#some lore in this one wowowowowowow

[billie-venus-wrote-a-book]

[non-canonical Elmsbury Vampyre]

Chapter Three

“CAUTION: Unstable Environment Prone to Underground Collapses; Do Not Enter Unless Authorised to do so and When Wearing the Correct Safety Gear”

***

Elmsbury Weekly

Obituaries

              Stephen Wilde, 44, born 12th November 1972 in Derby City Hospital, died tragically 1st October 2017 in a collapse within the Elmsbury-Gallows Museum Renovation Site third crosscut. Stephen was a loving father, husband, and brother to William (14) and Christopher Wilde (10), (sons), Mary Wilde (42), (wife), and Jonathan Wilde (51), (brother). Never one to frown, he was a kind and generous man, always one to give the leftovers of his dinner to his late-home hungry children, and one to share in his love of sports and history with all family members. He was one to hold open doors for anyone and give up his seat on buses and trains. Stephen’s goal in life was solely to be a successful father who raised two upstanding sons, and it is safe to say that though fatherhood was short for him, he managed to do so.

A public funeral for Stephen is being held at Holy Trinity Church on Church Street near Forest and Church Street Estates, Elmsbury-Gallows on 7th October 2017 at noon, hosted by Reverend James Fairfax, a beloved reverend of the family. Please come to pay respects and pray for the deceased’s loved ones to be free of visions of his spirit and to allow him to pass on into Heaven. God bless Stevie Wilde, may he rest easy.

Obituary written by Mary Wilde and sons.

***

              Amy leaned with her back to the noticeboard outside Professor Holly’s classroom, staring out of the great rectangular window which cut a hole in the side of the stairwell up to the second floor of the extensions done to the school building in the 60’s. The board behind her itched the back of her neck from the now a few dozen of curled edges on home printed Missing Dog posters that had spread out from Maisie Bailey’s, which seemed to have been patient zero. Amy’s scuffed black boot tapped on the linoleum floor to the beat of Lesbian Vampyres From Outer Space by Scary Bitches, currently blasting at full volume through her headphones. She studied the outside, not the most scenic of views, watching as the car park became less and less crowded as the students filtered out from it since the day had ended. A couple of year tens had poked holes in the top of their water bottles with compasses and were spraying unsuspecting year sevens and substitute teachers from their hiding spot in the bike shed; Amy couldn’t hear a thing from way up there, smiling a little to herself as the antics took place in complete silence, save for her music, like a black-and-white slapstick film. She looked up to a clock on the wall above the door to Professor Holly’s classroom: 3:32.

Both he and Kat were apparently late.

It had been about a week since their detentions had started, though it felt like years, and Amy resented the way that time was seemingly moving half as quickly as it did when she was doing things she actually enjoyed. It felt simply unfair, though she reconciled the feeling and decided that complaining about it wasn’t going to change anything, even if the person she was complaining to was herself. From her downward peripheral, a shape had started climbing the stairs. Amy didn’t see who it was at first, the light from outside obscured the person in complete blackness save for a small slit of narrow lighting across a skeletal face. She took her headphones off and rested them around her neck, turning the volume down a little as she could hear it chittering in a now muddy, static quality. Her eyes focused on the figure coming up the stairs: it was Mike Gregory.

He was hunched a little, as if carrying something heavy on his back, though he didn’t have a bag with him seemingly only turning up in his school shirt and blazer and a pair of joggers which hung loosely about his frame. His skin had faded to the colour of his sandy-blond hair which now had a faint greenish tint to it as if he had tried to dye it blue but washed it out too early. It looked over-washed, straw-like and dry, though the front few locks were greasy and stuck to his forehead, overgrown and unkempt. His cheeks were hollow and black, his lips were white and ashen and his irises were two watery brown spots in the jaundiced pool of his whites. It was as if he had become sepia.

He stopped at the top of the stairs to catch his breath, looking at Amy with something she first thought was triumph, but subtly became relief:

“Found you.” He rasped.

