When I Find You

by R. A. Casey

  I swallow a lump in my throat. So this was targeted. It was all real. It actually happened.

  “Now, trust me. I felt uneasy about it, like. I even came back to warn you a few times but got cold feet. That’s what happened when—when you caught me that day in the street. But anyway. I did it, and I ain’t proud of it. And listen, ten grand’s a lot of money, and when you’re struggling, it’s even more. But I did it. Didn’t think much of it. Not until he came to see me again a week back and asked if I’d do summat awful. Really awful.”

  I hold my breath. “What did he ask you to do?”

  “To—to break in. To break into your house all masked up and drive you away somewhere. Shake you up. Not harm you or hurt you, just—just fuck with you, you know?”

  My mouth goes dry. I can’t believe what I’m hearing.

  “I couldn’t do it. Not anymore. Told the bloke flat out I wasn’t gonna be his lackey anymore. But—but then yesterday, he paid me a visit. He gave me five more grand and told me to get the job done and not to tell the police about owt. And that if I didn’t do it or if I told the police, I’d be in trouble. My grandkids would be in trouble. Just turned up, he did. Handed ’em an ice cream. I knew then how much shit I was in. And he—he wanted me to tell you summat, too.”

  I swallow a lump in my throat. “What was it?”

  “‘I… I know what you did to Charlie.’”

  My skin turns cold.

  Everything goes numb.

  “I don’t know what it means,” he says. “I don’t know what any of it means. But someone’s after you, love. And honestly, I took the money, and I’m gonna use it to get me and my family far away from here. As far away from him as possible. ’Cause I’m scared of him. I’m scared what might happen if I go to the police ’cause he says he has people everywhere. And I’m scared you’re gonna get trapped in it all yourself. I just couldn’t have you thinking you’re crazy. ’Cause you ain’t. Really, you ain’t. It’s real. It’s all fucking real. And you need to be careful of this guy. You need to get yerself as far away from him as you can.”

  “Who—who is he?”

  “That’s the thing,” Cameron says. “I didn’t get a name. Not at first. Kept a very low profile, y’know. But I saw him. The night I came round to yours when the streetlamp went out. When you saw me. I—I saw him, and that’s when it hit me.”

  “Who is he?” I ask.

  “I dunno who he is,” Cameron says. “And I don’t know what he’s called. But I do know one thing. That old woman who lives next door to you. You can’t trust her. ’Cause I’m pretty sure it’s her son.”

  Chapter Fifty

  I drive back home, and I still can’t wrap my head around everything Cameron just told me.

  Somebody paid Cameron to deliver me that parcel in the summer. The parcel, which was real.

  Somebody paid Cameron to kidnap me.

  To tell me they knew something about… about Charlie.

  That they knew what I’d done to him.

  And ever since then, Cameron has been battling with his own demons over whether to reach out to me or not, jeopardising his own safety in the process.

  I can barely think. My mind is mush. I feel like I’m living in a dream. Or a nightmare.

  Because there is no doubt in my mind that what just happened is real.

  And I have the evidence to prove it.

  I’ve recorded my conversation with Cameron via GoPro. I haven’t even had time to stop the recording. Or to watch it back. Or anything like that.

  I’ve just sat here and tried to wrap my head around it.

  Tried to understand.

  There are so many things that don’t make sense to me.

  But I cannot deny what Cameron told me.

  I cannot deny that it adds up.

  Someone is stalking me.

  Someone really is terrorising me.

  And according to Cameron, that someone is Moira’s son.

  But Moira said she didn’t have a son. So it must be Kent. Her nephew.

  Unless she was lying about not having a son.

  Either way, I cannot trust her.

  I remember the night I went to the window. I remember looking outside, seeing that figure staring back at me in the darkness.

  And I remember Moira speaking to someone getting into a red car in hushed tones. Looking up at me, right at me, then away.

  And as I sit there, driving, barely able to focus, all of it slides into place.

  The parcel.

  I lost it around at Moira’s.

  Her son must’ve taken it, somehow.

  Shit. Her son must’ve sneaked around that day I collapsed in the kitchen.

  And come to think of it, when I went around to Moira’s in search of that parcel, I distinctly remember hearing movement upstairs.

  And the time I rushed back around later that day, I swore I heard her speaking to someone.

  I turn into my road. I can’t make sense of it. Any sense of it at all.

  I just know that I have all the evidence I need now.

  I need to get home.

  And regardless of what Freddie thinks of me now, I have to show him.

  I have to show him, so he knows I’m not crazy.

  So he knows I’m not insane.

  I drive past Moira’s house, attached to my own, and I can barely look at it. I need to go inside. I need to find Freddie. I need to tell him everything, and then we need to go to the police.

  But then the message.

  The message Cameron was paid to deliver me, through terror.

  I know what you did to Charlie.

  I shiver when I think about it.

  I don’t want to think about it.

  Because it’s like everyone says.

  Charlie never existed.

  Charlie has never even been a thing.

  It’s all just trauma.

  It’s all just false memory.

