Scarlet and Ivy 3-book Collection Volume 2

“Come inside,” I said. I led her into the room and pulled the doors shut. “Do you know what happened?”

She shook her head. Her pale cheeks began to burn red.

It began to dawn on me what might be going on. I’d said it myself, hadn’t I? What if she sleepwalks?

“Rose,” I tried gently. “Do you … walk in your sleep?”

There were a few moments of silence. “Sometimes.”

I felt a sliver of relief growing in my mind. That’s what was going on. “I think that’s what’s happened. You got dressed in your sleep –” I gestured at her buttons and jumper – “and tried to get in the bathtub. That must be why your clothes are wet.”

She frowned. “Bad,” she said simply.

That threw me a little. “Bad? To sleepwalk?”

This time it was a nod.

“But it’s not your fault,” I said. I put my hand on her damp sleeve again. “You can’t help it if you’re asleep. I sleepwalked once in my Aunt Phoebe’s house, and I woke up lying on the kitchen floor!”

She bent over, her wet hair dripping on to the carpet. “They said …” She didn’t seem to want to finish the sentence. I wondered who she meant. Had her family said it was bad? The doctors in the asylum?

And a part of me wondered if she meant she did something bad while sleepwalking. Stealing?

“Scared,” she said, still shaking. I wrapped an arm round her.

“It’s all right. Don’t be frightened.” I tried not to think about the sight of her standing on the balcony. I had been frightened out of my wits. “Come on. Let’s go back to our room so you can get dry.”

Eventually, she inhaled deeply and then responded with another nod.

I helped her to her feet and we headed for the door, Rose still dripping. I prayed that the water would dry before the next morning. I didn’t want the Rudges to have a heart attack.

But as we stepped out into the corridor, things went even more wrong.

Because Elsie and Cassandra were standing there, holding candles of their own, and they looked furious.

“There she is!” Elsie cried. “Get her!”

Chapter Twenty-two

SCARLET

was woken by the sound of raised voices and footsteps out in the corridor. I was sure there had been a candle beside our bed, but when I felt for it in the dark, it seemed to have gone.

Something else was gone too. Ivy.

I blinked in the darkness. The shouting grew louder and then faded. As if someone were being chased.

My twin senses were telling me something was wrong. I jumped out of bed and felt my way towards the door. I could hear Ariadne still snoring, but … was Rose there? I couldn’t hear her, and I couldn’t see well enough to be sure.

I didn’t worry about being quiet. Ariadne could sleep through most things, and Ivy might be in trouble. Maybe Rose too. I dashed out into the corridor and turned my head quickly from side to side. Where had they gone? I thought I could hear echoes of shouting coming from the stairway.

I ran towards the sound, my footsteps pounding on the floor. I followed them all the way down the stairs, running blindly along the hallway until I came to the reception area. The lights were still lit there, but the Rudges must have long since gone to bed. The front door of the hotel was just swinging shut as I reached it.

“Oh no, you don’t,” I said, grabbing it before it could close. I ran out into the night.

The courtyard in front of the hotel was lit up, and misty rain was falling.

I saw Ivy and Rose backed up against a wall, and two taller shapes that were unmistakably Elsie and Cassandra. I cursed them under my breath.

“No escape now, freak,” I heard Cassandra say.

I crept nearer, the rain sticking my hair to my face. If the harpies couldn’t see me, I had an advantage.

“Leave her alone,” Ivy said. She was holding a candle that spluttered in the wind. “She’s never done anything to you.”

The air was cold. I tried to forget that I was only wearing a nightgown and a pair of stockings. I tiptoed, staying light on my feet.

“We know it was you!” Elsie was shrieking. “We practically caught you red-handed!”

“We have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ivy pleaded. Her eyes flickered over to me, and I knew that she had seen me. I put my finger to my lips. She quickly looked away again.

As I got closer, I could see that Rose was soaking wet. The rain? I thought for a moment, but no, she looked like she’d fallen in the lake again. What on earth had just happened?

