Darwen Arkwright and the School of Shadows (14 page)

“I don't know,” said Alex. “You tell me.”

“None,” said Rich. “Because red cedars are not formal garden material. They are trash trees, and they pop up all over Georgia.”

“But they were planted by Native Americans to mark ritual spaces,” said Darwen, catching some of Rich's enthusiasm. “And there's a ring of them around Hillside.”

“Which, if we were in Atlanta,” mused Rich, nodding at the trees through the window, “would be in that direction, and exactly that far away. There's a Silbrican version of Mr. Peregrine's mansion, and a version of his shop. What if there's also . . . ?”

He didn't have to say anything else. The four of them moved hurriedly to the door and out, the bell tinkling as they ran around the back of the building and made for the trees.

“Well, that's just plain unsettling,” said Alex, who had come to an abrupt halt between two of the massive cedars.

Darwen pushed through the trees' hard green boughs and stared into the gathering darkness.

Unsettling was right.

Directly ahead of them was Hillside Academy, or rather a very strange version of it fashioned roughly out of—what? Stone? It looked like it. The school rose up from the ground like it had been molded or carved by someone who couldn't picture all the details. The buildings were all there, the steeply sloped roofs, the clock tower, but everything looked slightly irregular and unfinished. Darwen could just make out the faint tracing of lines between what should have been bricks, but the walls looked like they were just slabs that had grown up out of the ground, the brick pattern just a surface treatment to fool the eye. He remembered the gates of the Great Apparatus, composed of tree jambs rooted into the very ground, and he had the powerful impression that this replica of the school had not been built at all, not really, but had somehow
grown
there.

“I was never a big fan of Hillside,” said Rich, “but this is quite a bit worse.”

Darwen knew what he meant. The night, the silence, the uncanny rough-hewn version of the buildings in front of them made the school feel
off
somehow, familiar, but alien, and just plain . . .

“Creepifying,” Alex whispered aloud, completing Darwen's thought.

“We should go in,” said Eileen.

Alex gave her a wide-eyed stare.

“Might not be that easy,” said Rich. “Check it out. There's a fence.”

It was almost too dark to see the wires, but set a little back from the trees, Darwen could just make out a series of posts along which cables were strung. On top of the posts were tiny lights.

“It's electrified,” said Rich. “Or worse.”

“Anyone got any better ideas?” asked Darwen.

“Better than being fried on an electric fence, you mean?” asked Alex. “Yeah, I got a few ideas. How about not being?”

“We have to see inside,” said Darwen, adding—hurriedly, and with a half look at Eileen—“it might help us find Mr. Peregrine.”

“What if the fence is alarmed?” asked Rich.

Eileen checked her triple-barreled blaster. “I've got another couple of shots left in this thing, but that's all,” she said. “If I set the power real low, I might get a few more, but it won't be firing much more than light at that point.”

“There's a gate over there,” said Alex. She was pointing to what—in the real school—would have been the main drive. It passed through two metal scaffolds that looked like sentry boxes, and the air between them seemed to thrum with power.

“Some sort of portal,” said Rich.

“Built by Greyling,” added Darwen, “judging by the technology.”

Anything built by the Guardians tended to be old: wood and brass and copper. Only Greyling's scrobblers built from iron, and where the Guardians' work was elegant and sophisticated, scrobbler construction was clumsy and functional.

They approached the gate cautiously, glancing around for signs of guards, but there was nothing. Darwen's eyes fell on a statue—or what would have been a statue at the Atlanta version of the school, specifically the one where he'd spotted a flittercrake on his first day at Hillside—but here the sculpture was little more than a stalagmite twisting up out of the ground.

“If it's a portal,” Rich whispered, “we should hold hands.”

Eileen shot him a look and Rich blushed. “Otherwise you won't be able to get in,” he explained hurriedly.

Eileen held his gaze for a second, then nodded once and took his hand. For all the tension, Darwen thought Rich failed to hide how much this pleased him.

Darwen was about to speak when Alex stopped him. “And if you ask if I'm ready to step inside this spook-infested Silbrican nightmare of a school, I'm gonna whup you, got it?”

Darwen merely squeezed her hand, took Eileen's, and led them through.

The Shadow School

T
here was a
faint bluish fizz from the gateposts, a ripple of the air as they crossed over, then silence closed over them again. They released each other's hands, Rich letting go of Eileen's last, but quickly, like it had grown too hot to hold. They walked up to the main entrance, climbing the steps that seemed to have formed from some impossible geological accident.

“This is beyond weird,” muttered Alex.

There were no doors, no windows, so the structure felt like one of the ruined medieval castles that Darwen had so loved back in England, hollow shells that dripped with age and deeds long forgotten. The floor of the entrance hall was uneven, the statue of “Learning” a great stone blob that would have been unrecognizable if they hadn't known what stood in its place on the other side. Alex considered it, her head cocked onto her left shoulder, her eyes almost closed.

“I can almost smell the sappiness of the original,” she said. “If I stood here long enough, I might get the urge to take a hammer to it.”

