neck and blood splattered around it. Piper gave a bubbling shriek and tried to pull the necklace off again, but it was embedded too deeply into her throat, and her fingers tugged at it in vain.

  “All right!” I heard her gasp. “All right, I’m coming, I’m coming!”

  She half ran, half staggered past us. I didn’t know what I could do to help her, or whether I even should, and the next second she’d gone up the porch steps and disappeared into the house.

  “Piper,” the dolls whispered, “don’t you want to play with us any more? It’s fun to be dead.”

  The front door slammed shut behind her and then an explosion of flames broke the downstairs windows in great showers of hot, glittering glass.

  “Fire in the hole!” Dark Tom shrieked, frantically flapping his wings in his cage. “Fire in the hole!”

  Lilias and I ran to Cameron. The knife hadn’t touched him but he was lying utterly still in the grass and his eyes were closed, his face too white.

  When the lights shone on us I couldn’t understand what they were at first. My mind was so numbed by the horror of the last few hours that I didn’t realize they were car headlights until Uncle James ran through the gates towards us.

  “No, no, no!” he was saying. “Not again, not again!”

  “Cameron… Cameron’s been hurt,” I said, and it was an effort to speak – my tongue felt clumsy, my voice sounded strange in my ears. “We need an ambulance.”

  “It’s already on its way,” Uncle James said, falling beside Cameron in the grass. “I saw the fire from the road and I knew … I knew that Piper had done something again. I heard it in her voice on the phone. That’s why I caught the last ferry before they stopped running.” Uncle James looked at me and suddenly grabbed my shoulder. “Sophie, you’re hurt too!”

  I looked down and saw the blood all over my T-shirt and jeans. It was on my hands too, from where I’d helped Cameron out of the house. I shook my head. “It’s not mine,” I said. I felt so weird, so faraway and wobbly, I’d never felt shock like this before, not even when Jay died.

  “Lilias, are you OK?” Uncle James said. She was in a heap on the grass, sobbing into Shellycoat’s fur. She nodded but couldn’t speak.

  “It’s Cameron. Piper had… She had a knife.”

  Uncle James groaned and turned back to Cameron, leaning over him in the grass. There was so much blood – it shone dark and wet on his clothes and his skin and the ground.

  “I should have listened,” he muttered, speaking more to himself than to me. “God forgive me, why didn’t I listen to him?”

  The flashing blue lights signalled the arrival of the fire engine and the ambulance but Uncle James’s face was ashen as he looked up at me in the dancing firelight and, when he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “He’s not breathing.”

  Six Months Later

  I walked down the street towards the café, the one where it had all started with the Ouija-board app. My coat was buttoned up to my chin and a woolly hat was pulled low over my ears. It had snowed earlier in the day and was threatening to do so again. My feet were like blocks of ice in my boots despite the secon
d pair of socks I’d put on.

  When I turned the corner into the next street, I saw him straight away. He was standing outside the café wearing a blue scarf and a long dark coat. As I walked down the road, the first few flakes of snow began to fall, settling in his black hair. He was gazing around but didn’t notice me until I was almost right in front of him, then he broke into a huge smile that made my heart do a kind of flip-flop inside my chest.

  I’d worried that it might be a bit weird between us, since we hadn’t seen each other in months, but he walked the last few steps to meet me and threw his arms around me in a tight hug. He had to bend his tall body down slightly to my level and I could smell the fresh, minty scent of his shampoo.

  Neither one of us spoke for a few moments and I didn’t want the hug to end. It was such a joy to feel the warmth of his body, strong and healthy again, close to mine. It helped to dispel the awful memory of those first few days at the hospital when they hadn’t even been sure whether or not he would survive. When the paramedic had revived him at the scene I had been so relieved, but that had just been the start of a long difficult journey. Now the injury had finally healed, although it had left a jagged scar down his side that he would carry for life.

  Eventually, he pulled back and smiled at me. The smile completely transformed his face and brought so much warmth into those blue eyes of his that it was almost like looking at a different person.

  “Well,” Cameron said. “How are you?”

  “Never mind me,” I replied, giving him a poke. “Don’t keep me in suspense – tell me about your audition!”

  “I got in!” he said. “I’ll start music college in London in September.”

  “That’s great! Oh, Cameron, I’m so pleased for you!”

  The snow was coming down even harder now. It felt like we were a million miles away from Skye and last summer and everything that had happened on the island.

  “Come on,” he said, grabbing hold of my hand. “Let’s go inside and get warm.”

  We ordered hot chocolate and sat down at a table by the window.

  “How’s Lilias doing?” I asked.

  “Really well,” Cameron said. “The new house has been so good for her and she’s even made friends with the girl who lives next door.”

  “That’s fantastic!”

  “And Mum’s been doing better too. We’ve been allowed to see her a couple of times. Since… Since Piper died, she seems to have made big leaps in her progress. The doctors are really pleased with her.”

  “I’m so glad.” I reached across the table and brushed my fingertips against Cameron’s hand.

  The firemen had gone straight into the house that night to try to save Piper but, by the time they found her, it was too late – she had burned to death.

  “Did you manage to straighten everything out with your parents?” Cameron asked.

  “It took a while but they don’t think I’m suicidal any more, if that’s what you mean. What happened with the investigation?” I asked. “Into Brett’s accident?”

  “Officially closed,” Cameron replied. “Apparently Piper’s friends told the police that Brett … well…” He suddenly looked apologetic. “That he kissed you that night on the beach.”

  I could feel myself blushing. “It… It’s not what you think—” I began, but Cameron instantly put his hand over mine across the table.

