The Secret of Grim Hill

by Linda DeMeulemeester

  I didn’t mention how strange I thought everyone was behaving as I resumed trudging down the hill with Mia and Amarjeet. No point questioning a good thing. What was it people said? “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth?” What was the connection between that saying and the Greek myth about a gigantic hollow horse that soldiers had hid inside to sneak behind enemy lines, anyway? Those Greek guys should definitely have looked their gift horse in the mouth. Oh well, that’s not what the expression advised. Saying goodbye to my friends, I turned down my street and wearily made my way home.

  My legs felt stiff, so I went straight upstairs to the bathroom to pour a hot bath. I soaked in the tub until Mom called me down for dinner. We devoured homemade turkey vegetable soup and fresh baked biscuits.

  No one had to tell me to go to bed early, and seconds after diving under my down comforter, I fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.

  ***

  The next day, the thick fog that covered our town every night didn’t clear until after school, when Mia, Amarjeet, and I climbed Grim Hill to the soccer field. Later, after another grueling but exhilarating practice, we said exhausted goodbyes at the bottom of the hill, and I went home.

  When I went upstairs to my room to change my clothes, I passed by the bedroom door and noticed three long, white feathers on the wood floor. How had I missed them before? Picking one up, I stroked it. The feather felt silky and shimmered pink and green.

  Sookie!

  A terrible shock overtook me. Everything appeared to shrink and fade. I blinked my eyes, but it still seemed dark. Even though blood pounded in my skull, I took a deep breath and tried to think.

  I hadn’t seen or even thought about Sookie since halfway through my party Saturday night.

  How could I have forgotten to tuck her in after the party or ask Mom where she was at breakfast or where she was during dinner last night? Had she made new friends? Was she invited to a sleepover? Of course that’s what happened. Except there was one weird, upsetting detail. Until I picked up the feather, I’d completely forgotten the fact that I even had a little sister!

  I threw open Sookie’s bedroom door to check on her.

  Her room was neat and tidy.

  Terror clawed up my throat. Sookie’s room was never neat and tidy. Forcing myself to take another deep breath, I figured Mom must have realized what a big mistake she’d made almost wrecking my party by ordering me to take care of Sookie. So she must have come downstairs during the party to get Sookie, then made her clean up her room. That sounded perfectly logical, so why was my heart racing and my stomach dive-bombing?

  Inside the hamster cage, poor little Buddy stuck his pink nose through the bars and pawed at me with his tiny foot. His seed dish was empty. Thinking how unusual it was that Sookie forgot to feed him, I poured him some sunflower seeds. She loved Buddy and never forgot his food dish or water bottle, not ever. She acted like a mother hen when it came to her hamster.

  Mom!

  Mom hadn’t mentioned Sookie at all yesterday. Not, “Oh, Sookie complained constantly about staying away from the party,” not, “Oh, we had a good time together.” Come to think of it, if Sookie had stayed upstairs, Mom would surely have said something.

  I dropped the feather and watched it drift to the floor before I raced downstairs.

  Mom was filling her briefcase with paperwork. She snapped up her case and grabbed her purse.

  “You’re back from soccer already?” Mom said, frowning slightly. “The coaches are cutting practice a little short, aren’t they? By the way, Cat, I need to go back to Grimoire. They told me they want me to stay and work until later in the evening. There’s an after-school event, and they want me to hold down the fort in the front office – I have to answer the phones and do the photocopying. Sorry, but you’ll be on your own for dinner. The money will be great, so I can’t pass it up.”

  Suddenly my throat dried up. Mom said “on your own.” She didn’t mention babysitting. She hadn’t mentioned Sookie once. A cold dread crept up my spine. My fingers had felt hot when I stroked the feathers, and they still tingled – especially when I thought about how things were definitely wrong. How could I have forgotten all about my little sister?

  “What’s wrong?” Mom had picked up her bag again. She stared at me. “You look upset.”

  “Sookie.” It came out in a whisper.

  “Who?”

  “Sookie, where is she?” This time I shouted.

  “Calm down. Who is Sookie?” asked Mom.