Amy didn’t say anything, caught in a glitch between telling him to go away and asking him if he was hurt. Weird to feel concern for Mike Gregory of all people, but it was becoming very apparent that the circumstances that rendered him this way were also very much weird. Her mind flicked back to when she had seen him last: well-fed and jovial standing at the top of the hill, eyes and white teeth glinting in the twilight.

“Now,” he swallowed against a sandpaper throat, the light from the window haloing his messy hair, “lift this curse off me, alright?”

“Curse?”

Mike scoffed weakly, stumbling towards Amy a little, shooting out a thin hand to grip the banister for balance, making her flinch slightly, “that’s what you’ve done, right? Put some weird witchy curse on me?”

Maybe he was sicker than she had first thought. Amy straightened up against the noticeboard, trying to inch a little further away from him in case he was contagious, “curse— what curse?” she met his stooping gaze, “I don’t understand, Mike.”

His eyes pierced her, searching for any sign she was lying to him. Upon finding nothing, they welled up slightly, “please… you’ve got your revenge, okay? I know I’ve not been—” he searched, “—not been the nicest of people these past years, alright, but…” he trailed off, wanting for her to drop the badly-concealed concern plastered to her face, aching for her to tell him it was all one big joke, “…but this isn’t it… you can’t just do this to me.”

“Mike, I don’t know what you want from me,” Amy pleaded, “whatever’s happening, you don’t look well at all- maybe this is all from a fever or something.”

He paused for a moment, dropping his gaze to a small spot just next to her on the floor. His legs gave way, and he slumped down against the railings, tucking his knees to his chest, “I don’t know what’s happening, Cokes,” he didn’t look at her, “I just… I just want it to stop.”

Amy sat down opposite him, leaning against the wall, “what do you want to stop, Mike.”

He said nothing, his head twitching slightly in a way he was clearly trying to suppress as he glanced through the railings nearly obsessively, peering down at the floor below, “I keep trying to hurt myself.”

Amy wanted to reach out a hand to comfort him, “Mike… if that’s true then you need to talk to someone—”

He shook his head, laughing a little, “No… no they won’t— they wouldn’t let me look…” he looked back up at her, his eyes wide and yellow, “…they would stop me from looking for him.”

“Looking for who?” She cut down the tree with the olive branch. Had he taken something?

Mike wordlessly replied: he made his hand into a pointing finger, and exhaustively tapped his chest with it twice.

“Someone’s looking for you?”

The boy’s expression faltered: maybe she didn’t understand, “something like that.”

“Well Mike you need to tell someone if you’re being stalked—”

“Oh my God, you don’t get it!” He shot up, towering over her, his eyes glaring yellow holes in a shadowed, deathly face, “I told you, Cokes, I keep trying to hurt myself.”

Amy pressed herself back against the wall. Mike Gregory’s eyes grew bright with tears, “I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have come here, I shouldn’t—”  

Silence hung in the air like a fog. Amy watched as his face contorted painfully through its micro-expressions, so fast-paced and fleeting she couldn’t discern what any of them portrayed. He sighed, his features softening into something that Amy hadn’t really seen on him before: something genuine, “I wanted to be mates y’know,” he admitted, “I actually think you guys are kinda cool, it’s just Harrison and Henry who make me into a dickhead sometimes.” He laughed a little, “Hell, maybe sometime we could hang out- you could take me on one of your ghost hunts or something.”

“I thought you hated me because I cursed you?”

Mike waved a thin hand, “Nah…” he coughed up a small smile, “none of that shit’s real anyway.”

Amy paused, a question bubbling up towards her lips, “did you fake that photo- the one of the graveyard?”

Mike looked at her as if she were mad.

“Piss off Gregory before I chin you into next Tuesday!” Kat was marching up the stairs, still sporting the trouser-skirt, now made even more angry by the appearance of the source of their unjust detentions. Their eyes widened in surprise when Mike did- piss off, that is- and hurried down the stairs, the square of white light coming through the window engulfing him until he was completely swallowed by it.  

“He looked rough.” Kat remarked. Amy couldn’t tell if they were as concerned as she was.

“Kat,” she turned to her friend, “I’m gonna ask you something weird.”

