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  Then, without warning, he turned, rummaged beneath one of the pillows scattered across the sofa, and to my horror he produced a handgun, which he pointed directly at his father’s face. I could see that Ray’s arm was shaking uncontrollably as he struggled to keep the gun trained on his father’s head.

  “Don’t be stupid, boy. Put the gun down,” his father whispered.

  “I’m not fucking stupid!” Ray screamed, tears now streaming down his face. “I’m sick of people calling me stupid!”

  His father visibly flinched as his son screeched at him.

  “Okay, okay. You’re not stupid. But please put the gun down,” his father tried to reason with him.

  “You always call me stupid! Stupid-stupid-stupid! I’m fucking sick of it!” he roared, spittle flying from his lips.

  “Listen, we can sort this…” his father tried to negotiate.

  “No! You listen!” Ray screamed and he looked half mad as he waved the gun about.

  “Stop! Stop!” his father was pleading now, his hands raised.

  The more Ray became upset, the more his hand and arm shook, the gun waving recklessly only inches from his father’s face.

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” his father began to cry.

  “Get on your knees,” Ray ordered, his voice wavering.

  Sobbing, Ray’s father sank to his knees in the middle of that soft-looking carpet.

  “Ever since I can remember, you’ve hurt me,” Ray whispered, trying to keep his voice even. “It stops today, it stops now. I’m not a little boy anymore. It was wrong then and it’s wrong now.”

  “Please...” his father whined, snot running from his nose.

  “You think you are so brave – a hero,” Ray said. “But brave men don’t hurt little boys – only cowards do. But the sad thing is, I’m a coward, too. I hurt someone, bullied them because I could – because they were weaker than me – different from me.”

  As I watched from my hiding place, my heart beat so loud that I feared he might hear it. I knew he was talking about Melody.

  “But the thing is,” Ray continued, “she wasn’t weaker than me, she was stronger – better than me. I just wanted to hurt someone. I wanted them to feel like I did. I can be a hero if I want to be – but not like you, dad.”

  Then Ray slowly lowered the gun and placed it on the floor in front of his father. “I was never going to shoot you. I don’t need a gun to feel brave like you do. I’m better than that – I’m better than you.”

  “Sorry, Ray...” his father snivelled.

  Ignoring him, Ray said, “When I was six you told me that I was never to tell mum what you did to me because if I did, you would kill me. So you better make up your mind what you’re going to do, because mum will be back soon and I’m going to tell her everything.”

  His father glanced up at him, his face ashen and old-looking. Tears streamed down his face, but I guessed they weren’t for Ray. Then, before I knew what had happened, Ray’s father snatched up the gun and was aiming it at his son. Ray didn’t flinch or move away. He stood silently and looked down into his father’s face. Those few moments of tension were unbearable and I felt as if I was going to throw up.

  Ray took two small steps towards his father, so the end of the gun was touching the centre of his chest. “Go on,” Ray whispered. “You call yourself a hero.”

  Then, dropping the gun, Ray’s father covered his face with his hands, and rocked slowly back and forth on his knees as he sobbed uncontrollably. Seeing that Ray had finally found the courage to stand up to his father instead of taking his anger out on others, I crept away from the house and into the dark. I kept to the grass verges and I hid in the shadows of the nearby trees as cars passed on the road.

  There was one last thing I wanted to do before I left this hell behind me. I wanted to pay Melody’s mother a visit.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Isidor

  The sky was clear of clouds, and the moon hung yellow and old-looking. It was beautiful like my friends had said it would be, but there was little beauty in this world that I had seen. The house stood on the hill in darkness, a flat, square shape, silhouetted against the moonlight.

  Melody’s mum’s car was nowhere to be seen, so I figured she wasn’t back from wherever she had taken Melody to. I pushed open the white wooden gate and it made a wailing noise. I crept up the front garden path. Looking over my shoulder, just to make sure I hadn’t been seen, I turned the handle on the front door, but it was locked fast. Not knowing how long I had before she returned, I hurried around the side of the house, checking the first floor windows. They were all locked tight. At the back of the house, I found a wooden cellar doorway set into the ground. It had been padlocked. Glancing around one last time, I flexed my fingers and released my claws. I took the padlock in my fist and crushed it. It fell away and I yanked open the cellar doors. There were a set of stone steps and I followed them down into the darkness. The smell of melted candle wax was overpowering, and I knew that I was in the makeshift chapel where Melody had been punished by her mother. I removed my coat, and spreading my wings, I waited in the darkness for Melody’s mum to return.

  I don’t know how long I waited, but in that darkness, all I could see was Ray pointing that gun at his father. I tried to push those images away, but it was hard to do so. I just wanted to go home and try to forget what I had seen tonight.

  It was still dark when I heard the sound of a car pull up and park above me. I heard the front door swing open, and then slam shut. Then, just as I guessed I would, I heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs leading down into the chapel.

  I darted across the floor in the dark and hoisted myself up onto the cross that Melody’s mother had put there. I closed my eyes and angled my head forward so my chin was resting against my chest, and cast in shadow.

