The Beast of Seabourne (50 page)

Rowena Hilditch plunged on, cutting Oz off mid-sentence. “Good. Just wanted to check out the electrics in the dorm for Saturday night. Forgot to count how many plugs there were. We need at least half a dozen for the PA system and the lights. Atmosphere is so important for psychics.”

Oz frowned. “Someone's going to be reading people's minds?”

“Yes, I am. And helping them contact those they've lost.”

“Is this your soiree? I thought you were just going to be talking about your books.”

“That as well. Now, if you'll excuse me, there's a lot to do.” She left, heading for the door to the old orphanage as if she owned the place.

Oz watched his mother as Rowena Hilditch left and saw her squeeze her eyes shut, as though suddenly in the grip of some dreadful pain. When she turned back to Oz, however, the look had been replaced by the brave but tired smile she'd worn since he'd got back.

“Don't say it,” she said, her eyes shut as if to ward off an expected onslaught. But she delivered the remainder of her sentences in a staccato burst, as though wanting to get the words out before Oz could stop her. “I did try and speak to her, and we've agreed to reassess the situation after Rowena's soiree. She'd already put a lot of work into it, and…” She finally opened her eyes and looked at her son.

“Mum,” Oz said, his penne with Bolognese sauce going cold on the plate, “are you okay? Really okay?”

“I will be. Once this blasted soiree of Rowena's is over—”

Oz didn't let her finish. “If you don't want it to happen, why don't you just say
no
?”

Her reply rang hollow. “She's gone to so much trouble—”

“She's poison,” Oz said. “You heard what Pete Williams' mum said.”

Mrs Chambers grimaced at the memory. “I did. We all did. But she denies it. She says they made a mistake and that it wasn't her—”

Oz cut her off again, unable to quite believe his mother's defensiveness. “If you think she's going to pull her claws out after Saturday's mumbo-jumbo party, you're dead wrong. She's a cuckoo, Mum.”

Maybe it was the image of Rowena Hilditch as a fat greedy bird that did it, but Mrs Chambers dropped heavily onto a chair, her face draining of all colour, her eyes fixed on Oz.

“Oh, Oz,” she whispered hoarsely, and started worrying at the wedding ring on her finger, a sure sign something bad was brewing. Oz had seen these signs before, and they were never good. He threw another glance over at the fridge and the tip of that black dog's ear.

“Mum, tell me what's wrong.”

“I think I've been rather stupid, Oz,” she said in a tremulous voice.

“How?”

“Your dad would be so angry with me…”

“Mum, just tell me,” Oz demanded through clenched teeth. He was growing more anxious by the second now.

“I can't. I feel so foolish. I…”

“Mum, when we were away, stuff happened. Bad stuff to do with the artefacts and Soph and Gerber. But this is making me feel much worse than seeing Skelton point a gun at me.”

“Skelton? A gun?” Mrs Chambers looked aghast.

“I'm not saying another thing until you tell me what's going on here,” Oz said, and there was a grim resoluteness to his tone. His mention of a gun jolted Mrs Chambers out of her indecision. She took a deep breath and spoke, her eyes still on the ring she was playing with.

“Rowena and I… She's…she knew things, Oz. When she came, she knew things about me and you and Michael that it wasn't possible for anyone to know unless they'd virtually lived with us or were…psychic.” She let the word hang in the air like a bad smell.

“What?” Oz breathed.

“I'd never met her before, but she was able to tell me such intimate things about us. So we made a deal. I said she could use the dorm if she…if…if she put me in touch with your dad.”

Oz felt a sudden sick churning in his stomach. What did she mean, “in touch”? And then, at last, understanding pierced the fog of his momentary confusion like a steel blade. He grabbed his mother's arm and stared into her eyes.

“You mean in touch with Dad's ghost?”

