Blood Entwines

by Caroline Healy

  She opened up the search engine and typed in the words Saunderson and missing. Maybe if she did some research she would find a link. If Saunderson was real, if the weirdo was real, maybe the others were too – the young woman, the little boy – all the people in her dreams.

  She paused mid-strike. Something was wrong. She listened to the sounds of the house. She stretched her attention beyond her bedroom wall, in the general direction of her parents’ room. She reached out with her mind. Nothing, except sleep. She could not detect anything there. She shrugged her shoulders; perhaps she was being overly paranoid. Tentatively she moved her attention beyond the house, letting her mind roam as far as possible. She felt her control stretch further and further. Her abilities were becoming stronger. This new aptitude worried her.

  There. Almost at her limit she could feel it.

  A decision, an intent, murderous. Hannah pulled back from it, fighting to get away from the blackness. She slumped at the desk, her breath coming in sharp gasps. She was going to be sick. Pulling in her awareness quickly, she tried to come back into her own consciousness, getting away from the decision that was based on blood. It was worse than in her dreams. Being faced with the reality of such a decision made her feel nauseated, left a stain on her, an imprint in her head. In a few short seconds she knew the internal debate, the struggle to decide. The weirdo was out there somewhere, contemplating about blood, thinking about Kara. Had he come to kill her? Had she met the same fate as the people in Hannah’s dreams?

  Hannah opened Facebook. She would have to hack into someone’s account to get the number. Not a big deal, she knew all about computers and coding. She rooted in the desk drawer for the rarely charged mobile.

  ‘Please be OK. Please be OK,’ she chanted, her fingers racing across the keyboard.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The noise of the phone ringing infiltrated Kara’s dreams. She turned over and buried her head under the pillow. It’s too early. She drifted on a wave of pleasant almost-sleep, until a memory poked at her and she sat bolt upright in bed.

  She squinted at the clock through blurry, sleep-filled eyes. The alarm showed that it was 6 a.m.

  Her computer emitted a shrill beep. Someone had sent an instant message. Her phone on her bedside table vibrated. More messages.

  How had she got into bed last night?

  The last thing she remembered was lying on the floor in the bathroom.

  She groaned loudly to herself. Her head felt like a block of concrete. She dragged her fists across her eyes, scraping back the sleepy crusts from the corners.

  In a split second a thought entered her head. He must have carried her from the bathroom.

  ‘Oh my God!’

  She whipped back the duvet and checked what she was wearing: the same clothes as last night, her jeans and T-shirt. She said a silent thank you. Her hoodie was on the chair in the corner, curled on top of it fast asleep was the black kitten.

  Kara got out of the bed slowly, stretching her limbs, mentally checked that everything was in order. She moved to her computer. Ten IMs from Hannah.

  Kara had no idea Hannah had an online presence. Had never given her her account details.

  She clicked a few of the messages.

  Where r u?

  Answer ur phone.

  Why r u not online?

  She wrote a quick message and pressed send.

  I’m alive. Not that u care either way. C u at school if u bother 2 turn up!

  Kara couldn’t seem to ignite her brain cells. The whole morning passed in a blur. It was as if she was moving through oil, doing everything at a slow, laboured pace. Pulling on her clothes, fixing her hair, gathering her school things – it seemed to take forever. Eventually, she made it to school, walking as quickly as she could down the corridor.

  By the time she got to class the teacher was already there and all the other students seated. Kara paused in the doorway. Hannah was sitting at her desk, looking pale and tired, hunched over her books. Kara momentarily felt sorry for her, but then remembered the last few days of no contact.

  ‘Glad you could join us!’ Kara slipped into her seat, dropping her bag to the floor.

  Hannah looked at her guiltily. The teacher called for group work and the students began to pair up. The sound of quiet chatter filled the room.

  Hannah scraped her desk and chair towards Kara’s, looking a little abashed. They bowed their heads together over their books and pretended to read for a moment.

