Dead Night

by Tim O'Rourke

  Clouds raced past us and every so often, if I dared to look down, I could see the fields racing away far below, bathed in the silver light of the moon. He sped up and there was a rumbling sound like thunder. I stared up at Potter’s face, and it looked as hard as stone. His eyes were dark, and his skin pale like marble.

  “Where are you taking me?” I shouted over the sound of the rushing wind.

  “I was hoping you might know somewhere,” he said, without looking down at me.

  “There’s a farmhouse that I’ve been hiding out in,” I yelled. “It’s pretty secluded. We could hide out there for a few days.”

  “I haven’t got a few days,” he said, and to hear that made me feel alone again. But was that really how I felt? Wasn’t I just a little bit disappointed that he would be leaving me so soon?

  “Where is this farmhouse?” he asked me.

  “On a hill near a town called Beechers Hope,” I said. “Do you know where that is?”

  Without answering me, Potter banked sharply to the left, and my stomach did that somersault thing that happens when you take off in an aeroplane. What had taken me a week by foot and the odd bus journey to travel, Potter covered the distance between Havensfield to Beechers Hope in about half an hour. With his eyes fixed firmly ahead, we shot through the clouds and circled high above the town of Beechers Hope.

  “Where’s the farmhouse?” he asked in my ear.

  In the distance I could see the black silhouette of the hill against the night sky. I pointed at it and said, “Over there.”

  Potter covered the last half of a mile in what seemed like seconds, and it wasn’t long before he was setting me on my feet again outside the derelict farmhouse. With a shrug of his shoulders, I watched in wonder as his wings seemed to shrink away into his back. He clenched his fists and locked his jaw as his claws and fangs disappeared. He wrenched the rucksack from my back and pulled out the filthy-looking coat he had been wearing. Potter put it on and pushed open the broken down front door.

  “I thought you said you had to go,” I reminded him.

  Looking back at me, he said, “I’ve got a couple of things I want to ask you first.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “Like what?”

  “Like, what you were doing at Kiera’s flat tonight?”

  Potter lit the fire, and pulling up two battered armchairs, we sat before the roaring flames. The light from the fire cast away that pale look his skin had, and gave his face and chest a warm glow. He held his hands before the fire and rubbed them together and I could see that they were still streaked with blood from the cops he had killed at the flat.

  “So how come you were at Kiera’s flat?”

  he asked me.

  “My life hasn’t been the same since she woke up that night in the morgue,” I started to explain. “When the police arrived, I stole the sample of blood that I had taken from her for DNA analysis. I didn’t want the cops to have it.”

  “Why not?” he asked me.

  “It’s not every day that a corpse you’re working on suddenly sits up and strolls out of the lab,” I told him. “I hoped that her blood would hold the answers. So instead of following the cop back to the police station to give my statement, I gave him the slip and went to Marty’s. He worked in a lab that did work on the human genes. I knew that if anyone could find out what this Kiera Hudson was all about, then he could.”

  “And what did he find out?” he asked me, moving to the edge of the armchair.

  “That her blood wasn’t strictly human,” I said, looking him straight in the eyes. “He said that her blood wasn’t too dissimilar to that of a vampire bat. He told me to look after the blood and not to tell anyone about it.”

  “And that was it?” he pushed.

  “I think so, but it’s like things became muddled after that,” I said thoughtfully.

  “Muddled?”

  “Marty and I had been separated for over six months, he had met someone else,” I told him, and part of me, on a subconscious level, wanted to let him know that I was single. “I thought of him as a friend, that was all. But I think he tried to seduce me or something, because I remember him laying me down onto his bed and kissing me. It was then that he asked me what had been the girl’s name that the sample of blood had come from, so I told him. I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I can remember is waking up on his bed and hearing him shouting in the street outside. It was then that he was hit by the car.”

  Potter sat quietly as I explained what had happened when the happy-zapper cop had turned up. I told him how he had driven me out into the country and the other cop had killed him. I went on to explain how I fled. I didn’t know what to do or where to run. I knew that I couldn’t go back to my parents’ house, as that would have been the first place that the cops would look for me.

  “My parents are getting on now,” I said, and to think of them hurt me. “I haven’t had any contact with them for weeks, and I miss Archie.”

  “Archie?” Potter asked, cocking an eyebrow at me.

  “My dog,” I told him, and an odd look came over his face. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, fine,” he nodded.

  So I started to tell Potter how, by accident more than anything, I had ended up in Beechers Hope and at the farm. “I knew that I couldn’t just keep aimlessly wandering the countryside,” I said.

  “I needed to start making plans. I went into town to buy some supplies and new clothes and it was while I was there that I found this in the coat that I bought.” Then, fishing the driving licence out of my pocket, I handed it to him.

  Potter leant forward in his chair and studied the plastic I.D. in the light of the fire. “It’s a good likeness, but that isn’t you, is it?”

  I shook my head. “When I saw it, I thought that I could become her, you know, dye my hair, and if I did ever get stopped by the cops, I could flash that and they would believe that I was her – Caroline Hughes.”

