by Tim O'Rourke
Brushing dust from the knees of my jeans, I headed down the corridor to the locker room. I pushed open the door and stepped inside. There were four lockers. One for Potter, and one for Murphy, but whom did the other two lockers belong to? The first was stocked full of cigarettes. I didn’t have to be any good at detective work to figure out who that particular locker belonged to. On the top shelf was a pack of disposable razorblades and a can of shaving foam. Picking it up, I removed the cap and squeezed a little of it into the palm of my hand. The smell made me fell heady and my heart quickened. It was the smell I’d so often smelt when kissing Potter. In a strange kind of way it was his smell. It was comforting. Holding it just beneath the tip of my nose, I took a deep breath, closing my eyes. My mind swam with memories of us locked together as one. Opening my eyes again, I placed the can of shaving foam back where I had found it and closed the door.
The second locker rattled like a sack of old bones as I yanked open the door. There was a pipe lying on the top shelf and a tobacco pouch. Reaching inside, I took it out and opened it. The pouch was full of stringy lengths of brown tobacco. Just one whiff of it reminded me of my friend, Murphy. But Murphy had become more to me than just a friend. He had become like a father and I loved him as such. To be near to him and not to be able to be as we had before, crushed me as much as not being able to show my true feelings to Potter. Closing the pouch, I placed it back on the shelf. Hanging beneath were several finely starched pressed shirts. They weren’t police shirts and none of them had the sergeant stripes on the shoulders that I had always seen. Murphy and his insistence on wearing neatly pressed shirts, I smiled to myself. Shame about the faded denims and moth-eaten slippers. I smiled, closing the locker door and opening the next.
This one didn’t have any clothing hanging in it, but there was a pile of dog-eared sheets of paper. Reaching into the locker, I gathered them up and took them out. The sheets were covered in reams of spidery handwriting. There were so many that I shuffled them together into a neat pile in my hands. As I did, one of the sheets of paper fluttered free and landed at my feet. Bending at the knees, I reached down for the sheet of paper. As if stung, I jerked backwards at what was written across the piece of paper in an untidy scrawl. Ratbag – A Short Story by Isidor Smith.
“Isidor’s stories,” I gasped out loud as I snatched up the paper.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, I thumbed through the sheets of paper. Tears filled my eyes as I remembered how he had told me and my friends the struggle he’d had to read and write as a boy. He had once told us the story of how he had been taught to read by his friend Melody Rose. But if these were his stories, where was the author of them? Was Isidor here in this where and when? Scrambling to my feet, I placed the stories back where I had found them. I opened the last of the locker doors. There was nothing that I could see. I reached inside, running my hand to the furthest corners of the top shelf. It was empty. There must be something I’m not seeing. There must be some clue to tell me who the locker belonged to.
“The locker is spare if you want it, Kiera,” a voice said. “The person it belonged to won’t be back – not for a while at least.”
Spinning around, I gasped at the sight of Murphy standing in the open locker room doorway.
Chapter Eight
The pipe drooped from the corner of his mouth. Clouds of smoke pumped from it and settled like a blue haze just above his head. He wore a neatly pressed white shirt, blue jeans, and slippers on his feet.
“Who did the locker belong to?” I asked, trying to hide my surprise at seeing him. Where had he come from and how had he crept up on me without me hearing him?
“Kayla Hunt was her name,” Murphy said, taking the pipe from his mouth and tapping the bottom of the bowl with one knuckle.
“Was?” I frowned. “Where is Kayla Hunt now?”
“She’s gone away,” Murphy said, propping the pipe back into the corner of his mouth.
That’s what Potter had said when I’d first arrived at the offices of The Creeping Men. He’d said that there had been others but they had gone away.
Ignoring my question, Murphy came back at me with one of his own. “What are you doing here so early? It’s just gone seven o’clock.”
“I’m keen that’s all,” I shrugged, closing Kayla’s locker door.
