“At least we know that he got out of Cruor Pharma and left here very much alive,” I said. “He wasn’t caught with Sylvia so there’s still hope.”
Max nodded his head. “I guess.”
“You say you’re going to Doctor Langstone’s?” asked the bishop, a look of concern over his face. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea. If you haven’t heard from your brother then that could mean that all is not well. If Doctor Langstone had helped Robert and Alex then surely you would have heard from him.”
“I agree,” said Jude, turning to look up at me. “Doctor Langstone is one of these demons who can’t be trusted. I think we should consider our options, don’t you?” Jude turned to Max. “We need to find Robert and Alex, but just strolling into Doctor Langstone’s place could be the end of us.”
“Why don’t you stay here?” suggested the bishop. “You are more than welcome. Maybe Robert will come back here when he thinks it’s safe?”
“Thanks, but I can’t just sit back waiting here in the hope that Robert will turn up,” said Max. “I don’t mind staying here for a couple of nights just to rest up a bit but that’s it. I’ve come this far and I’ll keep going until I find Robert.”
“Besides, we don’t know how long we have before the cleaners turn up,” I said. “I know we should be safe here but what happens when we leave? What if the cleaners are outside? The moment we step foot out of here – then what? Two nights might be pushing it.”
“I don’t see the point in staying here at all,” grumbled Raven. “We only came here to find Robert and the others. We should leave now and head for Derbyshire before it’s too late. I don’t want to become a demon’s puppet.”
“We need to sleep, Raven,” I said. “We can’t keep on going with no rest. Let’s stay tonight and then move on tomorrow.”
Raven slumped back against the cushion, arms folded tight across her. Her lips turned down into a pout and she glared out at me from under her black hair. I looked at Jude. He had got up and was now peering out through a gap in the curtain. All this talk about the cleaners turning up had probably made him feel on edge, not that he would ever admit it. He turned away from the window. His shiny blue eyes met mine.
“It’s not just the cleaners we have to worry about,” he said. “Don’t forget the police are after us as well. The cleaners may have trouble getting to us while we’re in here but the police won’t.”
“The police don’t know we’re here,” said Max, leaning forward on the sofa. “I think if they did, then they’d be here by now.”
“Maybe, but do we want to take that risk?” said Jude, sitting down on the arm of the sofa beside me. “I really don’t know what’s the best plan to take.”
“I think you all need a good night’s sleep,” said the bishop, standing up and walking over to another cord that hung from the wall. “Sleep on it and have a serious think about staying here with me and waiting for Robert to come back.” He pulled on the cord and a distant bell chimed from somewhere in the house. “Mrs. Gables will show you to your rooms, but please stay away from the third floor. Well, it isn’t really a third floor – more of an attic. It’s not safe up there. The house is very old, as I’m sure you can tell, and sadly the attic is falling into disrepair. The floorboards up there are rotting away and I wouldn’t want any of you falling through them.”
The door to the snug opened and Mrs. Gables appeared. She looked nervous again. Her eyes flicked over us and then settled on the bishop. I couldn’t tell if it was us or the bishop she seemed to be scared of. When we had first turned up, I thought it had been the bishop, but now, as she eyed us nervously, it seemed to be our presence that had her looking scared.
“Mrs. Gables, could you show our guests to their rooms please.”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Gables, nodding her head at the bishop. “Follow me.”
We stood up and left the room. Turning around to the bishop who had followed us out, I said, “Thank you for letting us stay.”
“I couldn’t turn you away,” he smiled. “I will help you, like I helped the others. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep your being here quiet. After all, it seems that it’s not just you and your friends that could get into trouble – now you are all here, then myself and Mrs. Gables could find ourselves suffering the same fate as Father William or Father Peter and I don’t want that. I’m just sorry that I can’t do more.”
As I went to walk away, the bishop spoke again. “Make sure you keep the fire burning in your rooms. The house gets very cold and I like to keep a nice roaring fire burning all the time.” He grabbed hold of my arm and peered down at me. His eyebrows lowered so I could barely see his pupils. “Make sure you tell your friends. Tell them. Don’t let the fires go out.”
