Monster (16 page)

‘M
y leg—don’t touch it, don’t touch my leg! Arghhh!’

There was blood on one leg of his jeans and he was shivering like a newborn foal. ‘Need to g-g-g-g-get inside,’ he mumbled. ‘Get m-m-m-me inside.’

‘Oh my God, what happened?’ wailed Dianna.

‘I went out for f-f-firewood,’ Leon stammered, as me and Dianna helped him to his feet and put both of his arms around us for stability. ‘It chased me up the ladder. I kicked it down, but it … arghh … it got in. Don’t leave me out here, please. Help me.’

‘Oh my God,’ said Regan, inspecting the leg. ‘Have you been bitten?’

‘Never mind that, we have to get him inside,’ I said.

‘Are you mad?’ said Maggie. ‘We can’t take him inside!’ Brody growled at our visitor in apparent agreement.

‘We can’t leave him out here, can we?’ said Clarice. ‘Poor baby.’

Maggie frowned.
‘Pourquoi?’

‘What do you mean,
pourquoi
? Look at him!’

Maggie shrugged. ‘Yeah, I’m looking at him. He’s just burned down the Tree House to get a free ticket indoors.’

‘I didn’t … I kn-n-n-nocked over a lamp.’ He shuddered painfully.

Brody was barking his head off.

Maggie folded her arms and stood watching us. ‘We can’t just take him inside.’

I knew Maggie had a point, but I couldn’t leave him in the snow. ‘If he stays out here much longer he’ll freeze to death. He’s halfway there already.’

‘I say we leave him out here. We don’t know what he’s capable of. He’s a murderer, remember? Even the dog knows he’s a wrong ‘un.’

‘Tabs, take Brody inside!’ I told her angrily, his bark beginning to gnaw on my patience. Tabby obediently led the dog into Main House, coaxing him with some iced gems from her pocket. ‘We’re not leaving him out here. He could be hypothermic. We need to warm him up. Come on!’

Maggie stared at me. Regan and Clarice fluttered and flapped around us and me and Dianna helped Leon across the driveway and towards the front door where, reluctantly, Maggie held it open for us.

‘He’s shaking,’ she said, as we struggled past her, settling Leon down on Main Hall’s bearskin rug.

‘He’s freezing,’ I said. ‘We need to dry him off and remove his clothes.’

‘Things are looking up, eh, Clarice?’ said Maggie.

‘Oh, shut your face,’ said Clarice, looking helplessly at Leon like he was her brave soldier who we had carried back from the Somme.

‘He’ll need a warm drink or soup or something too,’ I said. ‘Dianna, the keys you found, was there a bunch on there for the Saul-Hudsons’ apartment?’

‘Yes, I think so.’ She patted her tunic pocket and there was a
chink.
She pulled out the bunch and began rifling through them to find the right one.

‘Okay, we’ll get him upstairs and lie him down on their bed. It’ll be more comfortable for him.’

‘I’ll go and grab some warm blankets from the airing cupboard, shall I?’ Clarice offered. I almost didn’t recognise her voice.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That would be good.’

‘Shall I make him some soup, Nash?’ said Tabby’s little voice.

‘Yeah. Go into the kitchens and see if you can find where Cook keeps the tins. Don’t open any though. Regan, go and help her. And take Brody with you, okay?’

‘It’s a bite, isn’t it?’ said Regan, looking at Leon’s blood-soaked jean leg.

‘Just
go
, Regan,’ I barked and she quickly took Tabby’s hand and Brody’s lead and left the Hall.

Dianna and I started to take Leon upstairs, still with no help from Maggie who sat right in the middle of the stairs. ‘He’s covered in blood, for God’s sake. He could have diseases. And we don’t know what caused that injury. Who’s to say that Matron didn’t do it in self-defence? What if he found her in the woods, she fought him off, maybe injured him?’

‘If you’re not going to help us, move out of the way,’ said Dianna.

‘I’m just saying, there might be more to this injury than meets the eye. He’s a criminal. He’s escaped from prison. We shouldn’t be going anywhere near him.’

‘Maggie, you’re probably right, but he is badly hurt.’

‘He’s not your brother, Nash. He’s not Seb.’

‘
Move
it, Maggie!’

‘Arggggghhhhhhhhhh!’ Leon screamed.

This time, we carried him bodily up the hallway stairs and along the green-carpeted mile towards the Saul-Hudsons’ private apartment. Between screams, we learned that the thing which had attacked him in the woods had apparently been ‘as big as a jaguar’. It had bitten him as he was halfway up the ladder to the Tree House and the lamp he had knocked over was a kerosene one that Dianna had found in the storage sheds and taken up there for him. He’d knocked it over in his struggle to get away.

