Even Pretty Things Rot: A dark, heart-pounding psychic thriller

by Farah Ali

  George cringed and Noah, knowing that this might be the only chance he would ever have to save Lila, charged grabbing him by the waist.

  ‘RUN LILA, RUN!’

  They crashed onto the bed, struggling, rolling onto the floor. Lila’s legs turned to jelly. She couldn’t leave her Papa.

  The shot rang out like a crack of thunder and Noah went limp. Stricken, Lila watched the light in his eyes dim and go out. Something switched on inside her. She ran for her life.

  A wild-eyed George looked up. ‘Shit. Lila come back, I’m not going to hurt you, Uncle George just wants to talk.’

  Leaving Noah where he was George chased after his niece.

  It was so dark outside, the crescent moon was hidden by clouds, but Lila, hearing Uncle George call for her, pumped her legs, her feet scraping across stones and prickly grass as she ran. Her uncle’s voice was getting closer. A horse neighed and Lila veered towards the stables. She would hide with the horses. They would protect her. Mama was dead, Maura was dead, Papa was dead. But she was a little five-year-old girl, how could she process that? All she knew for certain was that Uncle George was bad and had hurt her family, and now he was going to hurt her.

  ‘Lila! Everything is going to be okay, I promise.’

  His voice was thin and artificial and her teeth clattered as she ran into the stables, the warm, familiar odour of manure soothing her a little. All of the horses apart from the new one nickered in welcome. Whimpering, Lila undid the latch of the nearest stall, brushing past a brown and white stallion, huddling in the straw. The restless horse snorted, edging away from her, then coming closer, repeating this in the confined space until it began to stamp. Lila sensing danger stood and tried to sidle past. She would hide in another stall.

  ‘Lila?’ George was very close now. ‘Come out pretty girl.’

  The horse’s ears were pinned far back and its tail whipped from side to side. It spun, kicking at the wooden walls hard enough to shake them. Lila froze, flattening her body as the hooves stomped inches from her. She slunk to the side, but with a scream of rage the horse rose onto its hind legs and struck her.

  The world turned black.

  George hearing the commotion ran into the stables, his face grim. He tightened his grip on the revolver, but when he entered the horse bolted past him with its eyes rolling. That was when George saw Lila, on her front, her arms flung out as if she were flying. Even though he had intended to kill the child the sight of her dead wounded him. Something inside him withered and died.

  Lowering the gun he walked up to her, the tip of his boots just stopping short of her seeping blood.

  ‘Oh Lila.’

  He ran a hand through his hair barely able to understand how the evening had come to this. Guilt and self-loathing encircled him like vultures, but he couldn’t let them claim him, not yet. Not when he had to go back to the house and make it look like Noah had killed his family before shooting himself.

  With one final glance at his niece, George trudged away.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  The scene faded and Lila came to with a gasp. Maura had gone and she was alone in her old bedroom, moonlight streaming through the splintered window frame almost masking the years of decay and neglect. Shivering, she hugged herself tight, the squall of her emotions unbearable, almost overwhelming in their violence. Lila’s entire body, her entire sense of self was a raw wound without the scar tissue of time to protect her.

  Now I know. Now I see. Never had the old adage of be careful what you wish for been more appropriate. Lila felt like a stranger within her own body, a stranger within her own life. The wind whistled and she heard the front door bang. What was she supposed to do now?

  Jack. Talk to Jack. Let him be your anchor. With a mechanical nod, Lila went downstairs, her limbs numb and leaden with grief.

  ‘I thought you’d be here.’

  She looked up in a daze. It was George blocking the front door, pointing a shotgun at her head. All the farmers in Deerleap probably had shotguns, she thought. It was a handy way to dispatch of a dying animal after all. A strange sense of paralysis stole over her. No more pretence, no more lies. Just Lila and her uncle.

  ‘You killed them. I remember know.’ Her voice was calm and remote.

  George squeezed his eyes shut. ‘I thought so. I felt it in my gut. When you said what you did back in the house, I knew it. I knew you’d come here.’ He gave a deep, shuddering sigh. ‘I knew this day would come. Eventually. It’s almost a relief in a way.’

