by Frances Vick
‘What did they tell you?’
‘Nothing,’ Sylvia answered flatly. ‘They told me nothing. Just that it was “child-led activities”, which could have meant anything. I asked if I could become more involved in the group, maybe go along to the next retreat as a helper, but they said no to that too. I wasn’t qualified enough, they said.’
‘How could you not be qualified? You were her mum.’
‘I know! I said that too, and oh, they didn’t like that. Not one little bit. Oh they smiled, said they’d put me on the list for volunteers and showed me the door. She was meant to be going away that next weekend, but we got a letter saying it was cancelled – no explanation. Then at the next meeting, one of the other mothers told me that her boy had gone.’
‘So they lied about it being cancelled?’
‘They did. Marie was confused. She kept asking me why she didn’t go, maybe it was because she wasn’t special any more… so I asked. They said it had been an administrative error, and she was down for the next retreat – four days, this one was. And when she came back, she was… different. Very distant with me.’
‘Why? What did she say?’
‘Nothing at first. She was angry with me for asking… almost violent. It was like we’d stepped back in time; she didn’t eat, wouldn’t talk, stayed in her room ripping off the wallpaper – she ripped it all off one wall. Finally she told me what it was about. At the retreat there was a session about “Tick” people and “Cross” people. Tick people were positive, good influences, and Cross people were bad people – stupid people. They had to make a personal list of both types. Then they were told to pass their lists around to see if the rest of the group agreed with them. Well, when she got her list back, everyone had said that my name shouldn’t be on the Tick list, because I wasn’t positive enough. Well, you can imagine, Marie was really upset! She was confused, and hurt, and… and alone. Imagine it, alone with all these people saying her own mother was a bad person! A stupid person that didn’t love them. She couldn’t call me, she couldn’t come home…’
‘That’s awful! No wonder she was upset!’
Sylvia nodded. ‘It was awful. It was indefensible. But they didn’t stop there, the Cross and Tick exercise happened on the first day of the retreat. She had another three there for them to work on her, and that’s what they did. From what I know about the group now, and piecing together things Marie told me, what they did to her was standard operating procedure; they want to control the kids and the best way to do that is control the parents. If they can’t control the parents, if the parents ask questions – like I did – they turn the kid against them, in the hope that the parent will see sense and come back on board. So they made a fuss of her, everyone in the group gave her a hug, the leader told her it wasn’t her fault, or my fault. She was told that I used to be a “Tick” person, and I could be again, so long as I stopped being jealous of her talents. That’s the way they put it – jealous. And that was what she’d had to listen to for four days: how ordinary and small, and jealous I was. Jealous! Of my own daughter!’ There was a bitterness in Sylvia’s voice now, a quiet rage. ‘Well, they didn’t get their wish. We never went back. I had to keep her in her room for a week. I had to put a lock on the door to stop her trying to get out. She tried climbing out of the window, but I caught her. And all the while I’m getting calls from Star Child, visits from them.’
‘And, how was it? How was Marie then?’
‘She had nightmares. She missed them, she missed her friends. I put her in school here, thinking she’d make more friends, but she didn’t. Not really. The thing is, I went into Star Child because she was different, she was psychic, and after Star Child, she was still different, still psychic. That hadn’t changed. She changed though.’
‘How? How did she change?’
Sylvia’s head was bowed, she spoke to the twisted fingers on her lap. ‘She became cruel. She threw stones at cats, ran dogs into the road. She’d started at school that September and I thought that might help, but it made things worse. She said things that made other kids cry. She knew just what to say. She knew just what it was that would hurt the most. I seemed to spend my life in that head teacher’s office, making excuses, making amends, and Marie would say the right things – you know, promise not to do it again – but she always did. She thought she could do anything, that she had the right to do anything. That’s what Star Child had done to her.’
‘How has she managed to hide it? I’ve seen clips of her show and she’s so different on TV to how she is in life.’
‘She learned how to act. As she got older she spent a lot of time with Peg and her family, and I think she saw how they were, you know, they take no prisoners, always in trouble. Well, I think she saw them and realised that she had to learn to look more normal, she had to make people like her or she’d end up staying here for the rest of her life, like them. And she was always ambitious, she liked money, nice things, nice clothes. I think she taught herself to fit in, you know? And it’s worked out well for her, hasn’t it?’
