by Tim O'Rourke
Taking the flannel from her, I said, “It’s okay, it happens sometimes.”
“Does it?” She asked, sounding alarmed.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” I tried to assure her, and I noticed Kayla staring at me from the foot of the bed.
“You should see a doctor, dear,” Mrs. Payne said, plumping up the pillows beneath my head.
“I have, but they tell me there’s nothing wrong with me,” I said.
“Well, whatever, but you need to get some rest. You’ve had a nasty fall,” she told me. It was then that I remembered getting the text message on my phone from Sparky, and then…everything had just gone black.
“How many times have you been told not to climb up on that wall, Kayla?” Mrs. Payne snapped.
“I’m not six-years-old anymore,” Kayla muttered.
“I don’t want to see you up there again,” the housekeeper said, staring at Kayla. “Do you understand me?”
“Whatever,” Kayla sighed, flopping down on the bed.
“And what do you think you’re doing?” Mrs. Payne snapped at her again.
Poor Kid, I thought to myself. Wings or no wings – I’d want to run away from this place and never come back.
“I’m going to sit with Kiera and make sure she’s okay,” Kayla said.
“You’ll do no such thing,” the housekeeper sighed. “Kiera needs to get some rest. She doesn’t want you -”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I feel fine – honestly.”
“Don’t talk such nonsense.”
“No, I’d like Kayla to stay -” I started.
Ignoring me, Mrs. Payne, glared at Kayla and said, “Come on, you have some chores to do.”
Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Kayla shrugged at me and headed towards the door, following the housekeeper.
Just as she was about to disappear into the corridor, I called after her, “Have you got my phone?”
“Huh?” Kayla said looking back over her shoulder at me.
“My mobile phone?”
Staring at me, Kayla said, “I don’t know where it is. Maybe you dropped it into the moat as you fell from the wall.” Then she was gone, swinging the door shut behind her.
“Not my phone,” I groaned, punching the mattress with a clenched fist. I closed my eyes and tried to recall the text message Sparky had sent me. I remembered looking at my phone, and behind my eyes those flash-bulbs popped on and off again and in those flashes of light, the words from the message that Sparky had sent swam about in front of my closed eyes. Like I was solving some word puzzle I put the words in order so that they made sense. Then, as clear as if I were holding the phone in my hand, I read the words that seemed to have appeared on the inside of my eyelids.
Bad news Kiera – your flat has been burgled.
It’s a real mess here. Where are you?
Sparky. X
Opening my eyes, the words shot away, like the pieces of a scrabble game being tossed around the inside of my skull. So my nightmare about Phillips ransacking my flat had been true. He’d really been there, going through my stuff. But why? And what had he been looking for? But more than that, the message from Sparky proved that my dream had been more than just a nightmare, it had been a vision – premonition – of some kind. Realising this, my body turned cold and gooseflesh crawled up my arms and legs. If the nightmare that I’d had about Phillips had somehow been a window to what was happening outside the grounds of Hallowed Manor, then perhaps the nightmare I’d experienced while unconscious might also be….
Could that have really happened? I asked myself as I sat bolt upright on my bed. Could vampires have really gone berserk on the London Underground and killed all those people? And if it were true – if that had really taken place – what about the plane crash? And the voice of the pilot screamed inside my head: “Mayday! Mayday! They’ve breached the cockpit!” The pilot’s voice seemed almost deafening inside my head. Covering my ears with my hands, I lay back down on the bed and rolled onto my side. Pulling my knees up under my chin, I cradled myself like a baby.
