‘End of it – how d’you mean?’
‘End of it as a place folks can live in in peace. Listen. Margaret Turnbull – little Meg – the apple of her daddy’s eye. She falls sick. All through that winter, paler and paler, thinner and thinner. Calling out in her sleep. Doctors come. Specialists. No improvement. Comes a night in early spring, and there’s ever such a bang and a clatter and they find her at the foot of the stair, unconscious. Seven year old. Doctor says she’s been walking in her sleep. Anyway, the little mite recovers, though it’s touch and go for a while, and the minute she’s strong enough Master Turnbull sells up and moves on, and we’re all let go. Later, we hear the child perks up like magic as soon as she’s away from that house. And after that the place stands empty, and folks steer clear, same as they used to with the gatehouse. Somebody comes along and buys it eventually – a stranger, but he has no luck and moves out. Place has kept changing hands ever since. Soldiers were billeted there in the last war, and one disappeared. Deserted, says the authorities. Or drownded, we say, but it’s neither. And now he’s got bairns – a fresh lot practically every week, and he’ll be laughing, and it’s you’ve got to stop his laughter, Miss.’
‘Me?’ Fliss peered at old Sal in the gloom. ‘Why me? And anyway, how?’
‘Why you?’ The old woman poked a bony finger into her middle. ‘Because you had the dream, that’s why. You know – the Gate of Fate. The Keep of Sleep. The Room of Doom and the Bed of Dread. Remember?’
Fliss nodded, shivering. ‘Yes.’ Her voice was a croak. ‘But how –?’
‘How do I know? I told you. I can go through the wall. Leave the tunnel. See what’s really what. And as for how, you’ll be told. Don’t ask me who’ll tell you, because I couldn’t explain – just like you can’t explain any of this to your teachers – but believe me, you’ll be told. And if you refuse to do it – if you don’t do what has to be done – your little friend is doomed, together with those who went before her and all who’ll follow. Doomed to wander the earth, for ever. Do you understand what I’m saying, Felicity?’
‘You know my name.’
‘Oh, yes. Felicity. It means happiness. Did you know that?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Well, that’s what it means. And if you can be very brave tonight, you’ll let happiness back into that sad house, and into the hearts of more people than you know. Will you do it, Felicity?’
Fliss hesitated. The old woman’s words were whirling around inside her head. Strange words. A madwoman’s words. Yes, Sal Haggerlythe was mad all right – no doubt about it – completely out of her tree. And yet she knew so many things. The dream. All that stuff in The Crow’s Nest. Her name, and what it meant.
She nodded, biting her lip. ‘Yes.’
‘Good.’ A frail hand fell on her shoulder and squeezed. ‘You’ll succeed, Felicity. I know you will. Off you go now – your friends are worrying.’
Fliss allowed old Sal to take her hand and steer her back to the hole in the wall. Two people passed by, laughing to show they weren’t scared. Sal waited till they’d gone by, then whispered, ‘Follow them – they’re on their way out.’ Fliss felt a gentle push in the small of her back. She followed the laughing pair, and when she looked round a moment later, there was nothing to be seen.
‘WHERE THE HECK have you been? We’ve been waiting ages.’
Fliss had emerged, blinking against the sudden glare, on a narrow street at the back of the building. Gemma, Grant and Gary, keen to move on to the next thing, gazed reproachfully at her.
‘Sorry. I got lost.’
‘Lost?’ sneered Gemma. ‘How could you get lost in a tunnel, for goodness sake. You walk through and that’s it.’
‘And you were miles in front of us,’ put in Grant. ‘We expected to find you waiting here when we got out.’
Gary grinned. ‘You shot off up that tunnel in a heck of a hurry, Fliss. For someone who’s not chicken, I mean.’
‘Chicken’s got nothing to do with it. It was that moving floor. It was like a dream I had – a nightmare. My feet taking me where I didn’t want to go. And then there was this hole in the wall, and I went through and I was behind the tunnel. It was pitch black, and I kept bumping into stuff – rubbish and that. I thought I’d never find my way out.’
‘You’re a nut,’ said Grant. ‘I never saw any hole, and if I had I wouldn’t have gone through. Anyway, where we going next – amusements?’
