Dead Flesh (27 page)

“Kiera,” I
mumbled weakly, dropping to my knees and into a black pool of my
own blood. “Kiera – I’m sorry I failed.”

Then,
everything went black.

Kiera

I just couldn’t
rest until Isidor came back. Potter sat in a cloud of cigarette
smoke in front of the fire and we didn’t speak, both of us were
lost to our thoughts and concerns. But, if I were being honest with
myself, I was more than concerned. I feared for Kayla’s safety.

What was this body she had discovered?
I wondered.
Was it the body of Emily Clarke?

What I couldn’t
be sure of was if there had been another murder committed. If so,
had McCain done it like he had murdered Emily? But we didn’t even
know that he had murdered her. Okay, so we know he used her credit
card, but did that mean he had been involved in her murder?

I could feel my
stomach cramping and it wasn’t through nerves, it was the cravings
again. I looked at Potter and he stared at me through the smog that
his constant smoking was creating in the room. Turning away, I went
to the window and checked again to see if there was any sign of
Isidor. The sky was almost black and night was drawing in.

“Where is he?”
I muttered to myself. “He’s been gone ages.”

“I told you
that I should’ve gone,” Potter grumbled from the corner of the
room. The fire in the grate hissed and spat, the coals glowing red
and hot.

“Isidor will be
able to track her,” I said, looking at him.

“You better
hope you’re right, because...”

“He’s coming!”
I almost screamed with relief, spotting Isidor heading across the
field that stretched before the farmhouse. Through the darkness, I
could see that his hands were empty and I feared that perhaps he
hadn’t been able to find the camera after all. But at least he had
come back and hopefully with some news. I ran to the front door,
and throwing it open, I waved my arm in the air and shouted, “Hey,
Isidor!”

Seeing me,
Isidor ran the last few hundred yards to the farmhouse and Potter
joined me at the door.

Before he’d had
the chance to say anything, I said, “Did you find the camera?”

“Yes,” he
nodded, stepping into the warm and closing the door behind him.
Then, reaching into his coat pocket, he pulled out a small silver
coloured video camera. I took it from him and as I looked into his
eyes, I could see that they were dark and fearful.

“What’s
happened, Isidor?” I asked him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m
fine,” he said.

“Are you sure?”
Potter smirked. “Because if any of those school kids picked on you
I’ll go and speak to their teacher.”

“Yeah, very
funny,” Isidor said, and went into the kitchen where he switched on
the laptop.

I glared at
Potter who shrugged and said, “I’m just messing about with the
kid.”

Ignoring him, I
followed Isidor into the kitchen where we all sat around the table.
As Isidor connected the camera to the laptop, I said, “So, what
happened?”

“I got to the
school okay,” Isidor started to explain. “I crept around the
outskirts of the school and it was a while before I caught a whiff
of Kayla’s scent. I tracked it to a place by the wall where there
was a large chestnut tree. The branches spilled out over the top of
the wall, and I figured that Kayla must have used the tree to climb
over and get out of the school grounds. But there was another
scent.”

“What kind of
scent?” Potter cut in, his face now a mask of concentration, and
for all his piss-taking, I knew that he did really care for Kayla
and somewhere, deep down, for Isidor too.

“I could smell
that a boy had gone with her,” Isidor said, jiggling a wire that he
had attached to the camera and the laptop.

“Do you think
it was this boy, Sam that she has spoken about?” I asked him.

“I can’t be
sure, but whoever it was, Kayla felt comfortable with him,” Isidor
said.

“How do you
know that?” Potter pushed.

“Because they
headed across the field together to a nearby wood,” Isidor said.
“Their scents were side by side, which told me that they walked
together – they were very close. Kayla definitely trusted him.
Anyway, I followed their scent through the woods, and it wasn’t
long before I picked up another.”

“What kind of
smell was it?” I asked him.

“A corpse,”
Isidor said, as he figured out how to use the camera.

“The dead body
that Kayla mentioned in her message,” I breathed.

“I followed
Kayla’s and the boy’s scents which ran alongside a stream, until I
came to a massive clump of bushes, just like she said I would,” he
explained. “I sniffed about a bit and checked the bushes and then
found the camera.”

