by Tim O'Rourke
“But as I’ve already explained, there was no one in the room last night. I would have seen them,” Ms. locked said, sounding exasperated.
“Perhaps this person had already done a runner out of the window?” Potter said.
“But I would have seen them on the lawn, as I went straight to the window and looked out,” Locke said.
“And the makeshift rope is yet to be finished,” I said.
“So where are they hiding? Where had they come from?” Locke asked. “From under the bed?”
“No,” I said with a shake of my head.
“From where then?” Potter asked.
Slowly, I raised one finger and pointed across the room toward the wardrobe. “She has been hiding in there the whole time,” I whispered.
“Who?” Locke breathed, but I suspected she already knew the answer to her own question. She just needed clarification.
“Miss Amanda Lovecraft,” I said.
“What – for the last three weeks the girl has been living in that wardrobe?” Potter asked. “Have you gone fucking mad?”
“Not in it,” I said, looking at the both of them. “Beneath it.”
“Beneath it?” Locke gasped, clapping her hands to the side of her face in shock.
“Okay, I think it’s about time we just switched the lights on and went and found out the real truth from Edmund…” Potter started.
“I am telling the truth,” I said, grabbing his arm. “I’ve seen it.”
“Seen what?” he asked, eyebrow cocked.
“There is a false floor built into that wardrobe,” I tried to explain like I hadn’t just lost my mind. “I think beneath it lies a tunnel which leads below ground to that old outhouse.”
“Are you being serious…?” Potter cut in.
“Just listen,” I said, fearing that he would just push me aside and go marching down the corridor to Sir Edmund’s room. “Just let me explain.”
“Yes, let her,” Locke said in my defence.
“Why should I listen to you?” he asked. “I don’t think you’re too tightly wrapped either.”
“Because I’m the boss around here,” she said.
“Who put you in charge?” Potter scoffed.
“Do you want to get paid or not, Mr. Potter?” Locke asked. “I’ve hired you to do a job, so I think therefore, I hold all the cards. And I say we listen to what Miss Hudson has to say on the matter.” Before Potter could object again, Locke had turned her back on him and was looking straight at me. “Now, Kiera, what about this tunnel?”
“Since you told us that Miss Amanda’s items had been moved in her room, I suspected that it was she who was moving them,” I started to explain. “I believe in a lot of things, but not ghosts I’m afraid. So discounting the idea of a ghost moving Miss Amanda’s belongings, I looked at the next obvious choice – Sir Edmund. But you stated quite clearly, Ms. Locke, that Miss Amanda’s items would still be moved when only you were in the house and Sir Edmund was away. That only left one other person – Miss Amanda herself. But for you not to have discovered her, she would have needed an extremely good hiding place. I considered the idea of the outhouse, but that didn’t seem right, as you said that was where Sir Edmund had secured this ferocious hound. Why would Sir Edmund place his daughter in such danger? These are just some of the missing strands that I spoke of. But today you mentioned the wardrobe, Ms. Locke. You said that as a child, Miss Amanda, would sometimes go missing for hours at a time only to tell you that she had been hiding in the wardrobe all along, even though you said you had searched it. It was hearing this rather strange account that I realised you had given me another of the missing strands that I needed to pull the case even tighter together. I firmly started to believe that I knew where Miss Amanda had been hiding.”
“You didn’t tell me this,” Potter said, sounding pissed off.
“Would you have believed me or just laughed my theory off?” I asked. “I needed to prove to you that I was right, and the only way of doing that was by bringing you here tonight.”
“You said there was some kind of tunnel?” Ms. Locke asked. “How can you be so sure about that?”
