Shiverton Hall, the Creeper (13 page)

‘So?’

The boy glanced around and leaned towards Lizzie, lowering his voice.

‘Have you ever heard of Skinless Tom?’ he whispered.

‘Skinless Tom?’ Lizzie asked.

‘Shhh!’ the boy hissed. ‘Keep your voice down when you say it. He’s known as Skinless Tom around here, but in other places they call him Tommy Rawhead or Bloody Bones.’

‘Who is he?’

The boy hesitated. He could hear the voices of a gang of schoolkids making their way through the town; he did not want to be caught talking to Lizzie.

‘It doesn’t matter who he is,’ he said quickly. ‘What matters is that you and your sister get out of that house.’

‘But how could we –’

‘I don’t care! Beg, cry, burn the bleeding place down, it doesn’t matter!’

The voices were getting closer and the boy was panicking.

‘I have to go,’ he said.

‘Wait!’ Lizzie said, grabbing him by his mackintosh sleeve. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘You’re lucky I told you anything at all,’ the boy hissed. ‘If you love your sister, get out of that place.’

He yanked his sleeve free and scurried away.

‘I don’t love my sister,’ Lizzie called after him. ‘I don’t even like her!’

Later, at dinner with her family, Lizzie decided to do some probing.

‘Mum,’ she said casually, ‘what was your aunt like? The one who lived in this house?’

‘Do you know,’ her mother answered, ‘I never met her. She was my great-aunt apparently, on my father’s side.’

‘Didn’t you think it was odd? To inherit a house from a woman you’d never met?’

‘I didn’t think it was odd,’ her mother answered. ‘I thought it was too good to be true! You hear of these things happening but you never think they’ll happen to you.’

‘Well, I wish it hadn’t,’ Susan sulked. ‘I hate it here.’

‘Didn’t you make any friends at school today, dear?’ their father asked mildly, used to pacifying his eldest daughter.

‘No,’ Susan growled. ‘Not that I’d want to be friends with any of them anyway.’

Lizzie decided to change the subject.

‘Have you ever heard of Skinless Tom?’ Lizzie asked her mother.

Mrs Compton chewed thoughtfully. ‘Skinless Tom? No. Is he a boy at school?’

‘Or Tommy Rawhead? Bloody Bones?’ Lizzie pressed.

‘Oh, Bloody Bones!’ Mr Compton cried. ‘I remember him! We used to terrify each other about Bloody Bones when we were at school. “Bloody Bones is creeping up the stairs”. Do you remember that, dear?’ he asked his wife.

‘I hated all those horror stories.’ Mrs Compton shuddered.

Mr Compton leaned in towards his two daughters. ‘Legend has it that Bloody Bones was a teenage boy who worked in an abattoir. One evening, so the story goes, his shirt got caught up in one of the cogs. He screamed for help, but no one could hear him over the noise of the machines, and he was pulled in. When they found him, he was hanging up with the pigs and the cows, skinned alive.’

‘DAD!’ Susan yelled. ‘I’m trying to eat!’

‘The legend says that Bloody Bones is always looking for a child whose skin will fit him.’

‘That’s enough!’ Mrs Compton said. ‘Or none of us will sleep tonight.’

‘But it’s not true, is it?’ Lizzie asked. ‘It’s just made up?’

‘Of course it’s made up. I heard pretty much the same story at my school,’ Mrs Compton said.

‘All stories have to start somewhere,’ Mr Compton said in a spooky voice. ‘Why not here?’

Later that night, Lizzie found that she couldn’t sleep. The house creaked and rumbled and groaned, as most old houses will when listened to by a nervous child. She knew that the boy must have been teasing her, but it didn’t stop her from seeing a glistening, bloody face every time she closed her eyes.

The following day at school, Lizzie sought out the boy. She went to the school secretary and described him, claiming that he had dropped a textbook in town the day before. The secretary thought for a moment. ‘That sounds like Donald Stoker. Classroom 2b,’ she said.

Lizzie waited outside the classroom and accosted Donald as he left for break.

