by Tim O'Rourke
Wide-eyed, the clerk looked into Potter’s dead black eyes. He nodded his head.
“I can’t hear you,” Potter growled at him.
“Yes, I understand.” The man trembled in his seat.
“Perfect,” Potter said, taking his hands from the man’s shoulders. He followed me out of the booth.
Chapter Ten
“What now?” Potter asked as we stood outside the front of the railway station.
It was still raining hard, so I pulled the hood of my top back over my head. I looked out at Potter as rain ran down the length of his strong face. “I make my way to Snake Weed,” I said.
“We’d better fly,” Potter said. “It will be the quickest way. Plus we’ll be able to search the area from above…”
“No,” I said. “We might be seen. Nev might see me and I don’t want that. I don’t want him to know what I really am.”
“Well you must be out of your tiny mind if you think I’m going all the way to Snake Weed in that rust-bucket,” Potter said, nodding in the direction of my car.
“What’s this we business?” I asked him. “I’m going to search for Nev on my own.”
“I thought you said you needed my help?” Potter said, looking a little taken aback – a little hurt.
“And you have,” I said.
“What, you called me to come all the way out here to rough that guy up and that’s it? What, I’m nothing more than a bit of hired muscle?” he said. “You could’ve got a fucking chimp to do that. I ain’t no one’s pet monkey,” he barked, skulking away.
“That’s not what I meant,” I said, going after him, my boots splashing through puddles. I gripped his arm. He stopped and I let go. Potter turned to face me. “I thought that perhaps you should get back to Hallowed Manor. After all, doesn’t Sophie need you?”
“She’s resting – asleep most of the time up in the attic,” he said.
“And what about Murphy? Doesn’t he need you?” I asked.
“That old cow Mrs. Payne has Murphy firmly in hand,” he said with a grin that he found impossible to hide from me.
“You’re so freaking disgusting,” I groaned.
“And that’s what you like about me,” he said, looking right at me, that smile gone now.
“No, it’s not,” I said, looking away – counting the puddles at my feet.
“So you do like me then?” he said back.
“That’s not what I meant. I was meant to say that I think you are crude,” I told him.
“Crude?” Potter said and I didn’t need to look up to know that he was smirking again. “Kiera Hudson, you don’t fool me with this little-miss-innocent act.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I shot back and this time I did look up at him.
“I haven’t forgotten what happened in the cellblock back at the office,” he said. “You couldn’t keep your hands off me.”
“It was you who grabbed me,” I reminded him.
“Oh yeah, I remember now, my ears are still ringing from where you were screaming so loud for me to get off you…”
“Okay, okay, so we shared a kiss, big deal,” I shrugged, pretending that it had meant nothing to me. “It won’t be happening again.”
“So if that’s true, then you’ve got nothing to be worried about,” Potter said.
“What have I got to be worried about?” I frowned.
“You’re worried that if you let me tag along while you go in search of Nev, you won’t be able to keep your hands off me.” Then puffing out his chest, he added, “I understand.”
I scowled. “You’re so wrong about me.”
“Prove it,” he dared.
Spinning around and heading back across the rain-soaked carpark toward the station, I shouted over my shoulder, “We’ll take the train to Silent Gorge, then go on foot to Snake Weed.”
The blind was still drawn down over the ticket booth window as we made our way through the station and out onto the platform. Potter followed close behind. I suspected that the man wouldn’t be selling any more tickets today. Apart from Potter and I, there was only one other passenger who waited on the opposite platform to us. Potter took a cigarette from his pocket and within moments smoke was billowing from the end of it in grey clouds. I was tempted to point out the no smoking signs to him, but what would be the point?
“What?” he asked, noticing that I was staring at him.
“Nothing,” I said, looking away. I could see a train approaching the station further down the tracks. An illuminated display hung from the platform overhead. Reading the information on it, I could see that the approaching train stopped at Silent Gorge Station. As I stood and watched the train approach, I couldn’t help but remember the last time Potter and I had had been standing on a platform together, it had been underground, way beneath the grand looking station where people got pushed to the different wheres and whens. That had been the last place I had seen my Potter. And even now as I remembered that look of hurt and sorrow on his face as he realised how I’d tricked him and my friends to board that train without me, it still twisted my heart out of shape. I glanced at Potter from the corner of my eye as he stood a few feet from me, smoking in the rain. Was the real and only reason I’d decided to let Potter come with me because I felt guilty – guilty that I had tricked him at that other station? If I hadn’t have let him come with me to Snake Weed, wouldn’t I have been deceiving him and myself again? I knew he was right. My real objection at him coming with me was not so much to do with him but with me. Potter was right – I didn’t trust myself around him. I knew it wouldn’t take much for the barriers I was trying to construct between us to come crashing down. But wasn’t there another reason, too? Wasn’t there a place in my heart that hoped – wished – longed for – that when we both stepped on the train that now approached the station it would push both of us again? But this time not separately – but together. Might the train push both of us hand in hand to another where and where – a place where we could be together again just like we had once been before?
