by Tim O'Rourke
“Get out of here,” her momma breathed.
Melody tried to stand, then dropped to the floor again.
“Get out,” the woman hissed, still struggling to catch her breath.
I watched Melody pull herself up onto her hands and knees and crawl away from her mother like some kind of beaten animal. I turned around and faced the wall, not only because I couldn’t bear to watch any more, but the smell of blood running from the cuts crisscrossing the backs of Melody’s legs was driving me half insane with hunger and lust. I heard the sound of Melody limping and falling as she made her way up the stairs and out of the makeshift chapel.
“I will beat the beast out of that child,” I heard the mother say. She was so close now, I feared that I had been discovered and she was talking to me.
I glanced back over my shoulder to discover the woman now standing before the statue I was hiding behind. She gazed up into the Sacred Heart’s face – a look of ecstasy gleaming in her eyes.
“The devil tempted me once,” she whispered up into the statue’s face. “I won’t let him tempt my daughter.”
She then turned away, blew out the candle, and left the chapel. No sooner had she bolted the door closed at the top of the stairs, I raced from my hiding place and snatched up the box. I placed it against the wall beneath the window, and scrambled from the chapel.
It was almost dark and I ran towards the trees lining the road. I looked back at the house, still fighting the urge to go back and kill the woman living inside of it. The front door opened. Melody appeared on the porch, and over her shoulder she carried the rucksack I had seen her with before. Had she plucked up the courage to leave the sick bitch behind? Had she decided to take Isidor up on his offer and run away with him?
I watched her stagger down the front path. She winced at every footstep she took. Melody bit into her lower lip, fighting the urge to scream in pain as she limped past me. Hoping that she had decided to leave and find peace with Isidor, just like I had found sanctuary with Father Paul, I followed her. As the last rays of sunlight faded in the sky over the lake, Melody reached the shore. Isi-bore was sitting before the dark waters, crouched over what looked like some kind of notebook. He looked up to see Melody approach him.
From the safety of the woods, I watched Melody limp forwards, dragging her rucksack behind her in the sand. She took a folded piece of white paper from her apron. Isi-bore jumped up and ran towards her. I watched as he took the rucksack from Melody.
“What’s that?” he asked, looking at the piece of paper held in her hand.
“A copy of the school dress code,” Melody said, screwing up the piece of paper and throwing it away.
“What’s happened?” I heard Isi-bore ask.
“A good whipping, that’s what happened,” Melody said, stumbling forward into Isi-bore’s arms.
He helped Melody to sit down, and she cried out in pain. “It’s the back of my legs, cut to ribbons they are.”
“Your mum whipped you, didn’t she?” Isi-bore said, a sudden look of anger falling over his face.
Melody nodded.
“Why did she do it?” the boy asked, sitting beside her.
“A teacher noticed that I was wearing nail varnish,” Melody explained. “I forgot that I was wearing it. You’re not allowed to wear it at school. It’s not a big deal, really, but they called my mum. She came up to the school and took me home. She said the usual crap about how the devil was tempting me – and that only whores wear makeup.”
“Where is she now?” Isi-bore snapped.
Good boy! I thought. Go on – show some fucking backbone for once. Go round and rip that fucking bitch’s heart out.
“She’s praying for me,” Melody told him. “Isidor, are you all right?”
“No,” he said, staggering away from her. “I’ve got to go.”
“Go where?” Melody asked, looking hurt. “I need you.”
“Sorry,” Isi-bore almost seemed to gag, then turned and fled.
He is actually going to man-up and kill that bitch!
Leaving Melody alone on the shore, I went after Isi-bore as he raced away through the woods. I wanted to see if he really would kill Melody’s mother. I couldn’t believe Isi-bore could. And I was right. I soon realised he wasn’t racing back towards town and Melody’s home, but heading back towards the grate in the ground which would take him back to The Hollows.
I went after him, and as he fled, two giant black wings sprung from beneath his arms. He slid face-first into the dirt and yanked open the grate. Without looking back, he disappeared back beneath ground. I stood and looked down into the hole. Isi-bore had gone. I kicked the grate shut with my boot. Turning around, I saw the bride watching me from behind a tree.
“You were wrong,” I whispered.
“About what?” she asked from behind her veil.
“Me and the boy. I am nothing like him. If anyone had treated the person I loved so badly, I would have ripped her fucking spine out,” I said through gritted teeth, then walked away.
I reached the shore to find that Melody had gone. Where? Back home, I guessed. Where else did she have to go? From the corner of my eye, I saw the crumpled piece of paper that the girl had thrown away. I picked it up. It was a list of the school uniform rules and a letter to Melody’s mother. The letter explained how Melody had broken the school rules. It had been signed by the deputy head teacher. Her name was Mrs. Last.
That would be the last fucking letter she would be sending home to Melody’s mother, or anybody else’s for that matter, I smiled, tossing the piece of paper back into the sand.
With my claws already out, I headed back towards town in search of Mrs. Last. I planned on spending the rest of the night having some fun with her.