  The sound of a match strike and the smell of sulphur wafted across the chapel. Tilting my head slightly, I opened my eyes a fraction and watched her light two candles. A circular glow of orange light lit the room, and bent forward as if in prayer, she went to a little stone font that I hadn’t noticed before. She raised her hands and in the flickering light from the candles, I could see that they were smothered in blood.

  My stomach knotted and I felt sick again, as I feared where that blood might have come from. Plunging her hands into the font, she washed away the blood with the holy water. Then dropping to her knees behind one of the pews, she laced her hands together as if in prayer. With her head bowed forward, she said aloud, “Dear Lord, I have sent my wretched child to you for forgiveness. Please release her of her demons, if that is your will.”

  On hearing her perverted prayer, my heart stopped beating in my chest and the chapel swayed before me. I felt as if I was going to pass out, as I feared Melody had been murdered by her mother.

  “Dear sweet Jesus, I pray that you reward me now that I have carried out your will...now that Melody is dead,” she said.

  Unable to bear any more, I came away from the cross and hovered before her. Hearing the gentle hum of my fluttering wings, she looked up.

  “Don’t look,” I roared. “You’re not fit to look upon me.”

  Her face crumpled with fear, and she dropped to the floor.

  “What did you do?” I asked, hovering in the shadows above her so she couldn’t see my face.

  “What the Lord asked me to do,” she muttered. “I killed the demon within my child by sacrificing her.”

  Hearing this, I landed on the chapel floor and strode towards her, my arms and wings outstretched as if I were about to embrace a small child. I roughly dragged Melody’s mother to her feet and held her by her arms.

  With my wings beating furiously behind me, she stared at them and whispered, “Are you an angel?”

  “Yes,” I whispered back, “And your Lord has sent me to deliver a message to you.”

  “What is his message?” she asked, pounding her chest with her fist.

  “He wanted me to tell you, t
hat anyone who hurts a child should kill themselves, rather than face his anger.”

  I then pushed her away from me, and she looked up into my shadowy face. I could see that hers looked panic-stricken.

  “It’s not me who is the angel,” I roared at her. “It was your daughter and you will burn in Hell for what you have done to her!”

  “No!” she screamed, dropping to her knees again. She then started to cover my feet with kisses. “I beg you...please, you must forgive me.”

  “There is no forgiveness for what you have done,” and I didn’t like myself for pretending to be a messenger from God, but I hated her. I could have ripped out her heart with my claws, and the urge to do so was overpowering. But I wanted her to spend every second of every day, fearing the moment she would die and face the God that she believed in. There was a spike of anger that knifed its way through my soul and I couldn’t do anything to stop the pain that it caused.

  “There must be some way that I can redeem myself, a way so that I can enter God’s kingdom someday,” she pleaded on her knees.

  I kicked her off me, and with my wings casting long shadows all around us, I said, “Sacrifice yourself. That is the only way you will ever enter his kingdom.”

  I then left her sobbing on the chapel floor, full of self-pity and no remorse for killing Melody.

  The first rays of sunlight cut through the clouds, and as I stumbled back across the fields, I dropped to my knees. Pounding my fists into the earth over and over again, I screamed. I threw my head back and roared up at the sky until my throat was raw.

  “I hate you!” I screamed. “I hate you!”

  With tears of anger gushing down my face, I raced up into the sky. Tearing through the clouds I wanted to fly as high as I could. I wanted to come face to face with the humans’ God. When the air became so thin and cold that I thought I was going to lose consciousness, I hovered above the clouds, my wings rippling beneath my arms.

  “Show yourself to me!” I screamed up into the heavens. “Go on, you chicken shit!”

  The wind buffeted me from side to side.

  “What sort of God lets shit like this happen?” I roared. “What kinda God would let Ray’s father hurt him like that? What sort of God would have allowed Melody to die?”

  The wind dragged me left then right, almost as if it were trying to play with me, like a child when it plays with a ragdoll.

  “There is no God. There is no heaven,” I muttered. Then, looking down at the Earth, I whispered, “There is only Hell.”

  Lowering my arms and placing them against my sides, I dropped back through the clouds like a stone. Melody’s necklace whipped about my chest as I fell. Within inches of the ground, I snapped open my arms and soared away. I just wanted to go home, back to The Hollows.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Isidor

  I dropped through the canopy of trees that sheltered the woods. In the distance I could smell the fresh water of the lake, but I couldn’t go back there, not now. I stretched out my wings and tensed my muscles. My wings didn’t disappear, they just hung there. Inspecting my arms, I could see that those purple scars had gone, leaving my wings permanently on show. They were a part of me. Maybe they didn’t want to hide anymore? Perhaps they wanted to be free. My mother had said they would get stuck someday if I used them too much, and it looked as if she had been right all along.

