by Tim O'Rourke
I opened my eyes to find myself standing before a sea of statues. They stretched out before me for as far as the eye could see. Some looked away from me, as if scared – or out of some kind of misplaced reverence. The statues were grey or white in colour. Some looked more weather-stained than others – as if they had been here longer than the rest. I looked back to get my bearings and could see the church behind me, its spire reaching up into the gunmetal grey sky. I was right, it was going to snow, and the first flakes swept lazily down from above. The graveyard was still – quiet. Not even the barren black branches of the nearby trees stirred in the breeze. I looked back at the statues and flinched backwards. All of them now were looking away from me. How had they moved? The statues either covered their eyes with their arms or their hands.
“Help me!” the voice came again.
I tilted my head to the side as I tried to pinpoint the location of the soft, childlike voice.
“Help me!” it whispered again.
I looked front and knew that the voice was coming deep from within the maze of statues which had crammed themselves into the graveyard.
“Where are you?” I called out, my voice sounding thin and weak as it echoed back off the statues.
“Help me!” the voice came again.
I looked between the gaps the statues had made. There were so many of them, I wondered if I would barely be able to squeeze between them in search of the voice. Then I jumped. The sudden sound of the church bells ringing filled the air behind me. I looked back over my shoulder at the spire. One side of it was now covered white with snow. The bells stopped. With my mouth feeling dry, I looked back at the statues and gasped, a small cloud of breath escaping from my mouth.
The statues had moved again. It was like they had stepped aside, making a path for me to walk between them. This time their faces were tilted skywards, flakes of snow settling over their blank eyes and faces. Their arms were out stretched and their fingers were entwined. All of them were holding hands. In a perverse way, they looked beautiful, tranquil, and I suddenly felt at peace.
“Help me!” the voice called again. But this time it added another word to that sentence and it made me shiver. “Please!”
Slowly putting one foot in front of the other, I stepped between the statues in search of the voice. I looked left and right at the statues.
They weren’t dressed in long, flowing gowns like so many statues you see in graveyards. They didn’t look like angels either. They looked like everyday people who had somehow been turned to stone. There were children, some as young as four or five, teenagers, and adults. Men and women; boys and girls. Some of the women wore dresses, others denims, blouses, and coats. The men wore trousers, boots, and hats. Their style of clothing seemed to span several different time periods.
The snow fell heavier now, and I looked back to see how far I had come. I could no longer see the gap that the statues had seemed to open for me. It was as if they had gathered around the opening, their hands locked together preventing my exit. I could see my footprints in the snow, trailing away into the distance. I looked up and could see the church, faint in the distance, its spire white against the sky.
“Help me! Pleeeaaassee!” the voice hushed, this time closer now. As I drew nearer to the voice, it lost that childlike quality and sounded more like that of a young woman.
“Where are you?!” I called out.
Silence; not even the sound of the wind.
I looked back once more, my footprints now covered by the falling snow. Looking front again, I shivered; not with the cold, but through fear. The statues had changed position again. This time they were looking at me. A hundred or more sets of eyes were boring into me. Their cracked faces didn’t look mean or angry, though. They looked kind of sad.
“Who are you?” I asked one of them, a boy about the age of sixteen. He looked familiar somehow. It was like I had seen him before someplace, but just couldn’t quite remember where. He didn’t answer me, he just stared, his snow-white eyes looking into mine. Slowly, I cupped one of my hands and pressed it softly against his handsome face then pulled it quickly away again. He didn’t feel cold like stone, but warm, like a living person.
“Why are you here?” I asked, my mind thinking back to the statue of the girl in the grounds of Hallowed Manor. “Can I help you?”
The statue just stared back at me, its surface cracked and broken, his face covered with blotches of moss. I stepped away and followed the path the statues had created for me.
“Help me,” the voice came again, this time more desperate sounding than before.
I quickened my step and rounded a bend in the path. Between the falling flakes of snow, I could see a clearing amongst the statues and I headed towards it. Standing at the edge of the clearing I could see it was circular in shape, and the statues surrounded it, all of their hands locked together like some weird child’s game of ‘a ring of roses.’ In the centre of the clearing stood a statue.
Its back was towards me, head cast down, arms outstretched on either side of it, palms facing upwards. Snow had gathered in the statue’s hands, and it looked as if it were holding a fistful of soft, white feathers.
“Help me,” the statue whispered.
Although with its head facing away from me, and I couldn’t see its lips move, I knew it had spoken.
With snow falling all around me, covering my hair and shoulders, I stepped into the clearing and towards the statue. My feet crunched in the snow, and if I’d had a heart, I knew it would have been racing.
Slowly I reached the statue and faced it. I could see by its long lengths of cracked and marble-looking hair, that it was female.
“I want to help you,” I whispered, but the sound of my voice suddenly got drowned out by another sound – the sound of weeping. I looked left and right, and could see that the statues were no longer holding hands. Each had covered their faces and was crying into their hands. The sound of their weeping was like listening to a hundred lost children crying for their mothers. An unbearable sadness washed over me as I looked at them, young and old, all bent forward, weeping uncontrollably.