“What about the
corpse?” Potter asked, reaching into his pocket for his smokes.

Peering over
the laptop at Potter, Isidor said, “Now that’s where it all gets a
bit strange.”

“Strange?”
Potter asked, glancing at me.

“The smell of
the corpse was really strong, so I followed the scent into the
bushes,” he said. “I’m no Kiera Hudson, but even I could see where
the body had been lying – but it wasn’t there anymore.”

“So somebody
had moved the body?” I asked him, feeling confused.

“No,” Isidor
frowned. “I could only smell the three scents; Kayla’s, the boy’s,
and the corpse’s. Which makes me wonder how the body got there in
the first place because who brought it there? There were no other
scents. It was like the body had fallen out of the sky, but that
doesn’t happen, right?”

“I don’t want
to put a downer on things,” Potter said, lighting his cigarette,
“but if you could only smell three scents, perhaps the boy and the
corpse were one in the same?”

“What are you
trying to say?” Isidor asked him.

“Maybe Kayla
got hungry – needed the red stuff?” he suggested, blowing smoke out
of his nostrils. “You know what I’m trying to say, perhaps Kayla
killed the boy?”

“Never,” Isidor
hissed. “She wouldn’t do a thing like that!”

“Don’t be so
sure,” Potter came back. “Your sis can be real feisty when she
wants to be.”

“She would only
kill in self-defence,” Isidor said.

“Maybe it was
in self-defence,” Potter suggested. “All I’m trying to say is, we
don’t know anything about this kid she has gone and hooked herself
up with. Haven’t we all learnt by now that people don’t always tend
to tell us the truth? People have a habit of talking bullshit
around us.”

“She still
wouldn’t have killed a human,” Isidor insisted. “Kayla knows that
if she ever fed from one of them, she’d be creating another
vampire.”

I sat silently
for a moment and thought of the dream that I’d had of the girl
falling out of the sky and landing in a wooded area near to
Ravenwood School. Her face had been deformed somehow, but she had
been chased away by wolves and ended up at Ravenwood.

“Are you okay,
Kiera?” Potter asked me. “You look kind of lost.”

“I’m fine,” I
said back, forcing a smile. “I was just thinking about what Isidor
has just told us. So what did you do next?”

“The smell left
by the corpse led out of the bushes and back in the direction of
the school. So I followed it. I picked up Kayla’s scent again, and
the boy’s. It was like the corpse was chasing them back to the
school.”

“Sounds like a
freaking vampire to me,” Potter cut in.

“It wasn’t a
vampire, because the boy was still alive and he bled,” Isidor
said.

“Oh this just
keeps getting better and better,” Potter groaned.

“There was
blood?” I gasped, my concern for Kayla’s safety growing with every
passing moment.

“Only a
little,” Isidor explained. I hardly got a whiff of it, it was very
faint. If Kayla had fed on the boy, there would have been blood
everywhere and the smell would have been stronger. I’m guessing
that the boy fell over and got up again, because both he and Kayla
made it back to the school. I followed their scents back
there.”

“And the corpse
that was running around, what happened to it?” Potter snapped.

“Well that’s
the strangest thing of all,” Isidor said, finally figuring out how
to use the camera.

“What do you
mean?” I asked him, feeling anxious.

“The corpse did
make it as far as the school wall and the tree. The scent was
really strong there, like it had stayed rooted to the spot for a
while. But then, the smell moved off again. I followed it back
across the field, the scent becoming stronger and stronger the
whole time. It led me back into the woods and then suddenly, it
stopped.”

“What did you
find?” I asked him.

“Well this is
the craziest part of my story,” Isidor said, his voice dropping to
a whisper. “The smell stopped by a statue.”

“Statue?” I
breathed, glancing over at Potter.

“Crazy, right?”
Isidor said. “It was like the statue had been the corpse that had
chased after Kayla and the boy!”

“Crazy,” Potter
whispered and looked at me.

“You don’t know
what that could mean, do you?” Isidor asked.

