by Gary Fry
She was clearly talking to the cameraman, a figure who remained out of sight in this first recording. Nevertheless, it gave me a chill to think that I now viewed these events as Hartwell must have, seeing everything through his perverted gaze.
That was when it all grew worse.
Toward the end of the opening film, Sara had arrived, too. She appeared similarly pleased to have latched onto a man who possessed his own property, in the middle of such a splendid region. I recognized the barns, the pig sties and all the chessboard fields around the main building, finding it hard to believe I’d explored the place only that morning.
But where was Louise now? I thought I knew the answer; after all, hadn’t I located two once-padlocked bedrooms earlier that day? She might have been drugged and chained to one of those heavy metal beds. The next scene confirmed this intuitive notion.
One of the women was screaming as the camera pointed from her doorway, its lens trained inside. It was difficult to tell whether this was Louise or Sara, because although Peter Marsh’s informant had spoken earlier in a high-pitched voice and the other had talked with a more bass-like tone (much like Dexter), the shriek was too hysterical for such distinctions to be made.
Before collecting his camera again to film these reactions, what had Hartwell done to her? That sound, shrill and flesh-chilling, forced me to reduce the volume on my phone, in fear of anyone passing my car overhearing. It was getting dark, the perfect atmosphere in which to consume such sordid material. But this wasn’t fiction, and the way it all threatened to develop made my blood thicken.
Nevertheless, once the first recording ended with artless abruptness, I immediately opened the next (entitled “nf2”), feeling as if I was driven by compulsion, a perverse need to know more about this terrible case.
Part of it I knew about—the way both women had been rendered compliant by strong substances, an intoxication I could perceive in their hooded eyes and slurred vocalizations; the way they’d been forced to scuttle around the house on all fours, grunting and mewling; the way they’d eaten, thrusting their heads in muddy troughs, chasing foodstuff through water as dark as oil—but this video revealed aspects Peter hadn’t discussed in detail, such as repeatedly uttered words that sounded as if they were Latin or some other ancient language in which occult rites had been inscribed.
These incantations accompanied every act the women carried out, and the Irishman performing them had a dreadful voice, almost animal-like. I’d have thought his husky regional accent might belong to an older guy, if I hadn’t been told that Hartwell had been in his thirties when these events had occurred; perhaps he’d smoked heavily. Whatever the truth was, this constant mystical babbling possessed a hypnotic effect, making that feeling of nausea in my stomach flit across the rest of my body.
But I still needed to watch. What was I looking for? Some clue about the nature of my half-brother’s mother? Whenever Sara came onscreen to suffer more relentless torture, I felt sorry for her mistreatment, the same way I had when my dad had beaten Dex more than he had me. There’d been reasons for that, but although Hartwell spent as much time degrading Louise Patterson, I had an impression that he was more severe with the other woman, who wasn’t as pretty as her fellow victim, slightly plump and furtive in expression.
Was this further useful evidence? If so, I couldn’t figure out how it fit into the whole fearful history. And when the second recording ended—with another feeding frenzy alongside a sty-full of pigs, and then, the worst thing I’d seen in the footage, a brief coupling with that unwitting horse, the victims’ mouths forced to do unspeakable things to the stud—I shut down the file, no longer capable of watching more. Like the man who’d provided the recordings, I felt terrible about viewing them and wouldn’t wish to put myself through the women’s final days there and what was alleged to have happened then.
Those poor girls, I thought, not even beginning to understand what they’d been through, let alone the long-term effect this might have had on their lives. Louise had turned to drugs after the event; I knew that for sure, because she’d died from an overdose. But how had Sara survived? What had she known that the other didn’t? And what role had my dad played in that process?
I found myself hoping again that my father wasn’t as bad as I’d taken him for, and that—however short-lived this had been after adopting Dex—he’d had at least some compassion. Then, still feeling unable to view the final film (entitled “nf3”), I opened one of the PDFs, which turned out to be a map of sorts, depicting the North York Moors with only rudimentary landmarks included. But that wasn’t the scanned page’s focus.
