Secrets The Future Holds.
Now, walking down the desolate streets of Northampton town centre, Leo turned the corner into what he thought was going to be an abandoned Gold Street. Nobody had walked these parts of England for over five years now, so what Leo saw next as he turned made his heart race, pupils dilate and the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
It was the year 2009, the year when the credit crunch had hit hard and everybody was 'feeling the pinch'. Northampton town managed to keep steady for a couple of months, but on June 17th, a series of unexplained breakdowns around the town occurred, leaving people with no business, jobs, resources or homes. People, scared of a break-in, soon grew wary of leaving their homes, and most ended up packing up and moving away. But not many people found towns that hadn’t been hit hard like Northampton had. The friendly hustle and bustle, which usually made the market a pleasant place to be, soon turned to a place of anger and frustration. Before too long, the population decreased from around 85,000 to just 300 people.
A small family lived in a beautiful thatched cottage in Northampton, near Abington Park. It had cute little garden full of flowers, fruit and vegetable plants. The woman of the house, Mrs. Fentredent, was always out in the garden whilst her children; Leo (who was fifteen), and Clara (who was seventeen), were at school and college. Her husband was always away on business trips so he barely got time to spend with his wife and children. On June 16th, Clara was celebrating her eighteenth birthday with a party at a club in the town centre. Mr Fentredent was due to be home in the next few hours, depending on the traffic, to be with his family to celebrate his daughter’s birthday.
It was five o'clock and Mrs Fentredent was in the garden gathering flowers for decoration on the kitchen table and picking the ripest fruit and vegetables she had for a healthy lunch before the party, when the shrill ring of the house phone startled her, making her drop the contents of her picking basket. The contents spilled over the grass and with a sigh of disbelief she ran inside to pick up the phone. She was so shocked by the phone ringing because it was highly unusual for anybody to ring at this time of the day, as the people who usually rang were people for Mr Fentredent form work or Clara and Leo's friends. Who could it be? She ran as fast as she could, begging it not to stop ringing by the time she got there. She got there just as she thought it had stopped and picked up the receiver. "H-hello?" Mrs Fentredent gasped, out of breath. Someone was on the other end of the phone, but they didn’t speak. She could hear them breathing; whoever it was sounded as if they were in pain. "Get out of the house, as soon as possible" they choked, "They're coming for you and the kids"
The phone went dead. She couldn’t tell for definite who it was, but because the caller had said "...and the kids" she guessed and thought it was her husband. They sounded deadly serious, and in terrible pain. She stood frozen to the spot, gasping from shock and the run in from the garden. Phone still in hand, she allowed her brain to process what was going on. Someone was coming to the house, by the sound of it, for her family and herself. It sounds like whoever it was; they had already got to her husband. She got a grip of herself and a million thoughts ran through her mind. Without thinking about what she was doing, she rain upstairs and grabbed holiday bags from the airing cupboard in the bathroom and threw soap, toothbrushes and paste, flannels and towels into one of them, as if her body was in auto-pilot. She then ran into Clara’s bedroom and stuffed clothes form her drawers and wardrobe then to her own room and threw some clothes of hers and hers on top of Clara’s. She put her husbands into another bag and ran into Leo's room. Spilling the contents of his clothes drawers on top of Mr Fentredent’s clothes, she sat momentarily in shock.
Underneath Leo's socks was a photograph of his real father. He has never met him, and never seemed keen to know about him. She realised then that Leo was the absolute spit of him. Mr Fentredent wasn't Clara or Leo's biological father, but he had been their daddy ever since Leo was two and Clara was five. The father had left, due to family differences and ongoing arguments about money and housing. Nevertheless, she packed the photo. If Leo had gotten drawn close to this photograph, then she wouldn’t want to cause arguments or upsets by not taking it, wherever they were going. Then it dawned on her, where were they going to go, and how long must they be away from their home? She felt sick at the thought of having to leave and never come back. They had put their heart and soul into making this the home of their dreams. She ran downstairs, bags in hand, and the sound of them made her jump as they crashed on the stone floor. She rolled her eyes at herself and grabbed the mobile phone, which was only used for emergencies, from under the kitchen sink and selected Clara's number and pressed the call button. "Hello, what's wrong?" Clara’s voice came from the speaker on the mobile. "Clara honey, I don’t have time to explain but I need you to leave your lesson and get to the safest part of college, I’ll be there as soon as I can, I love you" Mrs Fentredent blurted out over the phone, trying to keep calm, but the nerves got the best of her. "Okay, I love you too" Clara replied, and then the phone line went dead. She searched through the phonebook in the tiny device and selected Leo's number and ran through the same conversation with him as she had done with Clara.
