The Midnight Gate (9 page)

“There now!” said Mrs. Proctor, finally. “Just listen to me go on! I'm sure you don't care a jot for old buildings. Why don't you go outside and play while I get on with the dishes?”

“I can help,” suggested Belladonna, noticing that there wasn't a dishwasher. “I could dry.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” gushed Mrs. Proctor, smiling. “You need some fresh air. Out you pop and have some fun.”

Belladonna wondered what kind of fun Mrs. Proctor thought she could have the day after she'd been taken from the only home she'd ever known, but she dutifully put on her coat and went outside.

The day was cold but bright, with a sickly sun shining low in the sky. Belladonna closed the front door and leaned over the low concrete wall. It was even more like a Roman arena from here. She almost expected gladiators to march out and salute before fighting each other to a grim death. The idea cheered her up a little and she decided to go in search of some ghosts. After all, the building was nearly sixty years old, loads of people must have died here and some of them
must
have decided to haunt the place, so there had to be a few ghosts wandering about. And given the lonely state of the building, they'd probably quite like to have a chat.

She started by walking all around the same level of the building. Most of the old apartments had been boarded up, but a few were open, the wind whistling through from front door to rear window. They seemed sort of sad—hollow and expectant, with hardly any sign that they'd ever been lived in, except for the occasional broken mug or three-legged chair.

But no ghosts. Once, she thought she saw something out of the corner of her eye, but when she turned around, there was nothing there. She made her way down the narrow concrete stairs to the central arena and wandered over to the swing set. She sat down on the single swing and began to turn around slowly, winding the chains supporting the swing into a spiral tangle. Seen from this angle, the whole place seemed even bigger and more impersonal. You could barely see all the front doors, just the top foot of colored paint, then nothing but dull bricks and more concrete.

She took her foot off the ground and spun slowly as the chains unwound. The rotting concrete and brick smoothed itself out as she spun faster and faster. Perhaps that's what it looked like when it was new: sleek and modern, the very latest thing in urban living.

And that was when she saw them, loads of them. Shadows standing in doorways or in the arches that led to the road and on to town. Tall, lanky shapes that were definitely people but without any definition—there were no faces, clothes, or shoes. Just shapes.

She put her foot down suddenly and stopped spinning, but as soon as she did so, the shadows vanished and the building was as empty as it had always been. But it wasn't. They were still there, just out of sight on the edge of her vision. What were they?

Belladonna walked slowly toward one of the doorways where she was sure she'd seen a shadow but nothing was there. She closed her eyes and felt around. Was it colder on one side? She opened her eyes. Probably not. She went back to the swing, wound it up, and spun again. Yes. There they were. She put her foot down again and stopped. Gone. Picked her foot up, spun … and there they were.

They couldn't be ghosts, she thought. If they were ghosts, she would be able to see them properly and talk to them just as she always did. And there was something about them … something uniform. They didn't seem like individuals; there weren't tall ones and short ones, thin ones and fat ones; they didn't seem like the shadows of actual people. She got off the swing and walked toward the huge archway where she and Mrs. Lazenby had driven in the night before. There had been at least three shadows lurking there, but, just as with the doorway, by the time she got there, they were gone.

What were they? And why were there no ghosts?

She squinted her eyes to see if she could see them more easily that way, but before she could decide if it was helping or not, a car horn suddenly blared behind her. She leapt to the side of the road and spun around. It was Mrs. Lazenby.

“Hello, Belladonna!” she yelled cheerfully, rolling down her window. “How are you feeling today? I brought you some things.”

She rolled through the archway and parked the car in the same place as the night before. Belladonna followed her back to the Proctors's and soon they were both in the warm sitting room drinking cups of tea and eating homemade scones still warm from the oven. Mrs. Lazenby nodded toward a small suitcase she'd left in the hall.

“I stopped by your … by the house,” she said, smiling, “and picked up a few things for you.”