‘I’m not talking to you,’ he said once he noticed her. ‘Leave me alone.’

‘I just wanted to ask you something,’ Lizzie said.

‘Look,’ Donald said, glancing nervously at the other students in the corridor, ‘we don’t talk to the kids who live in that house, OK?’

‘Why not?’ Lizzie asked.

‘Because they never last very long,’ Donald sighed.

‘So what can I do?’ Lizzie asked.

‘I told you what to do,’ Donald replied. ‘Get out of there.’

He pulled Lizzie closer to him and whispered, ‘He lives inside your house.’

Lizzie made her father search the house a hundred times, and her mother said it served him right for scaring his daughter so much. No matter how many times her parents told her that it was just a story, Lizzie wouldn’t believe them.

Matters deteriorated when Susan came tearing down the stairs one morning, claiming that when she had looked in her enamelled hand-mirror, a skinless, blood-soaked face had appeared in it. Mr Compton scolded her for teasing her sister, who was now completely frantic, insisting that they should leave the house immediately.

One Saturday evening, sick of their daughters’ squabbling, Lizzie’s parents decided to go out for a romantic dinner.

‘Yuck!’ Susan said.

‘Thank you, Susan,’ Mrs Compton said. ‘Since you’re old enough now you can look after your sister.’

‘Shouldn’t we get a babysitter, just in case?’ Lizzie said nervously.

‘It’ll be good for you two to spend some quality time together,’ Mr Compton reasoned.

Lizzie watched miserably as the tail lights of her parents’ car disappeared down the drive.

‘I’m going to be on the telephone in my room,’ Susan said haughtily. ‘Don’t you dare listen in.’

After Susan had been upstairs for an hour, Lizzie crept over to the telephone and quietly picked up the receiver.

Susan was talking to her best friend, Carol, who had lived a few doors down from them in Liverpool.

‘I never really liked him,’ Lizzie heard Susan say over the crackling line.

‘Yes, you did!’ Carol scoffed.

‘Wait,’ Susan said. ‘Did you hear a click? Lizzie! You’d better not be listening in!’

Lizzie held her breath.

‘It’s OK. I must have imagined it,’ Susan said finally.

‘I’m so jealous,’ Carol said. ‘It sounds so amazing. I can’t believe you’re the most popular girl at school already.’

Lizzie tried to muffle her giggles.

‘It is pretty amazing,’ Susan agreed blithely. Lizzie could tell from her sister’s smug, faraway tone that she was admiring her face in the mirror – something she did for at least an hour a night.

‘Do you have a boyfriend yet?’ Carol asked excitedly.

Lizzie held her breath, wondering what lie her sister would come up with for an answer. Lizzie couldn’t wait to torment Susan about it.

‘Hang on,’ Susan sighed. ‘My annoying little sister is knocking on my bedroom door.’

Lizzie froze. She wasn’t anywhere near Susan’s room. She heard the knocking faint on the line and the sound of Susan laying the receiver down on her bed to open the door.

Before Lizzie had time to warn her sister she heard a scream. Lizzie sprinted up the stairs, but there was no one in the hall. She ran to Susan’s room: it was empty. The receiver was still on the bed, and Lizzie could hear Carol’s tinny voice calling her sister’s name.

Susan was nowhere in the house. Lizzie called the restaurant and spoke to her parents.

When they arrived home their daughter was babbling, trying to explain what had happened. Mr Compton rushed around the house, searching in all of the rooms.

‘She isn’t here,’ he said anxiously. ‘I think we’d better call the police.’

‘Wait!’ Mrs Compton said, her voice flooded with relief. ‘There she is! Whatever is she doing outside in the rain? Susan! Come back inside!’

Lizzie peered out of the window, through the heavy rain.

Susan was standing in their back garden, looking in at the house, clutching the hand-mirror in her left hand. Except Susan looked different, her beautiful face sagged around the skull in a peculiar way, and her skin was baggy around the arms, like a jumper that was too big.

‘Mum,’ Lizzie whispered, ‘that isn’t Susan.’

