Refuge (2 page)

                ‘Isn’t that where that kid committed suicide?’ piped up Alex. ‘I saw it in the paper at that service station.’

                ‘Yes! That must be it!’ cried Drew. He stared at it in ghoulish fascination as the bus passed it and headed towards the Island. ‘Cool,’ he said again. He moved Lucas’ bag out of the way and dumped it on the floor. He sat down on the empty seat next to his mate. ‘Yes, we’ve got to get you some Island life,’ he said, nodding. ‘Don’t want you to be the fourth one, eh?’ he nudged Lucas sharply in the ribs.

                ‘Pack it in,’ muttered Lucas, shifting in his seat. He was regretting the confessions that had spilled out in the wake of several pints and being dumped by Laura. Unfortunately, for once, Drew had been a bit more sober than him, and could remember most of the conversation. He’d had great fun tormenting him ever since. Drew was a mate, and solid one at that; but Lucas would hate to have him as an enemy, that was for sure.

                ‘We’re he-er...’ shouted someone, doing a bad impersonation of the Poltergeist film. Everyone laughed: everyone, that is, except Lucas. He so wasn’t in the mood for this.

                ‘Come on, let’s get the gear unpacked,’ said Drew, nudging him again. He sprang up from his seat and began hauling his baggage from the luggage shelf above their heads. The driver had given up asking them to stay seated and keep their seatbelts fastened, somewhere on the A1. He just made sure he pressed the brake pretty hard: the bus stopped quickly and the lads standing up wobbled a bit. There was an outraged shout as someone’s bag hit someone else on the head, and Lucas shrank back in his seat, deciding to wait until the group calmed down enough for him to stand up and get the rest of his luggage.

                ‘I’ll go and get our room sorted, mate,’ said Drew, bounding down the aisle on long legs. ‘That way I can bags the best bed.’ He jumped off the bus and Lucas saw him run into the B&B, knocking Alex sideways and laughing about it as Alex hurled abuse after him and gave chase. Lucas sighed. Whatever, he thought, and stood up. He checked his mobile automatically, hoping to see the envelope icon telling him he had a text message from her. The screen was blank and he shoved it back in his pocket. There didn’t even seem to be a signal. Brilliant.

                Lucas was last to leave the bus. He at least had the courtesy to thank the driver as he stepped onto the Island.

                ‘See you in a couple of days,’ said the driver. Lucas slammed the door for him, and the bus pulled away, honking as Lucas raised his hand to the driver. The driver was taking no chances – he obviously wanted to get off that island. He probably didn’t fancy being stuck there overnight with Lucas and his friends. Lucas didn’t even fancy it much, if he was honest.

                Lucas stared around him hoisting his bag onto his shoulder. It suddenly seemed very quiet. There was nothing but the drone of the wind and the shushing of the sea around him. He had the oddest feeling that someone was watching him. He turned quickly and saw a young girl, maybe eighteen, nineteen years old. She was sitting on a fence across the road, her red hair falling in waves to her shoulders. Lucas caught her glance and she smiled at him. One of the Island girls, he presumed, just waiting for a bus load of students to pull up. Her and Drew would get on famously.

                ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Are you with the visitors?’

She must be well used to strangers pitching up on the island; it was a small place. She’d know they weren’t locals. Well, it cost nothing for him to be polite, he supposed.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘For two nights.’

                ‘Concise and to the point,’ smiled the girl. She hopped off the fence and came over to him. She was petite and skinny with it, but she moved gracefully, just like a dancer. ‘I’m Cass,’ she said, holding out her hand.

