“If they find me they’ll drag me back in chains. I’m never going back, you hear? Never!” His voice was tinged with desperation. Alex struggled, but he easily held her still. “If I let go, will you promise to be quiet?” he whispered in her ear.
The bloody hell she would. She had to help Sanderson, however much a potential lowlife he might be. He was one like her, flung down unaware into a new and frightening existence, and maybe they could help each other find some way back, even if he didn’t seem to think so. Back to normality and a life where the road in front of her was paved instead of being a dirt track. She tried to heave against him, attempting to buck him off. He was hurting her, his hand pinching tight around her mouth. Alex tried to bite him, wanting to open her mouth and yell until the soldiers found them. They could cart this huge oaf away into captivity for all she cared.
“Like that, is it?” Matthew rolled on top of her. Alex could barely breathe, protesting squeaks escaping from under his hard hand.
*
She refused to speak to him once he let her go, shrugging off his helping hand when they made their way back down to the cave. Her ribs hurt like hell after his ungentle treatment, and she was still clutching her phone, the other hand stuffed into her pocket. He’d let her raise her head enough to see when they took Sanderson away, his agonised screams as he was dragged across the ground echoing in the wind.
Alex brushed a hand across her face, blinking back on tears that made her vision blur. She didn’t want to be here, please let her wake up, please let this be a dream! She frowned down at her phone and texted a message to John. “In the cave,” she wrote. Maybe he could somehow push himself through time to find her. When Alex pressed the send button, the phone surged with pulsating energy, red-hot against her skin, and she dropped it with a muffled expletive. Matthew bent down and picked it up, handing it to her before he busied himself coaxing life back into the little fire.
“I’m sorry that I had to hurt you, but there was nothing we could do for him.” A tremor ran through him as he stared off towards the south. “But there was plenty they could do to me.”
The thought obviously had him sick with fear, so Alex gave him a nod and sat down, stretching her legs in front of her. Her brain was turning somersaults, and she’d managed to scratch the scab on the forehead open, a trickle of blood oozing its way downwards. She was exhausted and very, very hungry. Never get back, Sanderson had said, there was no way back. Oh God; she bit down hard on her lower lip to stop herself from bawling. Isaac wouldn’t even remember her, growing up alone in the world without father or mother.
The phone beeped to inform her it had delivered the previous message. It made Alex tingle all over, imagining electronic sound waves bouncing back and forth across the fourth dimension, time. Maybe those wormhole things did exist, random points in universe connecting distant times and places. She wrote a goodbye message to John and sent it off. The mobile vibrated, there was a sizzling sound and the display went black.
Chapter 4
“Impossible,” Diane said, “people just don’t disappear.” John scrubbed his hands through his hair and shook his head in agreement.
“I know. But he did.” He nudged the rucksack with his toe. “Look at it, as if it’s been in a fire or something. Hit by lightning, hey?” He gave a shaky laugh. “Maybe that’s what happened, a freak storm of such strength that it sort of buried them both or something.”
“On the same day? Two people?” Diane snorted with disbelief. “There must be a logical explanation.”
John hitched his shoulders and yawned. Driving back had been a trial, his eyes blinking shut with a weariness that was more driven by terror than exhaustion. The man had disappeared before his eyes; the expression on Sanderson’s face as he was sucked into the abyss was one he’d never forget. It must have been the ground splitting open and the poor bloke had fallen into a crevice or something. But the light, the noise…Diane handed him a cup of tea and sat down beside him.
“Of course there’s an explanation,” she said, green eyes meeting his.
“I’m all ears. I can’t wait to hear how you explain all of this.”
“I’ll have to see it first, won’t I?”
John yawned again and nodded. “We have to call the police. They might be able to find them.” He made a face, a tremor running through him at the thought of Alex lying dead and crushed under tons of moving earth. He felt nauseous with loss and shoved the dawning understanding that she might in fact be gone, for good, away from him.
