Hollow Pike (12 page)

‘Cool, do you like this coat?’ Kitty modelled a huge brown fake fur.

‘Gorgeous!’

‘I know! Are you finished? I’d best head home soon.’

Lis nodded, quickly forgetting the book and its sinister contents. ‘I just need to pay for my jacket.’ She picked up the red coat from where she’d left it and headed for the
cash desk, where the eccentric Mrs Gillespie was still folding scarves.

‘Hi. I’d like this, please,’ Lis said.

The old woman continued clawing through the scarves, apparently unaware of her presence.

‘Hello, Mrs Gill—’

‘You’re new,’ Mrs Gillespie stated, reaching over and taking the jacket from her.

Lis smiled nervously, trying to remain as polite as possible. ‘Yes, I just moved here from Wales.’

Through spidery lashes, Mrs Gillespie eyed Lis with suspicion. Her piercing green eyes burned into Lis’s own and her ruby mouth grew tight. Without warning, the woman reached out a thin
arm and grasped Lis’s hand. Cold rings pressed into her flesh. ‘I’ve heard about you, Lis London.’

Lis pulled her hand away sharply. ‘How do you know my name?’

Mrs Gillespie’s face shook with intensity. ‘The birds are your friends, but beware the trees!’

‘What?’ Christ, the woman was mental.

‘You don’t know, do you?’ Mrs Gillespie went on. ‘Well, listen up, young lady . . .
your dreams are a warning
!’

Tears suddenly stung Lis’s eyes. The woman couldn’t know about her nightmares – that wasn’t possible. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

Mrs Gillespie relaxed, smiling once more. ‘Very well. That’ll be three pounds fifty then, please.’

Lis quickly fumbled in her purse for the money as Kitty and Delilah arrived at her side.

‘Are you OK?’ asked Kitty.

‘Yeah, fine. Let’s go.’ Seizing the jacket, Lis turned and ran out of the shop, stumbling onto the cobbled pavement outside. She sank down onto the cold, stone step as Delilah
followed.

‘Lis? What’s up? Kitty’s just paying for her coat.’

Lis looked into her friend’s concerned face and told a lie. ‘I’m OK. That smell was just making me feel sick. Sorry.’

‘No worries,’ Delilah replied sympathetically.

On the contrary, Lis’s head was now full of nothing
but
worries.

Tired

The dream was back with a vengeance and it had evolved. It would start the same as always: Lis crawling, exhausted, through Pike Copse, struggling for breath. The trees, the
birds, the distant screams were all there, as was the moment when her assailant drove her face into the freezing waters of the stream.

And then she would wake up, cocooned in her still, silent bed. She would roll over to try to return to sleep, only now Mrs Gillespie would be lying in bed next to her. Yellow teeth revealed in a
snarl and red painted nails reaching for Lis’s face . . .

‘Liiiisss!’

And then Lis would wake up for real.

A week of broken sleep became full scale insomnia. Although her body was exhausted, fear prevented sleep, and, by the following Monday, Lis could feel the sleep deprivation beginning to affect
her health. Weak and dizzy, she felt somehow separate from reality, like a hologram.

What had Mrs Gillespie meant by calling her dreams
a warning
? Lis wondered if the nightmare was a taste of things to come, but then told herself that that was impossible. She also
reminded herself that Mrs Gillespie was a fruit-and-nut-case who couldn’t possibly be talking about
her
dreams, because it was also impossible for her to have known about them.

God, she needed a good night’s sleep.

And yet she drifted into school, hoping tedium would squeeze out the strangeness of her encounter at the shop. Lis was in luck; she received a cold, hard dose of reality as soon as she entered
the gates. Laura hadn’t lied – she was waiting, just as she’d promised. She and her hags were draped around the railings: gargoyles protecting their lair. Nasima spotted Lis and
turned to whisper something in Laura’s ear. A shadow of a smirk crept across Laura’s perfectly glossed lips as she stared at Lis, and she drew a perfectly manicured nail across her
elegant throat.

