by Ruth Dugdall
OTHER TITLES BY RUTH DUGDALL
The James Version
The Woman Before Me
The Sacrificial Man
Humber Boy B
Nowhere Girl
My Sister and Other Liars
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by Ruth Dugdall
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781612187181
ISBN-10: 1612187188
Cover design by Ghost Design
To my great-uncle, George Hair. I never met you, but you have been there with every word I wrote.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
1
DAY 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
DAY 2
8
9
10
DAY 3
11
12
13
DAY 4
14
15
16
17
18
19
DAY 5
20
21
DAY 6
22
23
24
DAY 7
25
DAY 8
26
27
28
DAY 9
29
30
31
DAY 10
32
33
DAY 11
34
35
36
37
DAY 12
38
39
DAY 13
40
DAY 14
41
DAY 15
42
43
44
DAY 16
45
DAY 17
46
NINE MONTHS LATER
47
48
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
HALLOWEEN, TWENTY YEARS EARLIER
Holly
In the blurred dusk someone moves, dipping in and out of the hedge. The girl searches the shadows, too nervous to call out, then in a swell of relief sees it’s Jamie, her brother. He turns his torch on her – the beam makes her blink. ‘Go back home, Holly! Quit following me.’
‘I want to come ghost-hunting too,’ she whispers, tugging the hem of his coat.
‘You can’t come, you’re too little!’
‘Let me or I’ll tell Dad you’re here.’
Dad’s forbidden them to go outside the fence at night and especially not to the farm – he says because of the machines it’s dangerous. But Holly knows the real reason: the farm is haunted. Everyone at school says so, lots of them have seen the ghosts, a woman in white and the falling man. Back on the airbase, her friends are collecting bags of candy and the only ghosts are pretend: that’s why she followed Jamie. She’s not little, she’s almost nine.
‘Fuck’s she doin’ here?’ Coming behind them, too large to be quiet, is Carl. His family just arrived, bringing to the sleepy Suffolk airbase all of his American bulk and brag. Holly doesn’t like him, doesn’t like how Jamie gets louder when Carl’s around.
‘Squirt followed me,’ Jamie grumbles. ‘But she’ll keep her mouth shut.’
They move through the wood, Jamie leads with his torch, then Carl, then Holly bringing up the rear. In the distance is the farmhouse. The setting sun hits the window panes so it looks like bloodshot eyes are watching their approach.
Holly’s feet feel heavy. She’s getting tired, but daren’t say so. A lone car crosses the plain, headlights strafing the far field, making for the town. She suddenly wishes with all her heart that she were in that car, going to Ipswich to see a film – her favourite treat – eating sweet popcorn and snuggled into a blue velvet seat. Safe.
The sound of cracking twigs, behind them. Holly gives a yelp and moves so close to Carl, they bump arms and he says, ‘Fuck’s that?’
Jamie stops, searches with his torch, finds yellow eyes glittering low in the grass. ‘Cat.’ He kicks out and Holly hears a feline cry of pain, then rustling as it scrams. He continues, and they follow, trudging onwards.
The house appears, stone sides suddenly upon them.
‘Fucking spooky, isn’t it?’ says Jamie, giving Carl a triumphant punch on the arm. ‘That’s Innocence Farm.’
The spreading glow of the setting sun has bathed the house red, as if the blood has seeped from the eye sockets and the whole face is bleeding. Holly clenches her hands, pushing the nails into the fleshy part of her palm to keep from screaming. They should go home now, she thinks. Time to turn back.
In front is the farm, but going back isn’t possible either. Something is behind them, cracking twigs as it moves, casting shapes against the inky sky. Telling herself it’s only the cat returning, she puts her hand over her mouth to stop the scream that’s building inside. But the noise comes closer, the shape much larger than a cat.
‘Holy crap,’ Carl says, pushing Jamie and snorting in surprise, ‘the freak actually showed.’
The shape approaches, shrinks, and turns into the outline of a teenage boy.
‘All right?’ he asks, bending into the light of Jamie’s torch. It’s Ash, who’s in Jamie’s year, who lives in the cottage along the lane. Jamie raises his hand and they press each other’s palms in a high five. The sharp slap of it makes her flinch. She looks at her brother, confused, but it’s too dark to see his expression. He bullies this boy, calls him weirdo and freak – why are they acting like friends?
Ash notices her. ‘Why’d ya bring the little kid?’
‘She followed us,’ says Jamie, landing a sharp kick on her shin.
Ash lifts the latch and gently opens the barn door, just enough for them to snake through the gap. Inside, the smell is sharp and makes her eyes water. She can hear angry clucking.
‘We’ve gotta be very still,’ Ash says, leaving the barn door ajar, and pulling a bale of straw in front of it for them to crouch behind. ‘This is the best place to watch from.’ His voice is shaking like he’s cold, but she thinks he’s excited too. Jamie and Carl are popular – everyone at school and on the base wants to hang out with them – but now they want something only Ash can show them. ‘The ghosts only come when it’s really quiet. And not every night, so I can’t promise you’ll see summat.’
‘We better!’ Jamie says, smacking Ash on the arm with his fist.
