‘Right,’ she eventually muttered, readying herself as she slipped her arms around Jimmy’s slack body, ‘let’s get you back on dry land.’
After losing her footing a few times on the muddy riverbed beneath her, Fran at last pulled the lifeless body the final few metres back to shore; all the while only making things difficult for herself by needlessly trying to keep the young man’s face above the rippling water.
‘Urrgghh,’ she grunted with effort, collapsing on her backside as she finally pulled Jimmy’s torso free of the water. ‘Well… a promise… is a promise, Jimmy,’ she panted, deftly retrieving her knife all the while watching the young man’s blood and mud covered corpse for movement. ‘I promised you, you wouldn’t come back… and… and you won’t.’
Taking a deep calming breath, Fran gently tilted his head to one side.
‘Goodbye, Jimmy,’ she whispered, before, with a quick sharp motion, she stabbed the blade of her knife down through the ear canal and deep into his brain; forever allowing Jimmy the solace of an uninterrupted eternal rest.
Ignoring the scraping sensation of metal against shattered bone, Fran slowly pulled the blade from Jimmy’s skull; carefully rinsed it free of its coating of bloody gore, checked for any damage and then slipped it back into its sheath. Only once she had taken care of her weapon did she then turn her attention to herself. With a sigh she glanced down at her arms and chest, still slick with a coating of dark mud and Jimmy’s cooling blood. Fran knew only a good scrubbing was going to make any real headway in cleaning the clothes she now wore and she was about to take off her jacket when another spirited autumn breeze suddenly whistled past her.
‘Oh… perhaps not,’ she mumbled to herself, deciding to just wash the worst of the blood from her for now.
She was just dipping her forearms into the cold water of the lake, the movement of her hands causing swirls of deep red to slowly entwine themselves with the clouds of churned up mud around her, when out of the corner of her eye she caught a dark and fleeting movement. Instantly on alert again, her head snapped to follow the shadow, while down at her side and almost without conscious thought, her hand made a grab for her knife.
‘Jesus….’ she thought to herself, somewhat relieved to see just a small startled moorhen darting away from her across the water, its darkly feathered body quickly disappearing among the tall reeds to her left. ‘Talk about jumpy.’
It was only as her eyes lingered on the place where the small bird had just vanished that a thought struck her.
‘Oh…’ she sighed, glancing back over at Jimmy’s lifeless body; realising that whatever information she had hoped to get out of him was now lost to her forever. ‘Shit!’
‘What, you couldn’t have waited ten minutes?’ she thought, shooting an annoyed glare to where the corpse that had killed Jimmy still floated face down in the water.
Yet no sooner had the thought come to mind than Fran felt a familiar stab of guilt, for deep down she knew it was pointless to blame the Dead for their actions. By their very existence the Dead were as much a victim as Jimmy; each of them perpetuating a tragic and deadly game of tag, damned to pass on their awful curse until someone stopped them.
‘You selfish cow,’ she muttered, berating herself as she turned and clambered the rest of the way back up the muddy bank to shoreline. ‘What a mess…’ she continued to mumble to herself; turning to give the two bodies one final and exhausted look. ‘What a pointless fucking mess.’
She knew the permanent oblivion of death already granted to the two corpses was all any of them could hope for in the end now, and as she took solace in the knowledge she had kept a promise to a dying man, Fran let her gaze wonder out over the lake; suddenly a little unsure what she should do next. Chewing on her lip she pondered just how the rest of those at White Oak Park would react to the news of Jimmy’s death; after all they would only have her word to go on regarding what happened and as a still relative stranger to them, fingers and blame could so easily start pointing in her direction.
‘Christ! It just keeps getting better and better,’ she grumbled aloud, rubbing her fingers angrily through her damp hair.
Fran knew whether they believed her or not, their opinion would likely change the moment she and Kai made a run for it; and the fact they intended to take Star with them would surely only compound their suspicions.
‘Dennis will probably try to come after us simply for taking Star,’ she thought to herself; shaking her head as she finally turned away from the lake, its surface once more undisturbed by little more than the merry traffic of busy waterfowl and the buffeting wind. ‘Fuck knows what he’ll do if he convinces himself I bumped off Jimmy too.’
