Frozen Charlotte (20 page)

With a sinking feeling I remembered seeing it skitter over the edge of the cliff and fall to the rocks below.

“No, I lost it earlier. On the clifftop. Haven’t you got yours?”

Cameron closed his eyes briefly and leaned his head back against the wall. I felt a chill of alarm
at how pale he was. “It ran out of battery at the police station,” he said.

“Daddy will be back in the morning,” Lilias said. “We could just stay up here tonight and wait for him to come home?”

Cameron opened his eyes and looked at me. We both knew he couldn’t stay up here on the roof all night. He needed to get to a hospital, and quickly. In fact, he needed to be there right now.

“We have to go back,” I said. “We have to get out of the house.”

“No,” Cameron said. “It’s too dangerous. We’re not going anywhere. She’s got a knife, for God’s sake.”

I shook my head. Lilias and I could wait it out until the morning, but Cameron definitely couldn’t.

“You two stay here,” I said. “I’ll go down and call for help from the landline.”

I turned to go back downstairs before Cameron could argue with me but, somehow, he managed to get back to his feet and put his tall body between me and the trapdoor.

“I won’t let you go back there,” he said, grabbing my wrist.

“You can’t stop me,” I replied. Lowering my voice
so that Lilias wouldn’t hear, I said, “Cameron, you’ll die if you stay here.”

His grip around my wrist tightened. “Don’t you understand?” he said. “This is my fault. I knew that there was something wrong with Piper. I knew she probably had something to do with what happened to Rebecca. I knew and I didn’t do anything about it!”

“But what
could
you have done?”

“I don’t know… Something… Anything… If you go down there you’ll just get yourself killed. At least this way, you and Lilias will survive.”

“I’m not going to stand around and watch you sacrifice yourself, if that’s what you’re asking,” I said, shaking him off. “No way. You can forget it. I don’t want to hurt you, Cameron, but I
am
going to call for help and you can’t stop me.”

“What’s that smell?” Lilias said suddenly.

“What smell?” Cameron asked.

But I smelled it too and Lilias and I both replied at the same time, “Smoke.”

I saw it then, billowing up from the side of the house in a great cloud, swirling with little flecks of ash.

“Oh God,” Cameron whispered. “She’s set the house on fire.”

For a moment we just stared at each other in horror, trying to work out what to do. Our options seemed pretty limited – either jump from the roof and hope by some miracle not to die, or wait right where we were to slowly burn to death in fiery agony.

“It’ll get you this time.” Piper’s voice floated up to us from the garden. She sounded happy, and I hated her for that. “The fire’s come back for you, Cameron, and you won’t get away from it again.”

I crossed over to the low wall running around the roof and saw Piper standing in the garden, Dark Tom’s cage at her feet. She was smiling and, in the light of the flames that were starting to flicker through the windows, she looked like a beautiful, insane devil.

I glanced back at Cameron, alone near the trapdoor, one hand still clamped to his bleeding side, his shoulders hunched, his eyes closed. He looked like someone who had been beaten. Someone who’d been fighting hard for a long time and had finally lost. And I felt a sudden rage come over me, unlike anything I’d ever felt before.

“We are
not
going to die here on this roof!” I said. “We’ve got to go back through the house. It’s our only chance.”

I went over to the trapdoor and gripped the handle, putting all my strength into pulling it up. The muscles in my back screamed in protest but I managed to lift the door, causing smoke to billow out on to the roof. I saw Cameron flinch away from it and wondered if the smell reminded him of that day when he’d saved Rebecca from the tree house and burnt his hand in the process.

I thought of that night when I arrived at the house and had smelled something burning and again later when Rebecca had come at me downstairs and I had seen flames that weren’t there. Perhaps she had known all along that this was going to happen, perhaps she had seen it somehow and had been trying to warn us.

Some people think spirits can see the future…
Wasn’t that what Jay had said that night at the café?

“How has the fire caught hold so quickly?” Cameron asked.

“The curtains,” Lilias said. “The sheets hanging in the windows. Piper got the petrol can from the shed…”

I remembered the smell of petrol when we’d first walked through the front door.

“It’s only going to get worse,” I said. “We need to go … right now.”

Cameron held his hand out for Lilias. “Come on. Let’s get down from here.”

