by Katie M John
“Hi!” he said, startling her. A look of puzzlement passed over his face. “How did you know this was my car?”
Fox cocked an eyebrow. “Really, do you have to ask?”
The key fob of the red Porsche Boxter beeped. “Am I that much of a cliché?” He smiled but part of him felt uneasy Fox should have worked him out so easily.
She slung her bag down into the well of the car and fell into the seat laughing. He followed, disconcerted by the idea that for the first time in his life, he was fooling nobody. All at once, the red sports car he’d been unable to resist buying felt like a shameful toy he should have given up along with his other toys. It wasn’t quite the image he’d envisaged when he’d driven it off the forecourt last weekend.
The feeling didn’t last for long; especially when he saw Fox wiggle back into the leather seat and smile. She may have seemed unimpressed but deep down, he knew the little red car was working its charm. He flicked on the stereo and the sounds of classic Americana filled the car, deepening Fox’s knowing smile.
“Do you miss home?” she asked. Her eyes were closed against the winter sun streaming in through the window.
He hesitated before answering. A hundred different responses offered their services. In the end, he settled for a quiet and honest, “Yes.”
She glanced at him before returning to her cat-like basking. “Why are you here?”
The question might have seemed like a piece of general friendly enquiry from anybody else, but the way Fox asked it, it was like it was punctuated with the cocking of a gun.
He flexed his knuckles on the steering wheel before saying deliberately, “I think you know why I’m here.” He glanced over at her but her head was turned towards the window so he couldn’t read her. “And, I think you know exactly who I am,” he said.
She smiled and was about to reply with some pithy comment when she was plunged deep into a vision. It took a moment to orientate herself, having expected to find herself in the familiar territory of the Ravenheart sisters, but she wasn’t.
*
Sunlight bounced off the glass in shards. Fox shielded her eyes with her hands and looked up and up towards the sky. The skyscraper was monolithic in its size and presence. All around it were other tall office blocks - but none so tall as the one she stood at the foot of. She glanced back down to the large revolving entrance and watched as tens of people scurried in and out of the building. She turned around, trying to work out exactly where she was. Several canary yellow taxis sat in the traffic and she understood she was connecting with Jeremiah; she was in New York.
She turned back towards the skyscraper and now the flashes of sunlight had faded so she could read the sign above the door. It read “Chase Enterprises.” There was the sensation of being yanked and she found herself standing in a classic oak-panelled office. The sound of angry men bounced around the room. She recognised Jeremiah’s voice and searched him out. He was standing by the window with his back to her. His whole body was wired and he ran his hand through his hair with frustration. An older man, handsome, silver-haired and blue-eyed sat behind the large desk. He was angry – very angry, although experience had taught him how to deliver his wrath without losing control. Fox couldn’t make out the exact words but she could tell that whatever was being said, it was causing a deep wound between the two of them.
Fox felt a warm stickiness on her hands and when she looked down, her heart skipped a beat at the sight of blood. So much blood that a small rivulet trickled from her palm in a gloopy string and headed towards the floor. When she looked up from her hands, she saw a body lying on the floor, but it was no longer the carpeted floor of the New York office and neither Jeremiah nor his father were anywhere to be seen.
The body on the floor was a woman. Fox tentatively stepped forward. She didn’t recognise her, and even closer inspection didn’t lead to any more understanding. Her dark tresses of hair fanned out across the wooden floor and her scarlet red dress did its best to hide the horror of all the blood. There was a stab wound above her hips on the left. It had been this wound that had killed her. The utilitarian kitchen knife lay by her side. Her chocolate brown eyes stared wide at the ceiling. She had been beautiful; very beautiful.
Fox gasped and came rushing back into reality.
“Are you okay?” Jeremiah asked.
He’d slowed the car right down so it was barely crawling along the country lane. His face was full of concern but it lacked surprise. She had been making quite a habit of this kind of weirdo behaviour over the last few days.
“Another… urm, thing?” he asked, uncertain about what word he should use.
She nodded and pressed her lips tightly together for fear that a hundred invasive questions might fly from it. She couldn’t let him know the vision had been about him – not yet. She had to be sure what it meant. She had to know who the dead woman was, even though she had a pretty certain suspicion she already did. Rachel, the internal whispered. The Philosophy teacher he had an affair with. So beautiful.
“Yes,” Fox whispered in reply.
Jeremiah mistook her reply as intended for him and he offered her a weak smile.
“I’m sure they’ll pass soon enough.” He stared at her for a minute before returning his attention back to the road and picking up the speed of the car.
He couldn’t fully explain the effect Fox had on him, as it was like none other. Whenever she was with him, he felt naked, stripped of all the masks and carefully constructed costumes that made up Master Chase; a title that would change to in less than a few months. “Mr. Chase.” The thought brought about an unreasonable sense of loathing. He shook his head and let out a sigh. Jeremiah felt like a hypocrite and Jeremiah despised hypocrites. His father was the biggest one of all; kicking off about his relationship with Rachel and cutting him with blades of shame and fear. Even now, his father’s words refused to leave his head:
“It’s making us a laughing stock.”
“It’s a freak show!”