Mobile phone pocketed, she opened an old, grubby biscuit box that was at the back of the food cupboard, that when she opened revealed a tiny set of keys. She took them out and ran into the shed in the garden and hurriedly shoved everything out of her way. As she pushed the last of the garden tools out of the way, a tiny hole in the floor was revealed and she put in one of the keys and turned it. Relief filled her as she heard the lock click and dust erupted form the floor as she lifted up a secret door that to anyone who didn’t know it was there, would look just like shed floorboards. She climbed down a metal ladder which took her down to a small room, filled with boxes and shelves. She didn’t have to look through lots of boxes because she knew exactly what she was looking for. She ran across the room towards what looked like a cardboard box, but turned out to be made of concrete. She turned another key in another lock and she pulled the heavy door open. Another box lay inside, about the size of a suitcase and she pulled it out, not bothering to close the door or the shed behind her. She opened up the suitcase and revealed about three thousand pound in £20 notes. She then stuffed this into her handbag and zipped it up quick, as if she thought someone might be watching her. She then took all the bags, ran out to her car and threw them into the boot, not caring about order or tidiness. She ran back into the house and emptied her food cupboards into a black sack and then three that along with the other bags into her boot.
Leo stood, momentarily in shock as he took in what he could see. He saw a gruesome looking beast, eight feet tall at least with great big hands and feet, a blackish slime covering its body, It had what looked like a half eaten animal of some sort in one hand, and the other hand covered in blood. He ran, fear flooding his body so he wasn’t making the movements in his muscles but a conscience telling him to move. He didn’t look back; he just needed to get back to the Safe Place. He ran up the Drapery, up past the Bear Pub and down to Lady's Lane to the building which was once The Roadmender. He threw open the doors and closed them shut tight behind him, locking all the locks and pushing chairs and boxes against the door. He paced to the upstairs lounge which is where he had set up his room in, and pulled out some books form under one of the sofas. He had some great ones there; Frankenstein, Of Mice and Men, Romeo and Juliet, an Inspector Calls, some poetry books and some cooking books. He picked up the biggest book, (which happened to be the bible his mother had packed all those years ago when they left) and out of it slid his RE schoolbook. Leo was in his RE lesson when his mother called and told him to get to a safe place. He looked around the room. It was dark, but felt comfortable with the lamplight on the bar. The red paint was peeling off the bricks in some places but it still felt like home. The small spaces in the wall allowed him to look down on the small stage and dance floor that was Roadmender Bar. He got cuddled up under his duvet and turned on some music. He thought a bit of Claude Debussy would calm him down, but when you know you are completely alone in a town that you have just found out has adopted some gross new monsters, you'd find it hard to be calm and peaceful too. Sweeping back his dirty blonde hair form his eyes, he opened a photo album and stared at the faces that he longed to see again, even if it were for one minute.
Leo woke, startled by the sound of the photo album falling to the floor when he had fallen asleep whilst watching the faces of his family staring back at him, frozen smiles on their faces. He missed them so much. As he lay there, deep in thought of his family, he didn’t know that someone, or something, was making their way toward his Safe Place. They were right outside, walking down Lady's Lane towards the underground way into Roadmender. Leo became suddenly aware that he was not alone, as someone was inside his Safe Place. "Hello is anybody there?" he called out, hoping that he would receive no reply. He pulled out a baseball bat from under the table and held it stiffly in one hand as he made his way out of his room, across the upstairs balcony area and down the metal winding stairs. "Hello, I know you're in here, please let me in!" came a voice from the stage hall. Leo recognised the voice, but he couldn’t put it to a face, he knew that voice, deep down, something burst into flames. "Who are you?" Leo shouted in reply, not daring to get any closer to the door. He was so frightened because he hadn’t spoken to anyone in person for such a long time. "You'll know me when you see me, oh Leo is it really you?" they replied. Leo stood, almost absolutely statue if it wasn’t for his chest going up and down to hard as his nerves pulsed all over his body. They knew his name, they knew him. How did they know he was here? "I'll let you in, but you have to answer a question, so I know you're who I think you are, okay?" Leo told her, he wasn’t stupid, it could be some scrounger. But all the same, a scrounger would be better company then nobody I guess. "How old was I, when you moved from our house?" Leo asked, hoping they would answer correctly. He waited for an answer; sure they weren’t going to answer but then... "Thirteen" they replied. This wasn’t who he thought this was; this was somebody pretending to be who he wished it was. "WHO ARE YOU?!" Leo shouted, furious and confused, tears pricked in his eyes. Who would be so cruel! Just then he heard a tremendous growl and banging on the doors. He heard scratching like something was desperate to get in, growling like whatever was trying to get in was furious and he could smell something so disgusting he could barely breathe.
