by Celina Grace
“Oh,” said Cody. For a moment, he sounded oddly relieved. “It’s all gone? She must have gone then.”
I continued to stare at him. There was something wrong with that sentence, but the second I thought about it, the meaning flashed away. I mentally shook myself.
“She didn’t leave a note with you or anything?” I asked, feebly.
“With me? No, why would she?” Cody seemed to have regained his equilibrium. “She’ll probably drop you a note or ring you really soon. I wouldn’t worry too much. Has she ever done this before?”
“What, just buggered off for no reason? No. No, she hasn’t.”
“Maybe she and Blue had a row.”
I remembered again Blue’s odd, violent remark when we’d all been by the swimming pool. Had Janey taken him up on that? Would she have had the nerve? I couldn’t imagine her doing something that she knew would piss him off.
“Maybe,” I said. There was a moment’s silence.
“Can I get back to my painting now?” asked Cody with a half-smile. I tried to smile in return and nodded.
“Sorry to interrupt you.”
“No worries. Come and get me in an hour or so and we’ll have a swim.”
“Okay,” I said. He shut the studio door as I turned away.
I walked slowly back to the house, trying to get my thoughts in order. The most dissatisfying part was knowing that I would have to wait days, possibly weeks, to hear from Janey, either through the post or by telephone. How could she have left, just like that? Once more, I went back to the room she’d shared with Blue and looked again, hoping that there might be a note or a scrap of paper left behind, something to tell me where she’d gone and - almost more importantly - why. I noticed this time that her guitar was gone, and her rucksack. She must have left; she would never leave her guitar behind. Was it something that I had done? I tried to think back on our last conversation but there was nothing there that I could interpret as anything that might have caused Janey to leave. After a fruitless search for a note, I left the room and walked back to the one I shared with Race. I lay back down on the bed, biting my nails.
After a moment, I remembered the necklace I’d picked up in the woods and retrieved it from my jeans pocket. The little ‘A’ spun around like a plumb weight. The more I stared at it, the more I thought I remembered seeing it before, somewhere. Was I going mad? It did look familiar. I shut my eyes and tried to think back over the past weeks. Where had I seen that necklace before? I opened my eyes and stared, unseeing, across Race’s room. Race – it was something to do with him. That was it! I leapt up and began to dig through the detritus scattered over the floor of the room, throwing clothes and shoes and jewellery aside. Eventually I found what I was looking for and carried it over to the bed. It was the copy of the New Musical Express that I’d been reading when Race had first approached us at the village pub. I unfolded it to the very page I’d been reading at the time, the one with the picture of Dirty Rumours, Blue in the middle with the tiny girl on his arm. I caught my breath. Around the girl’s neck, I could clearly see the necklace – a thin chain with the letter ‘A’ dangling from it. As soon as I saw the girl, I recognised her as the one who’d been here the day we arrived. The one who’d then disappeared. Disappeared – just as Janey seemed to have done.
Slowly I folded up the paper and hid it under a pile of clothes. I put the necklace back in my jeans pocket and hid those under a couple of dirty towels. I had a nasty, cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. Something was wrong. I couldn’t quite join up all the dots, but something was definitely wrong. I leant forward and pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to breathe normally. What was I going to do?
I tried to marshal the facts, what little I actually knew. The girl, the blonde girl with the necklace – April? – had she been Blue’s girlfriend? Or just a groupie? She had been here when we arrived, I knew it. I remembered that first drunken night, the girl who’d crouched by the side of the bed, someone I’d thought I’d dreamt or hallucinated. But had she really been there? Was she trying to warn me?
Had Janey actually left? The more I thought about it, the more I found it difficult to believe. But if she hadn’t left, where the hell was she – and where was all her stuff? Why was April’s necklace in the middle of the woods when nobody was supposed to leave the manor? I had a moment of clarity then – the ludicrousness of thinking that nobody was supposed to leave. We weren’t in prison, here. Nobody was keeping us here against our will. Were they?
