by Ruth Ware
Four brick paths quartered the garden, meeting in a small circle in the center, where the statue stood. It was so covered in ivy and other creepers that it was hard to make out, but as I drew nearer, brushing aside some of the foliage, I saw that it was a woman, thin and emaciated and broken down, her clothes ragged, her face skull-like, her blank stone eyes fixing mine with an accusing stare. Her cheeks were scored with what looked like scratches, and when I peered closer I saw that the nails on her skeletal hands were long and pointed.
“God,” I said, taken back. “What a horrible statue. Who on earth would put up something like that?” But there was no answer. The two little girls had disappeared into the thicket of greenery, and I could not see them. Peering closer I saw that there was a name on the pedestal she crouched on. Achlys. Was it some kind of memorial?
All of a sudden I felt a violent desire to get out of this overgrown nightmarish tangle of plants, out to the open air of the mountains and grounds.
“Maddie!” I called sharply. “Ellie, where are you?”
No answer came, and I suppressed a momentary unease.
“Maddie! We’re going to have lunch now. Let’s go and find a spot.”
They waited, just long enough for me to start feeling serious panic, and then there was a burst of giggles and both children broke cover and pelted down the path in front of me, towards the gate and the cool, clean air outside.
“Come on,” Maddie shouted over her shoulder. “We’ll show you the burn.”
The rest of the morning passed without incident. We had a quiet—even a nice—lunch on the shores of the peat-dark burn that cut through the corner of the grounds, and then afterwards the girls took off their shoes and socks and paddled in the tea-colored waters, screeching at the cold, and flicking me and Petra with ice-cold droplets that made me shriek, and Petra babble with excited glee. Only two things marred the general contentment—the first, Ellie’s shoe falling in the burn. I managed to retrieve it, but she was tearful, and sobbed when we had to go and she had to put the soggy shoe back on.
The other was the prickling of my forehead, where the creeper had brushed me. From an initial tingle, it was now properly itching, like a nettle sting, but more painful. I splashed the cold water from the burn onto it, but the itching continued, hard to ignore. Was it some kind of allergic reaction? I’d never experienced a plant allergy before, but perhaps this was something native to Scotland I would not have encountered down south. Either way, the thought of the reaction getting worse while I was alone with the children was not comforting—nor was the realization that I had left my inhaler back at the house.
All in all I was glad when the sky clouded over and I could suggest packing up and starting home. Petra fell asleep on the way back to the house, and I parked her buggy in the utility room. To my surprise, both Maddie and Ellie fell in with my suggestion of a film, and we were cuddled up in the media room, me with a growing sense of superiority, when there was a crackle and Sandra’s voice came over the speakers.
“Rowan? Is now a good time to chat?”
“Oh, hi, Sandra.” It was less unnerving the second time around but still unsettling. I found myself glancing up at the cameras, wondering how she knew which room I was in. The girls were both absorbed in the film and didn’t seem to have noticed their mother’s voice coming over the speakers. “Hang on, I’ll go through to the kitchen, so we can chat without disturbing the girls.”
“You can divert the call to your phone if that’s easier,” Sandra’s disembodied voice followed me as I eased myself out from beneath Ellie and walked through to the kitchen. “Just open the Happy app and click on the phone icon, then the divert arrow.”
I did as she said, ignoring the bloody Home is where the Happy is!, and pressed the icons she had instructed, then lifted the phone to my ear. To my relief, her voice sounded again, this time from the phone speaker.
“Done?”
“Yes, I’m on the phone now. Thanks for showing me how to do that.” If she could only have mentioned it last night rather than having that awkward conversation in front of Jack . . . but never mind. The rash on my forehead prickled, and I tried to ignore the desire to scratch it.
“No problem,” Sandra was saying briskly. “Happy is amazing when you get used to it, but I have to admit, it takes a while to figure out all the intricacies! How’s today going, anyway?”
