Stonebird (3 page)

With a loud grumble, the engine comes alive.

Mom's eyes in the mirror do not smile. They're
don't-talk-to-me
eyes. Jess looks out of the window all the way home and doesn't speak. Once I lost her hamster for four days, and no one talked to me until I caught it by making a peanut-butter trap for it to fall into. This feels the same as that. Which is annoying because I can't stop thinking about Grandma, and I've got fifty billion questions that need answering.

Has she really killed before?

Or was it the demon talking through her?

Here's everything I can remember about Grandma:

That's everything, and it's not very much at all. There must be more, but I can't remember. It feels as though everything we ever did with Grandma was on a vacation a long time ago, and it's getting blurrier and blurrier and blurrier around the edges until all that's left is a big smudge. And the sheepdog isn't even a memory, not really, just a story Mom once told me when we were going through old photos.

I don't think Grandma is a murderer. She couldn't have killed Granddad, because she was in the retirement home when he died. And she wouldn't have killed a sheepdog, because no one would kill a sheepdog, not even a demon.

“
Liam!
”

Jess is staring at me through the car window. We're home.

“Get out of the car!” she snaps.

“All right, all right. Where's Mom?”

“Inside. She said it's wine o'clock.”

The time on the car clock says 5:53. Sometimes different times have nicknames, like bedtime and lunchtime and home time. But I haven't heard of wine o'clock before. I count on my fingers from twelve until I get to seventeen. “It's ten to six,” I say.

Jess never cries, but I swear her eyes are watering.

Then she blinks and says, “I know. Are you coming or not?” She storms off, shouting over her shoulder, “Mom says you've got to get ready for school tomorrow!”

School
. It's getting so close.

“I'm just going to get a bit of fresh air,” I say.

I climb out of the car and walk around to the garden. It's so overgrown that it's more like a jungle. The low sun pokes through the trees, making stickman shadows on the grass.

You know when you go to have some cereal in the morning and you see your favorite one in there, Frosties or Coco Pops or something, and you can't wait to eat it, but then you find there's nothing there because your sister has eaten it all and left the empty box in the cupboard?

That's me right now. Not sad, exactly. Just empty.

The sky's growing purple, with red-and-orange smears on the horizon. Through the bushes at the edge of the garden, the streetlights flicker on. I can't go into the house. Not yet. It'll make school feel even closer.

So I stand there listening to the rustling wind, listening to the echo of Grandma in my mind. And that's when I realize—

If she did kill someone, maybe there's a chance she wrote about it.

What if there's something in the diary?

Music's already blaring from Jess's room when I get to the front door. I creep through the hall and dash upstairs to
my room. The diary's there under my bed. I grab it, then run back downstairs and out of the door.

Before I know it, my feet are carrying me through the gate.

Onto the quiet road.

Toward the graveyard.

The other houses on the lane are small and perfect and exactly the same, all the same color with the same roof and the same gardens. But the church . . .

The light's so low now that the stained-glass windows look dull and colorless.

I try to ignore the cold feeling running up and down my back as I walk up the path and slip through the old wooden door. In the darkness it's hard to see where I'm going, but I can just about make out the entrance to the crypt ahead of me.

My feet scuff on the flagstone floor. The sound echoes in the empty space.

I breathe slowly, in and out, in and out, trying to calm myself down.

Then I push through into the crypt.

It's still there at the back of the room, a dark shape, even blacker than the gloom around it. But something's missing. The eyes. They're not glowing anymore.

Maybe my mind
was
playing tricks.

It's only stone. Of course its eyes can't glow.

“You're not so bad,” I say, whispering again. I don't know why, but it feels like the kind of place where you have to whisper.

I reach out and touch the gargoyle's chest. It's cold. I stand there, breathing in the damp air. It smells stale.

In here, it's so dark that the air feels alive.

In here, school feels a million miles away.

“I don't want to go,” I say, and right away I feel like an idiot, speaking to the empty room.
But it's not empty, is it? It's got this great big thing in it.
“My friends are all back in Colchester, and Google says they're two hours and ten minutes away. I know I can call them, but it's not the same. I don't know anyone here. Mom doesn't understand. Jess doesn't want to know. Daisy's the best friend I've got left, but she's just a dog . . .”

I flop down and sit cross-legged on the floor.

It'll be all right
, I said to Mom, but I know it won't. Every time I think about school, my stomach twists and turns.

I hope the teachers don't find out about Grandma. At my last school, they kept asking.
How
are
you?
over and over again, no matter how many times I said I was okay. It's like they expected me to fall apart at any moment. But it's Mom they should have been worrying about. I can't really remember that much about Grandma before the Demon in Her, but Mom can. It must be horrible to lose someone so close to you. Because that's what it feels like. Even though Grandma's still there, she's lost.