  “I know,” he said. “It’s OK. You don’t have to explain – I can imagine what happened well enough. I’m only sorry I wasn’t there to— Well, anyway, all that matters is that her friends thought that might have given Piper a motive for attacking Brett. And they found her DNA on the needles. But since she’s not around any more … well … they’re not going to charge me with anything. Dad told them about how she set the house on fire and now they’re saying that perhaps she had undiagnosed mental problems.”

  “And the dolls?” I asked quietly. I hesitated to bring them up, just the mention of them sent a chill through my blood, but I had to know.

  “I went back to the house,” Cameron said, lowering his voice to match mine. “As soon as they let me out of the hospital, I went back, but it’s just a burnt-out shell now. There’s nothing left. I combed through the rubble but I couldn’t see any Frozen Charlottes. The ones that were left must have all been destroyed when the walls collapsed in the fire.”

  “So it’s definitely over then.”

  “It’s definitely over,” Cameron replied. He leaned back in his chair and looked suddenly nervous as he picked up a menu and fiddled with it. “You’ll come and visit me, won’t you?” he asked. “When I start college? London’s a lot closer than Skye. Or I could visit you, I mean, whatever is—”

  “Of course I’ll visit,” I said, my fingers entwining with his. “All the time.”

  Cameron smiled at me across the table and just for a moment I almost felt like Jay was there with me too. As if he was glad for me, like he was telling me that it was OK. His voice was clear inside my head. Be happy, Sophie. That’s all I want…

  Perhaps Cameron could feel it too somehow, because he said, “Maybe one day we could visit Jay’s grave together? I know I never met him but I’d… I don’t know – I guess I’d just like to pay my respects.”

  “Of course we can. I think you two would have really liked each other.”

  Cameron smiled at me and then said, “I’m hungry. Are you hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  He picked up the menu again. “So what’s good here?”

  I smiled. “Everything.”

  Epilogue

  It was a freezing winter’s day when the little girl found the suitcase washed up on the beach. It had obviously been in the sea a while because it was soaking wet and covered with seaweed and even had a few barnacles stuck to it. But the rusted padlock came open easily in her hands and, when she saw what was inside, her eyes widened in delight.

  She snatched up the case and raced back down the beach to show her parents, who were coming along more slowly behind her.

  “But they’re all broken and dirty, Judith,” her mum said. “You don’t really want to keep them, do you?”

  “I do, I do! Mummy, they spoke to me! And they said they want to be my friends, my best friends!”

  “Oh, well, if they want to be your best friends then I suppose you can keep them. Although I don’t know why you’d want strange little broken dolls like that when you’ve got so many nice ones at home. You’re going to have to come up with a lot of names for them all.”

  “They have the same name,” Judith told her.

  “And what’s that?”

  “It’s Charlotte.”

  Sleepless

  Lou Morgan

  The pressure of exams leads Izzy and her friends to take a new study drug they find online. But one by one they succumb to hallucinations, nightmares and psychosis. The only way to survive is to stay awake…

  Flesh and Blood

  Simon Cheshire

  When Sam hears screams coming from a nearby house, he sets out to investigate. But the secrets hidden behind the locked doors of Bierce Priory are worse than he could ever have imagined. Uncovering the horror is one thing, escaping is another.

  Bad Bones

  Graham Marks

  Gabe makes a discovery that could be the answer to all his problems. But taking the Aztec gold disturbs the spirit of an evil Spanish priest hell-bent on revenge. Can Gabe escape the demon he’s unleashed?

  Read on for the opening

  chapter of Sleepless…

  An extract from Sleepless

  by Lou Morgan

  Chapter One

  “Just a few more weeks. That’s all – a few more weeks and then we’re done.”

  “Until September.”

  “Whatever.”

  “And, you know, aren’t you forgetting something? Like exams, maybe?”

  Everyone else groaned, despite Grey’s grin. Nobody needed (or wanted) to be reminded about the exams. The Clerk
enwell School took exam results very seriously indeed. Almost as seriously as their parents did.

  The bell signalling the last of the afternoon’s classes rang, and Izzy hauled herself up from the small grass square that passed for the Clerkenwell’s courtyard, dusting down her school skirt and scooping her bag on to her shoulder. All around the courtyard, students started towards their respective classrooms, watched from the doorways by the school prefects. Not that anyone was in much of a hurry – it was the last real day of term. When the bell rang at 3:30pm, that was it. Study leave – and then exams, yes, but Izzy wasn’t going to think about that until she had to. Which was horribly soon.

  If she was honest, she thought, hitching the strap of her bag further over her shirt, it was probably about three weeks ago. Mia and Dom had had their revision timetables all drawn up and printed out by half term. “Tiger mother,” they’d said in unison when Noah had sniggered at the neat charts marked up in the twins’ diaries – everyone knew how pushy she was when it came to school. Not that Noah had much to worry about. He was probably the only one of the whole group who stood a chance of getting anywhere near a top grade. There was a reason he was at Clerkenwell, after all, and unlike most of them it wasn’t his family’s money.

  Izzy slipped into her seat in the English classroom just ahead of Kara and Grey. Kara kept her head down – she was the one person in the whole class who looked unhappy about the end of term. It didn’t exactly take a genius to know why, either. Poor Kara. She was so afraid of being on the outside that she’d rather be the butt of Tigs’s jokes than risk being forgotten. You could see it in her face. Even after all the time she and Tigs had known each other, she was still afraid of being shut out. All she wanted was to be part of this mythical ‘inner circle’ that had Tigs at its centre. Izzy had said as much to Grey, not all that long ago, as they’d waited for the lifts in the lobby of the Barbican’s Lauderdale Tower where they both lived.