Out of the Depths

CATHY MACPHAIL

For a Beloved Sister, Teresa

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Why I wrote
Out of The Depths

Meet Cathy MacPhail

Q&A with Cathy MacPhail

Cathy's Choice

Acknowledgements

Also by Cathy MacPhail

I saw my teacher in the queue at the supermarket last Christmas. Miss Baxter. I was surprised to see her. She'd been dead for six months.

She saw me. I know she saw me. In fact, I could swear her eyes were searching me out. As if she was watching for me.

As if she'd been waiting for me.

I hurried towards her, pushing people aside, but you know what it's like at Christmas. Queues at all the checkouts, crowds with trolleys piled high with shopping, everything and everyone blocking your way. By the time I got to where I'd seen her, she was gone. No sign of her anywhere.

And when I told them at school no one would believe me. ‘Typical Tyler Lawless,' they all said. ‘You're always making up stories.'

Even my best friend, Annabelle, agreed with them. She'd sounded annoyed at me. Wanted me to be just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill best friend who didn't cause her any embarrassment.

I had let my imagination run away with me, everyone said. It was just another of my stories. It's true I want to be a writer, and I do look for stories everywhere. You're supposed to do that. But this time I wasn't making it up. I really did see her.

Miss Baxter had died abroad during the summer holidays. A tragic accident, they said. An accident that should never have happened. Her body had been brought back and she was buried somewhere in England.

But I had seen her!

I couldn't stop thinking about her. Trying to find an explanation for the unexplainable. And I began to think … what if she hadn't died at all? What if someone else's body had been identified as hers? What if it was all a scam to get the life insurance?

Or what if she was in the witness protection programme and had had to change her identity?

‘She'd hardly be likely to pop into the local supermarket then, would she?' Annabelle scoffed at me. And if she couldn't believe me, what chance
did I have with anyone else?

I had also seen Miss Baxter making furtive calls. At least to me they looked furtive. Snapping her phone shut when she had seen I was watching her. And I thought, what if she had a secret life, was an undercover agent, and she'd come to the school for some dark purpose? And then had to fake her own death so she could move on to her next assignment.

It was those ‘what-ifs' that were always getting me into trouble. My imagination had caused me a mountain of problems at my last school.

I saw the French assistant, Mademoiselle Carlier, and the new science teacher going home together in her car one night after school. I had noticed them before, sharing a look, a smile when they thought no one was watching. But the science teacher was married.

‘What if they're having an affair?' I whispered.

I whispered it to the wrong person. She passed it on and I was pulled into the head's office and warned about spreading rumours. That had been my first warning. The first of many.

But it was this story, this one in particular, my insistence that I had seen Miss Baxter, that had caused the most
trouble. I wouldn't let it go. I wouldn't let them say I was making it up. I
had
seen her. It hadn't been a mistake. I began to get angry when people ridiculed me. And that just got me into more trouble.

My parents finally decided it would be best to take me out of that school and find somewhere else. It was a case of leaving before I was pushed. I was already on my final warning by this time. Unfair, in my opinion. I never caused real trouble. I wasn't a bully. I was never disruptive … I just noticed things other people missed. And, in the end, I had been right about Mademoiselle Carlier. Her and the science teacher had run off together, causing no end of scandal. But, of course, no one remembered that! Oh no. In fact, it only seemed to make things worse. As if by telling people about my suspicions I had actually made it happen. As if
I'd
done something wrong.

Sleekit, one of the teachers called me.

Sleekit. A great Scottish word – it means sly and underhand and untrustworthy. A great word, but not when it was applied to me. It hurt. I wasn't sleekit at all.

I had promised myself that here, in this new school, St Anthony's College, things were going to be different.
No more stories. I'd keep my imagination for the pages of my notebook. Here, I wanted to make a good impression. This was a clean slate, a new page.

So, why had I suddenly remembered seeing my dead teacher that day?

I shivered. The corridor grew colder. Didn't they say that happens when a ghostly presence is nearby? I pushed the thought away, determined my imagination would not ruin things for me again here.

I was sitting in the corridor outside the Rector's office. Mr Hyslop had popped his bushy head round the door only a few minutes ago. He had smiled at me through an equally bushy beard. ‘I'll try not to keep you waiting too long, Tyler,' he had said. ‘I have someone in with me at the moment.' And I had smiled back and nodded, quite happy to wait.