*
Next day, Diane looked at the road and then back at John, two brows striving towards her hairline.
“It’s just as it always was.”
“I know, I told you, didn’t I?” No wonder the police had been irritated; nothing here corroborated his story. He stared at the bucolic surroundings, at the undulating hills and the straight, undamaged stretch of road that flowed from the crossroads and onwards. Yesterday hadn’t happened. He must have imagined it, but he knew that he hadn’t. He crawled with fear. What the fuck was going on?
Diane gave him a quizzical look and got out of the car.
“Well, come on, now that we’re here we might as well take a look.” She tied her trainers and stood waiting for him. At first he was incapable of getting out, his body trembling with remembered fear. Diane tilted her head and studied him, her face pulling together in concern.
“It’s alright,” she said, jumping on the tarmac. “Look, it’s perfectly safe.” John edged towards her, trying to control the shivers in his legs.
“Her car was standing over there.” John waved his hand towards the hillside. Nothing wrong with it, according to the tow truck driver. Diane began to walk in serpentines up the slope, her eyes on the ground. He followed her with reluctance.
“Have you tried her phone?” Diane asked over her shoulder.
John looked at her with exasperation. Of course he’d tried her phone.
“Try again, if she’s anywhere close we might hear it.”
He stuck his hand in his pocket, stopped by her soft exclamation of surprise. She sank to her knees beside a large outcropping of stone.
“What?” John scrambled in his haste.
“It’s still red Converse, isn’t it?” Diane used a stick to lift something off the ground and turned to face him. The blood drained away from his head so fast it left him dizzy: one burnt red Converse, the sole a melted mass, the canvas black from toe cap to heel.
“Oh God,” he said, his voice shaking.
“It could be someone else’s,” Diane said. “We don’t know that it’s hers.”
He nodded, avoiding her concerned eyes. It was Alex’s, and whatever had happened to her must have been pretty awful to leave her shoe so badly burnt.
“Can lightning do that to you?” he said.
She shrugged in an I-don’t-know gesture. “I’ve heard of people being killed by lightning, but I’ve never heard of someone being obliterated by it.”
He held the shoe gingerly, staring at it in an attempt to find a connection to Alex. Maybe if he concentrated hard enough, the shoe would feed him some kind of image. He heard himself how ludicrous that sounded. Not even Mercedes, Alex’s long gone mother, would have believed in something that silly. Or maybe she would, he shuddered, remembering a night several years ago when Mercedes had been well into her cups.
Very strange, was Mercedes, an intense woman who mostly seemed to paint – weird pictures heaving with contained colours. A small canvas signed by Mercedes hung by their bed, and he generally avoided looking at it, feeling a disquieting tug in the pit of his stomach when he got too close. Mercedes had disappeared three years ago, coincidentally the same day Alex resurfaced after three months of unexplained absence in Italy. And now…he bit down on his lip.
“What?” Diane said.
“I was just thinking…poor Magnus, hey?”
“Yeah,” Diane sighed and looked away. “Poor, poor Magnus. First his wife, then his da
ughter.”
“He knew.” John chucked the shoe to the side.
“Who knew what?” Diane sounded confused.
“Him: Sanderson. He knew about Mercedes having disappeared. He said so, just before he…well…oh God…” John pressed his hands flat against his legs to contain the trembling that surged through him. People just don’t evaporate into nothingness, he reminded himself, there’s always a logical explanation. In Mercedes’ case maybe her brain caved in, making her throw herself off some crag or other. And in Alex’s case – well, he had no idea.
“He did?” Diane shrugged. “Not that strange, is it? It was all over the papers for a couple of weeks.”
John’s phone beeped and he pulled it out, his heart lurching when he saw the sender ID.
“From her,” he said and opened the text. “In the cave. A.” He stumbled to his feet. “There’s a cave, somewhere here there’s a cave.” Maybe she was hurt, her foot burnt off her, and if he didn’t find her she’d die of exposure and thirst and gangrene or something.
