Dead Angels (13 page)

“Helped you with what?” Mother asked me.

“With everything,” I told her, and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. It was freezing cold, and I shivered.

“You’re still ill, Isidor,” she said, trying to throw a blanket around my shoulders.

“I’m fine,” I tried to convince her.

“Wait just a few more days, then go,” she said, and I read the fear in her eyes.

“What are you so scared of?” I asked softy.

“You’re different to them,” she said, and gently stroked my face.

“We’re all different, and that’s good, isn’t it?” I said, pulling on my clothes.

I stood in the alcove and looked back at her. “I love you, mum,” I smiled.

“Isidor, don’t fall in love with a human,” she warned me. “It will only lead to heartache.”

“How do you figure that?” I asked her.

“Because we are not like them and they are not like us,” she said. “You will have to lead a life of lies and deceit. You could never tell her what you truly are. It is forbidden for the Vampyrus and humans to breed. If you don’t love yourself, Isidor, then love this girl enough not to deceive her. Come back to The Hollows before you cause her any hurt.” 

With my mother’s warning ringing in my ears, I went back above ground.

I headed through the woods and down towards the lake in search of Melody. It had been four days since I had last seen her. Had she believed that I had gone for good – never to come back? I had to see her, explain if I could, why I had fled that day, and left her when she had needed me most.

With the wind pulling at my hair and clothes, I raced down to the shore, but I couldn’t see Melody. I headed for the bush where we had spent so many days together. In the middle sat the ashes of the burnt out fire she had lit to keep us warm. She wasn’t there, either. The only other place that I could think of finding her was home.

So, it was with some trepidation that I approached Melody’s house and knocked on the door. I hadn’t seen her mum since I had hidden in the wardrobe. I knocked on the door. After several moments of waiting patiently, the door swung slowly ajar and Melody’s mum peered at me through the gap she had created. Her face looked older than I pictured it to be.  She had deep lines around her nose and mouth. Her hair was darkish grey and her lips looked taught and puckered.

“Hello,” I said. “My name is Isidor Smith.”

“What do you want?” she asked suspiciously.

“I was hoping I could speak with your daughter.”

“Daughter? What Daughter?” she said. “I haven’t got a daughter.”

“Yeah, you do,” I said confused. “Melody.”

“Nope, sorry, you’re mistaken. Never had no daughter – never had any children,” she insisted.

I wondered if she was madder than I first thought, or had she completely cut Melody out of her life and memory because of what she had done? Could her mother be that ashamed of her?

“Please can I see her?” I asked, feeling desperate now.

“Are you mad?” she croaked.

No, but you are
- I was tempted to say, but bit my tongue.

“
Go away!”
she cursed as she went to shut the door in my face.

I planted my foot between the door and the frame, forcing it open.

“Get your foot out of my door before I call the cops!” she threatened.

“You do have a daughter and her name is Melody...” I started.

“Yakadee - Yakadee - Yak!” she cackled. “I ain’t listening because I never had no daughter! Now get off my porch!”

I realised I was wasting my time and probably stirring up more trouble for Melody. So I withdrew my foot from her door, which she instantly closed in my face. I stepped away and moved towards the steps leading from her porch and then suddenly, I turned back and shouted at the closed door, “You say you’re a
religious
woman! Well if you are -
pray
for your own soul, because you’re gonna need all the prayers that you can get, you old witch.”

I then stepped off her porch and walked away. I hadn’t gone far, when I looked back at the house, and there looking back at me from the upstairs front window was Melody. Standing in the lane that cut through the fields to her house, I raised my hand in the air and waved. I couldn’t help the stupid grin that cut across my face. I was so happy to see her again. Instead of waving, Melody pressed the flat of her hand to the windowpane and hung her head.

Then, not caring who saw me, or how different I was to anyone else, I slowly removed my coat. It dropped to the ground, and then raising my arms, I looked up at the window to see Melody staring down at me once more, her hand still pressed against the window as if reaching out for me. Without taking my eyes from hers, I opened my arms and let my wings unfold. As they did, I could feel my feet lifting from the ground. With the wind snagging at my hair, I glided up to her window. I hovered outside as she stared back at me. She was either gonna freak out and run away, or she was...

