by Melody John
‘You can trust me,’ Dmitri said.
‘Fake! Fake! Fake!’
David appeared in the classroom doorway. He was leaning against the wall, and smiling. ‘Hey, Lizzie.’
‘David,’ I tried to say, but no words came out.
David smiled and looked at Dmitri. They gazed at each other, and I felt a great sense of urgency, as though I were just about to remember the thing I had to do, the reason why I was standing here in front of everybody. Just one second more, and I would know. I would know everything.
But there was a dark shadow growing at the back of the classroom. It grew and grew, and unfurled its wings, and it was dark and terrible, and it paralysed me. The fear of it crawled down my throat and knotted itself around my stomach. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t look away.
‘Lizzie,’ the darkness said.
I tried to speak, tried to scream. But I had no voice left.
*
I came awake with a start.
The van was silent, apart from a few snuffling, snoring noises coming from the front seat. It was still dark; the street lamps outside still illuminated the street with their sugary orange glow, but the sky was black.
I could make out a vague shady heap at the end of the seat that was Laura tucked up in her quilt. I eased myself up and peeked over the back seats. David and Dmitri were fast asleep, Dmitri resting his head on David’s chest, his sandy hair falling over his forehead, and David’s arm draped over Dmitri’s shoulder. One of David’s feet had stretched out of the quilt, and his bare toes were white in the shadows. Dmitri’s wings were still tucked closely onto his back, as they always were, but they had relaxed a little in sleep, and the tip of his left wing had unfolded enough to brush against David’s outstretched foot.
I looked away quickly, again experiencing that guilty feeling that I was spying on something private. I settled back down again in my quilt, and closed my eyes. My pillow still smelled of weed, but I was too sleepy to care very much, so I lay half on my back, my face turned towards the ceiling so I wouldn’t have to breathe it in. I stretched down my arm and felt about for my bag on the floor, then fumbled inside it for my phone. I pulled it out and checked the time: 2:41.
I yawned, and drew my knees up to my chest, and fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When I woke again, daylight was pouring in through the van windows onto my face. I groaned and wriggled away back into the shade.
‘Lizzie?’ Dmitri said.
‘Mmm.’
‘You awake?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Ugh,’ came David’s voice. ‘Whose bright idea was it to sleep in a van?’
‘Um, yours?’ Dmitri said.
‘Well in that case, I’m a moron.’ He groaned, and there was a shuffling noise. ‘God, my back hurts. I feel like an old man.’
‘You are an old man.’
‘Pff, an old man who can wrestle you into the sea.’
‘In your dreams, old man.’
I heard the seats creak as David sat up. He yawned. Then he said, ‘Where’s Laura?’
‘Mmph?’ I opened my eyes and squinted down. The other end of the seat was empty, with Laura’s quilt rucked up and empty on the floor. ‘Dunno.’
‘Ted?’ David called. ‘Ted.’
There was a long, garbled groaning noise from the front seats.
‘Ted,’ David called again. ‘Come on, man. Did you hear Laura go out somewhere?’
The groaning noise came again, then Ted hauled himself up into a sitting position. His hair was sticking up in all directions, and he scratched his chin, yawning widely. ‘Wha’?’
‘Laura,’ David repeated patiently. ‘Did you hear her go out anywhere?’
‘Nah.’ He blinked slowly. His eyes focused on me, and he frowned. ‘Yeah, but she’s here, in’t she?’
‘Ted,’ I said, ‘I’m not Laura. I’m Lizzie.’
Ted yawned again, and collapsed back onto the seat. ‘Goblin men,’ he mumbled. ‘We must not look at goblin men, we must not buy their fruits. Who knows upon what soil they fed those hungry, thirsty roots.’
‘Oh wait,’ Dmitri said. ‘I know that. It’s from Doctor Who.’
Ted groaned loudly. ‘Oh, my god. Save me from lower mortals.’
‘It is too from Doctor Who,’ I said, feeling that Laura hadn’t been wrong when she said that Ted was too Kerouac for her tastes. He seemed like a right pretentious git. Even when he was singing the Spongebob Squarepants theme song, it was done with a kind of hipsterish affectation.
‘It may have been used in Doctor Who to introduce people to high culture,’ Ted said, ‘but it’s actually from a poem by Christina Rosetti, who I’m sure would be rolling in her grave at the combined ignorance shown here.’
‘Ugh, shut up,’ I said, and rolled over and buried my face in the pillow, then came up choking and breathless. ‘Oh my god, my pillow stinks.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Ted said. ‘Jamie’s gone as well.’
‘What?’ I sat up.
‘Yeah.’ Ted looked over at the passenger seat as though expecting Jamie to miraculously appear there. ‘Like… you know.’
‘Where’s he gone?’
‘I don’t know.’
I looked over at David. He was frowning a little. ‘It’s a bit weird they didn’t tell us where they were going. No one’s got a text from them, have they?’