After a moment I got up and smoothed my hair down. My hands were trembling faintly. I could do nothing today, I realised. I had to act normally - act just as if nothing was wrong - while I tried to figure this out myself. After all, I told myself but not really believing it as I left the room, perhaps Janey would call later. What a relief that would be, to actually hear her voice.
Of all the afternoons I’d spent at the manor, that was one of the strangest. The struggle I had, to behave naturally, to behave just as I always had – in fact, not just as I always had because obviously I had to be a bit upset about Janey’s departure. I was upset. I was deeply upset and scared and worried. But I still joked with Cody, and flirted with Blue and when Race wanted to take me up to bed in the early evening, I let him. I lay beneath him and made all the right noises and moved in the right way, but my mind was far, far away. Afterwards, as we lay in each other’s arms, it crossed my mind to ask him. I almost immediately dismissed the idea.
Somehow I got through the evening. I pretended to drink more than I actually did because I wanted to keep a clear head, but still not rouse anyone’s suspicion. I lay in bed beside Race, my heart thudding. I hadn’t heard from Janey that day, not by post or by telephone. Of course I hadn’t. I had a thought that made my eyes fly open in the dark. What if she was still here? Kept locked away in one of the other wings of the house. There were rooms here that I had never explored. Was it possible that she was actually still here? Why would she be? I turned over and told myself to go to sleep. I would have a good look in the morning.
After a bad night’s sleep, I woke late, the morning almost gone. Race was still dead to the world beside me. I lay staring up at the ceiling and thinking. My fevered imaginings of the night before seemed silly in the bright light of day. What on Earth was I thinking, that Janey could be trapped here, like a princess in a fairy tale? It was ridiculous. I’d probably hear from her today. All the same, I decided I would have a little poke about in some of the empty rooms, just to set my mind at rest.
I waited until the band were closeted away in the studio. Merian wasn’t here today, so I didn’t have to worry about her. I checked the hallway of the manor for post, hoping against hope that there would be something from Janey. A postcard, even, with a single scribble on the back. Just something to let me know that she was okay. There was nothing. I set my jaw and began the slow ascent up to the third floor, where I’d never set foot before.
After I reached the corridor, I stood for a moment, hugging myself uncertainly. It was dark up here and the ceiling was much lower. Had these once been the rooms of the servants? I walked cautiously over the bare floorboards of the hallway, stepping gingerly over the creaking ones. Dust billowed up in chokingly thick clouds. I tried to sneeze quietly, although I wasn’t too worried – I could hear the thunderous chords of Butterfly Collar, one of the new songs from the album, coming from the studio. Ridiculously, I found myself tapping my feet and snorted. What was wrong with me? I opened the first door along the hallway and looked in. Then I gasped. Half the floor was actually missing; the gaping hole that remained was crossed only by what looked like a supporting beam of the floor below. A bare light bulb socket dangled above the chasm. There was nothing else in the room but even if there had been I wouldn’t have risked going inside. This place was positively dangerous. Was this third floor even stable? Perhaps I should go back downstairs… but something drew me on, despite my faltering footsteps.
I checked every room on the floor. No
ne were as bad as the first – the floorboards in each were at least intact – but they were all empty, except for the odd piece of furniture riddled with woodworm. Great curls of wallpaper had peeled away from the walls of the hallway. In one otherwise empty room, I saw a bracket fungus as big as my hand protruding from the skirting board. I stood in the middle of the corridor and imagined that I could actually hear the house very gradually disintegrating around me; chewed by death watch beetles, crumbled by water leaks and damp, being rubbed away by intruding tree branches. The dust swirled about me as if alive; I breathed it in and coughed. Asharton Manor was all about me, it was within me. All of a sudden, the ceiling seemed to be getting lower and the walls themselves seemed to move further towards me. I shuddered and turned to go. As I turned, my eye was snagged by a darker patch of shadow on the dim ceiling. An aperture into the roof, the entrance to an attic.