Melody pushed open the window. “Isidor, are you an angel?” she asked me softly.

“I don’t come from heaven, if that’s what you mean,” I smiled.

“Where do you come from?” she whispered, still not taking her eyes from mine.

“Below ground,” I told her.

“So you’re a dead angel?” she whispered over the sound of the wind that blew about the eaves.

Reaching through the open window, I took her hand and placed it against my chest so she could feel my racing heart. “Do I feel dead?” I asked her.

“No,” she breathed. “Why is your heart beating so fast?”

I didn’t want to tell her the reason – I couldn’t. So instead, I lifted her into my arms and said, “Let’s be us – just for one day.”

Then, rolling my shoulders back, I soared up into the sky with her wrapped in my arms. I carried her up into the clouds and it was freedom. I soared high, and Melody clung to me. We spiralled over the fields, hills, and mountains. The feeling of not having to hide my wings or who or what I really was felt incredible. To share that moment with Melody was wonderful.

We swooped out of the sky and gently landed on the shore by the lake. With Melody still in my arms, I untied the strings that held her bonnet in place and removed it. And just like the girl, Rapunzel, her hair fell free, spilling over her shoulders and down her back in thick coils. It was the first time I had seen her hair free and I gasped as it shone in the fading sunlight.

“Don’t you like it?” she asked me nervously.

“It’s beautiful,” I told her, losing my hands deep within its curls. It felt like silk running over my fingers. 

Then gently, she ran the tips of her fingers across my wings, and down the length of my scars. “That’s why you fled that day, wasn’t it?” she said mesmerised.

“Yes,” I told her. “I could feel myself changing and I thought you would be scared of me.”

“I always wondered what these scars were,” she said thoughtfully.

“Why didn’t you ask?”

“It was your secret and I knew that you would tell me one day – when you were ready,” she said.

“You’re not scared of me?” I asked her, my heart still racing.

“How could I be scared of an angel?” she whispered, looking up at me. “Angels help people, don’t they? They watch over you and make sure you are safe. I always knew that you were different from the others, and now I know why.”

“Thank you,” I smiled, our faces so close now that the tips of our noses were almost touching. I wanted to kiss her, but didn’t know if I should.

“Thank you for what?” she breathed, and her breath felt warm against my cheek.

“For liking me for who I am. For not wanting to put me in a cage and open me up to see how I work. For not laughing at me because I couldn’t read and write,” I told her.

“Thank you for not being cruel to me for how I dress and the way I live. Thank you for taking the loneliness away. I was so tired of being lonely, Isidor.”

Hearing her say this broke my heart as I knew that I couldn’t stay. I would have to go back to The Hollows. I couldn’t forget my mother’s warning, and I didn’t want to hurt Melody by staying because we could never be together. Neither could I live with being tempted by the need for human blood. If I went, my cravings would certainly go, but her loneliness would return. Not having the courage to tell her just yet, I took her hands in mine and said, “I’ve got something for you.”

“What?” she asked, her eyes brightening.

I led Melody up the shore to our makeshift camp in the bushes. Once inside, we sat down. As I reached into my pocket, Melody rummaged around in the undergrowth and pulled a stale pack of cigarettes from beneath some moss. She lit one. From my pocket, I took the notes that I had been writing on.

“What’s that?” she asked me.

“It’s not very good,” I said.

“What is it?”

“It’s a story I’ve written,” I explained. “I’m going to write more. I’m going to call them
Isidor’s Penny Dreadfuls
.”

“Why call them that?” she asked, looking confused.

“Because they’ll be so dreadful that people probably wouldn’t even pay a penny for them,” I half-laughed.

“What’s it about?” she asked, eagerly moving closer towards me.

“It’s a story about the things I’ve seen and learnt about above ground,” I explained. “I wrote it for you.”

With a smile on her lips and eyes bright, she said, “Isidor, I want to hear you read one of your own stories.”