  ‘Well . . .’ said Kara. ‘Where were you? You just disappeared. I haven’t heard from you since you stormed out of my house!’

  She shot an accusing look at Hannah.

  ‘I wasn’t feeling well. Migraine.’

  Kara snorted at the lame explanation. She waited for a better excuse, but none came. Hannah sat still in the chair, reading her book.

  Resigned to the fact that she would get no further apology or information, Kara considered if she should forgive Hannah. Glancing over her shoulder, she looked to the back of the room. Jenny and Ashleigh were sitting in their seats chatting together, their open books ignored. What options did Kara have?

  Tutting loudly to highlight her reluctance, she summarised the events of the last few days, leaving out details about Ben and the gap. If Hannah wasn’t going to reveal all her secrets, then why should Kara?

  ‘So he, it . . .’ Hannah struggled for words. ‘It wants to go back?’

  Kara looked towards the window. ‘I don’t know. I suppose so. It was like the blood had a mind of its own and just jumped back into his body when he cut his hand.’

  ‘And what happened to your blood?’ Hannah looked at her expectantly.

  ‘It was like it’s half and half. Diluted or something. His blood went shooting off back to him and separated, kind of, from mine. So . . .’ The words trailed off between them, but they both knew what the other was thinking.

  If he took back his blood, would Kara survive?

  ‘Why don’t we find out who he is? There has to be some record of an accident or something. The same way he found you. Let’s check the local papers.’

  The question was obvious, but Kara had been avoiding asking it out loud. She wasn’t sure if Hannah would help her.

  The fact that her stalker hadn’t been waiting for her outside the school this morning had made her nervous. Not that his absence wasn’t a welcome relief, but if he wasn’t there then where was he? And, more importantly, what was he doing?

  ‘OK,’ she said quietly, not daring to get too carried away.

  Hannah had let her down once. Who’s to say she wouldn’t do it again?

  Kara pushed through the revolving doors of the public library and inhaled deeply. The place smelt of paper, cracked leather and dust. She loved it. Hannah nudged past her into the foyer, oblivious to the sanctity of the library.

  ‘Come on. Let’s get this done. I can’t be late home from school.’

  Hannah had been chewing on the inside of her cheek since they’d left St Aloysius’. They were skiving, but nobody would notice. The seniors were pretty much free to come and go as they pleased, as long as they had a permission slip – which was the only part of the equation they were missing.

  ‘Chill. We have plenty of time. It’s not like your parents are going to send a search party for you if you’re five minutes late.’

  Hannah gave a withering look, rolling her eyes.

  ‘Would they?’ asked Kara, staring after Hannah as she advanced towards the information desk.

  ‘Yes?’ The librarian looked up, turning her head pointedly towards the clock on the wall. ‘Help with a school project, is it, girls?’

  Hannah shifted from foot to foot, her gaze levelled at the floor, leaving Kara to do all the talking.

  ‘We want to have a look at your archive machine . . .’ said Kara.

  ‘They’re off limits today.’ The librarian didn’t give her a chance to finish her request.

  ‘But –’ continued Kara. />
  ‘The archive machines are not to be used by unsupervised minors, especially not during school hours when young ladies –’ she looked at them both – ‘should be in class.’

  She began to shuffle through library-loan-request cards, her hands moving efficiently. Kara didn’t have a back-up plan. What should they do now? She turned to ask Hannah a question, but her friend was otherwise occupied. She was standing still, her hands bunched by her sides, the knuckles whitening. She made a low hissing sound. Kara looked up, none of the readers had noticed; the librarian was still arranging loan cards. Hannah whimpered. She swayed unsteadily before lifting her head.

  Kara stumbled back, bumping into the high counter. ‘Hannah,’ she whispered.

  The girl’s eyes had rolled back in her head, only the whites were visible. Her mouth moved quickly, uttering some kind of incantation. She looked terrifying and terrified at the same time, her milky gaze fixed on the woman behind the counter.

