Spellbinder (8 page)

She strode through the streets purposefully,
determined not to stop, but when she reached the newsagent’s, she hesitated for a moment, then dashed inside for her Parma Violets. She almost picked up the newspaper, then remembered that she didn’t need one. The thought made her stop. There was a strange feeling in her stomach and tears suddenly sprang to her eyes. They really weren’t there any more. She thought of her parents’ faces, smiling as she came home from school, or stern when she failed to do her homework or clean her room. Were they really gone forever this time?

A single tear rolled down her left cheek. She blinked her eyes and wiped it away with her hand. This would have to stop. If she was really going to find out what was going on, she couldn’t start crying every time she thought about her Mum and Dad. She sniffed and wiped her eyes again, and as they came back into focus she noticed that the front-page story in the
Chronicle
was about a terrible train crash that had happened that afternoon. The pictures looked dreadful, all knotted steel and crushed carriages. Belladonna paused and picked up the paper. For some reason she thought she ought to buy it after all. She ran back to the counter and plunked down a few coins, then hared off again down the street.

She slowed down when she passed the launderette; perhaps Mr. Baxter would still be there. He always seemed such an “almost ghost,” nowhere near as corporeal as her parents or Elsie. Perhaps he would still be waiting to wave to her through the window.

He wasn’t. All she could see was broken-down washers and dryers and curling notices about washing powder and fabric softener and how the management wasn’t responsible if someone came in and stole your clothes, but if you even thought about dyeing the living room curtains in one of their machines, the consequences would be too terrible to contemplate.

She picked up her pace again and in five minutes was bursting through the front door of her own house.

“I’m home!” she yelled, dropping her bag at the door and shrugging out of her coat. “Aunt Deirdre! I’m home!”

Silence.

She walked into the kitchen and saw a note on the table, propped up against the pepper grinder.

“Dear Belladonna,” it said. “Gone to see your grandmother. Tea in fridge. Make sure you do your homework. Back soon. D.”

Belladonna stared at it blankly for a moment, then smiled. She was right: Her grandmother
was
“the old lady” that Deirdre and Miss Parker had been discussing. It really was weird, though. As long as she’d known her, Aunt Deirdre had made fun of Grandma Johnson. And even her mother and father had been known to make the odd disparaging remark about her séances and palm reading. Why on earth would Aunt Deirdre even
think
about going to her for help, even if Miss Parker had said she should?

These thoughts passed through her mind in a flash,
of course, and within moments she had her coat back on and was dashing up the street toward her grandmother’s. The going was slow, however, and the daylight was quickly fading. She slackened her pace. What about the Hound? Maybe she should go back and wait.

She turned the corner onto Dulcimer Lane and saw a familiar figure: Steve Evans popping wheelies in the road on his hand-me-down bicycle.

“Hey!” he shouted, and zoomed over, expertly spinning the bike on its back wheel as he did so. “What’s up?”

Belladonna stopped, gasping for breath.

“My Aunt Deirdre,” she panted, “she knows something. . . . She’s gone to my Grandma’s. . . . I have to find out . . .”

“Knows something?” said Steve. “About what?”

“All the ghosts have vanished. Something’s wrong.”

“That doesn’t sound too wrong to me.”

“But it is. I don’t know why. . . . I just . . .”

Her voice petered off. She couldn’t explain it. Couldn’t explain the off-balance feeling she’d had, not so much since her parents had vanished but since she’d realized that everyone else had too. From the most imposing headless horseman to the tiniest proto-poltergeist—they’d all gone.

“I have to go,” she said, and took off again.

Steve easily caught up with her. “Hop on,” he said.

“What?”

“The handlebars. Hop on. It’ll be way faster.”

Belladonna was dubious about this, but she scrambled onto the freezing handlebars and held on for dear life as Steve took off full tilt, his feet pumping the old pedals while the loose spokes created a rattling whir that bounced off the sides of the parked cars and sounded like either a roaring motorbike (Steve’s opinion) or as if the whole rackety vehicle was about to shatter into its composite parts, leaving cyclist and passenger sitting in the middle of the road (the opinion of everyone else they passed).

