Hidden (Marchwood Vampire Series #1) (29 page)

‘
Yeah, course it is. I just thought you’d like to see
them.’

‘
Definitely. Cheers.’ Ben wandered back up the stairs and
Madison felt strangely deflated. She had spent the afternoon
getting quite excited at the thought of showing the statues to her
brother, but he didn’t seem to be that bothered.

To her, they
were exotic links to the past, like travelling back in time. She’d
never really thought about history before, it was just some boring
subject you did at school, but now she figured she’d enjoy finding
out about the past and stuff, especially when it related to
her.

Maddy looked
again at the dark-haired statue of the man – her favourite. She put
one of her hands on his forehead and combed her fingers through his
dark hair, her nails grazing his cold, stone scalp. She wished she
knew his name and what he used to do all those years ago. Was he a
real person? Or was he created from someone’s imagination? The air
smelt of stone, sawdust and bleach. The thump of Ben’s music wafted
down the cellar steps and she heard the distant drone of a
lawnmower.

Maddy walked
between the crates, running her fingers along the edges and
studying the faces. She was getting to know them already: the
handsome dark-haired eldest, the fair-haired boy and girl who
looked so similar to each other, the boy with wild brown curls and
the older girl from the portrait. Five statues … and a corpse.

Over the next
few weeks, Madison kept finding herself back in the small cellar
room. She’d be in the library reading or practicing her driving,
exploring the grounds or watching television, but her mind would
always return to the chiselled face of her favourite statue.
Whenever she thought of it, she couldn’t stop herself making her
way down below the house to gaze at him and satisfy her
craving.

In her dreams she would encounter him as a living man with
his eyes open, looking at her. She worried about the intensity of
her feelings and wondered if she might be going a bit mad. She
couldn’t concentrate on anything properly. But then, she didn’t
really have anything much to concentrate
on.

*

Ben’s radio
alarm filtered through his dreams. He resisted the urge to turn
over and go back to sleep, opening first one eye and then the
other. He dressed quickly and galloped downstairs for breakfast.
That was odd. Maddy wasn’t down here even though all the lights
were on. She was always down here first on school days. Then he saw
the cellar door open, light filtering upwards.

‘
Maddy!’ he called down the steps. ‘Mads, you down
there?’

He descended
the steps, but saw no immediate sign of her. He walked in through
the small opening to the hidden room. Maddy wasn’t in here either,
but one of the crates lay open, revealing that creepy statue Maddy
liked and he wondered what she’d been doing down here so early.
Well, she wasn’t here now. Maybe she’d gone outside to get
something.

He trudged
back upstairs and tried the back door. Locked. So she couldn’t be
out there. He went into the kitchen and poured himself some
cereal.  It was getting near to the time Morris usually picked
him up to go to school and there was still no sign of his sister.
It wasn’t like her. She usually fussed around him, making sure he
didn’t forget his school stuff. It was weird and he felt a small
flare of panic in his chest.

Ben raced up
the stairs two at a time and opened her bedroom door. She was
there! Asleep still. Relief washed over him and he felt stupid for
worrying. Her alarm mustn’t have gone off. But that didn’t explain
why all the lights had been on downstairs in the cellar and
everything.

Ben tiptoed
over to the bed and saw her fast asleep, but as he looked more
closely, he saw her face covered in a film of sweat and her teeth
chattering. She was talking to herself, strange mutterings and
whimpers.

‘
Mads?’ He shook her shoulder – it was sopping wet with sweat.
A car horn sounded outside. Ben rushed downstairs and flung open
the front door.

‘
Morris!’ he called. ‘It’s Maddy! I think she’s
ill!’

‘
Let’s take at look at her then,’ he said, following Ben up
the stairs and into her room. Madison was still rambling
incoherently. Morris took one look at her sweat-soaked brow and
called the doctor immediately. Then he called his wife.

‘
Your sister’s got a spot of flu, I shouldn’t wonder. Doctor
Wilson will sort her out.’

‘
Should I stay off school today?’

