Dead Flesh kh2-1

by Tim O'Rourke

  “It was you beneath that hood, Kayla,” Sam whispered. “You winked at me, then you pulled the hood back over your face and disappeared into the crowd. It was then that I slipped into unconsciousness and everything went black.”

  “It wasn’t me,” I said, jumping up. “I’ve never seen you before and I’ve never been to a beach in Cornwall.”

  “It was you, Kayla,” Sam insisted. “I couldn’t believe it the first day I saw you rummaging around in the Poor Box. It was like seeing a ghost. I didn’t want to…I couldn’t say anything, but that’s how I know you are different.”

  “This is getting really weird…” I started.

  “Don’t you see, Kayla? You were there the day my parents died, and then you show up here…and your parents drowned, too.”

  I wanted to tell Sam that my parents hadn’t drowned, that it was lie created by Potter, but I had to keep the pretence up. “Sam, I don’t know what you’re talking about…” I tried to convince him that he was mistaken, but he wasn’t listening to me.

  Then, gripping me by the shoulders, and staring me straight in the eyes, he said, “Don’t you see, Kayla, you’ve been sent to help me again.”

  “Help you?” I breathed in disbelief. “What are you talking about?”

  “You must realise that you are different from everyone else here,” he said excitedly. “Don’t you remember what McCain did with your hands — how he burnt you? You didn’t feel a thing.” Then, grabbing my hands and staring down at them, he said, “See, there are no scars, Kayla — your hands have healed already — that’s impossible.”

  “They weren’t as bad as they looked,” I stammered. “I used cream…”

  “Cream!” Sam cried. “There is no cream in the world that could get rid of burns like you had. You’re different, Kayla — even McCain has sensed it. You’re here for a reason.”

  “And what’s that?” I snapped, just wanting him to leave my room so I could contact Kiera and get out of Ravenwood.

  “You’ve been sent to help me,” he said, tears standing in his eyes. “You’ve been sent to get me out of here.”

  I pushed him away from me, not wanting to hear any more. “I’m sorry, Sam, but I haven’t been sent here to save you or

  anyone else.”

  “But you have, Kayla,” Sam said. “You just don’t see what you are.”

  “What am I?” I almost screamed at him.

  “You’re an angel, that’s what you are,” he breathed. “You’re an angel, Kayla — a dead angel!”

  “Dead angel?” I mumbled, and if I’d had a heart it would have been racing. “I’m not dead!”

  Then, reaching into his trouser pocket, Sam pulled out a folded piece of newspaper. “I came across this, Kayla, not long after I saw you on the beach that day,” he said, unfolding the paper.

  “What is it?” I asked, my hands starting to tremble.

  “It’s about you, Kayla,” he said, handing me the torn piece of newspaper.

  I took it from him, desperately trying to steady my hands as I looked down at the headline:

  Murdered Girl Found on Side of Cumbrian Mountain

  I read the words underneath and it described how sixteen-year-old school girl Kayla Hunt’s naked and mutilated body had been found partially covered by snow on the side of a mountain. With tears of my own beginning to well in my eyes, I screwed up the piece of newspaper when I saw the picture of myself staring back at me and read the part which described how the killer had cut off my ears.

  “That’s not me,” I said, sniffing back my tears. “You’re mistaken.”

  “That’s you, Kayla,” Sam said softly, almost caring. “I know it’s you.”

  “It can’t be me,” I said looking at him. I tried to smile, as if brushing away what he had just said as being nothing more than nonsense. But I was in danger of being discovered. I just wanted to run — get out of Ravenwood. I wanted to talk to Kiera. I wanted to be with her — she always knew what to do — she made me feel safe. Why hadn’t I listened to her when she had warned against me coming to Ravenwood? Kiera said it would be too dangerous for me to come here and she had been right. So, looking Sam straight in the eyes, and trying to be as confident as Kiera, I said, “You’re mistaken, Sam Brooke. That can’t be me in that newspaper article because I’m not dead.”