Diane looked at him as if he’d gone mad, but stood up and began to beat her way up the increasingly steeper inclination. Flies buzzed, clouds of butterflies rose disturbed as they waded through the gorse and heather.
It was well into the afternoon before John found the opening, almost invisible behind a creeper of some kind. Diane came over to join him and they peered into the gloom.
“No one’s been here recently,” Diane said.
John agreed, pushing his way into the small, enclosed space. It smelled of damp and a vague scent of mulch. Heaped debris, twigs, leaves, the carcass of what looked like a desiccated hedgehog lay in the opening. John did a slow turn. In one corner something caught his eye and he moved closer. Very faintly on the uneven wall he could make out words, written in faded capitals with some kind chalky rock. “ALEX WAS HERE.” An arrow pointed downwards and he dug at the earth, ignoring Diane’s worried voice.
“Jesus,” he groaned, staring down at what he had uncovered. “What the hell is this?” A small, rectangular object lay wrapped in what looked like a faded cloth pouch.
“Outside,” Diane said. “We can’t see anything in here.”
John followed her out into the sun and closed his fingers round a rusted metal object, still a clear red in streaks. It was her phone, and when he lifted it up to show Diane, bits and pieces flaked off to crumble into rusty dust.
“What has happened to her? How can you logically explain this?”
She sat down beside him. “I can’t. I have absolutely no idea.”
They sat in silence on the hillside.
“She just sent me a text,” John said, shaking his head. “How can she have done that if her phone lies buried in a cave?” Diane gave a helpless shrug. “And look at it,” he continued, “it looks as if it’s been in the ground for centuries.”
His phone beeped again. A new text. From her. Impossible, he thought, feeling sweat break out along his spine. “Take care of Isaac. Love u. A.”
John lay back against the ground and closed his eyes to stop the spinning sensation in his head. Alex was here, she even texted him – from a phone that lay in pieces in his hands. People don’t just disappear, he told himself, and then he saw Sanderson drowning in that funnel of light. His hand groped for something, someone. Diane took hold of him and squeezed.
“It’ll be alright, we’ll find her. Somehow we’ll find her.”
He turned towards her and hid his face against her jeans clad thigh. “I don’t understand.”
“Who does?” Diane sighed, running her hand through his hair. “Come on,” she added a few minutes later. “We’d best get going.”
*
Diane drove all the way back to Edinburgh, with John sitting stunned beside her.
“There must be a logical explanation,” he said, twisting in his seat to face her. “There must be, right?”
“Of course.”
“And if there is, then she’ll come back, won’t she? People don’t just disappear, do they?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, keeping her eyes on the road ahead of them.
“But you said! You said there had to be a logical explanation.”
She sighed and glanced in his direction. “Even if there is, I don’t think she’s coming back.”
“Of course she is!”
Diane looked away. “She might be dead.”
John folded his arms over his chest and decided not to say another word.
She parked outside the office and turned to face him.“You want me to come with you?”
Yes, he really wanted her to, but this was something he had to do on his own. Oh God; pick up Isaac and tell him his mother was gone; call on Magnus and inform him Alex had disappeared into thin air.
“No, I’ll be fine,” he said, releasing his seatbelt to scoot into the driver’s seat.
“You sure?”
“Yes.” He drove off before he begged her to come with him.
*
John hesitated in front of the bright red door. He loved this little street in Stockbridge, lined with similar row houses in unprepossessing grey stone, all of them with doors that attempted to give them a touch of individuality, exploding in reds and greens and blues and even, unfortunately, in yellow.
Isaac tugged at his hand. “Offa?”
John smiled down at him. “Yes, let’s see if your Offa’s home, shall we?”
He was, a bright smile appearing on his tanned face when he saw his grandson, mirrored in Isaac’s face. John watched them hug and felt something twist inside. They had each other, they were of blood. He was just a random man, with no biological ties to either of them now that Alex was gone. If, he reminded himself furiously, if she was gone. He followed them into the house, stepping over Magnus’ as yet unpacked suitcase.
