Monster (5 page)

‘Please be seated,’ said our Head when the prayer was over. And we all were. There followed an end of term lecture about not treating our rooms like hotels, news from the past few months (netball victories, a ‘positive’ visit from the school governors and a new bench donated by one of the trustees—who definitely was not a paedophile) and details about the Christmas Fayre that afternoon; who would be doing what and when. Stallholders would arrive to set up on the Orangery lawns at eleven a.m., the younger ones would be ‘making mince pies’ (folding impetigo into pastry) and the first year Sixth Formers (our class) would be adding finishing touches to the play, which would start in the Hall at three p.m. The candlelit procession through the Landscape Gardens rounded everything off and then the girls could find their parents and go home for Christmas.

And then it came. The dread in my chest was strangulating.

‘And lastly, I have the great pleasure of announcing my
new Head Girl, who will take up her post at the beginning of next year. It’s been a very difficult decision, owing to the quality of the candidates I had to choose from, but the girl I’m appointing is kind, considerate, brimming over with focus and dedication. She is accepting and kind to all students and is a keen exponent of fair play. She is also extremely loyal to Bathory and to what we are trying to achieve here.’

She looked directly at me. I, for once, held her gaze.

‘This girl will be your representative, your prefect leader, in loco parentis when there isn’t a member of staff on whom you can call. I am sure you will agree she is the right person for the role. Your new Head Girl is … Dianna Pfaff.’

There was a lengthy pause between the announcement and the beginning of the applause. The girls were shocked. The news about my ‘quite vicious attack on Clarice’ had yet to reach the majority of them, but I could feel eyes on me, looking at me for a reaction.

Maggie stared at me, mouthing a string of choice words. I smiled, a rictus grin, and watched Dianna stride along the aisle towards the lectern, where Saul-Hudson pinned the badge to her cardigan. I clapped along with all the others as she made her way back down the aisle to her pew, badge gleaming.

Dianna passed our pew, flashing us a sanctimonious, paint-stripping smile.

‘Whatever,’ I said, like a bitten apple, feeling itself going bad from the inside. ‘Whatever.’

A
s I made my way to the Refectory that morning after Prayers, I walked slower than everyone else. I was swept along on the tide of other girls who were all just like me, in the same uniform, just trying to get to the same place, The same. Not special. Not the best. I felt like little pieces of the person I was were flying off behind me never to return. I didn’t care that there was a little dab of Blu-Tack on my sole, sticking to the highly polished parquet every so often. I didn’t care that my tie was slightly askew. And I didn’t care if I was late for breakfast. For once in my life, I did not care.

The Refectory was a large, high room, echoing with the sounds of clinking cutlery, loud chatter and the dishwasher whirring in the kitchen through the hatch. It had a parquet
floor and walls decorated with scholarship boards dating back over a hundred years. Some of the Year Tens on my table were playing the game where you picked a name from one of the boards and everyone had to guess which one. They usually honed in on names like Smellie or Windass—the favourites were always Ethel Glasscock from 1947 and Olive Dicks from 1955.

It wasn’t long before I spotted Clarice Hoon, three tables away with all the other prefects. Her left arm was in a sling; her bottom lip was even more swollen than mine. She’d brushed her hair so that a curtain of it fell down across the bashed-up right side of her face, and tried to cover it with make-up, but she hadn’t done a good enough job. I caught details from the girls along my table. She’d fallen. Down the main staircase. Probably drunk. It had been known. Someone was covering for me. I felt a pang of guilt. I took a seat on Table Nine, aka The Rejects Table, and knowing looks all around me as I sat down told me what a huge statement I was making by not sitting with the other prefects.

‘Could you pass the toast, please?’ I called up the table to anyone who was listening and immediately, the toast rack was on its way down.

Maggie eventually scuffed in, socks rumpled down, face like thunder, looking like she’d been heaved through a hedge by her hair. I guessed by her scowl that she hadn’t been expelled. Inwardly, I sighed in relief.

‘Don’t ask,’ she griped, ignoring looks from the other girls and yanking out the chair opposite me.

‘Saul-Hudson still not expelling you then?’ I said, pouring her out some juice. It dripped on the table. I didn’t bother to wipe it up. What a rebel I was becoming. I’d be making headlines in the school magazine at this rate.

Maggie frowned. ‘I’m living in a sea of morons and the only life raft is made from moron trees. Twenty Blue Tickets, an hour in the Chiller and a loooong lecture about why I “mustn’t break in to Sickbay and steal laxatives”. What’s it gonna take to get kicked out of this dump?’

‘They’ll only send you to another school if you get kicked out of this one. Maybe a worse one.’

‘There
isn’t
a worse one,’ she said, looking like she meant it.

