Dead Flesh (4 page)

Eventually,
Potter propped the rake against a nearby tree, and turning his back
on the manor, he walked into the woods and disappeared from view,
his head down. I wanted to go after him, so jumping from my chair,
I left my room and the manor.

Kayla

While Isidor
kept himself busy with his stake-making, I decided to explore what
was once my home. For years Mrs. Payne had stopped me from going
into the West Wing of the manor, and as I placed my foot on the
bottom stair and looked up into the darkness, I could hear her
voice again as if being blended into my constant
soundtrack
by an invisible DJ.

“It is the forbidden wing, young lady,”
her voice
seemed to whisper in my ear.
“You are not to go
up there - not now - not
ever
!”
That
last word of warning seemed to stretch out forever inside my head
as if the DJ were playing the track at the wrong speed.

But Mrs. Payne
wasn’t here now - not
ever
- I smiled to
myself and lit the candle that I held before me. Potter had
promised to fix the lighting but still hadn’t gotten around to it.
He’d spent loads of time on his own, shut away in that creepy Gate
House. Why he wanted to shut himself away in there was way beyond
me. And when he did come out, he just scowled at everyone and
looked pissed off. I’d asked him to lend me the money so I could
buy a new iPod. But he just flipped his middle finger, told me to
fuck-off and lit another cigarette. He could be a real freak at
times.

Forgetting that
arsehole, I began to climb the stairs. Although it was still light
outside, this part of the manor had always seemed gloomier than the
rest. There weren’t any windows leading from the staircase, for
starters, and the rooms on either side of the hallway, as far as I
could remember, had always been shut. With nothing else to do,
maybe now was as good a time as any to find out what was hidden
inside them.

With the light
from the candle stretching my shadow up the walls like smudged
lines of mascara, I made my way down the hallway, set between the
row of doors. The candlelight was weak, and I couldn’t see what lay
ahead of me. I was kinda grateful for that, because I knew what lay
at the end of the hallway - that rickety old staircase that led up
to the attic and the hospital. That was the place where the
half-breeds had been nursed by my father and Doctor Ravenwood. I
had never been allowed up there, but Isidor had told me enough. He
had described what he, Potter, and Kiera had discovered up there.
The bodies of all those poor children, murdered by Sparky and…

Still unable to
even think of his name, let alone say it, I came to the first door
set into the wall on my right. The patterned wallpaper hung in torn
strips and it smelt weird. The wall peered out from behind the
paper, which looked scarred with black mildew and damp. Then I
remembered how my father had insisted that the walls be coated with
queets, the stuff that killed vampires.

The manor was
very much how I had remembered it to be. I pushed against the door
which swung open and then I changed my mind.

“Where has that
statue come from?” I whispered. I couldn’t ever remember there
being any statues in the manor - not in the grounds and definitely
not inside. But then again, I couldn’t actually recall ever being
in this room, so perhaps it had been here all the while. With the
flame flickering before me, I cupped my hand around it, fearing
that it might go out and leave me in total darkness. I could just
make out that the windows had been boarded over with planks of wood
so no one could see in and no one could see out. But that’s what
made the statue so odd. It was kneeling down. At first I thought
that it had been made to look as if it was in prayer, but as I
stepped through the darkness, I could see that the figure had been
shaped to look as if it were peering through a gap in the boards
that covered the window. It looked as if the statue were trying to
see outside.

I held the
candle to the figure and could see that whoever had made it had
failed to give the statue, eyes, ears, nose, and a mouth. Even so,
I could tell that the figure was a young man. It had short hair and
its body was carved with muscle. Not like one of those freaky
bodybuilders you see on T.V., but just nice, like a well-toned guy.
His upper body was naked and his lower half had been sculpted to
look as if he was wearing a set of baggy jeans. As I peered through
the orange glow of my light, I was mesmerised by the web of cracks
and breaks that covered it. There were so many, I feared that
should I touch it, it would fall apart before me in a pile of grey
ash.

