by Donna Hosie
“What else did they do?” My voice was barely a whisper.
My brother put the soup on the carpet and hugged me. I think it was because he couldn’t face looking at me.
“They took his eyes, Titch. Whoever killed him gouged out his eyes as well.”
Chapter Three
Starlight
Three days after we had buried Mr. Rochester and I was still reeling. Slurpy didn’t seem to care. Her giggling, the moaning, and the creaking of Arthur’s brass bed shook every inch of the cottage. Even a pillow over my ears failed to smother the noise. The nasty part of me, the one that we all possess but keep hidden most of the time, wanted to place the pillow over SS’s face. That would shut her up.
The idea for her SS nickname came to me one day when I was reading a book about Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. His organisation was called the Schutzsstaffel. That’s where the abbreviation SS comes from. History is for people who care enough to remember, or those who simply can’t forget. People like me.
So I was trapped in the house. I couldn’t run outside because the autumn skies had blackened the day after Mr. Rochester’s funeral and the rain started.
The darkness matched my guilt.
Even my mother had shed a couple of tears for Mr. Rochester. Then she got on the phone to my father – who was in Brussels – and her crocodile tears were matched by the gnashing of teeth.
“This place is feral. We cannot live here.”
I couldn’t hear my father. I didn’t want to hear my mother.
“That is not a choice, Luther. I do not want to live in London. You are asking me to choose between terrorists with bombs or terrorists with knives.”
Silence, apart from the sound of my mother twisting the cap from a bottle of pills.
“Luther, you need to come home. I cannot deal with this by myself.”
More silence, apart from the clinking of a crystal glass as the pills were washed down with something I would bet on my life wasn’t water.
“Arthur is fine, of course Arthur is fine. It’s Natasha. You know what she’s like. She just won’t make any effort.”
The stairs creaked as I shifted my butt cheeks, but the noise from Arthur’s room couldn’t have been drowned out by anything quieter than a jump jet. I couldn’t believe that after everything that had happened, my mother was still pissed about a stupid school dance. I really needed to go into the kitchen to get my homework, but I couldn’t face my mother, and so I had no choice but to wait until she had finished speaking to my father.
Eventually she went to lie down in her bedroom. She said she had a migraine. Clearly the slurps from Arthur and SS didn’t bother her. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. A Sunday. The 20th September and a new school week was approaching. As if to prove the point, a large pile of English homework was on the kitchen table, mocking me.
But I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the back garden. The rain lashed against the small leaded windows. Large red leaves streamed down from the trees, like enormous droplets of blood. The wind was frenzied in its assault of the garden, relentlessly whipping branches and stems back and forth, back and forth. It was hypnotic. The teak-stained garden chairs were already lost to the storm. In the distance I saw the spindly legs of one, poking out from under a bush like the Wicked Witch of the East after Dorothy’s house has landed on her.
Only the ghosts knew where the other three chairs had landed.
My ears were waiting for the sound of whispers, but above the combined noise of Arthur’s bed and the weather outside, they would have been impossible to hear unless they were breathing in my ear.
I knew the ghosts were there though. I could sense them.
Waiting. Biding their time.
My thoughts drifted to Mr. Rochester, and a surge of white hot anger rose from my stomach where it spiked in my mouth. It tasted bitter. He was only a floppy-eared baby. Barely two months in my possession and he was gone, stolen from me in the most brutal of ways. It was murder and someone needed to pay. I shouldn’t have run from the voices. I could – I should – have saved him.
“Where are you?” I whispered through gritted teeth. “Where are you, you cowards?”
I looked down. In my right hand was a large kitchen knife. I couldn’t remember reaching for it, but my fingers were clasped so tightly around the silver metal handle that the tips of my blunt nails were turning white.
“Titch, what the hell are you doing?” cried a voice behind me.
I pirouetted on the spot. Arthur and Slurpy were standing at the kitchen door, their faces frozen in horror.
Without replying, I slipped the knife back into the large wooden block on the kitchen worktop as my rage dissolved into embarrassment.
My eyes went back to the garden, but I knew my brother and his girlfriend were still behind me because I could hear them breathing: short and shallow. I had frightened them.
You do realise how that looked, said my inner voice, as my stitched head throbbed. Arthur and Sammy walk in and find you holding a kitchen knife, just a few days after your rabbit has been filleted. Could you appear more psycho?
“It wasn’t me,” I said.
“No one said it was,” said Arthur, slowly walking up to me, “but you gave us a scare there, Titch. Some people shouldn’t hold sharp objects, and you are one of them.”
I looked at him with as much disgust as I could gather, but I’m not a very good actress. I probably looked constipated.
“Shock, horror, Natasha is in the kitchen with a knife in her hand. Call the police, the Foreign Office, the FBI, call our bloody mother, because clearly the world is about to implode.”
“Don’t get snarkey with me. I am better at it than you, little sister.”
“You don’t need to remind me, big brother. I’ve been told for seventeen years that you are better than me at everything.”
We stood there on the cold limestone tiles, eyeballing each other. Then the corners of Arthur’s lips – which were miraculously still in place despite Slurpy’s best efforts to remove them – started to twitch.