Regan Matsumoto sat down at the end of our table. As quiet as a mouse yet as noticeable as a fart, nobody liked Regan though nobody quite knew why. It was just one of those innate things, like in the wild when mother animals reject the offspring with health defects. We’d all rejected Regan. Picked her last for team sports. Left her to wander the playing fields alone at break to identify insects and talk to people who weren’t there. All I really knew about her was that her parents had won money on the EuroMillions and were now so loaded they didn’t work, just took holidays. But they never took Regan with them.

A
clickety clack
on the polished parquet tiles signalled the arrival of Dianna Pfaff, our sparkling new Head Girl, a bundle of letters in her hands.

‘Hello, Natasha. Margaret.’ She beamed, her blonde bob shimmering in the early morning window-shine.

‘Hi, Dianna,’ I said, biting on both words as though they hurt me to say them. I reached for the milk jug. ‘Congratulations.’

She smiled and looked down at her badge. My badge. ‘Thanks, Natasha. I really couldn’t believe it when she said my name.’

‘Yeah, me neither,’ I muttered.

‘How come you’re on post today, princess?’ said Maggie, snatching the letter Dianna handed her. ‘Thought you’d have a minion running about for you.’

Dianna’s bangs quivered with annoyance. ‘Drop dead, Margaret.’

Maggie faux gasped. ‘I’m shocked. Our new Head Girl using such a callous remark? You get any post from your brother today, Dianna? I’ve always wondered, do prisoners really stick their envelopes down with spunk or is that a myth?’

Dianna stiffened and leaned over Regan’s cereal bowl.

‘Very funny, Margaret. You really should be on
Britain’s Got Talent.
They’re in dire need of comedians.’ She seemed really annoyed for some reason and every time she spoke, little flecks of spittle flew directly into Regan’s juice glass.

‘You’re so full of shit, Dianna. That must be why your eyes are brown.’

It went on like this for a while. It always did. I finished my toast and a whole bowl of cornflakes, the war of words still raging around me. Eventually, Dianna was the first to run out of comebacks. ‘There’s two for you, Natasha.’

She held out two white envelopes. I took them both and saw the handwriting on the top one was Mum’s. A Christmas card from her and Dad. I didn’t recognise the second one. All around me, the chatter and clinking stopped.

When I looked up, all eyes around the table were on me except Regan’s. She was slowly chewing into a slice of toast while watching a money spider crawling over her free hand like it was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen. I ripped into the envelope and opened the letter.

Dianna was still hovering. ‘Anything important?’

‘Keep your beak out,’ said Maggie. ‘It’s none of your business.’

‘Uh, I think it is my business. I am Head Girl.’

‘Yeah, and don’t we know it?’

‘What does that mean?’

Maggie swigged her orange juice then licked her lips, slowly like a cat. ‘The only reason you wear that badge is cos you brown-tongued your way up Saul-Hudson’s arse. Everyone knows it should have been Nash who got Head Girl, not you.’

Dianna’s nostrils flared. ‘Well, Natasha fell at the final fence, didn’t she?’

‘Yeah, and why was that, do you think?’ I said. When I looked up, Dianna was staring at me. I opened my second letter.

It was a picture. Hand-drawn and coloured. Trees. Leaves. A large black monster with huge pointed teeth. Between its jaws it held a man’s body. The man had blond hair. There was red scribble all around the page. It was supposed to be the Beast. My brother. Blood.

I folded the letter back up and slotted it into the torn envelope. As I returned to my toast, I took a quick scan of the room, fixing my own face into a calm mask.

Clarice.

I picked her out again, three tables away, talking to Lauren Entwistle. She glanced across at me, and quickly glanced away again.

‘Who was your other one from?’ asked Maggie.

Choose your battles. Just ignore it.

‘Oh, just my nan. She can’t come and get me over Christmas. She’s away.’

‘Well, my mum’s still fighting a big divorce case in LA so
she’s not going to be back any time soon either. And Dad’s in New York till whenever.’

‘Is your dad a lawyer too?’ I asked.

‘No, architect,’ said Maggie. ‘Something to do with that new thing they’re building on Wall Street or something, I dunno.’

‘One World Trade Center?’ I said, hardly believing it.

‘Summing like that.’

‘Wow,’ I said.

‘Sooo, we can have Christmas here on our own and totally let rip! No parents, no teachers, no Saul-Hudson ramming her big fat honk into our beeswax.’

‘Matron’ll be here though,’ I said.

She grimaced. ‘Yeah, but we can outrun her if we have to. Beeyatch.’

‘She’s been lovely since I heard about Seb,’ I said. ‘She asks me every morning if I’ve heard anything and whether I need to use the phone.’

‘Bless,’ said Maggie, unconvincingly. I knew how much she hated Matron and I didn’t wonder why. It was because Matron was usually the one who caught her out. Every single time.