It’s uncomfortable on the uneven earth with the straw bale in front of her, and she wants to sneeze. Around them the chickens are getting brave, coming closer on red-clawed feet, beaks open as they cluck warning sounds.
‘Come on, ghosts, it’s your night. Come join the party,’ Carl b
ooms, not caring that the others try to hush him. He takes a bottle from inside his jacket, then stands and raises it towards the house before taking a swig as if to toast it. ‘Halloween! When the dead walk the earth.’
Holly reaches for Jamie, moves close to him. ‘Please can we go home?’
He turns on her, hisses, ‘No one asked you to come.’
Carl turns his moonlike face at her, smug. ‘Scared, are ya? Don’t worry, we’ll protect ya.’ He pulls aside his Red Sox bomber jacket, which makes him look like a fat cherry, and she sees a BB gun wedged into the belt of his jeans. Black and stubby, a lot of the boys on the base have them.
Jamie grins. The light of the torch makes his teeth glow, as he pulls something out: he has his air rifle.
Holly gasps, her heart pounces. ‘Jamie, you shouldn’t!’ He’s only allowed to shoot cans in the backyard when Dad is watching.
‘Shut the fuck up, Holly,’ he says, the glittering barrel moving wildly as he does. He reaches across to take the bottle from Carl, and she smells caramel. Carl has stolen whisky.
The boys take turns swigging from the bottle – even Ash gets a go – as they crouch behind the straw bales, watching the farmhouse. They’re tense, but as the minutes tick past, they fidget. Jamie starts messing with his gun, turning the safety catch off and on. Finally, they’re all still. The empty bottle rolls over to the chickens, who stalk away from it, alarmed.
Holly wants her bed. She closes her eyes.
‘Holy fuck, it’s the woman in white!’
She wakes, realises immediately she’s in the barn and shouldn’t be. There’s danger here. She needs to go home. This time, it’s Jamie who presses against her, swaying, voice both slurred and afraid. ‘Shut up, Holly, don’t fucking move,’ he orders, though she was doing neither. She couldn’t move or speak even if she wanted to.
In front of them is a pale shape, moving slowly towards the barn. Moving from side to side like a mechanical toy, face definitely human. Human, but with blank, dark eyes. A person, but absent, dressed in white.
‘I want Dad,’ she whines, her whole body shaking from stomach out. She’s going to be sick.
In a reflex action, Jamie pushes Holly behind him.
Slowly, mechanically, the ghost looks their way. It walks towards them like a zombie and Carl swears, lifts his BB gun onto the straw bale, but it slips from his sweaty grasp. Jamie’s shaking so much that it takes him three goes to release the safety catch. Ash pulls at the barrel – ‘No, Jamie, stop!’
Jamie ignores him, lines up the barrel so it’s pointing at the ghost, just as Ash lunges forward to stop him. Carl reacts too, and all three fight in the dark. The chickens fret and cluck, bustling around, as the ghostly shape moves closer.
Jamie fires the gun, she hears the crack, then the cry.
The ghost cries out, then moans as it falls to the ground. It isn’t real, Holly tells herself. I’ll wake up soon.
The ghost is on its side, clutching its chest, where white cotton is soaking red. The lights in the farmhouse flash on, bright white, and a gruff voice shouts, ‘Who’s out there? I’m callin’ the police!’
Jamie grabs her by the wrist, Carl follows, and they run from the barn. Back through the scrubby farmland, through the woods, not stopping until they’re safe within the fence of the airbase, hearts thumping, chests ready to burst.
They can hear the distant sound of an ambulance, coming closer.
It is only then that she realises Ash isn’t with them. He stayed behind.
1
HALLOWEEN, NOW
Holly
‘Oh, your poor face!’ Holly said, wincing, a hand to her own cheek.
‘Ja, stuff of nightmares, isn’t it?’ Leif grinned wickedly, turning to show how on one side he still had the unblemished face of a Swedish Viking, tough-jawed and roguishly handsome – the face that had persuaded her to agree to this date in the first place. But now the left side was scored white, raised like pulp, with red blood-like marks streaked through it. His eye had been taped down at the corner so the skin there looked burned.
It was only stage make-up, to team with the Freddy Krueger red- and black-striped top and fake-knife fingers, but as he touched her with the plastic tips, she felt heat burning her cheeks.
‘I’m actually a bit tired, Leif,’ she said desperately, wondering how she could get out of this date that no longer seemed such a good idea. ‘I’m working tomorrow anyway, so maybe it’s best if I cry off. We could do this another time, yeah?’
‘Did I say something wrong, Holly?’ His handsome face fell, his seafarer eyes suddenly solemn, but there was a glint there too, like a naughty puppy who knew his cuteness could allay any punishment. ‘It has surely taken me months to persuade you to give me a chance. And now I have made a mistake somehow?’
‘No, of course not . . .’ How to begin explaining? She simply couldn’t. ‘Just one drink then.’
Leif gave a playful ‘Hurrah!’ and took her hand, leading her along the communal balcony past the front doors of the flats, towards the concrete steps leading to street level.
