by Paul Finch
I started trying to read about witchcraft, but our school library didn't have any proper books about it, only stupid stories and fairy tales. One evening a week we were allowed to go to the local library and choose a book to take out on a ticket. I always picked something that would impress my teachers, the sort of book that they were always making us read, or reading to us, like Little Women. Yecch! I also stole the books I really wanted to read-books about witchcraft and creepy stuff like that-but I made sure I put them back the next week after I'd read them. It was easy to do. No one took much notice of the kids when we were in the library, as we were all on our best behaviour. The librarians thought we were all lovely.
Reading about witches was brilliant because I realised that they used to be very important in the world. Some of them were good people, who didn't do horrible things at all, or worship the Devil, they just healed sick people. They knew about herbs and stuff like that. There were bad ones as well, who were supposed to use spells and curses, but most of the books said they weren't really servants of the Devil, just women who had upset the people in charge who got rid of them so they could stay in power. They did some horrible things to the witches, like drowning them and burning them. That must be awful, to be burned, like the worst thing in the world.
It reminded me of our vicar. He used to come to the school and talk to us about God and angels and stuff. There were some weird things in his mind. Dirty things. I hated speaking to him because those dirty things would always be reaching out like shadows to me. He was always on about how Jesus loved us, but I don't think the vicar knew what love was, not like I'd known it when Mum and Dad were alive.
One day I thought of the vilest thing I could think of-it was pretty horrible. And when the vicar tried to talk to me, I put my thought into his head. It was like letting a big spider crawl about in there, among all those dirty things, and it worked! The vicar didn't know it was me who'd done it, but he kept away from me after that, except to say polite hellos and stuff. I knew he was scared of me. I liked that.
I did that a few times to people when they annoyed me. Nothing horrible, like what I did to the vicar, but enough to keep them away from me. There were a couple of teachers who I didn't like much and the school nurse. She was bossy, although she was like it with everybody, not just me. We had to be examined every now and again, for head lice and stuff like that. Sometimes the nurse would get one of the girls and scrub her hair. It always made them cry. I made sure she didn't have to wash my hair for me. I just kept myself very clean and tidy.
In the dormitory we were allowed a few things, like dolls. I had a teddy bear, which no one else wanted. He had been shoved in a box at the back of a high shelf because his fur was missing in places and he only had one button eye. I felt sorry for him, so I made him mine. Same with the other three dolls. They were made of plastic and had painted faces, but the paint was fading on all of them. Their clothes were tatty, so I made them some nice new ones.
I was good at sewing and mending stuff and Miss Higginbotham, our crafts teacher, always said so. It was funny how she got excited inside when any of the girls did good work. It was the one thing that made her happy. She would have made a good mum, but she didn't have a boyfriend or anything. And she was quite old, so I expect she wouldn't have children now.
The other girls sniggered at my dolls and called them spassies, which made me angry. It was why things got bad for me. It wasn't fair, because the girls were wrong to say horrible things about my dolls and my teddy, even if he had different size eyes. I told some of the teachers about what the girls said and they were told off, sort of, but it didn't stop them poking fun at me when they thought they could get away with it. So I decided to teach them a lesson.
I said, pack it in or you'll be sorry. They just laughed and made faces in class. One night, when it was cold and you could hear the rain beating on the windows, I opened the door to my little room very quietly and I sent Teddy out to frighten them. There was one faint night-light and I watched Teddy doing his awkward walk down the middle of the dorm-between all the beds, which were lined up on either side. One of Teddy's legs was damaged-some of the stuffing inside had got crushed when he had been in that box-so he limped as he went along the aisle.
I made him stop at Louisa Bramton's bed and he went right up to where she was sleeping and started to tug at the eiderdown. When the eiderdown moved off her, the cold woke her up. She was face to face with Teddy. She screamed. It was brilliant! Teddy went under her bed, out of sight. Everyone thought Louisa had gone mental. Eventually one of the night staff, Mr Timson, heard the noise of all the girls chattering and came in, switching the lights on.