Gary shook his head. ‘Not me. I don’t like fruit machines. You lose all your money. I’m off to the shops.’
‘Me too,’ said Fliss. She needed to talk to Gary, away from the other two.
‘Well, I’m going with Grant,’ said Gemma. ‘I won two pounds for ten pence on a machine last year, at Blackpool.’
When Grant and Gemma had gone, Fliss said, ‘I’ve got something to tell you, Gary.’
‘What?’ They were back on the seafront, heading for the gift shops. Gary was walking fast.
‘Slow down a bit and I’ll tell you. It’s not the flipping Olympics, you know.’
Gary stopped. ‘Go on then – what?’
She told him about Sal Haggerlythe, and what the old woman had said. When she’d told him about the promise she’d made, she said, ‘Will you help me, Gary? I don’t think I’d attempt it by myself.’
Gary pulled a face. ‘I guess so. I mean, we’ve been together all the way along, haven’t we? Trot and Lisa too. I just don’t know what it is we’re supposed to do, Fliss.’
‘She said we’d be told.’
‘Yeah, but she’s barmy, isn’t she? If I hadn’t seen all that weird stuff with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe a word she said.’
‘But you have seen it. Old Sal might be mad, Gary, but she knows all about The Crow’s Nest.’
‘Hmm. Well, we’ll just have to wait and see if we’re told, won’t we? If we’re not, I don’t see how we can do anything except keep Ellie-May from going in that cupboard.’
They shopped. Fliss bought a brown photo mounted on a block for her parents. It was by somebody called Sutcliffe, who lived a long time ago and was a famous photographer. It showed two children playing with a toy boat. She’d seen one like it, but bigger, on the wall at The Crow’s Nest.
Gary found a leather key-fob with the abbey and the word Whitby embossed on it for his dad, and a little vase encrusted with seashells for his mum.
By the time they’d decided on these purchases, it was half-past two. They were due to meet the teachers back at the bandstand at three, so they made their way in that direction and spent the last twenty minutes in the lifeboat museum. Some of the others were there too, and they compared presents and donated their last few pennies to the lifeboats.
At three, Fliss, Gary and the others left the museum and crossed the road to the bandstand, where the teachers were waiting. Nearly everybody was there. The twins weren’t, and neither was Trot. Everybody sat down except Mrs Evans, who stood gazing along the seafront and looking at her watch.
The twins turned up. Mrs Evans frowned at them. ‘What time were we to meet?’ she asked.
‘Three o’clock, Miss,’ murmured Joanne.
‘And what time is it now, Joanne?’
‘Miss, eight minutes past. We were on the donkeys, Miss.’
‘Hmmm.’
It was almost a quarter-past three when Trot came trudging up the slipway from the beach. He was carrying a torn plastic kite, and looked fed up.
‘And where have you been, David Trotter? Do you know what the time is?’
‘Yes, Miss. Sorry, Miss. I was trying to mend my kite.’
Mrs Evans looked at the kite. It was made of clear polythene on a rigid plastic frame. It had a picture of a bat on it, but the polythene was badly torn and hung in tatters from its frame. She sighed. ‘What was the last thing I said before we went off to do our shopping, David?’
‘I don’t know, Miss.’
‘No, because you weren’t listening. I warned everybody
not to spend money on cheap, rubbishy goods, David. How much was that kite?’
‘One pound forty, Miss.’
‘One pound forty, and look at it. Didn’t you notice how thin that polythene was? Didn’t you realize that the first good gust of wind would rip it to pieces?’
‘No, Miss.’
‘No, Miss. Well, it did, didn’t it?’ She turned to the group. ‘You know, I sometimes wonder whether the other teachers and myself aren’t just wasting our breath talking to you people. First there was Lisa Watmough, going into a shop before we even got here, buying a trashy flashlight which is probably broken already. Then Gary Bazzard spends I don’t know how much on a stick of rock the size of a telegraph pole.’ Her eyes found Gary, who looked surprised. ‘Oh, yes, Gary – I know all about that rock. It’s in your room now, melting, with a beard of bed-fluff on it. You’ve sucked at it till you’re sick of it, and now you don’t know what to do with it.’ She looked at Trot again. ‘And now you, with your kite. I only hope that next time, if there is a next time, you’ll be told.’