Mrs Fentredent started driving towards Leo's school as it was closest. He attended Northampton School for Boys. It's a pity now this craziness was happening, because it was a brilliant school. He was sent to Weston Favell School first, but he got in a fight with some boys, who had been bullying him, and a teacher got caught up in it and he hit him in reflex as the teacher pulled him back. She started Speeding down billing road and turned swiftly into the car park. She ran towards head office and asked for her son immediately.
Leo ran towards the door, bat in hand and heart racing ten to the dozen. As the door smashed in he saw the ugly monster from Gold Street rampage towards him and his swung his winning swing and hit it straight in the head. It fell to the floor, blood everywhere, and Leo confirmed it dead when the body fell to pieces on the floor and started to turn to dust. “Whoa.” That was the weirdest thing Leo had seen in his life. Just when he thought he was going crazy, a woman ran in the door. He knew her straight away, he cried out loud “Clara, oh my god Clara!” and ran towards her. Why wasn’t she looking at him? Why wasn’t she answering him. She stood in shock as she saw the decomposing body on the floor. "Mum come quick, something's been killed in here!" Clara shouted. She was older now, obviously. She would be twenty three, going on twenty four now. Leo was going on nineteen himself. She looked so different, whereas Leo seemed to look the same. Then his mother came in and he couldn’t help but burst into tears. "MUM IM HERE, IT'S LEO, I’M HERE, LOOK AT ME!" he shouted, begging her to look at him. But she just stood with her daughter, looking at this beast and said "Damn, they're in Kettering and Corby, now Northampton?" she said, annoyed look on her face. "Leo would of loved this, us three together fighting these beasties." But he was standing right there. He had just killed this 'beastie' and his mother and sister wouldn’t even look at him. Were they angry at him or something? For getting stuck in the car when the house fell on them and they left, they left him! Why were they angry at him! He was so confused, a thousand memories ran through his mind. The phone call, the shouting, the building, the pain, getting stuck, he got stuck he... No, no way.
“Mum, what’s going on?” Leo asked, a worried and scared look on his face. The boy was fifteen for god sake how is he meant to handle this kind of situation in his mind. He stepped into the car and before he could even close his door properly Mrs Fentredent screeched off out of the school gates and headed towards Clara’ college. “Something or someone is coming for us, we don’t know who, we don’t know why, we just know” She told him about the phone call and how they needed to keep calm and get as far away as possible. They arrived at Clara’s College and she ran out of the college as soon as they arrived and she jumped in the car. She was older so she knew that an emergency in the Fentredent family was a major emergency, not just spilt milk. They started driving towards the town centre, to catch a train to London where Mr Fentredent was most likely to be. They turned down Gold Street when out of the blue a building collapsed in front of them, bricks landed all over the car and the Fentredent’s screamed. The only thing running through Mrs Fentredent’s mind was her children. “Leo, Clara are you okay?” she shouted. Clara made a noise that’s suggested she was and no sound came from Leo. “LEO, no Leo!” She started sobbing. Blood was pouring from his nose and his face was bruised and cut all over. His body lay mangled across the backseat of the car. “Mum, check his pulse check his pulse quick!” Clara screamed. She couldn’t believe that this could happen all on her birthday. Mrs Fentredent took hold of Leo’s arm. She felt no pulse. Leo Fentredent, her perfect, beautiful son, was dead.
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