  “So what were you doing in Kiera’s flat tonight?” Potter asked again, handing me back the I.D.

  “Once I had dyed my hair, put on my new clothes and got used to the idea of being Caroline Hughes, I got more daring, and over the next few days I left the farmhouse and took some walks along the coastal paths. I needed to get my head together and decide exactly what I was going to do. I couldn’t pretend that I was Caroline forever.

  The sea air cleared my head and the quietness of the place helped me focus. I hardly ever saw anyone on my walks, except for this girl and boy I would occasionally see. They seemed to be very much in love as they were always looking into each other’s eyes and holding hands. I let them be, as they obviously wanted to be left alone as much as I did.

  “I knew that your friend, Kiera Hudson was the key to this somehow, so I thought that perhaps if I could find out who she was, where she lived and so on, I could start to figure out what was happening. Remembering that I had seen a library in the town square, it took me another week or so to pluck up the courage to venture into town in my disguise. When I did, I dressed in the coat that I had bought, pulled the fur collar up about my face, and made sure that I had Caroline Hughes’s I.D. with me, just in case I got stopped.

  “I never did got stopped. I made my way in and of town without so much as a stare. In the library I paid for half an hour’s Internet access and searched for your friend on 192.com. There were three other women listed with that name. I wrote down their home addresses and telephone numbers, which were on the website. One of them was way too old to be your friend and the second had since emigrated. That only left one. I called her number from a public phone box. After several rings, her answer phone cut in and I recognised her voice from when she had spoken to me as she fled the morgue. Over the next few days, I rang that number again several times and each time there was no response, just the message left on her answer phone. Each time I listened to it, the more I became convinced that I had the right Kiera Hudson. But, I knew that I could only be sure if I went to her fla
t and checked it out for myself.

  “So I packed up my things, and running out of cash before leaving Beechers Hope, I withdrew some money from a cash machine. I know I shouldn’t have done it, because if anyone was checking my bank records they would know where I was, but as I was leaving the town, I guessed it wouldn’t matter,” I told him.

  “What did you find at the flat?” he asked me.

  “Not much,” I said. “I’d only been there long enough to check out a picture that was by the window when you showed up. But as soon as I saw that picture, I recognised her and knew that I had found the right Kiera Hudson.”

  “So what are you going to do now?” he asked me.

  I didn’t know what I was going to do, if I were to be honest. I hoped that by going to Kiera’s flat I would find something, although I wasn’t exactly sure what, and prove my innocence in some way. “I could come with you,”

  I suggested, lowering my eyes so I didn’t have to look at him.

  “Impossible,” Potter said.

  To hear him dismiss my idea so quickly hurt me, but also made me angry. “You can’t just leave me, Potter,” I said, staring at him. “What am I meant to do?”

  “Hide,” he said, and now it was he who looked away from me and into the fire.

  “Hide!” I snapped. “What sort of plan is that? What, you’re seriously suggesting that I spend the rest of my life pretending to be somebody else?”

  “So what where you planning on doing?”

  he grunted, taking a cigarette from his trouser pocket and lighting it.

  “Not ripping the fucking heads off of several cops, that’s for sure!” I shouted. “So you just walk back into my life, cause a massacre, and then disappear again? You know, it isn’t going to take a freaking genius to work out that those cops were killed by something other than a human.” “I never walked back into your life,” Potter said, blowing smoke into the air. “You walked into mine.”

  “You said that you came looking for me,”

  I reminded him.

  “Yeah, well maybe I shouldn’t have,” he snapped. “I made a mistake, okay?”

  “No, it’s not okay!” I hissed, standing up.

  “You can’t just walk back into my life, stir up old feelings, then disappear again!”

  “What old feelings?” he asked, looking up at me as I stood before the fire. “You said you didn’t remember me.”

  Clenching my fists, I shouted, “Why don’t you just piss off, Potter!”

  Without looking back at him, I stomped up the stairs. I went to the room with the pink coloured bedding, closed the door, lit a candle, and threw myself onto the bed. I just wanted to scream, but I didn’t want him to hear it, so I placed a pillow over my head. I felt lost, confused, and angry. I was angrier at myself than Potter – I hated the feelings that I had for him.

  But hadn’t they always been there, hidden just beneath the surface? Potter said before the world had been pushed we had been lovers. Maybe somehow those feelings – just like the letters – had seeped across time, through a tear in the fabric of reality and come back to haunt me.

  However hard I tried, I couldn’t help but feel love for the obnoxious prick who sat downstairs before the fire. I didn’t doubt what Potter had told me. I knew in my heart that we had once shared some kind of life together. As I lay on my front, my head buried beneath the pillow, I remembered how sometimes, when Marty was smoking a cigarette, he had reminded me of someone else and that someone else had been Potter. It was like he had been seeping through into my life for as long as I could remember. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to remember him – but now that he was back, I just couldn’t forget.

