Chapter 2

“Where did all the blood come from?” Robin asked with concern.
Gwynedd was red and his skin burned from where he’d sprinted through the front garden. The sun scorched him- he’d never got so much sun burn in thirty seconds in his life but it was already going. “You’ll never believe me but a bird just attacked me!” He laughed as if it was nothing but he’d really been scared.
“So all those chicks you’ve been bothering have now come back to bother you.” Robin kidded.
“You look bad, byt. You should go put something on that.” Alex was rubbing her eyes tiredly with her index finger along her pronounced cheekbones as she kneeled on the chair, leaning over the back. Her dark hair curled around her focussing eyes. “Errr… never mind, I think it was just a trick of the light.”
“Trick-of-the-light’s one way of saying it.” Gwynedd uttered to himself. He was standing next to the front door, half facing them as they sat seemingly innocently. Whatever the girls were doing had stopped and was only going to recommence when he was too far away to hear them. He didn’t mention this but walked through the front room into the kitchen.
The white units and tops looked grey in the dark. It was a room in the house where sunlight only came in later in the evening- mostly because of Robins’ veranda. One asset of the room was that it got a “fantastic” view of the back garden.
The back garden was barely a fraction of what their family owned. Behind were many fields of barley- that was sold to the local brewery- and corn. They were both the tall varieties. He could see the scarecrow and the totem pole from the window. His mother was an artist, so there were many strange little things lying around, such as the bench that was made from an old Citroën AX that lay out there somewhere out of view.
He poured himself a drink of water form the tap and stared at the glass on the counter. There was a strange pattern of light and shadow stretching towards him. He was thirsty, but he couldn’t make himself drink the water.
He watched his hand as he picked up the glass. He observed the fragments as they protruded from between his fingers as it collapsed in his grip.
“What the…?” he didn’t know he’d gripped it that hard, or that he could in the first place. “Shit!” He realised he was bleeding and opened his palm. Shards of glass, with droplets of blood on the fell on the counter, splashed in the water that was already there. Some grains of glass were embedded in his torn skin and he could see them sparkle amongst the blood.
With his hand uncomfortably held in front of him, he searched for a towel or something. Before he could think, he was already licking his wounds despite the danger of pricking his tongue. It tasted good. It wasn’t as usually blood could taste good, but it quenched his thirst and gave him a buzz.


“Gwynedd?” Robin walked through the hallway as Gwen and Alex headed into Gwen’s bedroom. Her hairs stood on end on the pale skin of her arms. “Gwynedd? Have you got the fans on or something?” She approached his door. It was ajar and slamming shut and opening and slamming shut again in a rhythmic motion.
A cold breeze seeped through the gap and reached through the entire corridor as if sucking all of the heat from the room. The white walls hemmed her in. She felt ill at ease as she reached out to the handle. The breeze was like cold hands grabbing hers and pulling them towards the opening.
Slowly, she pushed the door fully open, her heart beating the front of her rib cage and her breath, slow and stuttered. The hinges creaked quietly.
It was empty. The green walls were shelved up with books. His bed was unkempt and there were random papers and items of clothes over the floor. She didn’t take much notice of her surroundings. She respected his privacy.
A sudden movement on one side of the room made her jump. The blue curtains flapped in the air and waved around like a fish struggling to get back into a river. She sighed with relief and went to close the window.


