Raggy Maggie (8 page)

“
W
here’s Billy?’ I demanded. ‘What have you done with him?’

‘One hour, that’s what I said,’ Caddie scowled. ‘You took one hour and five more minutes. That’s not even close.’

‘Where is he?’ I repeated, more firmly this time. ‘And everyone else – what did you do with everyone else?’

‘Not telling. You didn’t win the game.’

I leapt for her, suddenly furious. My fingers tightened around the top of her arms. Her shoulders felt skinny and weak in my grip. ‘It’s not a game,’ I snarled. ‘None of this is a game. Now tell me where they are.’

Something cold and sharp exploded inside my head, as if an ice pick had been stabbed into my brain. My legs buckled and I crumpled to my knees. As my hands fell away from Caddie’s arms the pain quickly began to ease.

‘That’s for not playing nicely,’ she whispered.

‘B-Billy,’ I wheezed, ‘where…where is he?’

‘Tell him.’ Ameena couldn’t hide the contempt in her voice. ‘Now.’

Caddie gave a giggle and pirouetted away, twirling a strand of her hair around a pale finger. ‘Don’t remember,’ she said. ‘I put him
somewhere,
but…’

The sentence drifted off, as if she’d forgotten how it was supposed to end. Her delicate features pulled into a frown. Slowly, she reached into her dress pocket and pulled out the doll.

‘What’s that you say, Raggy Maggie?’ she asked. Ameena helped me up as Caddie held the doll’s porcelain head next to her own ear. ‘But I don’t want to tell him. He
wasn’t nice to me. He didn’t win the game.’

Raggy Maggie’s head moved up and down sharply in Caddie’s hand. For a long time the girl just stood there, her expression becoming darker and darker, as she “listened” to what her dolly had to say.

‘It’s not fair,’ Caddie spat at last. She shoved Raggy Maggie back into her pocket and jabbed a finger in the direction of a pale orange door. ‘He’s in
there,
OK?’

I glanced from the door to Caddie and back again. The door led into a stationery cupboard, I knew. I’d been sent to collect pencils and things from there before. It was long and wide, with shelves lining every side. There were no windows inside it, and no other way in or out.

Another trap? Maybe. Probably. But there was only one way to know for sure.

I approached the door, listening for any sign of life inside. I heard nothing. Caddie’s eyes were on me when I looked back over my shoulder. They sparkled with
something between mischief and malice.

‘Watch her,’ I told Ameena, and I turned to the door again.

The metal handle pushed down with a
click.
Cautiously, I inched the door open a crack. As I did, a warm wetness seeped from within and washed over my shoes.

I heard Caddie giggle as a river of red rushed out from inside the cupboard. It pooled around my feet, settling into a thick and gloopy puddle.

Sour saliva formed at the back of my throat. I had to swallow it down to stop myself being sick.

The door gave a creak as I pushed it open the rest of the way. Dim daylight cut through the darkness of the windowless room and I felt my heart skip several beats.

For a moment I thought the room was bleeding. The shelves and the walls glistened under a covering of crimson. The blood dripped from the ceiling, from the light shade, from the pens and the pencils and the spiral-bound notebooks.

And it dripped from Billy.

He was sitting on a chair at the very back of the cupboard. Head down. Not moving. His hands were behind the chair’s back, tied the same way I had been.

Drip. Drip. Drip.
The sound was on all sides of me as I stepped into the little room, like the plinks and plonks of a broken xylophone.

‘Billy,’ I said, my voice a shrill whisper. ‘Billy, are you OK?’

It was a stupid question. He was tied to a chair and drenched in blood. Of course he wasn’t OK.

I crept forward, until I was just a few paces away. Billy still wasn’t moving. His head hung at a worrying angle. Droplets of blood dangled from the end of his nose like tiny red icicles. I watched one of them wobble, then fall. It made a tiny splash where it landed in the puddle on the floor.

My hand was trembling as I held it out, palm down. I should shake him on the shoulder. I was
going
to shake him
on the shoulder, but fear tightened my muscles and made it hard to move. What if he didn’t respond? What if he didn’t wake up?

What if she’d killed-

A startled cry escaped my throat as Billy’s head suddenly lifted, revealing a face that was a mass of black and blue bruises. One sharp gasp of breath filled his lungs, and his eyes flicked open. The pupils swam lazily, as if he wasn’t quite conscious.