  “You are dead, Kayla,” he said, tears running down his face. “You’re my dead angel. I just have to prove it to you.”

  Then, reaching into his trouser pocket he pulled out a long bladed knife. “Please forgive me,” he cried as he thrust the knife into my chest.

  I looked at him, then down at the knife which protruded from me. I felt a crushing feeling inside of me, as if I were shrinking in some way. I staggered away from him. I just wanted to lie down. My whole body felt weak, and as I curled my numb-feeling fingers around the hilt of the knife, I noticed that my skin had started to turn grey and crack just like those statues I had seen.

  “Kiera,” I mumbled weakly, dropping to my knees and into a black pool of my own blood. “Kiera — I’m sorry I failed.”

  Then, everything went black.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Kiera

  I just couldn’t rest until Isidor came back. Potter sat in a cloud of cigarette smoke in front of the fire and we didn’t speak, both of us were lost to our thoughts and concerns. But, if I were being honest with myself, I was more than concerned. I feared for Kayla’s safety.

  What was this body she had discovered? I wondered. Was it the body of Emily Clarke?

  What I couldn’t be sure of was if there had been another murder committed. If so, had McCain done it like he had murdered Emily? But we didn’t even know that he had murdered her. Okay, so we know he used her credit card, but did that mean he had been involved in her murder?

  I could feel my stomach cramping and it wasn’t through nerves, it was the cravings again. I looked at Potter and he stared at me through the smog that his constant smoking was creating in the room. Turning away, I went to the window and checked again to see if there was any sign of Isidor. The sky was almost black and night was drawing in.

  “Where is he?” I muttered to myself. “He’s been gone ages.”

  “I told you that I should’ve gone,” Potter grumbled from the corner of the room. The fire in the grate hissed and spat, the coals glowing red and hot.

  “Isidor will be able to track her,” I said, looking at him.

  “You better hope you’re right, because…”

  “He’s coming!” I almost screamed with relief, spotting Isidor heading across the field that stretched before the farmhouse. Through the darkness, I could see that his hands were empty and I feared that perhaps he hadn’t been able to find the camera after all. But at least he had come back and hopefully with some news. I ran to the front door, and throwing it open, I waved my arm in the air and shouted, “Hey, Isidor!”

  Seeing me, Isidor ran the last few hundred yards to the farmhouse and Potter joined me at the door.

  Before he’d had the chance to say anything, I said, “Did you find the camera?”

  “Yes,” he nodded, stepping into the warm and closing the door behind him. Then, reaching into his coat pocket, he pulled out a small silver coloured video camera. I took it from him and as I looked into his eyes, I could see that they were dark and fearful.

  “What’s happened, Isidor?” I asked him. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said.

  “Are you sure?” Potter smirked. “Because if any of those school kids picked on you I’ll go and speak to their teacher.”

  “Yeah, very funny,” Isidor said, and went into the kitchen where he switched on the laptop.

  I glared at Potter who shrugged and said, “I’m just messing about with the kid.”

  Ignoring him, I followed Isidor into the kitchen where we all sat around the table. As Isidor connected the camera to the laptop, I said, “So, what happened?”

  “I got to the
school okay,” Isidor started to explain. “I crept around the outskirts of the school and it was a while before I caught a whiff of Kayla’s scent. I tracked it to a place by the wall where there was a large chestnut tree. The branches spilled out over the top of the wall, and I figured that Kayla must have used the tree to climb over and get out of the school grounds. But there was another scent.”

  “What kind of scent?” Potter cut in, his face now a mask of concentration, and for all his piss-taking, I knew that he did really care for Kayla and somewhere, deep down, for Isidor too.

  “I could smell that a boy had gone with her,” Isidor said, jiggling a wire that he had attached to the camera and the laptop.

  “Do you think it was this boy, Sam that she has spoken about?” I asked him.

  “I can’t be sure, but whoever it was, Kayla felt comfortable with him,” Isidor said.

  “How do you know that?” Potter pushed.