Cassandra was shaking with anger. “You stole my necklace,” she said. “And then you break into our room while we’re sleeping! How dare you? How DARE YOU?” She reached out as if she were going to slap Rose …

And I caught her arm in mid-swing.

She spun round furiously. “What—”

“You are not going to touch her,” I said.

She may have been taller than me, but she wasn’t stronger. I kept my grip on her arm as she tried to wrestle it away from me.

“Rose, run!” I yelled.

She didn’t need to be told twice. Rose was small and quick, and she darted round Cassandra and back off towards the hotel.

“Elsie!” Cassandra tried to alert her friend, but Ivy reacted faster than Elsie could. She stuck out her leg and sent Elsie flying. I almost cheered.

“Either of you want to explain what this is about?” I demanded.

Elsie got up and brushed herself off, her face red. I thought she was about to start steaming. “Don’t have to explain ourselves to you,” she muttered.

“Maybe not,” I said. “But I can go and tell Mrs Knight that you two just attacked my sister and my friend for no good reason. Or –” I tugged Cassandra’s arm a little to make the point – “you could tell us what you’ve got your knickers in a twist about.”

“She knows,” Elsie said with a glare at Ivy as she scrambled back up to her feet.

“I really don’t,” said Ivy.

Cassandra shared a glance with Elsie – I think they realised Ivy was telling the truth. “If you let me go, I’ll tell you.”

I shared a glance with my twin. I didn’t really trust Cassandra, but it was worth a try.

I dropped her arm and watched as she rubbed it, trying to get the feeling back.

“I’m not going to wait out here all night,” I said. Not least because it was so cold and rainy. “I’m running straight for the teachers if you don’t explain.”

“All right, all right.” Cassandra glared at me. She patted down her usually perfect curls, which were going frizzy in the rain. “We heard noises in our room,” she finally explained. “And when we lit the lights, we saw our room had been … vandalised.”

That reminded me of what had happened to us. Ivy must have thought the same, because she asked: “Things thrown everywhere? Curtains ripped?”

“No, not like that. There was this message written on the wall. In red. Like blood.” Cassandra shuddered. Elsie looked sick. “And there was water all over the floor. Then we came out into the corridor and saw that freak, soaking wet.”

“It was her,” Elsie hissed into the misty air. “You’re all blind. You think she’s so sweet and quiet. She’s insane, Grey. Haven’t you heard? She was in a mental asylum!”

“So was I,” I said through gritted teeth, but I don’t think they heard me. Elsie was in full flow now.

“She’s crazy. She hardly talks. She’s a thief. And now this? Soaking wet and writing threats on our wall? She should never have come on this trip. It’s not safe for any of us.” Elsie started punching one hand into the other. “She. Is. Crazy!”

Ivy wiped rain out of her eyes. “What exactly did this threat say?”

Elsie and Cassandra glanced at each other.

Ivy’s candle gave one final splutter and went out.

“Maybe you should see for yourself,” Elsie said quietly.

The prefects marched back into the Shady Pines Hotel, and we followed behind them.

“Are you all right?” I whispered to Ivy.

“Fine,” she replied. “Just cold. I hope Rose is safe in our room now. She was sleepwalking.”

I nodded my agreement as understanding dawned. So Rose had sleepwalked out of our room?

Ivy found some more matches behind the reception desk, and we relit the candle. As we slowly climbed the stairs to the top floor, I noticed that there were still wet footprints leading out of the bathroom.

“She got in the bath?” I asked Ivy.

“Seems so.” Ivy shrugged.

I peered closer, and I realised that there were more footprints, heading towards the prefects’ room. Ivy saw them too.

“That’s not good,” she said.

“Are you coming or not?” Elsie whispered angrily from over by their door.

“Yes, yes,” I said, hurrying along. “Keep your hair on.” But from a quick glance at the footprints, I could have sworn that they were bigger than Rose’s.