“I think our time might be better spent exploring,” said Rich.

“What are we looking for?” asked Eileen.

“No idea,” said Darwen. “Something connected to Mr. Peregrine, I guess, but . . . what was that?” He stood quite still. For a second, off in the shadows to his left, he thought he had seen movement. He stared past the rising rocky growth that echoed Hillside's main staircase but could see nothing.

He shrugged.

“Trick of the light, I guess,” he said.

“Trick of the dark, more like,” muttered Alex. “And can we agree right now that if we see something terrifying, you don't try to make friends with it, 'cause so far . . .”

“There!” said Rich. He was pointing to the other end of the hallway, his face pale, his eyes wide and fixed.

“What is it?” asked Eileen.

“Looks like . . .” Darwen hesitated, unable to say the word.

“A ghost,” said Alex.

It did. It was a smear of pale gray light, roughly human in shape, and it flickered as it drifted toward them.

“Here as well?” gasped Darwen.

“It's coming,” hissed Rich.

They backed away, but it came on, and though it clearly wasn't solid, the figure did have legs and was walking, albeit soundlessly, right at them. And then, all of a sudden, it wasn't. The specter shifted direction, hesitated, and moved off down the steps into the grounds.

Darwen shuddered.

“What
was
that?” demanded Eileen. Though she had been completely unfazed by the scrobblers and the turtle-like terrapod back in the Atlanta mansion, the ghostly apparition seemed to have unnerved her quite badly.

“This is Silbrica,” said Rich, who hadn't taken his eyes off it. “So who knows? Could be anything.”

“But it looked like what we saw at school,” said Darwen. “Like a ghost.”

“There's no such thing,” said Rich.

“‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,'” said Alex. “That's Shakespeare, man.
Hamlet
.”

“She has a point,” said Darwen. “We've seen lots of stuff no one would believe in. Compared to gnashers and flittercrakes, ghosts sound pretty plausible.”

Rich shrugged and nodded, grudgingly.

“Weird, though,” said Alex. “Here and at Hillside? Can't be a coincidence.”

“Let's get moving,” said Rich, his face pale and tense in the dark.

“Where to?” said Darwen. “The clock tower basement?”

Rich nodded and led the way. “This is seriously strange,” he whispered as they paced the curiously cave-like corridors. “You think this was where Greyling's army gathered at Halloween before coming through to Hillside?”

“Maybe,” said Darwen, taking in the eerie silence of the place. “There must be a way to cross into the school directly from here.”

“How about we talk about happy things?” said Alex, glancing uneasily into the shadows around her. “Like my dog, say. Let's talk about Sasha.”

“Okay,” said Darwen, who was feeling the same nervous apprehension. “Tell us about your dog.”

Alex hesitated thoughtfully. “She would really hate this place,” she said.

Rich considered this for a moment, inching along the near black hallway. “Smart dog,” he said. “Er, guys,” he added. “Are your watches being . . . I don't know, weird?”

Darwen glanced at his. The digital display was flickering, but it was impossible to read the numbers. “Yes,” he said. “What's yours doing?”

Rich held out his wrist and Darwen stared at the hands of his old-fashioned watch. The hour hand was inching visibly around the dial while the minute hand was positively spinning.

“Ohhh-kay,” said Alex. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing good,” said Rich.

“Time can be slippery in Silbrica,” said Eileen. “I think it's passing faster here.”

“So it's like four in the morning back home?” gasped Alex. “You have
got
to be kidding!”

“Four?” exclaimed Darwen. “My aunt will go nuts.”

“Start picking out the flowers now, boys,” said Alex, “'cause we are
so
dead.”

“We have to find a way back,” said Rich.

They moved slowly and in silence till they came to the first classroom on their right, and Darwen heard Eileen gasp.

Inside the room, visible through the uneven space that should have been a doorway, two more ghostly figures drifted soundlessly. One was barely visible, the merest pearly smudge like smoke that didn't dissipate, but the other was clearer, more obviously human in shape, and when it revolved to face them, its pale face came into view. It was vague and the features seemed to swirl and blur as the figure moved, but there was no question that it was a human face. If Darwen had to guess, he would have said it was a girl.

“We really have to get out of here,” said Rich, speaking for all of them.

“Just keep moving,” said Darwen, trying to ignore his pounding heart and the way the hair on his arms and the back of his neck was standing on end.

He traced his fingers along the rock wall so he could feel where he was and realized that there was wood in there too, gnarled rope-like roots and coarse bark: the structure was indeed growing, though instead of feeling the throb of life and energy such as he had felt in the Great Apparatus, Darwen felt only the wrongness of the place, as if the force that coursed through the tree trunks, through the veins in the rock, was somehow poisonous. He took his hand away and moved closer to the others.

“There are more ghosts in the other classrooms,” Rich said in a hushed, breathy voice. “Some of them are so faint they're barely there. Others look almost solid.”

“So long as they stay away from me,” murmured Alex.