In several places, including an area near the top in which Dwelham was located and another farther south where Norwood could be found, were dark blotches whose outline hinted at amorphous creatures, their limbs splayed out and heads canted at awkward angles. I was put in mind of those drawings and paintings I’d examined back at the journalist’s home, and when I read a short passage of text underneath the map, I was left with few doubts: RUMORED LOCATIONS OF THE OLD ONES, BASED ON ANALYSES OF DREAMS REPORTED BY LONG-TERM RESIDENTS OF VARIOUS PLACES IN THE NORTHEAST OF ENGLAND.
This had of course been the aspect of the story I’d found most unbelievable, but now, sitting alone with snow gathering on my car, it felt real enough, as if forcing me to admit something about my brother’s activities I didn’t want to think about so soon.
The cat—what he’d done with that fucking cat…
But again I closed off that thought and opened the other PDF.
This was a single picture made from separate photographs of each young woman, combined by a computer program in a way they’d rarely achieved in life, even during the three awful years they’d spent in captivity together. They both looked bright-eyed, full of the future, capable of good deeds and of being happy. In Sara Linton’s face, I perceived Dex’s looks, and combined with a mental image of my errant dad’s (if this wasn’t desperation masquerading as hopefulness on my part), it seemed likely that my half-brother had been their son.
And so it had come to this: hoping my father had an affair to produce a child, rather than admitting to the possibility that Dexter might be Thomas Hartwell’s boy.
It made my heart hurt to continue observing the women. I closed down both PDFs. But the second had helped to clarify an issue that had foxed me before reviewing all this material: where I should go next.
I used my university account to access an online electoral roll-based search engine (which had come in useful during my research work) and identified the residential address. There was only one Sara Harrison registered in the town, and I was grateful for that.
Then, after reprogramming my sat-nav unit with the postcode, I restarted my car and, regardless of the worsening weather, began heading for Scarborough on the east coast.
23
It was chancy, but I knew I must try. Peter Marsh had struggled to talk to the woman many years earlier, but I wondered whether that had been because all those events in Norwood had been too raw back then. Surely after three decades, the impact of such episodes would have lessened, and I had an advantage over the journalist: I was Frank Keyes’s son and, more importantly, Dexter’s brother.
Perhaps I was assigning too much positivity to someone who’d effectively sold her child, but as long as she provided me with further detail about Dex’s paternity, I wasn’t bothered whether she cared about him or not.
I had time to make this visit because I’d told my wife that I wouldn’t be home directly from work. Although she hadn’t replied to my return text, I imagined she was content with this arrangement, trusting me to remain honest without lapsing again into my former unfaithful ways (although I’d never seen my fling like that, preferring to describe it as a one-off yield to temptation that had meant nothing; but I could certainly understand Olivia’s point of view).
It was a two-hour drive from Sunderland to the North Yorkshire coastline, and I hoped it wouldn’t snow so heavily that I�
�d become stranded in the seaside location. I’d visited the town many times as a child, on the few occasions that I, Mum, Dad and Dex had behaved like a normal family. But in the growing dark and with wintry conditions taking grip, I doubted I’d see much there to prompt nostalgia.
But that was fine, because I wasn’t travelling for anything other than to acquire facts, possibly even painful ones. I was glad that Peter Marsh had let slip Sara Linton’s new surname (Harrison), following marriage to a man who must have died quite young. By rough calculation, based on the videos and photograph I’d seen, I reckoned the woman would be in her late forties, a few decades older than Dex and me. That seemed scary, mainly because those events occurring so long ago had been filmed with such poor equipment that it all felt further back, as if Sara should be ten years older than she must be, maybe even belonging to my mum’s generation.