“Are you coming or not?” I heard Potter ask.
“Huh?” I said, glancing up. While I’d been daydreaming – wishing – the train had pulled into the station. Potter stood in the open doorway of the carriage, looking back at me.
“The train is going to leave without you,” he said, hand out.
I looked at him. A snapshot memory of Potter standing on that other train – the one below ground before he was pushed and I was blinded by the sadness I could see in his eyes – swam before me. I couldn’t bear it. This time I wouldn’t let Potter leave without me. Reaching out, I grasped his hand. The doors made a whooshing sound as they started to close. Potter yanked me forward and into his arms as the doors slammed shut, sealing us both on board. The carriage was empty. The train started to glide out of the station. The lights flickered overhead, throwing the carriage into sudden darkness. If it was going to happen – if we were going to be pushed – it would be right now…
Chapter Eleven
“Kiera, wake up,” I heard Potter say. He was shaking me gently by the shoulders.
“Get down, they’re coming,” I said. “We’re trapped.”
“What are you talking about?” I heard him say.
“The soldiers are coming. We’ve got to get to the roof…” I said, opening my eyes and looking straight at Potter.
“We’re here,” Potter said, looking confused. “We’ve arrived at Silent Gorge Station.”
I glanced over his shoulder and could see that we were still on the train. We were pulling into a station. Had we been pushed? My head felt thick with fog. “We can’t leave without Sammy and the others. We’ve got to go back,” I said, sitting forward in my seat and grabbing hold of Potter’s coat lapels. “There’s a glider in the roof…”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Potter said, shaking me awake. “You fell asleep, Kiera. You’ve been dreaming, that’s all.”
“But what about Sammy an
d the others?” I blinked, looking about the train carriage as it pulled to a halt in Silent Gorge Station.
“Who the fuck is Sammy?” Potter asked, getting up from his seat. He took me by the hand, leading me toward the carriage door. My legs felt like strips of rubber.
The doors opened. With my hand still lost in Potter’s grip, he helped me down onto the platform. “Well that was a right barrel of laughs,” he groaned, looking for the exit from the platform.
“What was?” I said, still feeling confused and disorientated.
“Having to sit and listen to you snore your head off for the last hour or so,” Potter said, spying a wooden gate that led from the platform.
“It’s not me who snores, it’s you,” I said, scratching my head and still trying to find my bearings.
“And how would you know?” he said, swinging open the gate and stepping out onto a narrow lane. It led away from the remote station, thorny brambles and thickets flowered on each side of the lane.
“I don’t know,” I whispered, still feeling confused and not knowing whether I’d been pushed on the train or not. If we had, Potter seemed unaware of it. But I couldn’t help but feel that the train journey had taken me somewhere and not just here – to the Silent Gorge Railway Station. I had woken from my sleep – if that’s what it really had been – shouting out the name Samantha Carter again. Who was she and why couldn’t I remember her fully? I had seen a castle on top of a hill. There was something vaguely familiar about it. In the furthest corners of my mind I could see soldiers with guns. They crowded at the back of my mind like shadows. But one thing was for sure – Potter might not remember – but he had been with me. If I had been pushed on that train, Potter had been waiting for me in that where and when with the young woman named Samantha Carter, the castle on the hill, and the soldiers with their guns. I was sure of that at least. But if I had been pushed someplace else, I’d been pushed right back and Potter had come right back with me. Yet had he been anywhere at all? What if the Potter I had been with, in that castle on the hill, had been my Potter – the one I had shared so much of my life with? What if the layers were shifting – trying to bring us back together?
“This way,” Potter said, cutting into my thoughts.
“How can you be so sure? I thought you said you didn’t know where Snake Weed was,” I asked, my head beginning to clear and feel less foggy.
Without saying anything, Potter pointed at a sign that was partially hidden by the wild overgrowth that covered the walls on both sides of the lane. The sign read, Snake Weed – 2 miles.
Walking side-by-side, we headed in the direction the sign pointed. Although it had stopped raining, the wind was cold. My long, black hair fluttered about my shoulders and I felt suddenly hungry again. It was as if the wolf I had finally accepted as part of me was gnawing on my insides – taking everything that I ate for her.
“Are you okay?” Potter asked as we headed around a bend in the road. “You look kinda lost.”
“That must have been some deep sleep I was in,” I said.
“I guess,” Potter said, but not sounding convinced by my explanation. A silence fell between us and it felt kind of awkward. It was the first time I had ever felt anything like it when in his company. Sure there had been silences, but they had been comfortable – like we were at ease in each other’s company. It didn’t feel like that now as we headed down the road toward Snake Weed. We had both been to Snake Weed before. It was where we had once fought Luke and the Lycanthrope. Perhaps that was why the silence between us was now uncomfortable? Maybe there was some remote part of Potter that did remember? Was he feeling something close to déjà vu? But if he was, then wouldn’t that make him mine? Or if he were feeling anything at all – any kind of memory – was it not bleeding through from another where and when – wherever my Potter had been pushed to. Perhaps I should have left Potter back in Havensfield. Perhaps I should have let him return to Hallowed Manor and to Sophie.