“Help me!” the voice suddenly whispered through the weeping.
I looked front to see that the statue had now raised its head and was looking back at me.
Stumbling backwards, I threw my hands to my face and cried out. Looking at the statue was like looking at me. The statue was me. Although its face was cracked, and eyes a blank white, it was me I was looking at.
The statue spoke again, and instead of saying, “Help me,” it whispered, “Help us!”
Its lips didn’t move, not a fraction, but I could hear the voice all the same. It was like I could hear it in my head, and it was my own voice talking to me.
“Help us,” my voice whispered inside my head again.
Trying to stay on my feet, I stared back at the statue of myself and whispered, “How do I help you?”
“Lead us to the Dead Waters,” it breathed inside my head. “We will follow you.”
“Who are you?” I asked, my voice barely audible over the sound of the sobbing coming from the statues that surrounded us.
“I am what you will become,” the statue spoke again inside my mind, its dead, white eyes never leaving mine. “Don’t let yourself become a statue, Kiera Hudson. Don’t become one of us before you reach the Dead Waters.”
“What are these Dead Waters?” I asked.
“Dead to the living, but not to us,” the statue said.
“What does that mean?” I asked, my mind wondering if it wasn’t some kind of a riddle.
“The dead waters will give us life, and you can’t push back without us,” the statue’s voice hushed inside of me.
“How do I push back?” I whispered, the snow now so deep it covered my boots completely.
“Bathe in the Dead Waters if you want to save your friends,” the statue said, and this time I detected a note of urgency in its voice – my voice inside of me.
“What do you see, Kiera Hudson?” it asked me.
Slowly, I turned around, and this time my legs did buckle beneath me, and I fell to the ground, knee-deep in soft snow.
“Isidor?” I cried, ice-cold tears on my cheeks.
He stood before me, his arms wrapped around another – a girl – Melody Rose. The statue of Isidor and Melody stood locked in an eternal embrace, their dead, white eyes staring into each other’s forever. Snow covered them. I crawled forward, my hands looking raw with the cold.
There was another pair of statues just behind those of Isidor and Melody.
“Murphy,” I cried out. He stood holding the hands of two beautiful-looking girls. I recognised one of the statues to be that of the girl I had seen in the grounds of Hallowed Manor holding the crucifix. My voice told me he was with his daughters, Meren and Nessa. He looked happy, snow gathering in his thick, white eyebrows and on the tops of his carpet slippers.
The snow whipped all around me, and I cupped my hands around my eyes. Two other statues appeared out of the snow. “Kayla?” I whispered. It was her, a block of cracked stone as she held Sam in her arms. He didn’t look like a wolf though. He looked like the boy Isidor had carried from the burning school grounds. Frozen smiles tugged at the corners of their mouths. I looked back at the statue of me, but I had gone, replaced by another. Potter stood where the statue of me had once been. Dragging myself, I stumbled through the blizzard like snow towards it. I was there after all. Potter was holding me in his arms; my head was pressed gently against his chest.
“Potter,” I breathed, waving the snow away from in front of my eyes. It was then I felt as if my very soul had been crushed inside of me.
It wasn’t me Potter was cradling in his arms, but another. She was beautiful – so beautiful. Sobbing into my hands, just like the hundreds of statues surrounding me, I knew it was Sophie he was holding.
“Potter,” I sobbed, my soul aching.
“Why?”
“Don’t they all look happy?” the voice spoke up inside of me once more. This time the voice sounded different though. Old and broken.
I took my hands from my face and looked up into the falling snow. The statue of Potter and Sophie had gone. In their place stood statues of the four Elders. Beneath their stone hoods I could see their stitched-together faces, hard like marble.
“Don’t your friends look happy?” one of them spoke. I couldn’t tell which, as their cracked and blistered lips didn’t move.
“Yes,” I sobbed, unable to bear the memory of Potter and Sophie together.
“Don’t you want your friends to finally find peace and happiness?” one of them asked, its voice almost teasing.
“Yes,” I murmured, still on my knees.
“Then push everything back,” another of them said. “Push back into place what you moved.”
“I didn’t move anything,” I sobbed into the balls of my hands.
“Oh, Kiera,” one of them said, as if they almost cared. “You failed to choose in The Hollows, and this is the result. Can’t you see what you’ve done?”
“Everything would have been so simple if only you had chosen between the humans and the Vampyrus,” explained another. “There can only be one. This pushed world is the result of you failing to make your choice.”
“But I couldn’t choose,” I shouted at them, driving my fists into the snow. “You asked the impossible! You choose!”
“And that is why we are here. That is why we look the way we do,” and all of them seemed to speak as one. “We were all chosen like you once, and all of us failed to make a choice.
There is no right or wrong – you just have to make a choice. We are all half-breeds just like you.
