by Nina Milton
Aidan was the only one I cared about. I ran to the car and opened the door. The small body was curled into a blanket like a foetus. I heard a high, hiccupping sob. Now I was close to him, I could see his lips, as pale as lily petals, were moving. His eyes were wide with fear, not with the shock of death.
“Aidan,” I whispered. He was looking at me with intensity, as if I was a new menace he might have to deal with. “Aidan, can you hear me?”
As the blanket fell away, I saw that he had been bound in rope, just as I had. I lifted him from the back seat like a swaddled baby and carried him away from the car and the slumped figures. Lightly, I took him to the lawn and laid him on it. I wanted to wrap my arms around him, but it didn’t seem right to hug someone so tightly bound. My throat constricted. Aidan lay quiet. Perhaps he was too scared to speak, or maybe too stunned.
“Aidan,” I repeated. “It’s okay now, it’s okay … it’s over.” I trailed off. It didn’t seem to me that my words were at all comforting. My shaking hands worked at the knots that bound him. “You’re safe, now. Mummy and Daddy will come and get you. They’ve been so worried. And your granny.”
“Nanny Nora.” It was the first thing he’d said. He was correcting me. I was startled at his composure.
“Aidan, try to tell me,” I asked. “Did she make you drink something out of a bottle?”
He nodded at me, his huge eyes fixed on mine. I felt my stomach cramp. I had no idea how to ask what was needed—how long ago? How much?
“Nanny Nora makes me have it.” His voice was piping, but strong. “It’s ’orrible. I sicked it up.”
In the bald light, I could see that his chin was covered with the sticky syrup. I felt like singing out with joy. “Clever boy,” I whispered. “We’re so lucky. So lucky.”
“’Cause I rubbed his tum,” said Aidan.
“That’s right, darling.” I thought he was half delirious. “Rub your tum to stop the nasty medicine.”
“Not my tum,” said Aidan. A smile flickered onto his face. “My Buddy. You rub his tummy for good luck.”
“Oh, you gorgeous, gorgeous boy, no wonder everyone loves you. Everything will be all right soon. There’ll be police and an ambulance.” I glanced round. Ivan and Linnet still lay unmoving. I didn’t care to check if they were alive or dead. Aidan was way up above them on my priorities.
“They’re coming,” he said.
“Who dear? Who’s coming?”
“The p’lice.” He struggled to sit up, the rope falling from him. “Neeh-na, neeh-na!”
As if he’d pulled a trick on my mind, I heard those sounds echoing in the distance.
His sharp little ears had been right. Into the cold, dark night came the sirens.
THIRTY
Four Weeks Later
“Thank you for doing this,” I said to Gloria.
“Girl, I would never let you go to this place on your own. They’d have to put me in chains.”
I gave my foster mother a pained look. “Let’s not mention chains.”
“You are one brave lady, doing this.”
I laughed. “Oh no, Gloria. This doesn’t count as brave. Surviving abduction is brave. And that goes for Cliff as well as Aidan.”
Even so, my hand went involuntarily to the headscarf I wore round my head at all times. I had been so proud and fond of my heavy, dark locks. As soon as the wounds in my scalp had begun to heal, I’d gone to Debs, a friend of mine right back from our time at The Willows. She was now a hairdresser and beautician. She had actually wept as she’d shaved my remaining hair with a number one razor, but it had to be done. At least now it was an even length, and in the last two weeks had grown enough to almost conceal the scabs. But when I looked at myself in the mirror, the sight sickened me. I was reminded of the creature in my vision. I would never know—had she been Patsy’s past, or my own future?
“That woman,” said Gloria, shaking me out of my dream. “She should hang, in my view. I know I’m gonna invite your wrath with my small-minded attitude, but that’s how I feel. Hanging’s too good in fact.”
“Precisely,” I said. “Well, you know what they’ll call it. Balance of her mind.”
“Disturbed?” barked Gloria. “Ha!”
