by Amy Cross
I stare at her, shocked by the change in her tone.
“Just a little,” she adds. “Please. For me. I need you to be a little more adult. We're in this together, we're starting a new life and I already have to deal with Suzie. It'd be very helpful if you could start helping out more, instead of causing drama.”
“Mum, I'm scared!”
“Obviously,” she snaps, “but you don't have to be a bitch about it. Just -” She pauses for a moment. “I didn't mean that.”
“If you leave right now,” I reply, shaken by what she just said, “I'll never forgive you.”
“Well,” she says, forcing a smile. “Poor you, having such a terrible mother.”
Sighing, I step back and watch as she pulls the door shut, and a moment later the taxi starts to pull away. All I can do is watch until Mum is out of sight, and then I turn back to look at the house. For a moment, I can't shake the distinct feeling that I'm being watched, but finally I tell myself that I'm just letting myself get easily spooked. For Suzie's sake, if not for mine, I have to stay calm and hope that Mum's right for once.
There can't be ghosts here. There's no such things as ghosts.
Chapter Fourteen
Daniel
I see her in a dream. Young, carefree, happy again, before all of this happened.
We're down by the river, back in our old home village at a time when our parents were still alive. Rosie's running toward the bridge, shouting at me to follow, but I'm holding back a little. To be honest, keeping up with Rosie could be difficult sometimes since she always seemed to be bursting with more energy than I've ever known in a person. There were days back then when she'd wake me at dawn and drag me off on some adventure, and then finally when sundown came she'd still want to keep going. In the dream, I stop at the river's bend and watch as she runs across the bridge, and then she turns and waves for me to follow.
She looks so happy. How could anyone hurt someone like her?
I raise my hand to wave back, to let her know that I'm on my way, but I'm momentarily blinded by a flash of reflected light from the river. I blink a couple of times and suddenly Rosie is gone. I call out, trying not to worry, but there's still no sign of her. When I get to the bridge I call out again, convinced that she's playing a joke. Deep down, however, I know that something's wrong. I hurry across the bridge and into the forest, pushed on by the knowledge that she needs my help. I can hear her screaming now, begging me for help, but the further I run, the more distant her voice seems. Starting to panic, I turn and look back the way I came, wondering if perhaps somehow I missed her.
And then I feel them.
Looking down, I see that I'm standing on a vast carpet of bugs and flies. I take a step back, but my right foot suddenly sinks down to the knee, embedded in the sea of insects. When I try to turn, I find that I can't get away, and the harder I fight, the more quickly I'm dragged down until I slip beneath the surface. Reaching up, I open my mouth and try to call for help, but I immediately feel a swarm of beetles flooding past my teeth and across my tongue as they scurry down the back of my throat. They're filling my lungs now with their sharp, scratching little legs, and after a moment I feel them breaking through the base of my skull and spilling through up into my brain, scurrying across the surface until they reach the top, at which point they start chewing their way deeper.
As I try to claw the flesh from my face and reach into my skull, I become vaguely aware of a louder scratching sound nearby. I pay no attention at first, until suddenly I'm jolted awake.
The forest.
I'm in the forest.
Night has fallen.
I reach down to brush insects from my body, but there are none to be seen. Out of breath, I lean back and sigh, telling myself that I must have slept for much longer than I'd intended, wrapped in the dark swathes of a nightmare. Slowly, my panic is starting to subside.
A moment later, I hear a twig snap nearby.
There's someone here.
I reach for my sword and draw it from its sheath as I get to my feet, and when I turn I find that there's a dark figure standing nearby, silhouetted against the moonlit road. For a moment, I take it to be a thief. After all, there are plenty of those on the roads these days, and they'll kill a man as soon as look at him.
“Who are you?” I ask, taking a step forward. “Do you mean to rob me?”
“Never,” a voice replies, and when she steps forward into a patch of moonlight I see that it's Kate, the woman I met back in Offingham. “I just saw you here and thought I'd check you're okay. I was worried... Well, I was worried you might be dead, that's all.”
“What are you doing out here alone in the dark?” I ask. “The Weirminster road isn't safe for a woman.”
“It's not much safer for a man,” she points out.
“I have a weapon.”
“That I see.”
“Did you follow me?” I ask, sliding my sword back into its sheath.
“I -” She pauses, her smile growing slightly. “I didn't have to. After all, there are only so many roads away from Offingham.”
I look around, half-expecting to find that I'm surrounded, but there seems to be no-one else nearby. Turning back to Kate, I'm struck by her lack of fear. Any woman out here alone would have good reason to be terrified. After all, she has no idea that she can trust me; for all she knows, I might be about to drag her off into the forest so I can have my way with her before ending her miserable life. At the same time, I feel a little embarrassed when I think back to the vivid dream I experienced during the previous night, when I imagined her coming to my bed. At least she knows nothing of that.
“Aren't you going to ask what I want?” she says after a moment.
“I'm sure you'd tell me if it was important,” I reply.