I hesitated. Was I really going to climb up into the attic? It was probably dangerous to even set foot up there. There would almost certainly be mice and rats, possibly bats. I shifted from one foot to the other, listening to the crack and creak of the wood beneath my foot. Then I sighed and went and fetched a chair and stood it beneath the opening to the attic.
I had to haul myself up bodily, groaning, until I could roll awkwardly onto the attic floor, drawing my legs up and cautiously getting to my feet. It was very hot up there; airless and with a curious stillness to the room, as if it were listening out for something. It was packed to the rafters with junk; old furniture, splitting cardboard boxes, rolls of carpet. I should have brought a torch up with me. I dug in my skirt pocket and said ”Yes!” when I realised I had a cigarette lighter. I flicked on the flame and held it up. One thing I mustn’t do was drop it – I had the feeling that the entire attic was one giant tinder box waiting to happen – all this old paper and wood and cloth.
I held the lighter up until it got too hot to touch. Then I extinguished it. The attic seemed very black with the light gone. I felt a jump of panic and flicked the lighter on again, ignoring the pain in my thumb. It was then I noticed the faint footprints in the dust, leading away from me into the dimness. I clicked the lighter off again, closing my eyes against the sudden rush of the dark. I put my burnt thumb into my mouth, wincing. Then I flicked the lighter on again and followed the footsteps.
They wound through the piles of rubbish and trunks and boxes for some twenty feet, leading me deeper and deeper into the attic space. At least the floorboards up here appeared fairly sound, from what little I could see in the flickering light. Twice I had to click the lighter off and suck my poor thumb before rasping the wheel again and flicking on the little flame. I tried not to think about the lighter running out of fuel and leaving me stranded up here in the dark.
The footsteps led to a small black trunk. I peered at it in the poor light. Was it right of me even to open it? I was trespassing here, I realised. As I stared at the trunk, I became aware of an even more pressing sense of unease. That trunk is too small to hold a body, I told myself, trying to be reassuring, but how could I be reassured when I was thinking things like that? It was probably locked anyway. I flicked the light off, sucked my thumb again, wincing – it felt like most of the skin was gone from the side against the lighter. Then, gritting my teeth, I flicked the light on again and stretched a tentative hand out to the truck.
It wasn’t locked. The lid went up, easily and smoothly. I don’t know what I was expecting to find in there. The seemingly endless source of Wade’s heroin? Money? Or something even more prosaic like paperwork or clothes? Certainly not what the trunk actually contained, which made me stare, aghast, for once oblivious to the lighter burning my hand.
There were three coils of hair in the trunk; three coils of long, blonde hair. Very long hair – almost waist length on a woman, I calculated, some part of my mind remaining calm even whilst the rest of it was reverberating with shock. The coils were laid on a piece of black velvet on the bottom of the box, making it look bottomless, as if the pale twists of hair were floating in space. I was aware that cold sweat was inching down the small of my back, despite the great heat. I looked closer. In the coil of hair that lay on the right I could see something I recognised – a strip of white lace and blue ribbon. I knew that decoration – Janey had wound it into her hair three days ago. That was Janey’s hair.
I could feel a bubble of nausea rise up in my throat. I held the lighter closer to the other pieces of hair and saw something worse, worse if possible than the lace and ribbon. A fingernail, ripped off at the quick, entwined in the strands of blonde hair. A pink-painted fingernail, the blood at the base of it long ago turned black.
I retched, almost dropping the lighter. Then I turned and stumbled away from the trunk, running through the dark and the dust towards the pale rectangle of the attic opening. I caught my shin on something hard and gasped with pain but didn’t stop until I was dangling by my hands from the attic. I dropped onto the chair beneath and it overturned beneath me, sending me to the floor with a crash. Hardly noticing, I got up and ran down towards the staircase. My teeth were chattering as if I were icy cold. I stumbled and slipped down the stairs, managing to catch the railings and save myself a tumble.
