Authors: Gillian Shields
THE WYLDFORD CHRONICLE
LOCAL NEWS ROUNDUP
S
EPTEMBER
14: A new academic year is beginning this September at Wyldcliffe Abbey School for Young Ladies. The school has always been an important institution in the local area, bringing not only prestige to this remote corner of the country, but employment opportunities. Gardeners, cleaners, cooks, and many others have made their living at the exclusive girls’ boarding school. However, the
Chronicle
has learned that all that might be about to change, as the school, which is over a hundred years old, is now threatened with possible closure.
The troubles began when the respected High Mistress, Celia Hartle, who had led the school for many years, went
missing in mysterious circumstances. Her body was found on the moors above the school’s Victorian Gothic mansion, and an open verdict was returned by the coroner. Was it a heart attack, suicide, or something more sinister?
The teacher who took the reins while Mrs. Hartle was missing, Miss Pauline Raglan, then hurriedly left the school due to “family problems,” and the appointment of a new High Mistress, Miss Miriam Scratton, was similarly blighted. Miss Scratton was tragically killed in an automobile accident last term, and her death has set tongues wagging. It is only just over a year ago that one of the Wyldcliffe students drowned in the lake on the school grounds, and questions are now being asked as to whether the three deaths are connected in any way.
There have always been rumors about Wyldcliffe’s history, and the place has been called “cursed,” but these stories have usually been dismissed as gossip and legend. For instance, it is said locally that a former inhabitant of Wyldcliffe Abbey, Lady Agnes Templeton, was in fact murdered and that her ghost walks at night. Indeed, some elderly residents go so far as to say that Lady Agnes will one day return to Wyldcliffe to save it from great danger. And now less colorful, more disturbing stories are being circulated.
It is rumored that Wyldcliffe is the base for some kind
of pagan cult, whose existence has been hushed up over the years. There has never been any proof of such claims, but these persistent rumors, combined with the unfortunate recent deaths, have caused enrollments at Wyldcliffe School to plummet. Even its famously upper-crust traditions have been falling out of favor as the twenty-first century progresses. “Girls nowadays want to get good grades to prepare them for college, not learn how to hold a knife and fork correctly. Wyldcliffe’s day is over,” said one disgruntled former pupil, who didn’t want to be named.
It is known that Miss Scratton had wanted to introduce a program of modernization, but whether this will now take place and whether the school can survive without it remains to be seen.
F
ROM THE
D
IARY OF
H
ELEN
B
LACK
S
EPTEMBER
14
I
didn’t know whether I would survive approaching her. I was shaking with fear, crouching at the foot of the tallest stone on the Ridge, which loomed over me like a black tower. I tried to breathe the fragrant air of the moors to calm myself as I leaned against the rock and listened for my mother’s voice.
She sensed me. She welcomed me. She spoke to me from deep inside her prison, and her voice echoed in my head. It was heavy with sorrow, weighed down with regret for what she had done, and how she had fought against us.
I know, Wanderer, I know! Don’t tell me! You think I am fooling myself, dabbling in dangerous, self-indulgent games. Maybe
I am, but just listen! I told you that Celia Hartle hates the sound
of my name, but perhaps she has truly changed? What if the long days and nights she has spent as a prisoner have really made her see things differently? Maybe she even sees me differently now. And besides, isn’t everyone capable of redemption? If we don’t believe that, we are all lost in darkness forever.
Reaching out to my mother’s mind was extraordinary. We are both creatures of air, and although she has turned her back on the true meaning of the Mystic Way, she can still send her thoughts to me on the wind’s breath. And she seemed so altered from how she had been before, humble and quiet, not like the Celia Hartle I remembered. She showed me tender images of when I was a baby, during the few weeks before she took me to the children’s home. She said she wished she could go back to do things differently. To start again.
I know what you are thinking—can I trust anything that she says? But do I even have to decide about that yet? Can’t I just enjoy this secret time, before Evie and Sarah find out and tell me, “You can’t do this, don’t be so stupid, don’t be so crazy”?
