Kiera Hudson & The Creeping Men (13 page)

“Miss Amanda!” Locke cried out.

The girl looked up, the top half of her body sticking up out of the false floor I had discovered in the bottom of the wardrobe. Even in the weak moonlight that shone through the window, I could see that the girl looked gaunt and scared. Her eyes sparkled darkly at us. Then no sooner had she appeared, she was gone, dropping back through the hole beneath the floor of the wardrobe.

Switching on my torch again, I raced across the room. I threw wide the wardrobe doors, shining torchlight down into the hole. I took no satisfaction from seeing the tunnel and knowing that I had been right. What a desperate situation we had uncovered at Bastille Hall. Potter and Locke joined me at the wardrobe, both peering over my shoulder and down into the tunnel.

“What do we do now?” Locke gasped.

“We follow her,” I said, stooping down and climbing into the hole.

There was a small ladder fixed to the wall that was something close to a lift shaft built within the walls of Bastille Hall. I leapt from the bottom rung, dropping into a narrow passageway. It wasn’t big enough for me to stand tall. So bent forward, and with the torch shining ahead of me, I followed the sound of the footfalls I could hear racing away.

“Don’t be scared,” I called after the fleeing girl. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

Locke dropped into the hole, helped down by Potter, who had hold of her by the arms. He followed. Together we raced along the passageway. The walls were curved and very old. How long the tunnel had been in existence I didn’t know. But the air was damp and the walls were covered in giant patches of green and yellow moss. With the light from my torch bouncing off the walls, I caught sight of the girl racing ahead of us. Setting eyes on her, I slowed. Was that Kayla in the tunnel I could see? The girl was walking backwards, away from me just like Kayla had in the wood. And like then, she now beckoned me toward her with a wave of one pale hand.

“Kayla?” I gasped, coming to a sudden stop.

“What did you say?” Potter asked, crunching into me from behind.

“Nothing,” I whispered.

“Why have you stopped? She’s getting away,” he said, prodding me in the back.

The torchlight splashed the walls, lighting up the darkness ahead of us again. But it was no longer Kayla I could see, but Miss Amanda. She was climbing up a ladder that led up out of the underground passageway.

I moved forward, heart aching as my mind swam with thoughts of my friend Kayla again. Reaching the ladder, I looked up. The girl had gone, so I started to climb. I peered out into a darkened room. There was a gas lamp that had been turned down low. I could see a bed, a table, and two chairs. And there, in the centre of the room, I could see Miss Amanda. She crouched on all fours, watching me. As I climbed out of the hole, I saw something so strange that my heart almost came to a sudden stop. The girl scampered backwards at speed on all fours and into the darkness beneath the bed in the corner.

I climbed out of the hole into what I guessed was the small outhouse at the edge of the wood. The windows were covered so that I couldn’t see out. Locke, then Potter, climbed up out of the hole.

“Where is Miss Amanda?” Locke fretted almost at once.

I looked in the direction of the bed. “She’s hiding under there,” I whispered.

Ms. Locke edged her way toward the bed. I gripped her arm, but she shook it free. “Amanda,” she said, kneeling and trying to see into the darkness beneath the bed. “You can come out. It’s me, Ms. Locke. You don’t have to be scared of me.”

A sudden snarl sounded from the darkness beneath the bed. Ms. Locke flinched so violently that she fell backwards onto the floor. The sound came again as Locke scrambled to her feet. “You’ve got to help her. The hound has Miss Amanda held captive beneath the bed. Get her out of there.”

“I fear that Miss Amanda is the hound,” I said, looking at her.

“Not a hound,” a voice said and we looked back to see Sir Edmund climbing out of the hole and up into the outhouse. “My daughter is a Leshy.”

“A Leshy?” I asked.

Recognising me from the wood, Sir Edmund raised his gun, took aim, and fired.

