by Tim O'Rourke
“What else did she tell you about me?” I didn’t like the fact my business had been discussed with the village gravedigger. “Did she tell you my name?”
Morten nodded his head again.
“So why did you ask me my name if you already knew it?” I said.
“I never asked, you told me your name,” he reminded me.
Was that true? I couldn’t remember. But even if I had, I still felt a little creeped out that I’d obviously been discussed by Morten and Rea. Who else had been talking about me? I knew that Rush had passed onto Rea what I’d told him about Flint.
“Don’t look so unnerved,” Morten said with a twisting smile. “Like I said, you’re a stranger in Shade. Folk are going to be curious until we all get to know you better. Wouldn’t you and your people have been just as curious if a stranger had suddenly arrived in… in… where did you say you had come from?”
Had I told Rea and the others I’d come from Twisted Den or Thunder Bay? With Morten’s hard, white eyes boring into mine, I suddenly couldn’t remember. I felt like I was one of the night-watchmen’s prisoners undergoing some kind of interrogation. My heart began to speed up and I was grateful for the rain as it masked the sweat that I could feel breaking out on my brow.
“Twisted Den,” I said, sure that’s where I told Rea and the others I had come from. Part of me wished now that I hadn’t lied. I was proving not to be very good at it.
“That’s right…” Morten sighed. “Twisted Den. Never been there myself. What’s it like?”
“Look,” I smiled faintly back. “I’d love to chat some more, but I think I should…”
“Yes of course, the children,” Morten said. “The children are waiting to meet their new teacher.”
Taking me gently by the arm again, he led me out from beneath the tree and back into the rain. It was only a short walk of silence until we stood outside what looked like a small hall. It was made of white brick. The roof was slatted with a small pointed spire and had a brass bell. A rope hung from it, swishing just above the grass in the wind. Did the previous teacher pull on that bell each morning, calling the children to class? I wondered.
“So what did happen to the previous school teacher?” I asked, remembering how Rush had told me she had died of old age.
“She passed over,” Morten said as if understanding I was now testing him as he had just tested me.
“How did she die?”
“She was very old.” He looked at me and smiled as if appreciating the fact that he had met his match.
“That’s what Rush told me,” I smiled back.
He released a chuckle that sounded like the rustle of dead leaves. “Very good. I can see that we will become great friends, Mila Watson. Perhaps one evening you would like to come for supper and we could chat more about those beautiful immortals – that’s if you would like, too?”
“I would like that very much,” I said.
“Excellent.” He turned away.
“How will I find you? Where do you live?” I called over the blustering wind.
“In the graveyard of course,” he said, striding away without looking back.
Chapter Three
I pushed the hall door open and stepped inside. To my right there was a row of pegs. I counted ten and each had a coat hanging from it. Some of the coats had dripped rainwater onto the stone floor and formed puddles. To my left there were two doors. One had the shape of a little girl stencilled on it, the other a boy. The bathrooms, I guessed, stepping across the small lobby and pushing open another set of doors. They opened to reveal the main hall. It was just big enough to fit ten desks, a chalkboard and bookshelf, and a nest of drawers. There was a table for me at the front of the class with a chair. Behind each desk sat a white faced and wide eyed child. And just like Rea had said, the children were aged between six and ten years. They sat in two rows of five and looked at me – just like the adults had in the village. I was beginning to wonder if I didn’t have the biggest boogey in the world hanging from my nose that no one had dared point out to me. I cuffed the end of my nose with my sleeve. No boogey. I smiled nervously. Shouldn’t it be the children who felt nervous of me and not me of them? I was their new teacher after all. But was I really a teacher? I was nineteen. I still had so much to learn myself. But if teaching the children to read and write was what it took for me to stay in Shade for the time being at least, then I would carry out the task to the best of my ability. As I stood, wringing my hands in my lap, I scanned the faces staring back at me. One of them stood out almost at once and I stifled a sudden gasp. The little girl I had seen on the swing and staring at me from around the edge of the tree was sitting at the end of the front row. Her dark hair hung on either side of her ashen face and onto her shoulders. Now that we were only feet from each other, I could really see what a beautiful little thing she was. In fact, all of the children looked beautiful in their own way. There were five girls and five boys – an equal match.
Shaking rain from my hair, I peeled off my wet coat, placing it over the back of the chair by the table. Taking a deep breath, I smiled at the row of faces looking back at me and said, “Hello. My name is Mila Watson. But please just call me Mila. I’m your new teacher.”
They sat glum-faced and looked at me.
I took another deep breath. “Okay. So what are your names?”
Silence.
This was going to be harder than I first thought. “What’s your name?” I said, pointing to a small boy in the back row with sandy coloured hair. The bridge of his nose was covered with a spattering of freckles.
“Jonathon,” he said, unsmiling.
“Okay, Jonathan,” I smiled. “It’s good to meet you. Now what’s your name?” I pointed at a girl with fiery red hair in the front. She looked to be the oldest of the children.
“Suzanne,” she said, folding her arms across her narrow chest.
