by Nem Rowan
Ceri was fiddling with the bunch of keys. "Okay, point taken. But from now on, Christine sleeps in the loft, not in the living room. One of us can stay up there and keep an eye on her."
"You don't trust me, do you!" she cried wetly, her arms still clinging to a cushion.
"No, I don't!" He replied simply.
Mecky grunted and wiped her hair from her face before clapping her hands together, elbows resting on her knees. "I sleep in loft with Christine, okay. I make sure it is okay. And we stay here. I am not liking to leave my home. You understand."
Ceri and I nodded in agreement. Mecky rose to her feet, pulling the sleeping bag that Christine had been using off the ground where it had been unceremoniously dumped, and she beckoned to the damp-faced teen encouragingly. Christine got up and allowed her to put her arm round her shoulders so that she could lead her out of the room; I heard Mecky talking to her softly, trying to cheer her up. I understood why Christine had lied. Darnel must have come back to retrieve her, but when she saw Wallace with him, did it frighten her? Why did she scream? Now wasn't the time to ask, so for the now I could only speculate.
"Look at this," Ceri whispered once we were alone. He was thumbing the keyrings still, and I leaned closer to see what he was indicating. One of the key rings was from an estate agent and the number and street name were written on it. Another had a logo, 'Store24' and a code number on the other side. The other keys were a jumble of indistinguishable metal pieces with nothing to give us a clue as to what they were for.
"We should go to the address," he suggested quietly as he looked up into my eyes. The swelling on the bruised side of his face had completely closed his eyelids. He was in dire need of a bag of frozen peas and some painkillers.
"Tomorrow?" I assumed, but he shook his head. "Are you mad? Have you seen what your face looks like?"
"It can't wait, Leon," he said, frowning slightly as he looked down at the keys.
"Will you at least do something to reduce the swelling?" I reached to touch his sore face and he winced when I pressed a fingertip around the bulge. "I'll fetch you an ice pack."
"All right. But will you come with me?" He asked.
"Of course I will. I ain't gonna let you go there by yourself," I tilted my head in disbelief. He smiled, seeming relieved that I was willing to stay beside him, even if I thought it was a bad idea.
"I'm sorry I shouted at Christine. I lose my temper sometimes," he murmured as I stood up with the intention of going into the kitchen.
"It's fine. You just upset her, that's all," I stroked the top of his head, trying to flatten down some of his dark hair that was sticking up on the back of his head. "Now you wait there while I get you something cold for that face of yours, and then we'll go and get dressed. I ain't going outside in my pyjamas again."
Eighteen
Being able to drive was a luxury I couldn't enjoy anymore now that I only had one arm. I sat in the passenger side feeling annoyed at myself, while Ceri drove the car instead of being able to hold an ice pack to his puffed-up eye. I was worried he had a fracture because the swelling was so bad, and his eyeball had turned dark red, as though all of the little blood vessels in it had burst. I wasn't a doctor, but I was pretty sure that if your eyeball looked like a waxed cherry, you should probably go to A&E. He didn't complain about the pain, but I could smell it on him, the scent of suffering as he struggled to see through the damage.
Stubborn old goat, I thought to myself. If you end up with an eyepatch we're gonna look like a right pair of pirates.
The smell of Ceri's blood made the wolf in me stir in its slumber. I turned to look out the window, watching the streetlamps flashing past as the snow continued to fall in dull, fluffy waves, whilst feeling quite grateful for the warmth of my coat and scarf. Anyone walking out there in this weather must have been crazy, but then I guess we were travelling in it, too, but what choice did we have? We had to move fast, to cover ground that Wallace and Darnel might try to hide from us, even if it meant Ceri leaving the house with his injuries. Seeing him so beat up left me in bitter acknowledgement of his frail mortality; if that strike had been much harder, it could have killed him. If that strike had been as hard as the fist that hit me, it would have killed him.