“Where does she live?” he yelled.

“Yarrow Street. Number 3.”

Steve turned a sharp right, narrowly missing a lady pushing her baby in a pushchair. The lady yelled some very unladylike things after them, but her voice soon faded in the rush of wind. They finally skidded to a stop around the back of Grandma Johnson’s house.

“This is the back,” said Belladonna, confused.

“Course it is,” said Steve. “If you want to find out anything, you’re going to have to eavesdrop, aren’t you? Otherwise, all you’ll get is that stuff grown-ups always hand out: Don’t you worry about a thing, just do your homework, or eat your dinner, or clear the table. You know the sort of thing.”

He was right, of course. Her Mum and Dad had never discussed anything serious with her, and as for Aunt Deirdre—well, Belladonna was fairly sure that she didn’t even rate as a sentient life-form so far as her aunt was concerned.

The back alley was one of those old-fashioned ones with high brick walls and tall wooden gates. Belladonna slid off the bike and went to her grandmother’s gate. It was locked.

Before she could even point out this fact, Steve had scrambled over the wall and dropped down silently on the other side. He opened the gate and grinned.

“You are
so
going to end up in jail,” said Belladonna.

The two of them crept up the narrow garden, keeping close to the rhododendrons that lined one side. It was dark enough now for them to have a clear view into the brightly lit sitting room where Aunt Deirdre and Grandma Johnson were sitting near the fire, clutching cups of tea.

They made their way right up to the window, ignoring the thorns on the stumpy-looking roses and the sticky mud that seemed to be everywhere. The window was broad and tall, made up of five or six long panes, each of which had small stained-glass pieces at the top that opened to let fresh air in without causing a draft. Fortunately, one of these was wide open and the voices of the two women drifted out into the twilight garden.

“Well, it’s all very distressing,” said Grandma Johnson. “I didn’t even get to say good-bye. Most thoughtless!”

“They didn’t do it on purpose,” snapped Deirdre impatiently. “Something’s happened.”

“Yes . . . something,” agreed Grandma Johnson vaguely.

“And somebody is going to have to go and find out what.”

“Go where, dear?”

“There. You know. Over. To the Other Side.”

There was a long pause. Belladonna was tempted to raise her head and peek inside, but thought better of it.

“I think it’s time for a glass of wine,” said Grandma Johnson finally. “Will you join me? The sun’s well over the yardarm.”

Aunt Deirdre must have nodded, because there was another pause, the sound of glasses tinkling against each other, and a muffled pop as Grandma Johnson removed the cork.

“Now,” said Grandma Johnson in a more cheery voice, clearly having had a sip, “where were we?”

“Someone,” said Deirdre slowly (she was clearly having a very hard time keeping her patience), “has got to go over and find out what is going on.”

“What is she blathering on about?” whispered Steve.

Belladonna held her finger to her lips. She had a feeling that something really important was about to happen.

“And what we need to know,” continued Deirdre, “is where is the door?”

“Good heavens, child,” said Grandma Johnson, “what on earth makes you think I’d know something like that?”

There was a pause. Steve looked at Belladonna
questioningly. She decided to risk a peek and slowly raised her head above the windowsill. She could see her grandmother sitting in her favorite chair, the glass of wine on a small table next to her. Aunt Deirdre was perched on a tall wingbacked chair with her back to the window; all Belladonna could see of her was one thin, perfectly manicured hand toying with a glass, but that hand positively exuded fury.

“Look,” said Aunt Deirdre, “the Hound is out, there are Night Ravens in the trees around the school, and all the ghosts have vanished, so I’d really appreciate it if you’d stop the silly old biddy routine and tell me where the door is.”

Grandma Johnson stared at Aunt Deirdre for a moment. Belladonna felt sorry for her—she’d once been on the receiving end of her aunt’s wrath and remembered that it had made her feel like a very small animal that had been caught doing something dreadful to the best carpet.

Grandma Johnson was made of sterner stuff, however; her voice lost its comfortable tone and took on the timbre of someone who is used to being in charge.

“I’ll thank you to stop using that tone with me,” she said. “It might work on people in London, but this is not London, thank heaven, and I am not some office underling.”

