The Secret of Grim Hill

by Linda DeMeulemeester

  Inside the passageway, it smelled both musty and spicy, like moldy incense. The narrow stone steps were worn smooth – in other words, treacherous. For extra balance I kept one hand against the rough rock wall, but on about my hundredth step, something furry brushed by my hand – if it was a spider, it was gigantic. After that, I continued down with my arms close to my sides.

  A cold draft cut through my clothes and sank into my bones. My eyes began to ache from the chill, but I kept going. When I was about one-third of the way down, what started as a whoosh built up to a deafening roar. Suddenly the air moved all around me and high-pitched squeals grated my ears. My heart leaped – bats! I hunkered down as low as I could on the steps, grateful my mask was perched on my head, covering my hair. The bats flew so close, my clothes twitched from their vibration and I caught their feral scent. After they passed, it took a moment before my legs stopped shaking and I could climb steadily down the stairs. The orange light grew slowly to the size of a soccer ball and then a giant beach ball, until it was clear that the passageway was leading me far beneath Grimoire School and into Grim Hill. When I stood at the mouth of the passageway, I realized why the light was orange. Being outside didn’t put me back into any familiar surroundings. For one thing, the whole sky outside happened to be orange – as if someone had smeared the sky with pumpkin.

  A quick look revealed another startling discovery – it seemed as if I was standing on the soccer field outside of Grimoire School, yet I wasn’t. The soccer bleachers and goal posts were transparent, as if one image was superimposed over the other, so I was standing in two worlds at once. The flames of a bonfire roared and crackled in the middle of the field. Slipping my mask back over my face, I moved closer.

  And then I heard it.

  Music eerily similar to what I’d heard when I played soccer was now affecting me in a different way. Instead of buoying me on the field so I could play the best soccer of my life, this music made my feet twitch and my legs jump, and I could barely resist the urge to dance.

  The others that swarmed around the bonfire couldn’t resist the music either. The Grimoire girl I’d followed out of the library had joined a circle of dancers. She was kicking up her heels, her long black hair flying out behind her. As she spun, she turned and grinned at me, baring all her teeth in a razor-sharp smile. A slim boy with long arms and legs that sprang like coils in Slinky toys, bounced manically around the fire. He turned his head in a complete circle and I saw that his face was covered with the mask of a stork-like creature with a long, skinny beak. When he laughed, it was as if needles stabbed my skin. Half-human and half-goat creatures clip-clopped like tap dancers. Their eyes were fiery red and horns poked out of their hair. Girls with pure white hair and skin, dressed in long white cobweb gowns, glided around the fire.

  I’d found the fairy circle.

  And I could have easily been observing witches, devils, monsters, and ghosts dance around the fire. I finally understood how Halloween characters had spun from Celtic legends and fairy lore.

  Amongst these creatures danced eleven girls dressed in old-fashioned clothes like Lucinda’s. Now I could see that the clothes were soccer uniforms girls wore long ago. I could also see that unlike the fairy creatures, the girls weren’t enjoying the dance.

  I stared at the Witches team from the first match and watched them dance around the fire. None of the girls appeared any older than me, but each looked as if she’d been dancing for a long time. As one girl twirled past me, she moaned and tried to pull off one of her leather boots. Thin streaks of blood had climbed up her socks past her ankles. Another girl stumbled and fell to her knees until the boy with the stork mask poked her with his beak until she got up again.

  One girl twisted and twirled, jumped and somersaulted, crying out, “I’m tired – please, I want to stop!”

  “Go ahead,” said the black-haired fairy girl with a cruel smile.

  The girl stopped for a second, but then her legs began to twitch. Her feet began shuffling, and her body lurched forward. Soon she was dancing as hard as before.

  My own legs trembled more and more. My body swayed to the manic music. Then Lucinda twirled past me.

  “Get out fast,” she urged. “It’s all up to you. If you can’t stop this, eleven more girls will take our places.” She had no trouble seeing through my disguise.

  “Where is Sookie?” I demanded. “I’m taking her with me!”

