There was a ripple of laughter. Jess, feeling guilty, bit her lip and glanced at the Newbie, but Emerald did not seem in the least bothered - in fact, she smiled knowingly, as if being weird was something she was perfectly happy about.
‘Don’t be so rrrude, Leeann Brooks,’ said Mr Stone in a dark, serious voice. ‘We welcome everrry-one in this school.’ He paused. ‘Besides, some people would find you quite unnaturally terrrr-ifying if they met you on a storr-my night.’ There was a ripple of laughter, and Leeann blushed.
Mr Stone moved to stand behind the Newbie.
‘This is Emerald Greene. She’ll be joining 8A from this week, and I want you to make her feel welcome.’ He smiled, then gestured towards Jess. ‘I’m going to put you in Jessica’s capable hands, Emerald. She will be your guide, companion and men-torrr.’
Everyone turned to stare at Jessica. She looked up in alarm, feeling as if the bottom had dropped out of her stomach.
‘That is, someone who acts in an advisorrr-y capacity. Someone who is there to convey their experrr-ience and their knowledge when needed.’ He wiggled his eyebrows. ‘It’s usually someone devastatingly charrr-ming and intelligent, such as myself. But as I’m, ah, kind of tied up with teaching a few classes, I thought I’d delegate.’
‘I see,’ said Jess, biting her lip. She wasn’t sure she was up to being a mentor, as it was not something she had ever done before. ‘I’ll try, sir,’ she offered.
Mr Stone started the register, and the twenty-eight girls and four boys answered with varying degrees of boredom.
Jess felt something dig into her side. She gasped, looked down. It was a bony elbow. Emerald Greene had nudged Jess sharply in the ribs.
‘I would not worry,’ whispered Emerald Greene in a calm, serious tone. ‘I am sure we will manage to get on very well.’
‘I hope so,’ replied Jess politely, and she managed a weak smile.
Underneath it, though, she had the most tremendous sense of unease and foreboding. Everything she’d seen so far made her think that Emerald Greene spelt trouble - and trouble of a very odd kind indeed.
Aunt Gabi had managed to lose her keys again, and she had to run some errands before she started at the shop today. It wasn’t a good time to be dealing with a pushy suitor.
‘No, Miguel, look,’ she was saying patiently, the phone cradled under her chin as she frantically unpacked her college bag. ‘I keep telling you, evenings are no good...’
There was an unhappy babble on the other end of the line. Gabi upturned her bag on to the dining-room table and inspected the contents under her reading-lamp.
‘No - no, I’m sorry, but I have a hungry teenager to support, precious... I’m working God-forsaken hours down at the Spar and doing my college course, darling, and I really can’t - ’
There was more babbling. She sighed with relief as she found her keys wedged into her folder of notes.
‘Relationship?’ Gabi exclaimed. ‘Miguel, I hardly think we can call it a relationship. We’ve had two cups of coffee. And one of them was decaf. Look, we’ll do lunch sometime, okay? Gotta go. Ciao, darling. Mmwah.’ She clicked the phone off with an audible sigh of relief and threw it into the waste-paper basket. ‘Hasta la vista, baby,’ she muttered, and bit into an apple.
The reading-lamp flickered. Gabi tutted, told herself to make sure she got the bulb fixed. There was never time for all the little things like that. Young Jess, she thought, was remarkably tolerant of the house falling apart. Armed with purse and keys, Gabi strode towards the front door, apple jammed in her mouth, just as the phone started ringing again. Insistently.
Gabi sighed in exasperation. She retrieved the phone and thumbed Talk, forgetting to take the apple out of her mouth first. ‘Mmm-hmmff?’ she said.
First of all, there seemed to be no sound but a wash of static, or possibly heavy breathing.
Aunt Gabi grimaced. That’s all I need, she thought - a crank caller. She removed the apple and said calmly, ‘Listen, you creep, I can hear you. Don’t think you’re freaking me out, because you’re not. Got it?’