“Hm?”

“You’re not stalking Mike, are you?”

Kat looked taken aback, “What!?”

“Sorry, it’s just,” he was gone now, but Amy’s gaze lingered on where he had been sat, “he said some stuff to me there that’s proper concerning, like, danger-of-death concerning- I dunno, it’s a bit dumb but I thought maybe you were like trying to get back at him or something.”

“Oh shit,” Kat did look uneasy now, “God, no, no, I’m not doing that at all, like, I hate the guy and everything, but it in’t as if I want him dead.”  

***

              The headlights illuminated the winding form of Deerfolk Way as Neil snaked his way back up to Johnson’s Farm. He had found himself listening to an old Tom Lehrer CD that he thought he’d lost a number of years back, and had reminded himself to look for but never made good on that promise. It had been a lot later than usual when he was extracted from his classroom by cleaning staff, and it was well into the early hours of what could actually be considered nighttime by Autumnal standards when Neil slammed his feet down on the brake and clutch, cursing at the shifting form standing patiently in the driveway; a silhouette he was all too accustomed to recognising. He shut off the car and stepped out into the brisk October night.

The light on the outside of his front door illuminated Jim the Vicar from behind, though Neil could make out that sinister, many-toothed smile that he hated so much dimly glowing on a backdrop of absolute black, and the pleasant, cordial manner in which Jim always approached the person he had set his sights on talking to. Holly recalled a joke made when watching a nature documentary: something about sharks.

“Neil! I knocked but you weren’t in,” he folded two white hands sheepishly over his front, “I just thought I’d wait for you- assuming you wouldn’t be too long.”

Neil made his way to the house, standing in front of his door but not opening it, hoping that he could intangibly pull Jim around to face him where the lamplight would illuminate him fully, so they weren’t standing under cover of complete darkness, “You’ve never come looking for me here.”

Jim shrugged, “I supposed you wanted me to leave you alone, but I knew you’d forgive me for wanting so badly to reconnect with an old friend,” he smiled wide, the yellow buzzing glow of the lamp creating dark, c-shaped pits at the corners of his mouth with the push of his cheeks, glinting off his teeth and settling in the whites of his eyes.

“Well, you supposed right.” Neil said, flatly.

“My apologies, then I’ll make this brief, shall I?” Jim stepped forward a little, just stopping before the little step up to the front door, “Where are the books?”

“Books, what books?” he knew exactly what books Jim was talking about.

“Oh, come on, Neil, a man like you would know that playing stupid is extremely out of character,” he had stopped smiling now, his eyes forceful and unblinking, staring unmoving into Neil’s, who had backed up against the door a little, “it’s starting again- actually starting.”

He had seen that look in Jim’s eyes before, now reflecting back at him a watery, blurry memory that only revisited him in the seconds between being asleep and being awake. Neil stared right back at him, his jaw tightening, “No it isn’t.”

Jim laughed shortly, “I thought that ‘some things should stay buried’.” He’d got him, “or was that just a misinterpretation on my part? Not like you to deny evidence that’s right in front of you,” he chuckled again to himself, “maybe you’ve been replaced.”  

“Don’t say that— don’t joke about that.” His voice peaked a little. He tried to bandage his nerves.

Jim’s eyes were almost luminescent, “It’s looking for me, Neil, which means it’s also looking for you,” he leaned forward, though never moving up the steps, keeping himself at arms-length. Neil knew what he was going to say next, “Fairfaxes and Borthwicks.” His face hardened still, turning into a badly hidden grimace as his voice picked up a snappy, almost rhythmic tempo, “I know you kept them, you said you threw them out, but you of all people would never let a piece of local history- our own history- not to mention something as valuable as those books be lost to time.”

“Go home, Jim.”

“No,” he shook his head erratically, “No you’re not— you’re not listening to me,” The reverend’s face was flat and pale and burning in place like the last image projected on a hot TV, “we can have what we wanted— what we tried so hard to get back then.” Neill flinched a little as the other man’s eyes darted wildly as they scanned his face. Jim’s composure weakened still, “Come on, you’re acting like you weren’t the one who got me into this in the first place. Don’t you still want to know?”

