Return to Groosham Grange (12 page)

“I don’t know!” David cried.

But suddenly he did know. Suddenly a whole lot of things had fallen into place. He knew who had the Grail. He knew how it had been smuggled off the island. The only thing he didn’t know was how he could possibly reach it.

Then Vincent grabbed his arm. “I’ve got an idea,” he yelled.

“What?”

“We can get off the island. One of us . . .”

“Show me!” David said.

The thunder crashed again. The three of them turned and ran into the school.

I
t was getting very hot inside the Rolls-Royce.

Mr. Eliot ran a finger around his collar and flicked on the onboard computer showing the engine temperature. The engine’s heat was normal but he was sweating. His wife was sweating. Even the leather upholstery was sweating. In the backseat, all Aunt Mildred’s makeup had run and she now looked like a Sioux Indian in a rainstorm. It was very odd. The sun was shining but it was already late in the day. How could it be so warm?

“I think I’m going to faint,” Mrs. Eliot muttered, and promptly did, her head crashing into the dashboard.

“Oh no!” Mr. Eliot wailed.

“Is she hurt?” Mildred asked, clutching her handbag tightly to her chest and peering over the seat.

“I don’t know,” Mr. Eliot replied. “But she’s cracked the walnut paneling. Do you know how much that walnut paneling cost me? It took me a month’s salary just to pay for the walnut paneling. And another month’s salary to have it fitted!”

“I think she’s dead,” Mildred whispered.

Mr. Eliot poked his wife affectionately in the ear. “No. She’s still breathing,” he said.

By now all the windows in the Rolls-Royce had steamed up, which, as they were still driving at ninety miles per hour down the highway, made things rather difficult. But Mr. Eliot still clung grimly to the steering wheel, passing on the inside and swerving on the outside. At least he was driving on the correct side of the road.

“Why don’t you turn on the air-conditioning?” Aunt Mildred suggested.

“Good thinking!” Mr. Eliot snarled. “Pure mountain air. That’s what you get in a Rolls-Royce. In fact I could have bought a mountain for the amount it cost me.”

“Just do it, dear,” Mildred panted as her lipstick trickled over her chin.

Mr. Eliot pressed a button. There was a roar, and before either of them could react, they were engulfed in a snowstorm that rushed at them through the air-conditioning vents, filling the interior of the car. In seconds their sweat had frozen. Long icicles hung off Mr. Eliot’s nose and chin. His mustache had frozen solid. The intense cold had the effect of waking Mrs. Eliot up, but by now her face had stuck to the surface of the dashboard. In the backseat, Aunt Mildred had virtually disappeared beneath a huge snowdrift that rose over her like a white blanket. The Rolls-Royce swerved left and right, sending a Fiat and a Lexus hurtling into the median. Mr. Eliot’s hands were now firmly glued to the steering wheel.

“What’s going on?” he screamed, his breath coming out in white clouds. “I had the car serviced before I left. It was a Rolls-Royce serviceman. And all Rolls-Royce servicemen are regularly serviced themselves. What’s happening? This is motorway madness!”

“There’s a service station,” Aunt Mildred whimpered. “Why don’t we stop for a few minutes?”

“Good idea!” Mr. Eliot agreed, and wrenched the car over to the left.

It took them ten minutes to extract themselves from the frozen Rolls-Royce, which they left to melt slowly in the sun. Eileen Eliot had to be chiseled off the dashboard and they had to use a blowtorch to separate Edward Eliot from the steering wheel, but eventually the three of them were able to make their way up the concrete ramp that led to the Snappy Eater Café.

The Snappy Eater was a typical English highway restaurant. The tables were plastic. The chairs were plastic. And the food tasted of plastic. A few motorists were sitting in the brightly colored room, surrounded by artificial flowers, listening to the piped-in music and miserably nibbling their lukewarm snacks. Outside, the traffic roared past and the smell of burning tires and gas hung heavy in the air.

Mildred looked around and sniffed. “They have wonderful service stations in Japan,” she muttered. “You can get marvelous sushi . . .”

“What’s sushi?” Eileen asked. She was feeling quite carsick.

“It’s raw fish!” Mildred explained enthusiastically. “Lovely strips of raw fish, all wet and jellylike. All the Japanese highway restaurants have them.”