Another sound was growing in the background, though. A slow crescendo of singing. At first she thought the prankster had switched on a CD or something, but there was a fullness to the sound, a richness, as if the women’s voices were wrapping themselves around her head. The singing was beautiful, melancholy, yet somehow rough-edged, not like anything one normally heard. And Gabi found herself rooted to the spot, half in fear and half in fascination.
The reading-lamp flickered again and dimmed.
The women’s voices were growing louder, and she now seemed to hear them inside her head. And she found her eyes fixed on the reading-lamp, which now appeared to be filled with a crackly, blue light -
Bang bang bang, went the front door.
And in a split second, Aunt Gabi was back in her dining-kitchen, holding the phone. The lamp was just an old reading-lamp and there was no sound from the telephone at all. She stared into the receiver, holding it at arm’s length as if she expected it to bite her.
Bang bang bang. Someone was knocking persistently.
Gabi threw the receiver aside, paused in the hallway to smooth her dishevelled hair and went to the front door. She took a moment to compose herself and opened the door.
Two men stood there, long dark coats framed in the early-evening light. One was about fifty, burly, with a pink complexion and a thick grey moustache. The other was black, young, with a bald head, a square goatee beard and trendy glasses. Good-looking, she thought. She smiled winsomely at the younger man.
They flipped ID cards at her. ‘Good afternoon, ma’am,’ growled the older man. ‘Courtney, Special Measures Division. This is my colleague, Mr Odell.’
Gabi gave them the same suspicious, head-to-toe appraisal which all her doorstep callers got, from brush salesmen to the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
‘What’s the “Special Measures Division” when it’s at home?’ she demanded.
‘We’re never at home.’ This time, it was the young Mr Odell who spoke, giving her a brief smile. ‘Too busy, you see.’
‘You’re Miss LaForge, the home-owner?’ Mr Courtney asked.
‘Nope. I’m Ms LaForge, the home-owner. Close, but no cigar.’
‘Fine. Have it your way, Ms LaForge.’ Mr Courtney nodded politely. ‘Have you noticed anything... unusual happening in this neighbourhood in the last few days? Anything, shall we say, out of the ordinary?’
Gabi drew breath, raised her eyebrows and leaned against the door. ‘Oooh, well, depends what you mean,’ she said. She decided to keep her distance from these two, because she wasn’t getting good vibes from them at all. ‘Debbie Graham at number 27 - divorced, you know - she had two pints of milk on Thursday. And that Liam Johnson over the road, he’s been getting in with the wrong sort at school. Mind you...’ Gabi lowered her voice. The two men leaned nearer, Mr Odell with his pencil poised over his notebook. ‘I always had my doubts. Eyebrows too close together, if you know what I mean.’ She gave a knowing nod, leaned back and folded her arms.
The two men exchanged glances.
Mr Courtney held up an A3 poster. It featured the grinning face of a man in his fifties or sixties, super-imposed over a picture of a stone circle. Underneath, in big black letters, it read:
PROFESSOR EDWIN ULVERSTON, MA (Oxon), PhD, FBA, MIFA
invites the citizens of Meresbury to witness a historic event!
The opening of an ancient Viking tomb
within the Ten Sisters Stones at Scratchcombe Edge
Monday 14th September, from 7.30pm at the Plateau
ADMISSION: FREE.
‘Have you seen this before?’ Mr Courtney asked.
Gabi shrugged. ‘Of course. They’re all over the place. My niece is going with a group from school, in fact.’ She
narrowed her eyes. ‘Why? What’s up?’
‘Classified information,‘ snarled Mr Courtney. He nodded at Mr Odell, who snapped his notebook shut. ‘If you experience anything unusual, anything at all... unearthly, in the next few days, ma’am,’ said Mr Courtney sternly, ‘I’d be much obliged if you could call this number.’ He gave her a silver business-card. ‘Understood?’
‘Oh, absolutely.’ Gabi gave him a brief, scrappy salute. ‘I’ll be straight on that blower, never you fear.’
‘Right,’ said Mr Courtney, frowning sternly. ‘I’ll bid you good day, then.’
They turned to go, but just as Gabi was closing the door in relief, Mr Odell turned back. ‘Oh, one other thing, Ms LaForge,’ he said, index finger raised.