Now, after all these years, it seems that Celia Hartle might be willing to be a mother to me at last. I want to believe that, Wanderer. Let me believe it, just for today. She wishes she could start again…. I wish with all my heart that I could free her, body and soul, and turn back time so that everything could be different for both of us, clean and pure, like a new song, with no past, only a future.
Oh, I know that isn’t possible. She is hidden in her prison of stone and earth, and I cannot follow her into that eternal tomb. There is so much that divides us, and always will.
But I can still hope.
T
HE
W
ITNESS OF
E
VELYN
J
OHNSON
A
ll I hoped for as the new term began was an end to our long battle. It was time for us to finish this. The dark spirit of the Priestess was hidden in the black rock on the top of the windswept ridge, but although we had trapped her there at the end of the previous term, her twisted soul threw a shadow on our lives, like the ogre of the mountains in a child’s story. While she was still there we couldn’t be truly free, especially not Helen.
Our mystic powers—water for Evie, earth for Sarah, and air for Helen—had led us into strange worlds, where even death wasn’t what it seemed, and beyond the veil of death, our secret sister Agnes dwelt in the valley of light and served the sacred fire of the Creator. The four of us
had achieved so much together, but it seemed clear to me that our quest wasn’t over.
Sarah, Helen, and I had left Wyldcliffe for the summer vacation in a state of uneasy truce. Like the rest of the school, we mourned the death of Miss Scratton, but our grief was real. She had been our Guardian and counselor in our battles with the coven, and now she was gone, killed not by a road accident as everyone believed, but by Rowena Dalrymple, one of the mistresses at the school and the most fanatical of the Dark Sisters. Losing our Guardian had hit Helen hard, but when she wept for Miss Scratton, I couldn’t help wondering whether it was really her mother that those tears were for. I desperately wanted to help Helen, though I didn’t know how. She had done so much for me, and I wanted to return the gift, to pay back her devotion in some way. Although Helen had forced herself to be strong for us, I felt that her nerves were finally strained to the breaking point, as she brooded over what was lying in wait for her, out there on the barren hills.
We’d been at Wyldcliffe a few days before we got the chance to talk alone. The three of us snuck away after supper to the old grotto on the school grounds. It was a fanciful underground structure, built long ago by Agnes’s
father, Lord Charles Templeton, as a fashionable picnic place, an indulgence of art and leisure. The grotto was half cave, half stone temple, decorated with strange, pagan mosaics, and now it was damp and musty and abandoned, the perfect place for us to meet in secret. It was Sarah, practical as always, who came up with the first suggestion of what we should do next.
“I think we should go up to the Ridge as soon as we can and lay another binding spell on the stone,” she said. “That way we can be sure that the Priestess isn’t going to escape.”
“No!” Helen said, with surprising vehemence.
“Why not?” I asked. “I know it would be hard for you to go back there, but we’d be with you, Helen. You know we wouldn’t let you face it alone.”
“It’s not that—it’s just…well…” Her voice trailed off, and she blinked in the beam of Sarah’s flashlight, looking around nervously as if she would find the words she needed in the air.
“Just what?” I said encouragingly.
“Well, we don’t even know whether the rock could stand the force of another spell,” Helen replied. “We might end up shattering it and actually releasing her by mistake.”
“What do you think, Sarah?” I asked. “You understand
the earth and stones better than any of us.”
“Those megaliths on the Ridge are ancient and very powerful in themselves,” she answered thoughtfully. “I think they could cope with anything we threw at them.”
“I just don’t think it’s a good idea!” Helen persisted. “We can’t go back and meddle again with what we’ve done—that’s not how this works. Each moment takes care of itself. You can’t go back.”
“But we’re only trying to think of a way to make you safer, Helen,” Sarah said.
“Well, don’t! The Priestess is a prisoner—just leave it at that. She can’t hurt us now. In fact, I don’t want you two getting mixed up in any more of this stuff. We’ve had three lucky escapes. It might not work out like that next time.”
“I don’t think it was luck,” said Sarah. “We used the powers we’ve been granted, and made them into something deeper and stronger by working together. That’s not just luck. We’re meant to face this battle as a sisterhood—united.”
