by Alex North
And beside him, he’d drawn another person in his bedroom. A little girl, her black hair splayed almost angrily out to one side. Her dress was colored in with patches of blue, leaving the rest white. Little scrapes of red on one of her knees.
A corkscrew smile on her face.
Nine
After Jake’s bath that night, I knelt on the floor beside his bed so that we could read to each other. He was a good reader, and we were currently working our way through Power of Three by Diana Wynne Jones. It was a childhood favorite of mine, which I’d chosen without thinking. The horrible irony of the title had only occurred to me afterward.
When we’d finished that night’s chapter, I put the book down with all his others.
“Cuddle?” I said.
He slipped out of the covers without a word and sat sideways on my knees, wrapping his arms around me. I savored the cuddle for as long as I could, and then he clambered back into bed.
“I love you, Jake.”
“Even when we argue?”
“Of course. Especially when we argue. That’s when it matters the most.”
That reminded me of the picture I’d drawn for him, which I knew he’d kept. I glanced down at his Packet of Special Things, which was under the bed now, so that if he were to drape his small arm out in the night he’d be able to touch it. But that in turn made me think of the drawing he’d done that afternoon. He hadn’t been pleased about showing it to me, and so I hadn’t asked him about it at the time. But in the warm, soft light of his bedroom, it felt like maybe I could now.
“It was a good picture of our house today,” I said.
“Thank you, Daddy.”
“I’m curious about something, though. Who was the little girl in the window with you?”
He bit his lip and didn’t answer.
“It’s okay,” I said gently. “You can tell me.”
But again he didn’t reply. It was obvious that, whoever it was meant to be, the little girl was the reason he hadn’t wanted to show me the drawing today, and he didn’t want to talk about her now either. But why not?
The answer occurred to me a second later.
“Is she the little girl from the 567 Club?”
He hesitated, then nodded.
I sat back on my heels, doing my best to hide the frustration I felt. The disappointment, even. For the last week, everything had seemed fine. We had been happy here, Jake had seemed to be adjusting well, and I had been cautiously optimistic. And yet apparently his imaginary friend had been following us all along. The thought made me shiver slightly—the idea that we had left her behind in the old house, and ever since she had been working her way slowly across the intervening miles to find us.
“Do you still talk to her?” I said.
Jake shook his head.
“She’s not here.”
From his own disappointment, it was obvious that he wanted her to be, and once again I felt uneasy. It was unhealthy for him to be fixated on someone who wasn’t there. At the same time, he looked so dejected and lonely right now that I almost felt guilty at depriving him of it. And also hurt that, as always, I wasn’t enough.
“Well,” I said carefully. “You start school tomorrow. I’m sure you’ll make lots of new friends there. And in the meantime, I’m here. We’re here. New house, new start.”
“Is it safe here?”
“Safe?” Why was he asking that? “Yes, of course it is.”
“Is the door locked?”
“Yes.”
The lie—a white one—came automatically. The door wasn’t locked; I didn’t think I’d even hooked up the chain. But Featherbank was a quiet village. And anyway, it was early evening and the lights were all on. Nobody was going to be that blatant.
But Jake looked so frightened that I was suddenly conscious of the distance between the two of us and the front door. The noise of running his bath. If someone had crept in while we were up here, would I have heard it?
“You don’t need to worry about that.” I did my best to sound firm. “I’d never let anything happen to you. Why are you so worried?”
“You have to close doors,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“You have to keep them locked.”
“Jake—”
“If you leave a door half open, soon you’ll hear the whispers spoken.”
A chill ran through me. Jake looked scared, and the phrase certainly wasn’t the kind of thing he would have come up with by himself.
“What does that mean?” I said.
“I don’t know.”
“Where did you hear it, then?”
He didn’t answer. But then I realized he didn’t need to.
“The little girl?”
He nodded, and I shook my head, confused. Jake wouldn’t have thought up that rhyme by himself, but equally, he couldn’t have heard it from someone who wasn’t there. So perhaps I’d been wrong at the 567 Club and the little girl was real? Perhaps Jake had just called goodbye without realizing she had gone outside? Except he had been alone at the table when I’d arrived. It must have been one of the other children, then, trying to scare him. From the expression on his face right now, it had worked.
“You’re completely safe, Jake. I promise you.”
“But I’m not in charge of the door!”
“No,” I said. “I am. And so there is nothing for you to worry about. I don’t care what somebody told you. You need to listen to me now. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Ever.”
He was listening, at least, although I wasn’t sure he was convinced.
“I promise you. And do you know why I won’t let anything happen to you? Because I love you. Very much indeed. Even when we argue.”
That brought the slightest of smiles.
“Do you believe me?” I said.
He nodded, looking a little more reassured now.
“Good.” I ruffled his hair and stood up. “Because it’s true. Good night, sweetie.”
“Good night, Daddy.”
