Monster (21 page)

‘Which means …’ said Maggie.

‘That he’s lying,’ finished Regan.

Charlie fiddled with his friendship bands under his cuff and stared right at me. His eyebrows rose and his eyes swivelled to the ceiling, then back to me.

‘Leon?’ said Regan.

Charlie nodded. ‘I’d say
he’s
the reason your matron and your friend are missing.’

Tabby reached for the wolf mask and put it on her head. She looked at me and I couldn’t help but smile. Maggie looked away. I told Tabby to take it off again.

‘What do you suggest we do?’ said Regan, twisting the javelin round and round in her grip.

‘Is he handcuffed?’ asked Charlie.

‘No,’ I said. ‘He sleeps all the time anyway. I don’t think he’s a threat.’

‘It can’t be him,’ said Clarice. ‘I know him.’

‘Yeah, she knows him intimately,’ said Maggie. Clarice threw her a look. ‘No, I wasn’t taking the piss. You know him better than any of us.’

‘What, so you’re agreeing with me?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Oh.’

‘You don’t think it’s him?’ I said.

‘Of course it’s him,’ said Charlie bluntly. ‘You can’t afford to be this naive any more, guys. We’ve got to do something before he wakes up.’

‘I could lock the apartments. Keep him in there,’ suggested Maggie.

‘Yeah, good idea,’ said Charlie.

‘But he’s not dangerous. He can barely walk,’ I said, stopping Charlie as he went towards the back door.

‘Nash, when did you meet this person?’

‘Yesterday,’ I told him. ‘But—’

‘Have you got a crush on him or something?’

‘What?’ I laughed. ‘Charlie for God’s sake …’

‘Why else are you defending him. Hot, is he?’

‘Really hot,’ said Clarice.

‘Shut up, Clarice,’ I snipped. ‘Charlie you’re being ridiculous, I just don’t think—’

‘Why are you blushing?’ He was jealous. He was actually jealous.

‘Charlie, stop it.’

‘You insisted on bringing him indoors, you just told me that. You’ve undressed him and bandaged his wound. You like him, admit it.’

Just when my petrol tank of excuses had completely burnt out, salvation came in the form of the last person I’d ever expect to speak up for Leon.

Maggie.

‘It’s not like that at all,’ she said, stepping forward. ‘You’ve got it arse backwards. I told Nash to bring him inside. I thought he was dying. And yeah, I fancied him. I told Nash we needed to help him. Kindred spirit and all that.’

‘You wanted him in here?’ Charlie confirmed.

‘Yeah. Nash had nothing to do with it.’

Charlie looked from Maggie to me, expecting one of our masks to break. But they didn’t. We held strong. ‘How stupid can you get?’ he said, looking straight at Maggie. ‘You let your hormones do the thinking on this one, for sure.’ He laughed at her. ‘Well I guess it’s a bloody good thing that I arrived in time, isn’t it? Before he murdered you all in your beds.’

‘Keep your voice down,’ said Regan. ‘He’s sleeping.’

‘But once he gets wind that we suspect him, it could be a different story. Okay, how about a couple of us get the bus moving, say me and Maggie, and you stay here and look after the others, and pretend to Leon like we’ve just gone to the phone box in the village. Don’t say we’re going to get the police or anything or he could get testy.’

‘I don’t think he’s that bothered, actually,’ said Clarice. ‘He told me he’d rather go back to prison than stay outside in the cold.’

‘Someone said we should lock his door. We should go and do that now,’ Regan suggested.

‘I’ll do it,’ said Clarice and Regan threw her the keys.

‘I’m coming with you two to the bus,’ I said to Charlie
and Maggie. ‘It’s snowed in and the wheels are going to need digging out.’

‘All right,’ said Charlie. ‘You’re the boss.’

‘Come on,’ I said, plucking my gloves from my coat pocket and putting them on again. ‘Me and Maggie can do the digging. You can try the engine. Tabby needs to stay here.’

‘Awww,’ she whined. ‘I want to stay with you, Nash.’

‘No, Tabs, you’ve got to stay here and look after the Chief, all right? He needs you, go on.’ Head bowed, Tabby marched off into the utility room to find the aforementioned Newfie.

‘Regan, you look after Tabs.’

‘Okay,’ she said.

Wrenching open the door of the store cupboard, I found the panel of spare key bunches hung up just inside. I located the one for the bus. ‘Might need these then.’

‘Great,’ said Charlie, catching them as I tossed them over to him. ‘So me, Maggie and Nash will go and get help.’

Clarice, Regan and Tabby all looked back at us and stared.

‘I tell you what,’ I said to Tabby, ‘why don’t you go and find a nice board game to play in the common room and maybe Clarice and Regan will play it with you? I think there’s Junior Scrabble in there. And Mousetrap. Okay?’

Tabby nodded. Regan half smiled. Clarice looked like she’d cheerfully have stabbed me straight through the heart.

‘W
e’ll never dig it out of that,’ said Maggie.

