by Tim O'Rourke
“Are you sure?” Potter asked him.
“You asked me to do some research on the guy,” Isidor said, ignoring Potter and looking straight at me. “I searched the net for info on the guy, but it was hard because there are loads of McCains all over the place, so it was difficult for me to track him down. But I eventually found this article on a Morris McCain. He is known as the Matcher by the wolf community.”
“The matcher?” I breathed.
“It would seem that Morris McCain has spent his life organising the matching of wolves into human skins. He is meant to have a nose for it. And I’m not trying to be funny about the whole nose thing either. Apparently he has this amazing sense of smell, a bit like my own I guess,” Isidor explained. “That’s how he matches wolves to humans — he matches them by smell. But over the years, it has been rumoured that his sense of smell has weakened and some of the matches that he has arranged recently haven’t been entirely successful.”
“How come?” Potter asked him, sounding interested in what Isidor had discovered.
“It seems that for there to be a successful matching, the human host has to be very similar in attitude, temperament, and spirit to the wolf. If they’re not, then there can be problems.”
“What sort of problems?” I asked him.
“From what I’ve read, it’s almost like organ donation,” Isidor said. “If you don’t get a perfect match like blood type and stuff the body rejects the organ. If this happens in matching, the human rejects the wolf. It’s like they have an internal clash — a battle — if you like.”
“What happens then?” Potter asked, taking a cigarette and twiddling it between his fingers instead of lighting it.
“They go kind of crazy,” Isidor said, looking at us.
“How crazy?” I asked him.
“Put it like this,” Isidor said, “The crazy ones are known as the Berserkers. They either get humanely destroyed like rabid animals or get locked away. They are too dangerous to be allowed to just wander around the place.”
“So what about McCain?” Potter quizzed.
“Well, he seems to be quite high up in COW.”
“Cow?” I asked him.
“The Council of Wolves. It’s a self-regulating body of Skin-walkers who make sure that the Treaty of Wasp Water is adhered to. The humans have the same kind of thing, it’s called UNCOW. United Nations Control of Wolves,” Isidor explained, stroking the little beard that jutted from his chin. “Both organisations monitor the treaty. McCain is a prominent figure who is in charge of matching wolves with humans. He is highly thought of amongst the wolves and some humans.”
“Only some?” I asked, as a flurry of sparks from the fire disappeared up the chimney.
“There have been reports that he is brutal with some of the children he chooses for matching. The treaty says that although the matching of wolves with humans is a necessary evil to maintain peace, it has to be done humanely and with as little suffering to the child as possible. Those who aren’t chosen have to be returned unharmed to their families within a reasonable time. They can’t be held indefinitely.”
“That’s good of them,” Potter said dryly, then lit the cigarette he had been playing with.
“I can’t believe what you’re telling me, Isidor,” I said. “I know the world has been pushed…but this is nasty.”
“It gets worse,” Isidor sighed. “McCain is also rumoured to have murdered parents and teachers who have uncovered his cruelty and threatened to expose him. But it has never been proved. Witnesses have either retracted their statements or gone missing.”
“Just like Emily Clarke,” I said thoughtfully.
“But this time he just might not get away with it,” Isidor said, turning to face the laptop again. “Take a look at this.”
He brought up a page on the screen which contained an article about Morris McCain. In the top right hand-corner was his picture. Although the CCTV footage was grainy, I could see that it was McCain who had left the Seven-Eleven just moments after Emily Clarke’s credit card had been used.
“We have him,” Potter said grimly.
“Not quite,” I cautioned him. “We have a piece of dodgy-looking CCTV of a guy who looks like McCain leaving the store. Even if we could prove that it was him, we don’t actually have proof that it was him who used Emily’s credit card. How many other people were there in that store? Any one of them could have used that card.”
“We could go back and get a statement from the dude with the zits,” Potter suggested. “He might remember serving him.”
“What, and have another witness go missing?” Isidor cut in.