“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; Robin, you’re sister has big tits!” Alex caught the pillow Gwen threw only an inch before her eyes. They giggled and both stared up at Robin with a little surprise at the look on her face.
“What is it, Robin?” Gwen was the one who asked. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
“You’re one to talk, Miss paranormal!” Robin laughed. “Nah, it’s nothing. I was just looking for Gwyn to take a pic’ to put on my blog. I’ll title it “Girls get their own back on man-whore”.
“And? What do the cuts look like? Are they like nail marks?” Alex grinned maliciously.
“Nah, I couldn’t find him. He wasn’t in his room but we didn’t see him leave the house and he isn’t around.”
“Maybe he’s hiding.” Alex kidded.
“How could he leave the house without us seeing him?”
“I think he used his bedroom window.” Robin offered.
“That’s absurd. We’ve already trained him up on how to open doors and he’s still using the window?”
“Stop mucking around, Al.” Robin laughed.
“Hey! If you’re gonna start picking on every little thing and turn it into some kind of ghost story then get this. Have you been hearing that eerie howling every night?”
“Look, Al, it’s just some stray dog or something. The RSPCA centre already announced that there was a lock malfunction and thirty or so dogs got loose-…”
“-Yeah! … and that could be related!” Alex hushed them with a hand sign. “I reckon, that we should go’n’ check it out next full moon! ‘Course it’s absurd, but we’ve heaps of spare time on our hands!”
“Alright, but we already know we’re not gonna find anything.”
“Aha.” Alex nodded like a child, when in fact she was eighteen.
“Alright, so it’s not just me who’s superstitious?” Gwen looked pleased.
“We’re not superstitious, we’re just-…” Robin paused. “Is that the doorbell?”
“Huh? Yeah… I’ll answer it.” Gwen offered.
“Not if I get there first!”
Robin had an unfair head start, being half in the corridor at the time, so she reached the front door long before Gwen or Alex had even started scaling the stairs.
“Yeah?” She swung the door open suddenly and half expected the person on the step to be scared out of their wits, which would be good if they were the door-to-door man.
The man who stood there was about six feet, wore a long, worn leather, trench coat styled jacket and a wide brimmed ‘cowboy’ hat. He had a white bandanna or something tied around his neck. The sun was low behind him and the world was tinted orange and black.
She coughed and tilted her head, leaning against the door frame. “Yeah?” She repeated.
“I’m here because there were reported disturbances.”
She cocked a brow at him. “Serious?”
He stepped aside and she was suspicious. She could then fully see the sun, it was still there with a few streaks of cloud here and there. He sighed, as if he’d expected her to suddenly come out with something. “Have you had any break-ins? Any attacks from animals?”
“Animals?”
“Yes.”
“You mean the dogs that escaped the pound, right? I don’t see how that corresponds with break-ins but we have been hearing them howl in the night and that’s about it. I think they’re mostly concentrated around Cardigan area, not here.”
“I see.” He turned a little red. Where’s Cardigan? “Well…”
A smirk came across her lips and her eyes narrowed. “I hope that was of help, sir. Come again if you need anything… like maps or advice on where to go.”
“Is it that obvious I’m not from around here?”
“Subtly evident.” She nodded slyly.
“Well, thank you for your help Miss…”
“Vaughan.”
“If anything does happen, Miss Vaughan, I’ll be right round.”
“Alright.” Her voice was mockingly soft.
She closed the door and turned to see Gwen was holding onto the banister for dear life as she’d just tumbled down the last three steps of the stairs. Robin was impressed and Alex was giggling from the top of the stairs.
“I hate city people; traipsing around as if they know so much about every where and as if we normal people are just thick!”
“Oh.” Was all Alex could say.
“He was alright looking though.” Robin grinned.
The door rang again. She sighed with frustration and span on her heal - slamming the door open. “Yeah?”
The man outside jumped out of his skin and stared at her with wide eyes and a dropped jaw.
“Should I come back another time, Miss Robin?” Mr Jenkins waved at Gwen and Alex through the door. Gwen let go of the banister and gave up trying to save her own neck. There was a thud as she fell, sprawled half across the floor and half on the stairs at the same time with someone’s shoes under her head.
“Hello, Sir! By the way, I got my results today and I had an A* in English language, but only an A in English lit’… so pretty disappointing there.” Obviously she hadn’t noticed that most people weren’t accustomed to speaking towards the ground to a girl who was lying on top of her sisters’ discarded boots, especially if they were wearing a skirt no matter how respectable their underwear was.
“Nah. It’s an alright time. Out of interest, did you get visited by the man with the hat, yet?”
“Which man ‘with the hat’ are you talking about?”
“The man who just left our house about ten seconds before you arrived?”
“I didn’t see any one; perhaps it was longer than ten seconds.”
A chill ran down Robins’ spine and trailed through her shoulders. “Perhaps.” She agreed. “So why is it you’re here?”
“Firstly, to ask about my best pupils’ exam results.”
“There’s always a secondly when there’s a firstly.” Gwen stated from the ground where her legs were starting to fold over her head.“Indeed. Secondly, to ask a favour of you. You girls are good with horses and one of ours has managed to free himself and is running rampage through the play park and the woods.”