Lost Summer

by Stuart Harrison

  ‘Maybe there’s a way to narrow the field.’ He told her what Janice had told him about Carol Fraser and her husband leasing part of their farm.

  ‘Just because a director of the company that’s leasing her land is also on the board of Forest Havens it doesn’t mean she’s corrupt,’ Angela said.

  ‘No. But it is a pretty big coincidence. I think she’s worth another look anyway. Maybe if we dig a bit deeper Marion Crane will pop up in her past somewhere. Could be a relative or something.’

  Angela nodded and made a note. ‘I’ve also been working on this.’ She pulled a sheet of paper from the back of her pad, which Adam saw was the phone account from the lodge. ‘I’ve been calling some of these numbers, to see if they lead anywhere, but I haven’t had much luck there either.’ She started going through them. It turned out that some were to local supply businesses that dealt with the lodge, the international one was to a number in India, and the remainder were to innocuous places such as the local train station.

  ‘What about the mobile number?’

  ‘No luck. I get a recorded message saying the phone is either switched off or in an inaccessible area. There are still a couple of local numbers I haven’t tried yet.’

  Adam didn’t think she was going to find anything more there. He already knew that the one significant number on the list was the one he’d circled, and that was Angela’s own, which by her own admission Ben Pierce or one of the others had called the night they were killed. He put the list down.

  ‘Let’s concentrate on Marion Crane,’ he said.

  Angela found some cold chicken in the fridge and made a salad which they ate at the table in the kitchen. She wondered if she should ask him if he wanted to stay the night, but when she thought about how to phrase the suggestion there seemed an implication in the offer that she didn’t mean. Or did she? The night before when she had gone to his room he had practically told her that she was the reason, at least in part, that he had come back. She couldn’t believe even now that she’d had time to think about it that he had loved her so much all those years ago. To think that he had never forgotten her, that it was her image he’d sought through his relationships with other women. And yet she knew it must be true because he wouldn’t lie, she would know if he had. He’d told her the truth. She could feel it then just as she could now. There was something intense about Adam. He felt things keenly, his emotions running like a live current near to the surface so that sometimes you could almost feel what he thought like a pulse in the air around him. He lived by his feelings, as opposed to David who was more logical, who kept what he felt in check, like many men she supposed. Perhaps if he had been more like Adam they wouldn’t be in this situation because he would have talked to her instead of bottling everything up inside himself.

  She came to, realizing abruptly that she had been so engrossed in her thoughts that neither of them had spoken for some time. The light was fading. Across the table Adam was watching her with that same look he had worn the night before. There was a kind of hunger in his eyes. She could feel his desire like something tangible and she couldn’t deny that it affected her. Her pulse quickened. She could feel the flush of heat on her skin and a dull ache in her belly. It would be so easy to allow something to happen between them. How long had it been since she had felt so wanted, so needed? How long since she had felt the strength of a man’s arms around her, of another body moulded against her own? There was the temptation to offer herself as a gift. To soothe his troubled mind. He was like a man with a fever and he was burning up with the heat of a long-held desire that was bordering on obsession. She wanted to hold him, soothe him and at the same time take some physical comfort herself. She could immerse herself in heat and passion and tenderness for a time, forget everything. In a way the possibility seemed natural, something that should have happened a long time ago, as if the past remained incomplete. He watched her so seriously, his eyes drinking her in, devouring her. Her breath caught in her throat. Part of her, a tiny voice of caution in the back of her head, struggled vainly to be heard. She knew that it would happen, that she would allow it to and he could see her silent acquiescence in her eyes.

  He shifted as if to rise and as he did the sound of a car pulling into the front yard hit them like a blow. They froze and in that instant she knew it must be David. She got up to go to the door and as she did she switched on the light and the tension between them evaporated in an instant.

  At the front door she watched as a van backed into the lane and drove away. She felt Adam behind her and hugged her arms about herself as a cold wind blew into the house.

  ‘Just somebody turning around,’ she said. Her voice sounded unnatural.