Dennis was the type of man that would happily meat out his revenge if he caught them, of this she had no doubt; though she thought when it came down to it, the insult of daring to defy him would be the real reason for his retaliation rather than any supposed justice for Jimmy.
Fran was just wondering if they could risk postponing their secret departure until the dust of Jimmy’s death had had time to settle, when something glinting on the path ahead of her briefly caught her attention. Ignoring it at first as probably just a bit of old rubbish, she carried on walking; that was until she noticed another small metal object lying near it and then another and another.
‘What the…’ she started to say, stopping to take a better look.
But no sooner had she taken another step closer than she realised what she was looking at; for there, scattered along the side of the path where it met the encroaching woodland, was one of the strings of tiny brass bells.
‘Well, guess we know how the corpse got the jump on Jimmy,’ she sighed, wearily crouching down to pick up one of the bells.
Still attached to the next bell, Fran started to wind the thin cord about her fist; collecting both string and bells as she went. By the time she finally came to the end of the string she had five small brass bells held in her palm; all of them ending in one suspiciously looking cut cord.
‘Oh…’ she whispered, her eyes instantly searching for the next string of bells that should have been hanging nearby. ‘Oh… oh, crap… shit… shit!’ she continued, her slow steps increasing in speed as she noticed another string of bells lying on the ground further on, partly hidden among the foliage.
Without even stopping Fran ran on, her eyes frantically searching for the next hanging string of alarm bells.
‘Must’ve missed them…must’ve have…’ she panted, glancing back the way she had come; her eyes darting back and forth, ever hopeful to see a glint of metal hanging among the trees.
But as she slowly began to walk back to the last one she had found lying on the ground, studiously pushing aside the encroaching ferns and bushes as she went, it became apparent that a gap of about thirty metres had opened up in the defences of White Oak Park; a gap that had ultimately been the cause of Jimmy’s demise. Bending down, she picked up the first bell from the fallen string she had found and then the next and the next; the gentle and merry tinkling they made at odds with the growing sense of unease building within her.
‘Christ,’ she said aloud, as the end of the string finally slipped into her fingers, ‘this one’s been cut too!’
Almost without realising she was doing it, Fran’s gaze slowly wandered back to the lake and Jimmy’s blood splattered corpse still lying motionless on the muddy bank; the scene transforming in front of her yet at the same time staying the same.
‘This… this was no accident,’ she thought to herself, her fist tightening about the brass bells in her hand until they began to dig painfully into her palm. ‘Not by a fucking long shot!’ she finally spat, shaking her head as her growing rage consumed her.
Furiously tossing aside the string of bells that she now knew someone’s sabotage had purposefully rendered impotent, Fran turned and she began to walk back along the path in the direction of the tree houses; all the while with only one name seething through her thoughts:
‘Emma!’
***
‘We can’t stay here, Kai,’ said Fran, later that day as she paced back and forth in their tree house bedroom; anxiously chewing on her fingernails while Bob sat with his head resting on his paws sleepily watching her. ‘I mean it… not even one more night.’
‘And y…you’re sure,’ asked Kai, his dark eyes full of concern as he looked up at her from the bed. ‘Y...you’re sure it w…was Emma?’
‘You didn’t see the look on Jimmy’s face,’ she replied, abandoning her pacing to sit beside him on the bed, ‘when Emma found out about him and her sister yesterday… he was scared, Kai… like, terrified of her,’ she continued, turning to look at him her own eyes full of worry. ‘It must’ve been her… who else?’
‘Dennis?’ Kai offered with a shrug of his shoulders.
‘As much as I’d like to think it was him, no… no, I doubt it’s his style,’ she replied, her nervous attack of her thumbnail resuming as she spoke. ‘No… no, this was meant to look like an accident, like Jimmy had become a problem that quietly needed to be dealt with and without ruffling too many feathers.’
‘B…but w…why would she care?’ said Kai, reaching across to gently take Fran’s hand away from her mouth. ‘I m…mean she has D…Dennis in her pocket, why sh…should she give a damn w…what the others think?’