“You didn’t see it,” I said. “Her bedroom, stuffed full of toys ready for them to play with, and the place she’d held them. She used the word cherished.”
We had found the room she’d made for the kidnapped children while the paramedics were easing Aidan into the ambulance. The garage remote was on the seat of the BMW, and as the second door slowly lifted, the strangest sight was revealed. The garage had been turned into a nursery. There were toys and stuffed animals everywhere—at least as many as those still untouched and unloved in Linnet’s bedroom. A rocking horse of solid, polished wood; a little pedal bike that had nowhere to go; a remote control car, bashed to pieces, all told their own story. Most horrifying was an entire collection of Slamblasters with the Slamblaster Fortress, which stood untouched. In the centre was a low divan bed. A Manchester United duvet had slid to the floor, showing a sheet stained with splashes of ketchup. Coke cans, Miss Millie cartons, and pizza boxes, only half empty, were scattered over the floor. An off-cut of thick carpeting covered the concrete base. Overhead strip lighting and high wall heaters had attempted to create a habitable room in this brick box, but that didn’t detract from the chilling genius of the security. Linnet had converted her garage into a prison.
“Didn’t Rudi want a Slamblaster Fortress for Christmas?” I asked Gloria.
“Yes, he did. But I talked Charlene out of it. It smothers creative play. We’re making one out of junk, instead.”
I turned my head away to smile but didn’t quite make it. I was still there, standing outside the second garage, while paramedics dealt with Ivan and Linnet, dressing wounds, putting up tape and coping with Linnet’s screams. As Ivan himself would’ve pointed out if anyone had cared to ask him, air rifles can make a mess, but they rarely do much damage. She was standing up in court to face a refusal of bail a week later. I felt a certain satisfaction that she would be well enough to stand trial.
One of my abiding images of that night was Rey’s face as he had finally arrived with the third wave of police cars. The lights of his own car coloured the shocked whiteness of his skin as he found me, tucked into hospital blankets, ready to leave the scene. He had stood in front of me and put one hand onto my shoulder, but said nothing. And I was too shocked to say anything more coherent than, “I found the tunnel.” I’d been trembling uncontrollably and had wanted to explain that it was due to the bitter coldness that comes before dawn, but I could find no further words.
It had been my intention to say nothing about the way Ivan had threatened me at my home, or the fact that he had brought his air rifle along for a rather different intention. But by the time I was in an interview room, a polystyrene cup of tea in my hand, I realized that it would be foolhardy to step around the plain truth. My first loyalty was to Cliff, and to Josh and Aidan; if I tried to protect Ivan as well, it would only distort matters.
I did enquire as to his well-being. Although he had lost a lot of blood that night and needed some corrective surgery, he was discharged soon after. I hoped our paths would never cross again. I hoped he had learnt his lesson and thrown his air rifle into the nearest river. There are enough of those to choose from in this corner of England. Maybe he’ll have to undergo an anger management programme or even do community service. I have no idea and even less inclination to find out.
“We’re here,” said Gloria. She said it so softly, I hardly heard. She pulled on the handbrake and put her car into Neutral. “You okay for this?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.” I got out of the car and breathed in Somerset air.
Brokeltuft Cottage loomed like a ghost above us, a shimmering white spectre. A youthful police constable stood by the bro
ken gate. He watched as we moved forward.
“Sabbie Dare,” I introduced myself. “And this is my mum.”
“We appreciate you coming, Miss Dare,” said the constable.
“It’s no problem.”
No problem? I could sense a trembling in me, not the sort that makes your fingers shake, but the kind that begins in the very core and chills you from the inside.
A few weeks after Linnet had been dragged away from the gingerbread house, I’d been contacted by a gruff-voiced Rey.
“I came round,” he said. “But you weren’t at home.”
“I went up to North Wales for a while, and then I went to stay with my mum.”
“Good,” he said, a sudden surge of energy in his voice. “That’s good. You should recuperate. So does that mean you’re not available as a shaman at the moment?”
