Running Shoes (The Shades of Northwood) (16 page)

“Who are you?
How did you get in here? What do you want from me? Why do I feel
like I know you? I don’t even remember your name.”

“I’m Jack. You
let me in. And now I have to take you on a little trip.”

“That’s only
three answers. I asked four questions. How come I think I know you
and yet I don’t remember a thing about you?” Katie repeated.

“I…” something
dark zoomed across his whole body and he froze for just a fraction
of a second, most would have ignored it but Katie noticed. It was a
bit like some dark ice had slid right over him.
I thought I was
doing a better job than that.
“We’ve been seeing each other for
a while but you always forget me. I make you forget all about
me.”

“How? Why?”

Jack reached
out to her face and brushed her hair out of her face. “Forgive me,
Lady Katie. I never meant this to happen.”

“Wh-“ was as
far as she got before Jack cut her off with a kiss. It started by
just brushing their lips together, hardly touching. Suddenly, her
body tight with need, just needing to be close to some-one, the
kiss turned deep and passionate.
There is darkness so thick
Katie can see nothing but more darkness. She is scared to even
reach out or take a step forward because anything could be in front
of her. Anything or nothing at all. There are voices all around
her, whispering, rustling, moving. She holds her breath and tries
to pick out one voice in the chaos. So hard is she concentrating
that she almost forgets to look around her, already so used to this
solid blackness. One voice whispering something, shouting some
words in a language she does not know. Nonsense sounds. Her eyes
must be adjusting to the dark, finding some light source to react
to. Silvery glows roll along the thick, storm heavy skies. The
still air of just a few moments ago had become the utter calm
before a major storm. Katie looked around, trying to find the
direction the voice was coming from but the others made it sound
ethereal and everywhere. Instead, two green circles stare out at
her. She starts to smile, pleased just to have found another person
in this place. A sharp bolt of blood red lightning shoots through
the sky, accompanied by the crack of a whip and then a scream. Oh
God, the storm is starting. She snaps her jaw shut so she could
scream no more but she can see that red laser knife down over and
over and she can hear the screams each time. It’s not her voice.
No. green eyes are flinching halfway closed with each crack of the
whip but she doesn’t want to believe that these shrieks, full of
pain and blood and questions, are coming from those green eyes.
Those aqua puddles that have not moved from her face. But Katie
knows. She stretches out a hand, hoping she could touch some-one,
something. If she can touch him, she can help. The half-formed
thought was chased away from her mind by something nudging her back
and then she is stumbling, tripping, falling through this dark
world.

When Katie
opened her eyes, a scream was on her lips but so was a boy with
green eyes. She pushed him away and then buried her face in her
hands, trying not to cry.

“I’m sorry.” He
let his hand hover over her shoulder. Would Katie ever want him
near her again? Jack struggled for an answer he was happy with. It
was even less likely that she could want him now that he wasn’t
finished.. and there was no time to give her a longer break. He
guided her to the bed and put his face to hers once more, feeling
her tense and fight the images rushing into her mind.

She lands on
soft and squashy grass with a bump that almost hurts but not quite.
On automatic, Katie curls into a ball and rolls to her feet. A
flash of lightning lights up the sky and she sees herself glaring
around at a desert she dreamed up once. A disembodied voice
whispers “run” and she does, not seeing, not even caring where she
is going. There is something dangerous out here and pretty soon,
Katie can hear the violent strikes she had fallen away from. And
she is running towards them! the next flash illuminates a small
village, rickety and ancient. But she needs to get out of this
storm before the rain starts cutting her. There is a wide door to a
wooden building a little like stables and she heaves it open. It
would be dry and warm inside and she can wait there until the rain
stops and she can get help in the village. And then she hears a
sound she dreaded – the crack of a whip, its’ sonic boom leaving a
red slash in the air. A second later she registers a quiet scream,
bubbling like liquid filling the mouth. A second crack cleaved
through the night and through flesh. Another scream. Another crack.
But no scream. Crack. Silence. Crack. Silence. And so it went on
for what could have been minutes or more. Frozen to the spot, Katie
listened to the whipping get more violent and then laughs started
accompanying it. She follows the tail end of the red sparks and
finds a glow coming from an old oil lamp around a dark corner. A
sensible girl would have stopped and tried to be as quiet as
possible but not Katie. Not tonight. The storm is already raging.
She edges around the corners and sees just a flash of a man with a
whip in one hand, a mean snarl on his lips and pure hate in his
deep blue eyes. Then he locks gazes with her and advances on
her.