There was a moment where we all scrambled for our phones. No one had any texts; David had a missed call, but that turned out to be his service provider telling him about a great offer on his tariff.
‘Eh, they’ll be back,’ Ted said. ‘There’s nowhere to go here anyway.’
I supposed that was true. The road that the van was parked on seemed to go on for ages, just houses and houses, and then the park stretching away into the distance. Laura’s phone rang and rang until it went to voicemail, and it turned out that Jamie had left his phone in the car.
‘Are they on the beach?’ Dmitri suggested.
I fumbled under the seat for my shoes and shoved them on, then stumbled out of the van. The air was freezing cold, and I hadn’t realised just how stuffy and airless the van had become. I ran across the road to peer over the railings. The beach was empty, the sand white in the cold morning light, and draped with black seaweed. The sea hushed and sighed, the water a dark grey that looked bottomless.
‘She’s not there.’ David and Dmitri had followed me, and David was looking up and down the street.
I wrapped my arms around myself against the wind. ‘I don’t like this.’ I didn’t mean for my voice to sound so pathetic, but I was worried. ‘I don’t understand why she would leave the van.’
‘We don’t know why,’ Dmitri said comfortingly. ‘She must have had a good reason. She’ll probably be back soon.’
‘Yeah, and then we can make ourselves feel better by yelling at her.’ David touched my arm briefly. ‘It’s probably nothing to worry about.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, trying to smile.
We went back to the van. ‘Not there?’ Ted asked.
David shook his head.
‘No Jamie either?’
‘No,’ I said.
I sat on the seat, and David and Dmitri still stood outside. It was cold, but the atmosphere in the van was heavy, and I could still smell the faint lingering fug of weed. It was making me feel a bit sick. ‘But what are we going to do?’ I asked, trying not to sound as panicky as I felt.
David and Dmitri looked at each other.
‘We’ll wait here,’ Dmitri said. ‘See if she comes back. If she’s not here in an hour or so, some of us will go into the town and look for her.’
‘I can’t help but notice that you’re forgetting Jamie,’ Ted said in a patronising tone. ‘Don’t forget that he’s missing as well.’
Yeah, but Jamie’s an obnoxious tool. I didn’t say it, but it was clear from the others’ expressions that that was what they were thinking as wel
l.
Ted snorted. ‘Jeez, remind me not to have you guys for friends.’
‘Jamie isn’t our friend,’ Dmitri said. ‘Laura is.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
They didn’t come back.
We sat in the stuffy van, the atmosphere seeming to grow even more oppressive around us with each passing second. Ted turned on the radio after a bit, and we sat and listened to Classic FM. I closed my eyes and tried to fight the rising nausea.
After about forty minutes, Dmitri said sharply, ‘Wait.’
I opened my eyes and scrambled upright. ‘What? Where?’
‘There’s Jamie,’ he said, pointing.
I looked wildly after his pointing finger, and could just about make out a figure ambling towards the van, coming up in the direction from the town. ‘What? Are you sure?’
‘That’s not him,’ David said.
‘It is him,’ Dmitri said firmly.
I glanced back at him. He met my eyes and raised his eyebrows slightly. I looked away again.
The figure took ages to reach the van, but when it got closer, we could all see that it was Jamie. He didn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry; he was shambling along with his head down and his hands in his pockets. When he was still about twenty feet from the van, I lost patience. ‘Oh for God’s sake—’ I flung open the side door and hopped out. ‘Jamie!’
He looked up as casually as though nothing was wrong. ‘Yeah?’
‘Where’s Laura?’
‘Laura?’ He shrugged. ‘How the hell should I know? Mouthy bint’s probably off on her soapbox somewhere in town.’
I was so angry I could hardly speak. ‘She’s missing! Where did you go?’
He shrugged. ‘Just out for a walk. Why? There’s not a law against that, is there? Is it a crime?’
‘No, but it was dumb of you to leave your phone behind,’ David said, getting out of the van behind me. ‘What if something had happened?’
Jamie didn’t look as though he much cared. ‘Whatever, man. I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a walk, but I got lost in the town. And now I really need to sleep, okay?’
‘No!’ I said. ‘Are you sure you didn’t see her?’
‘Yeah, of course,’ he snapped.
‘Was she still in the van when you went out for your walk?’ I demanded.
Jamie looked at me. Then his gaze slid past me, onto the wall of the house behind me. He looked away immediately, glared at me, looked away, and pushed past us and climbed back into the front seat of the van.
‘All right, mate?’ Ted asked.
‘Peachy,’ Jamie said. He grabbed his quilt and rested his head against the window and closed his eyes.
I turned around and looked at the wall behind me where Jamie had been staring. It looked normal, just old red brickwork with the grey cement crumbling away in a few places.
Dmitri inhaled sharply. ‘Look.’
