Robin Jarvis-Jax 01 Dancing Jax Page 24

  “I know it’s nowhere near the same degree as those two lads,” Mr Hitchin, the chemistry teacher, said, “but a lot of pupils are acting out of character. Did anyone else notice that yesterday?”

  “I think it’s a reaction to the Disaster,” somebody answered.

  Martin pricked up his ears.

  “What does that counsellor the police provided say?” he asked. “I haven’t actually seen her about. What’s her name?”

  “Something Clucas, I think.”

  “It’s Angela, isn’t it?”

  “I thought it was Ayleen.”

  “Well, whatever it is, I think Paul could do with paying her a visit and talking last Friday night through.”

  “That Anthea Clucas is starting to get in my clack!” Barry Milligan’s gruff voice barked as he came marching in. “She’s swigged enough herbal tea to sink the Bismarck in and handed out Jaffa cakes and sympathy to a grand total of seven kids all week. I could have done that myself.”

  “It wouldn’t be herbal tea you’d be drinking though, would it, Barry?” Mr Wynn said acidly.

  “Isn’t there a sunbed pining for you someplace?” the Head asked. The games master pretended not to hear.

  “You know what she’s suggesting?” Barry continued to the others. “Group therapy sessions. She’s taken over one of the music rooms and wants half a dozen kids at a time to go in there to share their experiences and draw pictures, blah blah blah. She wants to read poetry to them.”

  “I think that’s a wonderful idea,” Mrs Yates said. “Some children might not want to be seen going to her on their own. A few at once isn’t anywhere near so bad and they may open up a bit more readily. She’s a trained professional – she knows what she’s doing.”

  Barry shrugged. “Well, whatever this ‘Blessed be’ thing is that’s going round,” he said, pouring himself a black coffee, “she’s caught it as well. God knows what sort of happy-clappy poetry she’ll be reading the kids, but I don’t think Jesus would want any of our lot for a sunbeam.”

  “Have a word with her, will you, Barry?” Martin asked. “See if she can fit Paul in sometime.”

  “Will do, squire. If you think it’ll do him any good. She’ll be gone by next week though. Once the memorial service is over this Sunday, I think we can start getting back to normal again.”

  “And when can we look forward to waving goodbye to you?” Mr Wynn asked dryly.

  “Oh… long before any of your shoddily coached teams ever win a trophy,” Barry answered. “Has anyone ever told you that you’ve got a truly ironic name?”

  The games teacher scowled and left the staffroom, huffing and blowing.

  “Something I said?” Barry asked with mock innocence. “How can someone with muscles like that be so thin-skinned? Do you think it’s a side-effect of all the tanning he does? He’s what’s known as a Mangerine.”

  “So you’ll put Paul’s name down for the counsellor today?” Martin reminded him.

  “Consider it done. He and five of his cohorts can trot off to her this afternoon and she can ‘Blessed be’ them all she likes.”

  Martin thanked him, little realising the danger he had just placed the eleven-year-old in.

  That morning Anthea Clucas, the counsellor who was supposed to be there to help the children talk through the trauma of the Disaster, saw eighteen pupils. When they emerged from the commandeered music room, none of them were the same.

  Sandra Dixon was running a temperature that morning and so her concerned mother kept her off school. She could not understand why her daughter’s bridesmaid’s dress was on the floor in a sopping wet heap. She couldn’t get any sense from the girl. She just wanted to be left alone with a book. Perhaps she should call the doctor?

  “No, good mistress,” Sandra said when she heard her mother suggest this. “I would be more soothed if you were to stay and read to me.”

  “You’re too old for that!” Mrs Dixon replied. “Have you spoken to Debbie yet? She rang last night wondering why you’d gone so quiet on her. You two used to be so close…”

  “Please,” the girl insisted. “Read just a page or two. It would give me such comfort – and you too, I believe.”

  And so her mother sat on the edge of her daughter’s bed and began to read to her…

  Emma Taylor had spent an anxious night and felt haggard and more irritable than usual from lack of sleep. She had half expected the police to turn up on the doorstep before she left the house. Had that gormless Conor grassed her up or not? She only went into school with the intention of finding out and trying any means she could to deter him if he hadn’t already.

