by Tim O'Rourke
I wanted to run from him, to get as far away as possible, but I just couldn’t move. He went to my bed and pulled back the covers. Taking hold of one of the pillows, he raised it to his face and inhaled. Once he had finished smelling it, he tossed the pillow to one side. Stooping over, he pulled open the drawers of the dresser that was next to my bed. The male rummaged through it, his movements quick yet precise, as if he knew what he was looking for.
But what could that be?
Tossing it aside, he pulled open the second drawer, searched it, then threw it aside, smashing it into the floor where it broke like matchwood. He did the same to the third and the fourth drawers. His breathing began to quicken as he raced about the room, knocking over my CD player and stack of CDs. He trampled over the cases, and I could hear the plastic snapping like broken bones.
What are you looking for? I wanted to scream, but nothing came out.
Once my bedroom resembled something close to a demolition site, he came back towards me, this time the torchlight sweeping over the mess on the floor, almost as if making sure that he hadn’t missed anything. And as he came towards me, I got a clearer view of his face. Although it was hideously disfigured, he reminded me of someone. Again, he brushed past me as if I wasn’t even there. He stood in the centre of the room like a dog and sniffed at the air. He froze, as if he had detected a familiar scent. Hunkering down, he crawled on all fours across the middle of my living room and towards one of the armchairs. His nose touched it. He paused, then was off again, the tip of his nose brushing up and over the seat, arms, and back of the chair. Whose scent had he detected – latched onto?
Mine? No not mine. I never sat in that chair; I always sat by the window so I could look out. Who then? Who had been the last person to have sat there?
Lady Hunt! I wanted to shout aloud, but my throat felt as if I were being strangled.
The male stood up as if he had been disturbed in some way. Maybe he had heard something that I hadn’t. Some noise that suggested someone was coming or was close by. Then I heard the noise that had obviously disturbed him. It sounded like water dripping from a tap that hadn’t been turned off tight enough. The sound was close by. I looked down and in the darkness I could see the black spatters of blood on the newspapers spread about at my feet. I looked up to see the male sniffing at the air again. He looked in my direction, as I felt the warm sensation of red tears leaking from my left eye. I wanted to wipe them away, to stop them dribbling from my chin, but my arms felt as if they had been tied to my sides.
The male came towards me again. He stopped, the tip of his nose almost touching mine. It was then that I knew how he had gotten those scars and who had given them to him. I stared into Sergeant Phillips’ twisted and deformed face and remembered how Potter had attacked him and left him for dead in the graveyard at St. Mary’s church in The Ragged Cove. He sniffed the air and smiled.
“Oh Kiera,” he whispered. “So what they said about you was true after all.”
Before I could say anything, he lunged forward and…
…I sat up in bed. I drew in deep lungfuls of breath as I tried to figure out where I was. My chest was rising up and down and sounded like a clapped-out steam train, sweat covered me in a fine sheen and my throat felt raw. I looked all around me, and it was only when I saw the four wooden posts protruding from each corner of the bed that I remembered that I was in my room at Hallowed Manor. Daylight glistened around the edges of the curtains. Slowly, it was all coming back to me.
But there was a noise – it sounded as if it were coming from miles away. It was music and it sounded hissy. Tilting my head to one side to listen, I realised I recognised the music that was being played. It was ‘Party Rock Anthem’ by LMFAO, and I had that particular track on my iPod. Straining to hear where it was coming from, I realised the music was closer than I originally thought. Wrapping myself in my blanket, I crawled to the end of my bed and peered over the edge. Sitting crossed-legged on the floor was a girl. She was rummaging through my rucksack and was listening to my iPod.
Reaching out, I tapped her on the shoulder and said, “What do you think you’re doing?”
Jumping with a start, the girl removed the earphones, looked at me and said, “Do you know that your eye is bleeding?”
