Whistle in the Dark

by Emma Healey

  WHAT DO YOU THINK?

  VOTE

  Same old same old

  This time it could be true

  See results:

  78% Same old same old

  22% This time it could be true

  3. Fox hunters chased her

  Now that fox-hunting is semi-illegal, some people say the hunts have turned to chasing people instead, and not the cosy type with cuddly bloodhounds rather than foxhounds, where the human is allowed to put some distance between themselves and the dogs. According to theorists, the people, if they survive, are so traumatized and exhausted they don’t remember anything about the experience. If you want to know more you should check out this Tumblr with a list of all the other people who are supposed to have been chased, along with their stories.

  WHAT DO YOU THINK?

  VOTE

  Sounds weird

  I believe it

  See results:

  39% Sounds weird

  61% I believe it

  4. Stone-circle magic

  There have been lots of accounts of lost time experienced inside one of the prehistoric stone circles in the Peak District. An American tourist found that she and her husband had spent seven hours inside the circle rather than the two they’d expected and had missed lunch and dinner. Read more on the Paranormalist blog. Another wanderer, from Belgium, decided to visit the circle one morning, leaving his group of friends at their campsite. Thinking he’d been gone about an hour, he was shocked to find his friends worriedly searching for him; it was nearly sunset and they thought he must have got lost. He could only remember being inside the circle. Could Lana have wandered into this same mysterious space?

  WHAT DO YOU THINK?

  VOTE

  Too freaky

  Too possible

  See results:

  64% Too freaky

  36% Too possible

  5. She was communing with trees

  Mysterious human shapes have been found burnt into trees in the woods near where Lana went missing. They were only discovered after she was found and people in the local area have begun linking the two. The other explanation is that this is the work of art students from the nearby college, influenced by artist Ana Mendieta. See a photograph of one of her pieces: Totem Grove 1985. The students deny making the images, but they might be scared to admit to the act after the local authority promised to arrest the perpetrators for vandalism. So was it cowardly students or was Lana out there leaving the mark of her body on the bark of ancient oak trees?

  WHAT DO YOU THINK?

  VOTE

  Totally the students

  Lana fo defs

  See results:

  88% Totally the students

  12% Lana fo defs

  6. Abducted by aliens

  Things just took an extraterrestrial turn. The theory of aliens out there on the moors has been gaining traction, especially as Bonsall, a village in the Derbyshire Dales, is the UFO capital of the world, with nineteen unidentified flying objects spotted in just two years, including this video recording of what looks like an alien craft. Bonsall is at the centre of what is known as the Matlock Triangle, where there are often reports of strange lights, eerie noises and things hovering in the sky, and one of the reports comes from the night of Lana Maddox’s disappearance. Did aliens come down and kidnap her before wiping her memory and dropping her back off on Earth?

  WHAT DO YOU THINK?

  VOTE

  Makes sense

  Doesn’t seem right to me

  See results:

  28% Makes sense

  72% Doesn’t seem right to me

  7. Descent into Hell

  This idea’s based on a local legend that a Christian group is advocating on its website. The legend goes that one child in every generation gets the opportunity to go down into Hell and have a look around, see who’s down there, find out what sins they committed, all that. Then they’re supposed to come back and tell us lot on Earth what we should and shouldn’t do. Eldon Hole might be the entrance, a pothole which was once thought to be bottomless. A goose was apparently thrown down the hole (long before the RSPCA existed to intervene) and emerged days later with its wings singed by fires. So, if Lana Maddox starts threatening us with hellfire, we’ll know this was the right call.

  WHAT DO YOU THINK?

  VOTE

  Inspirational

  Delusional

  See results:

  6% Inspirational

  94% Delusional

  Do you have another theory? Share it in the comments!

