C.J. Skuse - Monster

‘Natasha, come back here! What on earth …’

I had to see it more clearly. I had to know if it was there for sure, the thing I’d been seeing for weeks now, darting across fields, hiding around corners, vanishing behind trees. The killer of dozens of sheep and chickens. And possibly humans.

But, in a second, it had gone, vanished into the hedge with barely the rustle of a leaf.

Someone was behind me, walking quickly to catch up. I turned. Regan Matsumoto.

‘That was it, wasn’t it?’ she said breathlessly. ‘You saw it, didn’t you, Nash?’

I didn’t answer. Our PE teacher was marching up the grass behind us, face as red as her Aertex shirt. I was going to be punished. The only punishment Mrs Scott ever doled out: the thing no one wanted to do.

‘Just what the hell …’

‘I’ll collect the balls, Mrs Scott.’ I walked past her back towards the court.

There were many bad things about Bathory School for Girls—the rules, the staff, the food, the beds, the homesickness and the spooky legends including the Beast of Bathory—but some things about it were truly wonderful.

For a start, there was the amount of time we were expected to be outside. We were always playing sports—netball, hockey, tennis in the summer, swimming when it was hot enough in the outdoor pool.

Then there were the Hidey Holes, secret doorways and passages all over the main house, which had been there since Elizabethan times. Apparently their original purpose was to conceal Catholic priests who’d visited South Devon and taken refuge there—according to legend, one priest had hidden in a Hidey Hole for so long that he suffocated and died. Bathory girls had found four main Hidey Holes—two linking the Fiction and Reference Libraries, one in the Laundry room behind the towel rails and one in the wall behind the stage at the back of the gym—but there were more. The house itself was this huge, imposing grey building, surveying the remote South Devon moors like some buxom grey nursemaid with shining black eyes. It had a long flat roof and large turrets at either end. One turret was the Observatory where we had telescopes for stargazing, and in the other was the Weather Station where we took readings for science.

We had Hogwartsy-style Houses—Plantagenet, Tudor, Hanover and Windsor—and there was an unwritten rule that girls seemed to get picked for them according to their status, which was kind of like Hogwarts too. All the bad girls went in Plantagenet, all the ones good at sport went into Hanover, all the brainy ones went to Tudor and all the, well, the ones who weren’t really good at anything went in Windsor.

Another wonderful thing about Bathory was its setting. It was literally in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by fields and woods and acres of land in which to get lost. We were miles away from any form of civilisation, but we were quite self-sufficient. We had tennis courts, netball courts, playing fields, hockey pitches and formal and kitchen gardens where the cooks grew herbs and vegetables. Behind the house was a huge wooded valley with two large ponds and five beautiful follies in the upper sections of the woods. These were called the Birdcage, the Temple, the Wendy House, the Tree House and the Chapel. If you stood at the bottom of the valley by Edward’s Pond and looked up, you could see all of them, dotted around at regular intervals, like ornaments on a giant cake.

Back in the mists of time, before it became a school in the 1930s, Bathory House was the private home of the Duke and Duchess of Bathory and their twins, Edward and Grace, who were incredibly spoilt. When the little boy had asked for a pond to keep some fish, the little girl asked for a lake. Then the boy had asked for a tree house in the woods, but the girl had asked for a life-size version of her doll’s house, and so on and so forth. So basically, the Follies were monuments to the tantrums of two greedy little brats.

The wonderful really did outweigh the not-so-wonderful at Bathory and I loved it there. Especially at Christmas. The week before Christmas hols was usually the most magical time—full of parties, log fires, tobogganing down the hillsides in the snow, making sugarplums and traditional decorations for the end of term concert. It normally left me with the feeling of complete and utter happiness. Of safety. Of certainty that this was perfection.

But this Christmas, everything was different. There was no squidgy feeling. There was no safety. For me, Christmas was cancelled.

And Dianna Pfaff was making the most of my misery.

She sidled up to me as I was collecting up the balls after netball practice that evening.

‘Your head’s not really in it at the moment, is it?’

‘Oh, it’s okay, you don’t have to help. Mrs Scott asked me to …’

‘I want to help,’ she said, and set the bibs down on the ground to help me pick up balls. ‘I heard about your brother …’

‘What about my brother?’

‘About him being missing. Everyone knows.’

‘He’s not missing. He just hasn’t been in touch with my parents for a few days. They’re a bit worried. He’ll be okay. How does everyone know?’

‘Penny Marriott heard it from Kezzie Wood who got it from a Pup with chickenpox who was waiting outside Mrs Saul-Hudson’s office when you went in this morning.’

‘So the whole school knows?’

Dianna’s lips thinned. ‘What’s the latest?’

She said it like you’d ask for a weather update. ‘He went on some whale-watching expedition at a national park on the northern coast of Colombia. He was supposed to ring home two days ago but he didn’t. Probably just out of range.’

Dianna nodded. ‘Do you think you’ll be staying here for Christmas then? If your parents have to fly out to Cambodia?’

The thought was acid in my mouth. ‘It’s Colombia. And no, it won’t come to that. He’ll be fine, I’m sure.’

But still Dianna looked twitchy. ‘Mum said there’s a chance I might be staying. Hope not though. Christmas here would be a nightmare. She’s still in Spain. New boyfriend. Such a leech … Anyway, if you want a hand with any of Mrs Saul-Hudson’s stuff …’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I don’t know, just, like, the diary or making her tea or organising anything, you know, just give me a shout. I’m here if you want the help.’

She’d been like this for months, ever since she found out I was the front runner for Head Girl. The final week she had really ramped up the helpful bit.

‘I know you want Head Girl as well, Dianna.’

‘No, no, it’s not that at all,’ she said with a nervous laugh, eyebrows up in her hairline, trying to come across completely blasé. She bounced a white netball between her fingers. ‘But you’re under a lot of stress at the moment, getting everything ready for end of term and the Christmas Fayre and the concert and what with your brother …’

‘My brother will be fine,’ I said, measuring every word so it didn’t come out as loudly as I wanted it to. So many other words teetered on my tongue, from ‘I can manage perfectly well without your help, you endless parasitic worm’ to ‘Get lost and die a slow lingering death in a ditch.’ But none of those things were ever going to come out of my mouth. In the end I simply said, ‘Thanks.’

In the changing rooms, the school matron and Maggie Zappa were arguing like two alley cats over a fish bone.

‘I didn’t take it, all right? Stupid old fart. Why do you always assume it’s me?’

‘Because it usually is!’ screeched Matron, hands on hips, her tight blue uniform dotted with melting ice flecks. She’d apparently been head first in the chest freezer, looking for some lost meat.

‘I haven’t touched your stupid turkeys. Get your hands off me!’