We started to choke on the smoke as soon as we went back inside. Every single room was on fire because of the petrol-soaked curtains that Piper had hung there. This had clearly been her back-up plan all along. The Frozen Charlottes didn’t seem so pleased though.

“
Hot,
” they whimpered inside the walls. “
So hot.
”

“
It burns…
”

“
Make it stop…
”

“
Piper, please…
”

“
How can you hate them more than you love us?
”

“
Please, Piper…
”

We started to make our way back towards the staircase but the smoke snaked down our throats, making it almost impossible to breathe. Already it was unbearably hot and the thick clouds of ash made it hard to see where we were going.

I felt Cameron stagger beside me so I grabbed his arm and draped it around my shoulders. With his body pressed against mine I could feel the warmth of his blood soaking through my T-shirt and jeans, and I felt sick with worry. When he muttered Rebecca’s name I thought he was hallucinating at first, but then I saw her there through the flames. She was standing at the top of the stairs, her lips blue, her hair sparkling with frost, and she was beckoning us towards her.

The three of us hurried forward, trying to ignore the roar of the fire, the crying of the Frozen Charlottes and the unbearable heat pressing in on us from every angle. The dolls were no longer pleading, but angry instead. I could almost feel their rage burning through the walls as they spat out every swear word I knew, and some I’d never heard of. But there was one word they kept hissing over and over again:
Traitor
.

“
Traitorous, traitorous…
”

“
Not going to help us…
”

“
Never really loved us…
”

“
Never…
”

By the time we reached the top of the stairs, the smoke was so bad that I could barely see a metre in front of my face. I was practically carrying Cameron. My back burned and my shoulders screamed with the effort, and his head kept lolling against my shoulder so I wasn’t sure if he was awake or, I dreaded to think it, even still alive.

I’d lost Rebecca from sight and the smoke was like a great monster blocking our path. I wasn’t sure where the stairs were, and I was terrified of falling all the way down that steep flight and breaking our necks on the bottom like that teacher had done all those years ago.

We’re going to burn to death in this house
, I thought hopelessly.
Perhaps we should have stayed on the roof after all
.

But then cold fingers curled around mine and I knew that Rebecca was there, even though I couldn’t see her properly through the smoke. I held on to her hand and followed her down the stairs like a blind person.

As she led us through the house I could hear Cameron’s laboured breathing in my ear and tried to
comfort myself with the fact that at least that meant he was still alive. When we got down to the landing, the flames from the rooms on either side seemed to reach out to us like hot grasping hands, but the cold fingers around mine led us safely straight through the middle to the front door.

We tumbled out on to the porch and the hand suddenly vanished as Rebecca seemed to disappear into the smoke.

As we went down the steps to the garden, I looked at Cameron and my heart turned to ice. Lilias was no longer holding his other hand. She was still back there inside the house. At some point in all the noise and the smoke we had lost her.

“Where’s Lilias?” I asked.

Cameron looked confused in the firelight, and his eyes struggled to focus on me. “Lilias?” he said, and his voice was slurred. “But … isn’t she holding your other hand?”

“No! That was Rebecca showing us the way.”

“Oh God.” Cameron tried to go back to the house but he could barely stand up by himself and it wasn’t difficult for me to shove him back into the garden.

“Wait here, I’ll find her!” I said.

I ran back up the steps to the front door. As soon as I stepped into the hall I saw Lilias hurrying towards me with Shellycoat clutched to her chest, the old cat covered in ash.

“Come on!” I called. Through the crackle and hiss of the flames I could still hear the Frozen Charlottes snarling and hissing in the walls and the sound sent a chill down my spine. We rushed out of the burning house, taking huge thankful gasps of the cool sea air outside.

But it was far from over.

We had found ourselves right back where we started. Piper was still there in the garden, and she still had the knife.

The next few minutes seemed to happen in slow motion. I heard Dark Tom’s voice first, squawking from his cage: “
Monstrous!
” he said, just like he had done my first night at the house. “
Monstrous! Monstrous!
”

I turned round and saw Cameron struggling to climb back up the front steps towards us, sweat running down his face, making trails in the ash staining his skin. And Piper was right there behind him, already reaching for him, already grabbing
the back of his T-shirt before I had time to scream out a warning.

She yanked him back and he fell on to the grass, his head falling back against the ground with a crack.