“I’ll come up and check on you in five minutes.”
I turned the light off as I left the room, then padded downstairs as quietly as I could. But rather than collapsing on the couch as I wanted to, I stopped at the front door.
If you leave a door half open, soon you’ll hear the whispers spoken.
Rubbish, of course, wherever he had heard it. But the words still bothered me. And just as the idea of the little girl trailing us across the country had disturbed me, now I couldn’t shake the image of her sitting next to him, her hair swept out to one side and that strange smile on her face, whispering frightening things in his ear.
I hooked up the chain for the night.
Ten
DI Pete Willis had spent the weekend miles away from Featherbank, walking in the nearby countryside and trailing a stick through random tangles of undergrowth. He checked the hedges he passed. Occasionally, when the fields were empty, he hopped over stiles and trawled through the grass there.
Anyone watching might have mistaken him for a rambler, and to all intents and purposes he supposed that was what he was. These days, in fact, he deliberately thought of such expeditions as walks and outings—as just another way for an old man to fill his time. It had been twenty years now, after all. And yet a part of him remained focused. Rather than absorbing the beauty of the world around him, he was constantly searching the ground for bone fragments and snatches of old fabric.
Blue jogging pants. Little black polo shirt.
For some reason, it was always the clothes that stayed with him.
However much he tried not to think about it, Pete would never forget the day he’d viewed the horrors plastered inside the extension Frank Carter had built on the side of his house. Returning to the department afterward, he had still been reeling from the experience, but as he stepped through the sliding doors there had at least been some sense of relief. Four little boys had been killed. But even though Carter had remained at
large for the moment, the monster finally had a name—a real one, not the one the papers had given him—and four victims would be the end of it.
In that moment, he had believed it was nearly over.
But then he had seen Miranda and Alan Smith sitting in the reception. Even now he could still picture them clearly. Alan had been wearing a suit and sitting bolt upright, staring into space, his hands forming a heart between his knees. Miranda’s hands had been pressed between her thighs, and she had been leaning against her husband, resting her head on his shoulder with her long brown hair trailing down his chest. It was late afternoon, but they had both looked exhausted, like long-distance travelers who were trying and failing to sleep where they sat.
Their son Tony was missing.
And twenty years on from that afternoon, he still was.
Frank Carter had managed a day and a half on the run before he was finally arrested, his van pulled over on a country road nearly a hundred miles from Featherbank. There was forensic evidence that Tony Smith had been held in the back of his van, but no sign of the boy’s body. And while Carter had admitted killing Tony, he refused to reveal where he had discarded his remains.
The weeks that followed had seen extensive searches along the myriad possible routes Carter could have taken, all of them to no avail. Pete had attended several. The number of searchers had dwindled over time until, two decades later, he was the only one still out searching. Even Miranda and Alan Smith had moved on. They lived far away from Featherbank now. If Tony had been alive, he would be twenty-seven years old. Pete knew that Miranda and Alan’s daughter, Claire, born in the tumultuous years that followed, had just turned sixteen. He attached no blame to the Smiths for rebuilding their lives after the murder of their son, but the fact remained that he himself could not let it go.
A little boy was missing.
A little boy needed to be found and brought home.
As he drove back into Featherbank now, the homes he passed looked comfortable. Their windows were illuminated in the darkness, and he could imagine whispers of laughter and conversation drifting out from within.
People together, as people should be.
He felt a degree of loneliness at that, but you could find pleasure where you looked for it, even in as solitary a life as his. The road was lined with enormous trees, their leaves lost in the darkness except for where the streetlights touched them, scattering the street with intricate yellow-green explosions that undulated in the soft breeze. It was so quiet and peaceful in Featherbank that it was almost impossible to believe it had once played host to atrocities as terrible as Frank Carter’s.
A flyer was attached to the lamppost at the end of his street—one of the many MISSING posters that had been put up in the previous weeks by Neil Spencer’s family. There was a photograph of the boy, details of his clothing, and an appeal for witnesses to come forward with information. Both the image and the text had faded under the incessant beat of the summer sun, so that, as he drove past it now, it reminded him of wrinkled flowers left at the scene of an old accident. A little boy who had disappeared was beginning to disappear for a second time.
Nearly two months had passed since Neil Spencer went missing, and despite the resources, heart, and soul that had been poured into the investigation, the police knew little more now than they had on the evening he’d vanished. As far as Pete could tell, Amanda Beck had done everything right. It was a reflection of her efficiency, in fact, that even DCI Lyons, a man with a constant eye on his own reputation, had stood by her and left her in charge of the case. Although the last time Pete had passed Amanda in the corridor, she had looked so worn out that he had wondered if that wasn’t its own kind of punishment.
He wished he could tell her that it would get easier.