“Although I suspect that Miss Amanda had been hiding in the wardrobe the whole time, I knew there had to be more to it than that,” I said. “You said yourself that you had searched the wardrobe several times in the past. But it was when you told us how you watched Sir Edmund lock himself in this room, then within a matter of just a minute or two he was outside on the grounds by the outhouse, it was then I knew there must be some other way out of this room. Then it hit me,” I said, bouncing the palm of my hand off my forehead. “There must be some kind of tunnel or passage leading from this room to the outhouse. But where could such a passageway be concealed? In the same place Miss Amanda used to conceal herself as a child? As I searched the floor around the base of the wardrobe, I found tiny particles of earth which led a trail across the room to the bed and then to the window. Those tiny particles of earth I suspect came from the tunnel and fell from Miss Amanda’s feet.”
Both Miss Locke and Potter looked at me. The silence was thick and heavy.
“And what of the giant hound?” Ms. Locke eventually asked. “Where is it and why had Sir Edmund dressed it in Miss Amanda’s clothes? How do you explain that?”
I looked at Potter. He said nothing, other to fix me with a hard stare.
“Well?” Ms. Locked asked.
Swallowing hard, I whispered, “This is going to be the hardest part for you to understand – for you to believe,” I started, before I was interrupted by a creaking noise.
The three of us glanced back at the wardrobe. The door slowly swung open. Then out of the darkness crawled a frail-looking girl.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Miss Amanda!” Locke cried out.
The girl looked up, the top half of her body sticking up out of the false floor I had discovered in the bottom of the wardrobe. Even in the weak moonlight that shone through the window, I could see that the girl looked gaunt and scared. Her eyes sparkled darkly at us. Then no sooner had she appeared, she was gone, dropping back through the hole beneath the floor of the wardrobe.
Switching on my torch again, I raced across the room. I threw wide the wardrobe doors, shining torchlight down into the hole. I took no satisfaction from seeing the tunnel and knowing that I had been right. What a desperate situation we had uncovered at Bastille Hall. Potter and Locke joined me at the wardrobe, both peering over my shoulder and down into the tunnel.
“What do we do now?” Locke gasped.
“We follow her,” I said, stooping down and climbing into the hole.
There was a small ladder fixed to the wall that was something close to a lift shaft built within the walls of Bastille Hall. I leapt from the bottom rung, dropping into a narrow passageway. It wasn’t big enough for me to stand tall. So bent forward, and with the torch shining ahead of me, I followed the sound of the footfalls I could hear racing away.
“Don’t be scared,” I called after the fleeing girl. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
Locke dropped into the hole, helped down by Potter, who had hold of her by the arms. He followed. Together we raced along the passageway. The walls were curved and very old. How long the tunnel had been in existence I didn’t know. But the air was damp and the walls were covered in giant patches of green and yellow moss. With the light from my torch bouncing off the walls, I caught sight of the girl racing ahead of us. Setting eyes on her, I slowed. Was that Kayla in the tunnel I could see? The girl was walking backwards, away from me just like Kayla had in the wood. And like then, she now beckoned me toward her with a wave of one pale hand.
“Kayla?” I gasped, coming to a sudden stop.
“What did you say?” Potter asked, crunching into me from behind.
“Nothing,” I whispered.
“Why have you stopped? She’s getting away,” he said, prodding me in the back.
The torchlight splashed the walls,
lighting up the darkness ahead of us again. But it was no longer Kayla I could see, but Miss Amanda. She was climbing up a ladder that led up out of the underground passageway.
I moved forward, heart aching as my mind swam with thoughts of my friend Kayla again. Reaching the ladder, I looked up. The girl had gone, so I started to climb. I peered out into a darkened room. There was a gas lamp that had been turned down low. I could see a bed, a table, and two chairs. And there, in the centre of the room, I could see Miss Amanda. She crouched on all fours, watching me. As I climbed out of the hole, I saw something so strange that my heart almost came to a sudden stop. The girl scampered backwards at speed on all fours and into the darkness beneath the bed in the corner.
I climbed out of the hole into what I guessed was the small outhouse at the edge of the wood. The windows were covered so that I couldn’t see out. Locke, then Potter, climbed up out of the hole.
“Where is Miss Amanda?” Locke fretted almost at once.
