Skippy Dies (49 page)

Five machinating pairs of eyes fix on him.

‘Well, I don’t know if it’s a fungus,’ Odysseas says. ‘It might be a reaction to rayon.’

The situation is explained to him in double-quick time. It isn’t clear, at the end of it, whether Odysseas has any real idea
what he’s getting himself into, but after months of listening to Mario’s fantasies on the subject, he is keen to see the interior
of St Brigid’s for himself. The Condor is aloft again! Odysseas, furthermore, has a whole wardrobe of black fencing gear,
custom-made for covert operations, which he invites the Team to make use of.

As the hour strikes on the school clock – with Geoff Sproke gone on ahead to buttonhole the security guard – the three others
jostle at the door, synchronizing their phones, resembling, in their dusky regalia, not so much condors as fugitive punctuation
marks: two brackets and one overfed full stop. ‘So long, Victor! So long, Niall! We’ll send you a postcard from the next dimension!’

With that they run out the door and down the stairs, and into history.

Five minutes later, as Skippy is sitting down to eat with Lori’s family, they are straddled on the partition wall. From somewhere
in the darkness beyond, the theme to
Bunnington Village
may be heard, as Geoff thrashes through dock leaves with the St Brigid’s gatekeeper. Directly below, staring up intently
and wagging its stumpy tail in a decidedly foreboding manner, is a small brown-and-white beagle.

‘Maybe it just wants to play,’ Odysseas suggests.

‘Ha,’ Mario says. The dog’s eyes gleam at them through the darkness; its long tongue palpitates over smiling rows of teeth.

‘
In a glade in a forest
,’ Geoff Sproke’s voice wafts over faintly, ‘
where there’s magic in the air…
’

A cold, rain-laced wind plays over their cheeks.

‘This is some plan,’ Mario says sarcastically to Ruprecht’s ignominious silence. ‘Oh yes, clearly the work of a mastermind.’

It appears that at some point during the lead-in to the mission, Operation Condor’s Team Commander and Scientific Director
ate the biscuits intended for the neutralization of Nipper.

‘
Here comes William Bunnington
,’ sings Geoff anxiously, ‘
with his friend Owl – he’s the Mayor…
’

‘
Dog
biscuits! You draw up this big complicated plan, with the bells and the whistles, and then before we even
leave
you
eat
the
dog biscuits
!’

‘I couldn’t help it,’ Ruprecht replies miserably. ‘When I’m nervous I get hungry.’

‘They were
dog biscuits
!’

‘Well, we can’t stay up here for ever,’ Odysseas says.

‘I’m not going down there to get my family jewels chewed off,’ Mario states, then scratches his ear. ‘This damn rayon, it’s
making me itchy!’

‘
Bunnington Village
,’ Geoff, with mounting urgency, ‘
where the squirrels make Nut Soup…
’

‘Lad, why in God’s name do you keep making that infernal racket?’ comes the rough voice of Brody the janitor.

‘It helps me concentrate,’ they hear Geoff reply. ‘When I’m looking for things?’

‘Are you sure your ball even came in here?’

‘I think so,’ Geoff says.

Below, the dog flexes itself in a settling-in sort of way.

‘Maybe we should just abort the mission,’ Mario says.

‘Never!’ comes the defiant reply from his left.

‘Well, what are we going to do, just stay up here all night?’

Ruprecht does not answer.

‘Isn’t that a football right there?’ they hear the guard say.

‘Where?’ Geoff’s voice says.

‘There, right there, you’re looking right at it.’

‘Oh yes – hmm, I’m not sure that’s
my
football…’

‘Well, it’ll do ye –’

‘
A bunny place, a funny place
…’ desperately –

‘Ah for Jesus’ sake –’

‘
… an always bright and sunny place, Bunnington will keep a space for you…
’

‘Stop it! Go home now! I don’t want to see you in here again!’ the guard starts clapping his hands and calling the dog. The
dog, without taking its eye off the top of the wall, barks. ‘Hold on, sounds like Nipper’s found something…’

‘Wait!’ Geoff implores. ‘I have to tell you something! Something of the utmost importance!’

‘Well,
commandante
?’ Mario inquires acidly. ‘May we please go home now?’

