Cruel Minds

by Malcolm Richards

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  They huddled close together, eyes darting off to the sides as they headed back towards the house. They worked their way through the ground floor, locking every window and door until they came to Pamela’s living quarters. Helen was on the couch, still unconscious. Pamela was busy changing the soaked outer bandages of her head wound.

  “How’s she doing?” Emily asked.

  “It’s hard to tell. She’s breathing. Her pulse seems a little slow. Beyond that, I have no idea what I’m doing.” Pamela’s eyes shifted between Emily and Jerome. A look passed over face, as if she had somehow managed to catch a glimpse of their thoughts. “What is it? Where’s Melody?”

  Emily bit down on her lip. She took a breath. “Sam’s dead. We found him in the shed. He’s been murdered.”

  Pamela stared at them, flinching at each word.

  “Melody’s gone,” Emily continued, staring at the wall. “Whoever killed Sam and Oscar must have taken her, or she ran off into the forest after they attacked Helen. Either way, we can’t just leave her out there. We have to find her.”

  Pam remained perched on the edge of the sofa, staring up at Emily as if she were waiting for the punchline of a cruel joke. When it didn’t come, she got to her feet and moved noiselessly across the living room. Emily and Jerome watched her slip through the door that led to the rest of her quarters and close it behind her.

  “Why does she keep doing that?” said Jerome.

  Emily headed towards the door. “Stay with Helen. I’ll be back.”

  Following Pamela, she found herself in a purple corridor. The door at the end was ajar. Knocking softly, Emily stepped inside. Apart from a small Thai-style Buddha on the dresser, the rest of the bedroom showed no signs of the spiritualistic leanings of the rest of the house. Film posters from ten years ago, aged and wrinkled, were tacked to the walls—King Kong, The Chronicles of Narnia, Zathura.

  Pamela sat on the carpet, back against the bed, one of Marcia’s stuffed animals tucked under her arm. She looked up, her face stained with tears. Shadows circled her eyes.

  “Tell me my daughter is fine,” she said, lips trembling. “Tell me my Marcia is safe and well.”

  Emily moved further into the room. She dug her hands into her pockets and avoided Pamela’s gaze. Safety net or honest truth?

  “I really hope she is.”

  A handful of photographs were taped to the dresser mirror. In one, a pre-teen Marcia and a long-haired Pamela stood in front of Meadow Pines, boarded up windows behind them and weeds tangling around their feet. In another, seven-year-old Marcia blew out candles on a birthday cake. The photograph below that presented Marcia as a toddler, sat aloft the broad shoulders of a handsome man in his mid-twenties with red hair and a full beard. The final photograph was of Sam. It had been taken paparazzi style as he’d emerged from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his hips, wet hair flopping in his startled face.

  Emily stared at the photographs, her heart aching in her chest. Marcia’s room was a shrine to a childhood that had ended at twelve-years-old, when she’d been taken to live a life in the middle of nowhere.

  “Do you have children?” Pamela asked.

  Emily shook her head.

  “Everyone always says that being a mother comes naturally. That from the moment your child is born, you love her unconditionally, without question, without thought.” She paused, tears brimming. “Marcia’s such a kind girl, you know. She’s so selfless, willing to help anyone that asks for it. How am I going to tell her? When she comes back, how am I going to tell her that Sam is...?”

  Emily removed a fluffy white bear from a corner chair and sat down. She felt heavy, weighed down by anxiety. She thought about the symbols but now was not the time to ask Pamela about them. Her thoughts turned to Melody. Helplessness overwhelmed her. The longer they sat here, the less chance they had of finding her alive.

  It was clear by now that Daniel and Janelle had failed to catch up with Ben and Sylvia, and had been forced to head to Lyndhurst on foot. Until they returned with Sergeant Wells, the remaining residents of Meadow Pines were on their own. Frightened and restless, Emily stood up again. She couldn’t just sit here, waiting for the police to arrive, hoping that Marcia and Melody were still alive.

