A Step Into The Dark

by Vince Vogel

  His mother turned sharply on him.

  “You promised that you’d stopped lighting fires,” she put to him.

  “He’s done this before?” Alice asked.

  “Yes. He set fire to the garden fence a few years ago and he was caught setting fire to some things in a caravan site we were holidaying at a short while after that.”

  “And these other fires?” Alice said, taking ahold of the book and opening it up on a page she’d marked with a post-it. “The one in the churchyard. What happened there?”

  “It was nothing,” the boy muttered.

  “It says here,” Alice turned to the book, “that you set fire to the bush and watched it burn and that you imagined their screams coming from out of it. You write: ‘I even imagine their faces inside. Burning and blistering. The skin coming apart and falling away. Their eyes popping from the heat.’” She turned her eyes from the book to the teenager. His own were pointed down at the pockmarked table. “You still feel like that? Want to see their faces burned away?”

  He shook his head.

  “For the tape,” Alice seethed.

  “No.”

  “Louder.”

  “No.”

  “Then why did you write that?”

  Stuart Chadwell sat shivering as he thought about the question and then about the answers. The trembling rose up his knobbly spine and he appeared to be taken up suddenly by wrath. He shot his flashing eyes at Alice and for the first time she saw indignation shining in them.

  “Those fuckers make my life hell,” he complained. “Ever since I was ten, they’ve taunted me and abused me. Belittled me every chance they had. They do it to everyone that’s not like them. They’re like some tribe. If you’re not beautiful or athletic or tough, they look down on you like you were shit. They think they own our school. Think they own everything. Do you know what they did to me last year?”

  He was crying once more, the tears dropping from his eyes.

  “What did they do, Stuart?”

  “Broke my fucking arm!” he cried out. “Held me down while one of them stamped on it.”

  “You said you fell off your bike,” his mother put forward.

  “Of course I did,” the boy cried back, turning to her. “There’s no use going to anyone. Look what happened in year nine. They stop for a while. Don’t do it at school. But eventually it all begins again. They bump into you at the shopping center. Begin calling you names. Following you about. They think they have some divine right to make everyone else miserable.”

  “Was that what the bomb was for?” Alice suggested.

  “It wasn’t real!” Stuart exclaimed, turning back to her.

  “I know. But bomb disposal still said it was put together in a way that would have made it capable, had the right components and chemicals been present. They told me it looked like you were practicing.”

  “I was making a prop. I was going to trick my sister with it.”

  “That’s not what it says here.” Alice flicked through the notebook to another entry she’d marked. “‘I’d like to find them when they’re in the car. All sitting together. Joking about how great they are and how the rest of us are nothing but losers. Laugh about how much fun it is to make our lives hell. Imagine the looks on their faces as they sit there when I come along and throw a pipe bomb into the car. It lands on one of their laps and then BOOM! I watch as bits of them explode out of the windows. One of them staggers out with an arm missing. Bleeding face. Blinded by the blast.’” The detective looked up at him. “There’s a lot of anger in you, Stuart,” she added.

  “I would never have done it,” he muttered.

  “Now they’re dead,” Alice went on.

  “I know,” he sobbed, shaking his head. It was back between his shoulders. “Don’t think I haven’t been thinking that since I found out this morning. It’s weird. I actually feel sorry for them.” He raised his head. His expression was one of sincere sorrow. “You have to believe me, I didn’t want them dead. Not like this. I fantasize about stuff. It’s all I’ve got most of the time. Sometimes those fantasies get out of hand.”

  “What about the Incel group you’re a member of?” Alice then put to him.

  It wasn’t so much the murders she was after the boy for. It was more an awakening that she wanted to secure in his soul. She wanted to confront him with himself. Show him how far and how mutated these fantasies were. That spending all this time on his own was bad for him. Heck, it had been bad for her. Bad for Alice, all that time spent alone.

  Alice pointed down at one of the pages on the table. It was a text between a group of ‘Involuntary Celibates’ (Incel). Stuart was under the name of SirHungAlot.

  “What’s a ‘Stacey’?” the detective asked.

  The boy cleared his throat. He looked embarrassed.

