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Chapter Text

It was a cold, windy day in December when Ms Valerie Frizzle gathered her eleven-year-old students together in front of Walkerville Elementary School, by the bus.

“Kids, your parents have signed a form for the slumber party at the Sound Museum,” she told them that morning, after floating into the classroom with a purple dress with musical notes patterned over it, “so we are leaving at three.”

“Is this the same Sound Museum we visited two years ago?” Arnold asked nervously.

Ms Frizzle nodded. “Sure is, Arnold. Now, get ready for a night of wonder and excitement!”

While the class did endure wonder and excitement on their field trip, it was not quite the same type of wonder and excitement Ms Frizzle had promised.

Now, outside on the bus, the kids saw Janet sitting inside, smirking at Arnold. “Janet?” Arnold asked, suspicious, as he entered and sat down by her.

Janet smirked, leaning on the seat in front. “My parents said it would be beneficial, since I apparently make a mess on field trips with the other sixth-graders. And Ms Frizzle’s the only teacher that will take me.”
Arnold muttered to himself, “That’s not surprising.”

Phoebe settled down on the seat across from Arnold. “At my old school, students went with their own class,” she said aloud.

Janet frowned at her. “Phoebe, I’ve been coming to your field trips for two years. Are you honestly shocked?”

Phoebe swallowed, as the bus started up and trundled down the road.

The winter sun quickly set as they drove on the spooky forest path, illuminating a pinkish-orange hue through the bare trees. A hoot from an owl sounded as the bus came closer and closer to the Sound Museum and the tall, iron gates.

As soon as they entered through the gates, the class heard them creak, before slamming shut behind them. Although they couldn’t see it, the gate’s padlock was then locked behind them, sealing them inside the grounds.

As they approached the front door, it slowly opened and the class saw a figure standing there. A tall, skinny man with a black buttoned up coat and a slightly hunched back. He looked neither young nor old and he seemed to be frowning at them as they arrived. But the class just brushed this off as adults sometimes thinking kids were annoying. Still, they didn’t want to go near him unless Ms Frizzle said to.

Ms Frizzle noticed the man standing there and rolled down the window. “Hi,” she spoke aloud to him, “are you Mr Spook?”

“Yes,” he grunted, sounding irritated, “you?”

“Ms Frizzle and Walkerville Elementary School,” she carried on smiling, as she always did, “we’re here for the slumber party. That is tonight, isn’t it?”

Mr Spook groaned and then opened the creaking, gnarled door for them. “In.” he snapped.

The students came off the bus in surprised silence. But they all did their best to look away from Mr Spook, just in case he became nastier.

Ms Frizzle, however, entered the front hall last and cheerily replied, “Thank you, Mr Spook. Tell the owner that we’re here.”

He muttered something under his breath and walked out into the dusty yard, letting the door slam right behind him.

“What’s his problem?” Ralphie asked as the class followed Ms Frizzle into the nearest room.

It was a large living room, probably half the size of their school hall. The walls were a dark red, with endless black-and-white portraits framed on the walls and antique wooden furniture scattered around. The motif for the furniture seemed to be red, mostly felt or velvet. It really did seem as if they were in a museum, but the class didn’t remember this room last time they came. Then again, it had been a large mansion and it was in the middle of the night when they came.

They passed over the threshold one by one, following Ms Frizzle inside. “Oh, isn’t this thrilling?” she asked, before the class heard a loud squeal.

Turning, they saw Keesha, the last to come through, pushing down on her skirt as air blew up sharply through a grate underneath the door. Blushing, she ran forward from the gust of cold air and into the room. Ms Frizzle wandered over and peered down into the grate. Long, dark and foreboding, it seemed to stretch for miles when one looked inside. Her smile faded slightly before she looked quickly back at the class. “Never mind, just some cold from outside.” She walked past them and over towards the door on the other side.

Then Wanda asked her, “What exactly are we doing here, Ms Frizzle? There’s no competition on.”

Ms Frizzle just replied, opening a door at the end of the room and motioning into the same room where they had slept last time they had been here, “Ah, as I always say, ‘If you don’t know, dive right in!’”

As the class trooped after her, Arnold mumbled, “That’s what gets us shrunk, eaten, baked or invisible.”

When they entered the bedroom, Tim frowned as he examined the portraits on the wall.

One was of a man and a woman, in black-and-white, both frowning profusely. The woman was sat down on a chair and the man stood beside her, arms behind his back like a soldier. The woman wore a dress with puffed sleeves and a shawl around her shoulders. The man had what seemed to be a velvet vest and a long tie, folded into a ribbon you would find on a bow.

“D.A, do you know what these are?” Tim pointed at the photograph.

Dorothy Ann went over to take a look. “The man’s wearing a cravat. That’s where ties come from. The man also has a pocket watch, see? I’d guess this was probably taken about a hundred and fifty years ago.”

Tim saw another picture, which appeared to have been taken more recently. Four young women were stood next to or sat on an antique couch. They all appeared to be in their early twenties to early thirties. Only one seemed to be smiling, the one on the very left. She had long, red hair which tumbled down her back, was rather skinny and wore a beige dress. She stood by the couch, grinning widely. The woman next to her seemed younger, sadder and a bit larger, with limp, mousy-brown hair in a pixie cut, wearing a dark pink tunic. She was sitting down on the couch, instead of standing up and appeared as if she wanted to sit as far away from the smiley woman as possible.

The other two women were sat closer together, but both seemed utterly miserable. The older one had blonde hair in two pigtails and had a pair of white leggings on, along with a long-sleeved white blouse. The fourth woman seemed younger than the smiling woman and the blonde, but older than the sad-looking one. Her long, black hair hung around her, making her very white face seem even paler. She had on a black vest and a blue denim jacket, with black shorts. She even had black nail polish on her hands, as she stroked a pet nuzzled in her lap, too hidden by her hand for Tim to try and work out if it had been a dog or a cat. Tim couldn’t think of a group that looked even more bizarre and ill-fitting. The date on the bottom of the photograph said it had only been taken eight years ago.

He was snapped out of his thoughts by Janet’s loud complaining.

“Where am I supposed to sleep?” she groaned, “There are only eight beds.”

“Oh, no need to worry, Janet.” Ms Frizzle answered her question by pulling out a sleeping bag from one of her pockets. It was the exact same yellow as the bus.

Janet grumbled a ‘thank you’ as she took the sleeping bag and rolled it out beside Arnold’s bed. Which, thankfully, happened to be at the end of the semicircle, so there would be no-one trampling on her as they got in and out of bed.

Ms Frizzle went into her adjacent bedroom, as the children started to sit around on their beds.

“Why do you think we came this time?” Keesha asked, “There’s nothing on that could be remotely interesting.”

“Maybe she’s teaching us more about sound.” Tim suggested, but Dorothy Ann shook her head.

“No,” she answered, “it can’t be that. She taught us that two years ago. What’s she teaching us at the moment?”

“We’re learning about the Oregon Trail,” Arnold spoke aloud, “and woodland wildlife. But I don’t think either of those relate to this house.”

Janet groaned, before snapping at her cousin. “Arnold, the reason we’re here is because Ms Frizzle takes you on wild field trips. They don’t need to have a reason.”

Arnold frowned at her. “Janet,” he replied, “Ms Frizzle always has our best interests at heart. She wouldn’t take us on a field trip for no good reason.”

“Well, half the time it doesn’t even start out as a field trip,” his cousin argued, “you said so yourself when you went into the pickle brine. Or when you were flying on eagles three thousand feet up in the air.”
“I had feathers in my hair,” Wanda mumbled to herself, “Mom said I smelt like bird poop.”

“Fact is,” Janet stood up, hands on hips, glaring at Arnold, “your teacher is weird. You’re weird, Arnold. The whole lot of you are weird. But together you’re all pretty cool and I don’t like being kept in the dark about something if Ms Frizzle won’t tell me what it is.”

A loud snore came from Ms Frizzle’s room, making the children jump. Janet opened the door and saw Ms Frizzle lying on her bed, not even undressed. She looked rather worn out, one leg hanging off the edge of the bed and her arms spread out.

Liz sat at the foot of the bed, shaking her head at Ms Frizzle in the same manner one of the kids’ parents might when they did something wrong. Liz then looked up at the class and leaped up into Phoebe’s arms. “What now?” Phoebe asked, but then there was a knock at the other door.

The nine children turned to see Mr Spook standing there, growling like an annoyed dog. “The owner says it is dinnertime. You are to come now.” He didn’t seem too pleased about it.

“But our teacher’s asleep,” Wanda protested.

Mr Spook muttered something under his breath. “Well, dinner is in the dining room. When you want it, you can have it.”

“But where’s the dining room?” Dorothy Ann asked him.

Mr Spook simply flung a folded map onto the bed by the door, before turning to leave.

“Well that was rude,” Janet said, as the nine of them, plus Liz, started to leave the bedroom. Dorothy Ann picked up the map and examined it.

“Where’s the dining room, D.A?” Carlos asked, peering over her shoulder.

“It’s there,” Dorothy Ann looked at the map, “but there’s a lot of other weird rooms.”

“What’s so weird about having a swimming pool?” Carlos asked, as his eyes wandered over it.

“Not that,” Dorothy Ann told him, “this. A potions room, three crypts, several chimney passages, four different dungeons – and that’s aside from the rooms we found ourselves in last time.”

But as they walked along the dark hallway to the dining room, a figure stood at the entrance to Ms Frizzle’s room. They smirked as they realized the potion, sprayed onto her pillow, had worked.

“You’re mine,” the figure hissed as they locked the door, “you’re mine again.”

Chapter Text

The kids were not enjoying dinner.

The nine of them had sat at a long, rectangular table with a white tablecloth, but that was where normalities ended.

Mr Spook had told them that they were having turkey and mashed potatoes, but the food on their plates resembled burnt fish and pepperoni. The mashed potatoes were the only thing on the plate that appeared close to appetizing. This, however, was ruined by the plates being cracked and filthy. The room was also in almost complete darkness.

Ralphie wondered if Mr Spook had deliberately caked the plates in mud before serving up their dinner. He didn’t even touch the food, going out to have a walk.

As he got up from the table, Wanda raised an eyebrow as she prodded the burnt fish. “This stinks!” she groaned, to which Mr Spook, who had been standing at the empty head of the table, barked, “The fridge isn’t working, be grateful, child!”

Phoebe raised an eyebrow and glanced to the side at Mr Spook. He seemed far too nasty.

“Where’s Professor Contralto? She was here last time we came?” she asked him, trying her best to sound pleasant to him.

Mr Spook answered her, “Professor Contralto is at her summer home in northern California.” Just one short, quick sentence and that was all he said on the matter.

“This food’s cold!” Janet complained, dropping her fork onto the plate.

“Well, you should have come earlier.” Mr Spook grunted.

“You only told us dinner was ready five minutes ago!” she stood up from the table. Mr Spook just shrugged and Janet scowled, storming out.

“Janet...” Arnold grumbled, going after her.

“Carlos, don’t play with your food.” Dorothy Ann whispered to him, to which Carlos placed the fork down and walked out.

“I’m going to bed.” He moaned.

Dorothy Ann stood up. “But it’s only five-thirty.” She argued.

“I don’t care,” Carlos said, not turning back to look at her when he answered, “If I stay here any longer, I’ll be so bored, I’ll have turned into a drill.” He sniggered, dryly. “Get it? Bored?”

“Carlos!” the children groaned, even more irritated than they had been before.

Wanda pushed the turkey-fish away and got up, walking out of the room. Tim did the same, now completely fed up with his food.

That just left Mr Spook and Phoebe at the table. Phoebe tried her best to smile at him, but he grunted, rolled his eyes and carried on eating the food that resembled pepperoni. It was a miracle that he was here at all - Professor Contralto usually left up charms to keep them away. But the whole household - the owner, Mr Spook himself, the resident ghosts, vampires and faeries - had visited as soon as she left for California.

Of course, moving households wasn't too unusual. Back in the sixteenth century, when Mr Spook had lived in Bavaria, rich households would move every few months while the toilets were being drained. But now, they had been lucky to get Professor Contralto away.

One night was all they needed to take the children. One night to get everything going.

When the children went back into the bedroom, they started doing their own thing.

Dorothy Ann lay on her stomach as she read her violet book. Carlos lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. Arnold was examining the rocks in a book he had brought. Liz sat beside him, interested in what he was leafing through.

Everyone else had decided to wander the manor.

Tim and Wanda were already in the kitchen. At least, they assumed it was the kitchen. There was an old, wooden table with metal jugs and china plates on it, an old-fashioned black stove underneath a chimney and several cupboards filled with tinned food.

But a spinning wheel sat in the middle of the room, red thread wrapped around the spindle. A few threads were lying on the cold, stone floor, which looked unfortunately similar to splatters of blood.

“What is this place?” Tim asked, as he stood by the table and picked up a water jug. “It looks like we stepped back a hundred years.”

“Well, it looks like a kitchen, so it probably is,” Wanda spoke the obvious, “I don’t know.”

Wanda peered around, expectantly. There were huge cracks in the wooden door that they had come through, as well as what looked like marks made by darts.

Well, whoever lives here in the summer, they sure don’t take care of it, Wanda frowned to herself.

Janet was walking along one of the many corridors with paintings everywhere. If she was on this stupid field trip, she might as well try and find something she liked. True, Janet was fond of magic tricks and even though it didn’t look as if there were any here, the dark atmosphere could give her inspiration for another trick to play on Arnold.

She saw a portrait of what she saw to be a very boring-looking old woman. The caption underneath read 'Professor Cornelia C. Contralto, 1807 – 1892'.

Janet’s eyes wandered over to the portrait beside it, hoping it would be more interesting. Not really, as it turned out. This portrait was of a family. A man, a woman, two boys and a girl, sat on a patio, all wearing clothes that Janet guessed were from the Revolutionary War. It seemed she was right, as the caption read 'Copy of the portrait of the Irving family, lost in Delaware soon after its completion in 1777. Repainted from preliminary sketches, 1892. Nathaniel and Florence Irving, with children Oliver, Mary and Zachariah'.

The two sons, one of whom appeared to be an adult and one only a little kid (though it was impossible to tell in a painting) stood with the man, all miserable-looking and tired. The woman and the girl, who looked about Janet’s age, were sat on two chairs at either side.

Janet looked at the girl in the portrait. Unlike the others, they didn’t seem miserable. But there were small red splodges underneath her eyes, making her look as if she had been crying.

It was rather strange to see in a painting.

Ralphie, however, was certainly not enjoying himself.

He wanted to play baseball or read a comic book. Not get stuck in a scary manor after dark. At least when they were on the bus, they were doing something. This appeared to be the longest field trip he had been on. A quick look at his watch showed him that they had spent only an hour and a half here, but it seemed as if the entire night had just slipped by.

Leaning against a wall decorated with pale yellow wallpaper, Ralphie felt it fall out from behind him. He gave out a small cry of surprise before he landed on what seemed to be a conveyor belt.

It felt like a conveyor belt at any rate.

It escalated along as the boy sat on his backside and waited in darkness. The only sound seemed to be the sound of cogs turning.

“H – Help!” Ralphie screamed, but no-one could hear him.

He pushed himself to his feet. He strained his ears to try and listen properly. But it was still almost absolutely quiet.

When you get the feeling that you are being watched, it is a terrible, frantic sensation that causes you to turn your head from side to side, with increasing paranoia. Maybe it is better to find out at the time, instead of afterwards and view the whole experience in a harsher light.

Ralphie felt this exact thing as the conveyor belt went along. His fear was proven right when he heard the sounds of cackling.

Not so much witches’ cackling but the sound of hoarse, cruel laughing emanating from a brass instrument. To his left, his right, above him as well.

“Stop it!” he cried loudly, desperate for these invisible tormentors to stop, “Let me go!”

Then something splashed onto his green t-shirt. It was thick and wet, with the same texture as porridge. These people were throwing porridge at him? Why?

Something cold and mushy slammed into his cheek. That one was easy to work out; he could smell the tomato.

The laughter grew louder.

Other things were thrown at Ralphie from every direction. Fish, rotten tomatoes and bananas, mustard, tomato puree and something that felt like water but almost definitely wasn’t.

Ralphie then fell onto his back as the conveyer belt ceased to a halt. He blinked several times, regaining his bearings. Then he saw that he was in the front room they had come to the first time they were here. The bookcases all had the same books with sounds organized alphabetically. The only light came from an old-fashioned oil lamp on the wall.

“Oh, hi, Ralphie,” he heard Wanda perk up from a chair, “exploring?”

Then she wrinkled her nose. “Yuck! What’s that disgusting smell?”

Ralphie got up, speechless from trying to understand what had just happened. Then he let out a long ‘err’ as Wanda got up and stood by him to take a good look.