After being summoned to Lyons’s office, Pete had talked Amanda through the original investigation, but his involvement in the case had turned out to be cursory. There had been the familiar feeling of dread when he made the request to visit Frank Carter. He had imagined himself sitting across from the monster, being treated like a plaything, and, as always, he had wondered if he could do it—whether this encounter would be the one that finally proved too much for him. And yet his fear had been in vain. For the first time that he could remember, his request to talk to Carter had been met with refusal. The so-called Whisper Man, it seemed, had decided to go silent.
Pete had visited him on several occasions, and he had been prepared to do so again, but still—it had been impossible to suppress relief at that. That feeling had brought guilt and shame along with it, of course, but he had talked himself out of it. Sitting across from Frank Carter was an ordeal. It was bad for his health. And since the only connection was what Neil claimed to have seen and heard at his bedroom window, there was no reason to think it would help.
Relief was the correct response.
Back home, he tossed his keys onto the dining room table, already planning the meal he would make and the programs he would watch to fill the handful of hours before sleep. Tomorrow would bring the gym, the paperwork, the admin. Life as usual.
But before then, he performed the ritual.
He opened the kitchen cabinet and took out the bottle of vodka he kept in there, turning it around in his hands, weighing it, feeling how thick the glass was. There was a solid, protective layer between him and the silky liquid inside. It had been a long time since he’d opened a bottle like this, but he could still remember the comforting click that would come if he turned the top and broke the seal.
He retrieved the photograph from a drawer.
And then he sat down at the dinner table, with the bottle and photograph before him, and asked himself the question.
Do I want to do this?
Over the years the urge had come and gone, but to some extent it was always present. There were many obvious things that could jostle it awake, but there were also times when it seemed to stir at random, following its own oblique schedule. The bottle was often as dead and powerless as a cell phone without charge, but sometimes there was a flicker there. Right now the urge was stronger than he could recall. For the last two months, in fact, the bottle had been talking to him increasingly loudly.
You’re only delaying the inevitable, it told him now.
Why make yourself suffer like this?
A full bottle—that was important. Pouring a drink from a half-finished bottle was less comforting than breaking the seal on a fresh one. The comfort lay in knowing you had enough.
He gently tested the seal now, tempting himself. A little more pressure and it would break, and the bottle would be open.
You might as well give in.
It will make you feel worthless, but we both know that’s what you are.
The voice could be cruel as well as friendly. Play the minor chords as easily as the major.
You’re worthless. You’re useless.
So open the bottle.
As so often, the voice was his father’s. The old man was long dead, but even forty years on, Pete could picture him: fat and sprawled in a threadbare armchair in the dusty living room, a look of contempt on his face. Nothing Pete had done as a boy had ever been good enough for him. Worthless and useless were words he’d learned early and often.
Age had brought with it the understanding that his father had been a small man, disappointed with everything in his life, and that his son had just been a convenient target to vent his many frustrations on. But that understanding had come too late. By then the message had been absorbed and become part of his programming. Objectively, he knew it wasn’t true that he was worthless and a failure. But it always felt true. The trick, explained, still convinced.
He picked up the photograph of Sally. It was many years old, and the colors had faded over time, as though the paper were attempting to erase the image imprinted upon it and return to its original blank slate. The two of them looked so happy there, their faces pressed together. It had been taken on a summer’s day. Sally appear
ed full of joy, grinning in the sun, while Pete was squinting against the light and smiling.
This is what you lose by drinking.
This is why it’s not worth it.
He sat there for a few minutes, breathing slowly, then he put the bottle and the photograph away and began to make dinner. It was easy to understand why the urge had strengthened since Neil Spencer went missing, and that was why it was good his involvement had come to nothing. Let the urge flare in the light of that, he thought. Let it have its moment.
And then let it die.
Eleven
That night, as always, I found it difficult to fall asleep.
Once upon a time, when I had a new book out, I would go to events and even do the occasional signing tour. I generally went by myself, and I would lie awake afterward in unfamiliar hotel rooms, missing my family. I always found it hard to sleep when Rebecca wasn’t there beside me.
It was harder still, now that she never would be. Before, if I stretched my arm out onto the cold side of a hotel bed, I could at least imagine she was doing the same back home—that we might feel the ghosts of each other. After she died, when I stretched my arm out in our own bed I felt nothing but the cold emptiness of the sheets there. Perhaps a new house and bed should have changed that, but they hadn’t. When I stretched my arm out in the old house, I had at least known that Rebecca had lain there once.
So I stayed awake for a long time, missing her. Even if moving here had been the right decision, I was aware of a greater distance between Rebecca and me than ever before. It was terrible to leave her behind. I kept imagining her spirit in the old house, staring out of the window, wondering where her family had gone.
Which reminded me of Jake’s imaginary friend. The little girl he’d drawn. I did my best to empty my head of that, concentrating instead on how peaceful it was here in Featherbank. The world outside the curtains was quiet and still. The house around me was entirely silent now.
