Fallow Heart Read online

  Lori nodded, shrugging her backpack off her shoulder. Though she was desperate for news about Ryan Wade, what lay beyond those doors mattered more.

  “Do I have to?”

  The other girl had a high-pitched voice with a whiny note. She cocked her head to one side, revealing a pink streak in her honey blonde hair. The nurse collected Lori’s bag with a nod, then turned to the other girl. There was a curl in her lip as she spoke.

  “If you want to be helped, you need to co-operate, young lady,” the nurse replied.

  Slowly, the girl revealed her phone from a jacket pocket. She gave the nurse her purse and magazine too, standing up and folding her arms. Lori met her eyes once again, though this time there was no flash of crimson, no sudden pains.

  “How long have you known what’s up with you?” the girl asked.

  “Since yesterday,” Lori answered.

  “Shit, really?” The girl whistled. “Matilda came to me, like, three weeks ago. I cried for a week when she told me. Took me ages to decide to come down here. Go you, girl. Seriously.”

  It felt strange to have a smile, even a small one, but it made a world of difference.

  “Thanks. I’m Lorelai.”

  “Michaela,” the girl replied.

  She came to sit beside Lori near the exit. After a year at college of people actively avoiding the seat beside her, Lori shuffled awkwardly at the closeness. At this distance, Lori understood the need for so much make-up. Beneath the tangerine layer of powder, there was the tell-tale mountain ridge of acne on the girl’s cheeks and jaw. Michaela leaned in, speaking in a lower tone so the nurse wouldn’t hear her.

  “Fucking joke, them taking our phones, right?”

  In truth, Lori reckoned it was pretty sensible, but she nodded all the same.

  “Right.”

  “I guess you’ve got one of these too?” Michaela asked.

  The girl tugged at her camisole, lowering it enough for Lori to see a scar forming above her heart. Like Lori’s, the mark was in the shape of a crescent moon, though hers was a little thicker in the middle. Lori nodded slowly.

  “What did yours?” she asked.

  Michaela gave a shrug.

  “Don’t know, thank God,” the girl replied. “I was asleep. I woke up like this, didn’t even notice the scar for a few days. Wasn’t until I had an episode at school that Matilda even got wind of me.”

  “Episode?” Lori repeated. “Why, what happened?”

  Michaela bit her glossy lip. Up close, her eyes shone deep brown, with a faint violet ring around the irises. The air grew still between them. The girl receded a little, her hands sliding back and forth up her legs. Michaela’s shoulders slowly gravitated towards her ears, her fake lashes fluttering as she stared at the ground.

  “I came here eventually because… It’s impossible to talk to anyone else about this,” the girl revealed. “For weeks this thing has been happening to me. So many changes, so much I don’t understand about myself anymore. You get that?”

  Lori swallowed hard. She got it perfectly. She was amazed that Michaela had lasted three weeks in silence, when Lori had almost spilled the beans to Granddad not ten minutes ago. She watched as Michaela’s nervy grip travelled up into her hair, toying with the honey strands until they became loose straggles between her pale fingers.

  “I want to talk,” Michaela said, her voice lower still. “I want to be able to say stuff with people who understand what’s happening to me.”

  “I want that too,” Lori admitted. “So badly.”

  Michaela looked up, those violet eyes coated with a sheen of tears.

  “Can you keep a secret?” she whispered.

  “I can keep several,” Lori breathed back.

  Michaela glanced to the nurse once more. Then she cast her lashes downwards again, hands shaking in her lap.

  “I killed a teacher.”

  The police cars outside made sudden sense. Lori was paralysed, gripping her armrest and hoping that Michaela wouldn’t look up and see the horror on her face. She remembered her own rage, that moment when all she’d seen was red. Slamming poor Ryan into the desk, tugging a fistful of his hair so hard it might have come away from his scalp.

  “You... you lost control?” Lori asked.

  “I guess so,” Michaela replied. Her long locks shielded her face from view as she turned a little, rubbing her knees again. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you. But you’re the first person I’ve met who’s like me, you know?”