Mrs Chambers flinched at the derision in Oz's voice. “She says she's a medium. And there are things I would so much like to have said to your father—”

“That's why you borrow Soph, isn't it? To watch the holotrack of him in Achmed's?” Things were dropping into place. The holotrack was what had convinced his mother that Michael Chambers could not have committed suicide. It was vivid and touching, and Oz had been a fool not to realize how potent it was.

“It's so real,” Mrs Chambers whispered. “It's almost as if I could touch him. I can't sleep for thinking about it. There is something I so desperately want to tell him, Oz.”

“Can't you tell me instead?”

Mrs Chambers shook her head. “No. I can't. It's not… It's between me and him.” She stopped and took in a ragged breath, as if to compose herself. “But after hearing Janet Williams tear Rowena off a strip, I realised how ridiculous it all was. I did try and talk to her, but…”

“But what?” Oz asked.

Mrs Chambers squeezed her eyes shut, and her lower lip started trembling. “But she says that there'll be consequences. She says that she knows ways of bringing bad luck so that no lodgers would ever come here again. And I've told her things. Things that you shouldn't have to hear.” Mrs Chambers' voice dropped to a moan. “She's threatened to tell you if I don't…cooperate.”

Oz felt anger roar in his chest, and fire up his cheeks. He could hear the grinding of his own teeth. This was worse than he'd even dared imagine.

“If only Michael were here,” she said finally in a desperate whisper.

“If Dad was here, she wouldn't be,” Oz said, Pete's mother's warning ringing loud and clear in his ears. He pushed himself up and away from the table.

“Oz?” said Mrs Chambers in alarm. “What are you doing?”

“Sorting this out,” Oz said.

“But Oz, Rowena…she's very headstrong.”

“Keep my supper warm, Mum. I won't be long.”

Oz found her in the dorm taking old photos off the wall. The room had been swept, and several rows of chairs had been arranged to face a small dais.

“Ah, Oz,” she said, not bothering to look at him as she lifted down another print. “Come to help?”

“No, just wanted to show you something weird. Thought you'd be interested, since you've been asking.”

“Ooh, I
do
like weird.” The Cuckoo beamed at him.

“It's in one of the old classrooms below us.”

“Where you found the mad Lucy Bishop, is it?” She made pretend-scary eyes at Oz.

“Uh, yeah, that's it.” He led the way down one flight to the room with the new door. He put his hand on the handle but, before depressing it, turned to the Cuckoo. She still wore a smug smirk on her face.

“You're sure about this? It is pretty weird in there.”

“Oh I'm sure, all right,” the Cuckoo said, and Oz saw she was fighting back laughter. After having spent years of pretending to see ghosts and peddling flavoured water as a cure for everything, she was obviously confident that she knew all the tricks and wasn't worried about anything “weird” Oz could throw at her.

“Okay,” Oz said, and opened the door.

The room was exactly as it had been—a few piled-up desks and chairs covered in dust sheets, the large windows smudged with window-cleaning fluid, such that a sombre light was all that illuminated the murky interior.

“Oooh,” she said, striding inside. “Very spooky. Very spooky, indeed. We could sell this as a haunted classroom. Dare people to stay here overnight? They'd pay a fortune. And what's under those dustsheets, eh? Let me guess. Is one of your little friends going to jump out at me and make horrible noises? Or is there a clown-faced jack-in-the-box ready to spring up under there? A boggart in the wardrobe?” She laughed heartily and turned a pair of glittering eyes towards Oz.

“Don't think I don't know what you're trying to do here, little Ozzie. But I've eaten far cleverer and trickier oiks than you for breakfast. It's your mother that deals with me, okay? And believe me, there are going to be some changes around here. Your mum likes to talk to me. She tells me all her pathetic little secrets, all her hang-ups, the stuff about your father and the other
things
she's lost.
Things
you haven't got a clue about.” She looked satisfied with herself at Oz's troubled expression. “Oh, no. This place is a gold mine.” She started walking towards the dustsheets, smiling to herself as she did.