  It’s all just…

  I pull up outside, and I notice Freddie isn’t home yet. I just need to get inside and lock the doors and hide upstairs.

  Or… no. I need to just keep my cool. Moira’s nephew, Kent. Or her son. Whoever he is, and whatever he knows about me, he could’ve done a number of things before now. Just because I suddenly know the truth doesn’t mean he’s any more likely to act, especially when he doesn’t know what I know.

  Right?

  And then there’s Moira.

  What does she know?

  She always seems a bit odd.

  But this odd?

  I look around at my house and decide the only course of action right now is to get inside, act as normal as possible, and wait for Freddie to come home.

  I’ll show him the footage.

  Then we’ll go to the police.

  I climb out of my car. Keep my head down. I start rushing my way up the pathway, unable to keep my eyes off Moira’s front lawn. The garden gnomes tumbled onto their sides. And that CCTV camera staring down at me.

  And I wonder, then.

  Has this CCTV camera been working all along?

  Did she lie about that, and all this time, she’s been stalking me, waiting for the perfect opportunities to make her moves?

  I fumble around with my keys. Drop them to the ground. Pick them up.

  And then I hear movement down the pathway to my left.

  Whistling.

  Moira.

  I stick the key in the lock with my shaking hand.

  I turn it.

  Fast.

  And then, just as I see her appear, I step inside, close the door shut and turn the lock.

  I fall back against the door. Close my eyes. My heart races. I am covered in sweat. And as I slouch here, I just want Freddie to come home. I just want him to get back and to tell him everything, the whole lot.

  And then we can go to the police and finish this, once and for all.

  I feel bad for Cameron. He is scared. He is afraid. And his family is in danger.

 
But he did something bad. Really bad. And it has put me through hell.

  So if he thinks I’m not going to use his words against him, he is mistaken.

  I will try not to. But I cannot make any promises.

  I suddenly hear a floorboard creak upstairs.

  I open my eyes.

  My heart skips a beat.

  I heard something.

  Like footsteps.

  Like somebody is up there.

  After sitting there for what feels like an eternity, I finally manage to stand.

  I walk across the room. Grab a heavy metal clock we’ve got on the mantlepiece, and I stand at the bottom of the staircase.

  I know what I heard. And it could be nothing. After all, I always hear creaking around in the loft at night, something Freddie always insists is the wind.

  But I know what that sounded like.

  “Fuck it,” I say. “Here goes nothing.”

  I climb the stairs. Slowly. And every step I take feels more and more protracted than the last.

  I reach the top step. Sweat pooling down my face.

  I stand there on the landing.

  Silence.

  I raise the clock. Move towards the bathroom. Push the door open.

  Nothing in there.

  Nobody in there.

  Nothing but that opening, still unattended to, still unfixed.

  I move across the landing. Just two more rooms. The main bedroom and the spare.

  I check our room first.

  Empty.

  And then I walk down towards the spare room.

  Open the door.

  Also empty.

  I lower the clock a little. Sigh. Maybe it was just the floorboards creaking.

  I go to turn around when I hear something above me.

  I frown.

  Look up.

  That’s when I see the loft hatch.

  My stomach turns.

  I don’t want to go up there. I don’t like the thought of being in the dark, in the pitch black.

  But for some reason, at this moment, something possesses me.

  I look up at that loft hatch.

  I lift my phone and flick on the torch.

  “Fuck it,” I say.

  And then I reach up and click the release button.

  The hatch falls down, and with it, an air of dust, making me cough.

  I reach up. Pull the ladders down.

  And then I point my torch up there and climb the ladders.

  When I get to the top, I want to turn around immediately. It is dark up here. Damp. Claustrophobic. And there’re spiders everywhere.

  But more importantly than that, there is nobody up here.

  I go to turn around when I notice something.

  It catches my eye. Only for a moment. Just a brief, fleeting moment.

  But when I see it, it makes my heart skip a beat.

  Over by the wall—the wall connecting our loft to Moira’s loft—I see an old poster. A poster of an old cattle breed sticking to the wall.

  And as I get closer, I can’t figure out why, but I realise it’s familiar, somehow.

  I’ve seen it somewhere before.

  It’s when I reach it and stand right there that it comes to me.

  That it hits me.

  And that it almost knocks me to my feet.

  I’ve seen the corner of this poster before.

  I saw it in the Snap I received.

  The one with the note.

  I KNOW EVERYTHING.

  And then…

  I hear movement. Right in front of me.

  Shuffling.

  Which can’t be possible. Because this is the wall.

  It’s the wall between ours and Moira’s.

  It’s…

  And then it hits me.

  No.

  It can’t be.

  It can’t…

  I inch forward. Knowing full well, I need to turn back. Knowing full well I need to get away.

  I step right up to the wall between the lofts, and I push on one of the bricks.

  It tumbles away.

  I jump back.

  And then I pull another away.

  And another.

  And suddenly, as I pull more and more bricks away, I realise why I have heard movement above for so long.

  I realise I am not insane.

  And I realise why the Snapchat I received was sent from my own attic, after all.

  Because there is a passage between our attic and Moira’s attic.