“You’ve ruined
everything
!” Piper screamed over him, and in the flickering firelight she no longer looked beautiful, or even pretty, she looked exactly what she was – a snarling, soul-sucking monster. “I
hate
you, Cameron! I’ve always hated you!”

She raised the knife and the blade shone silver in the firelight. Cameron tried to prop himself up on one elbow, his good hand stretched out defensively in front of him.

“Piper,” he said weakly. “Please … don’t…”

I was running towards them. It felt like I’d been running towards them my whole life. I could hear my own voice screaming at Piper, but it was like moving through tar, and I knew I wouldn’t get there in time to stop what was about to happen. All Piper had to do was bring the knife down and it would be over.

But then, just as she was about to do it, her head jerked backwards as if she’d been struck. I heard her cry out, and saw the knife fall from her hand to land in the grass as she clutched both hands to her throat.
Blood trickled through her fingers and, with a thrill of horror, I realized it was the necklace.

I could only see the back of the doll’s head because its face was turned towards Piper, but I was sure it must be biting her throat because a thin ribbon of blood ran down from it. And the white fingers of all the broken hands were curled into her flesh, as if they were choking her.

“What—” she gasped, clutching at the necklace with both her hands.

“
Save us.
”

The dolls’ voices poured out of the house over the roar of the fire.

“
Forget about them…
”

“
And help us!
”

Her hands still clasped to her neck, Piper looked towards the house and, for the first time since I’d known her, I saw fear in her eyes – real, raw, ugly fear.

“But I can’t!” she cried. “I can’t get you out in time. It’s too late!”

“
No!
”

“
We’re by the door…
”

“
You can reach us…
”

“
You can…
”

“
You better…
”

The doll’s head at Piper’s throat seemed to nuzzle deeper into her neck and blood splattered around it. Piper gave a bubbling shriek and tried to pull the necklace off again, but it was embedded too deeply into her throat, and her fingers tugged at it in vain.

“All right!” I heard her gasp. “All right, I’m coming, I’m coming!”

She half ran, half staggered past us. I didn’t know what I could do to help her, or whether I even should, and the next second she’d gone up the porch steps and disappeared into the house.

“
Piper,
” the dolls whispered, “
don’t you want to play with us any more? It’s fun to be dead.
”

The front door slammed shut behind her and then an explosion of flames broke the downstairs windows in great showers of hot, glittering glass.

“
Fire in the hole!
” Dark Tom shrieked, frantically flapping his wings in his cage. “
Fire in the hole!
”

Lilias and I ran to Cameron. The knife hadn’t touched him but he was lying utterly still in the grass and his eyes were closed, his face too white.

When the lights shone on us I couldn’t understand what they were at first. My mind was so numbed by the horror of the last few hours that I didn’t realize they were car headlights until Uncle James ran through the gates towards us.

“No, no, no!” he was saying. “Not again, not again!”

“Cameron… Cameron’s been hurt,” I said, and it was an effort to speak – my tongue felt clumsy, my voice sounded strange in my ears. “We need an ambulance.”

“It’s already on its way,” Uncle James said, falling beside Cameron in the grass. “I saw the fire from the road and I knew … I knew that Piper had done something again. I heard it in her voice on the phone. That’s why I caught the last ferry before they stopped running.” Uncle James looked at me and suddenly grabbed my shoulder. “Sophie, you’re hurt too!”

I looked down and saw the blood all over my T-shirt and jeans. It was on my hands too, from where I’d helped Cameron out of the house. I shook my head. “It’s not mine,” I said. I felt so weird, so faraway and wobbly, I’d never felt shock like this before, not even when Jay died.

“Lilias, are you OK?” Uncle James said. She was in a heap on the grass, sobbing into Shellycoat’s fur. She nodded but couldn’t speak.

“It’s Cameron. Piper had… She had a knife.”

Uncle James groaned and turned back to Cameron, leaning over him in the grass. There was so much blood – it shone dark and wet on his clothes and his skin and the ground.

“I should have listened,” he muttered, speaking more to himself than to me. “God forgive me, why didn’t I listen to him?”

The flashing blue lights signalled the arrival of the fire engine and the ambulance but Uncle James’s face was ashen as he looked up at me in the dancing firelight and, when he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “He’s not breathing.”