Steve pulled Belladonna back down. “Good for her!” he whispered.

“Still,” continued Grandma Johnson, “the Hound. Well. A drop more, I think.”

There was the sound of the cork again, followed by a brief gurgle as the wine flowed into the glass.

“The thing is, I don’t know.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous—” began Aunt Deirdre, but Grandma Johnson cut her off.

“I’m serious. We lost track of it years ago. All I know is it’s red and has the number seventy-three on it. It
is
here in town, that much I
do
know. But even if you found it, you wouldn’t be able to go through.”

“What is it?” whispered Steve, concerned; Belladonna had just got the most peculiar look on her face.

She shook her head to indicate she was fine and hazarded another peek into the room.

“But it’s here?” asked Aunt Deirdre.

“Yes,” nodded Grandma Johnson. “But—my goodness, is that window open? No wonder I’m freezing!”

Belladonna ducked down as her grandmother leapt to her feet, shut the window, and whisked the curtains shut. The two women continued talking, but now all Belladonna and Steve could hear was the muffled murmur of their voices.

“Well, that wasn’t very useful,” whispered Steve.

“How can you say that?” said Belladonna in amazement as they crept back down the garden. “The door is here. We know that.”

“Where?” said Steve, who was starting to share Deirdre’s frustration. “And what door?”

“The door to the Other Side!” said Belladonna. “When my Dad vanished . . . right before he went, he said that the doors were all closing. The doors to the Other Side. But apparently there’s one left, and it’s here in town somewhere.”

“Wait . . .” Steve was staring at her. “Your Dad? Your dead Dad?”

“Yes,” Belladonna decided that trying to make it all sound as matter-of-fact as possible was probably the best thing. “He and Mum are at home. At least they were. Or they were when I was there anyway, and—”

“So you don’t live with your grandmother?”

Now it was Belladonna’s turn to stare at Steve. Was that all he had to say? She’d just told him that she lived with her dead parents!

“No . . . Doesn’t it bother you that my Mum and Dad are ghosts?”

Steve thought about this for a moment and shook his head. “Not really,” he said finally. “I mean, if you can see the attic girl—”

“Elsie.”

“Yes. Well, if you can see her and she’s been dead for nearly a hundred years, it makes sense that you’d be able to see other people too. I mean, your parents have only been dead for . . .” His voice trailed off and he glanced at Belladonna nervously.

“It’s alright,” she said, managing a small smile. “I see them every day. Or I did.”

Steve nodded and glanced at the window. “We’d better go.”

They crept down the garden and out into the alley. Steve picked up his bike and Belladonna clambered back up on the freezing handlebars. He pushed off hard with his right foot and they rolled silently down the alley and back onto the rapidly darkening street.

They made their way back, slowly this time, passing brightly lit shops punctuated by the gap-toothed emptiness of closed businesses. The town wasn’t as thriving as it had once been, and everywhere there were the signs of struggle and failure. Even the streetlights were intermittent, with repairs taking second place to other essential services, though looking at all the rubbish that was scattered about, it was hard to imagine which services were the essential ones. The little bike rolled on, passing speedily through well-lit sections, and slowing for the more dimly lit blocks where potholes lurked in the twilight.

Steve had been concentrating as they passed over the worst asphalt, but as they neared familiar territory, he was full of questions again.

“The Other Side,” he said, “you mean like . . . the Land of the Dead, the place people go when they . . . ?”

“I suppose,” said Belladonna reluctantly.

After their reappearance, she had somehow never thought of her parents, or any of the other ghosts for that matter, as dead. They weren’t spirits either. There was something sort of ethereal and airy about the word
spirits
, and there was nothing ethereal about most of the ones she knew.

“And to get there, you just find a door with the number seventy-three on it?”

“Well, not
any
door. I mean, there are probably lots of doors with the number seventy-three on them. This is a special door.”

“Special?”

“Um . . . it’s red.”

“So any red door with the number seventy-three on it is actually a portal to the Land of the Dead?”

She could hear the sarcasm in his voice and was just about to shoot some right back at him when she saw something in the street in front of them.