Dead Angels

by Tim ORourke

Chapter Nine

  Isidor

  Melody Rose stood out from the rest. Not because of anything she said or did, it was her ordinariness, that's what drew attention to her.

  I was fourteen, and had never dared leave The Hollows, not once. Some of the other Vampyrus I hung out with had shared stories of how they had snuck above ground. I was fascinated by what they told me, although some of what I heard I wondered if it was even true. It wasn't as if I didn't know anything about how the humans lived and the inventions that they had created. Over hundreds of years, other Vampyrus who had ventured above ground had returned with picture books, magazines, and newspapers. One Vampyrus, he was just a kid, I think his name was Burton, had returned one day with this odd-looking contraption, which shone moving pictures against the cave walls. It was like magic. He said the humans called it a movie projector.

  My mum, well, the woman who I believed to be my mother, told me how many years before I'd been born, Burton had returned below ground with a magical roll of pictures. Claiming that he had magic moving pictures of the most beautiful creature that had ever existed below or above ground, he gathered as many Vampyrus into the great chamber beneath the Dewy Pyramids and projected the magic pictures of this most beautiful human. As he stood before the hundreds of Vampyrus crammed into the chamber before him, Burton proudly announced that her name was Marilyn Monroe. During that short clip of film, my mother told me how the male Vampyrus had whooped, whistled, and cheered as she had stood in a flowing white dress which rippled up around her thighs. With a wistful smile on her face, my mother told me it was because of those magical moving pictures of that beautiful woman that hundreds of male Vampyrus left The Hollows the following day in search of their own creature as stunning as the one they had seen on the chamber walls.

  When I asked my mother what had become of this Burton, who had loved the magic moving pictures, she explained that, like the others, he had disappeared above ground.

  "Some say that he fell so in love with those moving pictures, that he spent the rest of his life learning how to make his own," she said.

  I loved hearing stories about above ground and I wanted to be able to tell my own. The humans sounded magical to me. They had so much and did so much. But the one thing that grabbed my attention the most - and I just couldn't believe it to be true - was that humans wanted to be the same. They didn't like other humans who were different in any way. I got the feeling that it scared them. But I wouldn't know for sure unless I ventured above ground and saw these humans for myself.

  My mother never knew of my adventures above ground - not until much later, that is. Once I'd made up my mind to go above ground, it took me about a week to pluck up the courage to venture out of The Hollows. It took me three days to find a route that I was happy with. I could have followed the paths that my friends and had taken, but I wanted my own. I didn't want mother to find out, you see. I wouldn't find out for some years why she was scared of me going above ground. Perhaps she was worried, that like the kid Burton, I would fall in love with something and never go back to her.

  The path I finally chose I found by chance. I lived with my mother in a hollow carved into the face of the Ageless Hill. I often wandered alone, conjuring stories inside my head about the world I had yet to see which existed above me. It was while I was walking one chilly afternoon that I noticed a root which protruded through the ground from above. It was so cold, the root was covered in a white frost and it glistened above like a stalagmite.

  I stood on tiptoe and reached up for the root. I gripped it, but the knotted lump of tree was slippery and I lost my hold and footing and landed on my arse. With the wind knocked from me, I tried again until I finally managed to work my way up it. Looking back below to make sure I wasn't being watched, I placed one cold hand over the other and disappeared in amongst the roots of the tree.

  Spiderpeeds and slugworms dropped from the roots as I cut a path through them. They wriggled in my hair, and I shook the insects free by shaking my head wildly from side to side. Then when I thought I couldn't climb any further, I found a hole. Taking a deep breath, I made myself as small as possible and wriggled into it. It was dark, but the roots gave way, and I found myself crawling on my hands and knees down a tunnel made of brick. The walls and ground felt slimy, and several times I had to stop dead-still as rats scurried past me. I hate rats. I didn't know how long or how far I had crawled through the tunnel, but I got the feeling that the tunnel was climbing upwards. Then, ever so gradually, I could see my hands in front of me along with the green and yellow moss that covered the walls of the tunnel. I looked up to see light shining through a metal grate. It was the first time that I had seen sunlight. It shone through the holes in the grate in thin, white slices. In that light, I spied a ladder fixed to the wall. Looking back one last time in the direction that I had come, I mustered all my courage and climbed the ladder towards the light. I had always had a heightened sense of smell, but now my nose tingled with the new wave of scents that wafted down the tunnel. Although the scent was sweet - almost fresh - I could also detect a metallic smell in the air.

