by Tim O'Rourke
Trembling all over with fear, I staggered back toward the village of Shade.
Chapter Five
With my legs feeling like jelly, I stumbled and lurched across the park. The sound of that hideous cry still rang in my ears. It was like it had followed me all the way from the graveyard and back toward the school. I had to warn the villagers about the werewolf. I had to get the others to believe me this time. I had to get help to Annabel.
Soaked through and freezing cold, I reached the school. With my hands trembling so much it was hard to keep them under control, I reached for the rope that hung from the bell attached to the roof. With all the strength I had left in me, I yanked on the rope. It clanged overhead, echoing out across the featureless park and back toward the village.
“Help!” I cried out. “Somebody help!”
I pulled on the rope again and again, until some of the villagers appeared in the distance at the edge of the park. They came toward me through the rain. They looked like nothing more than shadows as they made their way slowly across the park. Why wouldn’t they hurry? Couldn’t they tell that something was terribly wrong?
“Help!” I cried again, my arms feeling like lead as I continued to pull on the rope and ring the bell. “Come quickly!”
And then to my utter relief, I did see two shapes come rushing forward out of the rain. The day was so dull and grey now; it was like all the colour had been sucked out of it. Seeing that it was Rea and Calix who were rushing toward me, I let go of the rope, dropping to my feet in the mud.
“What’s happened?” Rea barked, looming over me. “What’s going on here?”
“Wolf…” I gasped, struggling to put into words what I had seen.
Calix grabbed me roughly by the arm. “Get up!” He dragged me to my feet. “Get the fuck up.”
“Werewolf…” I gasped, looking into his face.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” he growled at me.
His fingers dug into the flesh at the tops of my arms. I pulled away. “I told you there was a werewolf but you wouldn’t listen to me…” my bottom lip was trembling so much that I found it impossible to finish what I needed to say – what I needed to tell them.
“Let go of her,” Rea said, stepping forward and brushing Calix aside. He skulked away, but not far enough for my liking. He stood and watched me from over Rea’s shoulder. “Give her some space. Now take some deep breaths. Calm down and tell us what has happened.”
I watched rain stream down her beautiful face and through her thick black hair. In the distance I could see that the villagers had gathered in a crescent shape some distance away. Even the butcher had left his shop at the sound of the school bell. He stood with the others, blood dripping from his long hands.
Rea suddenly shook me. “Mila, what’s happened?”
I focused back on her. She wiped rain from her face. “Annabel has been taken… taken by a werewolf… in the graveyard…”
“Impossible,” Calix groaned.
“Show us,” Rea said, ignoring her friend – lover.
She gripped my elbow, steering me toward the other side of the park and the track that led to the church. From over my shoulder, I heard Calix tell the villagers to go home, to go back to their work, and that everything was under control. This was followed by the sound of Calix’s guns pounding against his thighs as he ran to catch up with us. He walked alongside me.
“You know this is going to be just one big fucking waste of time…” he started.
“If only you had believed me,” I mumbled, more to myself than him.
“What did you say?” Calix asked.
“Nothing,” I whispered. I didn’t want to get into another sparring match with Calix. Not now.
We walked in silence to the church. At the rusty iron gate, I pushed it open. “Over there,” I said, pointing in the direction of the row of black trees that stood bending in the wind.
“Show us,” Rea said, striding through the gate and between the rows of headstones. The tails of the long, black coat she wore flapped like wings as I followed her. Calix walked at my heels, every so often prodding me in the back with his fist, shoving me forward.
“Back off.” I scowled over my shoulder at him.
“Just get a fucking move on... I’ve got stuff to do,” he said.
Fucking, you mean, I wanted to snap at him, but I didn’t. I turned and looked front again.
Rea had reached the edge of the graveyard and stood looking at the trees. “Is this the place the girl went missing?”
“Yes,” I said with a brisk nod of the head.
“Well I can’t see anything,” Calix said, coming up beside me.
I took a step sideways from him.
“Just like I said it would, just one big, fat waste of my time,” Calix added, turning away as if desperate to head back to the village already.
“Hey!” a voice suddenly called from within the darkness beyond the treeline.
“That’s Rush,” Rea said, glancing back at Calix and me.
Without saying another word, Rea stepped into the slices of darkness between the trees and I followed.
Chapter Six
Rea drew one gun from the holster strapped to her thigh. I heard the sound of a gun being cocked behind me. I glanced back, and with my eyes growing accustomed to the dark, I could see Calix standing with both of his guns drawn.
“Don’t you think you should draw yours?” he said. “After all, it’s you who said you’ve seen a werewolf.”
“Oh yeah,” I said suddenly feeling foolish before him. I pulled the gun from the waistband of my jeans.
Calix stood and watched me turn it over in my hands.
“You do know how to use that thing, don’t you?”
“No, not really,” I said. “I’ve never fired a gun before.”
“Are you taking the fucking piss?” he glared.
“I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it…” I muttered, the gun feeling heavy in my fist and trying to remember how my uncle had told me to fire it.
“Perhaps if you’d had the gun in your hand you could have protected the kid from the werewolf you claimed to have seen,” Calix pointed out.
