She knew that there was no way anyone would ever find out about her and Jackson now as only she remained to tell the tale.
Except Goldman.
If he was still alive, he was the only other one who knew about her and Jackson. While Jackson may have removed the evidence from Goldman’s house, Goldman could still turn up.
Though she had always suspected that Jackson had finally murdered Goldman and buried him in the woods, she was unsure. He could always resurface – not that it would be in his interests, seeing as he was a wanted man. But she knew Goldman; she knew he got almost as excited about others’ misery as he did about little girls.
Her racing mind was interrupted by a scream and a crash in the kitchen.
Dakota ran to the kitchen to see Lula on the floor, leaned up against the cupboard and shaking, white as a sheet with the remains of a teacup around her legs.
“Lula? Lula, what’s wrong?” she asked softly seeing her sister’s fragile condition as she approached and knelt down beside her. Lula seemed to be staring at the air in the doorframe. “Lula? Tell me what’s happened?”
“It was him… he was right there, just looking at me as I turned around to put the tea on… he was there,” she muttered over and over until Dakota broke the spell and got her to look at her.
“Who was there?”
“Jackson,” she muttered and immediately broke into tears.
Dakota felt the hairs on her arms standing up as she recalled seeing him in her room that morning. Sudden fear gripped her stomach and the compulsion to return her gaze to the doorway was unbearable.
He was not there, and she was half-grateful but half-sad.
If he had been there, why didn’t he appear to her instead of Lula? So it seems he really did love Lula and want her at the end, she thought, a seed of that jealousy germinating in her again.
She had killed him but she wanted nothing more than to see him again, see those eyes once more.
It was early afternoon, and the kettle clicked off the boil as she sat holding a sobbing Lula in her arms. And all she could do was count the feelings that were fighting for control of her: sadness, fear, jealousy, loneliness and rage.
THIRTY-TWO: The Return of Jackson Shade
The following day there was a nasty shock waiting for Dakota on the front of the newspaper.
The face of Goldman stared at her from the hall floor, as the paper carried a story about a possible sighting of the man locally.
The missing suspect in a string of child murders was sighted by a man and woman in the area of St Brigid's Cemetery.
The man, James Goldman, has been missing for six months from his home in Little Mort and is the only suspect for the murders of seven children in the same area and neighbouring villages of Marbury and Chapel Allen. His home was found to contain large amounts of child pornography and many photographs taken by himself of several victims of unsolved murders. The discovery of these pictures has placed him as the lead suspect in the ‘Babes in the Woods Murders.’ They involved the Michelle Taybury murder along with the murders of six other girls whose bodies were all discovered in Pan’s Wood, Little Mort after an anonymous tip-off led the police to the body of Taybury. Though a local man confessed and was convicted, he has been cleared of murder charges but now faces being detained under the Mental Health Act and charges of perverting the course of justice.
No evidence was found connecting anyone to the murders until Goldman’s disappearance led to the search of his home.
A man matching his description was seen yesterday in the St Brigid’s cemetery which adjoins Pan’s Wood. Police are asking local residents to be alert and to report any further sightings, although they also advise the public not to approach this man as he could be dangerous.
Dakota wanted to collapse but some minimal strength in her legs kept her standing up. She could picture him, skulking through the woods waiting for her, or waiting for some other little girl to wander by so that he could snatch her away, too.
As nausea wavered in her throat she made her way slowly into the lounge. For an instant, Jackson was sitting in his favourite chair, smoking a cigarette. Dakota screamed and jumped back smacking her head off the doorframe.
Next thing she was aware of was Lula’s voice saying her name. When she opened her eyes, she found she was lying on the floor halfway between the lounge and the hall with the newspaper still gripped in her hand.
“What happened? I heard a scream and when I came down you were lying here!”
“Uh sorry, I hit my head, I jumped cos I saw…” She stopped and looked at the armchair, now very empty and frightening.
“Have you seen him, too?” asked Lula, a smile on her face suddenly, as though someone had just told her she wasn’t insane and that everything was right with the world.
“I thought I did, but I am still half-asleep, you know…”
“I knew I had seen him! He has come back to us!” Lula was ecstatic as she helped Dakota to her feet. “I knew he would not leave me! Maybe he can tell us who killed him!”
“Lula, I think we might just be a bit upset, you know, and seeing things,” suggested Dakota as she felt carefully around the lump rising on the back of her head, her eyes nervously scanning the room for a shadowy figure.
“No, I know what I saw and that’s it. I knew he wouldn’t leave me to cope alone. He has come to help us deal with everything, D!” Lula was happier than she had been for days, as though a new light was lit inside her.
And from that day, Lula didn’t need sedating. She returned to life as it had been before Jackson had died, suddenly empowered and full of hope. Dakota had never seen Lula so strong and she felt glad for her. She was quite relieved that she no longer had to watch over her sister and that her duties were done.
She spoke to the police regularly but always laughed with Dakota afterwards how she was going to solve the case before the police because Jackson was going to tell her himself who had murdered him.