“Oh God!” Mrs. Eliot gurgled, and ran off in the direction of the toilet.

“I love Japanese food,” Mildred continued, sitting down at a table and heaving her handbag in front of her.

“Why don’t you shut up about Japan, you interfering old goat?” Mr. Eliot asked as he wheeled himself next to her. He snatched the menu. “Here. They’ve got batter-fried fish and chips. You can have that raw. Better still, you can have it battered. I’ll batter you myself . . .”

A few minutes later, Eileen Eliot returned and they ordered two plates of vegetarian spaghetti and one portion of fish. But things had already begun to change inside the Snappy Eater.

Nobody noticed anything at first. The roar of the traffic drowned out the screams of the children who had been playing outside on a slide shaped like a plastic dragon. But the dragon was no longer plastic. It had already swallowed two of the children and was chasing a third with very real claws and fiery breath. About a hundred feet away, at the garage, motorists dived for cover as several of the pumps began to fire high-velocity bullets in all directions. Instead of serving unleaded octane, it seemed the pumps had decided to give out unoctaned lead.

Inside the restaurant, the piped-in music was still oozing out of the speakers—but now it really
was
oozing out. It was dripping down like honey, only bright pink and much stickier. The plastic flowers were being attacked by plastic wasps. All the waiters and waitresses had broken out in pimples. The one who was serving the Eliots had lost all his hair as well.

“Oh, goodness!” Mildred exclaimed as her meal was set in front of her. “This fish is swimming in grease!”

And it was. It appeared that the chef had neglected to kill it and the silvery cod was happily swimming in a large bowl of cold grease.

“I’m not sure about this spaghetti . . .” Eileen Eliot began. But the spaghetti was also not sure about her. It had come alive. Like an army of long white worms, it slithered and jumped out of the bowl and, giggling to itself, raced across the tabletop.

The same thing had happened to Mr. Eliot’s. “Get back on my plate!” he demanded, jabbing at the table with a fork. But the spaghetti ignored him, hurrying away to join two naked and headless chickens that had just escaped from the kitchen, running out on their drumsticks.

“This place is a madhouse!” Mr. Eliot said. “Let’s get out of here!”

Eileen and Mildred agreed, but even leaving the restaurant wasn’t easy. The revolving doors were revolving so fast that walking into them was like walking into a food processor, and two policemen and a truck driver had already been shredded. But eventually they found an open window and climbed down into the parking lot where their car was waiting.

“This would never happen in Japan,” Mildred exclaimed.

“I’ll put her in the trunk!” Mr. Eliot muttered as he started the engine. “I wish I’d never brought her . . .”

“What is going on?” Eileen Eliot moaned.

The Rolls-Royce reversed over somebody’s picnic and into a wastepaper basket. “Margate, here we come!” Mr. Eliot cried.

Mildred Eliot sat miserably in the backseat with her handbag beside her. Although she hadn’t noticed it and probably wouldn’t have mentioned it if she had, the handbag had begun to glow with a strange green light. And there was something inside it, humming softly and vibrating.

The Rolls-Royce swerved back onto the highway and continued its journey south.

 

 

David clung on for dear life, suspended between the ocean bubbling below and the storm clouds swirling above. Every gust of wind threatened to knock him off his perch and the wind never stopped. There wasn’t a muscle in his body that wasn’t aching and yet he couldn’t relax, not for an instant. He had to concentrate. With his hands clamped in front of him, his arms rigid, his face lashed by the rain, he urged the broomstick on.

It had been Vincent’s idea.

Mrs. Windergast’s broomstick was the only way off the island. Even if they had been able to take Captain Bloodbath’s boat, the sea was far too rough for sailing. Mrs. Windergast had taught them the basic theory of broomstick flying. True, they had never tried it before and certainly not in a full-blown storm. But as soon as Vincent had suggested it, David knew it was the only way.

They had taken the broomstick from Mrs. Windergast’s room. Normally the door would have been locked and the room would certainly have been protected by a magic spell. But everything had changed in the storm. The staff and pupils had vanished, taking shelter in the caverns below while the elements—the sea, the wind, the lightning and the rain—joined forces to destroy the island. Mrs. Windergast’s room was empty, but one of the windows had been shattered and pools of water and broken glass covered the carpet. There were papers everywhere. The curtains flapped madly against the wall. The broomstick lay on its side, half hidden by a chair.