I thumped him. Hard.
“Don’t laugh at me, Arthur.”
“I’m not laughing at you, Titch,” he replied. “It’s just when you are angry, that big vein on your forehead starts to vibrate. It looks funny, that’s all.”
I moved my hand up to my forehead and rubbed at it. Arthur was right. It felt like I had a long strand of cooked spaghetti above my left eyebrow.
“I’m stressed out.”
“Do your homework then,” replied Arthur sarcastically, walking over to the fridge. He grabbed two cans of soda from the top shelf and threw one to Slurpy. He didn’t bother passing one to me.
“There’s no point. I’m not going into school tomorrow.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t concentrate on anything. I may as well go mad here at home where people can’t see me.”
“Titch…”
“Arthur, can you drive me home now?” interrupted Slurpy, with a nasal whine.
“Just a second, Sammy,” replied Arthur, finally passing me a soda can. I opened it and sprayed frothy coke all over my newly washed, white skinny jeans. “Look, Titch, leave the homework for a couple of hours, and come for a drive with us. The fresh air might help clear that banged-up head of yours. Plus I could do with the company on the way back. If the car breaks down, you can get out and push.”
My brother: the chivalrous knight, but I didn’t have the energy to argue anymore. I nodded pathetically and reached for my short leather jacket, hanging on a hook by the back door. My eyes wandered to the back garden again, just in time to see the fallen trellis fly through the air.
And then I saw him.
My stomach fell into my shoes and then bounced up into my mouth. I was going to hurl or scream.
I decided to run.
Within seconds I was drenched, as I threw back the door bolt and launched myself into the rain and tornado-like wind.
�
�What is she doing?” screamed Slurpy.
“Titch, get back in here now,” yelled Arthur.
Too late. I was already halfway down the gravel path before the wind carried the sound of their voices to me. Slipping and sliding across the long grass, I ran, squelching into the dark mud. It rose up and over my bright red sneakers. I could feel the oozing, cold sludge seeping into my socks.
Then I saw him again, and a dose of warm happiness repelled, albeit briefly, the cold and wet conditions that were threatening to drown me. It was him, definitely him. There was the same honey and white colouring; the same floppy ears that almost reached the ground.
Two hands grabbed my shoulders and pulled me back sharply.
“I swear to something, Titch, you are seriously starting to scare me,” yelled Arthur. He was soaked to the skin already; his blue jeans were several shades darker because of the rain, and his white v-neck t-shirt had become transparent. He could barely see through his wet fringe, which was lying flat against his forehead.
“It’s Mr. Rochester,” I cried. “We’ve got to catch him before he runs away again.”
“What are you talking about? Mr. Rochester is dead, Titch,” yelled Arthur.
He turned to his girlfriend, who was standing under the arched frame of the back door. She looked as if she had been force-fed beetles. I wriggled free from Arthur’s grasp and continued running after my baby rabbit, which had disappeared from view again.
“Help me, Sammy,” cried Arthur.
Stumbling in the wet, grappling like really bad wrestlers, we reached the chicken coop. I was momentarily stunned by the sight of bloody straw which was soaking into the mud.
Slurpy had now joined Arthur. Her long dark hair was hanging in sodden thick tendrils around her face and shoulders. She snatched at my arm and sank her long purple nails into my skin.
“Stop behaving like a little spoilt bitch,” spat Slurpy, “and get the hell…”
Her jaw suddenly dropped. She let go of my arm and swayed like she was about to faint. All of the colour – which admittedly wasn’t much to begin with – had drained from her face. In the blink of an eye, Slurpy turned the shade of curdled milk.
“The rabbit,” she whispered. “I don’t believe it.”
Both Arthur and I turned to the spot that had mesmerised Slurpy, and sure enough, sitting quite still on all four paws, was Mr. Rochester.
But it wasn’t the same baby rabbit that I had lovingly cuddled and kissed before running away that day.
A golden cage surrounded Mr. Rochester, like a protective bubble. The rain bounced off it like dazzling miniature fireworks.
And if that wasn’t enough to stun the three of us into silence, where two big black eyes had once been, were two dazzling silver orbs.
Starlight.
“What the…” swore Arthur, wiping his long blonde fringe out of his eyes. My own long blonde hair, which was several shades darker than my brother’s, was stuck to my cheeks and eyelashes. Half of it was in my mouth; I gagged.
“That isn’t possible,” screeched Slurpy, stating the obvious. “What was in that drink? Have we been drugged?”
She started to back away, and I was sorely tempted to join her. My fluffy baby looked ethereal.
But Arthur was transfixed. The starlight from Mr. Rochester’s eyes had infected his own.
“Come here, little guy,” cooed Arthur, slowly walking towards Mr. Rochester. His body lowered to the ground with each careful step. “Come on, we won’t hurt you.”
With a twitch of his nose, Mr. Rochester disappeared under a holly bush. Arthur tore off after him in pursuit. I screamed at Arthur to stop, or at least slow down for me, but he vaulted over a long-slatted gate, and ran into the wood behind our house.
By the time I had levered myself up and over the same gate, Arthur was gone.
