Return of the Emerald Skull (9 page)

t was a dark, moonless night, and as the lamplit streets gave way to the narrow hedge-lined lanes of the southern outskirts, I felt a shiver of apprehension. Ahead of me lay the great double gates of Grassington Hall, silhouetted against the starry sky As I approached, I saw a heavy padlocked chain, like a coiled python, locking them shut.

So it was true, then, I thought ruefully. Grassington Hall was indeed a lock-up academy.

In the circumstances, there was only one thing for me to do. I had to sneak inside and get a message from one of the wretched
imprisoned pupils. A scrawled note with a lock of hair or a much-loved stuffed toy would alert Dear Mama and Papa to their little angel's plight.

Lock-up academies were best nipped in the bud, in my experience. Once I'd delivered the plea for help, the parents usually did the rest, alerting the authorities to shut the place down. At the first sign of trouble, the swindlers and con artists who ran these schools usually took what they could carry and disappeared – as long, that is, as things hadn't turned nasty and no blood was spilled …

I only hoped I had arrived in time.

Having checked that the coast was clear, I started up the left-hand gate. It was made from cast iron, intricately twirled and twisted, painted black – and easy to climb. I was up past the ornately curlicued ‘G’ at the top and down the other side in seconds. I paused for a moment, listening for the bark of a guard dog …

There was nothing.

To one side of the gates, the gatekeeper's lodge was in a terrible state. The door had been kicked in and was hanging off its hinges, and the windows had all been broken. I stepped inside. It was pitch-black. I reached inside my waistcoat pocket and drew out a box of Vestas. Striking a match, I held up the flickering flame and looked around.

Obviously someone had had it in for the Major. The place had been ransacked. Curtains had been pulled from the windows; pictures torn from the wall and dashed to the floor. An old leather armchair was on its side, its stuffing spilling out like the entrails of a butchered ox, and an oak table had been reduced to matchwood.

I stepped back outside, remembering the wild, haunted expression in the eyes of the gatekeeper. Poor honest fellow, I thought. He had obviously refused to go along with the headmaster and his cronies, and had suffered
grievously as a result. By the look of things, he'd only just escaped with his life – though in the event, of course, that had tragically proved to be only a temporary reprieve.

As I struck a second match, I caught sight of something at my feet. It was a large tasselled feather. Bright emerald, with wispy tips. I stooped down and picked it up.

The headmaster's precious stuffed birds, I thought with contempt as I examined the feather. Those horrible dead things seemed to mean more to him than living, breathing flesh and blood.

I glanced back at the wrecked gatehouse. As lock-ups went, this looked like a bad one. There was evil about. I could sense it. Gripping the handle of my swordstick, I turned my back on the lodge and headed across the playing fields towards the brightly lit main buildings of the school.

They were, I had to concede, magnificent – a fact which made the change in the school's
circumstances all the more unfortunate. The broad sweep of the east and west wings met at the grand central portico with its four stucco columns beneath a Grecian pediment. Through the portico lay the central courtyard, or quadrangle, from which, as I crept closer, I could hear voices.

Instinctively, I dropped to my haunches. I removed my coalstack hat, clicking it flat and stowing it in my topcoat. My right thumb flicked the catch on my swordstick as, out there in the middle of the playing fields, I crouched down in the inky darkness and waited.

The voices grew louder, buzzing and monotonous like the droning of angry bees, combining into an insistent chant.

‘Hunt the hog! Hunt the hog!’

All at once there was a loud whooping cheer from the quadrangle, followed a moment later by an agonized, high-pitched wail of terror.

What in hell's fiery furnace was going on? I asked myself as my muscles tensed in the darkness.

I didn't have to wait long to find out.

Suddenly a lone figure burst through the columns of the portico and out onto the playing field, running as fast as his legs would take him. Behind him, screeching and hooting like a horde of demented demons, came a pursuing mob.

Some carried blazing torches aloft, the yellow flames bathing the whole seething mass in a pool of flickering light. Some brandished bats and clubs; some wielded splintered table legs and bits of broken desks. A couple wore ornate feathered head-dresses. Several had blankets and curtains wrapped round their shoulders like cloaks. All were intent on running their quarry to ground.

