Fallen thorns, p.6
Fallen Thorns, page 6
I glanced back down at the package. Blood. Human? Animal? I supposed it didn’t matter. I was going to have to drink it regardless.
“Thanks.” I re-pocketed the bag, the viscous substance sloshing around in my hand. “And thank you. For saving me, I mean.”
Mars simply smiled, a twinge of sadness hidden behind their beautiful face.
Chapter Five
Welcome to your new family.
I ran onto the main street, navigating my way back through the cobbles towards my accommodation, whilst my eyes focused only on my trembling feet and hands. I lurched in, panting with exhaustion and slammed my door shut. I thumped my back against it and slid to the floor, head in hands.
You are not alone.
Murdered.
Urges.
After five minutes — or an hour, it was always hard to tell when I was trying to calm myself, I leaned back, shifting my legs in front of me.
I refused to say it aloud, but I knew exactly what I was. Dead. Immortal. A monster.
I unbuttoned the top of my shirt and placed my hand over my heart, the pointless organ sitting under my skin. I controlled my breathing and tipped my head back, staying in that position for a while. Nothing. Still no pulse.
I checked my neck and wrist. Nothing.
How was I breathing? Talking? Functioning? Scientifically, it made no sense, but this was completely beyond science. Beyond human life.
I was no longer human.
How will I ever process this? I had forever — an eternity to try.
My room was pitch black before I finally rose and walked over to my desk, and back again, then back to my desk. All subconscious of course, I had no idea what I wanted to do.
I felt different. Stronger. I didn’t want to experiment with how much stronger, however; the sensation was enough. My back felt wider, and as I stretched my fingers, they felt more flexible. Physically, I didn’t look any different, but I knew my own body — or more, I knew what my body wasn’t.
Teeth. Would they be longer? I flicked on the bathroom light and stared head on in the mirror. I played around with the skin on my face; colder and softer to the touch. I pulled at my eyelids, eyes the same hazel as before, except they didn’t feel mine. Arlo died last night and now this thing stood in his place. An exact copy of the boy it once was: a head of light blond waves, two annoying moles under its right eye, with teeth that appeared the same, except when I pushed my thumb into them and drew blood — they were monstrous.
Sense forced me to wince and I sucked the small wound clean, but as the drop of red soaked my tongue, I panicked and pictured the pouch Mars handed to me.
‘Take this when you’re hungry. You’ll know when.’
I pulled it from the pocket of the black coat I still wore and stared at the thick liquid within. Is this my life now?
I looked back up and the reflection frowned at me, eyes imbued with sadness.
Why me?
An abrupt bang at the front door echoed through my ears and the hairs on my arms stood on edge. I couldn’t move, my eyes fixed to the glass. I hoped whoever it was would give up and go away, but they didn’t. Bang, bang, bang. I squeezed my eyes tight. Bang, bang, bang. The knocking weakened, but then I heard, so faintly:
“Please.” A pained plea.
Rani.
My eyes widened. I patted myself down for my phone until I found it, tucked in my back pocket. I said I would call.
Twenty missed calls and fourteen texts. All from Rani — spanning from midnight until twenty minutes ago.
Shit.
“I’m... coming!” I shouted, frantically drying my hands. Chucking the packet under the sink, I tore off my coat, buttoned up my shirt, and threw a discarded, unwashed jumper on top. “Coming!”
I unlocked the door and it fell open. A blur of a person lunged towards me, arms locking in a tight in embrace. For the first time in a while, I returned the tight hug comfortably; leaning into it and dropping my face into Rani’s soft hair. Her warmth grounded me. I’m so sorry, I thought.
As she pulled back, I noticed the mascara smudged beneath her bloodshot eyes. “Arlo,” she panted. “You’re alive.”
My brow furrowed... did she know? How could she know?
“I...”
“Don’t you ever worry me like that again,” she snapped.
“I’m sorry.”
“You said you would call but you didn’t! I thought maybe you were having a better time than I expected, so I waited, but then I woke up this morning to find out there had been another death down by the riverside and you still weren’t answering me. I came here and knocked so many times but you wouldn’t answer, so I asked around to see if anyone had seen you because I was thinking the absolute worst and that the body they found was yours. I thought I’d lost my best friend because I let him go out with someone I didn’t know, but you were here. Were you here the whole time? Why didn’t you text me back?” Her eyes teared up again, and then my own welled, too. Not once had I thought of Rani. How selfish and ignorant of me.
“I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry.”
She hugged me again and sighed into my chest.“I thought you were dead.”
I was. I am. What am I?
“Where have you been? What happened?”
Where to begin.
“Arlo?”
Where. To. Begin.
“When did you come home?”
“Last night.” I lied. Why, why, why?
“Then why didn’t you pick up?
“I... slept in.”
“It’s five o’clock.”
“I drank. A lot.”
“I know you’re lying.” She released her hold and stepped back, staring straight into my eyes. “Why are you lying?”
“I...” I can’t tell her. There is no way I can tell her. Phantom hands groped my neck, immeasurable weight pressing down against my chest.
Her face softened. “Sorry. I’m just scared. I genuinely thought you were dead. Why is there so much death?”
