by Kara Silver
“Stop! Get away from her!” she yelled. She rubbed rain from her eyes, because she couldn’t be seeing what she thought she was. That up ahead, in a clearing, a squirming, pulsating mass of dark bodies was converging, on a woman lying prone? Kennedy forced herself to move, to hurtle towards the shadowy entities, their shining faces and glittering eyes illuminated by each bolt of lightning that struck the scene. “Leave her alone!”
Her stomach folded over on itself at the sight of the dark horde crowding the woman, pawing at her, their blank, featureless faces bent low, as if feeding! Kennedy still held her phone, the torch beam feeble and useless against this degree of darkness, but she fumbled with it, setting off the rape alarm app, the siren noise piercing the night. She brandished the phone high, her only weapon, advancing, pushing through the low-hanging tree branches and barriers of waist-high hedge and trip-hazard shrubs, to— Nothing.
No vicious gang, no creatures of darkness. Just silence and emptiness. But the woman was there! Almost sobbing now, Kennedy reached her, to find her lifeless. “No!” she cried, but the young woman was dead, her eyes open to nothing. Kennedy took the woman’s head onto her lap and sat back on her heels, rain coursing down on her. What the hell was going on? The only thing she knew for sure was that the woman was dead, although there was no indication how she’d died. There were no marks on her, and no signs of a fight, or any kind of scuffle. She peered, but couldn’t make out any footprints to show where the assailants might have gone. Not in this light.
Kennedy swallowed and set the woman’s body back down—she had to call or go for help. The collar of the woman’s jacket shifted, exposing her neck and beginning of her collarbone. She’d better cover her. A bolt of lightning crashed down, colouring the scene in a brief flash of electric-blue whiteness.
Even as she was doing it, Kennedy didn’t know what she was doing or why. All she knew was that, driven by some instinct, some imperative, she moved the woman’s top aside and rolled her carefully over to see the back of her shoulder. Because there was a tattoo. The same place as Kennedy’s birthmark and—she grabbed her phone again and shone the flashlight down—the same design as Kennedy’s birthmark. The fuck? Startled, scared, Kennedy inched away, the woman rolling over onto her back.
No signal on her phone, not here in this hollow, of course. With trembling fingers, Kennedy made sure the woman was clothed, and then got to her feet on shaky legs. She backed away to higher, tree-free ground, her eyes glued to her screen, willing reception. Finally, she got the SOS signal and pressed the icon, calling for the police, explaining about the murder, the death, the body, yelling her location, the time—anything she could think of. She could barely hear her own voice over the thunder and the trees whipping in the wind.
Hoping like hell the cops had heard enough to understand, Kennedy stumbled downhill again, back to the corpse and the— Nothing. There was nothing there, the space empty, the body gone. “No…it’s not possible!” she cried to the night, to the void, her head snapping from side to side as she searched. “Someone’s moved—” But there were no signs of a body being dragged. No marks in the wet earth, no broken shrubs or bushes. Only Kennedy’s footprints.
Aeth! He’d know what to do! Kennedy almost tripped, hurrying away, because she kept looking over her shoulder, back at the scene. The space that held no body, no monster horde…
“Kennedy? What—?” He reached for her arm to steady her. “Here.” He pulled her under a small telescopic umbrella he was holding over himself. “What was it?”
“Nothing,” she replied, wiping water from her face, glad it was raining, so no one could see the tears coursing down her cheeks. “Nothing. There was nothing there. I… Nothing.”
So, good thing she hadn’t gotten through to the emergency services, she guessed, taking a final look back at nothing as Aeth led her away. They would have thought she was pranking them. That or crazy.
But Kennedy wasn’t crazy, and she knew what she’d seen. Something dark, horrifying, and unexplainable was happening, and happening right here at Heylel College.