“Oh, really good.” I perched on the edge of a stool, resisting the urge to look up at the camera in the corner. “It’s going great, thanks. We had a really good morning exploring the grounds. Petra’s asleep, and the girls are—” I hesitated, thinking of her remark yesterday, but then forged on. No point in second-guessing myself all the time, and besides, she would presumably know what the girls were up to if she had checked the cameras before calling. “The girls are watching a film. I thought you wouldn’t mind as they were out in the fresh air this morning. I think they needed some down time.”
“Mind?” Sandra gave a little laugh. “Heavens, no. I’m not one of those helicopter parents.”
“Would you like to speak to them?”
“Absolutely—it’s why I called, really. Well, and to check you were coping of course. Do you want to put Ellie on first?”
I went back through to the den and handed Ellie the phone.
“It’s Mummy.”
Her face was a little uncertain as she picked up the phone, but she broke into smiles as she heard her mother’s voice, and I went back into the kitchen, not wanting to hover too obviously, but listening with half an ear to Ellie’s end of the conversation. At some point Sandra must have asked to be put across to Maddie, for there was a short whining complaint from Ellie, and then I heard Maddie’s voice, and Ellie came padding disconsolately through to me.
“I miss Mummy.” Her bottom lip was wobbling.
“Of course you do.” I crouched down, not wanting to risk a hug that might be rejected, but trying to make myself available on her level if she wanted comforting. “And she misses you too. But we’ll have lots of—”
But my remark was cut off by Maddie, coming through with the phone held out and a strange expression in her black eyes. I was not sure what it was—a mix of trepidation and glee, it looked like.
“Mummy wants to talk to you,” she said. I took the phone.
“Rowan,” Sandra’s voice was clipped and annoyed. “What’s this I hear about you taking them into the locked garden?”
“I— Well—” I was taken aback. What the hell? Sandra hadn’t said anything about the garden being out of bounds. “Well, I did, but—”
“How dare you force your way into an area of the grounds that we expressly keep locked for the children’s safety, I can’t believe how irresponsible—”
“Hang on a minute, I’m very sorry if I’ve made a mistake, Sandra, but I had no idea the walled garden was out of bounds. And I didn’t force my way in anywhere. Ellie and Maddie—”
Ellie and Maddie seemed to know how to open the gate, was what I had been going to say, but Sandra didn’t let me finish. Instead, she interrupted with an angry sigh of exasperation and I fell silent, reluctant to talk over her and increase her annoyance.
“I told you to use your common sense, Rowan. If breaking into a poison garden is your idea of common—”
“What?” I butted in, not caring about rudeness now. “What did you say?”
“It is a poison garden,” Sandra spat. “As you would know if you’d bothered to read the binder I provided. Which you clearly did not.”
“A poison—” I reached for the binder, beginning to frantically flick through the pages. The injustice stung. I had read the fucking thing, but it was 250 pages long. If there was critical information she should have put it up front, rather than burying it in pages and pages about acceptable types of crisps and the right type of shoes to wear for PE. “Just— What even is that?”
“The previous owner of Heatherbrae was an analytical chemist with a specialty in biological toxi
ns, and this was his personal”—she stopped, clearly too pissed off with the whole situation even to find words—“his personal testing ground, I suppose. Every single plant in that garden is toxic in some degree—some of them extremely toxic. And many of them you don’t need to ingest, brushing past them or touching the leaves is enough.”
Oh. My hand went up to the blistering rash on my forehead, which made a sudden kind of sense.
“We’re trying to find the best way to deal with it, but the bloody thing has heritage status or something. In the meantime we keep it firmly locked up, and I must say, it never occurred to me that you would take the children for a stroll—”
It was my turn to butt in now.
“Sandra.” I made my voice level, and calmer, and more reasonable than I really felt. “I apologize unreservedly for not paying sufficient attention to that page in the binder. That is one hundred percent on me, and I’ll rectify that immediately. But you should know, it wasn’t my idea to go in there. Maddie and Ellie suggested it, and they know how to open the lock without a key—there’s some kind of override on the inside, and Ellie can reach it. They’ve clearly been in there before.”
