Dead Angels (8 page)

“Here you go,” I said, holding my hand out.

Melody didn’t say anything back to me. She didn’t even stop searching for the remainder of the beads.

“I’ve got some of your beads,” I told her, and again she said nothing. So placing the beads in a neat pile on the ground, I said, “Suit yourself.”

I turned my back on her and walked away.

I made my way back through the town, wondering what else I might see. Not wanting to go too far on my very first day above ground, just in case I couldn’t find my way back to the grate in the woods, it wasn’t long before I was heading back down the road and out of town. I couldn’t be sure of the exact place that I had stepped from in the woods and onto the road, so finding a narrow path on my right, I followed it. Trees stretched up on either side of me, and I wandered slowly, taking in the sounds and the smells that were all new to me. After walking for some time, the trees thinned out and I found myself standing on the shore of a giant lake.

There was a short stretch of sand with an outcrop of rocks that jutted out into the water like a giant finger. I didn’t know exactly where I was, but I guessed this was Lake Lure. As I stood on the brown coloured sand, I looked out across the flat, dark surface of the lake and towards a jagged row of mountains in the distance, their peaks flecked with snow.

It was quiet there; I could have been the only person alive. I decided to stay for a while, and sat down on the stretch of sand. As I sat and stared out across the lake, I felt bad for Melody and what had happened to her. Taking a handful of stones, I picked out the smoothest ones and skimmed them across the surface of the lake. And as I watched the last of them bounce across the water, I heard a noise in the trees behind me. Turning, I saw Melody looking back at me from just inside the tree line. At first she startled me, and I wondered what she was doing there. I stood up, brushed the sand from the seat of my trousers, and started to walk away in the opposite direction.

I’d only taken a few steps when I heard her call after me.

“Wait! Don’t go,” she said.

I stopped, and turning, I looked at her.

She stepped clear of the tree line and into the light of the fading sun and made her way up the shore towards me. When she was just a few feet away, Melody put her hands into the deep pocket on the front of her apron. She looked uncomfortable, and a few stringy wisps of hair that had escaped from her bun tossed back and forth in the breeze. She didn’t look at me, but idly kicked at the pebbles on the sand.

“So?” I asked, not knowing what to say.

“So what?” she said back without looking up.

“What do you want?”

Then, tilting her head upwards and looking me straight in my eyes, she said, “I wanted to say I was sorry – you know, for what happened back in that alley.”

“What have you got to be sorry for?” I asked, confused.

“I was ungrateful,” she said. “You helped me pick up the beads from my necklace and I didn’t even say thank you.”

“Forget it,” I shrugged. This was followed by an uneasy silence. Feeling uncomfortable, I added, “I’ve got to get home.” Then turning, I walked away.

I’d only gone a short distance, when I glanced back over my shoulder to see if she was still standing where I’d left her. Holding my hand in front of my eyes to block out the light from the sunset, I could see that she was now sitting inches from where the water lapped against the shore. Her back was arched and she seemed to be concentrating on something which she had in her hands. Not wanting to leave her all alone, I made my way back up the shoreline towards her.

“What are you doing?” I asked, although I could see she was trying to put the beads back onto the chain that donkey-boy had broken.

“Trying to fix this,” Melody said without looking up. Although her hands were small and nimble-looking, I could see she was struggling to get the tiny beads back onto the chain. I sat down next to her on the sand and said, “Let me try.”

As if handing over something precious, she handed me the chain and the beads.

“Are these like, religious beads or something?” I asked her, threading the chain through the tiny holes.

“They’re called rosary beads,” Melody told me, and I could sense she was watching me.

“So you’re like, religious then?” I asked, having some knowledge of the humans’ belief in a God. As a child I had been told stories about a man called Jesus and how he had died on a cross. The chain that I was mending had a cross.

“I guess,” she said back, not taking her eyes off me.

Without looking up from the beads, I said, “You don’t sound too sure.’”

“It’s not me,” she said, then added, “It’s my mum who believes in all that stuff.”

