Dead Flesh

was close to zero outside, I could see him stripped to the waist as he raked the leaves, which had fallen onto the wide gravel drive, into a mushy pile. Potter was restless, just like the rest of us. I watched him as he worked. His face was ashen and hard-looking, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. I could see that although he was keeping himself busy, his mind wasn’t on the job at hand, but on something else. His eyes were dark, and he seemed to stare down at the copper and gold coloured leaves as if they weren’t even there.

On returning to the manor, I wondered if Potter and I would at last be together — just like other couples. Share the same bed, the same likes and dislikes — but that hadn’t happened. Any daydreams I might have had of us curled up together on the sofa watching movies, strolling hand-in-hand on long meandering walks had failed to materialise. At first we shared the same room — the same bed — but as the cracks started to appear in me and on me — so they started in our relationship. It wasn’t that I found myself loving Potter less, in fact, now free of The Hollows and the nightmare that I had journeyed over the last year, I felt as if I could breathe again — for a short time at least.

But the nightmares came — the girl forever being chased — her desperate escape — the school named Ravenwood — and deep inside of me, I knew there was trouble coming for me again. Just like how you know that a storm is brewing on a warm summer’s evening. The sky starts to darken, almost thicken. The atmosphere feels almost electric. That’s how I had started to feel, as if a storm were coming and I didn’t know when, from what direction, and if I could find shelter from it.

So gradually, Potter and I had stopped holding each other during the night. I would lay on my side, watching the gentle rise and fall of his chest as he slept, his strong arms enveloping me. But gradually we had started to sleep apart, back to back, until eventually Potter moved out of my room and then from the manor, taking up residence again in the Gate House. Somewhere inside of me, where my cravings for the red stuff kept me from sleeping, I was grateful for that. If I were to be honest with myself, I didn’t know how long I could fight the urge — need — or was it pure desire, to sink my fangs into him and feed again.

But I missed him and my heart ached to think of him alone in the Gate House, so I often went to see him there, only to find him sitting quietly, deep in thought, and I would remember how we had shared our first kiss in that rickety shack. I would sit opposite him on the flea-bitten sofa and talk was light. But you know, I needed to be with him and I knew that he needed to be with me. Sometimes we lay before the fire that he had roaring in the hearth, and I would lie in his arms and fight the tears that stood in my eyes. But before the talk turned to anything meaningful between us, I would slip away, back to the manor, leaving him to his private thoughts.

It was as if just being together was enough, during those intimate moments we were showing how much we loved each other; but for whatever reason, words were more difficult to find when trying to express how we felt.

I knew in my heart that Potter was hurting and I suspected now that he was away from The Hollows, he had found time to reflect on what had happened there. The betrayal by his best friend, Luke and the death of Murphy, I figured, were weighing heavily upon his soul. And like Potter, now away from The Hollows, I too was able to look back on everything that had happened. I too had been betrayed by Luke — we all had. I’d lost my mother and Murphy had been like a father to me. Sometimes, I would stand alone in the quiet of the night before the mirror in my room and look at the maze of hairline cracks that covered me. I would stare at those little black fingers that wriggled at the tips of my wings, my claws, and fangs and knew that I truly had been cursed. So many times, as I’d lain in Potter’s arms before the fire in the Gate House, I had fought the crippling urge to tell him about the cracks that covered my body when in my half-breed form. But I just couldn’t tell him. I could see he was consumed by his own worries, doubts, and grief, and being back from the dead wasn’t easy to deal with — like I said — it isn’t like being in the movies.

So I sat at my window and watched him rake the leaves away, both of us lost to our thoughts. For how long I sat there, I don’t know — that is another thing about being dead — time kind of just stands still. Nights could seem to last fifty or sixty hours and days only moments. Like I’ve already said, the world had been shoved to the left a bit.

Eventually, Potter propped the rake against a nearby tree, and turning his back on the manor, he walked into the woods and disappeared from view, his head down. I wanted to go after him, so jumping from my chair, I left my room and the manor.

Chapter Five

Kayla

While Isidor kept himself busy with his stake-making, I decided to explore what was once my home. For years Mrs. Payne had stopped me from going into the West Wing of the manor, and as I placed my foot on the bottom stair and looked up into the darkness, I could hear her voice again as if being blended into my constant soundtrack by an invisible DJ.

“It is the forbidden wing, young lady,” her voice seemed to whisper in my ear. “You are not to go up there — not now — notever!” That last word of warning seemed to stretch out forever inside my head as if the DJ were playing the track at the wrong speed.

But Mrs. Payne wasn’t here now — not ever — I smiled to myself and lit the candle that I held before me. Potter had promised to fix the lighting but still hadn’t gotten around to it. He’d spent loads of time on his own, shut away in that creepy Gate House. Why he wanted to shut himself away in there was way beyond me. And when he did come out, he just scowled at everyone and looked pissed off. I’d asked him to lend me the money so I could buy a new iPod. But he just flipped his middle finger, told me to fuck-off and lit another cigarette. He could be a real freak at times.

Forgetting that arsehole, I began to climb the stairs. Although it was still light outside, this part of the manor had always seemed gloomier than the rest. There weren’t any windows leading from the staircase, for starters, and the rooms on either side of the hallway, as far as I could remember, had always been shut. With nothing else to do, maybe now was as good a time as any to find out what was hidden inside them.

With the light from the candle stretching my shadow up the walls like smudged lines of mascara, I made my way down the hallway, set between the row of doors. The candlelight was weak, and I couldn’t see what lay ahead of me. I was kinda grateful for that, because I knew what lay at the end of the hallway — that rickety old staircase that led up to the attic and the hospital. That was the place where the half-breeds had been nursed by my father and Doctor Ravenwood. I had never been allowed up there, but Isidor had told me enough. He had described what he, Potter, and Kiera had discovered up there. The bodies of all those poor children, murdered by Sparky and…

Still unable to even think of his name, let alone say it, I came to the first door set into the wall on my right. The patterned wallpaper hung in torn strips and it smelt weird. The wall peered out from behind the paper, which looked scarred with black mildew and damp. Then I remembered how my father had insisted that the walls be coated with queets, the stuff that killed vampires.

The manor was very much how I had remembered it to be. I pushed against the door which swung open and then I changed my mind.

“Where has that statue come from?” I whispered. I couldn’t ever remember there being any statues in the manor — not in the grounds and definitely not inside. But then again, I couldn’t actually recall ever being in this room, so perhaps it had been here all the while. With the flame flickering before me, I cupped my hand around it, fearing that it might go out and leave me in total darkness. I could just make out that the windows had been boarded over with planks of wood so no one could see in and no one could see out. But that’s what made the statue so odd. It was kneeling down. At first I thought that it had been made to look as if it was in prayer, but as I stepped through the darkness, I could see that the figure had been shaped to look as if it were peering through a gap in the boards that covered the window. It looked as if the statue were trying to see outside.

I held the candle to the figure and could see that whoever had made it had failed to give the statue, eyes, ears, nose, and a mouth. Even so, I could tell that the figure was a young man. It had short hair and its body was carved with muscle. Not like one of those freaky bodybuilders you see on T.V., but just nice, like a well-toned guy. His upper body was naked and his lower half had been sculpted to look as if he was wearing a set of baggy jeans.