  “I’ll check on Helen,” she said. “Maybe she’ll wake up and tell us what happened.”

  Across the room, Pamela pulled her knees up to her chin. She nodded without opening her eyes. “I’ll be through in two minutes.”

  “I don’t think anyone should be left alone right now. Especially when—”

  “Two minutes,” Pamela repeated. “Please.”

  Emily moved over to the window, checked it was locked, then closed the door behind her. Returning to the living room, she found Jerome on the sofa with Helen’s head in his lap. She was still unconscious. A pile of bloody bandages lay crumpled on the floor.

  “Look at you Mr Lifesaver,” Emily said, the humour feeling at odds with the atmosphere in the room. “How’s she doing?”

  “Hard to tell. All I know is you can’t mess around with a head injury. There could be swelling on the brain, who knows what else.”

  “That stint as a TV doctor came in handy after all.” She moved to the window and checked the lock.

  “How are you doing?” Jerome asked.

  Emily hugged her ribs. “Can I get back to you on that? How about you?”

  “Oh, completely freaked out. This morning there were twelve people here. Now there’s four of us. Meanwhile, Franklyn Hobbes is stalking the forest with murder on his mind.” He looked towards the door. “Where’s Pamela?”

  “Having a moment.”

  He stared at her. Emily recognised the expression immediately. It said: you’re keeping something from me.

  “I don’t think it’s Franklyn Hobbes,” she said. She’d been thinking it since Jerome had first made the suggestion. “It’s been over a year since he disappeared. Why come back here now?”

  “Who knows how crazed psychopaths think? Perhaps he came back to finish what he started.”

  Emily’s eyes roamed the room and landed on the photograph album. “Why was Oscar looking for Franklyn in the first place? Who hired him?”

  “Concerned family? Franklyn had clearly come off the rails. Maybe he’d disappeared and they were worried about his safety.”

  “That would make sense. But if that’s the case, why would Oscar be tracing him back to a place he’d visited over a year ago? And come to think of it, why didn’t Oscar just come right out and ask Pamela if they’d seen him? Why go to the lengths of signing up for the retreat and then sneak around?”

  Jerome adjusted Helen’s bandages. “Perhaps he already knew Franklyn was here, hiding out in the woods. Rather than cause a panic, perhaps he thought he would try and track him down on the sly.”

  “But if he considered Franklyn to be a threat, keeping it to himself would put everyone in danger,” Emily said, frowning. “I don’t know, Jerome. There’s one thing that I keep coming back to that doesn’t fit into this whole Franklyn Hobbes theory.”

  “Which is?”

  “The argument I heard coming through his wall last night.”

  Emily picked up the photo album. On the sofa, Helen stirred a little, then was still.

  “Someone’s killing these people,” Jerome said, trying not to move. “If it’s not Franklyn, then who is it?”

  Flipping through the pages, Emily examined each photograph. “I don’t know. But while we sit here trying to figure it out, Melody is out there, either scared and hiding in the dark, or worse. We should be looking for her.”

  “You’re right, we should,” Jerome nodded. “But meanwhile, Pamela is having some sort of mental meltdown and Little Miss Head Injury here needs our help. We can’t just leave them. Besides, Janelle and Daniel will be back with the cavalry soon.”

  Emily flipped through the pages until she found Franklyn’s photograph. The dates beneath read: 6-15thDecembe
r 2014. She skipped forward by four months. Her fingers hovered over the page. There was a gap in the dates: 4-13thApril 2015. Pamela hadn’t taken a group shot on the final day, Emily guessed, which was understandable considering what had happened the night before.

  She turned the page, then the next. Her eyes landed on another photograph, which was dated 8-10thMay 2015. Dressed in a salmon pink tracksuit, Melody stood front and centre of a group of nine. The ten day retreats had come to an end, replaced by digital detox weekends.