‘But if she likes money so much, why won’t she sell the land and buy you somewhere more comfortable? Why has she been here so long? She must be losing money hand over fist while she’s here.’
Sylvia looked as if she was about to speak, but stayed silent.
‘Why is she sending us these notes? Why did she threaten me today? Why doesn’t she want us to be friends?’
‘I think she’s scared,’ Sylvia said after a pause.
‘What of though?’
‘You,’ Sylvia said softly.
‘Me? How could she be scared of me?’
Sylvia took a deep breath, let it out through pursed lips. ‘I think it not you, but something you know. That’s what she’s scared of.’
‘What?’
‘I’m not sure, but she’s been scared since that party at your sister’s house. Before that she was like she always is – cool, very measured, you know. But as soon as she saw you, she changed. Later that night when we were alone, she was livid, absolutely livid, saying you being there was a set-up, that she never would have come if she’d known the client was your sister, and god knows what else. I didn’t know what she was on about and I don’t know now… I’ve tried since to hang back, weather the storm, and it did seem to blow over a bit until she saw you a few weeks ago, when you came over to visit, remember? You met each other here? Well, she called me later that night and was wild… She was saying things she hadn’t said since she was little, and she seemed convinced that I was in some sort of conspiracy with you. That’s when I began to worry.’
‘What does she think I know?’ Kirsty was perplexed. ‘Is it something about Lisa? It must be, mustn’t it?’
Sylvia shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’ But her eyes were down, and her body shrieked evasion.
‘I think you do,’ Kirsty whispered.
Sylvia’s phone pinged in her pocket, and when she saw the name her mouth tightened. ‘That’s Marie now. She’s coming over. You’d better leave.’
‘What does she think I know?’
‘You have to leave. If you don’t she’ll… I don’t know what she’ll do. I’ll… I’ll try to find out what’s going on in her head and I’ll call you. Wait for my call and don’t call me in case she’s here, all right? That will just make things worse. Look, she’s coming now and she’s only been at Mona’s so she’ll be here any minute! You really have to leave!’
‘Will you call me?’
‘Yes! I promise! Now, get yourself gone, all right? And be careful, please!’
On the drive through Beacon Hill, Kirsty passed Marie’s big, sleek BMW. Its headlights swept and dazzled her as it sped by, smooth as a shark through dark water.
Twenty-Four
Sylvia didn’t call though. Instead Kirsty received a gnomic note at work the next morning.
Mrs Mackie (?) called apologies call back no message
Kirsty read it, peered questioningly at the receptioni
st, read it again. ‘Did you take the message?’
‘Nah. I found it when I came on shift.’
‘So who took it? Becky? Corrine? The one with the glasses?’
The receptionist looked tiredly at her. ‘I’m a temp. We all are mostly. It’s not like we know each other.’ He seemed wearily amused at Kirsty’s assumption of work camaraderie. ‘It was here, that’s all I know, and you’re the only Kirsten we’ve got on staff.’
‘When did she call?’
The receptionist rolled his eyes irritably. ‘How am I meant to know that? Could’ve been any time. Could’ve been last night even.’
Kirsty managed to swallow her sudden flash of pure hate, managed to nod, to turn and walk slowly to her office, the pink note quivering in her hand, its exact meaning horribly opaque. No message? But there was a message – call me back was the message. Wasn’t it? Or was she saying she’d call Kirsty back? That’s if it was from Sylvia at all – maybe there was a Mrs Mackie looking for her, who knew? No. No, it had to be Sylvia, and the fact that she’d called the hospital was telling, sinister – why not call her mobile? Perhaps the muddled meaning was less due to the receptionist’s sloppy note-taking, and more down to Sylvia’s panic – a garbled warning; a request for help.
The more she studied the note, written in the crabbed hand of a stranger, the more powerfully she felt that Sylvia was in great trouble. She called, but there was no answer, just automated voicemail. She called again, the same. She tried to tell herself to calm down, that nothing was wrong, that she was tired, stressed, overwrought… You have a full day of work, lots to do, deal with this afterwards. She was telling herself this even as she was heading to the door.