What is happening to me? And what is happening out there beyond the walls of Hallowed Manor? If the world was coming under attack by vampires, why was I seeing it? I didn’t want to see it! I needed to make contact with the outside world – I needed to speak with Sparky, but without my phone how would I? This place would surely have a phone. Perhaps Kayla would have a mobile that I could borrow – all teenagers had a mobile phone these days, right? But what was his number? I had it stored in my phone, sure, but I couldn’t remember it. That was the whole point of storing it in my phone – so I wouldn’t have to remember it. Perhaps I could get his home number by ringing directory enquires – yes that’s what I would do. Sparky would be able to tell me if any vampires had been found on that plane, if there had been a massacre on the Underground. Something like that would be all over the news and in the papers. God how I wish I had access to some newspapers right now. I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from cutting and pasting. I pictured my flat in Havensfield covered with the news cuttings of vampires at forty thousand feet above ground and two hundred feet below ground.
My head started to pound and it felt as if someone or something was chipping away at my brain with a pickaxe. I didn’t know if the pain was due to my fall or the realisation that I was somehow seeing what had happened, what was happening, or had yet to happen. Closing my eyes, I thought about the show-and-tell session Kayla and me had shared that morning. There were still questions that I wanted to ask Kayla – there was stuff I needed answers to. Some I could provide myself, like I now knew that it had been Marshal who had been up to the ‘forbidden’ wing. Why had he taken a tray up there and for whom? That I didn’t know. But there was someone else living at the manor other than Kayla, Mrs. Payne, Marshal, and the chauffeur. I also knew that Lady Hunt hadn’t gone to New York like she claimed she was going to. She was definitely going somewhere – but it was closer to home than that or she would have taken suitcases with her. She didn’t even have a handbag when she got out of the car at the railway station.
I now understood the true reason why she had asked me to come and watch her daughter – but where was she, and what was she doing? And what of Murphy, Potter, and Luke? Where were they when I needed them? What about Luke? Kayla had said that the last time she had seen him, he had looked disfigured – burnt. But there was one thing that I just couldn’t work out. Sitting on that wall with Kayla, she had known that I was going to receive a text message on my phone – some seconds before it had arrived. How had she known that? I would have to ask her, I thought as my eyes drooped shut and I drifted into sleep.
Chapter Twelve
I didn’t dream – I just slept – and when I woke my room was in semi-darkness. Someone had lit candles and placed them around my room. The curtains were open, and through the window, I could see that it was night and a crescent-shaped moon hung in the sky like a piece of cheese rind. Glancing at my wristwatch, the little luminous hands told me it was just before 9 p.m. Rolling onto my back, I propped myself up onto my elbows. My head still ached from my fall, but the pain had eased. Then in the gloom, I spotted Kayla sitting in the chair in the corner of the room. Noticing that I was awake, she removed the iPod’s earphones, picked something up from the dresser, and brought it towards me.
“I made you a sandwich,” she said, handing me a plate. “I thought you might be hungry.” Taking the plate of neatly-cut sandwiches from her, I looked at them and she added, “They’re ham. You do like ham, don’t you? I wasn’t sure.”
“I love cheese,” I said, taking a bite. “Mmm. These are good.”
“I fetched you a glass of milk, too,” Kayla smiled and took a glass from the dressing table.
“You’re too kind,” I smiled and took a gulp.
“Are you okay?” she asked, and I could see the concern in her eyes that twinkled in the candlelight.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, putting the glass to one s
ide.
“You had me worried for a bit,” she said.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m as tough as an old pair of boots,” I told her, and she laughed. There was an awkward silence that fell between us, so I broke it by saying, “So what have you been doing while I’ve been out of it?”
“Not much,” she sighed. “The old bag has had me mopping the kitchen floor and then I had to go and wash the Rolls Royce for James.” Then holding out her hands, she said, “See, look my hands have gone all wrinkly. Then I made you a sandwich and have just been sitting up here in the corner listening to music.”
“Anything good?” I asked her.
“ ‘Rocket Man’ by Elton John. I love that song,” she said.
As we were on the subject of listening to things, I said, “So tell me, how did you know I was going to get that text earlier? I mean, you knew it was coming even before it showed up on my phone.”
