Her thoughts drifted back to Alex. She missed him desperately. It had been seven weeks and there had still been no sign of him. The familiar, cold gnawing sensation of loneliness returned to the pit of her stomach once more. What if I never see him again? She pushed the thought away. Tomorrow she was going to Longtown, at last. If her suspicions about the place were right, she could maybe find help there or a way home.
******
Jo had come to her room the next morning. “Best not keep her waiting,” the little old woman had said with a wrinkly smile. “But whatever you do, please, you must still not tell her who you really are. It’s for the best.”
And who am I? She wondered, though she did not give the thought voice. She just agreed to Jo’s request. But it did not really matter anymore, anyway. Hayley had no intention of coming back. But she didn’t tell Jo that.
“We have some special guests coming tomorrow night who are very fond of water rabbit but unfortunately we have none left. We never seem to have anything left these days,” Madam Kiki said when Hayley arrived at her office to collect the details for her assignment.
Hayley raised an eyebrow.
Madam Kiki must have seen, for she answered her question before Hayley could open her mouth. “You would know them as water voles back home but here…” She shook her head and sighed as she pulled out an empty drawer. Slamming it shut, she whipped round the desk, pulling out another. “We call them water rabbits. I need you to bring back six of them.”
“What are you looking for?” Hayley asked, wondering what had got the older woman in such a flap.
“My stamp,” Madame Kiki sighed, her hands going to her hips. “The merchants at the harbour are prickly about giving their wares away without receiving official documentation.” She wiped back a hair that had fallen across her crimson coloured face. “You will not be getting anything for free without my mark.” Her eyes suddenly flitted to something across the cluttered desk. “A-ha!” she shouted, reaching forward and snatching the tiny, round stump of an emblem. She held it up in triumph. “Typical! I couldn’t see it in front of me for looking.” Having bemoaned her shortcoming, she took her seat once more and pulled out a parchment.
A few minutes later she had wrote out her order, creased the letter and sealed it with golden wax tipped from the first candle that came to hand. “You better go just now if you want to reach Longtown by evening fall. It’s the only way you’ll be back in time for the feast tomorrow night. The guests will be here by seven, I need you back at six at the latest. Do you understand?” she said, holding the parchment across the desk.
“Yes,” Hayley said, taking the paper and slipping it into one of her tatty black trouser pockets.
“Don’t let me down.”
With Madam Kiki’s words ringing in her ears, Hayley returned to her room to pack a bag. She did not have many possessions and she would have given anything for a pair of quality hiking boots and a tent. As it was, her mat, feather pillow and threadbare blue duvet would have to do. Lori, who was still there when she went to pack, let her borrow her cloak and a comb carved from bone. Hayley thought better of asking which poor soul it had once belonged too. She also regretted telling Lori where she was heading. From the moment she had mentioned it until the moment she left the kitchens, laden with food and water for the trip, the young woman had dogged her heels, begging her not to go.
Lori was adamant that she would not return. Finally, as Hayley stepped out into the morning sun, Lori shouted, “I’m going to Madam Kiki right now! I’ll make her send somebody else!”
Hayley rolled her eyes and turned about. “And if you do that you’ll be cleaning gutters for the next month and I will still be sent.”
Lori’s lip trembled and tears sparkled in her eyes. “But you will die…”
“Lori…” she sighed, shaking her head. She took her friend by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes. “It will be fine. I’ll be back soon, ok?”
Lori shook her head, breaking in a sob. “No you won’t! No-one ever comes back.”
Hayley smiled. “Well they must have or there would never be any food would there?” Her friend continued to cry, clutching a hanky to her face. Feeling she was getting nowhere fast, Hayley gave her friend a reassuring hug, said her farewells and departed with a big smile and a wave. But once she had turned away though, her expression turned grim. Hayley hoped she knew what she was doing.
Chapter Twenty One
John was tearing into a sandwich box he had picked up from the canteen on the ground floor of the hospital when he saw Constable Sloan. The policeman was speaking to a receptionist when he clocked the youth as well. “John. Hey! Wait!”
John hurried away, as quickly as he could without running. Rounding a corner, he darted for the lifts. None of them were open and a quick scan of the overhead numbers revealed that they were all in the upper floors. Cursing, he frantically stabbed at one of the buttons, all the while staring desperately at the number above the lift. But his finger-jabbing did nothing to convince the metallic contraption to budge from the seventh floor.
“John.”
“Shit,” he muttered under his breath, turning away from the officer.
Sloan folded his arms. “Why did you run?”
John turned back to face him. “Why are you here?” he demanded, flustered. “I told you everything that I know. Just leave me alone, right?”
Sloan moved on him. “You’re not in any trouble, John. I just need to talk to you.”
John shook his head. “No, just leave me alone.” He turned to walk away but Sloan grabbed him by the arm. John pulled away. “Don’t fucking touch me!”