  Something even stranger started happening. My thoughts became jumbled, and I started forgetting why I was so upset. A second ago, I had been asking something important, but what was it? Now my fingers were oddly numb, and I rubbed them against my track pants while I stood there for a minute, studying the living room, wondering what was missing. A black and orange streamer hung down from the deflating balloon chandelier that I’d left up from my party. That night, the night of the party, someone had been standing under the chandelier, someone important. Closing my eyes, I tried to picture who it was, but all I could see was a girl with the white feathered mask. The feathers …

  Slowly, almost as if I didn’t want to know, I trudged back upstairs. I stared at the feathers on the floor for a second before I forced myself to pick them up. When I stroked them, they shimmered like a rainbow.

  Then I remembered too much.

  Sookie had disappeared. I hadn’t watched out for her and halfway through my party, before the apple bobbing, she’d vanished. All I’d cared about that night was how she’d finally stopped bugging me. And now Mom didn’t even remember her. And if I wasn’t holding these feathers, I’d forget about little Sookie as well.

  What was going on? Forcing myself to think, I recalled that Jasper had mentioned girls who had gone missing. If only I’d have invited him to the party. He’d have kept an eye on Sookie. Instead, it was as if she had been erased from our minds just like … just like what?

  When I shoved the feathers into my pocket, I got an idea. Rushing into my room, I grabbed a picture of Dad and Sookie. I took it to Mom. “Who is this?” I pointed to Dad’s sunshine girl.

  Mom studied the picture. She half-smiled – it was the kind of smile she used when she was careful to say the right thing. “Is it your dad’s new stepdaughter?”

  Dad didn’t have a new family. As far as I knew, Mom hadn’t even heard from him since we’d moved. She simply had no idea who Sookie was. Mom acting as if she never heard of Sookie was so unbelievable, it made me feel dizzy. But when I brushed the tips of my fingers against the tips of the feathers in my pocket, I knew things were very wrong. I had to hang on to that horrible feeling if I was going to find out what had happened to my sister. I kept the feathers in my pocket and wouldn’t let Mom touch them. She would be so frightened if she remembered everything now. Letting Mom discover I’d lost Sookie wouldn’t help.

  It was up to me to find my sister.

  CHAPTER 13 A Haunting Discovery

  ONCE I PULLED myself together, I figured out three things. One – the girl in the mysterious mask had been trying to tell me something. Two – the feathers that had helped me remember Sookie were the same white feathers on that girl’s mask.

  Three – I needed Jasper.

  Taking off at a run, I hurried next door, jumped the stairs three at a time, and pounded on Jasper’s door. Jasper’s dad, Mr. Chung, answered.

  “Why hello, Cat. How’s the soccer going? Are you ready for the big match?”

  Not meaning to be rude, I blurted, “Is Jasper home?” At least I didn’t shout in my panic.

  Mr. Chung shook his head. “He’s at the library.”

  On top of my pounding heart, I felt sick with guilt. Jasper had known something was wrong in this town. He hadn’t given up investigating when all I’d cared about was my new popularity. Now I was in terrible trouble.

  “Mr. Chung, have you seen Sookie?” I asked, hoping desperately he would remember my sister.

  “Sookie …” he
said slowly. Mr. Chung squinted past me up Grim Hill. For a second, I thought he knew who I was talking about, but he shook his head. “Who is this Sookie?”

  My hope evaporated. I said, “Never mind,” and was about to leave, but he gently grabbed my arm.

  “Cat, you look so pale. Come in, I just made some fresh noodles.”

  The smell of garlic and ginger made my stomach grumble. Lunch was long past, but I muttered, “No thanks,” turned, and ran down the stairs. Mr. Chung called after me as I headed toward the library.

  “Something peculiar is in the air. You’re going to need all your strength. You should come in and eat!”

  Shivering, I kept running. A couple of blocks later, I spotted Emily and another girl from the Ghosts making their weary way home from soccer practice.

  “Emily, did you notice when Sookie left the party the other night?” I gulped, catching my breath. Emily had given Sookie decorations to put up at the party. Maybe she’d –

  “Who’s Sookie?” they asked simultaneously.

