Other Alice (7 page)

Alice shook her head, her eyes glassy. ‘By the time he’s through with you, you do it yourself.’

‘But why?’ I asked. ‘What would this person want with
you
, Alice? How does he even
know
you?’

She gave a short laugh, more of a bark. ‘Because I made him up.’

I stared at the film of sweat glistening above her eyebrows. She had to be in the grip of some kind of fever, although that still didn’t explain who the man outside was.
‘Alice,’ I said gently. ‘I think you need to—’

She shoved the notebook at me, scrabbling through the pages. ‘You don’t believe me? Look. It’s here! It’s all here!’

And it was. The word jumped out of the pages, over and over again; at first, neat and tidy, like a coiled rope, and then, later, pushed into the paper, breaking it like a neck as
Alice’s writing changed, as the story went beyond her control.

‘The Hangman is a character from your story?’
I said incredulously
.

Alice nodded, her greasy hair veiling her face like a curtain. ‘He’s not the only one. There are others. I’ve seen them. They’re looking for me . . .
looking for this!’ She brandished the notebook.

‘But . . . what do they want?’ I shook my head, bewildered. ‘They want to know how it ends?’

‘That’s just it,’ Alice whispered. ‘There
is
no ending! That’s why they’re here. Because I don’t know how to finish their
story.’

‘So . . . they want to . . . ?’ I struggled to understand.

‘To take control of it. To make their own endings . . . unless I can figure it out first.’

I blinked the memory away and found I was holding the notebook very tightly. A different notebook, a different story, but with one similarity: it was long, just like the story
with the Hangman had been. I began leafing through it. Pages and pages of Alice’s writing. Months and months of work. This was not a collection of little stories like Alice usually wrote: it
was one big story and the list at the front was a list of chapter titles.

It was a novel. A proper, full-length book . . . although it wasn’t yet finished.

Unexpectedly, a lump came into my throat. ‘I knew you could do it,’ I whispered proudly. ‘I knew you’d write one someday.’ I could almost see it now, a fat hardback
with Alice’s name on the cover. I had no doubt that at some point she would get her stories published. That they would be in bookshops everywhere. That Alice would be famous and I’d be
the luckiest brother anyone had, because I’d get to read all her stories first.

I flicked to the start, past the character notes and a few pages in. There it was. Chapter One:
The Storyteller
.

I began to read.

I stopped reading, the warm feeling from moments before slipping away. The pancakes in my stomach suddenly felt stodgy and unwelcome and there was a bitter taste in my mouth
that I knew wasn’t from the lemons I’d squeezed over them.

My talented, brilliant sister, who was obsessive, almost
scared
, about leaving a story incomplete, was writing about unfinished stories. Now she was gone and somehow at least two of the
characters from that story had been unleashed. They were here, in our world . . . but were they heroes or villains? What would they do to Alice, the creator of their story, if they
found her? Could they have found her already?

‘Alice,’ I whispered to her empty room. ‘Where are you? What have you done?’

I
LEFT ALICE’S ROOM AND
dressed quickly, pulling on my smartest jeans and the least scuffed trainers I could find. I
emptied my rucksack and placed Alice’s notebook and purse inside it and, after hesitating, a pair of Dad’s old glasses that had no lenses. I’d had them for years, and started out
by wearing them when I was playing dressing-up games, like being a doctor, or a detective. I didn’t wear them now, but carrying them somehow made me feel smarter, like they were a good luck
charm. Alice had always told me that if you looked clever, people would treat you as if you were clever, and that was what I needed to be now if I was going to find out what had happened to
her.

I went downstairs through the living room, where Mum was laughing at something on the television.

‘Mum, I’m going into town,’ I called, heading into the kitchen. ‘I need a few things for my Likeness.’ The room was still warm with the scent of sugar and lemon. I
rooted around under the sink and found a pocket torch and stuck it in my rucksack, then unplugged Alice’s phone and put that in, too.

‘Shall I come with you?’ Mum answered, appearing in the doorway, still in her dressing gown, with a guilty look on her face.

‘No!’ I squeaked. The last thing I wanted was for Mum to tag along, not before I really knew what was going on anyway. ‘I mean, you stay here and relax. Catch up with your
soaps. I won’t be long.’

‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Mum asked. ‘We’ll all go again later for the Summoning.’

‘I don’t mind,’ I said. ‘You should enjoy your day off.’

Mum yawned, not noticing anything was amiss. ‘Well, don’t be long.’ She turned and shuffled back into the living room. ‘I’ll have a nice cup of tea in a minute, I
think . . .’

I mumbled a goodbye, then zipped past her into the hallway, snatching my keys from the hook and shrugging into my coat before stepping outside. It was a crisp, bright morning. My breath misted
the air as I walked, trying to put my thoughts in order. At the moment, there was no evidence that Alice was definitely missing. All I knew was that she had left in a hurry, and that it must be
linked to the story, which meant one of two things. Firstly, Alice could have gone somewhere to hide until she figured out what to do. She had vanished a few times in the past after arguing with
Mum, sometimes for a few hours and once for an entire night.

The other possibility was that one of the characters had caught up with her. I felt a nasty little twist somewhere deep inside and pushed this thought away. I had to stay calm and use my head. I
had to treat this like it wasn’t Alice I was trying to find, like it wasn’t someone I cared about. Like I was a real detective.

The first thing that a real detective would be thinking is that, when someone goes missing, the first two days of the investigation are the most important. This is because any clues are still
fresh, witnesses can still remember things, and the missing person might still be close.

