Frozen Charlotte (11 page)

The police called Uncle James a little later to say that they’d questioned Brett, who’d sworn he had nothing to do with the piano and, since there was no evidence, there was nothing more they could do.

After the piano man had gone, Piper went out to soothe Dark Tom, who was still screaming bloody murder in the hall. The sound of his shrill voice stretched my nerves almost to breaking point so I went outside to get away from it.

The wind was still blowing in fiercely from the sea, wild enough to mess up my hair the moment I stepped outside. I wandered down the garden and found Lilias with her toy ostrich under the burnt tree. I hadn’t seen her all morning and I assumed she was just trying to stay out of the way.

“Is Cameron going to be OK?” she asked, staring up at me with huge eyes.

“I hope so,” I said. “Perhaps… Perhaps your dad will be able to buy him a new piano?”

But Lilias shook her head. “There’s no money,” she whispered.

I plonked myself down next to her and, for a while, we sat together in silence, listening to the moan of the wind and looking back towards the house.

“I hate those dolls!” Lilias burst out suddenly.

I looked down at her fierce expression and said, “It wasn’t the dolls who broke the piano, Lilias. Even if they could move around, they’re far too small to do damage like that.”

“They might not have broken it but it’s still their fault,” Lilias said. “I know it. They’re always telling people to do bad things.” I felt her small body shudder beside me, then she whispered, “Convincing. They’re so convincing. They twist everything up inside your head until you’re not sure what’s right any more. I don’t know how they do it, but somehow they can make it seem like a good idea to do a bad thing. They see right inside your head to where the secret thoughts are. That’s why I don’t talk to them any more. I talk to Hannah
instead.” She hugged the toy ostrich to her chest. “She just wants me to be good. She’s my real friend.” She looked at me and said, “Do you hear that?”

“I can’t hear anything except the wind. And the sea.”

Lilias nodded. “It’s only the wind and sea here now. The birds don’t come near the house but they’re everywhere on the clifftop, all the way to Neist Point. We never get any rabbits in the garden. No squirrels. No butterflies. I’m glad the butterflies don’t come here any more,” she said, picking at the grass beside her.

Now that she’d mentioned it, the garden did seem oddly quiet. There was no birdsong, no rustle of small animals moving through the bushes, no bright eyes peering down from the branches of the trees.

“Well, Shellycoat seems happy enough in the house,” I said, trying to find some logical objection to what she was saying.

“She never goes upstairs,” Lilias said. “Never. She doesn’t mind being downstairs, but if you try to take her upstairs she goes crazy. Cameron tried to take her up there once, when they were putting new carpets in downstairs. She almost scratched his face off. And the yowling. I never heard any cat sound like that before.
Cameron said it was like she’d turned into a different cat. He said that something must have spooked her. But I know it was the Frozen Charlottes. They never speak to boys – only girls – so Cameron’s never heard them. He just thinks they’re creepy dolls.”

“What about Dark Tom?” I asked. “Would he go upstairs?”

Lilias considered this for a moment, then shrugged. “Dark Tom is Dark Tom,” she said. “Anyway, the butterflies used to make me really sad. The Frozen Charlottes ripped off their wings and left them all around the house. Once I pulled back the covers to get into bed and it was covered in wings.”

“What was?” I asked, startled.

“The mattress,” she said. “I told Cameron, but he didn’t believe me about the dolls. He thought Piper had done it and he got really angry with her.” Her voice took on an almost dreamy quality. “They were all different colours. Pretty. So pretty.”

The unwelcome image of the vase of flowers in my bedroom came into my mind, all fresh and beautiful when I first arrived at the house but shrivelled up and dead by the time dinner was over.

“Their faces are inside the tree,” Lilias said.

“What?”

“The dolls. Their faces are in the tree.” She twisted and pointed at the dead tree behind us.

I looked around to follow her pointing finger and, this time, I saw what I hadn’t noticed before. Part of the way up the trunk, just where a few scorched boards still nestled between the burnt branches, were a whole load of faces. You had to know they were there in order to see them, since they were tiny and blackened and blended in with the rest of the tree. But now I could see that there were a dozen or so Frozen Charlotte heads peering down at us from the bark.