And though Dakota laughed with her sister, deep down she was afraid that Lula was right.
Lula claimed more and more that she had spoken with Jackson and they had comforted each other, but she said he always claimed not to be ready to discuss his murder.
Part of Dakota just thought her sister had finally lost her marbles, but another part thought it was real.
Although she had not spoken to Jackson, she had seen him regularly, though only for split seconds. In her dreams he haunted the edges of her vision, always slipping away as she turned to face him; he was like a tease, a tantalising glimpse of his proximity to her, but she could not touch him.
In her waking life he was the same, a flash of an image, a shape at the corner of her eye, a shadow across her door or in the corner of her unlit room.
One night she dreamt of being in her bedroom and she could hear ‘Loverman’ playing somewhere. The room was dark but hot, the curtains fluttered slightly in a breeze from the open window, and in the distance she could hear cars passing, far off in their late night journeys. Beside her bed the time glowed red for 1.30am.
Low down and faint she could hear the words to the song playing:
“Loverman, since the world began, forever Amen till the end of time...”
The door to her room was haloed in a dim yellow light coming from the hallway.
Then a shadow broke up the halo as a figure moved outside the door. It was Jackson and he was humming along to the music that was playing somewhere in her room. When the door opened, all she could see was the silhouette of the man with long hair that just touched his shoulders. He had on a pair of trousers and nothing else, but she could not see his face. All he was was a black shape moving slowly and silently save for his low humming.
Although she seemed quite still and at ease there was a great knot growing in her stomach, twisting and turning her stomach over. As he closed the door and made his way towards her bed in the dark, she realised it was fear she felt.
“There’s a devil waiti
ng outside your door… weak with evil and broken by the world... shouting your name and he’s asking for more…”
He had put the song back to the beginning and it was playing over again as she felt the weight of him lie down on the bed beside her and all the while he sang along quietly. Fear was becoming confusion. She knew this man – why was she so afraid of him? He said nothing to her; he just sang along, low and soft to the words of the song. He was faceless movement beside her in the dark, and he drew closer to her ear as he whispered the words:
“Take off that dress... I’m coming down... I’m your Loverman...”
The room seemed to be growing hotter and she could feel her body beginning to perspire as she smelt moisture growing on his brow. Then he put his hand under her nightdress and buried it between her legs.
She awoke sweating in the dark room and snapped the light on, shaking violently. The dream had been so real, so vivid that she was convinced it had actually happened. But her CD-player sat silent and Jackson was not in the room. Still she could almost smell him in the air, feel the pressure on her from where he had recently touched her.
The more she thought about it, the more she was sure it had happened. At that moment, her stereo exploded into life with the screaming voice of Nick Cave:
“I’m your Loverman! Til the bitter end!”
Dakota thought she was going to die of heart failure, but with a rush of fear she leapt from the bed and pulled the plug from the wall throwing the room into silence, before passing out on the floor.
The same dream began to recur for Dakota, and every time she was convinced it was real. It didn’t help that Lula was acting like Jackson wasn’t dead and talked constantly about how she had seen him that day. On top of that, Dakota thought she caught glimpses of him around the house and even out in the street.
She had always believed in ghosts but wondered why her parents had never come back. Now she was convinced she was being haunted by the man she murdered.
She frequently woke to the image of him standing over her bed, but his silhouette was always gone before she could blink her eyes clear of sleep, and while she was furious at his intrusions, she was angrier that he didn’t hang around long enough to talk to her.
The murder investigation turned up few leads and Lula and Dakota were questioned several times by the police leading them both to realise they were suspects. Fortunately for Dakota they were more interested in Lula because of her history of mental illness.
But even though it would have taken no more than a few well-placed words for the police to arrest Lula, she couldn’t have borne the guilt of sending her own sister to prison for a crime she had not committed. She had accepted that if they ever turned up the evidence to prove she had murdered Jackson, she would admit to it all and accept her fate, but she was comfortable in the knowledge that no one would ever know about her and Jackson, thus her motive was concealed. As long as Goldman didn’t turn himself in and spill the beans, she was safe.
The detectives had thrown in the whole ‘did you hate Jackson because he tried to take the place of your dead father’ routine, but Dakota’s responses were convincing due to the fact that she had never resented Jackson for moving in. Her genuine sadness at his death was beneficial because the detectives could see her cry every time they talked about his death. She told them simply, “He was like my big brother and he always took care of me. I can’t believe he’s gone…” and then she would sob over the death of her parents and they would feel sorry for her.
Eventually they released Jackson’s body for burial after they had taken all the evidence they needed from him, and the Crow sisters began to plan the funeral.
Dakota’s twenty-first birthday passed unnoticed, and she celebrated alone that night with a bottle of red wine in her room.
Lula seemed very calm about everything, still. Her night-time visits and chats with Jackson’s ghost seemed to be doing her the world of good.
“You seem so together about this funeral, Lula. You weren’t like this for Mum and Dad’s,” said Dakota one evening as they drank wine and decided what music should be played.
