by Holly Rivers
Oh, for fossil’s sake, groaned Demelza to herself. An early morning run-in with the smug-bottomed Smythes. Just what I need . . .
‘Got any of your marvellous inventions to show class today, Demelza?’ continued Persephone, sauntering closer. ‘You know how much we all enjoyed the last presentation you did on your Pigeon-Powered Lawnmower. NOT!’
She let out a spiteful giggle before Penelope chimed in, pulling her shoulders back and projecting her voice for all to hear. ‘And I see that you haven’t polished your shoes again. That’s the second time this week, isn’t it? I wonder what Ms Cardinal will have to say about that, hmm?’
Demelza dropped her satchel and squared up to the girl. ‘Well, I’m sure you won’t hesitate to tell her. I know how much you enjoy being a nasty little snitch!’
Miranda’s dark eyes widened, and Demelza was sure that she could see a hint of a smile forming on her lips.
‘I think you’ll find the correct term is corridor monitor, Demelza,’ said Penelope. ‘Maybe if you weren’t such an oddball, then you might be entrusted with an important title too. I don’t think that class freak really counts.’
Penelope sniggered and Demelza felt her fists curl inside her pockets. ‘You’ll pay for that!’ she hissed, and was just about to pounce when Ms Cardinal appeared from inside the classroom.
‘Hands out, ready for inspection!’ she snapped, clicking her bony fingers in the air. ‘Chop chop, we haven’t got all day. Wasted time is a wasted opportunity to learn!’
Every child in the corridor immediately jerked to attention, silence falling as Ms Cardinal began the rigorous process of scanning each and every set of palms.
Demelza watched the headmistress at work with dread. She’d only taken on the headship the previous year, but had quickly stepped into the authoritarian shoes of her predecessors, and was sterner than any army sergeant. She was extremely tall and extremely thin, the high collar of her grey dress buttoned tightly around her neck. Apart from a few purple veins on her cheeks, her skin was pallid, like the flesh of an uncooked oyster, her nose as pointy as a crow’s beak. But perhaps the most striking thing about her was the dark eye patch that hung over her right eye. Rumour had it that she’d lost it while working as a prison guard at a high-security penitentiary, but the only pupil brave enough to have ever asked about it had never set foot in Stricton Academy again.
‘Very good, Penelope, very good, Persephone,’ said Ms Cardinal, as she looked down at the twins’ dainty, manicured hands. ‘Cut and scrubbed fingernails, that’s what I like to see in an institute of learning. Exemplary.’
‘Thank you, Ms Cardinal,’ chorused the twins, reverting to the sickly, saccharine tones which they reserved exclusively for teachers. ‘Our mummy says that cleanliness is next to godliness.’
Demelza barely suppressed a retch. How did the pair always manage to worm their way into Ms Cardinal’s good books, when they were two of the most hideous organisms on Planet Earth? Maybe one day when she was a famous scientist, she’d be able to put them under her microscope and see what kind of repulsive mutant molecules made up their DNA.
‘And how about your hands, Miss Clock?’ taunted Ms Cardinal, coming to stand over Demelza and glaring down with her one good eye. ‘Any engine oil under your fingernails today? Any soldering iron-induced burns?’
A wave of stifled laughter rippled down the corridor and Demelza sighed. She knew that her hands would never meet her teacher’s exacting standards, especially after last night’s inventing session. She reluctantly held them out and Ms Cardinal let out a snort of disgust.
‘Disgraceful! If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a million times, inventing is not a suitable pastime for a young lady!’ She spat out the word inventing with revulsion, as if it were an activity on par with eating scabs.
‘But Ms Cardinal!’ Demelza protested, her blood beginning to boil like liquid in a test tube. ‘Lots and lots of things have been invented by young ladies. Dr Giuliana Argenta, for one, obtained more than one hundred and twenty-five patents for her creations and—’
‘Do NOT answer back, girl! Your wretched grandmother might put up with such unorthodox practices, but I certainly will not!’
Grandma Maeve, wretched? Demelza felt a wave of anger building up inside her, as fiery and explosive as nitroglycerine. She couldn’t hold it down. ‘Don’t you speak about my grandma like that!’ she shouted. ‘She’s not wretched! She’s wonderful! You’ve never even met her!’
