Don’t look back. I am Ruby, I am Ruby. Keep running. It’s time…
The track through the woods is hard and dry, tree roots covered in the slippy death of decaying leaves. But this is a nightmare well rehearsed. Every venal fork in the path as it splits and veers off, is marked, if you know where to look, with elder signs carved into the bark.
Don’t look back.
The towpath is lit with the faint silver light of a new moon, shaded with belts of fog and high cloud. Occasionally stars twinkle fleetingly, and shadows dance across the path. To my right the River Whisper gurgles darkly, lapping and glugging in the reeds. This is where I have to run like a hunted fox. Like hell. And vanish into the forest.
The second I’m in Woodsend things change without warning.
Uncle Rick’s behind me. Another man steps out onto the path…no, it’s not real. Do not be distracted. I am Ruby, I am Ruby. I need to score. I need to score. Keep running. Past Woodpecker Cottage, with the light in the window burning low just like always. This is where there’s another path. You get scratched with all the brambles but keep down and soon there’s a clearing, then the stone circle. Another flashback, something on the periphery of my mind like a flickering insect…black hooded figures and loud humming…Panic in my chest…But it’s not real and now I can hear her. Marie.
She waiting, her voice faint from somewhere in the trees.
“Ruby, hurry up for Christ’s sake.”
We’re kids and I’ve got stitch in my side. “Hurry up, they’ll see us.”
“What are they doing? What’s that screaming?”
“It’s a sacrifice.”
“What’s a sacrifice?”
The flashback’s gone. I can’t get it back. I can’t see it.
But ahead is what I came for. This is real time and I’ve got to keep it together - just a bit longer - gotta do this one last thing.
Slumping against the old oak opposite the house, I fall onto the ground next to Marie. Getting my second wind as we skulk in the shadows, watching. Waiting. She passes me a bottle of water. “Glad you could make it.”
The place is exactly as I remember. Like a travellers’ camp with abandoned caravans, trucks, and half-burned bonfires topped with scabby mattresses. A Rottweiler’s chained to the fence, a wisp of smoke spirals into the stars, and directly outside the front door stands a shiny black 4x4 bought no doubt, from her disability allowance - what a joke - its rutted tracks gouged into the track.
“He’s home,” says Marie.
“Where’s Ida?”
“Not sure. Looking at the light downstairs I’d say he’s watching TV. She’ll be upstairs drugged up.”
“What about Alice?”
“She’s in there - I’ve seen her face at the window enough times. They’re doing to her what they did to you, Ruby. We have to get her out of there and that’s why I needed to find you. I’d say we need to wait til 3 am to make sure Rick or Derek don’t turn up. And we’ve got to be positive the old witch is spark out.”
“How are we getting in with that bloody dog outside?”
Marie whispers, never taking her eyes off the place, “Give it some of your stash. Got a syringe?”
Behind us the trees are cloaked in dank fog. While ahead the gypsy camp squats darkly, one downstairs lamp glowing amber. All it would take would be one yap from the dog and he’d be out on the porch, scanning the area with a torch, while the witch fetches a knife. He can run like some kind of supernatural being, did I say? Oh yes he fair scuds through the trees, with feet that skate the ground and hands that grasp your hair and wrench joints right of sockets.
Clouds float across the scythe moon, and a fox barks throatily. This body of mine, the longer we sit here, is getting leaden, numb and bone-cold, with an aching lower back from pressing it into hollow bark.
I shiver and Marie says, “Do you want to know what happened to our mother?”
“I don’t care. She didn’t care about us.”