Belladonna stared at her.

“Say thank you, dear,” said Mrs. Proctor.

“Thank you,” said Belladonna, glancing at the bag. Mrs. Lazenby had been inside her house and rooted around in her bedroom. Her Mum and Dad had probably been watching. Belladonna was consumed with a mixture of sorrow and anger.

“Are you still looking for my Gran?” she asked, trying to keep the sullenness out of her voice.

“Of course, dear!” said Mrs. Lazenby, patting her hand. “And your aunt. As soon as we locate them, you'll be on your way home. Well, not right away, of course—they're both going to have some explaining to do.”

She winked at Mrs. Proctor as though the fact that they thought Belladonna's grandmother had behaved irresponsibly was somehow not grasped by Belladonna herself.

“Have you reported her missing to the police? You said you—”

“It hasn't been twenty-four hours. She could have just gone off to see friends or something. She could still come back.”

“She wouldn't do that,” said Belladonna, unable to stop her anger from seething into every word. “She's never done anything like that. And she has clients, she wouldn't just go. Something's happened, I know it has!”

“Well,” said Mrs. Lazenby, her voice getting a little tense, “I hardly think that being a psychic is like being a doctor. I imagine her ‘clients,' as you call them, can manage quite well without their weekly dose of crystal gazing.”

She flashed Mrs. Proctor the aren't-children-silly smile again, and the older lady tittered obligingly.

“Well,” she said, “I must be off. Lots to do. Don't worry, Belladonna. I'll come by every day to make sure everything is alright and let you know what's happening.”

“Oh, that's alright,” said Mrs. Proctor, following Mrs. Lazenby to the front door. “We're getting on like a house on fire, aren't we, Belladonna?”

Belladonna just stared at them both, unable to muster even a meaningless smile.

“Yes, of course,” said Mrs. Lazenby. “But I do have to see her every day. You understand.”

“I think a daily phone call will do,” said Mrs. Proctor, smiling and placing a friendly hand on Mrs. Lazenby's arm. “After all, you've known us for years.”

Mrs. Lazenby didn't say anything until she'd opened the door and stepped outside, then she turned back.

“Actually,” she said, “I think a daily phone call will do. It's not like you've never done this before, and I've known you for years. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Good-bye, Belladonna!”

The door clicked shut and Mrs. Proctor stepped back into the sitting room.

“Well, that was nice, wasn't it?” she said, sitting down and pouring herself another cup of tea. “It's always nice to have visitors, I think. You must learn to control your temper, though, Belladonna. Little girls really ought to be polite to their elders and not grill them as though they are criminals.”

“I'm not a little girl,” muttered Belladonna.

The teapot stopped in midair and Mrs. Proctor dropped her smile.

“Yes, you are,” she said, an edge of steel suddenly in her voice. “Now, why don't you take your suitcase upstairs and unpack?”

Belladonna stared at her for a moment, then stood up and picked up the suitcase.

“And while you're doing that, why don't you have a think about the proper respect due to your elders? There's a good girl.”

She smiled cheerily as Belladonna started up the stairs. The bag wasn't heavy but she took her time getting to the room. She had a feeling that something important had happened and she'd somehow missed it. It wasn't Mrs. Proctor's remarks about “little girls.” That was just irritating. It was something else.

Something Mrs. Lazenby had said.

She unpacked her clothes, then tried doing some of her Math homework and made a start on the monastery essay, but had difficulty concentrating. By the time she heard Mr. Proctor arrive home, she had given up entirely and was looking at some of the books in the room. How many children had been exactly where she now was, taken from everything familiar and plonked down with strangers? She imagined that for some children it was an escape, the best thing that had ever happened. But for others, like her, it was their worst nightmare come true.

That night at dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Proctor chatted with each other happily, but Belladonna couldn't pretend anymore. She wanted to be alone. To think.