  Despite Mom and Mr. Chung forgetting about Sookie, I had expected Emily to laugh and say she had seen her – that she was just playing down the street or that she was still waiting for me up on the soccer field. Even though everyone seemed to have forgotten Sookie, I had a hard time believing

  any of this was real.

  “Anyway, wicked party,” said Kate, the other girl.

  “Yeah, thanks for inviting your soccer rivals,” Emily said smiling.

  As they walked away, I touched the silky feathers in my pocket. If it wasn’t for those feathers, it would seem as if everyone else was right and I was dreaming. A scary thought occurred to me. How did I know that this wasn’t true? Would the feathers work on anyone else? I turned and kept running, even when I passed Zach and Mitch.

  “Cool party Saturday night,” Zach said. “Hey, I wanted to ask you something. Do you want to come to the dance with me next week?”

  Who could think about dancing? I kept going.

  “Don’t forget to invite Mia!” Mitch called after me.

  The town archives were in a small building built onto the library. Bursting through the door, I noticed right away that old has a smell. Those endless aisles of paper records smelled musty and dry – I could almost taste it. When I checked the first aisle, I found Jasper digging through a box on the bottom shelf. He gave me a cold look.

  “How was your party?” he asked casually.

  I burst into tears.

  He walked over to me and fished for a tissue from the pocket of his plaid shirt.

  “It’s okay,” Jasper said. “I forgive you.”

  Actually I was crying about Sookie, but a few of those tears were for being a jerk and only caring about myself. Jasper was a good friend.

  “Please tell me you have seen Sookie. She’s missing,” I blubbered.

  “Sookie,” he repeated a couple of times. “Sorry, Cat, but I don’t know who you mean.”

  I slipped one of the large white feathers from my pocket and handed it to him.

  The feather shimmered mauve and blue when Jasper touched it.

  “What do you mean, Sookie’s missing?” Jasper’s eyes widened with alarm.

  I told Jasper everything that had happened at my party and since my party, including his dad’s and my mom’s reactions.

  “Mom can’t even remember her own daughter,” I finished. Sniffling, I blew my nose. “Besides the feather I gave you, I have two more. If I gave Mom one, it would only make her feel terrible. More than that, I think that if I want to find Sookie again, you have to keep that feather. And I’d better hang onto the third feather for a while longer, just in case.”

  Jasper looked thoughtful. “You’d better trust your instincts. At least while you’re holding the feathers. No one else in this town is thinking clearly, and it’s not just the forgetting. There’s the obsession everyone has with the soccer match. If I hadn’t been investigating what happened in the original game about seventy years back, I’d have gotten caught up in the excitement the same as everyone else.”

  Jasper had a point. Before, I jokingly thought that the anticipation of the soccer match had cast a spell over everyone in this town. Now it didn’t seem funny at all. Not only did the feathers help me remember, but they woke me up to the fact that no one in this town had been acting normally since the tryouts. I mean, teachers saying “don’t worry” about assignments? Right, that was so typical.

  “We’ve got to find Sookie,” I said, trying to hold back my tears.

  “We can’t panic,” said Jasper, but the blood drained from his face as he paced back and forth. “Tell me again about that mysterious masked girl at the party. Wasn’t she the last person you saw with Sookie? What was she saying to you?” Jasper clutched the other feather as he nervously rattled out questions.

  “She was talking about Halloween traditions,” I said. “She mentioned Celts, who I guess were these ancient people who had started a lot of Halloween customs we still practice, and she said –” I stopped. Remembering what she had told me while I was holding the feather was like seeing her stand right in front of me, all Halloweened-out in her old-fashioned black clothes, silver mask, and spider hairclip – the ruby spider hairclip – how had I missed that the first time? Finally, I recognized the tall girl.

  “Jasper, the girl in the mask, I think it was Sookie’s friend, that weird goth girl, Cindy.”

