A/N: I'm getting through this slowly, but please realise that the outline for it was written a long time ago and I actually only found it last week! Was dying slowly on my old computer so I thought I could let it live for a while longer and be appreciated more. That's why the earlier parts might seem a little different in style to my normal writing. Anyway thank you for the review Andciritien and here is the more you're looking for!
*~*~*~*~* Chapter 2 *~*~*~*~*
Joanne looked round at the room in the dark. It
looked like a child's nursery, with puppets hung on hooks on the wall and a
rocking horse in the corner. On the floor beneath the rocking horse was a box
of soldiers that were obviously extremely old and they intrigued Joanne.
Giles had shown her to her room and told her
where his was if she should need him and then he had left for bed, yawning on
the way out of the room. She had put her bag on the floor at the bottom of the
bed and then slipped into the large bed to warm up. Even though it was a
child's bed it was rather large for a child. She didn't feel tired so she
pulled herself from beneath the warm covers and slipped Giles dressing gown on
over her and went to the toy soldiers picking one of them up. They reminded her
of the play the nutcracker she had been taken to see as a child, and she had
some vague memory of being scared of that play. She didn't know why, she put
the nutcracker soldier back down just as there was running in the corridor
outside. She looked to the door as if expecting it to burst open any minute,
but the footsteps stopped and Joanne wondered if it was Giles,
"Giles?" she called out moving to the door. She
turned the handle and opened it, but no one stood in the hall. She stepped out
into the corridor and looked both ways, but the house was quiet and no lights
were on. She heard running down the other end of the corridor and she turned and
started walking away from the stairs,
"Giles?" Giles room wasn't this way, but she
wondered why he was out of bed and running about at this time of night.
'Maybe he walks in his sleep?' Joanne thought
smiling to herself. She knew one of the younger watcher's that used to it and
when they were on night duty Joanne used to slip out of her room and go down to
the lobby and wait until he fell asleep and then she would watch him make a
prat of himself.
One morning she had almost followed him all the
way to the bakery on the end of the street. But that was a long time ago and
she couldn't recall the name of that watcher now. She got to where there was a
bend in the corridor and stairs went off to the right up to the attic and the
servants' quarters,
"Gil-" she was cut short as running footsteps
started coming towards her from behind,
"Ma'am"
Joanne jumped and turned round, but there was no
one there. She stopped herself from freaking out as the footsteps started going
away from her again, this time two pairs,
"It's Mr. Giles ma'am."
Joanne followed the voices breaking into a jog
and followed them downstairs. The front door lay open as the rain lashed in on
the hall floor. Joanne went to close it but it slammed shut before she reached
it. She jumped away from it as another door opened and she ran to it, as
someone pushed her inside and she fell to her knees. She pulled herself to her
feet as quickly as possible and looked round the room, it was empty apart from
the voices that she could hear, talking, arguing in her head it seemed. She
turned back to the door and tried to pull it open, but it was locked shut. She
pulled at the door handle then it came open sharply and Joanne went flying
backwards across the room. She smashed into a grand piano and the lid slammed
shut over the keys. When Joanne pulled herself into a sitting position rubbing
her head the door was closed again,
"- your fault Mr. Travers. Something could have
been done."
"Nothing could have been to stop what -"
"You didn't have to send him, you yourself could
have been sent. Or even one of the younger watcher's this was not a job for -"
"Your husband was the only one with enough
experience for this matter Mrs. Giles. I'm sorry that -"
The door flung itself open again as Joanne got back
to her feet for the second time and she rushed for the door which slammed
in her face. She felt a shiver run up her spine as she whirled round facing the
rest of the room,
"Ah Margaret, how are we -"
"Am I hearing right Mr. Travers?"
An old woman's voice resounded in Joanne's head
and it chilled her to the bones.
"Yes I'm very sorry to bring -"
"You're not Mr. Travers; I know this for a fact.
It was planned for my son to go abroad, yet you didn't want him killed. Injured
yes, but not killed. It seems to have turned out wrong -"
"I don't know -"
The curtains in the room pulled themselves shut
and the room fell into darkness. The lights flickered on for a moment, even
though Joanne remembered Giles saying the power was out for the whole village
earlier on, then all the light bulbs popped one by one. Joanne screamed and
ducked as the glass shattered above her head. She moved away from the wall into
the middle of the room, towards the piano again, listening, but the voices had
gone and she could no longer hear them. Then the books started to fly off the
few bookcases that were in the room smashing the glass in the glass fronted
ones. Some flew through the window and out into the garden, flying open at
random pages, until one dropped before her and flicked through until it found a
specific page. Joanne bent to look at the picture and the description beside
it, which was in Latin. She read it,
"Anala demons prefer warm regions and tend to
reside in such places as Africa and southern Asia. They kill there victims by
cutting them to shreds with the knife like fingers and teeth they posses. They
then devour their victims which will last them another week until they find
another human worthy of eating." The book snapped shut once she had finished reading
and flew out the window with the others, and then suddenly the room went
silent,
"Now do you remember Mr. Travers?"
The voice boomed out and then coldness swept
over Joanne possessing the far reaches of her body, tingling in her fingers and
toes and taking over her mind. She strode purposefully towards the door,
"I think you should go Mr. Travers. I need to
break the news to young Rupert."
Joanne reached for the door that opened before
her, and she swept out of the room, letting her feet take her and her mouth
talk for her. She had lost all control of her bodily functions. She couldn't
even breathe for herself. She tried to stop herself moving and stopped her feet
in her tracks. She reached out for the banister and hooked her arm round it
trying to stop herself travelling up the stairs, but she couldn't. Her arm bent
the wrong way and she released her grip, continuing to travel up the stairs.