Sitting there at the gargoyle's feet, I look at Grandma's diary. The face stares at me from the front cover. I'm one hundred percent sure it's the same. I get that most gargoyles look similar, and I know I probably imagined the
glowing eyes, but it's got the same pose, the same face, the same snarl.

I hesitate for a moment, holding my breath. Now that I'm about to read it, I keep looking at those words
TOP SECRET
and thinking it feels wrong. Would I want someone to read my diary if I ever wrote one? Probably not.

But I've got to find out if she really is a murderer.

Holding the pages carefully, I flick through the first few entries. They're surrounded by more sketches. Flowers and buildings and—

And fighter planes.

The War.

Of course I know Grandma lived during the Second World War, but I've never really thought about it. Would she have fought in it too? Could that be where she killed someone?

Before Dad left, he used to take us to air shows every year. I remember the Spitfires soaring overhead, and buying model toys afterward to build and paint and fly around
the house. But that was only two or three planes in the sky. In Grandma's drawing there are dozens.

I read the entry again. They don't sound like the words of a killer. But she's only thirteen here, and there are loads more pages. Maybe somewhere in them, something changes . . .

Suddenly I sit up.

I was so focused that it took me ages to realize.

You know how you can get so used to the furniture in a room that you don't notice when something's different, like when Mom switches the sofas around or changes the side table or moves the elephant statue? Then you squint, and you think, and after a while it comes to you.

That's how I'm feeling now.

It's still dark. Nothing's moved. But something's changed.

I squint around in the shadows, and that's when it hits me—the heat on my back. I scramble up as if I've been burned, even though it's not that hot, it's just warm, like I've been sitting against a radiator.

But there's no radiator at the back of the room.

It's only the gargoyle and me.

And if the warmth didn't come from a radiator, where did it come from?

The thing about school is that it always comes around too quickly.

Mom took me in so early that I was the only one there apart from the janitor, and he didn't say anything, just looked up once and carried on with his work.

“It pays to be early,” she said. “Especially on your first day.”

But I don't think it does pay to be early. I think that only makes things worse, because now I'm sitting outside reception watching the clock
tick tick tick
closer to nine o'clock, when my new teacher will come collect me and introduce me to the class.

Mom keeps saying things, but I'm not really in the mood to talk, so I say
mmm
and
yeah
in all the right places and try to ignore the snakes in my stomach. I can't stop thinking about the gargoyle. I might have imagined the
glowing eyes, but there's no way I made up the heat coming off it . . .

How can something made of stone get so warm?

Just then a woman arrives and holds out her hand. She's got short blonde hair and a wrinkly face, but they're friendly wrinkles, the kind that come from smiling and laughing too much.

“Hello,” she says. “I'm Mrs. Culpepper. You must be Mrs. Williams?”

“Yes,” Mom says. “And this is Liam.”

I stand up to shake the teacher's hand.

“Hello, Liam. Are you nervous?”

“A bit,” I say.

“Me too. We have two things in common already. It's my first day too, you see. I'm covering Mrs. Pindle's maternity leave,” she explains to Mom. “Shall we go and meet our class?”

We say good-bye to Mom, then Mrs. Culpepper leads me down the corridor and through a courtyard. The fifth-grade classroom is at the far end of the school, just past the library. It's right next to the playground, and you can still hear some kids out there as they rush toward school.

Mrs. Culpepper opens the door. Most of the seats are filled.

Everyone looks up. They're staring at me. I try to swallow, but my throat feels thick and useless. Then their eyes slide past me and on to Mrs. Culpepper, and in my head I'm saying
Thank you thank you thank you
, because it's
not as bad when you have someone else standing in the doorway with you.

“Stand here until I introduce you,” Mrs. Culpepper says. She walks to the front of the class and waits until everyone seems to have arrived, then clears her throat. “Hello. I'm Mrs. Culpepper, your teacher while Mrs. Pindle is off. You have a new student joining you today as well,” she continues, pointing in my direction. “Fifth grade, this is Liam. Liam, fifth grade.” Then she mouths, “Take a seat.”

I go to the nearest one, but the girl in the next seat looks up and says, “This seat's saved.”

I move to the one behind it, but that's saved too. A group of kids at the back of the class laugh, and I try to ignore them.

The next seat's free, so I sit down, feeling my cheeks getting hotter and hotter.

Something smacks me on the head and I look down to see a scrunched-up piece of paper on the floor. I pick it up and unfold it. It says:
Starting on the same day as the teacher? You her pet or something?

First day at a new school, and it's already begun.

Ignore it
, I tell myself.

“That's quite enough!” says Mrs. Culpepper. She glides over and takes the paper from my hand. “I won't tolerate anything being
thrown
in my class.” She spins around and hurls the paper, and I turn just in time to see it smack against the wall and drop into the trash. She walks away from me and over to the boys at the back. “What's your name?”

“Matt,” says the boy in the middle of the group.

