Jane Fizzle and the Chamber of Secrets

Chapter 17

    She is standing at the end of a very long, dimly lit chamber. Towering stone pillars entwine with more carved serpents rise to support a ceiling lost in darkness, casting long, black shadows through the odd, greenish gloom that filled the place. Her heart beats very fast, Jane standing, listening to the chill silence. Could the basilisk be lurking in a shadowy corner, behind a pillar? And where is Irine?

    She pulls out her wand and moves forward between the serpentine columns. Every careful footstep echoes loudly off the shadowy walls. She keeps her eyes narrowed, ready to clamp them shut at the smallest sign of movement. The hollow eye sockets of the stone snakes seem to be following her. More than once, with a jolt of the stomach, she thinks she sees one stir.

    Then, as she draws level with the last pair of pillars, a statue high as the Chamber itself loomed into view, standing against the back wall. Jane has to crane her neck to look up into the giant face above: It is ancient and monkeyish, with a long, thin beard that falls almost to the bottom of the wizard's sweeping stone robes, where two enormous gray feet stand on the smooth Chamber floor. And between the feet, facedown, lays a black-robed figure with flaming-red hair.

    "Irine!" Jane mutters, sprinting to her and dropping to her knees. "Irine — don't be dead — please don't be dead —" She flings her wand aside, grabbing Irine's shoulders, and turns her over. Her face is white as marble, and as cold, yet her eyes are closed, so she isn't Petrified. But then she must be... "Irine, please wake up," Jane whimpers, tears in her eyes, desperately, shaking her. "Wake up! You have to wake up!" Irine's head lollies hopelessly from side to side.

    "She won't wake," a soft voice says. Jane jumps and spins around on her knees. A tall, black-haired girl is leaning against the nearest pillar, watching. She is strangely blurred around the edges, as though Jane is looking at her through a misted window. But there is no mistaking her at all.

    "Samantha — Samantha O'Holly?" O'Holly nods, not taking her eyes off Jane's face. "What d'you mean, she won't wake?" Jane asks desperately. "She's not — she's not —?"

    "She's still alive," O'Holly reassures her before adding, "But only just."

    Jane stares at her. Samantha O'Holly has been at Hogwarts fifty years ago, yet here she stands, a weird, misty light shining about her, not a day older than sixteen. "Are you a ghost?" Jane asks her uncertainty.

    "A memory," O'Holly answers quietly. "Preserved in a diary for fifty years." She points towards the floor near the statue's giant toes. Lying open there is the little black diary Jane had found in Moaning Morgan's bathroom. For a second, Jane wonders how it has got there — but there are more pressing matters to deal with.

    "You've got to help me, Samantha," Jane says, raising Irine's head again. "We've got to get her out of here. There's a basilisk... I don't know where it is, but it could be along any moment... Please, help me."

    O'Holly didn't move. Jane, sweating, manages to hoist Irine half off the floor, and bends to pick up her wand again.

    But her wand is gone.

    "Did you see —?" She looks up. O'Holly is still watching her — twirling Jane's wand between her long fingers. "Thanks," Jane smiles weakly, stretching out her hand for it.

    A smile curls the corners of O'Holly's mouth. She continues to stare at Jane, twirling the wand idly.

    "Listen," Jane says urgently, her knees sagging with Irine's dead weight. "We've got to go! If the basilisk comes —"

    "It won't come until it is called," O'Holly says calmly.  

    Jane lowers Irine back onto the floor, unable to hold her up any longer. "What d'you mean?" she asks. "Look, give me my wand, I might need it —"