David and I moved in closer, looking at where Dmitri was pointing. There was a faint dark brown stain on the bricks. It was almost camouflaged, but Dmitri’s finger pointed at the rule of cement underneath that line of bricks. Stark against the dusty grey were some dark red spots of something that looked scarily like blood.
‘It’s just dirt,’ I said, feeling as though I was moving in a dream.
‘Yeah,’ David said quickly. ‘It’s just dirt.’
Dmitri said nothing. He touched the red stains with his finger, and drew in a deep breath.
I looked at David, trying to squash down the fear that stung like bile in the back of my mouth. ‘We’ve got to go look for her.’
He nodded. ‘But she might try to come back to the van. Someone should stay here.’
We looked back at Ted and Jamie. Jamie looked as though he was already asleep, and Ted was yawning and scratching his chin.
‘Leave them,’ Dmitri said. He threw me my coat, and then climbed out with his and David’s jackets.
I put my coat on gratefully as Dmitri told Ted that we were going into town to look for Laura, and to phone us if there was any trouble.
‘Right-ho,’ Ted said.
‘And no more smoking!’ I added. ‘If you’re going to smoke, do it outside so you don’t gas the rest of us to death.’
‘You won’t even be here,’ Jamie said, still with his eyes closed. ‘So it doesn’t matter where we do it.’
‘It stinks up the van!’
He groaned and rolled over. ‘Whatever, grandma.’
I joined David and Dmitri, and we hurried down the street. ‘God, I could slap Jamie,’ I said.
‘He’d probably enjoy it,’ Dmitri said.
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘You know, not that we’re criticising someone’s kinks,’ David says. ‘If they’re into that, good for them.’
Dmitri laughed. I didn’t.
David nudged me. ‘Come on, Lizzie. Laura will probably be in town, and we’ll yell at her and then go home and tell our grandchildren about what a terrible anti-climax all this was.’
I managed to smile. ‘And your grandchildren will say “Ew, granddad, no more about your climaxes, please, we’ve heard enough, TMI”.’
That made both of them laugh, and I felt a tiny glimmer of hope as we got closer to the town. It was a nice town, a bit grubby and touristy, with lots of little shops selling engraved shells and wooden boats, and with creaking stands full of sun-faded seaside-themed postcards outside. But there was a place selling fish and chips near the seafront, and they smelled so good that I stopped and brought three paper cones full of chips.
‘Chips for breakfast,’ David observed. ‘How hipster we are.’
The chips were piping hot, and I burned my tongue on the first one, but they were really tasty—crispy on the outside and white and fluffy on the inside. We walked along the tiny high street, eating chips and licking the grease off our fingers. It was still early, and only a few shops were properly open. A car occasionally whizzed past, and the grey sky was filled with white seagulls mewing and wailing overhead. For a moment, I was able to forget why we were there, and pretend that we were just there on a day trip, my friends and me celebrating the end of term.
But Laura wasn’t there. So few of the shops were open that it was very easy to check who was in them, and even when we split up and worked up our way up and down the street, and asked the shopkeepers if they’d seen her, we didn’t find her. Laura just wasn’t there.
I tried to stay positive, but when we met together at the bottom of the high street by the chip shop, both David and Dmitri were looking as worried as I felt. We headed back to the van, and I hoped desperately that she would be there, waiting for us when we got back.
But she wasn’t. Jamie was still asleep, and Ted was flicking through a book that he’d brought. ‘No luck?’ he asked absently as we opened the van door.
‘No,’ I snapped. His careless attitude made me want to scream at him.
‘Right,’ David said. ‘Okay.’ We all looked at each other for a moment. David took a deep breath. ‘We should go to the police.’
‘She won’t be a missing person, though,’ Dmitri said. ‘You have to wait twenty-four hours until the police can do anything.’
‘Oh god.’ I tried to push down the tears that I could feel rising up. ‘What are we going to do? We were only meant to be here for the night. David, you’ve got your train to catch.’
‘Screw the train,’ David said angrily. ‘Obviously I’m not going to swan off and leave you guys here.’
‘But there’s nothing we can do! Even if we do wait here for twenty-four hours, all we can do is just tell the police at the end of it and leave it up to them!’
‘Guys, be quiet,’ Jamie muttered. ‘She’s fine.’
‘What?’ I rounded on him. ‘What do you mean, she’s fine?’
He yawned. ‘I mean, she’s probably fine. This town is like the arse end of the country. They probably haven’t even had a hit-and-run in twenty years.’
‘Jamie, shut up,’ Dmitri sai
d curtly.
Jamie grumbled into his pillow.
It was too cold to stay outside the van, so we ended up getting back inside. I chewed on my thumb and stared out of the window, a horrible, heavy feeling of hopelessness twisting in my stomach. I tried to think of all of the reasons that Laura would have left the van. The toilet? There was a scummy little block of toilets near the steps down to the beach, but we’d looked in there on our way down to town. And even so, she would have come back to the van.