“Ralphie,” she asked, also bewildered, “why do you look as if you’ve just been dragged through garbage?”

Ralphie shook his head, sending the cheese-and-nut sauce and pineapple juice (so that’s what it was) from his hair and asked Wanda, “Do you know where the bathroom is?”

“I think I saw one by the dining room,” Wanda pointed towards the door, “is something wrong?”

“I – I just –“ Ralphie began, then looked at her right in the eye, “I’ve just been riding a conveyor belt backwards, been taunted in the dark and pelted with sauces and mashed vegetables. To be honest, I think I’ve had better field trips.”

Chapter Text

When everyone had arrived back into the bedroom (Ralphie having had a wash, although he desperately wanted to put his pyjamas on), Arnold thought it was a good idea to try to wake Ms Frizzle.

“Ms Frizzle?” he asked, knocking softly on the door. “Wh – What do we do now?”

Then the door creaked open very slowly. Arnold looked around the side, then fumbled on the wall for the light switch. Finding a piece of string, he yanked it.

But as soon as the light came on, he gave a loud gasp.

“Arnold? Arnold, what is it?” Keesha asked, running from her bed, the next one along from his, to the Friz’s annex.

“Hey! Mind out!” Janet shouted as Keesha almost ran straight into her.

But Keesha looked into the annex to find no sign of their teacher.

“She’s gone.” Keesha and Arnold locked eyes.

“Gone?” Phoebe asked, the rest of the class coming to look.

Despite Janet’s protests that she was being trampled, the class all peered over to find the annex empty.

The bed was still neatly made, her suitcase beside the desk. A book was on the bedside table and her shoes were on the floor. But Ms Frizzle had completely gone.

“What are we gonna do, what are we gonna do, what are we gonna do?” Wanda cried.

“Where on earth did she go?” Tim asked, Liz crawling under the class’ legs to look inside.

“Well, she sometimes does disappear,” Phoebe pointed out.

“Pheeb’s right,” Keesha said, “it’s just like Ms Frizzle to do this.”

Suddenly a horrible, wailing tune went out. But Keesha’s thoughts immediately went to the last time they were here.

“See?” the little girl tried her best to hide her fear, “It’s the same wailing tune as last time.”

Then there was an unearthly wail.

That wailing had not been there last time.

As the nine children and the lizard listened in earnest, a voice seemed to come from outside the door.

“You’re trapped, kiddies! You’re never going to leave alive!”

“Is it just me, or does that sound like a – a ghost?” Ralphie managed to squeal. As the class gave out a collective gasp, Keesha scoffed.

“Ralphie, there are no such things as ghosts?”

“Really?” another voice asked, as one of the duvets flew from a bed. The class stared after it as it rose. Even Keesha gave a small gulp, though she didn’t actually believe it was a ghost. It had to be wires, she told herself, and the Friz is using wires to teach us about – about – illusion, probably?

Then other things start to float. Other beds, bags, books, even Janet’s sleeping bag, tipping her out as it hung up in the air.

“We’ll show you ghosts!” the voice cried out again.

Then one of the beds was thrown against the door with an almighty smash. It was dragged with a great speed across the floor and another crashed on top. Books were flung about the room, bags tipped upside down and Dorothy Ann’s violet book flung onto the floor, opening neatly in the middle.

The beds were pushed around as two voices laughed loudly. The beds smashed against walls and the ceiling, the duvets and mattresses flying in the air. The whole thing resembled the most violent game of pinball ever.

“Run!” Wanda shrieked and the ten of them headed out of the room.

The door slammed shut as a bed pushed against it.

“We need to get Ms Frizzle!” Phoebe cried, just as all the windows around them opened wide, sending in harsh gusts of winds from all angles, then slamming shut, locking loudly.

“Well,” Keesha didn’t even try to hard her fear this time, “let’s look at the facts. There’s – a lot of stuff going on at once, so the windows shutting could be connected to wires.”

“Erm,” Arnold pointed out, “just think about what you just said.”

“What?” Keesha asked.

“If Ms Frizzle isn’t scaring us on purpose, then who is doing this?” Arnold finished.

They stood around in silence, letting the revelation sink in.

That was before Janet piped up, pushing her cousin aside, “Look, I’m not going to stand around while something strange happens. We need to try and look for her.”

“But where could she have gone?” Tim asked.

“We should split up.” Janet answered. Arnold gripped onto her arm.

“Oh, no. That’s what happens in scary movies.” He whined, causing Janet to roll her eyes.

“OK, who wants to go with who?” she asked, pretending Arnold hadn’t said that.

“We go together,” Wanda grabbed Tim, the nearest to her, “and Ralphie. It’s better if there’s three to a team.”

Ralphie nodded frantically, looking like a bobble-head doll. A very scared bobble-head doll who thought that he would wet his pants if he were any younger and was not going to rule that out now.

“I’ll go with Phoebe.” Dorothy Ann stood by the girl, as Carlos did the same.

Janet groaned and then pushed Arnold away from her. “I guess I have to look after you again.” she muttered loudly, as she, Arnold and Keesha started to walk upstairs.

Ralphie, Tim and Wanda took the path that Ralphie had taken earlier (partly so Ralphie could show them the freaky wall and conveyer belt) and Dorothy Ann, Carlos and Phoebe went down another hallway.

Liz was stuck by herself, so she just jumped onto Carlos’ shoulder.

The ghosts began talking as they floated above where the children had been.

“Well, what do you think?” the first asked.

“I do not know. We should examine them a little more. See if any of them have anything specific,” the second answered.

“And what of the teacher?”

“She is fine. Igor locked her up in the chimney alcove.”

“Did he have to? He knows I have my dresses there,” she moaned.

“You won’t need them love; you’ve been dead a hundred and fifty years.” He tried to comfort her.

“I know, I know. I just adore them so much,” the first one sighed.

“Oh well. When we’re alive again, we’ll have lots of lovely new clothes.”

“I suppose so. These modern girls wear such strange things. They talk weirdly as well; remember the last people to come here?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call those frumps people.” He snarled. “Men having hair down to their waists, dotted with flowers and beads, playing guitar and strutting about unclothed is very unsuitable.”

She laughed, to which he glared back at her.

“Oh darling,” she giggled at him, “stop larking about. We need to study them a bit more. See which are to our liking.”

“Till death do we part,” he sighed to himself as she floated off.

Janet, Arnold and Keesha were now in what seemed to be a bathroom. Well, it had a bath. A small, tin one that looked as if it belonged in Keesha’s grandmother’s childhood home, but still, an actual bath.

Which was more to be said for the rest of the room. The floor was wooden, the wallpaper was peeling and there were cobwebs everywhere.

“I don’t think anyone uses this room.” Arnold spoke his thoughts aloud.

“I wouldn’t be so sure, Arnold.” Keesha stood over the bath.

“And what makes you say that?” Janet asked, almost accusingly.

Keesha answered by saying, “Well, there are a few drops of water left in the bath. That aside, the inside is completely clean, whereas the rest of the room isn’t.”

“You mean somebody actually bathes in a room they don’t clean?” Janet asked her. “What kind of person would do that?”

“I don’t know,” Keesha spoke as they left the room, “but someone uses it, at any rate.”

“Maybe Mr Spook?” Arnold asked, “He looks creepy enough.” “He may actually be very nice,” Keesha counteracted, though she doubted it, “but we have to keep an open mind.”

“Are you always this obnoxious?” Janet asked her.

Unbeknownst to them, Mr Spook was watching them from behind a door as they walked up another staircase.

Soon, he told himself, soon the master shall take what is rightfully his.

Tim, Wanda and Ralphie had gone to the messy kitchen. As Wanda pulled a string which turned on the light, Ralphie made a face.

“Pee-yew!” he waved his hand in front of his face, “you weren’t kidding when you said this was filthy.”

“Why does Professor Contralto do this? Why does she let it go to ruin?” Tim asked as he peered around.

Wanda shrugged. She began feeling along the wall, trying to find a loose brick or something. They were always in kitchens like this.

“So, Ralphie,” Tim turned to his friend, “what exactly happened?”

Ralphie recalled what had happened in the incident with the wall, the conveyer belt and the horrible laughter. “It was bizarre,” he finished telling Tim, “I think they could see in the dark. They had really good aim and besides, they kept laughing at me.”

Wanda let out an “Aha!” as she pulled a grey brick from the wall. The wall moved away slightly to show a passageway. It had wooden walls, but a stone ceiling and floor. Unlike this room, though, there were no cobwebs whatsoever.

“Should we go down there?” Ralphie’s voice trembled.

“Not yet,” Wanda replied, turning, “it might shut on us. Or we could get lost. We need to find string or something, then come back.”

Back in the dining room, Carlos, Dorothy Ann and Phoebe were looking around. Liz was sitting by the fire, warming herself up.

Now that they were actually interested, they noticed that the dining room was quite grand. A white marble fireplace, a dark red rug, red walls with portraits scattered about. Their food was still on the table, indicating that Mr Spook hadn’t bothered to tidy up. The only light came from the log fire.

“Find anything, D.A?” Carlos asked, holding a vase from the fireplace upside down.

“No,” Dorothy Ann told him, as she stood up from looking under an ornate couch, “Carlos, put it down.”

Phoebe had noticed something about the paintings.

“Guys, this paintings are all made by the same person,” she said, a hint of excitement and anxiety in her voice, “look.”

“Lots of paintings are done by the same person,” Dorothy Ann said as the two of them came over, “Da Vinci painted many.”

“Yes, but look at the dates,” Phoebe pointed, “Scenic View from the White Mountains, New Hampshire, 1685, Isaiah Swindburn. But all of these have the same name.”

Dorothy Ann read the dates. “1700, 1725, 1778, 1843 – I think you’re right, Phoebe,” she gasped, as she reached the last few paintings, “all made by someone with the same name, up until this.” The date she pointed to said 1989 and was of a woman on a rack, named Jenny Did Not Listen. It made Dorothy Ann feel very queasy.

“It could be a family name,” Carlos suggested, “Swindburn’s not a very common name, is it?”

“All of them named Isaiah?” Phoebe raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t know,” Dorothy Ann responded, “maybe someone named Swindburn ordered the paintings.”
“Then where are the names of the actual artists?” Carlos argued.

Dorothy Ann thought. “According to my research, the names should be in a corner of the painting or on the back.”

But just as they were about to search, they heard footsteps coming from the end of the room. a door opened from a stairwell and they saw Arnold, Janet and Keesha come down.

“Any sign?” Phoebe asked.

“Nada,” Janet grunted, “not one frizzy red hair.”

She then sat at the table, Keesha following suit. Keesha put her head in her hands and gave out a long groan. “I just don’t know where she could be.”

Then Dorothy Ann felt as if she could have kicked herself for being so stupid. Going up to her friend, she asked, “You didn’t see the bus in the yard outside, did you?”

“No,” Janet replied, “it’s resting. Or whatever your bus does. She’s not there.”

Dorothy Ann sighed inwardly. That was another dead end.

Carlos was glancing up from where the three had come from. “You searched all of upstairs?”

“Yeah,” Arnold replied as he sat cross-legged by the fireplace, “half the rooms were locked, though.”

“And we didn’t want to get lost,” Janet grumbled, “and Arnold kept pulling on me all the time. Wimp.”

“Hey!” Arnold looked over his shoulder at her, “I’m not a wimp!”

Just then, the flames went out in the fireplace and they were stuck in the darkness, along with the sound of stones pushing against each other.

“What was that?” Carlos shouted loudly, “Where’s the light? Where’s the light?”

Despite the situation, Dorothy Ann couldn’t help giving out a giggle. “You’re not afraid of the dark, are you, Carlos?”

“No,” Carlos argued, “I just felt something push against my leg.”

“What?” Keesha asked.

“I don’t know!” Carlos snapped. “It felt like a chair.”

Suddenly the light came on from the piece of string being pulled. Everyone turned to see Wanda, Tim and Ralphie at the door.

“Why are you in the dark?” Wanda asked.

“I don’t know, everything went black.” Dorothy Ann replied.

Then a chill ran down her spine as she looked at Liz on the carpet.

“Liz,” she asked cautiously, “where’s Arnold and Phoebe?”

Slowly Liz pointed a claw towards the fireplace, the walls around which were slightly askew, as if it had been turned around.

“Arnold? Phoebe?” Dorothy Ann asked, her heart thumping.

Ms Frizzle. Now Arnold and Phoebe...

Janet had gone pale. “Arnold?” she asked, voice quivering.

But they were nowhere to be seen.

Outside in the hallway, the children shouted their classmates’ names. But there was no answer. Janet was close to tears, although she was too proud to show it. She just turned her head away from the rest of them. The lightbulbs above them were flickering slightly, just to add to the dismay.

“What could have happened?” Ralphie asked.

Wanda was the only one who could try to answer. “I don’t know.”

Then they heard a horrible scream.

“Help!”

They all recognised Arnold’s voice. Janet felt it pierce her harder than anyone else. she let herself go by calling after it.

“Arnold? Arnold!” she shouted, running down the corridor.

Liz stayed with Dorothy Ann and Carlos as the rest of them chased the noise. But even she looked around desperately as Carlos trooped back into the bedroom next to them.

Carlos sat at the end of his bed, which was now next to the door, sighing and running a hand through his messy hair. He wished he knew how to find Ms Frizzle. She seemed to have completely disappeared into thin air and he didn’t even know where everyone else had gone to, except that Arnold and Phoebe were definitely in trouble.

“I don’t know what to do,” he moped as Dorothy Ann sat on her bed next to him, “it just seems too much for us. I mean, we get turned into sea creatures, we fly in the air on a toy airplane, we take part in the weather. But when we did, we did it with Ms Frizzle and now she’s gone –“

The boy placed his head in his hands, close to tears, although he would never show it in front of anyone, especially not D.A.

“Carlos, it’ll be fine,” Dorothy Ann tried to reassure him, opening the map of the manor that had been dropped on the floor, “we need to look through all the rooms until we find something.”

“But Ms Frizzle might be in a room that isn’t even on the map!” Carlos argued, frustrated, “And – who knows if the map’s accurate?”

At that point, the door slammed shut with a loud thud. The two of them looked up and then felt a chilly gust of wind encircle their ankles. Dorothy Ann rubbed her arms with her hands and shivered.

“It’s freezing.” she said to herself, looking around for any central heating.

But before she could get up to try and search the room, ropes flew out from underneath the mattresses that the two were on, grabbing their wrists and ankles. The coils attached themselves to the four bedposts and the children were flat on their backs.

Bewildered, they glanced around, trying to find the invisible culprit. But they saw none.

Their gasps were getting deeper as they grew more frightened, twisting their wrists and ankles in an attempt to free themselves. But the cords were far too tight.

Then it began.

A cold breeze fluttered by Dorothy Ann’s face, making her hair stand up on end. Her head was pushed onto its side by a cold, clammy, invisible hand and another pushed her on her chest, causing her to let out a scream. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to think about whatever could be pushing down on her.

Carlos felt icy hands grip him close to the elbow, digging in as he heard a cruel laugh inches from his face. He tried even harder to get his hands free, waving them frantically, but they were now utterly sore.

Dorothy Ann was shrieking, “Get away! Get off of me!” while Carlos swung his head around, trying to make sense of what was going on.

Then Dorothy Ann started screaming louder as she heard a slight girlish giggle by her ear and something sliding through her skin, her bones feeling as if they had turned to ice. She rocked on the bed and cried, tears even falling down her cheek, but it was to no avail.

Carlos, meanwhile, felt the same, horrible sensation. He felt as if he was falling asleep in very cold weather and as he started to lose control of his body, he had only one thought.

Ms Frizzle...help.

Chapter Text

Meanwhile, Janet had reached a large hall. The white walls and dark blue carpets would have looked rather accepting, if the room was not dimly lit, caked in cobwebs and dust lingered over the furniture, as well as small stains everywhere, mostly mud or what was possibly vomit.

“Janet!” Wanda shouted as she approached the room, closely followed by Tim, Keesha and Ralphie, with Liz slightly trailing behind.

Janet turned and pointed up the staircase at the edge of the room. “I swear I heard Arnold calling from up here!” she exclaimed.

Keesha came up to her, frowning. “Listen, Janet, you can’t keep running off! We have to stay together this time, OK?”

Janet scowled back at her. “It’s my cousin, Keesha!” she argued, “I’m supposed to be responsible for him.”

“Then why don’t you?” Keesha snapped back. “You messed everything up on the solar system trip, you want everything your way. Can’t you just think about others for once, Janet?”

Janet wanted to slap her. But she held the bannister tight instead, her hand shaking from squeezing it too hard. Then, as she turned to go up the stairs, Wanda asked, “Err, guys, where are D.A and Carlos?”