  “Because they headed across the field together to a nearby wood,” Isidor said. “Their scents were side by side, which told me that they walked together — they were very close. Kayla definitely trusted him. Anyway, I followed their scent through the woods, and it wasn’t long before I picked up another.”

  “What kind of smell was it?” I asked him.

  “A corpse,” Isidor said, as he figured out how to use the camera.

  “The dead body that Kayla mentioned in her message,” I breathed.

  “I followed Kayla’s and the boy’s scents which ran alongside a stream, until I came to a massive clump of bushes, just like she said I would,” he explained. “I sniffed about a bit and checked the bushes and then found the camera.”

  “What about the corpse?” Potter asked, reaching into his pocket for his smokes.

  Peering over the laptop at Potter, Isidor said, “Now that’s where it all gets a bit strange.”

  “Strange?” Potter asked, glancing at me.

  “The smell of the corpse was really strong, so I followed the scent into the bushes,” he said. “I’m no Kiera Hudson, but even I could see where the body had been lying — but it wasn’t there anymore.”

  “So somebody had moved the body?” I asked him, feeling confused.

  “No,” Isidor frowned. “I could only smell the three scents; Kayla’s, the boy’s, and the corpse’s. Which makes me wonder how the body got there in the first place because who brought it there? There were no other scents. It was like the body had fallen out of the sky, but that doesn’t happen, right?”

  “I don’t want to put a downer on things,” Potter said, lighting his cigarette, “but if you could only smell three scents, perhaps the boy and the corpse were one in the same?”

  “What are you trying to say?” Isidor asked him.

  “Maybe Kayla got hungry — needed the red stuff?” he suggested, blowing smoke out of his nostrils. “You know what I’m trying to say, perhaps Kayla killed the boy?”

  “Never,” Isidor hissed. “She wouldn’t do a thing like that!”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Potter came back. “Your sis can be real feisty when she wants to be.”

  “She would only kill in self-defence,” Isidor said.

  “Maybe it was in self-defence,” Potter suggested. “All I’m trying to say is, we don’t know anything about this kid she has gone and hooked herself up with. Haven’t we all learnt by now that people don’t always tend to tell us the truth? People have a habit of talking bullshit around us.”

  “She still wouldn’t have killed a human,” Isidor insisted. “Kayla knows that if she ever fed from one of them, she’d be creating another vampire.”

  I sat silently for a moment and thought of the dream that I’d had of the girl falling out of the sky and landing in a wooded area near to Ravenwood School. Her face had been deformed somehow, but she had been chased away by wolves and ended up at Ravenwood.

  “Are you okay, Kiera?” Potter asked me. “You look kind of lost.”

  “I’m fine,” I said back, forcing a smile. “I was just thinking about what Isidor has just told us. So what did you do next?”

  “The smell left by the corpse led out of the bushes and back in the direction of the school. So I followed it. I picked up Kayla’s scent again, and the boy’s. It was like the corpse was chasing them back to the school.”

  “Sounds like a freaking vampire to me,” Potter cut in.

  “It wasn’t a vampire, because the boy was still alive and he bled,” Isidor said.

  “Oh this just keeps getting better and better,” Potter groaned.

  “There was blood?” I gasped, my concern for Kayla’s safety growing with every passing moment.

  “Only a little,” Isidor explained. I hardly got a whiff of it, it was very faint. If Kayla had fed on the boy, there would have been blood everywhere and the smell would have been stronger. I’m guessing that the boy fell over and got up again, because both he and Kayla made it back to the school. I followed their scents back there.”

  “And the corpse that was running around, what happened to it?” Potter snapped.

  “Well that’s the strangest thing of all,” Isidor said, finally figuring out how to use the camera.

  “What do you mean?” I asked him, feeling anxious.

  “The corpse did make it as far as the school wall and the tree. The scent was really strong there, like it had stayed rooted to the spot for a while. But then, the smell moved off again. I followed it back across the field, the scent becoming stronger and stronger the whole time. It led me back into the woods and then suddenly, it stopped.”

  “What did you find?” I asked him.

  “Well this is the craziest part of my story,” Isidor said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “The smell stopped by a statue.”