Then I properly started to cry. Rani pulled me into another hug. “It’s okay,” she said after a moment. “I’m just glad you’re alive.”
“I’m sorry,” I choked.
“I know. I’m sorry too.”
We held each other for a long moment, until I finally loosened my grip and let my arms flop back to my sides.
Rani wiped her eyes on her fluffy scarf. “I don’t want to sound like a crazy friend, but I care so much about you, Arlo, and… please just call next time. Or text. Even if it’s just a thumbs up or a kiss. I only need something to let me know I’ve not been a terrible friend and left you in danger.”
“I promise. I’m sorry, Rani, I really am. I got carried away and wasn’t thinking. I had no idea someone... someone died.” Realisation set in. “Do they know who it is?” I thought back to all the faces I could possibly remember from that night. Had Lucy attacked others? Killed others? Why was I the one who was saved?
Rani shook her head. “Not yet, which is why I got so concerned. You practically vanished off the face of the earth.”
“Sorry.”
“Stop apologising!” she snapped.
“Sor...”
She glared, hiding a grin.
A ghost of a smile twitched across my face as I closed my eyes, the tension lifting.
Rani slumped herself on my bed, pulling Wellington to her chest and wrapping her arms around him tightly. “People are getting scared. This isn’t supposed to happen.”
“Do they know the cause of death?” It has to have been Lucy.
“Suicide, apparently. Those are the rumours anyway. Jumped from a height, they say. The… carpark,” she choked out the word, clearly envisioning the scene.
Right next to where we were. My mind spiralled... it wasn’t a suicide. It couldn’t have been. They were pushed, to cover it up and make it easier to control the police. None of these deaths were accidents or murders inflicted by ordinary people — no, the victims were murdered by the same creatures that killed me. But why am I still here and they’re not? What made me any more important?
But how could I have expressed my thoughts to Rani in that moment without sounding inconsiderate and delusional? Spouting off the truth like some crazed conspiracist who ambles up to the police station, blaming some other worldly force for the deaths of three completely unconnected strangers. They would believe I’d lost my mind and have me escorted from the premises with a warning for wasting police time. I’d probably end up a suspect too for tying the cases together. I’d be essentially incriminating myself there and then. Two clear suicides and a murder. Victims not linked except they were. The two supposed suicides were, as I found out later that day, both from the same course. And the man? The police and investigators will have no doubt discovered a link to him too; they’re good like that. I would be locked away.
“Arlo?”
“Yes. Sorry. I was just thinking.” I tapped my fingers against my crossed arms.
“About what?”
“Nothing.”
That earned me a glare.
“Just about how surreal this all is,” I added.
Rani sighed, sitting up and parking my teddy between her crossed legs. “It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it. I can’t quite wrap my head around any of it. I wonder how the families are feeling. It’s heart-breaking.”
Instinct told me to console her, to sit by her side and drape a comforting arm around her but the notion felt too much. So, I remained standing and kept my arms folded, awkwardness creeping its way back in.
The bathroom fan buzzed away gently in the background, though the off-putting aura settling between us was probably my fault. I’ve never been good at comforting others, and though I tried so hard, I never had the right words to say or the correct actions to make the other comfortable. To prove I could be empathetic.
“Did you at least have a nice time last night?” Rani finally said.
“Hmm...” How much should I say? “It didn’t work out. But that’s fine.”
“Yeah. Oh well, you know what everyone says: There are plenty more fish in the sea.” Rani’s nose curled up at the statement.
“Yeah.” If that’s even what I want.
It wasn’t long after Rani reluctantly left that I fished out my laptop and began searching, looking for any sort of connection between these deaths so far and what happened to me. I needed to see if there were any loose ends or parts where Lucy or whoever she was with had not been so tactful and left a crucial detail of their involvement behind. I looked for anything I could use as proof to help these families and debunk it all. How would detectives go about this? Journalists? Surely, they can’t have brainwashed everyone? There had to have been at least someone out there who still suspected foul play. How does the Manipulation even work?
After reading all publicly available accounts and statements, I flicked through photograph after photograph on every news site. There wasn’t much to go off, understandably, as these were not, and probably never would be, big cases. However, I did manage to conclude that each victim had supposedly been out drinking the night before they were found. Perhaps meeting someone? I did some more digging and begrudgingly traced social media accounts (which felt so wrong on so many levels. I hated those apps. Primary school had taught me all I needed to know about how dark those sites could get.) The two students were, as far as I could tell, not in relationships and therefore easily could have been set up as I was. Led into falsehood and used. But despite my strained effort, I still had no real links, not a fleck of concrete proof. I was tracking a dead end. They were too good.
Am I going crazy?
I decided I wasn’t. Enough had happened in the last twenty-four hours for anything to be possible, and despite what the media said, all these deaths were linked. Yet why does no one else see this except The Thorns?
My only hope now would have been to look straight into finding potential murder suspects. There was no way the second victim’s death could be passed as anything other than murder — the body had been almost decapitated. But there weren’t any suspects, just posts about how the County Durham police department were ‘doing everything in their power’ to bring justice. It’s a pretty small city and it is highly uncommon for murder to occur, let alone in such a dramatic and performative way.