  Kasabian flashed into Lori’s mind. That photo of him with the scar and the strange lettering across his chest. She’d felt the same when she raced out of class the day before. She could have told him everything, if he hadn’t set her running. But if she’d killed someone, ended their life, could she tell him that?

  “Miss Blake and Miss Shaw?” said a deep, East London voice.

  Mr Allardyce was waiting, his bald head poked through the double doors at the far end of the room. Lori and Michaela stood up together. Lori’s body trembled at the sudden motion. Allardyce smiled that calming smile of his.

  “Please come this way, ladies.” He shifted his head. “It’s time we made you better.”

  Girls, and all their frailties

  Allardyce led the way down a long, white corridor. Lori kept her eyes on Michaela, though the girl seemed to have embarrassed herself into silence. When she finally met Lori’s look, it was with a bite of her lip. She was a good six inches shorter than Lori, with slim limbs and hips small enough to still fit into children’s clothes. Lori couldn’t accept it. How could this girl have killed anyone, let alone a fully-grown adult?

  “There are police cars outside,” Lori began, trying hard not to ask the questions she wanted to.

  “Witness protection.”

  It was Allardyce who answered. He took them through a set of double doors, turning slightly to eye Lori as he let her through.

  “Miss Shaw witnessed a terrible attack at her school last week, and she’s being monitored by police to ensure that she doesn’t become the next victim.”

  His explanation might have been perfectly fine, had Lori not just heard Michaela’s frantic confession. Her tears had been rubbed away, smudging the kohl around her pretty eyes a little. As Allardyce marched on, snaking a left turn, Michaela suddenly leaned closer to Lori again, almost falling onto her. She spoke in the barest whisper.

  “Matilda Vane,” Michaela explained. “She’s taken care of everything.”

  The door ahead had a paper sign: Girls’ Group H. As Allardyce reached it, he paused, fingers splayed across the door. Lori studied his serene face in the seconds before he spoke. There was no hint of strangeness, no sign that he cared one way or the other for the demonic fate of the girls before him. What was he? Was he even human? Lori’s spine trembled, vibrations travelling down into her tummy. It was awful that she even had to ask these kinds of questions now.

  “Your group meets here at this time every week,” Allardyce explained. “You’ll receive all the help you need, ladies. Counselling, medication, all of your questions answered. What we ask in return is that you allow us to monitor your progress. The ladies within are being given their weekly check-up now.”

  “What are you expecting us to progress into?” Lori asked.

  There. A flicker of something on the man’s dark lips. Tension before he resumed his smile. Allardyce gave an apologetic little shrug.

  “See for yourself,” he offered, opening the door.

  A short, portly woman in a white coat stood in the centre of the room. There were comfortable sofas lining the walls of the small space, but no windows, only the fluorescent glow of the strip-light overhead. Its stark beams rained down on a thin girl in a billowing summer dress. The thin white fabric drifted about as she raised her arms above her head. Michaela gave a little gasp beside Lori. The girl’s arms were so thin they could both see the muscles defined within them. Her skin had a pale translucence that Lori had only ever witnessed in horror movie
s, the veins in her straggly neck blue as mould.

  “Tell me what you’ve eaten this week, Niamh,” the white-coated woman asked. She had a tape-measure between her fingertips, which she looped around the girl in three different places.

  “Big Mac double-stacked, large fries, strawberry ice-cream milkshake.” The girl rattled off the items in a hoarse, pitchy voice. She sounded younger still when she spoke. “Just like you told me, Doctor Lyons.”

  “Keep going,” the doctor replied. “More, Niamh. As much as you can manage.”

  Lyons stepped away, returning the tape to her pocket and retrieving a notebook instead.

  “Time to play ‘Stuff the Pixie’ again,” another voice groaned. “Can’t wait.”

  She was sitting behind the door that Allardyce had opened, a sardonic echo of an unseen body. Lori took a few steps more into the room, craning to see the other girl who had spoken. At first glance, she wished that she hadn’t.

  “Come on, Owe.” Niamh smiled sweetly. “I thought you liked watching the staff’s faces when we go up and get my fifth burger?”