‘You’re alive,’ I cried. ‘Thank God.’

His head rolled loosely on his shoulders. He tried to speak, but the words came out as spittle on his swollen lips.

‘Of course he’s alive, silly.’

I spun to find Caddie standing just outside the stationery cupboard, still clutching her doll. I couldn’t see Ameena anywhere.

‘Where’s Ameena? What have you done with her?’

‘Your daddy told us you’d be fun to play with,’ Caddie
giggled, ignoring the question. ‘And he was right. This has been lots of fun, hasn’t it?’

‘And killing Billy?’ I scowled. ‘Would that have been fun too?’

‘I would never hurt Billy,’ Caddie protested. ‘Billy’s my bestest friend in the whole wide world.’ She glanced down at Raggy Maggie. ‘Well…second bestest.’

I heard a low groan tumble from Billy’s mouth. ‘But you did hurt him,’ I said. ‘Look at him. He’s a mess.’

Caddie shook her head. ‘That wasn’t me. That was Raggy Maggie.’ She patted the doll’s head. ‘Raggy Maggie was very cross with Billy, but I told her it wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t his fault he forgot about us.’

Her face twisted into a mask of rage. ‘It was
her
fault.’

I blinked. ‘Who? The doll?’

‘No. Not Raggy Maggie.
Her!’
Caddie’s tiny hands were clenched into fists.
‘She
had to come along and spoil everything. It’s
her
fault we had to go away to the dark place.’

‘Billy?’ I frowned. ‘What’s she talking about?’

Billy’s eyes were more focused now, but his whole body was trembling. He shook his head from side to side, sending droplets of blood spraying across the room. ‘I couldn’t help it,’ he spluttered. ‘She m-made me tell her. I’m sorry.’

‘What?’ The panic in Billy’s eyes set alarm bells ringing in my head. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked him. ‘Sorry for what?’

‘We would
never
have killed Billy,’ Caddie said. ‘We didn’t even hurt him
that
badly.’

‘But…the blood. Here on the walls. And the arrows…’

‘That’s not Billy’s blood.’

A strangled sob caught in the throat of the boy behind me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he wept. ‘She made me tell her.
She made me.’

‘Whose blood is it?’ I asked. There was a tone to my voice I’d never heard before, as if someone else was
speaking for me. My pulse had suddenly started racing. Every breath I took was becoming more difficult, as my chest went tight.

‘It wasn’t fair her coming along like that,’ Caddie sniffed. ‘She made all the bad things happen. She made Billy forget all about us.’

My lips had gone dry, but the rest of me felt soaked with sweat. ‘Whose blood is it?’ I said again.

‘Our game was just meant to keep you busy.’ Caddie clapped her hands excitedly. ‘So me and Raggy Maggie could play a game that was much more fun.’

‘My sister,’ Billy sobbed. ‘She’s got my little sister.’

For a moment everything in the world seemed to stop. Everything, that is, but the
drip, drip, drip
of the droplets of red.

‘Lilly?’ I croaked. ‘It’s Lilly’s blood?’

‘Oh no, it’s not
hers,’
Caddie giggled. ‘I haven’t done anything to her yet.’

‘Then whose is it?’

Caddie’s voice came as a thin and scratchy whisper. ‘It’s your mummy’s.’

A numbness froze me, made it impossible to move. The words rattled around in my head, empty and meaningless, as if my mind was rejecting them, pushing them away.

Behind me, Billy was babbling. Weeping. Wailing.
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

‘That’s what she gets for looking after
her—’

‘You’re lying,’ I said.

‘Only bad girls tell lies.’

‘You’re lying!’
I hurled myself at her. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. I’d make her confess. Make her admit it was all just another of her sick little jokes.

That icy blade cut through the inside of my head again, cold and sharp, slicing through my every thought. I didn’t feel my legs go limp. Didn’t feel my jaw crack off the blood-drenched floor. Didn’t feel
anything
but the freezing fire
burning through my brain.

It was a struggle, but I managed to crane my neck enough to find Caddie. She was hazy and indistinct, but I could see she was still standing outside the door. One hand was resting on the handle. In the other hand she clutched Raggy Maggie. The doll’s single eye leered down at me, merciless and unblinking. Where was Ameena when I needed her?

‘You know, maybe I
am
lying,’ Caddie sang. Her voice echoed, like feedback at a concert. ‘Maybe I’m not. But it doesn’t really matter.’