  At registration she found him hunched over the desk and was surprised to discover he was reading a book, an actual book, not one of the football programmes he usually pored over. She punched him on the shoulder.

  “So you snitched on me yet or what?” she demanded bluntly. The boy lifted his gaze and seemed to look right through her.

  “What’s up with you?” Emma snorted. “Can’t read and think at the same time?”

  His blank expression changed as he seemed to vaguely recognise her. “You remind me of the Jill of Spades,” he said faintly.

  “You what?”

  “You are the Jill of Spades,” he said more definitely.

  “Watch your mouth!”

  “I have no liking for the House of Spades’ cruel daughter.”

  “I definitely don’t dig you if that’s what you mean.”

  “Leave me – I am still angry for what you did to the noble Accipiter.”

  Emma’s forehead scrunched up. “You idiot – it were a knackered Fiesta an’ it weren’t my fault.”

  “It was a fine hunting bird. Too good for your murdering hands.”

  “You been sniffing your trainers, you gonk? All I want to know is, have you called the filth yet? Are they gonna come knockin’ or what?”

  Conor leaned back in his chair, revealing as he did so the playing card he had pinned to the lapel of his school blazer that morning. It was the Jack of Clubs.

  “Your deeds and caprices shall find their own dark rewards,” he told her. “One day your plots and schemes will misfire and you will be caught in your own nets.”

  “Is that a no?”

  “It is a caution you should heed.” And with that, the boy returned his attention to the book.

  Emma stood there, confused and speechless. What was he going on about? Was he threatening her? When the bell rang for the first lesson, she was none the wiser.

  At lunchtime she went to the football field to try and speak to him again, but Conor was not there and only three lads were half-heartedly kicking a ball about instead of the usual dozen or so. Moving through the playground, she began to notice that playing cards were pinned to the jackets and jumpers of other pupils. Most were simply number cards, but here and there were picture cards. She could not think what their significance was. Emma was usually on top of all the trends and crazes, and swiftly decided which to adopt and which to ridicule. Had a band brought out an album that had slipped beneath her radar? Perhaps it was sport-related, in which case she didn’t care. It would make sense if Conor was showing some kind of allegiance to a team, but playing cards were a weird way of doing it.

  Seeing a small boy in Year 8 standing alone in a corner by the defunct drinking fountain, she strode over and jabbed at the five of diamonds secured to his blazer.

  “What’s this then, you dork?” she interrogated him. “What’s it about?”

  Instead of being intimidated, as she had expected, the boy looked at her in the same far-off way that Conor had earlier.

  “I be a page to the House of Diamonds,” he answered proudly.

  “You what?”

  “There be uproar in the West Tower this day,” he said. “My Lord, the Knave, has stole the King of Hearts’ great Healing Ruby and will not tell where it be stowed ’less His Majesty’s fair daughter buys the information with a kiss. The Court be outraged and the
Jill of Hearts swears she won’t be bartered with, like a cabbage in the market. I be keeping out the way, for tempers be running hotter than spitting goose fat in every quarter.”

  “Is this off the telly?” Emma snapped.

  “’Tis the honest truth!” the boy swore. “I heard the Constable himself declare it. Oh, what scandal! When the Ismus hears of it, Magpie Jack had best fly.”

  The boy was so adamant and sure that Emma stepped away from him, unnerved.

  “Blessed be,” he said, returning to his daydreaming.

  Emma looked around the playground. Other children stood apart and alone like him, with the same rapt expression on their faces. But there were also groups gathered in tight circles, reading from books. All of them were wearing playing cards on their uniforms. The girl hadn’t seen anything like this before. Whatever was going on, it was unnatural and she didn’t like it. She wished Ashleigh and Keeley were here. They would have found something to laugh at in this creepy behaviour. Emma missed them more than she had ever thought possible. She wondered how she would feel on Sunday when they would be buried.