I looked up at the high, ornate ceilings, at the wooden pillars lining the walls. Angels had been carved into the dark wood. Angels with trumpets heralding Judgement Day, angels holding open prayer books, angels flying with outspread wings. Angels everywhere. There was a window near the roof, in the shape of a wheel, a beautiful stained-glass window depicting scenes from the Bible.

Another sudden cold shiver ran through me. It was the cold in this old school corridor, that was all, I told
myself. Bone-snapping February cold.

At that moment, I wished Mum was here. She'd wanted to be. She had driven me right up the winding gravel drive to the entrance this morning, past a long line of elm trees and a mist-shrouded lake. She had almost begged to come in with me. She worries about me, especially since the dead teacher thing. That had really bothered Mum. I had seen her face crease with concern whenever I talked about it. She must have thought her only daughter was going crazy. I didn't want her to worry about me any more.

And anyway, her and Dad had already been to the school, checked it out, met up with the Rector. There was no need for her to come in with me this morning. I was a big girl now, I assured her. And I knew she was already late for work. ‘I'll be fine, Mum,' I kept telling her. ‘I'd much rather go in by myself.'

St Anthony's College seemed to loom over us as we came up the drive, its carved contours etched against the dark clouds.

‘Isn't this is an imposing building?' Mum said.

I had to agree with her. St Anthony's was the kind of place that spun stories. It had originally been built as
a boarding school for poor boys, and had been run by a religious order of monks. That had been way back in the 1800s. It was built of red brick that seemed to give out a sunset glow, even on a dark, misty morning like this. Almost as if it was lit from within. It had a gothic look, with arched windows and richly carved spires, and those wheel windows on either side of the elaborately decorated front doors. There were even gargoyles jutting out under the roofs. Red, devilish gargoyles, each one of their grotesque faces different. One grinning, one spitting, another with red fangs exposed ready to bite. And every one of those monstrous faces seemed to be watching me.

‘They were supposed to frighten off evil spirits,' Mum told me. ‘Keep them from entering the building.'

‘I think it's working,' I told her. ‘I don't want to go inside there myself now.'

And, though I was joking, the faces of those gargoyles did give me the creeps. It was as if they were warning me to stay away from here. Warning me that if I stepped inside that front entrance, bad things would happen.

Imagination! Tyler!
I forced the thoughts back into the box. The box I had promised myself I would keep locked until I needed to open it for a story.

‘Bit like Notre Dame, isn't it?' Mum said, breaking
into my dark thoughts.

She was right. That was exactly what it reminded me of. We'd been there, her and me, only last year. And the cathedral and the stories behind it had fired my imagination. Especially the gargoyles. Now here they were again, as if they'd followed me all the way from Paris. I was half expecting Quasimodo to appear between them, peering over the roof at me.

‘I'll phone you at lunch, Mum,' I told her as I got out of the car. ‘Tell you how I get on.'

‘OK, honey,' Mum said. She even insisted on kissing me goodbye. I just hoped no one spotted her. But she's a brilliant mum. Dad's great too. Even after everything that I had put them through at my last school, they were right behind me. Didn't believe me either, of course. They thought it was only my vivid imagination playing tricks on me. They're so down to earth. Same with my big brother, Steven. He's training to be a car mechanic, like my dad, and you don't get more down to earth than that. Dad says he doesn't know where I get my imagination from. He says I come from a long line of car mechanics.

So, here I was, waiting for Mr Hyslop, on my own. Trying to rein in that imagination of mine. I looked
around again at the high, ornate ceiling, at the wooden pillars, at the tall stained-glass windows. And I shivered again. As if icy cold fingers had tiptoed down my spine. It was only the cold, I told myself. There just wasn't enough heating in this big school.

I sat back in the uncomfortable plastic chair. A plastic chair. Here. It was totally out of place in these ancient and elaborate surroundings, and I looked at all the dark wood pillars again. At the saints and the angels, and the devils luring them into sin. No wonder this was a listed building. Couldn't be pulled down or altered. I could see why. All this could never be replaced.

Across from me there was a glass cabinet displaying all the sporting trophies the school has won over the years. Plaques and quaichs and shields. There was a photograph of Mr Hyslop, a younger Mr Hyslop, his hair not so grey, his wild beard black as coal, proudly holding a School Sports Championship trophy. From the newspaper article displayed below, it seemed Mr Hyslop had been a champion athlete himself in his younger days. There was a picture of the Pope on the wall above the cabinet. Which Pope I don't know. I'm not a Catholic, and actually, nowadays, neither is St Anthony's a Catholic school. Long ago it became not
only co-educational, but non-denominational too. Up until about thirty years ago, though, it was still a residential school run by monks.