“Are you sure?” I asked her.

“Just read, Isidor, that’s what you always wanted to do, isn’t it?”

So, with Melody resting her head against my shoulder, and my first Penny Dreadful in my hand, this is the story that I read to her.

Chapter Seventeen

‘A Special Friend’

By

Isidor Smith

Michael Blake swung his legs over the side of the bed and fixed his thin, fragile feet firmly to the wooden floor. The boards which lined the floor of his poky bedroom were rough and he had lost count of how many times he had picked splinters from the balls of his feet. The sheets lay grey and unwashed at the foot of his bed.

Michael sat hunched forward, and warmed his bare shoulders by rubbing them vigorously with his hands. He raised his pale and gaunt face and peered about the dimly-lit room. His grey eyes were ringed with dark, sleepless shadows. Michael stood up on two bony legs and gave a long tired yawn. He arched his back and stretched out his arms, hoping the tiredness would leave him. As he did this, his skimpy vest rose upwards, showing off a set of ribs, which stuck through his skin like rungs on a ladder. He was way too thin for fourteen. Michael let his body relax and the vest dropped back into place, covering his emaciated body once again. He preferred it like that. He crossed the room and pulled back the curtains and looked out at the new day.

It was still dark outside and lights glimmered in the bedroom and kitchen windows from the house across the street. A milk float could be heard as it turned into the street. It rattled, jangled, and hummed as it came. The milk float stopped. Michael watched the driver get out, collect a crate of milk, and deliver bottles to the house across the street. Michael knew that he wouldn’t be getting any milk today as his father hadn’t been able to pay the bill. Michael let go of the curtain and it swung back into place. He turned and dressed for school.

Michael switched on the light and the bare bulb was hardly powerful enough to light the room. His bedroom was bare. The only furniture he had was his bed and a chair on which he hung his clothes. Beside his bed sat a small table and on this was an old fashioned looking alarm clock. He screwed up his eyes and peered at the hands on it. They read half past seven. The alarm clock might have been old, but it was never wrong. The walls inside his room were also bare, apart from his friend, that is.

Michael’s friend was Marilyn Monroe. The poster of her hung alone on his wall. She wasn’t like an everyday friend. Marilyn had been dead fifty years and had died thirty-six years before he had been born. But the picture of her was special to him. It was company for Michael and he needed that badly. He had no mother and a father who was interested in climbing into a bottle of Jack Daniels instead of spending time with him. Michael didn’t have any friends, either. He was the school scapegoat. Every school had one. So Michael took comfort by believing that Marilyn was his friend. Just his. But of course she wasn’t. Marilyn was dead. Michael didn’t trouble himself with such thoughts because he knew that they were special friends. He knew he wasn’t mad, he knew he didn’t imagine the conversations he had with her. At first Michael thought he was losing the plot, but after she had changed position in the poster on the wall and had joked, “It’s so tiring standing in the same pose,” he was sure it was for real. But if Michael were to be honest with himself, he did have doubts. But he had no one to confide in and even if he had, would they have believed him? Would you?

Michael tightened his school tie about his neck, put on his trousers, socks, and navy-blue sweater. He bent over the pile of school books on his bedroom floor and sorted through them. The school timetable buzzed around inside his head as he tried hard to remember the lessons he had for that day. But being so tired and weak feeling, it was hard for him to remember. Once he was sure he had collected the books he needed, he stuffed them under his arm. He straightened his messy black hair with his fingers. He looked up at the glossy poster of Marilyn, her head tilted to one side, thick red lips smiling down at him. She was wearing a one-piece swimsuit. One of her legs was slightly bent at the knee, both hands rested against her thighs. He thought she looked beautiful in that particular pose.

Michael took a step closer to the poster, and with a smile, he whispered, “See you later, Marilyn.”

He turned for the door, and as he did, he was sure that he heard...heard what? Maybe it was just the wind blowing outside. Michael jerked his head back towards the poster. Marilyn stood just as she had only moments before. Had she spoken to him? He couldn’t be sure.