by Sharon Jones
Slowly, she slid from under Michael’s arm. He grunted and turned onto his back, and the arm that had been wrapped around her flopped over his eyes. Nothing looked out of place, and the noise seemed further away now, like it was coming from the corridor. Bugger. That wasn’t a bird. It sounded like someone trying to pick a lock – what if someone was trying to get in? Maybe she should wake Michael. No. This was probably her being completely paranoid – she wasn’t going to wake him for that.
Nevertheless, her heart pounded in her chest as she crept across the room and, quietly as she could, turned the lock and opened the door. The study was in darkness. She looked from shadow to shadow. There was no one there.
As she edged further into the study, she noticed that Michael’s door was open. Oh God, what if someone had got in? She slowly pushed on the door until she could see the whole room. Bed…chair…the light from Michael’s computer blinking on and off like a heartbeat. No one there.
She sighed. Maybe she’d dreamed it. Except, there it was again…like fingernails scratching against one of the doors further down the corridor. Her breaths grew shallow as she crept towards the door and wrapped her fingers around the cold brass of the handle. Biting her lip she slowly twisted it and cracked open the door.
All the lights in the corridor were out, all except for one: the broken light. The one that flashed on and off like a nightclub strobe. In the brief flashes she saw that the corridor was empty. She sighed with relief. Yup, she was just being paranoid. The noise was probably rats inside the walls – not a pleasant thought but a darned sight better than a lurking killer.
She took one last look. The light flashed off. The corridor was soaked in darkness. But in that darkness she saw a human-shaped shadow. She tensed, but when the light flickered on again there was no one there. She rubbed her eyes. Just a trick of the light. Jesus! What was wrong with her head?!
But as darkness fell again, she saw him, clearer this time, pacing towards her, dinner jacket flapping, blood staining his white shirt. She knew him. But it couldn’t be…
Danny?
She stumbled back, sending the door slamming into the wall. This time when the light flicked on he was still there, his eyes wide and desperate, reaching a bloodstained hand towards her.
‘No…no…no!’
Just as the dead guy’s fingers reached her arm, Poppy screamed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The scream echoed through his dreams, shattering sleep like glass falling from a broken mirror. Michael bolted upright, his heart hammering in his chest. It took a second to realise it wasn’t a dream – someone was screaming. Poppy.
He leaped out of bed but his foot caught in the duvet and he crashed to the floor. He grunted as pain shot through his hip. He scrabbled to his feet and darted into the study.
Silhouetted against the light flashing in from the corridor, Poppy punched at the air, screaming like she was fighting someone off. He slammed on the light and pulled her to him.
‘No! No! Let me go!’ Her fist crashed into his chest, her other hand just missed his face.
‘Hey – hey!’ he said, grabbing her arms and pressing them to her sides. ‘Poppy, wake up! You’re dreaming.’
Her eyes connected with his at last, wide with terror. Her head swung back to the corridor and then her gaze darted around the study. ‘Where did he go?’
‘Where did who go?’
Down the corridor a door swung open. Michael instinctively hugged Poppy to him, but it was Ria who came running down the corridor wearing the same black silk robe he’d seen her in before, looking panicked. Conal raced after her.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ he shouted.
Poppy squirmed out of Michael’s arms. She looked like she was on the verge of panicking again and so he let her go. She cleared her throat, gasping for breath, and stared at the floor. ‘I’m – I’m sorry. I thought I heard somebody out here and then I saw…’
‘What did you see?’ Conal demanded.
Poppy shook her head. ‘Nothing. I saw nothing.’
‘If you didn’t see anything, why were you screaming the place down?’ he blurted.
Ria shoved Conal and glared at him.
Michael felt his blood pressure rise. ‘She couldn’t help it. I think she was sleepwalking.’
‘Well, can she sleepwalk in your set? Don’t you think we’ve had enough to deal with without her screaming the place down like she’s being murdered?’
‘Conal, enough!’ Ria snapped.
Conal ran his hand through his hair and glanced back down the corridor.
Ria edged closer to Poppy and took her hand.
Poppy jerked against Michael. He wrapped an arm around her and rubbed her shoulder. She was shaking.
‘What did you see, Poppy?’ Ria asked quietly.
‘N-nothing. Michael’s right. I must have been asleep.’
‘Then what were you dreaming?’
‘I saw…’ Poppy shook her head and turned her gaze back to the floor.
Michael didn’t believe that she didn’t remember, and by the look on Ria’s face, neither did she. But Ria didn’t push it.
‘Will you be OK?’ she asked gently.
Poppy nodded. ‘I just wanna go back to bed. I’m sorry if I woke you all.’
‘Don’t think we were meant to sleep tonight,’ Conal said. ‘Police haven’t long gone.’
Poppy’s gaze darted up to the older guy, her eyes suddenly alert.
‘Come on, Conal, let’s go,’ Ria said. Letting go of Poppy’s hand, she pushed him towards the door.
Then Ria stopped. ‘If you see anything you need to talk about, just give me a knock.’
Poppy’s hand slipped into Michael’s. He squeezed it reassuringly. It was almost as if she was afraid of the girl.