“Well, maybe if Mum and Dad had visited me I might have handled things better, but now Jackson has talked to me about everything, I know it’s just his body we are burying, not him!” She smiled as though she were trying to comfort Dakota.
“I guess that’s true. It’s just… he is gone.”
“No, he isn’t, not for me! I see him more now than I did when he was alive!” She laughed and sipped her wine. “I’m sorry you don’t get to speak to him, but I know you see him. It’s just that he and I had… well, a different and stronger bond than you had with him. That’s maybe why he can speak with me.”
Dakota nodded and wondered if Jackson was punishing her by not speaking to her. That’s so typical of him, she thought.
“Are you going to invite his father?”
“No, his older brother will be coming but that’s all,” replied Lula without looking up.
“You can’t not invite a man to his own son’s funeral,” Dakota said warily.
“D, he died a year or so ago. That’s why he won’t be there.”
“He died? How come it was never mentioned? Did Jackson go to the funeral?”
“Look, Jackson and his father were not very close so he never talked about it. I think he may have visited his grave since, but it wasn’t a sad parting so that was that. Now the music…” And with that Lula changed the subject.
Lula decided that Jackson would have liked to have the Nick Cave song ‘Into My Arms’ played at his funeral and there would be a poem read by herself and, if Dakota wanted to, she could read one, too.
Her mind strayed to the Baudelaire book he had been reading the day Lula met him, and she wondered if there was anything suitable in there. But how could she stand up there, in front of everyone, and pretend not to be saying goodbye to the love of her young life? Even though she kept it all together quite well most of the time, sometimes, late at night, she sobbed into her pillow – great, shuddering, back-arching sobs fed by her deep loss and unbearable guilt. She would ache for him, long for that touch again, the feel of those hands, to be at the mercy of his gaze and feel his burning kisses on her.
How could she hide her deep, bone-crushing sorrow from all those people as her eyes fell on the coffin where his dead body lay?
Two days before the funeral, Lula took Dakota to the funeral home so that she could see Jackson one last time. They arrived in the quiet lobby where paintings of trees and fields adorned the walls along with old-fashioned photos of the local area. Dakota waited patiently and silently as Lula spoke to the funeral director about payment and the funeral arrangements in between tears. All the while she became more aware that Jackson’s lifeless body was lying in a coffin in a room not far away. His presence was there; she felt it as the hairs on her arms stood up. Even though he was dead, she could still feel his presence nearby, invisible and daunting.
Moments later, Lula followed the funeral director around the corner to the room where Jackson was laid out. Dakota was close behind, her head bowed, dreading seeing him again. She had seen him twice since he died and now she had to see him again.
“Lula, do you mind if I go in after you? I think you should be alone with him, you know?” Dakota asked just as her sister was about to enter the room. Lula turned and nodded, her eyes already glassy with tears.
The long minutes passed as she listened to her sister sniffling and whispering to her dead fiancé’s body and eventually she came out, eyes red but with a smile on her lips as she looked at her sister.
“It’s OK, he looks fine. I’m glad I saw him. You go on in there and say goodbye,” Lula managed with a broken voice, touching her sister’s arm.
Dakota walked past her sister towards the door that lay open. She could already see the foot of the coffin as she moved slowly into the dim room with flock wallpaper. She wondered for a moment if they had actually made the room look gothic o
n purpose, but the thought soon left her head as she moved towards the coffin and looked in.
A sudden stillness overtook her, as she stared frozen at the body in the coffin. When she had seen him the moments after he died and later at the morgue, she had not looked at him properly.
But now she was staring at him and she could not tear her eyes away from him. He looked like he was asleep and at any moment would open his eyes, but there was something wrong. Even though her eyes showed her what looked like the Jackson she knew, there was an absence of something that gave her the deepest awareness that he was truly gone.
Dakota felt as though he was there in that tiny gothic room, but he was not lying in the coffin; he was somewhere else, leaning against the red walls and watching her intently. She was certain that if she turned away she would see him standing there, but she did not turn away from his body. It was all so raw and real: the stillness of the room, the knowledge that Jackson would never move again, the sense that his soul had gone and all that was left was a shell, the hard outer casing that was the appearance of Jackson Shade.
But what had made Jackson a person, a living being, was gone. Now he was an empty church, still and cold.
Without moving or shaking, she was crying. Tears were streaming down her face and dripping down her neck, but she could not feel anything except a gaping hole inside her, as though in killing Jackson, in robbing him of that thing that made him real, she had also lost a part of herself. She felt that part of her soul had been taken by Jackson as he slipped away that night, and now she was only half-alive. Half of her was lost to the woods and she would never get it back until she, too, stopped breathing.
THIRTY-THREE: The Funeral
That morning it was autumn suddenly.
Dakota stood and looked out of the window and saw the first leaves had fallen and the wind was pulling more down to sleep for the winter. Jackson would have liked it: the earth going to sleep for winter just as he was interred. He would have thought it poetic.
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