  Break in hostilities

  One of the article’s links was broken, but Jen studied the photo of Ana Mendieta’s carved and burnt tree trunks, looked at artists’ impressions of the pool-dwelling mermaid, read ten other stories involving supposed satanic cults and watched the UFO video in a trance. The stone-circle theory gave her a shiver, and she thought of the earphones Lana had tied on the tree by the Nine Ladies.

  ‘Have you seen all these mad theories people have about where you went?’ Jen asked when Lana got back from the cinema. (‘The film was rubbish, I’m not letting Bethany choose next time.’)

  ‘Yeah,’ Lana said, drinking a glass of water and pouring another. ‘Dumb ideas, huh?’

  ‘None of them are true, then?’

  ‘Sure, Mum, I was abducted by aliens and then given eternal life by a mermaid.’

  Jen shrank into her seat, expecting a row, but Lana smiled and leaned towards the screen, putting an arm around her mother’s shoulders. Jen didn’t dare breathe in case she scared her away. A cold drop of water hit her on the back of the neck when Lana turned to drink again from her glass, but Jen stayed still and didn’t complain.

  ‘Weird about the Nine Ladies, don’t you think?’ Jen ventured.

  Lana shrugged. ‘Someone at school asked me whether I knew if he was going to hell. Obviously, I told him he was.’

  ‘Sweet of you,’ Jen said, risking the teasing tone.

  ‘I know. I’m a sweet, sweet person.’ She put her glass down. ‘And some stupid emo shithead wanted me to describe the satanic ritual.’

  ‘He didn’t really think you’d been involved in one?’

  ‘Of course. I told you, he’s a shithead. Have you looked at all the article’s links?’ Lana asked, bending so that their cheeks nearly touched.

  Jen closed her eyes for a second. ‘Almost all. Why?’

  ‘Just wondering how thorough your research of me is.’ She stood up then and laughed, as if they were playing a game, as if Lana had set a diverting riddle for her mother, or perhaps was performing in a murder-mystery evening and had come out of character for a moment to wink at the dinner guests.

  Feeling as though she was being steered towards something, Jen went back to the article to see what she’d missed. There was just the Hell theory to go and she was surprised and not surprised to find that the link took her straight to the home page of the New Lollards Fellowship.

  It was an ugly website, the kind that would make Jen’s colleagues grimace. Busy with social-media updates and recommended books, there was an aggressive note for non-believers at the top, which said the site wouldn’t tolerate abuse or blasphemy, and at the bottom an option to ask Google Translate to change the site into another language – anything from Afrikaans to Zulu.

  ‘This is Stephen’s church,’ Jen said. ‘Stephen from the holiday.’

  ‘I know. He’s trying to cash in or whatever, right? Cheeky fuck.’

  ‘To cash in?’ Jen scrolled down and found a picture of Stephen standing outside a rather sad-looking brick building. Our soon-to-be minister, the caption read.

  ‘Yeah. Not for like actual cash, probably, but publicity will get him more souls, right?’

  ‘Do you think he’s that cynical?’

  Lana shrugged.

  A page entitled ‘Correspondents of Hell’ told the story she’d already read in the pamphlet from St Andrew’s church, only without the bits that suggested a re
asonable explanation. At the end was a link to the local paper: Gerry and Stephen interviewed.

  Jen followed this link, too, and found a large image of the stained-glass window in St Andrew’s.

  Have You Heard of the Boy who Visited Hell?

  By Susie Betts @sbettsreporter 15 June 2015

  There are references to this local legend in St Andrew’s, Middleton, and several other churches around the district. A young boy in the Middle Ages is said to have found an entrance to Hell and to have spent time there before resurfacing with a message for his fellow Christians. But how does that relate to a recent missing-persons case?

  On 7 June this year, Lana Maddox, 15, a holidaymaker from London, reappeared after four days missing in the Derbyshire Dales. Thankfully, she was found safe and sound, if a little the worse for wear after getting lost, but it still isn’t clear exactly where Miss Maddox was, or why searchers took so long to find her.

