Because it is (almost) Halloween. I can't guarantee that this story is actually scary, although I certainly frightened myself a fair bit writing it
...
"Con, tell us a story!"
Con Maynard glanced up from the book of French fairytales she was reading to see Emerence Hope looking imploringly at her. "What kind of story?" she asked.
"Oh, I don't know - anything," Emerence replied. "You will, won't you?" Con agreed - admittedly a little reluctantly - and the news quickly spread around the Middles' Common Room. Con had inherited her ability to spin a story from her authoress mother, and her own tales were quite popular among her school-friends. Before long, Con was surrounded by a sea of eager faces.
"What are you going to tell us?" Francie Wilford demanded.
"What would you like to hear?" Con responded equably.
No one replied for a long moment. Then, something prompted naughty Margot Maynard to say, "How about something scary? It is almost All Hallows, after all." This suggestion was met with cries of approval, causing Jo Scott hurriedly remind everyone to 'hush' - if they made too much noise they'd bring the staff down on them, or worse, the prefects.
"Someone turn the lights off - you, Margot," Jo ordered. Surprisingly obediently, Margot did so - and, while the other girls were still fumbling around in the dark, she quietly slipped out the door, chuckling quietly to herself. In the meantime, someone produced an electric lamp, and Con placed it on the small table beside her, so that her audience could see her.
"All right, Con," Jo said eventually, "I think you can start now."
Con cleared her throat, and in hushed tones began her tale.
"I expect by now you've all heard most of the school's legends. You'll have heard about Mrs Sheppard fishing up a dead body, that wasn't; you'll have heard about the Scottish girl who had the Sight, and could See things that no one should know. But there are some tales that no one wants to tell, some stories that no one wants to remember. Like the story of little Mary O'Connor. No one wants to remember her, and yet she refuses to be forgotten.
"It was back when the school was in the Tyrol. You might have seen those old black and white pictures of the original chalet; it was very pretty. It was also very old. None of the locals could quite remember when it had first been built, although each was sure they remembered a time when it hadn't been there. But it was a lovely place, and the girls and mistresses loved it alike.
"It was a stormy night when Mary O'Connor arrived at the chalet. She had been expected there that afternoon, but she had missed the ferry, or perhaps her train had been late; at any rate, she turned up alone, because her parents had been to busy to come with her. It seemed her father was a diplomat of Irish extraction, and her mother a society girl who didn't want to lose her fun just because she had a daughter. For a long time, Mary had been looked after by a doting grandmother, but Granny had died, leaving nothing behind but a small golden cross, which Mary always wore, to remember.
"Mary quickly became a favourite among the girls, although there was always something unsettling about her. No one could quite put their finger on what it was. Sometimes, when they talked to her, she would look at them with an intensity that was quite frightening. Sometimes she'd laugh, an odd, high-pitched little laugh, when no one else saw anything to laugh at. Sometimes in class she'd stare out the window, and a queer expression would come across her face, as though she were thinking thoughts that no mere mortal ought to think. And then it would be gone, and she'd be back to the same, smiling, normal girl she always was.
"One sunny afternoon, the girls decided to play hide-and-go-seek. They weren't allowed off school property, of course, but there were plenty of places to hide all the same. It was a riotous affair, with everyone from the prefects to the Juniors involved, and after a while no one knew who was hiding and who was seeking, but they kept on playing anyway. It wasn't until dinner time, when everyone was seated together back inside, that they realised Mary O'Connor was missing.
"They searched the grounds for her first, in case she'd been trapped somewhere; and then then someone had the bright idea of searching her room and found it empty - very empty. Mary's bed was made up, and her curtains were pulled - but her drawers were empty, and the miniature portrait she kept of her grandmother by her bedside had disappeared as well. The only sign that she had ever been there was a scrap of paper, left on her pillow. In Mary's flowery handwriting it simply read, I'm sorry.
"It was obvious she had run away, even if no one was sure why. Search parties were immediately organised. She hadn't caught the ferry or the train, so she must have climbed one of the mountain passes. But even the most experienced men couldn't find a trace of her. Telegrams were sent, urgently, to her parents - but no reply every came. One of the staff members, a music teacher, took it upon himself to travel all the way to Switzerland, where the diplomat had given his hotel's address. But even though his name was there in the hotel register, no one could remember ever having seen him, not the manager, not the maids, not the other guests. Eventually, it was decided that Mary's parents must have arrived for her during that game of hide-and-seek, and that she'd left with them in a hurry - hence that short note.