“Is that all?” Murphy asked, watching me through the smoke that continued to rise up from his pipe.
“You said that you were going to talk to me – explain stuff,” I reminded him.
“Let’s talk then,” he said, leaving the locker room.
I followed him as he limped back down the corridor, over the hatch and into the main office. He went to the filing cabinet, switching on the kettle. Sitting at Potter’s desk, I watched Murphy take two of the mugs and drop a teabag into each of them. He then picked up the half full bottle of milk. He sniffed the open top, screwed up his nose a little, then splashed some of the milk into the mugs.
“Sugar?” he asked without looking back.
“No thanks,” I said, knowing that Murphy should have already known that. What else had he forgotten? I knew that now I had him alone it was my chance to find out.
Placing one of the mugs before me, he went to his own desk and dropped into the chair. Leaning back and swinging his legs up onto the table, he looked at me and said, “So what do you want to know, Kiera Hudson?”
Noticing the clotted lumps of milk floating in my tea like a layer of scum, I pushed the mug to one side. Murphy seemed quite happy to drink his. “Who is Lois Li?” I asked.
“That’s what all the newbies ask,” he grunted, fixing me with a cold, blue stare.
“So who is she?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never met her,” he said.
“You work for her, don’t you?” I said.
“And so do you,” he shot back.
“But I’ve just got here…”
“And how exactly did you get here?” Murphy asked, refilling his pipe from the pouch but not once taking his eyes off me.
I looked back at him and swallowed hard. What did I say? How much could I say? How much did he know? When Potter and I had quarrelled about Heather Locke a few nights ago, he had said that if I wasn’t happy with how he ran things around here, I should ask the agency to push me someplace else. I sensed then and believed now that had perhaps been a slip-up on Potter’s part. So hoping that I was right, but still cautious of exactly what I should say, I said, “It was like I had woken up from a deep sleep and found myself in my car heading toward the Ragged Cove. There was an envelope on the passenger seat. So I pulled over and opened it. Inside was a letter stating that I should come here. That’s all I know.”
How did that sound? What would Murphy make of it? I couldn’t tell. His face was expressionless as he sat and looked at me.
To my surprise, Murphy said, “I remember coming round to discover that I had been shot. I was lying in the back of a marked police van, with Potter leaning over me. He was bitching that he hadn’t meant to have shot me. That his gun had gone off by accident.”
“I heard you and Potter talking about this…” I cut in.
“When?” he asked, his blank face turning into a look of suspicion.
“The other night in the grounds of Bastille Hall,” I explained. “I was hiding behind a tree and could hear you and Potter arguing about what had happened.”
“We’re always fucking arguing,” Murphy grunted as if happy with my explanation. He might not have been a sergeant in this where and when, but he still had that air of authority about him.
“Always?” I asked.
He eyed me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, you said you remember waking up in the back of that police van after being shot,” I reminded him. “Did you know Potter before that incident? Were you already friends?”
“That I don’t remember,” Murphy said, sliding his feet from off the desk and sitting forward in his chair. “I’m guessing t
hat we must have done because there was…” he trailed off.
“What?” I prompted him.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” he said, his eyes almost seeming to cloud over. “Despite the fucking idiot shooting me, I felt that perhaps there was a connection between us somehow. That we had been friends many years ago but I just couldn’t remember it. Anyway, I got early retirement and Potter got sacked.”
“So how did you both end up working here – for the agency and Lois Li?” I asked him.
“I discovered that no one really wants to employ a disgruntled copper with a dodgy hip,” Murphy said. “And Potter found it even harder to make a living. No one wants to take on a cop that has a twitchy trigger-finger. It was then we got offered the chance of working for the agency – for The Creeping Men.”
“Offered? How?” I said.
“A beige coloured envelope – just like the one you said you found in your car – was pushed through my letterbox,” Murphy said. “Inside was the offer of a job working for The Creeping Men. Potter got the same offer posted through his letterbox.”