4
I must have been a bit drunk to have imagined all that was Kennedy’s first thought on waking from a fits-and-starts sleep the next morning, her hand cramped from clutching her penknife under her pillow. Her neighbours, who’d seen her stumbling up the stairs last night dripping wet and still shaking, had certainly thought so. She shouted back an obscenity as another thumped her door and made some stupid joke on the way down to brunch. Those mixed drinks were strong. She’d worked in a bar. They hadn’t even been cocktails, just two different shots thrown into a glass with a bare hint of mixer.
Yeah, she was still a bit weak, and the mirror over the wash basin told her she was as pale and dark-eyed as she normally looked after a late night, especially one where she’d been drinking. Kennedy rubbed at the frown between her eyebrows and smoothed on some concealer and blush. She twisted her hair into a non-nonsense braid and nodded. She was sober now, back to her usual self, and ready for the new day and whatever it would bring. Starting with food…
Kennedy sat at a random table for brunch in the dining hall —having to make her own way in never bothered her. She looked for Aeth. The memory of his rock-solid arm, awkward around her back as it kept her aligned under the umbrella, lingered, but she didn’t see him. Actually, that was a good thing—being with him would have brought back last night. And even thinking that opened the floodgate to memory. Tactile memory—the weight of the young woman’s head and shoulders lolling on Kennedy’s knees, the texture of her rain-soaked hair on Kennedy’s fingertips. Kennedy pushed her plate away with a jerk, earning a raised eyebrow from of the room’s ubiquitous blue-uniformed custodians, on duty even at the weekend.
“Plans for the weekend?” It penetrated Kennedy’s funk. Olivia, wasn’t it, the name of this second year Kennedy was sitting next to? Olivia raised her voice, making Kennedy realise must have made the enquiry before. “Any society or club you’re interested in? We need new bods in hockey.”
“I’m more of a football girl.” Kennedy didn’t feel strong enough to imagine Hazelmere Lane School with added hockey sticks. Nice weapons they’d have made. Wyebury’s Sixth Form College was in the town centre and had no playing fields, meaning the town’s teenagers who stayed in education tended to stop playing sports at the age of sixteen, unless they joined youth clubs or used municipal facilities. “No, I want to see the town, get my bearings. But I have to catch up though.”
“Oh, walk together? I’ve got to go in,” invited the second-year girl opposite.
“Thanks. Andrea, right? Andi. Got it. Yeah, I’d like that,” Kennedy replied, meaning it.
“You know, it’s quicker through the back gate?” Andi commented as they walked out of the dining hall a little later. “Just down—”
“No. I mean, I need to get used to the college, the main route to town?” Kennedy explained she’d arrived late, was still a little lost. She was grateful that Andi decided to act as her guide, filling her in on who was who and what was what in Heylel and where was good in town. Oh, and where the best phone reception was on campus.
“What? Best reception?” Kennedy frowned in confused.
“You haven’t noticed? It’s an Oxford thing. Too many buildings crowded together means crap reception. So, stand right in the middle of a quad. The town’s usually good though,” Andi explained.
The college wasn’t far from the town centre—everything was within walking distance of everything else—but was almost at the end of the long road that led to the University Parks, and the avenue wasn’t just tree-lined but tree covered, their branches meeting overhead. The muffling green canopy made it felt very rural, and isolated, somehow.
Andi treated Kennedy to an iced latte when they arrived at the familiar green and white establishment, this branch on the High Street. The coffee shop, filled with a mixture of town and gown, was reassuring, similar to any Kennedy had been to in Wyebury or any town, really, and th
e Saturday streets teemed with people. And bikes. So many bikes!
Oxford was beautiful. There was no doubt it. The buildings—colleges, churches, institutes, libraries, theatres, pubs, restaurants—were all stunning, the shops too, their windows tasteful and quirky, inviting. Leaving Andi, Kennedy walked to the cycle shop Andi had mentioned, to check out the prices of the second-hand bikes. Still a bit out of her range. She got free tuition, accommodation and lodging, and a very small living allowance which wouldn’t cover extras. Staring at a poster about an upcoming bike auction at the police station, of all places, she was almost startled when her phone rang.
“You been booted out yet, Ken Doll?”
