This is a scene cut from Evening Falls, continuing right where the chapter September's Girl left off, so I'd recommend EF reader re-read that one first. This is how the evidence of Bella's rampage was covered up and I had tons of fun writing it, but it just didn't fit with such a dire chapter.
I know I spelled the caretaker's name in that chapter Oldridge instead of Aldridge. It was supposed to be Aldridge, I swear. :D
Mr. Aldridge and the Vampires
"They're not coming back, are they?" I whispered.
Esme's eyes were sorrowful. It was answer enough. I couldn't say anything else. All I could do was bury my face in the collar of her ruined shirt, trying to hide the tears.
"You're safe now, Elisa," she crooned into my hair, her fingers lightly stroking my head.
"I know," I sobbed. "But I didn't get to say goodbye."
We stayed like that for a long moment, nobody speaking. It wasn't until I felt Carlisle tense next to me and Esme went completely still that I lifted my head. For a second, I thought I had been wrong, that they were coming back, and anticipation danced within me. My heart collapsed in a sulky heap when Rosalie and Emmett appeared through the trees instead.
As soon as they caught sight of us and the wreckage of the cabin, they both skidded to a stop.
"What the hell happened here?" Emmett thundered. I couldn't tell if he was frightened for us or just disappointed that he had missed all the action.
"Bella," Carlisle explained simply. He sighed as he looked at me. "I am so sorry, Elisa. Everything happened so fast – I should have realized that having your scent all around her when she woke up would set her off. We were wholly unprepared for this."
"No, it was my fault," Esme interrupted him. "I wanted to be close by. I should have never picked a location that was accessible from our – "
"Excuse me!" Rosalie snapped, cutting her off. She was standing in front of me now, turning my head from side to side, examining my injuries, her glower deepening by the second. "Instead of trying to out guilt each other, maybe we should be laying the blame where it really belongs, on Bella! Where is she?" The last three words came out as more of a snarl.
Esme and Carlise both shot her reproving looks. "Edward is taking her someplace safe."
Rosalie pressed her lips together in a thin, angry line. She looked like she wanted to say something else but as she looked at Esme, her face softened.
"We have quite a mess to clean up," Carlisle looked around the campground with a sigh. The damage around us was much more extreme in the light of day. I couldn't imagine how we were going to fix this before someone saw it.
Even as I wondered, the four of them stilled simultaneously. I followed their gaze and my mouth dropped open.
"What in the name of all that's holy is going on here?"
Mr. Aldridge, the caretaker, was storming down the dirt road from his cabin. His weathered face was drawn with anger as he hobbled as fast as he could towards us.
"Uh oh," I whispered under my breath, but it was about to get a whole lot worse.
Just as he reached the clearing before our cabin, a few persistent rays of sunshine forced their way through the grey cloud cover. It descended on Carlisle, Esme, Rosalie and Emmett as if it were meant for them and the four of them lit up like crystals hung before a window, reflecting prisms of light off their skin.
Mr. Aldridge froze. He stared from one shimmering vampire to the next, then to me, then to the destroyed front side of the cabin. His eyes took in the Esme shaped crater in the earth, the long furrows in the grass, and finally he gazed through the trees to the fresh new gap where at least six giant trees lay toppled on their sides.
Fresh rage darkened his expression. "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU FREAKS DO TO MY CAMPGROUND?" he roared. In the face of all the fresh destruction, the sight of four sparkling vampires was apparently insignificant.
"Mr. Aldridge," Carlisle was speaking as calmly as if he was discussing the weather, even as he glittered brightly enough that his skin was casting rainbow covered prisms in all directions. "Please allow me to explain..."
I didn't realize what the significant look he cast to Rosalie as he spoke meant until she appeared behind Mr. Aldridge. I didn't see what she did, but in a second his eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped heavily to the ground. For a heart stopping minute I thought she'd killed him until I saw his chest was still moving up and down.