Chapter Twenty
Potter
I slept little. I hoped I would have slept more. It wasn’t that Kiera’s armchair was uncomfortable – it was way better then standing out in the freezing cold alleyway. What kept me awake was the hundreds and hundreds of newspaper clippings Kiera had tacked to the walls of her living room. My Kiera had often done the same thing, and I could remember that she had done exactly the same during our short stay at Hallowed Manor on our arrival into this pushed world. Perhaps both Kieras had some slight compulsive behavioural disorder? But in my heart I knew that wasn’t true. The Kiera I knew and loved only did this kinda shit when she was looking for someone or something.
In the glow of the small lamp, I eventually got up out of the armchair and began to inspect the newspaper cuttings. Pretty much all of them were reports about killings and murders that had taken place or about people who had suddenly gone missing. As I worked away around the room, I noticed other articles too that were about people who claimed to have lived past lives – different kind of lives. There were so many clippings that it seemed quite a phenomenon in this pushed world. Was this a result of Noah sitting in his ticket booth, punching out all those tickets? I wondered. Was the fact that so many people appeared to be convinced they had lived some kind of an alternate life the result of all the cracks Noah and Lilly had been making? But why was Kiera so interested in these news reports? Had she started to remember too? I continued to check out the hundreds of articles until my heart suddenly stopped dead in my chest. There was a face I recognised peering back at me from all of those black and white newspaper cuttings. It was Kayla’s face looking back at me. Slowly, I reached out and unpinned the article, which reported how Kayla and her brother, Isidor, had been butchered by their father, Doctor Hunt on the Cumbrian mountainside. Just like Murphy had told me, the report stated that Doctor Hunt had been delusional and had believed both his children were winged creatures who had come from a world beneath ground.
“Interesting, don’t you think?” I heard someone ask.
I spun around to find Kiera standing in her bedroom doorway. She wore a crimson coloured dressing gown that was fastened about her waist. She stepped into the room, and I caught a glimpse of her milky colour
ed thigh as she came towards me. I looked quickly away.
“Did you know this girl?” I asked tentatively, holding the newspaper clipping between my fingers.
“No,” Kiera said with a swift shake of her head and looked down at the picture. “But…” she trailed off.
“But what?” I asked, my heart speeding up.
“I don’t know,” she sighed, turning away.
“Why did you tear this from the newspaper and keep it if you don’t know the girl in the picture?”
“Her story interested me, that’s all,” she said, going to the window and looking down at the street.
The first rays of morning light were creeping over the roofs of the houses in the street, and they showered Kiera’s pale face with a soft pink glow. Remembering that Lilly had said there was a message for Murphy on the back of this newspaper clipping, I slid it into my pocket to read later.
“What was so interesting about it? People get killed all the time,” I asked, sensing now that perhaps this Kiera had started to make a connection with her other life.
“The girl and her brother, Isidor, were murdered, because their father believed they were winged creatures,” she said, still looking out of the window. “He was so convinced his two children had giant black wings hidden inside them, he cut them open and removed their spines. Don’t you think that’s a bit odd?” Now she turned to look directly at me.
“Odd?” I shrugged, trying to dismiss her comments. “The guy who did that to his kids sounds like a fucking whack-job.”
“Maybe his beliefs weren’t so crazy after all,” Kiera said. “Perhaps he was right.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me, right?” I half-smiled at her. “Winged creatures from beneath ground. You’ll be trying to tell me the Smurfs are real next.”
“Smurfs?” she frowned.
Did they have Smurf cartoons in the pushed world? I didn’t know and besides, who gave a crap? “Look, forget the Smurfs. My point is that this whole thing about creatures with wings is just a bunch of bullshit.”
“Is it?” Kiera said, turning her back towards me and dropping her dressing gown halfway down her back. “What are these then?”
I looked at Kiera’s back and gasped at the sight of the three bony-looking lumps beneath the skin covering each of her shoulder blades.
“Horrible, aren’t they?” she whispered, lowering her head as if in shame. She pulled the dressing gown back up to cover her shoulders.
“I don’t know what to say,” I mumbled, and I really didn’t. What could I say? Should I tell her the truth about everything? No I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t afford for Kiera to remember anything. Lilly had said that would be really dangerous. I didn’t know exactly what Lilly had meant by her warning – but should this Kiera remember, could that be dangerous for my Kiera? I couldn’t risk that. “Look, I think I should go…”
“Running out on me again, Potter?” Kiera whispered, turning to look at me. I could see the tears slowly rolling down the length of her beautiful face.
“No… I’m…” I started.
“I sicken you, don’t I?” she said, her lower lip trembling. “I’m hideous… a freak.”
How could I let her stand before me and cry believing that she was a freak, when I truly knew what she was? But I couldn’t tell her the truth, either. I crossed the room and took her gently in my arms. She didn’t push me away, but buried her face against my chest and sobbed.
Holding her felt no different than holding my Kiera.
“But she’s not your Kiera,” a voice whispered.
I glanced sideways to see the little girl with the long, dark hair and red dress standing in the open doorway of Kiera’s bedroom. I looked away because I knew what she said was true. But what could I do? Walk out on her again?