But before Ruprecht can reply, Odysseas has peeled off his black sweater, leapt off the wall into the yard and thrown it over
the dog. ‘Quickly!’ he urges the other two, as the sweater charges blindly left and right, emitting muffled barks of ever-growing
anger. Mario and Ruprecht land painfully on the wet asphalt, just as the dog’s vengeful snout pokes into view. ‘Go!’ Odysseas
exhorts, stepping protectively before them; and they take to their heels and run to the shadow of the school. Snarls and the
sound of tearing fabric echo across the empty yard. But there is no time to wonder or grieve, nor is there any way back. The
guard’s feet thump over the ground, his torch-beam flashing in every direction. Without stopping to think, they scurry around
to the back of the school and up the rickety metal staircase, wrestling open the window sash and hurling themselves through
it –

It’s only as they pick themselves up from the moth-eaten carpet that they realize where they are.
Inside
St Brigid’s: inside the
grey walls that have stared back at them for so long, teasing them with the mysteries they conceal. Not yet ready to speak
or move, every breath seeming like a thousand-decibel explosion, the boys roll their eyes at each other in mute incredulity.

One aspect of the plan has panned out – there doesn’t seem to be anybody around. Silently, warily, Ruprecht and Mario tread
away from the window, leaving the dark crenellations of Seabrook behind. The deserted hallway is both alien and familiar,
like the landscape of a dream. There is a chipped dado rail and a picture of Jesus, dewy-eyed and rosy-cheeked as a boy-band
singer; passing into the girls’ dorms, they see through the open doors rumpled bedcovers, balled-up foolscap, posters of footballers
and pop stars, homework timetables, bottles of spot cream – uncannily like the dorms in Seabrook, except in some unplaceable
but totally fundamental way
completely different
.

As they descend the stairs to negotiate the ground floor, this creepy schizoid feeling only grows. Everywhere they look, there
are analogues of their own school – classrooms with cramped benches and scrawled blackboards, printouts on the noticeboards,
trophy cabinets and art-room posters – almost identical, but at the same time, somehow, not, the discrepancy too subtle for
the naked eye and yet omnipresent, as though they’ve entered a parallel universe before the portal has been opened at all,
where instead of atoms everything is composed of some mysterious other entity, quarks of hitherto unseen colours… It is quite
different from how Mario imagined breaking into a girls’ school would be, and the idea that this place has been here, existing,
the whole time he’s been around
is one that he finds deeply unsettling.

If Ruprecht is struck by this he shows no sign; he treks on wordlessly, five or six steps in front of Mario, the pod clinking
gently in the bag slung over his shoulder. Then, up ahead, they hear footsteps, and Ruprecht yanks Mario into an unoccupied
classroom just as two grey-frocked nuns round the corner. In the very back row they crouch beneath the desks, bathed with
sweat, Mario’s breathing heavy and rushed –

‘You’re making too much noise!’ Ruprecht hisses at him.

‘I can’t help it!’ Mario gesticulates. ‘These nuns, they give me the willies…’

The nuns have stopped right outside the door. They are talking about a Brazilian priest who is visiting in spring. One nun
suggests they take him to Knock. The other says Ballinspittle. A polite argument ensues over the competing merits of the materializations
of Our Lady in these two places, one being more accredited, the other more recent, and then – ‘Did you hear something?’

Under his desk, Mario gazes in horror at his phone, which has just released two loud, self-satisfied bleeps, and now emits
two more. Hysterically, Mario fusses over the buttons, trying to shut it up –

‘Could it be mice?’ one nun wonders from the corridor.

‘Funny sort of mice,’ the other says, her tone hardening.

‘
Coronation Street
’s starting.’

‘I’ll just have a peep –’

The light comes on: the nun’s eyes scan the bare surfaces of the desks. The boys hold their breath, clench every muscle, painfully
aware of the fug of sweat and hormones and odours that pump from every pore, waiting for a nostril to twitch in recognition
–

‘Hmmph.’ The light goes off again, and the door closes. ‘That didn’t sound like a mouse to me, you know.’

‘No?’

‘Sounded more like a rat.’

‘Oh goodness, no…’

The voices recede: Mario whips off his balaclava and sucks in lungfuls of air. ‘These nuns,’ he pants, ‘in Italy they are
everywhere, everywhere!’

By the time he has calmed down sufficiently to carry on, their window of opportunity is starting to look decidedly narrow.
Dinner hour is over at eight, and although the students will be continuing from there to Study Hall, the nuns, of whom it
seems Mario has a pathological fear, which Ruprecht thinks is the kind
of thing that ought really to have been mentioned prior to entering the convent, will be at liberty and on the loose.