I eyed his reflection in the window, watching him focus on the road, his mop of hair tangled round his ears. Why did I do this to myself? Fall for an old man who was weaker than me? Allowing myself to care about him when he was so easily killed? That was one thing I knew well; humans were easy to dispatch, easy to snuff out, like fragile candle flames in a relentless breeze, going out one by one. Maybe being a werewolf wasn't as bad as I thought; at least I could protect Ceri... But then what? What about when he grew so old that he couldn't walk anymore? When his hair turned white, and his skin became like semi-translucent parchment, and his proud body became hunched and wraithlike? Death was coming for him, no matter what I did.
I don't know why I thought these things. I probably wouldn't have thought about them had I still been human. I didn't fear death before; now though, it was the fear of Ceri's death. Fear of being left on my own again, watching my loved ones die before my very eyes. I wondered if Ceri would want to become a werewolf too. Would he want immortality? Probably not, he didn't seem like he would. I didn't want to ask, afraid of being scoffed at, because how could I possibly enjoy being the monster I was cursed to be?
I reached for the car stereo and turned it on, relieved to hear some joking voices as the tinny sound of a chat show emitted from the speakers. Ceri glanced at me, managing a tentative smile, and I smiled back, but it was a sad one. I wanted to tell him that it was getting harder and harder to stop myself falling for him, but I didn't know how to start. He wasn't the first person I had fallen for, but that didn't make it any easier for me. Instead, I sank down in my seat and stared through the windscreen as we passed along a dark suburban street in the middle of Knowle.
"Can you make out the house numbers?" Ceri asked as he slowed the car, turning a corner onto the street we were searching for. The car rolled gradually along the road, and I moved in my seat to try and get a better look.
"We're too far up. These are in the sixties when we want forties. Go ahead a bit," I requested, so he sped up a little, taking us a few more metres down the street.
"You're gonna have to be my eyes; I can't see all that well," he confessed.
"Now you're telling me? But you thought it'd be all right to drive for twenty minutes to get here? You crazy asshole." I shook my head in disbelief.
"No, it's not that. It's just gotten worse during the journey." He pouted, turning his head to look at the house numbers on his side of the road.
I sighed, deflating slightly, before I suddenly spotted number 47. "Stop the car!"
He braked abruptly, both of us jerking forward, and I had to put my arm out to stop myself from thumping into the dashboard as I wasn't wearing a seatbelt. When I looked round at him, he seemed to expect me to be angry, but we ended up just laughing at each other. The little car chugged unhappily as he forced it into a miniscule parking space several doors down, and then we both stepped out into the chill torrents. I pulled my hood up, waiting for Ceri to lock the car, then he joined me on the pavement and we half-walked, half-staggered towards the house. The ground was covered in a sheet of solid ice and I could feel my trainers skidding on it.
Even the steps going up to the front door of the narrow, Victorian home were treacherous, and Ceri whooped when he almost got thrown back down them. Fortunately I had been standing right behind him and had managed to catch him before he hit the ground. He fumbled with the keys before taking off his gloves and cussing until he managed to get the key into the slot, the lock turning with a clunk and allowing him to push the door ajar. Together, we shuffled into the dark hallway within, quietly closing the door on the weather.
The house was in darkness, but that didn't mean no one was here; it was fast approaching one o'clock in the morning so the entire street was tuc
ked up in bed. I got the feeling no one was here though. The air smelled stagnant, musty, as though no windows had been opened for awhile and the heating had been turned off, leaving us feeling slightly clammy. To my right, there were two doors; one opened into the living room and the other a dining room. In the living room, Ceri looked for a light switch, discovering it behind the door and turning it on so that he could see his surroundings. Tired, slightly dated furniture was arranged around the room, the walls papered with a pattern of flying ducks and floral curtains had been pulled shut on the street outside. Christmas cards were still lined up along the mantlepiece. I sniffed deeply, picking out the individual smells of people I had never met, wondering which one of them belonged to the owner.
"Nothing... Nothing looks out of place by yere," Ceri answered as he picked up a photo frame and examined it.
