Wish Me Dead

by Malcolm Richards

  Tears splashed down Charlotte’s face as it contorted into a terrible grimace.

  Emily softened her voice. “Please, Charlotte. You’re the daughter of a priest – what could Becky possibly have on you?”

  Tears turned into great sobs. Charlotte buried her face into her hands.

  “I didn’t mean to do it!” she wailed. “I just wanted to be left alone. But she kept pushing and pushing. Asking for more money I didn’t have. She was going to show it to him!”

  A chill crawled over Emily’s skin. “Charlotte, what did you do?”

  Sucking in a trembling breath, Charlotte shut her eyes and shook her head violently from side to side.

  Emily tightened her grip on the crucifix.

  “Charlotte,” she repeated. “Where’s Becky?”

  Charlotte opened her eyes. When Emily stared into them, all she saw was empty space. An awkward cough drew her attention to the doorway behind. One of the removal men stared at the space between them, doing his best not to acknowledge Charlotte’s tear-stained face or the heavy atmosphere, thick as treacle, smothering the kitchen.

  “We’re about done, here,” he said. “We’ll start heading off.”

  He waited for one of the women to say something. When neither of them spoke, he shrugged a shoulder and turned back to the hall. He was halfway down when Charlotte called out.

  “Can you wait an hour? Take a break or something before you head off.”

  The man hovered. “Fine, but we’ll have to charge for the extra time.”

  Charlotte nodded. Satisfied, the man left them alone.

  Emily turned and met her friend’s unsettling gaze.

  “It’s not far,” Charlotte said quietly. “We can take my car.”

  21

  THEY DROVE IN silence, leaving the town behind and disappearing into the countryside, further and further away from people. Despite Emily’s efforts, Charlotte hadn’t uttered a word since leaving the kitchen. She kept her eyes on the road and her foot pressed on the accelerator. Emily sat in the passenger seat, fingers tapping on her knees. Becky had been missing for five days now. She had no idea if she was alive or dead.

  Stealing a quick glance at Charlotte, she saw that her skin had become slick with perspiration, giving it a marble-like sheen. Her expression sat somewhere between shock and terror. Emily wondered what was going through her mind. Nothing good; of that she was sure.

  Ten minutes passed. They turned off the main road and plunged down a narrow track. Tall hedgerows closed in on both sides, their leaves brushing the sides of the car.

  “Where are we going?” Emily asked, her shoulder muscles knotting. Charlotte remained silent. The road began to snake and buck, veering off to the left then the right, each corner sharper than the next. “Can you at least tell me if I’m going to find Becky alive or. . .”

  She couldn’t finish the sentence. Charlotte tightened her grip on the wheel.

  At last, the track came to an end, merging with a two-lane road. Charlotte took a left, then another right. The car disappeared down another track, this one even narrower than the last.

  Anxiety was spreading through Emily’s body like sickness. She made sure Charlotte wasn’t looking then pulled out her phone. To her dismay there was no signal. An hour ago, Charlotte had been her friend; quiet and intelligent, with a wry sense of humour and a benevolent aura. Now, Emily was afraid of her. Worse still, she was alone with her in the middle of nowhere, driving into the unknown.

  It suddenly occurred to Emily that she had spent the last year living with total strangers. The people she thought she had known were gone now and in their place were two shadowy figures, twisted by anguish and anger and despair.

  Charlotte spun the wheel, turning the car onto a dirt road. Trees appeared on both sides, plunging the world into shadows. Emily wondered if she’d made a terrible mistake coming along on this journey.

  A minute later, the road ended in a wide, round clearing, surrounded by forest.

  Charlotte slowed the car to a halt and turned off the engine. For a long time, she sat unmoving, staring through the windscreen, face devoid of expression. Just as the silence became unbearable and Emily’s anxiety reached excruciating levels, Charlotte grabbed the door handle and pushed the door open.

  “Come on.”

  Without looking back, she climbed out of the car.

  The sun had been smothered by a growing formation of clouds, teasing goose pimples to the surface of Emily’s flesh. She closed the door and stood by the car, staring into the trees.