Elsie held the door open, gesturing towards the wall with her other arm. Ivy and I stepped inside, and looked up.

I saw, in large, hastily painted letters as red as blood …

Chapter Twenty-three

IVY

he terrifying writing was huge, angrily slashed across the wall.

“Now do you believe us?” Cassandra said.

I didn’t know what to think. Rose had sleepwalked, and she’d got into the bath fully dressed. What was to say she hadn’t painted this strange message? Those footprints …

“I really don’t know,” I said. I stepped back from the wall. I wanted to get as far away from the words as possible. It didn’t matter who had written them. They made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Scarlet yawned. “I don’t know either. You don’t have proof it was her. And let’s say it was—”

“It was!” Elsie snapped.

My twin ignored her. “Let’s say it was. She was sleepwalking. She didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Firstly,” said Cassandra, who was leaning against the bedpost with her arms folded, “that’s if you believe her about the sleepwalking, and secondly, if she did it in her sleep, that’s even more weird.”

Elsie pointed out of the open door. “She’s possessed. That’s what it is.”

I swallowed. I remembered Rose standing on the balcony, her eyes like glass. She had almost looked possessed.

“Well, if she’s possessed, then blame the evil spirit that you think did it and not her,” Scarlet said, rolling her eyes. She turned to leave. “I’m tired of this nonsense. It’s the middle of the night.”

“You expect us to go back to sleep with this?” Cassandra waved at the writing.

“You’re supposed to be prefects. Why don’t you go and tell the teachers?” I suggested. “Instead of attacking Rose?”

“That would be too obvious,” Scarlet said in a stage whisper.

Both of them glared at us intently, and I decided it would definitely be a good time to leave. I took Scarlet’s arm and led her out of the room before she decided to try to hit them.

“They probably painted it themselves,” Scarlet muttered as the door slammed shut, leaving us with only the light of the little candle.

I tried to rub some of the warmth back into my body. Everything just felt too cold. “You don’t think there’s a chance that Rose … did this? You didn’t see her when she was sleepwalking. It was really strange.” I wasn’t sure that even quite did justice to it. It was otherworldly, almost. “And you saw the footprints.”

“I did,” she said, her hand resting on the door handle to our room. “And I know it looks bad. But there’s something off about them. They looked too big.”

I scrunched up my face. “So someone else came in? But …” A memory came back to me. “The front door was bolted. I pulled it back when I ran in. They must lock up at night.”

“So it was either someone staying at the hotel …” Scarlet mumbled.

“… or it was Rose,” I finished. My brow furrowed. This wasn’t right. I shouldn’t think that way about her. She was just a frightened girl.

“Or,” said Scarlet, “it was a ghost.”

“It isn’t a ghost,” I insisted. But no matter how much I tried to keep it out, Mr Owens’s story kept floating into my head. Those poor people, losing everything, even their graves …

We went back into the room, to find that Rose had fallen fast asleep in a chair in the corner, still wearing her wet clothes. There wasn’t much we could do about it, so we draped the blanket over her and left her to sleep.

I blew the candle out and lay back in bed. Soon my eyelids were fluttering shut, and I dreamt of restless souls floating through the water. And, just on the edge of hearing, I could have sworn that I heard the echo of ringing bells …

The sun rose on another day at the Shady Pines. But it rose even more reluctantly than I did, and hid behind the clouds as soon as it got the chance.

I stared out at the lake as I brushed my hair. There were so many secrets beneath its surface, I was sure.

I’d wanted to talk to Rose, although I couldn’t think what to say. “Did you really paint a creepy message on someone’s wall while you were sleepwalking?” wouldn’t be an easy question to ask or to answer.

Besides, Miss Bowler had already come to take Rose for questioning, so I hadn’t had the chance. That meant that Elsie and Cassandra hadn’t given up on accusing her, but at least they’d stopped taking matters into their own hands. I had tried to protest that Rose was innocent, and to explain about the sleepwalking, but Miss Bowler was too busy ranting to listen to me – no surprise there, I suppose.