Slurpy and I searched in the torrential rain for hours, screaming Arthur’s name until we were hoarse. By the time the alarm was raised back at Avalon Cottage, darkness had fallen.
The authorities used spotlights from helicopters and trained sniffer dogs to search the woods, but at midnight the search for Arthur was called off. The chief police officer spoke to my mother in a thick Welsh accent and told her that the search would resume again at first light.
She was beyond reason by this point, and her wailing tore at my insides, dredging up memories that should never have been woken. I desperately wanted to put my arms around her, to feel her heart beating against my face as she allowed herself to love me.
But my mother was out of practice. She was still mourning.
Slurpy and I stood in Arthur’s bedroom and looked out through the grimy window into the darkness. An eerie stillness had fallen over the world outside. The leaded panes of glass were still covered in crystal raindrops, and for the mere want of something to do, I let my fingers chase each one as they streamed down towards the windowsill.
Slurpy and I had told the investigating team what we knew: that Arthur had run off into the woods after a rabbit.
We certainly didn’t mention the strange cage of light, or the starlight eyes. Nobody would have believed us.
We didn’t really believe it ourselves.
After an eternity of silence, Slurpy eventually spoke. Her high-pitched voice was unusually low.
“He told me about the voices you heard.”
I nodded, unable to speak as tears filled my eyes. I bit down on my bottom lip.
“Were you telling the truth?”
I nodded again.
“Was it true about the people with swords?”
I nodded again.
“I would have called you a liar or a nutcase if I hadn’t seen that rabbit.”
“Don’t worry about it, most people think I’m a liar and a nutcase,” I whispered.
“Arthur doesn’t.”
The longest conversation we had ever shared was over. While we detested the presence of the other, we now had a common goal.
Find Arthur.
Slurpy’s parents arrived to pick her up not long after. Words of comfort spoken to my mother were lost to the breeze that constantly swept through our house as doors were opened and shut again. Total strangers tramped through our house as if it were their own.
My mother slept in Arthur’s bedroom, but only after a local doctor had tranquilised her. I didn’t sleep at all. I just listened to the voices whispering through the trees.
“He is here. He is here.”
Chapter Four
Follow the Rabbit
The inhabitants of nowhere were true to their word.
As the morning sun stretched over the horizon, the police cars trundled up the gravel drive, and the search for Arthur resumed.
Word had been spread from one house to another about the missing eighteen-year-old boy, and the strangers who had trampled through our house the night before were joined by more. Many, many more. By seven o’clock, over one hundred people had joined the search. Armed with sticks, plastic boots and waxed jackets, the brigade of locals set off in groups of ten, marching along the stone lanes like green knights.
“They’ll find him,” said Mrs. Pratchett repeatedly, as she took command of our kitchen.
I couldn’t eat or drink anything. Neither could my mother who had to be sedated once more. My father was due to arrive later in the morning, and already more senior police officers had turned up for the Foreign Office de-briefing.
“A terrorist kidnapping is not being ruled in or out at this stage,” said a tall thin officer with crooked yellow teeth to no one in particular.
They really didn’t have a clue what had been awoken underneath them after all this time, I thought.
My intention had been to slip away unnoticed and go in search of Arthur myself, but that was proving difficult. First, the tall thin officer with crooked yellow teeth had told a junior constable to shadow my every move. I ended up locking myself in the bathroom just to get away from her. Then Mrs. Pratchett and the post mistress o
f the village, Mrs. Lancelyn-Green, took it upon themselves to force feed me like a turkey at Christmas. They wanted to make sure I didn’t have another fainting spell in my delicate state.
My opportunity to run came from the most unexpected source. Slurpy and her younger brother arrived with their parents, not long after the second search party had been debriefed and sent out into the woods. Her brother, who saw the whole thing as a great excuse to skive off school, sat at the kitchen table and wolfed down slice after slice of cold toast, before burping the alphabet backwards.
Slurpy’s parents were slightly more helpful, and while her father took command of the third search party, Mrs. Slurpy went to keep an eye on my mother.
Slurpy motioned to me to follow her the second our police shadow went to the bathroom. We slipped into the garden and walked down to the empty chicken coop. The first thing I noticed was that the bloody straw had been removed. Yellow police tape was wound around the chicken coop and several trees.
“So what’s the plan?” whispered Slurpy, once we were sure no one was within earshot.
We were dressed very similar: skinny black jeans, black t-shirts and unbuttoned red and black plaid shirts. The only difference in our appearance was that my sweatshirt was tied around my waist, while Slurpy had hers draped over her shoulders. She also had a purple backpack.
“We need to find that tomb again,” I replied. “The one I fell down last week.”
“And what do we do then?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m making this up as I go along. All I know is that we can’t tell the police about Mr. Rochester, the ancient soldiers with swords, or the voices, because they’ll immediately think we are crazy or on drugs. Then it will look as if we had something do to with Arthur going missing, and that policewoman hasn’t let me out of her sight since she got here.”
“Then we have to leave now,” said Slurpy, glancing around the man-sized holly bush we were hiding behind, “before they realise you are missing. Do you know the way back to this hole?”