  I poked my fingers through the holes in the grate and felt the wind sweep over my fingers. It felt cold, just like the air in The Hollows. Gritting my teeth together, I lifted up the grate and slid it to one side. The sunlight showered my face. I closed my eyes and let it shine upon me. I stayed like that for several minutes, my head sticking up out of the hole, while the sun and wind touched my face. It felt incredible. With my heart racing, I opened my eyes and hoisted myself out of the hole. I pushed the grate back into place, then looked about me. I found myself standing in a large wooded area. The trees were similar to those in The Hollows, and they stretched up into the sky. The sky! Oh my God - the sky. I had only ever seen it in pictures and now I was actually standing beneath it. I stared upwards through the canopy of fine green leaves and drew a breath. To get a better look, I made my way through the trees until I found myself out in the open and standing on a narrow road. The sky was a pale blue and wispy clouds covered it like big white scratches. I heard from my friends that if you stared at the clouds long enough, you would see pictures in them, like faces, monsters, and all sorts of other weird stuff.

  So with my head tilted back, I stood in the road and gazed up at the sky. But before any of those faces and monsters had had a chance to appear for me, there was a bellowing sound. I span around to see a car bearing down on me. I had seen cars in picture books, but nothing could have prepared me for the speed with which they travelled. Stumbling backwards, the car raced past in a streak of silver. I could smell that metallic scent again and it came from a pipe which jutted out from the back of the car. As it passed me by, the driver jabbed his middle finger into the air and screamed, "Get out of the fucking road, arsehole!"

  I wasn't too familiar with how humans greeted one another, but I got the feeling that the guy driving the car wasn't too pleased to see me. The car disappeared into the distance, and taking more care, I headed down the road in the direction that the car had gone. I'd walked for some time, stopping every now and then when something caught my eye. There seemed to be so much to take in that my mind started to race, and I couldn't wait to get back to The Hollows and tell my friends my own stories. But the thing that caught my imagination the most was the birds. We had flying creatures in The Hollows, I was one of them.

  I knew from the stories I had been told, that unlike us, humans couldn't fly. They wanted to - they dreamt about it all the time. So they had invented machines called aeroplanes which they sat in and travelled through the air with. Listening to these stories, I had learnt from a very young age that any Vampyrus venturing above ground should never reveal their wings to the humans.

  "Remember, humans don't like anything that is different," my mother had often warned me, her green eyes growing wide as if she were telling me a scary bedtime story. "If they were to ever find out that winged creatures were living just beneath them, they would
come in search of us. "

  "But why?" I would ask her.

  "Because, they don't like different, Isidor. They like everyone to be the same," she would whisper while stoking the fire. Then, looking back over her shoulder at me with the flames dancing in her eyes, she would add, "They would capture us, put us in cages, and open us up to see how we worked. "

  I would often lie awake at night, my fingertips tracing the angry-looking scars that ran down the inside of my arms. Behind them hid my wings. When my wings were out, the scars disappeared, but my mother would warn me not to get them out too often as they would get stuck like that one day. And she was right, because one day, they did.

  So pulling my coat about me, paranoid that some human might see my scars, I continued to follow the road. After a couple of miles or so, I came to a wooden sign that had been fixed to the trunk of a large tree.

  Welcome to Lake Lure - Please drive carefully had been stencilled across it in thick, black letters. Staring at the sign, I guessed the last part had been added for the guy who had called me an arsehole.

  I pulled the collar of my coat up around my neck, thrust my hands into my pockets, and headed towards the town of Lake Lure. I wondered what stories I might find there.