The Grey Girl (15 page)

I let myself in through the kitchen door, my heart still racing from stealing the shadow puppet. Katie was busy baking cakes for the guests' arrival later that afternoon, but I ignored her and the glorious smells coming from the oven and headed straight out of the kitchen, through the hallway and towards the stairs. I needed to get to my bedroom – I wanted to hold Fiona's shadow puppet next to the one I'd found in the attic.

I almost collided with Nell as I reached the staircase. My arm instinctively shot behind my back so the shadow puppet wouldn't be in her sightline. ‘Your cousin's not well,' Nell said gravely, seeming not to notice that I was hiding something from her. ‘He hasn't got a fever but he won't get out of bed. One minute he says his head hurts, the next minute it's his stomach that's upset. If I didn't know better I'd think he was faking it. I just don't know what's wrong with him. And your poor aunt …'

I felt my breath hitch in my chest. I knew exactly what was wrong with Toby. He was petrified. Too scared to get out of bed because of what was waiting for him in the shadows of Dudley Hall. ‘I'll go up and see him,' I said, pushing past her and marching up the stairs, being careful to move the shadow puppet in front of me so it was still out of view.

‘The guests are arriving in a couple of hours,' she called after me. ‘I'll need your help.'

As I walked onto the first-floor landing I quickly glanced down at Nell. She was still standing at the foot of the stairs, watching me. I wondered if she could read me as well as Fiona could, if she could see on my face that I'd been to visit her sister that morning and she'd told me the whole story. I knew about how they'd broken into Dudley Hall as children and seen the grey girl, how they'd taken the shadow puppet from the house – the same puppet that I'd just stolen from Fiona. But I was still no closer to discovering who she was and how she died. Worried that everything was painted on my face, I quickly turned away from Nell and hurried up the second flight of stairs.

As I walked out into the second-floor landing I could hear Aunt Meredith talking on the phone. She was speaking frantically, obviously distressed. ‘I just don't know what to do,' I heard her say. I walked towards the sound of her voice. It was coming from behind a closed door – her and Richard's bedroom. ‘He won't even speak to me now. He's just staring off into space as if … yes, doctor. I understand. Yes … right away.'

I heard the sound of a phone click down on the receiver, and before I had a chance to move away Aunt Meredith appeared on the landing in front of me. I'd never seen her look like that before. Her eyes were red from lack of sleep and her hair was greasy from where she kept running her fingers through it with worry. It struck me how horribly she looked like my mother at that moment.

‘I'm going to take Toby to hospital,' Aunt Meredith said, a tear escaping from the corner of her eye.

‘What? Why?'

‘Something's very wrong with him, Suzy. He's catatonic. He won't speak to me. He's just staring into space. It's as if he's locked away inside himself and won't come out.'

I looked over towards Toby's bedroom door. Before I knew it I was walking towards it, pushing the door open and walking in. The light was dim, and my small cousin lay on his side in bed, facing the door. Aunt Meredith was right. He was catatonic. His eyes were wide open, staring into space. The whole of his little body was rigid, frozen still in terror. His two small hands were clasped in front of him, holding something tight against his chest, which rose and fell with each rapid breath. I moved towards the bed to get a better look at what he was holding, and my heart lurched with sickness within me as I realised what it was.

It was the shadow puppet of the beautiful maiden I'd found in the attic. The other half of the pair.

‘Why has he got that?' I said, sounding alarmed. ‘Where did he get it from?'

‘I don't know, Suzy. What are you talking about?' Aunt Meredith said, following me into the room.

The earth stopped turning as I realised what had happened to put Toby into a catatonic trance. She'd been here. She'd visited him and put that thing in his hand. Seeing her again had tipped my poor, tiny cousin over the edge. He'd disappeared so far into himself to get away from her my aunt was worried she'd never get him back. I bent forwards and quickly ripped the old puppet from Toby's hands.