  “It’s this way,” Charlotte said, her voice flat and lifeless. She started towards the forest.

  Emily watched her for a few seconds. No shovel, she observed. At least they wouldn’t be digging anyone up. Quickly searching the ground, she found a fist sized rock and slipped it inside her jacket pocket.

  Charlotte was waiting for her at the tree line. As Emily approached, she turned and disappeared into the forest.

  It was unusually quiet. The canopy above their heads was bereft of birds. Foliage crunched beneath Emily’s feet. She was having trouble breathing.

  They walked along a worn trail that curled between the tree trunks. It was a natural trail, worn into the ground over time by either human or animal feet. Emily’s eyes were fixed on Charlotte’s back. Occasionally, her gaze would stray off to the sides, noting that the deeper they were heading into the forest, the darker it was becoming.

  “Where are we going?” Emily’s voice bounced off the trees. Charlotte ploughed ahead, her movements stiff and zombie-like. “Damn it! Will you talk to me?”

  The path turned and Charlotte stepped off it, heading for a thick copse of silver birch trees.

  Emily stared at the path beneath her feet. She did not want to leave it.

  Charlotte had quickened her pace and was already disappearing into the distance. Emily called after her then broke into a jog.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you,” she panted, quickly catching her up.

  Rounding the birch trees, Charlotte walked towards a large cluster of undergrowth. The ground grew boggy beneath their feet. Wet soil splashed on their clothes. Emily grabbed Charlotte’s arm, spinning her around.

  For the first time since they’d left the house, Charlotte met her gaze. Emily gasped. It was as if she’d aged ten years during their car journey. Her eyes had grown round and dull. Shadows swam beneath them. This is what guilt does to you, Emily thought, and a sudden, unpleasant chill slipped beneath her jacket.

  Charlotte tried to get moving again but Emily held fast.

  “You need to talk to me, right now,” she said. “You need to tell me what happened with Becky. You need to tell me if . . . if we’re about to find her alive or dead.”

  Charlotte stared at her blankly. She blinked a couple of times, as if she’d just woken up.

  “I slept with Damien,” she said.

  Emily’s mouth fell open. “When?”

  “I don’t know, sometime last year. We got talking in the bar. I knew who he was, what he did, but I didn’t care. It was just a drunken one night stand, nothing more. A bit of fun.”

  Emily shook her head.

  “Everyone does it,” Charlotte said defensively. “I can’t be the priest’s daughter twenty-four- seven.”

  “I’m not judging you. I’m confused. What does sleeping with Damien Harris a year ago have to do with Becky?”

  Charlotte stared off into the trees. “One night, a couple of months ago, Becky came to my room. She was high as a kite, swaying everywhere, chewing her face off. She told me she’d been with Damien. That she’d been hanging out with him a lot. That afternoon, she’d been at his flat. He’d had to slip out for half an hour and he’d let her stay. She was using his computer and decided to snoop around. She found . . . videos.”

  “What kind of videos?”

  Charlotte stared at the ground as tears slipped silently down her cheeks. “It turns out Damien likes to record the women he sleeps with. Se
cretly. Without them knowing. Apparently, he has a whole collection on his hard drive. I had no idea that he’d. . .”

  Charlotte fell silent as her complexion flared a deep red.

  “I’m sorry,” Emily said, her heart aching for Charlotte. Suddenly it was clear what had happened next.

  “At first, I didn’t believe Becky, but then she showed me the video. She’d copied it to her phone. She demanded money, saying that if I didn’t give it to her, she’d make sure that video was uploaded to the Internet for everyone to see. I pleaded with her, practically got down on my knees, but she just laughed and said she’d send it to my father, too.” Charlotte continued to stare in her strange way, her voice slow and emotionless, as if she were reading from a script. “I knew it would kill him. He’s a priest. You know what his beliefs are. After Mum died, it was just the two of us. We’d never been best friends but he was all I had. If he saw that video. . . If the church found out, or the community, anyone. . . I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself. So, I gave Becky her money.”

  “And she deleted the video?”

