Charlie Bone and the Wilderness Wolf (Children of the Red King, Book 6) (17 page)

18

THE SHRIVELING SHROUD

Billy had regretted his decision to spend the weekend at school almost as soon as the other children had left. He watched Mr. Weedon lock and bolt the heavy doors and he was overcome with loneliness. Now he didn't even have Rembrandt to keep him company. Perhaps Cook could find a way to get the rat into school. This thought cheered Billy and he went in search of Cook.

Billy looked in every cafeteria and kitchen, even the green kitchen, where Mrs. Weedon was banging saucepans onto the counter.

"Have you seen Cook?" Billy asked timidly.

"I have not!" snapped the beefy woman.

On some days this reply might have sent Billy scuttling away. Mrs. Weedon always made him uneasy, but today he stood his ground. "Do you know where she might be?"

"Not at all. I'm in charge today."

Billy gave a nervous cough. "Urn, will I get supper?"

"An egg," she said grudgingly. "In here. Six o'clock sharp. I wasn't expecting you. No one told me."

"Sorry," said Billy. He backed out.

More than an hour to go before supper. And then what? Bed, he supposed. Billy went to his dormitory and began to read
The Children of the New Forest
for the fifth time. He had just got to the part where the children's family home is burnt down, when he heard something scratching the door.

"Blessed!" Billy jumped up and ran to open the door. He was so pleased to see the old dog he went down on his knees and hugged him.

"Where's Cook?" Billy asked in slow grunts.

"Frightened!" barked Blessed.

"I know. She's frightened of the fish boy. But where is she?"

Blessed's head dropped.

"Is she in her room in the east wing?"

The old dog wheezed, or was it a sigh? Billy wasn't sure. "Come on, let's go and look."

Billy was never sure which door, out of the many on the fourth floor, belonged to Cook, but he knew that Blessed would lead him to the right one. After climbing two staircases and wandering down several dark and echoing hallways, they came at last to an unpainted door with a pair of small walking shoes beside it.

Billy knocked. There was no reply. He opened the door just a crack and peeked in. A clean apron lay on a very tidy bed. There was a chair, a chest of drawers, and a cupboard. A threadbare carpet beside the bed was the only comfort for bare feet on the splintery floorboards. A pair of slippers had been placed at the end of the bed. They looked unworn.

Billy looked at Blessed. "I don't believe Cook lives in this room," he said in a series of light barks that he knew Blessed would understand.

Blessed's only reply was to hang his head.

"What is it? You look worried, Blessed. There's something you're not telling me. Aren't we friends anymore?"

"Friends! Friends, yes," barked Blessed. "Hide-and-seek!"

"OK. We'll play for a bit."

Hide-and-seek was Blessed's favorite game, probably because he was very good at it. His nose always led him straight to Billy's hiding place, although, sometimes, just to make things more exciting, he pretended that his sense of smell had temporarily deserted him.

Billy and Blessed played in the empty hallways and dormitories until just before six o'clock, when Billy hurried down to the green cafeteria.

The egg was waiting for him, a hard-boiled egg, sitting on a plate with a thin piece of bread beside it. A note on the table said,
Wash the plate when finished.

Billy peeled the cold egg and thought of the hot runny eggs that Maisie gave him when he stayed with Charlie. Blessed watched with a sad expression as Billy ate the cold egg and thin bread.

"Nice?" the old dog asked.

"Horrible," said Billy. He went into the kitchen, washed his plate, and put it on the counter.

"What next?" Billy asked Blessed.

"Hide-and-seek," said Blessed.

It was better than sitting alone in the dormitory.

Blessed chose to hide first. They began in the hall. Billy closed his eyes while he counted to a hundred. He could hear Blessed's claws pattering up the main staircase. On the landing Billy was certain the claws turned left, and then they faded into the huge silence that filled the building.

"One hundred," said Billy under his breath, and he set off up the stairs.

Blessed couldn't open doors, and he seldom bothered to close them; this led Billy to ignore all the doors on the second and third floors. Only the bathrooms were accessible to Blessed and he was not in any of them.