I spun around, flying back through the air as if I’d been punched hard in the arm. Hitting the wall of the outhouse, I dropped to the floor. Gripping the top of my left arm, I felt hot blood gush through my fingers. Peering up through my fringe, I saw Potter leap toward Sir Edmund. In one flash of movement, Potter had taken the gun from Sir Edmund’s hands and dropped him to the floor with one bone-splintering punch to the face.

Just as I lay and clutched my arm, Sir Edmund sat on the other side of the outhouse, hands covering his nose. Blood pumped from it in a thick, black gush.

“Are you are okay?” Potter asked, dropping to his knees beside me.

“I think it’s just a graze.” I winced.

“Let me see,” Potter said, peeling back my coat. He rolled up my T-shirt sleeve that was now stained crimson. “That’s going to sting a bit and you’re gonna need some stitches.”

“I’ll be okay,” I said, pulling my coat back over the wound, and pressing my hand to it. I forced myself up into a sitting position.

“What is going on?” Ms. Locke asked, her voice close to becoming hysterical.

“She’s come for my daughter,” Sir Edmund groaned, pointing one blood-stained finger at me. “I found her in the grounds this morning. I tried to shoot her then – but I didn’t miss this time.”

“Kiera?” Potter asked, looking down at me. “Is this true?”

I nodded my head.

“What were you doing here this morning?” he asked. Then as if something inside of him had clicked into place, he quickly added, “That’s why you were late to work this morning. That’s how you got those scratches.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Why?” he asked, looking suddenly angry.

“Because I knew you weren’t taking what Ms. Locke had told us seriously,” I said. “I knew that if I suggested we come and investigate, you would have said no.”

“I’m here now, aren’t I?” he said.

“Only because you were hoping to see me screw up,” I winced, getting to my feet. If we were going to get into another argument, I didn’t want him looking down upon me as I sat bleeding on the floor. I wanted to be standing. I wanted to be equal with him.

“That’s not true,” Potter said, but he knew as much as I did that it was.

A snarl came from beneath the bed again, and Locke cowered backwards, nearly tripping over Sir Edmund who, sat slumped on the floor nursing his nose.

“We’ll talk about this later back at the office,” Potter glared.

“If you like,” I shrugged. I bent at the knees and peered beneath the bed.

“Keep away from her,” Sir Edmund said, getting to his knees.

“Despite what you think,” I said, “I’m not here to hurt your daughter. I’m here to help.”

“So what were you doing sneaking about the grounds this morning?” he snapped, blood spraying from his top lip.

“It’s my fault,” Ms. Locke said. “Miss Hudson was just doing her job.”

“Job?” he asked, shooting her a distrustful stare. “What job?”

“I employed Miss Hudson and her partner, Mr. Potter…”

“She’s not my partner,” Potter said, still angry that I had come to Bastille Hall without his knowledge or say so. “
Miss
Hudson is my temporary secretary, that’s all.”

“Then you really need to her employ her as one of your fulltime investigators,” Locke said. “It would appear, Mr. Potter, that The Creeping Men will soon be defunct without her.”

“Creeping what?” Sir Edmund muttered, arming blood from beneath his nose. “Investigators? What is going on here?”

“I hired them to investigate the disappearance of Miss Amanda,” Locke finally confessed.

“But I told you…” Sir Edmund started.

“You told her a bunch of bullshit,” Potter cut in. “So perhaps you would like to start telling the truth?”

Sir Edmund looked at us. “Okay,” he sighed. Then reaching under the bed, he whispered, “It’s okay, Amanda, you can come out. No one is going to hurt you here.”

Locke stepped away from the bed, a look of horror on her face as Miss Amanda crawled out backwards from beneath it. The girl wore a loose-fitting dress, but her feet were bare. It was then that I too stepped away at the sight of Miss Amanda’s feet and hands. They were twisted backwards, as if they had been put on the wrong way. Her toes and fingers pointed backwards.

Amanda’s father reached for her, holding her tight to his chest. The girl straightened up, and as she did, there was a terrifying crunching sound, like that of breaking bones as her feet and hands twisted back into the correct position.

Throwing her hands to her face, Ms. Locke, cried out, fainting upon the bed.