I’d know for sure soon. However, the closer I drew to Scarborough—speeding through Middlesbrough and then bypassing the Gothic town Whitby—the more nervous I grew, at one stage even considering turning off and travelling back to West Yorkshire, putting this whole investigation behind me. My beautiful wife and daughter awaited, unsuspecting what horror I was potentially bringing into our private lives. As I navigated a sequence of winding moorside lanes, I wondered why I again risked all I had, everything I’d earned, by digging this time into a corrosive past, into events that needn’t have any direct impact on me.
While entering the sprawling, semi-elegant, semi-run-down town, I realized that I cared for Dexter. Yes, he was cold and standoffish, and not someone I’d trust in the company of more immediate family, but I’d witnessed things about him few others had and would always love him for that. With these honorable thoughts in mind, I steered determinedly for the aging woman’s house.
I arrived about five minutes later, parking at the curb of a street whose housing overlooked a hissing North Sea. This was an affluent location, most of its housing detached and aloof in proximity to the cliff side. I got out and almost slipped on snow now beginning to settle on the ground. Street lamps caused the road’s surface to glisten but received little support from the properties, almost all of which lay in conspicuous detachment, windows curtained and little light showing from behind.
As I advanced up Sara Harrison née Linton’s lengthy front path, I felt my heartbeat racing. It wasn’t only because I was about to meet Dexter’s mum (of my brother’s maternity, there was at least no doubt), but also because this woman might be damaged by her experiences and I was taking a risk coming to question her about them. Might she have pushed all those events out of memory and might I reawaken them, just as Hartwell had been trying to do with decidedly older creatures?
That was all nonsense, I reminded myself—the one part of this story I still refused to believe in. But as I knocked at the door, I heard only the earth stirring around me: the sea crashing against ancient rock; a fizz of snow landing on my clothing; the blustery insistence of a coastal wind cutting across this elevated area.
A moment later, the door opened.
I’m not sure what I’d expected when the homeowner appeared, but it wasn’t this. The stocky, dark-haired woman in the recordings, along with the picture I’d reviewed no more than two hours ago, was quite slender, dressed in elegant garments, and with—perhaps the most troubling aspect of her appearance—dyed blonde locks falling around her face. She actually looked a bit like my mother, but after a moment of panic I realized this had to be coincidence, and the woman’s eyes remained dark rather than the blue of Mum’s and mine.
“Hello?” she said, her voice as bass-like as the one I’d heard on all that garish film footage. I wondered whether she’d once smoked cigarettes or whether she still did; the many wrinkles I observed on her face as she took a defensive pace backward seemed to support that. “May I help?”
She sounded nervous, but that was far from surprising. She might have perceived something equally disturbing in my appearance—after all, wasn’t I the son of the man with whom she’d once been involved? That was the reason I was here, and as early evening approached and I was due to return home soon, I had to get on.
“Sorry to…bother you,” I said, still feeling jittery but quickly convincing myself that the tremulousness with which I’d spoken was a consequence of the cold outside, which might even make the woman feel sympathetic. But then, rather than skirt the issue, I simply said it: “My name is Harry Keyes. I believe you once knew my father, Frank Keyes, and…well, my brother Dexter.”
The woman, whose expression had previously been welcoming, now grew dark in comportment. This wasn’t anything obvious, like pale panic colonizing her face; it was related more to those eyes, which lost a little of their lively sheen, as if a horror held deep inside her leaked out the only way it could. Sara Linton had had over thirty years to deal with her memories, and in the absence of external prompts this might have been possible. But now here I was, inviting it all to come roaring back.
“You’d better come inside,” she said, her gaze still alarmed. But when she stepped away from her threshold, I wasted no time in entering. “I can’t say I haven’t expected this to happen at least once in what remains of my pitiful life.”
What she meant by this, I found difficult to reconcile with my perceptions. Despite all she’d suffered earlier in life, her house seemed comfortable, with tasteful furnishings and life-affirming art hanging in the plush hallway. But as I was led through to a lounge, I began to suspect that, even in the absence of her late husband, other demons lived in this property, which she dealt with on a daily basis.