  ‘I should be going anyway.’

  She stood aside to let him pass. His car was in the garage. She told him somebody from town had come by and checked it that afternoon. ‘He said you can drive it. Just don’t overdo it. He did a temporary repair on the window.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  He raised a hand and she waited until he had driven away before she went back inside. The house was silent. There was a bolt on the top of the front door that was never used. If David came home during the night and the door was bolted he wouldn’t be able to get in, short of breaking a window, which she supposed would be easy enough to do if he was that determined. Nevertheless she drew the bolt. It was symbolic of her need to be alone, of a distance she was putting between herself and David. Right now she didn’t want to see him, she didn’t want to confront him with the questions that filled her mind. It was, she acknowledged, a shift in her thinking because now she no longer truly knew what she believed.

  She wondered about that call the night David had gone out. He must have gone to the lodge, she acknowledged. But he had never mentioned it. And that same night three lads had been killed.

  She went along the passage to the stairs. The study door was half-open and as she passed by she reached inside to flip on the light. David was there. Not physically, but his presence was etched everywhere. In the prints on the wall, the books, the papers and bills scattered on the desk. Even in the empty glass that smelled of whisky. She was tired. She turned out the light and went upstairs.

  It took her a long time to sleep. She lay in the darkness and allowed her mind to drift. She envisaged a sunny day, the willow by a bend in the river, and a girl laughing. It was herself, though younger, paddling barefoot while Adam with his serious, dark eyes watched her from the grass on the bank. She recalled the pulse and surge of her emotions, the strange thrill of power she’d felt at the effect she knew she had on him. The beginnings of the discovery of her womanhood. Briefly she yearned for the return of something that was long since gone. It was, she thought, life’s greatest irony that the most precious state of all, that of innocence, has no value at all until it has been irrevocably lost.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Mad Mary. That’s what people called her. She couldn’t tell anybody about the Shapeshifter. Even if there were anybody to tell, nobody would believe her. Mad Mary. Don’t listen to her, she’s crazy. Even Nick told her it was in her head. But this time it wasn’t. She knew it wasn’t. She had seen it. It had a shifting face that turned from being a person into a hideous creature with a grinning, drooling mouth. Its eyes were red and puckered.

  Christ! Stop thinking about it! Stop it! That’s what it wanted because then she got scared and that’s what it liked. Didn’t she even know that much? Was she that stupid? She ought to fill her mind with other things, that’s what. She ought to think of trees. Big leafy trees like the ones in the wood. She knew a place where there was a purple beech that stood more than a hundred feet high. Its branches skirted the ground and made a huge cavern-like space inside. Safe from the outside world. If she looked skywards the leaves were green on the underside, and the light filtered softly through them. She felt safe there. She hoped it wasn’t one of the trees they cut down when they built the
holiday camp.

  I’m listening to you, Mary, you mad bitch. I’m listening to all your mad thoughts.

  Snigger, snigger. Chortle, chortle. Stop thinking about fucking trees. Think about the Shapeshifter instead. Look, isn’t it pretty? Picture it, Mary.

  It wants to touch you.

  It wants to taste you. It’s going to take a big bite out of you and chew you up into small pieces.

  SHUT UP YOU BASTARD!

  That’s not very nice, Mary. I don’t like you to shout at me. It isn’t polite. I’m going to punish you for that soon. Very soon.

  Mary screwed her eyes shut tight until it hurt, until lights exploded in the dark. Sometimes that kept the voice out, for a little while at least. It laughed as it retreated. She knew it was only hiding, burrowing into nooks and crannies in her mind. It didn’t seem to mind going away because it knew that it wouldn’t be long now.

  It’s nearly time, Mary. Nearly.