  “A ‘Stacey’ is a very attractive woman who wouldn’t look twice at someone like me. In fact, if she did look at me twice, she’d more than likely see nothing on both occasions. She only sees Chads.”

  “Which are?”

  “Popular guys. Guys like Micheal Burke and the others. Athletic. Muscular. See themselves as alpha and see people like me as some skinny beta.”

  “Okay. So tell me why you write that you’d like to go around in your car with a big gun shooting Chads and Staceys as they walked along holding hands?”

  “A joke.”

  “A joke?”

  As they spoke, Mrs. Chadwell was busy gazing down at the list of profane messages that lined the sheets of paper on the table. Messages that advocated raping women. Advocated killing. Men declaring themselves celibate so that beautiful women couldn’t control them through their bodies, thus making them pay for sex or pornography. Men who’d waged war on females and championed a world of misogyny. A world which Margaret Atwood would easily recognize.

  “I didn’t know you were so angry,” Mrs. Chadwell said, looking up at her son with a terrified face.

  She looked actually scared of him and he noticed it. His own mother scared of her son. It had the biggest impact on him since Alice had arrested the teen. To see his own mother physically afraid of him.

  Stuart Chadwell burst into tears, threw his head forward and buried it in his hands. If ever Alice needed a clear sign that Stuart wasn’t their man, it was now. He was capable of anger and perhaps somewhere in the future that anger could intensify to the point where he’d be willing to take it out on his fellow humans, but for now, he was only capable of fantasy. Alice would have him booked in for a month’s observation at a psychiatric facility and leave it at that.

  A knock at the door took her attention and she excused herself from the room, suspending the interview. Outside, she found Detective Sergeant Victoria Sharp, a tall, pencil-thin woman with shoulder-length brown hair and wearing a slim, gray trouser suit.

  “I just got word from the house and from forensics here, ma’am,” Sharp said.

  “What did they say?”

  “No sign of gun residue or any other signs of weapons in the house. Nothing on the kid’s clothing and none on anything else. We searched the shed and didn’t find anything there, either. Nothing in the rest of the house or garden. No physical evidence to tie him to the crime.”

  “It’s not him,” Alice admitted, though she already knew. “Well, not yet, at least.”

  “How so, ma’am?”

  Alice shook her head.

  “It doesn’t matter. Thanks for the update.”

  Alice turned and walked a little way up the corridor. She pulled her phone out and made a call.

  “What is it?” Jack Sheridan answered on the other end.

  “Had a slight development that turned into nothing. Some boy who went to school with them was abusing them online. But he’s nothing to do with it.”

  “Okay,” Jack let out in a sardonic tone. “Why’re you calling me about this on my day of rest?”

  Alice gazed into space. She was wondering the same thing. A part of her had made the call auto
matically. It was as though she wanted to speak to him. Even if she had nothing to say.

  “What are you doing now?” she quickly said.

  “Driving to Derby.”

  “Why?”

  “Something that Jonny Cockburn brought to my attention. More disrespect to my day of rest.”

  “Ugh! The journalist.”

  “Yes, the journalist. He’s not actually that bad when you get to know him.”

  “He’s the press, Jack. He’s sneaky. Plays both sides.”

  “I think you’ll be surprised that he has at least half a heart.”

  “Anyway, what’s it about?”

  He told her. Told her about Robert Kline. About the letters he’d been getting. About Graham Dyson never making it home from the park.

  “Sounds like it could be something,” Alice said. “Keep me updated.”

  “I will.”

  The two were silent for a moment and Jack eventually added, “Was there anything else?”

  “No. Just thought I’d update you.”

  “O-k-a-y. Well, I feel fully updated now.”

  She smiled. Involuntarily. Felt something warm in his sarcastic tone. The way he always added an air of cynicism in everything he said. As though he trusted the truth in nothing, including his own words.

  “Bye then,” she said, and hung up.

  28

  Jack drove through the outer realms of Derby. It was a small city with no more than two and a half hundred thousand souls within its borders. The housing estates were surrounded by vales of green and yellow fields, the outer city still holding something of a countryside charm. He found the address in a cul-de-sac of semi-detached brick houses.

