by Tim O'Rourke
But I missed him and my heart ached to think of him alone in the Gate House, so I often went to see him there, only to find him sitting quietly, deep in thought, and I would remember how we had shared our first kiss in that rickety shack. I would sit opposite him on the flea-bitten sofa and talk was light. But you know, I needed to be with him and I knew that he needed to be with me. Sometimes we lay before the fire that he had roaring in the hearth, and I would lie in his arms and fight the tears that stood in my eyes. But before the talk turned to anything meaningful between us, I would slip away, back to the manor, leaving him to his private thoughts.
It was as if just being together was enough, during those intimate moments we were showing how much we loved each other; but for whatever reason, words were more difficult to find when trying to express how we felt.
I knew in my heart that Potter was hurting and I suspected now that he was away from The Hollows, he had found time to reflect on what had happened there. The betrayal by his best friend, Luke and the death of Murphy, I figured, were weighing heavily upon his soul. And like Potter, now away from The Hollows, I too was able to look back on everything that had happened. I too had been betrayed by Luke – we all had. I’d lost my mother and Murphy had been like a father to me. Sometimes, I would stand alone in the quiet of the night before the mirror in my room and look at the maze of hairline cracks that covered me. I would stare at those little black fingers that wriggled at the tips of my wings, my claws, and fangs and knew that I truly had been cursed. So many times, as I’d lain in Potter’s arms before the fire in the Gate House, I had fought the crippling urge to tell him about the cracks that covered my body when in my half-breed form. But I just couldn’t tell him. I could see he was consumed by his own worries, doubts, and grief, and being back from the dead wasn’t easy to deal with – like I said – it isn’t like being in the movies.
So I sat at my window and watched him rake the leaves away, both of us lost to our thoughts. For how long I sat there, I don’t know – that is another thing about being dead – time kind of just stands still. Nights could seem to last fifty or sixty hours and days only moments. Like I’ve already said, the world had been shoved to the left a bit.
Eventually, Potter propped the rake against a nearby tree, and turning his back on the manor, he walked into the woods and disappeared from view, his head down. I wanted to go after him, so jumping from my chair, I left my room and the manor.
Chapter Five
Kayla
While Isidor kept himself busy with his stake-making, I decided to explore what was once my home. For years Mrs. Payne had stopped me from going into the West Wing of the manor, and as I placed my foot on the bottom stair and looked up into the darkness, I could hear her voice again as if being blended into my constant soundtrack by an invisible DJ.
“It is the forbidden wing, young lady,” her voice seemed to whisper in my ear. “You are not to go up there - not now - notever!” That last word of warning seemed to stretch out forever inside my head as if the DJ were playing the track at the wrong speed.
But Mrs. Payne wasn’t here now - not ever - I smiled to myself and lit the candle that I held before me. Potter had promised to fix the lighting but still hadn’t gotten around to it. He’d spent loads of time on his own, shut away in that creepy Gate House. Why he wanted to shut himself away in there was way beyond me. And when he did come out, he just scowled at everyone and looked pissed off. I’d asked him to lend me the money so I could buy a new iPod. But he just flipped his middle finger, told me to fuck-off and lit another cigarette. He could be a real freak at times.
Forgetting that arsehole, I began to climb the stairs. Although it was still light outside, this part of the manor had always seemed gloomier than the rest. There weren’t any windows leading from the staircase, for starters, and the rooms on either side of the hallway, as far as I could remember, had always been shut. With nothing else to do, maybe now was as good a time as any to find out what was hidden inside them.
With the light from the candle stretching my shadow up the walls like smudged lines of mascara, I made my way down the hallway, set between the row of doors. The candlelight was weak, and I couldn’t see what lay ahead of me. I was kinda grateful for that, because I knew what lay at the end of the hallway - that rickety old staircase that led up to the attic and the hospital. That was the place where the half-breeds had been nursed by my father and Doctor Ravenwood. I had never been allowed up there, but Isidor had told me enough. He had described what he, Potter, and Kiera had discovered up there. The bodies of all those poor children, murdered by Sparky and…
Still unable to even think of his name, let alone say it, I came to the first door set into the wall on my right. The patterned wallpaper hung in torn strips and it smelt weird. The wall peered out from behind the paper, which looked scarred with black mildew and damp. Then I remembered how my father had insisted that the walls be coated with queets, the stuff that killed vampires.
The manor was very much how I had remembered it to be. I pushed against the door which swung open and then I changed my mind.
“Where has that statue come from?” I whispered. I couldn’t ever remember there being any statues in the manor - not in the grounds and definitely not inside. But then again, I couldn’t actually recall ever being in this room, so perhaps it had been here all the while. With the flame flickering before me, I cupped my hand around it, fearing that it might go out and leave me in total darkness. I could just make out that the windows had been boarded over with planks of wood so no one could see in and no one could see out. But that’s what made the statue so odd. It was kneeling down. At first I thought that it had been made to look as if it was in prayer, but as I stepped through the darkness, I could see that the figure had been shaped to look as if it were peering through a gap in the boards that covered the window. It looked as if the statue were trying to see outside.