“You—” Neil caught his tongue before it lashed out, “—I don’t have any damn books, okay?” he fidgeted around in his pocket for his keys, “go home.”

Jim said nothing for a moment, that pleasant smile recapturing his face as his shoulders softened and un-tensed, “If you say so.”

Neil got himself into the house before Jim even turned away from the doorstep, slamming the door shut and sliding the chain bolt into its place. Tomorrow he would go out and buy a new lock for the cabinet.

***

              Three weeks passed before Amy and Kat even thought about the interaction with Mike Gregory on the stairs; despite it’s general strangeness, neither of them cared enough about him to remember it. They had empathy for him, sure, but sympathy was harder to come by. The only time it had been brought up again was the night it had happened when Amy retold the events to Trent in a vague overview.

“We should go on another hunt during half-term,” Trent was picking at a fraying thread on the hem of his blazer, “we haven’t been back in the graveyard for yonks now.” The quiet drum of tapping keys and buzzing conversation acted as white noise beneath his soft and measured voice. Amy felt Kat sigh dramatically next to her, “We’re all just too preoccupied because someone—” they pointedly looked over to Professor Holly, sunk too low behind his computer to be seen, “—insists on setting us shit tons of work to do, like, whatever happened to all that ‘work-life balance’ BS they had that one assembly on.”

A voice replied from behind the computer, “Kat, unfortunately it’s my job to make sure you can get a job in the future.”

Kat stuck their tongue out, before profusely apologising for doing so and getting on with their work. A few minutes passed before they were called on again.

“Hm, you three?” Holly pushed back on his desk chair so they could actually see his face, “just got an email asking you to go up to Mrs Pratchett’s- Mr Robins is going to collect you—it says to wait outside.”

Amy’s brow furrowed, flitting through the last term to try and think of anything they could have done wrong since Doorgate (as Kat insisted on calling it). Unsurprisingly, nothing came up.

The noticeboard outside the classroom was now plastered with Missing Dog posters, so much so that its original rectangular shape had been rendered into an irregular, jutting form, bulging out in a bevel; some posters had fallen to the floor underneath the board, no longer able to hold onto the great mass of old paper with a single flimsy thumbtack. Kat poked the noticeboard with an absently-placed finger, “you think anyone’s looking into all this?”

“I dunno, my mum said it might be some sort of animal from the forest that’s made it’s way into town- stuff like this has happened before apparently- back in, like, the 80’s and stuff,” Trent slumped down on the floor, brushing aside loose posters and drawing-pins with a leather-gloved hand, “not to this scale, though.”

“I don’t like it,” Amy leaned back against the bannister, arms folded tightly over her chest, it was colder now Autumn had taken hold of the town.

“Nobody likes it, Amy,” Kat pointed out.

“I know, it’s just—like, I’m very glad Sir Pounce is an indoor cat now,” she paused, a nasty thought creeping up behind her, “d’you think that photo… what if that was whatever’s doing this?”

“Nah, don’t think so,” Trent looked up at his friend, “I still think the photo’s fake, and even if it’s not, I’m pretty sure someone would notice if a giant hand creature was kicking about murking dogs.”

“What about the photo Amy took, of me by the bush?” Kat seemed a little mousy.

Trent replied that he maintained his stance that it was just a prop thrown away. Before any form of argument could break out, Mr Robins standing at the foot of the stairs, calling up to them, “Amy Cokes, Katherine Burton, Trent Lewis-Scott? Would you like to come with me please? Don’t worry, you’re not in any trouble.”

***

              “These are officers Burke and Hare from the Elmsbury Police Station,” Mr Robins introduced them, and the two men shook Amy’s hand last as the three filed into the office, sitting sheepishly on their chairs.The teacher left the room, closing the door on a cool silence which hung damp in the air. Again, Amy found herself furiously rifling through the events of this term- the only thing she could come up with was that- worst case scenario- Mike Gregory’s family had decided to press charges on them for assault. Even so, why would they summon Trent there as well; he hadn’t been involved at all, not even in discussing the detentions. Come to think of it, surely it would only be Kat who would be prime concern in that case. The more Amy dwelled on it, the less convincing it became.