“They had her too, Ruby. I saw her - down at the mill with his dad. That’s where they did the murders. And she had those kids with him, and Rick and Derek. That’s where the bodies are - the infants - they used the blood and foetuses for sacrifice, and the baby fat to mix with pitch so they could make candles for the black mass. She had to do it. They called her Natalie. After the old guy died they had her killed. I saw it. The old witch did it with belladonna at a ritual - she was a human altar and when it finished that’s what they did. I followed them. There’s a place underground, underneath the Mill…you keep on walking and it gets darker and darker, wetter and cavernous…”
The snap of a twig makes us stop dead, staring into each other’s widening eyes. Waiting without breath or movement for the longest, longest time. Eventually our collective breath is released. It was a wild animal, that’s all. There’s no one out tonight. The night is dead.
“How do you know all this?”
“I’ve been watching them for years,” she says. “About twenty of them. You wouldn‘t believe who they are!”
“I’m surprised no one saw you. You must have been shit scared?”
A caustic laugh catches silently in her throat. “Hate can replace fear, didn’t you know?”
“Why haven’t you gone to the police?”
“Because no one would believe me. Everything’s brilliantly covered up. People like I said, who you wouldn’t believe, are in this - police, the doctor, even a fucking priest. They’re Satanists and paedophiles - they stay in the caravans at Fairyhill - and there is no one we can trust. Not one single person. You can’t tell a doctor anything. You must never get into a hospital or a police station. We’ve got to do the job ourselves and save Alice. He knows we’re out on the loose and he‘s looking for us all the time. All the time, Ruby. We are not safe and never ever will be. God knows how we’ve survived this long.”
She glances at her watch. “Nearly the witching hour. Come on, Kid - let’s get closer and dope out the dog.”
***
We are stealthy as wild cats, our footfalls soft on the leaf-sodden turf. The dog sniffs, growls, then snaffles my remaining chocolate while Marie gives him a dose of smack. Sweet dreams, Pooch!
We stroke his head until he dozes. Or dies. I’m not sure which. But there isn’t much choice - if The Bastard hears us we’re dead, and it won’t be painless!
A complicit nod, then like common thieves we flick the knife into the door lock. A chain bars us. We hesitate for just a second - the air still and silent - then creep round to the back and ease open a window instead. It’s Ida’s laundry room - where she washes things on a daily basis - we never knew why she spent so much time in there cos the beds were always rank, so it wasn’t like it was our sheets she was washing. Thankfully the window lurches open on a looser catch than in the rest of the place, and we push our bodies through - plopping onto the linoleum below like slugs.
Snoring reverberates through the walls, followed by a creak of the double bed he shares with the witch we thought of as Mother, until we realised we don’t have eyes like hers. Hate consumes us, the adrenalin of it making our hands shake, while our breath steams on the air. With backs to the wall, we climb the stairs we used to flee down screaming so many times, his stick cracking our arms, legs and backs until we crumpled against the locked door and our small, fragile forms took the full force of his rage.
At the top of the stairs there is a mirror. A child’s face stares back at me, with wide blue eyes in a skin that never sees the sun. The child is holding a knife. She hesitates.
Alice…where is Alice?
The floorboards creak dangerously as another apnoeic snort signals one of them at least is asleep. But who?
Where is Alice?
We push open doors in turn: there are only four and one will be the bathroom.
The first, our old room, and most likely to be Alice’s, is at the back of the house with a view of the oil tank and wood store below. That’s where Marie saw her looking out of the
window. She must be here…But the head on the pillow is wedged with rollers and a scarf, the body bulky. Sickly perfume and body odour cloy the air. So he and the old witch are in separate rooms, now!
Closing the door carefully, we move to the next room.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
We reel back. He’s bolt upright in bed while her snores rattle on through the walls. Moonlight streaks across the room, glinting off the dresser onto his shock of white hair.
There is a fraction of a second.
He is reaching for something.
He isn’t looking at me, though - he’s looking at the bad girl screaming at him with a knife in her hand.
While I float away, to where there is a castle and a moat. Marie is beckoning to me. Hurry, hurry…Across the drawbridge…Pulling it up behind us…running quickly down a long corridor…then all at once, bursting out of French Windows into the full glare of daylight. There are lots of children here, and they’re rushing up to us with crayons, books and games. Behind them tables are set with white cloths piled high with exquisitely decorated fairy cakes and dishes wobbling with coloured jellies. All laid out on sun-dappled lawns, where in the background a river glints invitingly beneath a weeping willow.
