ME: Is he ill?
WILLIAM: Well, he isn’t quite himself…
We all had books to read but I couldn’t make head nor tail of them. I spent most of the lesson writing this, then examined the other kids in the class. I know most of their names now. Marion Grant – red-headed with freckles and big teeth. Bessie Dunlop – thin and pretty if you don’t look too close. Roger Bacon – Hong Kong Chinese. Since when was Roger Bacon a Chinese name?
In fact all these names sound wrong. Bessie just doesn’t look like a Bessie. Why is it that I think everyone is sharing some sort of horrible secret? And that Jeffrey, Jill and me are the only ones on the outside?
4.30 p.m.
Football. We played with an inflated pig’s bladder. I scored a goal, but I didn’t feel too good about it. You should try heading an inflated pig’s bladder…
6.00 p.m.
We ate the rest of the pig for tea. It was turning on a spit with an apple in its mouth. At least I managed to grab the apple!
6.30 p.m.
I am back in Monsieur Leloup’s classroom doing prep. That’s what I’m supposed to be doing anyway. Instead I’m writing this. And I’ve just noticed something. I suppose I noticed it from the very start. But it’s only just now that I’ve realized what it is.
Everyone in the class is wearing a ring. The same ring. It is a band of plain gold with a single black stone set in the top. What on earth does it mean? I’ve heard of school caps and school badges, but school rings?
I have re-read my first day’s diary. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s as if I’ve been seeing everything on a video recorder that’s been fast forwarded. I get the pieces but not the whole picture.
But if I wrote down everything I’d end up with a whole book. And something tells me I ought to leave time for my will.
7.30 p.m.
An hour’s free time before bed. No sign of Jeffrey or Jill. Went for a walk in the fresh air.
The football field is at the back of the school. Next to it there’s a forest – the thickest I’ve ever seen. It can’t be very big but the trees look like a solid wall. There’s a chapel at the back and also a small cemetery.
Saw Gregor sitting on a gravestone, smoking a cigarette. “Too many of those, Gregor,” I said, “and you’ll be under it!” This was a joke. Gregor did not laugh.
8.15 p.m.
Happened to see Jeffrey chatting to William Rufus. The two looked like the best of friends. Is this worrying?
8.40 p.m.
In bed. The lights go out in five minutes.
I had a bath this evening. The bathroom is antique. When you turn on the tap the water rushes out like the Niagara Falls, only muddier. Got out of the bath dirtier than when I went in. Next time I’ll shower.
After I’d finished writing the last entry in this diary, I put it away in the cupboard beside the bed with a pencil to mark the place. When I got back, the diary was in exactly the same position, but the pencil had rolled out.
SOMEBODY READ THIS WHILE I WAS OUT OF THE ROOM!
So I won’t be writing any more so long as I’m at Groosham Grange. I have a feeling it would be better to keep my thoughts to myself.
Questions:
Are all the names false? If so, why?
What is the meaning of the black rings?
What’s really going on at Groosham Grange?
And don’t worry, whoever’s reading this. Somehow I’m going to find the answers.
IN THE DARK
Despite his resolution, David had learnt nothing by the end of the next day. The school routine had ticked on as normal – breakfast, Latin, history, break, maths, lunch, geography, football – except that none of it was remotely normal. It was as if everything, the lessons and the books, was just an elaborate charade, and that only when it was sure that nobody was looking the school would reveal itself in its true colours.
It was half past seven in the evening. David was working on an essay in the school library – a room that was unusual in itself in that it didn’t have any books. Instead of bookshelves, the walls were lined with the heads of stuffed animals gazing out of wooden mounts with empty glass eyes. Not surprisingly, David hadn’t found it very easy to concentrate on Elizabethan history with two moles, an armadillo and a wart-hog staring over his shoulder.
After twenty minutes, he gave up. He had no interest in the Spanish Armada and he suspected he could say the same for Miss Pedicure (who also taught history). He examined the page he had just finished. It was more ink-blots and crossing out than anything else. With a sigh he crumpled it in a ball and threw it at the dustbin. It missed and hit the large mirror behind it. David sighed again and went over to retrieve it. But it had gone. He searched behind the dustbin, under the chairs and all over the carpet in front of the mirror. But the ball of paper had vanished without trace. Suddenly, and for no good reason, David felt nervous. He glanced over his shoulder. The wart-hog seemed to be grinning at him. He hurried out of the library, slamming the door behind him.
A narrow, arched passageway led out from the library and back into the main hall. This was the passage he had come down on his first evening at Groosham Grange. It went past the door of Mr Kilgraw’s study and now he paused outside it, remembering. That was when he heard the voices.
They were coming from the room opposite Mr Kilgraw’s, a room with a dark panelled door and the single word HEADS painted in gold letters. So Groosham Grange had not one but two headmasters! David filed the knowledge away, puzzled that he hadn’t yet seen either of them. He quickly looked about him. The other pupils had already left the library ahead of him. He was alone in the passage. Pretending to tie up his shoelace, he knelt beside the door.
“…settled in very well, I think.” David recognized the voice at once. There could be no mistaking the dusty syllables of Mr Kilgraw. “The girl was a touch difficult in her modelling class, but I suppose that’s only to be expected.”
