The Ash House

by Cross, Amy

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Diane

  “Daniel!” I call out, hurrying through to the front room and then to the kitchen. “Mum! Where are you?”

  Ever since I got back this latest time, there's been no sign of anyone else in the house. I've checked every room several times, but both Daniel and my mother are nowhere to be found. I guess it's possible that they might have gone into town, and certainly their things are still around, so I'm pretty sure they haven't gone too far. At the same time, there's no sign of the man I saw earlier, and I'm terrified that maybe he's done something to them.

  Every time I try to use the phone, however, I can't get a dial-tone.

  Hurrying through to the hallway, I head to the table next to the window, figuring that maybe I should drive to town and call the police. Just as I'm about to grab my car keys, however, I spot a pile of condolence cards on the windowsill, and I reach out to take a look at one of them.

  “Dear Elizabeth,” I whisper as I read the message inside, “so sorry for your loss. We're thinking of you. Doug and Paula.”

  I pause for a moment, trying to figure out what this is all about.

  “What loss?” I mutter.

  Setting the card down, I open the next.

  “Mrs. Mercer,” I read, “we're thinking of you in this difficult time. If you or Daniel need anything, don't hesitate to give us a call. All our love, Becky Tashenbacker and family.”

  I check another card, then another, but they all have variations of the same message. Finally, just as I'm starting to feel as if these people have lost their minds, I find a set of folded booklets. Opening one of the booklets, I feel a sudden shudder in my chest as I see that it's an order of service for a funeral.

  And my photo is on the front.

  In loving memory

  Diane Ruth Mercer

  Beloved daughter and mother

  My hands are shaking as I turn to check the next page, which lists the hymns and readings for the service. I know there must have been a mistake, that this has to be some kind of sick joke, but at the same time I can't help thinking back to everything the strange guy said in the forest. Ever since I woke up out there a couple of miles from the house, I've been struggling and failing to remember what happened to me after the last time I was rushed to hospital.

  I know I was in a bed, and I was feeling weak, but then...

  Every time I try to think of the world beyond this house and this forest, my mind becomes increasingly foggy.

  I pause for a moment, still looking at the booklet, before suddenly spotting movement out of the corner of my eye. Turning, I look over at the window and see that there's a figure in the distance, watching the house from between two trees.

  It's her.

  It's the little girl I've seen a couple of times already.

  I stay completely still, not wanting to make a move and potentially spook her. She's watching me, but I'm worried she'll run if I so much as take a step toward her. Finally, realizing that I have to try something, I step forward very carefully and raise a hand to wave at her.

  “Hey,” I call out. “Can you come over here?”

  I wait, but she simply stares back at me.

  “Please,” I continue, taking another step forward, “I just -”

  Suddenly my left foot presses on a loose board, causing a loud creaking sound.

  I freeze, but fortunately the girl doesn't run.

  “It's okay,” I tell her, as I turn the handle and slowly open the back door. “I want to talk to you. That's all. Can you come over here and -”

  Suddenly, behind me, there's a loud, rasping cough.

  The girl immediately turns and runs, but this time I set off after her.

  “Come back!” I shout. “I just want to talk to you!”

  She's fast, but I'm faster. I race across the yard and into the forest, rushing between the trees. Just as the girl turns and looks over her shoulder at me, I grab her by the arm and bring us both to a halt, and then I hold her tight as she struggles to get free.

  “It's okay,” I tell her, dropping to my knees in front of her. “Please, just listen to me. I need to talk to you.”

  She tries again to pull away, and then she falls still.

  Now that I can see her properly, I can see that she's very pale, with the exception of thick purplish bruises that cover one side of her face. Her flesh is split in places and there's damage to her eyes, with the lids seemingly curled inward slightly, as if they were cut at the edges and then healed awkwardly. The most striking damage, however, is around her jaw, where the bruise is at its darkest and where the bone seems to have been pushed far to the right-hand side.

  “My name is Diane,” I say cautiously, slowly loosening my grip on her already bruised arm. “I'm not going to hurt you. Please, I've seen you a few times now and I just want to ask you some questions. Do you think that might be alright?”

  She stares at me for a few seconds before looking past me, as if she's scared something might have followed us from the house.

  I glance over my shoulder, but there's no sign of anyone.

  “You hang around here a lot, don't you?” I continue, turning back to the girl. “Have you met my son Daniel? He likes to play in the yard.”

  She watches the distant trees for a moment and then turns to me again.

  “There's a man in my mother's house,” I tell her. “Do you know who he is?”

  She flinches and pulls back, and I instinctively grab her arm again.

  “So what's your name?” I ask.

  No reply.

  “You've got to help me out here,” I continue, “because I feel like I'm losing my mind. Have you been here all day? Did you see where my son and my mother went? Did they leave alone, or was that man with them?”

  This time she lets out a very faint groan, but she still doesn't open her mouth.

  “The boy who's been staying here is my son,” I tell her, “and I'm very worried about him. Can you understand that? I really need to make sure that he's safe, and there's been a man here lately. I don't know who he is, so I'm worried that he might be mean.”

  I wait, but once again she's fallen silent.

  “Do you even understand what I'm saying?” I ask, as light rain begins to fall all around us.

  The girl pauses, before slowly nodding.

  “That's good. So have you seen anything at all?”

  She groans again, and this time I hear a faint grinding sound coming from somewhere inside her closed mouth.

  “Are you okay, honey?” I ask. “If there's something wrong, maybe I can help.”

  She tilts her head slightly, still keeping her eyes fixed firmly on me. She's groaning, though, and the grinding sound continues.

  “Please,” I continue. “Why won't you talk to me?”

  She hesitates for a moment, and then slowly she reaches her hand up until it's in front of her face. I can't help noticing that her fingers are discolored and perhaps even slightly swollen, and I watch with a growing sense of horror as she pulls the collar of her dress aside to reveal a thick flap of loose flesh.

  “What happened to you?” I whisper, shocked by the sight of such awful damage. There's blood caked all around the wound, as if it was never attended to or cleaned in any way.

  She takes hold of the flap and then slowly starts lifting it up, revealing bone and meat below. Before I have a chance to tell her to stop, she pulls the flap all the way up to the edge of her mouth, and I'm shocked to see that her jawbone is shattered. One entire side has been broken into scores of pieces, with damaged teeth mixed in among mashed meat and pieces of pink, torn gums. It's as if something smashed one side of her face over and over again, and the breaks extend all the way up across her cheekbone and into her eye-socket.

  A moment later she groans again, and I hear the shards of bone grinding against one another as the girl tries but fails to speak. Broken fragments start ripping through her tattered gums, causing fresh beads of blood to leak out
and mix with saliva. She continues for a few more seconds, before letting the flap of skin fall back into place.

  And that's when I realize that I know the story of a damaged, beaten little girl who's said to have vanished in this very forest many years ago.

  “Is your name...”

  I pause, barely able to believe that I'm going to ask this question, but knowing deep down that I must.

  “Tell me,” I say finally. “Is your name Nora Copstone?”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Daniel

  Rain is starting to fall harder and faster outside now, battering the window as the light begins to fade and the forest turns blue. As I wander through to the front room, I can't help feeling distinctly restless, but when I stop in the doorway I see that Nana is fast asleep in her armchair.

  There's an empty wine glass on the little table next to her, and some kind of little black book. I wander over and take a look, and I see that it's a Bible, opened to a page with the name Mark at the top.

  “Can I go play outside?” I ask, as I look over at Nana.

  I wait, but she's completely out of it.

  “Thanks,” I add, turning and heading through to the hallway.

  I know there's no way she'd let me go out in the rain, but she didn't specifically deny my request so I reckon that's good enough. If she wanted to control everything I do, she should have stayed off the wine. That way, she'd have been awake just now and she could have nagged me all evening. That seems to be her favorite thing to do, anyway.

  As soon as I open the door and look out, I realize that the storm is even worse than I'd realized. Cold wind is blowing across the yard and rain is battering down against every surface, and I can already see that the yard is getting muddy. I consider going back inside and grabbing my coat, before figuring that the run to the ash house isn't that far. I don't mind getting slightly wet.

  Hurrying out into the rain, I clatter down the slippery steps and then out across the yard. Each step splashes cold mud against the top of my socks, and I'm pretty relieved when I reach the ash house and duck down through one of the entrances. Even after just a few seconds, I've got water dripping from my hair.

  Getting onto my knees, I crawl all the way inside and then I stop to listen as the rain gets worse and worse. In fact, it's almost as if the storm was waiting for me to get in here before turning absolutely torrential, and when I look outside I see that rain is pounding down so hard, I can barely believe it's real. I lean forward and reach a hand out, and I swear the rain is coming so hard, it almost hurts.

  In the distance, there's a faint rumbling sound, as if the sky is getting ready to unleash a torrent of thunder.

  “I wouldn't want to be caught out in that,” I mutter to myself as I look around the interior of the ash house and start to realize that I really should have brought something to do. There's not that much light in here, though, so it wouldn't have been much use to have brought comic books.

  Still, at least I'm not in the main house.

  The main house sucks.

  Glancing down at the dirty floor, I spot what looks like a knotted root poking out from the soil. I grab the root and pull, only to find that it's surprisingly tough. I try again, then again, but it takes several attempts before I finally manage to pull the root even partway free. It's still attached to the ground, however, and suddenly I notice loads of ants crawling all over the newly-exposed section.

  “Gross,” I whisper, as I realize there are little beetles mixed in with the ants.

  Still, this root wasn't there before. I guess maybe it was forced up due to some kind of pressure beneath the surface.

  Grabbing a stick, I knock the ants away and then I pull on the root some more. I know this is dumb, but it's not as if I've got anything else to do, and at least I'm away from Nana and her incessant demands that I help around the house. I'm sure when she wakes up she'll start calling me to go and have dessert with her.

  That'll be fun.

  “Daniel, come and sit with me,” I say under my breath, mimicking her whiny voice. “Come and eat chunks of tinned pineapple with ice cream. It's delicious.”