  I go to back off, to run away when I hear more movement.

  I freeze.

  Go completely still.

  I turn my torchlight on my phone ahead when I see something staring back at me.

  Two skeletons.

  Two bodies.

  The skeleton of a young woman.

  Skull caved in.

  And a smaller skeleton.

  A small skull.

  I almost collapse out of the loft. I can’t understand. I just need to get out of this house. I need to find Freddie. I need to find Freddie, and I need to go to the police because I am not insane. This is not in my head.

  I drop my phone in the panic. Hear a crack.

  But I just want to get out.

  I just want to get away.

  I race down the stairs and take a left when I slam into someone and scream.

  “Sarah!”

  “Get away! Get away!”

  “Whoah, whoah. It’s me. It’s me, Sarah. What is it? What’s wrong?”

  I quickly come to my senses and realise it’s Freddie. He’s holding me.

  “Sarah? What’s wrong?”

  I can barely speak. I can only point. “It’s—it’s real, Freddie.”

  “Slow down a second. What’s real?”

  “It’s… I got a message. A message from Cameron. And I recorded it. Recorded him telling me about how—how Moira’s son’s involved. Or—or her nephew, Kent. I don’t know who but—but it’s somebody. He told me everything. How he’s the one who stalked me. How he paid Cameron to—to do all these things. And then I got back here and—and I heard something just like I’ve heard so many times. Then I went into the loft, and I saw it. The place the Snap was taken. The one that vanished from the account with my password as the name. And… and the bricks, Freddie. The bricks. There’s a passage in there. And then—next door. There’s a… There’s something up there.”

  Freddie looks at me. Calm and composed as possible. “It’s okay,” he says. “Sarah, you just wait here. And I’ll go up there. I’ll see.”

  “No!” I shout.

  “Sarah,” Freddie says. “I’ve got this. Everything is okay. I love you. Okay?”

  I want to tell him to stop. I don’t want him going up there. I don’t feel like it’s safe up there or anywhere around here anymore.

  But then he climbs the stairs.

  And I see him disappear around the corner.

  I hear him climb the ladders, and I wait.

  I step back. Rub my temples. I wait for a shout. I wait for a scream. I wait for him to beg for help.

  And then I hear him come back down the steps of the ladder.

  I look up. See him at the top of the stairs. He’s holding my phone. He looks concerned.

  “Well?” I say.

  He steps right up to me. Puts a hand on my cheek.

  “Sarah,” he says. “You’re—you’re right.”

  And just hearing those words makes my body freeze. “What?”

  “There’s—there’s something up there. The walls to Moira’s. Something’s… Something’s not right. I saw it, Sarah. I—I fucking saw it.”

  I see the horror in his eyes, and I know he sees the truth now. I know he believes me now.

  “Freddie,” I say. “What’re—what’re we going to do?”

  I curse myself for sounding so weak, but he holds my arms, and in that reassuring way he always does, he takes a few deep breaths and looks me right in the eyes. “This video. This Cameron. Ha
ve you saved it?”

  I nod. “It’s—it’s right on there. It’s—”

  “Good,” he says. “Because we’ll need it.”

  He walks past me. He still hasn’t handed me back my phone yet.

  “What are we doing?” I ask.

  “What are we doing? Going to the fucking police, of course.”

  And I go to respond, go to agree, but something feels wrong.

  Something just doesn’t feel right.

  “You—you’ve been working up there,” I say.

  Freddie turns around. Frowns. “What?”

  “When we first moved in. You… you said it was rickety up there. And that—that you were doing work up there. Why didn’t you see it?”

  Freddie shakes his head. “Sarah? You really implying I knew something about this? Really?”

  “And you told me not to go up there.”

  “I advised you not to go up there because of the fucking hole in the bathroom ceiling.”

  I want to argue. I want to fight. I want to disagree.

  But in the end, I can feel myself slipping, feel myself spiralling.

  He walks up to me. Puts a soft hand on my arm.

  “We’re going to be okay. We’ll beat this, just like we beat everything.”

  He puts his arms around me, holds me, and I sink into them.

  “Everything will be okay, my angel,” he says. “Everything will be okay…”

  My stomach turns.

  I am back there.

  The maize fields.

  The demon mask.

  The hands around my wrists.

  And the neck mole.

  The…

  “Everything will be okay, my angel. Everything will be okay…”

  I pull away.

  I look at the scar on his neck.

  I look there, and suddenly it all makes sense.

  He stares at me. Calmly. “I’m guessing the video is saved to your phone, right?”

  “I—I—”

  “Good,” he says.

  He drops the phone to the floor and cracks it under his foot in one heavy stomp.

  And then he pulls back his fist, punches me across the face, and all I see is darkness.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  I open my eyes, and I hope it’s all been a nightmare, a horrible dream.

  But then I taste the blood on my lips, and I feel a deep, unwavering sense of dread.

  I’m in a room somewhere. It’s dark, and it’s cold. Dusty. I’m aching everywhere. I have a vague memory of being lifted. Of being carried upstairs and taken somewhere. I have a vague memory of a lot of things.