Shiverton Hall, the Creeper (3 page)

‘Well, boy?’ Croomb demanded. ‘Up to no good? I saw you eyeing my silver clock from the window last week. Don’t think I didn’t notice. You’ve always wanted my silver clock.’

‘Someone knocked on our door,’ Arthur explained patiently, ignoring the accusation. ‘I came to see who it was. Was it you, Mr Croomb?’

‘Me? Knock on your door? Why would I do that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Arthur sighed.

‘Are you trying to trick me, boy?’ Croomb said, jabbing his stick at Arthur. ‘Get me out here and then bash me over the head and take my clock, is that it? I’ll bash
you
over the head!’

‘Oi!’ Arthur yelled, hopping out of Croomb’s range. ‘What are you doing?’

Croomb raised his stick over his head, the silver handle glinting in the light from the neighbours’ flashing Christmas display. Arthur covered his head with his hands to cushion the blow. But none came. When Arthur looked back up, Mr Croomb was frozen, his stick poised in mid-air, whimpering and staring at a fixed point behind Arthur. Arthur turned, but could not see what Mr Croomb was looking at.

‘S-sorry, boy,’ Mr Croomb stammered. ‘Happy Christmas.’

Arthur had no idea what was going on. ‘Er . . . Happy Christmas, Mr Croomb,’ he replied.

Croomb nodded, and scuttled back into his flat, slamming his front door behind him.

Arthur shook his head. ‘Absolutely nuts,’ he said to himself as he turned back towards his front door. But there was already someone in it.

A huge, broad figure in an oily, black raincoat stood between Arthur and his flat. His face was obscured by a leather hood, which reminded Arthur of the chilling illustrations he had seen of medieval hangmen in Toynbee’s history class. Arthur could see the bloodshot eyes glittering behind the hood’s slits.

Arthur crept backwards towards Mr Croomb’s window; the hooded man remained motionless. Mr Croomb was watching from behind his yellowing curtains, and ducked out of sight when Arthur looked at him imploringly. ‘Mr Croomb,’ Arthur whispered, banging on the window with one fist, still facing the man. ‘Mr Croomb, open the door.’

Mr Croomb pulled his curtains tightly shut and turned off the lights.

The man laughed.

‘What do you want?’ Arthur asked, as calmly as he could.

The man took two enormous strides towards Arthur and in a moment, had him crushed against the wall with one hairy arm. He reached up with his other hand, and Arthur flinched, expecting a blow to his face. But instead, the man ripped off his hood.

If the hood was frightening, it was nothing compared to what it concealed. The man’s face was horribly scarred. Burned, hacked apart, tendons and teeth and an eye socket all exposed and bonded thickly together with pink warped scar tissue, like meat suspended in jelly.

‘Why don’t you scream?’ the man said.

Arthur could see that his tongue was partially missing, and it gave him a blunt, strange, grunting way of speaking, drool seeping from the corners of his twisted mouth. Arthur could barely understand him.

‘I said, “Why don’t you scream?”’ he repeated, crushing Arthur harder against the wall.

‘My family,’ Arthur choked. ‘I don’t want them to hear. I don’t want them to come down.’

The man’s lips moved into an approximation of a smile, and he released Arthur.

‘Then I trust I can count on you to stay quiet and not run away?’ he growled.

Arthur nodded.

The man looked at Arthur and chuckled. ‘Think you’re brave, then?’ he spat. ‘After a few moments at that place, think you’re brave?’

Arthur frowned. ‘What?’

The man stepped menacingly close to Arthur. ‘Shiverton Hall,’ he grunted.

‘I don’t understand,’ Arthur said.

The man laughed.

‘What do you want? Why are you here?’ Arthur asked.

The man glared at Arthur.

‘Think of me as a friendly warning,’ he answered finally.

‘A warning about what?’

The man scratched at his raw face and Arthur winced. The man caught Arthur’s reaction and lowered his hand self-consciously.

‘Make an excuse to your mother, call the school and tell them you aren’t going back.’

‘Why?’

‘No use asking “why”. Just do it,’ he growled.

‘No,’ Arthur replied steadily.

