Running Shoes (The Shades of Northwood) (31 page)

“Jaye?”

“Don’t move
yet. Your muscles won’t be working right.”

As if there was
any danger of doing that without pneumatic joints and marionette
strings on every limb. A memory of a half-remembered biology lesson
at school sparked.
Re-oxygenation. Blood, muscles, organs – no
part of you functions properly without a good supply of oxygen.
And, following that, a completely not-listened to physics class:
everything needs energy and everything has energy. Even
nothing.
It sounded important. Nostalgic for the school days
she had been so glad to leave behind? Not bloody likely!
Remembering a time when things were simple. Back when the worst of
her worries was overdue homework.

“Hey! Stay
awake Katie!”

The sting of a
firm slap on her already sore cheek broke Katie out of her
thoughts. And woke up the pain crashing through her. She felt it
like an earthquake deep inside, trying to tear her apart. She
wished she had enough energy to cry about it. Instead, she touched
her left cheek and felt it all scratched and abraded.

“Yeah, your
knees are all messed up too. I think you caught the wall on the way
down.”

Finally. An
injury that could be easily explained. If that was what – yes, that
was what happened. “I tried to get out.”

“Well, you
weren’t gonna do it from the foetal position. That’s what they call
it, right?”

“I thought you
were at the hospital.”

“I went for a
while. Couldn’t stay. They’re doing more tests.”

“Why didn’t you
come home?”

Jaye shrugged.
The towel fell to the floor and she knee-walked over to Katie. “I
love hearing you call it home. It took me months.”

Katie used her
elbows to push herself up and ran a hand through Jaye’s hair and
then traced her cheekbone – tear stained but not tear wet. “You’re
bone dry.” The pool was most definitely wet so how-

“It’s a Shade
thing. Water just goes through ghosts if we concentrate. Forces of
nature can’t act on things that shouldn’t really be here.”

Katie left her
hand up. “You should be here, Jaye. Uh, clothes?” she was sitting
ther in dripping underwear, suddenly aware that she was freezing,
the borrowed t-shirt floating around the pool somewhere. Jaye
returned with her rucksack, a pile of clothes and a clean towel.
Between them they managed to mostly dry and dress Katie without
jostling her too much. Every expected – and unexpected to be honest
– movement made something else hurt or go alarmingly numb. “I’d’ve
drowned without you.”

“I don’t know.
It was a pretty good distraction.”

Katie used both
hands to grasp the metal runner of the ladder by her head and
pulled herself up, holding on longer, until the world stopped
turning cartwheels. She didn’t trust herself to let go or to open
her mouth and ask for help without throwing up. Luckily, she didn’t
have to risk it. Jaye tucked herself under one shoulder, braced to
lift the heavier girl and supported her all the way home. Luckily,
although her feet were still lazy, Katie was just about awake
enough to take most of her own weight. Tiny Jaye would have been
squished like strawberry jam otherwise. It was nothing short of a
miracle that enough lights were on in the house to get the door
open without some interesting key-related disaster. Surprise,
surprise, there was a welcome party waiting by the stairs when they
got in. Jaye tried to ignore Lainy and propel Katie up the stairs
at the same time.

“Don’t
ask!”

“Think I’m
gonna have to sweetie. She looks trashed.” What was going on with
the poor girl? It was the strangest, if not the quickest,
self-destruct of a student she had ever watched. Not that there
wasn’t a good reason.

“Drowning has
that effect.” Lainy sent Jaye a sharp look. “Later, okay? I’ve got
to get her to bed.”

Katie shrugged
away and gripped the banister, swaying slightly. Up was hard. “I’m
going. I’m fine.”
Must work on convince face.

“Babe, you are
so very not fine. Let me help you.”

“Okay, get her
to her room but we need to talk, Jaye.”

“I didn’t mean
to get you in trouble.”

“This isn’t
about you, Katie.” Lainy put a hand over hers. She looked up at the
too-young face hovering above, fearing this was another Dina,
speeding towards the edge but not knowing quite why. “You sure you
can manage the stairs?”

No. “Sure.”

“Okay then.
Bed. Stay.”