The outburst drew stares from staff and patients alike, something the policeman was acutely aware of. Lowering his voice, Sloan said, “I need to talk to you about the body. It moved, ok? It said your friend Alexander’s name. I need to speak with him.”
John’s face turned as white as milk. Then, just as fast, it flushed red with anger. “My friend’s in a coma, right mate? Just leave me alone, ok? Leave me a-fucking-lone!”
“John…”
“Help! Someone help me, please!” John shouted, backing away from the policeman.
Before Sloan could say anything else a number of nurses and doctors had converged on them. They were asking questions over one another, while an elderly woman in a wheelchair nearby shot him a dark, disapproving look. Sloan tried to push past the medics, only to find his path blocked and more questions directed as to where he thought he was going. He caught sight of John over their heads talking to a security guard who had seen commotion. The teenager kept pointing at him, gesticulating wildly. The looks the guard shot him did not bode well and less than a minute later the policeman found himself being escorted out. Sloan cursed his luck. He was only shown the door because he could not find his ID. He had rummaged through every pocket on his person when the guard challenged him to prove he was a policeman. But for some reason his card had not been in his wallet when he looked, even though that was where he always kept it.
Sloan retreated to the safety of his vehicle on the edge of the dark hospital car park. A quick search of the interior also failed to turn up his missing ID. “Where is it?” he huffed, smacking his thick hands against the steering wheel in frustration. Slumping back, he lit up a cigarette and brooded. He gazed toward the entrance of the hospital and his eyes narrowed. He had been a policeman for more than twenty years and by God he was not going to give up that easily…
Chapter Twenty Two
The morning had been uneventful. Hayley had walked for a good three hours before stopping for lunch by the roadside. The narrow trail that wound its way from Madam Kiki’s through the trees had quickly given way to a dusty road, wide enough for two cars to pass one another either way. But there were no cars in this place, no more than there were people.
The woods themselves turned out to be disappointing in the sense of how big they were. It had only taken Hayley half an hour to clear them. Fr
om the endless ghost stories she had heard around the cooking pots and the washrooms she’d have been forgiven for thinking it went on forever. The woods had not even been that dark beneath the leafy canopies of the oak and silver birch. If anything, Hayley had welcomed the shade from the glare of the cloudless sun.
The trees had eventually given way to a long, low range of grassy hills which Hayley still found herself heading through when she stopped. The emerald grass swayed about her as a gentle, warm summer breeze raced up the valley, its fingers tugging gently at her hair. Brushing it back into place with one hand, she delved into her pack with the other. A heel of a loaf, three oat biscuits and an apple were her reward for rummaging.
While Hayley sat and chewed on the bread, she pulled out the order Madam Kiki had given her. Turning the folded parchment over, she examined the golden seal. It bore a simple device, a heart with two wings. Taking a long pull of water from her bone flask Hayley wondered at its significance and why Kiki had selected such a design. It struck her how funny her situation was. She came from a world where people could send messages electronically through a few taps of a keyboard, messages that could be sent to the other side of the world in a heartbeat. Orders were then delivered within hours, using machines that moved faster than men, sometimes travelling whole continents in a day. Yet here she sat, by a dusty road in the middle of nowhere, clutching a handwritten parchment that had been sealed in the same wax-and-stamp fashion employed by lords and ladies in the middle ages.
Shoving the letter back into the bag, she finished the last of the loaf and then set about the oatcakes. For the rest of her meagre meal she gazed out over the swaying grasses, her thoughts wondering with them. Hayley worried about whether it had been such a good idea to leave the safety of Madam Kiki’s after all. She had been told half a hundred times that the gates and walls around the hotel had been lined with angel iron - that’s what the workers had called it - for a good reason; to keep monsters out. Hayley had always suspected that they were forged from the same metal the angels used in their swords, the only metal in the universe that could kill anything dead in the truest sense; flesh, or soul, it all perished. Yet she could not be certain. The best answer she ever got from her co-workers to the question was a shrug and she had never had an appropriate moment to ask Madam Kiki or Jo. Meetings about food or linen were not the best times to raise such a query.
Her mind returned yet again to the most obvious question about the barrier: why would you build a wall to protect yourself against monsters that did not exist? The best Hayley could figure, as she bit into her last oatcake, was that it was all part of the act. Nearly everyone at Madam Kiki’s believed there were things in the woods. Those who knew the truth were forbidden to tell and most disappeared not long after working it out. Maybe it was to make them feel safe. Or maybe Madam Kiki had grown weary of the constant clamour from subordinates pestering her to keep them safe.
Hayley drank a long pull from her flask. How could a wall even keep them safe from demons and other malevolent spirits? If they could move through different realities as easily as walking through a door then she was adamant that they could climb over a wall. Hayley shook her head at the stupidity of her co-workers. But a moment later she pitied them. They see what they want to see.