  I’d heard a story once about a young woman who’d had an accident and had been in a coma for five years or more. When she finally woke, her fiancé had moved on and married someone else – but she had woken feeling the same for him, just as she had when she had slipped into that coma. At the time I had thought how awful that must have been for her – and now I really understood the pain she must have felt. I wanted to go with him. I didn’t want to be left alone. I’d been scared of him once – but I was different then. I didn’t want to think about him anymore, I just wanted to go to sleep. So swinging my legs over the edge of the bed and standing in the centre of the room, I slipped off my tree-hugger dress and my underwear. Then, as I stood naked, the door to my room swung slowly open and Potter stepped inside.

  15

  Potter

  I sat before the fire and listened to the sound of Sophie’s feet marching up the stairs, followed by the slam of a door. With smoke lingering around the tips of my fingers, I brought the cigarette up to my lips and inhaled deeply. The cravings for the red stuff were bad tonight and I knew that I would have to get back to Hallowed Manor soon. The nicotine masked it, but not enough – not tonight.

  Why had I come looking for Sophie? I told myself that it was to try and find out what had happened to the world while we had been away – but I knew that was bullshit. Sophie had been pushed too – so she wouldn’t have known any difference to the life that she was now living. But, she had remembered me. Why and how? And why had those letters turned up? I had sent them from another place, another time, where my heart had been crushed by her. Like I said, it wasn’t so much as another where – it was another when.

  I took another cigarette from the pack and lit it, as I thought of how finding Sophie again had brought back some of my own feelings that I had for her. Was that bad? Was I wrong for having those feelings as I had Kiera in my life now? With the cigarette dangling from the corner of my mouth, I couldn’t help but remember how much I’d loved Sophie. I could feel the pain again as she screamed at me, telling me to get out. The pain felt real, all over again. I could see myself wandering aimlessly for weeks, from one town to another, writing her those letters, hoping that she would accept me for who and what I really was.

  Had I been stupid to send those letters? No, I’d been naive and in love. But, then, hadn’t Sophie?

  Hadn’t her reaction to me been normal? Christ, what had I expected her reaction to be on seeing a giant bat perching on the end of her bed? And I’d been a numb-nuts coming back to look for her. I’d used her. Whatever had happened between us, Sophie deserved better than that.

  I flicked the end of my cigarette into the fire and got up. Taking off my coat, I made my way up the stairs to her room. At the end of the landing, I paused outside her door. Not knowing if again I was doing the right thing or not, I pushed it open and stepped into her room.

  She stood in the centre of the room, and she was naked. I half expected her to cover her breasts with her arms and yell at me to get out, but she didn’t, she just stood there, her arms by her sides and looked at me.

  “What do you want?” she asked me.

  “Do you want me to leave?” I said.

  “No,” she whispered, and the room flickered with candlelight. “Do you want to leave?”

  “No,” I said, closing the door behind me.

  I turned to face her again, and I couldn’t help but think of how beautiful she looked in the soft glow of the candlelight. Her long, blond hair flowed over her shoulders and settled against her breasts. Sophie came towards me, and as she did, I felt a thumping sensation race through my body.

  It was like a ghost of a heart, racing inside of me.

  She stopped before me, and we were so close that I could see she was trembling. “I do remember you,” she whispered. “I remember everything. I remember how much I loved you and I know how much I hurt you.”

  “How do you know?” I whispered back.

  “The letters you sent me,” she said, her eyes looking into mine. “They were full of pain.”

  “I’m not hurting anymore,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” she asked as she folded her arms about me. She pulled me so close that I could feel her breasts, soft against my chest and her breath, warm against my cheek.

  “I’m sure,” I said, closing my e
yes. “I’m in love with another.”

  Sophie seemed to flinch in my arms and pull slightly away from me. “Kiera Hudson?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I told her. “I love her more than anything.”

  “But you loved me,” she frowned.

  I opened my eyes to see that she was staring into them again, and the hurt that I could see there was almost unbearable.

  “That was a long time ago, in another where and another when,” I told her.

  “What about what we shared,” she smiled, pulling me close again. “What about us?”

  Gently easing her away from me, I said, “There is no us anymore, Sophie; I was wrong to have come back to look for you.”

  “You came back for me because deep down you still love me,” she tried to convince me.

  “I came back because I wanted to know what had happened to the world,” I explained, not wanting to hurt her feelings, but knowing that I had to be honest with her. “I had no one else.”

  “You don’t mean that,” she said, but I could tell by the tears that were standing in her eyes that she knew I was telling her the truth.

  “I’m sorry,” I shrugged.

  “You can’t just come back and open up old wounds then disappear again,” she whispered, a tear slipping down her cheek. “You might have had time for your feelings to have changed, but to me it seems like only moments ago that we were making love in my room.”

  “So why didn’t you answer my letters?” I snapped.

  “I was a child back then,” she cried. “I was scared, Potter, but not of you.”

  “Of what then?”

  “Me,” she said. “I was scared at how much I wanted you, even though I knew you were a -”