Chapter Seven
Pulling the blanket around me like a shawl, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and went to the bathroom. Taking a piece of tissue paper, I dabbed the corner of my left eye and wiped away the crimson smear that ran down the length of my cheek to my chin.
“So you’re a cop?” the girl said from the other room.
Flushing the bloodied piece of tissue down the toilet, I went back into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. Looking at the girl, who was still rummaging through my belongings, I said, “Do you mind?”
Ignoring me, the girl said, “Where’s your gun?”
“I don’t have a gun,” I told her.
“Taser?”
“I don’t have one of those, either.”
“CS spray?” she asked, looking almost hopeful.
I shook my head.
“Cuffs?”
“Nope,” I said, holding out my hand for my belongings.
Tossing the rucksack to one side and crossing to the window, she said, “What sort of cop doesn’t have a pair of handcuffs?”
Smiling inside, I said, “I’m sorry, but I didn’t realise I would need a full arsenal of weaponry to babysit you – you’re not that bad are you?” It must have come out sounding all wrong because she turned back from the window and scowled at me.
“Listen lady, or whatever your name is, I don’t need no babysitter.”
Taking a T-shirt from the rucksack, I pulled it over my head and said, “My name’s Kiera. I take it you’re Kayla.”
“Yeah, so?” she said taking a piece of gum from her jeans pocket and popping it into her mouth. Like her mother, she had stunning looks, with a mass of auburn hair that curled around her shoulders, an impish-looking face, and icy-blue eyes. Her skin was the colour of cream and she had a spattering of freckles across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. She was already beautiful, but give it another couple of years, and most men will find her drop-dead gorgeous. I wondered if Kayla knew that, but her confident manner suggested that she already did.
Matching her stare, I said, “So what?” and smiled.
“I don’t need this shit,” she scowled and stormed towards the bedroom door.
“That’s cool,” I said. “I don’t need this shit, either.”
Reaching the bedroom door, she turned and looked at me, and I couldn’t help but notice the slight look of surprise on her face. Maybe she was expecting some kind of rebuke for swearing and going through my rucksack without permission. I knew she was testing me. Perhaps Kayla had been expecting some hard-nosed copper who was going to lay down the law, but that wasn’t me. I had a week with her and I’d already made up my mind that I wasn’t going to spend it fighting. She glanced down at my iPod that lay on the floor where she’d left it. Music hissed from the speakers, sounding faint and far off.
“Can I borrow that?” she asked, her voice still sounding stubborn and cold. “Mine’s broken.”
Snatching it up off the floor, I tossed it at her. “Knock yourself out,” I said.
Catching it out of the air, she turned away, back towards the door. But before she had a chance to disappear, I asked, “What time’s breakfast around here? I’m starving.”
Without looking back she said, “I’ll wait down the hall for you.” Then she was gone.
I went to the bathroom, stripped off my T-shirt and underwear, and jumped in the shower. That ever-so-deep bath looked so inviting but I’d just have to try it out later. I didn’t want to leave Kayla waiting. Getting on her good side was going to be difficult enough. The water was warm and I hoped it would help wash away the images that I still had in my mind from the nightmare that I had woken from.
Why had I dreamt of Phillips
ransacking my flat? It wasn’t the first time that he had made a guest appearance in my nightmares since leaving The Ragged Cove, but they had never seemed so vivid – so real. And why did my eye keep bleeding? Like the visions of the plane crash I’d seen yesterday – had the pilot really been screaming that the cockpit had been breached by them before it had fallen out of the sky and nose-dived into the sea? I wanted to keep telling myself that it was my imagination working overtime – that perhaps what had happened in The Ragged Cove had disturbed me more than I first had thought, and the nightmares and visions were a consequence of that. Maybe Dr. Keats had been right. No, she thought I was raving mad but I knew I wasn’t.
If the nightmare had been some kind of vision, then had Philips really been to my flat and ransacked it? But why? What had he been looking for? If it had been some sort of premonition, that would mean Phillips was still alive and Taylor would be close by. And if they were together, Luke, Potter, and Murphy would be hot on their tail. After all, didn’t they say they were going to track them?