Louisa was told she must have had a bad dream, but I could read her thoughts-she knew it wasn't a dream! By the time Mr Timson got round all the beds and came in to my room, Teddy was snuggled up in bed beside me. I pretended to be asleep and it worked. Mr Timson didn't wake me up, but I could tell he was a bit puzzled.
I did it a few times after that, sending Teddy out to terrify the most spiteful of the girls. I suppose I got careless, because the teachers began to suspect me of something. After all, it was my teddy that the girls were complaining about. I was sent to Mrs Alburton to explain my side of the story. She knew, of course. She already knew I could move things. But she also knew that the other girls had been unkind to me.
"Whatever happens to us, Madeline," she said to me, "we must never take the law into our own hands. You do understand what I mean, don't you?"
I said yes, but I didn't really agree with her. I think she knew that. She couldn't read people like I could, but she was clever.
"I wonder if this school is the right place for you, Madeline. I know you are still very unhappy here and I don't like that. I want you to be happy. Do you think you could ever be happy here? When people are sad, they can get angry. And we know what happens when you get angry, don't we?"
"I warned them," I said. It came out quite suddenly, but Mrs Alburton was always fair and I knew she wanted to be kind. So I said it.
"Not to tease you? Or else you'd-punish them, is that it?"
I nodded. "In the Bible it says, an eye for an eye." I thought I was being clever saying that and it would get her right on my side, but I read her thoughts and I knew I'd made a mistake-she was frightened. For the first time I could tell she wasn't happy with me-she thought I was bad.
"Will you promise me something?" she said. "If you feel angry and you want to… hurt somebody, or scare them, just come to me, Madeline. Tell me and I'll promise to help. No more unpleasantness. Will you do that?"
I said yes. It seemed to please her, but deep down she was still a bit panicky.
If the girls had left me alone after that, I wouldn't have bothered with them. They'd have learned their lesson, so that would have been okay. But they didn't. They hated me even more and sometimes that hate was like a fire burning, especially at night. I made sure no one could get into my room.
One afternoon-it was a Saturday and we didn't have lessons-I went back to my room. I'd had some lunch and I was feeling a bit sleepy. We were allowed time to ourselves and mostly we did a bit of revision or reading. I'd stolen a book from the library in town on something called 'necromancy' so was looking forward to reading it. When I was stretched out on my bed, smiling at the weird pictures of people talking to dead people (which I didn't believe in) I reached under the blankets for Teddy. I often used to read to him, and the dolls, as if they could understand.
Teddy wasn't there. I looked everywhere in my room for him, which didn't take long because I don't have much furniture and there are only a few shelves. He definitely wasn't there. Outside my room, in the dormitory, I could hear whispering. A few of the girls were there, waiting for me. I went to the door and opened it, glaring at them.
"Hello, Madeline," said that Louisa Bramton creature. "Looking for something?"
I could read exactly what she meant. "If you've got Teddy, you better give him back."
"Why don't you come and see?" She laughed. The others with her giggled. Then they turned and ran out through some French windows on to the lawn outside, waiting for me to follow. Something was really wrong, I could feel it. I went after them and they ran off towards the edge of the long lawn, down to where there was a hedge with a field beyond it. Again I chased after them.
They were leading me to Teddy. Half way across the field, well out of sight of the school buildings, there was a clearing in the grass. The groundsman, Mr Craggs, sometimes came here to have fires and things, getting rid of leaves and fallen branches and rubbish like that. He must have been preparing to have a fire because there was a big heap of stuff in the middle of the cleared space. All the girls from the dormitory were here, gathered around the heaped wood. When I arrived they all laughed, some of them pointing at me.
"Where's Teddy?" I shouted, although I knew exactly where he was. It was in all their sick minds. They'd stuck him right up on top of the bonfire, wedged in between some sharp sticks that were poking up. The sun shone on his two eyes and made it look as if he was crying. I wanted to shout for Mr Craggs to come and help, but I knew he wasn't around. He usually had his fires in the evening.
