Groosham Grange Page 7

  Mr Netherby was delighted by what he saw. He couldn’t fail to be. As the day wore on he gradually unwound and even the sight of Gregor, humping a sack of potatoes down to the kitchen, only delighted him all the more.

  “The Council is very keen on the employment of disabled people,” he was heard to remark. “He wouldn’t by any chance be gay as well?”

  “He’s certainly very queer,” Mr Kilgraw concurred.

  “Excellent! Excellent! First class!” Mr Netherby nodded and ticked off a page in his notebook.

  By the end of the day, the inspector was in a thoroughly good mood. Although he had been sorry not to meet the heads – Mr Kilgraw had told him that they were away at a conference – he seemed entirely satisfied by everything he had seen. David and Jill watched him in dismay. Their only chance seemed to be slipping away and there was nothing they could do about it. Mr Kilgraw had managed things so that they had never been allowed near him. He hadn’t visited any of their classes. And whenever they had drawn near him, he had been quickly steered in the opposite direction.

  “It’s now or never,” Jill whispered as Mr Kilgraw led his visitor towards the front door. They had just finished prep and had half an hour’s free time before bed. Jill was clutching a note. She and David had written it the evening before and then carefully folded it into a square. The note read: THINGS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM AT GROOSHAM GRANGE. YOU ARE IN GREAT DANGER. MEET US ON THE CLIFFS AT 7.45 P.M. DO NOT LET ANYONE ELSE SEE THIS NOTE.

  Mr Kilgraw and the inspector were walking down the corridor towards them.

  “A most enjoyable day,” Mr Netherby was saying. “However, I have to tell you, Mr Kilgraw, that my department is rather concerned that we have no record of Groosham Grange. You don’t even appear to have a licence.”

  “Is that a problem?” Mr Kilgraw asked.

  “I fear so. There’ll have to be an enquiry. But I can assure you that I’ll be filing a most favourable report…”

  Jill and David knew what they had to do.

  They moved at the same time, walking swiftly into the corridors as if they were hurrying to get somewhere. Halfway down they bumped into the two men who had stood aside to let them pass. At that moment, David pretended to lose his balance, knocking Mr Kilgraw back into the lockers. At the same time, Jill pressed the square of paper into Mr Netherby’s hand.

  “Sorry, sir,” David muttered.

  It had taken less than three seconds. Then they were moving away again as if nothing had happened. But the assistant headmaster hadn’t seen anything. Mr Netherby had the note. The only question was, would he turn up at the cliffs?

  As soon as the two men had turned the corner, Jill and David doubled back, then left the school through a side exit that led into the cemetery. Nobody saw them go.

  “What’s the time?” David asked.

  “Quarter past seven.”

  “Then we’ve got half an hour…”

  They ran across the playing fields, past the lake and into the forest. It was a warm, cloudless night. The moon lit their path as they raced for the cover of the trees but neither of them looked up, neither of them saw.

  It was a full moon.

  They stopped, panting, at the edge of the forest.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” David asked.

  “We’ve got to come this way,” Jill said. “If we take the road, somebody may see us.”

  “But this forest gives me the creeps.”

  “The whole island gives me the creeps.”

  They pressed on through the forest. Here, with the moon shut out by a ceiling of leaves, everything was very dark and very still. It was like no forest David had ever seen. The trees seemed to be tied together in knots, thorns and briars snaking round the ancient trunks. Fantastic mushrooms bulged out of the ground only to ooze a horrible yellow when they trod on them. Nothing stirred: not a bird, not an owl, not a breath of wind.

  Then the wolf howled.

  Jill seized hold of David so suddenly that she nearly tore off his shirt. “What is it?” she whispered.

  “I think it was a dog,” David whispered back.

  “I’ve never heard a dog like that.”

  “It sounded like a dog.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  The wolf howled again.

  They ran.

