The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Kim Newman and available from Titan Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Primus: The Great Game

  I: Re-Enter: Kentish Glory

  II: Nine Hours Earlier: On the Road

  III: Nine Hours Later: In the Fog

  IV: Three Wrong ’Uns and a Right

  V: A Moment’s Dream

  VI: Awake and Fighting!

  VII: Tummy Trouble

  VIII: H’Alfie ’Ampton

  IX: Eros and Venetia

  X: Boldness and Mistrust

  XI: Adventures of the Amphibaeopteryx

  XII: House of Dracula

  XIII: What Amy Found in the Cellar

  XIV: The Last Leg

  XV: At the Finish

  Secundus: Moria Kratides

  I: Goodbye, Miss Gossage

  II: Ghost Moth

  III: Look to Windward

  IV: Old Girl, New Miss

  V: Secrets

  VI: A Further Moment’s Dream

  VII: Chapel and After

  VIII: The Archivist in the Annexe

  IX: The Real Spook-Spotters

  X: What Happened to Jimmy Wood

  XI: Yorick of Basingstoke Viewed Rosie in Garters

  XII: Notes from Miss Kratides

  Tertius: Night of the Broken Doll

  I: Night Watch and New Clothes

  II: Infernal Cakewalk

  III: The Purple Peril – Unmasked!

  IV: Blessings and Curses

  V: She Will Blame You...

  VI: A Final Moment’s Dream

  VII: In the Doll’s House

  VIII: Results

  Coda I: A Week Later – Break

  Coda II: Thirteen Years Later – the Mausoleum

  Drearcliff Grange School Register

  Ariel

  Desdemona

  Goneril

  Tamora

  Viola

  The Remove

  Staff

  The Great Game

  Secrets of the Remove

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  The Haunting of

  Drearcliff

  Grange

  School

  Also by Kim Newman and available from Titan Books:

  The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School

  Anno Dracula

  Anno Dracula: The Bloody Red Baron

  Anno Dracula: Dracula Cha Cha Cha

  Anno Dracula: Johnny Alucard

  Anno Dracula: One Thousand Monsters

  An English Ghost Story

  Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles

  Jago

  The Quorum

  Life’s Lottery

  Bad Dreams

  The Night Mayor

  The Man from the Diogenes Club

  The Haunting of

  Drearcliff

  Grange

  School

  KIM NEWMAN

  TITAN BOOKS

  The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School

  Print edition ISBN: 9781785658839

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781785658846

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: October 2018

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Kim Newman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Copyright © 2018 by Kim Newman

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  Did you enjoy this book? We love to hear from our readers. Please email us at [email protected] or write to us at Reader Feedback at the above address.

  To receive advance information, news, competitions, and exclusive offers online, please sign up for the Titan newsletter on our website: www.titanbooks.com

  For Grace

  Primus

  The Great Game

  I: Re-Enter: Kentish Glory

  AMY THOMSETT OF the Fourth Form could float, but not fly.

  She was becoming expert in the use of what Light Fingers called her ‘mentacles’. Amy thought of the phantom limbs as bendy tubes with thick gloves at the ends. Her party piece was gripping smallish items, then moving them. With fists in her pockets, she could turn a key, strike a match or stop a clock. For a grand finale, she’d wobble a pot off the table and pour. She always sloshed tea into the saucers. Her friends were mostly too impressed to complain.

  With a little less confidence, she could take mental hold of her body, lift off the ground, then shift herself. It was very close to flying.

  Tonight, she floated thirty feet above a plane of churning khaki soup. The air was clear up here, but cold enough to freeze the truncheon off a brass policeman. Fog humps over recognisable cathedrals, towers and bridges gave her a rough idea where she was. She had a rolled-up map with her, but knew better than to fish it out. The cruel wind that flicked city grit at her face would whip the map from her numb fingers.

  She had come to London to play in the Great Game.

