THE ANGEL ROOM

Abby and her two younger siblings are trying to settle in to their sixth foster home in a year. Although anywhere is better than Hope's End, the orphanage they were sent to, each home has proved too difficult for them to live in. However, in the home of Mr and Mrs Rose, they seem to have found something.

Abby is acutely aware that it is her duty to look after Jamarcus and Mattie, and had given up on ever finding her own space again... perhaps until now....

Later that night, bathed and ready for bed, Abby found herself standing at the doorway of her very own room. Mrs Rose’s hand wavered over the handle.

‘Mattie is next door and Jam is just across the hall. You don’t have to worry any more – they are perfectly safe. Now… this is where you will sleep.’

She twisted the coiled brass and pushed the door back. Abby held her breath, swallowed deeply and stepped inside. Tentatively she lifted her eyes and looked around. All around. This couldn’t be her room – it was so big! Her feet faltered and she had to steady herself against the wall as she gazed at two towering wardrobe doors, carved in white wood, standing like ghosts in robes. Close by a matching chest of drawers sat patiently offering a vanity unit with a mirror curved around the back in the shape of an angel’s wings. Abby hurried over and had only let her fingers glance across the lacquered hairbrush before she caught sight of her moonlit reflection, a ghost herself, walking through a fairy tale. For a moment the mirrored wings seemed to sit across her own shoulders. Spinning around Abby clasped her hands in delight – this was her room! Her haven! Basking in the cool blue light of the night pouring in through a bay window that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. It was as if this room and everything within it was just waiting for her to arrive. Mrs Rose smiled as she quietly closed the door. ‘Sleep well my dear.’

Abby curled her toes into the carpet and crept over to the bed, piled high with cushions precisely arranged on a quilt, as puffed up and inviting as a cloud. The starched linen hissed as she pulled it back and climbed in, sliding her legs down between the cool cotton covers. As the soft mattress folded around her body Abby realised she couldn’t remember the last time she had a moment to herself, so she closed her eyes to savour every second.

‘I think we’ve found somewhere Mum…I think we’ll be OK here.’ She thought, still looking forward to the day Mum would hold her in their arms again and tell her she had done well. For the first time in a year Abby felt she had a place, and the bedclothes smelt like home.

Yet despite this, and despite feeling a million miles away from the nightmare of Hope’s End, sleep would not come. In fact sleep would not come to any of them, and moments later she opened one weary eye just in time to watch Jam and Mattie creep into her room and settle over by the bay window.

Abby dragged the quilt off the bed and wrapped it around Mattie first and then Jam. From here, high up in the house and sat so close to the glass, it felt like they had been set adrift in the deep blue sky and were floating between the stars.

‘Do you think the stars can see us too?’ asked Mattie.

‘They can’t see anything - they’re just balls of fire in space.’ Jam was never one to sugar coat his opinion.

‘No they’re not, not all of them,’ Mattie bristled and straightened her back, ‘I think some of them can see us - I think some of them are lost people...like Mum and Dad’

‘That’s stupid.’ grunted Jam. ‘They’re not lost – they left.’

Abby sighed, far too tired to have this conversation again, so she squeezed Jam to quieten him before pulling Mattie closer.

‘Perhaps you’re right Mattie - perhaps some of them are lost people ... and now they are watching over us ... looking after us.’

Abby followed Mattie’s gaze up to the stars, as usual finding it difficult to say just the right thing – not like Mum, Mum always seemed to know what to say, how to find the way through a problem. Dad didn’t do problems – he just knew everything about everything about the world around them - a walking encyclopaedia! These thoughts brought the same sad smile to her lips and lump to her throat that they always did. Their sudden disappearance remained a mystery. She remembered arriving home from school, hungry and full of chatter, to an empty house. No note. No explanation. A few minutes later their front door collapsed under the force of a hob-nailed boot, kicked down by Principal Thrashwell Sneer who leered over them as he fought to hang on to the leads holding back the Prefects; five black, overgrown, psychopathic Dogos that went everywhere with him. He trapped the children in rough rope nets and dragged them away to Hope’s End. Jam always maintained Sneer must have known their parents had gone - and that means he must have known what happened to them. Sneer’s sightless eyes may be white and clotted like sour milk yet he can sense the slightest movement a full three hundred and sixty degrees around him and crush any transgressor under his heavy knobbled walking stick. It’s as good as having eyes in the back of your head. With his boil ridden skin and greasy hair Thrashwell Sneer smelt of pure evil, and Abby could only be grateful that she would never have to face him again.