  The librarian’s hand stopped mid-movement and she slumped in her chair, as if the energy had been sucked from her. She opened and closed her mouth, but no sound came out.

  ‘Archive machine?’ said Kara, her voice low.

  ‘Archives,’ said the librarian loudly, pushing herself up from the chair, knocking the neat stack of library cards to the floor. She moved unsteadily from behind the counter towards the back room. Kara followed, leading a muttering Hannah by the arm.

  The librarian took a bronze key from the chain attached to her belt and, like a jailer, she unlocked the door and pushed it open, gesturing to the back room. She turned on her heels and returned to the desk. Kara took Hannah and led her inside, kicking the door closed behind them.

  The room was small, and two high narrow windows let in just a sliver of light. Low-hung electric bulbs provided the rest of the illumination. There was a large table with varying types of chairs huddled around it. A layer of dust topped the backs of the seats and the surface of the table. Tall grey filing cabinets took up most of the wall space, and there in the back of the room sat an ancient computer. Its screen was huge and the keyboard must have been about twenty years old.

  Kara led Hannah to the dusty table and pulled out a chair. Gently, she helped ease her friend into the seat. The girl slumped forward, her head resting on her forearms, her back heaving as she wheezed air into her chest.

  ‘Hannah?’ Kara was really worried. She’d never seen Hannah this way before. The last time the girl had messed with their teacher’s mind it had been a silent and easy process.

  ‘Hannah,’ repeated Kara, throwing her satchel on the table before kneeling down. ‘What happened?’

  Hannah shook her head, coughing to clear her lungs. After what seemed like a long time, she lifted her head from her hands. Her eyes were deep pools of infinite grey.

  ‘Someone was looking for me,’ she whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was trying to change her mind and I could feel it. Someone else, searching for me.’

  ‘Who? Who’s searching for you?’

  ‘I don’t know, but he knows I exist.’ Hannah looked pale. Her hands were shaking.

  ‘Here, put this on. You’re freezing.’ Kara slipped her blazer over her friend’s shoulders.

  ‘Me changing people’s minds is like a marker or a beacon. Whoever is looking for me can sense it, the way I can sense people’s fear in my dreams, or their decisions when I want to alter them. The fear is their marker . . . the decision-changing is mine.’ Hannah stopped talking, her eyes shifting from left to right as if accessing some kind of internal database. ‘I couldn’t pull out halfway through.’ She nodded towards the door, referring to the librarian. ‘It messes with their heads, leaves this gap, like a hole in their memory. Once it’s there other moments disappear, other things that are important.’ She tapped her left foot, jiggling it up and down, chewing on the inside of her cheek.

  Kara wanted to ask how she knew all this, but suspected it had something to do with her accident.

  ‘It’s OK. It’s fine.’ Kara squeezed her hand, changing the emphasis of their conversation. ‘I think we should just get what we came for. We can talk about the other stuff when we can concentrate fully.’

  Kara went to the archive machine and pushed the switch. For a minute nothing happened. Then, with a whirring noise and something akin to computer splutter, the screen glowed an eerie green.

  ‘We’ll start at five years ago and do the first three pages of each paper. They contain the main local-news stories.’

  Hannah nodded, sitting a little straighter in the chair, her complexion regaining some colour.

  Kara looked at the written instructions taped to the side of the machine. Tentatively she clicked the mouse and the screen shimmered. She typed in a date and the parameters into the search category.

  Article after article in various shades of grey-and-white newspaper print whizzed by, the whoosh of the machine as it exchanged one date for the next the only sound. Kara’s eyes strained as she scanned page after page, searching for the clue that would put them on the right track.

  After a while Hannah appeared beside her, lending another pair of eyes to the search. Their enthusiasm waned as the newspaper pages, and the time, ticked by. Just when they were about to give up Kara spotted a small heading on the bottom of the Daily Bugle’s front page.

  ‘There!’ she exclaimed.