‘No?’ The man slammed Arthur against the wall again, twice as hard this time, his arm pinning Arthur’s neck against the bricks. For a moment Arthur thought the man was going to throttle him, but then he was released suddenly, and he tumbled to the ground clutching his bruised throat. The man looked down at him with a sneer.

‘Who sent you here?’ Arthur asked.

‘What do you mean?’ the man replied. ‘No one sent me.’

‘Why did you come, then?’

The man stepped on Arthur’s hand with a heavy boot. The pain was so intense Arthur thought he would have to scream.

‘No more questions,’ the man said. ‘I have come to tell you what you need to know. Be grateful that I have.’

‘Grateful?’ Arthur nearly laughed.

‘Yes. Grateful.’ The man looked steadily at Arthur.

He opened his twisted mouth to elaborate when the sound of sirens filled the cold air. Arthur glanced over at Mr Croomb’s window; Mr Croomb stared back at him, the phone in his hand.

The man cursed and pulled on his hood roughly. ‘You tell anyone I was here, you’ll regret it,’ the man growled.

Arthur nodded.

‘Now, take my advice,’ he snarled at Arthur. ‘Take it or be damned.’

With one sudden movement, he hoisted his bulk over the balcony wall and disappeared. Arthur rushed over to peer at the paving stones beneath, but there was no sign of him. Not even a footprint in the rain.

The police woke his family, and they piled down sleepily. Arthur maintained that Mr Croomb had been imagining things, and luckily for him, it was not the first time his neighbour had bothered the police with strange complaints. The police went away, leaving Mr Croomb staring accusingly at Arthur as he retreated into his flat.

Arthur didn’t have the energy to feel guilty.

Chapter Two

‘What. Is. THAT?’ Penny cried gleefully.

George threw himself down on the Garnons library sofa nonchalantly.

‘An eyepatch,’ he replied, coolly examining his fingernails.

‘AN EYEPATCH!’ Penny squealed. ‘Is it a fashion statement?’

‘No.’

‘Have you become a pirate?’

‘No.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘I
may
have drunk some of my Great-Aunt Tessa’s sherry and
accidentally
fallen down a mountain,’ George said quietly.

Penny stood stunned for a moment.

‘Oh dear, I have to sit down,’ she replied as she collapsed, giggling, into a chintz armchair, her mass of blonde curls bouncing behind her.

‘It’s very alluring, Penny,’ George replied angrily. ‘It makes me look like a dashing, devil-may-care master of the ocean.’

‘No.’ Penny shook her head.

‘But –’ George said.

‘Nope. Off.’ Penny stuck out her hand and George handed her the eyepatch.

‘Your eye is completely fine!’ Arthur said.

‘Yeah . . . well, it . . . it wasn’t fine a week ago,’ George stammered.

‘A week! You’ve been wearing this scabby thing for a week and there’s been nothing wrong with your eye!’ Penny gasped.

‘It makes me look cool, OK?’ George snapped. ‘And what about you? Who’d choose to wear a dress covered in bugs and plants?’

Penny looked down at her printed dress.

‘Oh, who am I kidding?’ George sighed. ‘You look amazing.’

Penny giggled again.

‘Can I have my eyepatch back now?’ George asked, grasping for it.

‘NO!’ Arthur and Penny shouted in unison.

‘Where is Jake?’ Arthur asked, as they settled down with their cups of tea and last term’s mouldy biscuits.

‘I haven’t really heard much from him these hols,’ George replied.

‘I hope things are all right at home,’ Penny said. ‘After everything that happened last term he could have done with a rest.’

‘Ha!’ A hoarse voice from the door replied. ‘I was in a coma for weeks, the last thing I needed was a rest.’

‘Jake!’ Penny cried, springing up and enveloping him in an enormous hug. He hugged her back awkwardly and smiled at the others.

Jake was unusual-looking at the best of times, with his white-blond hair and pale skin, but now he looked older, and had the haunted, blueish tinge of someone who hadn’t slept in a while.

‘Are you OK, Jake?’ Arthur asked. ‘You look a bit . . . knackered.’

Jake smiled tightly. ‘I’m fine,’ he replied. ‘Just need a cup of tea.’

Penny passed her mug over to him. ‘I like your new glasses,’ she said brightly. He was wearing a pair of very thick tortoiseshell frames that slightly overwhelmed his face.

‘My last ones got . . . broken,’ he said.

‘Right.’

They all sat in silence for a while.

‘How’s your mum?’ George asked.

‘Not great,’ Jake sighed. ‘It’s good to be back at school – let’s put it that way. I think I might just have had one of the worst Christmases in the whole history of Christmas.’

‘Perhaps,’ Penny said. ‘But you, sir, have not seen my father performing an unabridged, one-man production of Charles Dickens’s
A Christmas Carol
entirely in the nude.’

Jake sat silently for a moment, his eyes wide, and then burst out laughing. Soon they were all on the floor in a helpless fit of mirth. ‘It’s not funny!’ Penny choked, tears streaming down her face. ‘I’ll be in therapy for years!’

‘What on earth is going on here?’

They sprang to their feet, trying to stop giggling as Doctor Toynbee, the jovial, ancient housemaster of Garnons, and the man who had saved Arthur’s life the previous term, poked his head around the door.

‘Don’t stop on my account!’ he chuckled. ‘I take it from the rolling around on the carpet that you all had an enjoyable Christmas break?’

‘Very much so, thank you, sir,’ George replied, his voice wobblingly close to cracking.

‘Good-o. Assembly is in fifteen minutes. You might want to calm yourselves down before you walk over to the hall. You know how Professor Long-Pitt feels about jokes.’

Arthur and his friends hurried through Shiverton Hall’s imposing grounds. Past the creaking woods and the patchy, dry maze and the fountain with its hideous mermaid. The hall itself glowered down at them, its gargoyles watching as they scurried by.

‘It looks even more welcoming than usual,’ Arthur noted, as a particularly repulsive stained glass window depicting a baby roasting on a spit caught the evening light.

The assembly hall was a squat, semi-circular building that was only ever used for school assemblies and the odd half-hearted production of
Annie
. It was already full, and the chatter of a thousand students echoed around the wood-panelled walls. A few heads turned to look at Arthur; no doubt last term’s rumours had not yet been forgotten.

‘Let them look,’ Penny whispered, reading his mind. ‘They’ll get bored of it after a while.’

Just as they were taking their seats, a shrill, lisping voice squealed, ‘Arthur!’ from across the room. A few people giggled as Xanthe hopped gracelessly through the crowd towards them. She had only just had her casts off, having broken both of her legs the previous term, and she was still rather wobbly. ‘Make room for me, will you?’ she hissed at the poor first year who had the temerity to be sitting next to Arthur, and then turned to Arthur with a lovelorn smile, her braces sparkling in the fluorescent light from above.

‘Hello, Arthur,’ she breathed. ‘Do you mind if I sit here?’

‘Doesn’t look like he has a choice,’ George muttered.

Xanthe glared at him and parked herself in the vacated seat, snuggling close to Arthur as the lights dimmed.

Long-Pitt took the stage like a spider unfurling itself from a crack.

The room hushed immediately as she began her welcome speech. Arthur remembered her speech from last term, which had been interrupted by a deranged ex-pupil who had tried desperately to warn them about their imaginary friends. They should have listened to him, for the ‘imaginary friends’ had turned out to be a dangerous Amicus phantom that had nearly been the death of quite a few students, including Arthur. He wondered whether today’s speech would be as eventful.

Long-Pitt was not a compelling public speaker, preferring to list her way through the term’s many events and timetables as joylessly as possible while the students around her slowly lost the will to live. This term’s speech mostly focused on the coming weeks’ ‘Wednesday Afternoon Activities’ (or ‘WAAs’, as Penny called them, because they were so boring they made you cry like a baby). There were many options for the students, including writing for the school paper, rather grandly entitled
The Whisper
, which mostly included a collection of terrible cartoons drawn by George and some exposés of the quality of school food in the dining hall. Pupils could also choose to paint sets for the school play, pay visits to the local community, work in the Grimstone bakery, clear rubbish from the hedgerows, go kayaking in the freezing lake or help out at Grimstone Primary School.