“But they all signed?” This was a high-pitched, half-strangled voice. David could imagine someone inside the room, struggling with a tie that was tied too tight.
“There was no problem, Mr Teagle.” Mr Kilgraw laughed, a curiously melancholy sound. “Jeffrey – the boy with the stutter – came in last. He brought his own pencil. And two bottles of ink! In the end I had to hypnotize him, I’m afraid. After that, it was easy.”
“You think this Jeffrey is going to be difficult?” This voice was the softest of the three. The second headmaster didn’t speak so much as whisper.
“No, Mr Fitch,” Mr Kilgraw replied. “If anything, he’ll be the easiest. No. The one I’m worried about is Eliot.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“I don’t know for sure, Mr Teagle. But he has a certain strength, an independence…”
“That’s just what we need.”
“Of course. But even so…”
David was desperate to hear more of the conversation but just then Mrs Windergast appeared, walking towards the library. Seeing him, she stopped and blinked, her eyes flickering behind the half-glasses.
“Is there anything the matter, David?” she asked.
“No.” David pointed feebly at his shoes. “I was just tying my lace.”
“Very wise of you, my dear.” She smiled at him. “We don’t want you tripping over and breaking something, do we? But perhaps this isn’t the place to do it – right outside the headmasters’ study. Because somebody might think you were eavesdropping and that wouldn’t be a very good impression to give in your first week, would it?”
“No,” David agreed. He straightened up. “I’m sorry, Mrs Windergast.”
He moved away as quickly as he could. The matron brushed past him and went into the headmasters’ study. David would have given his right arm to have heard what they were saying now. But if he was found outside the door a second time, they would probably take it.
Instead he went in search of Jeffrey and Jill. He found them outside the staff room. Jill was examini
ng the pigeon holes, each one labelled with the name of one of the teachers.
“Have you seen Monsieur Leloup’s pigeon hole?” she asked, seeing him.
“What about it?”
“It’s got a pigeon in it.” She pointed at it, grimacing. The bird was obviously dead. “It looks like some wild animal got it.”
“What’s it doing there?” David asked.
“You’ll have to ask Monsieur Leloup,” Jill said.
“If he ever sh-sh-shows up,” Jeffrey added.
Together they walked back down the corridor. One side was lined with lockers. The other opened into classrooms. A couple of boys passed them, making their way up to the dormitories. There was almost an hour until the bell went, but it seemed that most of the pupils of Groosham Grange had already gone to bed. As ever, the silence in the school would have been better suited to a museum or a monastery. In the entire day, David hadn’t heard a door slam or a desk bang. What was going on at Groosham Grange?
They found an empty classroom and went into it. David hadn’t been in this room yet and looked around him curiously. The walls were covered with posters showing various animals – inside and out. Instead of a desk, the teacher had a long marble slab which was covered with scientific apparatus: a burner, a small metal cauldron and various bottles of chemicals. At the far end, a white rat cowered in a cage and two toads stared unhappily out of a glass tank. The skeleton of some sort of animal stood in one corner.
“This must be the biology lab,” David whispered.
“I wish it was,” Jill shook her head. “All this stuff has been left out since my first class this afternoon.”
“What c-c-class was that?” Jeffrey asked.
“Cookery.”
David swallowed, remembering the mince.
Jill sat down behind one of the desks. “So let’s compare notes,” she said.
“Our first two days at Groosham Grange,” David agreed.
“Jeffrey – you go first.”
Jeffrey had little to say. He was the most miserable of the three of them, still confused after his meeting with Mr Kilgraw. He hadn’t done any work at all and had spent the whole of the last lesson writing a letter to his mother, begging her to take him away. The only trouble was, of course, that there was nowhere to post it.
“I hate it here,” he said. “It isn’t t-t-tough like I thought it would be. But it isn’t anything like I th-th-thought it would be. All the t-t-teachers are mad. And nobody’s t-t-teased me about my stammer.”
“I thought you didn’t like being teased,” David said.
“I d-d-don’t. But it would be more n-n-normal if they did.”
“Nothing’s normal here,” Jill broke in. “First of all they make us sign our names in blood. The lessons are like no lessons I’ve ever sat through. And then there’s the business of the rings.”
“I saw them too,” David said.
“They’re all wearing the same ring. Like some sort of bond.”
“And I’ve found out more.” David went on to describe his discoveries of the day, starting with the mystery of the pyjamas. “I may be wrong,” he said, “but I get the feeling that everyone here is using false names.”
“There’s a boy in my class called Gideon Penman,” Jill muttered.
“Exactly. What sort of a name is that?”
“B-b-but why would they have false names?” Jeffrey asked.
“And why do they want our real names in blood?” Jill added.
“I found out something about that too,” David said and went on to describe the conversation outside the headmasters’ study. He left out the bit about Jeffrey being the weakest of them mainly because he thought it would be cruel to mention it. But also because it was probably true. “All I can say is that the sooner we’re out of here the better,” he concluded. “There’s something nasty going on at Groosham Grange. And if we stay here much longer I think it’s going to happen to us.”
