by Tim O'Rourke
“Flint!” I’d hissed, making fists with my hands. “Have you lost your freaking mind? Come out of there!”
Flint didn’t appear back in the open doorway and he didn’t shout out to me either. There had just been the sound of the summer breeze and birdsong.
“Flint!” I’d said again, this time my voice louder. “Stop messing about and come out of there!”
When he failed to respond again for a second time, I’d moved slowly toward the old house and the open door. The slice of darkness had seemed to pull me forward toward it – like the house wanted me to see what lay hiding inside. What dark secrets had awaited me behind the door?
Within touching distance of it, I’d called out again. “Flint, this isn’t funny, you know. You’re starting to piss me off.” But I hadn’t felt angry with Flint. I’d felt scared. More scared than I could ever remember feeling before, but I hadn’t known why. What had there been to be scared of on such a beautiful summer’s day? The house was made of brick and stone. It wasn’t as if it could hurt me in anyway.
Taking a deep breath in a failed attempt to steady my charging heart, I’d peered around the gap in the door. Sunlight had streamed over my shoulder and into the room that lay on the other side. Flint had been standing in the centre of the small room, staring down at something. But he’d been in the way, blocking my view of whatever had so grabbed his attention – whatever it was that he had described as being fucked-up.
“What is it, Flint?” I had whispered. “What are you looking at?”
“Come here,” he’d said, not looking back, but offering out his hand for me to take.
Gingerly, I’d placed one foot in front of the other and stepped into the room. The floor was made of wood, and the boards creaked with each step I had taken closer to Flint. Reaching for Flint’s hand in the near darkness, I’d entwined my fingers with his. I’d looked down at his feet, in the direction he’d been staring. There was a small mound of earth, like a molehill. Sticking out of the top of it was a withered bunch of flowers. The stems had long since turned a dark brown and the petals black. Several had fallen away and lay looking like little more than ash over the small mound of earth.
“Why would anyone plant a flower in the middle of the room?” I’d asked Flint in little more than a whisper.
“Out of respect?” Flint had whispered back.
“Respect of what?” I’d asked, glancing sideways at him, my own eyes as wide as his as we’d stood shoulder to shoulder in the dark, holding hands.
“For them,” Flint had said, nodding his head forward.
I’d turned and looked front. There were two shapes just feet away, close to the far wall of the house. Flint had led me slowly forward, then stopped. Taking my hand from his, I’d placed it over my mouth to stifle the sudden urge to scream. At our feet lay two skeletons. They were both big enough to have been adult humans. One had been bigger than the other so I guessed that one had once been female the other male. They were both spread star-shaped and propped against the wall. It looked as if they had been caught somewhere between sitting up and lying down. There was no flesh left on their grey bones. Their sunken eye sockets staring blankly back at us and their fleshless mouths had seemed to grin – or had that been a grimace?
“I want to leave,” I’d breathed, gripping hold of Flint’s hand again and tugging on it. As I had done this, I’d felt something warm and sticky splash over the back of my hand. Glancing down, I’d seen several drops of blood leak from the deepest scratch on my arm and splash down onto the dead flower.
“This is so fucked-up,” Flint had whispered again, mouth open and eyes wide.
“I know. That’s why we should just get out of here,” I’d implored him, yanking on his hand again in the direction of the door and the light.
“They were murdered – left here to die,” Flint had said, resisting my tugs on his arm as if unable to stop looking down at the two skeletons.
“How do you know that they were murdered?” I’d asked, screwing up my eyes and peeking out from beneath my long eyelashes.
“Look at the chains around their hands and feet,” Flint had said. “They were chained up and left in this house to die.”
“I don’t want to look,” I’d said, cowering beside him.
“It’s like they were crucified,” Flint had said, sounding breathless.
“Crucified?” I’d covered my eyes with my free hand and peeked through my fingers and down at the skeletons.
“Look at those nails sticking out from the centre of their hands,” he’d said, pointing.
Peering through the gaps in my fingers, I’d looked down at each of the skeletons’ hands. Flint had been right. From the middle of each bony palm had protruded a long, rusty-looking nail. Each one thick with a bulbous head and twisted pointed end. I could remember feeling a hot flush of bile hit the back of my throat. “Why would anyone want to stick nails in their hands?” I’d said, choking back the bile and the urge to be sick.
“You have no business being in here,” I’d heard a voice suddenly boom from over my shoulder.
Flint and I had both spun around, and had been unable to keep quiet the scream that tore from my throat. My Uncle Sidney stood in the open doorway.
“Uncle…?” I’d cried.
“Get out!” his voice had boomed. Never before had I heard him sound so angry – never before had his deep voice sounded so much like thunder. “You shouldn’t be in here. This place is dangerous.”
And when we hadn’t come forward at once, my uncle reached for both Flint and me with his giant hands. Digging his fingers into our shoulders, he’d dragged us forward and toward the door. Before he shoved me through it and back out into the sunlight, I’d glanced back into the room. And I was surprised to see that the plant was no longer dead and withered-looking. It appeared to be in full bloom – each one of its bright green steams covered with purple-blue coloured flowers.
My uncle kicked the door to the house shut with the heel of his boot and dragged us not back toward the brambles that we had taken such effort to climb through, but into the meadow. Once we were some distance from the old house, my uncle let go of both Flint and me. His face had been red and covered in beads of sweat. He blew out his cheeks as if catching his breath.
“Who were those two dead people?” Flint dared to ask, rubbing his shoulder where my uncle had gripped him. My shoulder felt as if a firecracker had exploded inside of it.
“I don’t know who they were and I don’t care,” my uncle had said, his eyes boring into us. “You never go back to that place – either of you. You don’t ever tell anyone what you saw in there. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” I’d said, lowering my head. I had hated to see my uncle looking so angry – so angry at me.
“But they had been chained up – they had nails sticking out of their hands,” Flint had said. “We should tell someone.”
“Tell who?” my uncle glared down at him.
“The night watchmen,” Flint had said. “They keep the peace, don’t they?”
“The night watchmen?” My uncle had scoffed. “Don’t make me laugh, boy. By the look of those bodies, they’ve been there hundreds of years.”
“So who killed them?” I dared to ask. “Why were they chained up with nails driven into their…”
“Those Beautiful Immortals resorted to all kinds of barbarism,” my uncle cut in.
“Those dead bodies were Beautiful Immortals?” Flint had gasped, eyes wide again.
“No,” my uncle had snapped.
“How can you be so sure?” I’d asked him.
“Because they’re both dead, aren’t they?” My uncle had fixed me with a beady stare. “Immortal means you live forever – you don’t ever die.”
“But the flower…” I’d started.
“Look, I haven’t got time to stand here talking to you two,” my uncle barked. “I’ve got a newspaper to print and you should be helping me, not sneaking all over the place with
this young boy…”
“We weren’t sneaking anywhere,” Flint had shot back.
“No? So what were you both doing so far out of town – just the two of you?” My uncle had looked hard at Flint as if studying him.
I’d glanced at my friend, then away. When Flint failed to say anything, my uncle puffed out his chest and said, “I thought as much. Now get home before I come around and speak to your father,” he’d warned Flint.
Flint looked at me and I at him.
“What are you waiting for, boy? Scram!” my uncle had roared.
Turning on the heels of his worn-out shoes, Flint ran back across the meadow and in the direction of town. Standing alone with my uncle and head down so I didn’t have to meet his stare, he said more soothingly, “You’re too young to be carrying a baby in your belly, Mila. Just be careful. Just be good.”
And if my Uncle Sidney had ever thought about teaching me anything about the act of sex and what it might lead to, that had been it. He never mentioned anything like that again. He didn’t need to. I understood the point he had made perfectly.
“Now let’s be getting home,” he said. “We’ve got work to do.”
So just as I now followed Clarabel home, my uncle had followed me, my head down so low that my chin rested against my chest. Reaching the door of his house on the opposite side of town, I’d looked up at my uncle and had said, “You told me to get out of that house – you said it was dangerous. But how can it be? Those two people, whoever they were, are both dead. The dead can’t hurt you.”
“I wasn’t talking about the dead people,” he said, pushing open the front door to his house and stepping inside. “I was talking about that old building. It looked so old that it might just fall in and kill you.”
So what were you doing out there? I had wanted to ask, but I hadn’t wanted to push my luck with my uncle so I had kept my mouth shut.
“This is where I live,” Clarabel suddenly said, tearing me from my memories.
“Huh?” I said, looking at her then toward the narrow house she had led me to through the rain.
“You said you wanted to speak with my father?” she reminded me.
“That’s right,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” I told her.
“Okay,” she sighed, turning and knocking on the ancient front door. “But he sure isn’t going to want to speak to you.”
Chapter Three
The front door to the house opened just wide enough for a white bony hand to slip out and curl itself around Clarabel’s shoulder. The hand snatched her through the gap and I lost sight of her. I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye. The door started to close at once and I quickly wedged my boot between it and the frame. The door came to a juddering halt against my foot. I peered into the gap and could see two pale eyes staring back out at me.
“Hello?” I said. “My name is…”
“I know who you are,” a voice rattled from the slice of darkness.
I took a deep breath before speaking again. “I’d really like to speak with you.”
A face slowly revealed itself to me from within the gap of darkness behind the door. I recognised it at once. It was the face of the man from the butcher’s shop in town – the man who had been staring at me from behind the display of raw and bloody meat. His face looked as gaunt and sunken as it had before. His eyes were two hollow pits in the centre of his face and they now reminded me of the skeletons I had discovered as a young girl while out searching for a den with Flint.
“I have nothing to say to you,” the man said through the gap in the door.
I just wanted to say sorry… I wanted to explain about what happened to… to your daughter… to Annabel,” I said, my stomach becoming a series of tangled knots and my mouth turning dry.
“One of them now, are you?” the man said, his face just a thin strip of pale flesh in the gap of darkness.
“I’m sorry?” I frowned back at him. “One of who?”
He glanced down at my thigh that could be seen through the opening of my coat. I followed his stare and as I did, I saw that one of his painfully thin hands was covered in blood to the wrist. Black clots of blood dripped from his fingers and from the meat clever he held.
“Given you a gun have they – as if you haven’t caused enough trouble already in Shade,” he said, his voice rattling in the back of his scrawny throat.
“My uncle gave it to me,” I said, realising that I hadn’t had a chance to say what I’d come to say to this man – to Annabel’s and Clarabel’s father. I glanced down at the gun that I had strapped to my thigh with the holster Calix had given to me. “I haven’t come to cause trouble with it. The gun is for protection…”
“It’s a shame you didn’t use it to protect my daughter,” he said, black sunken eyes now fixed on mine.
My heart shrivelled at what he had just said. It was true. Calix was right. The villagers of Shade did hold me responsible for Annabel’s death. “Please, if I could explain…” I started before yelping with pain.
The butcher was trying to close the door once more and it was crushing my foot that was still wedged in the gap. There was so much I wanted to say to him. “I didn’t know you had another daughter, Mr.… Mr.…?”
“Want to kill her, too, do you?” he said, pushing against the door.
“Perhaps now that Clarabel is feeling better I will see her in school tomorrow?” I said through gritted teeth as I tried to block out the pain in my foot and wanting to keep the conversation with the butcher going.
“I doubt it very much,” the man sniffed.
“Why not?” Did he really believe that I would harm Clarabel like he believed I had harmed Annabel?
“There is no school tomorrow. It’s the weekend,” he said, looking at me as if I were an utter imbecile.
With the pain in my foot now unbearable, I slid it from the gap in the door. He slammed it shut so hard that the adjacent windows rattled in their frames.
“Please, I just want to explain,” I said to the closed front door. “I didn’t hurt Annabel. I wouldn’t ever hurt anyone.”
No other sound came from behind the door. All I could hear was the thrum of driving rain all around me. Turning my back on the door, I stepped away and headed back in the direction of the small house where I now lived in Shade. I walked across the park. The swing where I had discovered Clarabel gusted back and forth as if being pushed by an invisible pair of hands. There was a part of me which felt relieved that I wouldn’t have to face the children of Shade so soon again after what had happened. I had the weekend to get my thoughts and self together at least. But there was another part of me that felt confused. Both Rush and Rea had told me that there were just the ten children living in Shade. I was sure of that. Had they been mistaken or had I? If Annabel really had had an identical twin sister, wouldn’t Rush have said something about it as we had sat and talked the night before? I had spoken about Annabel at length and what I had seen happen to her. Why then hadn’t he told me that she had a twin named Clarabel? Might he not have told me to lessen the guilt that I already felt? Wasn’t it bad enough that Annabel’s parents had lost a daughter? Hadn’t the knowledge that she’d had a sister too only added to the guilt I really felt? When I saw Rush next I would ask him why he hadn’t told me. Another question to add to the ever growing list of questions I now had about Shade, the people who lived in it, and my parents. And what of this young witch I had grown up hearing about? I hadn’t even come close to discovering the truth about her. But I knew more about Rea, Rush, and Calix than perhaps I first thought. Rush had told me that they had travelled to England by boat over ten years ago. They had fled their home in Switzerland and their native language was called Valais. I had seen passages of the writing written across Annabel’s school book and even more of it written over much of Calix’s chest, back, and arms. When I’d asked Rush about the writing on Calix’s body, he had said that his brother hadn’t wanted to forge
t their homeland. In fact, Calix hadn’t wanted to come to England. But with their home nothing more than a wasteland, they had fled. Rea had brought them as young boys to England, then to Shade, which they had found deserted. So would any of the people in Shade even know what had happened to my parents if they had arrived after everyone had disappeared? Was I wasting my time? Had me leaving Maze been a big mistake? If I’d stayed at home I’d be tucked up in my bed and if my uncle had been away on one of his many trips, then Flint would be tucked up with me. Reaching the front gate of the house I’d moved into, I looked at it standing at the end of the paved path. Was this what I had left my hometown for? To take up residence in a cottage that had once belonged to the previous headmistress of the school. Not only had I taken her home, I had also taken her job.
I pushed open the gate, then stopped midstride, remembering the night that Rush had first led me to the cottage. When I’d asked him who had once lived there, he had said, I think it belonged to some old woman – she was ancient. Died a long time ago. I think she used to be the headmistress of the village school – but like I’ve said, that was a long time ago.
“Some old woman?” I whispered out loud, letting the gate swing shut, where it hit me in the butt. I made my way slowly up the path to the front door. Fishing the key from my pocket, I remembered what Rush had told me only last night. He had said that the previous school teacher had been called Julia Miller. He had told me that she had travelled from Switzerland with him, Calix, Rea, and the other villagers. Sliding the key into the lock and pushing open the front door, I could suddenly remember Rush’s voice as if he were whispering the words into my ears.
“Julia Miller died just a year or so ago,” Rush had explained to me.
“She was fluent in speaking, reading, and writing English, so she was appointed teacher once we had settled in Shade. Julia taught all of us. Some of us learnt quicker than others – some of the adults still struggle, but we can get by…”