  Now, a prominent member of the New Lollards Fellowship, which has its headquarters in Sheffield, is filling in some of the gaps as to what happened. Gerry Farnham, 68, claims Miss Maddox wasn’t in this realm at the time of searching, and that the legend, alluded to in many of the churches in this area, is based on a real place that acts as an entrance to Hell.

  Mr Farnham said, ‘That boy in the legend wasn’t the only one. My sister found the entrance, too, and went down into Hell as a child. She went missing in 1956, and she came back several months later, very changed. She, like this girl Lana, also refused to tell us what she’d seen, and denied where she’d been for a very long time. She needed guidance from our elders to recall it all.’

  Unfortunately, Miss Farnham passed away some years ago, so is unable to confirm or deny this story, but Stephen Laurie, 42, a minister-in-training at the same church, agrees. He said, ‘Lana needs to be encouraged to speak out. We could all benefit from what she knows and, equally, we might suffer if she keeps quiet.

  ‘And it’s not some mad theory. There are many accounts from children, or the guardians of children, who have taken the same journey, and also records made by the governors of schools or workhouses. There’s a lot of evidence, going back hundreds of years, if you only look for it.’

  So could this be true? The Revd Thomas Lasting, 54, Rector at St Andrew’s, doesn’t think so: ‘These sorts of myths can be found all over the world, especially in regions where there are underground caves. They are interesting for students of the arcane but mustn’t be taken literally.’

  Have you any information to add? Email Susie.Betts@pdnews.co.uk

  London Road

  Jen was left thinking who might have information to add. She suspected that Gerry Farnham’s sister had gone away to have an illegitimate baby, and she wondered if she should email Susie Betts with that theory.

  Lana had just gone upstairs to have a shower (was she having too many? Was it a sign of something?), when the phone rang. Jen jumped at the sound and was glad no one was around to see. Her hand trembled slightly when she found a plate for the piece of toast she hadn’t known she was eating and finally picked up the handset.

  ‘Hey, Jen,’ said a high, soft voice with a London accent.

  ‘Oh, hi, Bethany.’ The simple act of answering the phone to one of Lana’s friends sent her back years, back to when things were easier, happier. ‘Do you want me to get Lana for you?’

  ‘Erm. That’s okay…’ She was breathy. ‘I just wanted to check she’s all right.’

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ Jen said, having to squeeze her own voice through a suddenly tight throat. ‘She’s upstairs.’

  ‘Okay, that’s good.’

  There was a shout in the background and then Bethany’s voice, directed elsewhere for a moment: ‘Did I arks you? No. No. Well, then, don’t give me your opinion.’

  Jen held the phone away from her ear to continue munching on the toast (when had she spread marmalade on it?) until Bethany’s voice came through clearly again.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Jen asked. ‘Have you and Lana had a fight?’

  ‘No. No nothing like that. It’s just…Lana’s been getting a load of tweets from randoms lately, and then today she seemed upset and she didn’t stay for the film.’

  ‘Oh. She hasn’t said anything about that to me.’ Lana had been out for hours. Where had she been, if not at the cinema? ‘What film were you going to see?’

  ‘London Road. It’s got Tom Hardy in,’ Bethany said. ‘He’s hot,’ she added, when Jen didn’t appear to react.

  ‘And you chose it together?’

  ‘Yeah. But then she got really, like, twitchy as soon as we sat down and she didn’t want her nachos, and then when the lights went off she kind of freaked out and said she had to go.’

  ‘And you let her? I mean, she just left?’

  ‘I asked if she wanted me to come with her,’ Bethany said, managing to pronounce ‘ask’ in the usual way, now she wasn’t shouting. ‘But she said no. She was like: I just need to be outside. Something like that.’

  ‘So you stayed and watched the film?’

  ‘Yeah, though I wish I hadn’t. It’s like a weird musical about prostitutes getting murdered. Did you know?’

  ‘Well, I saw it at the theatre, before it was a film.’