“How… How did they get there?” I asked, shivering at the sight of them.

“Daddy says they must have melted into the tree during the fire,” Lilias said. “There used to be a tree house and Rebecca was playing up there with the dolls when the fire started.”

“Was Cameron there too?” I asked.

“No, he saw the fire from the house,” Lilias said, “and he ran out to save Rebecca. Don’t you think that was brave of him? Daddy says Rebecca probably would have died in the fire if it hadn’t been for Cameron. She was stuck up there, you see, and
Cameron got her out. That’s how he hurt his hand.” She looked at me and said, “Do you think it would be better to burn or to freeze to death?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“What would you choose if you had a choice between burning to death, freezing to death or being sliced up with a knife?”

“It doesn’t sound like much of a choice,” I replied. “I wouldn’t like any of them.”

“Me neither,” Lilias said. “But I think I’d rather burn or freeze than get the knife. I think the knife would hurt the most. Daddy has lots of knives in the kitchen,” she went on. “He locked them away because he thinks I might try to cut out my bones, but I’d never do that. I’m stronger than the evil skeleton now.” She fingered her collarbone through the fabric of her turtleneck and I felt the sudden urge to take her hand and squeeze it.

“There is no evil skeleton, Lilias,” I said gently. “There’s only you.”

“The Frozen Charlotte dolls killed Rebecca,” Lilias whispered, ignoring what I’d said. “They didn’t manage it the first time so they had to try again.” She glanced up at the tree and said, “It’s good that
they’re up there. They’re trapped – they can’t get out of the tree.” Then she looked at me with those serious eyes of hers and said sadly, “But there’s still all the other ones back at the house.”

Piper appeared just then, walking across the lawn towards us. She’d wiped her eyes dry but they were still red and blotchy. It was the first time I’d seen her look anything less than perfect.

“Sophie, would you help me with something in the house?” she asked.

“What is it?”

“Just a small thing. Come on, I’ll show you.”

I left Lilias under the tree and went back to the house with Piper, following her up the stairs to her room. As she shut the door behind us, I noticed the bandage around her right hand.

“What happened to your hand?” I asked.

“Oh. It’s silly, really. I fell off Brett’s bike last night and twisted it. That’s why I need your help, actually.”

“You fell off the bike?” I said, alarmed. “Are you all right?”

“Oh yes, I’m fine. But the problem is that I promised to write to my friend, Sally – she’s just moved to England, you see. Only now that I’ve hurt
my hand, I can’t do it. Would you mind writing the letter for me?”

“Now?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“Don’t you email?”

“Oh no. Email is so impersonal. I prefer to write letters. You don’t mind, do you? Only she’ll worry if she doesn’t hear from me.”

I thought today of all days was a strange time to be bothering with such things, but I took the pen and paper she gave me and proceeded to write down the words she dictated.

It was a pretty boring letter, mostly about the weather they’d been having, and the different birds Piper had spotted on her clifftop walks. As I wrote it out for her, I found myself feeling more and more annoyed that she could be bothered with something like this when her brother’s priceless piano had just been destroyed, probably by her own boyfriend.

“So did you actually see Brett drive away?” I asked, handing her the finished letter.

“Gosh, your handwriting is a bit of a mess, isn’t it?” Piper said, peering at it with a concerned expression. “I do hope Sally is able to read it.”

“Piper, did you see him?” I asked, refusing to be put off.

“Who?” She looked up at me. “Cameron?”

“No, Brett! Did you actually see him drive away from the house?”

“Oh yes, he drove away all right,” she said. “I don’t believe he was the one who destroyed the piano for a second.” She sniffed and said, “But it would serve Cameron right if he had.”

I stared at her. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

She seemed genuinely surprised. “Is it? You saw the state of Brett’s back. Isn’t attacking another person far worse than dismantling a piano?”

I supposed she had a point, but I found her behaviour a strange contrast to the tears she had shed so copiously earlier.

“I’m devastated for Cameron, of course,” she said. “Simply devastated. But I can’t say he didn’t have it coming. Come on – let’s go and make lunch.”