“I heard about the boy,” she continues, her smile fading now. “That he died, I mean, and how it happened. I can't even begin to imagine what that was like for you to witness. I'm sorry, I didn't know you'd have to see something like that.”
“His head was infested,” I tell her. “His body too.”
She nods. “I know. Sometimes, when I used to lay a hand on his shoulder in an attempt to calm his cries, I could feel them crawling beneath the skin. They got in through his empty eyes and laid eggs. Sometimes...” She pauses. “Sometimes I used to wonder, when he spoke to me, whether it was really him, or whether the mass of insects in his head were somehow...”
“He's at peace now,” I point out.
“I know. I just wish he'd found peace while he was alive, too.”
I pause for a moment. “What are you doing out so late alone? Surely you can't be trying to walk all the way to Retcham?”
“Isn't that what you're doing?”
“I have business there.”
“But no horse.”
“I can walk just fine,” I mutter, still feeling as if her sudden reappearance is a little unusual. For one thing, she's unlike any woman I've ever met before, full of confidence and with not an ounce of apparent fear; for another, when I first saw her, she was standing with her back to the forest, almost as if it was from between the trees that she approached me rather than from the road.
“I should leave you be,” she says after a moment, taking a step back. “Truly, I only meant to check that you were not hurt, and now I see I had no reason to be worried. You should go on your way, soldier.”
“I'm not a solider.”
“Oh, no...” She pauses. “Not yet, anyway.”
“I'm looking for Freeman,” I tell her. “My understanding is that he might yet have business in the area, and I intend to catch up to him, save my sister, and end his miserable life.”
“You must -” She pauses, before looking around as if now she's the one who fears an ambush. “You must know what Freeman is like, even if you've only heard stories. The things he does to the women he takes, they're brutal and cruel but they're also usually very quick, especially if he believes them to be -” She catches herself
just in time. “Nykolas Freeman wouldn't know a real witch if one walked up to him and smacked him across the face,” she says finally, with venom in her voice. “One of the powers of witchcraft is an ability to conceal oneself from men such as Freeman. If your sister has been taken by him, that means she is in all likelihood not a witch.”
“I don't need you to tell me that.”
“It also means...” She pauses again. “Tell me, do you labor under the impression that she might still be alive?”
“I will find her,” I say firmly.
“Of course, I don't doubt you, but you didn't exactly answer my question.”
“For as long as there is a chance, I will not believe her to be dead.”
“Then...” She turns and looks back at the dark forest for a moment, before turning to me again. “You seem like a good man,” she continues. “I like to think I can tell these things, and it's clear to me that you...” She takes a deep breath. “I have not seen Nykolas Freeman on this road for a long, long time, but I heard cries recently, just over a week ago. I believe someone took women to a clearing about half a mile from here. I haven't dared approach to see what happened to them, I usually keep well away from such things but -”
“Take me.”
“I can't.”
“You must.”
“I'm scared,” she replies, with tears in her eyes. “I don't want to see.”
“Then take me as far as you can, and tell me the route for the rest.”
She opens her mouth to reply, before finally taking a step back. “You'll have to trust me, then. The forest is dark, with very little light getting through even when there's a full moon. I shall guide you as best I can, but I just...” She glances at my sword. “I hope you will remember that whatever we find, it's not my fault if it angers you.”
“Just show me,” I tell her. “You have nothing to fear.”
For the next hour or so, we walk in silence, although she continually glances back at me as if to check that I'm keeping up. There's something remarkably calm about her, more so than any other woman I've met in my life, and I can't help thinking that she's brave, too, to let herself be alone with someone she doesn't know. After all, I could do anything I wished to her right now, and she'd have no way of stopping me. Many of the men from the villages around here would as soon kill a woman as let her speak, so I can only assume that Kate is either extremely naive or extremely confident. For the first time in my life I have met a woman who seems genuinely willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with any man she finds. Truly, is this what the world is coming to?
“There,” she says, her voice trembling a little as she stops and points ahead. “Do you see?”
A shiver runs through my chest as soon as I see the clearing, where three figures have been left in the moonlight, tied to a set of wooden posts. The whole scene is bathed in an eerie blue glow, enough to reveal that the figures are all hideously burned, their skin turned dark as night.
“I will go no closer,” Kate tells me. “I will wait here for you, though, if you wish.”
Ignoring her, I step between the last of the trees and make my way across the clearing. Every step feels heavy, and as I approach the first of the burned figures I have to remind myself that most likely these are three random women, nothing at all to do with my sister. They are women, though, that much is certain, and while parts of their bodies are burned to a crisp, others are merely reddened and scorched, with patches of bare flesh showing on their naked corpses. I force myself to keep walking, to not even slow my step as I get to the first of the figures, and then I lean down a little so that I can look up into her bowed head.
It's not Rosie.
It can't be.
I stare at her features for a moment, and finally I realize that a slow sense of realization is crawling through my chest, squeezing tight.
It's her.
