by E. G. Foley
The nurse shook her head. “If that were the case, we would surely hear them. But there’s never any noise.”
“Why don’t you ask the teachers?” the cook grumbled, moving to the worktable to chop carrots. “Maybe it’s their fault, giving ’em too much homework. Maybe their brains are worn out.”
“I’ve already spoken to the teachers and they’ve promised to cut down on assignments for a while.” The nurse frowned, unaware of Jake eavesdropping in the hallway…
To say nothing of the other listener who had just arrived.
Jake stared at the transparent, bluish figure of the old professor he had seen on the school’s porch yesterday, when they had been halted by the funeral procession.
He was floating in the middle of the kitchen, looking very annoyed at both the school employees.
“I suppose it could be all the chores Dr. Winston gives the poorer boarders and the orphans,” the nurse admitted.
The cook snorted. “May well be. Cleaning house, washing dishes, doing laundry, pulling weeds. They’re just children, after all. He’s probably overworking them.”
“Yes, but these are coalmine children. Hardy stock. They can take a little labor. Heavens, I hope we don’t have a gas leak!” she said all of a sudden. “That could explain why they’re all so tired.”
“But none of us are affected,” the cook pointed out.
The ghost threw up his hands. “It’s not a gas leak, you idiots! It’s not the food, nor the chores! There’s something here, I tell you, feeding on the children! Why won’t anyone listen to me?”
Jake sucked in his breath at the ghost’s words.
Unfortunately, his gasp attracted the attention of all three.
“Can I help you?” the nurse demanded, her expression darkening as she realized he had overheard them discussing private problems at the school.
“Er, no, sorry.” Jake backed away. “I just—I’m a visitor—where’s the dining hall?”
“That way.” She pointed to the hall behind him.
“Thanks,” he mumbled, hurrying away, while the schoolboys brought in the final packages.
Drat it, Jake thought. That meant it was almost time to give his speech.
But before they left today, he needed to talk to that ghost and find out what he knew.
CHAPTER TEN
The Souling Song
Soon all the students were assembled in the dining hall, and Jake stood up at the front of the room to offer a few words of consolation.
He felt butterflies in his stomach, and his hands were shaking as he stood before the sea of faces. Archie gave him an encouraging nod, while Dani sat there with her fingers crossed.
“Ahem.” Jake cleared his throat. “So, my friends and I heard about what happened at the mine when we arrived here on holiday. And we really just wanted to say how terrible we feel about your loss. It’s awful, what you must be going through, feeling so alone, and wondering who’ll take care of you. I should know. My parents died when I was a baby, so I do understand.”
The kids stared at him.
“And the rest of you who’ve got family working in the mine, I imagine you all must be pretty scared right now. But the best thing, I think, is just to take it day by day, and have a little faith. And rely on your friends. You’ve still got each other, right?”
He floundered on a little longer and wasn’t even sure what all he said, but he paused when a ghostly face peered out from one of the oval decorative medallions that adorned the four corners of the ceiling.
It was the headmaster ghost again, studying him with a critical eye; Jake got the feeling the old professor was evaluating him on his rhetoric.
He doubted he got a passing grade.
“Ahem. Anyway, we brought you these things to try to cheer you up a bit.” Jake gestured toward the mound of presents on the front table so the other three would begin handing them out. “Thank you for listening. That is all.”
To his embarrassment, Dr. Winston started clapping for him. “Marvelous, Lord Griffon! Very fine indeed! Wasn’t it, children?”
Jake turned red as the schoolchildren politely followed suit, applauding him.
He knew full well that his speech had sounded kind of idiotic, but they seemed to appreciate it nonetheless. He nodded in thanks and hurried out of the limelight.
Still red-cheeked, he busied himself helping Archie and the girls pass out the gifts. He shook the kids’ hands as he met them one by one, pretending all the while that he knew what he was doing. Being an aristocrat could be so embarrassing sometimes, he thought, but what could you do.
Heading back to the pile of presents to get more to hand out, he noticed Isabelle marching stiffly toward the exit. She looked pale and queasy, barely glancing at him as she hurried past. “Izzy, are you all right?”
She shook her head but didn’t answer, rushing out of the dining hall like she had to puke. Dani wasn’t far behind her. As paid companion, it was her duty to look after the delicate young lady.
“What’s wrong with her?” Jake asked the carrot-head.
“Something in the atmosphere here is making her sick,” Dani whispered. “Too much sadness, too many people, who knows? She said she needs some fresh air. I’ll go see if there’s anything I can get for her.”
“Well, don’t take too long. We need you in here.”
“Jake!”
“Aw, c’mon, you can’t abandon Archie and me. Girls are better at this sort of thing. She gets queasy all the time.”
Dani gave him a look, then hurried out after the highly sensitive empath.
“She probably wants to be alone, anyway!” he added, but she was already gone.
He scooped up another armload of presents, then smiled ruefully at the schoolchildren’s happy chatter resounding through the dining hall. They seemed delighted, showing each other what they had got. Some were still waiting patiently, however. Jake made his way toward them.