  And as I spoke, I realized I hadn’t been completely right about the dance. I spotted one girl who had not grown tired of the fairy circle. In fact, she giggled and laughed, twirling with stork boys and ghost girls.

  “Sookie!” I called out.

  Sookie looked up and didn’t even seem to care that I was there.

  I called to her again. She ignored me and ran to the other side of the circle and dodged between the two fairy girls in white.

  “What’s happened to her?” I began to chase after her. Before I could take a second step, Lucinda grabbed my arm and held me back. She swayed from side to side unable to keep still.

  “Maliss and Sinster bargained with me,” Lucinda explained. “They promised they wouldn’t harm Sookie if I fetched her and had her spend a few moments of fairy time in the circle – so that she would stay out of their way until the match was over. That way, neither she nor I could directly tell you how to escape a dreadful fate.” Lucinda hung her head and continued in despair. “I thought it would be okay, that from my hints, you’d be able to figure out yourself what was going on, and then Sookie would be safe.” Lucinda took a deep breath. “But the fairy trick was that when Sookie joined the circle, she fell under the coaches’ enchantment. Now she won’t listen to me, and she won’t listen to you.”

  As if to prove Lucinda’s point, Sookie stuck her tongue out at me.

  “To her this is a big adventure, and if you try to drag her away, she’ll fight and scream.” Lucinda said. “Now she won’t try to escape, and I can’t leave the circle again.” Lucinda stopped swaying, dropped my arm, and began to twirl on the spot.

  “Why not?” I whispered. “You managed to escape before!”

  “When the veil between both our worlds grew thinner, and the power of Fairy began weakening, I could see into both worlds. I felt a tug when I noticed your little sister sitting on the bleachers. At first I thought she was my sister, Alice, but she wasn’t. The bond wasn’t strong enough between us, and the power of the circle pulled me back in. And with Sookie here, there’s no one tugging me from the outside at all.”

  Lucinda began to skitter away when she could no longer resist the dance. She managed to twist in my direction and say, “You have to weaken their power over us all. We need a stronger bond to the human world. You have to break the link to Fairy.”

  I cried out, “How do I do that?”

  Lucinda began to tell me, but before she finished a single word, her mouth disappeared! She’d been forced to keep her part of the fairy bargain. Terror raced through me as I stared at her.

  “Please Sookie, come with me,” I shouted.

  The stork boy and Grimoire girl slid to a stop, staring at me. They whispered to each other. Sookie simply laughed and joined hands with the two white-haired girls as she spun around and around.

  A wave of hopelessness washed over me. How could I fight off these fairies and drag my sister and the other girls back to our world? The thing was I couldn’t – not alone.

  Several fairies moved menacingly toward me, pointing me out and not appreciating that I was trying to break up their diabolical dance. Sweat beaded on my face under my mask, and when I backed away, I stumbled. My mask slid just enough to show a bit of my face. The fairies surged toward me. I turned and ran into the passage.

  Reckless now, I leaped up the stairs much faster than I ever had back at Darkmont High, and I yanked up my mask until I could see better. My lungs stung as I breathed in fast and furious gasps while footsteps pounded too closely behind me. Faster, I forced myself up and out into the l
ibrary. When I grabbed my flashlight out of the door jam, the bookshelf slammed with a huge thud. This time as I passed the grimoire book, I snagged two feather bookmarks and stuffed them into my pocket. If I’d had extra feathers, maybe I could have coaxed Sookie back. Maybe –

  The library bookshelf suddenly crashed open behind me.

  As I raced out into the corridor, an alarm reverberated through the school. Clang, clang it went as the Grimoire students rushed out from the classes. I hurried past, sure that they only could see the back of my head.

  Footsteps thundered behind me. “Ms. Peters,” shouted my soccer coach. “Come out of your office and grab that student!”

  To my utter horror, as I approached the oak door of Grimoire, I could see my mom reflected in the door’s glass window. Like someone under a voodoo spell, she marched toward me – my own mother!

