Shiverton Hall (12 page)

Arthur told them about George and Jake and Penny, and about Garnons and Toynbee and the football team. He omitted Long-Pitt’s dislike of him, and the Forge triplets’ snide comments and, most of all, he neglected to mention that the school seemed to be filled with strange forces intent on doing his friends harm. Now he was away from school, he felt a little more cynical. The imaginary friends seemed silly, childish even, and he reminded himself that he was only taking other people’s words for it – he himself had never seen anything remotely unusual.

This fact played on Arthur’s mind as he got into his old bed, with its familiar lumps. What if the imaginary friends were all an elaborate hoax? He had been made fun of his whole school career and perhaps it was happening all over again, but he had been too naive, too pathetically happy to have friends, to believe it. This idea upset him deeply, and he spent the night going over and over George and Penny’s stories, combing through them for holes. Finally, he fell into a fitful, shallow sleep.

Half-term slid by slowly. Arthur loved his mum, and it was even nice to see Rob, but he missed his new friends and the excitement of Shiverton. Mrs Bannister suggested they go to the Stanlake mall to get Arthur some new clothes. Arthur, who loathed clothes shopping even more than he hated going to the hairdresser, reluctantly allowed himself to be dragged there.

Stanlake was a vast, fluorescent, indoor city on the outskirts of London,
The Largest Mall in England
, a sign boasted on the way into the car park, as though this were a good thing. It had opened to much fanfare, but the hard times of the intervening years had left every third shop depressingly empty, with faded
SALE
signs hanging despondently in the windows. Even when it was full of people, it felt as though no one was there.

Christmas had kicked in at the mall months before, and tinny carols trickled from the speakers while garishly dressed fake Christmas trees were decorated with coupons. Arthur thought it might be the most depressing place in the world, but his mother loved it; if there was a bargain to be had, it was at Stanlake. May forced Arthur to try on some jeans, and ignored him as he hid, mortified, in the underwear section as she bought him some new boxers.

After an hour of traipsing around the shops, both mother and son had had enough of each other, and Arthur was allowed to wander by himself for a bit while his mother went off in search of a cappuccino.

Arthur was flipping through some posters in a music shop when he heard a voice outside that thinned his blood. ‘IAN!’ the voice yelled. ‘I-
AN
.’

Arthur slipped behind a display of postcards, watching fearfully through the gaps. The owner of the voice appeared in the window. Arthur glimpsed the shaved, blond head and the scarred lip. The boy leaned his tall, wiry frame on the door as he waited impatiently for ‘Ian’, who soon appeared next to him. Ian had hardly changed. He had the same pug nose and the cluster of angry spots on his neck. A thick, pink scar ran through his eyebrow.

The boys put their heads together, sniggering, and passed something between them. Arthur couldn’t hear what they were saying through the glass, but he heard Ian laugh.

‘Shut up, Ant!’ Ian sniggered.

Ian Mitchell and Antony Batch. Two boys he had hoped never to see again. Arthur gripped the wire display that held the postcards so hard that there were red cross-hatches on his fingers. He held his breath.
Don’t come in
, he begged silently.
Don’t come in
.

But the bell on the door rang as the boys lurched inside, whispering and laughing, glancing over at the shopkeeper, who flicked despondently through a music magazine. Arthur stepped further back into his hiding place, sweat gathering on his top lip. Ian was pretending to look through the dusty records while Antony stuffed anything close to hand into his pockets, with one eye on the shopkeeper. Arthur could see Antony’s freckled hand sneaking towards the postcard rack. Arthur held his breath as Antony grabbed a stack of postcards, the same ones that had been hiding Arthur’s face. Antony was still concentrating on stuffing them down his trousers, but Arthur knew that in a second Antony would look up and he would be discovered.

‘Excuse me,’ the shopkeeper said, causing all three boys to jump. ‘Are you going to buy anything?’

Antony stepped away from the postcard rack to face the shopkeeper and relief flooded through Arthur.

‘So what if I’m not?’ Antony snarled.

‘Not you,’ the shopkeeper answered. ‘
Him
.’ He nodded over at Arthur.

Arthur panicked and pushed the rack over Antony, sending a flutter of postcards flying. In the confusion he managed to barge past Ian and out of the shop, his trainers squeaking as they hit the mall’s marbled floor.

‘Get him!’ Antony screamed.

Ian belted after Arthur, pushing shoppers roughly out of the way, screaming abuse at Arthur’s back.

Arthur ran so hard that his lungs burned. He didn’t dare to turn around to discover how close Ian was.
Jingle Bells
rang in his ears, pumped out by the mall’s old sound system, along with the sound of his blood rushing. Arthur skidded round a corner. Antony had caught up with Ian and he stretched out his arm to grab at Arthur. He missed, lost his balance and swore furiously. Arthur saw his chance and hurtled round another corner and into a clothes shop. He flew into a dressing-room cubicle. He waited for a moment, trying to catch his breath, and frantically listened for footsteps.

He didn’t have long to wait for the curtain to be ripped back. Arthur yelped, instinctively holding his arms up.

‘If you’re not trying something on then get out,’ a small shop girl with a nose ring said accusingly.

Arthur begged her to be quiet. ‘I’ll try that on!’ he whispered, pointing at a pink cardigan. He glanced out into the shop for his pursuers. They weren’t there.

‘That’s a woman’s cardigan,’ the shop girl said flatly.

‘I know,’ Arthur replied, trying to sound calm.

