With the manor to myself, I could hear every creak and groan it made as the wind outside began to blow harder about the eaves. It wasn’t that this spooked me in any way, but just intensified my feelings of loneliness. I wandered from one room to another on the ground floor, each one of them dustier than the next. The furniture was covered in white sheets. Cobwebs hung from the corners of the rooms and swung down from the light fixtures overhead. Just off the main hallway, there was a narrow passageway and its walls were lined with mahogany, which gave it a dark and oppressive feeling. At the end of it there was a door. I pushed it open and was pleasantly surprised by what I found behind it, and the sight lifted my spirits.
I had found a small study, which could have easily been mistaken for a library by the amount of leather-bound books that covered the walls. There was a desk and in the centre of this was a large ink blotter. There were several silver-coloured pens lined neatly next to one another, and a photo frame. I picked it up and turned it over. The picture inside the frame was of Doctor Hunt, Lady Hunt, and Kayla. Kayla was sitting on her father’s knee and looked happy, her red hair spilling over her shoulders and down the front of the pretty dress she was wearing. Kayla looked to be about six-years-old. I looked at Doctor Hunt as he stared back at me from the picture and I remembered how I had buried his body beneath the tree on the outskirts of the town of Wasp Water.
Was his body still there? I wondered. Had it been discovered like mine had on the side of that Cumbria Mountain? In real time, that had only been about six weeks ago. Now that the world had been pushed, was his body still there? How much had the world changed on the other side of the manor walls?
Placing the picture back where I had found it, I looked about the room and with a bit of dusting, I knew that I had found my consulting room — that’s if anyone actually came to be consulted with. My brain was beginning to ache with restlessness. I needed something — a puzzle — to awaken it again. But what frustrated me the most was that I knew there was a puzzle to be solved and I was a piece of that puzzle. As was the girl in my dreams, falling out of the sky — only to wake and find herself like I had in that mortuary. Then, there was the statue by the summerhouse — the girl who had been turned to stone.
Until I had more pieces of that puzzle, I knew there was little I could do, so going to the giant kitchen, I found some old dusters and polish and went back to the study. I polished the desk, the bookshelves, and the mahogany walls. I shook the dust from the curtains and opened the large windows to let in some fresh air. When my back had started to ache and my throat and nose were full of dust, I stood back and admired my handiwork. I positioned the chair slightly behind the desk, then sat in it. I wondered if anyone would come — I wondered if anyone else realised that they had been pushed.
I closed the door to the study, put the dusters and polish back where I had found them, then left the manor to walk the grounds, needing to clear the dust that was stuck in the back of my throat. The rain had eased and looked more like a fine mist than a drizzle. The only sound was the regular squawk of the crows that flapped their giant wings overhead. I looked up at them and wondered where Potter was and what he was doing. I missed him, but I understood why he had needed to get away.
The trees towered on either side of me as I made my way through the wood and my feet crunched over the fallen branches and twigs. I hadn’t intended to head for the graveyard hidden by the weeping willows, or so I told myself, but it wasn’t long before I found myself parting their stooped branches with my hands and stepping into that secret place. Although the area surrounded by the forlorn trees held so much death, it was tranquil. It had that feeling of stepping off a busy street into a church. The silence, the mystery of the place — I was drawn to it.
I made my way through the headstones of all those half-breeds that, unlike me and Isidor, hadn’t lived past the age of sixteen. And as I looked down at some of the graves, I could see that some of them hadn’t even lived as long as that. Snuffed out too early, like a candle before dawn that hadn’t had a chance to break and shower the world with light.
There were several graves that didn’t have headstones like the rest, but makeshift crosses made from the branches of the nearby trees, like the one I had seen Potter make for Murphy. Passing amongst them, I noticed that one had been inscribed with the name Nessa and the other Meren and I knew that these were the graves of Murphy’s daughters. I could remember him saying their names as Potter had argued with Murphy before going to the Fountain of Souls in search of the Lycanthrope.
I bent over and peered at their names.
“Your father was a good man,” I whispered, “and I know he loved you so very much. He loved you so much that it blinded him. He wanted revenge for your murders so greatly that he put his own life in danger and took us on a journey where he was tricked and betrayed, where he ended up losing his own life.” Then straightening up, and with tears standing in my eyes, I added, “But I guess he has told you everything himself by now. I hope you are all happy together. And one last thing before I go, can you tell your Dad that although Potter would never admit this, he really misses him? We all do.”
Then, turning my back on the makeshift crosses, I headed back through the graveyard, passing Murphy’s cross as I went. And it was then that I saw it, or rather I didn’t. I had hung Murphy’s crucifix on the cross that Potter had made, but now it was gone. I searched the earth and grass that surrounded the foot of the cross, wondering if perhaps the crucifix had fallen off, but it wasn’t there. I stood up and wondered if perhaps Potter had taken it before we had left the graveyard that day. I made my way back through the woods.
The wind had started to pick up again, and the rain became heavier. With my hair beginning to look like a series of black-coloured rat tails as it clung to my face, I sped up as I headed back towards the manor. Following the route that Potter had previously led me, I headed towards the summerhouse, knowing that to avoid the downpour that the swollen clouds were threatening, I could always shelter in there.
I ran from beneath the trees and into the circular area where the summerhouse stood. Just before it stood the statue that I had seen the day before. But there was something different about it. And as I ran towards it, I was sure that before it had been facing the summerhouse, but now had its back turned towards it, as if the stone girl had turned around somehow. As I drew nearer, I could see that it wasn’t just the position of the girl that had changed, there was something different about her hands.
I reached the statue, and with rain running down my face, I looked at Murphy’s crucifix as it hung from the statue’s cold, stone fist. The crucifix glistened wetly, and I reached out for it. I pulled on it, but it was like the statue of the girl didn’t want to give it up. The crucifix wouldn’t come free of her grasp, so I left her to hold onto it. Then, looking into her featureless stone face, I whispered, “What are you? Who are you? I know you can hear me.”
And as I stood in the driving rain and secretly hoped for a reply, it was me who screeched as a hand suddenly gripped my shoulder.