We ate a distracted breakfast and tried to explain to Ariadne what had happened. The first thing she said was, “Do you think they’d let me photograph it?”

“I very much doubt it.” I’d already seen Mr Rudge heading to the room with a bucket of whitewash and paintbrush. His face had been whiter than the contents of the bucket.

“You should have woken me up,” she said, sounding disappointed.

“You were out like a light,” Scarlet said. “And besides, it wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience.”

“Indeed,” I added. “I’m crossing ‘getting chased through the rain in my nightgown by angry prefects’ off my list of things to ever do again.”

“Fair enough,” Ariadne said, but she didn’t lift her eyes from her toast. “I hope Rose is all right.”

We carried on eating in silence. Even with the other girls and guests there, the talk in the restaurant seemed so quiet compared to the usual racket of Rookwood’s dining hall. I looked around at the different faces at each table, remembering what we’d said the night before – that either the message was supernatural, or the culprit was someone at the hotel.

The man with the green suit was sitting a few tables over, reading a newspaper. He hadn’t given up on the hotel, then. Did he look tired, or guilty? It was hard to tell, especially when his face was partially obscured by his reading material. There was the lady in the wheelchair, though I imagined she probably wouldn’t be able to get up to the top floor, let alone go about painting spooky messages and dripping water all over the carpet.

Besides that, there were some younger ladies who looked dressed for a hiking trip, all fresh-faced and giggly. There was a very elderly couple, both wearing outlandish hats. There were the Mosses, who were lovingly sharing a boiled egg on the next table over. And finally there was a man with a monocle and a moustache like a walrus, who was wearing a napkin like a bib.

I stared at every single one of them over breakfast, and learnt nothing. None of them seemed particularly the sort to be haunting a hotel, but then what was the sort? And why would they? What would be in it for them?

“It’s useless,” I said, keeping my voice low, and sighed. “I don’t see how we can prove that Rose didn’t do this, especially when I’m not even certain myself. But it couldn’t be real ghosts … could it?”

“It would fit with the story,” Ariadne said. “Maybe the spirits really are angry about what happened to the village. Maybe they’re trapped under the water and can’t get to heaven. Just think about it.” She shuddered. “Not that I believe in ghosts, of course.”

“Of course,” Scarlet and I chorused.

“But wouldn’t their souls go to heaven as soon as they died?” Scarlet asked. “Or do they wait around until their business is finished on earth?”

I shrugged. “I have no idea. I think we’ll have to assume that a flesh-and-blood person is behind this. That leaves us with Rose. Or someone else at the hotel.” I glanced around again furtively, but no one had seemed any more suspicious than when I’d first looked.

“I still think the harpies are doing it to themselves,” Scarlet said. “It’s just the sort of thing they’d do. They want to pin the blame on Rose. They’ve been terrible drags ever since she wouldn’t show them her locket. I thought they were going to snap it off her neck.”

“Even before that,” Ariadne pointed out. “They wanted their friend to come on the trip, didn’t they?”

I took a sip of my tea, trying to savour it. I would miss all this when we were back at Rookwood – the food, that is, not the haunted hotel. “But … they really did look genuinely scared about the writing. I suppose they could have messed up the rooms and planted Cassandra’s necklace. But what about the bathtub filling up with water? And all the other things? The prayer book and the candlestick and the cross?”

“And if those things really are from the church under the lake …” Ariadne said, her eyes wide, “… if Elsie is responsible, or one of the other guests, or even Rose … how on earth would they have got them?”

“Could be fake,” Scarlet said.

“But why? Why do any of that?” I really couldn’t fathom it.

“I think someone wants us to be afraid,” Scarlet replied darkly.

Suddenly I didn’t feel like eating another bite of the breakfast. I was afraid.

Afraid she was right.

Chapter Twenty-four

SCARLET

swore to myself that if the harpies were behind this, I was going to get them back, somehow. Whatever it took.

