I tapped against the window again with my knuckles.

“Fuck off!” I heard her muffled reply from behind the glass.

I tapped again.

“I said, Fuck off, Potter!” she shouted louder than the first time.

I tapped against the window once more.

Then through the glass, I watched as she sat up, swung her legs over the side of the bed and came marching towards the window. Her hair was angry red, and her eyes were cold blue.

“What part of fuck off don’t you understand?” she shouted, hands on her hips.

“Let me in, Kayla, its freezing out here,” I said through the glass.

“Good!” she snapped. “I hope you freeze to death.”

“Don’t be like that,” I said softly. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

“I can hear you just fine from in here,”

she snapped back.

“I can’t talk to you from out here,” I said.

“Go on, let me in. Just give me five minutes, and if you’re still mad at me after that, I promise to fuck off and never come back.”

With her eyes fixed on mine, and her face beginning to soften, she said, “Potter, have you been crying?”

“Yes,” I said, knowing that if I were ever to win her trust I had to be honest. I’d had enough of lies and bullshit to last me a lifetime.

“How come?” she asked me.

“Because of what happened to Isidor,” I said, my nose almost touching the windowpane now. “But not just that. I feel bad for hurting you and Kiera. I never meant to. I promise.”

Slowly, Kayla reached out and opened the window. “You’ve got five minutes,” she whispered and let me in.

Chapter Thirteen

Kiera

“Help me!” the voice called. It was little more than a whisper, but it was there all the same.

“Help me!” the voice came again. It was the sound of a child. Boy or girl, I couldn’t be sure.

I opened my eyes to find myself standing before a sea of statues. They stretched out before me for as far as the eye could see. Some looked away from me, as if scared – or out of some kind of misplaced reverence. The statues were grey or white in colour. Some looked more weather-stained than others – as if they had been here longer than the rest. I looked back to get my bearings and could see the church behind me, its spire reaching up into the gunmetal grey sky. I was right, it was going to snow, and the first flakes swept lazily down from above. The graveyard was still – quiet. Not even the barren black branches of the nearby trees stirred in the breeze. I looked back at the statues and flinched backwards. All of them now were looking away from me. How had they moved? The statues either covered their eyes with their arms or their hands.

“Help me!” the voice came again.

I tilted my head to the side as I tried to pinpoint the location of the soft, childlike voice.

“Help me!” it whispered again.

I looked front and knew that the voice was coming deep from within the maze of statues which had crammed themselves into the graveyard.

“Where are you?” I called out, my voice sounding thin and weak as it echoed back off the statues.

“Help me!” the voice came again.

I looked between the gaps the statues had made. There were so many of them, I wondered if I would barely be able to squeeze between them in search of the voice. Then I jumped. The sudden sound of the church bells ringing filled the air behind me. I looked back over my shoulder at the spire. One side of it was now covered white with snow. The bells stopped. With my mouth feeling dry, I looked back at the statues and gasped, a small cloud of breath escaping from my mouth.

The statues had moved again. It was like they had stepped aside, making a path for me to walk between them. This time their faces were tilted skywards, flakes of snow settling over their blank eyes and faces. Their arms were out stretched and their fingers were entwined. All of them were holding hands. In a perverse way, they looked beautiful, tranquil, and I suddenly felt at peace.

“Help me!” the voice called again. But this time it added another word to that sentence and it made me shiver. “Please!”

Slowly putting one foot in front of the other, I stepped between the statues in search of the voice. I looked left and right at the statues.

They weren’t dressed in long, flowing gowns like so many statues you see in graveyards. They didn’t look like angels either. They looked like everyday people who had somehow been turned to stone. There were children, some as young as four or five, teenagers, and adults. Men and women; boys and girls. Some of the women wore dresses, others denims, blouses, and coats. The men wore trousers, boots, and hats. Their style of clothing seemed to span several different time periods.

The snow fell heavier now, and I looked back to see how far I had come. I could no longer see the gap that the statues had seemed to open for me. It was as if they had gathered around the opening, their hands locked together preventing my exit. I could see my footprints in the snow, trailing away into the distance. I looked up and could see the church, faint in the distance, its spire white against the sky.

