The Considine Curse Read online

  I wonder what other confessions her diary contains. I try to force myself out of the room but fear binds me to the bed. The night passes slowly. I try to imagine how my other cousins look as wolves. Amelia is the hardest to picture; she is so pretty and stylish, it is difficult to imagine her covered in hair with a long dog-like nose and sharp white teeth.

  Only as daylight is creeping around the side of the blind do I finally fall asleep. When I wake up, the clock on Elspeth’s wall says it’s midday. I get out of bed and go into the living room.

  Aunt Dee is sitting on the sofa, a laptop on her knee, surrounded by pieces of paper and open books. She is sitting on the cushion that hides Grandma’s diary.

  ‘Afternoon. You slept well.’ She laughs.

  It has been the worst night of my life but I nod and ask where everyone else is.

  ‘Sewell and your mum have gone to the farmers’ market. The girls were driving me mad with their bickering so I sent them too. Honestly, you would think they’d be able to share for two nights without being at each other’s throats.’ The words conjure up a different image to the one she intends. ‘You don’t mind getting your own breakfast, do you? I think I’m on the final furlong and there’s light at the end of the tunnel. That’s a mixed metaphor but you know what I mean.’

  I make myself cereal, then take a shower. I wish there was some noise in the house, a TV on or some music playing, anything to distract me from the terrible flashes of memory from last night. Every time I close my eyes I see Oberon’s hungry wolf face in front of me. In the shower I peel off the bandage on my hand. It still feels tender but the wound is barely visible now. I am brushing my teeth when the doorbell rings.

  ‘Mariel, would you mind getting that?’ shouts Aunt Dee. ‘If it’s anyone for me, I’m not in.’

  I quickly pull on my jeans and T-shirt and go to the door. Father Gowlett is standing on the doorstep. He adjusts his glasses and says. ‘Oh, hello again. I was actually hoping to have a word with Dee.’

  ‘She’s not in,’ I lie.

  He smiles and says in a loud voice, ‘Or she’s in there working on her book but doesn’t want to be disturbed.’

  From the living room, Aunt Dee shouts, ‘You know me too well, Ben.’

  Father Gowlett winks at me. ‘Oh well, could you pass on a message for me? Could you say that I am happy to babysit for Lily and Elspeth on Wednesday night?’

  ‘OK.’

  His eyes light up and he adds loudly, ‘Actually tell her I’ll babysit on condition she comes to church tomorrow?’

  ‘Not a chance,’ shouts Aunt Dee. ‘Tell him to stop God-bothering you.’

  He laughs and says to me, ‘She’s not a big fan of religion, your aunt, but I always say that the godless need us more than believers do.’

  ‘What about Grandma? Did she believe?’ I ask.

  ‘Flora believed in family.’

  ‘You knew my grandma well, didn’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes, Flora moved to Wilderdale when I was a young man.’

  ‘What was she like?’

  Father Gowlett considers this and says, ‘Intriguing. She was an intriguing woman.’

  There is something in the way he says it that makes me think he knows more than he is letting on.

  ‘I’ll let you into a secret,’ he says. He bends down to speak in my ear and, for a moment, I wonder what he is going to say. ‘When we were young, your grandmother and I courted.’ He chuckles. ‘That’s what it was called back then. Dating, I suppose you’d say these days. I actually proposed to her once.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  He straightens up. ‘She said she couldn’t marry me because she had fallen in love with my best friend. That was your grandfather.’

  ‘You were best friends?’

  ‘All our lives. Even after he stole Flora from me.’

  ‘What was Grandad like?’

  ‘Frank was cleverer, fitter, stronger and richer than me. He even married the girl I loved, and yet he was impossible to hate. A true gent was Frank. I lost a great friend when he died. It was a terrible way to go.’

  ‘Why? How did he die?’

  ‘Your mother never told you?’

  ‘She told me he died, she never told me how.’

  ‘Oh well, I shouldn’t be the one then.’

  ‘I want to know.’

