by Tim Major
Caitlin jumped out of bed and pressed herself up against the door.
Another shout came from the direction of Dr Scaife’s office. Caitlin squeezed her eyes shut, trying to concentrate on making out the words, which were repeated several times in a voice almost as shrill as the alarm. Something about ‘evil’? No. ‘Level’?
Then she understood.
“Leave them! Leave them all!”
Caitlin had an almost hysterical compulsion to laugh. With each hour that passed in the care home she had become more convinced that she would be trapped here for the foreseeable future. Instead, she was going to die today, surrounded by Snakeskins trapped in their poky cells. And nobody but Kit would ever know that Caitlin had been different to the others.
More heavy footsteps; then the voices stopped.
She thumped on the door with her fists. The metal barely budged. It was heavy, secure. There was no physical lock and not even a handle on the inside. She thumped again. Her elbow caught on the steel head of the bed, leaving a graze, reminding Caitlin of the flayed skin in her dream. She slumped down to the floor.
Perhaps the fire might be elsewhere in the building. Dr Scaife’s abandonment could be a calculated decision. Maybe she was confident that this part of the care home didn’t need to be evacuated. Caitlin wished she could summon any amount of faith in the doctor’s moral code.
She realised she could smell smoke. It was leaking through the narrow gap beneath the door.
She was going to die alone. Just like Uncle Tobe had done, face down in a swimming pool at night.
“Hey!” she shouted. “In here! Hey! Hey!”
“Hey,” she said again, in a quieter, muffled voice.
It took her a moment to register that she hadn’t spoken, this last time.
The door lock bleeped. Caitlin edged backwards along the slippery floor.
The door crunched open. Caitlin saw herself, wreathed in smoke.
“Hey,” the girl said again.
Caitlin sobbed with relief. “Kit!”
The Snakeskin held a finger to her lips. “Keep your voice down. A few members of staff are still pelting around out here. We’ll have to move fast.”
Kit bent down to yank Caitlin up and pulled her roughly from the room.
The corridor was thick with smoke, but it appeared deserted. The smoke grew thicker further along the residents’ corridor, the very direction Kit was leading them in.
Caitlin held back. “But the fire!”
“It’s contained,” Kit replied, shouting to make herself audible over the noise of the alarm. “It’s in a bin, jamming the lift doors open. All smoke and no fire! Thank me later.”
The alarm wasn’t the only sound Caitlin could hear. Thuds came from each of the metal doors that they passed, and shouts from inside. The Skins were trapped and afraid.
Kit had noticed too. “There’s a different pass card for each door. I’ve only got yours. There’s nothing I can do for them.” She dragged Caitlin along, waving her arm to clear the smoke.
Then Kit breathed, “Bollocks.”
Caitlin rubbed her stinging eyes, trying to identify the problem. Now she could make out the double doors of the lift, beside a staircase. The interior of the lift flickered red, a metallic vision of hell. Below, Caitlin saw a waste bin lying on its side with its burning contents spread over the floor. Parts of corridor lino had set alight.
“Doesn’t matter,” Kit shouted. “We can still get to the stairs. We’ll be up there before the fire spreads too much.”
They waded through the thickening smoke. Caitlin looked back. The metal cell doors were impossible to see now, but the thudding and screaming sounds were louder.
“I’m not going,” she said. She wriggled free of Kit’s grasp.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m not leaving them! They’ll die.”
She had already set off the way they had come before Kit responded. “But they’re Skins!” she shouted after Caitlin. “Dying is what they do!”
Caitlin bent her head down and charged through the noxious smoke. She turned right at the junction and gulped in air that tasted sweet in contrast. The passage to the visitors’ lounge was empty too. She burst through the plain door to the annex. As she had hoped, in below the shelves of supplies was a large fire extinguisher. The staff here might not care much about Skins, but the general public was another matter.
She raced back to Kit with the fire extinguisher held over her head. She had no idea where she found the strength. When she pulled its trigger, the force almost knocked her off her feet. The jet of foam made streamer spirals in the air. Kit’s arms snaked around her, reinforcing her grip on the extinguisher and directing the foam to the burning bin.