‘Of course I’ve met—’ Ms Cardinal quickly stopped herself. ‘I mean . . . of course she must be wretched, having raised such a beastly child.’ She coughed loudly and shifted her gaze. ‘As punishment for being so impudent, Miss Clock, you shall spend the morning helping Mrs Armstrong remove chewing gum from inside the gymnasium lockers. Do you understand?’
Demelza’s body was poker-stiff with rage, but she bit her tongue – it was pointless trying to argue with someone whose ideas were stuck somewhere in the 1800s. And besides, there was one benefit to her punishment: at least now she could spend the morning dreaming up designs for her booby trap. The plans for Operation: Night Noise could officially get underway.
CHAPTER 6
The Incredible Intruder Incarcerator
At four o’clock the school bell rang and Demelza was out of the classroom in a flash. As she burst through the front gates of the school she felt her shoulders soften – it had been such a long day and she couldn’t wait to get up to her attic room and make a start on her trap. She’d decided on a simple cage design, with a trigger causing the door to lock shut once the intruder was inside. A bowl of baked beans would be left as bait – after all, who or what wouldn’t be lured in by such a delicious delicacy?
But first, it was time for some sweets!
Demelza hopped on her bike and raced down the high street to the small shop at the very end, where the words Emmanuel Barnabas: Confectioner arched over the door in faded golden letters. The window was all ready for Halloween — decorated with delicate sugar cobwebs which veiled a display of jelly eyeballs, liquorice rats and some white chocolate skulls that looked frighteningly real. As Demelza pushed the door open, the tinkling of a bell sounded somewhere in the back room, and a brown-skinned man with a mop of thick hair toddled out to the shop floor. He wore a bow tie which was the same shade of red as the polka dots on his pocket square.
‘Demelza, my favourite sproglet! How nice to see you,’ he said, walking over to the huge selection of jars behind the counter. The buttons of his checked waistcoat were shiny and gold, as were a couple of his teeth. ‘And what takes your fancy today? Lemon drops? Chocolate buttons? Or –’ he picked up a chocolate bar wrapped in shiny orange paper from the counter in front of him – ‘one of the new Toffee-Apple Tongue Tinglers I have in for Halloween?’
Demelza gazed up at the shelves and licked her lips. Grandma Maeve had been bringing her to the shop since she was a little girl, but the novelty of ogling at the selection of sugary treats still hadn’t worn off. There were jars of coconut macaroons, pots of gumdrops and boxes of delicate sugar mice which glistened in shades of pale pink and yellow. A freshly cut Battenberg and an iced lemon drizzle cake sat on doilies under glass cloches.
‘I’ll take a bag of the jelly beans and two sherbet fountains,’ Demelza decided eventually. ‘And maybe one of your walnut whips for my Grandma Maeve.’
Mr Barnabas smiled. ‘And how is that lovely grandma of yours? Keeping well, I take it?’ He reached for the jar of jelly beans and untwisted the lid. As he poured, the shiny multicoloured sweeties fell into his weighing scales with a satisfying clatter.
‘She’s fine, thank you,’ Demelza replied. ‘She’s harvesting her crop of pumpkins today. I can bring you some for your Halloween window display if you’d like?’
‘Well, that’d be wonderful! Just what I need to go alongside the chocolate bats that Mrs Barnabas is making.’ He reached for the sherbet fountains and the walnut whip and passed them to Demelza with a w
ink. ‘There you go. On the house. My little treat.’
‘Thanks, Mr Barnabas,’ Demelza replied, turning towards the door. ‘I’ll drop in tomorrow morning with those pumpkins.’
‘Splendid! And please, do send my regards to your grandmother.’
The bell jingled again as Demelza left the shop, and with a mouthful of jelly beans she hopped back on her bicycle and made for home.
Bladderwrack Cottage was a run-down, ramshackle old place whose red bricks were half-masked by sweeping ivy. A wonky weathervane sprouted from the roof which, even in the strongest of gales, permanently pointed east. Along the garden path, crocuses exploded in marbled blues and purples, anchored by tangles of papery leaves.
