I SAT UP WITH MY HEART THUDDING wildly. Thank God I was awake. I caught the echo of a scream in the air. Moonlight fell into my new room, and I was really glad to feel a soft mattress under me—so much nicer than falling into a bottomless abyss, surrounded by a black void.
But I had only a split second to enjoy my relief, because then I heard loud footsteps in the corridor, my door was flung open, and Mom rushed over to my bed. “What happened, mousie? Have you hurt yourself?”
“What?” I blinked at the light, confused.
Only a few seconds later, Mia, Buttercup, Grayson, and Florence arrived, and finally Ernest came running in.
“A burglar?” cried Mia.
“Did you see a ghost?” asked Florence at the same time. “Did Spot jump on your bed?”
“A bat, I expect?” Ernest was tying the belt of his bathrobe around his waist. (Good, so he didn’t wander around the house half naked at night.) “Nothing to panic about. They do sometimes lose their way and come into the house at this time of year—oh, but your window is closed.”
The only one apart from Buttercup who didn’t ask questions was Grayson. He just looked at me as if he knew exactly what had happened.
It took me some time to pull myself together and get my breathing reasonably well under control. Having everyone stare at me wide-eyed and bombard me with questions didn’t really help. What were they all doing here?
“You screamed,” Mia explained.
It must have been a frightful scream to be heard two rooms away. Only Lottie, on the floor above, evidently hadn’t been woken.
“I had a silly dream, that’s all,” I muttered, avoiding Grayson’s eyes. Butter licked my hand comfortingly.
“What of? Being skinned alive?” Florence looked at me as if she’d never seen anything more pathetic in her life—and she was right. With my hair untidy and drenched with sweat, and my worn-out old nightshirt, I was certainly no sight for sore eyes. “Uh-oh, don’t they say that what you dream on your first night in a new house comes true?”
They said that, did they? What a delightful prospect.
“How unfortunate.” Mia gave Florence an annihilating glance. “Especially if Liv dreamed of an ax murderer coming to slaughter you in your bed.”
“My poor mousie. Please dream something nice from now on, will you?” Mom yawned and stroked my hair.
“And if you don’t, then at least be quiet about it,” added Florence huffily. “I nearly had a heart attack.”
“It’s only three thirty. I suggest we all go back to bed and try to get some more sleep,” said Ernest. “But maybe you’d better leave your bedside light on, Liv.”
You bet I would. I pulled the quilt up to my chin, because I suddenly felt icy cold.
“I’m sorry,” I said wearily. “I really didn’t mean to wake you all. Good night.”
One by one they started leaving my room. Only Grayson turned back in the doorway again and looked at me.
“What’s the matter?” I hissed, when he still hadn’t said anything after about ten seconds. He was wearing only his pajama bottoms, and although (or perhaps because) I was feeling right off the wall, I couldn’t help noticing how fit his upper body looked.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have dragged you into it.” And before I could answer, he closed the door.
Wearily, I dropped back against the pillows. He wasn’t to blame; it was all my own fault. I’d thought I was in control of events. I wasn’t.
And it wasn’t fun anymore either.
In rapid succession I remembered the fear in Anabel’s voice, the dog dying on the lawn, the triumphant gleam in Arthur’s eyes, and the invisible Something that had followed Henry and me along the corridor. Was it going to be like that every night now?
The story of Tom Holland had given me a lot to think about, and it badly shook my conviction that demons didn’t exist. Suppose Henry was wrong and Arthur had wished Tom dead last year at Halloween after all—then how great was the probability that, young and healthy as he’d been, he really would die within the next nine months? Less than one percent, I’d guess. Far less than one percent. It would explain why Arthur took the whole thing so seriously—so deadly seriously, you might say: He felt sure that Tom’s accident was the work of the demon. And I could even understand that.
I turned over on my other side and closed my eyes, exhausted. I’d simply have to ignore the green door as well as I could over the next few days, or I’d go right out of my mind. I’d sooner dream of Hamlet every night than of invisible pursuers, or falling into a void. Or of boys with gray eyes who simply vanished when things began to get romantic. It was about time to let my sound human reason take charge of this story again.