“Oh, Christ,” Potter muttered, lighting himself a cigarette.

Gently patting the back of Ms. Locke’s hand, I brought her out of her daze. It was her love for the girl which made the whole situation so traumatic for her. It must have been heart-breaking for Ms. Locke to see the girl she loved as her daughter to be so deformed-looking.

“There was no dog or hound, not a real one at least,” Sir Edmund said, cradling his daughter against him. She peered over his arm at Ms. Locke. “My daughter is a Leshy.”

“What’s a Leshy?” I asked, trying to soothe Ms. Locke by taking her hand in mine. I could feel her trembling next to me. Potter stood propped against the wall and smoked. Although he gave the appearance that he was disinterested, I could see that he was watching the girl very carefully.

“The Leshy or Lesovik, as they are rightly known, do have a close bond with the grey wolf, but they are not true wolves themselves,” Sir Edmund started to explain. “They are shapeshifters, and just like the mythical werewolf, the Leshy will turn on a full moon.”

At the mention of the word werewolf, I glanced at Potter for any kind of reaction. But his face stayed impassive and unreadable as he continued to watch the girl and listen to Sir Edmund.

“What do they turn into?” I asked.

“Each one is different,” Sir Edmund said. “They can take the shape of any forest creature. Some can even take the form of birds and fly.”

Again I glanced at Potter. Would he react at all at the mention of flying creatures? I wondered. But he didn’t.

“What kind of creature does Amanda become?” Ms. Locke asked, her voice rattling as she sat and trembled beside me.

“It’s too early to say, but I think perhaps she is taking the form of the Leshy’s closet relative, the wolf,” Sir Edmund said, gently placing a kiss on the crown of his daughter’s head. I could see that he loved her very much. “I fear that she will take after her mother.”

“But her mother is dead,” Ms. Locke said. “She died during childbirth – or is that more of your lies?”

“Sadly, that is true, her mother is dead. She died in this very room,” he said.

“How did you ever come to mix it up with one of these creatures?” Potter finally spoke up. A blue haze of smoke wafting about his head as he continued to draw on the cigarette jutting from the corner of his mouth.

“About fifteen years ago, I had cause to be on business in Spain, close to the Bay of Biscay,” Sir Edmund said. “I was younger then and not so right thinking – just a foolish young man. I had been out drinking with some friends when I became separated from them. I wandered into a remote part of the province where I happened upon a sandy stretch of beach. There was a party – people were dancing, conjurors were entertaining those gathered by the shore. There was a delightful and almost carnival type atmosphere amongst these people. Before too much time had passed, my hand had been grabbed by the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Her hair was dark and eyes the clearest of blues. We danced together on the beach, until at dawn she told me she had to go.

“‘Go where?’ I asked her, refusing to let her go.

“‘Home,’ she smiled, sliding her hand free of mine.

“‘Then let me walk you there,’ I said.

“‘No, you must never come to my home,’ she warned, and it was the first time since meeting her that I had seen her smile fade.

“‘If it is your father you fear, then let me speak with him. Let him see that I’m an honourable man with good prospects for the future,’ I told her.

“‘No, no,’ she said, shying away from me. ‘I will meet you here tomorrow night.’ Then she was gone, disappearing back along the beach with some of the other youths we had been dancing with.

“I could not get her from my mind all day, yet I didn’t even know her name. It was like she had bewitched me in some way,” Sir Edmund said. “So that night, I made up some excuse so that I could once again be parted from my traveling companions. I went to the beach, and as promised, the beautiful young woman who I had been unable to rid from my mind was waiting for me. But tonight she had come alone.

“‘Where are your friends?’ I asked her.

“‘I have snuck away so I can see you again, see you one last time,’ she said. ‘We don’t have long together, just a few hours at the most before they realise I am gone.’

“‘What do you mean I won’t see you again? Where is it you are going to?’ I asked her.

“‘My people are moving on and I have to go with them,’ she said.

