by Tim O'Rourke
“I don’t know,” I said. “But it would be nice to find out.”
“If you go up there, will you take me with you?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said shaking my head.
“I used to go up there as a kid,” she told me. “I could show you the way.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said getting up from the bed and heading for the door.
“You know what?” Kayla said, as I reached for the door handle.
“What?”
“My mother was wrong about you.”
“In what way?” I asked, looking back.
“She said you were going to be tough – that you wouldn’t put up with any nonsense and that you would keep me line,” Kayla said.
“But your mother was right about one thing,” I said lingering by the door.
“Oh, what was that?”
“You do have someone watching you,” I said, but I didn’t tell her that I knew she knew who he was. I didn’t tell her that despite the moat, the walls, the drawbridge and gate, he somehow gained access to the grounds. That she sends him messages to let him know the coast is clear. That he waits for her below until it is safe for him to come up to her balcony, but he is not her boyfriend. But nevertheless, he is someone she trusts and feels comfortable with. I didn’t tell Kayla that I had seen all of this since entering her bedroom.
“Do you know who it is?” Kayla said, springing from the edge of her bed and I could detect fear in her voice.
“Not yet,” I told her, closing the bedroom door behind me.
Chapter Thirteen
Instead of going back to my room, I crept down the stairs to the next landing. With the candle flickering in my hand, I looked at the stairs leading up into the ‘forbidden’ wing. Crouching forward, I looked only to see that the stairs and banisters had now been cleaned. Any trace of Marshal’s footsteps had been wiped away.
“Have you lost something?” a voice said from behind me.
With a gasp of fright, I leapt up and spun round. Peering through the flame of the candle that she held in her hand, Mrs. Payne gave me a distrusting look.
“Erm, no…well yes,” I said, sounding flustered.
“Oh, yes?” Mrs. Payne said without taking her beady eyes off me. “What have you lost”’
“My earrings,” I blurted out.
“Really?” Mrs. Payne said. “Well, you couldn’t have lost them here.”
“How come?” I said, looking down, pretending to be searching for them.
“You weren’t wearing any earrings today as Marshal carried you back into the house after your fall,” she smiled through the candlelight at me.
“That would be it then,” I said sounding relieved. “They must have come off when I fell.”
“Perhaps,” the housekeeper said, moving around me so as to block the stairs leading up into the blackness. “I’ll get Marshal to have a look for you tomorrow.”
“No, its okay,” I said. “They weren’t very expensive – just forget about it.”
“Whatever you wish,” Mrs. Payne smiled, but it was false. For a moment we just stood and looked at each other in the gloom.
“Any idea on when the lights are going to come back on?” I asked her.
“Very soon,” she said her fake smile fading.
“When would that be exactly?” I pushed.
“In a day or so – when the builders return. Why? Is there a problem, Kiera?” she asked.
“No, no problem,” I said, turning away and heading back up the stairs to my room.
“Goodnight then,” Mrs. Payne’s voice echoed up from the darkness.
“Goodnight,” I said, and climbed the stairs.
Back in my room, I closed the door and went to the bathroom. The bath looked inviting; so, taking off my jeans and jumper, I put my hair up and ran myself a bath. While the water was tumbling from the taps, I lit a few more candles and went to the windows, opening them just enough to let the cool night air into my room.
Turning, I went back to the bathroom, took off my underwear, and climbed into the bath. I sunk right to the bottom of it and the warm water almost came up to my chin. Leaning my head back I closed my eyes. I wished that I had my iPod with me; to be able to listen to Adele while I relaxed in the bath surrounded by candlelight would have been perfection. But Kayla still had it and I guessed her need was greater than mine. I liked Kayla and she was nothing like her mother had portrayed her. Sure she could be a little cocky, but she had a lot to deal with. Not only had one of her parents recently disappeared (and I knew how that felt), she had been left knowing that she was different from everyone else. Although she knew that her father had been a Vampyrus, had he ever really talked to her about that? Had she ever seen his wings? Surely he would have tried to have comforted her, made her feel as normal as possible. No wonder she was bitter and angry at times. And where was her mother now? Why had she really gone away? Was it in search of her husband?
