After the Eclipse

by Fran Dorricott

  Concrete. I remembered the dust they’d found on Darren Walker’s jeans. Was this where he had died? My whole body was shivering, no longer with the cold.

  I headed deeper into the building. The place seemed empty, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was following me. Sound seemed to echo but I heard nothing of the outside world. Even the falling rain was muted.

  The corridor led to a T at the end. To the right there was a small kitchen, almost a cupboard. The left was a closed door. It was locked.

  Three locks.

  I stared at the door with a mixture of fear and disgust. The top lock was just a bolt drawn across the door. I slid this across, and the bolt moved smoothly with a quiet snick, as though it had been recently oiled. The other two were trickier. Far too heavy-duty for an empty storage unit.

  A small voice in the corner of my mind said Wait for Marion but I brushed it off. Pushed it back. There wasn’t time.

  A flash of inspiration struck, and I ran back to the kitchen. There was no stove, but there was a small fire extinguisher still strapped to the wall, a relic from when this building was more than a ghost. I grabbed it, feeling relief at its weight.

  I hauled the thing over, hoping the door was made of wood and not something stronger. If it was metal – I didn’t know what I’d do. I counted to three inside my head, each time my heart skipping and nausea roiling in my stomach. I bit my lip, tasting iron, and focused. One… Two… Three.

  I slammed the fire extinguisher into the door. The sound reverberated inside my skull and I winced. Then I did it again. Hurled it with all of my strength. After four or five strong blows, the first combination lock popped off, half of it falling to the floor with a clatter. I didn’t stop to look around, just kept on smashing at the second lock until my arms were screaming with the effort and my legs were wobbling violently in protest.

  I took one deep breath, then pushed the door.

  It swung into darkness, opening away from me. I hesitated. The passage led not into another room, but onto a staircase. Dark enough that I could only see a few smudgy shadows that filtered from the lights in the corridor. I waited for my arms to stop hurting quite so badly, although I was still holding the extinguisher in a vice-like grip, unable to put it down. I groped for a light switch but couldn’t find one.

  The staircase was warmer than the corridor, as though something had been keeping all of the heat cooped up in here. My hoodie was sodden from the rain, but I didn’t want to waste time in taking it off. I blew out a long breath and started the descent into the dimness. I kept one elbow against the wall as I walked down, terrified that I might slip and fall. The stairs were uneven, felt like they’d been hollowed out of dirt rather than made from bricks.

  When I reached the bottom, there was another door. This one was locked too, twice, but one was just a bolt, and the other a standard cylinder lock – the kind Marion had once taught me to pick, out in the dusty warmth of her dad’s garden shed.

  I stopped, another wave of paralysing fear taking me by surprise as I dug out my phone. What if Marion hadn’t received my text? I should have just told her. I hoped she would figure it out. I checked my phone, noticing that my signal was down at zero bars, and I shivered again. I couldn’t face the thought of smashing this lock – wasn’t sure I could manage it. So I held my phone in my mouth for light and finally put the extinguisher down, setting about picking the lock with a hair grip from my pocket. Sometimes it was handy being a girl.

  Sweat beaded on my lip and along my spine. I had the phone gripped precariously between my teeth and the light shook. Every thud of my heartbeat in my ears made me tense up. My hands shook with the effort and something that had once been easy became almost impossible.

  Finally the lock made a clicking sound, and then there was a hollow thud from the other side. A scuffling noise. I slid my phone into the pocket of my jeans and then pushed gently at the door. I left the extinguisher on the floor just inside the room, my arms like jelly at the thought of carrying it for any longer and my heart beating so loud inside my head that I could barely think. A basement room. A fucking basement room—

  The door opened and I stopped mid-thought.

  I felt nausea rise in my throat and I swallowed hard.