  Parking on the drive, he got out and ventured to the door. He was feeling a little trepidatious. Over the phone, the mother had been keen to know if he was calling because of any developments in her son’s case. He had to tell her that he wouldn’t know until he’d asked her some questions, which he’d like to in person as the subject was delicate. The desperation in her voice had cut his heart.

  Now, when she answered the door, the little woman had a desperately eager look on her face.

  “Are you Detective Sheridan?” she immediately put to him.

  “Yes. And you must be Mrs. Dyson.”

  “Graham’s mum,” she was quick to point out. “I mean, Joyce,” she added with a shake of the head.

  She looked a little startled. Jack noticed that her hands were shaking.

  “Can we go inside?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course.”

  She led him through the door into a hallway. The first thing he saw as he removed his shoes on the mat was a large, glass-fronted cabinet filled with soccer medals and memorabilia. Standing on top was a framed photograph of a boy dressed in his soccer kit, a wide smile stretching his cheeks. Jack couldn’t help thinking of the cabinet in his own lounge filled with Tyler’s medals and pictures. The fang of melancholy pierced his heart as he imagined the cabinet frozen in time with no boy to continue filling it.

  “Is that Graham?” Jack asked.

  “Yes,” the mother said, beaming with pride.

  She was a short woman with curled, brown hair that hung limply from her gaunt face. She was in her thirties, but Jack thought she looked older. More tired around the eyes than she should be. She was dressed in black leggings and a white T-shirt. It hung from her, even the leggings, and she must have weighed no more than ninety pounds.

  “My grandson plays for a team too,” Jack said.

  “Yeah. Graham was…” She winced. Clenched her eyes. “I mean is a brilliant player. Makes us so proud.”

  Jack smiled at her and they went into a dining room. On a table was a collection of photographs, all of the same brown-haired skinny boy. She’d got them out especially.

  “I wanted you to see him,” she said. “So you’ll see what a good lad he were. Know why it’s so important to find him. He was always helpful.” She led him to the table and gazed down at the pictures with absolute pride shining on her face. “This one,” she said, picking up a photograph of the boy standing behind a cake stall at a fete, dressed in his boy scout uniform, “is from the Scout bake sale. He helped raise over three thousand pounds that day to help buy a machine for local kiddy’s ward. Always thinkin’ o’ other people.” She stopped and a tear fled down her cheek. “And this,” she went on, placing the scout picture down and taking up one were the boy was standing behind a stack of tinned vegetables. “He helped out a couple of times with his local footy team, distributin’ food to the homeless. Not a thought for hisself. Just doin’ things for others. They say kids are bad these days, but he weren’t.” She clenched her eyes again. “He isn’t. He thinks of others. A bloody God send…”

  She broke off in tears, sniffing loudly. Jack placed an arm around her shoulder and she threw herself into the detective, bawling her eyes out.

  “Don’t you see?” she wept. “He can’t be gone because God wouldn’t do that. He’d protect Graham. Protect him because he were a true lamb of God.”

  For the first time, Jack observed the cross on the wall. Above the head of the dining table. It was on her too, a gold crucifix she wore outside of her T-shirt.

  “Is your husband home?” he asked her.

  She took her face away from his chest and gazed up, turning red from embarrassment. It was as though she’d suddenly realized that she were holding a complete stranger in her dining room. She untangled herself from the detective and took a seat at the table. Jack went off and fetched some tissues from the lounge. When he returned, she’d got an ashtray out and was smoking. She dried her eyes on the tissues and he took a seat at the table with her, getting his pack of Marlboros out and lighting one.

  “Shaun couldn’t cope,” she began in a trembling voice. “In the two years after Graham’s disappearance, my husband faded into a man I, nor anyone else for that matter, recognized anymore. See, we’d tried for years to have Graham. IVF. The lot. He were a miracle.” She took the cross in her hand and rubbed her fingers around it. “Our little miracle.” She sighed, tapped her ash in the tray and continued, “You can imagine what it does to parents when their only chance of a child is taken from them.”

  “It must have been dreadful.”