  Charlotte shook her head. “A week later she came back, demanding more. Then the week after that, and the week after that. Until I had no money left to give her.” Charlotte reached for the empty space around her neck. “That’s when she took my necklace. It was all that was left of my mum. Becky knew that, but she took it anyway.”

  Emily felt the crucifix in her pocket. She yearned to return it to Charlotte, but she resisted. “Why didn’t you come to me? Why didn’t you tell me what was going on? I could have helped.”

  “How?” Charlotte’s voice was sharp and bitter. “That video would have been all over the Internet in a second. She would have sent it to my dad. Even if I managed to get hold of the original video, Becky had already made at least one copy. What was to stop her from making more?”

  “What about Sunday evening? The night Becky disappeared?” Emily asked quietly.

  For the briefest of moments, rage flashed like lightning across Charlotte’s face. Then blankness returned.

  “She called me to say she was leaving town and I would never hear from her again. But she wanted one last favour. That was the word she used — favour. She gave me a list of things she wanted from her room. I was to pack them and bring them to the station, and I had thirty minutes in which to do it.” Charlotte hesitated, looking back over her shoulder. “You’d already gone to bed. I crept into her room and filled a bag with the stuff she wanted. Then I slipped out and drove to the station. She was waiting for me when I pulled up in the parking space around the back. It was dark. No one was around. I gave her the damn bag and I thought that would be the end of it.

  “Then she said she had time to kill before her train arrived. She started boasting about all the people she’d exploited. About all the money she’d taken from them. She was boasting to me — one of the people she’d stolen from. Then she started laughing about how she’d pulled a fast one on Damien.”

  “Because she owed him money?”

  Charlotte shook her head. “Didn’t you work that out? Damien was in on it from the beginning. They chose their targets together. He helped plan everything. He even told Becky what to say when it came to blackmailing his father. She was laughing that night because she had no intention of sharing the money with Damien. She’d played him like an idiot.”

  Emily was stunned. When Damien had told her Becky owed him money, he’d meant his share of the takings. Had he been hoping Emily would track Becky down, leading him straight to her? As for Vice Chancellor Eriksson, he had no idea that his son was jointly responsible for his blackmail. It was clever of Damien, she supposed. He’d found a way of punishing his father without him ever knowing. She turned back to Charlotte, who was staring into space through red-rimmed eyes.

  “What happened next?”

  “She kept going on and on,” Charlotte said, her voice barely above a whisper. “About how bloody clever she was. About how she was going to start a new life where nobody knew her thanks to the money everyone had kindly handed over. Something in me snapped. I thought: what happens when the money runs out? Who will she come for then? As long as she had that video, she could call at any time and demand more. It could go on forever.” Her hands began to tremble. She held them up, staring at them. “All her talk was giving me a headache. I remember thinking: I wish she would just shut up. But she wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t bear it. So, I made her stop.”

  The temperature had dropped. A breeze blew up around them and continued through the forest. Emily gripped the rock in her pocket.

  “Charlotte, what did you do? Where’s Becky?”

  Charlotte stared at her open-mouthed, a lone tear splashing down her cheek.

  “She’s this way,” she said, and took off once more.

  This time, Emily stayed by her side. They rounded a large crop of ferns. The ground began to descend sharply. Charlotte stopped still, swaying like a flower on the breeze. Then, instead of heading down the slope, she turned right and walked on a few more paces until she reached a pile of fallen branches.

  “Here,” she said, staring lifelessly at Emily.

  Confused, Emily peered at the ground. “Where?”

  Charlotte pointed. “She’s down there.”

  Moving around the fallen branches, Emily saw the rusted metal hatch and stared at it with mounting horror. “What is this?”

  “An old bomb shelter left over from the Second World War. People used to live in it. Did you know there are bunkers all over the country? They’re hidden beneath cities and in the countryside, even buried in people’s back yards – protection from the bombs dropped by Nazi warplanes. We came here on a field trip in my first year. It was condemned not long after. They were supposed to fill it in, but all they did was chain it up.” She tapped the hatch with her foot. There was no chain on it now. “No one ever comes out this way, so ...”