  ‘And Tom Hardy’s only in it for, like, two minutes, and they made his teeth all rank. I don’t blame Lana for getting out of there.’

  ‘What time did the film start?’

  ‘Four fifteen, but I like the trailers so we went in at four.’

  ‘And Lana left almost immediately?’

  ‘Yeah. Like, less than five minutes after we sat down. It was kind of embarrassing. Especially because Marcus thought I’d arranged it so we could be alone.’

  Jen pushed her plate of toast away. Lana had got home at six thirty, which meant there were a couple of hours unaccounted for. Or, to put it another way, Lana had been missing for two hours. That sickeningly familiar unsteady feeling washed over her. She was floating up but her internal organs were rushing down, then her organs were rising but the rest of her was sinking.

  ‘Did she say where she was going?’ Jen asked, once her body had realigned itself. Had Lana left the cinema to meet someone, Jen wondered, someone she’d contacted on Twitter? Or was it the theme of the film that worried her?

  ‘She didn’t say,’ Bethany said. ‘But she’s home now. You said that, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Good. I was a bit scared, if I’m honest. I mean, creeped out, you know? It was like she’d seen something in the cinema, in the dark, that we couldn’t see. Like a ghost.’

  ‘A ghost?’

  A sigh came hissing down the line. ‘Yeah,’ Bethany said finally. ‘I’m sorry to scare you, and I feel bad, like, informing on her, you know? I mean, I shouldn’t be calling her mum, really. It’s just that…Lana’s different since you came back from half-term, since she was missing or whatever. She’s all sorry for stuff all the time. Like she’s scared I’m going to be angry with her or she’s done something wrong. Have you noticed that?’

  ‘Not really.’ Quite the opposite, Jen thought, searching for Lana’s Twitter account.

  Unwanted social-media attention

  Lana Maddox @bananalanarama

  Tweets & replies

  The #dayofjudgement is coming. Are you ready? Do you want to burn in #Hell? Ask @bananalanarama what that is like. #rapture #Armageddon

  Lana Maddox replying to @lordgodnmaster: No, don’t ask me. I don’t know anything.

  @bananalanarama You’re obviously mentally ill. I’d suggest getting help soon.

  Lana Maddox replying to @faithdustbuster: I already have a therapist, but thanks for your concern, dickhead.

  @bananalanarama Can you please please please give us details about gehenna? It is essential we know.

  Lana Maddox replying to @eclipseheaven: Can you please please please stop asking, I have nothing to tell you. It is essential you leave me alone.

  @bananalanarama Really
hope you’re ok. We are praying for you.

  Lana Maddox replying to @faithheals: The burns have healed nicely now, thanks. Praying must have worked. I also recommend Sudocrem for all those post Hell injuries.

  @bananalanarama I hope you liked what you lied about, because you WILL go to Hell for that lie.

  Lana Maddox replying to @jesusmy1friend: Thanks for the warning, but I haven’t lied. I never said I went to Hell. Stop freaking out, freak.

  @bananalanarama Come back daughter of darkness, we miss you. Sorry your ice cream melted, I’ll get you another one. Promise.

  Lana Maddox replying to @satanmysatan: Ha ha. Okay, but only if it’s strawberry cheesecake flavour. #soulsforicecream

  An Old Woman Reading

  There were pages of messages and replies. Jen was horrified by the vitriol some people had directed towards Lana, and angry that she’d been contacted by so many crazy or threatening strangers, but there was nothing that revealed where Lana had been that afternoon.

  Jen wanted to ask Lana directly, but they’d started to get on and she didn’t want to risk an argument just yet. Instead, she planned a later conversation in her head while making an elaborate dinner, taking down her old cookbooks, glued shut with kitchen grease and dust, finding a motherly sort of satisfaction in gathering the ingredients from the fridge. It was nice to feel motherly in that way, in a competent way, rather than a failing, flailing way, and it was even better when Lana wandered in, saying the kitchen smelled nice.