“Okay, Velma Dinkley,” Potter said, “what do you suggest this time? Perhaps we fire up the Mystery Machine, storm the school, and torture a confession out of this piece of shit?”
“No,” I cut in. “We pray that Kayla finds that camera.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Kiera
I could see him lying there, his face white, bruised, and featureless. I moved towards him in my mind, feeling nauseous and not wanting to look at him at all. But despite my fear and repulsion, I edged forward, half expecting him to sit bolt upright. I stood over him, his hard, cold, grey body looking like stone. I couldn’t tell how old he was, but there was something — I didn’t know what — but I had seen him before.
Who would sculpt a statue lying down, hidden amongst a pile of wild bushes? I wondered.
I leant over him and just like I feared, he sat bolt upright. I screamed and staggered backwards out of the bushes and into the woods. He crawled on his broken hands and knees into the clearing, parts of him falling away into grey, powdery dust.
I had seen that before. But there had been a girl. Hospital beds…
“C’mon, Kiera, come on in out of the cold!” the statue suddenly said, beckoning me with one cracked-looking hand, back to the shelter of the bush, “I have so much to tell you.”
“What do you have to tell me?” I whispered, stepping away.
“Come on in out of the cold,” he said again, not through his mouth as he didn’t have one. His voice seemed to seep from the crevices and breaks in his stone flesh.
“I’m not cold,” I lied, shivering in the snow-covered wood. “What is it that you have to tell me?”
“I need to talk to you about Alice,” he said, crawling forward, two of his fingers crumbling away as he grabbed at the woodland floor.
“Who’s Alice?” I asked him.
“The girl in the hospital bed,” he said.
Then there was a noise. It was shrill and sounded like a far-off alarm. I looked back into the wood, the snow seesawing down in giant white flakes. The sound of the alarm was coming from back there somewhere. I faced front again and screamed. The statue was standing inches from me, its broken hand outstretched.
“What’s that noise?” someone asked from beside me.
I turned to see Potter.
“Kiera, it’s Kayla,” he said…
“Potter?” I whispered, opening my eyes.
“Kayla is Skyping you,” Potter said, shoving my iPod into my hand.
I looked around me, half expecting to see the statue in the snow-covered wood. But I wasn’t in the wood; I was curled in the armchair before the roaring fire, where I had drifted asleep.
“It’s Kayla,” Potter said, thrusting the iPod towards me again. Hearing his sister’s name being mentioned, Isidor came into the room and looked at me.
I took my iPod from Potter and looking down I could see her pretty face staring out of the screen at me. Wherever she was, it was dark, as the light from the screen of her own iPod lit up her face in eerie shades of blue and green.
“Kayla,” I said, raising my iPod so she could see me. “Are you okay?”
“I guess,” she half-smiled back at me, her voice sounding faint and distorted. “I needed to speak to you.”
“Where are you?” I asked her. “It looks dark where you are.”
“I’m in my room,” sh
e explained, her voice just above a whisper. “Lights go out at nine at Ravenwood. I daren’t put the light on or it might attract the attention of one of those Greys. They’ve gone crazy tonight.”
“How come?” I asked her, Potter and Isidor now standing behind me so they could see Kayla.
“I don’t know, but something spooked them,” she said, bringing the iPod closer to her face. “These alarms were ringing and Greys were running around everywhere. One of them nearly caught us.”
“Us?” I asked her, wondering what was happening in that school.
“Me and Sam went walk-about tonight,” she whispered, her face ghostly looking as she stared back at me.
“Why?” Isidor asked, leaning over my shoulder.
“Hey, Isidor,” Kayla said, catching a glimpse of her brother. “I miss you.”
“I miss you too,” he said back, sounding a little choked. “But why did you…”
Before he had a chance to finish, Kayla said, “I’m not going to find anything out unless I actually go and investigate, am I?”
“Who’s Sam?” Isidor asked, sounding like a concerned older brother.
“Just a friend, he’s really nice,” she said, and I heard her voice soften slightly at the mention of him.