"Maybe they're sleeping upstairs as we speak." I smirked. "Maybe I should go and take a look."
"Would you? I'll check out the rest of the house," he agreed, keeping his voice low even though it was likely no one would hear us.
"Ceri—look. Look at this." I held out one of the Christmas cards I had picked up to look at. "I think this is Kelly Hayfield's house."
He accepted the card from me and read the message within. His expression became stern. "Oh yeah. I see what you mean."
We checked the other cards; all of them were addressed to Kelly. This was her house we were standing in, and suddenly I felt myself filled with dread. Were we too late?
"I'm going upstairs," I told him, heading for the living room door.
"Leon, wait. Let's look around together. I've got a bad feeling about this." He halted me in my tracks. "Let's stick together. Just in case."
I looked round at him, wondering if he had picked up on what I had been thinking about in the car, somehow. Or, maybe, his brush with Darnel had made him think about his mortality too.
We climbed the stairs up to the next level where we began our investigation of the bedrooms. There were two small rooms and a larger master bedroom, all of them dark and empty. One was obviously used as a gym because there was an exercise bike and a yoga mat in there, and the other small room was a guest bedroom with a plain single bed. The master bedroom was decorated with everything patterned in cats, even the duvet covers. Like the other rooms, this room too looked like it hadn't been touched for some time. A fine layer of dust coated every surface and the air was stale. All of them were so tidy... Perhaps a little too tidy. Even the bathroom looked as though it hadn't been touched, the water in the toilet bowl having dried down to a little puddle in the bottom.
"Maybe she's gone away on holiday or something," I suggested as we stood beside the banister in the hallway.
"I don't know about that," Ceri grunted. He didn't sound convinced.
We returned downstairs to check out the kitchen and dining room. Our movements sounded so loud to my ears; I felt as though we should have been creeping about and whispering, perhaps because it really was so quiet here. Ceri was the first to enter the dining room, and he stopped before the table and chairs that stood central to the room, his hand reaching to grab my arm as I came to join him.
"This isn't right. Look at this. It's like she just got up and walked out," he uttered as we both looked down upon the plate of rotted food on the table top. The knife and fork were balanced on either edge of the plate, as though they had been placed down for a pause while their user went to fetch something.
"Salad, beans and a jacket potato. Not very hearty, considering the season," I remarked as I moved around the table and surveyed what had been left behind. The salad looked like little more than green slop, the sauce around the beans had solidified into a dark orange sludge and the split open potato was shrunken and covered in a layer of fuzzy mould. In the glass that accompanied the plate, the orange juice had soured, and the smell made me wrinkle my nose.
"The chair is pushed back. She must have been sat yere, eating, and then got up to go and check on something," Ceri murmured as he looked in the direction of the front door.
"You don't really think they just knocked on her front door, do ya?" I tilted my head as I rested my hand on my hip.
"Like you said before, stranger things have happened..." he remarked.
"Hey, remember that gym bag Mecky found at the other house? There's an exercise bike upstairs," I said, watching as he opened and closed a few drawers in the large Edwardian cabinet beside the window. "Do ya reckon it was hers?"
"Yeah. I think it probably was," he agreed, glancing at me over his shoulder.
Suddenly, there was a plastic smacking sound in another room and we both froze, our heads turning sharply towards the doorway, our ears listening intently in case anyone was there. I could hear something moving close by. Hear its small heartbeat. I realised what it was I had picked up on when there came a pathetic little meow from the hallway.
"She's got a cat. Shit." Ceri let out a relieved sigh, his mouth turning up into an amused grin.
I leaned through the doorway, discovering a rather thin-looking tabby standing on the kitchen floor near a yellow cat flap, and when it saw me, it came scurrying towards me on silent paws, a stream of plaintive mewling coming from its open mouth.
"Hey there, kitty!" I bent to stroke it, discovering that it was actually a he as the cat rubbed up against my trouser legs. His tail stood right in the air, and when he pushed close I could feel the ridges of bone in his ribcage.