Before anyone could answer, Liz leapt onto Wanda’s shoulder and mimed putting her hands under her head and closing her eyes. “Oh, they’re in bed?” Wanda asked. Liz nodded.

Keesha rolled her eyes, as if to say that this wasn’t the right time to have a nap, but followed Janet up the stairs.

The five children and the lizard looked around the landing. It was also large with a dark blue and white motif, with fewer cobwebs or furniture, but there were five doors, four of which had planks crookedly nailed over.

The last door was almost coming off of its hinges and the white paint was peeling.

“I guess this way.” Tim remarked.

They made their way inside, only to find a room made out of stone. There was a stone floor and stone walls, made in a circular pattern. It had a low ceiling, barely higher than the top of the door. There was absolutely nothing else inside aside from an oil lamp.

“Well, that’s a dead end.” Ralphie said, but as he tried to leave, the door slammed shut and they heard a key turning in the lock.

“Hey!” Ralphie shouted, pulling on the handle and shouting wildly.

But then something else happened to them, something even worse than being locked inside a room barely bigger than a cupboard.

Keesha groaned in pain, both hands flying to just behind her ears. “Argh!” she cried, “That hurts!”

Before anyone could ask what was going on, Wanda felt something behind her ears. It felt as if she was being stung there by a hundred wasps. She fell to her knees, holding her palms flat against her ears.

Then, one by one, Janet, Tim and Ralphie also felt the agonising pain. Janet pushed up by the stone wall, Tim knelt on the floor and Ralphie curled over.

“Oh, oh my – that hurts!” Ralphie cried out, as the skin behind his ears was being pulled and twisted and moulded.

All Liz could do was stare, helpless.

After what seemed like forever, but was only a few seconds, it all stopped as soon as it began. Wanda and Tim got up from the floor and Ralphie stood up straight. But something had happened to their skin. Something so horrible they didn’t want to think about it.

“What was that?” Ralphie asked.

“I’m not sure,” Tim answered him, “but I think we should focus on breaking down the door.”

Keesha let out a tiny shriek and pointed at Tim.

“Tim! There’s – on your neck –“ she began, but Wanda answered for her.

“Tim, there are scales behind your ear!” she cried, pointing as well.

Tim turned around and saw Janet in the dim light. “Hey, Janet, there are scales behind your ear too.”

“What?” she asked, feeling where it had hurt, before she gasped.

“Hey,” Ralphie exclaimed, “There’s some behind your ears, too.” He gestured toward Keesha and Wanda. Shaking, he brushed his hand behind his own.

“And mine!” he gulped.

Liz jumped back up onto Keesha’s shoulder and had a look. It was true; there was a rectangular line of green scales, spreading from behind the top of Keesha’s ear to just below her earlobe. They were as scaly, hard and green as Liz’s own.

As everyone felt behind their ears, Wanda’s voice trembled. “You don’t think it could be magic, could you?”

“There has to be a reasonable explanation,” Keesha pointed out, “like when the bus transforms us.”

“Yes, but that’s instant and it doesn’t feel like tiny pins are jabbing you,” Ralphie argued, “and it just happened out of nowhere. Face it, Keesha, we’re up against something spooky and it’s not scientific.”

Just then, the door slid on on its old, broken-down hinges. Ralphie pushed it lightly and it fell loudly onto the carpet.

“I guess that means we go out.” Ralphie murmured, stepping over the door, as everyone else followed.

“What about our ears?” Janet howled.

Everyone glared back at her, even Liz. Janet just gulped and silently walked after them.

“Is there anywhere else we should look?” Keesha asked.

Wanda smiled for the first time since arriving there. “The passage behind the kitchen! We might find them there!”

“Passageway?” Keesha asked.

“Yeah, we found a passageway behind a kitchen,” Tim told them, “but it’s long. We need to get some string or something.”

“And a flashlight.” Ralphie pointed out, “Liz, go get a flashlight from the bedroom. We’ll try and find something so we won’t get lost.”

As he began pulling at the fabric at the bottom of a drape, Wanda asked Keesha, sitting at the bottom of the stairs, “Does it hurt?”

“A little,” Keesha mused, “but it’s started to numb. I wonder what caused it.”

“Whatever it was, we shouldn't be weasely wimps about it,” Wanda stroked her friend’s shoulder, “we need to keep going.”

Liz had entered the bedroom to see if she could find a flashlight. Did this place have any flashlights, she wondered. Maybe, maybe not. There was certainly some electricity, or at least, there had been when they visited two years ago.

Entering the room, she glanced around. The eight beds were all made up, with Janet’s sleeping bag on the floor. The curtains were wide open, the moon shining inside, sending a strange, white light over everything. Dorothy Ann and Carlos’ clothes were neatly folded at the end of their beds, but there was no sign of either student. Maybe they’d gone to try and look for the other two.

As Liz entered Ms Frizzle’s bedroom, she suspected this would be the best place to find anything. The pockets on that woman were incredible.

But when she did, she sniffed the air. It smelt strange in here, especially around the pillow on the bed. She backed away as she began to feel woozy. As soon as she got her bearings, an idea came to her, one that would have made her blood run cold if she hadn’t been cold-blooded already.

Maybe Ms Frizzle had been drugged. That would explain why she had fallen asleep, but it didn’t really say much about where she went, or who had taken her.

Looking under the bed, Liz found a flashlight nearly as big as her. Smiling with glee, the lizard exited the room.

As she wandered past the photographs, she felt a strange need to look at them. Jumping on top of a chest of drawers, she took a good look at the one of four women. Staring at them, she held her head to one side as she slowly examined each of them.

There was something about all of them. It niggled at the back of her mind, a blurry childhood memory. Looking over each of them in turn, Liz asked herself, ‘How do I know you?’

As she saw the fourth woman, the Goth sitting at the end, a chill ran down her bumpy spine. Her eyes glancing down to the pet the woman was holding, her long bony fingers stroking their lower back, Liz started to look a little closer.

Something...something was there...from a long time ago...

“Liz?”

She was torn from her thoughts when she saw Keesha and Ralphie standing there, both holding a large pile of string, one blue and one dark purple, pulled from drapes. She could see Wanda, Tim and Janet walking down the corridor from where they had been. Ralphie picked up Liz, thanking her for the flashlight, as Liz pointed outside of the room.

“I think she’s trying to show us a direction, aren’t you?” Keesha asked.

Liz nodded, pointing in the direction of the hidden door.

“OK, Liz.” Ralphie stroked her as they left the room. At that second, Liz tensed up and she kept turning her head, climbing out of Ralphie’s arms and onto his head. “Hey, what’s the big deal?” he asked, as he saw Liz look intently at the row of photographs.

Keesha took a good look at Liz, taking in the lizard’s sad, wide eyes. She had never seen Liz look so mournful.

“Look, we need to help them,” Keesha told her, taking the lizard from on top of Ralphie’s head, “and we can’t do that if you act up.”

Liz sighed, or as close to a sigh as she could get, as the three of went walked down the foreboding hallway.

By the time they had got to the passageway and Wanda held up the flashlight, they saw that the wooden passageway was split into two.

“I honestly don’t want to break up again,” Ralphie protested, “look what happened last time.”

“Yes, but we could find you this way,” Tim pointed at the different colours of the thread, “and we could find you.”

“I guess so,” Ralphie mumbled, as he, Keesha and Janet went down the right turn and Tim and Wanda took the left, “good thing this way has an oil lamp.”

Although in his opinion, oil lamps and wooden walls did not mix. Whoever made this passageway had no idea how to use it. Then again, maybe no-one was supposed to use this passageway. No, he told himself, that’s stupid. Someone obviously made it for a reason.

Meanwhile, Ms Frizzle’s eyelids fluttered as she woke. Her head really hurt and she was quite sleepy. Leaning up, she grabbed her curls with her hand and wondered what she’d been drinking. Then she felt around for the light.

Her hand brushed against soft fabric. Before anything could happen, she saw a crack right in front of her. It shone through two close doors and almost in her eye.

“Hey, what’s up?” she asked, as she heard a horrible laugh coming from the other side.

Her blood froze.

No, she told herself, no, no, no! Not him, please! Anyone but him! If he was here, that meant – no! No!

She tried stand up, but found that dresses were in the way. She couldn’t open the door very far, only pushing it open about six inches both sides. A few chains were fastened in front, preventing her going too far.

Ms Frizzle could see the tall pillars a few feet ahead. Right, if they were here, she was…oh, she was in her cupboard.

Looking up, she recognised her old friend’s dresses hanging above. They should belong in a museum, as they were such antiques.

More modern clothes were flung on the floor. A set of trousers, a dress shirt and a jacket, all from a prom. The nametag A. Miller was sewn inside. Ms Frizzle smirked a little. She hadn’t thought about him in ages. She swore she’d seen the young man in Seattle, but she hadn’t approached.

Things were too painful for the both of them.

She then thought about her students. What had happened to them?

Inside, Ms Frizzle felt as if she had failed them. She had made a promise, to keep them away from all this. To keep them ignorant of who she had been.

What she had been.

What she had done.

What she could never forgive herself for.

Chapter Text

Walking through a dank, cold passageway was not how any of them had imagined a field trip. True, there had been times when the bus went through a body or when they slid through a volcano and a very nasty instance involving drainpipes, but all those times they had been relatively safe and there had been a fixed destination. This time, they were going down a creepy tunnel with who knew what on the other end.

The passage twisted and turned, going up and down wooden or stone steps, spiral staircases and some carpeting, though it was torn and muddy. There were no doors or windows to be seen and with the sound of water running overhead, were very likely underground.

Keesha and Ralphie were definitely anxious as they wandered through. Janet didn’t seem to be too afraid, frowning the whole time, but that might simply be her determination. Even so, the light in the oil lamps was getting dimmer and dimmer and there was a possibility that they would end up in darkness.

“Face it, there’s no way forward,” Janet almost snapped, out of nowhere, “we’re running out of thread. We should go back. It’s obviously a dead end.”

“But why make a passageway that goes nowhere?” Ralphie asked.

Before either girl could answer, there was the sound of faint giggling. They all listened as they saw many coloured lights only feet away from them.

“Is it just me,” Ralphie asked, “or does that sound like little kids?”

Several balls of light were now hovering about them. These lights were all different colours of the rainbow and trailed sparkling dust behind them. Keesha put her hand up to swat one away when it dived. Then Keesha saw a face right in front of her eyes.

A small creature, about the same size as a butterfly, stared crossly at her. There was an orange glow around the creature, possibly coming from their orange hair and dress.

Keesha couldn’t believe she was looking at one, but as far as she knew, this was a faery.

Keesha had never believed in faeries. While her grandmother had books on them and other girls in her kindergarten class had painted them, or dressed up as them for Halloween, Keesha had instead drawn a stick figure of Marie Curie or dressed up as a pumpkin.

But there was one in front of her face right now, her arms folded and wings tickling Keesha’s nose.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” the faery shouted, in a voice that sounded like tinny bells, “You could have hurt me!”

“Err, sorry,” Keesha mumbled, unable to think straight, as she, Ralphie and Janet looked at the angry fairy, “I didn’t realise.”

A faery with purple hair and a purple dress groaned in exasperation, “The kids just want to get past. They don’t mean any harm.”

“Yeah,” Ralphie found his tongue at last, “we want to find our friends. Did any other kids come by?”

One faery then leant on her stomach in mid-air and crossed her arms, resting her head on them. “No, sorry, boy,” she replied, “but then again, we’re not supposed to roam.”

“You’re underneath a faery ring,” a faery with red hair and a red dress explained as she sat on Ralphie’s baseball cap, strangely camouflaged, “but we’ll gladly send you back. Where you folks going, anyways?”

“Well, our friends got lost,” Keesha tried to tell them, “No, wait, I think they were abducted.”

Janet had spent this time trying to work out whether this was an illusion, before she interrupted Keesha’s talking.

“One of them is my cousin a-and I don’t want to think about him – in trouble.” She glared at Keesha and Ralphie. “Never tell Arnold I said that.” She snapped.

The small group of faeries then all looked at each other, as if trying to figure something out. They all seemed rather saddened and perhaps a little afraid, but even as they talked to each other in whatever language they were speaking, they all started to smile as the orange one answered their problem.

“We’ll fly you to where you need to go,” the orange faery reassured the three, “but you must never tell anybody that you were here.”

“I doubt anyone will believe us.” Ralphie said the first thought to came to mind, although he was sure that Ms Frizzle might believe them.

The faery with blue hair held out her hands in a defensive gesture. “No, you truly can’t,” she begged, “since Igor Spook forbade us to go near the manor while he’s there.”

“If he knows,” the faery with purple hair explained to them, “he’ll set the Jersey Devil on us.”

Keesha wanted to tell them that if the Jersey Devil did exist (and after tonight, she wasn’t going to say otherwise) he would be in New Jersey, not Washington State, but she didn’t want to try and push her luck, so she stayed quiet.

Then the faeries all held their palms outstretched and blew, as sparkling dust scattered, picking them up a few inches and hovered there, before carrying the three children back down the passageway, to just outside a door that they had somehow missed due to some dim oil lamps.

“Did that actually happen?” Ralphie asked.

“I don’t want to ask,” Keesha sighed, “but I still stand on facts. I never question the bus, do I?”

Ralphie shook his head. Keesha gave a small smirk. “No, I don’t.” she told him as she pushed the handle of the door to try and go through.

On the other side sat something far creepier than the faeries.

A stone room, barely bigger than the basement at Ralphie’s house, with a nasty-looking stone coffin and lit candlesticks on top.

“Oh boy,” Ralphie squeaked, and grabbed Keesha’s jumper, to which Keesha groaned.

“Ralphie, there are no such things as vampires. Just be calm and think clearly.”

“Do you even know what we just saw?” Ralphie shrieked in the highest voice either girl had heard him speak with, “Who’s to say that vampires aren’t imaginary?”

He backed away and then collided with some polished, thankfully unlit, candlesticks. As they clattered to the ground, all three stood stock still as they tried to listen.

If there had been a vampire here, that would have woken them up, so as Ralphie placed the candlesticks back, the girls looked around for a door.

Meanwhile, Tim, Wanda and Liz were having better luck. Surveying the passage about them, they had come across a door that didn’t seem as if it fitted in with wonky architecture. In fact, it looked as if it was made from the same materials as the doors at school.

Wanda gingerly placed her palm against the unlocked door and it swung open. They held their breath as they waited in anticipation for any traps or monsters to suddenly come out.

Nothing happened.

Wanda then entered over the threshold and an idea popped into her head. Shining the flashlight down at the grate, she thought about what Ms Frizzle had said about air coming from outside. If only they were on the bus; they could drive through to get about the manor much more easily.

But then she turned around and began to shine the flashlight around them.

The walls were painted a deep red, with a matching red carpet under her feet. Wanda started to think that whoever was in charge of interior decorating was fond of deep red.

Tim whispered into her ear, “You’re certain that nothing’s going to get us here?”

“Pretty sure,” Wanda hissed back, “there wasn’t anything at the door. Even so, we’d better take care.”

About eight doors, four on either side, seemed to stretch out in front of them. Five of them had heavy-looking iron bolts across them. Not that they looked very inviting – three had them had weird-looking, lime-green gloop spewing underneath. Another had a picture of a bat hanging outside it, complete with high-pitched squealing from inside. The air outside the fifth door was very cold and the frost gathered over it suggested that nobody had touched it in days.

The other three doors all had writing on them. Igor the Janitor, Water Cooler and Isiah Swindburn. Liz pointed at the third door, pulling on Wanda’s hair to make her look.

Wanda pushed at the door, which was slightly open anyway, to see a rather curious sight. Then again, she was one of the kids who travelled on a magical school bus, so saying that was just contradictory.

A man sat on a three-legged stool, painting at an easel. He wore an apron with splotches in several different colours all over it from dripping paint. But that wasn’t the strange part. That was a nearby trunk, about the same size as a dog-carrier, hovering in the air, lifted up by green sparkling dust, along with many different paintings, some of them in gold frames, also several feet up in the air in a circle around him.

The man looked neither young nor old, wearing a pair of small, dark pink tinted glasses, flat salt-and-pepper hair beneath a beret. Underneath his apron, Wanda saw a working man’s shirt and dungarees, similar to what a builder or plumber would wear.

When he finally noticed that two children had entered, he looked up from what he was painting. “Oh, hello,” he said, as if seeing random children walk into his room was completely normal, “you’re on that field trip, aren’t you?”

Tim finally found his voice as he replied, “Yes, sir.”

The painter dabbed at the easel with a small, wet brush and said without turning his head, “I’d shake your hand, but I’ve spent weeks figuring out how to paint the faery glen when even going near results in dizziness.”