Making herself comfortable on the edge of my bed, Kayla looked at me and said, “I hear things.”
Swallowing a mouthful of ham and bread, I said, “How do you mean?”
“I don’t know – it’s hard to explain,” she sighed. “Remember how I told you I heard that doctor whisper in my father’s ear? Well they were right on the other side of my room but I could still hear them.”
“It could just have been good acoustics,” I said, but didn’t really believe that. And to hear myself doubt her like that reminded me of how Doctor Keats disbelieved me. The girl had wings for crying out loud – I should be able to believe anything.
“Come with me,” Kayla said, climbing from the edge and taking one of the candles. Pushing the plate aside, I took a candle for myself and followed her.
“Where you taking me?” I asked her.
“C’mon,” she said over her shoulder. “I want to show you my room.”
Following Kayla down the passageway, that smell hit my nostrils again. I tried not to get too close to the walls in an attempt to avoid getting that sticky stuff on my clothes. Just before the stairs, Kayla stopped outside a door and pushed it open. Looking back at me, she stepped inside. With my candle held out before me, I followed her. The room that I’d entered was lit with so many candles that it could have easily been mistaken for some kind of chapel. There were tall ones, short ones, fat and thin ones. The smell of melting wax was almost overwhelming. Apart from the candles, Kayla’s room could have been mistaken for any other teenage girl’s room up and down the country – apart from the four-poster bed, Ensuite bathroom, sheer size, and the balcony outside. Her room was covered with pictures of Enrique Iglesias, Robert Pattinson, and Katy Perry. Clothes spilled from the half-open wardrobe and across the floor, a Kindle lay on her bed.
“Reading anything good?” I asked.
Looking back over her shoulder, she said, “‘Atlas’ by Sienna Rose.”
“Any good?” I asked, turning to look at her dressing table.
“Awesome,” she said. “You should read it sometime.”
“Perhaps I will someday,” I smiled, noticing how her dressing table was littered with lipsticks, half-empty bottles of perfume, face wipes, hairgrips, and nail polish.
Kicking some of her clothes under the bed, Kayla smiled and said, “Sorry about the mess.”
“Hey, this looks like paradise compared to the state of my flat,” I said. Then I thought of how Phillips had left it and dreaded going back there to face it.
“Right. You lay down there,” she said. “I want to prove something to you.”
Playing along with her, I lay on her bed. Looking up I could see the bell pull hanging from the ceiling. It was frayed all down one side and at its end. Glancing away, I watched Kayla cross to the far side of the room. “Right now, close your eyes so you can’t lip read. Go on, close your eyes,” she urged me.
Smiling to myself, I closed my eyes and lay back. All I could hear was the sound of my own breathing.
“Ok, so what did I say?” she asked.
Opening my eyes, I looked at her standing across the room from me. “I couldn’t hear what you said,” I told her.
“See!” she exclaimed coming back towards me. “I was standing exactly where my father and that quack were that night, but I still heard them. That would be impossible, right?”
“I guess,” I said sitting back up. “So you have extra-sensitive hearing?” I asked her.
“It was like that at first,” she started to explain. “But now it’s different.”
“How?” I asked, crossing to the window to look out onto the balcony.
“I don’t know how to explain it – but it’s not like I hear voices, words, or sounds – it’s more like vibrations,” she said. “And it’s those vibrations that create noises inside my head. Like today, when we were sitting on the wall. I couldn’t have heard your text arriving because I heard it before it arrived on your phone. So how could I have heard it, if it hadn’t made a sound?”
“I don’t know,” I said, stepping away from the window. I’d seen enough so I went to her bathroom and glanced inside.
“I heard the vibrations of that text message travelling towards your phone through the air – does that makes sense?” she said.
Sitting on the edge of her bed, I looked at Kayla and said, “I think so.”
“That’s why I like to listen to music,” she said, coming to sit next to me.
“How come?”