That shut Sandra up. There was silence on the other end of the phone while I waited for her response. I could hear her breathing, and I wondered for a minute if I had made a bad strategic mistake in bringing up the fact that she clearly had no idea where her children had been roaming. Then she coughed.
“Well. We’ll say no more about it for the moment. Can you put me back on to Maddie, please?”
And that was it. No, “thanks for bringing it to my attention.” No admission that she herself wasn’t exactly winning parenting golds. But perhaps that would have been too much to hope for.
I passed the phone back to Maddie, who gave me a little smile as I handed it over, her dark eyes full of malice.
She took it back through to the media room, Ellie padding after her, hoping for another turn, and as Maddie’s end of the conversation grew fainter, I picked up the tablet that was lying on the kitchen counter and opened Google. Then I typed in Achlys.
A series of terrifying images popped up across the top of the screen—a variety of white, skull-like female faces in different states of decomposition, some pale and beautiful, with ravaged cheeks, others rotting and putrefying, with a stench of death coming from their rictus mouths.
Beneath them were various search entries, and I clicked one at random.
“Achlys—(pronounced ACK-liss)—Greek goddess of death, misery, and poison,” it read.
I shut the screen down. Well, binder or no binder, I couldn’t say I hadn’t been warned. It had been right there, written on the base of the statue in the center of the garden. I just hadn’t understood the message.
“I’m done.” Maddie’s voice came from the media room, and, pushing down my irritation, I walked back through to where the girls were crouched on the sofa, plainly waiting for me with some trepidation. I said nothing as Maddie handed me back the phone, just unpaused the film, and sat down on the far end of the sofa to continue watching, though their eyes kept flicking across to me, very different emotions on each face. Ellie’s was anxious . . . waiting to be told off. She had known that they were not supposed to go into that garden, and she had allowed herself to be tempted—to show her cleverness in opening the gate and letting us in. Maddie’s expression was very different, and harder to read, but I thought I could tell what it was. Triumph.
She had wanted me to get into trouble, and I had.
* * *
It was much later, over supper, as I wiped tomato sauce from Petra’s cheek, and swallowed my own mouthful of Alphabetti Spaghetti, that I said, casually, “Girls, did you know that the plants in that garden were dangerous?”
Ellie’s eyes flicked to Maddie, who seemed to be wavering.
“What garden,” Maddie said at last, though her tone didn’t hold a question mark. She was buying herself more time, I thought. I gave her my sweetest smile and shot her a look that said, Don’t fuck with me, dear.
“The poison garden,” I said. “The one with the statue. Your mum said we weren’t supposed to go in there. Did you know?”
“We’re not allowed in without a grown-up,” Maddie said evasively.
“Ellie, did you know?” I turned to her, but she refused to meet my eyes, and at last I took her chin, forcing her to look at me.
“Ow!”
“Ellie, look at me, did you know those plants were dangerous?”
She said nothing, just tried to twist her chin away.
“Did you know?”
“Yes,” she whispered at last. “Another girl died.”
It was not the answer I had been expecting, and I stopped, letting her chin go in my surprise.
“What did you say?”
“There was another little girl,” Ellie repeated, still not meeting my eyes. “She died. Jean told us.”
“Jesus!” The word slipped out without my realizing, and I saw from Maddie’s smirk that that too would be stored up to repeat to Sandra next time she called.
“What happened? When?”
“A long time ago,” Maddie said. It was plain that, unlike Ellie, she did not mind talking about the subject. In fact there was even a kind of relish in her tone. “Before we were born. She was the little girl of the man who lived here before us. It’s why he went saft.”
For a moment I didn’t understand the last word, but then it came to me. She was saying the word soft but with a Scottish accent, repeating whatever Jean McKenzie had said to her.