The moon was a perfect disc of white, with more abstract light cast by glow sticks and torches. The streets were teeming with werewolves and witches, ghosts and vampires of all shapes and sizes, but it was Leif ’s disguise that Holly felt most sensitive towards. She had to stifle an urge to flinch every time she looked at him. Her own effort at a Halloween costume was pathetic. Thirty minutes ago, she’d been standing in front of her wardrobe, assessing her limited options. Eventually she’d picked out a plain black top and leggings, re-beaded her hair so it stuck up in tufts like ears, and marked her cheeks with kohl eyeliner to represent whiskers. As a final gesture, she’d pinned a thin velvet scarf to her bottom, hoping it would pass as a tail.
Tonight, Ipswich town centre was a playground for kids. Children who would normally be in bed were hyped up on freedom and sugar. Portman Road, adjacent to the flat complex where Holly and Leif lived, usually the haunt of lone men in slow cars picking up prostitutes, was alive with childish screams and nervous laughter, enough to jangle Holly’s hypervigilant nerves. They came to a group of primary school-aged children who had just yelled ‘Trick or treat!’ and left a house with small packets of sweets in their clenched hands. Now they were pointing at Leif ’s face and squealing in delighted fear.
‘We don’t have this tricking or treating in Sweden,’ Leif told her, watching the children with indulgent good humour. ‘It’s underbar. Really wonderful!’
Holly, being half-American, had grown up with the yearly festival and thought it was, at best, an excuse for children to beg for candy. At worst, it was a festival that celebrated ghosts and demons.
Leif held her hand more tightly as they manoeuvred past the group. It had been a long time since she’d been touched, and though he was younger than her and not her usual type, he was easy company and – usually – very easy on the eye. The fact that he was Swedish meant that he couldn’t ‘read’ her: he didn’t have the cultural shorthand to glance at her and see the troubled past and her ‘otherness’ that was about neither of these things but something else, a unique trait, that marked her out as different. Holly had synaesthesia; it had started when she was eight years old. When it surfaced, as it always did, previously keen men turned cold, but Leif had yet to notice the signs and persisted.
‘So who taught you to do make-up?’ she asked, forcing herself not to notice how the red greasepaint made his skin look scorched, how the white foundation gave the impression that his eye had melted. ‘Not the Clinique counter at Debenhams, I can see that.’
‘Nej.’ Leif waggled a plastic-bladed glove at the gaggle of pre-teen trick-or-treaters across the road. ‘Trish, my colleague in the film department, specialises in costume and stage design. She used me as her workshop project today. The Film and Media students liked it very much.’
‘I bet they did.’
Holly knew, from their conversations in the shared walkway outside thei
r flats, that Leif was from Malmö, but had started studying for his PhD at Orwell University a year ago, lecturing and taking occasional seminars while writing his thesis on the films of Ingrid Bergman. No doubt the undergrads saw him as the perfect package: clever and cute. Holly couldn’t imagine studying films for a living, being locked in a fantasy world where anything can happen because it’s made up. She preferred anything dramatic to remain firmly within her control.
Their destination was the Poacher and Partridge, popular with students and lecturers alike because the booze was cheap, so Leif ’s usual haunt. Flaccid orange balloons hung from the light fixings, and a greenish skeleton stood in the corner, pointing a bony finger in the direction of the loos. Cobwebs had been strung across the ceiling – although Holly couldn’t be sure they were just decoration – while crudely carved pumpkins with candles flickering in their gashed eyes lined the bar. She challenged herself to stay in the pub and try to be sociable, although her senses were so alert that her skin felt flayed. She’d rather run away, had to fight the instinct not to. Running away never led to anything good.
‘There they are! Come, Holly, meet the gang.’
Leif led her to the darkest corner, where two round bar tables holding several empty glasses had been wedged together. Three ghouls sat in a coven-like huddle around the flickering tea lights: a man with albino colouring in a white coat stained with blood; a second figure in a hairy werewolf mask who could feasibly be of either gender; and seated between them a sexy blonde, carefully made up with cat’s-eye flicks and red lips, sucking on an e-cigarette.
With one arm around Holly’s shoulders, Leif pointed to his friends, shouting to be heard over the loud music and laughter. ‘The mad surgeon is Neil and the werewolf is Adam; they’re both technical wizards in the media department. The True Blood geek is Trish. As well as turning me into Freddy, she’s also my PhD supervisor.’
Holly looked again at the vaping blonde, who was clearly a multitasker. She wore a tight white shirt, open at the cleavage, revealing two bite marks on her neck, and her name badge said she was SOOKIE STACKHOUSE. Holly avoided horror or crime films, but guessed this must be a character from one of these.
‘Hi, Holly,’ Trish said, in a loud voice no doubt used to projecting across a lecture hall, flashing Holly a smile that did not reach her eyes. ‘Come and change the conversation! I’m sick of talking to these film geeks about who’s the most sympathetic killer, Dexter or Hannibal Lecter. And now that Leif is here, the conversation is bound to turn to Ingrid Bergman. I’ll gaslight myself if it does.’ She gave a huge theatrical yawn, then winked at Leif, who grinned. Holly had no idea what Trish was referring to, but it looked like she was enjoying this moment of shared intimacy with Leif.
