“C’mon,” he whispered, his voice sounding as if it were coming from miles away.
I set off after him. Murphy stood before a headstone, and not wanting to look at the name carved into the face of it, I stared at the flowers that Kiera’s father had left behind.
Some of the petals broke loose in the wind and scattered over the grave like confetti.
“Look at the grave,” Murphy whispered.
“I am,” I said.
“Look at the name.”
“I can’t.”
“You have to,” his voice changing from a whisper to a scream.
Lowering my eyes, I looked down at the headstone and read the name written across it: Kiera Hudson. It made me feel sick to look at her name, and although I knew Kiera was dead here – she wasn’t to me; she was still very much alive.
“Kiera will want to see her father – she loves him – she made him a promise...” I breathed, looking sideways through the fog at my friend.
“No!” Murphy snapped. “She must never find out that her father is still alive here.
If she does, then like you say, she will want to see him, speak with him, it would only be natural. But she can’t. Our Kiera is not his Kiiiiiieeeeraaa,” his voice trailed away.
“They come from two different whens,”
I said, trying to make sense of everything, my mind seeming to be filled with as much fog as the graveyard.
“Exactly,” Murphy hushed, now suddenly standing in front of me. “What if Kiera were to meet her father? Would she then want to push the world back and lose him all over again?” He stared into my eyes, pipe smoke smelling like rotten flesh.
“But I can’t keep a secret like that from her,” I whispered back. “She has a right to know that her father is still alive.”
“She has no rights!” Murphy grimaced, his face contorting out of shape like a nightmarish Halloween mask. “She doesn’t have the right to be here – none of us do.
Kiera’s father believes his daughter is dead, and she is as far as this world is concerned.
What would happen if he knew that she was living again on the other side of the country?
It’s not her – it’s not the Kiera that you are in love with; it’s the Kiera who was brought up in a world where wolves live amongst humans.
It’s a world where she is dead.”
“I don’t know if I can keep something like this from her,” I said.
“You must keep her away from her old life, Potter,” Murphy said, his voice now sounding like Isidor’s, as if he were somehow warning me from beyond the grave. “If her father should see her, then perhaps the world will merge just a little bit more, then a little bit more, and I fear that could be catastrophic for all of us.”
“But I don’t want to keep secrets from my friends, especially not from Kiera,” I shuddered. “She would hate me if she found out that her father was still alive and I hadn’t told her.”
“Then you better make sure that she never finds out about her father,” Murphy said in his own voice again, with a grim smile on his face. Then added, “Or about your friend, Sophie.”
I looked away in shame, even though nothing had happened between me and Sophie – not in this when. She had tempted me, but I had been true to Kiera. It was Kiera who I loved. I could never hurt her.
“So?”
“So what?” I asked, looking back at Murphy. But he had gone, and so had the fog and the graveyard. I was standing in a bedroom and Sophie appeared naked before me. I half expected her to cover her breasts with her arms and yell at me to get out, but she didn’t, she just stood there, her head to one side, looking at me. One side of her face looked broken and battered as if she had been hit by a car.
“What do you want?” she asked me.
“Do you want me to leave?” I said.
“No,” she whispered, and the room suddenly flickered with candlelight. “Do you want to leave?”
“No,” I said, closing the door behind me.
Sophie came towards me, and as she did, I felt a thumping sensation race through my body. It was like a ghost of a heart, racing inside of me. She stopped and her neck made a sickening crunching sound as if snapping back into place. We were so close that I could see she was trembling. “I do remember you,”
she whispered. “I remember everything. I remember how much I loved you and I know how much I hurt you.”
“How do you know?” I whispered back.
“The letters you sent me,” she said, her eyes looking into mine. “They were full of pain.”
“I’m not hurting anymore,” I said.
“Are you sure?” she asked as she folded her arms about me. They felt stiff and cold and her skin smelt as if she was decomposing, in my arms.
“I’m sure,” I said, closing my eyes.
“I’m in love with another.”
Sophie seemed to flinch in my arms and pull slightly away from me. “Kiera Hudson?”
she breathed and the bones in her broken neck made that crunching sound again.
“Yes,” I told her. “I love her more than anything.”