As Billy trudged up one of the many staircases, he became aware that he was approaching the attics, and his heart sank. Mr. Ezekiel used to give him cocoa in a gaslit room up in the attics. He would bribe Billy with chocolate and promise that soon nice, kind parents would come and adopt him. They never came. And the cocoa and promises had stopped when Billy made friends with Charlie Bone.

Billy reached the top of the staircase and sniffed the air. It was muggy and stale. Gaslights in iron brackets sent weak flickering beams down a narrow hall.

"I'm not going down there," Billy said to himself. But then he saw a shadow move across a half-open door.
I'll give you one more chance, Blessed,
he thought, and he tiptoed as softly as he could into the dark room behind the door.

To Billy's astonishment, he found that the floor of the room was lit by thin lines of light. Cracks in the ancient floorboards were letting in light from the room below. Curious to see what lay beneath, Billy carefully lowered himself to the floor and put one eye to a large crack. What he saw made him gasp with horror.

Directly below him Manfred Bloor lay on a red velvet sofa. His head was propped on a silk cushion, and his face was covered in orange bugs. Stifling another gasp, Billy stared at the tiny moving creatures. Behind their writhing, Manfred's pale face was changing. If Billy could believe his eyes, Manfred's scars were fading.

"Magic bugs," Billy whispered to himself.

Slowly and shakily Billy lifted his head, but before he could get to his feet, a voice from the doorway said, "What have we got here?"

"A spy," came the icy reply.

Suddenly, a ghostly gray shroud came flying toward Billy, smothering him in smoky folds, choking him until he felt he would never breathe again, blinding him with impenetrable darkness, deafening him with a thousand silences, and pinning him to the floor in a net of steel.

Sometime later, when Billy was not certain that he could really be alive, he smelled, through his smoky cage, a distinct and doggy scent.

"Blessed," rasped Billy. "Is that you?"

The reply was a desperate howl that made no sense at all to Billy. There followed a series of grunts, barks, and whines. Billy could understand none of it.

"Help me, Blessed," he croaked. "Pull this awful thing off me."

He waited. There were no more barks. No howls. Not even a whimper, and Billy knew that the old dog had abandoned him.

He can't understand me,
thought Billy,
and I can't understand him. They've stolen my endowment, the only thing I had, the only thing that made my life worth living.

In her secret apartment beneath the kitchens, Cook awoke from an uneasy sleep. She could hear a dog whining in the distance. Cook got out of bed, put on her slippers, and opened her bedroom door. The whine continued, low and urgent.

Cook pressed a switch and soft light illuminated a cozy sitting room. Snug armchairs with plump cushions were gathered around a small stove. The walls were hung with bright pictures, and gold-patterned china twinkled reassuringly from the shelves of an old oak dresser.

Cook crossed the room and opened a small door in the corner. A dark cupboard was revealed. She opened another door at the back of the cupboard and saw Blessed sitting at the bottom of a flight of steps. Cook's room was very secret indeed.

"Well, what is it?" Cook yawned. "You've woken me up all for nothing, I suppose."

Blessed barked. Cook couldn't speak his language, but she recognized the urgency in his voice.

"Come in, then, you blessed dog."

Blessed didn't want to come in. He turned his back and began to waddle up the steps.

"I'm not following you at this time of night," Cook whispered harshly.

The old dog looked back at her and gave such a mournful howl, Cook realized that something was very wrong indeed.

"Wait a minute, then." She rushed back to get her bathrobe. Slipping it on, she put a flashlight in her pocket and followed Blessed through the two doors, carefully closing each one behind her. As she climbed the steps she told herself she was being very foolish.

Something nasty was going on at Bloor's Academy; she'd already seen the fish boy and Dorcas Loom crossing the landing, long after the other children had left.

There were two ways of entering Cook's secret apartment. One began in a broom closet in the kitchen, but Blessed found the other route easier to navigate. At the top of the stairs Cook followed him along a hallway that led, in endless curves, to a very small door. Beside the door a dog-size panel in the wainscot opened to let Blessed through. Cook raised an eyebrow. She'd put on weight since Christmas and wasn't about to get stuck in a dog flap. She unlocked the very small door, opened it, and gently pushed at a cupboard standing in front of it. Squeezing herself between the cupboard and the door, Cook emerged into a carpeted corridor. Blessed was waiting for her.

"Now what?" Cook asked the old dog.