‘Night,’ Michael said. He tugged Poppy with him to the door, shut it and clicked the lock into place.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked.
She nodded, but she couldn’t seem to stop glancing around as if she expected someone to jump out at any moment. The fingers of her right hand worried the shiny black stone that hung around her neck, the one that the Native American medicine woman had given her. The small piece of obsidian was meant to protect her – if you believed that shit – but as far as he could see it did sweet fuck all.
‘What did you see?’ he asked again.
‘You’re probably right. I was just dreaming. I suppose with everything that happened yesterday…seeing the guy and all… makes sense I’d end up having nightmares.’
It was the logical explanation. But he knew when Poppy was lying.
‘What did you dream?’ he asked, playing along.
She shrugged, still not looking at him.
‘Poppy, tell me. It’ll help. Break the dream and all that.’
Her eyes searched his as if unsure how he would react. ‘I heard a noise. I thought someone might be trying to get in here, or break into Ria’s room. When I opened the door there was no one there, but then…’ she blinked and shook her head. ‘Was I really dreaming? Felt like I was awake.’
Michael ran a hand over her tangled strawberry blonde hair and brushed his fingers over her cheek. ‘What did you see?’
‘It was him. The dead guy. He was coming at me.’ She turned her face up to his and shook her head. ‘I must have been asleep. Must have been.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Poppy felt Michael’s finger trace lazy shapes on her cheek as they lay, waiting for morning. Spirals and stars. Letters and symbols. It was something they’d done since they were four or five and they’d seen a deaf woman. Michael had been fascinated by her sign language, but the thought of either of them going deaf had terrified Poppy so much that she’d cried. They didn’t know sign language. How would they play? How would they talk? Michael had taken her hand in his and with a grubby finger he’d drawn letters on her palm. ‘That’s how we’ll talk,’ he’d told her.
She’d never have guessed that eleven years
later he’d be lying in her bed, sharing her pillow, still talking in their secret language. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the tickling movements of his finger.
I ♥ U
The fact that he’d said it before didn’t stop the breath from catching in her throat. She smiled and moved her hand from where it was tucked against his chest and drew on his T-shirt:
I ♥ U 2
Michael pressed a kiss to her forehead, glanced at his watch and sighed. ‘It’s probably time to get up.’
She didn’t want to. They’d been awake most of the night and now her whole body ached like she’d run several marathons. She just wanted to stay there with Michael. Warm and safe.
NO, she drew on his chest.
‘OK, but if your dad finds us in bed together again you know there’ll be trouble.’
He had a point.
After some cajoling by Michael, she got up, splashed some water on her face in hope of waking herself up. When Michael went back to his room she took the opportunity to dress in as many layers as she could find in her rucksack. There was no way she was having a shower. She’d rather smell skanky than risk the chance of a Psycho-type nightmare in the bathroom down the hall.
The sound of voices in the study made her stop still. Dad must have arrived. She wrapped her arms around herself, not wanting to go out there. Seeing him so upset last night had made her realise how horrible she’d been to him. Yes, he’d got stuff wrong, but so had she.
There was a soft tap on the door.
Poppy took a deep breath before opening it.
Dad’s eyes were red. Bronze stubble shadowed his chin and cheeks. Clearly he hadn’t slept either. But today he was wearing jeans, walking boots and his old black all-weather jacket. He looked more himself. He looked more like her dad than the stranger she thought he’d become.
His lips pulled up into a sad side-smile and his brow wrinkled. ‘Hey, Pops.’
Poppy smiled, but her throat was too tight to respond.
Dad pulled her into a tight hug and kissed the top of her head. ‘I hear you didn’t have such a good night.’
Oh God. Michael had told him what had happened. But what version? The one where she’d sleepwalked, or the one where she’d seen a dead guy when she was wide awake?
He rubbed her arm. ‘Come on. Food, shot of caffeine, and then there might be time for me to show you the sites of some of my misdemeanours before your train.’
She pulled out of his arms. ‘Misdemeanours? I thought you were the model student.’
He smiled, but lines of tension were drawn around his eyes and mouth – he looked about as worried as she’d ever seen him. Was someone threatening him? Had he had a note like the one Ria was sent?
‘Got your keys?’ he asked.
She patted her jeans pocket. ‘Yeah.’ She grabbed her phone from the bedside cabinet, shoved it in her other pocket, hooked up the scarf Dad had lent her and followed him out.
Michael smiled and held out his coat to her. ‘I know it’ll drown you, but it’s better than nothing.’
‘I’m OK. I’ve got, like, four layers on,’ she said, tugging at the bulge beneath her hoodie.
‘Where’s yours?’ Dad asked.
‘The police still have it.’
‘Oh. Yeah. Well, let me get you a new one. There’s an outdoors shop round the corner from where I thought we could go for breakfast. We should have time to pick something up.’
The three of them trooped into the hallway and waited in silence while Michael locked the door.
‘It’s icy out there this morning,’ Dad said as they traipsed down the stairs. ‘So watch yourself.’
When Poppy stepped out of the archway into Great Court, a sharp wind whipped the breath out of her lungs. She buried her face in Dad’s scarf and concentrated on placing her feet between the patches of ice. They had got almost to the corner of the quad when someone started screaming.