The fires on the lino were extinguished instantly. The waste bin hissed as its burning contents became saturated.
When the last lick of flame disappeared, Caitlin dropped the fire extinguisher to the floor with a clang. All strength left her body.
Kit whooped. “You know what?” she said, barely audible beneath the shrill siren. “You’re all right, you are.”
Panting heavily, Caitlin grinned at her.
“That dress you’re wearing,” she said. “I remember.”
Kit glanced down at herself and her face flushed. Over black leggings she wore a green-and-white dress patterned with images of ivy. It had belonged to Caitlin’s mum. She had loved ivy, hence the name of their house, Ivy Cottage, despite the fact that she had never successfully trained the plant along its north-facing front wall.
“For strength,” Kit said. “I hoped you’d be okay with it.”
She didn’t wait for an answer but instead charged towards the flight of stairs. Caitlin followed her up, barely able to run fast enough to keep sight of her.
On the first floor Caitlin saw the chrome counters of a kitchen, as well as a lounge area where shabby, low armchairs had been arranged in a horseshoe formation around a bulky TV.
“Ayo let me out of my room one night and snuck me up here,” Kit said from behind her. “We ate fruit cake and watched a wildlife documentary together. Baby birds tumbling down a cliff. It was heavenly. But we’re not going that way.” She dashed to the winding stairs. “Next floor.”
Caitlin stumbled up the stairs. Kit stood at the top, holding open an unmarked door to let Caitlin pass through. Caitlin’s slippered feet sunk into thick carpet. There was a wide bed covered with a plush quilt. Through a side door she saw a pristine bathroom suite. It looked for all the world like an upmarket hotel room.
“You’ll never guess whose room this is,” Kit said, but didn’t wait for a reply. “Dr Vicky Scaife. I figured it was appropriate.” She plucked something from the pillow – a soft-toy puppy – and scowled at it.
Caitlin rubbed her forehead. The two-tone shriek of the alarm was beginning to make her head swim. “What are we doing here? What does Dr Scaife have that we need?”
Kit grinned. “We just came here for the view.”
“Are you serious? Have you actually gone crazy?”
Kit ignored her and moved to the window. From here Caitlin could see the other buildings of the January complex and, in the distance, fields of bright yellow rapeseed and the motorway.
Kit heaved against the window. It opened. She turned and smiled.
Then she stepped backwards.
Acting on instinct, Caitlin darted after her with both arms outstretched. Her palms jolted against the wooden windowsill. She gazed down.
Kit was directly below the sill, beaming up at her. A steel ladder stretched away to the ground, two storeys below.
“Fast as you like,” she said.
The wind whipped at Caitlin’s smock as she edged out of the window. Her hands shook, threatening to release their grip on the rungs of the ladder, which reverberated with every step. Rather than look up or down, she stared only at her hands. Her knuckles turned white, followed by her fingers, then the backs of her hands lost colour too.
The ladder stopped rocking. Caitlin froze, terrified that it had slipped away from the sill and that she was gradually tipping backwards. She looked down. She saw her own face – no, Kit’s face – peering up at her from the ground with one hand shielding her eyes. Now the bounce of the ladder with each step became much less pronounced. Finally, Caitlin’s feet met flat concrete. Breeze from an enormous ventilation fan at the rear of the building flung her hair around as though she were still high up in the air.
“You made a meal of that,” Kit said scornfully. “I thought we were identical.”
Caitlin bent double to try and regain her breath. There was a fundamental difference between the two of them, of course. Kit had nothing to lose.
“Still, what you did in there was pretty great,” Kit continued. “Putting out the fire. You made me feel like an utter shit for being ready to abandon them.”
“Girls!” a voice hissed.
Caitlin jerked her head up, expecting to see Dr Scaife or one of the nurses. Instead, she recognised the thick coat and hunting cap of her visitor from yesterday, Dodie.
“There’s no time for hanging around,” Dodie said. “Hop in, would you?” She pointed at a car parked at the corner of the building, a blue Morris Minor with three white daisies painted on its rounded boot.