He walked down the passageway, stopping at every framed photo down its length. All of them were of Alex; from chubby babyhood through long legged angular pre-pubescence, to self-conscious teenager hiding her swelling chest in bulky sweaters.
“What’s the matter?” Magnus said.
John swallowed. “Was the conference any good?” he said instead.
Magnus made a dismissive gesture, his bright blue eyes boring into John. “Has something happened?”
“Yes, I’m afraid it has.” John inhaled. “Alex seems to have gone missing. Again.” He caught Magnus as he stumbled, supported him over to an armchair, and poured them both a stiff whisky before sitting down beside him.
“How? When?” Magnus was pale, his blondish grey hair a mess after he’d run his hands through it. “Holy Matilda; you think…you think she’s been kidnapped again?”
John took a deep gulp, savouring the burning feeling that travelled down his gullet to land in his gut. Kidnapped? None of them really knew what had happened to Alex down in Italy. She had refused to talk about it, clamming up completely whenever he tried to raise the issue. And now he’d never know. He shook himself, aware of Magnus’ eyes hanging off him.
“Yesterday, it happened yesterday. She got caught in a lightning storm out on the moor. At least that’s what we think, and then she just…” John hid his head in his hands. “Oh God; oh God, oh God, oh God.”
Magnus sat back, with his glass held like a lifeline in his hand.
“She just went up in smoke; the car, all her stuff was there, but she was gone.” He wasn’t telling this well, he could see that in Magnus’ face. So John pulled up his legs, clenched his arms around them, and told Magnus everything, from the moment when he started to worry about Alex being late, to the moment Sanderson disappeared.
“And I don’t know what to do,” he finished. “How do I go about finding her again?” His hand strayed to his pocket and the remains of her phone, still wrapped in that old piece of cloth. He pulled it out and put it on the table. “I found this, but I just don’t understand.”
Magnus poked at it but didn’t unwrap it. Instead he walked over to the shelf where he
kept his whisky and brought the bottle back with him.
“Tell me again,” he said, once he had topped up their glasses. So John did. When he drifted to a stop Magnus bent forward and undid the little package, staring down with an aghast expression at the worn and rusted remains of his daughter’s phone.
“She just bought it.”
“I know,” John said, all of him trembling.
Any further discussion at that point was interrupted by Isaac, who came to lean against Magnus, complaining that he was hungry.
“Well, we can’t have that, can we?” Magnus said, tousling Isaac’s dark hair. No, Isaac agreed seriously, his tummy hurt.
*
A few hours later and they were back in the study, after having fed and put Isaac to bed.
“It’s just like with Mercedes,” Magnus said, “an inexplicable disappearance.”
“I know. And we’ll never know what happened – just like with Mercedes.” John leaned forward to clasp Magnus’ hand hard in his. “I’m so sorry.” Magnus nodded, looking drawn.
“Mercedes…” He raised his drink to his mouth, one quick gulp before he slammed the empty glass back down on the table. “I’m still hoping, you know?”
“It’s been three years,” John said.
Magnus shrugged and stared into the empty grate. “Still; I hope.” He smiled slightly, shaking his head. “Thirty years –more than that. I met her in Seville, in 1968. I was there to study Spanish, a tall gawky Swedish boy. She saw me on one of the bridges across the Guadalquivir and flirted with me. I was twenty-two. I have no idea how old she was, only that she was quite a lot older.”
John’s skin puckered; Mercedes had always seemed so young, ten, even twenty years Magnus’ junior.
Magnus nodded. “I know, she didn’t age much, did she? And…” He tensed and cocked his head. “Did you hear that?”
“No.”
“Shh, listen!” Magnus said, getting to his feet.
John rose as well. From above came the soft but unmistakeable sounds of something moving stealthily across the floor of the room upstairs – Mercedes’ studio.
A Rip in the Veil (The Graham Saga) Page 4