Cursed with being half and half – cursed with the choice. A choice that can only be made by one who knows what it is like to be half-human and half-Vampyrus. Choose your better half, Kiera Hudson, and you can be free.”
“Free to go home?” I asked, my eyes wet with tears. “Free to go back to how it was?”
“Oh no, Kiera,” one of them said. “You don’t ever get to go back. This was always a one-way journey for you. The statues of your friends you see reflect the lives they will have if you choose wisely. They will lead happy lives with the people they truly love.”
I thought of my friends – I thought of Potter with Sophie. Was he meant to be with her and not me? The pain inside of me was crippling when I thought of them together.
“Why me?” I begged them now. “Why was I chosen to make this choice?”
“Why are any of us chosen?” one of the Elders whispered above the sound of the weeping.
“Why is anyone born? None of us chose that. It is a decision made for us. We just make the best of that choice. We don’t know the answer to your question. It is a question that we have all asked ourselves. It was a question which made us fail.”
“So if I choose, everything goes back to the way it was before?” I asked through my tears.
“Everything gets pushed back?”
“Not exactly the same,” one of them said.
“Either Vampyrus or humans will live, but your friends will be saved. They will be just as you see them now. They will be with the people they love.”
“But I love them and they love me,” I said.
“They won’t remember you,” they said together. “You would have never touched their lives.”
“Jim Murphy will only know the love that he has for his daughters, Isidor Smith, the love he has for Melody Rose, Kayla and Sam, and Sean Potter will be with his first love, Sophie Harrison.
Whichever way you choose, they will either be human or Vampyrus – but they will be happy,”
they explained, their stitched faces staring down into mine.
“When do I make this choice?” I asked them, hoping in my heart, even though he had hurt me, that I would see Potter just one last time.
“You have already started down the path in making your choice,” one of them said, but I didn’t know which one.
“What path?” I asked.
“The moment you decided to find your father,” they said, this time as one again.
“Was it you who left the pictures for me and Isidor?” I breathed. “Was it you who sent the letters to Sophie? Has it been you pushing us all in the direction we’ve needed to go?”
“No, that has been done by another.”
“Who?”
“The one who will finally make you choose,” one of them said, their voice just a whisper amongst the falling snow.
“And the other statues?” I breathed.
There was a pause, as if somehow they didn’t know or weren’t quite sure how to answer my question.
Then after what seemed like an eternity, they said, “What other statues?”
Confused by their answer, and pointing with my finger, I said, “These statues.”
As I looked in the direction I was pointing, I gasped. There were no statues, just the graveyard, the church, and the falling snow. I looked back at the Elders and they had gone, too.
Chapter Fourteen
Potter
I sat at the end of Kayla’s bed, she at the other, cradling a pillow to her chest. Her cheeks were tearstained, her green eyes dull-looking. I felt bad at seeing her so upset. She watched me, waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t know where to start. It seemed like minutes were ticking by and she had only given me five. I couldn’t bear the thought of her collapsing into another fit of hysterics. Could I really blame her, though?
So, saying the first thing that came into my head, I said, “I know Isidor was your brother, but he was like one to me, too.”
“You had a funny way of showing it,” she snapped, her anger still fresh and raw.
“I really didn’t mean the stuff that I used to say to him,” I
tried to convince her. My excuse sounded shit and I knew it. “I was just yanking his chain, that was all.”
“You did nothing but put him down,” she reminded me.
“I know I did,” I said, unable to look at her. “But me and Isidor made our peace before...”
“Those creatures killed him – cut his fucking head off,” she hissed.
“You’ve got to understand, Kayla. Isidor didn’t stay behind because of anything I said,” I told her. “I know it might look that way.”
“How else am I meant to see it?”
“He loved that girl, Melody Rose,” I reminded her. “He really missed her. He had carried that picture of them until the time was right. He went and had all those tattoos done and his eyebrow piercing so he looked just like he did in that picture. He really believed he would see her again. He just got tired of waiting. He had no one for himself. Whoever left that picture for him to find was the person who killed him.”
“Who left it for him?” Kayla asked, her voice softening just a little.
“I don’t know,” I said thoughtfully. “But someone is fucking with us, and I intend to find out who.”
“You’ve pissed off Kiera, too,” she said.
“I know,” I whispered, looking down at the floor, “but I never meant to.”
“For someone who doesn’t intend on pissing people off, you have a really good knack of doing it,” she said.
“I know,” I said. “I’ve always been the same. But just like someone left that picture for Isidor, someone left a picture for Kiera.”
“The picture of her father that I heard you talking about?”
“That’s right,” I said. “Someone had written that word push on the back, just like they had on that picture of Isidor and Melody. And just like that picture led Isidor to his death, I think the picture of Kiera and her father will lead to her death, too.”
“Shouldn’t you go after her then?” Kayla asked me.
“I want to, but she hates me at the moment.”
“Because of that girl, Sophie?” she asked, staring at me as if I were under interrogation.