‘We’ve got to try,’ said Charlie.

The three of us stood in front of the huge white mound of snow covering the smaller of our two school minibuses, parked up on the lawn on the right-hand side of the school.

‘It’s getting darker by the second,’ I said.

We started digging out the wheels one by one, using a couple of fallen roof slates Maggie found by a drain. We were careful to shift the snow to the side of the bus, rather than in front of it, pushing great drifts of it from the windows and mirrors as we went. It took an age.

‘Surely there’s a shovel about somewhere?’ puffed Maggie. ‘My hands are getting corpsy doing this.’

‘They’ll all be in the gardening shed which Mr McReady locks in the holidays.’

‘Damn.’

‘Front wheels are clear,’ Charlie eventually called out from the front and we heard the driver’s door click open. ‘I’ll get in and warm her up.’

I joined Maggie at her back wheel and began helping her with my broken gloved hands. Once we were done with the back, we made a start on clearing the path directly in front of the bus.

‘Why’s it getting so dark? It’s only about four o’clock, innit?’ said Maggie.

I shovelled the snow as hard and as fast as I could. ‘We’ll do it. Just keep digging.’

‘Think we’ll get out of here in time?’

‘Nope,’ I said. All of a sudden, a quick wet splat of snow came at my face. When I looked up, Maggie was grinning at me.

‘What was that for?’ I said.

‘You had your Bitchy Focus Face on,’ she replied.

I smiled. ‘That’s cos my face is trying to focus. Bitch,’ I said, flinging a small handful at her, catching her right on the back of her neck.

‘Ooh, you …
mange la merde
!’ She winced, wiping her neck with her gloved hand. ‘Why isn’t this mother-humping bus moving yet?’ she said. ‘Charlie? I don’t hear the roar of the engine,’ she called out.

There was no reply.

Maggie threw me a look and then we both stood up and walked around to the front to find out what was the matter.

The air inside the bus felt even more freezing than it was
outside. The driver’s door was open. Charlie was just sitting there, staring at the steering wheel.

‘What is it?’ I asked him.

He looked at me. ‘It won’t start.’

‘What do you mean?’

He turned the key in the ignition on the steering wheel stem. The bus didn’t make a single sound. Not even a click.

‘Try it again,’ said Maggie.

He did. And again. And again. And again. It just clicked.

Then it started to tick over.

On the seventh attempt, it spluttered.

On the eighth attempt, it coughed.

‘Do it again, come on, it’s doing something!’ said Maggie, more urgently this time.

Next time he turned the key, the bus spluttered
and
coughed. But it didn’t come to life.

‘Come on,’ he muttered and turned the key again.

This time, the bus spluttered, coughed and wheezed painfully, like an old man with a chest infection. But still it didn’t come to life.

‘It’s making different noises every time. I think we just need to keep trying,’ I said.

Charlie sat back in the driver’s seat and stared through the windscreen. ‘I don’t think this is gonna happen, girls.’

Maggie looked down at the wheels. ‘Turn the key again and press the accelerator.’

‘It’s not gonna help,’ he said.

‘Just do it,’ she ordered, and Charlie reluctantly released the handbrake, turned the key again, muttering about how he was probably flooding the engine, and stepped on the accelerator pedal.

This time, the engine hacked into life, roaring up as Charlie
pressed the pedal down further and further until it settled and chugged happily on its spot.

‘Yes!’ shrieked Maggie as she and Charlie high-fived. The wheels started spinning at the front, but the bus was still going nowhere.

‘It’s stuck,’ said Maggie. ‘There’s no what’s-it-called on the wheels.’

I remembered Seb’s car getting stuck in the snow last Christmas. He’d got some old boards and two tea trays out of the garage and put them under the wheels so they had something to grip to. ‘Traction,’ I said, looking down at the front right wheel spinning for all it was worth in the sodden, muddy mush of icy grass.

‘Yeah, that’s it. It’s because it’s parked on the lawn. The snow’s made it all boggy,’ said Charlie, continuing to roar the engine. ‘We need something underneath the tyres so they can grip. Something flat.’

‘There’ll be something in the storage sheds,’ I said. ‘Scenery and signs from the plays. I know there are. I tidied up in there a few days ago. I can put my hand right on them.’

‘Good thinking,’ said Charlie. ‘You’re not just a pretty face, then?’ He winked.

‘I’m lots of things,’ I said, smiling back at him.

Maggie grimaced. ‘Shall I prepare the altar or are we gonna get our arses in gear at some point?’

‘I’ll get the boards,’ I announced, and started off across the lawn towards the formal garden gate.

As I walked, Seb was on my mind again. Once, in some bad snow at home, we couldn’t get his car out of the driveway. He’d told me to get the wooden boards from the garage that we’d written ‘Garage Sale’ on in the summer, and
we put them under the front wheels. We were on our way in no time.

The only problem was the storage sheds were at the back of the school. I had to go around the other side of the building, across the Great Plat, through the Chinese Gate, across the Orangery lawn and down into the Pig Yard to get there. It was some distance, even without our present urgency.