“Nothing I want
more.”

“God, your
dad’s gonna kill me when he sees you in this state.”

“I won’t tell
if you don’t.” Katie gave her a tired smile and hoped it didn’t
look it. She turned to Jaye, remembering she hadn’t thanked her,
but she had already vanished into the front room. “Night.” Her
phone beeped midnight – it had been doing that way too often of
late – reminding her that it was almost as close to her regular
getting up time than to bedtime. Katie enjoyed the touch of a
friend, not just some-one whose house she lived in, looking
longingly towards her room and let Lainy take the hint.

“We need to
talk about how you got like this. Later, I know.” Yes the girl was
legal. Yes the girl was mature and independent but, Christ, she was
still a child. Who looked as though she had been chucked through a
plate glass window. A hospital bed would have been more appropriate
than the one Katie was heading for but Lainy put that right at the
top of the PROBLEMS FOR TOMORROW list. “Now, about Dina.”

For some
reason, Katie wasn’t surprised to find Jack sitting at her desk
when she got there. “I don’t want you here,” she told him. “I need
a pee. Don’t be here when I get back.” It didn’t provoke any strong
emotion to see him – not anger or lust. If Katie had to sum up her
feeling, she’d go with absent. Her body hurt but she didn’t feel it
as much as be academically aware of it. Her brain was at a
temporary standstill but she didn’t mind as long as the bad
thoughts couldn’t get in.

When she came
from the bathroom, Jack was still sitting at her desk, his eyes
half closed in concentration and his body was just starting to mist
at the edges. His breath was coming shallow and fast. She’d never
seen him try to leave and didn’t know how it was meant to work but
surely it wasn’t meant to be this hard. Jack held onto the edge of
the desk and groaned low in his chest. A pained moan, Katie could
tell. He looked up at her and put his head in his arms. Something
was stopping him moving. Wisps of mist blurred Jacks’ fingers and
slowly the rest of his hand began to fade into black tinged fog.
But that was all, and after a second, the process stopped and Jack
was left half solid and half ghosted away. Katie stepped forward,
plunged her hand into the mist and grabbed something solid. There
was a jolt of energy between them and Katie froze. Nothing should
ever feel like that. The pain, the red-hot pain, the complete void,
empty of anything else but that bright agony. And it wasn’t hers
this time. This was his. This was what Jack felt every time he had
to go back into his own world. Where-ever that was. No wonder he
had wanted to share that with some-one. It couldn’t be easy knowing
you only had this endless agony waiting for you when the time came
to leave the living world.

A scream echoed
through Katie’s head so loud that she wondered the whole house
didn’t come running, but she realised no-one else could hear. And
suddenly, she understood. Her hand slid down whatever was left of
his arm and twisted their fingers together. She took a breath and
stepped into the mist, cursing her own stupidity. She had done a
dozen stupid things recently but she had to do this one too. Unless
she was willing to give Jack up. Whilst she wasn’t sure that would
exactly break her heart, she couldn’t live with herself knowing she
had condemned him to this life of hurting forever. “Where are we
going?”

“You tell me.”
Oh goody. Another decision she had to make.

“I don’t know
how to fix any of this, Jack.” There was something, though – a tiny
slippery idea that didn’t yet have words. “What did I do to deserve
any of this? I wanted to learn, compete, make friends, maybe fall
in love. Trying not to get killed never even registered.”

“I know you
blame me.” Katie started to protest but Jack put a finger over her
lips and began to talk once more but his words were whipped away as
her room fell away around them. Air rushed through her ears as the
work got suddenly dark and cold. Some change in the atmosphere told
Katie that she was going somewhere she didn’t want to go and that
when she got there she would be all alone.

“Wakey, wakey,
little girl,” a voice singsonged a few feet away. There was no joy
or music in it, just meanness and hate. “There’s fun to be
had.”

Katie felt the
press of rough concrete against her face, the tightness of her
muscles where she had been curled in a foetal ball on the ground.
It was to be expected and Katie only felt a mild sense of
annoyance. She kept her eyes closed a while longer and let her mind
roam. Thinking of anything was better than having to open her eyes
and see the bad man’s cruel face and see that whip again. He knew
how to use his weapon of choice.