‘Okaaay,’ I said, thinking it was strange that the Beast hadn’t taken his foot off completely. ‘That must have been your blood we found then,’ I said. ‘On the ladder and on the snow.’

Leon was still shivering. I vaguely remembered from Brownies that shivering was a good sign. ‘I didn’t mean to … burn it down,’ he said through gritted teeth.

‘That’s all right,’ said Maggie, ‘we can just add arsonist to your list of skills. Under murderer and burglar. And rapist.’

‘I’m not … a … rapist.’

‘There’s still time.’

‘Maggie, stop it,’ I said.

‘Oh come on, Nash. What, have you got the murderer kink as well now? You don’t honestly buy that story, do you?’
Nobody answered her. She gave up arguing and folded her arms in exasperation. As it turned out, no, I
didn’t
quite buy his story, though at that moment I couldn’t figure out why.

Finally, at the last stage, Dianna left to start unlocking the doors and we managed to heave him inside the Saul-Hudsons’ massive Vettriano-decorated bedroom, manoeuvring him clumsily up onto the frilly-silk king size bed.

‘Aaaarrrrrghhhhhhhh, Jesus!’ Leon wailed again. ‘Knock me out, just knock me out!’

‘God, he’s in so much pain,’ cried Dianna, shaking almost as much as her brother.

‘How can you tell?’ said Maggie, arms annoyingly folded.

Clarice returned with a big pile of blankets. She plonked them on the end of the bed as I started removing Leon’s clothes. ‘Uh, do you need any help doing that, Nash?’ she said.

‘Clarice, there’s a time and a place,’ said Maggie.

Clarice went to say something, but I jumped in. ‘Ignore her. Yes, we need to get his coat and jumper off and get some warm clothes on him. See what Mr Saul-Hudson’s got in the wardrobe.’

‘Aaaaaarrgghhh!’ Leon seethed, as I gently tried to remove his jeans, careful not to touch the bite. It was no use. Every tug on the denim produced a blood-curdling yell from the patient so in the end I gave up. I rooted through the drawers of a large white dressing table for scissors, and found some hairdressing ones.

Clarice yelped as though she could feel everything he could. ‘Is there anything we can give him in Sickbay, Nash? To help with the pain?’

‘Paracetamol—that’s about it,’ I said.

‘What about anaesthetic?’

‘I doubt they keep any anaesthetic on school property.’
Snip snip snip.

Leon screamed like a banshee as I finally reached the end of his leg and fully revealed his wound to the world.

There was a ring of small but deep incisions, as though something’s sharp teeth had clenched around his leg, all gaping open and bleeding. In one of the wounds, I saw bone. My brother had once gashed his thigh on some barbed wire when we’d been playing in a field behind our house and I’d fainted when I saw it. But Seb knew exactly what to do. He talked me through it.

This looked like a big animal bite, but it was no animal bite I’d ever seen. The puncture wounds were so thin, oozing crimson red.

Clarice’s hand leapt to her mouth. ‘What the hell is that?’ Her breathing got shallower and shallower until she was sort of scream-crying, right in my ear.

Tabby was still standing at my side. ‘I think the monster did that,’ she said. She was completely unfussed, unlike Clarice and Dianna, who were verging on hysterics.

Tabby was too bright to be told otherwise and believe it, so I said nothing. ‘Clarice, go to Sickbay and get me the first aid box from the window, please.’ I clocked the kettle by the bed. ‘Dianna, boil that kettle, will you? There’s a measuring jug on the bath. We need to get the boiled water tepid and wash the wound.’

‘How are we going to do that?’ she asked.

‘Uh … a washing-up bowl. See if there’s one in the kitchenette, next door. We’ll rest his leg on it and run the warm water onto it to try to flush out any infection.’

She set to work, unplugging and taking the kettle into the bathroom. I took one of the sheets from the extra pile
by Leon’s pillow and started tearing it up. Clarice came back in with the first aid kit, but, when I opened it, the box was empty.

‘Go back and look again, Clarice. I need dressings, antiseptic wipes and saline solution.’

‘Arghhh!’ Leon groaned. His pain seemed to be getting worse.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she fluttered.

‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘Just bring me back the things and we can start cleaning him up, all right?’

Dianna returned with the kettle and plugged it back in to boil it. Regan then appeared with a bag of ice. She stopped at the foot of the bed. She couldn’t take her eyes off the bite. ‘Was it a big animal? Like a big cat, only with a pointier head and teeth like knife blades?’

Leon nodded, his face strained. ‘I only saw it for a second.’