Cameron didn’t come down for lunch and the rest of us ate around the table in silence. Afterwards I went to the schoolroom and reexamined the photo of Rebecca on the wall. I’d been so intent on her
face last time that I hadn’t noticed she was holding something. It was a Frozen Charlotte doll.

“Poor Rebecca,” Piper said from behind me in a sad voice. I turned and saw her standing in the doorway, fingering her Frozen Charlotte necklace. “Things would have been so different for all of us if she hadn’t died.”

“Why do you think she left the house in the middle of the night?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Sophie. Really, why would anyone go out in the middle of the night when it was dark and howling a gale and there was snow everywhere? She knew she wasn’t allowed to. She ought to have been at home in bed.” She sighed. “But anyway, I came to ask if you’d like to come camping with us on the beach tomorrow?”

“Us?”

“Me, Brett and a few other friends. We often go down to the beach during the summer, make a fire, have a barbecue and sleep outside. It’s great fun. You can borrow a sleeping bag.”

I thought back to how angry Uncle James had seemed earlier. If my mum or dad had caught me sneaking out like Piper had done, even without the
piano incident, I probably would have been grounded for weeks.

“But … what about your dad…”

“Oh, don’t worry about him,” Piper said, waving her hand. “I said that we’d already arranged the camping, just for you, and that you’re really excited about it and everything. You will come, won’t you? He might not let me go otherwise. I was going to ask you before, I just never got round to it.”

“Won’t we get washed away in weather like this?” I asked, glancing out of the window at the trees bending in the wind.

“Oh, it’s going to die down tomorrow. I checked the forecast.” She smiled at me. “I think it would do you good to get out of the house. You look terribly tired, you know, even Dad’s noticed it and he never notices anything. I don’t think you can be sleeping very well here. A night on the beach, in the fresh air, will probably do you the world of good.”

In fact, ever since last night I’d just wanted to go home. After what had taken place in Rebecca’s room, and finding out Piper’s secret, and then what had happened to Cameron’s piano, home seemed so warm and safe and
normal
. But a night spent away
from the Frozen Charlottes and this stifling, airless house would be something at least. “All right,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Great. We’ll head down there around six-ish. Oh, and Sophie, would you mind not mentioning that Brett’s going to be there? I sort of skipped over that part with Dad. You know what parents are like.”

I couldn’t help it – I groaned out loud. “Piper, look, I’m not a snitch but I’d rather not have to lie to your dad.”

“You won’t have to lie to him,” Piper said. “Don’t worry, he’s not going to start questioning you about it. You just have to keep your mouth shut, that’s all. You can do that, can’t you? Please, Sophie? As a personal favour?”

I sighed. “All right.”

She beamed. “I knew I could count on you.”

After she left, I went upstairs and saw that Mum had sent me an email in response to the one I’d sent the night before. I couldn’t be bothered to reply right then so I ran a bath instead. But even though the water was hot when I first stepped in, it seemed to cool down really quickly. Frowning, I reached out, intending to turn the tap on for another blast
of hot water. But my hand was only halfway there when I gasped – the water in the bath wasn’t just cooling down now, it was ice cold, freezing in fact. I put my hands on either side of the bath, intending to pull myself out.

The moment I lifted out my hands, the water in the bath started to freeze, actually freeze, around me. Ice blasted across the surface, snapping and crackling as it went – burning me with a ferocious cold that made my skin feel like it was being stripped from my bones in slices, like my body was no longer flesh and blood, but porcelain that would shatter at the slightest touch.

Although my arms were free, I couldn’t get out of the bath because the ice had sealed me in completely, the same way the plaster had sealed the Frozen Charlotte dolls into the wall of the basement. When I tried to pull myself up I felt my skin tear and a red swirl ran through the ice, scarlet mixing with white in a way that was disturbingly beautiful.

I opened my mouth and screamed.

Or at least I tried to.

But I couldn’t make a single sound because my throat was suddenly clogged up with something, something
that threatened to choke me. My chest heaved and I found myself coughing up great clumps of black sand that landed in wet lumps upon the frozen surface of the water.