“Chandyce!” Kennedy was glad to hear a familiar voice, a similar accent. “Nah, they haven’t found out how stupid I am yet.”
“You ain’t, mate. Or you wouldn’t have got that place there. Not like the rest of us. How’s it going? I didn’t call right away, thought best let you settle, yeah? So, how’s all those uni parties, then? All tuxedos and ball gowns?”
The reception fading in and out, Kennedy filled her friend in as she walked back.
“Got yourself a bar gig sorted? Or retail?”
“Not yet. And I don’t know if I can.” Students weren’t encouraged to take on work during term time, or even during the summer vacation. She explained about her workload plus her duty hours—which Chandyce called slavery—and adding that her hours in the Rose and her Business Certificate course at the local higher education college wasn’t much better, and it was crap without Kennedy. Especially the Rose, where Kennedy had worked with her.
“At least you get your own place. Well, flat sharing,” Kennedy consoled her.
Young adults aging out of local authority children’s homes came in for financial assistance for a few years after being booted out, as Chandyce named it. She planned on taking course after course at the college just to keep getting her enhanced living allowance and her rent paid until she was twenty-four, when her assistance entitlement finished. Kennedy was glad—she was hoping to sleep on Chandyce’s floor for the Christmas and Easter breaks. She’d have to get an accommodation-provided job over the three-month summer breaks.
“Hey, I went and did it. Put myself on the register.”
“Wow!” A lot of the kids in Holden House who had no contact with their parents spoke about putting their names on the Adoption Contact Register once they turned eighteen. Kennedy could see Chandyce now, twirling a glossy black curl around her finger, stretching it out and letting it bounce back, her tell for nervousness, as she spoke about letting her absentee father know she wanted to see him.
“You gonna?”
“I’m still thinking about it.” Kennedy squirmed to scratch the itch on her back. No; her shoulder. “I’ve got to go. I’m back at college and I’ll lose reception in a minute.”
Chandyce’s horrified cries of how she couldn’t live without her phone were still making Kennedy smile when she retrieved her books and notepads and made for the library, a huge building next to the dining hall. This counts as my physio, schlepping all the way to the back then to here again. But it had to be done. She couldn’t get behind in her work so soon. And she was interested in her course, and grateful to be there. Amazed, really. She needed to see which books on her reading list Heylel had, and which she’d have to look for in the department library, or even in the second-hand section of Blackwell’s or the smaller second-hand bookshops dotted around the city.
“Anthropology, right?” A library assistant nodded at Kennedy. “I remember you from last night. This way.”
Wow, what a decent way to work off your duty hours. Looking around the long room, breathing in the leather and vanilla smell of old books, Kennedy wished she’d gotten a placement that would give her some transferable skills. Well, security guard experience would always come in handy. Can get the late shift working security in a mall, easy-peasy. She sat cross-legged on the floor in between two shelves, twisting to take out books and piling them on her coat next to her, rather than trek backwards and forwards to a table just yet. Although there were plenty of tables in the wide aisles between the rows, and a table with church-pew-type benches sat in the space between the last shelf and an alcove, visible through the open stacks where she sat, two back from it.
After a minute, the voices of the group seated at the end of the row of stacks, caught her attention, and she recognised people from the party in the cellar bar. She tried to block them out. It wasn’t people talking in a library that bothered her but that she really didn’t want to rehash last night, and the way her stupid imagination had played tricks on her.
“I know! Me neither!” Khloe shushed herself and lowered her voice again. “Crazy, hey!” But not by much.
“What did they call it?”
Kennedy kneeled up. That had been Maja, sounding worried. Feeling as though she was in some low-budget spy movie, Kennedy removed a couple of books to peer through the gap. Maja had her sleeve rolled up and was showing the others her inner forearm. Kennedy caught the word infection and the others laughed. Khloe was showing her arm too.
I don’t like this. And big sister Kennedy strikes again—she was already squeezing herself out of the row of shelves, slipping between the end and the wall to crouch still hidden but closer to the group seated beyond.