‘You actually saw it?’ said Regan, clearly in awe.

‘When I got inside the Tree House, I looked down. It was jumping up. It jumped … about s-s-s-six f-f-f-feet in the air. It almost had my face off.’

‘Liar,’ said Maggie, but no one was paying any attention. Everyone else was either busy or in pain.

‘Did it have these mottled markings on it? Like a jaguar but you’d have to be really looking at it and really close to see them?’

‘Uh, I don’t know. Ow! Watch it! It just looked b-b-b-black to me. With r-r-red eyes.’

‘Red eyes,’ Regan gasped. ‘So the legend
is
true then, that it has red eyes when it hunts.’

‘Yeah,’ said Leon.

I looked at him. He looked at me and stared me out until I looked away.

My hands were covered in blood again, just as they had been the previous night. ‘Did you see … anything else when you were trying to get here? Anyone in the snow?’

‘Like who?’ The kettle clicked beside him on the nightstand and Dianna filled a plastic measuring jug with hot water.

‘A woman. Our matron. She went missing last night. She must be out there somewhere.’

He shook his head, breathing like he was giving birth now. ‘You think it g-g-got her?’

Dianna started crying again, messy and unashamed.

‘We don’t know. We don’t know anything for sure. It’s okay,’ I told her.

‘N-n-n-no, it’s not.’ Leon sweated and seethed in his sickbed like the girl from
The Exorcist.
‘None of you are safe here. You’ve got to get your p-p-p-p-parents to come and get you. That th-th-th-thing is out there. Look what it’s done to me.’

‘Why do you think we’re all here in the first place?’ I said. ‘We’re all waiting for our parents. The phone isn’t working because of the storm. None of us can get home.’

‘Call the police,’ he begged. ‘I don’t care if they t-t-take me back.’

‘We don’t have a phone,’ I repeated. ‘None of us do. We’re all stuck here.’

Leon flopped his head back on the pillow.

Clarice returned, this time with actual medical supplies. Unclicking it, I laid everything out on the bed beside Leon’s leg. I gently propped up his foot on the bottom bed board
and began swabbing the wound with a saline wipe. He let out the most ear-piercing scream yet.

‘Oh screw this,’ said Maggie, and left the room.

‘Maggie? Where are you going?’ I called out to her. She called something back, but I couldn’t hear it over Leon’s screams.

‘She wasn’t doing anything anyway,’ said Regan, appearing in the doorway, as though from a puff of smoke.

‘Have you left Tabby down there with that soup on?’ I said.

‘No, I did it in the microwave. I’m keeping it warm under a plate.’

‘Oh. Good. Thanks.’

Dianna and Clarice dressed the shivering patient in a warm shirt and Argyll cardigan, though Leon took a brief break from his agonies to tell them he wouldn’t wear the golf trousers they’d picked out ‘under any cock-sucking circumstances’.

Tabby appeared at my elbow and tugged on my jumper sleeve. ‘Brody is having his lunch.’

‘Good girl.’

‘What happened to the man?’

‘He’s hurt his leg. We have to look after him.’

‘Did the monster hurt him?’

‘Uh, no, no, Tabs, don’t worry. He just … fell over.’

‘We’ve got to … get out of here,’ said Leon again, his sweaty face whiter than the sheets he was lying on. ‘That thing’s out there. It’ll get in.’

‘It’s okay, it’s okay.’ Dianna tried her best to soothe him.

At that moment, Maggie reappeared, this time with a half-empty bottle in each hand.

‘What the hell’s that?’ said Clarice.

‘Alcohol.’

‘Where did you get it?’ said Dianna sniffily.

‘Next door. Keys to their lounge are on that bunch. I brought whiskey and voddy but there’s loads more in there. Thank God for Mr Saul-H and his failed stint in rehab, eh?’

‘Trust you,’ Dianna snipped. ‘Long as you’re enjoying yourself, nothing else matters, does it, Maggie?’

‘Actually, I got them for Laughing Boy there,’ she said, walking towards the bed. ‘You said you needed anaesthetic.’ She nodded at the whiskey. ‘
Vive la
France. If he’s pissed enough, maybe he’ll stop screaming.’

‘You can’t give a hypothermic person alcohol, Maggie. That’s stupid.’ Regan left the room.

‘More stupid than inviting a murderer into a girls’ school for first aid and light refreshments?’

Leon sat up and Maggie threw him the whiskey bottle. He caught it in one hand and fumbled to get the lid off. Once he’d unscrewed the cap, he began guzzling faster than an infant at a full teat. Then Maggie began rooting through the bedside drawers as though her life depended on it.