You’ll be told. Fliss, whose mind had been wandering, looked up sharply. Mrs Evans, talking about –
Buying things. Things you shouldn’t. Lisa. Gary. Trot. Why those three? It’s a connection, isn’t it? Must be. Can’t be coincidence, can it? Her heart kicked. You’ll be told.
Yeah, but hold on a minute. What about me? I’m one of them. I started it, in fact, and I haven’t been in trouble for buying anything. I’ve been late for breakfast, but that’s different. Nobody’s said to me, ‘You shouldn’t have bought that, it’s rubbish.’ Nobody’s –
The pebble. The big pebble. I didn’t buy it, of course, but Mrs Evans told me to put it down, and it’s a thing, like a torch or a stick of rock or a kite.
That’s it. The four of us. Nobody else has been told off for something they’ve got, have they? She sat, frowning, gnawing her lip.
A torch. A stick of rock. A pebble. A kite.
You’ll be told.
THEY WERE BACK at The Crow’s Nest by twenty to four, stowing their purchases in their rooms and writing up their journals. It had been their last day, and Fliss wondered why it had had to end so early. It wasn’t as if they’d be setting off home at the crack of dawn and needed an early night. They weren’t leaving till half-past ten.
Not that an early night would be much use to the four of us anyway, she thought. She had talked briefly to Lisa and Trot on the stairway. They knew what had happened to her today, and had agreed to meet Gary and herself in the usual spot at half-past eleven.
The rest of the kids were feeling a bit down because the holiday was nearly over, but for Fliss, Gary, Lisa and Trot it couldn’t end soon enough. They were tired and frightened, and wanted only to be near their parents and to sleep in their own beds.
‘Guess what?’ said Marie. She was looking out of the window.
‘Shut up, Marie,’ growled Maureen. ‘I’m trying to write.’
‘The old witch is there again,’ said Marie, ignoring her.
‘We know,’ said Joanne, impatiently. ‘We saw her when we came past the shelter just now. How d’you spell “stake”, Fliss?’
Fliss looked up. ‘There’s two sorts of stake,’ she said. ‘What’re you writing about?’
‘A poster I saw in the town. Movie poster. It showed this vampire with a stake through its heart. It said, “Party all night, sleep all day, never grow old, never die, it’s fun being a vampire.’”
‘That sort of stake’s S-T-A-K-E,’ Fliss told her.
‘Thanks.’ Joanne bent her head over her work. Marie left the window, sat down at the dressing-table and began to write. Silence reigned.
Fliss chewed her pencil and stared at the carpet. S-T-A-K-E. Stake. A short pole, sharpened at one end, and a mallet to hammer it in with. A flaming torch to illuminate the crypt, and a cross lest the vampire should wake. A stick of rock the size of a telegraph pole, sucked to a point. A pebble too heavy for the pocket. A torch the shape of a dragon. A cross? No cross.
Trot. We’ve each done our bit, except Trot. Trot must find the cross, then. He hasn’t got one that I’ve ever seen. He didn’t buy one today, which was the last chance. He bought –
A kite. That tattered kite on its rigid, cross-shaped frame. That’s it!
She was certain, now. You’ll be told, Sal Haggerlythe had said, and it was true. Mrs Evans had catalogued the items, and then spoken those very words. You’ll be told. The pieces fitted. Every one.
She got up and went to the window. Sal was sitting in the shelter, and seemed to be looking at her. Fliss mouthed a silent ‘yes,’ and nodded. The woman made no response, but then, the sun was behind the hotel and this side was in shadow.
When they went down to the lounge, the children found out why they’d returned early to the hotel. There was to be a disco for them in the dining-room starting at seven o’clock. They would eat early so that the room could be prepared, and would have plenty of time to wash, do their hair and get into their best outfits before the festivities began.
‘It’s a farewell disco,’ Mr Hepworth told them. ‘Farewell to The Crow’s Nest, farewell to Whitby. We’ve kept it a secret till now because we wanted it to be a surprise. It will go on until half-past nine, with a break at eight o’clock for pop, crisps and various other goodies. Mr and Mrs Wilkinson’s daughter will be running the disco, and I think it’s very kind of them all. Don’t you?’
