Tim O'Rourke - Dead Flesh

“So you got me to make the decision for you!” Seth roared. “You coward — you silly little bitch.”

“Get out of here!” Potter barked at him, heading around the table. Seth seemed unmoved by Potter’s display of anger and he remained seated.

“Have you any idea what you put me through?” Seth screeched, spittle flying from his lips again. “The Elders punished me all over again for killing you, Hudson. But this time their curse was so much worse than the original curse of the Lycanthrope. They sent me back to that night — nearly two hundred fucking years ago, made me re-live it all over again. Only this time, as a Shape-Shifter.”

“A Skin-walker?” Kayla cut in.

“More than a Skin-walker,” Seth hissed. “I don’t need to steal skins like them. I can change into any living creature.”

“Cool,” Isidor breathed.

“Cool!” Seth bellowed, his wrinkled lips curling back. “It’s a fucking curse, I tell you! I don’t want to live under this spell anymore. I want to be a man again — just man.”

“You were never a man,” Potter spat. “You were a filthy murdering killer.”

“I know I was,” Seth hissed. “And maybe I deserved the curse of the Lycanthrope. But I had tried to change. I was so close to having the curse lifted, until she set me up in the Dust Palace.”

“So the last two hundred years hasn’t mellowed you then?” Potter asked him.

“I’ve had two hundred years of waiting until we met again,” Seth said. “I didn’t know when you would all put in an appearance, but I’ve bided my time. It gave me years to make plans, get myself ready for your return.”

“What plans?” I asked him.

“How I would finally get the great Kiera Hudson to make a choice,” he grinned at me, and his eyes spun in their sockets. “But first I had to flush you out. I got myself in with the wolves, as I can look like one of them at will — and I don’t need no children’s soul to look like a human, either. I took it upon myself to name a certain school after a certain Doctor Ravenwood. An unusual name that I knew you would be drawn to. But still you didn’t come. I thought and thought of how I could flush you out, and knowing how much you hate injustice, it was me who suggested the matching between humans and wolves when the Treaty was drawn up.”

“So you’re this Wolf Man that we’ve heard so much about?” Potter sneered at him.

“No,” Seth grinned back at him. “I am not he. So, the Treaty was signed and I waited and waited. Then, I read a very interesting news article about a young woman who had sat bolt upright during an autopsy and fled into the night with three strange-looking friends. One of which carried a crossbow,” he explained, eyeing Isidor. “I tracked down that pathologist, and very wild she was too. She enjoyed me so much, that she would have told me anything. And she did.”

“What did she tell you?” I asked him, feeling sickened at the thought of him tricking that pretty young pathologist into bed with him.

“What she told me, although it was hard for me to understand her as there was a lot of moaning and groaning going on at the time,” he winked at me, “is that as you fled the mortuary, she asked you your name, and you told her.”

I remembered that.

“I had you at last,” Seth said, rubbing his long hands together. “Knowing that it wouldn’t be too long before you started sticking your nose into why, and how the world had been changed, my good friend here got herself employed at Ravenwood School, as I guessed the name would arouse your interest.”

“But it was your sister, Emily, who was employed at Ravenwood school,” I said, looking at Elizabeth.

“I have no sister,” Elizabeth smiled. “I have no twin. There is only me. I’m Emily.”

“But we saw you being murdered on that video footage,” Isidor said.

“It was all just an act,” Seth chuckled. “Skin-walkers — wolves — can heal very quickly.”

“You’re a wolf?” Kayla gasped, staring at Emily.

“I prefer Skin-walker,” Emily smiled quite sweetly back at Kayla. “But, yes under this human skin I am a wolf. I was matched some years ago…”

“Look, this is all very interesting,” Potter snapped. “So McCain didn’t actually murder anyone?”

Sighing, Seth looked at Potter and said, “Coming back from the dead hasn’t sharpened your brain at all, has it? McCain didn’t know anything about anything. As far as he was concerned, Emily Clarke was just another teacher who decided to leave, albeit leaving her room in a rather bloody mess.”

“That’s why he was in her room that night, sniffing the walls,” Kayla breathed. “He was trying to figure out what had happened to her.”

“But we saw McCain on the video…” Isidor started.

“He’s slow to catch on, isn’t he?” Seth smiled. Then, looking at Potter, he added. “You two aren’t related by any chance, are you?”

“That was you on that video,” I said, fitting all the pieces of the jigsaw together. “You said that you were a Shape-Shifter. You could look just like him at will.”

“Not totally at will,” Seth smiled. “It’s a little bit more complex than that. I needed some of McCain’s blood. Not much, just a drop and that’s where Dorsey fit in so nicely. McCain had no idea that he was Emily’s son, he thought he was just another student.”

I glanced at the burnt-looking boy.

“It wasn’t very hard for me to find myself in trouble with McCain.” Dorsey said. “That prick Pryor was always ragging on me, so I spent a lot of time in McCain’s office being punished. But I didn’t care that Pryor beat me, teased me, it didn’t hurt none. In fact, the more that he beat up on me, the more chance I had of stealing what Mr. Seth needed from McCain.”

“And what was that?” Kayla asked curiously.

“That freak was always suffering from nosebleeds,” Dorsey said. “He couldn’t breathe properly half of the time. McCain was always ramming one of those little bottles of medicine up his nose. So, one day as he punished me, I took my chance and stole one of those medicine bottles from his pocket. And just like I knew it would be, the tip of the bottle was covered in blood from one of his nosebleeds.”

“A drop was all I needed,” Seth smiled. “I licked the end of the bottle clean and I became him. Not for long, just for a few days. Long enough to make it look like McCain had murdered Emily Clarke in front of the camera, which we set up.” Then, reaching inside his shirt, he produced a packet of Cadbury’s chocolate fingers and threw them onto the table. “Sorry, I couldn’t think of what else to buy.”

“So it was you who used the credit card?” I gasped.

“Yes,” Seth smiled. “Emily lent it to me. I knew you would check that out. I wanted you to see McCain using her card — it just made the whole thing more believable and stacked the evidence nicely against him. And the rest you know.”

“But why frame McCain?” I asked him. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“It makes perfect sense,” Seth hissed at me. “I knew that if I sent my friend Emily to you with some mystery murder, you wouldn’t be able to help yourself from investigating. I knew that if Emily mentioned the camera, you would go snooping for it. Although I must say, I was surprised you used the girl. I thought you liked taking all the glory.”

“I couldn’t very well disguise myself as a school teacher,” I snapped at him.

“I was hoping that you were going to dress up as a school girl,” Seth smiled back at me. “That would’ve been worth catching on camera. I could have watched it over and over again. I would have gotten a kick out of that.”

“Shut your filthy mouth, child killer!” Potter shouted.