by Tim O'Rourke
I turned off the water and went back onto the landing. I pushed open the door nearest to me. My mouth fell open, eyes bulging in their sockets. “How… wow!” I gasped. “Wow! Wow! Wow!”
For the first time since climbing through that gap and into Shade, my heart leapt for joy. I crossed what I could only describe as a small study, to a bookshelf on the far side of the room. To my utter astonishment, each shelf was crammed with books.
“Books! Books! Books!” I cried out. I had never seen so many in my life. I pulled free the first one my hand fell on. Without even bothering to read the title, I fanned open the pages just beneath my nose. “Oh, my God,” I sighed breathing deeply. “The smell – it’s wonderful!”
I flipped the book over in my trembling hands. I felt as if I was holding a fistful of gold dust. But what lined the shelves was far more precious than any amount of gold. “And Then There Were None,” I whispered out loud, reading the title written across the front of the book. “By Agatha Christie.”
Clutching the book to my chest, I reached for another and read the title, my voice brimming with excitement. “The Complete Father Brown Mysteries by G.K Chesterton.” I took another book from the shelf, then another and another until my arms were full. Each one appeared to be a detective story. I remembered that Rush had told me the house had once belonged to the headmistress from the village school. Well, she definitely loved a good mystery story. Cradling the books to my chest, I tilted my head to one side, reading the spine of a book that still sat on the shelf. Placing the other books down, I reached for the book that had so suddenly grabbed my attention. “The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,” I breathed. Fact or fiction, I didn’t know. I hadn’t heard of the book or author before. But a book about a giant hound had to be essential reading for me in the village of Shade.
Taking the book with me, along with my rucksack, I left the room and stood on the landing. There was only one door in the house that I had yet to look behind. I pushed it open. On the other side of it was a bedroom. A rickety-looking bed on wooden legs was in one corner. And even though it didn’t look the most comfortable of beds, it would be better than sleeping against the front door like I had the night before. The bed had been covered in a dust sheet, which I yanked free. A spray of dust plumed into the air, making my eyes sting. Placing the rucksack and book onto the bed, I pushed open the shutters. From the bedroom window I could see the park again. The swing still gusted silently back and forth. The little girl hadn’t returned. There was a set of drawers to my right. The top two were full of musty old clothes. I guessed that these had once belonged to the old headmistress. Closing them, I opened the other two, and to my delight a found some clean towels. I took one.
Closing the shutters just a fraction, I pulled off my clothes, where they pooled at my feet. Naked, towel in one hand, I went to the bathroom. Before stepping into the shower, I turned on the taps. The pipes groaned again, but the water ran clear. Holding my breath, I stepped beneath the water that rained down on me in an icy-cold spray. I raked water through my long, blonde hair with my fingers. I didn’t want to stand for too long beneath the freezing water for fear of catching pneumonia. Trembling with cold, I hurriedly washed myself, letting the water run over my shoulders and down my back. When my teeth refused to stop chattering and I was shivering from head to foot, I switched off the taps. With water in my eyes, I blindly reached for the towel that I had left draped over the side of the bath.
“Looking for this?” I heard someone say.
Rubbing water from my eyes, I opened them. “What the fu… get out!” I screamed at Calix as he stood grinning at me from the open bathroom doorway, towel swinging from his fist.
Chapter Ten
Shooting from the shower, I snatched the towel from him, wrapping it about me. With arms now folded across his chest, he continued to watch me as he stood propped in the doorway. His jet black hair was as wet as mine with rain.
“How dare you creep in here…!” I shouted, still feeling in shock and unable to comprehend his audacity.
“I didn’t creep in anywhere,” he said, smirking. “The front door was open. How was I to know you were…”
“Just piss off,” I snapped, barging past him. I wanted to get away from Calix and back into the bedroom where my clothes lay on the floor.
As I passed him, he gripped my arm, spinning me around. Water dripped from the ends of my hair, onto my face, and into my eyes. I blinked the drops away like tears. And even though my skin was still ice cold from the shower, Calix’s hold felt colder still. I pulled backwards, but he held me firm, less than an inch between us. With our noses almost touching, his breath made my skin prickle. He hit me with his pale blue eyes and I found it impossible to look away, even though I wanted to. The corners of his mouth curled upwards and he licked away a raindrop with the tip of his tongue that dripped from his hair, settling at the corner of his mouth.
