“No need to apologise, my dear. Indeed, was it not I who contacted you?”
“Is it about the case?”
“Yes and no.”
“I suppose you could say that I’ve made a bit of progress down here. I’ve already met up with three of the four on the list, but I don’t really feel like I’ve found out anything about the attack.”
“Well, that’s all well and good. Give me one moment,” said the deputy without waiting for Amanda to reply. Amanda could hear as the deputy put the phone down and proceeded to talk with someone who must have been in his room. Despite her best efforts, she could not hear enough of the conversation to make anything of it. “You still there, Amanda?” he continued.
“Still here.”
“Right, first thing. For the moment, you can forget about the interviews. Just pack what you have gathered together so far, as quickly as you can, and make your way back here.”
“But…”
“Do not worry, Ms Blake. You can return to your work as soon as you have helped us resolve another issue. You see, it’s the boy. He’s missing.”
Chapter 4
Amanda slouched down on a mustard-coloured chair, which was situated on the edge of the service station’s main seating area, after surreptitiously consuming one of her bags of blood in the toilet. Though she knew that she could be wasting valuable time by stopping at a service station, not long after she had left her Radcliff hotel Amanda had started to feel the familiar pang of hunger gnawing at the edges of her willpower. She had to drink, but her supplies were in the boot of her Clio, meaning she had to stop somewhere. What was more, past experience had made it quite clear to Amanda that you were not only all too visible if you tried to drink in a car but you could also very easily end up spilling blood. As she did not want to have to deal with the tempting aroma of blood for the rest of the long drive ahead of her, or get caught, the obvious thing to do was a short stay at the roadside services.
She had given herself a minute or two to settle down after the intake of blood - it always took a little while for her to clear her head afterwards - and had bought herself a croissant to occupy herself with as she waited. She had once loved eating croissants, but now she only enjoyed the smell when they were still warm; all she did with the thing was to tear it slowly apart. A few more shreds of the cold pastry found their way onto the shiny surface of the table top before she had had enough. She pushed the small mess she had created to one side and retrieved her phone to check if she had missed another message from deputy.
There were no texts or any missed calls. Amanda let the phone fall out of her hand and clank on the table. She leant back in her chair and looked at a couple of the seemingly alone and probably lonely transport drivers tucking into their fast food, before turning to an exhausted and undernourished looking mother who was ignoring her two young boys as they threw the contents of nearby plant pots at one another. Without really meaning to, one of the boys managed to get a little soil in the eye of the other. With immediate effect, the game was over and the injured little man ran over to his mother to moan about the terrible actions of his brother and to get a little sympathy for what had transpired.
“That boy could be anywhere, but he’s likely to go one place more than anywhere else,” Amanda muttered to herself, wondering why the deputy would want her to return to the school rather than just stay near Brenden’s home in Radcliff. Was it not possible that the boy had jumped on a coach and was at that very moment passing by on the motorway just outside the service station? If the boy was to head anywhere, surely it would be his mother’s house.
She picked up her phone once more and, as a service station worker quietly cleared away the remains of her croissant, she called the deputy. The ringing tone sounded again and again until Amanda started to doubt that she was doing the right thing, but before she could change her mind she heard the voice of the deputy.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Mr Martin. Sorry, I mean, Mr Chester. It’s Amanda.”
“Ah, Amanda? Is something wrong?”
“No, I’m still on my way. I just wanted to call, though, to ask if I’m doing the right thing. Don’t you think that Brenden could be on his way back to Radcliff? I could still turn around, I’ve only been on the road for about half an hour and could easily make my way back.”
The deputy gave no reply.
“Hello? Martin, are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m still here. I was thinking about what you just said. Yes, it could be the case that the boy might make his way to Radcliff: it’s a possibility. However, I have a few reasons to doubt that he has started such a journey. You see, he has no money, as far as we’re aware, and the school is some distance from any train station, so it is quite likely that he is still nearby. Indeed,” continued the deputy in a slightly absent voice, talking more to himself than Amanda, “there’s not even a bus station near the school, so it would take him some time to get anywhere as he would have to make his way by foot. Unless that is… but of course, he would not do that, not after what happened to him.”
The line went silent for a few moments leading Amanda to wonder if she really had lost the deputy.
“Deputy?” she said again, with her short patience getting the better of her.
“No, Amanda. I want you to come back as you will be more use to us here. I just don’t have the staff to send enough people to town. One of the problems is that there are quite a few individuals here at the school who just can’t go out there, not without causing a stir anyway. If you come back, we can keep the school running without too much disturbance and have at least a few people searching for the boy. There is also another reason I want you to come back: I know from what you told me about your interview with the boy that you were able to make a connection with him, you got much more out of him than I could. It might be good for him to see a friendly face, not an austere old man like myself, when he next meets someone from our community. It’ll make it all the easier to convince him to come back.”
Amanda stood up with the intention of going to her car and made her way past the still crying boy, whose mother was still trying to remove soil from his eyes with a wet wipe.