“And what would have been the point in that? The silver bullets were taken from me,” I reminded him.
“Silver bullets! What a fucking joke you really are,” Calix said, brushing past me and joining Rea who had come to a stop in a small clearing. There was a pool of light coming from a lantern that had been placed on the ground. Rush was kneeling over something, his back arched and facing us. Hearing the sound of our footfalls, he looked back.
“This is bad,” he said, looking haunted.
Where had Rush come from? I wondered, stepping into the light. Both Rea and Calix had said that he was busy. Busy doing what they hadn’t said.
“Oh, Christ,” I gasped, seeing for the first time what Rush was leaning over and inspecting on the ground. I stuffed a fist into my mouth as if holding back the bile that had rushed up into my throat. I turned to force the image of what I had just seen from my mind, but I doubted that I would ever be able to. Annabel lay on her back, arms stretched out on either side. Her head was tilted back, exposing her throat – or what was left of it. What had once been covered in smooth, white flesh had now been ripped away, leaving a jagged black hole. Her dark eyes were now rolled back into her skull, leaving just the whites to stare blankly up at the dead branches above.
I heard Rea draw a deep breath and I knew that however hard she could appear, she too was shocked by the brutality of the little girl’s death.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Calix groaned.
“Is that all you’ve got to say?” I shouted at him, gun clenched in one fist.
“What do you expect me to say? The kid’s dead,” he shot back. “There ain’t anything we can do about that.”
“This is your fault,” I seethed, stepping toward him.
“My fault,” he smirked. “How do you figure that one out
, darling?”
“I told you there was a werewolf in Shade, but you wouldn’t listen to me – you wouldn’t believe me. You just laughed and took the piss.”
“Stop this,” Rea jumped in. “It isn’t helping…”
“No, let her continue,” Calix said, holding up one hand, gun held tight. “I want to hear what she has to say.”
“If only you had taken your head out of your arrogant arse and listened to what I’ve been telling you, then Annabel wouldn’t be lying here dead with her freaking throat torn out.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Calix smirked, “but I thought it was you who was asked to look after the children? You’ve only been teaching them for five minutes and one of them ends up fucking dead.”
“Are you trying to say this is all my fault?” I gasped, feeling as if I’d been slapped hard across the face. “The last time I checked, I wasn’t a freaking werewolf.”
“Werewolf or not,” Calix said, gun pointed straight at me, “none of this shit started to happen until you arrived in Shade.”
“Okay, okay,” Rush said, jumping to his feet. Reaching out, he placed one hand over Calix’s and slowly forced him to lower his gun away from me. “Rea is right, arguing isn’t going to help. And besides, the child wasn’t killed by a werewolf.”
“Tell me something, I don’t know,” Calix said, holstering both guns, his eyes never leaving me.
“It was a werewolf, I saw it,” I said, looking at Rush, knowing that if any one of them was going to believe me it would be him.
“What did you see?” Rea asked, sliding a cigar from her coat pocket and lighting it with the flame from the lamp. Her cheeks hollowed as she sucked on the end of the cigar.
Do you suck Calix’s dick so hard? I wanted to ask her.
Calix blamed me for the girl’s death as I was her teacher, but where had Calix and Rea been? What had they been doing? They claimed to protect Shade from werewolves, but they had been too busy screwing each other as Annabel was having her throat ripped out. It had been me who had come after her. Not them. They were hypocrites and I wanted to tell them so. But I couldn’t. Was it courage that I lacked, or my desire to stay in Shade and search for the truth about my parents the reason I kept my mouth shut?
I watched Rea blow smoke from the corner of her full lips as I said, “Annabel was standing at the edge of the treeline when I saw a set of bony white hands reach out of the darkness and take hold of…”
“Shouldn’t that be paws and not hands?” Calix cut in.
“Enough already,” Rea shot at him.
“There was no werewolf,” Calix came back at her. “Whatever killed the kid was brought here by her.” He jabbed a finger in my direction.
“The girl was killed by a wolf for sure, but not a werewolf,” Rush said, trying to make the peace again.
“A wolf that got into Shade because she made a hole in the wall,” Calix said.
“The hole was already there,” I insisted.
Drawing on the cigar so the end of it lit up like a torch in the gloom, Rea looked at me thoughtfully and said, “Hands – you said you saw hands. Are you sure about that?”
“Yes.” I nodded and couldn’t help but notice how the three of them looked at each other. Was that a sudden spark of unease – fear – I could see in their eyes?
“This is such a bad fucking idea,” Calix suddenly said.
“What is?” I asked.
Ignoring the both of us, Rea turned to Rush and said, “Take Mila home. Calix and I will sort this mess out and inform Annabel’s mother.”
“Home?” I breathed out loud.
“Yeah, why don’t you fuck off back to the Twisted Den or wherever it is you claim to have come from? I’m sure the boyfriend will be happy to see you.”
Had Rea given Rush the order to take me all the way home – back to Maze – the Twisted Den?
“But I don’t want to go home…” I started.
“Back to the house in the village,” Rea said.
“You’re letting me stay?” I asked.
“Why not? This wasn’t your fault,” she said.
