The Birch House

Chapter Seven

I couldn't sleep.

Maybe it was the memory of that creepy little gothic room - which I suspected Alyssa really, deeply loved - but all of a sudden, my lovely cosy room seemed full of shadows, and the creaks of old wood in the wind sounded... stealthy. Maybe the house eats people, I thought, lying there alone in the dark, watching the bone-thin shadows of branches shudder on the far wall. The wind made twigs tap on my window, like something trying to get in. Alyssa had said vampires couldn't get in, but what if they could? What if they were already inside? What if Alex...?

I heard a soft, silvery note, and knew that Alex was playing downstairs. Something about that helped - pushed the shadows back, turned the sounds into something normal and soothing. It was just a house, and we were just kids sharing it, and if there was anything wrong, well, it was outside.

I must have slept then, but it didn't feel like it; some noise startled me awake, and when I checked the clock next to my bed it was close to five thirty. The sky wasn't light outside, but it wasn't totally dark, either; the stars were faded, soft sparkles in a sky gradually turning dark blue.

Alex's guitar was still going, very quietly. Didn't he ever sleep? I slid out of the bed, tossed a blanket over my shoulders over the T-shirt I wore to bed, and shuffled out and into the still-dark hallway. As I passed the hidden door I glanced at it and shivered, then continued on to the bathroom. Once I'd got that out of the way - and brushed my hair - I crept quietly down the steps and sat down, blanket around me, listening to Alex play.

His head was down, and he was deep into it; I watched his fingers move light and quick on the strings, his body rock slowly with the rhythm, and felt a deep sense of...safety. Nothing bad could happen around Alex. I just knew it.

Next to him, a clock beeped an alarm. He looked up, startled, and slapped it off, then got up and put his guitar away. I watched, puzzled... Did he have someplace to be? Or did he actually have to set an alarm to go to bed? Wow, that was obsession...

Alex stood, watching the clock as if it were his own personal enemy, and then he turned and walked over to the window.

The sky was the colour of dark turquoise now, all but the strongest stars faded. Alex, holding a beer in his hand, drank the rest of the bottle and put it down on the table, crossed his arms, and waited.

I was about to ask him what he was waiting for when the first ray of sun crept up in a blinding orange knife, and Alex gasped and hunched over, pressing his stomach.

I lunged to my feet, startled and afraid for the look of sheer agony on his face. The movement caught his attention, and he jerked his head towards me, blue eyes wide.

'No,' he moaned, and pitched forward to his hands and knees, gasping. 'Don't.'

I ignored that and jumped down the stairs to run to his side, but once I was there I didn't know what to do, didn't have any idea how to help him. Alex was breathing in deep, aching gasps, in terrible pain.

I put my hand on his back, felt his fever-hot skin burning through the thin cloth, and heard him make a sound like nothing I'd ever heard in my life.

Like someone dying, I thought in panic, and opened my mouth to scream for Chase, Alyssa, anybody.

My hand suddenly went right through him. The scream, for whatever reason, locked tight in my throat as Alex - transparent Alex - looked at me with despair and desperation in his eyes.

'Oh, god, don't tell them.' His voice came from a long, long way off, a whisper that faded on the shafts of morning sun.

And so did he.