I could understand Lady Hunt believing I might be able to protect her daughter; after all she told me herself that she knew I’d managed to survive in The Ragged Cove. But who was I protecting Kayla from, and did she really need protecting? I knew that Kayla was in contact with someone on the outside of the manor, I could see that when I looked out of her bedroom window onto the balcony. There was a torch hidden in the corner. If she had a torch available to her, why wasn’t she using it to light her way through the house at night instead of a candle? No, she was using the torch to send a signal to someone at night on the moors. She flicked the torch light on and off to send messages to him. A candle would be no good; the wind would blow out the flame. There was also a sprinkling of earth on the stone floor of the balcony and some had dirtied the windows. Directly below her balcony was a flowerbed, and this is where the man stood and threw earth up at her window to get Kayla’s attention. How did he get up onto the balcony? Kayla would unfasten the bell pull. She would tie a knot in one end to secure it between the balcony railings and the male would hoist himself up. He wasn’t a Vampyrus or he would have flown onto her balcony and there would have been no need for the mud-slinging or frayed looking-bell pull.
Whoever it was, he was just a friend to Kayla. There was no romantic interest as she wasn’t trying to impress him. Any young girl wanting to grab the attentions of a young man wouldn’t dare let him into such an untidy room, where used face wipes were discarded on the dresser, and dirty clothes and underwear sprawled across the floor. But this did show that whoever it was, she felt comfortable with him – comfortable enough not to put on a show.
My head spun with so much information. So splashing some water onto my face to waken myself, I climbed out of the bath. Wrapping a towel around me, I peered into the mirror fastened to the wall above the basin. With the forefinger of my right hand, I touched the tear duct of my left eye. I couldn’t see any blood and my eye didn’t even look bloodshot. I still didn’t understand why my eye bled when I had those – visions – when I saw things.
What, with me seeing things and Kayla hearing things, nothing would ever get past us. What a team we would make! Then as if being punched in the face, I staggered backwards – nearly stumbling back into the bath. How had I not seen it? Kayla had been going through changes since the age of fourteen. And since that age she had been hearing things. I tried to remember at what age I had started to see things – probably about the same age I guessed. But just like her hearing, which over the years had started to develop – change – so had my sight. No longer was I just able to see things that anybody else would if only they looked for them, but now I was seeing stuff that either had yet to happen or had happened. But Kayla had gone through other changes too – she had started to grow wings. Although small at the moment, they were sure to develop into full-sized wings as she grew older.
With my heart pounding in my chest, and my mouth turning dry, I lowered the towel that I had wrapped around me. Glancing back over my shoulder, I looked at my back in the mirror.
“What am I doing?” I shouted aloud. “Kiera Hudson, you need to get a grip!”
Then I started to laugh, there was no way I could be some kind of half-breed human-slash-Vampyrus. One of Kayla’s parents had been a Vampyrus; mine had just been plain old –
…then I screamed in horror and pulled the towel tight about me. Reflected in the mirror was my bedroom window, and in its reflection was the bandaged face of Marshal staring back at me.
Chapter Fourteen
Tying the towel around me, I turned around and raced towards the windows on the far side of my room. Throwing them open, I went out onto the balcony.
“What’s the big idea?” I shouted, expecting to see Marshal standing there, but the balcony was empty. There was no one there. Suspecting that he might have seen me coming and climbed off the balcony, I peered over the edge, but couldn’t see him. How had he disappeared so quickly? It only took me moments to get from the bathroom to here. My mind then started to tell me that perhaps he hadn’t been there at all. Maybe I hadn’t seen him spying on me through the windows. But I knew he’d been there watching me. But for how long had he been standing on my balcony, and why?