“I am working.” I told him. “I’m seeing Cliff. Can’t afford—”
“Not to work, I know. Actually, I wondered if you might consider a paid assignment.”
“Sorry?”
“For us. The forensic team at Brokeltuft, I mean. They’re finding it … well, there’s this odd atmosphere.”
“They’re picking up sensations?”
“Don’t ask me,” Rey had barked. “Cops don’t usually act like wusses.”
“You want me to go over there?”
“Would that be hard?”
“Not at all.” I hadn’t wanted him to think I was a wuss as well. But I had hoped that he would have the decency to meet me here. It would’ve been nice if he’d said sorry … about constantly doubting me, about conning me with the phoney Slamblaster. But apologies didn’t sit comfortable with Rey Buckley. I figured asking me to work for the team was the closest he’d get.
The constable took us around the side of Brokeltuft, to where they’d set up HQ in a caravan. A female officer helped me kit myself out in the protective gear of the forensic team. It felt as if I was getting ready to be blasted into space. We left Gloria sipping a cup of police tea and moved out of the van as if through an air lock that led onto an alien planet.
The back garden had been flattened and was pockmarked with holes. The lawn had disappeared, as if a bomb had fallen into its centre, except this was a smart bomb—the hole was tidy-edged and flat-bottomed.
“Did you find anything?”
“If it hasn’t been on the news, I can’t tell you,” said the constable. He smiled, as if suggesting that made him sorry, and held open the back door for me.
I glanced round. I wanted to check the black poplar was still there. “You won’t touch the tree, will you?” I said. “It’s been very kind, over the years.”
“We’ll try, miss,” he said. “If you think it will help.”
It took me a second or two to realize he meant it. They’d asked me to come and were prepared to take my advice. But as I was thinking these things, I passed through the back door.
The cottage had become a shell. The walls were knocked through, and the ceilings, which had fallen in places when I was last here, had been taken down entirely. Looking up, I could see right into the rafters. Looking down, I saw the floorboards had been replaced by sufficient chipboard panels to get from room to room. They were pale and new but already layered with fine dust.
“You must have used some big skips to empty all this out,” I said.
“You might say that, miss,” said the constable. “Take care as you walk.”
I followed the angular path of the chipboard, like a rat in a maze, until I reached what had been the front room. Everything was so changed that it should have been difficult to locate the place where the sofa had once stood, hiding two bodies, but it was not hard at all. Although the bodies had been the first things out of here, I had a clear impression that the fullness of their spirits remained.
As I came to a halt and put down the carrier bag I’d brought with me, the policeman said, “Er … yes, that’s sort of the worst place. Martin lost the tip of his thumb there. When we opened …”
I turned back. His back was against the far wall. He was lit by one of the spotlights the forensic guys were working by, stock-still as if caught on stage without his lines. He was not going to accompany me into this vortex of energy.
I took another step. I could feel it on my body, a sensation of cold pressure. It made me light-headed and numb, sick in my stomach. I stopped. They were down beneath my feet, where they had dwelt for so many years.
I hadn’t thought much about what I would do. I remembered all too clearly the way I had descended into a trance without even having to try, as if their presence under the boards had sucked me in to them. I stood watching and almost waiting. My heart was yammering in my chest. I had to fight to stop myself turning round to see if the policeman could hear it. All I knew was that I was standing near a concentrated core of power, so bleak and dark that the forensic team had been unable to work within it.
“C’mon,” I whispered. “Show yourselves.” Nothing stirred. “Okay you bastards. I’ll get you up.”
Inside my mind, I drew the shield of my cloak around me. I felt the folds of the hood brush my face. I dipped into my carrier bag and retrieved a bundle of herbs, tied round with unbleached cotton. Native Americans call this a smudge stick, I believe, but these were plants raised in Somerset soil … lavender, sage, rosemary, and the end of a yew branch. The flame from my lighter curve around the bundle, caressing it until the dried leaves crackled. Smoke trailed off, a clean scent that made me seize the first proper breath I’d dared to take in this putrid place.
