The next day, after a fantastic night, we texted the boys to find out what had happened, but they refused to tell us. Achilles, however, wasn’t so coy with the details. According to him, William and Hogan had met him and his friends, and William had demanded that he stay away from me. When he refused, William pushed him, and that was when a member of school staff intervened and separated them. They all got banned from the ball, and they considered themselves lucky.
I thanked him for his information and was happily starting to get ready to go to town when Pam burst in and said that we needed to keep Delphine, Scarlett and the others updated about what we had found while in London. She was right; festival or no festival, we still had a problem on our hands.
We all met at the Magic Wrap, and I was very happy to realise that Pam’s choice of costumes for us was fabulous. We were once again the best dressed in Gateway Hill. We looked so cute that the owner gave us our favourite sandwiches, The Balboa and The Toby, for free.
After the debrief, we all agreed that a few questions about our investigation needed to be addressed. Why our school? What was the connection? And was this going on in other schools as well? But these were questions that we might never get answers to.
Right when we were in the middle of our discussion, I saw someone coming towards us. It was Hassan, with a huge smile on his face. He stood right in front of me, staring down at me with a grin. He bent down, put his hands on my shoulders and said, “So, Columbo, rumour in town is that you are investigating Wade Allen Tillerson’s death.”
I could have screamed. Hassan was the last thing we needed at the moment. He was the Inspector Gadget to my Penny. The list of his espiègleries was as long as the Great Wall of China, and its consequences would have been biblical if it wasn’t for Amelia, Pam and me fixing it every time, so I was in no mood to include our resident Gomer Goof in anything.
The problem was that Hassan was Alex’s partner in crime and had probably been invited by him to join us, which did not help. He was also a good and trusted friend of us all. I couldn’t just dismiss him. All I could hope was that he wouldn’t put us in a mess too deep to get out of.
Hassan was a year older than me, and we had grown up together. The year before, to celebrate my birthday, we all spent the weekend in Birmingham at Hassan’s uncle’s house. It had been exciting to get out of Yanar and spend time in the Masani world. The next day, while the others were at the Bullring, I did some shopping at the Oasis shop on Corporation Street. Hassan agreed to accompany me, and after I was done, we were due to meet with the others at the New Street Cineworld. We decided to forgo jumping on a bus and walked instead. On our way to New Street, we saw a group of girls coming our way, and he pushed me aside so the girls didn’t see me and assume that I was his girlfriend, and I went flying. Not only did he not even turn towards me to check if I was okay, but by the time I got up, I saw him flirting with the girls as if nothing had happened.
I had scratches all over my arms, my clothes were all muddy because I had fallen in a puddle of dirty water, and my stockings were torn. I was furious. I was so angry that I left and did not answer my phone when he realised later on that I had disappeared. We did not speak for a week after that.
We had been due to spend a few days in London before going home. After I went back to London, Hassan kept trying to make amends, so I decided that rather than let him suffer, I should forgive him. He took me to my favourite London sea-food restaurant. He said that it was his way of apologising for pushing me. The others had told him that I had scratches on my arms and knees because of him, so I was glad that he wanted to make amends.
When we arrived at the restaurant, the first thing he did was ask about a specific waitress. He was very eager to know if she was working there that day. I realised that he had only brought me there to flirt with that girl, and got very annoyed. My mother often said that men cannot multitask. Well, that was not the case for teenage boys. He clearly had planned to kill two birds with one stone.
After we had our meals and he had spent the entire time flirting with the Polish waitress, the time came to pay the bill. She placed it in front of him, and as soon as she was gone, he looked at me, made a sorry face and said that he didn’t have any money and that I would have to pay for the meal.
I rolled my eyes, but I had no choice. As soon as I said yes, he begged me to give him my wallet so that he could pretend that he was the one paying to look good in front of the waitress. I was so over it that I agreed, gave him my wallet, and he paid. When she brought back the change, I realised that he had left a ten-pound tip. I was furious. First of all, a tip was supposed to be only ten per cent of the bill, and secondly, the money was mine, and I wasn’t planning on tipping a waitress who had ignored me all the time I was there, because she was busy flirting with my dinner companion.