I looked at
Potter, who stared back at me.

“Was the statue
of a girl?” I asked Isidor.

“No, the statue
was of a male, although it was hard to tell as it didn’t really
have a face. But it was dressed like a man.”

Hearing this I
thought of the nightmare I’d had in which the statue of a male had
crawled from some bushes in a wooded area, and asked for someone
called Alice.

“We’ve seen one
of these statues before,” I told him.

“Where?” Isidor
frowned.

“Back at the
manor,” I said.

“So why didn’t
you say anything?”

“What could I
have said? I couldn’t explain why it was there myself,” I answered,
but really I had wanted to forget the statue, I was scared that I
was becoming one, too.

“What do you
think they are?” Isidor asked me.

“I don’t know,
Isidor,” I whispered. “I really don’t know.”

Sensing that I
was beginning to feel uncomfortable, Potter flicked his cigarette
end into the sink and said, “So have you managed to get that camera
working yet or not, Einstein?”

Isidor looked
away from me and back at the laptop. “Sure, I’ve got it working.
Take a look.”

The screen
flickered on but only showed a picture of darkness. In the top
right-hand corner of the screen was the time and date in neat white
text. It had been recorded seven days ago and the time read
23:43hrs. Nothing seemed to be happening on the screen, so Isidor
fast-forwarded the image. He stopped the picture at 02:17hrs, when
suddenly the image on the screen burst into life. The video showed
a wide-angled shot of Emily’s bedroom and I could see her lying
asleep on her bed. Even from the angle that the camera had been set
at, and the gloom of the room, I could see that she was identical
to her sister, Elizabeth. The covers had come away and I could see
she was wearing jogging bottoms and a t-shirt. The image had burst
into life, because out of camera shot, someone had obviously
entered her room and switched on the light. Emily stirred slightly
on her bed and rolled over, then fell back to sleep.

Morris McCain
then walked into the frame. There was no mistake – it was him. I
glanced at Potter then back at the screen and watched as McCain
crossed the room and began to shake Emily violently. I could see
Emily was stunned or maybe it was shock. Although there was no
sound, I could see by McCain’s actions and body language that he
was shouting at Emily.

Emily appeared
to be motioning him away by waving her hands at McCain and shaking
her head. McCain then began to wave his arms and hands in the air
and point angrily at Emily. I snatched another quick look at Potter
and he looked coldly at what was unfolding before him.

I looked back
at the screen and it looked as if Emily was trying to get off the
bed. She was shaking her head and trying to move McCain out of her
way, who was now standing directly in front of her and shaking his
fists in the air. I watched as Emily managed to get free of her bed
by pushing McCain in his chest to move him out of her way. McCain
then punched Emily straight between the eyes. All of us flinched in
our seats. Emily stumbled backwards, landed on her bed, then rolled
off onto the floor. I watched as she shook her head wearily from
side to side, as she tried to fight off oncoming
unconsciousness.

Watching the
video made me feel sick. I stared as McCain then set about Emily in
a frenzy of kicks and punches. He repeatedly punched Emily about
her head and I struggled to hold back my tears as I watched Emily
desperately try to fight him off. She paddled her arms in a vain
attempt to protect herself. Then, sitting astride her on the floor,
McCain began to change. It was his hands that I first noticed. They
seemed to grow into the shape of giant paws. His back arched and
his clothes began to fall away in strips as his body took on the
shape of a giant wolf. McCain rolled his head back, as his neck
began to thicken, and his slicked, black hair which covered his
head, started to cover him. His already bulbous nose twitched then
protruded from his face forming a wet snout. Raising his giant paws
into the air, he opened his vicious-looking jaws and lunged at
Emily who lay beneath him. From the amount of blood that jetted
from her and splashed the walls, her death was quick and within
moments she had stopped struggling and lay motionless on the floor
of her bedroom.

“That fucking
animal,” Potter hissed.

Emily was dead,
her eyes wide open. I looked at the screen and I felt goose flesh
run up my back as I looked into her eyes. She had died looking
straight up at her secret camera. It was like she lay there staring
straight into
my
eyes.