Pandora Read online

  Zoe pressed her face to the glass and confirmed that there was no furniture, ornaments or any other personal belongings inside the house. “Perhaps they didn’t like it here and have left?” she suggested.

  “Maybe,” replied Pandora in a disbelieving tone. “Let’s go and have a look at Craig’s place.”

  The two girls walked on, turned a few corners and came to Craig’s house. Once again, they knocked on the door, and once again, no one answered.

  “This is empty too,” exclaimed Pandora, peering through a window.

  “They could both have moved out on the same day,” said Zoe in a worried tone. She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck standing up.

  “Excuse me,” called Pandora to a woman who was passing with some shopping. “Can you tell me where everyone is?”

  “Who are you looking for?” asked the woman with a doubtful look on her face.

  “Craig Mitchell.”

  “You must have the wrong house,” replied the woman. “I don’t know anyone called Craig Mitchell, but I do know that house is empty. It hasn’t been sold or let.”

  “Everybody knows the Mitchells,” said Zoe in disbelief. “Craig’s mum was screaming in the street at three o’clock in the morning, drunk. The police were called out. Don’t you remember?”

  Screaming in the street?” echoed the woman, a frown on her face.

  “Yes! It was only last weekend. Saturday night, Sunday morning.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t remember any of that,” said the woman. “And I only live a few houses up. You must have the wrong house and road. They all look the same, so it’s an easy mistake to make.”

  “What about Wayne Jones?” asked Pandora. “He lives just round the corner and he’s always hanging out with Craig.”

  The woman shook her head in bewilderment. “I don’t know a Wayne Jones either. I thought I knew almost everyone in the development, given that there aren’t that many of us yet. Most of the houses here are still empty. You must have come to the wrong house.”

  “Yes, that must be it,” said Zoe slowly, but the look she gave Pandora showed that she didn’t know what to think about the disappearance of two complete families.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The following day at school, Pandora and Zoe set out to discover if anyone knew what had happened to Mitchell and Jones.

  “Who?” asked Duncan in puzzlement.

  “Craig Mitchell and Wayne Jones!” said Zoe in disbelief. “They used to stand in the corner of the yard, next to the steps that lead down to the football field and would threaten people as they walked past.”

  Duncan looked genuinely bewildered and shook his head.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Charity Halford, attracted by the baffled expressions.

  “They’re asking me about someone called Wayne Jones and Craig Mitchell. I’ve never even heard of them.”

  “Wayne and Craig?” mused Charity. “Are they new boys?”

  “They’ve been here for two weeks!” exclaimed Zoe. “They used to stand over there and threaten to hit people as they went past.”

  “What?” exclaimed Charity. “They could never get away with that!”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” said Duncan. “Miss Hill would never allow such a thing.” Pandora saw again that such behaviour was totally alien to those born in Willowcombe Clatford.

  “You must remember them,” insisted Zoe. By now, a small crowd had gathered around, including some of the new pupils. “Practically the whole school was scared of them!”

  “Wayne and Craig? Yeah, I liked them,” said Kylie dreamily. “They were rebels.”

  “They were thugs,” said Zoe.

  “At least they knew how to have fun,” snapped Kylie, who had a similar outlook on life as Mitchell and Jones.

  “I’m sorry,” broke in Charity in a reasonable tone of voice, “but I really have no idea who you are talking about.”

  “Craig was the lad who said you were a snobby bitch during P.E., because you wouldn’t go with him behind the hedge,” said Kylie in a sneering tone.

  Charity looked appalled. “No one has ever spoken to me like that,” she said, her face going red. “I would report anything like that to Miss Hill straight away!”

  “He was right,” drawled Kylie. “You are a snobby bitch. You should have gone and had a bit. It’s about the only thing to do in this dump.”

  The native Willowcombe children looked utterly sickened at her words. Some walked hurriedly away while others stared in genuine shock.

  “I’ve never heard such filth!” shouted Charity, tears streaming down her face.

  “Bloody hell, how old are you?” asked Kylie incredulously. “Here, haven’t you even done it yet? Are you a virgin?” She laughed, harshly and cruelly. “You are! You’re a virgin!”

  “I’m telling Miss Hill!” shrieked Charity, looking as though she was going to be violently sick as she ran away.

  This finally attracted the attention of a teacher–Miss Saunders, the victim of Mitchell and Jones’ verbal attack. “What’s going on here?” she hooted as she strode into the middle of the group, scattering the smaller children left and right.

  “Miss Saunders!” said Zoe in relief. “Have you seen Craig Mitchell or Wayne Jones today?”

  “Who?” asked Miss Saunders, her face looking puzzled.

  Zoe’s jaw dropped. “You know! The two boys who were... rude to you. On Tuesday.”

  “Two boys who were rude to me?”

  “Yes! They told you to... um... well, they used abusive and threatening language,” said Zoe, resorting to police terminology. “They stood there by the steps and wore gold jewellery which you told them to take off, and they swore at you.”

  “Abusive language?” said Miss Saunders slowly. For a moment her face creased, as though an unexpected, painful memory had surfaced and was struggling to get to the shore of her conscious mind, but then her eyes glazed over.