“
Fresh meat.
Oh, you’re gonna SCREAM.”

She glared at
him as he rushed towards her, daring him to do it. And then, just
as he reached her, the rage-filled man was gone, leaving a crack of
his whip in the air and a sting across her upper arm. She picked up
the lamp, held it in front of her so she could see what or who the
man had been attacking. There were a few horses around and,
although she had a horrible feeling she knew who had been whipped
into silence, Katie wished the man had been taking his anger out on
one of them. But before her was the body of a boy with green eyes
she knew he couldn’t see out of. He wore leather boots and a
Stetson and these were the only perfect things that were left on a
body decomposing much faster than it should have been. And then the
body had become a skeleton. Skeletons didn’t walk or talk or kiss
her but this one did and Katie let it. The bones crumbled beneath
her fingers and she opened her eyes. Green eyes stared out from the
remnants of his skull. Then they blinked out of existence, finally
giving up.

And then she is
alone. She sits on the bale of straw the boy had been propped
against. There is something warm and wet all around her. The lamp
light shows it is blood, soaked in but still fresh. At least the
sweet, ripe scent of blood and death is mostly hidden by the dry
polleny smell of hay and straw although it is now the only thing
Katie can smell. The thought has been planted. The oil lamp swings
from her arm and she pushes open the door and glances behind her.
Nobody else was in the barn but the feeling of being watched will
not leave. A rain-battered village stands before her and,, hurrying
from one building towards her is a young man with a man chasing
him, a whip in his hand and hate on his face, shouting something in
a language she does not recognise. The whip arks down and catches
the boy across his back. This is how it all started. The angry man
is closing the gap and a second crack of the whip sends the boy to
his knees, caught somewhere between crying and screaming. Katie
wants to run to him, help him up and bundle into the stables,
shutting the heavy door behind them. But she doesn’t. Can’t? Won’t?
But the boy, Katie knows him – Jack - the name seems to fit even
though she has no idea if it is correct, tries to crawl towards
her, towards safety. He is not moving fast enough.

“
Hurry,
Jack! Be quicker!” she calls out

And then the
whip cracks down once more, leaving a thin slash of blood across
the back of his checked shirt. Jack stares up, seeing Katie even
though she isn’t sure she is real, and fixes his eyes on her brown
ones, shadows taking up residence behind them. The angry man
catches up to them and picks him up, kicking and shoving the boy
towards the dry barn. Katie follows and watches an unconscious
young man being beaten until the pain forces him back to
consciousness and pulls tired screams from him, resigned to taking
the assault, no fight left in him.

At some point
during the barrage of images Katie had fainted. Jack desperately
wanted to lay her back on the bed and let the girl rest as soon as
he felt her go limp in his arms. Wanted to but didn’t. Couldn’t. iI
he stopped now, Jack knew, he would never again have the courage to
show Katie these pictures. These raw, hateful, hurtful memories
that he had to think about every day. Because he liked the girl,
kept coming back to see her although he shouldn’t, and he needed
her to know about him before he fell any further. He grinned down
at Katie as she lay in his arms, caught between unconsciousness and
a nightmare.
Sleep now, Lady Katie. The nightmare’s over.
She must have heard the command beneath thick layers of fitful
sleep because her breathing became deep and regular, and she lay
still in his arms, one hand tightly finger laced with his.

And then Jack
began worrying. Was she meant to calm this quickly? What if she was
not strong enough to handle all the things he had buried in her
mind? What if something rose to the surface? He needn’t have
worried.

Katie squirmed
around and blinked up at him, lazily. “Sorry. I don’t usually sleep
on guys I don’t know.” Then she frowned. “But I
do
know
you.”

“Yes, we’ve met
before.”

“Really?
Where?”

“Katie, you
have to sleep. I’ll explain everything in the morning.”

She shuffled up
the bed and curled up. Jack put an arm across her waist and did not
move until late the next morning, content to sleep, or the closest
thing he had, right next to her.