I heard the door creak, saw the light narrowing and the shadows growing. I fought with my legs, but they weren’t working. I could do nothing but lie there and watch as Caddie’s face distorted into an inhuman grin that was much too wide for her face.

‘It doesn’t matter, because you’ll never know,’ she whispered.

The door closed over with a slam, leaving me all alone
in the cupboard with Billy and the swirling, flowing rivers of blood.

W
ith the door closed the air in the room was choking. It smelled like the contents of a butcher’s bin bag. It stunk of rancid things. Rotting things. Things days dead. It swirled up my nostrils and nipped at my lungs as I hauled myself up and shook the fuzz from inside my head.

Billy was babbling and whimpering. Noises, not words. Normally it would have been distracting. Normally it would have shot my concentration to pieces.

Normally.

But not now.

Now the sparks raced and danced and crackled – not
just across my head this time, but through my every vein. I could feel them there, just below my skin, pushed around my body by a swelling of hatred and rage. I couldn’t have stopped them, even if I’d wanted to.

And I didn’t want to. I was no longer holding back. I’d felt their power on Christmas Day. I’d sensed then what the sparks could do – what
I
could do – and I’d been afraid. Afraid to give in to it. Afraid to test the extent of my new abilities.

I wasn’t afraid any more.

It’s your mummy’s.
Caddie’s voice played over and over in my head, scratchy and crackling, like an old vinyl record.

She hurt my mum.

The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood up. Static electricity fizzled on my skin.

She hurt my mum.

Something in my vision flickered, and the dark was
pushed aside by a ghostly blue glow. It picked out the edges of everything. The shelves. The door. Billy, mouth open, weeping silently.

She hurt my mum.

And she was going to pay.

My finger lifted, touched the door. The wood exploded into matchsticks, letting the light flood in.

I stepped out of the cupboard. Caddie was already gone, and it looked like she had taken Ameena with her. I wasn’t sure how she could have done it, but there was a lot more to the little girl than her appearance suggested.

I didn’t know where she had gone to. Right then, I didn’t care. I knew where I was going, and that was enough. Behind me Billy swallowed down a sob.

‘How…how did you d-do that?’

‘Long story,’ I said. ‘Caddie. How fast can she move from place to place?’

‘W-what?’

‘When she was in your head,’ I said. ‘Back then, how quickly did she move?’

‘I don’t know,’ Billy replied. ‘I never really saw…usually if I went anywhere she’d get there ahead of me. She’d just kind of be there waiting for me.’

‘Great,’ I sighed. That was just what I didn’t want to hear. I started to stride towards the hole where the stairs should have been. ‘You coming?’ I asked, not looking back.

‘I can’t,’ he croaked. ‘My hands. I’m tied.’

‘No,’ I said, picturing the ropes falling away. ‘You aren’t.’

The chair creaked as he got up. ‘How did you—?’

‘I don’t have time to explain,’ I snapped. ‘Now move.’

His feet splashed through the blood – through my mum’s blood – as he scurried out of the store cupboard. The shattered edge of the floor was a few paces in front of me. I broke into a run. As I did, I heard Billy’s feet hesitate and
a gasp stick in his throat.

‘Watch out!’ he warned. ‘You’re going to fall.’

I saw the stairs as they should have been, and my insides sparkled like a sack of diamonds. I didn’t bother to look down as I stepped off the edge. Didn’t bother because I knew I had nothing to fear.

The first step appeared as my foot came down, the empty air turning to solid stone just in time to support me. A second step formed next to it, lower down. By the time I’d reached the third step, the entire stairway had been rebuilt.

Billy cautiously lowered a foot on to the top step and touched it with the toe of his shoe. When it didn’t move, he ventured down a couple more steps.

‘That’s…impossible,’ Billy whispered. ‘It’s impossible,’ he repeated, louder this time. His footsteps broke into a gallop, and within a few seconds he was running beside me down the stairs. ‘How did…I mean…?’

‘What did you tell her?’ I asked him.

‘What? I don’t—’

‘What did you tell her?’

We passed the second floor and carried on down the steps. The light from the window reflected off the dampness in Billy’s eyes.

‘She…she asked about my sister,’ Billy began. ‘About Lilly. She knew all about her. She wanted…She asked me where she was.’

‘And you told her?’ I sneered. ‘Just like that.’