‘I don’t know… I guess Jimmy had been with them a while,’ she mused, standing again as if moving helped her to think things through. ‘Perhaps… perhaps if the others knew it was her they could get to thinking that they may be next… after all you keep the troops in line, not give them a reason to mutiny.’
‘How did Emma r…react when she f…found out?’ asked Kai, still unsure whether the young woman was truly to blame for Jimmy’s death.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied nervously picking at a loose chip of paint on the windowsill, ‘I only told Dennis,’ she continued, glancing back at Kai. ‘He said he’d spread the word.’
‘Oh… and how did D…Dennis take the n…news?’ enquired Kai, watching as Fran’s gaze kept returning to the window and the slowly darkening forest beyond. ‘S…surprised? Upset?’’
‘Hmm… I’d say more irritated than anything,’ she replied, picturing the look on the large man’s face. ‘Like Jimmy got himself killed just to piss him off.’
‘Ch…charming…’ said Kai, moving from the bed to take her in his arms. ‘So,’ he continued, gently kissing the top of her head, ‘so, how are we going to do this?’
For a moment Fran simply stood silently in his embrace, allowing herself the tiniest respite from the world and its troubles; wishing the peace she felt within the warmth of this arms could be with her always.
‘Fran?’ Kai prompted, tilting back slightly to look down at her.
‘We should have gone the moment we realised Mike and Sam had risked Poppy’s safety to get away from this place,’ she mumbled into his chest before looking back up at him. ‘We’ve got to go, Kai… we got to leave here tonight.’
‘Okay,’ he simply replied, slowly nodding his agreement. ‘And what about…’
‘I have to give him one last chance,’ Fran interrupted, knowing Kai was about to ask about Tom. ‘I… I can’t leave him here, not without trying to get through him just one more time.’
‘He’s n…not the m…man he was, Fran,’ said Kai, knowing as hard as it would be for him to leave Tom behind, it would be ten times worse for Fran. ‘His m…mind it’s… it’s b…broken and matter how you w…want it to be different… it’s not.’
‘But he’s in there somewhere,’ she replied, the pain of his loss already building in her chest, ‘he has to be.’
‘Okay,’ said Kai, smiling sadly as his fingers gently stroked Fran’s hair, ‘you can try… b…but I w…wouldn’t say w...we’re leaving tonight,’ he went on to add, his tone suddenly full of warning. ‘P…promise me, Fran. Ask him to come b…but don’t say w…when.’
‘You think he’ll try to stop us?’ she asked, already knowing his reply.
‘We p…plan on taking S…star and the cart. D…don’t you?’ Kai chuckled somewhat bitterly while on the floor by his feet Bob opened his jaws wide, yawned and with a lick of his nose settled down for a nap; quite disinterested in the concerns of his human travelling companions.
Although Fran hated to think that Tom would side with White Oak Park against them, she knew Wendy had clawed her way into his mind, using his own psychosis against him to trample over his past loyalties and friendships until little remained.
‘If I can’t get through to him, yes,’ she finally replied with a sigh, burying her head forlornly in Kai’s chest once more. ‘Yes, I do.’
***
Chapter 7:
With the memory of Kai’s lips brushing tenderly against her own and his whispered warning of ‘Be careful’ still running through her mind, Fran slipped from their tree house cabin and out into the cold moonlit night.
‘Oh, great…’ she thought to herself, her breath briefly pluming in front of her before being wisped away by an icy blast. ‘It’s freezing.’
Above her the cloudless sky, so dark it had taken on almost a deep bruised purple hue, was awash with a million stars; dominating this heavenly spectacle was a low hanging full moon that washed the forest in ghostly palette of silver and grey.
‘And you’re not much help either,’ she thought, tossing a disapproving scowl to the silent celestial body above her, seemingly determined to illuminate her furtive movements for all to see. ‘Well… here goes nothing,’ she softly muttered to herself, slowly edging her way along the railing towards the first of suspended walkways; all the while making sure she kept to the darkest of shadows that the moon overhead allowed.