“Why did he leave?” said Amanda, continuing her conversation with the deputy as she reached the exit.
“This is something that has yet to be fully established.”
“If you find out anything, please get back to me. If I find him, it might make a big difference with any attempt to convince him to come back. If something has happened at the school…”
“Again, Amanda, this is a good reason for you to join the effort to locate the boy. If it is indeed someone at the school who has driven the boy to leave, this would be a very significant thing for us to know.”
Amanda stopped for a moment, pausing between two parked cars that had seen better days, and considered what the deputy had said. If she did indeed become privy to certain information about the goings on at the school, something which could lead to serious ramifications for a student or teacher, would she be willing to pass it on to the deputy if the potentially guilty party was trying to do the best for the boy? What’s more, if it was the case that something had happened - something which she did not even wish to imagine and could prevent the boy’s return - what would she do? She would not be able to let him go home as this would only endanger Brenden’s family and friends, or just some unknown unfortunate who might be in the vicinity of the boy when his hunger struck, nor would she be able to take him back. Indeed, she would probably not even be in the position to inform the deputy or anyone else that she had found him. This could all mean that she would be left in the difficult situation that she might have to try and look after the boy herself, keeping him somewhere in her tiny flat while also pretending to everyone she knew that she had no idea where he was.
Suddenly, an ill-formed idea developed at the back of Amanda’s mind. She could not quite grasp what it meant, nor bring it further forward, but she noted t
o herself that there was something to consider.
“Amanda?” said the deputy, a little annoyed as he had clearly continued talking after Amanda’s concentration had moved on. “Are you there?”
Whatever her thought was, it would have to wait.
“Yes, I’m here.”
“So you’re coming back?”
Just after hanging up the phone, Amanda found herself standing in front of her car. She knew that she had to get on, but for a few moments she just wanted to pause and mull over a memory from her own time at the school that had been dredged up by Brenden’s running away. She recalled how she had felt more than out of place in the rickety old building and more than a little afraid of the other students, the teachers and what she herself had become. The short-statured and rather ancient looking Mr Falmouth, her form tutor, obviously recognised what Amanda was feeling and came to talk with her. He suggested to Amanda that there would be no place back in the living world for many of his students, but that she would most likely have no trouble fitting back in as she had been ‘so well preserved’. She was not quite sure how to take this comment at the time, and it still did not sit well with her even after she had left the school behind. It was clear that Falmouth had been trying to allay her fears about what she was, a vampire, and to help her come to terms with this fact, something that she had had a very difficult time doing. However, the teacher’s comment only intensified her feelings of alienation at the school and her desire to leave.
Only, she did not leave in the end until her set period of time at the school came to a close. She only ever got as far as making her way a few hundred feet down the road just outside the school’s grounds. She had once found a spot where the seven-foot-high brick wall that surrounded much of the school’s forest had collapsed and she returned there night after night, always with the intention of going further, but she never did. Instead, she would just sit at the edge of the pile of broken bricks with her eyes closed while listening to the sound of the rustling leaves above her and the whirring of the engines of the cars that occasionally passed by. That was until one night, she found her friend Mary waiting for her. After that, she never returned.
***
One further drop of water dripped down into the pile of mugs that had carelessly been neglected in the common room’s sink. Ms Halford watched as the splash led to several small trails of water to flow down the sides of some of the haphazardly placed mugs and wished there was something she could do to put at least this little mess in order. But there was nothing she could do except to tell someone else that they should clean it up. She had been watching the events unfolding in the sink for most of her lunch break, an allotted period of time which she had little use for, after wandering back into the room in which she had last seen the boy. A part of herself that she considered to be quite unreasonable, but difficult not to listen to, had given her a grain of hope that the boy might have returned to the common room, but of course, this had not been the case.
She tried to run over the words - her words - that she now believed must have led the boy to leave. What had she said? How foolish had she been to suggest in such a blunt fashion that Brenden should return to the realm of the living? By letting her unsubstantiated concerns about what she thought Adam was teaching get the better of her, she had placed the poor boy in jeopardy. Brenden was still young, she considered, and from what she had heard and seen, in the modern world, children seemed to grow up at a much slower pace than when she had still known what it was to live. So, what had she done? Nothing more than send an innocent child into a dangerous environment just because of her petty squabble with another teacher. How wrong she had been.
Though outwardly she retained her composure, Ms Halford felt as if she had lost control of the run of her thoughts as they repeatedly returned to the themes of her guilt and misjudgement. She remained on the spot, stock still; nothing more than an apparition of a statue of regret and guilt.
“Matilda.”
Her name broke the spell that had settled on Ms Halford and she turned to find Adam’s cloudy eyes resting upon her with concern. His expression soon hardened, however, and after clearing his throat, he continued on in such a way that Ms Halford doubted that she had correctly read the man’s initial expression.
“That deputy can be a fool! What did he think he was doing sending teachers - and a number of the students, for that matter – off into the woods in the middle of the night? Surely it was clear from early on that the boy had scarpered.”