I thought that might be okay and that I could rescue Teddy, but when I saw Louisa Bramton pull a box of matches out of her pocket, I knew what the girls were going to do. I was going to grab Louisa Bramton's arm, but someone tripped me up and some of the girls kept me on the ground. I was too winded to stop them and I saw Louisa Bramton strike a match and set light to some of the newspaper poking out from the bottom of the fire. It didn't take long for the fire to catch.
It roared into life. By the time the girls let me up, the flames were so high that I had to step well back. I tried to use my gifts to move Teddy, but he was stuck firm, the girls had made sure of that. I screamed and screamed as if it was me being burned. Poor Teddy. He didn't have a chance. His eyes melted and his little body turned black and then went to ashes.
Later, when Mr Craggs found me, my face wet with tears, he didn't understand what had happened. He just thought it was me who'd lit the fire for a prank. He hadn't seen any of the other girls, and what was worse, neither had anyone else. I was spoken to by a few of the teachers-Mrs Alburton was away at something called a conference. They didn't say so, but I could read that all of them thought I'd started the fire. I told them about Teddy, but no one believed me. There was nothing left of him so I couldn't show them.
I was sent back to my room and told that I would have to stay there for a few days until they decided what to do with me. I cried a lot about Teddy. No one understood that to me it was like I'd lost a real person, like when I'd lost Mum and Dad. The dolls couldn't understand. They listened, but they weren't like Teddy. He was much cleverer than anyone could have known. The dolls were okay, but they were a bit silly. I didn't normally mind, but that night I wished they were more sympathetic.
When I finished crying, I got angry. Very, very angry. I could feel the girls in the dormitory, being horrible and laughing at me and what they had done. They said some awful things about Teddy and called him a cross-eyed freak and much worse. It still makes me furious to think about it. I remembered what Mrs Alburton had said about going to her if I felt angry, but I wasn't going to wait until she got back.
So I did what she said I shouldn't. I paid the girls in the dormitory back. That night, right at midnight-I chose the time deliberately-I sent out my power, only this time I really did use it. My anger was like the fire that had burned poor Teddy. It made it easy to do what I did.
One by one, I tipped every bed over and tossed all of the girls on to the floor. I made the sheets dance and whirl about, sort of like ghosts. There was lots of screaming and the girls were really terrified. I buried Louisa Bramton under a blanket and started to suffocate her. I got a bit scared when I realised I could have choked her, actually killed her. So I let her go and it was much more fun to see her wail and watch her tears.
When the night staff rushed in, they were really freaked out. The looks on their faces made me giggle. The dormitory was an absolute mess, beds everywhere, sheets and blankets heaped up. But the best thing was that lots of the girls had wet themselves, including Louisa Bramton. That was brilliant.
I could feel the staff approaching my door. I was locked in, so no one could possibly blame me. I could read their doubts. Oh, they wanted to blame me, but how could they? I couldn't walk through walls, could I? So when they came in, I was pretending to be asleep, my three dolls with me. I did my best to look sweet and innocent, but the staff were too screwed up to know what to think. They did wake me up and spoke to me, but I just yawned.
After that, I couldn't be allowed to stay at the boarding school. Mrs Alburton was much more strict and stiff with me. She was angry and she knew that I'd done all that harm in the dormitory, but she couldn't say that to any of her staff. She thought if she did, they'd think she was crazy. She told me that I was to go to another place, somewhere where I'd be much more relaxed and better cared for. I was okay about it. I hated the school now and besides, if I had had to stay on much longer, I would have hurt someone badly.
So they brought me here, to Fairholme.
It wasn't until I came here that I found out about that other thing I can do. It was a sort of accident. There was another girl here, called Julie Treadway, who I liked. She was very quiet and didn't talk to anyone much, but we sort of got on okay. She liked dolls and between us we had quite a lot in our rooms-everyone here had their own room. They don't call the staff teachers, just staff, or doctor, or nurse. It's not a hospital, they say, but when I hear them talking to each other and thinking things, they mean that it is. So everyone here, like me, has something wrong with them. According to them anyway.