Blessed set off at a trot, which, at his age and size, wasn't that fast. Cook hurried after him. When Blessed approached the eerie region of the attics, Cook slowed down.

She was beginning to feel very nervous.
Any minute now,
she thought,
and Lord Grimwald will come lurching out at me, in his dreadful sea-boot stride.
"Blessed," she called in a whisper. "No farther."

But the old dog increased his pace, and now Cook was sure that a child was in trouble, and she remembered the promise that she had made to herself: to keep the balance between light and darkness, between the children bent on evil and those who only wished each other well. Cook's endowment was tranquillity.

They came at last to the gaslit hallway. With a soft growl Blessed padded into a dark room. Cook took a few steps into the room; she stumbled against a bundle lying on the ground. Shining her flashlight on the floor, Cook saw Billy Raven's white head beneath a gray weblike shawl.

"Billy!" Cook dropped to her knees and began to tear at the soft, clinging fabric.

A voice from the hall said, "I wouldn't do that if I were you!"

Cook got to her feet and swung around. The beam from her flashlight lit two familiar faces: Dagbert Endless and Dorcas Loom.

"What are you doing here?" Cook demanded. "And what have you done to this poor boy?"

"Nothing that he didn't deserve," said Dorcas.

"Deserve? Deserve? You wicked girl!" cried Cook. She could feel Dagbert's eyes on her, and her legs felt like jelly. She hoped the light from the gas jet was too weak for him to see her face clearly, but unfortunately, it only made her look younger, and he began to recognize her features.

"I know you, don't I?" Dagbert said slowly.

"Of course you do; I'm Cook," she snapped.

"No, I mean from long ago. I've seen your photo somewhere." He grinned. "My father has it."

"Don't be silly," cried Cook, adding, "Is your father - around?"

"He's gone back to the North," said Dagbert. "He doesn't much like it here."

Cook wasn't sure she believed him. "Go to bed," she told him, "while I attend to this poor boy."

"You mustn't do that," said Dorcas in a low, chilly voice.

"No, Cook. Leave him be." Dagbert took a menacing step toward her.

"Go to bed," she ordered, "right this minute."

"Go to bed," they jeered. "NO. WE WONT!"

Cook saw a large shadow loom behind the children. She almost dropped her flashlight in terror, she was so certain that Lord Grimwald would come striding in. But he didn't.

"YOU'LL DO AS YOU'RE TOLD!" roared a voice.

The two children were grabbed by the scruffs of their necks and hauled backward.

Cook raised her flashlight a little. She smiled with surprise and relief. "Dr. Saltweather!"

"Good evening, Cook!" Dr. Saltweather held the two squirming children in a firm grasp. "Are these kids bothering you?"

"They certainly are," said Cook. "And they've done something awful to poor Billy Raven."

"He's a little creep," yelled Dagbert, "and you don't know what you're getting into, you old fool." He swung his foot at Dr. Saltweather, kicking him viciously in the shin.

"Stop that!" barked the music teacher.

"I'll do what I like," screeched Dagbert. "We've had permission."

"Not mine," said Dr. Saltweather. "Now, get back to your miserable beds." Releasing Dagbert and Dorcas, he gave them both a shove toward the stairs.

Dagbert stood very still. He glared at Dr. Saltweather with shining aquamarine eyes. A foggy cloud spread around the teacher and began to fill the hallway. Even Dorcas staggered backward, coughing violently.

Cook found she could hardly breathe. The fog was filling her lungs, and if she could believe her eyes, there were fish swimming through the walls and seaweed floating in the blue-green water all around her. Was it possible to drown in an attic? she wondered.

"STOP IT!" thundered a voice.

Dr. Saltweather seemed impervious to the choking fog and the watery images.

Dagbert gave a horrible, burbling laugh. "You're drowning."

"I CANNOT DROWN!"

Cook could not be sure what she heard. The words were spoken in a deep whisper that swam around her head.
Cannot drown. Cannot drown. Cannot drown.
She became aware that the fish were fading, the seaweed withering, and the fog retreating.

Dagbert stood in the hallway looking puzzled. A frightened Dorcas clung to his arm.

"Go to bed," Dr. Saltweather ordered, this time in a calm, clear voice.

The two children turned meekly away and ran down the stairs.