  I bit my lip until I tasted blood and burst out of the door, hoping she hadn’t recognized me.

  Afterward, I raced down the hill in the dark, not stopping to catch my breath, not stopping to look where I was going. I tumbled once head over heels, and without missing a beat, was back up and running even harder. All the while I was furious with myself.

  It was like taking a shot on goal when I was halfway down the soccer field, with no forwards to pass the ball to and the defense pressing down on me. Do I let the opportunity of making a goal slip by because I’m afraid I’ll fail? No, I take a shot. But I hadn’t.

  Sookie was right there in Fairy, and I didn’t grab her, even if it meant throwing her over my shoulder, kicking and screaming, so we could escape. It didn’t matter that the odds would have been stacked against me. I had let the opportunity to save my sister slip away.

  I passed my house for the second time that night and ran up Fairlane Street. When I burst through the door and into Miss Greystone’s front room, she and Jasper were hunched over the computer, staring at the screen. Miss Greystone and Jasper quickly jumped up and rushed toward me.

  “Cat, what’s …?”

  I collapsed on my knees, panting, trying to suck in oxygen.

  “We have to go back to the school,” I rasped. “We have to free Sookie and the other girls.”

  CHAPTER 18 An Impossible Challenge

  MISS GREYSTONE INSISTED I sit down on her couch and catch my breath before I said anything. The chicken salad sandwich she brought me sat untouched on the plate. I wasn’t hungry, but I drank two glasses of water. Besides being freezing cold, the air seemed very dry in Fairy.

  Lifting my glass for more water, I told Miss Greystone, “Because you looked a lot like my sister when you were small, Lucinda was able to break free of the fairy circle to talk to Sookie. She thought it was you.”

  Ms. Greystone and Jasper exchanged confused looks. I took another gulp of water and explained everything that had happened to me.

  “That’s it!” exclaimed Miss Greystone after I finished my story. She thumped her hand on her fairy tale book. “This book says that the only way to rescue someone from a fairy circle is to create a human chain. Lucinda felt the pull of a little girl she thought was me. She felt the pull of the human heart.”

  And Sookie’s disappearance pulled at my heart every second.

  “But Lucinda still couldn’t escape,” I said quietly, remembering my last horrible moments in Fairy. I didn’t mention what the fairies had done to her mouth.

  No one spoke for a minute. Finally Jasper said, “Because the pull wasn’t strong enough. Maybe if Sookie had been Alice, Lucinda’s real sister, Lucinda could have broken free.”

  I didn’t blame them for trying, but they didn’t quite understand. They hadn’t seen what I had seen, the hideous enchantment that was driving those girls. But then I thought about it.

  “Halloween is the key,” I decided. “The pull of the human heart tugs at the enchanted girls. But I also think Lucinda managed to escape in and out of the two worlds because the veil is weaker at this time of year, because it’s almost Samhain.” I remembered seeing the soccer bleachers superimposed over the fairy field when I was inside the hill. “The barrier between our worlds is becoming thin. Lucinda also mentioned this.”

  “And while Fairy waits for its new tithe, the fairies grow weaker,” said Jasper. “It’s as if the batteries are wearing out and its power could shut down.” He started pacing again. “Hey, maybe we could break the bridge between the fairy world and here if we convince your soccer team not to play,” Jasper said. “No more slaves, right? The link between the netherworld and here would close, and Fairy would have to shut down without any new energy.”

  For a second, I could almost hear the parts of the puzzle snap into place. Except … Jasper had missed the most important piece. “But if the link between our worlds closed,” I almost shouted, “then how do we get Sookie back?”

  “Oh. Right.” Jasper looked a bit ashamed.

  “Besides,” I said, “how would I convince the other girls on my soccer team not to show up? There’s nothing that would stop them.”

  But maybe there was something that could be done. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the other silvery feathers I’d taken from the grimoire book. But seeing through the glamour didn’t solve the problem of rescuing Sookie, or saving a new team from being captured and enslaved by Fairy.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Sookie told me when I first joined the team that no one could win. What if that’s it? What if we kept playing the game at a tie, and no one won? The link to Fairy would keep getting weaker and weaker as their power runs out. If no one wins, they can’t capture anybody.”

