Dead Flesh

by Tim O'Rourke

  “Why don’t you come with us?” Kayla asked me. “You haven’t left the grounds of the manor since we got here. It would be good for you to get out a bit.”

  The offer was a kind one, but I knew that if I were to go with them, I would have to fly and that would mean having to get my wings out and if I did that, those cracks would appear. I still wasn’t ready for them to see me like that.

  “No, you’re okay,” I told her. “I think I’ll just bum around here for a while.”

  “And do what?” Isidor asked me, his fangs shining as brightly as the chandelier above us.

  “I’m going to sync my iPod to my old email address, make sure that it’s still working okay, just in case we do get a response to those adverts.”

  “That isn’t going to take all day,” Kayla pushed. “Go on, Kiera, come with us – it could be fun.”

  I did want to go with them, not really relishing the thought of spending the day mooching about the empty manor on my own. But I just couldn’t. “I’ve got plenty to do – like setting up a room for consulting. We need to look the part should we get any clients.”

  “Your choice,” Kayla smiled weakly at me, but I could tell she knew that there was something up with me.

  I followed them to the giant front door, and Isidor had been right, the day was overcast and miserable-looking. A fine rain was coming down, and the leaves that Potter had raked into a neat pile now swirled up and down the drive in the wind.

  They both looked back at me one last time, then without a word, they both soared up into the dismal-looking sky. Within seconds, I had lost sight of them amongst the clouds.

  “See you in a while, crocodile,” I whispered, closing the front door of the manor, and leaving me all alone.

  Chapter Nine

  Kayla

  It felt cool to be flying again. The rain that struck my face was cold but refreshing, as if waking me up. I hadn’t flown since The Hollows. For pretty much my whole life, I had resented being different from those girls who had called me ‘stickleback’ at boarding school. But I had learnt that my wings were just another part of me, like my arms and legs. Those girls back at school would never know the freedom my wings gave me.

  Isidor flew beside me, his arms outstretched on either side of him, his wings rippling beneath them. He glanced at me and winked, and I knew that he was enjoying the freedom again as much as I was. The wind roared past us, and the sound of it was wonderful, it deafened the other noises – my soundtrack.

  The clouds broke beneath us, and I could see the town of Wood Hill, the one that we had been visiting daily for Kiera. We swooped over it, circled, and spying a small wooded area on its outskirts, we raced towards them. We landed, and rolling back my shoulders, I put on the sweatshirt that I’d tied about my waist, covering my back and the crop-top that I was wearing. Unlike me, Isidor couldn’t fold his wings away, he had to hide them, and so he zipped up the front of his jacket.

  “Ready?” he asked me.

  ` “You bet,” I nodded and followed him out of the small wooded area and up the hill to the town. As we walked together, I wondered if we stood out. Did we look freaky? We were definitely very pale, looking like we had been ill or something. Maybe it was my imagination, but as we headed into town and passed some of the people on the road, they seemed to look away from us, casting their heads down, and some even crossed the road as if to avoid us.

  I wondered why I hadn’t noticed this before on our trips to Wood Hill, but we had always come by car. I had waited inside, parked at the curb, while Isidor had taken the papers from the newspaper stand outside the store and left the money for them in the honesty tin outside. We had never actually spoken to anyone in the town. Driving through a place was always different than walking through it. You saw more when you walked, noticed things that you wouldn’t have while in a car.

  Well, I was definitely noticing stuff now. Like how the streets didn’t seem that busy at all, and those people who were on them seemed to be in a hurry. It was as if they were all late for a meeting or something. But what was freaking me out more than that, was it wasn’t just me and Isidor that they were ignoring, they were ignoring each other. For such a small town, not one of them looked at each other as they passed by. There were no ‘good mornings’, or ‘Hey, how you doing today?’ It was like they didn’t really see each other – but they did. It was weird to watch how they almost seemed to shy away from one another. I stared in amazement as they crisscrossed back and forth in an almost desperate attempt not to come in contact. One guy, elderly with a stick, stepped off the curb to avoid a scrawny-looking woman who was coming down the street towards him. But then another guy, mid-forties with a belly that hung over the top of his trousers, stepped into the road from the other side of the street as he tried to avoid someone else. On seeing this, the old guy turned, then turned again as if trapped. He shuffled around in a full circle as if trying to figure out which way to go – how to escape.

  The thin, homemade cigarette that hung from the corner of his wrinkled old mouth fell out and he swore. Then looking up, he saw me watching him and he cried out. He turned away and covered his face with his arm, as if he didn’t want us to see him - or was it that he didn’t want to see us? The old guy saw a gap and shuffled away, flinching as someone else came too close to him.

  “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” I whispered, as we made our way through the town. “This place is fucked up.”

  “What day is it today?” Isidor asked, not looking at me, but watching the crazy people on the street all around us.

  “Saturday, I think,” I said back. “Why?”

  “So it’s not a school day then,” he whispered, as one of the people toppled from the edge of the curb in a desperate attempt to avoid us.

  “I guess,” I breathed. “Why?”

  “Where are all the kids?” he said, and this time he did look at me. “Shouldn’t they be hanging about on street corners with their mates, out shopping, stuff like that?”