Stepping from the shower and towelling myself dry, I wondered if coming to the Hallowed Manor had been such a good idea after all. For months, I’d been looking for – searching – each and every newspaper and news report for anything that might suggest their return and as soon as I turn my back….
Kiera, what are you thinking of? I scolded myself. It was just a dream. It had been the first night away from my flat since leaving The Ragged Cove and somewhere deep inside I was probably feeling insecure. That was all I was feeling – I was being paranoid that now I had left Havensfield behind, Luke was going to put in an appearance and I wouldn’t be there. I was two hundred and fifty-five-and-a- half miles away staying on some godforsaken moor. How would he ever find me?
“Stop it!” I groaned to myself as I pulled on a pair of jeans, boots and jumper. “Stop torturing yourself.”
But I couldn’t stop. I needed to know if the nightmare I’d had about Phillips burgling my flat had been some vision or just a dream. How would I know? I still had a whole week down here. So taking my mobile phone from my bag, I went to ‘contacts’ and scrolled down to ‘Sparky’. Hitting ‘message’ with my fingernail, I wrote the following text:
Had to go away 4 wk can u check on flat?
Thanx. Kiera. x
After hitting the send button, I tucked the phone into my jeans pocket and left my room in search of Kayla.
Chapter Eight
As soon as I stepped into the passageway outside my room, there was that smell again – the sweet-musty odour that I had noticed last night. Even though it was nearly nine a.m., the corridor was very dark as all the doors leading from it were shut, and there wasn’t any windows. I could see a grey patch of light ahead of me where the daylight shone up the staircase from below. I could see the silhouette of a figure sitting further down the passageway. To guide myself in the gloom, I trailed my fingertips along the wall. It was then I noticed that they felt sticky, as if someone had covered them in some kind of varnish which hadn’t yet dried. I brought the tips of my fingers up to my nose and it was the strange varnish that was making the manor smell so odd. Perhaps it had something to do with the renovation of the manor. Maybe the builders had been tasked to varnish the entire place. But who had ever heard of varnishing wallpaper?
Wiping my hands against my jeans, I walked towards the light and the figure sitting at the end of the passageway. As I drew closer, I could see that Kayla was sitting on the top stair waiting for me.
Looking down at her, I said, “Thanks.”
“For what?” she asked, taking out the earphones and offering me back my iPod.
“For waiting for me,” I smiled, then added. “You can keep hold of my iPod for the time being, I’m in no rush to have it back.”
“Thanks,” Kayla mumbled, as if saying those very words caused her pain.
“So what’s for breakfast?” I asked.
“Dunno,” she replied, and headed down the stairs.
I followed her to the next landing. Just before we headed down to the hallway, I pointed to the staircase that led into the ‘forbidden’ right wing, as Mrs. Payne had liked to call it. Although the light wasn’t great, it was better than the candlelight from the night before. Despite Mrs. Payne’s warning that the right wing was a no-go area, I could see that someone had been up there this morning. I looked at Kayla and could see that it hadn’t been her. Whoever it had been was male, was right-handed, and had carried something heavy in their left hand, probably a breakfast tray, which they’d had difficulty balancing. But why would they have been taking a tray load of breakfast into an area that was forbidden and who had it been for?
“What’s up there?” I asked Kayla.
Hearing my question, Kayla almost seemed to falter on the stairs and she gripped the banister as if to steady herself. “Oh, we don’t go up there. No one does,” she said without looking back at me.
Really? I thought to myself. “Why not?” I pressed, as I followed her down to the large circular hallway.
“Mother says it’s too dangerous,” she said. “It’s structurally unsafe or something like that.”
“Have you ever been up there?” I asked her, not wanting to let the subject drop.
“Not since I was a kid,” she said. “It’s been like that for a long time now.”
“Never been tempted to take another look?” I asked, but before Kayla had had a chance to reply, Mrs. Payne had appeared in the hallway.