  The voice faded and died on a lingering echo. Once she’d thought the voice couldn’t hurt her, but she’d been wrong, she knew that now. The Shapeshifter and the voice were really the same. The voice wasn’t only in her head any more. Her madness had made it real. It had been born in her mind, but it had frightened her and it was her fear that made it real, made it grow, so the voice was both inside and outside of her now. Soon the Shapeshifter would come for her and she wouldn’t be able to escape, it would do terrible things to her and laugh while she screamed and nobody would ever be able to help her.

  Oh, yes yes yes. Terrible things. Scream. Scream all you like, Mad Mary. You slut. You deserve what you’re going to get. You dirty little bitch. You’ve got this coming. Yes yes yes.

  She opened her eyes. Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow. She paused, unable to recall how the rest of the rhyme went. So she said the first line in her mind again. Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow. She repeated it over and over again, and the repetition made the voice go quiet. It couldn’t talk while she filled her mind with stuff like this. She looked at the table by the bed. There was a bottle of pills there. Her medication. If she took them, six a day, she would feel better. That’s what the doctors said. The voice would go. Maybe it would, but she would shake and drool and feel like she was trapped in a cotton wool dream, her movements dulled, her senses coated in tar. It was like being half dead, and one day she knew if she took the medication she would never wake up. She would be trapped like a zombie for ever, and then the voice would come for her. She thought maybe it was a trick, it was what the voice really wanted. So she didn’t take the pills.

  Take them, Mary.

  NO! Shut your mouth. She lay down on the bed. It was cold and dark, other than the soft, red light that flowed into the corners of the room from the lamp. A breeze through the window made her shiver, and made the light pulse like a beating heart, like blood.

  Where was Nick? Why did he always leave her alone these days? But she was glad he wasn’t there in a way. He had changed, she didn’t like him that much any more.

  She felt under the pillow. Her fingers closed on the cold metal of the gun barrel. It felt alien. Hard and cold, but it gave her some comfort to know it was there. She withdrew her hand and closed her eyes. She was tired now, and the voice had settled to a whispering background hiss. Sometimes bubbling when it laughed, mocking her, but she could stand that. She closed her eyes, and weariness overtook her. She was so tired. Being afraid made her tired. She slept.

  Once she had been a happy, bright schoolgirl. She had grown up on a farm between Castleton and Carlisle. She’d gone to school at St Agnes. She’d ridden her horse, played the violin, had planned to go to university. When she was seventeen the voice had first started speaking to her, and afterwards her life had slowly fractured, splintered, eventually disintegrated. Her family hadn’t understood and now she rarely heard from them. They had written her off. They couldn’t see that she was changing into another person, not the Mary they knew, and that there was nothing she could do about it. Her parents hadn’t understood why she drank until she was almost senseless, why she’d started taking drugs. Alcohol and drugs dulled the horror of what was happening as she slowly lost herself, but she couldn’t explain. Every time she tried to talk, the voice in her head screamed at her so loud it hurt her. Only drinking or smoking dope, or eventually shooting up, soothed it. She left home. She lived in filthy places, and fucked people for money. Anybody. Old men. Men who stopped in cars. Youths who laughed and jeered at the things she did for five pounds. A lot of the time she was out of it, barely knew what was happening to her. She didn’t care. She cut herself and wanted to die.

  Nick told her that they had met in a pub in Carlisle when she was drunk. She didn’t remember. He said he had beaten up somebody who was trying to drag her outside. Her parents were horrified when she moved in with him, though by then they had almost reached the limit of their horror. But it was Nick who had taken her back to hospital. She had stayed there for three months and they had told her she was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, had got her on medication. When she came out she came to live at the cottages. After a year, when she told Nick she wasn’t going to take the medication any more he hadn’t argued. Sometimes she thought she loved him. Other times, in her half-lucid moments, she knew they merely existed together, two misfits, two loners. He had nightmares. He was sullen and moody and they didn’t talk much. Sometimes he got angry with her and occasionally he punched her and then she hated him.

  They never went anywhere together. But that wasn’t his fault. She didn’t like to go out. She was afraid to go anywhere, though she wanted to leave the cottages. She thought they were haunted. By the past. By ghosts. Nick said that soon they would leave. She knew that in a way he didn’t want to because he’d grown up here, though she suspected his childhood had not been a happy one. He didn’t talk about it and she didn’t ask. She had her own problems.