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
I headed across the large hall to where the others waited for me at the bottom of the oak staircase. That uneasy feeling had started to ebb its way back into my stomach and up my throat. The bishop’s request to keep the fires burning was reasonable enough but it had been the way he had grabbed my arm and the persistence in his voice that had disturbed me. I could understand an old man wanting to keep his house warm but he had spoken as if it seemed more like a matter of life or death to him. Seeing Mrs. Gables now crouched down in front of the fireplace, throwing more coals in and stoking the fire up with a long metal fork, didn’t help. She had placed enough coals to keep the fire burning for another month. In fact, it looked more like a bonfire. Maybe I was just reading too much into it? Maybe Mrs. Gables was just following orders? I continued to watch her as she stood up and stared at the fire, like she was making sure that it was just right. She seemed to be counting how many lumps of coal she had thrown into the burning flames. Maybe there was a correct amount to keep it fired up throughout the night? I guessed an old building like this – one without any central heating – would require a lot of coals, but to have to count them seemed way over the top. Just one more coal and I was sure that the bonfire would turn into an inferno. She seemed to be satisfied with the blaze as she turned away and walked toward us.
“Now, there are two rooms for you,” she said, taking the lead and heading up the staircase. She was careful to keep her distance from us, always two stairs ahead, checking over her shoulder to make sure we weren’t too close. Mrs. Gables pulled out a torch from her apron pocket and switched it on. “The electrics do not work upstairs, so we use torches.”
Max, who was in front of me, turned and screwed up his face. “Torches? I thought Bishops were meant to be rich – surely he can afford to get them fixed?” he whispered.
“Not very romantic, is it?” said Jude, nudging me in the arm with his elbow. “Nothing like the passionate flames of candlelight.”
“This isn’t exactly a romantic setting now, is it?” I half-smiled. “A tatty, run-down old home fits torchlight perfectly.” Maybe bishops weren’t rich, after all he had just told us that the third floor was falling apart. A house this size must cost a fortune to keep maintained.
I looked over my shoulder to make sure that Raven was following. She glanced up at me with her black eyes, her face nearly drowned out with the approaching darkness as we reached the top of the stairs.
Mrs. Gables turned right and continued to walk down a hallway decorated with large paintings of portraits and scenic views. It was hard to tell what was on them, because as soon as the torchlight hit them, it soon left and moved on to the next painting. I turned around and looked back the way we had come. It was swallowed up with the dark and looked nothing more than a shadowy tunnel.
Taking another turn into a smaller hallway, Mrs. Gables stopped. “This is the first room.” She pointed the torchlight at the door and then swung it round to another door opposite the first one. “And this is the other one.” She took two keys from her pocket and unlocked each room. “The beds are made up and the fires are going. Be sure to keep them burning. I’ve left a pile of coals for each of you and that should be enough to keep it goin
g throughout the night.” She looked at us nervously, the light from the torch shinning up into her face made her head look too big for her body. “I’ve left a couple of nightdresses out for you two ladies and the bishop has kindly let you two use some of his old pyjamas.” She turned to face Max and Jude, the torchlight now on them.
“That’s nice,” smiled Jude, trying not to laugh.
“That’s very kind,” said Max, ignoring Jude who stood and sniggered. “Could you tell me where the bathroom is please? Just in case one of us needs to use it during the night.”
“There’s no wandering about the hallways at night,” whispered Mrs. Gables. “I’ve placed two bedpans under the beds just in case.”
“What? I’m not using no bedpan,” hissed Raven. “That’s disgusting. We had better facilities at Cruor Pharma – at least we had a bathroom.”
Ignoring Raven, Mrs. Gables backed away. “Breakfast is at 8. Stay in your rooms and don’t forget the fires.” She disappeared back down the hallway taking the torchlight with her. Her footsteps could be heard on the creaky floorboards as she retreated back the way we had come.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
I opened the door to the bedroom. The hallway was immediately lit up from the flames of one of Mrs. Gable’s bonfires. The room was dusky and the floorboards bare, with only a small rug placed in the middle of the room. Two single beds were pushed up against the wall, a window between them. They had been made up with a single sheet and a crochet blanket covered the top. At the end of each bed I spotted a neatly folded nightdress, probably a couple of Mrs. Gables’s, I should imagine. They looked like something you would wear back in the Victorian days. Wait until Raven spotted them – I could only begin to imagine what she would say. I smiled to myself.
“I don’t like this room,” hissed Raven, her face lit up in orangey-black shadows from the flames. “It’s creepy.”