I held the candle to the figure and could see that whoever had made it had failed to give the statue, eyes, ears, nose, and a mouth. Even so, I could tell that the figure was a young man. It had short hair and its body was carved with muscle. Not like one of those freaky bodybuilders you see on T.V., but just nice, like a well-toned guy. His upper body was naked and his lower half had been sculpted to look as if he was wearing a set of baggy jeans. As I peered through the orange glow of my light, I was mesmerised by the web of cracks and breaks that covered it. There were so many, I feared that should I touch it, it would fall apart before me in a pile of grey ash.
Apart from the statue, the room was empty. There wasn’t a bed, wardrobe, not one stitch of furniture, just the statue, which looked as if it were secretly trying to look out of the window. Then from behind me, the door suddenly slammed shut, snuffing out my light. The room went black and I screamed. With my free hand, I fumbled in my pockets for the book of matches I had found in the kitchen drawers. Placing the candle on the ground, I struck one of the matches, and a brilliant glow of orange light flared up before me and I screamed again. In my panic, I dropped the match and it went out. But in that split second of light, I had seen that statue again. He had no longer been looking out of the boarded-up window, but had now been standing before me, its blank, featureless face just inches from mine.
I stumbled back into the darkness, desperately trying to free another match from the book. But my hands were trembling so much, that it seemed impossible. Drawing a deep breath and backing away towards the closed door, I managed to free a match and strike it. At once there was a flare of orange light. With the flame jerking to and fro between my shaking fingers, I could see the statue knelt before the window.
“Get a grip, Kayla Hunt,” I spoke aloud, and even though it was my own voice in the darkness it gave me some comfort. I picked up the candle from the rough wooden floor and lit it. Snuffing out the match before it burnt my fingers, I reached out behind me and fumbled for the door handle. Unable to take my eyes from the statue, I could see that it was in exactly the
same place and position it had been before the door had slammed shut and blown out my candle.
The statue hadn’t moved – it couldn’t have. I would have heard it, right? Feeling kinda dumb for spooking myself, I yanked open the door and stepped back into the hallway, closing the door behind me. I looked into the direction of the rickety staircase and, convincing myself that I had probably done enough exploring for the day, I headed back down the stairs and left the forbidden wing behind me. Maybe that old cow Ms. Payne had done me a favour by forbidding me to go up there.
I reached the bottom landing and once back in daylight, I blew out the candle. How had I been so easily spooked after everything I had seen and been through in the last year? After all, I was the dead one around here. I was the ghost stalking the stairwells and passageways. What did I have to be scared of? So, feeling embarrassed at myself, I decided not to tell the others what I had found up in the forbidden wing - especially not Potter - he really would take the piss and he didn’t need too much encouragement to do that.
So pushing the thoughts of that dumb statue from my head, I went in search of Kiera’s iPod. I needed to drown out my soundtrack - I needed to drown everything out.
Chapter Six
Kiera
As I crossed the lawn in front of the manor, my boots left footprints in the frost that covered the grass. Before I had died, I would have expected to see plumes of breath escaping from my mouth and disappearing up into the cold morning air, but that didn’t happen now. Not since I had come back. It was like I was colder on the inside than the icy cold wind that blew about me.
Before entering the woods, I looked back at the manor. It sat like a giant grey shell, its walls ancient-looking and covered in ivory like greedy, green-coloured hands. But as I looked back I noticed for the first time that all of the tarpaulin had been removed. The last time I had been at Hallowed Manor, the Forbidden Wing had been undergoing extensive repairs. The windows were still boarded up but there had been several skips surrounding that part of the manor, all of them filled with rubble. As I turned away, I wondered if Potter had removed them in an attempt to keep himself busy.
Although most of the trees had shed their leaves, there were still enough Fir and Conifers to cast the woods into a gloomy darkness. I passed amongst them, heading away from the manor in the direction that I had seen Potter head in. I came across the group of weeping willows that stood before me like a cluster of elderly people with curved backs. From within them I could hear the sound of wood breaking. Gently, I parted the branches of one of the willow trees and peered into the tiny graveyard where the half-breeds had been buried over the years when the Vampyrus had lived above ground. I hadn’t been back here since watching Murphy carry the bodies of his two dead daughters to this secluded place. With his back to me, I spied on Potter as he broke two thick branches over his knee. Then, with a piece of twine, he tied the two pieces of wood together to make a large cross. Silently, he made his way towards the other graves. I watched him as he skewered the bottom of the cross into the ground. When he had fixed it securely, he stepped back from it and looked at the cross. I knew who he was remembering and it filled me with sadness.
I pushed the branches of the weeping willows aside and made my way quietly towards him. As if hearing my approach, he looked over his shoulder at me then back at the cross he had made. Without saying anything, I stood next to him. Then taking Murphy’s crucifix and chain from around my neck, I hung it over the cross that he had fixed into the ground.