  She woke not knowing how long she had been asleep. At first she lay still on the bed, breathing normally with her eyes closed, trying to feel if there was anyone in the room with her. She couldn’t hear anything, and she couldn’t sense anything. The voice in her head was quiet. In fact it was silent, and suddenly Mary was filled with a deep rushing dread that threatened to engulf her. The silence overwhelmed her. She felt so alone. Like she was standing in a great limitless dark space and there was nobody near; no sound, no light, just nothingness and that was all there would ever be. While she had slept it had taken her and brought her to this place and left her here. She was absolutely, completely alone. The absence of sound, of even the voice of her madness that at least she was used to terrified her. Fear rose in her throat and threatened to gag her.

  She opened her eyes, and the scream that had risen died on her lips. There was light. Soft, red, comforting. She was in her room. She looked warily towards the door, but it was closed the way she had left it. Slowly she raised herself on one elbow and looked about the room. Nick wasn’t there. Nobody was there. She started to breathe a little easier. The voice remained silent, and this fact disconcerted her. She was so used to it; even when it wasn’t shouting in her brain, trying to drown out her own voice, it was there, whispering in the background, ever present like the constant movement of air through trees. But now it was gone and the empty space it left behind was unfamiliar. She glanced at the table to see if her pills were there, thinking that perhaps she had taken them and had forgotten. But the pills were where she’d left them, and when she held out her hand it wasn’t shaking, and when she felt her face it wasn’t wet with her own drool.

  She rose from her bed and stood uncertainly on the bare floorboards. She wasn’t sure what she should do. She trembled, and goosebumps rose on her arms. The window was open and the flimsy curtain fluttered in a freezing breeze. She went towards it and outside the moon suddenly appeared through a break in the cloud. A movement caught her eye. It was close to the wall of the last cottage, something dark and shapeless in the shadows. Fe
ar leapt in her breast, and she stifled a gasp. Then it moved into the grey light of the moon and she saw that it was Nick. He paused briefly, looking one way and then the other as if he was searching for something. She wanted to call out his name but stopped herself before a sound escaped her lips. Instead she watched as he went towards the meadow and from the way he often stopped and looked around, from the way he moved with deliberate stealth, she knew he was searching for something. It was as if he was stalking.

  Suddenly, a rustle in the undergrowth beneath her window made Mary look down. The moon vanished again and darkness returned, but not before she saw something down there. A shifting shape. She couldn’t see it clearly now, but it was moving. She sensed rather than saw a change in the texture of the darkness every now and then as it slipped away from the cottages. She realized that it was getting closer to Nick. Fear paralysed her, freezing her to the spot. She couldn’t move or make a sound. A shiver ran the length of her body as a blast of freezing air rippled over her skin. The clouds parted briefly, and the moon illuminated the meadow again. Nick was standing still, looking towards the woods. He held something in his hand. A shotgun she thought. Something emerged from the trees behind him and changed shape, becoming a man on two legs. The shape moved swiftly and silently and in the last second before it reached Nick, Mary opened her mouth and screamed.

  Nick turned, startled, and started to raise his shotgun, but then a cloud passed over the moon and everything was plunged into darkness. She thought she heard a scuffle, a soft thump as her scream died in her throat. Then there was only silence before the moon reappeared to reveal the empty meadow.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  While Adam ate breakfast in his room he watched the TV reports on local and national news. Following the story in the Courier’s special edition the previous evening linking the remains found in Cold Tarn to the disappearance of Meg Coucesco in August 1985, the police were admitting there was certain evidence to support this theory. The chief inspector holding the press conference remained tight-lipped about the precise nature of the evidence, even when a reporter referred to claims in the Courier that jewellery found with the remains matched items discovered in the vehicle of a man police questioned over the disappearance seventeen years earlier.