It was nearly
noon the next day when Katie rolled over and stared into the green
digital display on her alarm clock. The late hour panicked her –
when had she last gotten up so late? – but not quite so much as
seeing the clock at all. For some reason, she was expecting to wake
up next to some-one. Not wanting to get out of her cosy bed and
shake off the warm glow of a wonderful dream, Katie rolled onto her
side and closed her eyes. But the bliss only lasted a fraction of a
second as pain lanced through her right upper arm. Katie let out a
scream of pain before she could stop herself and shot out of bed,
stopping just before she barrelled into the mirror standing on her
desk by the door. She sat down and rubbed her face tiredly. She
remembered being up late, talking a good portion of the night away.
She was beginning to wonder – she couldn’t remember a name – when
she saw something smeared over the mirror in her pale peach
lipstick. It was to faint to read. An old trick they had used to
share answers in her exams that spring had been to write answers on
the bathroom mirrors in pale lipstick then spray over them with
hairspray so it stood out against the mist. There was a can around
here somewhere. Mom had made her pack some “just in case”. Just in
case what, God only knew. As the spray settled on the shiny
surface, Katie rolled up the sleeve of her loose pyjama top and
twisted her arm until she could see it. A large area of her upper
arm was red and angry-looking. A thin line of blood ran through the
middle and broken ribbons of flesh decorated it.

“Honey? Roy
phoned.” Lainy knocked and pushed the door open just a crack. When
she saw that Katie was decent she came a bit further into the room,
a sound halfway out of her mouth when she saw the slash on the
girl’s arm. “What happened?” She glanced up at the mirror and the
curiosity in her eyes turned to anger – Katie saw that tiny shadow
shoot behind them.

“I wish I could
tell you,” Katie answered.

Lainy bent down
and poked just hard enough to make her flinch, not hard enough to
hurt. “Looks like a whip stroke. Kinky.”

“I’m wondering
how you know that.”

“I’ve seen all
sorts. I also know that, if it draws blood, you’re doing it
wrong.”

“A lot of
things feel wrong right now.” Katie tried to look at the mirror
without being too obvious but it just wasn’t happening.. She could
make out ACK and the top line of a letter that was probably a T.
And what the hell did tack mean when it was at home? One more thing
to add to the weird list. “You wanted something?”

“Yeah. Roy
phoned earlier. I didn’t want to wake you so I tool a message.
Kinda wish I hadn’t now…” She shook herself and went on. “They said
you can’t have a job at the academy. It sucks, right?”

“Great. Now,
what do I do for cash?”

“Well, the
scholarship gives you a bit of freedom with fees. We’ll have a
think about it later, okay.”

Katie brushed
her hair back with her sweaty palms and grabbed some clothes.
“Right, I’m off for a shower and then I’ve gotta buy dinner
stuff.”

“But-“

“My problems
will still be here when I get back.”

CHAPTER
NINE

By the time
Katie had showered, slapped a dressing on her arm and got her bag
from her room, the others were banging around downstairs or in the
garden. Life went on as normal in the house on Newton Street. Katie
only allowed herself a minute to listen to everything before going
downstairs, where she drank water and picked at fruit.

“I’m going to
the library,” yelled Leo and swung out the door, slamming it behind
him. It seemed to be the first time he had left the house since she
had got here. Was it really only a week ago that she had said
goodbye to her family? It seemed so much longer.

Jaye breezed
into the kitchen, her nose buried in a textbook, got a pack of
biscuits and headed back to her room without even seeing her. All
second year students and above were expected to have kept up some
kind of reading during the holidays and, with classes starting next
week, it was a pretty good bet that cramming just enough to blag
the first lesson was the order of the day. Dina was probably holed
up in their room too – she hadn’t heard her. When her admittedly
poor excuse for breakfast was over, Katie got a sheet of paper from
her bag and scribbled down a few things she needed to get for
dinner. It was going to be lasagne with salad and bread rolls. It
might not be the most imaginative meal but she found it easy to
make and she knew it was tasty. Well nobody ha ever died when she
made it and that was good enough for Katie. She started writing her
list and then her ears latched onto an angru conversation drifting
through the closed lounge door.