  Jasper nodded. “And if you could keep the game tied long enough for us to figure out how to make a human chain, we might be able to free Sookie, Lucinda, and her team. If the fairies didn’t have slaves at all, wouldn’t the link collapse?”

  I felt a warm flush of hope.

  Jasper suddenly sounded discouraged. “The only thing is that I have no idea how to do it.”

  Miss Greystone said, “And neither do I.”

  Maybe, just maybe … I got up, walked over to the mantel, and picked up Miss Greystone’s old journal. “Is it possible that some of the brothers and sisters of the people on the old soccer team still live in this town?”

  “Very possible,” said Miss Greystone. She took the journal and flipped through the pages until she found the section in which she had talked constantly about Lucinda’s soccer team. “Madelene Rogers was on that team, and her brother Billy still lives in town. And I play bridge with Pearl’s sister, Vivian, every Wednesday night. I’m sure there will be others.”

  “Here, you’ll need this for the brothers and sisters.” Handing Miss Greystone an extra feather, I began to form a plan to try to break the fairy spell. We had no choice.

  ***

  Later that night when I went home, my mom sat in the living room reading a book. When I came in, she peered over the book cover. “Had the coaches called for evening practice? Good. There’s not much time left to get ready for the big day.”

  I tried to erase the image of her trying to grab me for the fairies.

  Quietly I opened the closet door and buried the black mask under a pile of sweaters. Wearily I climbed the stairs and tugged my shoes off before walking down the hall and into my bedroom. I didn’t even finish buttoning my nightgown before I tumbled into bed. That night, I tossed and turned, dreaming I was in the fairy circle.

  ***

  When I woke the next morning, at first, I thought that it had all just been a nightmare. Then I remembered that what I had seen could very well be my fate. Sookie had said the school had liked our team’s energy the best. The Ghosts played poorly and it was a done deal that our team would win. Jasper and I had to make our plan work, or these would be my last few days of freedom.

  While Miss Greystone phoned every single person in town who had had a sister on the original Witches team long ago, Jasper and I plastered every square inch of Darkmont with posters advertising the big game – not that it
needed any publicity. The whole town was going to be at the soccer match, and some of our parents and teachers were volunteering to set up the field and act as referees. Secretly I wondered if the Grimoire staff members were becoming too weak and faded to supervise the game. That might be an advantage. Also, we wrote on the poster that only people wearing a Halloween mask would be allowed to watch the game. It was time for this town to take ancient precautions. Besides, it would hide what we were really planning. Once we finished with Darkmont, Jasper and I nailed the posters on every telephone pole and taped them on every shop window and door.

  Throughout the week, I forced myself to attend soccer practice so that the coaches wouldn’t think that I was onto them. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. When I crawled out of bed each morning, I wondered how I’d possibly slip on my soccer boots that I’d once loved so much and force a frozen smile on my face as I ran laps around that field. During practice, Ms. Sinster’s uncanny stare would drill through the back of my head, and I worried that despite my act, she was becoming suspicious. The only way I managed to keep going was by focusing on one moment at a time.

  When I walked to school on Friday, Mr. Keating came out of his emporium.

  “Cat,” he said as he plucked an apple from his barrel and handed it to me. “I should pay you commission.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I’ve had to order more masks from the next town. My store has never run out of costumes before, and I hear it was your idea to wear masks to the soccer game.”

  “Yes,” I said, a bit worried about admitting it. “That was me.”

  Mr. Keating scratched his head. “What a good idea,” he said, and his voice drifted. “It’s a very good …” He looked puzzled, then he smiled and walked back into the Emporium.

  ***

  The morning of the Halloween soccer match, I called Mia and Amarjeet, as well as Emily from the Ghosts, over to my house. When they arrived, I sat them down on my front porch and said, “Before I explain anything, I want you to have these.”