“He went soft? Soft in the head you mean?”
“Yes, he had to be put away. Not straightaway, but after a while. Living here with her ghost,” Maddie said, matter-of-factly. “She used to wake him in the middle of the night with her crying. After she was gone. Jean told us. So after a while he stopped sleeping. He just used to pace backwards and forward all night long. Then he went mad. People do go mad, you know, if you stop them from sleeping for long enough. They go mad, and then they die.”
Pacing. The word gave me a sharp jolt, and for a second I didn’t know what to say. Then I remembered something else.
“Maddie.” I swallowed, trying to figure out how to phrase my question. “Maddie . . . is . . . is that what you meant? Before? When you said, the ghosts wouldn’t like it?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Her face was stiff and expressionless, and she had pushed her plate away.
“When you hugged me, that day I first came. You said the ghosts wouldn’t like it.”
“No, I didn’t,” she said stonily. “I didn’t hug you. I don’t hug people.” But she had overreached herself with that last remark. I might have believed that she hadn’t said what I thought I’d heard, but there was no way I could forget that stiff, desperate little hug. She had hugged me. And the knowledge suddenly made me sure of what I’d heard too. I shook my head.
“You know there’s no such thing as ghosts, right? No matter what Jean has told you—it’s just rubbish, Maddie, it’s just people who are sad about other people who have died, and wish they could see them again, so they make up stories, and they imagine they see them. But it’s all nonsense.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Maddie said, and she shook her head so that her straight dark hair flapped against her cheeks.
“There aren’t any ghosts, Maddie. I promise you that. They’re just make-believe. They can’t hurt you—or me—or any of us.”
“Can I get down now?” she asked flatly, and I sighed.
“Don’t you want pudding?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Go on then.”
She slid from her chair, and Ellie followed, her obedient little shadow.
I put a yogurt in front of Petra and then went round to clear the girls’ plates. Ellie’s was just the usual mess of toast crusts and spaghetti sauce, with as many peas as possible hidden under her spoon. But Maddie’s . . . I was about to scrape it
into the compost bin when I stopped, turning the plate.
She had eaten most of her supper, but a dozen or so alphabet letters had been left, and now I saw, just as I was about to throw them away, that the letters seemed to be arranged into words. The phrase was sliding diagonally across the plate where I had tipped it towards the compost bin, but it was still just readable.
W E H
A T
E U
We hate you.
Somehow, seeing it there in the innocence of Alphabetti Spaghetti was more upsetting than almost anything else. I scraped the plate with a violence that made the spaghetti ricochet off the inside of the compost bin lid, and then threw it into the sink, where it hit a glass, and they both shattered, sending shards of glass and spatters of tomato sauce flying.
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
I hate you too! I wanted to scream after their retreating backs, as they padded quietly away into the media room to fire up Netflix. I hate you too, you vile, creepy little shits!
But it wasn’t true. Not completely.
I did hate them—in that moment. But I saw myself too. A prickly little girl, full of emotions too big for her small frame, emotions she could not understand or contain.
I hate you, I remembered sobbing into my pillow, after my mother threw away my favorite teddy bear, too old, too shabby, too babyish for a big girl like me, according to her. I hate you so much!
But it wasn’t true then either. I loved my mother. I loved her so much that it suffocated her—or that was the impression she gave. All those years of small hands being disentangled from sleeves and skirts, and untwined from around necks. That’s enough now, you’ll mess up my hair, and, Oh, for goodness’ sake, your hands are filthy, and Stop being a baby now, a big girl like you. All those years of being too needy, and too grabby, and too grubby-handed—of trying to be better and neater, and just more lovable.
She didn’t want me. Or that’s what it felt like, at times.
But she was all I had.
Maddie had so much more than me—a father, three sisters, a beautiful house, two dogs . . . but I recognized her sadness and her anger and her frustration—an angry little dark changeling among her blond sisters.