Wanda looked at the name on the door. “Err, are you Isiah Swindburn?” she asked.

“Who wants to know?” he snapped, glaring at them, before he noticed Wanda had simply pointed at the door. His frown disappeared and he chortled to himself. “Yes, I am Isiah Swindburn. I like to paint portraits. I’ve been paid handsomely for it, as well. You children should report to your bedroom if the owner doesn’t want to catch you out of bed. It’s nearly nine o’clock, you know; it’s getting quite late.”

“We’ve been here that long?” Wanda looked over her shoulder at Tim, who shrugged.

Isiah then waved at the children without looking up from his easel. “Goodbye, have a good time, shalom or whatever people say to each other. How would I know? I haven’t been anywhere bigger than a small village for a hundred years.”

As Wanda carefully closed the door, Tim asked, “Wait, did he just say that he’s over a hundred?”

The door inside the crypt, luckily, did not lead to a vampire’s feast or a torture chamber, as Ralphie had imagined. Instead, it lead to what appeared to a room with clean, bare wooden flooring, a roaring fire inside a marble fireplace and a closet with chains wrapped around it.

“Well, this isn’t quite what I expected,” Ralphie mused to himself, “but then again, this whole manor’s nothing what I expected.”

The three of them glanced around, trying to work out why this was connected to the crypt. Ralphie stood by the fireplace and Janet looked at the large wooden door at the end of the room.

Keesha walked over to the closet and pulled the rather loose chain down. As she opened the door, she wrinkled her nose at how filthy it was.

Some of the clothes had been scattered over the floor instead of up on the hangers. What looked suspiciously liked dried blood was plastered over one of the walls, which caused her stomach to churn. There were also scribbles all over the walls, some in pencil, some in pen, some in coloured chalk.

But when Keesha knelt down and had a closer look, she saw that there was an exit at the back carved into the wall. It looked as if it had been done by someone who had no clue on how to use a saw, as there were jagged marks everywhere, but it was big enough for a fully-grown adult to just about fit through.

Keesha heard Janet shouting before she could enter, however.

“Janet?” she asked, as she and Ralphie walked over to where Janet had been. She had fallen backwards into the wall. Not exactly the same as what had happened to Ralphie, but crashed against loose panelling and into a black shaft.

Coal dust rose up and Janet shrieked again. “My clothes!” she cried, “My hair! I’m filthy!”

“I’d say that’s the least of our worries.” Keesha muttered. Janet crossly threw a handful of coal dust at her, staining her jumper.

“Hey, stop it!” Keesha snapped, then asked, “Are you all right? Besides your clothes.”

Janet pushed herself out and Keesha went onto her knees to look up the shaft.

“It seems to be a chimney. I don’t know if it’s still used, though.” She told the others.

“But why would a chimney be over here when the fireplace is over there?” Ralphie questioned.

“Could be for another chimney,” Keesha replied, “maybe one that’s blocked up.”

Ralphie pushed lightly against the door. This one, however, was locked. “Great, we’re trapped,” he moaned, as Keesha’s eyes looked back towards the cupboard, “and who knows who’s going to come across us?” He paused. “Helpless,” he spoke softly, a little frightened, “alone, without a teacher to help us.” His voice trailed off with a squeak.

Janet rolled her eyes, but even so, she felt rather worried. Not just for herself, but for Arnold.

“Maybe we could go this way,” Keesha pointed inside the tunnel at the back of the closet, “it’s definitely big enough.”

“Oh, no,” Janet argued, “I’m not going through there. I’ve had enough of wandering through a creepy maze. You go ahead if you want. I’m staying here.”

“Janet, we can’t split up again!” Keesha demanded, angrily, “so either you come with us right now or I’ll make you, understand?”

“Nuh-uh!” Janet protested, folding her arms. “If someone just comes, I’ll hide in the closet.”

The problem is that if you speak of the Devil, he will appear. There were intense footsteps outside on the stone steps of the crypt. Janet pushed Ralphie aside as she climbed into the closet, but he shoved himself in after her, elbowing her aside as the door was pulled partially shut.

None of the kids saw what was outside exactly, just someone standing in front of the fire, back turned to them, as he wore a long cloak. The first thought that came to Ralphie was that this was a vampire, but then he saw the shadow on the floor. Not that this settled him very much, though.

Then they heard Mr Spook’s voice.

“Sir,” he piped up, “the ghosts have disobeyed you.”

“What?” they heard the cloaked figure shout, his voice booming, “After I threatened them?”

“Well,” they heard Mr Spook try to reason with him, “it’s difficult to threaten a ghost. But don’t worry – everybody else left to go when they heard you were bringing the children here.”

“Not everyone,” the cloaked figure snarled, “I swear I heard faeries tinkling outside. Isiah is still up in his room. And at least one witch is out in the grounds.”

“It’s like a fraternity half the time!” the cloaked figure spat, “And when I threaten them, do they leave? No! They carry on being a nuisance!” He calmed down a little, before he coughed and asked Mr Spook, “And the teacher?”

“Locked up, sir,” Mr Spook assured him gleefully, “she won’t get in the way. When we get out of here, sir, what do you wish we do with her? I mean, she is one of our late leader’s most valued followers.”

“Was one of the most trusted followers,” the owner groaned, “have you not forgotten the massacre at Winthrop seven years ago? She’s the only traitor we found that’s not dead, gone mad or living in Tanzania.”

“I know, sir, I know.” Mr Spook humbly muttered.

Keesha had had enough. Tugging on Janet’s t-shirt, Keesha began her way through the tunnel. Ralphie and Janet followed after her. Moving along, Keesha could see some faint cracks of light ahead of them, as if shining through jagged wood.

Then she spied something hanging by one of the cracks. Stopping, she pulled it away and felt Ralphie crash into her.

“Hey, watch it!” he hissed at her, before Keesha turned her head around and showed him what she had found.

“I think it’s Ms Frizzle’s hair,” she whispered, holding the strands between her thumb and forefinger, “she must have come this way.”

“So she’s OK?” Ralphie asked, his heart soaring.

Keesha looked through the crack to the source of the light. To her surprise, she found that it was their bedroom. The beds were still cluttered everywhere and it was a complete mess, but at least she knew where they were.

“Do you think you could help me push on the tunnel wall?” she asked.

Before either of them could answer, Keesha had pushed at the wood, trying to make it crack. But it was no use. “It’s too stiff!” she groaned.

Ralphie then suggested a helpful idea. “Maybe Ms Frizzle’s at the end of the tunnel, Keesha. We could try to have a look.”

Janet mumbled something about how her idea of fun was not crawling on her hands and knees through a dark tunnel in the middle of the night, but they ignored her. Before they could go on, however, they heard voices from outside of the room.

“Never!” they heard a female voice shouting, before the sound of a slap.

Then they heard Mr Spook’s voice. “I’m sorry, but the owner recommends that you give them back to him.”

“They’re hardly his property!” the female voice argued back, “They’re ours, now.”

“And I really believe that you are just as bad as him,” a male voice told Mr Spook, “you take orders but never once stop to think for yourself. You’ve been doing it for decades, my good man; stand up to the fellow!”

“I’m sorry,” Mr Spook answered firmly, “but it’s not my decision to make. Now you can give them back this minute or I’ll make sure that the witches will banish you from the houses for the next century!”

The children heard the female voice giggle loudly.

“That’s the same voice as earlier!” Ralphie hissed into Keesha’s ear, which was not hard to do as he was only inches away from her face.

The female voice then said to Mr Spook, “The problem is that now we are physical, we can do such things that we have always wanted to do. So, Mr Spook, I’d say that we will do to you what we have dreamed of doing – if ghosts could dream, that is – for fifty-six years.”

All the children heard were the sounds of Mr Spook shouting in protest, then in pain, as the two ghosts laughed manically.

Tim, Wanda and Liz heard the laughter as well, although as they were in a completely separate area of the manor, it was quite faint.

“What was that?” Wanda asked, shining the flashlight around.

“I don’t want to know.” Tim told her as he headed down the wooden corridor. Then he stopped in his tracks and gasped.

“What? What is it?” Wanda asked, concerned, as she followed him.

Then her mouth fell open as she stared at what was in front of them.

Hovering ten feet away, about six or seven feet up in the air, was Phoebe. Not Phoebe’s physical form, but a pale, ghostly imitation. She was lying on her back, her eyes closed. She shimmered and as Wanda placed her hand forward, disappeared into mist.

“Phoebe?” Wanda finally managed to ask, but instead they received a nasty cackle.

The two children stood closely together, with Liz standing by their feet, as they heard the cackling voice call out, with a voice that sounded as if they had swallowed rusty nails, “She’s alive, kiddies. But you’ll never find her!”

“Oh, yes we will!” Wanda shouted back, but the cackling started up again.

“Behind a locked door, little kiddies, your pretty friend waits,” the voice spoke, in an almost eerily calm tone, “but not for long! When midnight arrives, you’ll be trapped till dawn. Ha, ha, ha! Trapped like mice! If she’d been straight with you from the start, you wouldn’t be in this predicament!”

Then the voice cackled again, before seeming to stop.

“Midnight?” Wanda asked. “Tim, do you have the time?”

Tim checked his watch. “Nearly half past eleven.”

“Well,” Wanda tried to think, but she knew it was useless when it was just the two of them, “if I’d say that was a witch, we’re supposedly trapped inside the manor – or the grounds – until dawn, which would be at about six am.”

“And she said Phoebe was behind a locked door. But which door?” Tim asked.

By now Liz was walking back down the way they had come, trying to look underneath the doors. Wanda noticed and smiled at her. “Great idea, Liz!” she exclaimed, “You look underneath the doors, we try and carry on this way when you’re done.”

But even so, Liz seemed to find nothing.

“Maybe we could try going back to the bedroom and try another route through the main building,” Tim suggested, “it could work.”

Wanda supposed that this could be an option. After all, Dorothy Ann had likely left the map inside the bedroom and they could try from there.

As Wanda and Tim carefully trod through the corridor, the only light coming from Tim’s flashlight, they listened out for any sign that anyone had spotted them. If anybody had, the children knew that there would have been trouble. But Liz didn’t seem to have noticed anything and she definitely would have.

“If we can’t get to the bedroom,” Wanda whispered, “we’ll have to go out through the back garden. And that’s in the complete dark. How are we going to get out of here?”

“I’ve no clue,” Tim replied, scanning the light onto the stone bricks, “we don’t know how to get back. Plus, Phoebe and Arnold are still missing. Maybe splitting up in a creepy house isn’t a good idea.”

Wanda was about to point out that it was Tim’s idea that the two of them come down this passage in the first place, but then they heard something that sounded like muffled screaming and crying.

Daring to run down, their footsteps softened by the carpet, they strained their ears to try and work out what it was. Wanda thought if only the bus had turned them into bats again or something else with good hearing.

Eventually they stopped in their tracks. The noise seemed to be coming from the other side of a wall.

The screaming was now louder, but it sounded more like stock music that they would have heard from watching a movie.

“I think it’s a recording,” Wanda pointed at the wall, “someone has a recording behind the wall. You can see the column of bricks have a small gap between them. There’s a secret room behind here.” She pointed out how the small gap went from ceiling to floor and that there were hinges placed inside.

“Why would someone place a recording in a secret room?” Tim asked.

Then they heard a loud squealing, chilling and desperate, like a stuck pig.

That had been real, all right.

The two children started pulling at the bricks and their fingers soon found a stone door, which they managed to heave outwards. Tim shone his flashlight inside and caught some hanging cobwebs from wooden beams above.

Gingerly, the two of them stepped through and noticed a small light from a distance away. Walking carefully towards it, they heard the screaming get louder.

“Reminds me of a banshee I heard in a movie.” Tim mumbled.

Wanda commented, “That or an animal in pain. It’s stock music that you can get from anyplace. It’s from a ton of movies.”

Except they knew that wasn’t true.

As they approached the light, they stopped and stared at what lay within.

Arnold was lying slumped on a tall, old-looking wooden chair. Belts strapped his wrists and ankles to the chair and his handkerchief was tied through his mouth. The unearthly wailing had come from a gramophone that sat on an adjacent cabinet. Arnold’s eyes were wide and darting and he was mumbling something behind his gag.

Tim took stopped the record and Wanda pulled the handkerchief down. Wanda then asked him, “Are you all right?” even though she knew it was unlikely to have a positive answer.

Arnold was babbling in a hoarse whisper, inconsistently, still slumped.

“Arnold?” Tim asked, beginning to undo the belts. He cupped a hand to his ear and tried to listen to what his friend was saying.

“...never run...be mine...always...always be mine...don’t listen to Mary...Mary killed for her pet...she murdered before, she’ll murder now...”

“Arnold!” Wanda shouted, the sound echoing through the small room and ringing in their ears. He suddenly sat up in the chair, staring ahead, before he slumped down again, his glasses askew.

“Wanda? Tim?” he managed to mutter, looking from one of them to the other.

“Arnold? What happened?” Wanda questioned him, trying to be careful.

The two of them helped him up. He began to tell them everything as they took him down back to the hallway, his arms around their shoulders.

Arnold had been in the dining room when the fireplace turned around 180 degrees and then he was in darkness. A spotlight shone onto his face and all he could work out was someone cackling.

He had then asked, trying to hide the fear in his voice, ‘Who’s there?’ But he just heard more cackling. Then a bony hand grabbed his wrist and pulled him from the spotlight into the darkness again. They started pushing him out of the door, snarling, “Move it, you little annoyance.” But even if Arnold could have gotten away, he wouldn’t have been able to get back; the light was blinding and it stayed after he left, with mechanical noises echoing round, suggesting someone was using it to turn on the light.

But then he had heard Ms Frizzle somewhere talking about getting a spare tyre. He tried calling out for her, but whoever that managed to drag him away then held a hand over his mouth. Arnold heard some of them shouting for him as well, so he guessed that they were able to hear him.

Just then, the guy holding Arnold hissed into his ear, ‘You and the girl are just the first, Perlstein. You’re never going home.’ Arnold seemed to recall he shoved him in the stony room, but he didn’t get a good look at him. However, he was able to remember he had a vampire cloak on, but he didn’t see his face.

Arnold frowned in concentration. “I think that there was a message on the record. It’s at the back of my mind.”

The three of them stopped, right outside the door leading to the kitchens.

Wanda spoke what they were all thinking. “If that man said that we were never going home, what do you think he wants to do to us?”

Silence followed for a few moments, before Arnold spoke up. “When I try to think of the recording, I see scaly skin and lizard eyes and when reptiles flick out at flies with their tongues and I really, really wanted to sit under a sunlamp, like Liz does.”

“And you said you heard Ms Frizzle. That probably means she’s up and about like us,” Wanda pointed out, “and the lizard thing ties in with – well, take a look.” She pulled her hair from behind her ears and turned around. Arnold pulled a face, as Tim explained what had happened.

Wanda said, “It’s all related to lizards. But what would a vampire – and I truly believe that the owner could be one, or at least, one’s here – want with lizards?”

Tim shivered with the thought. “I don’t know, but we need to get back to the others.”

Arnold pointed out, “But Phoebe’s missing. She could be locked up like me!”

“That is a point,” Tim told them, “but the kitchen’s this way and we need to get back to the bedroom.” He held his watch up, tapping it as Arnold took a look.

“Half past eleven!” Arnold exclaimed, holding a hand to his forehead. “You mean to tell me that I was strapped to a chair for four and a half hours?”

He then held a hand to his stomach. “No wonder I’m so hungry.”

Keesha, Janet and Ralphie hadn’t been having much luck, either. The tunnel had led them back to the mountain they had come to the first time. But in the darkness, it didn’t seem as welcoming.

As Keesha sat down on the snowy ground, she sighed as she struggled to think of an idea. But everything just seemed fruitless.

Just as Ralphie was about to put forward that as they already knew about the rooms dedicated to sound, they look there first, there was an eerie sound.

“What’s that?” Ralphie almost shouted, but as the two of them listened to the nasty cackle, they could make out a voice.

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary, she thinks she’s all grown up.

A wolf in sheep’s clothing, heart as cold as the grave.

She murdered before, she’ll murder again.

Watch out! Watch out! Oh woops, too late!

Stab, stab, stab, all down the drain!”

It seemed to come from a grown woman, speaking in a mocking tone, cruel and spiteful.

Keesha groaned at the thought. She despised bullies. This woman was obviously a bully. Adults should set an example.

Then the voice called out again, seeming to come from an arrowslit, high above them in the wall.

“Bite once, bite twice, bite three times, we take your body and your mind.

A little water, pay with your life.

Skin to scales, big to small, as we become you and you become us.”

That one made even less sense.