“Kayla,” she said, her voice sounding frustrated rather than cross. “You know you should be at your chores by now and you still haven’t had any breakfast. What would your mother say?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” Kayla shrugged as she passed Mrs. Payne without even looking at her.
“Kayla!” the old woman snapped. “That’s no way to speak -”
“It’s not Kayla’s fault she’s running late,” I cut in.
“Whose is it then?” Mrs. Payne asked, eyeing me up and down. As she did, I noticed white flecks of something in her hair.
“It’s mine I’m afraid,” I smiled. “I’ve been talking to her in my room – just getting to know her.”
Kayla turned back and looked at me with suspicion.
“Well, Kiera, Kayla has rules that she must -” the old woman started.
“I’m sure Lady Hunt wouldn’t have minded just this once. I was keen to get to know Kayla,” I said. “After all, I think it’s what her mother would have wanted.”
Offering me a smile that looked like a crack in a plate, Mrs. Payne said, “Yes, you’re probably right. Lady Hunt did ask you here to keep an eye on Kayla.”
“I am right here, you know!” Kayla snapped. “You don’t have to talk about me as if I wasn’t. And besides, I’m sixteen for Christ’s sake, I don’t need anyone looking out for me!” Then, staring in my direction, she added, “Especially not some stressed-out cop!”
I took her spiteful comment on the chin. After all, I’d been called worse, so I smiled at her.
“Kayla, that’s no way to speak to Ms. Hudson. She’s a guest in this house, so you show her some respect!” Mrs. Payne scolded her.
“She’s getting paid, isn’t she?” Kayla came back.
“Don’t you dare be so ill-mannered!” Mrs. Payne said, her voice sounding cross. “You apologise right this minute young lady!”
Kayla just looked at me, huffed, and then putting in the earphones, she switched my iPod back on.
Cheeky-little-cow, I smiled inwardly.
“I’m so sorry about this, Kiera,” Mrs. Payne said, and she looked genuinely embarrassed.
“No worries,” I said. “I’m sure Kayla and I will become the bests of friends.”
“We’ll see,” Mrs. Payne said, and tutted in the direction of Kayla.
Changing the subject, I said, “I was wondering if I could get some breakfast? I’m starving.”
“Of course, my dear,” she smiled. “Come with me.”
&nbs
p; The kitchen was, like the rest of the manor, huge. Down the centre of it ran a giant wooden table that would have been big enough to seat an entire football team, coaches and all. Around the far wall stood grey metal sinks and stoves, the kind you would see in the kitchen of a large hotel. There were too many cupboards to count and the three of us looked lost in the vastness of such a great room. How many people could be fed here? Hundreds I guessed, except there was only Mrs. Payne and as far as I could gather she did the cooking, cleaning and if I hadn’t of been around, keeping an eye on Kayla as well.
Pulling back a chair, I sat down at the table and Kayla sat opposite me. The table was so wide that even if we had stretched our arms out as far as possible, our hands still wouldn’t have touched. Mrs. Payne placed a large bowl of fruit on the table, some bread, butter, and several different types of cereal.
“Would you like me to cook you something?” she asked us. “Some kippers, perhaps?”
Taking a bowl and filling it with some corn flakes, I waved my hand at her and said, “No this will be just fine.”
Without even acknowledging the housekeeper, Kayla took an apple from the fruit bowl and took a bite. She still wore the earphones, and she rocked in her seat as she listened to the music.
“So how do you manage looking after such a big place?” I asked Mrs. Payne as I splashed ice cold milk onto the cereal.
“Oh, it’s not so bad,” she said, pouring me a mug of coffee and setting it before me. “There is only Lady Hunt, Kayla, Mr. Marshal, and James to worry about.”
“James?” I asked her.
“The chauffeur,” she said, placing a glass of orange juice down in front of Kayla. Again she was ignored, there was no ‘thank- you.’