I thought of the love letters that Potter had once sent to Sophie and how they too had been pushed. Was there a connection? But that had been in another where and when, so did it matter? I looked at Murphy through the halo of blue pipe smoke that hovered about his head and shoulders. “You said you don’t remember anything other than waking up shot in the back of the van, but did you know you were a Vampyrus?”
“Haven’t you always known that you are different?” Murphy said back. “I could never forget what I truly am. Potter hadn’t forgotten that either. It’s a secret we both keep from the humans.”
“So you remember The Hollows?” I asked.
“The Hollows? Murphy frowned, his dark eyebrows meeting in the middle of his brow. “What are The Hollows?”
To learn that he knew nothing of The Hollows – the secret world beneath our feet – hit me like a punch. It was his home. It was where he had grown up. It was where he had taken Pen and where they had fallen in love while watching the magical moving pictures played out across the walls of The Hollows by the Vampyrus named Burton. It was like much of Murphy’s memory had been erased. Had I done that? Had that been the price my friends had to pay for forgetting me? I had tricked them – pushed them away – so that they could lead happy lives with the people they most loved. With this thought at the forefront of my mind, and now not knowing how much Murphy remembered, I said, “How did your wife deal with you being shot and having to leave the police force…?” I started.
“What wife?” Murphy said, sucking on his pipe again. “I don’t have a wife.”
“Girlfriend?”
“No girlfriend,” he said.
“No one?” I asked, wanting to ask about Meren and Nessa, but fearing that I shouldn’t.
“No one,” he said with a brisk shake of his head. “It’s like I have no past. It’s like my life was somehow reset in the back of that police van the moment Potter shot me.”
If the Murphy sitting across the room from me in the cloud of smoke was the Murphy I had pushed back, then something had gone terribly wrong. And was it my fault? Where was Pen? Where were Meren and Nessa? If this was the Murphy I knew and loved, why weren’t they here with him? Why weren’t they all happy together? But Sophie was here. She was with Potter? They were together.
“What about Potter and Sophie?” I asked.
“What about them?” Murphy eyed me through the smoke.
“Well, Potter remembered her and his life was reset like yours, wasn’t it?” I said, trying to make sense of the answers I was getting from Murphy.
“Potter met Sophie after he shot me,” Murphy explained. “She was temping here at The Creeping Men, but she didn’t work out.”
“How come?” I asked.
“She’s not like us, she’s human,” Murphy said. “It seems that her life wasn’t reset. She has a mother and father – she has a fucking life.”
“So how come Potter and Sophie are still together?” I dared to ask, then drawing a deep breath, I quickly added, “How come they are getting married?”
“Have you seen her?” Murphy grunted back at me.
I nodded my head, not needing to be reminded of how beautiful Sophie looked with her thick, blonde hair, full red lips, and legs that went up to her armpits.
“Potter loves a pretty girl, especially human ones,” Murphy said with a hint of disapproval. “But that’s for him to sort out with the agency.”
“Sort what out?” I asked.
“It’s none of my business what Potter gets up to, but be careful, Kiera Hudson, the guy is all hands when there is a pretty girl about – or eye-candy as he likes to say,” Murphy reminded me.
“Well, you said he likes pretty girls, so that counts me out,” I smiled back at Murphy.
Looking straight back at me, he said, “Don’t play too hard to get, Kiera Hudson, Potter likes a challenge – he likes danger. That’s what he likes about Sophie.”
“Is Sophie dangerous?” I asked, a little confused.
“Humans and Vampyrus don’t mix,” Murphy said. “Sure, we live amongst them, and we’re not the only creatures that do so, but we keep to ourselves. We don’t go looking for trouble.”
“And Potter does?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.
“Do bears like to shit in the woods?” Murphy said, getting up and limping back across the office toward the kettle. “Want another cuppa?”
“No thanks,” I said, glancing down into the first mug of tea he had made me. The curdled milk had now formed a white layer of what looked like scum over the top of the tea. I looked away.