‘I need to get him to the hospital,' Aunt Meredith said, not noticing what I'd done. She walked towards him, and started to nervously brush the hair from his vacant eyes. ‘I'm going to drive him there now.' I watched in horror, the two puppets behind my back, as she darted around the room with frenzied movement, packing up a bag of Toby's things to take in to the hospital. ‘Will you be okay on your own tonight, Suzy? I'm not sure when I'll be back. Nell and Katie have everything they need for the party. I've typed up your story and characters – Nell will give them to the guests when they arrive. All you'll need to do is play the murder victim and …'

‘I'll be fine,' I lied. The thought of dressing up as a schoolgirl who died in Dudley Hall made me feel nothing but sick to my stomach.

After quickly putting the two shadow puppets in my bedroom, I helped Aunt Meredith load a small overnight bag into her car as she carried Toby into the back seat. She promised to call me with any news as soon as possible and then drove off with a screech of tyres upon gravel. I went back inside the house and closed the door behind me. The walls seemed to creak and the air crackled as my heart beat furiously inside me. I closed my eyes and sank my head back against the heavy wooden door. This had gone too far. This had to stop –
she
had to be stopped. For her to appear before me was horrible, but for her to taunt my little cousin until he sank into some kind of trance was unforgivable. I knew one way or another that this had to end – soon. I had to find a way to rid her from the house forever.

‘Suzy,' came Nell's voice from the corner of the hallway. I opened my eyes and caught her staring at me. I briefly wondered how long she'd been standing there for. ‘The guests will be here in an hour. Go and get into costume and get ready to greet them.'

My costume was simple – a school uniform comprised of a blue skirt and cardigan, a white blouse and knee-high socks. I wore my simple black ballet pumps, scraped my hair back into a neat ponytail and kept my make-up to a minimum. I stared at myself in my bedroom mirror. I hadn't worn a school uniform for months, and I'd been dreading putting one on. But staring at my reflection didn't horrify me as much as I had thought it might. It was someone else staring back at me in the mirror – I was playing a part. I looked myself in the eye and took a deep breath; I could do this, I could pretend.

As the guests began to arrive I lined up with Nell and Katie by the front door. Nell was dressed in an old-fashioned matron's uniform and Katie was in the same costume as me, only she wore a ‘Prefect' badge pinned to her cardigan.

‘Please each pick up an envelope from the hallway table.' Nell smiled at the guests as they streamed in to Dudley Hall with a clatter of suitcase wheels and excited giggles. They were much younger than normal murder mystery party guests – girls in their twenties. There must have been fifteen of them in total. ‘Each envelope will contain your characters for the weekend, along with smaller envelopes containing the clues to be revealed throughout the weekend. Don't open these smaller envelopes until you're instructed to.'

‘Which way are our bedrooms?' one of the girls asked.

Katie dutifully led them up to their rooms for the weekend. An hour later the hen party were dressed in their blue school uniforms and standing in the library, awaiting further instructions. ‘Welcome to Dudley Hall,' Nell boomed loudly. ‘The year is 1952. King George VI has just died and his daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, has come to the throne. Winston Churchill is Prime Minister, 1.4 million people in Great Britain own a television set and Team GB has won a gold medal at the Winter Olympics. You are all schoolgirls at the Dudley Hall boarding school, having been orphaned during the Second World War. And amongst your lessons and games of hockey this weekend you may want to keep your eyes peeled for something far more sinister … because we have a murderer in our midst.' The obligatory ‘ooh' and ‘aah' sounds echoed throughout the library. ‘Now, please help yourselves to tea and cake and be ready to be seated for dinner at seven o'clock sharp.'

The flurry of activity over the next few hours was exactly what I needed. I helped Nell and Katie prepare the guests' dinner and ply them with endless cups of tea and pieces of cake. It was a fantastic distraction, but every now and then my mind would wander back to the two shadow puppets sitting upstairs in my bedroom, and I worried about how this would all end. I couldn't bear the thought of Toby lying in a hospital bed, Aunt Meredith holding his hand and praying he'd be okay.