  If Niamh was human but no longer shaped like one, then Owe was the reverse. She had all the right anatomy of a sixteen-year-old girl, decked out in camo shorts and a boho Ramones t-shirt, but everywhere Lori looked, something was wrong. Her skin was dark, but it had a strange reddish tinge that didn’t belong there, as though she was glowing under the fluorescent lights. Owe’s hands had developed black nails that were thicker than average, turning square at the edges. In the line where her forehead met her thin curls of jet-black hair, Owe had two little lumps sticking out of her head.

  Horns, Lori wondered, or antlers?

  A wild panic suddenly gripped Lori’s shaking stomach. The wailing creature in the cage had been one thing, and the beast who attacked her was quite another, but this was too much. This was her in what, a year’s time? Less? This was what was going to happen. No control. She looked at Niamh again, watching the muscles in the younger girl’s face twist as she smiled. Her skin barely stretched over the bones of her jaw. As Lori started to step backwards, Allardyce’s firm hand came down on her shoulder. She stopped dead in her tacks. Under his steady grip, Lori could feel how much she was trembling.

  “Put your faith in the D.C.,” he said. “We’re here to help. Every new case brings us closer to curing what that beast has infected you with.”

  Lori met Doctor Lyons’s eyes for the first time. A sharp, dark gaze ran over her, and Lyons tucked her brown bob of hair behind her ears. She clasped her hands together tightly for a moment.

  “What you see in the case of Miss Owe Mahad,” Lyons said, nodding to the girl in the corner, “Is a refusal to take her suppressants. There are some developments we can control, but nobody’s going to force you to take anything here.”

  Lori glanced at Owe again, only to find the strange girl meeting her gaze. She blinked, and Lori couldn’t help but shriek.

  “Jesus,” Michaela breathed. “Did your eyelids just…”

  “Yeah,” Owe answered flatly. “They did.”

  She blinked again. Sideways. Her eyelids had turned sideways, like those on cats. Make-up, hair, clothes and gloves could certainly help Owe to hide some of the changes out in the world, but those eyelids were unmistakeable. Why didn’t she want to take the medication? All Lori had ever wanted to do at school was blend in. What kind of girl would want this to happen to them?

  “There’s no point,” Owe said. “There’s no point in suppressing and hiding.”

  “Miss Mahad,” Lyons said, eyebrows rising.

  “It doesn’t matter,” the girl continued.

  “Miss Mahad, hold your tongue.” The doctor leaned towards her a little, raising a finger.

  Owe leaned forward too, her gaze dark.

  “They find you all the same,” she said. “The demons come back for you.”

  Allardyce gave a small sigh. His hand shifted from Lori’s shoulder, and she felt his presence fade behind her.

  “Miss Mahad,” he said gently, “I think it’s time that you and I had a little talk in private.”

  Owe rolled her eyes, and the sight of those eyelids shifting made Lori’s gut wrench. She watched as the girl untangled herself from her crossed legs, then charged round the doorframe. Lori tried to move out of the girl’s way, but it was too late. Owe smashed into her, full force at the shoulder and Lori wobbled. She reached out, flailing, and grabbed a hold of Owe’s bare forearm, pulling herself steady. Lori winced, a sudden hiss filling the air. But it was no hiss of pain. A cloud of steam had erupted right in front of her. Where her hand met Owe’s arm, Lori was wet.

  “Shit,” Owe said through gritted teeth. “What’s wrong with this one?”

  The steam cloud vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. Owe was cradling her arm, trying to pull her t-shirt sleeve down to rub over it. Allardyce’s eyes were locked on Lori, flashing between her hands and her face.

  “What?” Lori mumbled, brow furrowed so hard that it hurt. “Did I do that? I didn’t mean to.”

  “I know.” Allardyce nodded. He took Owe by the shoulder gently, pushing her further out of the room. “You see,” he said as the door closed behind them, “This is what you get for barging into people.”

  Lori watched the door until the moment it closed, desperate to run. She wanted to backtrack all the way out of the corridor, run home and pretend she’d never seen or heard any of this. But as she turned back into the room, she saw Michaela watching her. The petite girl, hiding her acne beneath a layer of orange foundation. The girl who’d been hiding from the reality of what was happening to her for a whole three weeks. And where had that led? Michaela had killed someone.