‘No, not
just like that.’
Billy’s voice took on a little of its usual edge. Not much, but a little. ‘I told her to get out of my face. Told her I wasn’t telling her nothing.’

‘But you did tell her.’ I didn’t make any attempt to hide the anger in my voice. ‘Didn’t you?’

Billy’s mouth flapped up and down for a few seconds, like a fish stuck on dry land. The first floor passed. We were almost at the bottom.

‘She…did things,’ Billy said. He sounded hollow and mechanical. From the corner of my eye I saw him lift up his school jumper and the shirt beneath it.

The skin on his chest and stomach was scalded red. Here and there it formed into bulbous blisters. A clear liquid sloshed about inside them as we hurried down the last of the steps.

‘I tried not to tell her,’ he said hoarsely, ‘but she wouldn’t stop.’ His hands were shaking as he pulled the clothes back down. I glanced up into eyes I no longer recognised. Tears rolled down Billy’s cheeks, cutting tracks through the drying blood. ‘I tried,’ he sobbed, ‘but she wouldn’t stop.
She wouldn’t stop so I told her where Lilly was.
I told her she was at your house.’

His whole body was shaking now. I should have hated him. I
wanted
to hate him. He’d not only sold out his own little sister, he’d sold out my mum. But I remembered the pain that had spilled from Caddie’s teapot. Billy had given
in to it. Who was to say I wouldn’t eventually have done the same?

Mum would have tried to protect Lilly. She’d have done everything she could to keep the girl safe.

She wouldn’t have stood a chance.

‘What then?’ I asked.

‘She…she left. She locked me in. I didn’t see her again until you arrived.’

We were down the stairs now, running towards a side door of the school. Beyond that lay the staff car park. Beyond that a three-mile journey home. I wasn’t sure if Caddie would be there, but Mum might be, and right then, that was all I cared about.

‘How long was she gone?’

‘I…I don’t know.’

The anger inside me lashed out. ‘Well,
think,
Billy.’

‘I was…I passed out,’ he protested weakly. ‘I don’t know, I’m sorry.’

The doors flew open before we’d reached them and we exploded out into the car park. There were around two dozen cars parked in it. Wherever the staff and pupils of the school had gone, they hadn’t driven there.

An hour and five minutes – that was how long it had taken me to get to Billy. I’d seen Caddie about ten minutes before I made it to the top floor, so that was a fifty-five minute period when I didn’t know where she was or what she was doing.

Fifty-five minutes. Was that enough time to torture Billy, get to my house, then get back? It depended on how long Billy took to crack. It was a twenty-minute round trip by car from my house to school. I doubted Caddie could drive, but the girl was full of surprises.

So thirty-five minutes to get what she needed from Billy, attack my mum and snatch Lilly. Much as I hated to admit it, it was doable. It was definitely doable.

‘Where are we going?’ Billy asked.

‘My house.’ I eyed up the cars, trying to find one that looked fast. I quickly realised none of them did. Most of the teachers drove boring, sensible vehicles that would struggle to hit fifty miles per hour.
Most
of the teachers.

But not all of them.

Mr Preston was very protective of his motorbike. It was black, red and silver. It was also ridiculously shiny. It stood there glistening and sleek in the sunlight. Mr Preston’s pride and joy.

A spark flashed through me and the bike roared into life.

‘Whoa,’ Billy whistled. ‘How did you do that?’

‘Will you stop asking me that?’ I spat.

Billy fell silent. He watched me swing my leg over the bike. It hummed impatiently beneath me. ‘Do you know how to ride?’ he asked meekly.

‘I’ll learn. Get on.’

He hesitated for a second, then clambered on behind
me. I was trying to figure out how to make the bike start moving when I realised someone was standing in front of me. It was the man who had untied me from the chair in the canteen.

‘Do me a favour,’ he said, holding up both hands. A motorbike helmet was perched on each palm. ‘If you’re going to head off on this contraption, at least stick these on. Last thing you need is your head bashed in.’

He passed me one of the helmets. It was black with a clear visor, and I recognised it as Mr Preston’s. It tugged at my ears as I slipped it over my head, and everything suddenly sounded distant and muted.

I had a lot of questions I would have liked to ask the mystery man, but once again there was no time. I settled on only one.

‘How’s Mrs Milton?’

‘She’s fine,’ he said, handing the other helmet to Billy. ‘Bit confused, but fine. She doesn’t remember any of it.’