  “Statue?” I breathed, glancing over at Potter.

  “Crazy, right?” Isidor said. “It was like the statue had been the corpse that had chased after Kayla and the boy!”

  “Crazy,” Potter whispered and looked at me.

  “You don’t know what that could mean, do you?” Isidor asked.

  I looked at Potter, who stared back at me.

  “Was the statue of a girl?” I asked Isidor.

  “No, the statue was of a male, although it was hard to tell as it didn’t really have a face. But it was dressed like a man.”

  Hearing this I thought of the nightmare I’d had in which the statue of a male had crawled from some bushes in a wooded area, and asked for someone called Alice.

  “We’ve seen one of these statues before,” I told him.

  “Where?” Isidor frowned.

  “Back at the manor,” I said.

  “So why didn’t you say anything?”

  “What could I have said? I couldn’t explain why it was there myself,” I answered, but really I had wanted to forget the statue, I was scared that I was becoming one, too.

  “What do you think they are?” Isidor asked me.

  “I don’t know, Isidor,” I whispered. “I really don’t know.”

  Sensing that I was beginning to feel uncomfortable, Potter flicked his cigarette end into the sink and said, “So have you managed to get that camera working yet or not, Einstein?”

  Isidor looked away from me and back at the laptop. “Sure, I’ve got it working. Take a look.”

  The screen flickered on but only showed a picture of darkness. In the top right-hand corner of the screen was the time and date in neat white text. It had been recorded seven days ago and the time read 23:43hrs. Nothing seemed to be happening on the screen, so Isidor fast-forwarded the image. He stopped the picture at 02:17hrs, when suddenly the image on the screen burst into life. The video showed a wide-angled shot of Emily’s bedroom and I could see her lying asleep on her bed. Even from the angle that the camera had been set at, and the gloom of the room, I could see that she was identical to her sister, Elizabeth. The covers had come away and I could see she was wearing jogging bottoms and a t-shirt. The image had burst into life, because out of cam
era shot, someone had obviously entered her room and switched on the light. Emily stirred slightly on her bed and rolled over, then fell back to sleep.

  Morris McCain then walked into the frame. There was no mistake — it was him. I glanced at Potter then back at the screen and watched as McCain crossed the room and began to shake Emily violently. I could see Emily was stunned or maybe it was shock. Although there was no sound, I could see by McCain’s actions and body language that he was shouting at Emily.

  Emily appeared to be motioning him away by waving her hands at McCain and shaking her head. McCain then began to wave his arms and hands in the air and point angrily at Emily. I snatched another quick look at Potter and he looked coldly at what was unfolding before him.

  I looked back at the screen and it looked as if Emily was trying to get off the bed. She was shaking her head and trying to move McCain out of her way, who was now standing directly in front of her and shaking his fists in the air. I watched as Emily managed to get free of her bed by pushing McCain in his chest to move him out of her way. McCain then punched Emily straight between the eyes. All of us flinched in our seats. Emily stumbled backwards, landed on her bed, then rolled off onto the floor. I watched as she shook her head wearily from side to side, as she tried to fight off oncoming unconsciousness.

  Watching the video made me feel sick. I stared as McCain then set about Emily in a frenzy of kicks and punches. He repeatedly punched Emily about her head and I struggled to hold back my tears as I watched Emily desperately try to fight him off. She paddled her arms in a vain attempt to protect herself. Then, sitting astride her on the floor, McCain began to change. It was his hands that I first noticed. They seemed to grow into the shape of giant paws. His back arched and his clothes began to fall away in strips as his body took on the shape of a giant wolf. McCain rolled his head back, as his neck began to thicken, and his slicked, black hair which covered his head, started to cover him. His already bulbous nose twitched then protruded from his face forming a wet snout. Raising his giant paws into the air, he opened his vicious-looking jaws and lunged at Emily who lay beneath him. From the amount of blood that jetted from her and splashed the walls, her death was quick and within moments she had stopped struggling and lay motionless on the floor of her bedroom.