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“The same dead child. That’s what a ghost is, Clarissa. And you seem determined to just keep adding to the account of dead boys at Havencross. If Austin is hurt or ill or, God forbid, dies because of what you’ve done tonight, I will never forgive you.”
Clarissa looked like a little girl beginning to realize she’d done something wrong. Her eyes filled with tears. “I just wanted Thomas.”
“Thomas is dead, Clarissa. And if you can’t put the needs of living children before your dead brother, than you have no business running a school. Weston!”
He looked nearly as bemused as Clarissa by Diana’s outburst and eyed her warily. “Yes?”
“Take her back to the house. I’m going after Austin.”
“I can do that.”
But Diana’s expert eye had assessed the woman’s physical state. “Clarissa’s not going to stay on her feet all the way back,” she said. “And I can’t carry her. Besides, I’m the one who knows where to find Austin. Just hurry back.”
If the small opening she and Joshua had made at the icehouse hadn’t been widened, Diana might have missed it in the dark night. But Austin had clearly moved enough stones to get himself inside.
Diana lay with her stomach down on the ground and called into the opening: “Austin? Austin, are you there?”
For a long, terrifying moment there was silence. Then a rush of relief as she heard the boy call back faintly. “I’m here. Miss Somersby?”
“No, it’s Miss Neville. Austin, I need you to come out now. I’ve got to get you back to bed before your mother gets angry with me.”
“Ummm … I think I’m stuck. The tunnel kind of got thin and uneven, like maybe part of it fell in sometime?”
She batted a burst of panic away. “Stuck like there’s no room for you to turn around? Can you just back your way out? I know it’s uncomfortable.”
“I tried. But I think something’s snagged my shirt and I can’t quite reach it, whatever it is. Can you help, Miss Neville?”
Diana drew in a deep breath and blew out. And then another. When she was sure she could speak without her voice shaking, she said, “Of course I can help. Just be still and I’ll come to you.”
Don’t think of France, she commanded herself. This is nothing like Viliers-Bretoneux. This time I’m deliberately entering a tunnel that narrows so much a nine-year-old boy can’t free himself. It will be fine.
Crawling through damp, cold earth with a torch in one hand was excruciating for both her body and mind. Panic lurked at the edges of her awareness, and she kept it back by keeping up a steady stream of words for Austin.
“It really doesn’t seem fair of a ghost to want you to come in here,” she said. “I don’t suppose a spirit has so much trouble getting through narrow spaces. When we’re out of here, Austin, we’re going to have a serious conversation about logic and responsibility.”
Finally her light glanced off the soles of his slippers. Unlike Clarissa, he hadn’t managed to put on boots. “All right, Austin, I see you. I’m setting down the light, and I’ll come up as carefully as I can and stretch my arm along your side. Which side are you caught on?”
“The right, miss.”
Diana wedged the torch against the wall. Although she couldn’t so much as crouch in the space, it wasn’t as closed-in as she’d feared. It was a mess, though—as Austin had said, it looked as though there’d been some kind of collapse in earlier years. It was that mess of fallen-in debris that had snagged the hem of his shirt—the fabric had caught firmly around a rock and Austin’s efforts to free himself had only tangled it tighter.
Diana teased the fabric free. “Okay, Austin, you can back up now. I’m going to crawl back a short way and then you should be able to get past me.”
“I can just follow you out.”
“Absolutely not. Look what happened when we took our eyes off you for five minutes. You’re going out ahead of me so I can be sure you don’t take any sudden detours.”
“Yes, miss.”
She heard the relief in his voice, ample payment for her efforts at speaking calmly. As promised, after they’d both backed up for maybe fifty feet, the tunnel widened enough for Austin to wiggle past her and turn around. Very carefully, Diana managed to get herself turned the right direction as well.
“All right, lead the way,” she told him, and set herself to follow his slippers. At least they weren’t belly-crawling any longer; they both had enough room to be on their hands and knees.
Diana bumped the torch against the tunnel wall, and in the wavering light, she thought she saw the outline of a boy—one most definitely not Austin. For one thing, he was standing up, with his lower legs sunk into the earth as though rising from a grave.
For another thing, he was transparent.
She yelped and Austin cried, “What’s wrong, miss?’