  Paul Thornbury had received the message from Martin that he and five of his classmates were to see the counsellor in the last double period that afternoon. Paul rolled his eyes when he heard. Martin was still convinced he needed to discuss the Disaster so that he wouldn’t mess about with fireworks again. Why wouldn’t anyone listen to him? He thought about the counsellor, Mrs Clucas, and wondered what she was like. If he could get just one adult on his side, he wouldn’t feel so isolated and useless.

  Standing in the playground, he too saw the playing cards some of the other children were wearing and he realised for the first time just how many pupils that book had affected.

  “Or infected,” he murmured to himself.

  It was like a swiftly spreading disease. Even the teachers on break duty scratched their chins at the new craze of wearing playing cards. When they discussed it among themselves in the staffroom afterwards, Mr Roy thought this fad should be nipped in the bud and the cards banned.

  “Remember the Pokémon thing years ago?” the geography teacher said. “Those trading and collecting games just aren’t nice. They encourage bullying and cheating and the younger ones get ripped off by the bigger kids.”

  “But this isn’t a swapsy game, is it?” asked Miss Smyth. “As far as I can tell, it’s some sort of house identity.”

  “Then there were those Crazy Bones,” Mr Roy continued. “These things get out of control.”

  “The kids seem a lot quieter if you ask me,” Miss Smyth added.

  “Wait till this week is over,” Barry Milligan told everyone. “Let them do this if they want. It’s not offending anyone, is it? No one’s fighting, for a change. Like I said this morning, once the funerals and the service are out of the way, we can get back to normal.”

  And so the playing cards remained pinned to the children’s clothes.

  Later that afternoon, when the last double period of the day commenced, Anthea Clucas watched the small group of children from Paul’s class file into the music room and sit on the chairs that were arranged in a semi-circle before her. None of them were wearing playing cards. She smiled at them, as they looked at her expectantly. Then she raised the book she held in her hands and began to read from Dancing Jacks.

  The children fidgeted uncomfortably for several minutes – until the power of the words drew them in and all five of them were lost.

  At exactly the same moment, Paul Thornbury was several miles away, walking down Hamilton Road in the middle of town. He had decided to bunk off and avoid seeing the totally unnecessary counsellor. There was someone else he wanted to speak to, far more urgently. His truancy that afternoon saved him.

  It did not take him long to reach the estate agent’s. He glanced at the photographs of the houses in the window, peering between them to the desks within. There were three of them and at once he spotted the person he was looking for. With a determined look on his face, he pushed the door open and went inside.

  Trudy Bishop was tapping placidly at her keyboard. She was surfing the Net while waiting for a call about a property in nearby Trimley St Mary. A shadow fell across her desk and she immediately clicked off the ABBA appreciation forum and glanced up. A young boy stood before her.

  “Hello?” she said, looking past him to see if there was an accompanying parent.

  The boy took a breath as if summoning up courage to speak. “I’m Paul,” he introduced himself.

  “Trudy,” she replied with a practised, but questioning smile. She was a short, plump woman with spectacles. Her desk was not the tidiest, and there was a half-eaten packet of Monster Munch and a custard doughnut in her drawer.

  “How can I help?” she asked.

  The boy stared at her intently. “I sent you an email,” he said in a low, important whisper like a secret agent as he waggled his eyebrows at her.

  Trudy’s professional mask slipped for an instant as she thought about the dating site she had joined recently and the odd messages she had received from some of its members. But none of them could possibly be this kid, could they? You just didn’t know who was who on the Web.

  “Well, you can’t be the Capricorn with a four-wheel drive and a boa constrictor,” she said dryly.

  “Eh?”

  “What can I do for you?” she asked.

  Paul glanced around cautiously. “Last night,” he said. “The one about Austerly Fellows and your ghost hunting. You replied this morning and…”

  The woman’s face changed immediately. “You sent me that?” she asked in a rush of shock and surprise. That email had come from a child? “I told you not to contact me. How dare you come here! What do you think you’re playing at?”

  “But I have to talk to you about him! You have to listen to me. No one else will and I’m getting really scared! It’s important – really important!”