“‘But there must be a way…’ I started, but before the words had left my lips, she had kissed me.

“I kissed her back with as much passion as she kissed me. I could not help myself,” Sir Edmund explained. “It was like a spell had been cast over me. Hand in hand, she led me away up the beach where I spent the happiest hours of my life. Locked in each other’s arms and knowing that I might never see her again, I beseeched her to come visit me in England. I told her where she could find me. She said that it would be impossible – that she would never be able to leave her family. I feared that perhaps in some way she was being held prisoner.

“‘I am not a prisoner,’ she assured me. ‘They are my people. We travel together. We travel as one.’

“Having to take her at her word, and hoping that perhaps we could find a way, I drifted off to sleep on the sand, holding her in my arms,” Sir Edmund told us. “But when I woke she had gone – slipped from my arms as I lay sleeping – dreaming for her. I returned to England with a heavy heart.”

“Did you not search for her?” Ms. Locke asked.

“Where should I have looked?” he said in reply. “I didn’t even know her name.”

“I’ve had a few dates like that,” Potter cut in, dropping his cigarette to the floor. He lit another almost at once.

Ignoring him, Sir Edmund, continued. “Several months later, and believing all hope had been lost in ever finding that beautiful young woman again, she arrived one morning at my door.”

“Ouch,” Potter groaned. “That’s not so good. Got her preggers, had you?”

“It was good – very good,” Sir Edmund glared at him. “And yes, she was pregnant.”

“Come looking for money, did she?” Potter smirked. “I hope you got a DNA test because…”

“Look, Mr. Potter,” Sir Edmund seethed, “I do not know from which rock you’ve crawled out from under, but please feel free to crawl back beneath it at any time.”

“I’m just fine standing right here,” Potter said, that cocky look on his face again.

“What was her name?” I asked Sir Edmund, the pain in my arm beginning to ease.

“Her name was as beautiful as she,” Sir Edmund said, as if conjuring her memory in his mind. “She was called Magdalena. And even though we had been parted, it appeared that our love for each other had not faded. I welcomed Magdalena and my unborn child into my home. But I got the feeling that however deep our love was for each other, Magdalena was not truly happy. At first I thought it was because she was finding it difficult to settle in a foreign land, or perhaps that she missed her family. Then one night, I woke to find her sobbing at the foot of the bed. Taking her in my arms, I begged her to tell me what it was that made her so unhappy. It was that night as I held her close in my arms she told me everything. She told me what she really was.”

“She was one of these Leshy that you have described?” Ms. Locke asked.

“Yes,” Sir Edmund nodded. “But you have to understand that discovering what she truly was made no difference to my feelings for her. In fact, I loved Magdalena even more from that moment onwards.”

“Even though she was a… a…” Ms. Locke struggled to find the most tactful phrase or word.

“A monster?” Sir Edmund said for her. “I loved her even when she told me that her people were a race of murderous shapeshifters who lure their victims to their deaths by imitating voices and looking like people known to their victims.”

“What did you say?” I blurted out, remembering how I’d believed I’d seen Kayla in the woods and in the passageway.

“The Leshy can undertake terrible trickery,” Sir Edmund explained further. “They like to kill their victims in the woods and forests where they dwell. To do so, they mimic the voices and shapeshift to look like one of their victim’s friends or relatives. The victim, believing that they have come across someone they know and trust, follows them – follows them to their death.”

All I could see was Kayla in the front of my mind, and I too realised that I had been tricked. It hadn’t been Kayla I had seen in the woods. It hadn’t been Kayla I had seen in the passageway, it had been a Leshy – Miss Amanda coaxing me to my death. It wasn’t that thought which brought tears to my eyes, but the sudden realisation that it wasn’t my friend Kayla I had seen. I looked at Amanda, as she now lie on her side, head rested against her father’s lap. She looked so peaceful. So unable to harm or trick anyone.