  They ran whichever way they could, dodging under the low-lying branches and leaping over the undergrowth. Soon they were hopelessly lost. The forest had swallowed them up, an impossible maze that seemed to grow even as they fought their way through it. And the animal, whatever it was, was getting closer. David couldn’t see it. He almost wished he could. Instead he sensed it and that was much, much worse. His imagination screamed at him. The wolf, hooking its claws into the flesh at the back of his neck. The wolf, snarling ferociously as its drooling jaws lunged at his throat. The wolf…

  “We can’t go on!” Jill almost sobbed the words, sliding to a halt.

  David stopped beside her, breathless, his shirt soaked with sweat. Why had they ever decided to come this way? He had stumbled and fallen into a bed of thistles and his right hand was on fire. And their twisting path had led them into a dead end of branch and bramble. David looked around him. A heavy stick lay on the ground, blown down in one of the storms. Clutching it with both hands, he dragged it free of the nettles and picked it up.

  “David…!”

  He turned round. And now he could see something. It was too dark to tell what it was. A wolf, a man … or something between the two? It was just a shape, a mass of black fur with two red eyes glowing in the centre. He could hear it too. A soft, snuffling sound that made his skin crawl.

  There was no way back. The creature was blocking the path.

  But there was no way forward.

  The creature leapt.

  David swung the stick.

  He had shut his eyes at the last second, but he felt the heavy piece of wood make contact. His arm shuddered. The creature screamed. Then there was a sound of the undergrowth crashing and breaking and when he opened his eyes again it had gone.

  Jill stepped forward and laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “That was no dog,” she said.

  “Then what was it?”

  “I don’t know.” Jill looked thoughtfully back up the path. “But it howled with a French accent.”

  They had reached the southern end of the island where the land sloped steeply down, curving round to the point. Climbing through the last tangles of the forest, they crossed the road and ran to the end of the cliffs, where they had arranged to meet Mr Netherby. Jill glanced at her watch. They had made it with ten minutes to spare.

  They waited there, high up above the sea.

  The top of the cliff was flat and peaceful with a soft carpet of grass. Twenty metres below, the waves glittered in the moonlight, splashing against the rocks that jutted out, looking as if they had torn through the very fabric of the sea.

  “Do you think he’ll come?” David asked.

  “I think he’s already here,” Jill said.

  There was somebody walking across the grass towards them, a black silhouette against the pale sky. He was still about two hundred yards away but as he drew closer they saw that he was clutching an attaché case. Seeing them, he stopped and glanced over his shoulder. The man was afraid. They could tell simply from the way he walked.

  He had covered about fifty yards, following the edge of the cliff, when it happened. At first David thought he had been stung by a wasp. But then he remembered that it was only March and there were no wasps. The man jerked, his head snapping back. One hand reached for the side of his neck. Then it happened a second time, only this time it was his shoulder. He clutched it, spinning round as if he had been shot. But there had been no gunshot. There was nobody in sight.

  The man – and it was Mr Netherby – screamed as one of his knees gave way beneath him, his voice thin and high-pitched. Then it was his back. Falli
ng to the ground he arched up and screamed again, both hands clawing at the air.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Jill whispered, her eyes wide and staring.

  David shook his head, unable to speak.

  It was a dreadful sight made more dreadful by the stillness of the night and the soft witness of the moon. Mr Netherby was jerking about like an out-of-control puppet as first one part of his body, then the next, was attacked. Jill and David could only stand and watch. When it seemed that Mr Netherby must be dead, he reached out and grabbed his attaché case, then somehow staggered to his feet. For a moment he stood there, swaying on the very edge of the cliff.

  “I shall have to report this!” he called out.

  Then something struck him in the heart and he toppled backwards into the darkness, plummeting down to the rocks.

  David and Jill said nothing for a very long time. Then David gently put his hand round her shoulders. “We’d better go back,” he said.

  But for David the night was not yet over.

