When I Find You

by R. A. Casey

  But one thing I remember clearly?

  Freddie.

  Dropping my phone.

  Crushing it underneath his foot.

  And then punching me in the face.

  The dread hits me again. Freddie. My sweet Freddie. All this time and he has been involved. All this time and I should’ve seen it.

  Because how else was somebody supposed to sneak into our house after I passed out and take the parcel away from me?

  But how far does this go?

  How deep does this go?

  I look around, and I see I am in the attic. And that fills me with fear. With dread. Because it’s dark. So dark.

  I think about the sounds above.

  I think about the voices and the footsteps I swore to Freddie I heard in the night. The creaking he swore was the wind.

  And I think about the number of times he told me not to go up there. Because he was working on something. Because it was a mess. Because the bathroom ceiling wasn’t safe.

  And how little he needed to convince me, all along.

  I hear a floorboard creak behind me, and I know I am not alone.

  Footsteps. Footsteps moving closer to me. I sit there. Heart racing. I’m on some kind of chair. Some kind of wooden stool.

  I don’t know what is going to happen to me. But I know how afraid I am.

  I know how decisive this feels.

  How trapped I feel.

  Because the man I love punched me in the face and knocked me unconscious, then dragged me up here and bound me here.

  I hear the footsteps get closer and closer.

  And then, they stop.

  There is someone behind me. Right behind me. Standing over me. I hear their breathing, heavy. I sense their gaze. And I smell the slight sweetness from their aftershave.

  I know right away it is Freddie.

  “Hello, love,” he says, casual as ever. “Do you need water or anything?”

  He speaks with such a casual tone that it actually knocks me for six. This has to be a nightmare. It can’t be real. I’ve hallucinated scenes that seemed more vivid.

  But then I wonder. Have I? Do I even need the medication I’m on? Did I even need my stint in the psychiatric hospital after all?

  I shake my head. This can’t be for real. Freddie can’t be involved.

  He can’t know the things I’ve been hiding from him.

  Hiding from myself.

  But then he walks around the chair and stands right in front of me.

  It’s dark, but I can see his face. And there’s a look to it. A look I’ve never seen before.

  A look on his face like he despises me.

  But a familiarity there, too.

  A familiarity I’ve noticed before, in brief moments, but never truly acknowledged. Never truly registered.

  A familiarity I’ve looked past.

  But a familiarity that is starting to dawn on me more and more.

  A past I have tried to bury. Tried to suppress.

  Rearing its violent head, all over again.

  “I’m serious,” Freddie says. “You look like you could use a drink.”

  I try to say something when I realise I am gagged. The taste of sickly saliva clings to the back of my throat. I’m woozy. Shaky. Weak.

  “I’m sorry about the nose,” Freddie says. And it’s only then I realise how painful it is. How bunged up with blood it is. “I realise that was a rather… dramatic way of proving a point. But everything has fallen into place, Sarah. Everything has built up to this moment. I’m just sorry it’s come about so soon. I was hoping we could stretch this out a little longer. We both were.”

  I frown. I still don’t understand. My heart races. My chest is tight. I can barely breathe.

  Freddie steps forward. Right before me, then. He crouches in front of me. Puts his hands on mine. And then he smiles.

  “You really don’t recognise me. Do you?”

  I want to say I do. Because a part of me does. A part of me senses I know him.

  But it’s that part deep, deep within the darkest recesses of my brain.

  The part I least want to go.

  “I thought that would be the hardest part. Convincing you I’m a stranger. I mean… sure. We hardly knew each other too well. But we knew each other enough. I knew you better than you knew me, anyway. A lot about you.”

  He looks at me, right into my eyes, and I can sense him pulling at the doors of a part of my mind I don’t want him to go.

  “First of all,” he says, sighing. “Before I go any further. I just want you to know you’re right. All the events of the last few months. They were real.”

  Hearing Freddie saying those words punches me right in the gut.

  “I would say I’m not proud of what I did. But honestly, I’m pretty proud. Even the small details. Printing all those mock newspapers with Charlie’s death on there. Convincing you you’d imagined it. Really think it was so hard for me to just rip up some other newspaper, Sarah? Didn’t think to check?”

  I feel sick. I want to vomit.

  This can’t be real.

  It can’t be true.

  “And the photos, too. The screenshots you took of the Snaps. Didn’t think that maybe, just maybe, I might know a thing or two about logging into your iCloud? Deleting them before you got to me? Especially having your bloody iCloud password as that Snapchat account name of mine. Really, I almost sympathised with you. I would’ve done, anyway. If I were on the outside. But I’m not. Am I, Sarah?”

  It’s the way he says those last words that convince me.

  It’s the way he says them that makes me understand.

  Makes me realise.

  “I’ve searched for you for a long, long time. When you left the Family, it became difficult to track you down. Especially when names are so easy to change. But when I found you… well. I knew it would take time to break you down. I knew it would take many, many years. But I knew it would be worth it, too.”