‘Yes?’ said Gabi.
‘Lock the door at night. There are some funny people around.’ He nodded politely to her, and turned to follow his superior down the steps.
Gabi, frowning at this last comment, found herself scurrying into the lounge to watch where the men went. She twitched her net curtains open and peered out - just in time to see them getting into a sleek, black car with tinted windows, which was parked at the end of the street. It moved off, smoothly and swiftly.
Gabi went back into the dining kitchen and, treading very carefully, approached the reading-lamp. It seemed to be back to normal again.
All the same...
She shivered, and switched off the lamp at the mains.
Richie Fanshawe dreamed of going into space.
It had been Richie’s dream since he was little, when he’d watched the NASA Space Shuttle taking off on the TV news. It had not deterred him when his older brother Tom told him that one of them had blown up once and that everyone on board had been killed. Richie had later written a poem about the Challenger and its crew, these distant voyagers who had died years before he was born, and it had won a national competition.
When Richie wasn’t scouring the astronomical news, he listened to short-wave radio, trying to pick out a pattern in the bleeps and crackles. His prize possession was an illuminated globe of the Moon - a present from Tom, who had turned out all right now that he was grown-up and working.
Ever since he could remember, Richie had been drawing pictures of himself as a spaceman, either planting the Union Flag on the moon’s surface, or re-entering Earth’s atmosphere in a capsule, or battling multi-headed alien invaders. He wasn’t sure about the last bit - he liked to think that if he ever met any alien life-forms he’d sit down and chat to them rather than zap their tentacles - but at the end of the day, they might be bad guys and someone would have to defeat them.
People laughed at him, of course. Partly because he didn’t look much like an astronaut. People always laughed at you if you loved something, Richie realised. Love was weak, love was poncy, love was for girls. Except football. You could love a football team and nobody would call you names. Richie wasn’t much good at football, though, and he didn’t have a favourite team or player. In PE lessons, he’d be the last to be picked. He would spend the game shivering on the wing, not able to see much without his glasses, hoping that the ball wouldn’t hit him. If he didn’t get muddy and the game came nowhere near him, then it was a good result.
Jess seemed to understand him, or at least tolerate him. She treated him a bit like a younger brother.
Luckily, Richie’s talents meant that he wasn’t often bullied - he was in demand as a resident boffin. Barely a week went by without a pupil asking him to help write a computer program or mend their iPod. He was thinking of charging for his services.
Today, at lunchtime in the deserted IT room, he had another mission - only this time, it was one of his own.
He typed ‘Rubicon House’ into the search engine, and clicked on the first website he found. Text flowed on to the screen, alongside a picture of an imposing Georgian mansion.
Richie blinked. ‘She lives there? You’re kidding!’
He kept reading - and after about the second paragraph, he blinked again, sat back in his chair and felt a shiver run through his body.
Well, that couldn’t be right. Could it?
And then he found he had another problem.
‘Where’s that coming from?’ he said out loud.
There was an odd noise coming from the speakers. Singing. It echoed in the room, and now it was bouncing round the inside of his head as if in a giant cavern. A great, echoing cavern of stone and a glittering lake of sheer, black water.
Where did that appear from? The image, as clear as a picture on the screen, was right inside his head.
The songs seemed almost tangible. Richie blinked as it tickled his nostrils: a musty, damp, vegetable odour. The hot smells of computer and carpet were permeated with it, a cold, underground wetness which -
He had to reach out and touch the coldness. Taste it. And the only way to do that was to reach for the bright lights of the pixels, to reach into the harsh voices of the song, to step forward from the darkness and walk right in -
The screen was suffused with a cold, hard light, shining brighter than computer screens were ever meant to. The angry singing was now at an incredible pitch, strong and urgent, the same discordant song over and over.
And then - a bone-shaking bang! like a car backfiring. Richie leapt to the floor, hid under a desk and covered his head. Smoke was pouring out of the back of the computer, and the screen was flashing like a strobe light.
Richie could feel the floor vibrating.
A second later, a whirling mass of flame shot through the air - right through the spot where Richie had been sitting - and hit the back wall with a whoomph and a noise like sizzling sausages.