Keesha was about to go back into the hallway when Ralphie grabbed her by the arm and pointed at something.

“Keesh, what’s that?” he gulped as he pointed at something that had appeared from nowhere. The two of them stared in horror, wondering if they would be sick.

A skeleton slumped through the bars of a body-shaped iron cage, one arm pointed at them as it leant on one of the iron rings. What remained of their long, red locks was stuck to the head, a white headband with red spots tangled up in it. They wore a fading teal leotard and matching legwarmers, all moth-eaten and barely hanging by a thread, with a string of white beads hanging on a long necklace. Ralphie had never seen anything this hilarious and terrifying at the same time.

As Ralphie and Keesha dared to inch closer, they saw something carved onto the bottom of the cage.

“Farewell, life.” Keesha read aloud, her voice almost stuck inside her windpipe.

“Farewell? Life? That – that isn’t going to be us, is it?” Ralphie squeaked, but Keesha glared at him. Janet only rolled her eyes.

“That was written ages ago!” she snapped at him, “And she –“ Keesha pointed at the skeleton, “wouldn’t have been able to reach anyway.”

A chill went down Keesha’s spine as she muttered, “So someone else wrote the message.”

The two children screamed in terror as the skull then moved to look at them. A thin mist danced around her as she managed to whisper in a hoarse voice, “Don’t try and be stupid. Try and get away while you still can.”

But what she said next was far more horrifying than anything else that had happened in the room so far.

“Oh, Keesha, you look just like your parents.”

For once in her life, the young girl was speechless. But the skeleton carried on.

“You scream like them too. I made them scream.”

This was too much for either child. They ran from the room, desperate to get away from this freaky spirit and the arrowslits with their bullying playground rhyme.

Chapter Text

Tim, Wanda, Arnold and Liz were back inside the tunnel now. Arnold gripped onto Tim, however, which was slightly annoying, but understandable considering what Arnold had just been through.

“Do you know the way back to the bedroom?” Arnold asked as soon as they got to the kitchen.

“Pretty much,” Tim answered, “back down this way.”

As they got out into the hallway again they saw Keesha, Ralphie and Janet running in the opposite direction.

“Janet!” Arnold suddenly shouted, letting go of Tim. Janet stopped running and shouted, pleased for the first time since arriving at the manor, “Hey, guys! They found Arnold!”

Keesha and Ralphie stopped in their tracks and saw the three children and the lizard outside the kitchen. Walking over, Ralphie asked, “You okay, Arn?”

“Not – really.” Arnold managed to mumble, turning his head a few times to look around skittishly.

“He’s – had a very nasty time,” Wanda explained, “putting it mildly.” Then she asked, “Keesha, what’s wrong?”

Keesha was holding herself close and stood up against the wall, staring at the floor. She barely seemed to register that her friends were right in front of her.

“Do you –“ Keesha started to say, “do you ever get the feeling that something is being kept from you?”

“What do you mean?” Wanda asked.

Keesha looked up and Wanda could see the silent tears falling down her friend’s cheek. “I think that – I think my Grandma didn’t tell me everything about what happened to my parents.”

“Your grandma?” Arnold asked, but Ralphie began to explain about the skeleton in the cage, back inside the other room.

“How did your grandma say your parents died?” Tim asked Keesha.

Keesha sighed, pulled a few loose hairs behind her ear and took a deep breath.

“I’m not entirely sure. I was four years old when they died in a landslide in Montana. Grandma had been looking after me and she came in to my room in the middle of the night and said that my parents were dead. I don’t really remember them very well. We visit a graveyard on their birthdays, though.”

Everyone went quiet as they tried to take in exactly what the skeleton had meant. “It may just be a trick,” Wanda tried to reassure her friend, “they might have been trying to scare you.”

“Well, it worked.” Keesha sighed.

“Come on, no use moping, Keesh,” Ralphie tried to cheer her up, “we need to find the others.”

“And Ms Frizzle.” Arnold pointed out.

But they had no idea where to go. Trooping back to the bedroom, Wanda opened the door. “D.A, Carlos,” she began, “have you managed to look anywhere else?”

When she saw that not only were her friends not in the bedroom, but their beds didn’t look slept in, the horror seeped through her as she realised that the two had been gone for over four and a half hours and none of them had known.

“They’re missing!” she shouted as she ran back to the group. “D.A, Carlos, they’re gone!”

“Wanda, what do you mean?” Arnold asked her.

Wanda looked at Liz, who was sitting on Ralphie’s shoulder. “Liz,” she asked, “did you actually see them in bed?”

Liz shook her head, nervously.

Wanda grabbed her hair in both hands and pulled slightly as she wracked her brains. “What are we gonna do, what are we gonna do, what are we gonna do?” she wailed, “We’ve got three pupils missing and no idea how to find them, a missing teacher, creepy things that want to hurt us and we probably can’t leave the grounds.”

Then she sighed, pulling her hands down from her now messy hair. “OK, we can’t split up again, agreed?”

“Agreed.” Everyone answered in unison.

Luckily, the map was still in the bedroom, so for a few minutes the group surveyed it to check off everywhere they had been. Ralphie pointed at the tower, the entrance to which was next to the library of sounds.

“We haven’t been there. We could try,” he suggested, “I mean, there can’t be many places left to look, right?”

“I suppose, Ralphie.” Keesha mumbled. She had been very quiet throughout all of this.

Could her grandma be hiding something from her? Was she simply too young to know about what had happened to her parents? What caused their deaths? Were they even dead? Did her grandma not know?

There were so many questions that Keesha wanted to ask when she got back but didn’t know if she’d receive the answer.

As they climbed up the spiral staircase inside the tower, almost everything coated in cobwebs and dust, the six children and the lizard listened out for any spooky noises or anything that looked out of place.

Shining the flashlight about, Janet pointed. “Look! A door! Is it locked?”

Keesha tried it and nodded.

But as they opened it, they found something terrifying and startling within.

It did not look too out of the ordinary, with a red four-poster bed in the centre of the small room and a bare floor. But on the bed lay Phoebe, her eyes closed and holding a small bouquet of rhododendron, meadow saffron and monkshood flowers to her chest. They all had tiny paper labels attached to them, as if someone had the idea that the class were slightly stupid.

“Pheeb?” Tim asked, as the children entered the room, shining the flashlight over her, “Are you all right?”

“She’s asleep, silly,” Keesha told them, “how do we wake her up?”

“We’re not supposed to kiss her, are we?” Arnold asked, pulling a face, shortly followed by Ralphie and Tim.

Keesha slapped him on the arm playfully, telling them, “No, silly, we’ll try other things. Anybody got any water?”

Nobody did. Keesha and Wanda walked closer towards Phoebe, as everyone else looked around the room for clues. Wanda knelt down and whispered into Phoebe’s ear, “Phoebe? Can you hear me? Can you wake up?”

Tim was looking underneath the bed when he found a wooden bucket. “Hey, what about this?” he asked, dragging it out. He picked it up and threw the cold water over Phoebe.

She then rolled onto her side and shouted, “What’s going on?” as she slowly sat up. Her eyes darted around as she saw everybody staring at her and she mumbled, “Err, what’s going on?”

“Phoebe, you’ve been missing for nearly five hours,” Wanda explained to her, “we’ve been looking for you. What happened?”

Phoebe got off of the bed as she tried to recall. “I’m not too sure. The last thing I remember is the fireplace turning around.”

“Lucky.” Arnold mumbled to himself, tensing as he thought about what he had been through.

“Phoebe,” Keesha said, “D.A and Carlos are missing. You need to stay with us, okay?”

“Okay.” Phoebe nodded as Keesha and Wanda helped her up.

As they made their way out, Janet asked Arnold, “You are all right, aren’t you?”

“Why do you care, Janet?”

“Well, you were in danger. Do you –“ Janet paused, “do you want to talk about it? I know I pester you like anything, but at the end of the day, you’re still my cousin.”

Arnold kept his eyes on the stone steps as they walked down, talking softly. Janet normally wouldn’t have cared what he was going through, but from the sounds of it, Arnold had been put through sheer torture.

As they got downstairs, Phoebe sat on one of the chairs in the library, as did Keesha and Janet in the chairs either side of her, with Liz sitting on an armrest. The others all stood around the room, deep in various thoughts.

But before they could think of a plan of action, however, they heard a voice coming from the hallway.

Tim, Arnold, Ralphie and Wanda ran outside, listening intently. As they did, a trail of dark smoke rushed past them. As they leant out of the way, Arnold asked, “What was that?”

Ralphie gulped. “I’m pretty sure that that was a vampire. They can turn into smoke like that. At least, that’s what I’ve heard.”

They heard the same voice complaining loudly as they ran up the stairs after it. It sounded like a woman. A very frustrated, tired woman.

“Ms Frizzle?” Tim asked aloud.

But when they looked, they saw that it definitely wasn’t her.

Tim, Wanda, Arnold and Ralphie saw a small figure standing at the top. Stopping in their tracks, they stared up at the person with confusion.

Dorothy Ann wore a long, maroon dress with long, slightly puffed sleeves, with small tears around the hem, similar to the paper stars the class had cut out at Christmas, all jagged with a few threads loose. An old, once-white shawl was draped around her shoulders and tied at the neck. She leaned against the banister and smirked at them. “Why, hello,” she called, seemingly interested, “I wouldn’t expect to see you here. I’d have thought the owner would have you locked up now.”

Her voice seemed older and eerie-sounding, completely different from what D.A usually sounded like. She giggled slightly, still sounding a bit like a little girl as she did, before running off up the next flight of stairs.

“D.A!” they shouted as they headed after her, listening to her pattering on the wooden steps as they chased after her. When they reached the top, they stopped in their tracks, almost falling over.

At the top of the tower, there was a windowless room lit by an old-fashioned chandelier. Wooden trunks and boxes were scattered all over, with dust and cobwebs decorating them and the walls. Old furniture was cluttered about the room as well. Wooden chairs, a table, what looked like half of a spinning wheel and a large, ornate gold mirror. On the table sat some maroon cloth, seemingly cut from the bottom of the dress.

In front of the mirror stood Carlos, wearing clothes just as ridiculous as Dorothy Ann’s. He had a white shirt, a purple velvet vest, woollen purple trousers and a dark blue cravat. Noticing the four in the dirty mirror, he peered over his shoulder and smiled nastily at them.

“Ah, our guests,” he said to himself rather than anyone else, in a deep, older voice with the same eerie sound, “you finally found us. Or rather, them. It took long enough for you to bother to turn up, but better late than never, I always say.” He frowned slightly when he took a good look at them. “You’re all scruffy and your clothes are abysmal! I would never have worn something like that when I was your age. Anyway, why don’t you take a seat and we’ll explain everything as we wait for the owner. Oh,” he pointed at the stairs, “don’t even bother going back down. If I’m right, Igor has locked the door.”

Arnold paused, swallowing hard, before he asked, “C-Carlos?”

Carlos barely seemed to notice him, instead sitting down on an old-fashioned couch next to Dorothy Ann. The four noticed that he had a large, nasty-looking stain on his vest. “Not really, my good man. Clever of you to figure that out. No, no. We are ghosts. When you and your fancy yellow horseless carriage arrived, we decided that before the owner could do anything he wanted to you, we would use this chance to be alive again. Admittedly, I am against the idea of experiencing puberty again, but this young man seems healthy enough. I’m glad I chose the right one. The two of us were looking you over as you came into the grounds and you were slim pickings.” He pointed Carlos’ finger at the four of them, going over them one by one, “you were too heavy,” Ralphie frowned, “too short,” Wanda crossed her arms defensively, “too bland,” Tim blushed, “which meant I am glad with what I decided on.”

To the children’s surprise, they heard the sound of a loud bell clanging, vibrating through the building. ‘Dorothy Ann’ stood up.

“Ah, midnight,” she smiled, “the witching hour. Perfect, really. I need to do my hair up. Wouldn’t do to look indecent at the celebration.”

“Celebration?” Ralphie’s voice quivered. He started staring at Dorothy Ann’s face. Her right side was beginning to sag, with her eye red and bloodshot, beginning to twitch slightly.

‘Carlos’ seemed to notice. Putting on hand on her shoulder and the other around her, he asked, “Darling, are you all right?”

But Dorothy Ann’s body was now shivering a little bit and the boys gasped when they saw her crash onto her hands and knees, groaning horribly, before she looked up at them, eye still bloodshot and cried, “Get the sage! It’s downstairs in the bathroom sink!”

It was Dorothy Ann who said that, not whoever had taken over her.

The children acted fast. Tim ran downstairs as fast as his heels would take him, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw the door wasn’t locked. He looked around desperately for a bathroom and saw that one door was left ajar.

Running inside, he saw the light was still on. Inside the ancient sink was a bunch of long, thin sticks held together with string. Seeing a few bits of ash in the sink underneath, Tim realised that he needed to burn the tip.

But how?

Meanwhile, in the attic, Ralphie and Arnold had leapt on ‘Carlos’ and had him pinned to the floor. The ghost was strong and writhed frantically, shaking Carlos’ head from side to side. Wanda stood by Dorothy Ann’s side, as the body of her friend lay against the side of the couch, putting her hand by her head and moaning.

“You let me go at once!” ‘Carlos’ screamed, “Don’t make me use magic.”

“You’re a child now,” they heard ‘Dorothy Ann’ gasp, lying on her back, flopping like a fish, “you can’t use any ghostly powers as a human. Just hover.”

Arnold, who was pressing one arm across his friend’s body’s chest, looked into his eyes for any sign of redness. Instead, he just saw a horrible smirk looking back at him. But it wasn’t Carlos smirking. No, his face looked a little different. Older, more learned and weary, with his face warping high cheekbones. It was a terrifying sight.

“Let our friend go!” Ralphie argued with the ghost. Instead, he heard a scoff.

“Don’t even try to threaten me, boy,” ‘Carlos’ snarled, “by the time the owner’s finished with you, your friend will wish I possessed him.”

“What does that mean?” Arnold squeaked.

Then they heard the floorboards creaking and a small cackle. Ralphie and Arnold dared to peer at ‘Dorothy Ann’, who was now standing upright, with her head bowed. She rose into the air and floated over, slowly, still cackling.

“They don’t know! She never told them, darling!” she then did a somersault in the air, giggling inanely. “You’d think that she’d have told them, wouldn’t she? Honestly, even our slaves were told when they were children!”

‘Dorothy Ann’ hovered over the boys, grinning and showing off rotted stumps instead of D.A’s pearly teeth. “We’ve waited a hundred and fifty years to get new bodies and we’re going to keep them.”

Arnold suddenly remembered the portrait from downstairs.

“Are you the couple from the picture in the hall?” he asked, still cautious not to loosen his grip on the ghost.

‘Dorothy Ann’ nodded.

“We died nearby, on sacred ground, after we tried killing humans during a hunt. The Indians refused to bury us, but left us back in the mansion. We’ve held meetings and had this as a sanctuary during hard times. We weren’t on anyone’s side; we just became unfortunate. But if you’re just going to stop me and my loved one having lives again, we might as well deliver you to the owner in broken pieces. Then again, he won’t approve of what we did…”

At that point, Tim reached the top of the stairs, the lit sage in his hand, a box of matches in the other, holding his arm out.

‘Dorothy Ann’ stood staring at the sage, before she frowned and began to levitate again, hovering four feet above Tim. But he brandished it at her, waving it so that the smoke drifted around the room.

‘Dorothy Ann’ screeched loudly, before flying over to the sofa, gripping it and coughing horribly. Tim roughly but carefully held it right by her and watched as Dorothy Ann’s mouth opened widely, closed her eyes and looked upwards.

They could see a pale, white figure begin to float out of her mouth and up into the air. Dorothy Ann’s head then hung low and began coughing from the smoke. Wanda stood over her friend as Tim held the bundle away from her and asked, “Dorothy Ann?”

She raised her head to look at him. Her eye was no longer bloodshot and she looked worn out, as if she had done strenuous exercise. “I’m fine,” she mumbled, her voice weak and wobbly, “it’s me, guys.”

Ralphie and Arnold were pushed backwards as ‘Carlos’ pushed them aside, yelling as he levitated into the air.

“No!” he cried, “Where are you, my love? Where did that sage come from?”

Tim explained quickly, not taking his eyes off of the creature inside his friend. “I found it in the bathroom. It had been recently lit. Now, let my friend go!”

But ‘Carlos’ smirked nastily and hovered lower, onto his stomach. His face was soon only inches from their’s.

“I don’t think so. You prevented her from having a life again. For that, you will certainly pay.”

The others were still in the library when they heard the sounds of loud crashing, as well as annoyed screaming. Keesha stood up and ran after it, completely ignoring Phoebe calling after her to come back.