“Just leave,” I said.
“So you don’t want me to fix this then?” he said, pulling something from the pocket of the long, dark coat he wore. I glanced sideways at his hand and could see he was holding up the broken lock from the front door.
“Rush said he was going to come over and fix it,” I told him, looking back into those eyes – those eyes that if set into any face other than Calix’s would have drawn me in – pulled me under – consumed me.
I shook my head, breaking his stare.
“Rush is busy,” Calix said, his hold on me finally loosening. “He asked me to come over and fix it.”
Now that I was free of his grip, I took a step away from him in the direction of the bedroom where I could slam the door shut in his face and put on some clothes. I held the towel tight about me. It suddenly felt like I was holding a shield – a shield made of nothing more than cotton. But it was something – a barrier between his flesh and mine. Now that there was at least a foot between us, I could see that the front of his coat was open. I couldn’t be sure because of the shadows that crowded from the landing, but it looked to me as if Calix wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath his coat. His flesh looked dark – almost black – in complete contrast to his pale face and hands. Was it thick, black hair I could see covering his chest and stomach? I took another step backwards. He stood and watched me, his eyes searching mine.
“Just fix the lock and leave,” I said, continuing to edge away from him, each step taking me nearer to the bedroom.
“What is your problem?” he asked. “I come all the way over here in the pouring rain to do you a favour and you…”
“You were watching me…” I hissed, clenching my fists, holding that towel so tight.
“Don’t flatter yourself, love,” he said. “I’ve seen it all before.”
“You’ve not seen mine… you’ve not seen me before,” I said. “My boyfriend wouldn’t be happy if he found out that you had…”
“Does Rush know about this boyfriend you keep prattling on about?” Calix said with that maddening smirk again.
“Why?” I asked.
“Just wondered, that’s all,” Calix said with a shrug of his shoulders, coat flapping open. I glanced down at his chest and stomach, but before I’d had the chance of taking a proper look, the coat had fallen back into place again. “So he really loves you then?”
“Who?” I asked, wishing that he would just fix the lock and leave. “Rush?”
“Not, Rush,” he said. “I was talking about your boyfriend. The guy who would be mad as hell if he knew what was happening between us right here – right now.”
“Nothing is happening between us,” I scowled. How dare he suggest such a thing? Had he lost his freaking mind? “Of course my boyfriend loves me.”
“Loves you so much that he let you come all alone to a place like Shade,” he smirked one last time, before turning his back on me and setting off down the stairs.
“If you’re trying to scare me off – run me out of town, it’s not going to work. I’m not scared!”
I hollered down over the bannister at him.
“Not yet,” I heard him say before disappearing into the gloom at the foot of the stairs.
Arrggh! I screamed inside, storming into the bedroom and slamming the door closed behind me.
Dropping the towel from around me, I shook the contents of the rucksack out onto the bed. Putting on clean underwear, I stepped into my jeans and threw on a sweater I had brought with me. I laced up my boots, then towelled dry the wet ends of my hair. Fixing it into a ponytail, I spied the gun amongst the clean clothes I had shaken from my rucksack. I picked it up and slid it into the waistband of my jeans, pulling the bottom of my sweater over it.
Fully clothed and with the gun hidden, I felt a little less vulnerable around Calix. I could have stayed in the bedroom until he had fixed the lock and left, but I didn’t want him to think that I was scared of him. Calix didn’t scare me – he annoyed me. So leaving the bedroom, I headed downstairs. I hadn’t reached the bottom stair when I stopped dead mid-stride. Calix had removed his coat, and just like I had suspected, he was stripped naked to the waist. But his muscular body wasn’t covered in black hair – it was covered in something – but what, I couldn’t quite see. Stepping off the bottom stair, I walked into the hallway where Calix stood fixing the lock on the front door. Sheets of rain continued to fall outside, some of which splashed Calix’s arms and chest as he worked in the open doorway. It made whatever covered his body glisten.