  I look into Freddie’s eyes as tears stream down my cheeks, and as much as I don’t want to accept it, as much as I want to run from it, I know I can’t deny it anymore.

  Who he is.

  How he knows.

  What he knows.

  “But it isn’t just me involved, is it, Sarah?”

  He looks around, over to the darkness behind. And I realise then that this is the attic. It’s my attic.

  And up ahead of me, there’s that gap in the bricks.

  The gap to the room.

  The room where I saw the skeletons…

  No.

  I don’t want to think about that.

  I don’t want to think who it might be.

  “Mum?” he says. “You can come through now.”

  A woman appears in the darkness.

  I hear footsteps up ahead.

  “You know, that’s the part I thought might be difficult. But when this house came up for sale… Let’s just say I had the perfect plan. To link the two houses. And then to start.”

  A woman appears in the darkness.

  And I see right away that it is Moira.

  She is dressed all in white.

  Just like I used to dress when I was a little girl.

  And she certainly isn’t struggling anymore.

  Not struggling with her mobility at all.

  I think of her upstairs when I went around to find the contents of the parcel.

  I think of her at the top of the stairs, and how weird it seemed.

  I think about it all, and I see it right before my eyes.

  Freddie wanted us to buy this house.

  He wanted us to buy it.

  And he did it for a reason.

  “Well?” Freddie says. “Aren’t you going to say hello?”

  Moira steps forward, and a smile widens across her face. And suddenly, I know why I recognise her. I know why I found her familiar when I first saw her. It’s because I’ve seen her before. A long, long time ago. But it’s her.

  “Hello
, dear,” she says. “Long time no see. I’ve waited a long time to make you pay. We both have. For what you did…”

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  The door in my mind is open now.

  I think of my life in two distinct segments.

  The days before Charlie went missing.

  And the days after he went missing.

  Those two distinct segments are real. Very real.

  It’s how I told myself the story that isn’t quite as it happened.

  “Hello, Sarah,” Moira says as she stands there opposite me in the darkness of the attic. “Is it starting to make a little more sense now?”

  I look up at Moira. I look at Freddie. I look at them both in this attic as I sit there, bound to the chair. Taste of blood in my mouth. My nose throbbing, swollen, undoubtedly broken.

  And it’s the burn on Freddie’s neck that keeps on catching my eye.

  That, and Moira’s white dress.

  The same dress all the women in the Family used to wear.

  I see it all, and I know what they know.

  I know how they know.

  I know who they are.

  I remember her standing there that day when I stared down at the dying rat. Smile on her face. Cheering me on. Encouraging me. She looked so much different then. So much younger.

  But I see it now. Clearly.

  It’s quite clearly her.

  She is one of them.

  “Did you think you could run from your past forever?” Moira asks. “After everything you did?”

  I want to speak. I want to fight my corner. I want to say so much.

  But the gag around my mouth suffocates me from saying anything.

  And even if I could say anything, I’m not sure any words would come out.

  I am broken.

  I am totally and utterly destroyed.

  My worst nightmares are playing out right before my eyes.

  “My nephew, Kent. Not my nephew at all. Nothing more than a handyman. My son here couldn’t go compromising his identity. So we got someone to help us out. To visit and threaten onion-breath Cameron to do the dirty work. Just a pity Cameron spotted him leaving my place that night. But anyway, that is irrelevant now. Maybe you should’ve paid more attention to just how often your beloved fiancé here headed up into the attic. But no. So self-absorbed. As you always were.”

  Freddie walks over to me, then. He pulls the gag away. Pushes a water bottle into my mouth and pours it down my throat. There’s no sensitivity there. Not anymore. It’s as if he doesn’t recognise me anymore. Doesn’t love me anymore.

  “When I heard about your breakdown about a son you ‘never had’,” Freddie says, “I didn’t know whether to sympathise or be insulted.”

  I shake my head. I want this to stop. I want this to end. I want it to all go away.

  “Because on the one hand… at least you were being haunted by your actions. By your past. Especially when I heard the name. Charlie.”

  My skin shivers.

  “But on the other hand… it almost felt like you were taunting me. Like you were taunting all of us.”

  I shake my head because it’s not true. None of this is true.

  I wasn’t taunting them.

  It wasn’t a game.

  It was just… what happened.

  And it’s such a huge part of who I am.

  The hidden iceberg under the surface of the water influencing my every move.

  “But we had to stay patient. Both of us had to stay patient. We had to create the perfect conditions for the grand reveal, so to speak. We had to put you through hell to get you to this point. Just like you put us through hell. Both of us. And hell. Who knows how much further we might’ve got if Cameron didn’t open his big old onion-stinking mouth? Jeez. So many things I can’t believe you fell for. Cameron coming round to service the boiler? You actually believed that shit? Honestly, it was too easy. Didn’t quite realise how crackers you actually were. Close, but not quite.”