“Do you like disrupting my lesson, Matt?”

“No, Miss,” he says.

“Good. I suggest you don't do it again.” She walks back to the front of the class and stands by the board. “Now, as I was saying, you're going to have to put up with me for the next six months, I'm afraid.”

Quiet. The room's so quiet now.

“In front of you, you have your timetable. This is how the classes will work for the rest of term . . .”

It's pretty much the same as my old school: math, English, history. There's an asterisk at the bottom of the page, and next to it, in photocopied handwriting, are the words
World War II
.

“As you can see,” says Mrs. Culpepper, “the special focus in history this term is going to be on the Second World War. I've got a really exciting project for you. So let's start with some homework, shall we?”

Homework already?
Maybe she isn't so nice after all.

The other kids are sighing and complaining but Mrs. Culpepper only smiles.

“Don't worry,” she says. “This isn't going to be like normal homework. It'll be interesting, I promise. I want you to find someone who lived through the War and interview them. This could be a grandparent, or a friend of your family, or a neighbor. All you have to do is ask them a few questions. Then we'll form a story circle next week and tell each other what we found out.”

“A story circle?” scoffs Matt. “What the hell's a story circle?”

“Matt,
language
,” Mrs. Culpepper says sharply. “Now, don't tell me you've never made a story circle?” She looks around the class in disbelief. Then she says, “Yes?” because a girl two rows in front of me is holding her hand so high she's about to fall out of her chair.

“Do you mean like reading? Because Mrs. Pindle sometimes reads to us in English. We're on
The Hobbit
at the moment, and last term we read
Harry Potter
.”

“A little like that,” says Mrs. Culpepper. “But I'm talking about stories of your own. Stories
you
tell, not me.”

The class is quiet, except for Matt and his friends, who keep whispering at the back of the room. Mrs. Culpepper doesn't even seem to notice.

“I can see we're going to need some practice,” she says. “Form a circle!” She claps her hands, and her blonde hair bounces on her shoulders as she points at the floor. “Quickly, now. That's it! Chop, chop.”

We shove our chairs under the desks and gather cross-legged on the floor. Mrs. Culpepper stands in the middle of the circle. She reaches into her bag and takes out an egg, one of those marble ones you see in museum shops for about three pounds.

“This is a magic egg,” she says. “
Only
the person touching the egg is allowed to talk. You're going to pass it around, tell me your name, and something about yourself. Okay?”

Uh-oh
. Talking in front of the whole class? My mind's moving so fast, it feels like it's going to catch fire. I know it's only about ten seconds of talking, but no one here knows anything about me, and if I mess up they'll make fun of me for the rest of the year.

Mrs. Culpepper hands the egg to the girl beside me. I watch as she takes it and holds it in her small hands. Her eyes look so big behind her glasses. She says her name is Fiona and starts talking about rabbits, but I'm not listening because all I can think is
Please go around the circle the other way.

I don't have anything to say. I can't exactly talk about my weekend.

My Grandma threatened to kill me . . .

I look up at a sudden noise.

The girl is holding the egg in my face. Up close, I can see the veins in the marble, clear blue against the rusty brown and red.

“Liam,” says Mrs. Culpepper, “is there anything you want to tell us about yourself?”

My hand trembles as I reach out and take the egg, feel its warmth seep into my hands.

“Um . . . My name's Liam.”

Laughter breaks out around the room, and I blink to try to ignore it, and my heart's beating and my tongue's so heavy I can't remember how to use it, and all the time I'm thinking,
Orange penguins orange penguins orange penguins
, just to try and focus.

What can I say? Anything that's not about Grandma.

“Did you do anything at the weekend?” says Mrs. Culpepper. “How's your grandma getting on?”

“She's fine,” I say automatically.

Then I think,
How does she know about Grandma?

Mom must have let the teachers know.

I shift the egg from hand to hand, trying to forget about the faces and the circle.

“It's okay,” says Mrs. Culpepper. “Just pass it on if you can't think of anything you'd like to share.”

I quickly hand the egg to the boy on my left. Matt snickers. His eyes are thin and mocking, and I can't hold his gaze, so I close my eyes and think of the church, just the quiet church in the darkness.

And the gargoyle.

When I open my eyes, Matt's not looking at me anymore.

The marble egg goes around the circle. Mrs. Culpepper yelps when it gets back to her. She drops it and only just catches it again before it hits the ground. She holds it up for all of us to see, and makes a big
O
with her mouth.

“Amazing!” she says. “It's got so warm. That just shows how good your stories were. Lots of happy memories. And happy memories are powerful things.” She smiles at me, and I can feel my cheeks catch fire again. She's looking at me and looking at me.
Why is she only looking at me?
But soon she's smiling at the
whole class and standing up and putting the egg back on her desk.

“Next week we will circle up again and tell stories of the War,” she says. “You all need to interview someone before next Monday. Now—math!”