Adopting a classic victim stance, Lis put her head down and scurried past before the spider could lunge for the fly. She cursed her own weakness. If she wasn’t her, she’d probably
pick on her! Lis wished she’d caught the bus with the others instead of having Max drop her off; at least there was strength in numbers.

Somehow, registration and first period drifted by easily like a hazy summer cloud. She was
so tired
. She
had
to sleep tonight. She’d read all sorts of things about what
happened if you didn’t sleep for too many days: hallucinations, anxiety attacks, spontaneous fits of sleep, blackouts. Lis knew she couldn’t be far off. She hadn’t slept for more
than thirty minutes in over forty-eight hours.

Second-period Spanish. At least she had the whole gang to keep her afloat in this lesson. They sat in the corner at the back of the classroom, farthest away from Mr Gray at the front and Laura
near the windows. But Spanish oral practice was dull and the classroom was way too hot.
Maybe I could sleep here
, Lis thought.
Would Mr Gray even notice?
Across the room Laura had
artfully arranged her blazer into a pillow and had her head down, pretending to repeat the lines to Harry.

‘
Me duele la cabeza
,’ Jack announced. Spanish with a Geordie accent sounded extra special.

‘My head hurts,’ repeated the translation on the CD.

‘Your turn,’ Jack prompted, but Lis remained slumped in her corner, her eyes aching.

‘You do it,’ she mumbled.

Kitty turned round from the row in front and pulled her headphones off. ‘What’s up?’

Lis leaned forward, every movement a triumph in her current state. ‘I’m not sleeping too well.’

Delilah looked concerned and paused the CD. ‘Why not? What’s on your mind?’

‘Nothing. I suppose I’m just a “troubled sleeper”.’

‘My dad knows some amazing homoeopathic sleeping remedies,’ Delilah said. ‘I’ll get him to dig you something out.’

‘Thanks, Delilah, but I’m sure I’ll sleep tonight,’ Lis told her.

‘My mum swears by three Nytol and a glass of Chardonnay,’ Jack put in, pausing their own CD.

Kitty spoke. ‘Bad dreams?’

Lis froze. A knowing glint sparkled for the briefest moment in Kitty’s blue eyes. Impossible! This was her paranoia again. Kitty had asked a perfectly reasonable question given the
context. Regardless, Lis wasn’t ready to share the full horror of her nightmares with her friends yet. Would any of them understand her horrific recurring dreams? She feared she was too
freaky, even for them.

‘Something like that,’ Lis muttered, cutting the conversation short.

Kitty’s gaze held suspicion for a second and she opened her mouth to speak.

‘Kitty!’ Mr Gray yelled. ‘Turn around and get on with your practice, please.’

Kitty rolled her eyes and pulled the headphones back onto her head. Lis leaned back as Jack continued his butchery of the Spanish language.

‘
Me duele la espalda
.’

‘My back hurts,’ the CD responded.

‘
Me duele el brazo
.’

‘My arm hurts.’

‘
Me duele . . .
’ His voice grew quieter.

Lis jumped. Something freezing cold washed over her feet. There must be a leak or a flood . . . or blood. Looking down, she saw deep, purple-black liquid rushing up around her ankles. Time
slowed to a crawl and she turned to Jack, but he was gone. They were all gone. Lis was alone in a deserted classroom.

Angry winds somehow blew through the walls, and the posters and displays of G2 faded to be replaced by the familiar criss-cross lattice of branches against the night sky, the tree canopy locking
her in its cage. Pike Copse. Once more Lis heard the branches whispering her name in their monotone: ‘
Lissss
’, the final phoneme hissed like a serpent.

The classroom dissolved to nothing. Lis realised she’d fallen asleep in class. Oh, God. She was asleep in class! She looked around the forest, now standing knee-deep in a bubbling stream
of oily blood. This was different though, new. She’d never ever been
standing
in the stream before. She had to wake up. Lis screwed her eyes tight shut.
Wake up, Lis. Wake up, right
NOW
! she told herself. She opened her eyes but, instead of Jack, she saw something else that she’d never seen in the nightmare before: herself.

About six metres ahead she could see her own slender body locked in the futile crawl through the brook, her long brown hair matted to her soaking back.