  The room was perhaps as big as my living room at home, but in it were crammed enough things for a whole life. A fridge on one side, a microwave on the counter. Against the other wall was a tin bath, low and shiny, and behind a short wall there was a toilet. All around there were pictures. Drawings and paintings. They started off childish, green trees and horses, the paper curling with age, some torn and taped back together. The newer ones were more sophisticated. I was shaking as I took it in. These told the story of a life. A captive life. I felt my knees buckle as the breath whooshed out of me.

  One of the later ones… My own face stared back out at me. Cheeks still teenage soft, eyes exactly the right shade of golden brown, hair curly and wild. My face. Painstakingly captured by my little sister.

  I fought back a sob. Tore my eyes away.

  On the right, there was a window, small enough that I hadn’t noticed it from the outside of the building. It would have been floor-height, hard to see in the dark. Yellow lamp-light filtered through it from outside, but it was weak and created as many shadows as it illuminated. But there, underneath the window, there was a bed.

  A single bed, almost like a cot. It had raised sides that made it look closed-in. Hand-made. And in the bed there was a figure.

  “Olive?” I whispered.

  The girl dragged herself upright, her eyes wide and glittering with fear.

  “No,” she said, her voice tiny and hoarse. “I’m Bella.” She stopped, frozen and her mouth yawned into a panicked ‘o’.

  “Where is she?”

  Bella’s eyes were dry but raw with unshed tears. I knew what she was going to say before the words came out, the world going black so that all I could see was that drawing on the wall. My face…

  It was true, then.

  “I think she’s dead.”

  51

  MY HEART STUTTERED IN my chest but I forced myself to stand still instead of giving in to the wave of sadness inside me.

  The kid didn’t move. She was dirty, her face streaked with grime and tears. Her hair was matted, her cheeks too pink. She looked feverish, glassy-eyed, her knees pulled to her chest.

  Then I noticed what she was wearing. For days I had been picturing this little girl in her school uniform like the last time I had seen her, but her dress was an old-fashioned plaid pinafore. The shirt underneath was white, decorated with broderie anglaise. I felt sick. It was like the sort of thing Olive and I had worn as young children in the nineties – the kind of outfit Olive had hated.

  Seeing Bella dressed like this now I started to understand what had happened here. Like Marion had feared, this was like a recreation of something, some image or fantasy. Bella had fitted the bill. I could see it even more in the flesh, the curve of her jaw, the point of her nose – she looked like my sister.

  “Did he hurt you?” I asked, trying not to inject a note of urgency in my voice. Bella didn’t need to panic. We just needed to get up and walk out. Before he came back.

  “He didn’t – he said he would wait for me to get older, like he did with…” Bella was holding back tears. I could see it in the way her teeth were clenched, her whole face trembling with the effort of keeping the tears in.

  “We can leave now,” I said. “Do you remember me? I came here to take you home.”

  Bella yelped as I made a move towards her. “I should have known,” she blurted. “I should have known when his daughter wasn’t there. When he said he’d drive me to school. I should have…” She rubbed her face. “What if he sees us?”

  “He won’t,” I said. “I promise. I’ll take care of you. The police are on their way. Come with me and we can leave—”

  “He’ll hurt me.”

  She started to rock, burying her face
in her knees. I took the opportunity to approach her, just wanting to touch her, to make sure she was real. She didn’t pull away from me but she started to sob, great wracking sobs that pulled through her entire body, making her tremble.

  “Bella, Bella,” I said. I would have picked her up and carried her but I didn’t have the strength. “Please, sweetie, come on let’s go.”

  Bella snapped her head back, staring at me with tears still caught on her eyelashes.

  “Don’t you hear it?” she asked.

  “Hear what?”

  “He’s here. He’s here early. He doesn’t know I can hear him but I haven’t been drinking the water.”

  As she said this, I heard them. Footsteps. But it was too late. He was already here. Quickly, I grabbed hold of Bella’s arm.

  “When I tell you to run, you run. You hear me? There’s an open window in the toilet upstairs—”

  Before I had the chance to finish, he was there. The smell of oranges and hand sanitiser was overwhelming, as though he’d just come inside after a snack.

  “I told you to back off.”