“So, did you find anything out on this little trip of yours?” Potter suddenly cut in.
“Hey, is that cranky-pants?” Kayla asked, and I could hear her giggle back in her room.
“Watch it,” Potter said but he didn’t really sound angry with her, he knew she was just teasing him. “So did you find anything or not?”
“I found out that McCain is a complete and utter whack-job,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I asked her, fearing that he might have hurt her in some way. We sat huddled around my iPod as Kayla told us about her visit through Ravenwood to Emily Clarke’s bedroom. She described in detail the blood that covered the walls and how she and Sam had hidden when McCain had come to the room. On hearing how he had licked the walls, my stomach lurched as it made me feel sick, but not as ill as when Kayla described what he had done after that. Kayla told us in a whisper how McCain seemed to have a permanently blocked nose, and Isidor told her why.
Kayla seemed to know little about the matching other than it took place at a disused chapel and that McCain was responsible for the matching of the wolves with the kids at the school. Hearing her description of Emily’s bedroom, I feared that this was how Emily had met her death. I asked Kayla if this is all that she had managed to discover.
Then, for just a second she disappeared from view, then was back again. She held something up before her and said, “Look what I found.”
It took me a moment to figure out exactly what it was she holding. “Is that the camera Emily had hidden in her room?” I breathed.
“Sure is,” she said, sounding pleased with herself.
“Have you watched what’s on it?” Isidor cut in, sounding excited.
“Does it show her being murdered?” Potter asked next.
“Shhh!” I hissed. “Let Kayla talk.”
“No, I haven’t been able to watch it,” she said. “It’s one of those cameras that downloads straight to a laptop. Besides, I had to leave the power cable behind.”
“Why?” Potter asked.
“I was in a mad rush to get out of that room before McCain came back,” she explained.
“So how are we gonna ever know what’s on there?” Isidor inquired.
“I’ll go and get it,” Potter said, standing up as if he was going to leave right now.
“No, don’t do that!” Kayla insisted. “I’m not allowed visitors until the matching is over and they drill it into the kids that if they see strangers or anyone who looks odd, to report it.”
“I don’t look odd,” Potter snapped. Then, looking at me, he said, “Do I look odd to you?”
Ignoring him, I looked down at the screen and said, “What do you suggest, Kayla?”
“I’ll try and sneak away tomorrow somehow,” she said. “But the place is pretty guarded, what with the searchlights and towers. But I’ve got the advantage that no one here knows what I truly am. I can move fast and I can fly so I should be able to figure something out.”
“Don’t take any unnecessary risks,” I warned her. “This world is screwed up enough without throwing a winged half-breed into the mix.”
“I’ll try and leave the camera on the other side of the school walls,” Kayla suggested. “I’ll find a place to hide it, somewhere that you can find it. I’ll leave a marker of some kind. Then, I’ll send you a message, Kiera, to let you know where I’ve hidden it.”
“Okay,” I agreed. The plan wasn’t great, but I couldn’t think of what else to do, and we didn’t have time on our side. “As soon as the camera is in place, let me know and I’ll send Isidor to collect.”
“Why not me?” Potter asked, sounding offended.
“Because we stand a better chance of Isidor getting close to the school and getting the camera without drawing any attention to us,” I explained. “If we lose that camera then we lose everything. Besides, Isidor will be able to follow Kayla’s scent to wherever she leaves the camera. Right, Isidor?”
“You bet,” Isidor said proudly and sniffed the air.
Then, not wanting to debate it further, I looked back down at Kayla’s ghostly image and said, “Good work, Kayla. You’ve done a good job. Be careful and we’ll wait for your message.”
“I miss you guys,” Kayla said one last time before she ended the call.
I slipped the iPod into my pocket and looked at the others.
“I don’t like this one bit,” Potter said.
“Neither do I,” Isidor said, and it was the first time that I had ever known them to agree on anything.