There was a squeaking noise from below and I wondered if it were Marshal trying to make good his escape. Peering down into the darkness, I could hear the squeaking noise but couldn’t see anything. Running back into my room, I blew out the candles. Returning to my balcony, I crouched down and peered through the concrete railings, hiding myself in the darkness, hoping that whoever was below might reveal themselves if they thought that I had gone back to my room, and gone to bed.
The squeaking came again and I couldn’t work out where it was coming from or what was making the sound. Then, peering to my right, I saw James come from around the side of the manor house in his wheelchair. With every turn of the wheels, they let out a high-pitched squeaking sound. Staying hidden in the darkness, I watched him make his way down the gravel path towards the gatehouse. I sat there until the squeaking faded into the distance and he disappeared from view. I stayed hidden in the darkness and wondered why he would be out at such a late hour and heading for the gate house. Was he going to see Marshal? Deciding that there wasn’t anything that odd about this, and suspecting I was just being jittery because I thought I saw Marshal watching me, I decided to go back inside and lock the windows behind me.
But just as I was about to crawl out from the shadows I saw a light blinking on and off out across the moors. The light flashed once, then again but this time longer. Then again, and again. Staying hidden, I peered along the side of the building and could just make out Kayla’s balcony in the distance. Lying as flat as I could, I watched her balcony windows swing slowly open. Within seconds, I watched as Kayla came crawling out on her hands and knees. Just like I knew she had been, she took the torch that she had been hiding, switched it on then quickly off again. The torchlight on the moors flashed again in recognition of her signal. Kayla switched her torch on and off in rapid succession and whoever she was signalling to on the moors signalled back with a quick flash of torchlight.
Scrambling back into my bedroom, I rummaged around for a pen and a scrap of paper in my bag. Searching in the darkness with the tips of my fingers, I pulled out a pen and an old mini-bank statement. Hurrying back onto the balcony, I waited for the flashes of torchlight to come from the darkness of the moors. At first there was nothing and I hoped that I hadn’t missed the last of it. Then, out of the night came two long flashes followed by two short bursts of light, followed by one long flash, and then a pause which was quickly followed by a further two long flashes and one short burst. I frantically made a note of this on the scrap of paper and waited. Nothing more followed and I looked to my right and watched Kayla disappear back into her room, quietly closing the windows behind her.
Hurrying back into my room, not knowing if I had any time to lose, I struck a match from the box on the dressing table and lit a candle. In the dim light I tried to make sense of what I’d written. This is what I’d scrawled on the back of the bank statement:
-- --/-/-/--
-- --/-
How I wished I’d learnt the Morse code, as I sat looking at the lines and dashes I’d drawn. Trying to work as fast as I could, I knew that the top line made a four letter word and the second line consisted of a two-letter word. But what were they? I tried to think of as many two letter words that I could, but there were too many. Then I remembered reading once that the most commonly used letter in the English alphabet was the letter ‘E’. So I hoped that maybe either word started with the letter ‘E’ or at least had the letter somewhere within them.
Then I noticed that the first word had two short dashes in the middle. So under them I wrote:
-- --/-/-/--
e/e
The two-letter word also had one of these short bursts as its second letter, so I wrote:
-- --/-/-/--
e/e
--/-
/e
I couldn’t think of too many two-letter words that ended with ‘E’ and the first that came to mind was the word ‘ME’. I looked at my scribbles and could see that the first letter of the first word was identical to that of the first word in the second word, so I wrote:
-- --/-/-/--
M/e/e/--
-- --/-
M/e
Looking down at the piece of scrap paper there was only one four letter word that I could think of which started with the letters M.E.E and that was the word meet. So placing the letter ‘T’ at the end of the cipher, I read the message that the person on the moors had sent Kayla. It read:
Meet me!
Fearing that Kayla was going to go and meet this stranger, I pulled on my clothes, and blowing out the candle I’d lit, I crept to my bedroom door. Opening it just an inch, I peered out and could just make out Kayla heading away from me down the corridor. Sneaking out, I suddenly stopped. Kayla could hear things? If she could hear my heartbeat just sitting next to her, wouldn’t she be able to hear me following her? Closing the door behind me as quietly as I could, I knew it was a risk I’d have to take if I were to ever find out who it was she had been meeting. After all, that’s what Lady Hunt was supposedly paying me to find out.