“So does Sophie know what Potter is?” I asked.
With his back to me as he refilled his mug, Murphy said, “It ain’t nothing to do with me.”
Sensing that I wasn’t going to get any more information about the state of Potter’s and Sophie’s relationship from Murphy, I changed the subject. Taking another deep breath but needing to know the answer to my next question, I said, “You told me that you felt an immediate connection between you and Potter, even though you couldn’t remember knowing him before waking up in the back of the police van. Did you feel the same about the others that got sent here to The Creeping Men?”
“Just the ones that were like me – not entirely human,” he said, turning and heading back across the office with another mug of steaming tea. He sat in his chair again, wincing at the pain in his hip as he lowered himself into it.
“Did you feel a connection with Kayla Hunt and Isidor Smith?” I dared to ask him.
“How do you know his name?” Murphy quizzed.
“You told me,” I lied.
“No, I told you the girl’s name,” he reminded me.
“Okay, I went snooping,” I confessed, trying to look as coy as I could. “I was looking for an empty locker. I came across some stories with the name Isidor Smith on the front.”
There was a long pause as Murphy sat looking – inspecting me. Eventually his stern look broke into a half smile. “He certainly liked to write stories,” Murphy said. “I read one once. Couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Some soppy love story about a girl with bright pink hair who was covered in tattoos. All a bit fucked up if you ask me. But then again, the kid did used to wander around the place like his head was stuck in the clouds. But saying that, he was pretty good in a fight and a whizz with a crossbow. He used to wear these crucifixes about his neck. Potter used to take the piss and call the boy Madonna.”
I felt my eyes suddenly sting with tears as I heard Murphy talk about my friend Isidor. “Where is he now?” I asked.
“He went away,” Murphy said again.
I knew I wasn’t going to get an answer to my next question but I had to ask. “And what about the girl, Kayla?”
“She went with Isidor. They were brother and sister,” Murphy said.
“What was she like?” I asked, just wanting to hear about my f
riend all over again as if it helped to keep her alive in my heart.
“Real pretty like,” Murphy smiled to himself, as if remembering someone he had once cared very much about. “Her temper was as fiery as the colour of her hair. She didn’t put up with any of Potter’s shit. He’d met his match there. They were always bitching and fighting. But I could tell they were fond of each other. She didn’t like Sophie much either.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Perhaps it was because she was human? Perhaps there was something more to it? I can’t be sure,” Murphy said. “But it was a shame Kayla went, because just like her dopey brother, she was good in a fight. Vicious little fucker when she wanted to be. I could tell she got a real kick out of having a good scrap.”
As Murphy spoke of Kayla, I couldn’t help but remember how Kayla’s eyes would light up with a feverish excitement the moment she realised there was going to be some imminent bloodletting. But where were they now? And why wouldn’t Murphy tell me? Did he even know? There was a lot that Murphy didn’t seem to know or remember.
Then looking at him, I said, “Do you feel the same connection with me?”
“From the moment I laid eyes on you, Kiera Hudson,” he said. “The moment I saw you punch Potter right in his arrogant face, I knew we would become the best of friends.”
Then, reaching into my coat pocket, I closed my fist around Murphy’s crucifix. The one he had given to me before boarding that train. The crucifix that had somehow been pushed with me. Opening my fist, and not knowing whether I was doing the right thing or not, I let him see the crucifix.
“Was me punching Potter in the face the only reason you think there is a connection between us?” I asked.
As if he hadn’t heard a single word of what I’d just said, Murphy slowly got up from his chair, his eyes fixed rigid on the tiny cross I held in my open hand.
“Where did you find that?” he breathed in wonder.
“Is it yours?” I whispered.
He inched his way toward me, eyes not leaving the cross for the briefest of moments. “Yes, it’s mine,” he said, reaching out and closing his fist around it. I held his hand. I didn’t want to let it go. His skin felt ice cold.