"The years passed, and the school grew. It grew to such a size that the original chalet wasn't big enough to hold everyone any more. It was decided to expand, to build two new blocks. An architect was hired, a young man who was very excited about this job. But pouring over the plans for the original chalet, he noticed something odd - the kitchen was too small. From the outside, it looked like it should have been at least four feet longer than it really was. Investigating, he found that the wood on one of the walls didn't match the other three. With the permission of his employers, he got some of the local peasants to knock it down, to find out what was behind it, and a truly horrifying sight met his eyes. There, hidden away, was the skeleton of a young woman.
"The tiny room she had been in was covered in scratches, as though she had been trying to claw her way out. Someone had trapped her in there alive, the architect realised, building the fourth wall up to keep her inside. He sent for one of the doctors from the Sanatorium to look at it, and the doctor said that whoever she was, she must have been dead for centuries; he could tell by looking at the bones. Then one of the maids, who had been there watching, gave a little scream. A pile of dead bones had meant nothing to her, but as the doctor had examined them the maid had caught sight of the golden chain which still hung around the skeleton's neck. The golden chain with the small golden cross at the end. The small golden cross which looked just like Mary's."
A gasp went around the room at that, and a squeal from one or two of the younger girls. Con's eyes gleamed in the lamplight. She wasn't finished yet.
"The war came, and the school left Austria. Many of the girls who had been there with Mary O'Connor had now left, save for one or two. They had been very young when she had been there, but they remembered her all the same. These girls were Seniors, then prefects, then they, too, left the school. There was no one left to remember Mary now.
"One morning, one of the Juniors looked particularly tired. Matron saw, of course, and investigated. The girl refused to say anything at first, but eventually she gave in and told Matron everything. She'd woke up the night before and heard a scratching noise. 'What scratching noise?' Matron asked, in her no-nonsense voice.
"'It's that big girl scratching,' the Junior said. 'She's scratching cos she's trapped and she needs to get out.'
"Matron hadn't known Mary, but she'd been there when the skeleton was discovered, and she'd heard the rumours, even though she wasn't one for gossiping herself. She raced up to the Junior's dorm, and was relieved to see that everything was as it ought. Everything, that is, apart from the note pinned to the girl's pillow. It read, in flowery handwriting, I'm sorry.
"It didn't take Matron long to figure out what was going on. The school had forgotten Mary O'Connor. But Mary O'Connor was determined not to be forgot."
There was silence in the room now; the girls were too scared to say anything at all. So when something started to go scritch, scritch, scritch against the wall, everybody heard it.
There was instant pandemonium. The younger girls screamed in terror; Emerence jumped up, meaning to dive for the lights, but ended up tumbling over Ros Lilley who howled in pain. Finally, the door swung open and a terrifying figure was outlined in the doorway. More cries of terror greeted this apparition, until it switched on the light and revealed itself to be an irate Betsy Lucy. That instantly sobered most of the girls up, although one or two were too far gone to do anything but burst into tears.
"Well?" was all that Betsy said.
"We- we were telling ghost stories," Jo Scott offered.
"I see. Silly babies telling silly stories and frightening themselves out of the few wits they had," Betsy said crushingly. "If I hear any more noise from you this evening I'll have you all writing lines like the babies you are." The older girls looked ashamed of themselves, and Betsy clearly thought that that threat was more than enough as she left them again - leaving the door open.
"But we heard Mary O'Con-" someone started to say, only to be interrupted by Len.
"It was obviously just someone moving furniture in the next room," she said sensibly. "We were all a little worked up over that awful story of Con's - honestly, Con, I can't think what drove you to tell it."
"Sorry, everyone," Con said, since it seemed to be expected. Her quick eyes caught the sight of Margot sliding back into the room, a disgruntled expression on her face.
"Sorry, Con," she said, the moment the two of them were alone. "I got caught by Matey as soon as I went outside - I didn't have a chance to do the scratching. Sounds like everyone was scared just fine all the same though - are you alright? You've gone all pale."
"Fine, Mags," Con replied, swallowing hard. Imagination, that was it. All those girls, thinking frightening thoughts in the dark room, of course when they heard some strange noise they were going to think it was the ghost of Mary O'Connor. It was far more likely to be furniture scraping, like Len had said. After all, Mary O'Connor was nothing but a story - a story that she, Con, had invented. There was nothing real about it.
But on the very edge of her hearing, Con could still hear what could surely only be the sound of someone trying to claw their way out of a tiny wooden room.
Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.