“You know where you’re going?” Jill called out. She had to raise her voice to make herself heard above the storm.

David nodded. A half-remembered line here and a few spoken words there had come together and everything had clicked. He had worked it out.

His parents. After they left Groosham Grange, they were taking Mildred back to her home in Margate. Edward Eliot had told him as much in the letter he had written a few weeks before. And where was Margate? Just a few miles north of Canterbury.

And what had Aunt Mildred said as she got into the car?
I’m sure it wasn’t as heavy as this when I set out . . .
She had lost her handbag. It had been handed back to her—but heavier than before. David was certain. Somebody had hidden the Grail inside the handbag. And she had unwittingly carried it off the island.

Clutching the broomstick in Mrs. Windergast’s room, David knew that he had to fly south, somehow find the orange Rolls-Royce and intercept it before it reached Margate. Someone would be waiting for it at the other end. But who? That was still a mystery.

“Be careful,” Vincent said. “It’s not as easy as it looks.”

“And hurry, David,” Jill added. “The school’s powers are failing. If the Grail gets too close to Canterbury, the broomstick won’t fly. You’ll fall. You’ll be killed.”

Feeling slightly ridiculous, David pushed the broomstick between his legs with the twigs poking out behind. How had Mrs. Windergast done it? He concentrated and almost at once felt the stick pushing upward. His feet left the floor and then he wasn’t exactly flying but wobbling above the carpet, trying to keep his balance.

“Good luck,” Vincent said.

David turned around in midair. “Thanks,” he said. Then he and the broomstick lurched out of the window and into the storm.

The first few minutes were the worst. The wind seemed to be coming at him from all directions, invisible fists that punched at him again and again. The rain blinded him. He knew he was climbing higher but in what direction, north or south, he couldn’t say. The broomstick worked through some sort of telepathy. He only had to think “right” to go that way. But if he thought too hard, the broomstick would spin around like an amusement-park ride and it was as much as he could do to hang on. He glimpsed Groosham Grange, rising at a crazy angle from the corner of his eye. Then it was upside down! He had to get his bearings. He felt sick and exhausted and the journey hadn’t even begun. He forced the broomstick up the right way. With his body tensed, he resisted the force of the storm. He was about three hundred feet up. And at last he had control.

And so he flew. The broomstick had no speed limit and seemed to have left the island behind in only seconds. The Norfolk coastline was already visible ahead. He relaxed, then yelled out as he collided with a flock of seagulls. Again he was blinded, aware only of gray feathers and indignant cries all around him. The control was broken and the broomstick plunged down, pulling David after it, his stomach lurching. The sea rushed up to swallow him.

“Up!” David shouted, and thought it too, clamping his mind on it. Despite everything, he didn’t panic. Already he understood that panic would freeze his mind and without a clear mind he couldn’t fly. He relaxed everything, even his hands. And at once the broomstick responded. It had swooped down but now it curved gently up. The sea had gone. As the broomstick rose higher, David saw dry land below, the sandy beaches of the Norfolk coast. He had left the storm behind him. The sun was shining.

Swallowing hard, he turned the broomstick south and set off in pursuit of the Unholy Grail.

 

 

After David had gone, Vincent and Jill left Mrs. Windergast’s room and made their way downstairs, heading for the network of underground caves beneath the school. The wind was still howling outside and as they reached the main staircase a huge stained-glass window suddenly exploded inward, showering them with multicolored fragments of glass. They ran into the library, intending to pass through the mirror that concealed the passage down—but the windows in the room had been shattered by the storm and the mirror had broken too. A single crack ran down its face, effectively sealing it. Jill knew that if they tried to pass through a cracked mirror, they would be cut in half.

“Outside!” Vincent shouted. Jill nodded and followed him.

It was even worse outside than they had imagined. The entire island was in the grip of something like a volcanic eruption. Whole trees had been torn up, the gravestones in the cemetery blown apart, the larger tombs thrown open. The sky was midnight black, crossed and recrossed by streaks of lightning that were like razor blades slashing at the air. The whole of the East Tower had collapsed in on itself. The rest of the school looked as if it was about to do the same.