They exit the classroom and hurry along as directed by the map. Nerves are strained now, and the uncanny
familiarity
of their surroundings paradoxically disorientates them, leading them repeatedly down false paths – ‘That was the chemistry
lab back there, so the gym must be this way!’ ‘No, because the lab was on the right, by the AV Room.’ ‘No, it wasn’t.’ ‘Yes,
it was – just trust me, it’s this way – oh.’ ‘Oh, this is the gym, is it? This is the gym, that they have disguised as a second,
identical AV Room? And they play badminton with the televisions, and hockey with the VCRs? Wow, they must be strong, these
girls, to use heavy AV equipment instead of balls –’ It starts to seem like the school itself is misdirecting them, reacting
hostilely to their presence here – either that, or the corridors simply don’t link up in a linear way, don’t actually correspond
to the map, but instead are obeying some circuitous, rhizomatic feminine principle, the influence of the Mound, maybe…

And then, quite by accident, they find themselves in a recognizably older part of the school. Here there are holes in the
wainscoting and crumbling walls; even the light seems dimmer, greyer. They hasten along by dilapidated rooms stacked full
of chairs, till they arrive at a pair of wooden doors. Very softly, Ruprecht twists the doorknob and peeks inside. Inside
there are climbing frames and mini-soccer nets: the gym. ‘Meaning that
this
,’ turning one hundred and eighty degrees to the door across the corridor, ‘must be the Locked Room.’ He can’t keep the quaver
out of his voice.

The door, of course, is locked when they try it. Ruprecht sets down his equipment on the floor, produces the OpenSesame!™
Skeleton Key and inserts it in the keyhole. After jiggling it around a moment, he tries the door again. It is still locked.
‘Hmm,’ Ruprecht says, stroking his chin.

‘What’s the matter?’ Mario asks him. He does not like this corridor. Mechanical noises are emanating from somewhere, and a
draught that seems unnaturally cold circles his ankles. Without
replying, Ruprecht examines the teeth of the key and replaces it in the keyhole.

‘What is it?’ Mario repeats, hopping from one foot to the other.

‘This is supposed to be able to open any conventional lock,’ Ruprecht says, twisting it about.

‘It’s not working?’

‘I can’t quite seem to get it to connect…’

‘We don’t have time for this! Try something else!’

‘It has a guarantee,’ Ruprecht points out.

‘Just use the drill and get it over with.’

‘The drill will make noise.’

‘It’ll take two
seconds
with the drill.’

‘All right, all right –’ He looks at Mario expectantly.

‘What?’ Mario says.

‘Well, give it to me then.’

‘I thought you had it.’

‘Why would I have it?’

‘Because I don’t have it…’ The realization hits them simultaneously; Mario’s shoulders slump. ‘I thought you said you planned
this.’

‘I did,’ Ruprecht says humbly. ‘It’s just that I made the plan before I knew what was going to happen.’

It is then that they hear the voice. By its pitch it is clearly a woman’s, but any feminine softness has long desiccated away,
replaced by an eldritch darkness and attended by what sounds an awful lot like the snipping of spectral shears… For a moment
they remain frozen to the spot, and then – ‘Run,’ gurgles Ruprecht. Mario doesn’t need telling twice. Scrambling his bag from
the ground, he is set to scarper down the corridor when a hand fastens about his arm –

‘What are you
doing
?’ hisses Ruprecht.

Mario stares at him, nearly apoplectic with terror. ‘I’m
running
.’

‘It’s
coming
from down there,’ Ruprecht blinks back at him.

‘It’s not, it’s coming from up
there
…’

They pause, almost but not quite clutching each other, with their ears cocked. The hideous dried-out croak is drawing inevitably
closer – apparently, whether by some quirk of the architecture, the type of stone in the masonry perhaps or the curious way
the corridor bends, from
both directions at once
. The boys gibber at each other helplessly. With every passing instant now the temperature drops precipitously, the grey light
wanes; the ghastly voice chants its message, necrotic and Latin, over and again, as though doomed to repeat it, doomed for
eternity, a doom that any second now they will be sharing, when the voice’s owner comes around that corner, or the other corner,
or possibly even both corners, to find them quaking before her –