  Father Gowlett shuffles his feet and then answers. ‘A burglar broke into Louvre House. Frank went downstairs to confront him. In the struggle he was killed. Luckily for you the burglar fled.’

  ‘Why was that lucky for me?’ I ask.

  ‘You and your mother were staying with your grandparents at the time. Your mother, the poor dear, was the one who found his body on the kitchen floor.’

  ‘Where was Grandma?’

  ‘She slept through the whole thing.’

  I imagine the scene: Mum coming downstairs to find her father dead, crying or screaming before running upstairs to check on me, still sleeping in my cot. Her own mother waking up to find her husband had been killed. The image appears vividly in my mind almost like I can actually remember it. It is another thing Mum has kept from me, but I can’t blame her for this one.

  ‘I must go now, but why don’t you come to my service tomorrow?’ says Father Gowlett.

  I agree to go because it feels to me like there are other questions I need to ask him. Once he has gone, I finish getting dressed, then head outside. I’m not really going anywhere in particular but I find myself at the library. It has large windows and sliding doors. There is an information desk with a bored-looking student sitting behind it, reading a book. I ask him for the section on Genetics.

  ‘Science books are on the second floor,’ he replies, barely looking up from his book.

  There are a few students dotted around the library, mostly sitting at computers. The Genetics section, however, is empty. I pull out several dull-looking books. There is nothing in the index about a Lycan gene. Under ‘W’ there is reference to a werewolf gene but when I turn to the page it is a condition called ‘hypertrichosis’, which causes extreme hair growth in people. There is a picture of a man whose entire body, including his face is covered in hair, which is pretty weird but a long way from what I witnessed last night. The man in the picture looks sad so I don’t linger on it. I try reading up on how genes work but it is full of long technical words which I can’t understand. I return the book to the shelf, and go and find a computer. An internet search brings up more pictures of the sad-looking man and others with his condition. There are also websites of werewolf fanatics who call themselves Lycans and lots of pages saying the usual stuff about full moons and silver bullets, but I find nothing about an actual genetic condition so I log off and leave the library.

  Back at the flat, the door has been left on the latch and I can hear laughter from inside. As I enter, Uncle Sewell, Aunt Dee, Lily, Elspeth and Mum all cheer and raise their glasses. Aunt Dee crosses the room to hand me a glass. ‘Ah, Mariel. We’re celebrating. I’ve written the last sentence.’

  Uncle Sewell pours me a glass of grape juice.

  ‘Now we’re all here, may I propose a toast,’ he says. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, raise your glasses please to my extremely clever wife, Professor Dee Considine.’

  ‘Speech . . . speech,’ shout Lily and Elspeth, giggling.

  ‘No no no, oh, all right then,’ says Aunt Dee. ‘Thank you everyone for your love and support and for helping me write another unreadable book to be unread by a select number of uninteresting intellectuals.’

  We all clink glasses and Mum puts her arm round me. Without meaning to, I flinch at her touch. There is so much she hasn’t told me and yet there is so much she doesn’t know. I look into her eyes and it feels like I’m looking at a stranger . . .

  ‘Isn’t this nice?’ she says.

  Elspeth and Lily are laughing and acting like normal sisters in a normal family. How can they live two such different lives? How can they be one thing at night an
d something so different by day? The secret burns inside of me. I feel it tightening around my chest, crushing me from within, separating me from everything else. I glance over at the sofa but there is no chance of me retrieving the diary without being seen. Lily meets my gaze and looks at me.

  ‘It’s been a lovely couple of days,’ says Mum. ‘It’s a shame Mariel wasn’t awake in time to come to the farmers’ market this morning.’

  ‘Mariel had to stay here and protect me from the God squad,’ says Aunt Dee.

  ‘Gowlett?’ says Uncle Sewell.

  ‘Yes, he says he can babysit on Wednesday.’

  ‘We don’t need a babysitter. We’re old enough to look after ourselves,’ says Elspeth.

  ‘Not a chance,’ replies Aunt Dee.