I don’t quite know where I thought I was going. I was in such a mad panic that I was almost running blindly. I reached the ground floor hallway just as Merian came through the front door. I almost cannoned into her and she put her arms out to stop me.
“Eve? What the hell—“
I was so relieved to see Merian – of all people – that I almost burst into tears. The relief of having her here, another woman, a professional, someone who got things done. She would know what to do. I started gasping out what I’d found, what had happened, what it meant but I must have been almost incoherent.
“I don’t understand – what are you saying, Eve? You found what?”
She drew me into Cody’s room, the old ballroom and sat me down on one of the chairs. The shutters were drawn over the tall windows and it was almost as dark as night. Merian groped for a lamp and then cursed as the bulb blew, almost immediately, as it came on.
“For God’s sake, this place…” She found a few candles stubs, fixed onto a plate with wax – that was mainly what we used as lighting at night - and lit them with her lighter. “Well, it’s better than nothing, I suppose. Now, what the hell is going on?”
I took a deep breath. “I think Janey’s dead. I think Blue killed her. I found hair – up in the attic – three bits of hair – and there was another girl that was here when we arrived but she disappeared. My god, Merian, what if he’s killed more than one?”
Merian looked at me, slightly shaking her head. “Are you high?”
“No,” I said indignantly. “If you don’t believe me, go and see for yourself.”
She didn’t take me up on that. “You think Blue has killed Janey? Why?”
“Because her bloody hair’s been cut off and put in a trunk in the attic! She’s disappeared. She wouldn’t just go like that, with no word and no contact – she just wouldn’t.”
“But why the hell do you think it’s Blue?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I don’t know. But he’s Blue Turner, isn’t he? He can do whatever he wants.”
Merian put a hand up to her temple as if she had a sudden headache. “I can’t believe this. I need you to tell me everything, everything that’s been going on.”
I took another deep breath. The panic was receding a little now, now that someone was actually listening to me. “I can do that.”
And I did. I told Merian everything that had happened since we’d arrived at the manor. How Race met us and brought us back here. The girl – April – who was here when we arrived and then never seen again after that night. The necklace of hers that I’d found in the woods. Janey’s disappearance. The trunk and the hair and the fingernail.
Merian had gone pale. She had her own fingers up to her mouth, chewing on her red painted nails.
“Go to the police?” I suggested, timidly.
Merian closed her eyes briefly. “Well, yes, I suppose so. My god.”
“What about Blue?” I whispered. I felt a pulse of fear at the thought of him finding out that I knew his secret.
“Don’t say anything,” said Merian, shortly. “In fact, leave it with me. Wait here for five minutes. I’ll be back soon.”
She jumped up and walked briskly out of the room, heels clacking on the floor. I remained on my chair, stiff and tense. What the hell was I – was Merian – going to do? Was she phoning the police right now? How long would it take them to come? I remembered, so long ago it now seemed, walking through the village, past the old boarded up police station.
In less than five minutes, I heard the clack of Merian’s heels coming back. I jumped up in relief.
“Thank God you’re back—“ I began and then my voice simply failed. Behind her, coming into the room, were Blue and Race. They came right in and shut the door behind them.
I could feel my heart begin a slow and painful thudding. Blue was looking at me with something like contempt. Race just looked uneasy.
“She knows,” Merian said abruptly.
“She can’t do,” said Blue, not taking his eyes off me.
“She knows enough, then. She found the hair, Blue. My god, didn’t I tell you that was a stupid thing to keep? Why the hell do you have to keep trophies?”
“I like it,” said Blue, his voice low and ragged. “I like to remember.”
“My god,” said Merian, in what sounded like disgust. “Well, it’s too late now.”
Somehow I got my mouth to move. “You – what have you done with Janey?”
No one answered me for a moment. I asked again. “What happened to Janey?”
Merian sighed. “He likes to choke women using their hair. It’s a thing he does, it’s a fetish. Now it’s an obsession,” she said impatiently, as if I was stupid for not having worked it out on my own.