“But that wasn’t you,” I heard the little girl whisper as if she were able to hear my thoughts.
I couldn’t walk out – not now, despite knowing in my heart that I should. Glancing back at the bedroom door, I could see that the little girl had gone again. Kiera continued to sob in my arms as I held her. I knew she was scared – I could feel her fear.
“You’re not a freak,” I whispered in her ear.
“What am I then?” she asked, easing herself back so she could look up into my eyes.
Whether this was my Kiera or not – I couldn’t lie to her. Lying would get me nowhere. Kiera had taught me that. I wanted to tell her the truth. I wanted to show her my wings – to prove to her she wasn’t alone like she believed she was.
“Kiera… you’re… a…” I started, then stopped as the song Just the way you are by Bruno Mars started to play from somewhere in the apartment.
The last time I’d heard that song was when Kiera and I had made love in the bunker beneath the hangar on the outskirts of Wasp Water. Kiera slipped from my arms.
“That’s my phone,” she whispered, wiping the tears from her cheeks with the balls of her hands. She crossed the room, and picking her jacket up from off the floor, Kiera fished her phone from one of the pockets.
“Kiera,” she said into the phone, trying to make her voice so steady to hide the fact she had just been crying. “Hey, John.”
Sparky? I guessed.
“Really?” she breathed. “What, at this time of the morning?”
She paused and listened.
“Where did this happen?” she asked. “Okay. I’m on my way.”
She pressed the disconnect button.
“Sparky?” I cocked an eyebrow at her.
“Yes,” she nodded, heading for the bathroom. “I’ve got to go.”
“Go where?” I asked.
“A youth has been struck and killed by a train on a desolate stretch of track a few miles from here,” she said, looking back at me.
“So what’s that got to do with you?” I asked, taking a cigarette from one of the packets she had given me and lighting it.
“I’m a cop, remember?” she half-smiled.
“What I meant was, why have you got to go? You’re not even on duty. Are you like the only cop left in this town?” I said.
“Might as well be,” she shrugged. “Most of the cops are wolves and they don’t really care about what happens to humans. It’s really just down to me and Spar… John… to police this place.”
“So why doesn’t Sparky, go and deal with the kid under the train?” I asked, blowing smoke from the side of my mouth.
“He said he’s got another job he’s dealing with, a domestic or something,” Kiera explained.
“So you’re going alone?” I asked.
“I’ve got used to being alone, remember?” she said right back, stepping into the bathroom.
Before she closed the door fully, I said, “I’m going to come with you.”
“Why?” she asked, peering through the gap in the door at me.
“I’m a cop, too, remember?” I said.
Within ten minutes of receiving the call from Sparky, I was sitting in Kiera’s tiny little red car as she drove towards the scene of the incident. It was such a tight fit in the Mini that my knees were drawn up so far that my chin nearly rested against them.
The early morning sky had turned overcast and it looked like we were gonna get more rain. Looking at Kiera, I said as casually as possible, “So why that particular song?”
“What song?” Kiera asked, switching on the windscreen wipers at the first splashes of rain.
“The one you use as a ringtone,” I reminded her.
“I like it. Why?” she asked.
“No reason,” I lied.
We sat in silence; I guess neither of us knowing what to say. Then turning to look at her, I said, “Why did you show me those… those… lumps on your back?”
“Because the thought of them scares me,” she said, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. “I needed to show someone.”
“What does Sparky think they are?” I asked, wondering if I was now pushing my luck.
“He hasn’t
seen them,” Kiera said.
“No?” I said, trying to hide my surprise. “But I thought you two were…”
“What?” she asked, shooting me a sideways glance.
“You know.”
“No, I don’t know, Potter,” she said, looking back at the rain-slicked country road we were now heading along.
“I thought you two were having jiggy-jiggy.” I didn’t know how to say it.
“What’s jiggy-jiggy?” she asked.
I looked at her. “You know… a bit of humpty-dumpty…” I then saw the faintest of smiles tugging at the corners of her lips. “If you’re gonna take the piss, I won’t bother talking to you. You know exactly what I mean.”
“If you must know,” she said, slowing the car to navigate a tight bend in the winding road, “me and John are just good friends.”
“Really?” I asked, trying to mask my delight at this news. “But I thought you two were…”
“Having humpty-dumpty, as you so eloquently described it?” she cut in.
“Well, yeah,” I said.
“So now you know,” she said.
I looked out of the window again and tried to hide my grin.
There was another long silence, only filled by the squeaking sound of the wipers driving away the rain.
This time Kiera spoke first. “So have you had jiggy-jiggy with anyone else since… since you left?” she asked, unable to bring herself to look at me.
How did I answer that? There had been another… the other Kiera.
“No,” I said. “There has only been you.”
Was that really I lie? My brain was starting to ache.
“Okay,” she said, that little smile tugging at the corner of her lips again.
Wanting to change the subject and unable to think of anything else to say, I said the first thing that came into my head. “So what do you think those lumps are?”
“My wings,” she said.
“You’re shitting me, right?” I asked, staring at her.
“Why couldn’t they be?” she asked right back.