“Help me! Pleeeaaassee!” the voice hushed, this time closer now. As I drew nearer to the voice, it lost that childlike quality and sounded more like that of a young woman.

“Where are you?!” I called out.

Silence; not even the sound of the wind.

I looked back once more, my footprints now covered by the falling snow. Looking front again, I shivered; not with the cold, but through fear. The statues had changed position again. This time they were looking at me. A hundred or more sets of eyes were boring into me. Their cracked faces didn’t look mean or angry, though. They looked kind of sad.

“Who are you?” I asked one of them, a boy about the age of sixteen. He looked familiar somehow. It was like I had seen him before someplace, but just couldn’t quite remember where. He didn’t answer me, he just stared, his snow-white eyes looking into mine. Slowly, I cupped one of my hands and pressed it softly against his handsome face then pulled it quickly away again. He didn’t feel cold like stone, but warm, like a living person.

“Why are you here?” I asked, my mind thinking back to the statue of the girl in the grounds of Hallowed Manor. “Can I help you?”

The statue just stared back at me, its surface cracked and broken, his face covered with blotches of moss. I stepped away and followed the path the statues had created for me.

“Help me,” the voice came again, this time more desperate sounding than before.

I quickened my step and rounded a bend in the path. Between the falling flakes of snow, I could see a clearing amongst the statues and I headed towards it. Standing at the edge of the clearing I could see it was circular in shape, and the statues surrounded it, all of their hands locked together like some weird child’s game of ‘a ring of roses.’ In the centre of the clearing stood a statue.

Its back was towards me, head cast down, arms outstretched on either side of it, palms facing upwards. Snow had gathered in the statue’s hands, and it looked as if it were holding a fistful of soft, white feathers.

“Help me,” the statue whispered.

Although with its head facing away from me, and I couldn’t see its lips move, I knew it had spoken.

With snow falling all around me, covering my hair and shoulders, I stepped into the clearing and towards the statue. My feet crunched in the snow, and if I’d had a heart, I knew it would have been racing.

Slowly I reached the statue and faced it. I could see by its long lengths of cracked and marble-looking hair, that it was female.

“I want to help you,” I whispered, but the sound of my voice suddenly got drowned out by another sound – the sound of weeping. I looked left and right, and could see that the statues were no longer holding hands. Each had covered their faces and was crying into their hands. The sound of their weeping was like listening to a hundred lost children crying for their mothers. An unbearable sadness washed over me as I looked at them, young and old, all bent forward, weeping uncontrollably.

“Help me!” the voice suddenly whispered through the weeping.

I looked front to see that the statue had now raised its head and was looking back at me.

Stumbling backwards, I threw my hands to my face and cried out. Looking at the statue was like looking at me. The statue was me. Although its face was cracked, and eyes a blank white, it was me I was looking at.

The statue spoke again, and instead of saying, “Help me,” it whispered, “Help us!”

Its lips didn’t move, not a fraction, but I could hear the voice all the same. It was like I could hear it in my head, and it was my own voice talking to me.

“Help us,” my voice whispered inside my head again.

Trying to stay on my feet, I stared back at the statue of myself and whispered, “How do I help you?”

“Lead us to the Dead Waters,” it breathed inside my head. “We will follow you.”

“Who are you?” I asked, my voice barely audible over the sound of the sobbing coming from the statues that surrounded us.

“I am what you will become,” the statue spoke again inside my mind, its dead, white eyes never leaving mine. “Don’t let yourself become a statue, Kiera Hudson. Don’t become one of us before you reach the Dead Waters.”

“What are these Dead Waters?” I asked.

“Dead to the living, but not to us,” the statue said.

“What does that mean?” I asked, my mind wondering if it wasn’t some kind of a riddle.

“The dead waters will give us life, and you can’t push back without us,” the statue’s voice hushed inside of me.

“How do I push back?” I whispered, the snow now so deep it covered my boots completely.

“Bathe in the Dead Waters if you want to save your friends,” the statue said, and this time I detected a note of urgency in its voice – my voice inside of me.

“But my friends are safe, aren’t they?” I asked, wiping away the snow that fell before my eyes. When I looked again, the statue was pointing behind me.