The next day I felt ready to write again. After breakfast I took myself into the garden with my notepad and pen. I didn’t fancy being alone in the boathouse, so I stayed close to the house. I ran my hands over the pentagram scar on the side of the weeping willow tree as I sat down next to the flowing brook. I leant my back against the tree and wrote away for a couple of hours.
As I dotted the end of a sentence a huge black bird swooped down and landed on the ground a few short paces away from me. A raven. I’d seen them before when I visited the Tower of London on a school trip. Legend said that if the ravens ever left the Tower then England would fall. Whatever that meant. I idly worried if the bird in front of me had flown all the way from London, and if England was due to fall because of him. I watched as he pecked at the ground and jerked his head about. He fluttered his wings and launched himself into the air. I followed his flight as he swooped up towards the house, towards an open window on the top floor of the building. The last window on the right at the very top of the house. The room that was locked. The room that I so desperately wanted to see inside.
I absently got to my feet and walked towards the house, all the time not taking my eyes from the window I’d seen the raven disappear into. I came closer to the house and shielded my eyes from the sun as I looked up. The window to the locked room was wide open. It was large enough to climb through if you could get up there.
If I wanted to get into the room then that was my way. I had to follow the path of the raven. He was showing me the way. My eyes traced a route down from the window onto the ground below. There was an old drainpipe running down the side of the house. The drainpipe looked new; it must have been put in there when they renovated the roof. It would hold my weight, I was certain of it.
Before I could convince myself it was a bad idea I threw my pen and notepad to the ground, walked over to the drainpipe and prepared to climb.
The drainpipe was as sturdy as it looked and firmly fixed to the side of the house. I placed one Converse trainer on the drainpipe’s bottom support and propelled myself up. There was another support at head height, I grabbed onto that and placed my other foot onto the ground-floor window ledge. The window looked into the lounge, which I knew would be empty at that time of the week without party guests to sit in it. Anyone who caught a glimpse of a red-haired teenager shimmying up a drainpipe would have done something to stop me. But as I reached for the next support on the drainpipe and pulled myself higher, using the top of the ground-floor window as my next foothold, there was no one there to force me back down. Once I’d cleared the first storey I knew nothing would stop me from reaching the top. I was already a good two metres from the ground – there was no turning back now.
I couldn’t let myself look down as I continued to scale higher up the side of the house. The drainpipe ruts and windowsills provided me with sure and steady footholds and I took my time with each move. All the tree-climbing practice I’d had as a tomboy child had put me in good stead. Like a pawn in a game of chess I moved myself up the side of the house with careful precision. Soon I was level with the first-floor windows. I was halfway to the roof and halfway to the open attic window. My arms were starting to ache with the tension of heaving up my body weight. The tips of my fingers were numb from gripping the smooth edges of the drainpipe, and the inside of my thighs were beginning to fatigue from clenching the pipe tightly between them as I climbed.
I took a moment to rest as I cleared the first floor window. Just a few more moves and I’d be over the gargoyles and onto the roof. I pressed my weight into the drainpipe, gripped the pipe between my aching thighs and relaxed my hands for the briefest of moments. My heart was pounding, and I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to try to steady my nerves. As I opened my eyes, a movement in the corner of my vision nearly swept me off the side of the house. A black raven swooped down from the roof. The motion of the bird made my stomach drop like a lurching elevator. I felt the urge to vomit and suddenly all I wanted was to feel my feet flat on the ground. I was aware that my hands were shaking, and my thighs wobbled where they gripped the pipe. I needed to keep moving or I’d fall to my death.
I looked up and saw my next handhold, a drainpipe support just a foot above my head. Shakily, I stretched out my left hand and reached for it. I looked for the next foothold – a small air vent cut into the house. Before I allowed myself to think I pushed onwards, higher. Next step was another drainpipe support. Before I knew it I was reaching for the face of a stone gargoyle and shakily heaving myself up onto the gently sloping roof. The roof tiles were new and firm, not a scrap of slippery moss in sight. The window to the attic room was now within reaching distance.
