Kraal

Chapter 8: Rose

"These are great," Laura rifled through the photographs, clearly pleased with what she was seeing. "And you found this in the woods?" She held up one of the stills of the cage that I had printed earlier, and examined it closely.

I nodded. "Yeah, it looks like it's being used for some kind of illegal fight."

I didn't dare tell Laura about the creatures I had seen inside the cage, I checked all of my photographs before I brought them to her, but I hadn't managed to capture the image of the beasts.

I hadn't believed it myself when I had awoken that morning. My dreams had been filled with images of creatures with sharp teeth and fur, half man-half beast, chasing me through the woods.

"An illegal fight?" Laura's brow furrowed.

"Well, that's what it looked like."

Laura examined the photographs again and then her face brightened. "Ah, I know what's going on here. Westwood Falls is a popular place for filming, we often have television and film crew up here shooting scenes, I bet that's what they were doing last night. That's probably why they had these big spotlights and such a large crowd."

I felt the knot that I had been carrying around in my stomach loosen. Laura's explanation made total sense. I laughed nervously. "That's such a relief."

Laura smiled. "Still, it's probably not a good idea to be wandering around in the woods at night."

"I know, but the trail starts right by my house, I just followed the path."

"Maybe try to get some more photographs of the cage during the day, I loved the way you captured the light and shade here," Laura held up one of the photographs I had taken when I first found the cage. "And it might be useful to find out a little about the history of the cage, find out how it got there."

I nodded. "I'll speak to my Gran; she seems to be the authority on everything that goes on around here."

The rest of the class started to filter in then and I hastily scooped up the photographs, slotting them carefully into my folder before finding my seat.

My stomach flipped when Josh strode into the room and I silently scolded myself for letting him get to me.

His dark eyes observed me as he sat down. They shone like the night sky, inviting me in, swallowing me whole. I shook my head and tried not to think about how close our forearms were as we sat side by side.

There was a cut on his cheek, it looked fresh – red and swollen. "I hear you met my ex-girlfriend yesterday." He said.

"Yeah, I'm lucky I still have hair on my head."

He didn't laugh. "I'm sorry about what she did to you. She's not a bad person, not really, she's just a little possessive."

"So I've heard, I thought you two weren't together anymore."

He turned to face me then, his eyes searching mine. He opened his mouth like he was about to speak, but then Laura closed the door and the lesson began.

I didn't see Josh again that week. I threw all of my energy into creating a big mood board for my Art project at home and at college I spent most of my time trying to avoid uncomfortable conversations with Daisy about what I was going to wear to her brother's party.

I didn't venture back into the woods either. I figured that if there was a film crew there, I needed to stay out of the way until they were done.

Daisy wasn't so easy to escape. When I stumbled into the kitchen on Saturday morning, bleary eyed, I found her sitting at the table tucking into a cooked breakfast with Mum.