Apart from the
statue, the room was empty. There wasn’t a bed, wardrobe, not one
stitch of furniture, just the statue, which looked as if it were
secretly trying to look out of the window. Then from behind me, the
door suddenly slammed shut, snuffing out my light. The room went
black and I screamed. With my free hand, I fumbled in my pockets
for the book of matches I had found in the kitchen drawers. Placing
the candle on the ground, I struck one of the matches, and a
brilliant glow of orange light flared up before me and I screamed
again. In my panic, I dropped the match and it went out. But in
that split second of light, I had seen that statue again. He had no
longer been looking out of the boarded-up window, but had now been
standing before me, its blank, featureless face just inches from
mine.

I stumbled back
into the darkness, desperately trying to free another match from
the book. But my hands were trembling so much, that it seemed
impossible. Drawing a deep breath and backing away towards the
closed door, I managed to free a match and strike it. At once there
was a flare of orange light. With the flame jerking to and fro
between my shaking fingers, I could see the statue knelt before the
window.

“Get a grip,
Kayla Hunt,” I spoke aloud, and even though it was my own voice in
the darkness it gave me some comfort. I picked up the candle from
the rough wooden floor and lit it. Snuffing out the match before it
burnt my fingers, I reached out behind me and fumbled for the door
handle. Unable to take my eyes from the statue, I could see that it
was in exactly the same place and position it had been before the
door had slammed shut and blown out my candle.

The statue
hadn’t moved – it couldn’t have. I would have heard it, right?
Feeling kinda dumb for spooking myself, I yanked open the door and
stepped back into the hallway, closing the door behind me. I looked
into the direction of the rickety staircase and, convincing myself
that I had probably done enough exploring for the day, I headed
back down the stairs and left the forbidden wing behind me. Maybe
that old cow Ms. Payne had done me a favour by forbidding me to go
up there.

I reached the
bottom landing and once back in daylight, I blew out the candle.
How had I been so easily spooked after everything I had seen and
been through in the last year? After all, I was the dead one around
here. I was the ghost stalking the stairwells and passageways. What
did I have to be scared of? So, feeling embarrassed at myself, I
decided not to tell the others what I had found up in the forbidden
wing - especially not Potter - he really would take the piss and he
didn’t need too much encouragement to do that.

So pushing the
thoughts of that dumb statue from my head, I went in search of
Kiera’s iPod. I needed to drown out my
soundtrack
- I needed to drown everything out.

Kiera

As I crossed
the lawn in front of the manor, my boots left footprints in the
frost that covered the grass. Before I had died, I would have
expected to see plumes of breath escaping from my mouth and
disappearing up into the cold morning air, but that didn’t happen
now. Not since I had come back. It was like I was colder on the
inside than the icy cold wind that blew about me.

Before entering
the woods, I looked back at the manor. It sat like a giant grey
shell, its walls ancient-looking and covered in ivory like greedy,
green-coloured hands. But as I looked back I noticed for the first
time that all of the tarpaulin had been removed. The last time I
had been at Hallowed Manor, the Forbidden Wing had been undergoing
extensive repairs. The windows were still boarded up but there had
been several skips surrounding that part of the manor, all of them
filled with rubble. As I turned away, I wondered if Potter had
removed them in an attempt to keep himself busy.

Although most
of the trees had shed their leaves, there were still enough Fir and
Conifers to cast the woods into a gloomy darkness. I passed amongst
them, heading away from the manor in the direction that I had seen
Potter head in. I came across the group of weeping willows that
stood before me like a cluster of elderly people with curved backs.
From within them I could hear the sound of wood breaking. Gently, I
parted the branches of one of the willow trees and peered into the
tiny graveyard where the half-breeds had been buried over the years
when the Vampyrus had lived above ground. I hadn’t been back here
since watching Murphy carry the bodies of his two dead daughters to
this secluded place. With his back to me, I spied on Potter as he
broke two thick branches over his knee. Then, with a piece of
twine, he tied the two pieces of wood together to make a large
cross. Silently, he made his way towards the other graves. I
watched him as he skewered the bottom of the cross into the ground.
When he had fixed it securely, he stepped back from it and looked
at the cross. I knew who he was remembering and it filled me with
sadness.