“Why have you got this chain then?” I asked, turning to look at her, and it was then that I was struck at how blue her eyes actually were.
She continued to stare at me, so I looked away, feeling kinda uncomfortable.

“My mum gave them to me,” she said, looking away, as if what she had to tell me was embarrassing. “She says the chain will protect me - keep evil away.”

“What, like monsters and stuff?” I asked.

“’The devil’ is what she says. My mum reckons that if I carry the rosary around with me, then no harm will ever come to me - I’ll be protected, that sorta thing,” she said.

“Those others – the ones who broke your necklace – they obviously don’t realise the power of the beads then?” I said, half-smiling. Melody just stared back at me, and at first I wondered if I had offended her by what I’d said. Then a smile formed at the corners of her mouth and she laughed. And when she did, she didn’t look so plain after all; her face looked kind of pretty.

“Maybe my mum should tell them,” she said.

I fixed the last of the beads onto the chain and handed it back to her. Taking it carefully in her hands so as not to break it again, Melody placed it back into her pocket. Then, looking at me she said, “So what are you doing down here? I thought I was the only one that knew about this place.”

“I stumbled across it by accident,” I told her.

“Are you new in town?” she asked. “I haven’t seen you before. You don’t go to school in town.”

“I haven’t been here very long,” I replied, knowing that was a massive understatement, but I couldn’t tell her the truth. “I moved into a house just outside of town a few months back with my mother.”

“Where about?” she asked.

Jerking my thumb casually over my shoulder, I said, “Over in that direction.” Then, wanting to change the subject, I stood up and added, “I should be getting home.”

“Are you going to be coming to school?” she asked, getting up.

“Erm, I don’t think so,” I mumbled. “I don’t think we’re gonna be in town for long.”

“How come?” she asked, and I noticed her pat her apron pocket, as if checking that the rosary beads were still there. It was like she was petrified of losing them. Once Melody had satisfied herself that they were there, she looked at me. “You never answered my question,” she said.

“What was that?” I asked right back.

“How come you’ll be moving on so soon?” she repeated, and again she fixed her eyes on mine. The bloody red light of the sunset spilled over her head and shoulders, hiding her features in a crimson silhouette.

I didn’t say anything back at first. I wasn’t sure what to say. Perhaps I should’ve thought up some kind of cover story before coming above ground. So instead of telling Melody the truth, I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Like you I guess – I do as my mother tells me. If she goes, I follow.”  Desperate to avoid any more questions, I walked away.

But there was one more question.

“What’s your name?” she called out.

“Isidor Smith,” I said, glancing back. “And you are?”

“Melody Rose,” she said and looked away.

Seizing my chance, I headed up the shore and into the shadows beneath the trees. I wondered if she might follow me, but she didn’t. I only looked back once and Melody had gone.

Chapter Eleven

Isidor

I returned up above ground a few days later. My mother had travelled deep into The Hollows to stay with a friend for a week or two, leaving me alone. Left to my own devices and feeling as free as the birds I’d seen in the woods above ground, I returned.  This time, though, I didn’t head straight into town, I headed for the lake.

Since my last visit, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what I had seen. I thought of Melody Rose often, and remembering that she had said she spent time at the lake, I secretly hoped that I would find her there. It wasn’t that I thought she was hot or anything like that, but she did seem easy to talk to, and I hoped I might find out more about above ground from her.

So with my mother gone, I made my way up through the roots of the tree, into the tunnel, and pushing the grate aside, I found myself back in the woods. It was cold and the ground and the air felt damp. I guessed it had rained recently and I was annoyed that I had missed that. I’d never felt rain against my skin before. Covering the grate with leaves, I made my way through the woods and down to the lake, and there just as I had hoped, sat Melody on the tiny stretch of sand. I couldn’t be sure, but it was almost as if she had been waiting for me, because as she looked up, I saw a faint smile cross her lips. I walked along the shoreline and sat beside her. And that’s how our friendship started. We became almost inseparable. We spent the next couple of months together, apart from Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings when Melody’s mum took her to church and prayer meetings. I soon came to consider Melody as my best friend. During the first few days of our time spent together, Melody described her mum as being a ‘religious nut-nut.’