Not thinking about what I might find inside the room, I launched myself up. I scrambled over the roof tiles, running up the sloping roof like I was a child scrambling up a sandbank. Just as I felt gravity try to pull me down, I reached for the crumbling window ledge. I grasped it between my numb fingers and somehow pulled myself towards it. Next thing I knew I had both hands on the window ledge, then my right foot was pushing at the rusted edging of the window pane. I can’t remember how I got myself in through the window, all I remember was lying flat on my back on the attic room floor. Panting for breath and shaking from head to toe like someone who’d just escaped the gallows. I was in, I’d done it.
I pulled myself up so I sat below the window I’d just climbed through, my back pressed against the attic room wall. My eyes scanned the room I’d spent the last few days obsessing over. I was finally inside.
It wasn’t like the other rooms in the attic. This room was crammed full of things. There was a small bed pressed up against the exterior wall. There was no mattress on the bed, and the rusted springs and metal headboard looked ancient. At the foot of the bed was a rotten wooden wardrobe, the door hanging off the hinges. On the other side of the room was a large piece of furniture covered by an old dust sheet. Beside that was an old wooden trunk, the lid secured in place by a padlock. This must have been one of the schoolgirls’ bedrooms. It looked as though nothing had been touched for a long, long time. Decades, maybe longer. I slowly stood up and walked towards the small table next to the bed. It was scattered with dust-covered cut-out shapes stuck on to sticks. I picked one up. It was a black figure of a woman, parts of her dress and face cut out. As I held it up to look closer I noticed the shadow it cast on the far wall – an elegant maiden. A long, medieval dress and flowing thick hair. ‘A shadow puppet,’ I whispered.
The sound of something rustling in the wardrobe made me jump. My fingers closed tightly around the shadow puppet’s stick as I turned around to face the old wardrobe. Something was inside it, inside and moving about. Nervously, I stepped towards the wardrobe doors. The rustling sound intensified and I reached forward, ready to pull the rotten door wide open and see what was inside. At that moment a black bird burst out of the wardrobe, nearly crashing into me as it flew past and out of the window into the fading daylight.
I turned away and tried to catch my breath, feeling so stupid for letting myself be scared. I’d known the ravens were nesting in the room before I’d come up here – they’d led me here. There was nothing to be afraid of. Resolute, I walked over to whatever was covered by the dust sheet in the corner of the room. With the shadow puppet still in one hand, I reached for the edge of the dust sheet with the other. I tugged it hard and pulled the sheet clean away. Beneath was a child’s dressing table and small stool. Propped up on the table top, lying against the wall was a shattered mirror. It looked as though someone had struck it in the centre – all the cracks began at a central point and bled out to the edges. The room behind me reflected in the mirror shards, and I could see a dozen red-haired girls looking gormlessly back at me.
The mirror was framed with dark wood, and there were words scratched into the bottom of the frame. I moved towards it, my reflections getting bigger as I tried to read the words someone had scratched into the wood.
I am half sick of shadows
No sooner had I finished reading the words than there was another sound behind me. This time it wasn’t coming from the wardrobe. It didn’t sound like the rustling of a bird. It sounded like the quiet crying of a child. Slowly, I turned away from the shattered mirror and looked around the cluttered room. There was no one there. I was all alone. The sound of crying came again, louder this time. I could hear it behind me, as if it were coming from the mirror. I spun around and froze in horror as I saw the reflection of a small grey girl in the shards of mirror. She was crouched on the floor and scratching manically at the floorboard beneath her feet as she sobbed. I could hear the sound of her nails tearing at the wood. I closed my eyes and counted to ten, just like a doctor had once told me to do if I should find myself having a delusion.