As soon as I see her features properly, with the lower part of her face burned beyond recognition but one eye and part of her forehead left reasonably undamaged, I can tell without any doubt at all that this is my sister's body. Her remaining eye is open, staring down at the ground with a kind of calm blankness, although I realize after a moment that her jaw is hanging down, as if she died screaming. There are nails in her neck and chest, holding her against the wooden pole, and when I look at her chest I see that some of her ribs have been torn open, no doubt as part of whatever vile torture was carried out before she was set alight. Her breasts have been sliced away and, further down, other mutilations have been performed on the parts of her body that make her a woman.
I cannot describe the sense of trembling calm that fills my body as I reach out and pull out the nails that has been driven through her chest; all I can say for certain is that deeper down, beneath that calm, something else is starting to grow, something that I feel certain is going to break through soon. For now, however, I have to give my sister some dignity.
The crude metal nails cut my fingers as I continue to tear them away.
Flakes of charred flesh fall onto my hands.
She has been dead for a few days, clearly. Perhaps a week, left naked and disfigured in this clearing.
It takes several minutes to pull the rest of the nails out, and then I take hold of her body and gently ease her down. There are two other dead women nearby, and I shall have to attend to their bodies too, but for now all I can think about is Rosie. Her body is stiff as I start to carry her away, and I can feel my fingertips digging into flesh that in some places is charred and brittle like burned hog-meat, and in other places is putrid and rotten enough to burst at the slightest pressure. I carry her across the clearing, trying to work out where and how to bury her, and finally I spot Kate up ahead, kneeling on the forest floor with her hands clasped together in prayer. When she hears me getting closer, she turns to me with tears in her eyes and I can tell that she has guessed the truth.
“I will help you,” she says, her voice trembling with shock. “If you need to dig a -”
“I can do it,” I reply, stepping past her and making my way between the trees before stopping and realizing that I have no idea where to take Rosie's body. “She was my sister.”
“There is a church about five miles away,” she tells me. “I can show you the way, if you wish to bury her there.”
I nod.
“I don't know what denomination she was,” she continues, “but -”
“It doesn't matter,” I reply, interrupting her. “A church is a church, is it not?”
“Wait a moment,” she says, turning and hurrying to the clearing. “I will be with you in just a few minutes.”
Turning, I watch as she makes her way to another of the women and starts pulling the nails out. I can't quite believe that Kate would be able to do such a thing, but finally she takes the second woman down and carries her back across the clearing until she reaches me.
“The third will have to wait,” she explains, “but at least we can take these two to hallowed ground for now.” She pauses, as if she's going to say something else, and then she steps past me. “Come. I'll lead you to the church.”
For a moment, I feel as if I can't possibly walk any further. I want to scream, to race back to the road and tear the world apart until I have Nykolas Freeman's throat in my hands. After all, I have absolutely no doubt that he is responsible for this. At the same time, I can feel that my rage is waiting until my sister is properly buried before it can burst through. There is a time for everything, it seems, and my poor dead, burned sister must be given rest so that she can pass on to a better place.
Barely able to get my thoughts straight, I follow Kate through the forest with my sister's stiff, burned corpse in my arms.
Chapter Fifteen
Laura
“He's coming,” Suzie says, with her back to me as she stares out the window.
At first I don't register what she's saying, but when I look over at her and see her figure framed against the afternoon light, I realize that her voi
ce sounds a little different suddenly, more serious and worried. I've been trying to distract her all morning since Mum left, but it's clear that something is on her mind.
“What did you say?” I ask, setting my phone aside.
“He's coming.” She pauses, before turning to me. “Can't you feel it?”
“Why don't we play a game?” I reply, forcing a smile. “How about Monopoly? You're probably old enough.”
She stares at me, and finally a frown wrinkles her forehead. “He's coming,” she says again.
Heading over to join her at the window, I look out at the garden and at the line of trees at the far end. “Who's coming?” I ask cautiously. “I don't see anyone.”
“That's because he's not here yet,” she replies, “but -” She reaches out and takes my hand. “He is coming.”
“No-one's -”
Before I can finish, there's a loud bump from upstairs, from the room directly above us. I look up for a moment, and then I turn to Suzie and see that she's looking over at the door.
“Okay,” I say with a forced smile, “that's enough of that. We're not going to let ourselves get spooked out by little bumps, are we? This is an old house. No, scratch that, this is a goddamn ancient house. Houses... They settle, did you know that?”
“They do what?” she asks, frowning.
“They settle,” I continue, taking a step back from her. “It's what houses do, and it makes them creak and bump sometimes.”
“What does it mean?”
“Settling? It just means...” I pause, realizing that I have no idea. “Plus there's the plumbing,” I add, with an increasing sense of desperation. Damn it, who am I trying to convince? Her or me? “The plumbing in these old places is always completely shot, and the pipes move and bang into each other.”
“They do?”
“And the thing about humans,”I continue, “is that we're, like, programed to read stuff into stuff and think it's something else. You know, like, always seeing patterns that aren't really there.” Realizing that I'm making no sense at all, and that I'm starting to panic slightly, I try to force myself to stay calm. “Why don't we play a game, yeah? To distract ourselves and get our minds fixed on something else?”