‘Lis!’ she screamed. That was weird, calling to herself. ‘Stop!’

She started to wade through the blood, or water, or mixture of both, towards her doppelgänger. It was exhausting, forcing her legs against the current. Instinctively she knew she had to
reach herself, warn herself about the inevitable conclusion the nightmare always reached. Maybe this time she could break the cycle.

‘Lis!’ she called again, but her clone failed to respond. Lis quickened her pace, trying to jog through the stream, the sharp pebbles shifting underfoot. As she drew closer, she now
saw that she was wearing her school uniform. She’d never noticed that in her previous visits.

Two metres away. ‘Lis, for God’s sake!’

She stumbled, toppling forwards into the icy water. Steadying herself, Lis saw that she was just a metre away from her other self.

Her hand now moved as though it were not hers. She watched as her fingers glided forwards of their own volition, reaching towards her own drenched hair. In the same instant she became aware of a
solid object in her right hand. Her fingers were gripping a leather handle of some sort. Connected to the hilt was a deadly-looking blade, the edge waved and engraved with an intricate pattern of
circles and some sort of writing. Lis couldn’t read the inscription, though. It seemed to be in old English – beyond anything she could understand.

Her left hand made contact with her other self’s thick, dark locks, her fingers weaving into the dripping strands. Lis pleaded with her hands to stop, but they had a sinister mind of their
own. Her hand tightly gripped the hair, tugging the head back.

But she wasn’t clutching her
own
head any more. It was Laura Rigg’s.

Her eyes snapped open and she found herself looking into Jack’s grinning face.

‘Rise and shine, sleepy he—’

A scream and a crash from the other side of the room cut him off. Laura had
also
awoken with a start, throwing her entire body back, as if waking from the worst nightmare imaginable. Her
chair toppled backwards and she tumbled into the table behind, dragging the CD player onto the floor with her.

The room was stunned into silence. Lis stood as Laura lay squashed in between chairs, table legs and CD player. No one spoke for about three seconds and then Bobsy tentatively tried a laugh.

‘Nice one, Riggsy!’

Mr Gray darted forwards from the group he was working with. ‘Robert, be quiet. Laura, are you OK?’

Harry pushed herself out of the way and reached down to help her friend up.

‘Get off me!’ Laura screeched.

Mr Gray pulled the table back as a dishevelled Laura clambered to her feet. ‘Laura, let me have a look at y—’

‘Don’t touch me!’ she snapped. ‘I’m fine!’

‘Laura, just let me make sure you’re OK . . .’ Mr Gray began.

Without another word, Laura pelted out of the classroom. There was another second of silence, followed by some nasty, hushed giggles from the rest of the class, including Kitty and Jack.

‘That’s enough!’ Mr Gray snapped. ‘Get back to work.’

Lis couldn’t move. She was still at her desk, her eyes fixed on the spot where the whole scene had played out. Laura had been in her dream. How? Why had the nightmare changed now? Mrs
Gillespie’s words echoed in her mind:
your dreams are a warning.

‘Child, that girl act like she on crack!’ Jack sniggered.

Kitty could barely hide her hysterics behind her hand. ‘What the bloody hell was that all about?’

Delilah also suppressed a grin. ‘And the award for best actress in a dramatic meltdown goes to . . .’

Lis didn’t think it was very funny. It wasn’t very funny at all.

Laura, Laura, Laura. That girl had filled Lis’s head from the moment she’d met her. It seemed that now she couldn’t even avoid her in her dreams.

Another night of fractured sleep followed. Lis couldn’t even close her eyes. She lay motionless, gazing out of the French windows at the stars shining brightly in the cloudless sky. It was
as if Mrs Gillespie’s bonkers message had caused real life and her nightmares to merge. There was no escaping Laura now. Lis recognised it all too well. It was Gwynedd Community College: the
Sequel. This was only the beginning. Being scared – scared of Laura, scared of her bitches, scared of school. And Lis knew her lies would follow: lying to get out of school, fake illnesses,
truancy. She wasn’t sure what the third stage was. That was the point at which she’d run away to Hollow Pike.