  They leaned in to see the fuzzy print. The headline read: Teenager Found in Alleyway.

  This morning the body of a youth was discovered in an alleyway to the rear of Drury Street. Whilst emptying the bins, council worker Burt Nugent came across what he thought was a dead body. On closer inspection he found that the youth was breathing and he immediately alerted police. Badly bruised and cut but with no obvious external injuries the youth was taken to St Mary’s Hospital, where he is said to be in a critical but stable condition. Formal identification has yet to be made but it is assumed that he is missing person, Jack Kennedy, of Highbury Close. Mr Kennedy was recently bereaved of his parents, who died in suspicious circumstances.

  There was a small picture, a driving-licence photo at the top of the article. Kara peered at it, trying to see if it was the same person. This guy was much younger, maybe seventeen or eighteen. He was fresh faced, boyish even, his hair floppy, falling across his forehead. The eyes were blue. Hannah was watching her. Kara nodded her head.

  ‘That’s him.’

  There was a small map in the very bottom right-hand corner of the article. Kara drew in a sharp breath.

  ‘What?’ asked Hannah.

  Kara’s finger touched the old screen, tracing the outline of the map, following along Drury Street and round the block of buildings to the front, which faced on to Hyde Street.

  Her finger stopped in the centre of a row of buildings and hovered there.

  ‘It’s where my dad died.’ She nodded her head at the mouse. ‘Go back.’

  Hannah complied, rolling the screen back to the top of the page. Kara read the date. ‘That’s two days after my dad jumped.’

  Her voice was shaking. She found it hard to talk about her father, least of all to reminisce over that day. Her dad used to make her pancakes for breakfast. On her birthday he would pick a different flower each year and leave it on her pillow for when she woke up. He’d taught her how to ride her bike and play Twenty-one. The police report claimed that he’d thrown himself from the roof of a six-storey building on Hyde Street at 3.27 p.m. on a wintry day, when the sun was low and bright in the sky.

  Kara had been at school, her old school, and when it was time to go home her next-door neighbour was waiting for her. She knew when she saw Mrs Knowles that something was seriously wrong. Her doughy eyes were misted over and her hands kept wringing and unwringing themselves.

  There had been an accident, she told Kara. Accident was a word that people began to put in the sentence when they wished to gloss over the fact that Kara’s dad had hurled himself off a building.

&
nbsp; For weeks afterwards, she had nightmares of the final seconds before he hit the ground. Always before the last moment, before he made contact, she would wake up screaming.

  She looked again at the heading of the article. This person, Jack Kennedy, had been found two days after her father’s suicide, unconscious, a street away from the scene of the accident.

  She had his blood circulating through her.

  Kara sat very still and thought about the best course of action.

  Hannah sat beside her, watching.

  ‘I need to speak to him.’

  ‘I know. I could sense him last night, his decisions; one minute they’re sane and rational, the next ugly and violent. It’s like he’s two people rolled into one. The shift from one to the other makes him dangerous. He could choose either option.’

  The door to the archive room opened. The librarian, her hair slightly undone from its bun, the corner of her blouse poking out from her skirt, ‘Girls!’ she exclaimed. ‘No unsupervised minors allowed.’ She pointed to a large laminated sign stuck to the wall.

  Kara clicked the exit key on the screen.

  ‘Who let you in here?’ demanded the librarian, a flare of colour rising to her cheeks.

  ‘Lets get out of here,’ said Kara.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Monday

  Kara looked for him in the morning as she walked to school. She peered out of the window during class looking for a red bike parked under the tree across the road. She sniffed the air on the walk home. Nothing. It was as if he’d disappeared.

  Could there be a link between him and her father? She had to speak to him, had to ask.

  Where the hell was he?

  Wednesday

  Kara tried to study, but it was proving decidedly difficult. The week had been so dull. Ben was away with his family for a few days, so she hadn’t seen him properly since their night at the gap.

  Thinking about the failed date made her wince.