"Great," she snapped as she looked down at his prostrate figure. "What are we going to do now?"
"OK, then," Emmett straightened up after depositing a still unconscious Mr. Aldridge in the unmade bed with its yellowing sheets. "What now?"
Rosalie put her hands on her hips, looking around her with an exasperated expression. We were standing in Mr. Aldridge's caretaker cabin, a stuffy darkened little shack that looked - and smelled - like it hadn't been cleaned in years. It made the cabin I'd stayed in with Esme look like a palace.
Esme had objected strenuously to me being involved in the cover-up that was taking place right now, but Carlisle had insisted so vehemently that he take her back home so he could examine her injuries that she couldn't put up much of a fight. Besides, I wanted to be smack in the middle of some vampire subterfuge, first of all because it probably wouldn't be the last time we'd need to do something like this and secondly because if I didn't have anything to do I'd be a sobbing heap somewhere, grieving over Edward and Bella.
Rosalie was taking a deep breath now and looking satisfied, she gestured to me. "Elisa, go look in the cupboards in the kitchen. He's got a bottle of some sort of alcohol in there; bring it to me."
I was sure Rosalie could have found what she needed in half a second but apparently she felt I needed to practice Vampire Cover Up 101 as well.
A few minutes of digging through the cupboards in Mr. Aldridge's dank, tiny kitchenette and I found it, a half empty bottle of gin. When I brought it back to Rosalie and tried to hand it to her, she shook her head. "No, you're going to do it."
"Rose,' Emmett started to object and she shot him a look.
"Go set up the other cabin, Em. We'll be out in a few minutes."
With a sigh and a blur, Emmett was gone and Rosalie zipped over to the bed, pulling Mr. Aldridge into a slightly upright position. She turned to me. "Uncap it and pour some in his mouth. Just a little; we don't want him to vomit in his sleep."
I tried to obey but only half of what I poured into the old man's reeking mouth actually made it down his throat. The rest spilled on his shirt. Rosalie waved away my apology with a dismissive hand. "That's even better; he'll believe he was completely out of it."
With that she snatched the bottle, zoomed to the doorway where she emptied the rest of the bottle into the grass, and was back again just as fast. I helped her to lay Mr. Aldridge back down on his pillow and she placed the empty bottle in his hand. "There. Whatever he remembers when he wakes up he'll think was a drunken dream."
From outside there came a huge crashing noise that made me jump out of my shoes but Rosalie didn't even seem to notice. "Tape this to his door, Elisa," she handed me an envelope with Mr. Aldridge scrawled on it.
"What's this?" I queried, looking at it.
"A tip and a thank you note I wrote on behalf of Esme. When he wakes up he'll think we checked out before anything happened."
"Will this really work?" I couldn't help but ask worriedly.
Rosalie actually smiled at that. "Worked every other time we've done it."
"But what about our cabin?" I had to ask. Before Carlisle had left he'd helped Emmett replant most of the torn out trees, assuring me that they should re-root without problems and no one would be the wiser. The furrows in the earth weren't hard for them to fill in either. The cabin that Bella had half smashed in trying to get to me was a different story. It had been nearly destroyed; there was no way I could see that they could hide that.
"Come and see," Rosalie smirked at me.
I stopped and stared in amazement. The cabin was still destroyed, it was true, but now a giant pine tree which minutes ago had stood proudly next to it, shading it with enormous branches, now lay splayed across it. The effect was perfect; it looked exactly like it had fallen during the night and crushed the small wooden building underneath it.
"That looks awesome!" I exclaimed, then frowned. "Why is anyone going to believe a tree just fell like that, though?"
Emmett grinned widely at this, looking extremely pleased with himself. "It's not actually the same tree, Elisa. I switched it with one of the trees we were going to replant. This one has rot in it; it would have fallen eventually anyway. Happens all the time."
I couldn't even think of anything to say to that. No wonder the human world had never found out about vampires; they put James Bond to shame.