Jeffrey looked accusingly at Jill. “I thought you were going to r-r-run away.”
“I will.” Jill glanced out of the window. “But not tonight. I think there’s going to be another storm.”
The storm broke a few minutes later. This time there was no lightning, but the cloudburst was spectacular nonetheless. It was as if the sea had risen up in a great tidal wave only to come crashing down on the school. At the same time, the wind whipped through it, tearing up the earth, punching into the brickwork. Loose shutters were ripped out of their frames. A gravestone exploded. A huge oak tree was snapped in half, its bare branches crashing into the soil.
It was the sound of the falling tree that woke David for the second time that day. Scrabbling in his bedside cabinet, he found his torch and flicked it on, directing the beam at his watch. It was just after midnight. He lay back against the pillow, gazing out of the window. There was a full moon; he could just make out its shape behind the curtain of rain. When he was a child, David had never been frightened by storms. So he was surprised to find that he was trembling now.
But it wasn’t the weather. In the brief moment that the torch had been on, he had noticed something out of the corner of his eye, something that hadn’t been fully registered in his mind. Sitting up again, he turned it back on, then swung the beam across the dormitory. Then he knew what it was.
Jeffrey was asleep in the bed next to him, his head buried underneath the covers. But otherwise the two of them were alone. When the lights had gone out at nine-thirty, the other boys in the dormitory had already been asleep. Now their beds were empty, the covers pulled back. He directed the torch on to their chairs. Their clothes had gone too.
Quietly, he slipped out of bed and put on his dressing-gown and slippers. Then he went to the door and opened it. There were no lights on in the school. And the silence was more profound, more frightening than ever.
He tried a second dormitory, then a third. In each one the story was the same. The beds were empty, the clothes were gone. Outside, the rain was still falling. He could hear it pattering against the windows. He looked at his watch again, certain that he was making some sort of crazy mistake. It was twenty past twelve. So where was everybody?
He could feel his heart tugging against his chest as if it were urging him to go back to bed and forget all about it. But David was wide awake now. He would get to the bottom of this even if it killed him. And, he thought to himself, in all probability it would.
He tiptoed down the corridor, wincing every time he stepped on a creaking floorboard. Eventually he reached a fourth dormitory. He shone the torch on the handle of the door.
Behind him, a hand reached out of the gloom.
It settled on his shoulder.
David felt his stomach shrink to the size of a pea. He opened his mouth to scream and only managed to stop himself by shoving the torch between his teeth. It was a miracle he didn’t swallow it. Slowly he turned round, the back of his neck glowing bright red with the beam of the torch shining through his throat.
Jill stood opposite him. Like him, she was wearing a dressing-gown and slippers. She looked even more frightened than he did.
“Where are they?” she whispered. “Where have they gone?”
“Nggg…” David remembered the torch in his mouth and pulled it out. “I don’t know,” he said. “I was trying to find out.”
“I saw them go.” Jill sighed, relieved to have found David awake and out of bed. “It was about twenty minutes ago. One of them woke me up as she left the dormitory. I waited a bit and then followed them.”
“So where did they go?” David asked, repeating Jill’s own question.
“I saw them go into the library,” Jill replied. “All of them. The whole school. I listened at the door for a bit but I couldn’t hear anything, so then I went in myself. But they weren’t there, David.” Jill took a deep breath. David could see that she was close to tears. “They’d all vanished.”
David thought back. He had been in the library after tea, surrounded by the stuffed
animal heads. It was a small room, barely big enough for sixty-three people. Apart from a table, a mirror, a dozen chairs and the animals, there was nothing in it. And that included doors. There was only one way in. Only one way back out again.
“Maybe they’ve all gone outside?” he suggested. “Through a window.”
Jill scowled at him. “In this weather? Anyway, the windows in the library are too high. I know. I tried…”
“Then they must be somewhere in the school.”
“No.” Jill slumped against the wall, then slithered down to sit on the floor. She was exhausted – and not just through lack of sleep. “I’ve looked everywhere. In the classrooms, in the dining hall, in the staff room … everywhere. They’re not here.”
“They’ve got to be here somewhere!” David insisted. “They can’t just have disappeared.”
Jill made no answer. David sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders. Neither of them spoke. David’s last words echoed in his thoughts. “They’ve got to be here somewhere! They can’t just have disappeared.”
But sitting in the dark and silent passage he knew that he was wrong.
Impossible though it seemed, they were alone in Groosham Grange.
CHRISTMAS
Three days before Christmas it began to snow.
By Christmas Day the whole island had been blanketed out. The ground was white. The sea was white. It was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began, and standing in the fields you felt like a single letter on a blank page in an envelope waiting to be posted.
There was no central heating at Groosham Grange. Instead, huge logs burned in open fireplaces, crackling and hissing as if they were angry at having to share their warmth. All the windows had steamed up and the plumbing shuddered, groaned and gurgled as the water forced its way through half-frozen pipes. A colony of bats that inhabited one of the northern towers migrated downstairs for warmth and ended up in the dining-room. Nobody complained. But David found mealtimes something of a struggle with about a hundred eyes examining his rhubarb crumble upside down from the rafters.