  Lila mouth was full of molasses. It was so hard to talk but she had so much to say.

  ‘That’s why you wanted me to leave Deerleap. It’s why you sent me away in the first place when I came out of the hospital. You couldn’t bear to look at me knowing what you’d done. I suppose you were afraid I’d remember.’

  George grimaced. ‘I should never have written that letter. I just...I was curious, I...’

  ‘I’m surprised you didn’t kill me when I returned. Run me over or poisoned me,’ she said dully.

  A spasm of pain rippled across his features. ‘How could you think that? I’m not a monster.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  George wiped his upper lip.

  ‘It all makes sense,’ continued Lila. ‘You’re so uncomfortable around me. You can hardly look me in the eye. I thought it was because I reminded you of Papa. I suppose that’s true. I tried so hard to win your approval, to win your love and all this time—’

  ‘Lila—’

  She touched the dent in her skull. ‘You must have been horrified when I survived. Even more so when I turned up here.’

  George’s shoulders heaved. ‘I was scared, so scared, but then you woke up and they said your memory was gone. I...I was relieved. Relieved you were alive. You might not believe me but it’s the truth.’

  ‘Do you think about what you did, to me, to my family? How you destroyed them? Ruined my health and my life?’

  George shook his head violently. ‘STOP. You don’t understand...I...I never meant to kill them or hurt you. I loved Amelia...loved you and Maura...but I couldn’t let her tell anyone...she should have listened to me...my life...everything...Daisy would have been taken away from me...oh God. It all happened so fast. I’m weak...it’s a weakness, a sickness. But I swore, after you, after what happened, I would never do it again...I stayed away from...from girls, I promised never to...you were the only one...’ His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

  ‘What about Daisy? And Maura?’

  ‘Daisy?’ He frowned, then stared, horrified. ‘What? No, never, she’s my daughter I never laid a finger on her...you don’t understand...’ He bit a calloused thumb hard enough to draw blood. ‘Daisy and Maura looked like Amelia, I could never...you were different...I don’t know...I can’t—’

  ‘You used to smoke?’

  Confused, he nodded. ‘Yeah, almost twenty a day. Daisy made me give up years ago.’

  Lila sighed. She was tired. So very tired. And she hurt. Hurt so bad.

  ‘So many mornings I’d have the same nightmare about my family and wake up with tobacco in my mouth.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘It never even entered my mind to think you had anything to do with their deaths. You’re a bad man, George, a terrible human-being. My parents trusted you and you betrayed them. You betrayed me. I was a child. A child.’

  He winced. ‘You don’t know what the years have been like for me, how lonely, how hard. That night’s haunted me ever since, I hardly sleep, every time I look at Daisy it’s like seeing Amelia. I hate myself. Every day is like a living death.’ He began to weep.

  Lila looked away in disgust as he wallowed.

  He wiped his streaming nose on his arm and looked her in the eye. ‘I’m sorry, Lila. Real sorry. It was never meant to be like this. Forgive me.’

  Taking a deep breath George lifted the shotgun and fired.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  As the gunshot erupted, shattering the night and sending a cascade of
angry crows into the sky, a man walking his dog nearby dropped the lead in surprise before racing to the nearest phone box and calling the police.

  At this time of night, when Deerleap’s police station was closed, all phone calls were re-routed to the Inspector’s house, a detail that had alarmed Jack when he first learned of it. But he’d only ever been called out overnight once since his arrival and that was to reassure a frightened elderly lady when she heard odd noises in her garden.

  Sleeping in an armchair with his broken leg raised on a footstool, Jack was deep in a nightmare about David Ash when the telephone trilled. Groggy, but relived to have escaped those decomposing hands, he answered the phone. The news about a gunshot didn’t concern him, after all it wasn’t that unusual on a farm, but when he learned it came from the abandoned Cassandra house, Jack bolted upright. It was probably nothing serious, maybe kids doing some illegal target practice, but he couldn’t shake off the drumbeat of dread in his chest.

  He couldn’t drive down there with a broken leg so he called Alika and asked her to pick him up and to wake up the others too, just in case. Jack and a grumbling Alika arrived at the old Cassandra house first and when Jack, cursing his crutches, entered the desolate building he reeled bumping into Alika who gasped.