  “It is cold and it’s raining,” I reminded him.

  “Didn’t bother that old guy,” Isidor said, his voice still low, just above a whisper.

  Then looking across the street, I said, “Over there! That woman, see her? She’s pushing a pram and there’s a baby in it.”

  We watched her hurry down the street, her head down as she tried to avoid everyone else. But a man with an umbrella was heading towards her, and she crossed the street to avoid him.

  Isidor yanked me by the arm into a nearby shop doorway, and said, “Let’s hide in here – keep out of her way.”

  “Why?” I hushed.

  “Because you know that smell that babies always have?”

  “No, not really,” I told him, watching from the shadows of the shop doorway as the woman with the pram headed towards us.

  “Believe me, babies do have a certain odour,” he said, “And I can’t smell it.”

  “So?” I asked.

  “So look!” he whispered as the woman passed us as we hid in the shop doorway.

  I followed Isidor’s stare and looked into the pram and gasped.

  Clamping his hand over my mouth, he put his lips to my ear and very quietly said, “Shhh, Kayla.”

  Chapter Ten

  Kiera

  With the manor to myself, I could hear every creak and groan it made as the wind outside began to blow harder about the eaves. It wasn’t that this spooked me in any way, but just intensified my feelings of loneliness. I wandered from one room to another on the ground floor, each one of them dustier than the next. The furniture was covered in white sheets. Cobwebs hung from the corners of the rooms and swung down from the light fixtures overhead. Just off the main hallway, there was a narrow passageway and its walls were lined with mahogany, which gave it a dark and oppressive feeling. At the end of it there was a door. I pushed it open and was pleasantly surprised by what I found behind it, and the sight lifted my spirits.

  I had found a small study, which could
have easily been mistaken for a library by the amount of leather-bound books that covered the walls. There was a desk and in the centre of this was a large ink blotter. There were several silver-coloured pens lined neatly next to one another, and a photo frame. I picked it up and turned it over. The picture inside the frame was of Doctor Hunt, Lady Hunt, and Kayla. Kayla was sitting on her father’s knee and looked happy, her red hair spilling over her shoulders and down the front of the pretty dress she was wearing. Kayla looked to be about six-years-old. I looked at Doctor Hunt as he stared back at me from the picture and I remembered how I had buried his body beneath the tree on the outskirts of the town of Wasp Water.

  Was his body still there? I wondered. Had it been discovered like mine had on the side of that Cumbria Mountain? In real time, that had only been about six weeks ago. Now that the world had been pushed, was his body still there? How much had the world changed on the other side of the manor walls?

  Placing the picture back where I had found it, I looked about the room and with a bit of dusting, I knew that I had found my consulting room – that’s if anyone actually came to be consulted with. My brain was beginning to ache with restlessness. I needed something – a puzzle – to awaken it again. But what frustrated me the most was that I knew there was a puzzle to be solved and I was a piece of that puzzle. As was the girl in my dreams, falling out of the sky – only to wake and find herself like I had in that mortuary. Then, there was the statue by the summerhouse – the girl who had been turned to stone.

  Until I had more pieces of that puzzle, I knew there was little I could do, so going to the giant kitchen, I found some old dusters and polish and went back to the study. I polished the desk, the bookshelves, and the mahogany walls. I shook the dust from the curtains and opened the large windows to let in some fresh air. When my back had started to ache and my throat and nose were full of dust, I stood back and admired my handiwork. I positioned the chair slightly behind the desk, then sat in it. I wondered if anyone would come – I wondered if anyone else realised that they had been pushed.

  I closed the door to the study, put the dusters and polish back where I had found them, then left the manor to walk the grounds, needing to clear the dust that was stuck in the back of my throat. The rain had eased and looked more like a fine mist than a drizzle. The only sound was the regular squawk of the crows that flapped their giant wings overhead. I looked up at them and wondered where Potter was and what he was doing. I missed him, but I understood why he had needed to get away.

  The trees towered on either side of me as I made my way through the wood and my feet crunched over the fallen branches and twigs. I hadn’t intended to head for the graveyard hidden by the weeping willows, or so I told myself, but it wasn’t long before I found myself parting their stooped branches with my hands and stepping into that secret place. Although the area surrounded by the forlorn trees held so much death, it was tranquil. It had that feeling of stepping off a busy street into a church. The silence, the mystery of the place – I was drawn to it.

  I made my way through the headstones of all those half-breeds that, unlike me and Isidor, hadn’t lived past the age of sixteen. And as I looked down at some of the graves, I could see that some of them hadn’t even lived as long as that. Snuffed out too early, like a candle before dawn that hadn’t had a chance to break and shower the world with light.

  There were several graves that didn’t have headstones like the rest, but makeshift crosses made from the branches of the nearby trees, like the one I had seen Potter make for Murphy. Passing amongst them, I noticed that one had been inscribed with the name Nessa and the other Meren and I knew that these were the graves of Murphy’s daughters. I could remember him saying their names as Potter had argued with Murphy before going to the Fountain of Souls in search of the Lycanthrope.

  I bent over and peered at their names.

  “Your father was a good man,” I whispered, “and I know he loved you so very much. He loved you so much that it blinded him. He wanted revenge for your murders so greatly that he put his own life in danger and took us on a journey where he was tricked and betrayed, where he ended up losing his own life.” Then straightening up, and with tears standing in my eyes, I added, “But I guess he has told you everything himself by now. I hope you are all happy together. And one last thing before I go, can you tell your Dad that although Potter would never admit this, he really misses him? We all do.”

  Then, turning my back on the makeshift crosses, I headed back through the graveyard, passing Murphy’s cross as I went. And it was then that I saw it, or rather I didn’t. I had hung Murphy’s crucifix on the cross that Potter had made, but now it was gone. I searched the earth and grass that surrounded the foot of the cross, wondering if perhaps the crucifix had fallen off, but it wasn’t there. I stood up and wondered if perhaps Potter had taken it before we had left the graveyard that day. I made my way back through the woods.

  The wind had started to pick up again, and the rain became heavier. With my hair beginning to look like a series of black-coloured rat tails as it clung to my face, I sped up as I headed back towards the manor. Following the route that Potter had previously led me, I headed towards the summerhouse, knowing that to avoid the downpour that the swollen clouds were threatening, I could always shelter in there.

  I ran from beneath the trees and into the circular area where the summerhouse stood. Just before it stood the statue that I had seen the day before. But there was something different about it. And as I ran towards it, I was sure that before it had been facing the summerhouse, but now had its back turned towards it, as if the stone girl had turned around somehow. As I drew nearer, I could see that it wasn’t just the position of the girl that had changed, there was something different about her hands.

  I reached the statue, and with rain running down my face, I looked at Murphy’s crucifix as it hung from the statue’s cold, stone fist. The crucifix glistened wetly, and I reached out for it. I pulled on it, but it was like the statue of the girl didn’t want to give it up. The crucifix wouldn’t come free of her grasp, so I left her to hold onto it. Then, looking into her featureless stone face, I whispered, “What are you? Who are you? I know you can hear me.”

  And as I stood in the driving rain and secretly hoped for a reply, it was me who screeched as a hand suddenly gripped my shoulder.

  Chapter Eleven

  Kayla

  “That wasn’t a baby in that pram,” I gasped. “It was a doll! Why would she be pushing that thing around?”

  “Freaky, huh?” Isidor said, stepping from the doorway and watching the woman with the pram retreat up the road. “And did you notice how the doll’s eyes had been removed?”

  “Isidor, I don’t want to state the freaking obvious, but this place is like, really screwed up,” I said, standing in the rain next to him. “Maybe we should just head back to the manor.”

  “Not before putting some of these adverts around town,” he said, taking them from within his coat.

  “You’re not serious!” I said to him.

  “If anyone has been pushed, as Kiera describes it,” Isidor replied thoughtfully, “the people of this town must have. Someone has got to respond to these adverts.”

  I followed Isidor up the rain-drenched streets, as water raced along the gutter and sloshed into the storm drains. We hadn’t gone far when we came to a small newsagent, the shop where Isidor had bought the papers from on previous visits to Wood Hill.

  With his hand pressed against the door, he looked back at me and said, “Ready?”

  “Ready for what?” I asked him, my eyes wide.

  “Anything, I guess,” he said, pushing open the door and stepping inside.

  A bell chimed above our heads as the door swung shut behind us. The shop was dimly lit and dust motes hovered in the air. Two narrow racks ran the length of the shop, and these were filled with groceries, which looked to be covered with as much dust as the air about us. Some of the shelves were littered with magazines,
which looked dog-eared, their covers yellowed with age. The shop smelt of sweat, stale cigar smoke, and beer. At the end of one of the aisles was one of those tall displays that turned. It was full of postcards, and just like the magazines had, they looked creased up and old. I turned the display round, and as I did, it made a creaking sound and toppled over. I tried to grab hold of it, but it slipped through my fingers and toppled over onto the floor. The postcards scattered, some of them disappearing beneath the shelves and racks.

  “What’s going on back there?” a deep voice boomed, and it almost seemed to shake the whole shop.

  Together, Isidor and I peered around the edge of the nearest shelf and could see a counter at the back of the shop. Someone was sitting behind it, but I couldn’t see who as that part of the shop was covered in shadows. The voice spoke again and said, “What do you want?”

  Isidor glanced at me, then, with the adverts in his hand, he made his way towards the counter. I followed him, and as we drew near, I could hear heavy breathing. It sounded out of breath. And as I drew nearer still, I could hear the heartbeat. It was weak sounding as it struggled to push the blood around this person’s body. As we stepped towards the counter and through the shadows, I understood why the breathing had sounded like a clapped-out old engine and the heart like a weak drum beat.

  The man who sat behind the counter was huge – a giant. His head was the size of a basketball, round with cheeks that glowed red as if it had just been pulled from a fire. Sweat rolled from his brow and down the side of his face and he mopped it away with one of his meaty hands. The fingers looked like overstuffed sausages, and the fingernails were yellow with a black rind of dirt under each one. He wore a vest which was stained yellow with sweat and old food, his belly sat on his lap like a stuffed cushion.