Caitlin had so many questions she didn’t know where to begin. So, instead, she did as she was told.
Kit blocked her from getting into the passenger seat. “Not dressed like that, you don’t.”
“But I’ll still be visible anyway. Oh. You don’t mean the back seat, do you?”
Dodie had already clicked open the boot. It appeared barely large enough to hold a suitcase. As she clambered in, Caitlin studied the woman’s face, hoping to see something there that proved that she was trustworthy. But Dodie was looking elsewhere.
“We must get going,” she whispered. Her hand clutched the rim of the car boot. “They’ll figure it out soon enough.”
Caitlin’s view of the sky narrowed to a line, then was eclipsed entirely. She tried to stretch out her limbs to test the available space. It wasn’t much at all. Her spine was awkwardly curled and something was jabbing into her shoulder blades. But that wasn’t the worst of it. She couldn’t remember ever being somewhere so profoundly dark. She realised that she was as much at other people’s mercy, trapped in here, as she had been in her locked cell.
Two dull thuds signalled that Dodie and Kit had taken their seats. An engine rumble made the walls of Caitlin’s tiny prison buzz against her shoulders and her tucked-up knees. When the car began to move, the judder made her bite her tongue. She pressed her elbows out against the walls to brace herself.
After less than a minute, the car slowed to a halt. Caitlin heard a faint squeak and guessed that Dodie was winding down the window. She held her breath. She couldn’t make out what she said, but Dodie’s muffled voice rose and fell melodically, sounding unconcerned. She must be putting on a show, acting the doddery old woman for the benefit of whoever was guarding the gate to the January complex. Caitlin tried to imagine what she might be saying. Good grief, that alarm was loud! I do hope everybody in there is safe. I must dash – the hanging baskets need watering.
The car spasmed and began to move. Caitlin counted to five before allowing herself to breathe again. Her body rocked violently from side to side: the car was accelerating. She thought about thumping on the backs of the car seats – had they forgotten she was in here, getting bashed around? But she didn’t know either of these people, not really. Her instinct was to bide her time.
Soon, she heard muffled voices again. Kit and Dodie’s conversation began in low tones but became more animated. She couldn’t hear their words. Dodie’s voice was slow and sounded tired, and Kit’s often rose to a high, emphatic note. Was that what Caitlin herself sounded like, when she was emotional? The fact that Kit sounded upset robbed her of a little more of her dwindling confidence.
Her experience during the journey was reduced to patterns – the regular rocking of her right thigh against the floor of the boot, the musical stop-start of Kit’s voice, the pauses in conversation during which time Caitlin tried to guess which of them would speak next. She lost all sense of time and had no idea how far they might have travelled. She was too alert and afraid to succumb to sleep, but in the blackness she felt as though she were floating in space.
She barely registered that the car had stopped. When the boot was thrown open she yelped in alarm.
Dodie held out a mass of cloth. The gesture reminded Caitlin of the cape she offered to Kit on the night of the shedding.
“Kit’s already inside,” Dodie said. “Quick, put this on, and out you get. We don’t want anybody clocking the two of you appearing in quick succession. The neighbourhood’s full of curtain-twitchers.”
Now Caitlin filled the tiny boot entirely, like dough risen in a too-small oven. With difficulty, and with her elbows knocking painfully on the walls of the boot, Caitlin struggled free and shrugged on the thick duffel coat. Dodie pulled the hood over her head.
The car was parked half on and half off the pavement of a residential cul-de-sac ringed by a dozen semi-detached houses. Their identical keystoned driveways appeared like the supporting strands of a spiderweb, with the single tree on a tiny roundabout at its centre. Caitlin saw no evidence of curtains twitching, but in the beige depths of each house she imagined neighbours watching with curiosity.
Gently, Dodie spun her around. The house before which the car was parked was similar to all of the others, though Caitlin guessed it may have been a little older. The only clear difference was that this house was double the size of the others and detached.
“No dallying, now,” Dodie said. “In you go. Your Skin is waiting.”