“There is always noise going on inside my head – it can kinda drive me nuts at times,” she said. “It’s like just sitting here next to you, I can hear your heart beating, I can hear the blood surging through your veins, I can hear your hair and nails growing. It’s like there is this constant background noise.”
“How do you cope with it?” I asked her.
“Sometimes I don’t,” she explained. “That’s one of the reasons I was distracted at school. It was so hard to concentrate when I could hear the lunch that the girl sitting next me had eaten being broken down by her stomach acid inside her. It wasn’t very nice and very distracting!”
“I know how you feel,” I told her. “I can see things.”
“See things?” she asked, then with an excited glint in her eyes, she added, “What, like ghosts and stuff?”
“No,” I laughed. “I’m not psychic.” But then I thought of how I’d seen Phillips burgle my flat in a dream and wondered if I was. God, Doctor Keats would have enough material to keep her busy for the rest of her life!
“How do you mean then?” Kayla asked.
“Okay,” I said. “How many people live in this house?”
“Well, including you and my mother when she’s here -” she started.
“Apart from us,” I cut in. “How many staff are there?”
“Why, just three,” she said, looking confused. “Mrs. Payne, Marshal, and James.”
“Wrong, there’s another,” I said looking her straight in the eye.
“But that’s impossible!” she gasped. “Who are they, and where are they? I haven’t seen anyone!”
“But I have,” I said. “I don’t know who they are, but I know that they are probably living in the other wing.”
“How can you be so sure?” She asked, sounding breathless.
“Marshal took them breakfast this morning,” I assured her.
“Marshal? How do you know that?”
“The stairs leading up to the ‘forbidden’ wing, as the good housekeeper likes to call it, are covered in dust. Thick dust which I guess has been created by the renovations that have been taking place there. It looks reddish in colour which probably makes it brick dust,” I said.
“So?”
“There aren’t any builders here – not that I’ve seen,” I said.
“No, they stopped work last week,” Kayla said. “They can’t continue until some more supplies have been ordered. Well, that’s what Mrs. Payne told me anyhow. Apparently, they’ll be back next week.”
“Okay, so if there haven’t been any builders in the
manor since last week, why are there fresh boot prints in the dust on those stairs? The prints looked to me to be about a size twelve – far too big to be Mrs. Payne’s or yours. The chauffeur can’t walk, so that only leaves one other person…”
“Marshal!” Kayla breathed, her eyes growing wide. “But how do you know that he was taking someone their breakfast?”
“Halfway up the banisters, there is a handprint where someone gripped hold of it. It wasn’t because they slipped or fell, having to suddenly take hold of the banister, the footprints didn’t show any sign of this. The fact that there isn’t a matching handprint on the opposite banister tells me that they were carrying something else in their hand. Something that they were trying to balance and something that they couldn’t drop for fear of bringing unwanted attention to themselves,” I explained. Then holding my arm up with my hand out flat, I pretended that I was holding a tray. “See, a tray would contain plates, cutlery, or a teapot and a cup at the very least. Imagine the noise that would have made if it had gone clattering down the stairs.”
“But what makes you think it was breakfast?” Kayla asked, looking intrigued.
“What else could someone possibly be carrying on a tray at such an early hour in the morning?” I said.
“How do you know it was in the morning?” she asked.
“I passed those stairs at gone midnight last night and even though I only had the aid of a candle to guide me, it was adequate enough for me to have noticed any great big boot marks if they’d been there.”
Looking at me, Kayla blew out her cheeks and said, “That was pretty neat. But how can you definitely be sure it was Marshal? I know what you said about him being the only -”
“When he placed me on the bed after my fall today, I couldn’t help but notice a trail of the same coloured brick dust along the right sleeve of his coat. And as he walked away, I could see it on the soles of his boots,” I explained.
“You really do see things, don’t you?” Kayla said. “But if you are right - and I don’t doubt you – who was Marshal taking breakfast to and what are they doing up there?”