  She’d worried pigeons would be a hazard, but sensible scavengers of the skies were tucked up in nests out of the weather. The same went for the paladins who patrolled these airways. The Aviatrix and Dr Shade must be snug in their eyries, pasting press cuttings into scrapbooks or honing crime-battling skills.

  Before Amy learned a measure of self-control, her ‘light spells’ were often inconvenient or embarrassing. Many girls were rebuked by parents for not keeping their feet on the ground or their head out of the clouds. In her case, that old tune was tiresomely apt. Mother was misguided, though – wrong about Amy’s ‘problem’ and wronger still about the school she’d sent her to.

  At Drearcliff Grange, Amy learned not to be ashamed of her Talent.

  Her tutor Miss Gossage, familiarly known as the Sausage, favoured psychical jargon. Preferably involving long German words. According to Miss Gossage, Amy was a poltergeist. More precisely, ‘a locus of poltergeist phen-omen-ah’. In olden days unquiet spirits got the blame when girls levitated or teapots floated. Poltergeist meant something like ‘noisy ghost’. Amy’s best friend Frecks had issued a standing invitation to haunt her ancestral home. She wanted her spendthrift brother Ralph driven potty with looming candlesticks and rattled chains.

  Shivering, Amy fondly recalled the comfort of draughty, leaky Walmergrave Towers.

  The quilt of fog muted street sounds. Amy heard faint car horn toots and saw funnel-shapes of light crawl through murk. Other ghostly glows came from shrouded streetlamps or brazier fires. It wasn’t a fit night to go out on the town. Occasional snatches of song rose as pub doors opened, then quieted as they were slammed to keep the weather out.

  Amy began singing to herself.

  ‘One thousand and one green bottles hanging on the wall, one thousand and one green
bottles hanging on the wall… and if one green bottle should accidentally fall – whistle whistle whistle kerr-ASH!’ – it was Drearcliff tradition to include sound effects – ‘there’d be one thousand and none green bottles hanging on the wall…’

  The weather made the Game more challenging.

  Miss Gossage was awfully enthusiastic about challenges. She had supreme confidence in Drearcliff Spirit. ‘Boldness,’ she would say, ‘always boldness.’

  Amy was supposed to serve as an observation balloon, relaying intelligence to teammates on the ground. For all her enthusiasm, the Sausage was not a mistress of tactics. Up here in the arctic blast, Amy was in no position to gather or relay intelligence. Much more of this and her brain might turn into a lump of ice. If she lost concentration, her floating became unsteady. No one would be impressed by a paladin who wobbled in mid-air. If she blacked out altogether, she’d plummet and that would be the end of her story.

  At Drearcliff Grange she had special lessons to develop her Talent.

  ‘Attributes and Abilities are not enough,’ Headmistress said. ‘An Unusual Girl must cultivate Applications.’

  During outdoor training, Amy was tethered so as not to be swept off by strong gusts. Miss Gossage beat time with a baton as she executed slow aerobatics, trailing lengths of gauze from her wrists. ‘Elegahnce, Thomsett, e-leg-ahnce,’ shouted the Sausage. ‘You are a sprite, a fay… Swirl your streamers with panache!’ Amy usually got in a tangle with her tether and gauzes, dashing dreams of a ballet career as the only swan who wouldn’t need hoisting in the pas de deux. She’d have to fall back on haunting homes to order.

  Nevertheless, she no longer flapped like a broken kite. Miss Gossage had her adopt a diving pose to cut down wind resistance – legs straight, arms out, hands open. She felt silly, but could propel herself like a dart. The posture was murder on her back, especially when she had to float with books perched on her head.

  ‘Talent is well and good, Thomsett, but Talent alone does not make up for shockingly poor deportment. Straighten that spine, gel!’

  Her landings were woeful. More often than not she pranged and sprained an ankle. The Sausage insisted Amy spend hours on boring earthbound calisthenics, pushing against a solid (and smelly) gym mat. She must grow strong and stay supple to cope with the stresses and strains of being a Moth Girl… of being Kentish Glory.

  Paladins had colourful handles. It was a tradition. Some hid their real names and faces. Everyone knew the Aviatrix was Lucinda Tregellis-d’Aulney – a Drearcliff Grange Old Girl! – but Dr Shade’s true identity was a mystery. According to British Pluck Weekly, that was to stop nemeses nobbling him by going after his loved ones. Should she pretend Kentish Glory was not Amy Thomsett to protect her loved ones? At present, the nearest thing she had were her friends in the Moth Club. They could all pretty much look after themselves. It would be a brave nemesis who dared try anything on with Mother.

  For the Great Game she wore the mantle of Kentish Glory.

  Her kit was a thick wool leotard, tennis skirt, riding boots, flying helmet and goggles, and a fisherman’s waistcoat with useful little pockets. The double-layered mothwing cloak was tarted-up salvage from the theatre wardrobe. Light Fingers sewed all the Moth Club costumes. She’d troubled to make Amy’s wings the authentic Kentish Glory (Endromis versicolora) colouring – orange undercape with brown markings, brown overwing with white markings.

  The natty get-up was at once uniform and disguise, though most of the school had a fair notion of the true identity of the flier in their midst. Flapping at the end of a line over the cricket pitch was a bit of a giveaway.

  She shared all her secrets only with her closest chums. To commemorate survival into the Fourth Form, the Moth Club swore a dire oath of loyalty, sealed with pinpricks of blood. Amy, Frecks, Light Fingers, Kali – to the grave, and beyond! Thomsett, Amanda; Walmergrave, Serafine; Naisbitt, Emma; Chattopadhyay, Kali: Desdemona House, Fourth Form, Drearcliff Grange School. To bowl straight and bat square. Spirit – always Spirit! Kentish Glory, Willow Ermine, Large Dark Prominent, Oleander Hawk – by day and by night, in lessons and after Lights Out, firm in any just cause, till the end of time.

  ‘Nine hundred and twenty-two green bottles hanging on the wall,’ she went on, ‘nine hundred and twenty-two green bottles hanging on the wall… and if one green bottle should accidentally fall – whistle whistle whistle kerr-ASH! – there’d be nine hundred and twenty-one green bottles hanging on the wall…’

  She imagined bottles plunging into the fog – and the distant kerr-ash of glass breaking on paving stones.

  Last year, when but lowly Thirds, the Moth Club rallied the Remove – the school’s stream for Unusuals of all forms and houses – to best a hooded conspiracy. They pit Talent and Spirit against trespassers from another plane of existence intent on turning the world into a colony of human ants. In the summer term, Kentish Glory and Company saw through the sheikish good looks of the Reverend Rinaldo and the lamia charms of his ‘wife’ Ariadne and saved a coven of Sixths from fates worse than death. Unaccountably, the victims were in two minds about the rescue. Still, the Moth Club asked for no thanks. Struggle in a just cause was reward enough. Except for Light Fingers, who sulked unless she got at least a little thanks.

  This year, as sophisticated Fourths, the Moth Club’s epic battle was with Drearcliff Grange’s stringent rules against cosmetics. Like generations of schoolgirls before them, and doubtless generations yet to come, Amy and her friends seethed at a cruel regime that denied them warpaint. Shopgirls their age striped themselves like birds of paradise. Magazines were full of testimonials from actresses who owed their success to the transformative products of Max Factor. But Drearcliff girls must show bare faces to the world, exposing every blemish to mockery – rendering themselves so hideous no fellow would ever clap eyes on them without a shudder. It was a conspiracy to condemn them to lives of sad spinsterhood. Women died of melancholy because of such unjust strictures.

  Only the most daring girls tried to get round the rules. Frecks – Serafine Walmergrave – made a Clara Bow beauty mark with a soft pencil, and passed it off as the last surviving freckle from the plague that earned her undying handle. Kali – Princess Kali of Kafiristan – maintained her caste mark with blood-red paint she would sometimes lightly dab on her relatively rosy lips.

  Shivering in the air, Amy no longer gave a heaped teaspoon about beauty make-up. She wished she’d thought to lather her face with protective grease like a Channel swimmer. She wrapped her cloak tight about her, more like a cocoon than wings. Her jaws ached from clamping them shut to prevent chattering teeth. This cold didn’t suit moths. As she inhaled, hooks of ice formed in her lungs. Her breath came out warm, though – dampening the scarf wrapped around her lower face.

  The bright-mauve muffler didn’t really go with Kentish Glory colours. The smitten Laurence knitted it for Frecks last Christmas. When her idol casually lent the scarf to Amy for the duration of the Game, the Ariel Third’s eyes glinted with tragic pain. ‘Her need is greater than mine,’ said Frecks, bestowing a heartening thumbs-up on her admirer. ‘Our gratitude flows like the proverbial wine. We couldn’t pull this jaunt off without you, Young Pocket.’

  That was the honest truth. Drearcliff Grange strategy relied on Larry’s singular Talent – putting objects temporarily out of reach of mortal grasp in an aperture in space she could open and close at will.

  Ever since Frecks let slip about the Moth Club, Larry burned to join. Amy didn’t think of herself as unkind, but baulked at bestowing even associate membership on a person who didn’t understand how moth names worked. They were supposed to be appropriate to home territory. Amy was from Worcestershire, where – perhaps against expectations – the Kentish Glory was most commonly found. Larry wanted to call herself Scarce Forester, because a cloak with that species’ iridescent blue-green colouring would be glamorous. The Laurence family homes were in Belgravia and Berkshire, where Jordanita globulariae was yet to be sigh
ted. Larry was an Ariel. It was typical of that most well-heeled of houses to assume rules would be waived for their convenience. Amy wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d wanted a butterfly handle. Larry needed something better than Pocket, though. It gave away too much. Mademoiselle Marsupial would be subtler. Or the Purple Pixie.

  ‘Eight hundred and fifty-three green bottles hanging on the wall, eight hundred and fifty-three green bottles hanging on the wall, and if one green bottle should accidentally fall…Whistle whistle whistle kerr-ASH! – there’ll be eight hundred and fifty-two green bottles hanging on the wall!’

  Even Amy was getting tired of the crashing bottles.

  For all she knew, the Drearcliff team could have been captured or disabled by their arch-rivals, Lobelia Draycott’s House of Reform. The Great Game’s defending champions. Also known as the Disapproved School. Repository for the Worst Girls in England. Girls weren’t sent there; they were sentenced there. Mrs Draycott’s staff were prison warders sacked for brutality and Magdalen Sisters defrocked for excessive use of the tawse.

  Bad blood ran between Primrose Quell, the Draycott’s Captain, and Prima Haldane, Drearcliff’s Head Girl. Quell, formerly of Goneril House, was expelled from Drearcliff Grange last term. Headers Haldane set aside the Code of Break and tattled to Dr Swan. Queenie Quell ran what Kali called a protection racket, collecting thruppence out of every shilling spent on black market tuck, make-up or sundry contraband. The moral defects that got Quell booted out of Drearcliff Grange suited her for advancement at the House of Reform.

  Kali wondered if Quell might ditch the Game and just use fog cover to get even with Haldane. The daughter of a Kafiristani bandit chief and well up on the gangs of Chicago, Kali understood the concept of vendetta. She said the team should keep a wary eye out for pigmeat hung from a shrub. ‘It won’t be no bacon tree, mugs… it’ll be a ham bush!’

  Amy looked down and wondered if she saw red traces in the fog.

  Between Drearcliff and Draycott’s, it was always personal.

  At the Off, Quell’s she-imps had made mocking, grunting sounds at the Drearcliff Grange girls.