“It’s a rush, isn’t it?” Emma said. “And that’s the name. Rush. Short for Russia, I think. I can’t remember. I tried some last week at the Freshers Rush In party. Can’t really remember that either.”
“Sign you had a good time.” Khloe swigged water. “I feel like death.”
“It’s no biggie, Maja. I’m fine. No side effects, and I haven’t done any since. Didn’t get offered any, I mean, and I’m not going crazy without it.” Emma pulled Maja’s sleeve down. “College equals experimentation, right? Doing things you wouldn’t before?”
“Jesus, just take some damn aspirin and stop moaning, or go back to your room.”
Kennedy didn’t know the impatient guy with the group who’d just snapped. She slumped down, her back to the shelves. Good thing she’d left, if people had been doing drugs. She didn’t know, of course, but it was statistically likely that her mother had been a user, or even an addict, and that Kennedy’s conception and abandonment had been a result of it. At least, that was what she believed. So, while Kennedy enjoyed a drink now and then, she’d never touch drugs. The first one’s free, the second one costs and the third hurts, as they said.
And a college environment would be even better than a city centre school for introducing teenagers to the stuff and then reaping the profits from it. But that didn’t tally with what Emma had said, that she’d tried it last week with no problem, hadn’t had it pushed on her again. Kennedy didn’t know what to make of it. She should… Keep my damn nose out. College was a place for people to make their own mistakes. She had enough on her plate, wasting the afternoon when she should be working.
She squeezed around the end of the shelves again, retrieved her bag and books and found an empty table a good few feet away. Perspectives on human evolution, here she came. Two-thousand-word essay? She was on it. She tipped out her A Level notes. She’d taken History, Sociology, Classical Civilisations, and Philosophy. Something ought to help!
An hour or three later, Kennedy stretched her back and arms and rotated her ankle, as the physio nurse had shown her. She had to grab some dinner and searched through her information—no, tonight was just the usual self-service meal. Next week was Formal Hall, for which she’d have to get a gown and cap and learn which knives and forks were for which course. Unless she skipped it and went to MacDonald’s instead, joining Chandyce and Layla in spirit for their ‘do something on Sunday to forget about Monday’ event, them back home in Wyebury and her here. That made her smile.
Remembering that tonight was her first shift in the museum soon wiped the smile clean off her face.
5
It’s that man again. Did no one feel th
e urge to drape the statue’s neck in a college scarf? Add a woolly hat to his head? No, hang on, the weather was warm. Slot a pair of sunglasses over his eyes, then? Give him a straw hat? Back in Wyebury, the stone dude would have become a magnet for a football strip, just like the statue in the marketplace there, of the town’s first lord mayor. It sported the green and white scarf and hat of Wyebury United more often than not.
Yes, I’m stalling, Kennedy acknowledged, making for the museum. She carried her laptop and books with her. If the place was all shut up, surely she could settle down to some work? Oh, she’d patrol every hour, or whatever. But—
The museum’s door opened as she put a foot on the step and she gulped, feeling stupid when a black guy about her own age came out, obviously waiting for her.
“Kennedy, yes?” He had a deep voice. “Edson. Six until eight.”
“Nice to meet you. Or re-meet you—didn’t I see you in the bar yesterday?”
Edson didn’t seem to talk much, keen to take her through the extra health and safety awareness she’d need for working there, in addition to checking on the orientation she’d received about the building when she’d had her practical there. Kennedy, equally as keen to keep him there as long as possible, subjected him to a question-and-answer session, learning he was from Mozambique, that his Catholic, Salesian-order school had links with Heylel, that he was reading History and did a few hours in the cellar bar too.
Huh, lucky Edson, she grouched, waving him off, wondering how long before she’d have paid her dues with this crappy job and could put in for a transfer for something bigger and better, preferably bar work. Working off her obligations and having fun doing it sounded okay to her. And she had experience: she’d practically been head bartender at the Rose, opening up, cashing up, closing up. I could do a job like that here with my eyes closed.