Lucas hesitated for a moment, then took it. ‘Lucas,’ he said. The girl smiled at him again. Her eyes were a queer sort of azure blue. They made her pupils look enormously black and her lashes were thick and dark, and framed them perfectly. Most people of that colouring had pale, unremarkable eyelashes, but hers were different. He remembered Laura’s dressing table, full of little pots of magic this and special that. She’d go through tubes of mascara, he remembered, piling it on, opening her eyes wide in the mirror and building her lashes up. Her mouth would gape open while she did it, her whole demeanour so full of concentration that he’d laugh at her. He actually quite missed seeing her get ready. She was a welcome sight in the morning. This Cass, whoever she was, didn’t look like she’d ever been to a make-up counter in her life. Her skin was a flawless creamy colour, and her cheeks rosy pink, like her lips. She looked fresh and natural – even down to the eyelashes.

                ‘So, two nights?’ she asked. ‘That’s long enough, I guess.’

                ‘Long enough for what?’ asked Lucas.

                ‘Long enough for me to get to know you better,’ said Cass, tilting her head to one side. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’ She smiled and turned away from him, heading back to the field. ‘Oh,’ she threw back over her shoulder, ‘the lime kilns. I’d go there if I were you. If you’re interested in history, that is. We’ve got the castle and the Priory and the gardens and things, but nobody seems to give the lime kilns the time of day. You should go.’

                Lucas opened his mouth to reply, but she had already turned back and was climbing the fence into the field. He watched after her for a moment, then pushed the door to the B&B open. Cass. Interesting. Quickly, he slapped the thought away. That’s what had got him into trouble with Laura.

1860

Kester Lawson had watched his sister die. Her name had been Summer. It suited her – she was golden and bright, like a warm July day. Looking back, Kester was pleased his parents had made them sit for formal photographic portraits. The gentleman had come over from Bath with his new equipment; he would produce ambrotypes, he had told them. They were better than daguerreotypes: but much more expensive, especially if he had to go away and hand-tint them. Kester’s parents, always keen to practice the newest fads, and indeed, to be seen to be practising the newest fads, had demanded Kester and Summer’s presence for the portraits. There were the usual sets of stiff, family portraits: Kester and his sister standing behind his parents, one of his father standing with his hands on his mother’s shoulders, one of Kester and Summer together - his face was slightly blurred in that one – unfortunately, he had moved just at the wrong time.

                ‘It is so typical of you!’ Summer had laughed. ‘I despair of you. Can’t you do anything right?’

                The portrait of Summer had been his favourite, although at fourteen, he was loathe to tell her that. The gentleman from Bath had made a perfect job of capturing Summer’s peachy skin and long, barley-coloured hair. Sparkling, cornflower blue eyes complimented the rose tinted mouth and there she was, captured forever at sixteen years old. She was going to have a coming-out ball when she was seventeen, her parents declared. The picture would be pride of place in the ballroom, subtly located so the young men would have to pass it every time they walked towards the door.

                Summer never made it to seventeen. It had been the autumn of that year – ironic, really, when Kester thought about it. She had seemed a little more distracted than usual; desperate to ride out every day, yet coming home begging to go to the family house in Grosvenor Square, London – because life was more exciting in London and she now knew people from London.

                ‘May I ride out with you?’ Kester had asked one day. It was the beginning of September and the countryside was slipping into one of those long, warm Indian summer afternoons.

His sister had glared at him. ‘Why ever would I want you to come with me?’ she had snapped. ‘Do I need a chaperone? And a fourteen year old boy at that? I think not.’ She had stormed out of the drawing room and slammed several doors behind her.

Kester stared open mouthed, then found his voice. ‘Who mentioned I had to chaperone you?’ he shouted at the closed door. ‘What have you got to hide?’ He had made it his mission at that point to discover what she was, indeed, hiding.

***

The next day, Kester slipped out of the house and hid in the stables, waiting for Summer to walk around and take her horse out. Peeping out from behind a hay bale, he saw her enter the building. Summer’s long skirts swept the slate floors and an elaborate, feathered hat was balanced on her head. She walked up to her usual roan mare and fondled its mane. Kester narrowed his eyes. She didn’t usually get that dressed up for riding. He waited until she had mounted the horse and watched her disappear out of the stables, head held high, perched on the horse side-saddle. Kester heard the clip clop of the horse’s hooves ring out over the cobbles in the courtyard, the mare speeding up as his sister reached the archway which led into the garden. Giving her a few minutes to get ahead, Kester mounted his horse and kicked it in the flanks. The horse started and trotted out into the courtyard.  Kester urged the horse on a little faster and followed Summer through the archway. He could just see her on the horizon, a small, black dot threading through the outskirts of the woods. Summer would have a chaperone that day, whether she liked it or not.