Missing
. The word made me feel a bit sick. Missing people belonged on the television or in newspapers. It couldn’t happen to someone like Alice. It couldn’t happen to a
family like us.

I reached the shop on the corner of our street and stopped outside. This was where I’d seen the girl, Gypsy. Finding her might also lead me to Alice, and I was hoping that she might have
gone into the shop before I’d spotted her.

A bell jangled above the door as I went in. Gino, the shopkeeper, was stacking tins on a shelf near the counter. He looked up and smiled. He was a large, red-faced, friendly man, though Mum said
he was a gossip.

I got a bottle of lemonade out of the chilled cabinet, then took it to the counter. A moment later, Gino got up, ringing up the drink on the till. A straw Likeness with black hair in a little
bun and button eyes was propped next to the charity tin.

‘Who’s this?’ I asked.

‘Is my mama,’ Gino said, patting the doll with a beefy hand. ‘She die many years ago without sharing her best lasagne recipe.’ He rubbed his tummy wistfully. ‘I try
to make myself, but is never the same. If she come tonight, I ask her secret! And who do you make?’

‘I haven’t decided yet,’ I said.

Gino wagged his finger. ‘You’ll run out of time!’

‘I’ll get my sister to help me,’ I said, hoping the mention of Alice would jog his memory of the other girl. ‘She’s always got good ideas.’ I pointed to some
jars behind the counter. ‘Can I have a pound’s worth of rhubarb and custards, too, please?’

Gino beamed and weighed out the sweets, giving me an extra one ‘for luck’ as he always did. ‘Your sister, she is in here earlier,’ he said, his smile fading. ‘I ask
her who she make for the Summoning, but she act like she don’t know what I’m a-talking about. Like she never hear of the Summoning before.’

My heart quickened. The real Alice knew all about it, as did everyone else who lived in Fiddler’s Hollow. It had to be Gypsy.

‘Then she ask me directions,’ Gino continued. ‘Very strange.’

‘Directions to where?’

‘The library,’ said Gino. ‘So I tell her, then I ask if she is a-feeling all right.’ He scratched his beard. ‘She say yes and give me a funny look, and that she
just got lost. And the strangest thing is, she don’t speak. She write everything in a notebook and show me.’ He shrugged. ‘And so I think to myself that maybe she is playing a
trick on me. And I have a busy morning, so I forget about it until you come in.’

I paid him and left, turning out of Cuckoo Lane. If I hurried to the library, perhaps I could find her. I headed for the town centre. Saturdays were always busy, but the weekend of the Summoning
saw it packed out, the square near the town hall especially. The library was at the back of the town hall and, as I neared its huge doors, I slowed a little. They were shut and the board displaying
the library’s opening hours confirmed it had closed fifteen minutes ago.

I felt a little of the wind leave my sails. My first lead and I’d lost it! I shrugged the bag higher up my back. There were still other clues and my biggest one was the notebook. If there
were anything else I needed to know about Gypsy, I’d find it there. Plus, I had another place in mind that I wanted to go – but there, instead of Gypsy, I would be looking for
Alice.

I cut through the centre of town to the church, taking the path that wove through the gravestones. At the back of the churchyard, there was an overgrown mass of trees and shrubs. I stopped,
taking a quick look about to make sure no one was watching me, before pushing through a gap in the greenery. Twigs and leaves brushed against my cheeks as I crawled between them, the winter ground
dampening my hands and knees.

The Den was a short way in and a bit of a scramble through what appeared to be a dense thicket. Once you were through, though, there was a hollow space like a leafy cave beyond. It was
completely hidden from view and, if you were quiet enough, no one would ever know you were there. Alice had shown me the spot a couple of years ago, but made me promise not to tell anyone.

I came to a halt and spat out a leaf, searching the ground for any sign that someone had been here recently. Last year, Alice and Mum had argued and Alice had stormed out of the house. She
hadn’t returned until the next afternoon and wouldn’t say where she’d been, but the next time I came to the Den I found Alice’s name traced over and over in the soil. Later,
she told me she’d been there all night.

Now, however, there was no sign of her at all. I reached into my bag and popped a rhubarb and custard into my mouth, then took out Alice’s phone and notebook. I tried the phone first
– perhaps there was a message on there, or maybe a call from someone Alice had gone to meet? I was quickly disappointed, for the phone was locked with a password to stop anyone from looking
at it. I put it back in the bag, frustrated, then opened the notebook.

It was hard to see in the gloom, but I remembered the pocket torch and shone it at the paper. There were three pages of character notes on Gypsy, mixed in with doodles, diagrams and even little
pictures of outfits that had been cut out of fashion magazines. At the top of the page, a word had been written in capital letters: CURSED.

‘Just like Alice,’ I whispered to myself.

A flowery doodle had been drawn heavily round two words:
Gypsy Spindle
. I traced it with my finger, remembering the night Alice had first mentioned the curse. The day she’d come
back after going to search for her father. She’d been looking at the book of fairy tales: Sleeping Beauty about to prick her finger on the spindle of the spinning wheel. About to fall under
the spell. Alice had always liked using weird names, and Gypsy Spindle was straight out of a fairy tale. I read through the notes. Some of it was very familiar: her mother was a Romany traveller
and her father had worked with a bookbinder. It sounded a lot like our mother, who had worked in a bookshop before going into publishing, and Alice’s father.