I waited until the top of Kayla’s head had disappeared over the brow of the stairs, then as quickly and as quietly as I could, I set off down the passageway after her. At the top of the stairs, I looked around the banister to see her cross the hall beneath the giant chandelier. Hunkering down and peering through the gaps in the banisters, I watched as she reached the front door. Sliding back the bolts, she stole one quick glance back over her shoulder then disappeared out into the night.
Running down the stairs on tiptoe, I raced across the great hall and slowly opened the front door just a fraction. Pressing my eye against the gap that I’d created, I watched Kayla run across the open grassy area in front of the manor, heading towards the shelter and utter darkness beneath the trees. Not wanting to lose sight of her, I pulled the front door closed behind me, and headed across the lawns. Ahead of me, Kayla disappeared into the darkness and I lost her from view. With my heart racing in my chest, I prayed that she couldn’t hear it and I headed towards the tree line.
Shielding myself behind the trunk of an ancient oak tree, I spied into the darkness that filled the gaps between the tree trunks like black ink. Then to my left and a short distance away, I saw a light weaving back and forward across the ground. Believing that she was a safe distance from the manor and hidden by the trees, she must have turned her torch on. Following the torch light, I crept after her. Gradually my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and everything around me looked grey and dull as if the colour had been sucked out of it. In the distance I could see the torchlight bobbing up and down. Then I heard a sound in the silence which made me quicken my step and close the gap between Kayla and me. It was the hissing sound of my iPod that I could hear, and if she was listening to that, then maybe she wouldn’t be able to hear me following her.<
br />
Weaving between the tree trunks, I continued after her, until someway ahead, the torchlight went out. Stopping where I was, I listened, but there was only silence now, even the hissy sound of my iPod had stopped. Placing one foot carefully in front of the other, I made my way towards the area where I’d seen the torchlight go out. As I drew near, the trees thinned out into an open circular area. In its centre was a small summerhouse. It was white in colour and the roof was pointed, giving it the appearance of a medieval chapel. At the front of it there was a small covered porch and a swinging couch. The porch was raised off the ground, and to get to it there were several wooden steps. Surrounding the summerhouse was a white picket fence. From my hiding place and lit by the light of the moon, the tiny little house looked like something from a fairytale.
Kayla stood to one side of the summerhouse. I watched her wind the earphones around my iPod then place it on the ground next to her jacket which she had taken off. She was dressed in jeans and a black gym top, which was tight-fitting, stopped an inch above her navel, and was low-cut at the back. Arching her shoulders and hanging her arms loosely by her side, Kayla’s small looking wings unfolded from her back. The tips of them peeked just above her shoulders and I could see the three bony fingers at each end of the wing wiggling open and closed in the moonlight.
Then I heard the sweetest sound that I think I’d ever heard. Kayla started giggling to herself and it sounded like the happiest sound in the world. As she giggled, she fluttered her wings and ever so slowly her feet began to lift off the ground. Watching from the darkness beneath the trees, I felt kind of weird as if I were intruding on a very private moment. But, however much I guessed that I should walk way, I couldn’t; I was mesmerised by her beauty. She looked like an angel.
Kayla’s feet rose about a foot off the ground, before she dropped again. Raising herself on the tips of her toes, she held her arms out on either side of her slender frame and with a gentle flap of her wings, she rose off the ground again. At first I wasn’t sure what she was trying to achieve by doing this, but then she hovered a few feet off the ground, twisted her body to the right and fluttered in that direction. Seeing this, I knew that she was getting used to having wings – she was practising flying. I could tell that her wings were too underdeveloped to reach the heights and speeds that I’d seen Luke, Potter, and Murphy achieve, but one day – one day she would and what a sight she would make, soaring, racing, and diving through the sky with her flame-coloured hair billowing out behind her. As I thought of this, there was a very small part of me that was envious of her.