Everybody did. There were three very loud cheers for the Wilkinsons, who came to the doorway of the lounge to hear them, and then it was dinnertime.
As she ate, Fliss watched Ellie-May, two tables away. She’d joined them on the trip to Robin Hood’s Bay that morning, and had seemed fine. She’d behaved so normally that at one point Fliss had approached her and spoken, just to see what she’d do. Ellie-May had been her usual rude self, telling Fliss to drop dead, and she seemed normal now too, sitting between Tara and Michelle, boasting about the outfit she was going to wear. She’s chuffed to little mint balls, thought Fliss. Looking forward to the disco like everybody else. She doesn’t remember a thing about last night. Or the night before. Or the night before that.
Lucky her.
‘HEY, WHERE’S THE dining-room gone?’ Neil Atkinson, first down in jeans and sneakers, paused in the doorway. Tables and carpet had disappeared. Chairs had been moved back against the walls. Heavy curtains blacked out all the windows. Coloured lights flashed red, then blue, then green, striking sparks from the parquet, leaving corners in shadow. The place looked twice as big as before. At one end, between stacked speakers, a girl stood behind a double-deck. She twitched and writhed as Madonna belted out a number so loud you felt it through your feet.
‘Wow!’ Sarah-Jane, made-up and dressed to kill, went on tiptoe to peer over the boy’s shoulder. ‘It’s brilliant – like a real disco. What we waiting for?’
They walked out on to the floor, fitting their movements into the beat, beginning to dance. The girl at the deck smiled as her blue face turned to green. Others followed, spilling on to the floor in their finery with grins and exclamations.
It grew hot as record followed record, rising and falling on the twin-deck in unbroken series. The three teachers sat together way back in shadow and watched. Now and then, somebody would go over and try to get them to dance, but they wouldn’t. ‘My dancing days are over,’ they’d say, or, ‘I’m waiting for Buddy Holly.’ When the break came at eight, everybody was ready for it.
Fliss managed to get the other three in a corner together. Gary had worked up a sweat. His hair was stuck to his forehead. He slurped Coke as she told them what she’d worked out. When she’d finished, he said, ‘So what you’re saying is, we go in there where he is, and all we’ve got is a torch, a pebble, a stick of rock and a knackered kite, right?’
Fliss nodded.
‘Well, I don’t fancy it, I can tell you that.’
‘Who does, but have you got a better idea?’
‘Sure. We go t
o bed tonight like everybody else and forget it.’
‘And what about Ellie-May? Not to mention all the other kids he’s enticed into that cupboard, and all those he will in future if we don’t do something about it.’
‘It’s got nothing to do with us, has it? We’ve done our best. We tried to tell the teachers but they wouldn’t listen. What I mean is, here we are at this disco, right? And everybody’s really enjoying it except us. It’s been the same all week. Everybody else has been on holiday, but we’ve been in the middle of a nightmare. Why us, Fliss? Tell me that.’
Fliss shrugged. ‘I can’t. I don’t know why us, Gary, except we’ve been picked out somehow. You bought that rock and spent three days sucking it to a point. You’re part of the team.’
‘Big deal.’
She looked him in the eye. ‘We can’t do it without you, Gary. It needs four. Four things, four people. Are you chickening out?’
He shook his head, looking at the floor. ‘I don’t suppose so. It’s not fair, that’s all I’m saying.’
‘You’ll be there though, at half-eleven?’
‘Yes.’
The second half kicked off with the new Bros album. They danced together, the four of them, a little apart from the others. Gary was right, of course. Deep down, each of them felt as he did – that they’d been unfairly singled out. They’d do what had to be done, but their week had been ruined and that was that. They moved mechanically to the music and thought about midnight.
The end came too soon for everybody, except perhaps the teachers, who had sat it all out, waiting in vain for Buddy Holly. At half-past nine the last track faded, the lights came on and the enchantment melted away. Children stood on the scuffed, littered floor, exposed, self-conscious and tired. Mr Hepworth led three cheers and a round of applause for the disc jockey, who grinned, blushed and looked at her feet. After that, they collected jackets, bags and cardigans and went away to bed.
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