When Keesha had reached the room with the enormous musical instruments, she saw some of them flying around.

The harp was zooming through the air, crashing into the walls and ceiling and making a horrible racket. The gong was dancing along the floor and just avoided Keesha’s feet. The drumsticks were strumming together on one wall and the saxophone was flying headfirst into the violins, making a sound that reminded Keesha of her neighbour’s cats.

In the middle of all of this stood Tim, Wanda, Dorothy Ann, Ralphie and Arnold around the large xylophone. The three boys were holding small bundles of sticks that were on fire, while Dorothy Ann wore a maroon dress and stood some way back, leaning onto the gong, with Wanda lying on her stomach and holding her hands on her head. Keesha would have said this looked strange, but she had seen many things that night and much more on the various field trips, so she didn’t say anything.

As she moved closer, Keesha saw Carlos was tied to the xylophone. His hair was untidy from shaking it, his eyes were wild and he was wearing strange purple clothes. He was also yelling loudly, in furious pain.

“Carlos?” she asked as she ran up. Ralphie held an arm out, stopping her.

“That’s...not...Carlos,” he told her and as Keesha looked properly, she could see that his pupils were turning blood red and he was snarling like a dog.

“You free me now or you will truly suffer!” he spat and Keesha could tell this wasn’t her friend. It was a man’s voice, even though it sounded slightly like a dog growling. "You filthy vermin! You should respect your elders, not attack them! If I had my way, I'd give you a damn good thrashing!"

“We’ve tried holding it back with sage, but it’s only so powerful,” Arnold explained, “he’s focused his power on everything else in the room.”

Keesha ducked to avoid a piano key flying over her head. “I can see.”

‘Carlos’ was now snarling with clenched teeth, as he began to shout something about ‘if he’d been alive, he’d have been able to do it much more easily’.

Behind them, Ms Frizzle entered the room. Aside from Ralphie, who had his eye firmly on ‘Carlos’, the children’s heads all turned. “Ms Frizzle?” they all exclaimed, surprised and relieved that she was finally here.

Ms Frizzle, still smiling, walked up closer to the six of them. Folding her arms and eyeing the struggling boy, she asked, “Well, what’s here? I see that you’ve decided that one of my students would make a suitable body.”

The red pupils flicked in her direction. Then it stopped snarling for a few seconds. Then, grinning again, the ghost laughed, to the students’ utmost surprise.

“I didn’t recognize you! It’s been so long, hasn’t it? Come to see your old friends again?”

“Not when you take over the body of one of my students,” Ms Frizzle spoke calmly and affirmatively. She took the sage from Arnold and the creature growled again, trying to back away. “This isn’t the first time you’ve tried to take over a body, but it’s the first time you’ll do it under my watch! Now, let Carlos go and you and your wife can go back to haunting this godforsaken place or wherever the fraternity decides to mess up.”

‘Carlos’ sneered. “Being a teacher has caused you to go soft. I told you I wanted one of my own, before you left, so what am I supposed to do? You didn’t let me have the other young lad last time you were here.”

“That boy,” Ms Frizzle replied, reaching inside her pocket, “was not my responsibility. These children are. And if you don’t let him go, you are going to spend the next century inside a vase; I’ll make sure of it!”

The ghost groaned, just as Ms Frizzle took a small, white-and-silver book from her pocket. Skimming to a page, she began reading something out, loudly and furiously.

None of the children, not even Dorothy Ann, knew what language she was speaking, only that it was fast and throughout it Ms Frizzle pointed her index finger at Carlos’ form.

The ghost then shouted above her, “Even if I go, you know what he’ll try to do. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Carlos’ mouth opened wide and a small plume of pale smoke began to billow from inside. It rose into the air and Carlos’ head flopped down. All of the instruments fell down clattering around the room.

Ms Frizzle snapped her book shut and took the few steps over to his side.

“Ms Frizzle?” the students heard Carlos whimper quietly, nothing at all like his usual jovial tones, “has he gone now?”

Ms Frizzle nodded and bent down to untie him.

Tim turned to Keesha beside him. “Where are Phoebe and Janet?” he asked her.

“Right here,” Phoebe called, running into the room, holding Liz, as Janet followed behind her.

 “I don’t feel safe,” Arnold spoke up, “even if you are here, Ms Frizzle. There are creepy things around here.”

By now Ms Frizzle had untied Carlos and had her hand underneath his arm, helping him up. “You’ll be fine,” she told him, “ghostly possessions usually leave a person feeling sick or dizzy for a while. It all depends on how strong the ghost was, and believe me, that particular ghost is determined to have a life again.”

“How do you know all this?” Dorothy Ann asked her, as the group began to follow her out of the room. Instead of answering, Ms Frizzle held her arm and looked at the floor, as if ashamed.

“Let’s just say, I was there when they died. We had been hunting and our prey managed to ambush us and shot them with a blunderbuss. I dragged them back to the cart, but by the time we arrived back, it was too late. Sometimes when I needed somewhere to hide out over the centuries, I hid in this manor. It’s changed a lot since I last came, seven years ago, though.”

“What kind of prey can use a blunderbuss?” Tim asked what everybody was thinking.

But then Phoebe, Dorothy Ann and Arnold stopped in their tracks.

Phoebe groaned, putting her hands behind her ears. Arnold grimaced, squeezing his eyes in pain as he did the same. Dorothy Ann yelped as she rubbed that area.

“Oh, no,” Keesha murmured, “not them!”

It was agony for both the three pupils to have to go through this, but just as bad for everyone watching. Ms Frizzle looked horrified.

When it had finished, Dorothy Ann asked, frightened, “Why is the skin behind my ear scaly?”

Ms Frizzle looked at the skin there and she suddenly looked just as angry as the rhinoceros that she had taken them to see in September.

Frowning, she went into the bedroom.

She stopped in front of the photograph of the four women. Liz came in after her and leapt into her hands, pointing at the fourth woman, curious.

“I’m sorry, Liz,” Ms Frizzle whispered, “I should never have come if I thought they would trap us.”

Chapter Text

When Phoebe walked into the bedroom, she saw Ms Frizzle sitting on the end of one of the beds, with Liz standing beside her. But Ms Frizzle seemed forlorn and Liz appeared angry. Phoebe didn’t want to ask what was going on.

Liz got up and scampered out of the room, passing underneath Phoebe. Phoebe stared after her, then went further into the room. The girl looked nervously at Ms Frizzle. She’d never seen her so upset.

“Ms Frizzle,” Phoebe asked, concerned, “is something wrong?”

Ms Frizzle looked up, shook her head and sighed. “No, Phoebe. Nothing that you can fix.”

Ms Frizzle pulled a photo out of her pocket and held it longingly. Phoebe sat down beside her as she took a look.

The four women from the other photo looked back out at her, all in equally strange clothing. They were sat around a swimming pool in somewhere hot with a few palm trees behind a white stone wall, maybe California or Florida, maybe not even in this country. They were sitting in the exact same line as they had done from their framed photo.

The redhead wore a light green steeple hat and matching gown (‘a kirtle’, Phoebe remembered from a history lesson at her old school, over two years ago), dipping sandaled feet into the pool. She was smiling again, her red hair once again loose around her shoulders. The brunette wore a cream dress with trumpet sleeves, with a French hood on her head. Again, she was utterly miserable and wanted to sit as far away from the redhead as possible. Personally, Phoebe thought the two of them looked like they had stepped out of a Renaissance fair.

The other two women were sitting close together, again. The blonde wore a dark pink petticoat with a low neckline that made Phoebe blush. She also wore a wide-brimmed dark pink hat and had lace on her cuffs. The Goth had on a white chemise dress, a black sash around the middle and a wide-brimmed straw hat with a black ribbon. It seemed to match her chalk-white face and scowl.

Ms Frizzle sighed as she looked at them, before turning to Phoebe, smiling sweetly at her.

“That’s me,” she told her, pointing at the Goth, “when I went through a phase.”

“You?” Phoebe asked, surprised. The Goth looked nothing like Ms Frizzle. But as she took a closer look, she saw that the Goth was holding a small lizard.

“Liz?” Phoebe asked. Ms Frizzle nodded.

“This was a very long time ago,” she explained, “back in the summer of 1989. You see, we’re all wearing outfits that were popular when we were young.”

But Phoebe had only seen these kinds of clothes inside museums. Then again, she didn’t know how old Ms Frizzle was. It stood to reason that, since the bus was magical, there was nothing to suggest that Ms Frizzle didn’t use magic to make herself look young.

Ms Frizzle saw her confusion and told her, in a slightly forced cheerful voice, “Never ask a lady her age.”

Phoebe then pointed at the three others. “Who are they?” she asked.

Ms Frizzle gestured to the woman in medieval dress. “That’s my friend Flora. She was the oldest of us. Born in medieval France.” She looked over at the sad-looking girl. “And that’s Fauna; she was always a quiet woman. She came over to Florida when her husband brought one of the first plantations. I don’t know his name, it was something Spanish. Plus he died a few years later of an infected alligator bite.”

Ms Frizzle quickly moved on. “The blonde woman is Fiona. She’s a good sport. She’s in Nebraska right now,” Ms Frizzle closed her eyes and took a deep breath, “was the first person I ever took on the bus. She was the mind of a child. I guess that’s why she was so easy to manipulate when they took her – back in – the early 1600s. She was only fourteen.”

Ms Frizzle swallowed hard, as if trying to block a painful memory. Then she sniffled.

“I – oh, Phoebe – I was born to shoemakers in the Colony of Massachusetts,” she explained, firmly and plainly, “and I took that form back in 1983, as I was growing old and tired and looked like a hag and that is all I need to tell you on the subject.”

Ms Frizzle carefully placed the photo back in her pocket and got up. As Phoebe started to protest, Ms Frizzle told her, “If you learn any more, you’ll desert me. You’ll hate me, Phoebe. You’ll hate me for everything I’ve done.”

Her voice started to crack and she held one arm around herself, trying her best to hold in her sobs.

Then Phoebe heard her murmur something. Softly, but just loud enough that the girl could hear.

“Bite once, bite twice, bite three times, we take your body and your mind. A little water, pay with your life. Skin to scales, big to small, as we become you and you become us.”

The owner snarled as he paced around his bedchamber.

The teacher had managed to get away. So had Perlstein and Terese. As far as he could work out, the ghosts had managed to get to two of the children before him and had possessed them. He sighed as he thought about that couple. Both of them had been a nuisance, even when alive. But the problem with annoying ghosts was that they tended to stay near who had irritated them in life.

But still, a few setbacks were no problem. He had managed to get a mechanic to sort out the back of the bus. That dumb mechanic hadn’t questioned why he was going to a scary-looking mansion after midnight, but never mind.

The spell had been cast, though, which presented a small problem with the mechanic. No-one who was one hundred percent human could leave the grounds before the sun rose. At least it meant the teacher would stay where she was.

He groaned, wondering where Igor had gone. That useless thing had been busy that night, that was for certain. Igor had helped the witch carry out her spell, squirted bug-spray at the faeries and prepared for the journey that would take them less than a hundred miles over the border into British Columbia. But even so, where was he? If he was having a nap, the owner would kick him awake. He was used to that.

The owner had all of the cages and the sacks and the trunks ready for the journey through into the magic realm. Of course, there were a few children left over that he would take; the siblings of the class. Never mind, he would take them too, when the time was right.

Ms Frizzle walked out into the hallway and began to address the class.

“Right, if you could follow me out onto the bus, I am sure that we will get away soon.”

“But what about staying the night here?” Tim asked.

Ms Frizzle argued, “I think we’ve had enough excitement for one night, Tim. Now, kindly follow me two by two outside…”

Liz was squirming in Keesha’s arms, glaring at their teacher. Keesha also found the courage to ask, “Ms Frizzle, why did a skeleton tell me about my parents?”

The colour drained from Ms Frizzle’s face as she managed to ask, softly and emotionlessly, “Who told you?”

Then to everyone’s horror and amazement, Ms Frizzle was frowning crossly. Crosser than she had ever been and it was actually really frightening. Even Liz seemed taken aback. “Who told you?” she asked, angrily.

Keesha stood back against the wall and stammered, “Nothing, M-Ms Frizzle. A skeleton said that she reminded me of her parents.”

“She? How do you know?” Ms Frizzle gabbled.

“She had long hair. Long, red hair,” Ralphie intervened, “there was some left.”

“Was – was the skeleton inside a tight cage, Ralphie?” Ms Frizzle dared ask him. Ralphie nodded, as Ms Frizzle’s scowl faded and she seemed mournful again.

“Oh, Flora…” she sighed, so low that the class nearly didn’t hear. Then she forced a smile and instructed, “Right, to the bus!”

When they got outside, however, there was a chilly breeze that blew past everyone. Even for the recent weather, it felt cold. Wanda was reminded of when they had gone to the Arctic. Dragging their suitcases out, they all stood beside the bus.

When Ms Frizzle started fumbling with the keys, the wind started to lift her off of her feet. She squealed as she slowly levitated from the ground. Dorothy Ann immediately grabbed onto her ankle as she floated away, but both of them were lifted away.

“Ms Frizzle! D.A!” the class shouted after them, terrified.

Ms Frizzle then started to move closer to an open window in the tower. Clawed hands grabbed out for her, tugging both Ms Frizzle and Dorothy Ann inside.

“What are we gonna do, what are we gonna do, what are we gonna do?” Wanda cried, close to tears.

Everyone felt the same. So close and yet so far.

“I think –“ Ralphie gulped, “we need to go back inside.”

“Oh no! Oh, no, no, no!” Arnold shook his head. “I’m not going to risk anything again!”

“Maybe we shouldn’t go inside,” Keesha suggested, “but try and get in over the roof! Liz, can you see if there’s a safe way we can get around?”

Liz nodded and then started climbing up the wall. She looked around carefully, trying her best to steady herself, before she noticed a crazy paving path behind the side of the house. It seemed to wind away slightly into the grounds, but it lead to a ladder where somebody had been washing the windows and then gave up halfway through, the wet bucket still hanging down by the windowsill.

From there, she noticed, were the stone steps that went up the tower. She was certain. Liz could hear Ms Frizzle arguing inside and although it broke her heart, the lizard knew that this was the only way inside.

But as she arrived back, however, another gust of wind came out of nowhere.

Picking Keesha, Janet and Tim up, as everyone else managed to grab onto various parts of the statues and support beams, the three children started to scream as they were carried further and further up.

“Keesh!” Wanda shouted, waving her arm about to try and grab them. Arnold, who had wrapped his arms and legs around a vicious-looking gargoyle, squeezed his eyes shut as he looked away, too scared to try and help. Carlos and Ralphie had curled around support beams, also holding their arms out to try and get them. Phoebe gripped onto a gargoyle’s ears and sobbed quietly.

But the three children flew into the air, dozens and then hundreds of feet up, able to see for miles, over the rolling mountainous forests that lay around them. Flying over the back of the house, they headed towards the ground, thankfully landing in some hedges.

“We’re okay!” Tim shouted, hoping that the rest of the class could hear him. Unfortunately, the enemies inside the house would also.

The bus door opened slightly. Immediately, Liz leapt inside and tried fiddling with the wheel. The rest of the class went in after her.

“Can the bus turn us into birds or something?” Phoebe asked Liz. Liz frowned at her in response. She could barely stand up in the seat to reach the wheel, let alone use the bus without the Friz present!

“Hey, what’s this?” Carlos asked, as a small wooden disk slipped out from where the airbag would normally be. He held it up and taking a look at it closely, saw that it was divided into eight sections.

Ribbons in each colour of the rainbow hung down from the sides, with string tied through tiny holes to hold flowers. The smell of honey rose up, along with lemons, soil and seaweed. In each section, a small hair was taped down.

Liz concentrated on it, remembering something from only two years ago.

Ms Frizzle had been inside her garden, during a full moon on the patio. The wooden circle already had the ribbons on and she had drawn lines with a classroom ruler to make eight equal sections. The flowers – baby’s breath, bouvardia, foxglove, white heather, coronilla, parsley, white rose, solidago, witch hazel, vervain, freesia, moss – were on the patio stones, along with a bottle of lemon juice, some seaweed, a jar of honey, and a small plastic container with eight hairs inside.

As soon as Ms Frizzle picked each of the hairs up, she had said something as she placed the hair on the wood. Liz could only make out names.

Names she recognised as the names of Ms Frizzle’s students.

When Ms Frizzle had finished, Liz saw her place the disk on the patio, letting the full moon’s rays shine onto it. She had picked Liz up and softly said, “Oh, Liz, I just want to help. If I place it in the bus, it will allow them to transform.”

In the present, Liz’s eyes grew wide as she fixed them on the circle.

“Err, Liz, are you all right?” Carlos asked.