***
Chapter 30
Present Day, Christmas Eve. Riber Ward.
Becky looked through the porthole window at Ruby, now in Room 8. Claire stood next to her. “She’s doing really well. Amazingly. Thank God.”
“You look exhausted, Claire.”
“I am. I can’t tell you how grateful I am you’re back. Noel’s been doing double shifts and I can’t remember when I last had a day off.”
Becky inclined her head towards Ruby. “How have the other patients been with her?”
“Fine. She reads their palms and tells them what their auras mean and they love it. I have to say she’s pretty accurate too - she got my grandma’s name, told me what she looked like and described where she lived - quite incredible! And if the old lady really is watching over me then I’m pretty happy about it, to be honest. Ruby seems to know stuff she couldn’t possibly know, it’s incredible - she just blurts it out while you’re doing something else. I think she’s got trouble controlling it, though…Now look - she’s got me believing this stuff as well!”
Becky smiled.
“She also said you were ‘on your way back’! Oh and that my mum had a health scare coming up but she’d be okay. Funny thing is - Mum’s booked in for a breast scan the first week in January.”
“I don’t know where her knowledge comes from either, Claire, but she’s spot on, all right, so hopefully you won’t have to worry too much about your mum!” Becky swallowed hard, then took the plunge. “Did she um…say anything about the police officer who went missing? D.I Ross? He was working on her case, you see, investigating Woodsend village.”
“It’s odd how everyone working with her has had something awful happen to them, isn’t it? She didn’t mention him, sorry, although she did say Martha should never have read a diary or something.”
“A diary?”
Claire shrugged. “It doesn’t make too much sense.”
“But Martha had a heart attack, didn’t she?”
“Yes, I know.”
“ This is the thing, you see. We all had something happen - Jack had a mental breakdown after a hypnosis session with her. I tripped over nothing and ended up in hospital. Martha’s dead after reading a diary about Woodsend. D.I. Ross has gone missing. And now I hear Kristy’s had some kind of breakdown too? None of it makes sense as you say, Claire! None of it.”
“What exactly happened to Kristy? I have to say I’m really shocked - she was so cool and right at the top of her game. She was my idol, really. I wanted to be her!”
“I don’t know. Something about collapsing on stage at a conference. Another coincidence anyway.”
Claire frowned.
“The thing is - taken in isolation, as Kristy said, everything can be explained, but look at the wider picture and it’s distinctly odd. It’s like everyone who was trying to uncover the truth about Ruby has, one way or another, been stopped - even Kristy herself, who I have to say I thought was pretty invincible.”
“You know Amanda was freaked out, don’t you? She had this weird session with Ruby before she resigned - where Ruby was painting a cave with black shapes on the walls. Suddenly Ruby turned to her and told her she was next! Amanda went into melt down. I didn’t think she’d react like that but I suppose in light of the fact we’d just got back from Martha’s funeral and everyone was talking about Jack…well she literally packed her case there and then, wrote out her notice, the lot!”
“Really?”
“Ruby is way too accurate to ignore and we all know it! Even the dinner ladies ask her stuff and she’s spot on -doesn’t know them from Adam but she’ll be able to list their grandparents’ names and who their childhood babysitter was; tell them who should see a doctor and if one of their kids is up to no good - and she’s always, always right. You’d have to be tough as camel hide to brush off a warning like that from Ruby. Even Isaac’s taken extended leave. We’ve got a locum next door now!”
“No wonder you’re shattered, Claire.”
“It’s odd how she hasn’t got to me, isn’t it? I mean - I’m ok so far!”
“Ah well you’re not involved in her case, are you? You aren’t researching anything that might uncover a few unpalatable truths about Woodsend village for example?”