“As you probably saw, my daughter can twist her hands and feet around,” Sir Edmund said. “This is so they can walk backwards, never breaking the stare – always maintaining eye contact with their victims as they lead them deeper and deeper into the woods and forests. But there is another reason, too, that they walk backwards…”

“It makes tracking them almost impossible,” I said, remembering how easily I had been fooled and confused by the footprints I had found on the edge of the wood.

“Exactly,” Sir Edmund said. “The Leshy can be cunning if they so wish.”

“And what about Magdalena?” Potter asked. “Was she so cunning?”

“If she was, then I never saw it,” Sir Edmund said. “She seemed so unlike her people – the other Leshy – she had travelled with. That is why she wanted to break her ties with them but feared doing so. She knew that they would come after her. And however much she wanted to come looking for me after that stolen night we shared on the beach, she knew that she couldn’t.”

“But she did,” Locke reminded him.

“Magdalena tried to hide her pregnancy from her people, but it became inevitable that they would find out, and eventually they did,” he said. “They wanted to know which of the Leshy she had mixed with, but no male in the group would step forward and take responsibility. Why should they? It had been none of them – I was the father of the child that Magdalena carried. It didn’t take too long for one of the Leshy to suspect that the father of the child had been the man they had seen Magdalena dancing with on the beach some months before. When confronted over the matter by her people, Magdalena confessed and declared her love for me. The Leshy were outraged, never before had one of their kind mixed with a human nor loved one. It was agreed that as soon as the child was born, it would be killed. The Leshy said it would be a freak – an abomination to their kind.

“So Magdalena fled her people and came to England in search of me – the natural father of the child. We had no idea how the child would be, but I believed that Magdalena was so beautiful in spirit and looks that the child would be perfect,” he said. “But there was a nagging disquiet inside of me that I never shared with Magdalena.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Every full moon, despite however beautiful and tender Magdalena was, the Leshy that lived deep within her would show itself. She would not always fully turn into a wolf, but I could find her wandering backwards through the woods, looking like my father or my mother, both who had died some years before leaving Bastille Hall to me. So convincing was her mimickery and disguise, that I was often drawn into the woods by her. I feared that if it wasn’t for the fact I knew what Magdalena truly was, she might have killed me too, but I wasn’t fooled by her trickery. So it was agreed between us that on each full moon, she would come out to this outhouse. It had once been used as shelter by my parents during World War II, and as you now know, there was a tunnel connecting the house with the shelter. It was somewhere safe that Magdalena could be secured without harming me or others. And it was during the night of a full moon, as Magdalena sheltered in here, that she gave birth to Amanda,” he said, brushing his daughter’s hair with his fingers.

I looked at her. Amanda had her eyes closed, resting her head against her father. Was she asleep? I wondered. The hour was late.

“I heard her cry out in the dead of night,” Sir Edmund continued. “I unlocked the hidden panel and came rushing through the tunnel. But I was too late, for as I reached this very room, my beautiful Magdalena lay dead on the bed, cradling our newborn daughter to her chest.

“Although it was April, it snowed on the day I buried Magdalena in the woods. I knew that snow was for her,” he said.

“How come?” I asked.

“Magdalena said she had never seen snow, and she hoped that now she lived in England that she might see some, but she died before she did. I’m glad it snowed that day. She would have liked that. Soon after, I employed you, Ms. Locke,” Sir Edmund said, glancing up at her. “You had no idea what had gone on before, only that Amanda’s mother had died during childbirth, and that much was true at least. But I kept a watchful eye over Amanda, looking for any kind of change in her behaviour. But there was none that I could see, and I began to wonder if perhaps the Leshy curse, for that is what I believe it to be, had somehow passed over my daughter. So as the years passed and Amanda grew older without any sign of Leshy traits, I began to relax. Venture further away from home on business. I also removed the bed and other furniture from the outhouse, covering the trapdoor in the floor with carpet. However, Amanda discovered one day that you could slide back the floor of the wardrobe. It was locked, but she came asking what was hidden beneath. Knowing that her curiosity had been aroused, I took her down into the secret passage and showed her where it led to. But I forbade her to tell anyone about it…”