  For a second, a wave of what might have been relief washed over me. It couldn’t be Ady. This man was bigger, stronger, more terrifying. He was built differently, wasn’t he? He was darker and altogether more evil. But with a flick of his wrist at the wall he illuminated the room and the space was flooded by a screaming halogen brightness. I had to blink, and hope was replaced by the familiar sense of despair.

  It was him. He just wasn’t the man I knew. The man I’d called my friend. This wasn’t the same man who ran charity races, who asked about my gran and doted on his daughter.

  Gran. At least he slowed down. Her confusion that the driver had come at her slowly… The hit and run. I realised with a jolt that it was Ady. His comment afterwards wasn’t just neighbourly reassurance. It is lucky that your gran wasn’t seriously injured. That was for me. A message. Just like back off. A reminder that things could be worse if I didn’t stop digging.

  “You,” I spat. I positioned myself between him and Bella, wishing I could reach the fire extinguisher. But Ady wasn’t armed, except with his weight and height, and I wondered if I could take him by surprise.

  “I could say the same thing myself.” Ady paused where he was, taking in the scene. Bella sobbed behind me, her face once again buried. He tilted his head to the side, a predatory look taking over his face. “I always knew there was a rotten core in you. I knew you’d cause us a problem.”

  “What did you do with her?” I tried to keep my eyes focused on his face, the antiseptic clementine scent assaulting my nose. “Where is she?”

  He started to smile, the quiet man I knew being replaced by the monster. I fought the panic that threatened to cut off the oxygen to my brain. Tried very hard to breathe. I had no phone signal, no weapon, and he was much bigger than me…

  He ignored my question.

  “Funny you timed it so well. The girl should be asleep by now.” He tilted his head further, staring me down. “But I knew it was only a matter of time until you showed up. You just don’t know when to quit.”

  “I know what you are,” I spat, pointed at Olive’s drawings. At Bella. “I know what you’ve done.”

  “Oh, do you? You know everything?”

  Olive. I didn’t know what he had done with Olive…

  “I know everything I need to know,” I said. Both of us saw it for the lie it was. I didn’t know the one thing that mattered. But I kept going. “The police are on their way.”

  His body weight shifted backwards, and I realised that I had been wrong before. He was armed. He moved his right arm and I saw the length of a small kitchen knife glitter in the light. He’d seen my car – he’d known I was here, and he’d come prepared. And he didn’t care that I’d mentioned the police – maybe he didn’t believe me.

  I fought against the urge that rose deep within me to lunge at him, to throw everything I had at him. All I had to do, I thought, was wait. Marion was coming.

  But what if she wasn’t? What if she hadn’t got my message? What if…?

  All the time my brain whirred Ady stood there, watching. Bella shifted on the bed. I heard the springs creak beneath her. Ady’s focus snapped to her, his expression changing again.

  “Don’t you move,” he said.

  “I won’t let you hurt her.” I raised my chin higher.

  “I would never hurt her. She’s better off here where it’s safe.”

  “Safe?”

  I flicked my eyes from side to side, searching desperately for something to protect myself. No weapons in the kitchen. Nothing I could use in self-defence.

  “Don’t do anything stupid.” Ady’s voice brought my attention right back to his face. He pulled the knife in front of him, brandishing it so that the blade reflected the light.

  I stepped backwards, one arm behind me. Bella reached out to take it, her clammy hand gripping mine. She was trembling. Or I was.

  “You’re disgusting,” I said. “I thought you were a good person.”

  “I am a good person.” Ady raised his eyebrows, genuine confusion crossing his face. “I saved them.”

  “Saved them?” I tried to force a laugh, but all that came out was a croak. “Is that what you think?”

  “I saved them from the world.” Ady shook his head. “I love my girls. I care for them. The world hasn’t cared for them, not even the people who were supposed to look after them. To love them most. Look at Bella, here. She was a disaster waiting to happen! So beautiful and clever, but never nurtured. Nobody saw her gift, not like I did. She needs to be cared for. I wasn’t going to let it happen – skimpy outfits and belly rings and boys. Jesus, she’s a child—”

  “A child who needs to be with her mother!”