I touched my neck; the two puncture wounds were mere scabs now, barely noticeable. But if a... vampire wanted to cover their tracks (I was really starting to reconsider my sanity here), they would remove signs of entry wounds. The neck. Decapitation. Cutting through the bites... I shivered.
Could it have been one of The Thorns? After all, I knew none of them, and they could have been lying through their teeth. No. They were good people. People? Marianne clearly stated they were trying to catch whoever is responsible and I remember the truth in her eyes. Nonetheless, I feared Lucy wasn’t acting alone, and for all I knew, there was a whole network of undead murderers gearing to attack.
A searing pain shot through my head, like someone had shot a bullet straight through my skull, and it now lodged there, filling my mind with immense pressure. My eyes had begun to burn a few minutes before, but I brushed it off as screen strain. I’d had headaches before, and while some were relatively painful, this was no ordinary sensation. I squeezed my eyes shut and pushed myself away from my desk, head in hands. Sheer blackness enveloped the room, the laptop the only light source.
My breathing quickened, and my limbs grew weak as pins and needles shot up my toes and fingers almost simultaneously. Am I having a stroke? Pushing up from my chair, the wheels clattered off the rug behind me, and I could barely keep my eyes open. I tore off my jumper, sodden with sweat that now dripped off me in rivulets. It was no use. I was going to pass out, I knew it. The irony of my anaemia crossed my mind, but I had never felt such intense symptoms like this. As my legs gave way beneath me and I clung onto the bedhead for support, I started to picture what the scene would look like if someone were to come into my room and find me lying unconscious, curled up like an embryo in the pitch dark. They’d think I was dead without a pulse...
I already was dead.
‘You’ll know when.’
The blood.
I fixed my eyes on the crack of bathroom light and dragged myself across the cold, tiled floor to reach it, the transparent package visible from under the faucet. What was I doing? Was I really going to do this? To give in? These were such human symptoms; what if I’d just caught a cold or a fever? Something I could battle away with rest?
‘You’ll know when.’
I grabbed the packet and tore it open in one clean tug. My arms barely supported my movements as I raised the packet to my face. This time it really did smell like blood, all metallic and fresh, so very fresh.
And sweet.
My canines elongated; this was no human sensation. I was an abomination about to commit an unspeakable act. Tipping my head back, I downed nearly the entire sachet in a few gulps, dropping the packet beside me and letting the remaining contents drip out onto the floor. I slouched my body against the toilet as my vision cleared and breathing subsided. Blood trickled down my shirt and I was certain it was on my face too.
But it tasted so good.
Tears slipped down my cheeks and mixed with the drying blood on my lips.
I slept for a while with my body propped up against the bathtub, recharging. I awoke as the sun crept through the frosted glass of my bathroom window, the fan still whirring and light still on. My back ached, legs slightly numb from the unnatural position I found myself in. I was, for the first few seconds or so of consciousness, completely unaware of why I was there. Then my eyes honed onto the blood splattered tiles, trailing to the sink where two bloody handprints slid down the porcelain. The blood bag lay on the floor beneath it, remnants dried onto the tiles. I glanced down at my hands, palms inked with dried blood, then I touched my face and rubbed my thumb across my teeth. Normal.
I was sat in the centre of a crime scene. I was very conscious of the fact it wasn’t a true crime scene, but if I let the blood dry any longer there would be no hiding the evidence of what I’d done.
I stripped my shirt off and thoroughly washed my hands, avoiding the mirror in front of me. I went to the cabinet to grab every form of cleaning product I could find and began scrubbing.
It took forever, my mind abuzz with thoughts and fears of everything I’d found myself experiencing. Still waiting to wake up from the nightmare, muttering words of disbelief.
Once I was satisfied the room looked as it did before, I ran a shower and binned my entire outfit, desperate to erase all traces of everything. I stepped into the scorching hot shower and rubbed hard at my face and body, and even after the water stopped running red, I persisted, scraping my bare arms until they were red raw. I needed to be clean of it all.
The room had steamed up and I was struggling to see in front of me, but instead of turning the shower off, I put the plug in and watched the tub fill. I slowly lowered myself until I sat with my head against the side of the tub, where I closed my eyes and breathed.
“You see, I wrote this, but then I had a bit of a breakdown because I think I’ve interpreted the whole thing wrong. I don’t think that’s what he meant with that line,” Rani said, pointing at her notes over lunch the following day. We were discussing a poem by Shelley, the poet I’d studied at length two nights ago, but was yet to expand upon my knowledge because, well, everything had changed since then.
“You could ask him?” I gestured to the sky, earning an audible eye roll. Successful sarcasm, I think.
“Okay, but seriously, what do you think? You’re normally really expressive with poetry.”
I uncrossed my legs and leaned forward, trying to engage properly; I was only half listening before. “Well, you could say he is saying we’re all useless and empty inside. Untameable and ever-changing vessels that serve very little permanence in the grand scheme of things and simply ruin what the world already has to offer. If you think about what clouds are, in essence. We are not free.”