Nell and Katie served the guests their dinner, and once they had finished their dessert course I opened the front door and quietly stepped out into the night. I hadn't noticed it grow dark, but the evening was pitch black, with only the faintest glow from the moon. Just as I had written in
The Ghost of Dudley Hall
, I stood outside the dining room window and gave the guests my best blood-curdling scream. I then lay on the cold gravel ground, bending my arms and legs into as uncomfortable a position as I could manage so I looked more authentic.

‘She must have jumped from a top-floor window!' one of the guests cried as they ran out to find my lifeless body on the driveway.

‘Someone pushed her from her dormitory window!' another person added.

‘This is so exciting!' gushed the voice of another girl. ‘Murder at Dudley Hall!'

The party soon complained of the chill in the air and quickly disappeared back inside the house to get warm, happy that the body had been discovered and the murder mystery was under way. Once the front door had been shut behind them I opened my eyes and stared up into the starless sky, watching as my breath made small puffs of white cloud above me. Lying on the ground, looking up at the Dudley Hall gargoyles looming over me, I felt strangely peaceful. But my peace was quickly ended by the sound of motorbike wheels scrunching down on gravel. As the bike pulled to a halt I got to my feet and began to shake off the stray stones that had clung to my school uniform.

‘You promised me I could trust you,' Nate growled at me as he jumped from his bike and pulled his helmet off. I watched, speechless, as he stormed past me into the house. ‘You stole that stupid puppet from my mum, Suzy, didn't you? It's not yours to take – it belongs to my family.'

‘You shouldn't be in here.' I ran after him. I pulled at his white T-shirt so he spun around to face me. We stood opposite one another in the grand hallway as the sound of the party guests seeped underneath the closed dining-room door. ‘The house is full of murder mystery guests – they can't see you.'

‘I'll be gone as soon as you give me the puppet back.' He glared at me.

I nervously glanced towards the back corridor, praying that Nell wouldn't hear us and come out to see why Nate had driven up here to confront me. ‘I need it,' I admitted to him quietly.

‘What could you possibly need an old piece of junk like that for?' Nate asked me, his voice still hard and his eyes unforgiving.

‘You wouldn't believe me if I told you.'

‘Try me.'

I stood silently for a moment, weighing up whether to tell him the truth or not. ‘I need to show you something,' I said eventually.

Silently, I led him up the grand staircase, onto the second-floor landing and into my room. Nate's eyebrows raised as I reached to close my bedroom door behind him. ‘You wanted to show me the inside of your bedroom? Suzy, don't think you can distract me with …'

‘Oh, shut up, Nate.' I rolled my eyes and made my way over to the computer. ‘The house is crawling with murder mystery guests and Nell's just downstairs. I don't want them to see you. Besides, it's time I told you something.'

Nate shook his head at me and exhaled loudly. ‘Fine. Nice room by the way,' he said, glancing about. He opened the door to the bathroom and looked in there, then peered out of the window onto the grounds below. ‘Very posh.'

‘Here, look at this.' I pulled up one of the pictures from Frankie's phone onto my computer screen. The one with the girl standing by the window.

Nate looked at the computer screen for a second, and then looked back at me. ‘What exactly am I meant to be looking at here?' he asked.

‘Er, the ghostly girl by the window.'

‘It's an empty room,' he said with a raised eyebrow. ‘There's no one there.'

I looked down at the computer screen again. I was not imagining it. Frankie had not been imagining it. There, in the centre of the picture, as clear as the window she stood next to, was the little grey girl. I pointed to the screen in frustration. ‘She's right there.'

‘You're pointing at a wall.'

‘No, I'm not,' I said, feeling irritated. ‘Can't you see her?'

‘Er, there's nothing there to see.' He laughed nervously.

‘There!' I shouted at him, thrusting my finger towards the grainy image of the grey girl in the picture.

‘It's a trick of the light,' he shrugged. ‘Okay, it looks a bit like the shape of a girl, but it's probably just a shadow or …' He stopped and studied me. A slow smile spread over his face and something passed over his eyes, as if he was suddenly shutting down. ‘You're letting my mum's stories get to you, Suzy. Don't listen to her.'

‘Your mum's not crazy. The grey girl really exists – she's here in this house. This photo is …' I stopped talking as something out of the window caught my eye.