  They had slipped into the school unnoticed and whispered a trembling “good night” in the corridor. The other boys had already gone to bed and were sleeping as David undressed and slipped between the sheets. But he couldn’t fall asleep. For what seemed like hours he lay there, thinking about what had happened and wondering what would happen next. Then he heard it.

  “David…”

  It was his own name, whispered in the darkness by someone who was not there. He turned over and buried his head in the pillow, certain that he must have imagined it.

  “David…”

  There it was again, soft, insistent, not just in his ear but inside his very head. He sat upright and looked around him. Nobody stirred.

  “David, come to us…”

  He had to obey. Almost in a trance he got out of bed, put on his dressing-gown and crept noiselessly out of the dormitory. The school was swathed in darkness but downstairs in the main hall he could see an open doorway with a solid rectangle of light stretching out on to the carpet. That was where the voice wanted him to go … into the staff room. He hesitated, afraid of what he would find inside, but the voice urged him on. He had to obey.

  He walked down the staircase and, without knocking, entered the room. There, in the harsh light, the trance ended as David found himself face to face with the entire staff of Groosham Grange.

  Mrs Windergast was sitting in an armchair closest to the door, knitting. Next to her sat Mr Creer, his eyes closed, scarcely breathing.

  Gregor crouched beside the fireplace, muttering to himself. Opposite the fireplace, Mr Leloup was also seated, one side of his face purple and swollen. David remembered the creature in the wood, how he had beaten it off, and he was not surprised when the French teacher glanced at him with venom in his eyes. But it was Miss Pedicure who drew his attention. She was sitting at a table in the middle of the room and as David came in she giggled and threw something down. It was a wax model, thin, with spectacles, clutching a tiny wax attaché case. Pins had been stuck into its neck, its arms, its legs and its chest with one pin – the thirteenth – buried in its heart.

  “Please come in, David.”

  Mr Kilgraw was standing in front of the window with his back to the room. Now he turned round and walked back into the room, pausing at the end of the table. His eyes flickered from David to the wax doll. “Did you really think that you could fool us?” he said. There was no menace in his voice. His tone was almost matter-of-fact. But the menace was still there in the room, swirling through the air like cigarette smoke. “When you wrote that letter, you signed Mr Netherby’s death warrant. Regrettable, but you gave us no choice.”

  He raised his head and now his eyes settled on David.

  “What are we going to do with you, David? You are doing well in class. You are, I think, beginning to enjoy yourself on the island. But still you resist us. We have your body. We have your mind. But you still refuse to give us your spirit.”

  David opened his mouth to speak but Mr Kilgraw silenced him with one gesture of his hand.

  “We are running out of time,” he said. “In fact we have only a few days remaining. I would be sad to lose you, David. We all would. And that is why I have decided on desperate measures.”

  Mr Kilgraw picked up the doll and plucked the pin out of its heart. A single drop of bright red blood dripped onto the table.

  “You will report to the study at one o’clock tomorrow,” he said. “I think it’s time you saw the heads.”

  THE HEADS

  I think it’s time you saw the heads.

  David had overheard the heads talking. He had been inside their study. But in all his time on the island he had never once seen Mr Fitch or Mr Teagle.

  He hardly got a wink of sleep that night. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was angry. It wasn’t fair. The bottles had been Jill’s idea, so why had he been singled out? And what would the heads do with him when they got him? At Beton College any visit to the headmaster invariably meant six strokes of the cane. Even at the end-of-term sherry party he would generally cane several of the boys and even, on one memorable occasion, a couple of the parents. And there were two headmasters at Groosham Grange. Did that mean he could expect twelve?

  He finally fell asleep at about two o’clock.

  It was a troubled sleep with dreams of wolves and black rings and mirrors with no reflections. At one point in the dream he was standing on the cliffs watching Mr Netherby fall. Only it was he who was holding the wax doll, he who was jabbing the pins into it. Then his father wheelchaired himself across the grass, waving a packet of muesli, and David pointed at him and muttered something he didn’t understand and his father exploded in flames and…

  He woke up.