We returned to our room to find Rose crying. I didn’t know what Miss Bowler had said to her, but we at least gathered that she hadn’t been sent home or punished. I guessed Miss Bowler couldn’t prove that Rose was guilty any more than we could.

Honestly, if she did want to scare the prefects, I didn’t blame her. I couldn’t imagine it, though. She had always seemed so sweet and friendly, even without using any words. An image of her clutching the pony book that I’d given her came to mind. If Elsie and Cassandra opened their eyes for five minutes, maybe they could see her that way too.

But when we went back out into the corridor, hoping to find out what the day’s activity was, we found Elsie protesting to Miss Bowler.

“But, Miss,” she was saying. “We know she did it. We saw her. She was all wet and crazy-looking. She’s mad, or she’s possessed, or both!”

“How dare—” I started, but Ivy and Ariadne grabbed my arms and pulled me back into the doorway.

“This is all claptrap and twaddle!” said Miss Bowler. “I’ve never heard such balderdash in all my life! There’s no such thing as being possessed. Someone vandalised your room, that’s all. We’ll get to the bottom of it.” She shook her head.

Elsie decided to try a different approach. “But we saw her, right after. And she was all wet. She should be punished, shouldn’t she? For vandalising? Or what’s to stop her doing something worse?”

This time I wasn’t going to let myself be held back. “Oh, you little snitch! You don’t have proof that Rose has done anything!”

Elsie swung round. “Well, who do you think did it, then?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. I just floundered uselessly.

“CALM DOWN, BOTH OF YOU!” Miss Bowler boomed. “Get back in your rooms and get ready for the day! We’re going horse riding. I don’t want to hear another word about this incident! Is that clear?”

“Yes, Miss,” we all mumbled.

“I SAID, IS THAT CLEAR?”

“Yes, Miss!”

We made a hasty retreat back into the room.

“Did she …” Ivy paused. “Did she say horse riding?”

Ivy and I had only been on horseback a couple of times, when we were much younger. It had been at a farm near where we grew up. And they weren’t horses at all, really, but tiny Shetland ponies. Father rode a big old mare called Chestnut, who was bad-tempered and would snort and flick her ears at you. She had these enormous chomping teeth and trying to feed her a carrot was a dangerous business.

Each time we’d gone riding I had hated it. I screamed the whole time and insisted I was going to fall off and die. Ivy had clung on for dear life, her face pale and eyes wide, not saying a word.

I wasn’t hugely enthusiastic about the idea. “It’s a horse,” I kept saying. “They’re big and angry. I don’t think they want me to sit on them.”

Ariadne, on the other hand, was overjoyed. “Oh, goody!” she kept saying, clapping her hands. “Ever since Daddy sold Oswald I haven’t been able to go riding. This will be such fun!”

It had cheered Rose up as well. At the mere mention of the word ‘horse’ she had dried her tears and was looking a lot more eager. “I’ll help,” she whispered, and suddenly she had pulled her boots on and dashed off out of the door.

“Help with what?” Ivy said after her.

“Preparing the horses for the ride, I suppose,” Ariadne said. “Fetching their tack and grooming them and so on. I think she does that a lot at school.”

I peered down at my suitcase and realised another problem – we didn’t own any trousers. I definitely didn’t fancy riding side-saddle. “Oh, look,” I said. “We don’t have any trousers. So we probably can’t go anyway. Such a shame.”

“You can both borrow some of mine!” Ariadne said cheerily.

I gave up and flopped on to the bed. It looked like I wasn’t getting out of this one.

We went down to the courtyard once we were dressed, me trudging reluctantly and Ivy doing her best to look like she wasn’t doing the same.

Ariadne was bouncier than ever, bounding down the stairs with her camera round her neck as usual. She’d even found her own riding hat in one of her suitcases – goodness knows how it had fitted in there. Ivy had read a book called Mary Poppins about a nanny who had a magical bag that somehow managed to contain things like an armchair and a bedstead, and she was convinced Ariadne had one the same.