When he got me home, I realised that the girl had put her phone number in his pocket. He was proudly showing it to anyone who would listen, so I grabbed his arm and snatched it from him. I made it clear to him that since it was my money that bought the food, the girl’s number was also mine.
I realised too late that he would kung fu me if he had to in order to get that number, so I just sprinted away and ate the number while he was chasing me. He got his revenge on me by barging in the bathroom while I was in the shower, and peed, ignoring my screams for him to get out.
The list of his nonsense was very long, so as he was standing in front of me now, I was about to tell him to clear off when he said that he had seen Wade Allen Tillerson in the dining room, talking to one of the dinner ladies, and one of them had handed him the plastic bottle the students had seen flying and no one had recovered as far as we knew.
Scarlett, Pam and I gasped and looked at each other. That was dynamite information. I hoped Hassan was not lying to us, so I agreed to include him in our group, and while we were giving him a recap of our journey so far, he added that Arnold was missing.
On his way to join us, he had overheard some academics talking about the fact that Arnold had just disappeared and how upset they were that his replacement had not been properly vetted by the headmaster. He also said that he’d heard them say that they believed a missing-person report had been filed by the school.
The first thing we decided on was to wait until after Aethelf-laed’s festival to start our investigation. It did not take long. By Monday it was business as usual. It was decided that the girls would go and find out what we could about Arnold from the A-level Yans and see if his disappearance had any connection to the cult, and the boys would try and find the dinner lady Hassan had talked about.
From what we found out, it seemed that he had no family; his family was J.C. As much as I was worried about Arnold, it occurred to me that he was not the only school employee that had disappeared all of a sudden.
I had noticed not too long ago that one of the live-out school groundkeepers wasn’t working at J.C. any more, but since it wasn’t the first time that a staff member had left, I hadn’t paid much attention to it at the time, but I did now. I had been told that in the past, when a staff member left of their own accord, the rumours of their upcoming departure would be all over the school, even if they didn’t have a goodbye party, but not that guy, and that combined with Arnold’s disappearance was very strange.
That night, in my room, the girls and I started a mystery board, and we pinned up all the clues that we had found. I had learned reading Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle that every great detective kept revisiting their findings while gathering their thoughts, so I created the board to help me do that.
At the moment, we had people disappearing and students dying without anyone seeming to care or know about it. So people needed to realise that something seriously wrong was happening. Also, we needed something in writing in case anything happened to us, something to allow anyone to pick up right where we had left off, something clear and simple just in case the last man standing was Hassan.
I also started writing a journal. Whoever was to replace me needed to know exactly how I had got to my conclusions and what I was feeling at the time. Little did I know that while I was playing a modern-day Nancy Drew, steps were being taken that would result in tragedy striking our school once again.
The following weekend, we went to the Mystery Pot tavern. It had been opened by J.C.’s French culinary teacher when the school first opened, and was built based on a model of a Gaul tavern, with wooden windows, a thatched roof and a tall, slightly tilted grey stone chimney. Inside, the tables were long and wooden, with wooden benches instead of chairs, which meant that sometimes we ended up sitting next to complete strangers.
The Mystery Pot only opened on weekends and featured the best dishes of the week, cooked by students, and they were all J.C. students’ original recipes. The best part was that the name of the creators was known only by the tavern owner and the school academic staff, and at the end of the year, the dish that had been voted the best by the students would get a prize, as well as its creator.
The most amazing food was prepared there, and it was everyone’s favourite place to eat, along with the Magic Wrap, the best sandwich shop ever. At the tavern, we had the most amazing chicken J.C., which was one of my favourite dishes in the world. It was braided chicken breast stuffed with béchamel sauce and bacon, served on a bed of morel mushrooms and potato gratin.
We were about to leave when we overheard the table next to us. They were talking about an accident involving a J.C. teacher and her two children. They had been found dead after their car had skidded, crashed and turned over on impact. We found out that it was Amelia’s teacher Ms Veronica Thompson Montoya. She was young and beautiful. I considered her the nicest, most elegant, loving, caring and academic in the whole school, and she was a local. She had been born and bred in Gateway Hill.