“I’m gonna make
you scream until your voice breaks and no-one can hear you.”

“Screw you,”
she threw at him, knowing her words had less strength to them than
a feather lifting a lead weight.

“Not right
now,” he replied. “But a nice thought. And the question you’re
afraid to ask… What did Jack do?”

Please. I don’t
want to know this.

“Well, you
see.” As the man spoke he began pacing in front of the gated
circle. Katie watched him stride up and down, up and down, his boot
heels beating a rhythm hat never seemed to slow or quicken, the
steady bumf bumf bumf she remembered from her dreams. More pieces
of the jigsaw clicked into place but she couldn’t tell what the
picture was yet. She was trying to work out what to do next when
the swish of the man’s coat revealed a metallic glint about waist
high.
Knife.
She knew it as certainly as anything before. He
was carrying a knife – a weapon that could deliver death in one
well-placed blow.

If he got close
enough to use it.

“Your precious
Jack, the innocent little boy with the bright green eyes, isn’t all
that he seems. He stole from me, he broke into my house, he took my
money and my horse and then he tried to run away. Like he thought
I’d never know.”

“it was a
hundred… two hundred years ago. Whatever.”

“Oh, it was a
time ago.”

“And that was
punishable by death?”

“Those things
were MINE!” he roared, angry now. “And now I’m gonna take something
of his.”

“You’re killing
him every night. He relives the night you killed him all the time;
the same pain, the same blood, the same storm. Every time it’s
exactly the same and I – I think I get it now.”

The man flicked
the whip out and the sonic boom rang in Katie’s ears. She flinched,
yelped and tried to scuttle even further back. At least she had a
tiny bit of safety in her mesh cage.

“I was there.
Not just the other night but all the time. You didn’t know it was
me. Hell, I didn’t know it was me, but you knew there was someone
else watching.” Katie sat up straight, ignoring her reluctant
muscles, quite proud of herself for having worked that part out.
“And once you knew who I was, it was just a matter of hunting me
down.” There was a dull ache in her stomach – hunger. Her body
didn’t like the way she was abusing it. And yet knowing that she
had put herself through the past few days without completely
falling apart filled her with happiness. “So. I’m here now. What’re
you gonna do to me?”

“I’m
gonna-“

“Make me
scream? Yeah, you wish.” Katie knew she was borrowing heavily from
what Jaye would say in this situation but she reckoned she had just
about enough attitude to make it sound believable. In one movement,
fast and fluid, the man with hate in his eyes had strode over to
force his fingers through the chain link gate and was grinning down
at her. There were calluses across his knuckles. They were strong,
sure hands – those of a man who had earned his living from them.
There was something beautiful about that – dying at the hands of a
man who knew how to use them. Poetic. Terrifying. Katie scrambled
to her feet – aware once again that she was almost the same as him.
Were people that much shorter in the olden days? She curled her
legs up to her chest and spent a few minutes tying and retying her
running shoes. She had a feeling moving fast was going to be the
order of the day -
night
– and she had no desire to trip and
break her neck. Then, when they were as secure as they could
possibly be without using superglue, Katie raised her head and
stared the man straight in the eye. Not glancing away from the
blind anger she saw burning there was almost impossibly difficult
but worth it. After a minute or two, the man let his smile slip,
the anger faded to a violent shade of confusion.

“Don’t worry,
little girl. I’ll make it quick,” he promised. There was no doubt
that he meant it too.

Katie fixed her
eyes on that piece of metal she could see glittering at his waist.
If she could reach over and grab it maybe she could stab him with
it. Or slice her way through the string that kept them apart and
make a run for it through the other side. Why hadn’t he grabbed for
his knife yet, used it and left her to bleed to death in this place
where no-one would ever find her? Because this wasn’t the real
world and he could do what he wanted.

He saw where
Katie was looking and tapped it with the end of his whip. “My badge
of honour,” he said.

“Why don’t you
use it, then? I’m standing right here.” Not close enough,
hopefully, to use it to much effect.