There was a horribly pungent smell of burning. In its wake, a great billow of choking, rubbery smoke rolled through the room.
Cautiously, he looked up, coughing and wafting the smoke away.
The shattered screen yawned open, resembling a toothed predator, while thousands of globules of molten plastic and metal were dotted across the back wall of the IT Room. The liquefied fragments of computer dribbled down the walls like something out of an unpleasant cookery accident.
‘Wow,’ said Richie unsteadily, lifting his head. ‘Now that’s what I call a bug.’
Looking after Emerald Greene proved to be an eye-opening experience for Jessica, in more ways than one. In General Science, Mr Gretton was explaining the theory behind the acceleration due to gravity. He dropped a tennis-ball and a lead weight through a laser beam to demonstrate it, and was about to put the equation up on the whiteboard when Emerald’s hand shot up.
‘Sir,’ she said crossly, ‘the acceleration due to gravity is not ten metres per second squared. It is nine point eight one.’
There were a few groans from the back of the room, derisive laughs, and a not-quite-under-the-breath catcall of, ‘Girly swot!’
Mr Gretton beamed. ‘Well, that’s absolutely right, er...’ He peered at her, obviously unable to remember her name.
‘Emerald Greene, sir.’
‘Well, Emerald, I think you can have a house point for knowing that. However - ’
‘I was not seeking any kind of reward, sir,’ said Emerald, causing Mr Gretton to blink in astonishment. ‘I just wanted to point it out. If you are always rounding up to ten in your calculations, then I expect science will be put back several centuries by imprecision.’
Lesson two was French. Halfway through a practice of simple likes and dislikes, Emerald put her hand up and asked Miss Bridie a question in completely fluent, colloquial French - at least, this was how it sounded to Jess. Miss Bridie, taken aback, sat down heavily and answered Emerald with her usual precision, before sending her away for a solo chat with Yves, the Assistant. Jess, despite making protestations, couldn’t go with her.
And then double Maths in lessons three and four. Emeral
d slammed down her pen in frustration, making Jessica jump and causing Ms James to swing round instantly.
‘Is something wrong?’ asked Ms James quietly, her brow creasing under her spiky blonde hair.
‘These algebraic equations, Ms James,’ said Emerald, narrowing her eyes and folding her arms. ‘They are rather pointless, are they not?’
Ms James smiled indulgently, like someone who had heard it all before. ‘Well, Emerald, it depends what you mean by pointless. Yes, they’re not actually applied, but they’re examples. They’re to help you understand the concepts of algebra - one of the keystones of modern mathematics.’
Emerald put her fingers to her temples and made a growling sound, so unexpected that it made both Jess and Ms James recoil. ‘Oh, you do not understand! What about the chaos coefficient? Mm?’ Emerald opened her palms flat and held them out to Ms James. ‘How,’ she demanded, ‘can we begin to calculate variables without the quantum factor?’
Ms James, to her credit, was thrown only for a moment. ‘Well, Emerald,’ she began, and smiled. ‘You do have a point... but sub-atomic physics does fall a little way outside the requirements of Key Stage Three. If you like, I can lend you a book?’
Next came Geography, and with it another shock.
Mrs Morris was talking about population growth in cities. ‘Now,’ she said, pointing to a map of Europe, ‘if we take the capital of France, which is - ’ She looked round expectantly, and her gaze alighted on Emerald. ‘Yes, you, the new girl. With the, ah, hair.’
‘Emerald Greene, Miss,’ said Jess helpfully.
‘Yeah, like that’s her real name,’ came a muttered comment from the back.
‘Settle down!’ snapped Mrs Morris. ‘Hand up to speak, if you wouldn’t mind, Leeann Brooks. And keep your comments relevant.’
Mrs Morris was a no-nonsense, old-fashioned teacher who didn’t hold with modern ideas like girls wearing trousers and boys doing cookery, and she considered the Internet and mobile phones to be part of a vast conspiracy to addle children’s brains. What, Jessica wondered, would she make of the bizarre Newbie?
Emerald Greene and the Witch Stones Page 2