I sensed at once that it was going to take some considerable amount of time and effort on my part to build some trust between me and the children I had been given charge of. This investigative reporting lark wasn’t how I imagined it to be. What had I imagined? I’d pictured myself riding into Shade… and… what? Not finding a village full of people that couldn’t stop staring at me and being bribed into becoming the village school teacher. How could I have ever imagined that? If only my uncle and Flint could see me now. Would they be proud? My uncle Sidney probably, but knowing Flint, he would have teased the hell out of me. Being a school teacher wasn’t as exciting as being a night-watchmen. Not in his book.
Suspecting that if I could get one of the stony-faced children on my side, the others might follow, I looked at the little girl I had seen on the swing that morning. With my arms at my side and a beaming smile on my lips, I made my way toward her, stopping about a foot away from the desk she sat behind. There was an exercise book with a blue cover on the desk. She looked up at me, dark eyes wide.
“Hey, sweetie, what’s your name?”
“Annabel,” she said in a voice so quiet it was barely a whisper.
“Hey Annabel,” I said, offering her my hand.
She flinched backwards, nearly toppling out of her chair. I heard the other children snigger.
“I won’t hurt you,” I tried to assure her. “You don’t have to be scared of me.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw a hand shoot up into the air. It was Suzanne who now sat at her desk, arm in the air.
“Miss, where have you come from?” she asked.
“You don’t have to call me Miss. My name is Mila and I come from a town called the Twisted Den,” I said, keeping up the pretence. If the children were anything like the adults in Shade, they wouldn’t think twice about discussing me with their parents as soon as they made it home after school.
“Is that on the other side of the wall?” Suzanne asked, lowering her arm, resting her doll-like hand on the desk.
“Yes,” I nodded.
The children glanced at each other.
“But we’ve been told…” Annabel started in that voice which was no more than a faint whisper.
“Be quiet, Annabel!” Suzanne suddenly shouted.
Annabel flinched in her seat. Startled myself, I looked at Suzanne. She broke my stare, looking down at her hands folded on top of her desk.
“Sorry, Miss,” she said.
“What were you going to say, Annabel?” I said, turning back to her.
“It doesn’t matter,” she whispered, head down, long black hair covering her face.
Sensing that the moment the little girl had wanted to say something had been lost, I reached down, picking up the exercise book from her desk. One word was scrawled in childish writing across the front of it. Was it some attempt to form some word? Did the children really have no grasp on how to write and read English? I opened the textbook and stifled a gasp. The first page was covered in black spidery scrawl. Although the words were written in a language I did not understand, I did recognise it. It was identical to the writing I had seen tattooed over Calix’s body. I thumbed through the pages of the book as the children watched me. Each page was covered in the unreadable scrawl.
“What is this language?” I asked, holding up the book.
“It’s our language,” a small girl in the back row said. She couldn’t have been any older than eight years. She had long blonde hair, similar in colour to my own, which she wore in plats. Her eyes were a piercing blue.
“And what is your language called?” I asked. Were the people of Shade foreign? Had they come from another land? My uncle had told me once that not all humans had spoken English. He said that the humans who had lived before us had spoken in tongues called French, German, Romanian, and many others. I couldn’t remember them all. Was the language in the exercise books and written over Calix’s body one of these other languages that my uncle had spoken of?
“Valais,” the girl said.
“Valais?” I asked, frowning at her. I had never heard the word before. “What is Valais?”
“That is the name of our language,” the girl said.
“And where does your language originate from?”
The group of children looked blankly back at me.
I tried again. “In what country do the people speak Valais?”
“In…” Annabel started.
“Stop it!” Suzanne screeched springing from behind her desk at Annabel and knocking her from her chair.
Annabel’s chair skittered across the hall as Suzanne yanked her to the floor. Sitting astride Annabel, Suzanne slapped the smaller girl across the face. The sound of the strike was like a plate being thrown against a wall.
“Stop it, I tell you!” Suzanne screeched, raising her hand to strike Annabel again.
“No, you stop it!” I gasped, taking hold of Suzanne by the wrist and yanking her from off Annabel who lay sprawled on the floor.
“Get off me!” the older girl screeched, lips curled back in something close to a snarl.
Gripping her other wrist, I shook the girl. “What is wrong with you?”
Then as if she had suddenly come to her senses, Suzanne’s snarl curled up into a smile. “I’m sorry, Miss.”
I felt her arms loosen as if the strength had been sapped from her. Believing that she had calmed herself, I released my grip on her. “Sit down,” I said, trying to keep myself calm. There was a part of me that felt outraged by her outburst, but the other part of me was just confused. Why had she suddenly acted so violently toward Annabel?
I looked back at the floor where the smaller girl had cowered. She was gone. From over my shoulder I heard the sound of the hall door being thrown open. I spun around to see the back of Annabel as she darted out the door.
Snatching my coat from the back of the chair, I threw it on. Then looking back at the remaining children, I said, “Class is dismissed for the day. Go home.”
Without looking back, I raced out into the wind and the rain in search of Annabel.