Sitting on the couch to which I’d been directed, I noticed Sara steal across to a mantelpiece surrounding an unlit open fire and remove something perched on top, which crackled in her hands as she shoved it in one pocket of her silken trousers. And had this really been a medication blister pack?
I couldn’t be certain, but then, as my host sat in a chair opposite me, I took a moment to observe other aspects of that hearth, mainly picture frames showing a younger-looking Sara accompanied by an older man, who seemed to love her well, his arms wrapped around her in every shot. I was glad she’d found some happiness in life; despite what she’d done to my family—selling us a child I wasn’t convinced had even belonged to my dad—I wouldn’t have wished what had preceded this on anyone.
When I turned back to look at her, Sara had lit up a cigarette and sat smoking in this graceful room. This felt wrong somehow—incongruous, unexpected, inappropriate. The fortysomething woman bore all the accoutrements of a comfortable life, but below surely monsters lurked, each waiting to rise aboveground.
“So,” I said, realizing I’d already made more progress than my journalist informant had when he’d visited, “thanks for agreeing to speak to me.”
She took another puff on her cigarette, before blowing out smoke like an irate dragon. “You’re making assumptions, young man. I don’t recall saying that I planned to speak to you.”
Then why had she invited me inside? After a moment spent trying to figure out what she meant, I replied, “Well, presumably we’re not going to sit here in silence.”
She shrugged, wriggling in her seat, that crackling plastic sound arising again from her pocket.
I struggled to understand her attitude. Yes, I knew my visit had probably caused her discomfort, but she’d invited me inside, hadn’t she? Foregoing further introductory chat, I decided to get to my point. I didn’t imagine I’d be welcome for long and knew I should make quick progress.
“I’ve come to talk about Dexter: your son.”
She scoffed, more smoke leaking from her wrinkled mouth. I ignored this and went on.
“Dex has discovered he was adopted. He found the certificate in our old house, the one in which we all lived as a family many years ago. It showed that although my dad was his father, my mum wasn’t his mother. You were.”
I paused, wondering how this information would be received, but only observed Sara sitting the
re, looking as unmoved as she had since I’d entered the building. With a lengthy inhalation to steady my uncertainty, I continued.
“Naturally, my brother—well, half-brother—is curious about his past, the way he came into being. And…and that’s why I’m here today, to ask the one person alive who knows what happened. My dad died, you see—a few years ago. And my mum…well, she understands only parts of it: how you and he had had an affair, resulting in pregnancy, and how they raised money to…to buy the child from you, even though I understand it went through the proper adoption agencies, making it an otherwise legal process.”
At that moment, Sara started laughing; she laughed so long and hard that I feared her immediate neighbors might hear and come knocking to see what was amiss. But if this kind of thing was typical of her behavior—such a loud, eccentric sound, full of pain, scorn and maybe even incipient insanity—I wondered how many ever got involved with her.
About a minute later, the room still suffering the caustic shrieks of its owner, Sara lapsed into silence, staring fixedly my way with an unnatural absence of blinks. I began to feel uncomfortable, suspecting I was about to learn something that would blow open my case, making me question the nature of reality.
The woman finally spoke: “An affair? Is that what you’ve been led to believe?”
“Well, I…uh, yeah.” I hesitated, realizing what I was about to add was probably provocative, but then saying it anyway. “Isn’t that bad enough?”
She laughed again, but not so hysterically and for only a portion of the time of her previous outburst. She sounded bleak, as if her eyes and mouth leaked poison. Leaning forward, raising the pointed forefinger of the hand holding her cigarette, she said, “You can have no idea what bad really means.”
I took umbrage at this comment, largely because it assumed naïveté on my part, and whatever else I might be accused of, I’d been worldly enough to acquire information in the absence of sufficient knowledge.