“Murphy would have wanted you to keep it,” Potter said without looking at me. “He would have wanted you to be safe.”
“Do I have to worry about vampires now?” I asked him, my voice low as if I were in a church.
“Who knows what dangers lay ahead,” he said, turning to look at me. His eyes were dark and looked troubled.
“What’s wrong, Potter?” I asked him, reaching out and brushing his thick forearm with my hand.
“I could ask you the same question,” he shot back, but his voice wasn’t angry – just confused sounding. “What’s happened to us?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered and took my hand away.
“I wasn’t expecting to spend the rest of eternity sniffing red roses or dancing in the hills singing, The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Music like Julie-freaking-Andrews, but I did think that perhaps we could…”
“Play happy families?” I cut in.
“Not that either,” he said. “Just you and me…together.”
“We are together,” I said, but I knew exactly what he meant, so I added, “Look, we’ve been through so much. None of us are finding this easy. At first I was so happy to wake and find that I had you, Isidor, and Kayla back again, but that happiness soon faded. And I know you feel the same. We all feel it. I lay awake at night listening to the sound of Kayla crying – it can’t be easy for her to know that she was murdered by Luke. He betrayed her.”
“He betrayed all of us,” Potter spat and stuck a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. “He was my friend too. To know that he was behind everything that we went through – to know that he set Murphy up like that – that’s hard to deal with.”
“Exactly,” I said, looking at him as he lit the cigarette. “We all lost one way or another and then to wake to find that we are the walking dead and...” I cut off before I said anything more.
“And what?” he asked, streams of blue smoke jetting from his nostrils.
“Nothing,” I said back, thinking of the cracks.
“Why don’t we just go away?” he suggested, coming closer to me.
“We are away,” I said and I let him take me into his arms. “Or perhaps you were thinking of some kind of holiday? Disneyland perhaps?” and I half-smiled.
“Grizzel’s,” he said, looking into my eyes.
“Sorry?” I asked sounding confused.
“There is no such place as Disneyland here, not anymore at least,” he said. “There is no Walt Disney or Mickey Mouse. There is Cornelius Grizzel and a maggot called Frogskin – but no mouse called Mickey. It’s like good old Disney never existed.” Then looking at me he added, “You’re not the only one who has noticed the world has been pushed.”
“Pushed?” I asked him, sensing he knew more about this than I had first thought.
“It’s like the world has been pushed off course,” he said, dropping the cigarette to the ground and grinding it out with his boot. “The world that we have come back to is different from the one we left behind when we went down into The Hollows. Something has changed – something happened.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “Not everything has changed.”
“Isidor told me about London now being called Linden,” I told him.
“It gets better than that,” he half-smirked, but I could see that look of concern again behind his eyes. “Houston, Texas? Or Euston, Texas as it’s now known. ‘Euston, we have a problem.’ Sounds the same, but not quite.”
“So what do you think happened while we were away?” I asked.
“Perhaps nothing changed while we were away,” he said, fixing me with a stare. “Perhaps we’ve come back to a different world, one that has been pushed sideways a little.”
“But how come no one else has noticed the changes?” I asked him. “I mean, people would notice if Disneyland just vanished, wouldn’t they?”
“Not if it was never here in the first place,” he said, cocking an eyebrow at me. “Not if it had always been this Drizzle dude.”
“You said Grizzel before,” I reminded him.
“Whatever! Grizzel or Drizzle – it all amounts to the same thing,” he said. “I don’t think the humans have ever known any different.”
“But why aren’t the changes bigger?”
“I think the capital of England suddenly having a new name is a pretty big deal,” he said, looking at me.
“No, I don’t mean like that,” I sighed. “I mean things c
ould be completely different instead of changing a few place names, songs, books, and movies. Whole continents could have changed, Kings and Queens could be different, and landscapes could have changed.”
“Perhaps they have,” he said thoughtfully. “We haven’t been the most sociable of people since coming back from the dead. We haven’t even stuck our noses beyond the front gate. There could be a whole new world waiting on the other side of those giant walls.”
“I don’t think so,” I told him. “Isidor and Kayla have been bringing me newspapers and I’ve been on the net. I would have noticed any big changes like that – they would have noticed, too. The changes that we’re talking about are subtle. It’s like coming back from holiday and finding that the furniture has been moved slightly and a few new pots and pans have been added to the cupboards. It’s the same house, in the same street, but stuff has been pushed from where you left it.”
Then, taking me by the hand, Potter said, “let me show you something. I’ve got a subtle change to show you,” and he set off through the trees.
Chapter Seven
Kiera
Potter led me by the hand through the woods. Pale shards of wintry sun cut through the leafy overhead canopy and the smell of the pine needles smelt fresh and sweet. Our walk through the woods was quiet, the only sound was the odd squawk from a crow as we startled it by our progress.