  I shake my head, and I want to cry, and I want to beg because I didn’t mean it I didn’t mean any of it I just did what I did to help save myself I—

  “But the truth is,” Freddie says, “I’ve learned that as haunted by the past as you are, you’re still just the same jealous, deceitful, lying bitch you’ve always been. The same malicious cunt you were back then. The same selfish witch who did all the things you did.”

  “Please,” I say.

  “What?”

  “Don’t. Just… just don’t. Please.”

  Freddie looks at Moira. Moira looks back at him. And then both of them look back at me, bemused smiles on their faces.

  “‘Don’t’?” Freddie says. “‘Don’t’? That all you have to say?”

  He walks right up to me again.

  Crouches right before me.

  “Love,” Moira says. “Don’t get too rough with her.”

  But he grabs me by my cheeks and squeezes them tight.

  Stares at me with hateful eyes.

  “‘Don’t’?” he says. “Really? That’s all you’ve got to say?”

  I try to speak, but he’s holding my face so tight that I can’t say a word.

  He shakes his head. Smiles.

  “No,” he says. “I’m going to make you remember.”

  “Freddie, please—”

  “I’m going to make you remember, and I’m going to make you confess it all,” he shouts. “Because that’s all I’ve wanted. All along, I’ve pushed you further and further because it’s all I’ve wanted. For you to admit it. To look me in the eye and admit it. Once and for all.”

  “Please, Freddie. If you’ve… if you care at all about me, please. Don’t do this.”

  “Care about you?” He snorts. “I only care about one thing from you. One fucking thing.”

  I close my eyes and shake my head because I know it’s coming.

  It’s coming, and I don’t want to hear it.

  “I want to hear you say the words,” he says.

  “Freddie—”

  “I want to hear you admit it.”

  “Please!”

  “I want you to admit to me and admit to your fucking self what you did to Charlie! And what you did to Elana! Your own fucking sister! And her child! My child!”

  I hear those words, and I am back there again.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  I am back there again, and this time I know the memories are real.

  They are memories. Not visions. Not hallucinations.

  They are memories spilling out of a box I wanted to keep closed all this time.

  I am in the field first. It’s a warm day. For a moment, I wonder if it’s Charlie’s hand in mine. His sweaty palm, as I stand there in the middle of this field.

  But it isn’t.

  I look around and see my sister, Elana, standing beside me.

  She’s crying. Tears cover her beautiful, perfect skin as she stands there in the white dress we all wear. I always was jealous of her, a little. Jealous of how beautiful she was. And jealous of just how much more attention she got than me.

  As much as I didn’t want to admit it. Because jealously is wrong. It’s a sin.

  “It won’t happen,” she says. She’s only eighteen, but she looks older. Like a young woman. Ready for the world outside? The dangerous world outside we’ve heard all about?

  Somehow, I’m not sure whether we’re ever going to see that world.

  “It will happen,” I say, squeezing Elana’s hand. Maybe a little tighter than is comfortable.

  “But it won’t,” she spits. “I think it’s my eggs. I think—I think maybe I just can’t have a baby.”

  I don’t know a lot about boys or eggs or sperm or how they work. The boys and the girls are kept separate here in the Family until they’re old enough to meet each other and marry and have a baby. I’ve never met Andy, the guy my sister has fallen in love with. But I know he’s older, and I know there’s a chance this might not all be Elana’s fault.
>
  “Who’s to say it isn’t him?”

  “It’s not him, Sarah.”

  “But—”

  “It isn’t him, Sarah. Okay?”

  She looks at me then with those toxic eyes. With such venom. Because even though Elana is my sister, we’ve never been close. I’ve tried to be close to her. But even though she gets all the fuss and attention, ever since I was born three years after her, she’s always been jealous of me.

  “Maybe… maybe it’s not such a bad thing that you can’t have a baby.”

  Elana narrows her eyes. Frowns. “What?”

  “I’m—I’m just saying. You’re still… young. And the boy.”

  “You can call him by his name.”

  “Okay. Andy,” I say, a hint of frustration to my voice. “I haven’t even met him.”

  “What does that matter?”

  “I mean, I’m your sister.”

  Elana opens her mouth as if she’s going to say something nasty. Then she closes her lips. Sighs. “Are you still bleeding?”

  I feel my face go warm. I’ve been bleeding for a couple of years now. I still find it icky. A bit disgusting. But I’m getting more used to it. “Yeah. What does that have to do with anything?”

  She looks at me, and just for a moment, I see a glint in her eyes.

  The glint of somebody planning something.

  “Nothing,” she says. “When did you last… you know…”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

  “Nothing,” she says. “I’m just checking… checking my little sister is okay. That’s all.”

  I sigh. “A week ago. Something like that.”

  “A week ago,” Elana says.

  And once again, she isn’t there.

  Once again, she is distant.

  Once again, she is lost in thought.

  Lost in a plan.

  A plan that I can see now.

  A plan I should’ve seen at the time, but my fifteen-year-old self couldn’t quite comprehend.

  Not so naive and innocent and living in a community like this.

  I see Elana smile.

  Then I see her lean over and kiss me on the cheek.