‘
I don’t think you need to do that. I’ll drop you in once the
doctor’s been. We’ll have a cup of tea while we wait for him. I’ll
make one for Esther too. She’ll be here any minute.’

They went
downstairs and Morris busied himself making tea. Ben didn’t tell
him that he didn’t like tea. He accepted the drink and grimaced,
taking an unwanted sip. Surprisingly, he actually didn’t mind the
taste of this milky sweet liquid. It wasn’t anything like the tea
Angie used to make. Hers was almost black, with no sugar and tasted
how he imagined soil would taste.

He took
another large sip as Esther bustled into the kitchen, dumping her
large brown handbag on the table. Morris filled her in on Madison’s
condition, but she wanted to see for herself. They all marched up
the stairs again and Morris and Ben stood by Madison’s bedroom
door, waiting for Esther’s pronouncement.

‘
Is Doctor Wilson on his way?’ she asked.

‘
Should be here any minute,’ Morris replied.

‘
Good.’ Esther pulled the heavy covers back, leaving just a
sheet over Maddy. ‘She’s burning up.’

‘
Hello!’ a man’s voice called up the stairs. ‘It’s Doctor
Wilson! The front door was open!’ A tall thin man in his sixties,
wearing a dark grey suit, jogged up the stairs and walked across
the landing towards Ben and Morris.

‘
I was just heading out when I got your call. Is this where
the patient is? Good to see you, Morris. Keeping well?’

‘
Can’t complain, Doctor. You?’

‘
Yes, I’m fighting fit. Esther, nice to see you. Is this our
patient?’

Esther turned
her mouth up, in what, Ben supposed, was meant to be a smile, but
it looked like the corners of her mouth were being lifted with two
pieces of string. He guessed she wasn’t used to smiling.

‘
She’s delirious and burning up,’ Esther said.

The doctor
examined Madison, while Ben and the others looked on.

‘
Aha,’ Doctor Wilson exclaimed. ‘She has some lacerations on
one of her wrists. That could be what’s caused the fever but I
can’t be sure. They don’t appear to be infected but I’ll clean and
dress them, give her a tetanus shot and a course of antibiotics.
We’ll see if that does the trick. Whenever she feels too hot, cool
her down with a damp sponge. Make sure the sheets are kept dry
after any sweats she might have. Are you able to stay here, in the
house? To keep an eye on her?’ he asked Esther and
Morris.

‘
There’s tons of space. You can choose whichever room you
want,’ Ben said, before either Morris or Esther could
respond.

‘
Very good,’ said Doctor Wilson. ‘I’ll call back round this
evening. Ring me if she gets any worse.’

Over the next
few hours, Maddy drifted in and out of consciousness, tossing and
turning, crying out, whimpering, talking gibberish or just staring
glassily into space. When Ben returned from school, he ran straight
up to her room to sit with her and see how she was doing.

At the end of
day two, Maddy’s fever eventually broke, but she still didn’t wake.
Instead, she fell into a peaceful uninterrupted sleep. At last, on
the third day, she finally came through the haze of sleep and
opened her eyes.

Three and a
half days earlier

Madison lay in
bed. She guessed it must be about one or two in the morning, but
she couldn’t sleep. The wind whistled around the house, creepers
tapped out of time on the windows and she tried and failed to get
comfortable, turning from one side to the other.

She was
thinking about the dark-haired statue again, but couldn’t bring the
image of his face to her mind. She concentrated, but it was no
good. Maddy had forgotten what he looked like, which was crazy, as
she had only seen him a few hours ago. She knew it was mad, but she
felt she had to go and look at him now, to lock the image in her
mind. She switched on her bedside lamp, pushed the covers back and
walked across the wooden floor of her bedroom.

Madison crept
downstairs in her t-shirt. The creak of the stairs sounded
monstrously loud in the silent house and she hoped she wouldn’t
wake Ben up. She tiptoed across the cold flagstones of the entrance
hall and into the kitchen. Once in the utility room, she slipped
her feet into her trainers, squashing the backs of them down with
her heels, and made her way down the narrow, winding cellar steps.
In her sleepy haste, she had forgotten the torch and had to rely on
a faint glow of light shining down from the utility room.