Liz nodded slowly and held her hand out for the circle.

“Oh, err, I guess you can have it back.” Carlos told her as Liz slotted it back behind the wheel.

Meanwhile, Tim, Keesha and Janet looked around where they had landed. “Well, it could have been worse. We could have landed on thorns.” Tim remarked.

“Yeah, sure,” Janet scoffed, pulling twigs from her hair, “how do we get back to the bus?”

“Janet!” Keesha snapped, “We need to help get Ms Frizzle and D.A!”

Janet sighed. “I’ll never get the last word, will I?” she asked. Keesha shook her head. Janet grumbled to herself as she followed them towards the house, which was just about visible behind some trees.

Janet heard giggling in her ear and she turned sharply. Was it the faeries again? But she saw a small, white ball of light, hovering beside her head. Janet grunted, trying to push it aside as she walked away.

But even as she did, she realised she had felt nothing on her hand, even though she was sure it was close to the ball.

Her hand had gone through it.

Inside the tower, Dorothy Ann cowered behind Ms Frizzle, her heart beating furiously. The tower was dark, aside from a roaring fireplace which didn’t light up the corners of the room. The door had bolted shut as soon as they had entered and the door had two spears crossed over it. Dorothy Ann had the distinct feeling that if she went closer, the spears would attack. It wouldn’t be out of place for this manor. A wooden trunk lay by the window, along with a few chairs.

But the scariest thing seemed to be someone standing by the fireplace. He was tall and very thin, with ashen skin and ash-grey hair. His hands were more like claws, with their long fingernails painted black. He wore a long, black cloak that went down to the floor and sneered horribly.

Facing them, he smiled nastily as he approached. “Ah, it appears that you come back at last,” he told Ms Frizzle, then his eyes darted to Dorothy Ann, “may I introduce myself? I am the owner. At least, while Professor Contralto is away. If you wish to be more accurate, I have visited this house for decades before she was born, so I tend to think of myself as the owner.”

“Stay away from her.” Ms Frizzle responded in a deep, threatening voice that, truth be told, frightened Dorothy Ann as much as anything else in the room.

The owner ignored her. “Let me show you how horrible I am, Miss Dorothy Ann. In a few minutes, someone will be arriving at the front gate and I will demonstrate how powerful I can be.”

Then his eyes turned to Ms Frizzle. “Oh course, you know what I can do, Mary.”

“Her name’s Valerie.” Dorothy Ann found her voice.

But Ms Frizzle sighed, her eyes locking with the girl’s. “No. My birth name is Mary. I’ve only used Valerie in the last seven years.”

The owner looked slightly triumphant, seeing how broken Ms Frizzle seemed to be.

Dorothy Ann looked over at Ms Frizzle, who had her head bowed, looking at the floor. “Ms Frizzle,” the girl asked, “is – that true? You told my mom that your name was Valerie.”

“Well,” Ms Frizzle swallowed hard, “some of us – change our names – when we take different forms. But I had Mary until recently because it was the name my parents gave me.”

“When was that?” Dorothy Ann asked her, slightly curious despite everything that was going on.

“I was born in 1766,” Ms Frizzle mumbled, just loud enough for her student to hear, “in the Colony of Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. My family – my parents, my brothers and I – we look human, but –“ Ms Frizzle sat down on the wooden trunk, grasping strands of her hair in her hands, ashamed and terrified.

“We – we are chameleons, Dorothy Ann.”

“Chameleons?” Dorothy Ann asked. “But you’re human.”

“Oh, Dorothy Ann,” the teacher sighed, “didn’t you ever guess?”

“If that’s the smartest kid you’ve got, you haven’t done a good job,” the owner remarked cruelly, but both of them ignored him.

“We –“ Ms Frizzle started to explain, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly, “chameleons come in many forms. But some powerful chameleons want to control – all chameleons, living among humans or otherwise. Some of them start whole families, all chameleons, like the Kennedys or the Borgias. Some of them capture people and then take over their lives all at once, like the Rockefellers did in the early nineteenth century, or the Tsars in 1547. Some of them change one at a time, as did a family of four brothers in England who started up a band in the early 1960s. They even hinted at this in their most famous album cover. I was there when it was taken.”

Then Ms Frizzle sighed, as she thought about one of her more painful memories.

“But the Leader wasn’t happy about my family keeping our heritage secret from my brothers and I. Which is why,” she looked Dorothy Ann in the eye, “he took me. He took me away from – from my family. At the start of the Revolutionary War, you remember doing that, don’t you? My brothers and I were brainwashed, brainwashed into being good little soldiers who didn’t question what we were. When I grew older, I was placed – placed into a posse of female assassins.”

“Assassins?” Dorothy Ann’s voice squeaked, as Ms Frizzle looked away, ashamed. “But – you’re so nice.”

Ms Frizzle gave a small smile, but it flickered away immediately. “I was different then. I was a pure-blooded chameleon and I didn’t care who I hurt. The four of us – the four from the photograph – were found it exciting.”

“How many did you kill?” Dorothy Ann whispered.

“Maybe three hundred and fifty. I’m not sure; I’ve been an assassin since 1794.”

Before Dorothy Ann could say anything about that, hoping that the people – or chameleons, perhaps – that Ms Frizzle had killed had been bad, the owner clapped his hands together.

“Ah! The mechanic has arrived!” he then looked towards the two females. “You wouldn’t want to miss this.”

Outside at the gate, Mr Junkett rapped hard on the iron gates. “Hello? Someone call for a mechanic?” he yelled.

The class, who had been just about to walk around to the path that Liz had found, looked back. “Hey! Hey, Mr Junkett!” Arnold started waving frantically.

The mechanic glanced at them. “Oh, no, not that class!” he grumbled to himself, “That bus is toast this time.”

He wiped peanut butter on his trousers as the gate opened. Storming up to the bus, he glared at them. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?” he shouted at them. “It’s gone half past one!”

But before he could go very far up the path, he suddenly stopped in his tracks as a thin, silvery-grey mist trailed around him. He looked around and tried to move away, but it was too late. Within a few seconds, he had turned into a marble statue.

“Mr Junkett!” the children shouted, terrified.

Dorothy Ann gripped tight onto Ms Frizzle as she asked, “How – what happened to him?”

The owner answered for her. “It’s quite simple, Dorothy Ann. If anyone who is one hundred percent human passes through a chalk line on the ground, they will turn to stone. Oh, just one more thing left to do.”

He took the two spears and then flung them, one at a time, out of the window.

As the first one touched the marble statue, it broke into hundreds of tiny pieces, causing the watching children to scream in fright. When the second one touched the ground, the pieces turned into smoke and floated away into the air.

“Let’s get out of here!” Arnold screamed, running down the path. The others didn’t argue with him, following after Arnold down the paved path.

Dorothy Ann was now crying. Ms Frizzle held her arms around her as she pulled the girl’s face away from the window, trying her best to soothe her. However, the owner wasn’t finished with tormenting them.

“Remember how you got your lizard?” the owner asked.

Ms Frizzle looked utterly horrified and started, to Dorothy Ann’s surprise, looking him in the eye and begging.

“Please, no! Not to my students!” she was almost crying.

“It was her last kill to date,” the owner informed Dorothy Ann, “aside from whosoever she took that body from. Do you know anything of European history fifty years ago, Miss Dorothy Ann?”

Dorothy Ann nodded, biting her lip. “Yes.”

“Then you will know of something called the French Resistance,” he carried on talking, laying back into his seat, “when spies and ordinary folk in little French villages helped take British spies to safety and helped them defeat the Germans. Of course, some spies were caught, they were tortured, they were executed, all suffering in cruel conditions.

“We, of course, were a little different. A radio operator in the suburbs of Coeur d’Alene – a woman with a rich chameleon family background, someone we never suspected – had delivered some information to the chameleon resistance. This resistance was made up of those who believed that chameleons and humans should live side by side, instead of chameleons coming out of hiding and ruling over them.

“But we found out and we sent the four chameleon assassins to kill her. Now, as far as I know, your precious teacher didn’t do anything. She simply went into the kitchen and had a pot of tea and some lemon cake. Now, it was tradition that when a spy or a resistance member was executed, the killers would ransack the house and take what they desired. Flora took nothing, as she found everything tacky. Fauna found a silver hairbrush. Fiona found some jewelry to her liking, as well as some videotapes.

“But apparently little miss Mary, quite contrary, preferred to take the traitor’s pet lizard. It was only a little thing, still technically a kid. Whenever I saw that thing, Mary was taking care of it. The only times I ever saw her smile was when she looked after it.

“When the resistance finally toppled us, which is why the chameleons have not come out to humankind and are ruling over them, killing the Leader and several of her followers, aside from traitors who exchanged information or agreed to help the resistance, Mary fled with her stuff. And the lizard.”

Dorothy Ann glanced at Ms Frizzle, who sighed.

“Dorothy Ann, I cannot deny who I was,” she spoke firmly and clearly, but even so, she seemed deathly afraid, “but I also cannot deny who I am now. And that is a woman who is desperate to look after and care and teach children.”

“But why these children specifically?” the owner asked her, chuckling slightly.

Dorothy Ann turned to face him. “Why?” she asked, cautious. She was frightened that she would receive an answer she didn’t want.

“Well,” the owner sniggered, “didn’t you ever wonder why there were only eight of you in the classroom? Why you had the same teacher since third grade? Or even why one of your classmates had to leave her old school? Or what happened to another girl’s parents?”

“Keesha?” Dorothy Ann breathed.

Ms Frizzle had now stood up and pulled Dorothy Ann close as she backed out of the room, determined to escape.

“Dorothy Ann, I can assure you that they were brave,” Ms Frizzle gabbled hurriedly, “and you can tell Keesha that. We were on different sides and I promise you, I promise with all my heart, that I only met them once and before anything happened, but I have been doing my best, my upmost best, to attempt to try and right the wrongs I did, the wrongs I did for so many decades, when I was under the control of that man!”

She shouted the last few words as she pointed at the owner, who was now starting to storm over to them, cape billowing.

Ms Frizzle then aimed her words at the owner.

“I have wanted to say this for so long, you miserable brute! If you took them, if you moulded them, you would have done what humans did in Germany fifty years ago! Which I should have realised, I should have realised in 1777 when you snatched me, when you snatched my brothers, who died fighting for your side! I should have mourned my parents, I should have mourned them again when Miller told me that the Leader had had them murdered. But Miller is a good man, you sick animal; far, far better than anyone you know could ever be and I am glad that he and his wife and his fighters stopped chameleons like you, because if the Leader had succeeded, these children would be growing up in misery! But these children are my children and I will do everything – everything – to protect them, do you understand me?”

At that point, Ms Frizzle pulled Dorothy Ann over the threshold and slammed the door shut, bolting it.

Grabbing Dorothy Ann’s hand, she hissed at her, “Come on, there’s not much time! Back to the bus!”

“Ms Frizzle,” Dorothy Ann sniffled, “did you really kill Liz’s first owner?”

As they headed through the corridors, Ms Frizzle only tightened her grip on the girl. “Dorothy Ann, I know you might hate me right now, but brainwashing is a powerful thing, especially when you’ve been subjected to it for two hundred years. I know you’ll understand me one day, but please, just for now, just follow me and do what I say.”

Arnold, Phoebe, Ralphie, Carlos, Wanda and Liz had gone behind the back of the house. The ladder was only a short way away and they needed to act quickly if they wanted to save their friends.

“You go look for the others,” Carlos told Ralphie and Wanda, as Arnold and Phoebe began climbing the ladder.

“No, we’re not doing that again!” Ralphie argued, scowling. “Last time we split up, it ended in disaster!”

“There’s no time!” Carlos replied, starting to climb the ladder. “Never mind, I think I can see them from here.”

As he climbed, he pulled at his collar. “Argh, that guy’s clothes are itchy.”

As Janet, Tim and Keesha approached, Keesha asked Ralphie, “Are you sure this is a safe way in?”

“Well, Liz seems to think so,” he answered, as they began climbing, “the tower’s only up there.”

Ralphie held onto the bottom rungs as he asked, “Ready, Wanda?” then he glanced around. “Wanda?”

Wanda was several feet away, staring at the dark, foreboding trees. A dozen small, white orbs were floating around on the ground. She was giggling cheerfully as she chased after them.

“Wanda! Come back!” Ralphie called, as he ran over the grass after her.

Wanda had her hands up, trying to catch them as they shone brightly, leading her deeper and deeper into the forest. Being sportier, however, Ralphie soon grabbed her by her shirt, almost falling over as he did.

They were close to a clearing, one with a roaring campfire in the middle. The tiny balls of light all seemed to disperse as they approached the clearing. Wanda still held her hands playfully after them, not even seeming to notice Ralphie grabbing her.

As soon as they had gone, however, Wanda slowly placed her hands down and turned round. “Ralphie?” she asked, “What exactly happened?”

“They’re called will-o’-the-wisp, child,” a crackly voice came from the clearing, “they lure travellers to their death.”

An old, bent woman was standing there, holding a wooden staff for support. Even without her long, scraggly grey hair and ice-blue eyes, they knew she was a witch.

Standing back a little, without taking their eyes off her, the two children held each other’s hands in terror.

The witch laughed softly. “Oh, I will not hurt you,” she reassured them, even though it didn’t work, “I do not hurt children. Not in my two hundred and eighty years. Besides, you are marked.”

She held her staff out and used it to push some of Wanda’s hair up, exposing the scales. Placing it down, the witch told them, “My own spell did it, girl. The owner asked for eight vials, for eight children. They were broken in the air and would attach themselves to the nearest child.”

“Why did you give us scales?” Ralphie asked.

The witch snorted. “I only let them show before the end of puberty.”

That made absolutely no sense.

But she carried on, saying, “You would have had them eventually, once puberty was over and you had grown. Of course, you would have been able to hide them in public, control when you show them. Your eyes will change, as well, when you manage it. Didn’t your teacher tell you this?”

When neither child answered, the witch groaned loudly, annoyed. “Of course not. Why would she? She’s keeping you safe, why would she tell you?”

“Keeping us safe? What do you mean?” Wanda asked, nervously.

The witch started to hold her staff underneath herself and hover like a broomstick. “Her scent. Her scent masks anything that you would give out. Her enemies would smell her a hundred miles away and they would smell you too, but an adult’s scent blocks a child’s, if they happen to be frequently around the child. Well, ask her about it. She’s the one who needs to tell you.”

The witch then started to fly away into the sky, becoming a dot in the distance.

“Come on,” Ralphie told Wanda, “let’s go.”

Chapter Text

Ms Frizzle and Dorothy Ann somehow had made it back to the bedroom. As Dorothy Ann stepped into the annex to change back into her normal clothes, Ms Frizzle sat down on the bed, just as she had done only ten minutes ago.

What would the class think of her? They’d hate her, she just knew it. Ms Frizzle had tried so hard to teach them and to help them and protect them, but they were too young to know about what had happened.

What Ms Frizzle had done to so many people.

Ms Frizzle knew that what she had done was nothing compared to some of those she had worked with, but still…

It was just so sad that she couldn’t let the class know what she was really was, why she was their teacher, why she did all of these things. Ms Frizzle lived a life completely different from the one she used to have. Training from the age of eleven, on weapons and languages (which she wasn’t very good at, to be honest) to alchemy and the newfound interests of science (which explained why most of the field trips were science-related), undergoing exercises that she was certain even the army didn’t do.

And when she had finished her training, her only contact being her teacher – that evil man – at the age of seventeen, Mary had been ruthless. She didn’t care about her dead parents any more. She didn’t care about her brothers. All she cared for was herself and pleasing her teacher and, in turn, their Leader.

The brainwashing had lasted until the 1980s; two hundred years of living between the magical and human worlds, killing whoever the Leader pleased, spending her days with her fellow assassins, taking bodies when their current ones grew old (although Flora only seemed to take bodies to stay forever young, the selfish cow) and not caring one jot about innocent people, humans or chameleons.

Mary’s Goth form had been taken from a college party, back in 1983. At the time, she and Fauna had been searching for new bodies at the local sorority, in Portland. Appearing as old cleaning ladies, no-one gave them a second glance.

Then when they had come to the sorority during a party (good grief, the parties college kids held were horrendous) and came across two young women arguing over a jock. One had been a brunette, short freshman, the other had been a black-haired, pale junior. They were fighting like cats, so it had been reasonably simple to overpower them, as both of the women were too focused on their rival to fight back against two old ladies.

Baring their chameleon forms, Fauna and Mary had bitten their victims three times, before turning the sprinklers on them. Once Fauna and Mary were once again young and pretty, they stomped their victims to death.

It was something that chameleons always did, once they had snatched another form.

As Dorothy Ann came out, dressed in her clothes again, Ms Frizzle felt the need to ask a question.