“You’re gonna regret that decision… it’s a big fucking mistake if you ask me,” Calix warned.
“No one is asking you,” Rea said, grinding out her cigar with the heel of her boot. Then at Rush, she added, “Get Mila out of here.”
Stepping forward, Rush snuck one arm about my shoulder. “C’mon,” he smiled. “Let me take you home.”
As he led me away, I glanced back just once at the little girl lying dead on the ground. It was then I was struck with the same puzzle as before. Just like the sheep that had had its throat ripped out on the hillside, there was no blood on the ground that I could see. It was like it had all been sucked up. Heading back through the graveyard with Rush at my side, I heard the sound of a spade scraping over earth. I looked up to see Augustus Morten, bent over a spade in the wind and the rain as he dug a fresh grave. Rain bounced off his bowler hat and narrow shoulders.
Was he preparing Annabel’s grave already? I couldn’t help but wonder as we left the graveyard.
Chapter Seven
Taking the key Calix had given me, I slipped it into the lock, pushing open the front door to the house I had taken as my own in Shade. I stepped inside out of the rain. I looked back at Rush. He stood outside looking at me.
“Aren’t you going to come in?” I asked, stepping aside. I didn’t want to be alone. All I could see in the forefront of my mind was that little girl lying on her back in the wood – arms outstretched, throat gnawed open, and blank eyes being filled with rain.
“Have you eaten?” was Rush’s reply.
I shook my head. I didn’t feel like eating. I felt sick. “I’m not hungry."
Joining me in the hallway, Rush closed the door behind him. He was so tall that he had to stoop his shoulders so as not to hit his head on the low-lying ceiling. I went to the living room and shivered.
“It’s cold in here,” Rush said, dropping to his knees before the fire. Taking a box of matches from his coat pocket he lit the fire. It was growing dark outside. The day had seemed to slip away from me. I closed the shutters over the window, blocking out the swing in the distance as the wind dragged it back and forth. I pushed thoughts of Annabel sitting on it from my mind and turned to face Rush. He was standing by the fire, rain dripping from his hair and coat.
“You should take that coat off and let it dry,” I said, removing my own and placing it over the back of the armchair nearest to the fire.
“You don’t mind me staying then?” he asked, sliding the coat from his arms. His guns glinted in the firelight.
“Why should I mind?” I asked him.
“I thought you might want to be alone, especially after what happened…”
“Being alone is the last thing I want,” I said. Then looking at him, I added, “You don’t mind staying for a while… if you don’t have something else you should be doing?”
“No, I’d like to stay with you for a while,” he said, with that smile that made part of me feel half crazy.
I looked away as I headed across the room to the door.
“Where are you going?” he said, taking my arm and turning me so I had to face him.
“I was going to get some towels,” I said, even though that was only partly true. I’d wanted to leave the room so I could mop away the tears that were threatening at the corner of each eye.
“Are you okay?” he asked, searching my eyes.
“No,” I whispered, lowering my head as those tears finally broke free and cascaded down the length of my face. I trembled in his arms as he pulled me close. “That poor little girl,” I sobbed. “It’s my fault that she’s dead. I let her get away from me…”
“Shhh,” Rush soothed, taking me by the hand and leading me back towards the warmth of the fire. We sat next to each other on the threadbare sofa as the fire crackled before us. “What happened?”
I sniffed back my tears, wiping my che
eks with the backs of my hands. All I could see was Annabel stretched out on the ground like a doll that had been given up and thrown into the trash. I knew the world could be harsh, I knew it could be dangerous, but that was no way for a child to die. “She got away from me,” I mumbled through my falling tears. “I went after her but…”
“She got away from you?” Rush asked. “What do you mean?”
“There was a fight in the classroom,” I started to explain. “Another girl… an older girl… Suzanne pushed Annabel from her chair and hit her.”
“But why?” Rush frowned.
Choking back my tears and trying to gain some control over myself, I straightened my back, combing loose strands of damp hair behind my ears. I didn’t feel foolish for crying in front of Rush. It seemed okay to do so somehow. I doubted that I’d ever be able to show such raw emotions in front of someone like Calix. He’d be calling me a silly bitch and barking at me to shut my face. But despite Rush’s understanding and caring manner, I couldn’t help but feel that spike of pain – that feeling of being homesick. How part of me now wished that I had never left Maze, my uncle and Flint. Either one of them would have taken me in their arms, held me close and told me that everything was going to be okay. Flint would have taken me to my bed, made love to me, made me feel beautiful, even though I felt ugly on the inside for letting that little girl get away from me.
“Why did Suzanne hit Annabel?” Rush asked again, stirring me from thoughts of Flint.
“I’m not sure,” I said, glancing sideways at him. He looked blurred and out of focus through my tears. I cuffed them away. “Annabel was going to say something but before she’d had the chance, Suzanne was screaming at her – hitting her.”
“What was it Annabel was going to say?” Rush asked, his voice smooth and soothing.
“I asked her where the writing had come from…”
“What writing?” Rush cut in.
“Annabel had this strange looking writing all over the front of her schoolbook. One of the other children said it was called Valais. She said it was their language.”