“She’s nothing but a whore, Jeremiah.”
“What would a woman like that possibly want with a boy? You’re fooling yourself if you think it’s love – and it certainly isn’t lust – unless she’s very easily satisfied. You’re nothing but a pretty cheque book.”
They had rowed. His father’s cruel laughter had chorused with a thumping fist and a deep, low warning growl. He hadn’t even bothered to stand, as if even the effort of the “discussion” was something of a distraction to his otherwise busy schedule. He had sat down and shook Jeremiah’s world from the roots and it was done without even a shred of remorse; not a care for the pain his son was feeling. Jeremiah had stood at the window, looking down on the New York streets, which teemed with little lives. In that moment, he understood his father was a god.
“I’ve decided you’re going to England. I have a distant relative who is willing to host you,” his father had said as way of wrapping up their talk.
Jeremiah momentarily lost the capacity to speak. He had expected punishment; the withdrawal of his credit card, the garaging of his beloved Ferrari, maybe even curfew – but he hadn’t expected to be sent away half way across the world. “B…but…”
His father’s raised hand and firmly pressed lips stopped him from going any further.
“You are not yet eighteen, Jeremiah. I am your father. I will decide where and with whom you should live. We all need some time out from your behaviour.”
His father was losing attention with this “petty” trifle and had started to scroll through his e-mails on his desktop.
“And if I refuse?” Jeremiah asked.
His father’s head flipped up and shot Jeremiah a curious look, as if he was genuinely surprised by his son’s attempt at defiance. His eyes closed slowly, like a reptile considering its next move. His words came out slow and deliberate so they resonated around the room, “Then you would give me little choice but to get rid of all your pretty little trinkets, Jeremiah.”
Jerem
iah heard his father’s threat on Rachel’s life loud and clear and where there had been a small seed of contempt for the man in front of him, a poisonous hatred bloomed.
“You wouldn’t…” Jeremiah protested, knowing full well his father’s empire ran as deep underground amongst the criminals and gangs as it did sideways through the most powerful houses of New York City.
“Don’t test me. You’ll regret it.” His father returned to his messages on the laptop, typing out a response and making it very clear he had nothing more to say about the matter.
Jeremiah turned and left with his head reeling. He’d always known his father was secretly a complete and utter bastard, he’d even had fleeting moments of suspicion about the lengths to which his father had stooped to keep Chase Enterprise the powerhouse it was, but until this afternoon, his father had always at least had the decency to hide it all behind a perfectly veneered mask; the charity dinners, the patronage of the arts, the weekly mass attendance, the apprenticeship schemes, the school library builds, the sports sponsorships, the college scholarship program – the all-around, good, honest, American-made good. Everything was a lie. Even Rachel. That had been the worst of it; most of what his father had said about her was more than likely true, but it didn’t stop him loving her. She had this kind of power over him – a temptation he just couldn’t resist.
Jeremiah pinched the bridge of his nose and wrinkled his forehead. He needed to forget Rachel; to accept she had been as transient as the summer, and now she was gone, filed away in his personal history as a fun and roguish phase. It’s already over. The thought hit him at the same time he realised it had been at least a week since he’d last had contact with her.
During his first few weeks of exile, there had been daily texts, tortured declarations of conflict about her engagement – regrets that things had not turned out differently. There had been flirtatious photos attached to drunken sentiments of love, but now, days had passed and he had heard nothing. He shook the immediate fear of his father’s threat away. He had kept his end of the bargain, coming to England as instructed, so there was no reason for his father to… Jeremiah shied away from ending his thought.
“The turning is coming up on your left. It’s hidden by the bend.” Fox broke the silence of the car. He slowed the car and looked for the turning. The light was already fading, giving the woods a pleasantly spooky atmosphere. He knew from his previous explorations they would only be able to drive so far before the old driveway became too overgrown for the car to handle. Jeremiah let out a wry smile at the thought of a more practical four-by-four.
“Have you ever been into The Rookeries?” he asked.
Fox laughed, “You’re kidding right – only a complete nutter…” her sentence trailed off as she realised the multiple ironies in her statement. “As kids, we were told in no uncertain terms that if we were ever caught going into The Rookeries, we’d be grounded for life, and when my mother makes a statement like that, she isn’t talking figuratively.”
He pulled the car up and cut the engine. “Ready, Thelma?”
“Hey,” she said nudging his elbow. “What’s with the Thelma label, surely I’m more Daphne?” she said, flicking her hair.
He snorted a laugh. “Well, I guess that would make me Fred, then.”
His response had come out spontaneous and natural but it had raised alarm in Fox. Why should that make him Fred? the internal quizzed. Fox tried to rid herself of the ridiculous thoughts. He hadn’t meant anything by it, it had been a quick-fire quip and no real reflection of a relationship growing between him, but nevertheless, something about the comment niggled her.
“Come on, Scooby Doo!” she said, taking the lead towards the foreboding relic of The Rookeries. “If you insist on following through with this stupid idea, then let’s get it done before darkness falls.”