“I know you don’t want to admit it, but there is a connection between us, Kiera,” Potter suddenly said, breaking the silence. He wasn’t looking at me but straight ahead, smoke coiling up from the tip of the cigarette that dangled from the corner of his mouth.
“Please stop,” I whispered, wishing now for the silence again.
“I can’t stop,” he said. “I’ve tried to stop thinking about you, I’ve tried to stop the feelings I have inside for you, and I’ve tried to stop saying your name a thousand times a second inside my head. But I can’t stop. I just can’t.”
“You’ve got to,” I said, unable to bring myself to look at him.
“I feel like I‘m being stretched inside – being torn apart – by you,” Potter said, still walking and still looking front. By not looking at me, did it make it easier for him to open up, say what he was really feeling inside?
“But you have Sophie,” I said.
“Don’t remind me.”
“You’re going to be a father.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” he said. “Don’t you think it breaks my heart to be with you knowing that someone else depends on me – someone who hasn’t even been born yet?”
“Perhaps you will feel different when the child is born,” I said.
“Different how?”
“Different about me.”
“I wish I believed that to be true, Kiera, but I doubt it will be,” Potter said, his voice sounding full of regret. “I can’t see one single day in my future when I won’t be in love with you. I don’t want there to be one single day in my future where I won’t be with you.”
“Please don’t say these things,” I whispered, head down, counting my strides, trying to erect some kind of disconnect between what he was saying and how it was making me feel. I loved what he was saying – it brought joy to my heart – but a deep sadness, too.
“I can’t help myself,” Potter said. “I know that if I don’t say how I feel, I will go insane. But however much I love you, there is a part of me that hates you too.”
“Hates me?” I asked, glancing at him for the first time since he had started talking.
“There is a part of me that hates the fact that you came into my life,” he said. “Part of me wishes I could go back in time to the day you arrived at the office. A part of me wishes that you never had.”
“There is a part of me that wishes that too,” I said. “But I can’t change it – neither of us can. There is a part of me that wishes things could be different, but I know it’s pointless to do so.”
That heavy silence crept over us again and we made the last of the walk toward Snake Weed, without a word passing between us.
Chapter Twelve
Snake Weed was just how I remembered it to be. It was surrounded on all sides by rolling hills – hills that I had once marched down side by side with my friends… I pushed those thoughts from my mind. They did nothing to please me. They were just a constant reminder of my past life. A life that I could no sooner go back to than Potter could go back to the time before I arrived at the offices of The Creeping Men.
Together we wandered the few streets that made up the small hamelt. It was near dark now and the streets were deserted and quiet. Cigarette smoke wafted over Potter’s shoulder, leaving a trail of grey behind him. I wanted to reach for him, take his hand in mine and tell him that everything was going to be okay. My Potter or not, I hated the thought of him hurting inside – hurting because of a decision I had made for him – for all of my friends. But instead of reaching for his hand, I shoved it into the pocket of my hoodie. The end of the street widened, leading out into something close to a town square. It was as I remembered it to be, but with one difference. As before, the cobbled square was surrounded by Tudor-style houses and shops. Each of them had thatched roofs and was supported by ancient wooden beams. Over the tops of the houses and in the distance, I could see the peaks of the hills and the mountains that surrounded Snake Weed. But there hadn’t been a statue before. Coming to a sudde
n stop, I looked across the square at it. The statue was facing away from me, but I knew it was the one that Nev had painted, the one that he came so often to Snake Weed to look at and paint. It was the statue I had once seen in my dreams. Slowly, I crossed the square toward it. My heart was racing fast and I didn’t know why. It was just a statue after all. Several small fountains of water jetted in a constant stream from the base the statue had been erected on. I circled the statue until I was facing it. With my heart racing faster still, I slowly lifted my head and looked up into its face. I stifled a gasp in the back of my throat. The statue did look very much like me. She was naked, long hair trailing over her shoulders and covering her breasts. She stood with one leg bent slightly at the knee, her hands folded in her lap. A set of giant wings protruded from her back.
The water rippled about her feet. At first I thought it was just my own reflection that I could see staring back at me. But it wasn’t – it was Potter’s reflection I could see. I glanced back over my shoulder believing that he must have crept up on me, but he hadn’t. He stood some feet away smoking. He was too far away to have caused a reflection of himself in the water. I looked back, that image of Potter was still there. And even though it rippled back and forth, his dark eyes were boring into mine. He wore that same look of sorrow I had seen on his face when he realised I’d tricked him into getting onto that train.
“Potter,” I whispered.
“Kiera,” I heard him whisper back over the sound of the frothing and tumbling water. Was it really his voice I had heard? I stole another quick glance over my shoulder. Potter was still some feet away. I looked back down into the water. Was I staring into the face of my Potter?
“Where did we first kiss?” I asked the reflection.