  The day dragged on like a sack of bricks. Maths, then history, then English literature… David didn’t see Jill all morning which, in his present mood, was probably just as well. He hardly took in a word that was said to him. He could only think of his appointment and his eyes were drawn to the clocks on the classroom walls. The minute hands seemed to be moving slower than they should have been. And the other pupils knew. Every now and then he caught them glancing at him. Then they would whisper among themselves. The teachers did their best to ignore him.

  At last the time came. David was tempted to run away and hide – but he knew it would do him no good. The staff would find him and drag him out and whatever they might think of him, he didn’t want to act like a coward. At one o’clock exactly he stood outside the headmasters’ study. He took a deep breath. He raised his hand. He knocked. “Come …”

  “… in.”

  Both of them had spoken, Mr Fitch taking the first word, Mr Teagle the second. David went in.

  The sun must have passed behind a cloud for it was dark in the room, the light barely penetrating the stained glass windows. The black marble floor, too, made the study seem darker than it had any right to be in the middle of the day. David closed the door behind him and moved slowly towards the desk. There were two men sitting behind it, waiting for him.

  No. One man.

  But…

  And then David saw with a spidery surge of horror that brushed against the bottom of his spine and scuttled all the way up to his neck. There was only one headmaster at Groosham Grange – but two heads. Or to put it another way, the heads really were heads. Mr Fitch was quite bald with a hooked nose and vulture eyes. Mr Teagle had thin grey hair, a tiny beard and glasses. But the two heads were joined to one body, sitting in a dark suit and bright green tie behind the single desk in the single chair. The two heads had a neck in the shape of a letter Y. Even as David fainted he found himself wondering which of them had chosen the tie.

  He woke up back in the dormitory, lying on his own bed.

  “Are you feeling better, my dear?”

  Mrs Windergast was sitting on the bed next to him, holding a sponge and a basin and watching him anxiously. She had loosened his collar and mopped his face with cold water.

&n
bsp; “You obviously weren’t quite ready to see the heads,” the matron crooned on. “It can be a very upsetting experience. Poor Mr Fitch and Mr Teagle were both so distinguished and good-looking until their little accident.”

  If that was a “little” accident, David thought to himself, what would you call a major calamity?

  “We’re all very worried about you, David.” Mrs Windergast leaned forward with the sponge but David reared away. It might only be water in the basin, but at Groosham Grange you never knew. One quick slosh and you might wake up with three extra eyes and a passion for fresh blood.

  The matron sighed and dropped the sponge.

  “The trouble is,” she said, “we’ve got to you rather late, and now we don’t have much time left. How long now? Two days only! It would be such a shame to lose you, really it would. I think you’re a nice boy, David. I really wish…!”

  “Just leave me alone!” David turned his eyes away from her. He couldn’t bear looking at her. Mrs Windergast might be just like somebody’s grandmother. But the somebody was probably Jack the Ripper.

  “All right, dear. I can see you’re still upset…”

  Mrs Windergast stood up and bustled out of the dormitory.

  David stayed where he was, glad to be alone. He needed time to think, time to work things out. Already the memory of the headmasters had faded, as if his brain were unwilling to hold on to the image. Instead he thought about what Mrs Windergast had just told him. “Two days only.” Why only two days?

  And then it clicked. He should have realized at once. Today was March 2. Without any holidays and with no post arriving on the island, it was all too easy to forget the date. But March 4 – in two days’ time – was one day he could never forget. It was his birthday, his thirteenth birthday.

  And then he remembered something else. Once, when he was chatting to Jeffrey – that was when he was still able to chat to Jeffrey – the fat boy had mentioned that he was unlucky enough to have a birthday that fell on Christmas Day. In the rush of events he had managed to forget all about it, but now he remembered. It had been on Christmas Day that Jeffrey had changed. That was when he had been given his black ring. On his thirteenth birthday.