Caitlin walked ahead of Dodie. The fur-lined coat hood obscured everything but the door to the house. She pushed at it. It was unlocked.
Inside, the soft interior lighting made her feel instantly warmer. She recognised the flower-patterned wallpaper as that which hung in the rarely-used second lounge in Ivy Cottage.
“Second door on the left,” Dodie said.
Caitlin glanced inside the first door as she passed it. The sofas were covered with plastic sheeting. A side table held a single lace doily. She remembered learning about Victorian homes and the convention of reserving the front room for use on Sundays and on special occasions, despite the small size of the houses. It occurred to her that this would be the only downstairs room visible from the street outside.
The next door opened before Caitlin reached it. Kit smiled and stood aside to let her enter.
“Welcome to our home,” Dodie said. She was standing in the centre of the large room.
Instantly, Caitlin spun around. Dodie – a Dodie – was still behind her in the doorway.
“What?” Caitlin said. She couldn’t think how to articulate any other question.
“Welcome,” the Dodie in the doorway said.
“Welcome,” Dodie said again, her voice now coming from elsewhere.
“Welcome.”
Prickles of light appeared at the corners of Caitlin’s vision. She felt suddenly hot and faint. She pulled down the hood of the duffel coat.
More people – eight of them in all – lined the edges of the room. In her dizzy state, they reminded Caitlin of the houses of the cul-de-sac, arranged to watch each other.
But instead they were all watching Caitlin.
They were all Dodie.
THIRTEEN
“But I visited just the other day,” Gerry said.
“Doesn’t matter,” the security guard replied, cosy and warm within his tiny cabin beside the front gate of the January complex. “I’m not letting you in and that’s the end of it.”
Gerry gripped the steering wheel. Would her car survive if she tried to bash through the red-and-white striped barrier? It would wipe the smug look off the guard’s face, at least.
“Let me speak to Doctor Scaife,” she said.
“I can square things with her. We got off on the wrong foot, that’s all. I’m sure she didn’t intend to blacklist me.”
If only she hadn’t blustered her way into the care home, broadcasting her real intentions, she might have stood a chance of getting in there today. If Caitlin Hext wasn’t at home, she must surely be inside visiting her Snakeskin. From what Ian had told her, Caitlin had spent much of her time here recently.
A flurry of movement in the distance caught her eye. The car park was vast and the care home entrance was partially hidden behind a row of palm trees, but she could still make out the people rushing in and out of the glass-walled lobby. Another group wearing white staff uniforms stood in a huddle to one side. She wound down the car window fully and stuck out her head. Now she could hear a faint sound. It rose and fell as the breeze changed direction. A siren.
“This pig-headedness of yours isn’t about Doctor Scaife, is it?”
The guard’s mouth tightened. It might have been unconscious agreement, or confusion.
Gerry peered at the care home again. Until now she had taken the grey mass in the sky behind the building to be a low cloud. “Is that smoke? Has there been a fire?”
The guard unfolded an edition of Folk. With exaggerated concentration, he began to read.
It was clear she wasn’t going to get any more information out of him. She revved her engine as a childish protest, then backed up between the concrete pillars, weaving as she tried to navigate in reverse. Finally, she swung the car backwards around the corner and pulled up at the edge of the country road.
She had no idea what to do next. So much for going back to the source. She’d been travelling for days and had got nowhere.
She thought of the shepherd’s hut on the mountainside at Ilam. Artists’ impressions always depicted the Fall as a widespread shower of meteors – but perhaps that hadn’t been the case. They had certainly affected the Ilam villagers, of course, that much was beyond doubt. But none of the history books had mentioned fragments of the meteors actually reaching the earth. Historians agreed that they had broken far up in the atmosphere, and that it was their dispersal that ensured that so many people in the valley were granted the inexplicable gifts of sheddings and Snakeskins. But those indentations on the crest of rock beside the shepherd’s hut were a contradiction. And if one or more of the meteors had actually landed up on the mountainside above the village, what did that mean for the occupants of the shepherd’s hut? Whatever the answer was, Caitlin was its embodiment – the last member of the Hext family line.