In fact, Henry did seem to have vanished, and not just from the dream. He didn’t come to school on Monday, never mind how much I looked out for him. First I was just uneasy, but when he still didn’t turn up on Tuesday, my uneasiness turned to mild hysteria. What did I know about these dreams and the laws governing them? Maybe that rustling thing had caught Henry, and … Or he was simply sick and I was in the process of going off my rocker. Because I was seriously considering the possibility of catching a cold in dream corridors. So much for sound human reason.
And when there was still no sign of Henry on Wednesday morning, although I lingered at my locker for an extra-long time, I suddenly realized how much I missed him. I also realized that I couldn’t stand the uncertainty any longer. I’d have to swallow my pride and ask Grayson.
At that moment I heard Henry’s voice.
“Has your locker hypnotized you, cheese girl? You’ve been staring at the same spot for a full minute.”
I was so relieved to see him that my legs almost gave way beneath me. Of course, I couldn’t come up with a smart answer right away.
“Henry!” In fact, I could only just suppress a deep sigh of relief.
He smiled. “I’ve missed you, too,” he said. His eyes were bright, but you couldn’t help seeing the dark shadows under them.
“Where’ve you been?” I managed to ask.
He opened his locker and took out a few books. “I had to see about something at home.” Rather hesitantly, he added, “My mother had one of her bad turns. But it’s all right again now.”
Had it been his mother’s voice breaking into Amy’s colorful little-girl dream? Which of you damn kids…? Not exactly what you’d want to hear your mother saying.
“You suddenly just disappeared, and then everything turned black,” I murmured, suppressing the impulse to touch him just to make sure he was really there. I crossed my arms, to be on the safe side.
The bell rang for class.
“I’m sorry—I was woken, and then so was Amy.” He closed his locker a little more forcefully than necessary. “I’d have liked to explain, but you haven’t been in the dream corridor these last few nights.”
“You could simply have phoned,” I said. “In the daytime, I mean.”
He looked at me thoughtfully. “Yes, I expect I could,” he said. “I must go—I have a biology test. Active and passive transport mechanisms in the biomembrane. Cross your fingers for me.”
Then he had disappeared into the crowd, and I began missing him all over again. If Persephone hadn’t turned up to hold her cell phone under my nose, showing a picture of herself in a reed-green ball dress, I might even have run after him. For the first time, I was grateful to Persephone for her presence.
Over the following nights, however, there was no one to save me from thinking about Henry and myself. It took me forever to get to sleep, and when I did finally manage it, at least I didn’t have nightmares (and I only once had to put up with Florence playing both leading parts in Hamlet), but the green door turned up all over the place. Again and again I was on the point of opening it, only to decide against the idea.
No, I wasn’t about to make it so easy for him! If Henry wanted to talk to me, he could do it by day. He knew where to find me. Apart from which, you never knew whom or what else you might meet in that corridor.
But Henry seemed to be avoiding me. I met Arthur and Jasper now and then, but because I was always with Persephone, they just smiled and cast me meaningful glances. Maybe that did bring Persephone to the verge of a heart attack every time, but it cheered me up a bit. The dreams were one thing, but when I thought of the ritual in Jasper’s living room, I couldn’t help laughing.
My nights seemed to go on forever, while my days passed at surprising speed, not least because living with the Spencers was so strange and new for us all. But it worked out better than I’d expected. Maybe that was because Mom and Ernest were so obviously happy together. To be honest, I’d never seen Mom happier. In the circumstances, it was harder and harder for Mia and me to act as if we were always going to detest Ernest. We still avoided speaking to him directly, but if we weren’t careful, an “Ernest” sometimes slipped out, instead of “Mr. Spencer.” And a smile.
It was easy to get used to Grayson as well. He might have a few bad habits, like forgetting to put the milk back in the fridge, or leaving large blobs of toothpaste in the washbasin, but otherwise it was nice sharing a house with him. Buttercup in particular loved him to bits, because he played in the garden with her every day and praised her ability to fetch even when she bit his basketball in half. He didn’t seem to spend much time with Emily during the week, but you knew at once when she was on the phone, because then his voice changed and he disappeared into his room as soon as he could. (We were all thankful for that; having Mom and Ernest going lovey-dovey the whole time was quite enough.)
Every morning on his way to work, Ernest first dropped Florence, Mia, and me off at school, then he took Mom to the rail station. Grayson cycled to school. He liked it, and anyway there wasn’t any room left for him in the car.