"Aww, poor bugger." Ceri smiled, watching me running my hand down the cat's bumpy spine.
"He's starving. Look at him, he needs some food," I said, getting a twinge in my heart for the skinny animal. I hadn't expected a cat to want to come near a werewolf, but perhaps he was so hungry he was desperate for any attention he could get.
"You can feed the cat." Ceri rolled his eyes at me.
"If he's in such a state, how long do you think she's been gone for? There's no way someone would go on holiday and leave their cat to starve," I said as I stood upright, the cat still curling around my ankles.
"You'd be surprised. Some people think it's okay to leave their children, let alone their bloody cat," he grumbled as he shouldered past me into the hallway and stepped into the small kitchen.
We discovered that the litter tray was overflowing with mouldy poop, and the cat had started to toilet in one corner of the room, as close to the back door as possible. His water bowl was empty, too. I went through the cupboards until I found a pack of tinned cat food, but I couldn't find his dish, so I just scooped the jellied meat out onto a saucer and put that on the ground for him.
Meanwhile, Ceri had flipped open a large address book and was skimming through the numbers and names listed in it. Kitty was ravenous and started to scoff down the food as soon as it hit the floor. I filled up his bowl in the sink, and placed that beside him, feeling satisfied that I had done something worthwhile for a change. Maybe that's what I needed, a pet or something. Or even a baby, that would be nice.
"Can we take the cat with us?" I inquired cautiously as I leaned against the counter.
"No," Ceri murmured. His brain was too busy processing information for him to actually turn and look at me so I found myself talking to his shoulder.
"Oh, come on, he might starve to death if we leave him," I groaned, feeling like a kid again, begging my mum to let me keep the puppy I had found on the street.
"No, he won't. He's a cat; cats are resourceful."
"It's the middle of winter. It's not exactly abundant with wildlife out there for him to hunt," I reasoned, but still Ceri wasn't impressed.
"I don't think Mecky likes cats. Anyway, if we can rescue Kelly as soon as possible, she can come home and look after him, can't she." He looked up at me as he turned a page in the book.
"Then can we at least put a note through the neighbour's door and ask them to put some food out for him?" I pleaded. I didn't want to leave the cat to starve. I wasn't even a cat fancier. I just felt bad leaving him when he needed ou
r help.
"All right, we'll do that. Now stop it with the cat and let's think about what we're going to do next." He huffed as he stood upright and leaned his hip against the counter's edge. "Have you picked up any smells since you got yere?"
"No, not really. It's hard to tell when I can still smell Darnel on you. I think he might have been here, but not recently." I shrugged. "Plus I think my sense of smell only gets really strong when the full moon is coming. The further away from it I am, the weaker it gets so I don't think my nose is gonna be a lot of use to you, to be honest."
He sighed, nodding in acknowledgement. "Okay. Well, I think it's fair to say Kelly's already been taken by them, so there's little we can do for her now except try to find her. My concern is that if they've got Kelly, maybe they've got Edith, too. I haven't found anything in the news, so I'm thinking Kelly hasn't even been reported missing."
"A girl goes missing for a month and no one even notices?" I frowned with disbelief, but Ceri nodded, a regretful smile on his bruised face.
"Some time ago in London, a young woman passed away in her flat and she wasn't discovered for several years. No one noticed she'd disappeared. It's totally plausible if Kelly isn't local, if she doesn't have any family or friends yere, that no one has noticed she's missing. Pretty sad if you ask me, but it does happen." He sighed again as he stood upright and stuffed his hands into his pockets. "All we can do is try to find her and make sure she's alright."
"Okay," I agreed, brushing my hair back behind my ears as I glanced down at the cat. He had finished eating and was lapping up the fresh water I had put down for him. I was in dire need of a cigarette, but that could wait until we had returned to the car. "Well, I guess we should go and check out this 24-hour storage then."
"You gonna do a note for the cat?" Ceri reminded me as he moved towards the kitchen doorway, and I thought I saw a little teasing glint in his eye, but that was quickly replaced by apologetic empathy.