I looked in the direction of the bed. “She’s hiding under there,” I whispered.
Ms. Locke edged her way toward the bed. I gripped her arm, but she shook it free. “Amanda,” she said, kneeling and trying to see into the darkness beneath the bed. “You can come out. It’s me, Ms. Locke. You don’t have to be scared of me.”
A sudden snarl sounded from the darkness beneath the bed. Ms. Locke flinched so violently that she fell backwards onto the floor. The sound came again as Locke scrambled to her feet. “You’ve got to help her. The hound has Miss Amanda held captive beneath the bed. Get her out of there.”
“I fear that Miss Amanda is the hound,” I said, looking at her.
“Not a hound,” a voice said and we looked back to see Sir Edmund climbing out of the hole and up into the outhouse. “My daughter is a Leshy.”
“A Leshy?” I asked.
Recognising me from the wood, Sir Edmund raised his gun, took aim, and fired.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I spun around, flying back through the air as if I’d been punched hard in the arm. Hitting the wall of the outhouse, I dropped to the floor. Gripping the top of my left arm, I felt hot blood gush through my fingers. Peering up through my fringe, I saw Potter leap toward Sir Edmund. In one flash of movement, Potter had taken the gun from Sir Edmund’s hands and dropped him to the floor with one bone-splintering punch to the face.
Just as I lay and clutched my arm, Sir Edmund sat on the other side of the outhouse, hands covering his nose. Blood pumped from it in a thick, black gush.
“Are you are okay?” Potter asked, dropping to his knees beside me.
“I think it’s just a graze.” I winced.
“Let me see,” Potter said, peeling back my coat. He rolled up my T-shirt sleeve that was now stained crimson. “That’s going to sting a bit and you’re gonna need some stitches.”
“I’ll be okay,” I said, pulling my coat back over the wound, and pressing my hand to it. I forced myself up into a sitting position.
“What is going on?” Ms. Locke asked, her voice close to becoming hysterical.
“She’s come for my daughter,” Sir Edmund groaned, pointing one blood-stained finger at me. “I found her in the grounds this morning. I tried to shoot her then – but I didn’t miss this time.”
“Kiera?” Potter asked, looking down at me. “Is this true?”
I nodded my head.
“What were you doing here this morning?” he asked. Then as if something inside of him had clicked into place, he quickly added, “That’s why you were late to work this morning. That’s how you got those scratches.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Why?” he asked, looking suddenly angry.
“Because I knew you weren’t taking what Ms. Locke had told us seriously,” I said. “I knew that if I suggested we come and investigate, you would have said no.”
“I’m here now, aren’t I?” he said.
“Only because you were hoping to see me screw up,” I winced, getting to my feet. If we were going to get into another argument, I didn’t want him looking down upon me as I sat bleeding on the floor. I wanted to be standing. I wanted to be equal with him.
“That’s not true,” Potter said, but he knew as much as I did that it was.
A snarl came from beneath the bed again, and Locke cowered backwards, nearly tripping over Sir Edmund who, sat slumped on the floor nursing his nose.
“We’ll talk about this later back at the office,” Potter glared.
“If you like,” I shrugged. I bent at the knees and peered beneath the bed.
“Keep away from her,” Sir Edmund said, getting to his knees.
“Despite what you think,” I said, “I’m not here to hurt your daughter. I’m here to help.”
“So what were you doing sneaking about the grounds this morning?” he snapped, blood spraying from his top lip.
“It’s my fault,” Ms. Locke said. “Miss Hudson was just doing her job.”
“Job?” he asked, shooting her a distrustful stare. “What job?”
“I employed Miss Hudson and her partner, Mr. Potter…”
“She’s not my partner,” Potter said, still angry that I had come to Bastille Hall without his knowledge or say so. “Miss Hudson is my temporary secretary, that’s all.”
“Then you really need to her employ her as one of your fulltime investigators,” Locke said. “It would appear, Mr. Potter, that The Creeping Men will soon be defunct without her.”