“Dorothy Ann, can I just say something?”

“Yes?” Dorothy Ann answered, staring at the ground, still a little afraid to look directly at the woman she had trusted until five minutes ago.

“If you go to college, never go to a party. You’ll end up worse for wear.”

The students had, obviously, been rather scared of having seen Mr Junkett turn to stone and his body scattered in the winds. But they were even more frightened of leaving here without Ms Frizzle.

Perhaps, not even leaving at all.

But they still walked slowly and carefully up the stairs, even though it was almost in complete darkness and there was the fear of tripping up.

Janet was groaning, muttering under her breath. “Why do I have to do this? I’m not even in her class; I could have just stayed on the bus. I never should have come. This place is horrifying and I want to just get out –“

“Damn it, Janet!” Arnold snapped at his cousin, “Will you just shut up for one minute?”

Janet was a little taken aback by the fact that her cousin had somehow grown a spine. Maybe being strapped to a chair for four and a half hours did something to him.

As Keesha, at the front, carefully opened the door, listening intently, she whispered softly, “Ms Frizzle? D.A?”

Then, once they had all entered the room, they saw the owner standing by the fireplace, his fingers arched, smiling horribly and his eyes shining with victory.

The children stood still, in shock, as they laid their eyes on him. Arnold hid behind Janet. Ralphie and Keesha held hands. Wanda ducked down at the back. But they all stared back at the owner.

“Why, hello,” he snarled, “I am the owner here. Well, while Professor Contralto is away, at least. But never mind, I have you all here now, so it will be a piece of cake.”

Arnold then interrupted. “Wait, you’re the guy who locked me up!”

The owner snorted. “That was just for fun. This is me being serious, Perlstein.”

The door slammed shut behind them and they saw the vampire properly for the first time. Not exactly tall and pale, as Ralphie had imagined, but rather hairy, with large hands.

“Yes, sir?” he asked the owner. At least his accent seemed like a typical vampire’s.

The owner spieled off a bunch of instructions. “Get the children out of here while the witch opens up the portal to the magical realm. Then get the girl away from Mary. Kill Mary if you have to. I no longer like her. Remember, I only hired you because you can move faster than anyone else who bothers to do what I say.”

While the owner said all this, however, Ralphie racked his brains to try and figure out how to stop the vampire. There were no crucifixes in the room, so he had to rule that out. Silver? No, he couldn’t see any either. And Ralphie was certain that there was no garlic in the room.

Fire. Maybe Ralphie could push him into the fireplace.

He whispered this into Keesha’s ear. She argued, “Ralphie, it’s too dangerous! He might overpower us.”

The owner then transformed into a small lizard, climbing out of the window by sticking to the walls, leaving them alone with the vampire.

“We’ve got no choice, Keesh.” Ralphie told her, just as the vampire lunged.

The vampire had aimed for Keesha first, picking her up with no trouble. She kicked and screamed horribly, grabbing onto the edge of the fireplace so that he would be stuck and so that Ralphie could push.

“Get him, Ralphie!” she shouted. Other members of the class tried to help as well. Phoebe, Wanda, Tim and Carlos pushed onto the vampire’s back and at his arms and legs. As they did so, Keesha dropped to the ground when he let go and picked up the poker from the fireplace.

But the vampire was fighting back. Scratching Phoebe’s face with his hand, kicking out at Tim and pulling on Wanda’s hair with his other hand, he swore repeatedly in a foreign language.

Just then, Carlos kicked the vampire in the back, so that he automatically let go of everyone and fell into the fireplace, giving out such a terrible scream that it sent chills down the children’s spines.

Ironically, if Carlos had been wearing his normal shoes, the effect on the vampire would not have been so great. Still wearing the ghost’s boots with silver buckles sewn on (rather haphazardly and presumably recently as they were quite clean), these had hurt the vampire in the spine much more than normal, as the silver’s power had burnt him.

While the vampire burned to ash, Janet, with Arnold still holding onto her t-shirt, had turned the knob on the door and opened it. Elbowing Arnold in the ribs, he let go and blushed.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, as everyone walked past him to get out, “I – I’m just not very brave.”

“You wouldn’t be you if you weren’t a little scared, Arn,” Wanda reassured him, holding the door for the two of them to follow, “I think we were all scared.”

Ms Frizzle had gone to the kitchen, where she was searching through all of the cupboards, pulling the doors open and chucking things onto the floor. Dorothy Ann just stood behind the table, watching her nervously.

“Where is it?” Ms Frizzle groaned to herself, “Professor Contralto told me she kept it in here behind the silver and garlic, so where did she put it?” She knelt back on her knees and looked up at Dorothy Ann.

Ms Frizzle sighed to herself before she asked her, “Please, I know you’re angry with me, Dorothy Ann –“

“You killed someone!” Dorothy Ann cried, shrinking back towards the wall, “You’ve killed hundreds!”

“Listen, D.A,” Ms Frizzle tried reassuring her, “I never actually hurt Liz’s first owner. And most of the people I killed personally were bad people – thieves and users of black magic and those who kidnapped children, beat children, did far worse to children – it was Flora who killed most of them herself. Or Fiona; she was always in a frenzy when she murdered. Or Izzy. Growing up as a torturer’s daughter didn’t help. But I hardly ever killed any myself. I was just the nerd. Like you.”

“I’m nothing like you!” Dorothy Ann sobbed.

Ms Frizzle told her, now desperate, “Listen, D.A, I’ll tell the class myself and get out of your hair, just as soon as I get you all to safety.”

Dorothy Ann mumbled, barely able to look her in the eye, “You promise?”

“I promise,” Ms Frizzle told her, as the girl came closer, “please, help me look and we can get out of here sooner.”

But even as she said that, she took a small, green glass from the back of the cupboard, frowning in concentration.

Breaking a promise to a child broke her heart, but it was something teachers had to do if necessary.

The children had now come back to the bedroom, shutting the door after them and pushing a bed against it.

“What now?” Phoebe asked, saying what everyone was thinking.

“There’s no way we’re splitting up again,” Keesha told them, arms folded, “we need to think about this. Maybe we could find something on the bus. And work out how to get out of here.”

“I said we should use the bus to transform ourselves,” Phoebe spoke up, before turning to Liz, whom Ralphie was holding, “do you know how to use the bus?”

Liz shrugged a little, as if to say she didn’t know entirely.

“Well, it’s the only plan we’ve got,” Keesha told the others, “so we need to be fast. Guys, let’s go out to the bus. Oh, one more thing, though.”

She looked over at Carlos. “Please change your clothes as soon as possible; you look ridiculous.”

Carlos blushed slightly, pulling at his collar as they left. “I know, Keesha!” he groaned to himself.

When they’d gotten outside, however, to their surprise, they saw Ms Frizzle was already out there, trying to turn the key in the ignition.

“Ms Frizzle?” they chorused, before running on. She looked at them. It was amazing that she still remained cheerful after all of this. Or maybe she was just putting it on so as not to frighten them.

“Ready to go class?” she asked, in the same tone of voice she usually had, swallowing back her nerves, “two by two, please.”

As they entered, both relieved and terrified about what could happen next, Wanda sat down by Dorothy Ann, who had moved to the back of the bus and looked far too scared for Wanda’s liking.

“D.A?” Wanda asked her, “What is it?”

Dorothy Ann sniffled and murmured, “Ms Frizzle said I should wait to tell.”

“Oh, all right, then,” Wanda answered, still curious about what could have happened to her friend.

But even as the doors shut and everyone put on their seatbelts, they all jumped when the owner, now in human form again, landed on the front window, his pale, furious face glaring inside.

The children couldn’t help but scream and all Ms Frizzle could do was try to use the windscreen wipers to push him off. Even if she had attached icicles to them and poked him repeatedly.

“I knew that I should have gotten Igor to lock you lot up!” he snapped horribly, his eyes fixed on Ms Frizzle, “Where is the useless freak anyway?”

Carlos swallowed and then whispered into Ralphie’s ear next to him, “You don’t want to know.”

The owner gripped onto the top of the bus, his pupils turning hazel and his irises becoming a horizontal oval and turning yellow. It was rather creepy, but didn’t seem to affect the class as much as it would normally have done, given how much they had seen and encountered that night.

“I’d normally have sent Igor out to drive your bus away,” the owner was snarling, “but he couldn’t, due to the enchantment not allowing anyone one hundred percent human in or out before dawn. Come to think of it, Mary, you have that spell cast on that castle you’ve used. The one with all the bats living there.”

Ms Frizzle was trying to make the bus fly, but even though the bonnet kept flicking up, the owner did not move.

“You can’t try to get away, Mary,” he snapped loudly at her, “they’re mine!”

“Mary?” Arnold asked, before Dorothy Ann spoke up.

“He called Ms Frizzle that. She said her name used to be Mary.” Dorothy Ann wiped her nose on her sleeve and cast her eyes downward.

“D.A, if you saw something, you can tell us.” Carlos tried to comfort her, but instead the girl just turned to the side.

By now the bus was several feet in the air and flying over the wall. the owner was clawing at the window and screaming horribly.

“It’ll take ages to get those marks off.” Ms Frizzle murmured to herself, before she flew over the forested area. “Class, hold on tight! It’s about to get messy!”

“Oh, boy.” Arnold muttered, closing his eyes.

The bus then turned upside down and shot up like a rocket into the air. But the owner had grabbed hold of the windscreen wipers and had now started to grow a long green tail.

The windows still open, the children tried all they could, once the owner was climbing around. Phoebe slammed her window. Tim tried to prise the owner’s claws off. Carlos had taken the ghost’s boots off and was trying to hit the owner’s hands with the heels.

But Ms Frizzle then turned the bus onto its side, causing the owner to loose balance and swing in mid-air.

“Hit it, Liz!” Ms Frizzle cried, as the lizard, who had been climbing on the wall of the bus this entire time, bit the owner on the nose.

The owner let go and Liz fell down into Janet’s hands as the owner fell, screaming, down into a rocky stream hundreds of feet below.

The children all looked away from the window as Ms Frizzle started to fly away.

After a while, she finally spoke. “I promised Dorothy Ann that I would tell you who I am exactly and I will say everything once we get breakfast. I expect you’re ravenous.”

She flew closer to the ground again as she told them who the owner was.

“He used to be my teacher, class. Ever wondered who had taught your teachers when they were young? But he wasn’t a teacher so much as a bully, a cruel man. He used to build tunnels around houses, alongside drainpipes, where he would place winds that would blow when people walked past, just for fun.

“When I was eleven, over two hundred years ago, he was my tutor and he used to hurt me terribly. He would lock me in the darkness for days on end if I disobeyed. He’d sometimes leave me in a room partly filled with freezing water.

“it wasn’t just me who suffered like this. My brothers did it as well. My dear brothers Oliver and Zachariah. Oliver was too big, nearly a man, so he fought back far too much. So the Leader – my tutor worked for them – had him blinded.”

Her voice croaked a little as she said that, her tale hitting the class’ hearts.

“I didn’t see little Zachariah for seven years. When I did see him again, he wasn’t the cheerful little boy he used to be, but he was barely more than a soldier. His spirit was broken. The both of them died around the time of the Civil War; the forms they had stolen were young, fit Union soldiers who had gotten drunk and wandered away. They died still believing that the Leader was good.

“The Leader was not good, children – the Leader was a demon! And I met demons, so I know what I mean.”

After a short silence, Wanda finally spoke up.

“So, what are you, Ms Frizzle? Why are you over two hundred years old?”

“She said she was a chameleon,” Dorothy Ann sat up, “and the owner said that some chameleons wanted to control the world. But they failed.”

“I can’t deny that,” Ms Frizzle sighed, “but maybe having Liz as a pet made me less wicked than I would have been otherwise.” The lizard now looked up and stared at her, puzzled. Ms Frizzle gave a small sigh. “Maybe taking care of someone made me a lot kinder than I would have otherwise. Maybe that helped me learn how to take care of you.”

“But what are chameleons? How are they secret from humans?” Keesha asked her.

Ms Frizzle knew this conversation would have come eventually.

“They aren’t the sort of chameleons you’re used to, class. Not the sort that can be found in rainforests, though we look a lot like them. I think we are descended from salamanders and dragons and other mythical lizards.”

“But salamanders exist.” Arnold pointed out.

Dorothy Ann told him, “People used to think salamanders were magic. Are they, Ms Frizzle?”

Ms Frizzle only carried on speaking.

“Sometimes humans learn of chameleons. They have experiences with them, they work with them, sometimes,” she spoke quietly to herself, “like Miller’s wife, they marry them despite knowing who they are because it doesn’t make a difference to them.” She coughed and then started to talk louder. “A few times, psychics get a hold of a connection. They think it’s made up, though. That’s how lots of stories start. There’s a group of kids up in Maine who talk around a campfire every week who pick up stories without knowing it. They named themselves the Midnight Society, I believe. Anyway, it’s likely that you’ve met a chameleon and didn’t know it. About one percent of people are chameleons, whether they know it or not.”

“Are we chameleons, Ms Frizzle?” Arnold asked slowly, feeling the scales behind his ear.

An eerie silence fell about as Ms Frizzle simply answered, “Liz, there’s a cream for the scales in my glove compartment. Please apply it for them.”

Once they had stopped off to get some breakfast and ate it silently in the back (Carlos having gone inside to the toilets and changed, stuffing the ghost’s clothing in one of the bus’s magic compartments) Ms Frizzle looked back at them.

“I promise, I’ll tell you more when we get back to school.” She told them, watching them as she leant on the back of her chair.

“I don’t like night-time trips,” Janet murmured, “I also like to know what we’re up against.”

For once, Arnold agreed with his cousin.

Keesha could barely eat her food. Ralphie asked, “What’s wrong?”

Keesha shrugged. “I just – my parents. I – I just want to know what happened.”

“You will, Keesh.” he promised, his hand on top of hers, to which she gave out a small giggle and teased, “Stop it!”

Dorothy Ann’s eyes gazed out of the window, as Wanda and Carlos, beside her, listened to her.

“I thought I knew a lot,” she told them, “But this – Ms Frizzle’s opened up a whole new world. Well, more than we would have been taught in the class, at any rate.”

“You know, we will listen when you’re ready to tell.” Carlos reassured her, to which she smirked. “Thanks, Carlos.”

Phoebe and Tim just silently wondered if this meant that Ms Frizzle would teach them about her world, now that she told about them about it.

But all nine of them wondered the same thing.

How much did any of them actually know about their heritage?

Ms Frizzle looked back at the nine children, who were all eating their breakfasts and sipping at their hot cocoa. When they were lying back onto the seats, their eyelids started to droop. As soon as they finished their drinks, they were all sound asleep.

Liz looked suspiciously at Ms Frizzle, who held the tiny, green glass bottle in her hand. It was empty.

Liz raised what would have been an eyebrow if she had one, just as Ms Frizzle’s eyes shone hazel, with a horizontal yellow cat’s pupil.

“Oh, Liz,” she murmured, stroking her, “what else can I do? They’re still too young to know. It was just enough to hide any mention of what I really am.”

She got up and walked along the aisle to where Dorothy Ann sat. Stroking one of the girl’s pigtails and her cheek, Ms Frizzle sighed.

“She would hate me. I know she would, if she knew now. Professor Contralto is coming to put up more charms. They’ve all suffered tonight.”

Ms Frizzle smiled when she saw Arnold and Wanda lying against each other, their palms just about touching.

“He’ll have nightmares for a while,” she spoke more to herself than for Liz’s benefit, “and she’ll dream about the will-o’-the-wisp.”

Phoebe was lying on her side.

“Who knows what happened to her? Thank goodness she didn’t wake.”

Ralphie was on his side, snoring loudly.

“I don’t even know why they threw trash at him. I think it was just for fun, like how they did with Arnold.”

Carlos was behind Ralphie, his head flopping.

“That ghost is far too aggressive. I would bet that he killed Igor when in Carlos’ body. And the poor boy saw the whole thing. Poor, poor Carlos.”

Tim was in the row behind Ms Frizzle, by his sketchpad.

“He didn’t say what happened to him, but I doubt it was pleasant.”

Janet was in the back. Even asleep, she frowned deeply.

“She wasn’t even supposed to come with us.”

Then Ms Frizzle looked over at Keesha, leaning on the seat. Ms Frizzle pulled some loose hair behind the girl’s ear and sighed deeply.

“Her grandmother is a very brave woman, hiding this from her, Liz. And Keesha is a very brave girl and will grow into a very brave woman, which is something that needs to be kept from evil. I need to help them grow, Liz. I know I will. I must.”

Her eyes turned back into a human’s and she muttered when she held the wheel tightly.

“Go ahead, bus. Do your stuff.”