Tim O'Rourke - Dead Flesh

“Murphy would have wanted you to keep it,” Potter said without looking at me. “He would have wanted you to be safe.”

“Do I have to worry about vampires now?” I asked him, my voice low as if I were in a church.

“Who knows what dangers lay ahead,” he said, turning to look at me. His eyes were dark and looked troubled.

“What’s wrong, Potter?” I asked him, reaching out and brushing his thick forearm with my hand.

“I could ask you the same question,” he shot back, but his voice wasn’t angry — just confused sounding. “What’s happened to us?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered and took my hand away.

“I wasn’t expecting to spend the rest of eternity sniffing red roses or dancing in the hills singing, The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Music like Julie-freaking-Andrews, but I did think that perhaps we could…”

“Play happy families?” I cut in.

“Not that either,” he said. “Just you and me…together.”

“We are together,” I said, but I knew exactly what he meant, so I added, “Look, we’ve been through so much. None of us are finding this easy. At first I was so happy to wake and find that I had you, Isidor, and Kayla back again, but that happiness soon faded. And I know you feel the same. We all feel it. I lay awake at night listening to the sound of Kayla crying — it can’t be easy for her to know that she was murdered by Luke. He betrayed her.”

“He betrayed all of us,” Potter spat and stuck a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. “He was my friend too. To know that he was behind everything that we went through — to know that he set Murphy up like that — that’s hard to deal with.”

“Exactly,” I said, looking at him as he lit the cigarette. “We all lost one way or another and then to wake to find that we are the walking dead and…” I cut off before I said anything more.

“And what?” he asked, streams of blue smoke jetting from his nostrils.

“Nothing,” I said back, thinking of the cracks.

“Why don’t we just go away?” he suggested, coming closer to me.

“We are away ,” I said and I let him take me into his arms. “Or perhaps you were thinking of some kind of holiday? Disneyland perhaps?” and I half-smiled.

“Grizzel’s,” he said, looking into my eyes.

“Sorry?” I asked sounding confused.

“There is no such place as Disneyland here, not anymore at least,” he said. “There is no Walt Disney or Mickey Mouse. There is Cornelius Grizzel and a maggot called Frogskin — but no mouse called Mickey. It’s like good old Disney never existed.” Then looking at me he added, “You’re not the only one who has noticed the world has been pushed.”

“Pushed?” I asked him, sensing he knew more about this than I had first thought.

“It’s like the world has been pushed off course,” he said, dropping the cigarette to the ground and grinding it out with his boot. “The world that we have come back to is different from the one we left behind when we went down into The Hollows. Something has changed — something happened.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “Not everything has changed.”

“Isidor told me about London now being called Linden ,” I told him.

“It gets better than that,” he half-smirked, but I could see that look of concern again behind his eyes. “Houston, Texas? Or Euston , Texas as it’s now known. ‘ Euston, we have a problem.’ Sounds the same, but not quite.”

“So what do you think happened while we were away?” I asked.

“Perhaps nothing changed while we were away,” he said, fixing me with a stare. “Perhaps we’ve come back to a different world, one that has been pushed sideways a little.”

“But how come no one else has noticed the changes?” I asked him. “I mean, people would notice if Disneyland just vanished, wouldn’t they?”

“Not if it was never here in the first place,” he said, cocking an eyebrow at me. “Not if it had always been this Drizzle dude.”

“You said Grizzel before,” I reminded him.

“Whatever! Grizzel or Drizzle — it all amounts to the same thing,” he said. “I don’t think the humans have ever known any different.”

“But why aren’t the changes bigger?”

“I think the capital of England suddenly having a new name is a pretty big deal,” he said, looking at me.

“No, I don’t mean like that,” I sighed. “I mean things could be completely different instead of changing a few place names, songs, books, and movies. Whole continents could have changed, Kings and Queens could be different, and landscapes could have changed.”

“Perhaps they have,” he said thoughtfully. “We haven’t been the most sociable of people since coming back from the dead. We haven’t even stuck our noses beyond the front gate. There could be a whole new world waiting on the other side of those giant walls.”

“I don’t think so,” I told him. “Isidor and Kayla have been bringing me newspapers and I’ve been on the net. I would have noticed any big changes like that — they would have noticed, too. The changes that we’re talking about are subtle. It’s like coming back from holiday and finding that the furniture has been moved slightly and a few new pots and pans have been added to the cupboards. It’s the same house, in the same street, but stuff has been pushed from where you left it.”

Then, taking me by the hand, Potter said, “let me show you something. I’ve got a subtle change to show you,” and he set off through the trees.

Potter led me by the hand through the woods. Pale shards of wintry sun cut through the leafy overhead canopy and the smell of the pine needles smelt fresh and sweet. Our walk through the woods was quiet, the only sound was the odd squawk from a crow as we startled it by our progress.

We walked hand in hand and for the first time since returning from the dead and back to the manor, it felt as if we were a real couple taking a stroll on a winter’s afternoon. But to think of this only made me long for what we could have had if we had met someplace else other than the Ragged Cove — in another time surrounded by a different set of circumstances.

The treeline ahead began to thin, the gaps between them growing bigger. Potter led me out into the clearing where the summerhouse stood.

“Notice anything different?” Potter almost seemed to whisper. “Can you see anything that has been pushed ?”

Just as I had remembered it, the summerhouse was a small, squat building, painted white, which stood on a raised wooden platform with a small set of steps leading up to its wooden front door. But there was something different — something had been pushed into place that hadn’t been there before. There was a statue. Letting go of Potter’s hand, I stepped into the clearing and walked slowly towards it. To see the statue just standing there made me feel uneasy — on edge — and if I still had a heart, I knew that it would be quickening in my chest.

I came to rest before it. It was made of grey coloured stone and even though its face was featureless, I knew that it was a statue of a girl. She was bent forward slightly and had her fingers laced together as if in prayer. To look at her reminded me of the many statues of St. Bernadette I had seen. Whoever had sculpted this life-sized statue of the girl had gone to tremendous detail. Her hair looked so real that at any moment, I thought it might just flutter back from her shoulders. She was dressed in what looked like a shroud, which came to rest against her marble-looking toes. I say marble as her face, hands, and feet were covered in the faintest of cracks. To look at her was, in some freaky way, like looking back at my own reflection as I stood alone before the mirror in my room, studying the cracks and lines in my naked flesh.