Lottie enjoyed mothering three more people than before, plus a cat. She did all the food shopping, made supper, and saw to keeping the whole house neat and tidy and full of delicious cooking smells, and as usual her good temper spread to everyone.
By the end of the first week, even Spot and Buttercup were lying peacefully side by side on the sofa.
In fact, if Florence and I hadn’t been getting on each other’s nerves so badly, there’d have been an almost suspiciously harmonious atmosphere in the house and the enlarged family. But she could be relied on to spoil that. On the pretext of “just wanting to help,” she meddled with everything: homework, dog training, a bathroom schedule—and plans for my sixteenth birthday.
Not that there had to be any real plans. We’d never made a big fuss about birthdays. A few presents, a cake, the essential phone call from Papa, and we usually went to the cinema in the evening—the perfect day! Florence, Grayson, and Ernest were welcome to a piece of my birthday cake, but apart from that I saw no reason for my birthday to be any different from usual this year.
However, I’d been reckoning without Florence.
On Friday afternoon I came home from school in a towering fury, ready to strangle Florence with my own hands. I found her sitting with Mom, Mia, and Lottie in the kitchen, teaching them all to play bridge. That idyllic sight was the last straw! I swept the cards off the table, leaned both hands on it, and faced Florence.
“How come Persephone Porter-Peregrin is going about claiming to have been invited to my birthday party?” I felt like shouting, but what came out of my mouth wasn’t much more than a concentrated hiss.
For the first time since I’d known her, Florence looked taken aback. For about a second.
“But, mousie,” said Mom, “I asked Florence to invite a few of your new friends.”
“And it’s obvious that you spend more time with Persephone than anyone else at school,” said Florence, “so I thought—”
“Are you crazy?” I was getting closer to a shout now. “Persephone is driving me out of my mind! She follows me everywhere, talking to me the whole darn time! I mean, if at least she talked about something interesting! But oh no, she describes all the ball dresses she didn’t buy, in detail! It’s more than anyone could stand. I’d like a rest from it on my birthday, at least!”
“Mousie,” said Mom again, “you’re only sixteen once, as Florence said, and she’s right. So we thought it would be nice to celebrate the day with a little more than just a birthday cake.”
“Of course there’ll be a birthday cake as well,” said Lottie. “And balloons!”
“We’re going to have a picnic,” said Mom proudly. “A genuine English picnic in the park, with the family and all your new friends! We’ve thought of all kinds of nice games and things to do. Emily is going to bring a croquet set—”
“Emily?” I gasped for air.
“Well, as Grayson’s girlfriend, of course she’s invited. She’s practically one of the family.”
“And I have to bring Daisy Dawn along, too,” said Mia, winking at me. “I mean, of course, I’m allowed to bring Daisy Dawn along.”
“It will be great!” Mom was beaming at me. “Henry has said he’ll come as well, and if we have a barbecue, maybe Charles will—”
“Henry?”
“Yes, mousie, the boy you’re going to the ball with. I’m looking forward so much to meeting him.” Mom frowned. “Oh, please don’t say that he’s another one driving you out of your mind.”
“No!” Yes. No. Only a little. I was breathing with difficulty. Who else had Florence invited? Her dancing partner, the one she’d fished up from the anonymous depths of the Math Club? Emily’s disturbed brother Sam? Itsy and Bitsy? Jasper and Arthur? The London Symphony Orchestra? And maybe Secrecy to take birthday photographs as a memento?
“We only wanted to do something nice for you,” said Mom. She could sense that my anger was beginning to die down and laid her hand on mine. “Now, please tell me why you’re so upset. It will be a splendid day, and you deserve one!”
“But … but … you can’t simply … I mean to say…,” I stammered.
“I know. I’d be overwhelmed myself in your place.” Florence gave me a modest smile. “But there’s no need to thank me. I was really happy to fix it all.”
“You’re only sixteen once,” Mom repeated.
And Lottie said, “We’re all looking forward to it so much!”
I gave up. They’d won. With a little luck, it would rain on my birthday and the picnic would be a washout. After all, we were in England, and this was fall.
“I’ll just go and get my things for kung fu,” I said, resigned.