‘That is the grossest thing I have ever heard,’ Arthur said, disgusted.

‘They demolished the house after that,’ George said. ‘Now it’s just an old story that Grimstone kids tell to scare each other.’

‘So you don’t think it was Skinless Tom back there on the hill, then?’ Arthur asked, not really wanting to know the answer.

‘I hope not,’ George said. ‘I really don’t fancy my face being worn as a balaclava, do you?’

Chapter Eleven

Arthur felt certain that all of these things – Andrew Farnham’s disappearance, the burned book, the Creeper, the hooded man that had appeared at his house in the middle of the night and Cornwall’s mysterious conversation – must be linked. He lay awake at night thinking about them, but he could see no obvious connection.

There was something else that kept him awake too. He increasingly felt as though he was being watched, monitored, like a deer in a hunter’s cross hairs. Occasionally he would feel a tap on his shoulder, or another tug at his sleeve, or something grasping at his hand at night, but when he turned to look, he would find nothing there at all.

It was half-term soon, but he was almost as anxious about going home as he was about staying at Shiverton Hall. He certainly didn’t want to see the burned man again, especially since he had ignored his warning. Arthur wondered whether it might have been wiser to listen to the stranger, no matter how frightening he looked.

Arthur ran over everything again as he made his way to Cornwall’s class, but nothing seemed to make sense. He was starting to suspect that it was no coincidence that a boy had gone missing after the arrival of the Gainsborough, with its strange creeping figure. Arthur had to remind himself once again that, since the Creeper had not moved from the painting, he was worrying over nothing, just another scary Shiverton story.

The lesson began with Cornwall sitting at his desk, staring into space, his left eye twitching. The teacher’s behaviour had become increasingly eccentric since the night in the maze. He appeared to have given up teaching entirely, and now merely sat and glowered at them all during lessons. And as the weeks went by, his hair grew straggly, his velvet outfits a little worn, and his mood edgy and irrational. Even Jake had started to worry that Cornwall might be a little unhinged.

‘Right,’ Cornwall said, once Arthur had taken his seat, ‘I’ve been ticked off by Long-Pitt for not teaching you the correct syllabus.’

‘Finally,’ Xanthe muttered.

‘Out!’ Cornwall said, pointing to the door.

‘What? Again?’ Xanthe cried.

‘Maybe it’ll teach you some manners,’ he said.

Xanthe grumblingly gathered up her things and stalked out.

‘Now, just so you know,’ Cornwall continued, ‘I have no intention of teaching you the syllabus. Art isn’t on a syllabus. If you want to learn the “syllabus” then you can go read a book.’

‘What about our exams?’ Penny asked.

‘Exams are a waste of time,’ Cornwall replied haughtily. ‘I never passed an exam in my life and look at me now.’

The class looked at him dubiously. He seemed to have some chewing gum stuck to his shirt.

‘What I want you to do today,’ Cornwall said, ‘is to begin a self-portrait. It can be in any medium – oil, charcoal, gouache or clay . . . whatever you like. You will have until the end of this term to complete it.’

‘Will it go towards our coursework?’ one of the students asked.

‘What’s coursework?’ Cornwall’s expression was blank.

‘Well, it looks like we’re all failing our art exams,’ Penny whispered.

She needn’t have bothered to keep her voice down, because Cornwall had already put his head on his desk and fallen asleep.

‘What is up with him?’ Arthur asked.

‘He’s losing it,’ Penny said. ‘Some of the third years caught him crying in the library.’

‘What?’ Arthur said.

‘He’s snapped,’ George said.

‘He doesn’t seem to be very . . . engaged, does he?’ Jake admitted, looking at Cornwall’s slumped form.

‘Why did he even agree to take this job in the first place?’ George said.

‘That,’ Arthur replied, ‘is a very good question.’

When Penny and Xanthe went into the
Whisper
offices that Wednesday afternoon, they had a plan. Chuk was editing a criminally boring article about greenfly in the school rose garden when they burst in.

‘Hello, you two,’ Chuk said. ‘You’re early.’