Approaching the tables of kids who were still empty-handed, he noticed Derek and Miss Helena standing together, chatting with Dr. Winston by the wall.
“Very well done, young man,” the headmaster congratulated him.
“Thank you, sir,” he answered.
But when Dr. Winston moved to clap him on the back, Jake noticed the portrait hanging on the wall behind him.
He recognized that face.
“Dr. Winston, who is that?” he asked casually, nodding at the painting.
“Why, that’s Dr. Ephraim Sackville. Died some twenty years ago. Old Sack, we used to call him,” Dr. Winston drawled, hands in pockets like one of the schoolboys.
The tall, slightly tipsy man rocked back and forth on his feet, the tassel on his cap swinging. “Old Sack was headmaster here for forty years. Made the Harris school what it is today. And trust me, he did not take any nonsense. I was in his first class of students when he was a new teacher here. Fierce old buzzard. He could hit a misbehaving boy in the back row square on the forehead with an eraser standing all the way up at the chalkboard. I believe he played cricket in his youth. Quite an arm on him.”
“How dare you? Buzzard, am I?”
Jake blinked as the ghostly face of Old Sack peered out from the portrait and scowled at the living headmaster.
“You, sir, are a disgrace to this school and all it stands for. Drunkard! I can’t believe they ever gave you my position.”
Dr. Winston sighed, unaware of the ghost glaring over his shoulder. “Sometimes I could swear he still hangs around this place. I can almost feel him…watching me.”
“Sir, I need to talk to you,” Jake blurted out.
The living and the dead headmasters, side by side, both looked at him in question.
“About what, my boy?” Dr. Winston asked, but the strict, dead headmaster snorted.
“I daresay. That speech was a maudlin disaster. Your rhetoric needs serious work. You have obviously put no effort at all into your studies. In my office now, you young dunce.”
�
��Hm?” Dr. Winston prompted.
Jake stared, his mind a blank from that unexpected scolding. Then he realized the living headmaster was still waiting for his question. “Uh, you know, sir, I just entirely forgot what I was going to say.”
“Ha! Happens to me all the time,” Dr. Winston confessed with a chuckle. “If you’ll excuse me.” He nodded, taking leave of them to mingle among the students and admire their little gifts in his jovial, tipsy way.
“Something wrong?” Miss Helena asked, smiling at him.
“No.” Jake shook his head, but as soon as Dani returned, he took her and Archie aside.
He implored them to cover for him and distract everyone while he slipped out for a few minutes to speak to the grumpy ghost.
They agreed to this readily enough, after he assured them he would explain later. With that, Jake made a stealthy exit from the dining hall and went looking for Old Sack.
Jake hurried down the dark hallway, past the kitchen, then sneaked out into the gloomy foyer at the foot of the staircase. “Dr. Sackville? Headmaster, sir, are you here?” he whispered as loudly as he dared, looking all around him.
“You’re really not a very intelligent boy at all, are you?” The ghost of Dr. Sackville materialized, floating, arms crossed, a few feet off the floor. “Does this look like my office?”
“Sorry, sir, there isn’t much time,” Jake whispered. “I have a few questions—”
“I daresay.” Old Sack shook his head in disapproval, and the tassel on his cap swung like the pendulum on a grandfather clock. “But never fear. Rhetoricians are not born, they are made, by study, effort, practice. Now then. We will cover topics such as posture, diction, and the appropriate use of Classical references.” He floated grandly toward the ceiling, hands clasped behind his back, peering down at Jake all the while through the small spectacles perched on his nose. “The best way to start a speech is with a Latin phrase to edify one’s listeners—”
“Dr. Sackville, that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about!”
“Ending a sentence with a preposition? Ugh, my ears may bleed.”
“You said something’s feeding on the children.”
The ghost paused. “You heard that?”
“I did.”
Old Sack hesitated over how to respond, then chose to bluster. “Young persons should never eavesdrop on their elders! It is too shocking! No privileges for a fortnight.”
“I don’t go to school here. If you’d just tell me what you saw, maybe I can help.”
“I have no idea what nonsense you are spewing. We here at the Harris School place the highest possible priority on the welfare of our students and maintain the strictest standards of excellence. Now go back to class,” he warned, narrowing his eyes, “or I shall have you caned.”
A large paddle appeared in the ghost’s hand; he tapped it meaningfully against his other palm.
“Good grief,” Jake muttered. “Sir, if what you saw is a black fog, your students could be in more danger than you realize.”
The ghost leaned down to glower in his face. “You think I don’t know that?” he snapped in an angry whisper. “You are asking the wrong question once again, young dunce! Why am I not surprised?”
“Then what’s the right question?”
“Oh, you want the answers given to you? I see.”
“I’m only trying to help!”
The headmaster ghost glanced around fearfully. “Then ask not what the black fog is, but whom!” With that, Old Sack disappeared.
“Come back!” Jake whispered into the empty air.
He rushed across the foyer and threw open the front door of the Harris School to see if the headmaster spirit was floating back to the cemetery across the road, where his body was probably buried.
Jake did not see him, but he did spy Isabelle leaning against their carriage. The brisk autumn air had brought the pink back into her cheeks.