  “Yes. And then… then to have to… to have to lose your husband as well.”

  Jack hadn’t checked up on it. He’d not known.

  “When did it happen?” he asked.

  “Christmas before last,” she said, wiping her eyes. “He’d given up hope. I came home one day and he was redecorating Graham’s room. Taken all his stuff to the tip. Couldn’t go on thinking all the time about him. Then at Christmas, he got worse. Seeing all the families out. Buying presents. Happy faces. Seeing all the decorations on the street. The kids carol singing. It just got to him.”

  She sat frozen, eyes glaring into space. The ash slipped from the end of her trembling cigarette, but she didn’t notice.

  “I’m so sorry,” Jack said.

  There was nothing else he could say.

  “He gave up hope,” she muttered in a despondent voice, a little light coming back to the windows of her eyes. “I won’t.”

  She clenched the crucifix tightly.

  “I wish I didn’t have to do this,” Jack said after clearing his throat, “but I’m here to talk about Graham’s disappearance.”

  “Has there been a development?” she asked sharply, the glimmer of a smile—a smile of hope—flickering on her thin lips.

  “I think so. But I need to know a few things first.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “A letter was recently found in the possession of a prison inmate. In it is a description of a crime which matches Graham’s disappearance. I’d like to speak to you and see if it’s possible that the crime he describes is Graham’s disappearance.”

  “Someone sent a letter?” she said softly, a look of confusion stunning her melancholy face.

  “Yes. The
y claimed to have taken a boy and sent his mother a note written by the boy’s hand. He said he took the boy on a park while he walked with a ball.”

  A shudder ran through Joyce Dyson and she almost gasped. Pointing her eyes at the detective, she cried out, “Did the letter say he killed him?”

  I took him away and made him disappear. Got him to write a letter to his ma. Do you think we’ll be together in the afterlife?

  “It didn’t say,” Jack replied like a coward. “Just that he took him.”

  “And nothin’ about where they are? If Graham’s alright? If he’s feedin’ him? Lookin’ after him?”

  Not for the first time, a look of utter desperation took hold of her face.

  “It didn’t say,” Jack repeated. “Only that he took a boy from a park while he walked home holding a football.”

  “They found the ball,” she almost cried. “Where the van was seen drivin’ away from. Lyin’ in the street. All that was left of him. Then came the letter.”

  She almost looked deranged, her brows bending and twisting as she gazed into the past with swollen eyes.

  “I haven’t bothered going to Derby police to get access to it,” Jack said softly. “I didn’t want to get bogged down in the police bureaucracy of it. I don’t suppose you have a copy?”

  Her eyes came back alive. In a hollowed-out voice, she replied, “Sure. They let me keep a copy.”

  She stubbed her burned-down cigarette into the ashtray and got up like a zombie. The poor woman looked washed out and exhausted. Soon, she came back with a photo album. She’d had the letter laminated inside. It was the last thing she had of him.

  The note was written in a boy’s scrawl.

  “They had experts look at it,” she said. “Compared it to his school work. It’s completely him. He wrote it in his own words.”

  The last will and testiment of Graham Dyson. I love you mum and dad, nanna and grandad, grandma and pops, aunty Suzy and uncle Gary, all my cousins, I loved you all the same, my mates who were the best, the whole of North End football team, my coaches, sorry Pete looks like I won’t be playing for England, sorry to let you down, everyone at St Margarets, say a prayer for me and I’ll make sure to mention you to our father when we meet, and to everyone else I ever knew. I loved you all. I’ll be with my father now, so please, please don’t worry! Just remember the way I made you laugh and all the amazing times we had together. Please don’t ever let this ruin your lives just keep living one day at a time. Some good will come out of this I’m sure. I’ll always love all of you. Thanks mum and dad for being the best parents. You made me so happy. I couldn’t have had better. When I think of what this will do to you it makes me so terribly sad. Please get on with your lives. And please with the lord in your hearts forgive the man who has done this. I have already forgiven him. You will only ever poison your own world with anger and hatred. Isn’t that what you always said dad? My thoughts will always be with you. All my heart Graham.