She switched
on the halogen, illuminating the familiar surroundings. Through the
open window, she heard the rustling of leaves. A fox screamed and
something clanked rhythmically in the wind.

Madison
perched on the side of the crate, gazing at the face of her angel.
How could she have forgotten what he looked like? His strong
features and square-jawed beauty never ceased to take her breath
away. She put one of her hands on his forehead and combed her
fingers through his thick, dark hair, her nails, grazing his cold,
stone scalp. She felt sleepily content.

The statue
suddenly sat bolt upright in its crate. It grabbed her arm with
both hands and clamped its mouth onto her wrist, its grip like
iron. Maddy was in shock, she couldn’t get away. She used her free
hand to try to prise his fingers off, but they encircled her arm
like a solid stone cuff. Its eyes were still closed. With horror,
she realised its teeth had pierced her skin and were sunk deep into
her wrist. But then, even worse, she realised that it actually felt
nice ... It felt amazing and her body tingled, becoming light as
air.

Dizziness
fuzzed her brain and she swooned. But almost immediately, it let go
of her arm and snapped back down to its statue-like state. She was
losing consciousness and then, like the shutters going down,
everything faded to black.

*

Cold embraced
her. She felt weak and stiff. Maddy opened her eyes and then had to
close them again against the searing light. Where was she? She
remembered something vaguely and tried to catch the edge of the
memory, but it drifted off into another part of her mind and
blackness followed again.

*

She woke some
time later and now the coldness and numbness had completely taken
over her body, along with an aching weakness. She remembered. The
statue! No … Impossible. It must have been a vivid dream. But she
knew it was true. It had happened. She inched open her eyes and
forced them to adjust to the bright halogen light that bored
relentlessly into her brain.

She lay on the
stone floor of the secret room. The sighing wind had stopped,
replaced by the birds singing their morning song. Maddy carefully
stretched out her body, testing each limb to see if she was okay.
She was freezing, shivering uncontrollably. Her teeth chattered and
her throat and eyes ached. Gingerly she tried to sit, but as she
pushed herself up she winced as a stabbing pain shot through her
wrist and she came over all light-headed.

Maddy looked
down at the source of the pain, viewing her wrist as if it was an
alien entity that didn’t belong to her. She twisted it around to
view the inner part and saw immediately what she had known she
would find – two large messy puncture marks, with dried blood caked
around them. She tasted bile in her throat and felt panic. She was
weak and struggled to get to her feet. She leant on the crate and
looked at him … at it. It looked like the same beautiful statue it
had always been. It looked harmless.

Madison
staggered to the bottom of the cellar steps, but her legs were too
weak to fully support her and when she finally reached the steps,
she had to sit to regain her strength. After a few minutes she
crawled upwards, screwing up her face in pain every time she had to
lean on her wrist, exhausted at the mere thought of trying to make
it all the way to her bedroom. But she craved the warmth and
softness of her duvet and so she moved at her snail’s pace, inch by
inch, through the kitchen, along the hallway, up the creaking
wooden stairway, along the landing and finally, blissfully, into
her room and her large, warm bed.

She knew she
should be thinking things, feeling things and doing things, but all
she could manage was to close her eyes and sleep.

*

‘
Do you think she needs to go to hospital?’

Ben’s voice
sounded small and far away, but it gradually became louder and
clearer.

‘
It’s just … she’s been like this for ages now.’

‘
Doctor said she’ll be fine. Exhausted from the fever. Needs
to sleep it off.’ Esther’s voice cut through her brain like a
cheese grater.

Maddy lay
there, unmoving with her eyes closed. Something had happened to
her, something bad. She didn’t want to remember, but her memory
rebelled, flashing up unwanted images. She remembered crawling up
to bed, and now Ben and Esther were here in her room. She moved her
hand under the covers to feel her wrist – it was bandaged. They
must have seen! She opened her eyes.