  “It didn’t happen,” she said in a strange, flat tone. “Nothing like that could ever happen here,” Then, her eyes lit up and her face beamed. “All that happened on Tuesday was little Tommy Wintergreen fell over and scraped his knees. Boys will be boys! Always falling over and getting scabs on their knees, the little mites!” She laughed at the memory, a memory Pandora was sure had never happened. “Ah, there goes the bell. Come along, everyone, don’t straggle, back inside and to your classes.” Clucking like an ineffectual mother hen, Miss Saunders flapped her arms at the group, which quickly broke up as the pupils made their way inside.

  “What is going on, Pan?” asked Zoe in a low, savage whisper. “No one remembers them except those of us who have only just moved here. That has to be significant.”

  “I know. I’m not sure. I can almost see it, some sort of pattern. The disappearance of Mitchell and Jones, the fact that the kids born here don’t question their teachers or parents...”

  “This place is unreal,” said Zoe, shaking her head in disbelief. “It’s like we’re back in the 1950s. Everyone defers to authority. But what’s going on? How do we find out?”

  “I don’t know.” replied Pandora miserably. She felt totally helpless and didn’t know what she could do.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  On thinking the problem through, Pandora decided that one obvious course of action was to ask a teacher for advice. Admittedly, the idea of asking a teacher for anything was quite ludicrous to a survivor of Lowell Comprehensive, but St Hilda’s could prove to be different.

  Zoe, feeling apprehensive at the disappearance of two families, decided to head home at the end of the school day, to reassure herself that her own family was still there, leaving Pandora to seek out Mr Gilchirst alone. He was the only teacher she actually liked, and while she also liked Miss Winters, the librarian, Pandora hadn’t seen her for days.

  Pandora made her way to her form room, but it was empty and locked. She remembered Mr Gil
chirst, on the first day she had met him, saying that the staff often stayed late to discuss the day with the headmistress, so Pandora made her way to the staff room. She could hear the argument before she got anywhere near the open door.

  “This is totally unacceptable,” hooted a female voice.

  Pandora had no trouble recognising the smug self-assurance of Miss Hill. She and Mabel had a lot in common.

  “I’m glad we can agree on that,” snapped the voice of Mr Gilchirst. “Your philosophy of learning is atrocious.”

  “I have never been spoken to in such a way!” gasped the voice of Miss Hill in outrage.

  “In that case, you have been damn lucky,” retorted Mr Gilchirst.

  Pandora stopped walking and leaned against the wall. Her appearance would probably not be welcomed. Besides, she was curious as to what could have annoyed Mr Gilchirst so much. He was normally rather affable, if somewhat touchy on certain subjects such as grammar and the value of books.

  “I have been a teacher for thirty years and my results speak for themselves,” snapped the voice of Miss Hill.

  “And therein lies the problem,” replied the precise tone of Mr Gilchirst. “Your results are all that you concern yourself with.”

  “How dare you say such a thing? I have the best interest of the children at heart.”

  “I dare say, but your interpretation of the best interests of the children is inadequate, lacking in empathy and centres entirely on examination results.”

  “My students are all high achievers and the exam results are proof of that!”

  “Your exam results are testimony to your obsessive compulsion to perform well in assessment-based criteria, not to endow children with the faculty to think for themselves.”

  “We are not here to teach children to think,” snorted Miss Hill before realising what she had said. “I mean...”

  “What you mean is quite clear, both in what you say and in your teaching philosophy.” replied Mr Gilchirst sharply.

  “You know perfectly well what I mean. We are here to prepare these children for their future lives.”

  “Indeed we are, yet I believe we can best do this by giving the children the ability to think independently. You seem to take the opposing view that children should only move along pre-established, regulated lines.”

  “The exam results speak for themselves,” repeated Miss Hill, sounding like a stuck record.

  “The exam results merely show that your students can regurgitate information after studying twenty-years’ worth of past exam papers. By any other criteria, such as how much of that information they actually understand, they fail. Are we here to teach these young people to have enquiring minds, or are we here to turn them into brainless automatons who can recite facts and figures only?”

  “The results speak for themselves!” repeated Miss Hill, who had clearly made this into a personal mantra.

  “And we are not questioning the results,” said a cold, reptilian voice, which Pandora recognised in horror. Mabel. What was she doing in there?

  “On the contrary, Miss Whitemarsh,” replied the testy voice of Mr Gilchirst, “I am doing precisely that. I would have hoped that a school governor would understand my concerns, but I am not surprised that you don’t.”

  “Oh, I have my concerns,” purred Mabel. “Concerns raised by Miss Hill and the other dedicated teachers of this fine school. Concerns against your teaching methods.”

  “Ah, I wondered why this meeting of the school governors had been called,” said the voice of Mr Gilchirst.

  Pandora could imagine him rocking back and forth on his heels as he talked, looking over the heads of the other people in the room. She crept down the corridor and risked peeking around the door. There, she saw Mabel sitting at the head of a large table. To her left sat Miss Hill and Reverend Cope, while to her right was Mr Toy. Finally, almost overlooked as always, was Mr Jackson. In front of them stood Mr Gilchrist, his back to Pandora.