She heard the beep of the remote locking system and the sound of Jeremiah’s footsteps behind her. The vision she’d had about him continued to bite at the edges of her consciousness, but she knew she’d get no further with it until she had time to actually sit quietly and fully process what she’d seen. Since she’d had the vision, she felt she saw Jeremiah with new eyes; eyes that had seen the inner workings of him. But rather than it making her feel she understood him more, it made her realise just what a complex machine he was. She’d had him down as shallow; a plastic mannequin with good dress sense and a well-recorded banter, but seeing him under the full force of his father, she now understood he was more. As he approached her, he instinctively reached out a hand and placed it on her shoulder.
“Are you sure you’re okay about all of this?” he asked. “You seem a little on edge.”
Jeremiah asked the question because, in truth, he felt a little on edge about the whole thing himself. On the last visit to The Rookeries, he had searched out the room with the mirror writing, but he’d had no luck. He had, however, stumbled across a whole load of other freaky-looking rooms, which ever since his visit, he had found himself revisiting in his dreams. For the past few nights, he’d wake to the sound of screaming, which he knew for certain came from within the labyrinthine walls of the asylum, and last night, the wretched toy carousel had decided to go all shlock horror film and start spinning wildly around as soon as he startled from his sleep. He’d taken the insidious little thing and stuffed it deep into the dark shadows of his wardrobe.
Whatever had decided to make its presence known certainly knew how to go about creeping him out to the max. He’d selfishly used the History project as an excuse to have Fox for company. If he was going to come face to face with the crazed souls of the undead, then the thought of having Fox with him somehow made him feel a little more protected – not that he knew why. Maybe it was something to do with her mother running the New Age shop and the whole spooky-girl vision thing.
The main door of The Rookeries was boarded fast, so they were forced to stumble through the weeds and building debris to the side of the old hospital. Jeremiah had scouted out a loose board, which had been put over a smashed-in window. There was definitely going to be no elegant way of entering, so Fox allowed Jeremiah to take the lead, subconsciously holding back from entering the gloomy looking place.
There was very little light left in the sky and this was lessened to a half-light shadow by the boardings over the windows. After a minute to adjust her eyes to the light, Fox saw they were standing in the middle of a once beautiful room, complete with a half-disintegrated chandelier.
“Wow! I hadn’t expected this,” she said in a half whisper.
“I guess the doctors had a taste for the finer things in life. I mean, imagine spending all your days working amongst the squalor and horror of the hospital wards. I guess when you finished for the day, you’d want to come somewhere more beautiful.”
Fox shrugged and made her way across the floor to the far wall, which was painted with images of woodland nymphs in diaphanous robes. The damp had done their beauty no favours and they were sadly not destined to become the immortals they had once promised. Pale pink flakes of paint peeled away, giving the unnerving impression their skin was shedding. Fox moved away, shivering with the cool air as she did. Despite the images being beautiful, there was something about them that made her feel uneasy. They were out of place, and although she couldn’t exactly put a finger on it, there was something about them that felt really inappropriate; and it wasn’t just the fact that the lightness of their fabrics did nothing to hide their modesty, but it was something in the way the seated male figures looked at them, with eyes that burned through to their very soul. It made Fox think of the doctors sat here looking on their patients in very much the same way.
Jeremiah lacked any interest in the mural and was already heading out of the room and into the first of the many corridors they’d travel that evening. Fox attempted to strike up a conversation, but the sound of her voice sounded so loud in the eerie silence of the cavernous rooms that she gave up and fell silent. Jeremiah had recovered his torch and
his camera from his rucksack and was busily snapping photos of anything spooky he could find - he certainly wasn’t short of material; rusty wheelchairs and weird medical equipment littered the rooms with no sense of order or sense. Fox could see they weren’t the first trespassers to enter The Rookeries; A thought which made her feel even more like she was about to become a cast member of some dodgy horror film.
“Remind me again why we’re actually here.”
“Er … for our History project!” Jeremiah attempted to pull off sarcastic but failed and just sounded silly.
“You do know History is about studying the past, don’t you? So there isn’t actually a need for us to be here today.”
“Sounds like someone is getting a little spooked! Want to go home back to mommy?” Jeremiah continued to snap photo after photo as he spoke to her.
Fox noticed how Jeremiah had travelled ahead, ducking his head into rooms and giving a quick sweep of them before assessing their merit or not; it had given Fox the distinct impression Jeremiah was looking for something specific; a feeling made stronger by the fact Swan and her had caught him sneaking around the place all alone the other night.
“What are you looking for?” Fox asked, surprised at her own surety.
“Pardon?” he said flustering. “What makes you say that?”
“The way you’re looking over every room as if you’re on some kind of slightly crazy treasure hunt.”
He let his camera fall to his side and looked Fox square in the eye. He stalled before sighing. She could see he was building to say something – something big and then she saw how he changed his mind and was trying to now find something to say that would justify the build-up but divert her from the truth. Before he got a chance to lie, she jumped in with, “You might as well tell me. It was you who pushed for us to do our project on The Rookeries, and then there was the small matter of us catching you sneaking about the place in the dark on your own, and now,” she shrugged, “call it instinct if you like, but I know there is something up with you and this place – and it isn’t a love of History.”