  I can't help chuckling.

  “Yeah, right.”

  As I tear the root up a little more, I see more ants and loads more beetles. There's something else caught up in part of the root as well, and I use a stick to clear the bugs away before reaching down and pulling at some kind of hard, sharp white fragment. Finally pulling the piece free, I hold it up just as the sky rumbles again, and I can't help realizing that I seem to have found a piece of bone.

  “Huh,” I whisper, feeling a flicker of anticipation as I realize that I might have stumbled upon something cool buried beneath the ash house.

  Setting the piece of bone aside, I start digging again, and sure enough I quickly find another, larger section. I pull this out too, then another, and finally I dig up a piece of bone that's much bigger than the others. As I hold this latest piece up, I can't help thinking that it looks a little bit like a human finger bone, although I know that's not possible. I mean, why would anyone want to be buried out here, without even a headstone to make their final resting place?

  Then again, I guess some people are stupid.

  There's a strange scratch on the bone, too. Turning toward the entrance a little, I tilt the bone until I see what appears to be a small cross, accompanied by some numbers:

  9:29.

  I look at another of the bones and find another cross, and more numbers:

  9:17 – 29.

  I check yet another bone:

  5:1 – 20.

  I start digging again, as the rain somehow gets even worse outside, and as the rumbles of thunder become increasingly ominous. Given how fast the rain is coming down now, I reckon I'd get completely drenched if I tried to run back into the main house now, so really the only smart thing to do is to stay here and wait the storm out. It's getting darker and darker as evening rolls through, but I can still just about make out what I'm doing as I use the stick to scrape away more mud from around this stubborn root.

  And the deeper I go, the more pieces of bone I keep finding, until finally I start pulling on a section that seems much larger than the others. When I eventually get this piece out and hold it up, I put it against my arm so I can compare the size, and I can't deny that this latest discovery certainly looks like it might have been part of a person's arm.

  Like all the others, this bone has another set of numbers carved into its side.

  I get back to work, digging deeper and deeper. I keep telling myself that I've probably just found the remains of someone's pet dog or cat, but a moment later my fingertips start brushing against a larger, smoother and slightly rounded section of bone.

  I start scraping more soil away, and deep down I can't shake the feeling that this piece looks like the top of a skull.

  “No way,” I whisper, trying to stay calm. “It can't be a -”

  I stop suddenly, as I see the top part of an eye socket poking out from the soil.

  I was right.

  I've found a human skull.

  My heart is pounding, but I keep working carefully and methodically until finally I've exposed most of the skull's upper section. I try to gently pull the skull free but it's wedged pretty firmly in the dirt, so I remove some more soil and try again, then again, until finally I can feel a little movement. Still, the last thing I want is to damage anything, so I really take my time before deciding that it might be worth trying once again to wiggle the damn thing free.

  I take hold of the edges very carefully, and then finally I'm able to start lifting the skull out of the ground.

  To my surprise, I find that the lower part of the skull has been damaged, with fragments of broken bone coming loose from the area around the cheeks and mouth area. The jawbone is partially attached, but this too has some chunks missing and several of the teeth have been smashed. Just as I start to lift the skull out of the mud, the jawbone falls away and the various pieces
land back in the mud, but at least I've got the main section free.

  There's another rumble of thunder outside as I hold the skull up and stare into its dark, empty eyes.

  “Woah,” I whisper, genuinely shocked by my discovery. “How long have you been down there?”

  I stare at the skull for a moment longer, and then suddenly the next crack of thunder is accompanied by a brief flash of lightning that illuminates the dark yard beyond the skull, outside the ash house.

  In that flash, I see a pair of feet.

  Someone is standing right outside the ash house.

  I instinctively pull back against the curved wall, still holding the skull. The yard is dark again now and I can't see anything, but I swear that for a fraction of a second I saw a pair of feet. Whoever was out there, it looked like a man wearing black trousers and black shoes.

  I wait, but all I hear is the constant hiss of more and more rain hitting the ash house's roof.

  “Hello?” I whisper, before realizing that I'll need to be louder if I want to be heard over the noise. And braver, too. “Hello! Is anyone there?”

  No reply.

  Just the crashing rain and then, a moment later, another rumble of thunder.

  I watch the entrance, waiting for the next flash of lightning. I keep replaying the sight of the feet over and over, trying to think of some way I might have been wrong.

  Suddenly there's another flash, and this time I'm immensely relieved to see that the feet are gone. I look over at the other entrance, but of course by now all I can see is pitch darkness. With the skull still in my hand, I sit completely still, listening just in case I happen to hear anyone over the sound of the growing storm.

  Finally I lean forward and peer outside, and I can see the house with the lights on in the front room. I guess Nana's still fast asleep in there, because if she'd woken up by now I'd have heard her yelling my name from the front door. To be honest, I wish I was inside right now, but the whole yard looks like a mud-bath and I figure I should wait for the worst of the storm to pass.

  And then, just as I'm about to turn away, another flash of lightning illuminates the yard, and in that fraction of a second I spot a tall, hunched figure walking wearily up the steps and into the house.