‘There’s a Pup staying as well,’ I said, trying to think of the little girl’s name.

‘And I am,’ said a small voice. We both looked at the stern-looking girl with the plaits.

‘Why will
you
be here?’ asked Maggie, barely hiding her disdain.

‘I’m not allowed to go home for Christmas,’ Regan said, matter-of-fact. She pushed her glasses up her nose and dipped her head.

‘Why aren’t you allowed to go home?’

Regan swallowed down some cornflakes, leaving a milk drop on her chin. ‘I’m only allowed home one holiday a year, summer or Christmas. I went home in the summer so …’

‘… so you’re here for Christmas,’ I finished.

She nodded.

‘Oh peach parfait,’ groaned Maggie, her spoon clattering against her empty bowl.

‘Well, I guess we can make the best of it,’ I said, trying to find a bright side. ‘Plan a midnight raid on the kitchen or something.’

‘The devil is at your elbow, my child,’ said Maggie with an evil stare and a suggestive eyebrow wiggle.

I laughed.

Regan laughed too, but I don’t think she knew what she was laughing at. She still had a milk drip on her chin. ‘We can go looking for the Beast that killed the man in the village.’

Maggie and I looked at her.

‘It would be better than sitting in the library. I spend a lot of time in the library.’

She didn’t say it to court pity. It was just a fact. And it was a fact with a subtext: spending time in the library was code for
I have absolutely no friends.

‘I slept in there on Sunday night.’

‘Why?’ said Maggie. ‘All there is are encyclopedias and crappy books like
Common Sense Beekeeping
and
Fun With Yarn.
Not exactly party central.’

‘It’s warmer than the dorm. I was reading all the old school scrapbooks that the prefects of the past used to keep. About all the parties and plays. And the Beast.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Maggie laughed. ‘The Beast of Bathory? The
stupidest mythical beast known to man. He only comes out in the winter when there’s no food around.’

‘He killed Mr Pellett in the village. He was a retired accountant. Lived up at The Old Apothecary.’

‘How do you know all this?’ said Maggie.

Regan tapped her nose. ‘I know a lot of things about the Beast of Bathory.’

I thought about my monster.

‘It’s just a scary story,’ I said. ‘The prefects have been telling the Pups ghost stories about the Beast of Bathory for generations.’

‘It’s more than a story. It’s real. A man died last week. It tore him to pieces. Two tourists went missing at the end of last summer and they haven’t been found.’ She fumbled with her collar and pulled out what looked like a necklace made from green garden twine. Right in the centre of it, there was a tooth. She showed it to us. ‘What do you think that is?’

‘Uh, looks like a tooth,’ said Maggie.

‘Looks like a dog’s tooth,’ I said.

‘I found it on the path between the Chapel and the Tree House. It’s one of the Beast’s incisors. Look at the size of it.’ The tooth
was
pretty big, about the length of a Post-it note. And about the same colour yellow too.

‘How did you make the hole?’ I asked her.

‘I did it in the CDT room. Imagine being ripped apart by a mouth full of them.’ She looked at the tooth like it was a naked picture of Ryan Gosling.

Maggie threw me a look, grabbing a last piece of burnt toast from the rack. ‘It’s total and utter rubbish. It’s probably plastic.’

‘No it’s not,’ said Regan. ‘People have seen it.’ She looked directly at me. I poured myself some more apple juice.

‘Witnesses swear it’s bigger than any beast you would get in a zoo. Twice the size of a tiger.’

Maggie stared at her with wide eyes, almost missing her mouth as her thickly buttered toast rose to greet it.

‘Loads of people have been killed in the past two years. And now Mr Pellett. There’ve been sightings recently. All at night.’

‘Convenient,’ said Maggie.

‘They say it has bright red eyes and growls like a tiger. It’s taken sheep from the farms. Everyone knows about it.’

Maggie laughed. ‘Bright red eyes. Don’t make me laugh. All boarding schools have these stories cos they’re so deathly dull. If you go up to the Blue Bathroom and say Adolf Hitler three times in the mirror, he appears and stabs you. And if you stand on the eleventh step of back stairs at eleven minutes past eleven on the eleventh month of the year, some weird leprechaun thing comes up out of the stairs and drags you down to hell.’

‘O’Leary’s ghost.’ I nodded. ‘Isn’t there one about the ghost girl of Grace’s Lake too? The one who sleepwalked there in the night and fell in, all tangled up in her bed sheets?’

Regan was stony-faced. ‘The Beast is real. People have died.’

We both looked at her. She really believed it.

‘I’ve seen tree trunks with scratches all up the bark. And I found something behind the Temple. Something awful. Do you want to see it?’

Just then, the bell
dingalingalinggggged
out in the corridor and Maggie and I both jumped out of our skins. Regan didn’t. She was just staring at us, waiting for an answer.