With her psychic sort of allergy to evil, the fact that the atmosphere inside the school had made her sick raised the obvious question: What if the black fog thing was in there even now?
The thought sent a chill down his spine.
He thought of how this mysterious black fog had sucked the life out of the tree goblins, leaving them like little, dead, dried-out mummies. There were no reports of any children dying here, but they certainly looked weary and anemic—enough to alarm even the school nurse.
I have got to get to the bottom of this.
All the more reason to attend the séance tomorrow night, he thought. Maybe one of the ghosts around here would be more willing to talk to him than Dr. Sackville.
The late headmaster seemed more concerned about protecting his school’s reputation than the actual safety of the children. It was rather maddening.
Jake marched over to Isabelle. “What did you sense?”
She sent him a dark, troubled glance, then looked at the school again. “There’s something evil in this place.”
“Do you think it’s in there now?”
“Hard to say. It might be. Did you see anything?”
She still looked green around the gills, so he chose not to burden her with the news about Old Sack, and shook his head.
“Well, then,” she said slowly, “maybe all I’m sensing is the residue it left behind.” A shudder gripped her, and she glanced over her shoulder at the opposite hill. “Who knows what might wander over here from that cemetery?”
Jake’s jaw tightened at the thought. “Feel better, Izzy.”
“Thanks. I’ll wait out here till everyone’s ready to go.”
He nodded, then went back inside, on the watch for any sign of a black fog.
On his way back to the dining hall, he passed a classroom where Archie was talking to the teachers and older students about his latest scientific obsession. He had sketched a picture on the blackboard of the submersible he was building back at home. Jake sent him a grateful nod from the doorway.
This was obviously Archie’s way of helping to distract the teachers and older students, as they had discussed. Dani must have agreed to entertain the youngers. As Jake approached the dining hall, he felt a tug on his heartstrings as he realized the carrot-head had got the children singing. Leave it to the Irish.
It was a song Jake knew all too well, but it pained him to hear it coming, muffled, through the door. He had sung that song many times. Indeed, the melancholy tune brought back some of the bleakest moments of his former mode of life.
The age-old ‘Souling Song’ was typically sung by homeless children going door-to-door to beg for food:
Hey-ho, nobody home,
No food, no drink, no money have I none.
Yet will I be merry!
Hey-ho, nobody home.
They sang it in a round split between two groups. That was how it sounded prettiest.
Jake ignored the slight lump in his throat and pushed open the door.
But the moment he stepped into the dining hall, he stopped in shock. “What are you doing?”
Illuminium glittered in a cloud over Dani’s head and sparkled over the heads of the smaller children crowded around her, all singing.
Jake took an angry step forward. Little fool!
When Dani saw him standing in the doorway with a horrified glare, she abruptly stopped singing.
The schoolchildren followed suit and when the song stopped, the Illuminium went dark in the silence; it fell out of the air, whispering to the floor like ordinary dust.
The kids’ eyes shone with wonder, but Dani’s green ones filled with confusion when she saw the fury on Jake’s face.
“Can I please speak to you for a moment, Miss O’Dell?” he said through gritted teeth.
Usually she would have sassed him for being bossy, but she must have heard the serious wrath in his voice. She furrowed her brow, got up, and hurried over, then stepped out into the hallway with him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he whispered angrily at her before she could sp
eak. “You can’t show them that!”
She seemed startled. “What’s the harm? You saw how sad they all were. I had to do something to cheer them up. It made them happy.”
“It was supposed to be a secret!”
“Well…I forgot!”
“You forgot? Don’t lie to me! You know you broke the rules.”
“Like you never do that!” she retorted.
“Dani, this is serious,” he warned her when she rolled her eyes and folded her arms across her chest. “Anything having to do with the magical world can’t be shown to outsiders! You know that perfectly well. Why did you do this?”
“I felt sorry for them!” she exclaimed. “Kids like that, they never get anything.”
“What if Aunt Ramona found out? You could be fired.”
She drew in her breath, paling at the prospect of being sent back to the rookery. “Are you going to tell on me?”
“Of course not,” he snapped. Then he shook his head. “But I have no idea what sort of problems you might have just caused by showing them that. What else did you tell them?”
“Nothing!”
“Did you tell them about the goldmine? The dwarves? The unicorns?”
“Of course not! I’m not stupid!”
“Are you sure about that?”
Hurt flashed across her freckled face. “I was only doing what you asked me to. Distract ’em, you said!”
“Right, so your mistake is my fault?”
“I said I was sorry!” she cried, then she rushed off with tears in her eyes, pounded through the foyer, and slammed out the front door, rejoining Isabelle by the coach.
Great. Jake scowled after her. Now I have to clean up her mess. Stupid carrot-head. How could she do such a thing? She knew better than this.
If these school kids started asking questions about the Illuminium, like where it came from, that would lead to questions about the mine, and him, as the person who owned it.
Soon Plas-y-Fforest could be plagued with a wave of snooping youngsters trying to sneak onto the property to explore—and then how long before they discovered dwarves and unicorns, and tree goblins, and house brownies, and roses that moved on command?