“We get the camera,” I said. “We see what it’s got to show…”
“And if it does show McCain killing the Clarke woman?” Potter asked.
“We get Kayla out of there,” I said.
“Then what?” Isidor said.
But before I’d had the chance to reply, Potter said, “We push McCain so freaking hard, that he never gets up again.”
Chapter Thirty
Kayla
I arrived for the class the following morning only to discover that Sam had been right, Brother Michael had taken ill. As I sat down next to Sam, he couldn’t wait to tell me that rumours were rampant that our new teacher, Sister Margaret, had actually gone berserk herself and freaked out a few weeks before. Hearing this, my heart sank. Another freak!
“What happened?” I whispered behind my hand, as Sister Margaret sat slumped in a rocking chair at the front of the class. Just like the other Ravenwood Greys, her face was covered by the hood of her robes.
“Listen to this,” Sam whispered back. “I heard she started to eat a book she was reading!”
I looked at him and said, “That’s just a bunch of crap. That never happened.”
“Honest,” Sam said. “I’m not faking. She started to rip the pages from her book — then eat them, until she puked her guts up all over the classroom floor.”
I had seen a lot of crazy stuff in my life, but this story seemed
too strange to believe. The class as usual was in silence, there hadn’t been much work set for us. I guessed it was art class or something, because on each desk had been placed a jug of cloudy water with paintbrushes. It almost felt like we were killing time until we were either chosen by McCain for matching or we were set free. The class had been sitting quietly. As I spied around the room, I could see that some weren’t painting at all, but just staring into space like freaking zombies, while others sat and painted pictures.
Dorsey was sitting in front of me. I peered over his shoulder and could see that he was painting a picture. I couldn’t see what it was, but his small, narrow shoulders were slumped forward, his burnt face almost touching the paper in front of him.
Sister Margaret continued to sit at the front of the class, w
ith a book open, but facing down in her lap. Her head was bent forward with her hood concealing her face, and all the while she just rocked slowly back and forth in her chair. I thought of the conversation that I’d had with Kiera, Potter, and Isidor the night before and knew that I had to find a way of sneaking out of the school and hiding the camera.
Dorsey suddenly stood up and went to the front of the class. He stopped at the sink and filled a jug with water. It was then I noticed Pryor. He was sitting next to two other boys. The three of them looked pale and gaunt, as if they hadn’t seen daylight for a while. The last time I’d seen Pryor, he was being dragged across the schoolyard by Brother Michael on his way to the Rat-House. By the look of the two emaciated-looking identical twins sitting on either side of Pryor, I guessed that they were the Addison twins that McCain had mentioned. By the look of them, their time spent in the Rat-House hadn’t been great. They looked dirty, scruffy, and haunted.
I watched Pryor lean over and nudge one of the Addison brothers. The twin began to snigger and he turned to his brother and laughed. His twin winked back at him.Dorsey made his way back from the sink holding the jug of water and some paintbrushes. As he approached Sister Margaret, Pryor stuck his leg out and sent Dorsey pin-wheeling through the air. The jug he was holding flew from his hand and I watched as it spun towards Sister Margaret. It crashed into her left shoulder and shattered on impact, as if it had just been thrown into a brick wall. Water sprayed everywhere, covering Sister Margaret’s head and chest.
For a moment she didn’t move, she didn’t even flinch, as if she had been totally unaware of what had just happened. Sister Margaret continued to sit, rocking back and forth several more times until she suddenly stopped. The class sat in silence as we stared at her. Dorsey got to his feet and began to brush himself off with his burnt and twisted fingers. Sister Margaret slowly rose out of her chair and loomed over Dorsey. For what seemed like the longest time, she just stood there, completely motionless. Then, without warning, her tongue rolled from between her lips like a fat, grey worm and she licked the water from her chin. Once she had soaked up every drop, her tongue crawled back into her mouth. She then raised one of her arms and pointed at Dorsey. Then as quickly as she had raised her arm, she lowered it and then freaked out.