All three of them stopped and stared around.
Poppy’s pulse picked up speed. ‘Where’s it coming from?’
‘I can’t tell,’ Dad said.
On the other side of Great Court, two porters were running along the path, away from the lodge, towards the steps that led to Nevile’s Court.
‘What’s going on?’ Poppy asked.
Dad shook his head. ‘I don’t like the look of it.’ He squeezed her shoulder. ‘You two wait here.’
Dad set off at a pace and followed the two porters up the steps and disappeared in through the archway. Poppy darted after them.
‘Poppy, wait!’ Michael shouted.
She couldn’t stop. She ran up the steps, almost tripping on the last one, and darted past a couple of shocked-looking students, through the wood-panelled walkway, and out the other side.
She caught sight of Dad heading between the pillars of the cloister to the left and chased after him, Michael following close behind.
The cloister opened out onto another courtyard. The much plainer buildings were built in a pinky-coloured sandstone that mirrored the pink and purple sky of the new morning. Most of yesterday’s snowfall had melted, but at the centre of the lawn a cushion of perfect, untouched white encircled a massive tree. Hanging high in its branches wasn’t a birdfeeder or Christmas lights, but a full-sized bicycle.
Lucy was sobbing into the chest of the guy they’d seen with Ria and Conal that first night when they’d arrived at the college. He stroked the girl’s back and whispered into her hair. Dad ran a hand over his face and stalked over to them.
‘Go away, Jim!’ the guy said.
‘Devon, I’m…’
‘She doesn’t need a priest right now. None of us do,’ the guy said.
Poppy couldn’t work out why Lucy was crying – the bike in the tree was weird, but hardly something to get upset about. Then two of the porters moved, revealing a snow angel. It seemed that someone hadn’t been able to resist making their mark on the snowy lawn after all. Where the wings had been carved out, bright red paint had melted the snow, right the way back to the grass leaving what looked like pools of blood.
Michael’s arm slid around Poppy’s shoulders. ‘That’s a really sick joke.’
But was it a joke, or a warning?
Dad wandered over to them and sighed. ‘I’m sorry, guys. It looks like I need to deal with some stuff here. Can you go and find breakfast yourselves and I’ll catch up with you in a little while? Your train’s at eleven.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Michael glanced at Poppy. Her hand felt like a small block of ice in his. She really wasn’t dressed for the weather despite having said she was fine. She was so lost in thought that as they walked through the passageway back to Great Court he had to steer her around the fluorescent yellow cone warning of the growing puddle left by people traipsing in snow. He wondered what had her so consumed. After last night she was too tired and strung out to be thinking clearly about anything.
He still wasn’t convinced that what he’d seen had been a straightforward nightmare. He’d have known if she’d experienced something like it before. He was almost certain that if Poppy hadn’t told him then her mum would have mentioned it. And as far as he knew, sleepwalking wasn’t something that started when someone was nearly seventeen.
They passed groups of students in a hurry to get to hall before breakfast ended, out of the passageway and down the steps into Great Court. Poppy’s eyes flicked up and caught his.
Her cheeks reddened. ‘What?’
He let go of her hand and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. ‘I didn’t know you sleepwalk.’
She blinked and turned her eyes to the icy pavement. ‘I don’t normally.’
‘So it’s never happened before?’
She shook her head.
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m pretty sure, but I suppose I would have been asleep at the time, so maybe I don’t remember it.’ She grinned at him, but it was half-hearted.
He wasn’t buying it. ‘You didn’t
look asleep.’
She stepped out of his hold and glared at him. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say, Michael!’ After a second her face fell. She sighed and shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shout.’
He watched the struggle going on behind her eyes. Any second now she’d try and change the subject but he wasn’t done yet. ‘Last night you didn’t seem all that sure that you were asleep.’
She ran her hand through her hair. ‘But I must have been. You’ve had dreams that feel real, haven’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s all it was.’ Her fingers slipped beneath the college scarf that was wrapped around her neck and, although he couldn’t see it, he knew that she was fiddling with the small black stone that hung there.
He got the feeling she didn’t think she had been asleep at all. He got the feeling she thought she’d seen a ghost. Except, he didn’t believe in all that stuff, and for the last few years, neither had she. But working on the principle that ghosts didn’t exist, that could only mean that the ghost had been a product of Poppy’s imagination. He didn’t know what it took to get someone to the point of seeing things, but he was sure it wasn’t exactly normal.
‘Come here,’ he said, slipping his arms around her waist.
She resisted at first, but then her body moulded to his and she tucked her head under his chin as he wrapped his arms around her. His mind turned over possible causes. Stress? Mental illness? She nearly drowned a while ago, what if that had left her with some kind of brain damage or epilepsy? He needed to persuade her to see a doctor.
‘Can we just go back to the room?’ she murmured.
‘Sure.’
As she stepped out of his arms he caught hold of her hand. ‘I’m worried about you,’ he said, quietly.
She tried to smile. ‘Don’t be. It was nothing. I’m OK.’
The problem was, every time she said that, he believed it a little less.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN