Shiverton Hall (18 page)

‘Broke both her legs,’ Calypso answered breathlessly. ‘Someone said that you could see the bone poking out of the skin.’

‘Why on earth would you throw yourself out of a window?’ Asha asked, uncomprehending.

‘Wouldn’t
you
if you were Xanthe?’ Calypso said unkindly. ‘I mean, she’s pretty sad. She doesn’t have any friends.’

Arthur felt a twitch of rage. ‘I’m her friend,’ he said.

‘Really?’ Calypso said with a cool smile. ‘Apparently Xanthe spent all last night crying in her room because you’d told her to push off.’

Arthur blushed as Penny and George looked at him in surprise.

‘I didn’t!’ he said guiltily. ‘I mean, I didn’t mean to.’

Calypso stood up with her tray. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said spitefully. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t entirely your fault that she threw herself out of a window. Come on, Asha.’

Asha got up and scuttled off behind Calypso.

‘Is that true, Arthur?’ Penny asked after a moment.

‘I snapped at Xanthe,’ Arthur admitted, ‘but I didn’t realise she was that upset. I should have apologised.’

‘It’s not your fault, mate,’ George said. ‘We know who’s really behind it.’

‘We need to speak to someone who’ll actually listen to us,’ Arthur said grimly. ‘Let’s go to Toynbee.’

Toynbee’s classroom always looked as though a gale had recently blown through it. Papers were scattered everywhere, covered in Toynbee’s purple scrawl, and a strange array of historical artefacts peopled the Prussian-blue room: a suit of armour leaned casually against the blackboard; a black-and-gold-striped Egyptian sarcophagus was propped up in a corner; a huge, deactivated, spiked naval mine acted as a hatstand; and a collection of Iron Age spears rusted quietly on the window sill.

Toynbee had just finished a lesson with the sixth form and looked surprised to find Arthur and his friends standing in front of his table at break time.

As Arthur spoke, with interjections from Penny and George, Toynbee thoughtfully cleaned his gold glasses on what looked like a piece of the Bayeux Tapestry. When they had finished, Toynbee remained silent, staring broodingly out of the window, until Arthur began to wonder whether he had been paying attention.

Finally Toynbee answered in his clear, quiet voice. ‘Many of the students here, and indeed the teachers, seem to have forgotten the more, shall we say,
unusual
forces that share Shiverton with us. We’ve been safe here for some time now, but that’s no reason to be complacent. I should have known that poor Jake wouldn’t have done such a foolish thing without something forcing his hand, and now it seems my naivety has led to another student being hurt.’

‘We should have told you sooner,’ Arthur said.

Toynbee smiled sadly. ‘And I should have been more direct with you. I had an inkling that something was going on. I suppose I didn’t want to believe it.’

‘What happens now?’ George asked. ‘Will you shut the school down?’

Toynbee shook his head. ‘It’s not as simple as that. If these phantoms have chosen you, they won’t be put off by mere geography. As Penny learned in Grimstone, they’re now strong enough to follow you out of the school.’

‘Great!’ Penny said dismally. ‘So it’s hopeless.’

‘Not quite. I’ve always been interested in the strange history of this place, and I’m therefore not without my own theories as to what might be going on. But let’s leave them aside for now. I’ll put out a message to all of my friends who deal in the supernatural, including your grandfather, George, even though I’m more than a little annoyed with him for sitting on this information. In the meantime, I suppose this advice will seem rather silly, but try to stay cheerful. If there are phantoms at work then they thrive on your unhappiness. At the moment happiness could be the one thing to keep you safe. I know it’s a pretty tough order under the circumstances.’

Arthur tried his best to smile, but he didn’t feel very cheerful.

‘I think it might be time for you to go and visit Jake in hospital,’ said Toynbee. ‘I realise it isn’t likely to contribute to your good cheer, but he might benefit from hearing some friendly voices.’

‘Of course,’ Penny said. ‘We’re desperate to see him.’

‘There’s someone else you might like to talk to at the hospital while you’re there. He’s in the psychiatric ward,’ Toynbee continued. ‘Tristan Maynard.’

Chapter Sixteen

St Swithin’s Hospital was on the outskirts of a crumbling, boarded-up town an hour from Shiverton Hall. The hospital looked in need of an operation or two itself: its once-white exterior was brown with damp and the paint flaked off it in patches. Outside the main doors a cluster of grey patients in grubby dressing gowns were trying to get some fresh air, shivering in the cold and trailing their drips behind them.

‘This is horrible,’ Penny whispered as the automatic doors slid open.

The lobby had made a gesture towards jolliness, and had been painted lime green and orange, but it only served to make the whole place even more depressing. They enquired after Jake at the reception desk, and were directed to a room on the third floor.

Before they reached the lift, Penny spotted a small gift shop, and stopped George and Arthur.

‘Hold on a minute,’ she said, darting into the shop.

She emerged a minute later with a bunch of rather drooping lilies.

‘It’s all they had,’ she explained with a sad shrug.

The third floor was painted a minty, sickly green and the plastic floor was sticky from disinfectant. Arthur and his friends hesitated for a moment, apprehensive about seeing Jake for the first time since the ‘accident’. They walked through a ward of people, many of them elderly, who looked at their faces hopefully then, on realising that they weren’t there to visit them, returned to the blaring television that hung on the wall.

The friends walked down yet another corridor, this one a septic yellow, until they reached Jake’s door. They knocked, out of politeness rather than necessity, and entered with trepidation.

Jake lay on the bed, covered in plastic tubes and attached to a cumbersome monitor which bleeped out his heartbeat. He was as white as the pillow he lay on, and his blond hair had been brushed into a neat side parting that he would never have worn had he been awake. The side table was crowded with unread get-well cards, a pot of wilting roses and his glasses, which were unfolded within reach in case he woke up.

The sight was too much for Penny, who stifled a sob with her sleeve.

George self-consciously sat down in the chair next to Jake’s bed. ‘Hello, mate,’ he said, patting Jake’s hand. ‘How’s it going?’

George talked and talked, much to the relief of Penny and Arthur, who were too nervous and upset to speak. He relayed all the Shiverton gossip, what was happening in the news, how well Jake’s football team was playing. He didn’t mention Xanthe or the phantoms, and managed to ramble good-naturedly for nearly half an hour.

When George’s chatter started to stall, Penny approached Jake’s bed and arranged the lilies in a vase next to him, hastily wiping a tear away with the back of her hand. Arthur stood awkwardly at the foot of the bed, not knowing where to stand and feeling like an idiot.

A young doctor entered the room, consulting a clipboard, and it took her a moment to notice that Jake had guests.

‘Oh!’ she said in surprise. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know that you were in here. I’ll come back.’

‘No!’ Penny said. ‘Please, we were just on our way out.’

The doctor smiled. ‘I’m glad to see that Jake finally has some visitors.’

‘What do you mean, “finally”?’ Arthur asked.

‘Well, Jake hasn’t had many visitors,’ replied the doctor. ‘Only one, actually – his mother, and she’s only here for a few minutes at a time. The hospital seems to make her uncomfortable.’

‘Poor Jake,’ Penny said guiltily. ‘We should have come sooner.’

‘Well, you’re here now,’ the doctor said reassuringly, ‘and I’m sure it’s done him the world of good.’

‘How long do you think he’ll be . . .’ George’s voice dropped, ‘ . . . you know?’

‘In a coma?’ the doctor answered. ‘I’m afraid I can’t say. It’s a very unusual case – the first I’ve ever heard of, in fact.’

‘How is it unusual?’ Arthur asked.

‘It’s unusual because there’s nothing wrong with him,’ she replied. ‘Jake’s body is in perfect working order. He suffered a few small scratches from the fall and mild hypothermia from the cold, but he was remarkably unscathed considering.’

‘Then why hasn’t he woken up?’ George asked.

‘That’s just it – we have no idea. We had a specialist come up from London and he’s as baffled as we are. Jake’s brain scans are totally normal . . .’ she hesitated, ‘. . . except for one thing.’

‘What?’ Penny asked.

‘There’s one part of his brain where the activity is far more intense than it should be under the circumstances.’

‘Which part?’ Arthur said.

‘The part that’s responsible for fear. The activity there indicates someone experiencing extreme and sustained terror. You’d expect to see these levels in a person who was about to be eaten by a tiger, say – not someone asleep in a warm bed. It doesn’t make sense.’

Arthur, Penny and George looked over at Jake, outwardly sleeping peacefully, but in reality silently suffering some unknowable torment.

‘Let me get this straight,’ Arthur said. ‘You think that it could be fear that’s keeping Jake unconscious?’

‘It’s conceivable, yes,’ the doctor replied. ‘This case is highly unusual though, perhaps even unique.’

‘So if we could stop what’s frightening Jake, he might wake up?’ Arthur continued.

‘I suppose so . . .’ said the doctor doubtfully.

Arthur crouched down next to Jake’s bedside. ‘Don’t worry, mate,’ he said quietly. ‘We’re going to get them.’

George shut the door quietly behind them so that the doctor could perform her check-up. The corridor stank thickly of antiseptic and some brown-smelling hospital food that a nurse was pushing down the hall on a rattling cart. The trauma of seeing Jake, coupled with the doctor’s disturbing diagnosis, was crushing.

‘I can’t bear it,’ Penny whispered. ‘He’s been in there terrified and totally alone.’

‘But we can help him,’ Arthur said. ‘You heard what the doctor said: there’s nothing wrong with him physically. If we can stop the phantoms, he’ll wake up.’

‘But
how do we stop them
?’ she replied desperately.

‘I don’t know,’ Arthur admitted, ‘but there is someone who might.’

The psychiatric ward was in a separate building around the back of the hospital. Squat and pebble-dashed, the place itself looked enough to make anyone go mad. It was dark now, at five o’clock, and the damp evening air was a welcome change to the institutional gravy-and-medicine aroma of the main hospital. The lobby had been half-heartedly decorated for Christmas with balding, silver tinsel. A surly nurse sat behind the reception desk.

‘No visitors after five,’ she said as they entered, her eyes remaining on her gossip magazine.

Penny faltered, but George stepped in confidently.

‘It’s only two minutes past,’ he said. ‘Do you think you could make an exception just this once?’

The nurse sighed and looked up at him, unmoved. ‘No visitors past five o’clock,’ she repeated.

Penny stepped forward. ‘Please, we got stuck in traffic,’ she lied. ‘We’ve come all the way from Scotland.’

The nurse raised an eyebrow. ‘You don’t sound Scottish,’ she said.

‘We’re at school there,’ Arthur cut in.

‘We’ll be no more than a few minutes. Please,’ Penny pleaded.

The nurse looked at her beadily. ‘Who do you want to see?’ she asked.

‘Tristan Maynard.’

The nurse clucked triumphantly. ‘Well, you couldn’t see him anyway,’ she crowed. ‘He’s in the special ward, only family can see him.’

‘We’re Tristan’s cousins!’ George said quickly. ‘We’ve been here before – the other nurse always lets us see him.’

The nurse eyed them as they tried to look casual.