“And you know what? Regardless of what you and your little friends think, and no matter what any of those prissy parents from the school say, Rowena Hilditch has landed on her feet, and I am going to squeeze this place for all it's worth. So, get used to it, little Oscar the half-orphan. There are plenty of people out there desperate enough to listen to me, even if you don't want to.”

She grabbed the sheet and pulled it off with a flourish. There was no jack-in-the-box, no one dressed up as a ghoul or spectre. In fact, for a moment there seemed to be nothing there at all. If she noticed the light in the room dimming even more, she said nothing as she peered into the dark space between the chairs and the desk. However, something did stir as she disturbed its peace. A diaphanous shape shifted slightly in the dense shadow, then unfurled. Oz took a step back into the darkness of the corner to watch.

“Hah, what is it we have here? A little wind-up doll with an evil face?Or some sort of pathetic fairy-winged elf? You see, Oz, I'm not scared of stuff like this, because I know that it doesn't exist. In fact, I can honestly say that I'm not scared of anyth—uunnngghh.” Her words ended in an involuntary groan of horror as she stumbled back, knocking over a chair in the process, mouth open in a silent scream as she watched the thing from under the desk extend out of its dusty nest. A cobwebby shape fluttered up on dark gossamer wings, six feet tall in an instant, legs dangling as it moved across the room, a dreadful dry clicking accompanying its progress. He heard a choking sob escape the Cuckoo's throat as one of its grey appendages almost brushed her face.

Then, as if a dam had burst, she screamed. It was a noise full of desperate terror, which pierced the dusty air and sent the colossal crane fly that Soph was projecting into a frenzy of flight. It zoomed towards the pale grey window and then back into the dark depths of the room above the cowering woman. However, in the moment of its exposure, what was revealed was enough to terrify even the most committed of entomologists.

Two huge compound eyes glinted with an iridescent sheen; long antennae twitched with insectoid life. An elongated rostrum ended in sharp mouthparts, which clicked and snapped together like the jaws of a trap. Rowena Hilditch, too scared to take her eyes from it, staggered backwards against the wall and edged along it, her hand grasping for the door handle, whimpering and bleating like a wounded animal. The magnified crane fly hologram swooped and dived, soaring randomly around the room, getting closer to and then farther away from the woman in a spooky
danse macabre
. The Cuckoo clung to the wall, eyes darting, looking for the door but not finding it anywhere.

Oz's question, when it came, sounded nothing like his own voice. Transmuted through Soph and transmitted from the shifting spectre, it emerged as a cracked and sibilant beyond-the-grave utterance, which caused the already-horrified Cuckoo to moan in dismay.

“Are you working for Gerber?”

The Cuckoo wailed.

“Answer me!
Are you working for Gerber
?”

“I don't… Garbo? Who is Garbo? I don't know any Garbo. Please,” she whimpered. “Please let me go.”

In Oz's head, he heard Soph's calm voice. “Pupils have remained dilated and blink rate has not changed. Likelihood of lying less than 0.5 per cent.”

In the shadows, Oz nodded. They'd all misread the signs. They'd suspected the Cuckoo and missed Skelton altogether and almost…almost paid the ultimate price. Penwurt did attract strangeness like a magnet, yet Rowena, AKA Karena, Hilditch could not have turned up out of pure coincidence.

“Who sent you to us?” asked the spectre.

“No one, I swear…”

“
Who
?” roared the voice.

“Lorenzo. Lorenzo put me onto you,” she quavered. “He said there was a haunted house and rooms to rent. He said there were rich pickings.”

Heeps.

Realization washed over Oz in a cold wave. He should have known nothing happened by chance when it came to the Puffers and Penwurt. On the surface, there was nothing wrong with sending a possible tenant who was researching a book on legends to a haunted house. No one would question that. But Heeps would have known what he was doing. He would have known that Rowena Hilditch was a fraud and a gold-digging, blackmailing monster. He would also have furnished her with all the intimate details it was impossible for a stranger to know unless she was…“psychic.”