                Kester kept his eyes on her, following her at a safe distance until she was swallowed up by the trees. He kicked the horse again and began to gallop after her. There was nowhere to go through the woods, except to an old, disused flour mill. It was a picturesque spot; they had often ridden there with the governess on the pretext of a ‘nature lesson’. Kester reined the horse in and wondered if that was the way he should go. It was to the right, just over a little stone bridge. He made up his mind to casually ride by the mill, when a scream rang out from over the bridge. He recognised it at once.

                ‘Summer!’ he shouted. The scream started up again and there was a sound of pounding hooves coming closer and closer to him. They rattled over the bridge and Kester saw his sister hurtling straight towards him on the horse. She wasn’t wearing her hat, he noticed, and her hair was flying loose behind her. The roan mare bore down on him and he pulled his horse into the undergrowth, not knowing what to do.

                ‘Kester! Dear God, what are you doing here? Please, you have to go. Now! Hurry!’ she cried. ‘Don’t let him find you!’

She sped past him and he called after her. ‘Summer! Who is it? I’ll fight him for you!’ The bravado of a fourteen year old held no sway.

‘Just leave!’ Summer cried.  She turned around, perhaps to shout something more, and that was when it happened. A tree branch cracked Summer across the head, and she was lifted out of her seat. Her long skirts and many petticoats somehow hooked around the horns of the saddle, and Kester watched helplessly as she smacked off the ground and bounced along in the wake of the horse.

Before he could move, a black whirlwind seemed to blow up from the direction of the mill. That was all he could think to describe it as later. Something whipped past him, and he saw an arm reach out and grab hold of the roan mare’s bridle. The horse’s head was yanked at an awkward angle and it whinnied in pain, but it had the desired effect. It stopped running and Summer lay like a bundle of rags, bloodied and battered on the ground.

‘Thank you!’ Kester tried to say. His voice cracked and it came out in a whisper. The man – for he seemed like a man; a tall man, dressed all in black with a pristine white ruffle at his throat - ignored him. He knelt down next to Summer and carefully brushed her hair away from her face. Kester thought she was still alive: her chest seemed to be moving slightly. Then the man took hold of a hank of Summer’s hair and pulled her head as roughly as he had pulled the horses. He bent over the girl and what Kester saw next sickened him. The man tore at Summer’s throat with his teeth and the girl’s body jerked. Her back arched and then she flopped down onto the grass as the man continued his work. Kester felt the bile rise in his throat. He couldn’t watch any more. He turned the horse and galloped as far away as he could, as fast as he could. Only when he was safely out of the woods and near the house, did he dismount and stumble away towards a dry stone wall, where he vomited until he could vomit no more.

It took him years to realise that he couldn’t have saved her then, even if he’d tried. But he swore that one day he would hunt the creature down. And if he couldn’t find that one, he would make it his new mission to kill as many of them as he could.

***

A degree in Theology from Oxford didn’t help. Kester thought that it might have enabled him to understand the creature he had seen. The only thing it did, however, was make him worry that Summer’s soul was somehow trapped between Heaven and Hell; worse still, that it was in Hell itself. They had given her a Christian burial of course. He remembered standing by the mausoleum in the grounds of the chapel, watching the white coffin being lowered into the building. Nobody had ever been able to explain away Summer’s injuries. They put them down to the accident and Kester had never spoken of what he’d seen. A marble angel would eventually grace the mausoleum, sculpted in the image of his sister. He was pleased they had the angel made. And pleased about the ambrotype. Otherwise, all he could have remembered about Summer was the creature leaning over her and the jerking of her body as it drained her blood.