I pushed the
branches of the weeping willows aside and made my way quietly
towards him. As if hearing my approach, he looked over his shoulder
at me then back at the cross he had made. Without saying anything,
I stood next to him. Then taking Murphy’s crucifix and chain from
around my neck, I hung it over the cross that he had fixed into the
ground.

“Murphy would
have wanted you to keep it,” Potter said without looking at me. “He
would have wanted you to be safe.”

“Do I have to
worry about vampires now?” I asked him, my voice low as if I were
in a church.

“Who knows what
dangers lay ahead,” he said, turning to look at me. His eyes were
dark and looked troubled.

“What’s wrong,
Potter?” I asked him, reaching out and brushing his thick forearm
with my hand.

“I could ask
you the same question,” he shot back, but his voice wasn’t angry –
just confused sounding. “What’s happened to us?”

“I don’t know,”
I whispered and took my hand away.

“I wasn’t
expecting to spend the rest of eternity sniffing red roses or
dancing in the hills singing,
The Hills Are Alive
With the Sound of Music
like Julie-freaking-Andrews, but I
did think that perhaps we could…”

“Play happy
families?” I cut in.

“Not that
either,” he said. “Just you and me…together.”

“We are
together,” I said, but I knew exactly what he meant, so I added,
“Look, we’ve been through so much. None of us are finding this
easy. At first I was so happy to wake and find that I had you,
Isidor, and Kayla back again, but that happiness soon faded. And I
know you feel the same. We all feel it. I lay awake at night
listening to the sound of Kayla crying – it can’t be easy for her
to know that she was murdered by Luke. He betrayed her.”

“He betrayed
all of us,” Potter spat and stuck a cigarette in the corner of his
mouth. “He was my friend too. To know that he was behind everything
that we went through – to know that he set Murphy up like that –
that’s hard to deal with.”

“Exactly,” I
said, looking at him as he lit the cigarette. “We all lost one way
or another and then to wake to find that we are the walking dead
and...” I cut off before I said anything more.

“And what?” he
asked, streams of blue smoke jetting from his nostrils.

“Nothing,” I
said back, thinking of the cracks.

“Why don’t we
just go away?” he suggested, coming closer to me.

“We are
away
,” I said and I let him take me into
his arms. “Or perhaps you were thinking of some kind of holiday?
Disneyland perhaps?” and I half-smiled.

“Grizzel’s,” he
said, looking into my eyes.

“Sorry?” I
asked sounding confused.

“There is no
such place as Disneyland here, not anymore at least,” he said.
“There is no Walt Disney or Mickey Mouse. There is Cornelius
Grizzel and a maggot called Frogskin – but no mouse called Mickey.
It’s like good old Disney never existed.” Then looking at me he
added, “You’re not the only one who has noticed the world has been
pushed.”

“Pushed?”
I asked him, sensing he knew more about this
than I had first thought.

“It’s like the
world has been
pushed
off course,” he
said, dropping the cigarette to the ground and grinding it out with
his boot. “The world that we have come back to is different from
the one we left behind when we went down into The Hollows.
Something has changed – something happened.”

“Like
what?”

“I don’t know,”
he shrugged. “Not everything has changed.”

“Isidor told me
about London now being called
Linden
,” I
told him.

“It gets better
than that,” he half-smirked, but I could see that look of concern
again behind his eyes. “Houston, Texas? Or
Euston
, Texas as it’s now known. ‘
Euston,
we have a problem.’ Sounds the same, but not
quite.”

“So what do you
think happened while we were away?” I asked.