Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 97229 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 486(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97229 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 486(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Home.
It wasn’t home though, was it? I was living in a room in a house I hardly knew, with people I’d barely spoken to. My home was in Orcop. My family had been living there for generations. I’d traced my family tree back as far as it would go, hoping for signs of more relatives to ease the constant burden of just me, my mother and grandmother, wanting my life to be more than just the three of us, when both of them clearly dismissed me as nothing.
My search had shown up generations, all tied back to that one part of the country. Georgina, wife of Thomas, agricultural worker, Orcop. Josephine, wife of Phillip, agricultural worker, Orcop. Elaine, wife of David, agricultural worker, Orcop. Lillian, wife of Matthew, agricultural worker, Orcop. Ruby, Georgina, Margaret. Jane, Deborah, Kerry-May, Mary… so many women in the chain, all of them from Orcop.
So many women in my family line I’d thought of, and wondered who they resembled most. Were they more like my mother and grandmother or more like me? I’d been needing something, anything, to believe I wasn’t the black, lonely sheep in a very scathing family.
I kept on walking, so caught up in the memories and my pounding heart and the constant taxi firm unavailable tone in my ear, that I was at the cobbled lane of Hyde Street before I realised it. I stopped in my tracks the moment I felt the first bump of stone under my feet, staring at the dull street lights lying ahead of me. Barely more than an orange glow.
There was not a soul to be seen. Just like in my dream.
The air was misty, and my breaths were raspy, and I could have taken the longer route around Brooke Avenue, but it would have added at least ten minutes to my journey. I didn’t think my shaky legs could handle it.
The final scrap of stop being ridiculous, Katherine rose up and took hold of me, and I stepped forward onto the cobbles. As soon as I’d done so, I felt another lurch deep in the pit of me, knowing that the stop being ridiculous, Katherine, stupid girl rantings had always been nothing more than a lie. Mum and Grandma had known I wasn’t a stupid, ridiculous girl living in a fantasy world. I should never have believed them in the first place. I felt it right down in my soul.
There was more to this. So much more.
My thoughts were interrupted by a jolt.
“Lovely to see you, Katherine.”
Hans’ voice came out of nowhere, his footsteps appearing behind me. I spun to face him, dropping my keys and phone without a thought, and he kept on pacing towards me, even though I had both hands held up in panic.
“Stop it, Hans! Leave me alone!”
“Oh, please.” He laughed. “I’ve been leaving you alone for eighteen long years. It’s high time we became properly acquainted.”
“It was you, wasn’t it?” I squeaked at him. “You were the one at Garway!”
He had his hands clasped behind his back so naturally, circling me with footsteps, his bright green eyes fixed on mine as I turned around to keep him in view.
His voice was so low and powerful.
“Strange, don’t you think? How you didn’t remember those encounters at Garway until a short while ago. Recollections can come back in a flash. Just like that!” He clicked his fingers.
I was playing around the gravestones, ran straight into a man’s legs, fell back with a yelp. His smile. His slender fingers reaching to help me up.
Be more careful amongst the dead, Katherine. Those were his words. Then he’d vanished.
I’d forgotten all about…
“What the hell is going on?” I asked him. “Really, Hans. What’s going on?!”
I was terrified, and my heart was thumping so hard I could feel it in my ribs, my legs shaking harder than ever, but underneath all of that there was something different. A recognition, as though I’d known this man my whole life.
“You know what’s going on,” Hans said. “Trust your instincts and not your brain, like you should have done since the day you were born.”
Rational Katherine was losing all hold of me, but I still felt like a fantasist fool when I spoke the words out loud.
“You really are a vampire, aren’t you?”
He smiled his perfect smile.
“Indeed, I am.”
“And last night… that wasn’t just a nightmare, was it? That was real?”
“Ouch. I see you’re using the term nightmare now. It was a dream earlier, if I recall?”
“A dream, then. It wasn’t a dream at all, was it? It was real.”
He tipped his head, as though he was curious, still circling me. “Call it a trial run.”
I backed up against a door, ignoring my discarded phone and keys. I wasn’t surprised to find it was the same large wooden door I’d backed into in my dream.