Helen sighed. “Even if that was true, perhaps things are changing. The coven is weakened. Their Priestess is our prisoner. I don’t see why you need to do any more. Cal is waiting for you, Sarah. And Evie, you’ve got so much
to look forward to. I’m alone. Let me deal with this stuff now.”
“You’re not alone, Helen, you’ve got us,” I said, alarmed. “And besides, what about the things Miss Scratton told us about, you know, the secret of the keys—and she said we had to be ready—and that our destiny was near.”
Helen looked at me strangely, her face half-hidden in shadow. “She said that my destiny was near, not yours or Sarah’s. It’s up to me to finish this. I want you and Sarah to stay away. Just stay with Josh and Cal and be happy. Let me sort it out.”
“But we’re sisters,” Sarah said again. “We work together. We need each other.”
“I don’t need anyone,” Helen muttered, looking away from both of us. But I knew she didn’t really mean that. Helen needed someone to love, and she needed us too. There was nothing we could do to persuade her that night, though. Our vows of friendship and support seemed not to touch her, like water rolling off a smooth, polished rock.
I was worried, but all Sarah and I could do was to keep an eye on Helen as the new term got underway, although we tried not to make it too obvious. I didn’t want to intrude. Helen was as elusive as thistledown on the wind, impossible to pin down, and as easy to alarm as a wild
creature. She was beautiful too, though she didn’t realize it, with her cloud of fair hair, and her pale eyes full of sorrow, seeing things that were hidden from the rest of us. One wrong word and she would retreat into herself. It was as though the deepest part of her soul was kept in a locked glass case, and we didn’t have the key. Even with us, her closest friends, her only friends, she still had her secrets.
A gloomy atmosphere descended on the school over the next few days like a shroud of autumn fog. There was a subdued feeling, as though everyone was waiting for some unknown but secretly dreaded disaster. I’d only been at the school a year myself and had always found the place oppressive with its old-fashioned rules and regulations, but this—this was different. There was fear in the air. As the students passed through the dimly lit corridors or gathered in the high-ceilinged classrooms, there were whispers and hurried conversations all on one theme: What was going to happen to Wyldcliffe? This privileged world had been touched by sordid realities, and suddenly it no longer seemed such a safe haven for the daughters of the rich and powerful. Death and scandal and fear had touched its slumbering walls.
The teachers, or mistresses, appeared to be tense too. It was clear that quite a few girls hadn’t come back after
the summer break. India Hoxton, for one, had carried out her threat to transfer to Chalfont Manor near London, and others had followed her lead. I wouldn’t miss India, as she had detested me from the moment I arrived at Wyldcliffe, but her snobby friend Celeste van Pallandt looked lost and unsettled without her. Poor Celeste, how hard she tried to hate. Her anger was eating her up like a disease, crippling the girl she might have been….
Celeste wouldn’t accept any sympathy from me, of course. She had tried to get me expelled in my first term at the school, when I had just arrived as a scholarship student, but I had forgiven her for that. I knew that her resentment of me was in some strange way bound up with her unhappiness about her cousin Laura, who had “drowned” in the lake, down by the ruins of the ancient chapel that stood on the school grounds. And every time I saw Celeste I thought of poor Laura and the sickening truth about her fate; that she had been murdered by the Dark Sisters, whose coven was rooted in Wyldcliffe’s lonely valley.
Laura was dead, but her soul was trapped, caught between death and the eternal darkness. Poor Laura existed as a Bondsoul, controlled like a zombie by the leader of the coven, who in life had been Helen’s mother, Celia Hartle, the High Mistress of Wyldcliffe, and was
now the Priestess of the Eternal King of the Unconquered lords, and our deadly enemy. And although her spirit was tethered to the great stone at the top of the Ridge, she was still brooding over our destinies, still waiting for her revenge….
As the new term began and we settled into the familiar routine, I grew more and more uneasy. Why wouldn’t Helen let us try to help her in the fight against her mother? What secrets was she hiding from her sisters?