  Emily turned to the next page. Melody was there again just a couple of weeks later, this time dressed in black leggings and a Bon Jovi t-shirt. She was waiting on the next page too, in plain grey sweatpants and a white blouse. Emily turned the pages and Melody’s face continued to appear. She flipped back, checking the dates. Melody had been coming to Meadow Pines once every two weeks since the start of the digital detox retreat.

  Carrying the album over to the sofa, she pushed it in front of Jerome’s face. She turned the pages until he made the connection.

  “That’s weird. Perhaps she’s really addicted to her tablet. I mean, she’s been sneaking it in every time like a dirty junkie.”

  “She doesn’t come here to detox. She comes here because she’s lonely.” Emily closed the album, her mind trying to make sense of all the thoughts tumbling over each other. “But this place isn’t cheap.”

  “You’re telling me. That’s the first month’s salary gone from the job I don’t have,” Jerome said.

  Emily pushed the album back onto the shelf, then stared at the door. “If Pamela resurfaces, cover for me.”

  Jerome squirmed under Helen’s weight. “Wait, where are you going? It’s not safe to go anywhere on your own.”

  “I’m just going upstairs. The house is all locked up. I’ll be five minutes.”

  “Damn you, Emily Swanson. What are you up to?”

  “Five minutes,” Emily repeated.

  Before Jerome could say anything else, she opened the living room door and stepped into the hall.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The house was quiet. Emily stole through the hallway, conscious of the floorboards beneath her feet, the rustle of her clothes against her body. She passed the meditation room, the art room, Pamela’s office. The table was still on its side where Helen had fallen. Her blood remained in a pool on the floor. Grimacing, Emily skirted around it and rechecked the front door locks.

  Shadows cloaked the top of the stairs. She climbed, one foot silently placed in front of the other. Rained drummed on the slate roof above. Reaching the top, she peered down the length of the corridor, then turned a hundred and eighty degrees, heading towards Melody’s room.

  The tablet lay on the bed, the ceiling reflected on its glossy screen. Emily picked it up, circled the power button with a finger, then pressed it. The screen lit up. Seconds later, she was staring at the orange and charcoal face of a cat.

  “Derek,” she whispered.

  Derek was grossly overweight and pissed off. His yellow-green eyes glared at the camera, daring the viewer to come an inch closer, to feel the sharpness of his claws. Emily scanned through the folders on the tablet’s desktop, located the pictures folder and opened it up. Melody had arranged her photographs into subfolders, which were categorised by months and years.

  Opening 2015, Emily picked a month at random—February—and scanned through the pictures. It didn’t take long to build an image of Melody’s life. In this modern world of technology, it seemed that every minor detail of a person’s being begged to be captured on camera and paraded on social media. Emily was yet to decipher if it was out of a need for attention, of acknowledgement that one’s life was interesting and worthy, or if it was because technology had paved the way for a whole new language of communication. Uncharacteristically for a member of the Millennial generation, Emily had never been interested in sharing images of her dinner with the world or uploading a hundred selfies.

  Melody, on the other hand, appeared to be an obsessive fan. In picture after picture, she posed for the camera. Sometimes she was alone, pouting her lips or demonstrating a range of smiles. Other times, she held Derek tightly against her cheek or up in the air for all to see. Except there was no all. There were no pictures of friends or family, of social gatherings or celebrations. There were only Melody and Derek, holed up in their small but meticulously-kept flat.

  As she flipped through the images, Emily felt tendrils of loneliness reach out from the screen and pierce her chest. Melody’s life was a solitary existence that reeked of unhappiness. It was no wonder she had so desperately attached herself to Meadow Pines.

  Emily’s mind wandered back to yesterday evening, when, sat on the edge of the jetty, Melody had seemed so sad and alone. She reached back further to dinner, to when Melody had arrived late and had looked as if she’d been crying.

  Exiting the February folder, Emily tapped on June. There were more self-portraits. More shots of Melody and Derek posing in their cramped living room or sharing a pillow in bed.

  But there were other photographs here too. Candid photographs taken of the guests at Meadow Pines.