“All old houses are creepy at night,” whispered Max, plonking himself down on one of the beds. “At least we know we can get a good night’s sleep without fear of demons and cleaners coming in.”
“But do we know that for sure?” said Raven, lowering her voice, “What about ghosts? I bet there’s plenty of them floating about.”
“As long as they just float and don’t attack me in my sleep, then I don’t care,” I whispered, pulling open the curtain and peering out into the dark. I shuddered. Our window overlooked the graveyard of St. Georges church. Not a view I really wanted after everything that had happened to us. Gravestones poked out from the ground like rows of broken, wonky teeth covered in the shadows of night. The rain had stopped falling but the wind was just as strong as it had been earlier when we’d first arrived at Dusk Fall Retreat. The large Ash trees still swayed frantically like arms of drowning people trying to stay afloat. I pulled the curtain shut as the glass rattled from a sudden strong gust of wind.
“Let’s leave tomorrow,” whispered Raven. “I don’t like it here.”
“Is there anywhere you do like?” asked Jude, pulling an old rocking chair across the floorboards and sitting down in it. The sound of the wooden rockers cut over the crackle and hiss of the flames, as Jude rocked slowly back and forth.
Raven shrugged her shoulders and didn’t reply. She propped herself on the other bed leaning back against a pillow.
“Let’s see how we all feel in the morning,” I yawned. “If everyone wants to leave tomorrow then I don’t mind. Doctor Fletcher did say we needed to keep moving – not to stay in one place for too long.”
“Fine with me,” whispered Max. “I just want to find Robert.”
“It’s hard to know what the right thing to do is,” said Jude. “We should be safe here from the cleaners but not from the police and Inspector Cropper. All they’d have to do is drag us out and hand us over to Middleton and the cleaners, but if we leave, then we can still get caught. If we go to Doctor Langstone then the chances are he will keep us for himself and he then gains control over the cleaners and their loyalty. We then lose ourselves forever and end up trapped within a demon-controlled body. We need to find somewhere that’s safe to live – completely undetected or… we stay on the run – forever.”
“Or we find a way to kill the demons,” Max said. “There must be a way to get rid of them – surely?”
Raven sat up. “You can’t kill demons. They have to be exorcized by a priest or bishop.”
“What about us?” I whispered, perching on the end of the bed that Raven sat on. “If we kill the demons, then what happens to us?”
“What do you mean?” asked Jude, his blue eyes reflected with orange and yellow flashes from the fireplace.
“If we kill the demons, who’s going to help us remove VA20 from our veins? If they die, do we die? We’ve got demon stuff in us – a part of them is now travelling through our veins – so does that mean, we die when they die?” I whispered, removing my boots and curling my legs up onto the bed.
No one answered. We sat in silence for a few minutes. Not one of us had an answer to my questions. We didn’t know.
The fire continued to crackle and snap. The wind still rushed around outside. The silence was broken by a loud, dong… dong… dong… making us jump.
“It’s just a clock,” said Max. “I saw it down the hall – one of those old Grandfather clocks.”
It continued to clang until it had let out twelve dongs. The house fell silent again.
“Midnight,” whispered Jude, rocking slowly in his chair.
“The witching hour,” hissed Raven. “When witches and ghosts appear to perform their unholy practices.” She shuddered and looked toward the door. The hallway was black, like an abyss – silent as a grave.
“Shall we all sleep in here tonight?” Max whispered, his eyes trained on the open doorway. “I mean it’s probably better if we stay together, right?”
“Max is feeling scared,” sniggered Jude.
“I’m not scared… I just think that if anything did happen then we’re stronger together… that’s all,” sighed Max. “Well, what do you think?”
“Come on then,” smiled Jude, “let’s go and get the pillows and blankets from the other room and we’ll settle in here tonight.”
“Throw some coals on the fire in there,” I said, remembering the bishop’s firm request to keep the fires burning.
“Why, what’s the point if we’re not sleeping in there tonight?” asked Jude, stopping at the doorway.
“The bishop seemed pretty pushy about keeping them burning all night – doesn’t want to let the house get cold,” I answered, walking over to the fireplace and scooping up some coals to throw in.