  “Okay!” he shouted, pounding his fists together. The librarian peered over his desk at us. More quietly, Jasper confirmed, “Now we have a starting point. If Sookie’s friend showed up at the party, the friend you didn’t want her talking to –”

  “Exactly,” my heart sank as I thought about Sookie’s stubborn streak. “And it would be just like Sookie to go somewhere else with Cindy, just so she could do what she wanted before I stopped her!”

  For my sake, Jasper said very calmly, “We don’t know that she left with Cindy, but we do know Cindy paid attention to her at your party, right?”

  I winced because I hadn’t paid attention.

  Jasper shook his head, saying, “This isn’t your fault, Cat. Clearly there’s something a lot stranger going on. Have you ever seen Cindy at Darkmont?”

  Shaking my head, I said, “Definitely not.”

  “Then Cindy must be a Grimoire student. Here’s the problem,” Jasper waved at the endless aisles of boxes. “I’ve been looking up all the old school records here because Grimoire School has never put anything online, not even current stuff. I don’t know how we’ll learn Cindy’s last name.”

  Puzzled, I said, “But Grimoire puts lots of stuff online; my Mom’s always inputting and downloading student data files.”

  “It’s locked, then,” said Jasper. “No one from outside the school can access that information.”

  “What about daughters of school secretaries?” I said. “Mom’s laptop is at home, and I’m sure I could figure out her password – she probably has it set to default.” My mother could never remember passwords, so this was the first moment since Sookie disappeared that I’d felt hopeful. Jasper grabbed my hand and we flew out of the library, racing back to my house.

  Since early this morning, I’d started running and hadn’t stopped. My side ached and I was starting to feel light-headed, but I only paused a second to catch my breath before climbing up to the attic where Mom usually left her laptop. The way things were going, I half expected that to be missing too. As we ducked under the low door, I felt relieved when I spotted the computer sitting on the desk.

  When I turned it on, I was immediately logged in at Grimoire, but when I typed in Mom’s name, we couldn’t automatically access the records. “Now what?” I asked miserably.

  “Type in her name and ask for a password hint,” suggested Jasper.

  The hint was “a six letter word for ‘important.’” Mom always said the most important thing to her is “family,” so I typed it in as quickly as I could. I logged on successfully and in seconds, I
located the student registers at Grimoire School. Oddly, there wasn’t a single Cindy at Grimoire, and there were no other schools in town. “We’ve hit a dead end,” I said with deep disappointment. “Cindy must be homeschooled.”

  “This is crazy.” Jasper paced the floor, sounding more and more alarmed. “Even if we call the police, they won’t know what we’re talking about. What if it’s just like those other girls from the first match – the ones I can’t find a single trace of after the first scholarship game?”

  “Jasper,” I said. Now it was my turn to take a steadying breath. “There’s got to be some record of those first girls. I’m already in the Grimoire registry, so why don’t you give me their names. I can easily go back in time with a click of the mouse.” What I was really hoping for was some kind of connection.

  “Here, I can do better than that.” He handed me the entire list of Darkmont girls who’d registered for the first scholarship game.

  “Remember,” Jasper said. “I couldn’t find a single name of any Witch team member registered at Darkmont after the soccer match. And I found only one old Grimoire file for all the registered names up to the letter h, so I know for sure that a few girls hadn’t registered there either.”

  Quickly I did a cross-check against all the names on Grimoire’s register.

  “Jasper, you were wrong,” I said in a low, frightened voice. “After the scholarship match long ago, a few girls didn’t go missing. None of those girls registered at Grimoire. The entire Witches team vanished!”

  Both Jasper and I stood in stunned silence for a few seconds.

  There had to be another explanation. Maybe a bunch of files simply went missing or were never entered in the first place. That’s what I tried convincing myself. But in my heart, I thought that I might never see Sookie again.

  “Jasper, we have to find Cindy – fast. The more I think about it, the more I know there was something not right about that girl. Why did she come to the party in the first place? And why did I only see her hanging out with Sookie? And there was all that weird stuff about Halloween she was telling me. She’s our only clue.” A dark feeling blossomed in my chest. “Jasper, I really think Cindy took my sister.” Maybe not by force, but Sookie was gone all the same.