But as she said it, one of the figures emerged from the far end of the hallway and even at this distance they could see that it was altogether more substantial than any they had seen so far. There was nothing wispy about it at all. It had the same pallor as the others, but where the previous apparitions had looked like smoke and vapor lit softly from within, this looked like a person, though his face and clothes held no color.

Darwen thought
his
because he was sure it was a man, or rather a tall boy, and there was something familiar about him, something that Darwen did not like, even though he couldn't put his finger on what it was. Worse, while the other specters seemed to go about whatever they were doing seemingly at random, ignoring the presence of Darwen and his friends, this one stopped quite still and stared at them. It wasn't just facing in their direction. It was looking at them, seeing them. Darwen was sure of that even before it raised an accusing hand and pointed their way.

But his terror did not fully engage until the apparition began to scream.

It was a terrible sound, high and keening, full of rage and hatred. It stretched the figure's mouth wide and kept coming long after any living person would have had to pause for breath.

And then the pearly shadows in the rooms around them seemed to hesitate too and turn in the direction of the sound. There was an awful pause, then they started moving out into the hall.

“They're coming after us,” gasped Rich. “All of them.”

They weren't the only ones. Darwen heard a series of distant bangs out near the perimeter fence and heard grunting voices.
Scrobblers
, he thought
. Probably other things too.

The alarm had obviously been raised. Now they really did have to get out.

“This way!” shouted Darwen, sounding braver than he felt, particularly since his first few steps actually took him closer to the shrieking ghost before they could cut left into the open space of the quadrangle and the great black hunk that was this world's equivalent of the Hillside clock tower.

The tower reached up into the night sky, immense and threatening, but up just beneath where the clock face should be, Darwen could see lights, and leading up to it was an iron staircase that zigzagged its way down to the ground. He peered into the blackness, deliberately not looking to the classrooms where the ghostly figures were now drifting out into the corridor, as if gathering to attack. He tried not to listen to the panicked sounds of Alex's stuttering footsteps, Rich's labored breathing, and what might have been a sob from Eileen, all of which were almost drowned out by the dreadful cry from the ghost boy at the end of the hall. At last Darwen could just make it out: an archway that maybe, just maybe . . .

“There!” he yelled, pointing. “Up those stairs. I think it's a portal!”

Alex led the way, leaping ahead through the night like a gazelle with a lion on her tail. Rich and Eileen followed, and only when they were safely past him did Darwen risk a look back into the corridor.

He had been right. Beyond the throbbing ghost forms, he saw large, solid figures stomping into view. A pair of scrobblers with more behind, and at least one gnasher. They were coming fast. Maybe too fast for him to get away.

The thought had just occurred to him when there was a sudden explosion from behind the scrobblers and one of them fell hard. Just visible in the brief muzzle flash of his blaster was a small ferret-like creature.

Weazen!

“All right there, Darwen?” called the Peace Hunter, quite unfazed by being in the middle of a battle. “Moth said you were snooping in the neighborhood, so I thought I'd check in. Rather hoped I wouldn't find you here, to be honest. Not what you'd call the most pleasant of places.”

He fired twice more as if to make the point. The scrobblers hesitated, turning to face their new adversary, and Darwen knew that would buy him just enough time to get out. He turned back to the iron staircase, grateful for Weazen's timely appearance, and was alarmed to find the screaming ghost was actually closer now. Close enough that Darwen could see his face.

It was like being slapped hard. For a moment he stared in baffled shock and horror. But then he heard Rich calling to him from the metal stairs and he forced himself to move, though he was walking blind, his head twisted back toward the screaming boy and his terrible face.

It was a Hillside student, but it was also, somehow, a scrobbler.

Or some dreadful echo of one. The face was pale, the eyes dead, the jaw heavy and studded with tusklike teeth. It oozed malice and cruelty.

But there was something else in the face, something he almost recognized. Someone he felt he should know . . .

After an impossibly long and horrified moment, Darwen was able to look away and stumbled up the steps, gripping the rail as his injured leg groaned with pain. In the structure below, there were more explosions, more shouts, and now a stream of ghostly forms was flowing into the quadrangle, moving as if with one mind toward the staircase. Darwen looked wildly around for signs of Weazen, but the little creature was nowhere to be seen.

“It's a portal,” snapped Rich as Darwen reached the top, “but I don't think it's finished.”

The scaffold platform was littered with heavy tools and tangles of wire.

“We can't get through?” gasped Alex, desperately glancing from the swarming enemy to her speeding watch. She squeezed her eyes shut and a single tear rolled down her cheek.

“I don't know,” said Rich, pointing to a set of terminals, only some of which had cables plugged in. “There's power running to parts of it, but not everything has been hooked up and I don't know what that means. It might not be stable. Might not work at all.”

“Do we have any alternatives?” asked Eileen, her eyes fixed on the swelling tide of ghost figures coalescing at the foot of the stairs.

Among them was a small, lithe figure, which fired two more quick shots through one of the windows, forcing a heavily armed scrobbler to duck back before it came bounding up the stairs. For all his dread at what was happening, Darwen sighed with relief.