As Demelza fumbled for the front door keys in her satchel she recalled the morning she’d first arrived at the cottage after Mum and Dad had died. She hadn’t yet turned four years old, and was ‘not much taller than a toadstool’, according to Grandma Maeve. The cottage had been warm and welcoming, the smell of toasted teacakes and coffee thick in the air as she’d been scooped into Grandma’s open arms. Upstairs, the little attic bed had been made up with the same patchwork quilt that she still snuggled under now and it wasn’t long before she’d acquired her first microscope. As much as Demelza loved the life she had with Grandma Maeve, she couldn’t help wondering what her world might have been like if things had been different, if her parents hadn’t gone out on that perilous, icy night . . .
Shaking herself from her trance, Demelza unlocked the front door and let herself in. Shiver came bounding into the hallway, his stumpy little legs skidding across the tiles. ‘Hello, Grandma!’ Demelza called, throwing her satchel on the hallway floor and hooking her blazer on to the coat stand. ‘Grandma, it’s me! Where are you?’
The wooden walking stick that Grandma Maeve used when she left the cottage was leaning against the sideboard, so Demelza knew that she was in. Inside the small front room, Demelza found her asleep in her armchair, a half-drunk cup of tea on the table in front of her. All around, shelves were lined with cookery books, trinkets and mismatched pieces of china. The last few embers of a fire glowed jewel-like in the grate.
‘Excellent,’ Demelza muttered to herself, steepling her fingers as she watched her grandmother snooze. ‘The perfect time to undertake my booby trap apparatus heist!’ She’d decided to keep her plan a secret from Grandma Maeve for the time being – she didn’t want to be caught inventing instead of doing homework again, and besides, what a brilliant surprise it would be if she could prove that there was something strange going on in the cottage.
As stealthy as a stoat, Demelza snuck into the kitchen. She knew from experience it would be full of useful things for her contraption. She went through drawer after drawer, cupboard after cupboard, pulling out anything that she thought might be useful. Nothing filled her with more wonder than picturing a new project coming together, and her heart raced as she found more and more things that could potentially be cut, glued or soldered.
After much deliberation she finally decided on a handful of clothes pegs, a dessert fork, a small weighing scale, some fridge magnets, a can opener and three sheets of greaseproof paper. The half-empty bucket of paraffin Grandma used for lighting lamps during power cuts was also added to the loot, as well as the plunger from under the sink. Shiver watched closely and Demelza took a chunk of ham from the fridge and threw it into his slobbering, pink mouth. ‘There you go, boy, a little treat,’ she whispered, giving him a scratch behind his ears. ‘Now keep quiet and don’t wake up Grandma Maeve.’
Up in the attic, and with her thinking cap on, Demelza worked tirelessly for most of the evening. As the booby trap came together she began to feel more and more convinced that she was going to be able to solve the mystery of the night-time noises. She hadn’t been so excited since finding a copy of Rocket Propulsion for Beginners by Serge A. Head in the local library the previous week.
‘Voila!’ she said eventually, brushing her gluey hands together before stepping back from her desk. Fitted with a complex series of pulleys, levers and wire barbs, the trap resembled a medieval torture device that had somehow been transported into a futuristic galaxy. ‘I shall call it the Incredible Intruder Incarcerator. Now all I have to do is wait until dark . . .’
She threw a dust sheet over her work and, having tossed a handful of lettuce leaves into Archimedes’s cage, followed the delicious smell of dinner wafting up from downstairs.
Later that evening, and having gulped down second and third portions of pork chops and potatoes, Demelza went into the sitting room to say goodnight to Grandma Maeve. Inside, the curtains had been drawn and the old woman was reclining in her armchair once more, a glass of ginger wine in one hand and a bag of chocolate brazil nuts in the other. A roaring log fire filled the air with a sweet-smelling smoke.
Normally, Demelza would have cosied down under a blanket and hoped that Grandma Maeve would make her a mug of hot chocolate, but tonight she kept her distance. Grandma could smell mischief from a mile off, and Demelza knew that she definitely reeked of it.
‘Right, Grandma, I’m going up,’ she said with one of her well-practised pretend yawns. ‘I’m feeling ever so tired. I think I’m going to get an early night.’