We ran out and parted ways with the boys. The girls went to the post office to get more information, and the boys went to tell other students we had just seen in the village. The post-mistress was telling some tourist how poor Mr Thompson had been waiting for them to come home. He had cooked dinner for them and had been setting the table ready when the police came and delivered the news to him.
That part was so sad that tears started rolling down my cheeks. I couldn’t bear the thought of that man waiting for his beautiful family and finding out that the ones he was waiting for would never return.
We left the post office, and we all hugged to comfort each other. Everybody loved Ms Montoya. William saw that we were upset, so he took me in his arms and embraced me. If it had been Hogan that had done that, my thoughts would have still been on the tragedy, but it was William, and I had the biggest crush on him. Having him hug me made my heart jump, and I forgot about Mr Thompson’s sadness and shamelessly enjoyed the moment.
When I saw the smirk on the guys’ faces, I said, “What? I needed a hug. Haven’t you ever needed a hug?” And I blushed, unfortunately.
I got the same reaction from them that people had when they heard politicians say, “Our thoughts and prayers are with the family.” No one believed them, but no one dared to say that out loud either.
When we got back to school, I did my best to console Amelia. She really loved her art teacher, and I could see the pain on all her friends’ and classmates’ faces. It did not take long for the school to find a replacement for Ms Montoya. Actually, it was quite a speedy move, because Ms Montoya had had her accident on Saturday, and by Monday morning her replacement was already there.
Her name was Ms Dujardin. My first impression was that Cruella de Vil must have had a twin sister Dodie Smith had forgotten to tell us about. Not only that, but she looked like she couldn’t spell the word smile and always had a disapproving look on her face. But as it turned out, she was about to be the least of our problems.
A few days after Ms Montoya’s death, I started to become worried. A feeling of unease plagued me every time I went to class. I was starting to see faint shadows around the school from time to time and always during twilight.
I wasn’t the only one starting to see shadows. During FIST a number of students had started to talk about catching glimpses of shadows circling the school. The older students had also started to complain about having the feeling of being watched. Seeing shadows in the Masani world was not unusual for Yans; since the cracking of the veil, it was a frequent phenomenon.
When Yanar came up with a protection shield for our territories, the sight of shadows there disappeared. At the time, the Yan population was told that the shield was obstructing the view, but the councils made it very clear that the veil was still as fragile as before. In the Masani world, however, since they had no shield, we would occasionally see some shadows in the sky, but not as much as in J.C. It was as if they were gathering around the school.
I realised that Pam and I had closed my mother’s investigation too soon. She was right; something was wrong in England, and it had to do with the veil.
That very night, Pam and I gave her a full report of what we had been seeing and the increase in shadow presence around the school.
Mother told us that they had discovered a portal in Utah, United States, but they had no idea how it had been opened, by whom or why.
When we asked her what the portal looked like, she said, “For now it is just a deep, dark hole protected by a shimmering shield. We are investigating the phenomenon, but I very much doubt that it looks like that unopened. Just be vigilant and do not attract attention to yourselves.”
I replied, “Very well, Mother.”
“Very well, Auntie,” replied Pam.
Pam and I were starting to think that there might be a connection between the deaths in our school and the investigation we were conducting. We surmised that there wasn’t enough danger to prompt us to reveal to the boys the mission my mother had given us, not yet anyway.
The feeling of unease in the school was taking its toll on me, and I was starting to become more withdrawn. I was missing home, and Surrey’s charms were not doing it for me any more, and the winter holidays couldn’t come soon enough.
For some reason, the large number of shadows was affecting me more than the others. I was feeling dizzy at times and I had nausea occasionally. The surprising thing was that Amelia and Alex were sharing the same symptoms. We had been to the local GP, but they couldn’t find anything wrong with us.
The good news for me was that I was getting extra attention from William, but the bad news was that William had forbidden me from continuing my investigation until I was feeling better.
The others decided to continue with the investigation into the case of the missing school staff members without Alex and me, and by doing so, they decided that it would be a good idea to talk to the colleagues and families of the missing people, whenever they had the chance to go to Gateway Hill.
They were determined to learn as much as they could about their background story, if there was one, and find where they might have gone and why.