‘Lucky her,’ I muttered.

‘Hey! Not fair,’ Billy complained. He was holding the other helmet up, scowling at it as if it were covered in sick. ‘How come I get the pink one?’

‘Just put it on,’ I told him.

‘Good luck,’ the man said. He stepped aside, making room for us to pass.

‘Oh, come on, it’s got
Sexy Mama
written on it!’

‘Will I see you again?’ I asked, ignoring Billy’s protests.

‘I mean…
Sexy Mama
!’

The man nodded. ‘I hope so.’

Billy said something else, but he was halfway through putting the helmet on, and his voice was muffled. I kicked the motorbike stand away and twisted the throttle. The bike suddenly launched us forward and Billy’s words were left trailing in our wake. Whatever he had said, it wasn’t important. Nothing was important. Nothing mattered but getting home.

The white lines and tarmac flew by beneath us, and we were out of the car park in seconds. I wrenched on the handlebars and took the corner awkwardly. The bike weaved wildly on to a narrow side road, the engine shuddering and stuttering as we left the school behind.

I twisted the right handle, opening the throttle further. The back wheel spun and the engine squealed in complaint, but the burst of speed helped keep the bike balanced. Tyres smoking, we screeched off towards the main road.

Billy’s voice came crackling from somewhere by my right ear. The helmets must have some kind of communication system built in, I realised. ‘We are
so
going to die,’ Billy groaned.

I didn’t answer. The motorbike had seemed like a good idea. I’d pictured it kicking into life, and it had done just that. Picturing myself as someone who could actually ride a motorbike, though – that was proving more difficult.

The main road was a hundred metres ahead. One left turn and three miles and we’d be within spitting distance of my house. It sounded simple. I gritted my teeth and thought of Mum. It
would be
simple.

Traffic flowed in both directions along the main road. The town wasn’t big enough to have a proper rush hour – and even if it did this wouldn’t have been it – but there was still a stream of cars racing past the T-junction ahead of us.

Sure,
I thought.
Simple.

We wobbled our way up to the junction. I had slowed down, but didn’t want to stop. I wasn’t sure if I could keep the bike balanced if we stopped. Besides, stopping would waste time.

A white van flashed past, probably over the speed limit. A silver car shot by behind it. The driver’s eyes went wide as he spotted us – two kids riding a motorbike – but he didn’t slow down.

There was a break in the traffic after that, although I
could see a white car coming up fast. The rage had made me confident – more confident than I’d ever felt – but now that confidence was fading a little. The white car was closing the gap. This was going to be tight.

‘Hold on,’ I yelled, twisting the grip and accelerating out on to the main road.

‘Hey, cool, we can hear each other,’ Billy said, but I was too focused on what I was doing to reply.

The bike lurched, stuttered a few times, then began to speed up. I glanced down at the digital speedometer in the centre of the handlebars. It said we were going at twenty-seven miles per hour, but that couldn’t be right. It felt much faster.

‘Change gears,’ instructed Billy. ‘You’re going to blow the engine up.’

Up until that point I hadn’t realised motorbikes had gears. Now he mentioned it, though, the whine of the engine was getting higher and higher, like a swarm of angry wasps.

‘How do I do that?’ I asked.

An arm appeared over my left shoulder. The finger was extended towards the left handle grip.

‘Twist that, then there’s a little lever next to your right foot,’ he instructed. ‘Click that.’

It took a few tries, but I eventually managed a clumsy gear change. The bike roared furiously for a few moments, then settled down into something resembling a normal engine sound.

‘Keep changing up as we get faster,’ Billy told me. I nodded and clicked the bike into third gear, then fourth. The transitions got smoother each time, and the bike didn’t complain nearly as much. I glanced at the speedo again. Fifty-four miles per hour. That was more like it.

‘How did you know about the gears?’ I asked, bending my body forward against the wind.

‘My cousin has a bike,’ he explained. ‘He’s let me ride it a few times.’

‘And you didn’t think to mention that
before
we got on?’ I scowled.

‘I thought you knew what you were doing.’

‘Well, I don’t.’

I had to breathe deeply to stop my anger bubbling over. My whole body still felt alive with electricity. I was a loaded weapon, ready to go off. If I didn’t calm down there was no saying what could happen.

We were on our way, that was the main thing. All we had to do was follow the main road for another couple of miles. Just five minutes or so and I’d be home.