“But you loved me,” she frowned.
I opened my eyes to see that she was staring into them again, and the hurt that I could see there was almost unbearable. I had loved Sophie once, and those feelings which I thought had been snuffed out like a flame, slowly rekindled themselves inside of me. She had been my first love.
“That was a long time ago, in another where and another when,” I whispered, wanting to run from her.
“What about what we shared?” she suddenly screamed, pulling me close again.
“What about us?”
Then instead of pushing her away like I had done in the cottage, high on Black Hill, I pulled her close. Her naked body now felt soft and warm against mine. The touch of her hair against my cheek made my phantom heart race.
My mind told me it raced not from lust or desire, but out of fear. I wanted to push Sophie away – she wasn’t Kiera. It was Kiera I wanted to be holding naked against me. It was Kiera who I wanted to be lowering onto the bed in the glow of the warm candlelight. Sophie smiled up at me, only the whites of her eyes showing. She raised her arms, her breasts just inches from my face. They looked wrinkled and old, like two withered balloons. With my eyes closed, and searching for Kiera in my mind, I heard her voice. It was soft at first – like a whisper.
“No!”
Then louder.
“No! Potter!”
Louder still. Almost a scream.
“No! Potter...
“...Potter!” Kiera cried out.
I opened my eyes. Kiera was standing by the carriage door which was now open. Wind blew her long, dark hair about her face and shoulders. With my dream breaking apart into tiny fragments, I stumbled to my feet and went to her.
I felt sick with guilt, even though I had only been dreaming. Sophie and Eloisa hadn’t been real – they had just come back to haunt me. Just as Murphy had. All of them had come back to remind me I was keeping secrets from the woman I loved.
“What’s wrong?” I said over the roar of the passing wind which buffeted the side of the train.
“The picture!” Kiera cried.
“Picture?” I frowned, the last remaining shards of my nightmare blinding me.
“The picture of me and my dad,” she said, leaning out of the open carriage and back along the tracks. “It flew out of the door.”
“How?” I asked, scratching my head, still feeling a little groggy.
“I don’t know!” Kiera snapped. “It was like it was snatched out of my hand somehow.
Taken away from me.”
I looked at her, tears standing in the corners of her eyes. It hurt me to see the pain she felt at losing that picture of her dad. However much I hated it myself, I also felt relieved, too.
Perhaps now, without the picture as a constant reminder, Kiera’s desire to go looking for her father might lessen. Deep inside of me, I doubted that. Had I been able to stop myself looking for Sophie? No. However much I told myself I had gone in search of Sophie to try and find out if she knew why the world had been pushed, I knew that was just a bunch of crap. That’s why I had dreamt of her. She hadn’t come back to haunt my dreams, my guilt had. That’s what was eating me up inside.
I looked at Kiera standing by the open carriage door as she peered back along the track for any sign of that picture, which had meant so much to her. The pain in her eyes told me she was going to go in search of her father – picture or no picture. Now I’m not known for my sensitive side, but to see that look of desperation in her eyes – panic – crushed me, and I just wanted to tell her everything. I didn’t want to keep those fucking secrets that Murphy had crapped on me from such a great height. I wanted to be honest with Kiera, I owed her that. She should know that her father was still alive, that cancer hadn’t eaten him like it had before the world had been pushed. Didn’t she have a right to know?
“She has no rights!” Murphy whispered in my ear. “She doesn’t have the right to be here – none of us do.”
What would Kiera think of me if I told her now? What would she think of me if she knew I had met Murphy again during those twenty-four hours that I had been away from Hallowed Manor? She’d want to know why I hadn’t told her that Murphy was alive, and why I had kept it a secret from her. Worse still, Kiera would want to know why I hadn’t told her about her dad.
I moved slowly towards her, and taking her in my arms, she rested her head against my chest. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“It’s not your fault,” she said, thinking I was talking about the picture.
As I held her close in my arms, I felt the train begin to slow. I didn’t want it to stop just yet, I wanted to keep moving so I could stay and hold her close to me. Then, looking over her shoulder I watched the night sky as it flashed with pulses of luminous blue light. The Skin-walkers disguised as cops had caught up with us, and the train was slowing so they could greet us.