  “I need control,” Lori said, looking back to Doctor Lyons. “I want to know how to stop hurting people.”

  Lyons nodded firmly. She indicated a sofa where Michaela and Lori took a seat. Niamh floated past them to the chair that Owe had been hogging, curling herself up there in the same cross-legged position. She smiled brightly at nothing in particular, and Lori fought the urge to look away from her emaciated frame.

  “Different creatures have different physiological and biological traits,” Doctor Lyons explained. “For example, the beast who infected Niamh with its blood had caused her to burn calories at an alarmingly high rate.”

  The thin girl gave a pleasant nod.

  “It’s costing my parents a fortune in food,” she said far too brightly, “but Miss Vane’s set us up with a grant to cover some of the costs.”

  Matilda Vane again. Lori could hardly believe the pull that the woman had. If the D.C. could cover up something so incredible, then they were a force to be reckoned with. Better a friend than an enemy, Lori reasoned.

  “At the heart of it, these creatures are predators,” Lyons continued with a nod. “You will find violent tendencies are common to all. Our research has revealed many variations from one species to another, and we aim to provide medication to alleviate the symptoms as much as we can. Most of the Sown we get here find that their body temperatures have dropped a little, for example, so we try to advise treatment for that. I daresay you’re having the opposite problem, my dear?”

  She raised a brow at Lori. Lori looked away. It was all so real and matter-of-fact. This was happening to her. An illness. A transformation. No escape.

  “Are you Miss Blake, or Miss Shaw?” Lyons asked her.

  “Blake,” Lori replied, staring hard at the floor. She wouldn’t cry. Not again.

  “And you’re running hot, I’d wager?”

  “Very,” Lori admitted.

  She heard a little scratching noise, and looked up again to find Lyons making a note.

  “We can give you something to bring the fever down, and make you feel a little calmer,” the doctor explained.

  “I’d like that,” Lori said, her voice shaking. “Thank you.”

  “All in good time,” Lyons replied. “For now, we’ll get you two new girls checked over. I daresay
Miss Mahad won’t be returning this session, but I’m sure Niamh can help you to settle into the routine.”

  “It gets easier as you go along.” The skeletal girl wore an ethereal grin.

  If there was one thing Lori hated more than being weighed and measured, it was being weighed and measured in front of other people. She grew hotter than ever on Doctor Lyons’s scales, but the sniggers she might have expected from Niamh and Michaela never came. They had bigger problems to deal with than giggling at a fat girl, Lori supposed. In truth, she hadn’t much thought about her size until Lyons was writing it down in numbers, for what was happening inside her was a much larger concern.

  Lyons gave Lori some pamphlets on coping with anxiety. The girls did breathing exercises and calming meditations. None of it helped. Through every silent moment designed for emptying one’s mind, Lori’s kept filling with fears. Tiny Michaela had killed a teacher, and she was three weeks into her infection. Lori had seen red, lost control and grabbed Ryan Wade by the roots of his hair without even knowing she’d done so.

  Break his neck.

  Yesterday’s thoughts resurfaced, from that voice in her head which so often told her she was fat and ugly. Was it giving her orders now? Had it said that exact phrase yesterday, when she’d lashed out at Ryan Wade in the classroom? Had it told her to do the very thing which had later killed him?

  “Am I dangerous?”

  When it came time to ask questions, this was the first on Lori’s list. When she asked those three little words, Michaela leaned forward in her seat too. Doctor Lyons was sitting with a clipboard now, dabbing the rounded end of a pencil against her lips. She looked at them both for a moment.

  “In what way?” she asked, cocking her head to one side.

  “Will I hurt people that I care about?” Lori said. “You know, if I lose my temper?”

  “You might well be capable of doing so,” Lyons replied. “I have you down as Sown of Cervinae from Miss Vane’s initial consultation. Cervinae are a particularly violent type. Not terribly intelligent, simply working from base instincts. We’ve had some success in managing these tendencies with the suppressants, however.”