That made me a bit annoyed when I found out. My friend Julie didn't like lessons very much, because they made her head ache and she got tired quickly. One of the staff, Mr Bardell, was a bit of a bully. I knew from his thoughts that he was fed up because he couldn't get Julie to do as she was told, but he was determined to make her. One day, after a lesson with her when he'd got cross and told her she must work harder, she was very upset in her room and it took me a long time to help her stop crying.
When we were in the canteen the next day, I saw Mr Bardell, having lunch with some other staff. He was drinking a big cup of tea. I saw him spoon some sugar into his tea, two big helpings. I concentrated on his arm and made him spoon another three, four, five lots of sugar into the tea. He didn't seem to realise and the other staff were too busy nattering to notice. He stirred it up and drank the tea in one go-I made him. You should have seen his face!
He rushed out of the room and I knew he'd gone to the loo. He shut himself in, but I knew he was being sick. All that big fried breakfast came back up. I told Julie about it, but not that it had been me that made him sick. Serves him right, she said, and she laughed for the first time in ages.
Mr Bardell was okay really, because I knew that he was like Mrs Alburton had been-he did care about the kids, I could read that. But no one should be a bully, even a bit. There was a doctor, Stenners, who came soon after I did, and he was supposed to be what they called an expert in psychology and stuff. He thought he was very clever and knew more than the other staff. He thought he understood what he called 'the patients' better than anyone. And he thought he understood me. You know what? He started calling me 'Maddie' just like my uncle had. He thought it was a way of winning me over.
Dr Stenners made me do tests and I had to have my heartbeat measured and had to have other machines and things check my body. I even had to have injections. I began to resent Dr Stenners a lot. I made my mind up to deal with him, because I knew I could. I knew from his mind that he liked one of the nurses, Miss Werrell, but she had a boyfriend in the town and didn't like Dr Stenners at all, although she pretended to because she had to work with him. Dr Stenners used to make comments to Miss Werrell and I knew he wanted to do the things to her that he pictured in
his mind. Dirty things. It reminded me of that vicar. Miss Werrell guessed what Stenners was thinking, but was afraid to say anything to anyone.
I had started to play a new game with my dolls. I gave each of them a special name-the name of one of the staff, and I used my sewing stuff to make uniforms for them and I painted their plastic faces so that they were supposed to look like the staff they were named for. I had one dolly for Miss Werrell-she had thick blonde hair and a little red ribbon in it. Her face wasn't brilliant, because I'm not that good at painting, but she looked about right. I didn't have a doll for Dr Stenners at first, as he was fairly new here, and there weren't any dolls left anywhere else I could use. I wasn't going to take one of Julie's.
So I made one. I got some material and I tore a bit off one of my sheets and I got some cotton wool for stuffing and I made a Dr Stenners doll. Its head was a bit soft and its hair wasn't very realistic-just strands of wool that I made black from some shoe polish. I sewed the face on and it was okay. I knew it was meant to be him anyway.
I waited until evening one Tuesday. In the week, the staff lived in at Fairholme, and they all had their own rooms. I knew that Miss Werrell had gone to her room after tea. I could read her mind. She was going to phone her boyfriend. Dr Stenners was outside the buildings, doing something to his car. He didn't have a girlfriend. He had a wife once, but she left him because they argued a lot. She hated him because he had other girlfriends and you're not supposed to do that when you're married. I read that in his mind. He knew it was true, but he didn't care. He only pretended to.
While I was listening to his thoughts, he did what I expected-he thought about Miss Werrell. His usual dirty thoughts. I was sitting on my bed, holding the two dolls, the plastic Miss Werrell and the lumpy, cloth Dr Stenners. I pushed them slowly together and put Mr Stenners's arms around Miss Werrell. Her doll was squashed on to the bed and Mr Stenners was on top of her. I made him start pulling her clothes off.