The plan, despite the obvious dangers, had seemed so simple when they had talked it through back in the safety of the cabin but already, bathed in the bright moonlight Fran, could see it starting to unravel about the edges.
‘Get to the cart, prepare Star, then try and talk some sense into Tom,’ Fran thought to herself over and over; running through the three point plan in her head like a mantra to keep her growing nerves in check.
It was the last of her three tasks that filled Fran with the most trepidation. What happened during that one conversation would be a crossroads for them all. The paths they could take would be altered irrevocably, futures determined and perhaps their very lives could hang in the balance; and all of it rested on Tom. Just how his fractured mind would to react to her misgivings, what spin his mania would give on the news that they intended to leave; she could only guess. Yet whatever happened Fran prayed there was still enough of the man she knew, hidden deep within the convoluted maze of his mind, that he wouldn’t immediately alert the others of their intentions.
‘Oh, okay… we’ll give it a few more days,’ she was preparing herself to say, hoping that if he was indeed too far lost in the world he had created then at least her lies could buy them some time, at least until dawn, before their absence was noticed.
Reaching the rope-bridge, Fran ducked down and peered across to the dark cabin some twenty metres away. She knew walking across the suspended walkways, past occupied cabins and then on to the Hub would be tricky at best, what with each creak of the boards beneath her feet potentially giving her presence away, but she knew the alternative was even more dangerous. Initially she had suggested she would have more chance of getting to the cart unobserved if she dispensed with the walkways altogether and instead travelled via the forest floor but as Kai had pointed out; in an unknown terrain, in the dark and with the Dead wandering about, it would be tantamount to suicide; and after thinking it though, she had to agree with him
As if to give credence to Kai’s warning, Fran suddenly heard the snapping of twigs and the soft tinkling of alarm bells echoing from somewhere in the darkness beneath her.
‘Great,’ she muttered under her breath, her hand instinctively moving to rest on the handle of the machete as she started her
way across. ‘This just gets better and better.’
Cautiously placing one foot in front of the other Fran slowly made her made across the bridge; cringing at each creak and groan of the wooden boards underfoot. But the twenty metre gap soon became ten and then it became five; and still no alarm was raised. Then, before she knew it, she was she was stepping off the walkway and greeting the decking surrounding the next tree house with a deep sigh of relief.
‘One down,’ she thought to herself, glancing briefly over at the cabin in front of her with its dark foreboding windows; the cabin that Sam and Mike had all too briefly made their home. ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ she found herself thinking, her mind conjuring up images of the young couple and their child fleeing into the night and onto the traitorous dark churning waters of the river Fal. ‘You could’ve trusted us, you know.’
But it was pointless to dwell on the past; and Fran knew it. Mike and Sam, for reasons known only to themselves, had felt unable to take Fran and Kai into their confidence; to trust them with their plan to flee. Yes, it saddened Fran to accept this but she truly hoped Dennis had been wrong about their watery deaths and wished them safe passage to wherever they thought they were going.
‘Just a pity you couldn’t have waited one more day…’ she added, darting to the shadow drenched corner of the cabin where she knew the next suspended walkway awaited her. ‘We’d have come with you,’ she softly mumbled, edging to the corner to fix the next tree house in her sights. ‘Shit!’ she suddenly cursed, noticing the soft beam of light breaking through the cabin’s partly closed curtains. ‘Why aren’t you asleep?’
Getting this far has been easy, after all with Sam and Mike gone, the nearest tree house was unoccupied; but it was the next cabin and the residents she knew that lived there that would be her first real challenge. Fran knew the Nash brothers would do more than ask a few friendly questions if they found her wandering the walkways in the dark; especially after Jimmy’s untimely and unobserved demise. Even from her limited contact with the young men, it was obvious how that encounter would go down if they caught her; smarmy innuendo and sexual intimidation would quickly be followed by misguided threats, all inevitably culminating in no doubt a violent encounter. She’d be lucky to escape the incident without more blood being spilled, possibly some of it her own, and no matter how it played out, their chance to escape White Oak Park unnoticed that night would be in tatters.
Star Drawn Saga (Book 2): Lost Among The Dead Page 28