  “We have all been concerned with your refusal to teach the curriculum set out before you,” continued Miss Hill.

  Mr Gilchirst pounced on the statement. “Really? Perhaps you could elaborate on when I have refused to teach the texts set out by the external examination board?”

  “We are not talking about the national curriculum,” backtracked Miss Hill, irritation pulling at her voice.

  “And what other curriculum is there?”

  “There is the school curriculum.”

  “Ah, yes, the blinkered school policy of turning children into little more than clones in your image. Now, I admit that at times I suspect that the national curriculum and our political masters are aiming to reduce us all to unthinking automatons, but until the hidden policy is made public and official, I shall continue to teach children to think independently.”

  “And that is your final word?” asked Mabel, her voice bloated with satisfaction.

  “Indeed it is,” said Mr Gilchirst, “and as I have not defied the national curriculum, I look forward to your attempts to remove me from the school before the contract ends.”

  “That will not be a problem,” hissed Mabel. “We have removed many of the evils which plague us–disruptive, violent, antisocial elements–and we can remove you. Our power has grown. The more we exercise it, the more we have.”

  “Power?” said Mr Gilchirst in puzzlement. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “You are disharmonious,” said Reverend Cope.

  “You bring disruption to order,” said Mr Toy.

  “We cannot tolerate your insubordination,” added Mr Jackson, trying to impose his presence onto the room.

  “You are really not making any sense,” said Mr Gilchirst, whose tone indicated he had concerns about the mental health of his colleagues.

  “Miss Hill,” snapped Mabel, “bring out the box.”

  Pandora stared as Miss Hill went to a cabinet in the corner of the room and carefully pulled from it a small wooden chest. She turned, holding the chest carefully. The wood was dark but also faded and seemed to be ancient and warped. Pandora couldn’t understand how it didn’t just crumble apart.

  “What on earth is that?” asked Mr Gilchirst in bewilderment.

  “This is order,” said Mabel in triumph as Miss Hill reverently carried the small chest forward. “This is harmony. This is what will keep Willowcombe Clatford free of the filthy lower orders and coloureds and all the other scum that drag us down to their level. We have used it sparingly, learning its power, but now we are ready to unleash the full force of the box.”

  “The force of the box? What on earth?”

  “Everyone concentrate,” spat Mabel, her face twisted into a grotesque leer of triumph and expectation.

  The air became heavy and a strange silence fell on the room. A bright blue light erupted from the box, shining through the numerous cracks and gaps. Miss Hill opened the box and the blue light exploded out, filling the staff room. The light coalesced into a tornado, which spat out bolts of lightning directly at Mr Gilchirst, pinning him to the ground.

  The tornado swung around and enveloped him, drawing him into the heart of the supernatural storm. For a moment, his body hung in the air, little more than a silhouette against the intense blue light, then it dwindled down and disappeared as the tornado snapped out.

  “Excellent,” smiled Mabel. “We are finally ready to remove the development and everyone in it.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Mr Toy. “Do we have the ability to remove an entire housing estate? So far, we have only erased individuals. An entire community may be beyond our capabilities. We don’t yet have full control. You remember what happened with the Tooke family? We only got the boy. The parents are still out there, living on the development.”

  “We have learnt since then,” said Mabel decisively. “Nothing can prevent us returning Willowcombe Clatford to the way it should always have been. We will have our values, good old-fashioned values our
parents lived by, where authority was respected and people knew their place. We will rid ourselves of these outsiders who infest us. Our children will be safe.

  “Willowcombe Clatford will be the perfect place to live.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Time seemed to slow down and every detail became magnified as Pandora backed away from the door, her face a grimace of horror. Evil was being done, yet it was being done in the name of good, and it was being done by those in authority, people who genuinely believed that they were acting in a moral way.

  She found herself outside. The afterschool clubs had finished and the children were out, running happily through the playground or standing, chatting and laughing in groups, all seemingly without a care in the world, the girls with boaters and ankle-length skirts, the older boys in blazers and trousers, the younger in shirts and short trousers.

  Pandora turned, feeling completely isolated from her surroundings as she looked through the school gates and down the village green. She had seen it on that first day and every day since, but she had not understood it. Now, she did.

  The cheerful mothers, all dressed in long skirts and blouses with cardigans over the top, pushing their perambulators or holding the hands of their polite, perfectly behaved children. The pensioners walking cheerfully up and down the High Street, all in blazers or tweed. The cricket team practising on the village green. There was no disorder, no fear, no argument. It was a perfect world.

  But perfect for whom? Everyone was polite and well behaved because they had no choice, and what was worse, they didn’t even know that they had no choice. This perfect world had been created by those who held narrow, insular views, who proudly wore their prejudices but disguised them as values. There was no disorder or fear, but there was also no difference, no eccentricity, no motivation to explore, to ask, to develop. There was only unthinking conformity.

  And in this world, there were no poor people. No working class, except those on the development. No coloured people, except Zoe and her family...