I raised my arms above my head and called out the words I use every day. They keep my clients and me safe in my therapy room, and I was hoping they’d have the same affect here.
“I call upon spirits, seen and unseen, the spirits of the four corners of the earth and the spirits above and below the earth, to be present and work in peace. I call upon their power, benevolence, guidance, and protection to be with me in this place today.”
I’d come woefully unprepared. It’s not impossible to for me to work without the defence of my black dress with its totems, bells, rattle, and wand, but now that I’d begun, I heartily wished I’d brought more than a smudge stick from my garden and an imaginary cloak. There was no way I would be able to find true north or any quadrant—it was going to be hard enough to walk in a circle. But I had to try. I had to enclose these murderers with my own shamanic allies and guardians. I felt Trendle settle on my shoulder.
Just do it, he said. I stepped as lightly as I could, my herbs held aloft, leaping from one board to another.
I enclose these loathsome and damaging spirits in the purity of love and protecting strength … and … the justice of the natural world.
I was winging it now, letting the words come into my mind without a thought between them.
Pinchie! I called to him first. Kissie! We bind you in this circle, not to punish or drive you out, but show you an endurance of love that has no beginning and no end. We wish for you to seek out such love and let yourself fuse with it.
I had come full circle. I could see this because, in the garish beam from the spotlights, the smoke I’d trailed in the air had become a ring, end touching end. I lowered myself down, using the empty carrier bag to protect my rump. I crossed my legs and rested my arms on my knees. I kept hold of the smudge stick with both hands so that its smoke circled around my face. I felt it caress my closed eyes and seep into my nostrils. Sweet herbs perfumed the air. It was enough to tip me over.
Trendle stared at me with prettily lashed eyes. I fell into their depths, into the hole in the floor, into the den that these terrible spirits had made for themselves. The air was thick and dingy beneath the gaping boards. A mist, as yellow as the smogs of Avonmouth, oozed upwards. I could see it swirl within itself, as if two strands of smoke were twisting in a dance, or in a fight. I watched a
s the strands came apart and flew into one another, twisting, clutching, capturing, churning the air. There was no sound at all from the mists, but inside my head was the boom of my throbbing arteries, punctuated by the hiss of my breath, fast and shallow. This rhythm seemed to pull me further into the trance, until their forms separated in my sight, congealing until I could discern arms and legs, and finally, the expressions on their faces.
I could see Kissie’s sallow features, her gleaming blade of a nose and her painted lips, stretched open in a silent cry of agony and desperation. Her eyes were staring straight at me. She could see me. She called to me with the vacuous dryness of her mouth. Around her neck was the gleaming yellow of a muscled forearm. It reminded me of the statues of Soviet Russia—the iron strength of working men’s limbs. Pinchie was trying to pull her back into their grave. He was half hidden behind his wife, the shine on his hairless skull outlined against the black foundations of the cottage. His mouth was a grim line, his eyes half closed with the determination of his task.
The first time I was in this room, I had run away, gibbering with crazed fear, forgetting every magical protection. I had learned so much in the short time since then. I held the stick of smoking incense tight in both hands, and when I leaned my head on one side, Trendle’s damp fur rubbed against my chin. With him on my shoulder, I could stand my ground.
Veronica Campion, I said. Her yellow frame shuddered and I saw her husband’s other arm come up and grasp her shoulder. Veronica—surely there must be a more fitting place than this one.
I thought I heard a whimper. I was concentrating so hard that I missed the first seconds of Pinchie’s sudden movement. He expanded out of the space below the joists and shot into my face. The yellow mist surrounded me. I was too shocked to shriek or even breathe. His gruesome presence enveloped me. The final days of the victims, every sensation they had experienced, permeated the aura around my body. My pulse stopped its thrusting beat for long seconds. I remembered what Cliff had spoken of: they didn’t want tears. Or screams even.