  I made my way through the woods to the grate and the tunnel that would lead me home. The grate was hidden by a blanket of leaves and twigs. On my knees, I brushed them aside and then stopped, my hand hovering above the grate. Someone had placed a folded piece of paper between the slits. With my heart racing, I pulled the paper from the grate and unfolded it. It wasn’t a piece of paper at all, but a photograph. I looked at it and stumbled backwards onto my arse. Sitting amongst the damp leaves that covered the ground, I stared down at the photograph of Melody and me. But we looked different – we looked a few years older – late teens, maybe? We had our arms around each other, both of us staring into the camera lens. Melody looked beautiful, her hair free and flowing about her shoulders, as if caught in a gentle breeze. I could see those roses covering her arms and neck, bright and red and pink and full of life. But I had tattoos, too. They looked like black flames seething up my left arm and neck. There was a little stubby black beard covering my chin, and an eyebrow piercing in my right brow. Around my neck, not only hung Melody’s rosary beads, but several others, and in my hand I carried a crossbow.

  I didn’t have to wonder who had left the picture for me; I knew it was Melody who had somehow placed it there. I had given her the idea. Just like Steve Edwards had in the story that I had written for Melody, I sat and looked at the picture. But it wasn’t of Michael Blake amongst a screaming crowd of adoring Marilyn Monroe fans; it was a picture of Melody and me from another time, another place – another when. But just like Michael had in the postcard he’d left for Edwards, Melody and I looked happy at last.

  I turned the photograph over, and across the back she had written the word PUSH!

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Kiera

  Isidor had talked throughout the night. Dawn was fast approaching, but the storm still raged outside, and the heavy, black clouds gave the impression that it was still night. Isidor suddenly stopped talking, and apart from the sound of the wind screaming outside and the sudden burst of thunder, the waiting room had fallen into a hushed silence.

  Isidor sat across from me, his head down, crossbow in his lap. His story had left me feeling shocked and upset, and I looked around the waiting room at the others. Kayla sat at the end of the bench where Sam still lay asleep, and Potter sat on the floor, his back against the wall. I think all of us had been affected by Isidor’s story. Kayla slowly got up from her seat, and sitting next to Isidor, she put her arm around his shoulder.

  “I’m so sorry, Isidor, that you lost Melody,” she said.

  “I didn’t lose her, she was murdered,” Isidor said numbly. “Sometimes, I miss her so much that I wish I had never met her. I went above ground for an adventure, to see those faces in the clouds, to feel the sun against me, to watch cars pass by, and see those machines that soar through the sky. But instead, I only discovered monsters.”

  “Not all humans are monsters...” I started, but before I could finish Isidor cut in.

  “Sometimes, Kiera, I wish you had made that decision back in The Hollows and chosen the Vampyrus to live!” he shouted.

  “Isidor, you don’t really mean that,” I whispered.

  “My mother told me if the humans found out that I was different to them, they would cut me open to see how I worked,” he snapped. “But it’s not the Vampyrus who are the monsters – it’s the humans.”

  “But, Isidor, like me, you are a half and half,” I said softly, understanding his anger and frustration.

  “And that’s what I can’t reconcile,” he said. “I hate myself for being part human.”

  “But you fell in love with a human,” Potter said, staring at Isidor. “Melody wasn’t evil. You yourself said she was an angel.”

  “And now she’s a dead angel, thanks to a human,” he said bitterly.

  No one said anything for a while after this. When the silence became too uncomfortable to bear, and wanting to know more about the picture that Melody had left in the grate for Isidor, I looked at him and asked, “Have you still got that photograph?”

  Without saying a word, Isidor reached inside his coat and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He handed it to me. Taking it very carefully in my hands, as I knew it must have been very special to him, I unfolded the picture. It was Isidor, just as he looked now. He stood beside the girl he had called Melody and she was beautiful – how could anyone have ever thought otherwise? Her long, blond hair was just how Isidor had described it, long, thick, and curly. Her arms were covered in the most realistic tattoos. The roses looked almost real, as if they were swaying in a gentle breeze that was obviously blowing around Melody and
Isidor in the photo. I could have stared at those tattoos for hours, believing at any moment those roses were going to open and flower. Then, turning the photo over in my hands, I saw the word PUSH! which had been written in ink across the back.

  Handing the picture to Potter, I looked at Isidor and said, “So you have no idea where that picture was taken?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head.

  “So you haven’t met up with her since she was driven away that day by her mum?” Potter asked, inspecting the photo.

  “I’ve told you already that she is dead,” Isidor said.

  “But the tattoos,” Kayla breathed, peering over Potter’s shoulder at the picture. “You must have seen her again since having your tattoos done.”

  “I had those done because of the photograph,” Isidor said, taking the picture from Potter and placing it carefully back into his coat pocket.

  “What do you mean?” I asked him.

  “I was so desperate to see Melody again, that I did everything that I could think of to make sure that day would come,” he told us. “So I went and had the tattoos done. I took the photograph along to the tattooist. He worked from the picture. I then had my eyebrow pierced and trained myself in the art of using a crossbow. I didn’t know why I needed to do any of these things, but that’s how I looked in that photograph – so I made sure I copied it.”

  “So you never met with her again?” Potter asked a second time.

  “Look, how many ways have I got to tell you?” Isidor sighed. “I’ve not seen Melody since the day her mother snatched her away from me. She’s dead.”

  “But she can’t be,” Kayla said. “She’s in that picture with you and you’re very much alive.”

  Then, looking at the three of them, I gasped and said, “But that’s the whole point don’t you see? We’re not alive – we’re dead.”