“What do you mean?” I asked her as we wandered together through the woods.

“She thinks she’s a nun!”

“What, she dresses up as one?” I laughed.

“Kind of, she’s not like other mums. She never wears any makeup, her hair is grey and cut short, she only ever wears black, and she always has this large wooden cross hanging around her neck for everyone to see.”

“Is that weird?” I asked, not knowing for sure.

“Yeah, that’s weird,” she said back, straightening the bonnet that she always wore on her head. “My dad left her soon after I was born. If she was anything then like she is now, I don’t blame him.”

“My father left soon after I was born, too,” I told her, but my mother had never said more than that about him. I’d never even seen a picture. “But you sound as if you really hate your mum. I don’t hate my mum because my father left us.”

“I don’t hate her. I just hate the way she is. When she isn’t attending church or going to prayer meetings, she spends most of her time in her room.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“She’s praying. My mum has turned her room into a mini grotto, like the one in Lourdes. She’s built this big cave-type thing out of papier-mâché and put a statue of the Virgin Mary in it.”

I wasn’t sure what a grotto was or anything about a place called Lourdes, but not wanting to appear as if I knew very little about above ground, I cried in disbelief, “Get outter of here! You’re kidding me!”

“I’ll show you someday,” she said, and I noticed a sadness in Melody’s eyes that I hadn’t seen before. I guessed that maybe she was telling the truth after all about this grotto thing, and a statue of a virgin.

“Is there anything you remember about your father?” Melody asked, bending down and picking up a stone from beneath a huge tree.

“I don’t remember anything about him,” I told her.

“Nothing at all?” she asked me, toying with the stone in her hands.

“My mother never talks about him,” I told her. “I’ve asked loads of times, but she just changes the subject. I don’t even know his name. It’s almost as if he didn’t really exist at all.”

“That’s sad,” she said softly, and again I saw that look of sadness dance across her eyes. Melody was unique. I had never been able to talk so easily with any of my other friends. I supposed it was because Melody and I had similar backgrounds, but all the same, I thought she was a very sensitive person.

Then, changing the subject I said, “Have you ever seen magic pictures?”

“Magic pictures?” she asked, looking confused.

“A movie projector?” I added, wondering if I’d said the wrong thing.

“The multiplex, is that what you mean?”

“I think so,” I said, wishing now that I hadn’t said anything. “We call them movie projectors where I come from.”

Then, stopping and smoothing the stone with the flat of her hand, she looked at me and said, “Where do you come from, Isidor? You’ve never said where home is.”

“Erm,” I stammered. “It’s a long way from here.”

“What, are you from another country?” Melody asked, sounding more than interested.

“I guess,” I said, not knowing what to say next and glancing down at the ground, knowing that my home was some way beneath me.

Then, raising her hand as if to take mine, but changing her mind at the last moment, Melody said, “It doesn’t matter to me where you’re from, I’m just glad that you came to Lake Lure.”  

Just wanting to change the subject, I blurted out, “So shall we go to this multiplex and watch Marilyn Monroe?”

“Marilyn Monroe?” Melody said, stifling a giggle. ”She doesn’t make movies anymore. She’s dead and has been for years, way before I was born. Besides, my mum says that movies are sinful, that they fill young people’s heads with wicked thoughts.”

I thought of what my mother had told me about the hundreds of male Vampyrus leaving The Hollows in search of their own human as beautiful as Marilyn Monroe and said, “Perhaps your mum is right.”

We spent the following day mooching around the town. We passed by a shop that was having a new sign painted on it by a man who was high above us on a ladder. At street level, the painter had left a little toolbox rammed with brushes and tiny pots of paint. Before I had a chance to realise what was happening, Melody surprised me by reaching into the toolbox. She grabbed hold of something and then ran off into the maze of narrow alleyways between the shops and houses.