  Trudy could see he was telling the truth. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her colleagues looking over to check what was going on. She waved at them to get on with their work.

  “I’ll give you five minutes,” she told Paul in a hushed voice. “But not in here.” She rose and the boy followed her outside.

  “Bit young for you, Trudy!” one of the other estate agents heckled as they passed. She was too preoccupied to even hear him.

  “Five minutes, kid,” she repeated when they were standing on the pavement. “And that is more than you deserve for doorstepping me like this. You’ve got a ruddy nerve.”

  “I couldn’t think what else to do. I had to know what happened when you went to that house.”

  “Why? What’s it to you?”

  “Because something is happening right now, something wrong and freaky, and it’s all because of Austerly Fellows.”

  Trudy closed her eyes for a moment. “Anything to do with that man would be,” she said. “Whatever it is you’re involved in, stop it. If you’re thinking of going to that house, don’t. What are you, twelve?”

  “Eleven.”

  “Oh, give me strength! I’ve got underwear older than you. Listen, you stay away from that place, do you hear me?”

  “No danger of me going anywhere near it, even if I knew where it was!” Paul assured her. “I just want to find out more about this Fellows bloke. There isn’t much on the Net.”

  “The less you know, the safer you’ll be,” Trudy said firmly. “He was a dangerous man when he was alive and an even more dangerous one after he died – if he ever did die. You know what he was, don’t you?”

  “Wikipedia said he was some kind of devil worshipper.”

  “Do you even understand what that is? It’s not like a computer game with red cartoon demons running about with pitchforks. It’s not a Hallowe’en fancy-dress party. It’s serious and nasty and dangerous.”

  Paul nodded. “I know,” he said. “I’ve seen that already.”

  “Then keep away from it,” she warned. “Where on earth are your pa
rents? Why are they letting you get mixed up in this?”

  “I’ve tried telling them, but no one will believe me!” he replied impatiently. “No one – not one.”

  Trudy ran a hand through her bobbed hair. “I wouldn’t have either,” she said. “Not before that night.”

  “You think Fellows is still alive?” the boy asked. “Wiki said he’d disappeared. He couldn’t still be around, not after all this time.”

  “Something is,” she answered, lowering her voice as a shopper ambled by. “Something is alive and in that house. Guarding whatever’s in there.”

  “Tell me what happened to you, please. It might help.”

  Trudy rubbed her eyes beneath her glasses. “You’ve seen the website,” she began. “You know we went there looking for… I don’t know – a spooky time. We had no idea how stupid we were: me, Geoff with the camera, Reg, Keith and Reg’s Auntie Doreen. She’s always said she was a bit psychic. She can predict the weather better than John Kettley and is good at finding lost watches and car keys, but nothing big league – just the odd feeling, cold spots and the like. Anyway, soon as we got to the end of that drive, she started to panic. She didn’t want to go any further. She said the house was ‘full and waiting’, her exact words, ‘full and waiting’. She said ‘he’ was in there, ‘he had never left’. She was going on and on about blackness, about mould and blackness. Geoff even filmed her and we were laughing. Oh, good God, we laughed at her…”

  Trudy’s mouth was dry and she tried to moisten her lips with a rasping tongue.

  “She made such a fuss that we left the car right there, with her still throwing a wobbly in it. She begged us not to go, but we took no notice. We were so stupid. We had no idea what we were doing, like toddlers putting their hands in a fire to see what it feels like. We walked up that drive, giggling and acting the goat. So bloody clueless.”

  A bus rumbled by and Trudy waited till it had gone before continuing. “So we get to the front door. It’s a big place. You’ve seen the photo?”

  “On your site, yes.”

  “Then you know it’s run-down and boarded up. We take some pics, mess about like teenagers. We have a drink. Geoff films us being daft. We were only having a bit of silly fun – that’s all it was ever meant to be. When you get to my age, divorced with two grown-up kids, you’ll understand. And then… then I suggest we break in and have a seance. That was my brilliant idea. I egged them on. Well done, Trudy.”