‘All right, m’dear,’ said the old woman, swigging the last dregs of her wine before kissing her granddaughter on the forehead. ‘But straight to sleep. None of that late night inventin’ again, you promise me?’
Demelza felt a slight pang of guilt somewhere in the pit of her stomach knowing that she had no real intention of nodding off, but she couldn’t change her mind now – she had a scientific operation to undertake! ‘Yes, Grandma,’ she said, crossing her fingers behind her back. ‘I promise.’
‘Oh, and Demelza,’ called Grandma Maeve as her granddaughter made for the door, ‘can we have a little chat tomorrow mornin’? Nothin’ to worry about, just need to talk to you about somethin’, that’s all.’
Demelza frowned. ‘Erm . . . OK . . . Is everything all right, Grandma?’
Grandma Maeve cleared her throat. ‘Yes, yes, everything’s fine. You just toddle off to bed, and we’ll speak tomorrow. Love you more than teapots!’
‘Love you more than circuit boards!’
For the next hour Demelza waited patiently in the attic for Grandma Maeve to retire to her room too. To stop herself from falling asleep, she’d decided to work on her mental arithmetic and had just reached number 67,231 in the Fibonacci sequence when she heard the landing light clicking off and the sound of her grandmother’s door closing.
Demelza leapt out of bed and pulled on her thinking cap and lab coat. She crept over to her trap and was just about to give it a final test run when a sound came from the window. It was a strange tap-tapping, as if something was being pelted at the glass.
Demelza gasped. Abseiling atoms! Has the intruder arrived already?
Thinking fast, she grabbed a wrench from her desk and raised it above her head, ready to attack. She whipped open the curtains and—
What on earth?
There, looking up at her from the front garden, with a stone in one hand and a torch in the other, was Percy. He was wrapped up in his pyjamas and dressing gown, a pair of fluffy pink bunny slippers on his feet.
He gave Demelza a little wave and she felt a huge grin spread across her face and a rush of excitement shoot through her body. Percy’d changed his mind! She had a partner in crime after all!
Demelza flitted downstairs and, having triple checked that Grandma Maeve was nowhere to be seen, unlatched the front door. It was freezing outside and under his torchlight Percy’s pale skin was almost aglow, like that of a ghostly apparition.
‘I thought you weren’t coming,’ whispered Demelza sarcastically, trying to hide the joy she actually felt at seeing her friend.
‘Well, you didn’t think I’d really let you do this all on your own, did you?’ said Percy. ‘You might need me to protect you if anything bad happens.’
Demelza l
et out a dismissive snort. ‘In those slippers? Oh yes, I forgot how scary ickle pink bunny wabbits are.’
Percy’s face crumpled and Demelza gave him a playful smile. ‘Only joking, silly. And sorry if I was a bit mean earlier. You know what I’m like when I get an idea into my head.’ She ushered him through the front door and closed it as quietly as possible. ‘How did you sneak out, anyway?’
‘I waited until Dad was watching one of his boring news programmes then slipped out of the back door. I stuffed some cushions under my duvet to look like my body in case he comes to check up on me.’
‘Brilliant!’ whispered Demelza. ‘Captain Thalasso would be proud! Now come on, I want to show you my booby trap!’
As the pair tiptoed up the cottage’s rickety old staircase and the wooden floorboards creaked beneath their feet, their torchlight swept across the walls, giving eerie glimpses of Grandma’s antiques and strange collections.
‘It’s a bit creepy,’ whispered Percy, looking over his shoulder as they approached the top of the stairs. ‘And it’s ever so dark.’
‘Of course it’s dark!’ replied Demelza curtly. ‘It’s the middle of the night – you know, the bit of the day when the big ball of light disappears from the sky? What did you expect?’
Percy looked to the floor. ‘I don’t really know. Dad doesn’t usually let me stay up past seven p.m.’
Demelza rolled her eyes and was just about to come back with a witty retort when all of a sudden she froze.
‘Wh-what’s wrong?’ asked Percy, peering over her shoulder. ‘Why have we stopped?’
Demelza didn’t answer.
She shuffled to the window overlooking the back garden and, without saying a word, pointed to Grandma Maeve’s greenhouse. A figure was moving around inside, its form silhouetted under the moonlight.