  Her shoes sinking into wet mud, Emily crouched down beside the hatch and ran her fingers along its edges. Rust crumbled into dust. Images of Becky’s broken body lying in the dark flashed in her mind.

  “You brought her all the way out here?” she said, without turning around.

  Charlotte took a step closer. “I don’t really remember bringing her here. Something must have triggered in my brain. A memory of the field trip.”

  Another image came to Emily: Charlotte dragging Becky’s unconscious body through the forest at night.

  “I thought I’d killed her. She was bleeding and she wouldn’t wake up.” Charlotte scuffed the ground with her foot. “It was like a dream.”

  Emily was gripped by a surge of panic. While they were up here talking, Becky was down there in the dark. She reached for the opening mechanism and pulled the lever with both hands. It wouldn’t move.

  “How do I open this thing?”

  Charlotte was leaning over her, watching her through curious eyes. “It’s rusty. You have to put your strength into it.”

  With the ground wet from yesterday’s rain, Emily struggled to anchor herself. As she tugged on the lever, her feet slipped from beneath her and she landed on her side. Hoisting herself up and into a crouch, she tried a different approach, placing her heels on the edge of the hatch.

  This time she didn’t slip. Clenching her teeth, she pulled on the lever again. A metallic grating filled her ears. The lever shot towards her. Emily tumbled onto her back. The hatch door was unlocked.

  Jumping to her feet, she moved around to the other side of the hatch, crouched, and gripped the edges of the door. She pushed up, surprised by how heavy it was.

  Charlotte had moved to one side but made no effort to help.

  Emily shifted her weight, channelling her energy into her arms. With her teeth mashing together, she pushed up with all her strength.

  A metallic screech resounded through the woodland as the hatch door flew open.

  Panting from her efforts, Emily stooped over a rectangular void of impenetrable blackness
. Fear gripped her, catching her off balance and making her blood freeze.

  A ladder descended into the dark depths below, rusty and slippery looking.

  “She’s down there?”

  Charlotte slowly nodded. She slipped her hand inside her pocket, pulled out a pen torch and handed it to Emily.

  Depressing the power button, Emily made sure she had a tight grip on the edge of the hatch then leaned over, pointing the torch beam downward. The light splashed on the ladder rungs, illuminating rust and lichen and droplets of water. It wasn’t a huge drop, perhaps about ten feet. But it wasn’t the drop that scared Emily. It was what lay beyond it, down there in the dark.

  Keeping a watchful eye on Charlotte, she tightened her grip on the edge of the hatch, then leaned a little further into the hole. The torch beam reached down the ladder, until she could just make out the hard, wet ground below.

  Emily caught her breath. At the periphery of the torchlight, she saw a pair of feet, one of them bare. She changed the angle of the torch and the feet grew legs.

  “I see her,” Emily gasped. “I see Becky.”

  Charlotte nodded, her expression devoid of emotion.

  “We need to get down there.” An awful image flashed in Emily’s mind: Becky’s body crashing against the ladder, pitching through darkness. “You go first.”

  Charlotte remained frozen in a crouch, staring into the bunker.

  “I’m not even kidding,” Emily barked. “Go. Now!”

  Terror crept over Charlotte’s face, until at last, she nodded. Crossing herself, she gripped both sides of the hatch and slowly lowered herself in. Emily watched her cling to the ladder with shaking hands and then take a step down. The ladder trembled, sending rusty flakes drifting to the depths below.

  Emily gave the hatch door a push. Satisfied it wasn’t going to flip over and seal them in, she clenched the pen torch between her teeth. Then, sucking in an unsteady breath, she lowered herself into darkness.

  22

  PANIC KICKED IN as soon as Emily began to descend the ladder, growing stronger as she moved deeper and deeper into darkness. With the pen torch clamped between her teeth, she had to rely on the daylight seeping in from above. Charlotte had already reached the bottom and was now standing by the foot of the ladder, swaying from side to side, making no attempt to rush to Becky’s aid.