  George was on the ground, a chunk of his head missing, a shotgun beside him. Lila sat on the rickety stairs in her pyjamas, hugging the banister and biting her palm.

  ‘Lila? Lila what happened?’ Alika stepped around George’s body and put an arm around the shaking girl.

  Jack looked down at George and then at Lila. A dreadful, dawning realisation crept over him. He pulled in his breath.

  ‘It was him, wasn’t it?’

  Lila, shifting her glazed eyes from her uncle to Jack, nodded.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Alika, puzzled.

  Jack swallowed. ‘The Cassandra case. It was George.’ As he said the words he realised he wasn’t surprised, for George had always seemed to be under immense pressure and strain. Jack remembered his warning to stay away from Lila and thought back to the day they talked as George sheared the sheep. Hadn’t there been something besides misery in his eyes when he asked Jack why he was investigating the case?

  Yes, thought Jack. There had been. And now I know what it was. Fear.

  Alika gave a low whistle. ‘No wonder he shot himself, carrying something like that inside him for eighteen years. He couldn’t face the repercussions. Oh Lila, thank goodness you’re all right.’

  Jack’s face filled with sorrow. ‘Lila? Are you hurt?’

  Tearing her eyes away from her dead uncle she shook her head and some of the tension left Jack’s shoulders.

  Turning to Alika, he whispered, ‘I think I hear the others coming. Tell them what’s happened and get someone to call Angus Brent. And we’ll need an ambulance to take the body away.’

  With one last look at George, Alika ran outside. Jack, as gently as he could, ushered Lila out of the house and towards Alika’s car as the police officers huddled and stared. He sat beside her in the backseat and brought her close.

  ‘It’s going to be okay, I promise. I wish I’d been with you when you remembered. Was it a vision?’

  Lila was silent. Then she met Jack’s kind, bewildered gaze. She knew his scepticism had gone long ago and his encounter with David Ash had dismantled his belief-system, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to tell him about the Great Stag. Maybe one day, but not today.

  She looked up at the glowing moon. ‘Yes. I remember it. I remember everything. But now I wished I didn’t.’ She began to sob and soon Jack’s t-shirt was damp with her tears.

  ‘Tell me. Tell me everything, if you can.’

  Lila wiped her eyes and in a muffled voice told him all the sordid, macabre details of that night eighteen years ago. And Jack listened, ignoring all the activity around them, tightening his grip on her, his sadness growing until he thought he would crack from the horror of it all.

  ‘I’m sorry, Lila. So sorry, from the bottom of my heart.’

  Lila stiffened and when Jack followed the direction of her gaze he understood why. Daisy had arrived in a dressing gown over her pyjamas with rollers in her hair. Lila got out of the car and reached for her cousin. Daisy brushed past heading towards the house before pivoting and coming back to Lila.

  ‘What’s going on? Jeff called he said somebody’s been shot in your old house? I got up and both you and Dad had gone.’

  Jack stood next to Lila his face grim. Word of the circumstances around George’s death was already spreading like wildfire.

  Daisy bit her lip. ‘Lila?’

  But Lila was looking over her head. Daisy turned and saw the ambulance crew wheeling a black body bag out of the house.

  Jack limped forward. ‘Daisy. I’m sorry to tell you this, but your father is dead.’

  ‘What? What the hell are you talking about? Lila?’

  Lila shut her eyes. She couldn’t stop seeing the moment George aimed the shotgun at her before placing it under his chin and pulling the trigger.

  ‘It’s true, Daisy. It’s true. George shot himself.’

  ‘You’re crazy. This is crazy. Of course he didn’t shoot himself! Why would he?’

  ‘Why don’t you come with us to the police station, we can—’

  Daisy pushed Jack to the side, ignoring him entirely. She grabbed Lila by the arm. ‘Why aren’t you saying anything? Tell me what’s going on or I swear I’ll—’

  Lila looked away. ‘George killed himself because I remembered what he did. What he did to me and my family. He killed them, Daisy. Papa didn’t do it. Your father did. He made it look like Papa did it. That’s the truth. I remember now. I remember it all.’