The icy wind bit my face as my feet chomped and tramped through the thick snow carpet. I pulled up my hood, feeling the immediate warmth of its sheepskin lining and fake fur trim. I pushed my hands into my deep coat pockets and felt for the fruit knife Maggie had given me. Fat lot of good a fruit knife was going to be if I
did
encounter the Beast of Bathory. To do any real damage, I’d have to be close enough for it to bite my head off. But the fact that the knife was there, in my pocket, sharp and ready, made me feel safer anyway.

The night was beginning to draw in as I walked across the Great Plat and through the ornate black Chinese Gate onto the Orangery lawn, surrounded by trees stripped bare of their leaves and clawing at the sky with ferociously sharp branches. I was a sitting duck for an attack, I knew it. A lone, easy target under an ever-darkening sky, with nothing to defend myself but an ancient fruit knife and a pair of teeth chattering so hard they felt like they could shatter at any moment.

But nothing did attack me as I bypassed the tennis courts and entered the Pig Yard where the first storage shed stood. The Pig Yard was called that because pigs used to be kept there during the Second World War, when the school was self-sufficient and reared its own animals. The pigs were long gone though. All the sheds housed now were broken lawnmowers, out-of-tune pianos, ping-pong tables, summer
parasols, old play scenery that was too big for the Chiller and the maintenance man’s tools. It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for—I’d tidied them behind a broken, warped piano the previous week. We’d had to paint signs for the school production of
Calamity Jane
a couple of years ago and three of them—’The Golden Garter’, ‘Wells & Fargo Illinois’ and ‘One Night Only: Adelaide Adams’ were resting up against the back wall, next to some big bags full of old costumes and boxes of kerosene lamps, one of which Dianna must have given to Leon to light the Tree House. I reached across and got two of the boards. Then, with an effort, I managed to climb across some broken tables and badminton equipment, get my fingers to the third and pull it out.

‘Gotcha,’ I said triumphantly. A hidden window at the back rattled in the ever-strengthening wind, and it startled me, just for a second.

I couldn’t find any more boards, so I started climbing back towards the front of the shed. The door blew wide open and banged shut. I hurried to it before it banged again and shut it firmly behind me. Outside, all was silent. The birds had stopped.

And there it was. No warning. No sudden movement. Just standing there, a little way up the path towards Edward’s Pond. I froze. There was no denying it this time. It was large and proud and very real.

The Beast.

I still couldn’t move, even as it sniffed the air around its head, even as I watched its breath clouds, slow and steady, vaporising into the evening sky. Even as its tail swished and its paws padded silently across the ground towards me. It was enormous. This was bigger than any tiger I’d ever
seen in the zoo. I made absolutely no movement. I tried not to look directly into its eyes, but that was impossible. I wanted to stare at it. Its eyes were unspeakably beautiful, the brightest clearest orange. It seemed utterly unfazed by my appearance.

It suddenly arched its neck and yawned, its giant teeth emerging from its mouth. It licked over them, and started to step towards me. I still didn’t move. I clutched the three wooden boards against my body and stood there, as still as a signpost. It didn’t move fast at all. It wasn’t in attack mode; I knew it. I knew it wouldn’t pounce on me. It just walked closer, ever closer, until it was only a couple of metres away.

Sniff sniff sniff.

It smelled the snowy ground. I studied its fur, as black as coal in places yet in others mottled and spotted like a tortoiseshell cat. Its eyes, so orange and startling. It came closer still, until I could hear its paws on the snow. It sniffed around the ground where I stood. It sniffed over my boots. I still didn’t move, although I could hear my own breath getting faster and faster. Its jaws didn’t gnash. It was beautiful and serene, and when it lifted its head, I could feel its breath on my neck like a dream.

Now it was in front of me. I could have reached out and touched it, held its giant head between my hands, but I still didn’t move a muscle—only my eyes, which darted back and forth, trying to take all of it in. As it came closer still, I closed them completely and waited. I couldn’t outrun it now even if I wanted to. So I waited. And waited. And felt the soft brush of warm fur on my face for an instant, before I opened my eyes again and looked into nothingness. The Beast’s tail swished off in the other direction. It looked back at me once, as though it had forgotten to tell me something,
before it sniffed the air again and continued, disappearing eventually into the thick green of the evergreen trees.

And that was when I saw it.

Sticking out of the grass verge, right where the Beast had been standing, was a hand. A pale, white hand.

Even as I walked towards it, I willed it to be just a pale branch. Twigs sticking out of the snow that looked like spindly fingers. I hoped and I hoped and I hoped.

But, as I reached it, I knew for certain there was only one thing it could be.

The Beast had disturbed the snow around her. Uncovered her hand, her snow-filled eye sockets. My hope died and became sick reality.

Matron.

But the Beast hadn’t killed her. He couldn’t have. I could see it, the second I looked down: around her neck lay a cherry-red necklace of frozen blood. Her throat had been slit from ear to ear.