Claire’s brow furrowed in puzzlement.
“I know - it’s hard to get your head round.”
For a moment the two women just watched Ruby lying on her bed. Without turning to look at her, Claire said, “What about you? Are you going to be okay, Becky?”
“I hope so. I’m scared to be honest, after what I went through, but I’m damn well going to find out what happened to Ruby if it’s the last thing I do. For all our sakes.”
Claire nodded silently. “ She survived, though, didn’t she? Ruby, I mean! Which is more than we can say for our colleagues.”
“Survived what, though? And how did she do it?”
Claire’s beeper sounded and she glanced down. “I’m going to have to go - there’s been a lock-down next door!”
***
Ruby looked up and smiled when Becky walked in a few minutes later.
“Don’t worry, he’s okay.”
The blood rushed to Becky’s face. She stood with her back to Ruby, gazing out of the window across the wind-flattened lawns until her heart steadied.
“How do you know?”
She shrugged. “I just do.”
“Tell me…”
The words gushed out with rapid speed, devoid of punctuation. “I can see him on a dark road - shiny and wet with rain - moors on either side - oh no he wasn’t supposed to get out - he was put in the dark place - left deep inside on the stone floor - his fingernails are bleeding and his head’s cut - blood down the side of his face - there’s a swimmy feel about him - like he was drugged - but now it’s all cold and wet - outside -he’ll get picked up soon, though.” The monologue came to an abrupt end. “I don’t know anymore.”
Becky whirled around. “Ruby, there have been some very bad things happening to the staff here - all of us who’ve tried to help you. Why? What have we done?”
Ruby’s far away smile faded slightly and Becky immediately regretted her tone. None of this was the girl’s fault. She took a deep breath and tried again. “Sorry, sorry. It’s been hard on us - all of us.”
Ruby stared back at her.
“The thing is - Kristy’s now very ill. And your doctor, Jack McGowan - he’ll never be the same again. Martha Kind died of a heart attack and I…well, I just don’t understand, Ruby. I saw terrible things too…I wasn’t myself at all. In the end I persuaded Noel to take me into a church. Since then I’ve been better. I just don’t get it. What on earth is happening to us? You’re the link, don’t you see?” Against her b
etter judgement she slumped onto the edge of her patient’s bed, head in hands.
Ruby’s face settled into a worried frown, her gaze focused on something deep inside her mind.
Eventually Becky looked up. “Sorry. I’m sorry, Ruby. The thing is we really need to understand where this is coming from. What’s at the heart of it all. I know Amanda did a lot of work with you. I’ve seen the drawings of trees and a house with caravans with washing strewn outside. Is that where you lived? In Woodsend? There’s no record of you there but there is of a boy called Thomas and a girl called Belinda - both still in psychiatric units, by the way. Kristy was helping Thomas before she heard about you, and she went out there. On the way back she had a nasty experience, and of course, it’s where D.I. Ross vanished from. Maybe you could tell me more about Woodsend - did you grow up there?”
Ruby’s demeanour remained unchanged.
“There’s no record of it, as I said. No record of you being there, at all! And yet that’s where you were found before you came here!”
No response.
“It’s odd about the children actually. None on the birth register according to Martha’s research, for the last thirty years except Thomas Blackmore and Belinda Dean, who I’ve mentioned and who are mentally ill. And there were no children born to Paul and Ida Dean at all, yet there’s a lady called Celeste Frost who recalls lots of children running wild around their place in the mid-nineties. Gypsy children? Did these people travel? Do you know anything? Anything at all that might help?”
Ruby’s head jerked up, her expression now one of quiet contemplation, her lips tightened into a prim line of disapproval .
Was this still Ruby? It looked like her and yet something infinitesimal had changed.
“Who am I talking to?”
In response, the voice was small and tight. “Marie.”
“Marie? Hello Marie.”
Father of Lies Page 22