I took a step closer. The floorboard groaned underfoot and Calix looked up. Our eyes met briefly. He said nothing to me and went back to his work, twisting the screwdriver he held in his fist as he screwed the lock to the doorframe. I stood and watched him as he worked, the muscles in his arms, chest, and stomach flexing. Although he had a nice body for someone who was a complete and utter knob-head, it wasn’t that which I found myself drawn to. It was what covered his flesh that I found myself mesmerized by.
Inching my way forward, I looked at his body. And as I drew nearer I could see that it was covered in lines and lines of tiny writing. I couldn’t make out what any of it said as the words were written in a language that I didn’t recognise. It looked as if my uncle had fed him through his printing press. Calix’s body looked like the pages of the books on the shelves in the room above me. And as he worked, it looked as if those words were shifting – moving across his back, arms, chest, and stomach. It was as if the words were telling a forever changing story over his very body. I had never seen anything like it before – not ever. But there was something else too – something between – underneath those thousands and thousands of strange-looking words. His body was covered in a crisscrossing patchwork of scars. There were so many it looked as if his flesh had been weaved together.
Without realising what I was doing, my eyes trapped by the hypnotic ebb and flow of those shifting words, I reached out with my hand. I wanted to know if I would be able to feel them moving like Braille beneath my fingertips. Perhaps if I touched them I would understand them – be able to read what had been tattooed over Calix’s flesh.
I felt a hand grip my wrist. I jolted backwards as if suddenly coming awake. Calix had hold of me, his blue eyes boring into mine. He placed his mouth against my ear.
“Don’t touch,” he whispered.
Chapter Eleven
I pulled away from Calix, the side of my face and neck still tingling from where his breath had caressed me. Again my eyes were drawn to the minute lines of writing covering his upper torso. The reams of unusual black lettering stopped at the base of his neck, his wrists, and disappeared beneath the waistband of his jeans. I noticed a thin line of black hair snaking up toward his navel, but it became lost amongst the words tattooed over the tight-looking muscles that sculpted his stomach. Did the writing cover the rest of his body too? Although it was in a language I didn’t recognise, the words looked as if they had been written across him by hand. If the parts of him that I couldn’t see were tattooed with writing, it could only have been engraved there by someone he trusted – a lover, perhaps? What kind of woman could ever love a man like Calix? And what about the scars? Was the rest of him covered in them too? If so, I couldn’t even begin to imagine the pain – the torture – he must have suffered.
“What does it say?” I whispered, fighting hard not to be drawn in by the writing again – or by him.
“You told Rea that you could read, didn’t you?” he said, plucking up his coat and pushing his arms into the sleeves.
Now that the writing was hidden again, I snapped my head up and looked straight at Calix. “I can read and write English. I don’t know what language that is…”
“I knew it,” Calix muttered, fastening the top few buttons of his coat but leaving the lower ones unfastened so he could reach his guns if he needed to.
“Knew what?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“Yes it does or why say it?” I pushed.
“Look, darling, I don’t have time to stand here chatting shit with you,” he said, heading down the hall to the door. He then turned and tossed something through the air at me.
I snatched whatever it was from out of the air. Opening my fist, I discovered a black iron key.
“Don’t forget to lock the door behind you,” Calix said.
“Behind me?” I raised an eyebrow. “Am I going somewhere?”
“Yeah, you’re coming with me.”
“Where?”
“Rea wants to see you,” he said, heading back out into the rain, flicking up the collar of his coat.
My stomach suddenly clenched as if gripped by a fist. Had Rea made up her mind whether I could stay in Shade or not? Was that why she wanted to see me?
Grabbing my coat, I threw it on and left the house, locking the door behind me with the key. Sliding it into my pocket, I followed Calix down the paved pathway and through the broken gate. He crossed the park in large strides as I struggled to keep up with him. Then, with the feeling I was being watched again, I jerked my head around, looking back at the house I had moved into. And there, peeking out from behind the twisted tree in the front garden was the same little girl I had seen on the swing. Her face looked like a small white moon, as she peered from around the edge of the black tree trunk with her large dark eyes.
“Hey!” I called out to her, offering the friendliest smile I could muster.
“C’mon,” Calix snapped at me.
I looked back to see that he had nearly reached the opposite side of the park. Turning my head again, rain splashing my face, I stared back at the tree only to find that, just like she had before, the little girl had vanished. Heading toward Calix again, I lowered my head against the rain and drove my hands into my coat pockets. As the chill wind blew my damp hair all about my face and shoulders, I couldn’t help but wonder why the little girl was out on her own in such bad weather. Perhaps she had gotten to the park early – before it had started to rain? Maybe she had seen me throw open the window shutters and had been curious to see who had moved into the house that had stood deserted for so long? Perhaps like all children, the little girl was just full of curiosity?
“Get a move-on,” Calix grumbled as I neared him.
“I thought I saw…”
“Not another wolf,” he cut in with that obnoxious look of his.
“It doesn’t matter,” I sighed, knowing that I was wasting my time trying to explain anything to Calix.
“Good,” he said, striding away again.
I lagged behind as he led me through the same streets I had walked with Rush the night before. I didn’t want to walk alongside Calix, I had nothing to say to him, and apart from his snide comments, I guessed he didn’t have very much to say to me either. It was like I was nothing more than an irritant to him. I could understand how he felt – he was starting to piss me off too. No, he had already pissed me off –finding him watching me this morning had done that.
Some of the shops I had passed the night before were now open. I looked through the f
ront windows of a butcher’s shop as I walked by. Laid out on metal trays in the window were slabs of red meat, swimming in pools of blood. A gaunt-looking man stood behind the display of meat. His face was so thin it looked as if he were sucking in his cheeks. He looked so emaciated, I thought that perhaps he could do with eating some of the lumps of meat he had for sale in the shop window. His eyes looked dark and hollow as they met mine. Then reaching out with his hand, he ran a rake of brittle looking fingers over the meat. Blood splashed over them, making his hands look as if they were covered in a blotchy rash. His narrow face broke out into a grim smile, and I looked away.
Calix was standing at the entrance to the alleyway. Again, I seemed to have fallen behind. He looked back at me with a scowl.
“I’m coming,” I muttered, then let out a shallow gasp.
On the opposite side of the street to where Calix waited for me stood several people. Men and women. They stood still in the downpour, backs straight, arms at their sides, like railings. Rain spattered their clothes and ran the length of their ashen faces. Their eyes were wide open, each of their stares as dark and as penetrating as the little girl I had caught watching me as she swung on the swing. But it wasn’t only their eyes that were open, but their mouths too. It was as if they were looking at me in shock or awe. Whichever it was, it unnerved me. Looking away and lowering my head, I made my way briskly up the street toward Calix. Never did I think I would want to be at his side so much.
“What are they staring at?” I asked, head still hung low and glancing up at him.
“It’s not every day they see a new face in Shade,” he said, stepping into the darkness that filled the alleyway.
Chapter Twelve
The urge to look back to see if I was still being watched by those people was tempting, but I didn’t. I wasn’t sure that I could bear to see their pale faces and dark eyes staring at me – watching me. I feared that if I looked into them for too long, I might just skip past The Weeping Wolf, where I suspected Rea was waiting for me, and head straight back up the hill, tear away the plank, and leave Shade forever. But I knew I couldn’t do that. I knew I had to stay if I was ever to find out the truth about my parents’ disappearance. So I didn’t look back, I kept my eyes locked on Calix as he strode ahead down the alleyway. The alley wasn’t as dark as before, but just as suffocating. The rain-sleeked walls seemed to close in on me on all sides. The further we went, the narrower the alley seemed to become. It was like it was narrowing into a point ahead. Taking deep gasps of breath, I tried to fight off the irrational feeling that I was going to suffocate inside the alley. I looked up at the strip of sky I could see. But it seemed so far away. It was as if the walls of the alley were set between two buildings like the ones my uncle had once told me about. Buildings that had existed in cities before the beautiful immortals had gone to war. My uncle had called these buildings skyscrapers. As a child I had found it hard to believe that such buildings had ever existed – buildings so tall that the tops of them scraped against the very sky. But now, as I looked up, sucking into my collapsing lungs, the walls on either side of me did appear so tall that if I were standing on top of them I would be able to reach up and touch the murky clouds that scudded overhead.