Trent gave her an apprehensive look from across the row of them, which Kat joined in on. Officer Burke, a spindly man with a receding crop of ginger hair and a face closely resembling that of a pug, spoke gently, small vertical notepad and Berol in hand, “don’t worry you three, we just want to ask you a few questions.”

“What about?” Kat’s voice sounded smaller in the cacophonous office. Burke ignored them, “we have spoken to two other classmates of yours, uhhm…” he glanced at a previous page in the notepad, “…Harrison Burke and Henry Clarke- we’re assuming you know them, even if it’s just as acquaintances.”

Amy felt a nagging sensation at the back of her neck- she twitched her head a little to dispel it. Burke continued, “and they stated that you three were present at the old radio tower about a month ago, with their friend Mike— Mike Gregory.”

“Yeah, they kicked us off it,” Kat said before they could stop themself.

“Hm,” Burke glanced at his partner, “What do you mean ‘kicked you off it’?”

Kat paused, “uhm, like, I dunno, we were up there then they came up there and told us to get lost.”

Burke made a note.

“Hm, okay… well, we also want to know what you three were doing up there, if anything?”

A moment. Maybe this was about the weed? Or trespassing? Amy didn’t feel like that was the case, the fields are public property. She was pretty sure anyway. And they hadn’t been smoking anything that time, honestly it had been ages since the three of them had a stoner phase.

“Uh, well, we were just hanging out up there,” Trent glanced to his friends, “if it was trespassing, we didn’t know, there aren’t any signs.”

The two cops exchanged another look, this time, it was Hare who spoke- a tall, broad man with a bald head and small, piercing, bright green eyes, “that isn’t what we’re here to talk about- those fields are public paths so you’re clear there: we want to know if you noticed anything…” he tilted his head from side to side, trying to find the right word, “…anything concerning about Mike Gregory?”

Oh.

Amy knew she had to speak up- if that was what they were asking- but not about their encounter at the tower but about the one in the hallway. Had something happened to him?  What if something really bad had happened to him. Would they be implicated? No, no that wouldn’t make sense, why would they be implicated in… whatever this was? Was he dead?

“Is he okay?” She volunteered, not wanting to launch too far into her encounter with him on the stairs, just in case.

Burke took a sharp breath in, Hare’s eyes suddenly fixated on her, “This morning Mike’s parents went into his room to wake him up and he was gone.”

A coldness oscillated through the three friends.

Hare continued, “we think he’s run away, but we are still short on a motive so if there is anything you three can maybe volunteer that could point to one it would help the investigation.” He sat back, “you were the last to see him, save for Henry and Harrison, so please: anything, anything at all?” He turned his focus back to Amy, “you asked if he was okay, just then, did he do anything that might spike that concern or is it simply… just empathy?”

You need to tell them.

“Uhm…”

Tell them.

Amy looked to Kat, whose eyes were bolted straight ahead, their face ashy and pale. Their breathing was controlled and concentrated, like they were focusing on not throwing up.

“One little thing, I think,” she began, “like, three weeks ago—”

The shrill bellow of the school bell pierced the room, ricocheting off the walls and denting the great metal filing cabinet, echoing into a diminuendo until the room was silent again. Burke told them to stay put.

Hare persisted, “you were saying?”

Amy stuttered, trying so hard to painfully push the words out. She knew what she wanted to say but somehow not how to say it. It was if she were chasing the memory, and it was getting further and further away from her, “Well, he just—I ran into him, or rather he ran into me, when I was waiting for a detention like, I dunno two or three weeks ago—”

Burke made a note.

“—and he just, well, he said some stuff that was… I dunno, weird.”

“What did he say?”

“I…” Amy fought to remember, “…he said he was scared he’d hurt himself, then I think he got mad at me when I tried to tell him to speak to someone—he said I ‘didn’t understand’.”

“And that’s verbatim?” Hare asked.

“What is?”

“That he said you ‘didn’t understand’?”