Ms Halford said nothing in reply as Adam’s words only led her to return to the pattern of thoughts that she had followed before her fellow teacher had entered the room. Instead, she just watched as the disgruntled giant of a man started to prepare a green tea for himself with a delicacy that few would expect him to possess.
“I mean, it’s ridiculous, you would think that the boy’s life was in danger. He’ll come back soon enough, of that I have no doubt. The only questions that we really have to deal with is whether he does so before he gets himself into a bit of grief by running out of blood and what led him to run off in the first place.”
“I think I can answer one of those questions, Adam.”
“Matilda, whatever do you mean?”
“Oh Adam, it’s awful. I don’t know how to say it. I said something and I’m sure it must have driven the boy to go. I told him that he needed to see the world for himself, to make up his mind about his future: he must have taken me to mean to go right away. How could I have been so irresponsible? He’s just a boy.”
The look of concern returned to Adam’s face and Ms Halford waited for him to tell her how terrible her actions had been, that she had failed in her responsibilities as a teacher, and how unfortunate it was that the boy was exposed to her dangerous advice. But Adam did nothing of the sort and remained silent. No words passed between them and the only noise in the room, apart from the barely audible drip in the sink, was the ever rising sound of Adam’s kettle as it came to the boil.
Adam moved over to the kettle after hearing its click and then slowly filled his cup.
“You cannot blame yourself, Matilda,” said Adam, with his eyes fixed on the green tea bag bobbing around in his mug. “The boy’s decisions are his own, and though he is still a child he is not so young. If anything, you were just trying to do your best for the boy. And even if it is the case that certain words may have helped push the boy along to go, I am quite sure that these words were not yours alone. Indeed, since I found out that the boy had departed the school, I have also been running over what I might have done to drive Brenden away. Several times last night as I was walking through the wood, I discovered something that made me believe for a while that it was all my own doing, that I had put too much pressure on the boy to think about what he would do in the future. But there is no use dwelling on such ideas; we have no true idea of what was really in the boy’s mind. No, Matilda, as much as it might seem to you now that you might have been responsible, believe me, it was not your doing. Don’t blame yourself.”
As Adam finished what he was saying, Ms Halford abruptly looked away to focus her attention on the entrance to the room.
“Dmitry,” she said with a firm voice, “what are you doing over there?”
“Sorry to disturb your conversation,” said the ghost, “I had no intention of doing such a thing.”
Adam took a moment to look Dmitry up and down, taking in the sight of the young man - with his youthful but badly scarred face, thin frame and transparent body - who was stuck forever in the tatty black shirt he had perished in following a motorcycle accident. They both knew - as did almost everyone who had spent any amount of time working at the school - that Dmitry was the ears of the deputy and that he had probably heard more of their conversation than either would be comfortable with.
“Be that as it may,” added Adam, “as you have disturbed us, you might as well tell us why you’re here.”
“Of course, Adam. You don’t need to worry about th
at. I’m just making the rounds to say that the teachers don’t need to worry about having to look for the boy anymore.”
“Has someone found him?” asked Ms Halford.
“Sorry Ms H, no. It’s just that the deputy’s pulled the teachers off the search.”
“But what about the boy?”
“No need to worry, the deputy’s got it sorted. He’s got someone from outside looking into it and so things around here can just get back to normal. I think he was going to send in a couple of the teachers as well but decided against it. He feared this might not just scare the locals, but that the staff might end up using the wrong words and do nothing but ensure that the boy never comes back again.”
Dmitri regarded the two teachers for a moment and gently fought with himself to prevent a smile from curling across his lips.
“Well, now that you know, I’ve got to go. No rest for the living dead.”
Adam and Ms Halford looked at each other and waited in silence until Adam took the initiative to walk over to the door to check whether Dmitri was still in the corridor outside.
“That little shit!”
“Adam!”
“Oh, I don’t care. How dare the deputy use that boy to keep tabs on us, and any of the other teachers and students for that matter. What’s just as perverse is that all the deputy will have done is to send his hacks and another bunch of inexperienced ex-students to do a job they have no idea how to do so he can keep everyone where he, and he alone, wants them. Sometimes I despair for this school.”
Ms Halford came up to Adam’s side. She wished she once again consisted of something more than what she had become so she could reach out to console the man with more than just her words and the transparent shadow of her presence. She told herself that she would just have to make do.
“I know, Adam,” she said. “I know.”
***
The Blue Bell Inn, which was situated just beyond the dirt-spattered welcome sign for Caldborough, had shut like so many of the pubs of the town during some time in the recent past. Though it had not been such a long time since the place had last closed its doors, the loss of its own sign of a dark blue bell; the untendered flower baskets and the algae that was growing across the wooden sheets that boarded up the windows all made it seem as if the place had been closed for decades. It was true that the place was not entirely out of use as the owner - who had been trying to get someone to buy the property for some time, even if it meant tearing the old building down – had come up with a plan to charge people to use the ample gravel covered car park behind the pub. But even the car park was rarely used.
The School of the Undead Page 9