As for her, Hayley knew if Marli had come for her at the hotel, no wall or hotel workers armed with mops and pans would have stopped the crazed angel. The thought frightened her, like it had every day since she had arrived in purgatory. At least out in the open the mad angel was less likely to kill anyone else if she discovered Hayley on the road. Madam Kiki’s would have been turned into a bloodbath, she had no doubt. Her fingers on her right hand began to itch furiously, so she scratched them, digging nails deep into her crawling skin. At the same time she felt the familiar palpitations return to her chest, the same kind she got after waking from her nightmare the night before. Then she felt it. Her soul stirred - just for a second - then vanished. Concentrating, she tried to reach within herself and grab it - but it was gone, taking the feelings and sensations it had allowed her to glimpse with it.
Hayley sat there by the road for the best part of an hour trying to get it to ignite again. It had always been so easy to wake when Alex was around but now it seemed impossible to do. In the end she gave up, tears filling her eyes. No amount of concentrating or introspection seemed to bring it back to her. If the dreams that haunted her purgatory nights had taught Hayley nothing else, it was that her soul was trying to wake, wanted to wake. So why doesn’t it? And why do I wake every morning sick to my stomach with the feeling that I’ve forgotten something important?
The thoughts were too depressing. Hayley had been here before, many a night, and knew allowing them to run through her mind one more time would bring her no closer to the answers she so desperately sought. Drawing a deep breath, Hayley wiped the corners of her eyes and stood. Snatching up the bone flask and shouldering her backpack once more, she headed onward into territories unknown.
******
The fresh summer air and the rolling hills had done nothing to lift Hayley from her gloomy mood. Every time she tried to think on something different she would find her mind drifting back to the questions that haunted her.
As the sun kissed the horizon the road wound its way toward another forest. Hayley had first seen it appear on the horizon earlier in the afternoon, stretching from the farthest point in the east until it vanished beyond view to the west; yet she gave it no mind until she set foot beneath the first pine trees. They towered about her, their sharp branches reaching far higher than the leafy, friendly green leaves that had greeted her in the woods beneath Madam Kiki’s. The trees here seemed darker, drinking the last of the sunlight as it turned pink against the edge of the sky, throwing the pines into long shadows. Hayley found herself feeling uneasy, until she told herself off. They are only trees. I’ve made good time, Longtown cannot be much further. I’ll be through them in half an hour.
But two hours later she found herself still walking through the gloomy pines and the advent of night had plunged the forest into near pitch darkness. A half moon was rising between the trees but they were clustered so tightly to one another that only the occasional shaft of silvery light pierced through. The moonlight looked like the thin, spindly white fingers of a sceptre, reaching across the forest floor. Hayley had taken the notion to bring a lantern, which she used now to light her way. Even still, she found herself glancing over her shoulder from time to time as she followed the road, which now ran alongside a fast, flowing, black river. She had first heard its rushing an hour before the path finally twisted to run beside it. Hayley had been glad to hear it. The silence of the forest had been deafening. There had been no sound or sign of life since she had set foot into the pines, not even the chirp of a cricket. Why is it so bloody quiet? The ground gave way beneath her foot and the next thing she knew she was falling. Light gone, Hayley scrambled at the earth as she tumbled down it. Soil broke through her fingers as the pines and sky spun above. All the light vanished from the world when she hit the water. She continued to flail in the darkness, for something, for anything to hold onto. But there was nothing. Gripped by panic she slipped her backpack and clawed at the water, desperately trying to swim for the surface. Yet no matter how hard she tried, the light of the stars above seemed only to grow more distant, until they were swallowed by the gloom and Hayley lost all strength in her limbs, her vision darkening.
Alex…
Chapter Twenty Three
It had taken him the best part of half an hour to reach the seventh floor but he was finally there. Sloan had sneaked in through one of the delivery doors at the rear of the hospital. Years of stealth and surveillance had worked to the officer’s advantage. Having spent a few minutes watching a van driver and staff come and go, he’d picked his moment and crept in using the vehicle as cover. Then he had simply climbed the stairs. He knew security would not be looking for him. Everyone would still be preoccupied with helpin
g the casualties of the day.
Just like at reception, he found the seventh floor mobbed. Patients lay on beds lining the corridor, while doctors and nurses darted this way and that, doing all they could. The constable had to force his gaze away when he saw one woman lying there, crying hysterically. She was reaching for the air with a trembling hand, for someone, for anyone. Her other three limbs were missing, bandaged with wads and wads of dressings. Dark crimson spots dotted the stump of her left arm below the elbow. Sloan noticed that she also had a bandage over left eye, her face horribly scarred. But no one came, despite her calls. His heart in his mouth, Sloan forced himself on. He wanted to help her, to tell her it would all be ok, but he knew there was nothing he could do for her. He had no painkillers and his medical knowledge was limited to basic first aid. The doctors will come. They’re just rushed off their feet, he kept repeating to himself. But it did not make walking past the mutilated woman any easier.