“I'm sorry,” she said, pushing away a plate from which she had eaten two small mouthfuls, “I'm really tired. I think I'll go to bed early, if that's alright.”

“Of course it is, dear,” said Mrs. Proctor. “I'll bring you some hot chocolate.”

“That's alright. I'm not really—”

“Nonsense! All children must have a hot drink at bedtime.”

Belladonna climbed the stairs to her room again. She sat on the bed, racking her brains. What had Mrs. Lazenby said that was so important? What had she missed?

“Here's your cocoa, dear.”

 

8

The Parchment

THE NEXT MORNING,
Belladonna woke up with one thought—school. She'd never thought she'd actually be happy to go, but the idea of being in a place she understood, with people she knew, suddenly seemed like the best thing in the world. She scrambled out of bed and into the bathroom. Her reflection in the mirror still looked tired, but perhaps not quite so bad as the day before. She'd had plenty of sleep, after all, even though it was far from restful slumber. A succession of dreams had left her feeling exhausted and wrung out with a slight headache, but who cared about that? Now it was morning and she could get out of this house and away from all the people trying to do what was “best” for her.

She wolfed down some toast and a cup of tea.

“What do you do for lunch?” asked Mrs. Proctor. “Do you need me to make something?”

“No, thanks, there's a cafeteria,” smiled Belladonna, throwing on her coat and picking up her pink backpack.

“Do you know the way from here?”

“Yes. I'll be fine.”

“See you at teatime, then!”

“Bye!”

And she was out. She didn't actually have any idea where school was in relation to Shady Gardens, but she ran all the same. The wind caught at her black hair as she went, whipping and tangling it. She was sure she looked even more of a mess than usual, but it was so wonderful to be running. There was the church! And the corner of her own road! Now she knew where she was.

She ran through the front door, hung up her coat, and dashed toward the classroom, waving to a surprised Elsie as she passed. She just made it to her desk as the bell sounded for the first class, so it wasn't until forty minutes had passed that she noticed that everyone was staring, and by the time break rolled around, her initial elation at being away from the Proctors had evaporated and she was back to feeling like the odd girl out.

And her head was pounding.

She went to the school nurse and got a couple of aspirins, then made her way around the back of the school to her favorite bench and sat down with a thump.

“Where have you been?” asked Elsie, poking her head out of the art room wall.

“She got arrested.”

Belladonna looked up. Steve was leaning against the wall, looking grim.

“I told you Sophie would get you back for the chair.”

“So it
was
her?”

Steve nodded.

“How do you know?”

“Her brother Gareth told me this morning.”

Elsie looked from one to the other with rising frustration.

“What? What happened? What did she do?”

“She followed Belladonna home and saw her go into her old house instead of going to her grandmother's. She watched for a while to make sure she was really living there, which wasn't hard because apparently the Johnsons don't have enough sense to draw the curtains, and then she went home and told her mother.”

“Why should we draw the curtains? It wasn't dark yet.”

“Because you're twelve and you're living alone in a house with two ghosts.”

“Yes, but why should anyone want to spy? And why are you so narky?”

“I'm not narky.”

“Yes, you are. You've been in an absolutely filthy mood ever since the beginning of term.”

Belladonna felt glad that she'd finally said something about it, but Steve looked at her as if he was trying to decide whether to say something or just give up and stalk back to the football field.

“I'm fed up,” he said finally.

“About what?” asked Elsie.

“Nothing. Everything. My Mum for leaving me and my Dad. My Dad for making me work in the shop all the time. You…”

“Me?” said Belladonna. “What've I done?”

“All of this!” he said, waving his arm around vaguely. “It was all so simple before. And now … What if it doesn't work out? What if you die? Or I die? It could happen.”

“What's wrong with being dead?” asked Elsie, clearly annoyed.

“Nothing … I mean … well, it's not the being-dead part, is it? It's the actual dying. This isn't some story with happy endings and stuff. It's real and it's getting worse.”