  A dozen emotions flitted across Daisy’s sneering face and Jack could see she was fighting with herself. Daisy swung around like she was lost. As the body was loaded into the ambulance she ran towards it at full pelt, shoving the paramedics out of the way and unzipping the thick black bag, and before Warren could drag her away she saw her father.

  Daisy’s wails ripped through the night. With a wrench she escaped from Rhea’s embrace and ran towards Lila with her teeth bared and fists raised.

  ‘This is your fault, you bitch I’m going to kill you for this, Dad’s not a murderer, you’re a liar!’

  Alika managed to intercept her before she could get to Lila, who simply stood rooted to the spot, her arms limp by her sides. It took three officers to subdue Daisy and they bundled her into Graham’s car. Lila and Jack watched Graham and Rhea drive away with Daisy in the backseat, her face in her hands.

  ‘Come on. I’m going to take you home. Alika will drive us.’ Jack ushered Lila into the car.

  ‘She’ll never forgive me,’ whispered Lila. ‘Daisy, I mean. What’s life going to be like for her when everyone finds out what George did?’ Lila paused, collecting her thoughts. She rested her head against the cool window. ‘I’ve lost her too. I’ve lost everything. And everyone.’

  Alika switched the engine on and Jack watched the Cassandra house fade into the distance. He threaded his fingers through Lila’s stiff ones.

  ‘You are the strongest person I know, Lila. You’ll get through this. And you haven’t lost everyone. I’m here for you. And Alika. And Warren, Rhea, Graham, Maggie. All of us.’

  ‘It’s true,’ murmured Alika as she steered the car down Deerleap’s narrow roads.

  Lila closed her eyes. She wished she could go to sleep and never wake up.

  ***

  Lila kneeled by Amelia’s grave brushing mud from the headstone and clearing away crispy leaves. She had done the same to Noah and Maura’s. When she was done she curled into a ball on the cold, hard ground and gazed at the soft, gentle smiles of each marble angel.

  ‘I know now. You can rest in peace. I know the truth. I’ve cleared your name, Papa. All of Deerleap Hollow knows the truth. I’m sorry it took me so long.’

  She wrapped her cardigan around her as tight
ly as she could. Winter was stalking autumn’s footsteps and Lila shivered in the biting wind. She lay there for an hour until the stiffness became unbearable. Rousing she stood, stomping her feet, trying to get the blood flowing again. The graveyard was silent. She was alone.

  Heading back towards the main path she paused and looked at her fingertips, wondering why they were tingling so. Her body grew slack and she groaned. Her eyelids fluttered. She hadn’t had a vision, or even a dream, since George’s suicide, much to her relief, for she was too fragile to cope with the darkness abounding in Deerleap. Resigned to her fate, she waited, hoping that whatever was about to present itself wasn’t too awful.

  Three hazy figures stood beyond her family’s headstones in swirling shades of grey. Noah, one hand shoved into his pocket one arm around his wife’s shoulders tilted his head and grinned. Amelia blew a kiss towards her, while Maura, forever a seven-year-old, waved, her small hands flopping from side to side. Warmth flooded through Lila’s body and she opened her arms.

  ‘Please don’t leave me alone. I don’t want to live without you.’

  Lila

  The whisper was like an embrace and tears sprang to her eyes.

  ‘Please. I need you. Please, Mama, please Papa.’

  Love you Lila be strong

  ‘Oh don’t go, don’t leave me alone.’

  Be strong

  With a discrete cough, a man with a bushy red beard and a bouquet of lilies walked past, casting a curious glance in her direction. Lila blinked and her family scattered into the wind like smoke.

  Wrapping her scarf around her neck, Lila took one long look at the headstones before she left, her throat tightening with loss. They’re at peace. Be grateful for that.

  And the ache inside of her subsided, just a little.

  Back at home she let Tulip out of his cage and the exuberant bird flew around the room before settling nearby, gently chirping as she stroked his soft feathers with a finger.

  The phone rang. Lila tilted her head and concentrated until she saw a faint outline. Jack. A smile hovered on her lips, but instead of answering she grabbed a blanket and settled by the window, resting her chin on her knees as she gazed across the trees and towards the mountain as the sun set over Deerleap Hollow.