Chapter Four
I could see Annabel in the distance as she ran barefoot across the park. Her long black hair trailed out behind her. From where I stood just outside the school, she looked so small, like a ragdoll running away. At first I thought she was heading toward the swing, but she darted right, heading across the park in the direction away from the village. Striding out, I went after her. With plumes of breath jetting from my nose and mouth I ran across the park in the direction she was heading. But for someone so small, the girl moved fast. She cleared the park, darting through a gap in the bushes and shrubs that curled that side of the park. I lost sight of her and quickened my pace.
Reaching the place in the bushes where I had last seen Annabel, I could see that it was in fact the start of a single track that led away toward a part of the village I had yet to explore. With rain driving into me, I yanked wet strands of hair from my face. It was then I saw her on the path as it bent round to the left in the distance.
“Hey! Annabel!” I shouted.
She stopped and looked back at me. Her face was as white as the dress that she was wearing. Then, turning, she raced away again and I lost sight of her to the bend up ahead. Both sides of the road were tree-lined. The trees bristled and swayed in the wind, showering dead leaves all about me like burnt confetti. Clawing hair from my eyes again, I set off after her. As I ran, a stitch knifing its way into my side, I wondered if I shouldn’t perhaps head back to the village and find some help. I was still unfamiliar with the layout of the village and had no idea exactly where I was heading. But if I went back, something might happen to the girl and I would be blamed. However much I disliked the idea, the children of Shade had been in my charge. What would the villagers think of me – would they ever trust me – if I let one of the children become lost or get injured on the very first day of me taking up post as teacher? What would Rea and Rush think of me? In my mind’s eye I could see that gloating look of disapproval on Calix’s face. He would love to see me fuck up. Pushing thoughts of him from my head, I raced on.
I darted around the bend in the road, a sudden gust of wind threatening to drive me backwards. I staggered as if punched. Regaining my footing I raced on. Poking out from between the trees ahead, I could see what looked like the twisted spire of a church. It reached up into the overcast sky like a twisted limb. A wall that looked like it had been constructed from rubble appeared through the bushes on my left. There was a black gate made of iron set into it. The gate was open and it swung back and forth in the wind. I glanced left, then stopped, chest hitching up and down as I drew in breath. I could see Annabel running between the broken headstones that poked out of the ground surrounding the church. Guessing this was the graveyard where Augustus Morten said he worked – lived – I shot a look in all directions as I searched for any sign of him. Perhaps he could help me catch the girl. But he was nowhere to be seen nor was there any sign of any house close by that he might live in.
With my head down, I zigzagged between the crumbling gravestones as I chased after the girl. I lost sight of her as she ran behind some of the taller gravestones. She would reappear again in a flash of white, then be gone again. How could she keep running so fast and for so long? The muscles in my calves and thighs ached and my lungs felt like they had been set on fire. The furthest reaches of the graveyard were surrounded by a wall of trees. They looked black and leafless, like they had been scorched. I saw a white flash like lightning as Annabel skittered toward them.
“Annabel!” I cried out, the sound of my voice snatched away on the wind.
This time she didn’t look back, but headed between the misshapen-looking trees. Panting for breath like a tired dog, I reached the edge of the graveyard. Resting against one of them with one hand, and bent forward at the waist, I gasped for breath. As I did, I peered up through my bedraggled fringe to see that Annabel had finally stopped running. She stood facing me from just within the treeline. Her hair was so wet that it lay in thick streams like tar to the sides of her face. Her white dress
clung to her fragile looking frame. Annabel stared back at me, just like she had stared at me from the swing and from behind the tree in my front garden. And even though she had not stopped all the way from the school to this barren graveyard, her chest lay flat – it didn’t rise up and down like mine. The gaps between the trees were so dark they were like black lines reaching from the ground up into the knotted deformed branches.
“Annabel,” I gasped, fighting to catch my breath. I stepped away from the gravestone where I had been propping myself up. I took a step toward her. She didn’t move. Annabel stayed perfectly still, her black eyes trained on me.
“Annabel, you don’t have to run,” I said, reaching out. “There is no need to be scared.”
The girl glanced down at my hand, then back at me. The hem of her dress flapped about her bony knees.
“What was it you wanted to tell me, Annabel?” I asked, taking another step toward her. “What were you going to say before Suzanne stopped you?”
With her eyes locked with mine, Annabel said, “There are no humans…”
Before the last of her words had escaped over her lips, a gut-wrenching scream broke the silence of the graveyard. Throwing my hands to my ears, I watched as two skeletal hands shot from the shadows behind Annabel, gripping her by the shoulders, and dragging her back into the darkness.
“Annabel!” I screamed, looking at the spot where she had stood moments ago.
The sound of that deafening screech came again, followed by the thunderous sound of branches splitting from within the darkness. A tremor rippled through the ground beneath my feet as the trees shook violently from side to side. I heard the girl cry out, then fall silent.
Staggering backwards, I knocked into one of the gravestones, falling onto the ground. I peered into the darkness between the trees in search of any sign of Annabel. But there were none. Scrambling to my knees and using a nearby gravestone for support, I clawed myself to my feet. Had the werewolf I’d seen taken the girl? Had I been right about there being a werewolf in Shade after all?