Outside the moonlight provided a pallid preview of their new neighbourhood. Good homes full of good people. Gardens neatly set out, with tidy lawns and borders, Autumn leaves gathering in corners, trees settling down for a winters sleep. Abby spotted it first.

‘Look! Look at that place over there,’ she whispered, shivering slightly.

Jam and Mattie peered into the gloom. One house stood alone, perfectly still, as if waiting. The windows faced away from the other houses, giving the impression that it had turned its back, ignoring them. Wooden slats sagged like an old man’s skin, and high up on top a great glass dome sat like a hat, panes cracked and shattered. The house looked unloved and neglected, delicate floral ironwork dissolving into rust, ancient white paint peeling away from the rotting walls whilst in the garden one solitary old tree twisted painfully up toward the night sky.

‘What’s that?’ asked Jam, pointing his finger at the house. Abby tried to follow his eye-line.

‘What?

‘That! There’s someone inside, can’t you see that light?

The three of them sat up to the window and squinted into the darkness.

‘It’s only the moonlight’ said Mattie ‘ It’s reflectring off the broken glass.’

‘The word is ‘reflecting’ Mattie - and reflections don’t move from room to room.’ countered Jam. He was right.

A muted blue orb hovered by the veined glass of the rotted conservatory throwing a weak glow out into the dense woodland. Slowly it slid from window to window, as if checking each of the rooms, into the back parlour, out again into the hallway, disappearing for a moment, then reappearing, fractured behind some old wooden blinds before emerging into full view, right in the middle of a large downstairs room.

‘Is it a ghost?’ breathed Mattie

‘No such thing,’ said Jam.

‘Seems like it’s looking for something,’ whispered Abby,

The light drifted hopelessly, when without warning it shot straight to the centre of the window - as if it had seen something - as if it had seen them!

‘Hide!’ shrieked Jam. pulling his sisters towards the floor, pressing their faces into the carpet.

‘What was it Jam?’ whimpered Mattie

‘I’m not sure, it just... it just stared at us. I don’t like it...I don’t like it at all.’

‘Well we can’t stay here all night,’ said Abby practically.

‘I don’t want to go back to my room on my own,’ sniffed Mattie, burying her head in her big sister’s nightdress. Abby cupped her head in her hand, ‘Don’t worry - we can just lay here for a few minutes.’

Abby stared into the weave of the carpet, her breathing growing steady, yet alert for any indication of danger. But Mattie soon started to fidget and twist,

‘I’m hurting…’ she grumbled, and sat up, forgetting herself. When she looked out of the window she gasped.

‘Aaaaaww! That’s so beautiful!’

Abby and Jam looked at each other before scrambling onto their knees. Cautiously they looked back toward the old house, but now, instead of being cloaked in darkness it sparkled within an incandescent glow.

The small globe they had seen earlier had grown into a huge ball of light hovering in that downstairs window, casting long shadows from the trees, like witches fingers reaching out toward them. The whole house had an aura of blue and golden light, with sparks flying up from the edges. Flickering and popping, thousands of small feathery flecks flew away from the old wooden walls - you could almost hear them fluttering.

‘Can you hear it?’ asked Mattie - her eyes wide with wonder ‘That music.’

Abby held her breath and strained to hear it. Somewhere out there in the night air something floated on top of the night breezes, something barely audible, but something glorious.

‘It’s incredible… I can hear it too.’ she laughed ‘And is that... can you smell something?’

‘Cookies!’ cried Mattie.

‘It is cookies.. ’ gasped Jam ‘and...and lavender!’

They were all gazing onto the house, lost in its light, trying to hear its music, when Abby clearly heard a voice whisper in her ear. As if someone was standing right next to her.

‘Abbyyyy….’

‘What was that?’ she asked

‘Abbyyy….’ the voice breathed again.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Jam

‘It’s my name - someone in that house is calling my name’

‘Abbyyyy….Jaaaam…Maaattyyyy…

They all heard it, clear, terrifying, and unmistakable. They all screamed...