  “Mother? Did you see her press conference? It was a shambles. I was horrified. What kind of mother lets her child go to school in dirty clothes? What kind of mother puts her divorce before her child’s welfare—”

  “What gives you the right to make that decision? What gives you the right to decide what makes a good mother?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Ady snapped. “Yours was broken too. You’re broken, just like her. Weak-willed. You drink and you fight and you still think that you can take the moral high ground? That you’re a good person? Well you aren’t. I’ve seen you with that police friend of yours.” He sneered. “I saw that in you from the beginning. It’s disgusting. I saw your father with his fancy woman. He didn’t care about you, about your rottenness. I saw what your mother did to your sister. Such a beautiful girl, and she bruised her.”

  Suddenly I couldn’t control myself. I lunged at him, hands outstretched as though I could claw his eyes out. He batted me away with ease, knocking me to the floor with a swift kick to my knee. The pain was white-hot and angry; it shot through my leg fast enough that my vision blurred. My glasses skittered across the floor. Bella cried out and scuttled back so that she was pressed right into the corner of the bed, sobs echoing in the small space.

  Ady turned on her, his face livid.

  “And you—”

  “Don’t touch her!”

  Ady looked at me, sat on the floor clutching my leg, and he shook his head.

  “You just don’t understand, do you?” he said sadly. “I would never hurt her. I love her. Like I loved Olive. The universe brought them to me – both of them. I’ve been gifted, two fresh starts, two eclipses. I gave them a better life! It was meant to be.”

  These words were aimed right at my heart, and I felt them like a thousand knives pressed to my skin. I wanted to scream and shout at him, throw myself at him again, but I knew I had to stay calm. Keep him talking long enough. Marion, where are you?

  “How could you have loved her?” I said, my voice barely loud enough to be audible. But his face hardened and I knew that he had heard me. “You took her from me.”

  “I told you, I kept her safe,” he said. His jaw was tense, his arms loose and limber
by his sides. If I could get the knife, I’d stand a chance. “She was a good girl. Beautiful. She was clever, too. Read like nobody I’ve ever known. Books and magazines and everything. And she was always so polite.”

  “You hu—”

  “I never meant to hurt her!” he shouted. Raw emotion punctuated his words. “I never meant for any of that. It was an accident. It never would have happened if she hadn’t made me do it.”

  “What, like your wife? Was that an accident, too?”

  “That was different,” Ady said. I could see that I was right, though. His expression clouded and his grip on the knife tightened. “Annabelle was weak – she didn’t understand. She didn’t understand me. Not like I thought she did when I married her.

  “She wasn’t like Olive. By fourteen your sister was more mature, more graceful, more everything than Annabelle.” His face screwed up in disgust. “When I told Annabelle about Olive she couldn’t handle it. She knew she was too weak to handle the life I was giving her. So she took the pills I gave her.”

  “You killed her,” I said.

  “I told her not to take them unless she wanted an end. I told her they would make her ill. I gave her a chance to become a mother, I gave her a baby for us to look after. A family. I warned her. But, in the end, she didn’t want to live. Like your mother. Weak, both of them.”

  I ignored the pain at his mention of my mum and ploughed on.

  “And Darren? Did you warn him too?”

  I thought of the texts Ady had sent me. How he’d tried to get me to stop digging after I mentioned I was looking into Olive’s disappearance. He had known it would come to this.

  “Darren couldn’t leave it alone. He’s been picking over all this money crap for years, going on and on about how I needed to pay him and his mum back because it was a ‘loan’. His dad gave me that money. He was my friend. And Daz should have just let it lie. But no, he had to ask questions. And when your bloody police friend asked him about Olive’s ring – the idiot recognised it. I knew I shouldn’t have taken it from Olive after all. He confronted me. Said he was going to tell unless I paid him back. He should have kept his damn mouth shut, but he was just like Cordy.”