“Yes, yes I remember him saying that to me, he was mad- really mad and then he got, uh, upset, started crying and stuff- then Kat came upstairs to the classroom, and he left.” Amy felt a little guilty about her conscious decision to leave out Kat yelling at Mike to piss off- she really didn’t like the idea of this turning into an ironically misdirected bullying incident.

Burke made a note.

“Okay…” Hare turned his focus to the other two, “you two got anything else? Anything at all will be helpful.”

They shook their heads. The room took a breath it had been holding for a good few minutes now; Burke and Hare got up, told them not to speak publicly about the investigation, and then ushered the three out.

***

              As they descended the winding stairs back down to the hallway, an uncharacteristic lack of words had befallen Amy, Kat, and Trent. Kat looked pale, Trent had a semi-permanent frown, and Amy felt like she had missed something out. That nagging came again, lodged at the back of her neck like a tick. She scratched it.

“D’you think he ran off because of us?” Kat’s voice was quiet.

“I…” Trent began, “I dunno,” he relented, “I don’t think so- we didn’t do anything to him, it would make more sense if one of us ran off because of him.”

“Maybe something at home then,” Kat’s gaze was firmly on the ground, “like, his family being shit or something- didn’t you say, Amy, that he said he wanted to hurt himself or something?”

“Yeah, I mean, he didn’t want to, it was more like he was scared he would, like he thought that he wasn’t in control of himself,” Amy added, “I honestly thought he’d taken something- he looked awful, like really awful.” She reflected back on the conversation outside Professor Holly’s. The fear in Mike’s eyes was that of a hunted animal trying to outrun a thing much bigger than itself; he had had a look about him of a creeping realisation that he was just not smart enough to escape something- it was nothing like how he had been at the tower not even a week prior. He looked like he had been deprived of food and water for months, Amy doubted that only a week of not eating could do that to a person, no matter how extreme their manner of starvation was. There was something so real about the way he’d kept looking around himself, glancing through the railings.

“Fuck.”

“What? What is it?”

Amy knew she had forgotten something, “I forgot to tell them about the stalking.”

“The what?” Trent looked confused, “I thought he was just unwell—”

“No, no he said he was being stalked, I think- he inferred it.” Amy honestly wasn’t sure, “maybe? He was so incoherent so I don’t know what he was getting at- but he might have been.”

“Should we go back up?” Kat offered.

“No shit we should go back up,” Trent was already turning around, “what if he’s got, like, kidnapped or someth—”

The pealing of the bell soared up the thin spiral staircase, ringing in their skulls and bouncing around behind their eyes. They had reached the bottom of the stairs. It was the end of break. Mr Robins opened the door, “get to class you three.”

Amy opened her mouth to protest, but she found herself already back in the corridor. It was all just a little too late to turn around.

***

              “So I am going to assign you work to do over half term—”

A unanimous groan came from the class. Professor Holly continued, “—just a little research task since it’s the start of the year, it’s to start getting into the swing of A-Level style source gathering,” he sat down on his desk to address the class, arms folded, eyes smiling through his glasses, “I want you to go out and look for both primary and secondary sources for the 17th Century project, extra points for local historical events- Matthew Hopkins did commit a witch trial here, which I am sure some of you know a little bit about already, so there’s an idea of where to start.”

Amy, Kat, and Trent were back in for the second half of the lesson, having missed their break entirely. Holly continued, “remember to use books to find your primary sources, not Google or Wikipedia since they are—”

He gestured for everyone to join in with him, which they did, “—shit.”  He smiled, “very good, and nobody tell Mr Robins I got you guys to say that.”

`Kat and Amy still had to attend detention after school, telling Trent to run to Cery’s to grab a few cans of off-brand Coke and meet them at the tower, giving him their respective change. The detention was no shorter or less painstakingly boring than any of the previous ones, despite it being the last day of term. On their way out, Professor Holly wished them a good break, a sentiment that they both returned in kind. As Amy descended the stairs after Kat, the eyes on the Missing Poster for Mike Gregory- placed starkly in the centre of the noticeboard- followed her movement until she was out of sight.