  ‘I’d like to go to church tomorrow,’ I say.

  ‘You’ve never been to church in your life,’ says Mum.

  ‘I haven’t lived all my life yet,’ I reply.

  For dinner Uncle Sewell cooks a large joint of beef bought from the market. He cooks it medium rare so that it is pink and fleshy in the middle. When he offers a slice to Mum, she says it’s too rare for her and asks for a cut from the side instead.

  ‘I’ll have the middle bit,’ says Elspeth, catching my eye. ‘I like my meat bloody.’

  No one else notices the dark tone in her voice.

  I feel pleased this is the last night with her. I need to retrieve the book before we leave in the morning so after everyone has gone to bed I get up and sneak out. I push open the living room door and stop dead because a light is on. Lily is sitting on the sofa. She has the diary in her hands. She looks up at me and mouths for me to close the door.

  ‘Where did you find it?’ she whispers.

  ‘Behind the painting,’ I reply.

  ‘How much have you read?’

  ‘Just the first page. It’s Grandma’s diary, isn’t it?’

  Lily closes the book. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’d like to read more,’ I say.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But I found it.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have been looking. You shouldn’t know anything about us. If people knew about us, it would endanger the whole species.’

  ‘There are others?’ I ask.

  It hasn’t occurred to me that there might be other families who carry the gene.

  ‘Of course there are others, but you need to forget everything you know.’

  I sit down next to her. ‘Grandad must have known about her. That must have been why he sent Mum away.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s the past.’

  I think about the picture of my grandparents on their wedding day. ‘Do you think he knew when he married her?’

  ‘I don’t know. Grandma never talked about him.’ Lily’s tone is clipped like she wants me to stop asking these questions.

  ‘If you let me look at the diary, I promise to give it back and not to tell.’ I reach out my hand but Lily leaves it hanging there.

  ‘Tomorrow I’m going to burn this diary. I can’t let it fall into the wrong hands.’

  ‘Like whose?’

  ‘There are people out there who want evidence of our existence. They set up traps and cameras in the woods.’

  ‘What people?’

  She looks away. ‘You should go to bed. Elspeth will be back soon.’

  ‘She’s gone out to kill again?’

  Lily’s silence answers my question.

  ‘And you? Will you kill tonight?’ I ask.

  She looks down. ‘We all kill. We can’t not. You can’t ignore the voice.’

  ‘Don’t you feel bad about it?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s nature. Big animals kill little ones,’ she replies.

  ‘And you eat what you kill or you just hunt for fun?’

  ‘It’s not fun,’ says Lily. ‘Not for me anyway. But you’ve seen what we’re like after the change. We don’t just change on the outside. Killing becomes instinct. Our stomachs crave fresh raw meat. And it will be your meat if Elspeth finds out you know about the diary.’

  Chapter 14

  The Sunday Service

  When Mum and I say goodbye, Lily and Elspeth are polite but quiet. No one would suspect from their behaviour that during my two-day stay one of them threatened to kill me and the other actually tried to do so.

  Uncle Sewell drives us off the campus to drop me at the church before taking Mum to pick up the hire car. Both of them are keen to avoid the embarrassment of having to explain to Father Gowlett why they are not attending his sermon so they drop me off around the corner from the church.

  Another day of sunshine has reduced the snow covering in the churchyard to a few grubby-looking clumps but it is still cold and icicles hang from the church roof.

  I am the youngest member of the congregation by a long way and Father Gowlett does a good job of hiding his disappointment at the small turnout. He reads some prayers and delivers a sermon about being kind to one another. The hymns we sing are tuneless dirges, accompanied by the old lady on the organ and her yapping dog, who I recognise from Grandma’s funeral. When Father Gowlett finally says my Grandma’s name, it is as part of a long list of other local people who have recently died.

  At the end, he stands by the door and shakes everyone’s hands. I stay longer on the bench and follow the old organist up the aisle.