“Cold? This place is roasting with all these fires,” said Jude. “Feels like I’m in a bloody sauna.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I know but that’s what he wants and as we’re his guests I think we should do as he asks.”
“Okay, I’ll do it,” said Jude, following Max through the doorway.
I threw the coal onto the fire and turned to look at Raven. She was already asleep, sprawled out across the bed.
“Great,” I whispered. “No room for me on the bed then.”
Max and Jude returned with an armful of pillows and two blankets.
“Who’s sleeping where?” asked Max, when he spotted Raven had fallen asleep and taken up one bed all to herself.
“Three in a bed,” smiled Jude. “This could be interesting. As long as Kassidy’s in the middle – no offence, Max.”
“You can’t fit three in that bed,” I whispered. “One of us will have to sleep in the rocking chair.”
“Or squeeze in next to Raven,” said Max, looking at Jude.
“Don’t look at me,” said Jude. “I ain’t sleeping next to her. She’ll probably wake up in the middle of the night and kill me.”
“Argue it out amongst yourselves,” I smiled, jumping onto the empty bed. “I’m not sleeping next to her either, not after the way she was on Ward 2.” I shivered as I remembered last night, wa
tching Raven from beneath the cover of my blanket, wondering if she was going to leap up and attack me – too scared to wake her after her crazy outbursts. I climbed under the crochet blanket and lay my head on the pillow. I was too tired to stay awake and see who I would be sharing the bed with. My eyes stung with tiredness and my head hurt. I could feel my eyelids drooping, closing. I was falling into stand-by mode – shutting down. I fell asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
I lay, twisting and turning. I had no idea how long I had been asleep but my head felt fuzzy and my eyes heavy. It seemed that it had only been moments ago that I had got into this bed and shut my eyes. But it must have been longer as small snippets of a dream kept fluttering around inside my head. I turned over. The bed was uncomfortable. I plumped up the pillow and tried to relax. I wanted to go back to sleep but my mind was on overdrive, even though my body was begging for sleep.
I opened my eyes and sat up in bed, clutching the crochet blanket. The room was a mixture of dark shadows and dancing flames. My head felt dizzy and my eyelashes felt sticky – wet. I must have been crying in my sleep. What had I been dreaming of? I shook my head as I tried to remember. Memories of my dad seeped through my cloudy head as I started to recall parts of my dream. My dad had been standing in the creepy corridors of Cruor Pharma and Carly had been in it. I shuddered.
A noise in the room stirred me from my thoughts. I glanced from one dark corner to the next. My eyes fell upon the dark shape of the rocking chair by the end of my bed. I could just make out Max, his head poked out from beneath a blanket. I turned slightly in the bed and looked down beside me. Jude lay on his side, one arm draped over my lap. Shadows flickered across his bare chest, highlighting the muscles in his arms like a showpiece. The noise came again. What was it? It sounded like something falling – scattering to the floor. I looked over at Raven. She had her back to me, but she seemed to be sleeping peacefully. I tried to breathe calmly. Thoughts of Ward 2 seeped back into my head. I tried to push them away – reminding myself that I was no longer trapped there – I was in a place of safety now. I slowly slipped out from under Jude’s arm. My bare feet recoiled at the cold floor and I rubbed them together to rid them of the chill that now threatened to travel up my legs. I shivered. I felt uneasy. The dream, or should I say nightmare, had left me feeling anxious – bothered. Braving the cold floor, I tiptoed over to the window and pulled the curtain aside. It was still dark. Nothing stirred outside. Even the wind had gone to sleep. The graveyard was void of life and for that I was grateful. I had half expected to see the floating dark shapes of the cleaners looming over the graves, waiting for us to leave the safety of the bishop’s home. As my heart rate calmed the scattering noise came again. I spun around, my eyes wildly searching out the source from which it came from. I took a few steps forward. A loud thump from above startled me and I flinched down, fearful that something was going to fall on me. When nothing happened, I straightened up. I looked at Max. I wanted to wake him up. I didn’t want to be the only one wandering around in the dark, half scared. I cocked my head to the side and strained my left ear – listening for movement above me. What could it have been? The bishop had said that the third floor was in disrepair, so what could be up there thumping around in the dead of night? I shook my head. I was just scaring myself. Max had been right in what he’d said about this house. All old houses were creepy, especially at night. They were like old men and women – full of aches and pains – creaks and groans.
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