The shop girl rolled her eyes and passed it to him. ‘If you’re a weirdo I’m calling the police,’ she said.

Ten minutes later Arthur hesitantly stepped out of the shop, checking that the boys had gone, and hastily made his way to the coffee shop where he was late meeting his mother. Arthur didn’t dare tell her about Antony and Ian – he didn’t want to upset her.

On the drive home Arthur felt like rolling down the window and screaming. Instead he sat, sullen and silent and desperately trying not to think of what might have happened if they had caught up with him. May could sense that her son was uneasy about something.

‘Is everything all right, petal?’ she asked as they turned into their street. ‘You are enjoying school, aren’t you?’

‘What?’ Arthur said, pulling his mind away from the darkness. ‘Oh, yeah. It’s great.’

‘Because you know,’ his mother continued, trying to sound casual, ‘if you don’t like it you don’t have to go back. I know I didn’t believe you at first last time, but if you’re being bullied or –’

‘Mum!’ Arthur snapped. ‘I like it, OK? It’s nothing like last time. It’s safe there. I’m safe there.’

What Arthur didn’t want to admit was that he wasn’t entirely convinced this was true.

Chapter Ten

George bounded into the Garnons common room the colour of a chestnut, with white rings around his eyes.

‘So skiing was good then?’ Arthur asked. He was skimming through some poetry for Long-Pitt’s class the following day – he was determined to start the second half of term on the right foot.

‘It. Was. Brilliant,’ George said, throwing himself on to the sofa beside his friend. ‘How about you? Good half-term?’

Arthur smiled half-heartedly. ‘Yeah, it was OK.’

The front door burst open, ushering in a biting wind, a handful of dead leaves, and Penny and Jake, who had already unpacked in their own houses. Penny’s face brightened on seeing Arthur, but Jake looked miserable.

‘All right, Jakey?’ George asked.

‘Yeah,’ Jake said sadly.

‘What’s up?’ Arthur said.

‘It’s just Mum,’ Jake began hesitantly, looking at the floor. ‘She’s got worse.’

‘What’s happened?’ Arthur asked.

Jake sat on the edge of the sofa and took his glasses off to rub his eyes. ‘She thinks there are germs everywhere,’ he sighed. ‘She spends all night cleaning everything over and over again. She chucked out half the things in my room while I was away because they’re “contaminated”.’

‘That doesn’t sound good,’ George agreed.

‘Can she see a doctor?’ Arthur suggested.

‘She won’t leave the house.’ Jake bit his lip and took a deep breath. ‘I thought she was getting better.’

‘I’m sorry, Jake,’ Penny whispered.

‘What if they take her away while I’m here?’ Jake sniffed. ‘I’ll have to go and live with Dad and Dawn.’

‘That would suck,’ George agreed. ‘Dawn’s awful.’

Penny flicked George’s ear crossly, but Jake smiled in spite of himself. Dawn really was awful.

The group chatted about their half-terms, all of them trying to be funny to cheer Jake up, with George regaling them with his most embarrassing anecdotes from his holiday. Eventually the bell rang and it was time for Jake to go back to Pootle and Penny to return to Starling. Penny gave Jake a hug, which seemed to pep him up more than any of George’s jokes, and they went their separate ways.

Jake trudged down the empty path, his hands shoved in his pockets against the cold. It was dark, his way lit by the dim, yellow lamps that were posted every few metres. Everyone else must have been by the fires in their houses, having decided not to brave the winter wind to visit friends in other houses that night, because Jake cast a lonely shadow. He had always prided himself on being sensible, rational – it was why he was so good at maths and why he had been able to look after his mother almost single-handedly when his father had left them – but the moonless dark of the night and the rustling of the trees in the forest to his left made him walk faster than he normally would.

As he hastened towards Pootle, the lamplight began to flicker suddenly, with a low buzz, then shut out entirely. Jake yelped as he was hurled into darkness, and then scolded himself for being so easily spooked. He carried on tentatively, taking small steps to make sure he didn’t trip over something as his eyes adjusted to the blackness. The wind swirled through the trees, creating a doleful sigh that sounded almost human. Jake hurried ahead, all sorts of monsters in his mind, not worrying whether he slipped now and willing the warm light of his house to tip into sight.

Jake stopped.
What was that?
There was a scuffling in the forest only a few metres away from him. Jake stayed as still as stone. The sound was moving away from him, deeper into the forest. It didn’t sound like an animal; the movements were precise, slow, deliberate, like Jake’s own footsteps a moment before. There was the crunching of leaves and sticks underfoot and the brushing away of branches, as though someone were carefully picking their way along.

‘Hello?’ Jake said, his voice faint. ‘Is someone there?’

There was no answer, just the strange footsteps and the wind in the trees.

Jake began to walk again, as fast as he could, when another sound made him pause again: the faint jangling of bells from the belly of the forest, tinkling through the dead leaves towards him. Jake, too frightened to turn his head, but too frightened not to, glanced between the tree trunks.

A figure, dressed in white, was standing alone between the trees, facing Jake. Through the darkness Jake could see the tattered, coloured ribbons trailing off its elbows, and the drooping hat covered in wilted flowers, terrifying in its familiarity. The bells around its ankles and wrists grew louder, purling a discordant, hypnotic tune that made Jake want to stop his ears. The figure beckoned with a long finger.

Jake felt his legs move, but they weren’t travelling towards Pootle – they were taking him into the forest.