  ‘Now, Mrs Mills,’ he says to the old woman. ‘I really would prefer if you were to leave Mr Pickles at home. I know he likes to join in with the hymns, but I feel he may not have picked up on some of the subtler points of my sermon.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Father. I thought I had left him but the naughty thing climbs into my bag when I’m not looking. I think he likes it here. He finds your voice very soothing.’

  ‘That’s nice to hear but, as I say, perhaps next time you could check inside your bag before leaving the house.’

  The old lady moves on and Father Gowlett peers down at me, his pale eyes magnified by his glasses. ‘Mariel. Thank you for coming.’

  ‘I have more questions about my grandparents.’

  ‘Of course. Do you mind if I tidy up as we talk?’

  I follow him back into the church. He gathers up the rows of hymn books he has laid out.

  ‘You said a burglar killed Grandad all those years ago,’ I say.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Exactly how did Grandad die?’

  He coughs and says, ‘I shouldn’t want to be the cause of nightmares.’

  ‘I don’t have nightmares. I’d like to know,’ I respond.

  ‘Frank’s neck was broken,’ he replies.

  Both my grandparents died of broken necks. Surely I’m not the only one to find this strange. I remember how Father Gowlett said Grandma slept through the attack. Looking up I realise he is watching me. I meet his gaze and for a moment we understand one another.

  ‘You’ve discovered their secret, haven’t you?’ he says.

  I don’t respond but he can clearly see the relief on my face at having someone to talk to about my cousins. He marches to the door, shuts and locks it. The sound of the heavy bolt echoes around the high ceiling. Even though the church is empty he looks around again to check no one can hear. When he speaks, it is in a low whisper.

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘Oberon and Elspeth tried to kill me,’ I reply.

  His eyes light up with excitement. ‘You saw them . . . changed, I mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A grim smile spreads across his face. ‘If one of them were to kill you, it would secure the right to lead the pack. You must keep safe. Who are you staying with next?’

  ‘Freddie.’

  ‘Be careful with him. He’s intelligent but ambitious enough to be a danger to you.’

  ‘How do you know about them?’

  ‘I have known for many years. Since before they were born. I saw your grandmother as a wolf once. She was a beautiful creature even in that ungodly form.’

  ‘And she
knew you knew?’

  ‘Oh yes. Flora liked to tease me. I tried to persuade her to reveal her secret many times but wolves are secretive by nature. They have been hunted for many centuries. They fear discovery but the world needs to know of their existence.’

  ‘So it was you Lily was talking about, when she said about people setting traps in the woods.’

  Father Gowlett shakes his head. ‘Flora swore she never told them about me. As far as your cousins are concerned I am just an old family friend.’

  ‘I don’t understand. You said you asked her to marry you.’

  He flicks through the pages of a hymn book absent-mindedly. ‘I was . . .’ His pause makes me feel that he is ashamed of what he is about to say. ‘I was obsessed with her. I didn’t want to lose her. When she said no, I followed her into the woods. She allowed me to see her as a wolf in an attempt to stop me loving her.’

  ‘Did Grandad know before they got married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then why did he marry her?’

  ‘Frank loved Flora for all her faults.’

  Outside, the sun comes out, illuminating the coloured glass and painting Father Gowlett’s wrinkled face a strange tinge of red. ‘And yet she rewarded his love by breaking his neck.’ He places a heavy hand on my shoulder. ‘Yes, Mariel, Flora murdered your grandfather.’

  I try to take this in, but I feel disconnected, like a character in the stained-glass window looking down on the two of us talking.

  ‘What about Grandma?’ I ask. ‘Was her death really an accident?’

  ‘No. She may not have been young any more but she was strong. It would take more than a tumble down some stairs to kill the great Ma’wolf.’

  ‘Then who . . .’

  ‘I believe one of your cousins killed her. This is how it is with them. They are without morals, without humanity. The single biggest threat to a wolf is another wolf in their pack. Time and again they fight among themselves in order to gain control of the pack. Hierarchy is everything to them.’