“Creeping what?” Sir Edmund muttered, arming blood from beneath his nose. “Investigators? What is going on here?”
“I hired them to investigate the disappearance of Miss Amanda,” Locke finally confessed.
“But I told you…” Sir Edmund started.
“You told her a bunch of bullshit,” Potter cut in. “So perhaps you would like to start telling the truth?”
Sir Edmund looked at us. “Okay,” he sighed. Then reaching under the bed, he whispered, “It’s okay, Amanda, you can come out. No one is going to hurt you here.”
Locke stepped away from the bed, a look of horror on her face as Miss Amanda crawled out backwards from beneath it. The girl wore a loose-fitting dress, but her feet were bare. It was then that I too stepped away at the sight of Miss Amanda’s feet and hands. They were twisted backwards, as if they had been put on the wrong way. Her toes and fingers pointed backwards.
Amanda’s father reached for her, holding her tight to his chest. The girl straightened up, and as she did, there was a terrifying crunching sound, like that of breaking bones as her feet and hands twisted back into the correct position.
Throwing her hands to her face, Ms. Locke, cried out, fainting upon the bed.
“Oh, Christ,” Potter muttered, lighting himself a cigarette.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gently patting the back of Ms. Locke’s hand, I brought her out of her daze. It was her love for the girl which made the whole situation so traumatic for her. It must have been heart-breaking for Ms. Locke to see the girl she loved as her daughter to be so deformed-looking.
“There was no dog or hound, not a real one at least,” Sir Edmund said, cradling his daughter against him. She peered over his arm at Ms. Locke. “My daughter is a Leshy.”
“What’s a Leshy?” I asked, trying to soothe Ms. Locke by taking her hand in mine. I could feel her trembling next to me. Potter stood propped against the wall and smoked. Although he gave the appearance that he was disinterested, I could see that he was watching the girl very carefully.
“The Leshy or Lesovik, as they are rightly known, do have a close bond with the grey wolf, but they are not true wolves themselves,” Sir Edmund started to explain. “They are shapeshifters, and just like the mythical werewolf, the Leshy will turn on a full moon.”
At the mention of the word werewolf, I glanced at Potter for any kind of reaction. But his face stayed impassive and unreadable as he continued to watch the girl and listen to Sir Edmund.
“What do they tu
rn into?” I asked.
“Each one is different,” Sir Edmund said. “They can take the shape of any forest creature. Some can even take the form of birds and fly.”
Again I glanced at Potter. Would he react at all at the mention of flying creatures? I wondered. But he didn’t.
“What kind of creature does Amanda become?” Ms. Locke asked, her voice rattling as she sat and trembled beside me.
“It’s too early to say, but I think perhaps she is taking the form of the Leshy’s closet relative, the wolf,” Sir Edmund said, gently placing a kiss on the crown of his daughter’s head. I could see that he loved her very much. “I fear that she will take after her mother.”
“But her mother is dead,” Ms. Locke said. “She died during childbirth – or is that more of your lies?”
“Sadly, that is true, her mother is dead. She died in this very room,” he said.
“How did you ever come to mix it up with one of these creatures?” Potter finally spoke up. A blue haze of smoke wafting about his head as he continued to draw on the cigarette jutting from the corner of his mouth.
“About fifteen years ago, I had cause to be on business in Spain, close to the Bay of Biscay,” Sir Edmund said. “I was younger then and not so right thinking – just a foolish young man. I had been out drinking with some friends when I became separated from them. I wandered into a remote part of the province where I happened upon a sandy stretch of beach. There was a party – people were dancing, conjurors were entertaining those gathered by the shore. There was a delightful and almost carnival type atmosphere amongst these people. Before too much time had passed, my hand had been grabbed by the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Her hair was dark and eyes the clearest of blues. We danced together on the beach, until at dawn she told me she had to go.
“‘Go where?’ I asked her, refusing to let her go.