  Emily examined each one: a picture snapped from the front door of Janelle and Marcia toiling in the vegetable garden; an image taken from the treeline of Jerome and Daniel sat on the back porch, their bodies turned to one another in an obvious display of attraction. A series of shots had been captured through the kitchen window, showing Sam slicing onions with a sharp knife, then wiping sweat from his brow while hunched over a bubbling pot, then rolling a joint on the kitchen island. They were followed by a photograph taken from a bedroom window, showing Sam now smoking the joint at the edge of the forest.

  Bringing the tablet with her, Emily moved over to the rain-covered window and stared out. The porch roof was directly below. Beyond, the forest was black and murky; a series of sharp points and angles in the shadows.

  If Melody had sneaked her tablet into Meadow Pines this weekend, it was more than likely she’d done it before. Returning to sit on the bed, Emily worked her way backwards through the folders of 2015. Her intuition had been correct. There were several photographs of past guests, each one secretly snapped from windows, doorways, and corners.

  Moving into December 2014, Emily lingered over photographs of Christmas Day—of Melody and Derek wearing matching Christmas sweaters at a dinner table set for one.

  November revealed yet more photographs taken at Meadow Pines: guests making sculptures in the art room; rusty leaves decaying on the forest floor while the pines stood bold and green. Emily moved back through the months, her finger swiping again and again across the screen. She had no idea what she was doing, no idea why she was so wilfully invading Melody’s privacy while she was out there in the forest, possibly enduring all kinds of horrors at the hands of a psychopath. But instinct told her to keep searching. There was something here, she was sure of it. The missing element that connected what was happening right now at Meadow Pines to the terrible events that occurred one stormy night in April 2014.

  She found it minutes later in an unnamed folder. What she saw made her eyes grow wide with shock.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Jerome tried to temper the anger that was heating his skin. Why did Emily think it was fine to just take off like that, knowing that he couldn’t go after her? He’d learned months ago that if Emily had set her mind on something, it was best to see how you could help rather than hinder her—no matter how much danger she was about to put herself in—but he’d hoped that after being abducted, put into a coma, experimented upon, and almost murdered, that she might have learned a thing or two about safety procedures in dangerous situations. For a person that could come across as quiet to the point of withdrawn at times, Emily certainly had a surprising amount of gall. It was a quality that impressed and frustrated him in equal measures. Like now for example—here they were, trapped inside a house in the middle of the New Forest with a maniac on the loose, and Emily Swanson had s
een it fit to run off alone. It was obvious she was onto something but couldn’t she see how much it made him worry? Did she even care?

  He glanced down at Helen. Her chest rose and fell in slow bursts. The fresh bandages he’d applied were holding out but they would need changing soon. What if it was Emily who lay unconscious on the sofa right now, a hole in her head the size of a large marble? He doubted she would learn anything new from it—except next time to duck.

  He was distracted from his thoughts by Pamela. She stood in the doorway, staring at Helen.

  “No change?” she asked.

  Jerome shook his head.

  “Here, I’ll take over.” She swapped positions with him, gently resting Helen’s head in her lap. She nodded towards a cherry wood cabinet in the corner. “There’s whiskey.”

  Jerome took out glasses and a bottle of Glenfiddich single malt. He poured out two generous shots, handed one to Pamela, then held his glass up to the light. Tipping back his head, he drained it of its amber-coloured contents. A fire ignited in his belly, burning all the way up to his chest. He refilled his glass, then watched as Pamela tended to Helen.

  “We’re almost out of bandages,” he said.

  “Well, we’ll have to improvise. There are clean towels in the closet—through that door, then second on the left.” Pamela went still. She looked around the room as if she didn’t recognise it. “Where’s Emily?”

  “Upstairs. She went to fetch something from her room,” he said, annoyed by his loyalty.

  “She shouldn’t be wandering around alone. It’s not safe.”

  “You’d have better luck convincing Jason Voorhees.”

  “Who?”

  Jerome shrugged a shoulder. “I’ll get those towels.”