The figure, sobbing and whimpering with terror, plunged into the darkness of the playing fields, and I drew back as he lumbered
towards me. All at once, with a muddy squelch, he stumbled and fell, sprawling headlong on the turf. I stepped forward and, gripping him by the arm, hauled him to his feet. He turned his mud-smeared face to mine, his eyes wide with terror.

Screeching and hooting like a horde of demented demons

It was the games master, Mr Cripps.

His cracked lips opened. ‘Help me,’ he pleaded, his voice little more than a rasping whisper. ‘Help … me …’

‘Hunt the hog! Hunt the hog!’

The fiendish cries of the pursuing mob jolted Cripps back into action. He pushed past me and headed off into the blackness in the direction of the school gates and the promise of escape. His pursuers followed close behind. I dropped to my knees once more, cloaking myself in darkness as they swept past.

I felt the heat from the blazing torches and smelled the burning pitch. I saw the blur of brandished weapons, and heard the yelp and
shriek of voices that seemed barely human.

One figure, wrapped in a length of striped curtain, dropped the sharpened stump of a chair leg and crouched to retrieve it from the mud. The curtain fell from his shoulders. I recognized at once that round, red-cheeked face, the tousle-haired head …

‘Sidney junior,’ I muttered under my breath.

The next instant, he seized the chair leg and was off once more with the others, baying at the top of his voice. I thought of his father reading the lock-up letter, and wondered what ‘the proudest father in the whole world’ would have to say if he could see his son now.

‘Please! Please! Please!’ I heard the abject cries of the games master echoing back across the field above the howls of glee from his pursuers. The hunt had obviously run its victim to ground.

Keeping to the darkness beyond the
flickering torchlight, I approached as close as I dared. After the seeming chaos of the chase, the hunters were now working calmly and methodically. I saw the gleam of leather and a momentary flash of metal, bright in the moonlight, as one school belt was fastened around Cripps's neck, another around his waist, and the two fastened together. As they worked, the individual screeches and cries subsided, and a new chant was taken up.

‘Bring him to the head! Bring him to the head!’

It was low and hypnotic, and I realized that everyone was responding to its rhythm. Those binding the games teacher were doing it at the same pace, while those watching were swaying from side to side like metronomes. The only one not following the same mesmeric beat was Cripps himself, who tugged and struggled at every opportunity, desperate still to break free – not that it did him a ha'p'orth of good.

Softly at first, though soon rising in volume, the new chant caught on.

‘Bring him to the head! Bring him to the head! Bring him to the head!’

‘No!’ Cripps cried out. ‘No, for the love of all that is sacred, not that! Let me go, I beg you! Let me go!’

No one paid him any heed as they tugged him to his feet. Even though his voice grew louder and louder until he was screaming hysterically, it was drowned out by the rising swell of the chanting.

‘Bring him to the head! Bring him to the head!’

What manner of evil was the headmaster orchestrating in this lock-up academy? I wondered as the mob approached.

As they had been swaying, so now they were marching, each individual in the hunting party in step with the others as they strode back across the fields to the rhythm of the echoing chant. In their midst,
struggling no longer, was Mr Cripps. He was walking along so obediently, his head down and his eyes to the ground, that no one needed to tug on the leashes that bound him any longer.

The victorious hunting pack marched past me in the darkness. As it did so, I picked up the length of curtain that young Sidney junior had dropped, wrapped it round my shoulders, and fell into step at the back of the throng. Ahead of me, the chant continued.

‘Bring him to the head! Bring him to the head!’

The sense of evil I'd felt from the moment I'd scaled the gates of Grassington Hall gripped me more powerfully than ever. I thought of the beautiful Mei Ling waiting for me to show up for my usual yinchido lesson. How far away the laundry now seemed as I followed the chanting crowd into the school.

From the top of my head to the marrow in
my bones, I knew that something terrible was about to unfold in this place. As to what it was, I could only guess, yet as I stepped through the portico and into the quadrangle, I knew I had to find out.