I opened my eyes, hoping the grey girl would have vanished. But she was still there, reflected in the shards of the broken mirror. Only now she wasn’t crouched on the ground scratching at the floor, she was standing and staring straight at me. Her face was stained with tears, her hands outstretched towards me. Reaching for me. In the mirrors’ reflections she was standing behind me, at my shoulder. I turned around again and for the briefest of moments I saw her in front of me. Her face a mask of desperate horror, her lips parted, and in between her sobs she cried, ‘Help me. Help me.’
The next thing I heard was the sound of my own screams.
The girl vanished and I was alone in the room.
I bolted for the door, desperate to get out.
I rattled the handle violently. The door wouldn’t open. There was no key in the lock, no bolt to pull aside. I screamed and screamed. ‘HELP!’ I yelled at the closed door. ‘SOMEONE HELP ME!’ I desperately shook the door handle as I shouted and cried. I turned towards the window, half expecting to see the girl again as I ran towards it. I screamed into the garden. ‘HELP ME!’ The walls felt as though they were closing in on me. Every piece of furniture in that room loomed in like some kind of nightmare. I ran at the door with all my strength, screaming, screaming. But it wouldn’t budge.
I banged against the door again and again.
Soon I was blind with panic, my whole body frantically convulsing with a primal fear that consumed every part of me. I pounded and pounded against the door until it felt as though my bones were breaking. When that didn’t work I began to scratch at it, as if I could somehow claw my way out. As though the door was a coffin and I had been buried alive.
Once again I reached for the impotent handle and gripped it hard. The door handle began to shake beneath my hand and I stepped back in horror as it rattled without me touching it. Just as I thought I would pass out from fear, the door swung open.
It’s the class recital coming up, and today we were put into pairs. We have to work together on a poem of our choice and perform it in front of the other girls. You’ll never guess who I’m paired with – Tilly. Lavinia and Sybil are working together, and I was secretly grateful that I wasn’t paired with Margot – the Goddess still hasn’t cured her of her lisp and there’s no way we’d stand a chance of winning with that. But Tilly? The ghost girl who never goes outside and is as pale as ash? I’d rather compete on my own!
Tonight we had our first rehearsal. ‘You better not be nice to her,’ Lavinia had warned me. I assured Lavinia that I had no intention of being nice to Tilly, but that I couldn’t avoid speaking to her – we had to choose the poem we wanted to recite.
Tilly was waiting for me in one of the cold music rooms after school today. ‘Maybe we could walk around the grounds as we talk,’ I said to her. ‘I find fresh air helps me think.’
‘I can’t go outside,’ Tilly said quietly. She’d fallen right into my trap; this was exactly the admission I had wanted her to make. I didn’t have to be as nasty as Lavinia, but at least I could report back to my friends the real reason why Tilly can’t go outside.
‘Why?’ I asked her.
‘I’m cursed,’ she said seriously. ‘I have been all my life. When I go outside in the sun my skin burns up and I come out in painful blisters. Before they died my parents would pray for me each night, but that didn’t help. Now they’re dead I pray for myself. But God hasn’t answered my prayers.’
I didn’t know what to say to Tilly. I had never heard of such an affliction before. To not be able to go out in sunlight must be such a terrible curse. To never see the blue sky, or feel the wind or rain on your face. ‘But you can go out at night?’ I asked her without thinking. Tilly studied me closely and an unspoken understanding passed between us – she knew that I had seen her.
She nodded. ‘I’m a Moonchild.’
Tilly the Moonchild.
Maybe she shouldn’t be praying to God, she should be doing Rituals to the Goddess instead, maybe she’d hear Tilly’s prayers. Lavinia would strangle me in my sleep if I said anything to Tilly about the Goddess or the Rituals, so I stayed quiet. But I wanted to do something that might help her, I wanted to do something kind. ‘You can choose the poem,’ I said. It was the only thing I could think of. ‘What do you want to do?’ I asked. ‘What’s your favourite poem?’
Tilly smiled and answered me in a clear and confident tone, ‘The Lady of Shalott.’
‘Excellent choice.’ I smiled, and I meant it. I’ve always adored that poem.
Until I write again,
Annabel