* * *
She left the car by the lock-up garages near Beacon Hill and cautiously walked the rough track leading to the house. It was the first time she’d been there in full daylight, the first time she could see just how much rubbish there was on the track, and how, closer to the house, the wind moved like a live thing over the vague, humped shapes of cars, over rusting axles, rotting timber, sinuously draped tarps… it moved and whispered, both beckoning and warning. A group of brown sunflowers thumped their heads, rattling with dead seeds, against the kitchen window.
Trembling like a child, Kirsty made herself knock on the door, made herself call, ‘Sylvia? Are you there? Are you OK? It’s Kirsty.’
No answer.
She couldn’t peer through the window because the curtains were drawn, so she squatted down on the sagging boards of the porch and opened the letterbox. One chair was pulled away from the table, left at an angle as if someone had leapt from it quickly, and on the floor – what were they? Papers? Cards? A vase of flowers had been upended, the water pooled into milky murk on the polished table top. There was no way Sylvia would leave her house in this kind of mess.
Her heart now slapping in her chest, the coppery taste of adrenaline in her throat, Kirsty stalked the perimeter of the house, reaching a side door, where, half stuck in the mud, its screen smashed, was Sylvia’s phone. With stiff fingers Kirsty picked it up. Stuck into the mud in the hollow the phone had made – too eccentric and too neatly placed to be accidental – were two tarot cards: The Empress, one enigmatic eye gazing through the mud, pinned under the King of Swords. Sylvia had left her a clue, a message. Sylvia herself was The Empress, the mother figure, the all-knowing, benevolent guide. And the King of Swords? A man who was all about reality and rules and the way things should be… a man who was now challenged, frightened and furious. Lee.
Then she heard the sound.
A snap, or a click. Something being opened, or shut, and it was coming from the stubby, shaded woods beyond. She wasn’t alone here… someone else was there, maybe waiting, watching, weighing up their own options. Adrenaline surged and froze, and Kirsty’s every sense became suddenly, quiveringly alert. She could wait or she could run back to the car, strap herself in and get the hell out of there. Her car was only a few hundred yards away, but a few hundred yards of open, flat land where she’d be horribly, vulnerably visible. But what choice did she have? Hugging close to the side of the house, she edged back towards the front again, pushing her way through the nasty, hairy sunflower stalks, her feet crunching on dead seeds. From here, she could see the snout of her car poking out from the line of garages. She took a deep breath, and was about to dash towards it, when she heard another sound from the woods – the release catch of a car door. Whoever it was in the woods was waiting too. She half heard/half imagined footsteps over leaves, over frozen mud and pushed herself further into the sunflower patch, feeling the ground dip at her heels, the warped boards at the base of the house bowed in enough to give her a little more shelter. She waited for what seemed like hours, barely breathing, the rubbish collecting around her ankles, hearing only the wind, until, with terrifying suddenness, Sylvia’s phone rang – a shrill peal like an alarm. Loud enough for the person in the woods to hear it, loud enough for the residents in Beacon Hill to hear it! Kirsty fumbled with the thing, cutting her palm on the shattered screen, and managed to turn it off, but following like an aftershock was another sound – the slam of a car door, the gunning of an engine, coming from the scrubland, and it was coming closer, lumbering like a beast through undergrowth, straight towards the house, straight towards her. If she stayed where she was, she’d be seen, perhaps even hit. She had a sudden, clear understanding that whoever it was behind the wheel of that car had hurt Sylvia and would hurt her too if she let them.
Still gripping the phone – hard enough that later she found three needle-like shards of the broken screen embedded in her palm – she kicked at the rotten boards, feeling them bend and splinter, felt her heels slip backwards into a crawl space that had been carved out between the kitchen floor and the bare earth. With great difficulty, Kirsty shuffled backwards into the hole, tasting sour soil and feeling the rough ceiling scrape her scalp, snagging her hair, tearing some out at the roots. Her face was pressed into the ground, breathing was difficult. Outside, the car was circling the house in a long, slow orbit, as if the driver was teasing her, tormenting her.
With great difficulty, Kirsty managed to turn over. Now that she lay flat, breathing was easier, but the stench was even worse: there were a fair few animal carcasses by the smell of it… rats, probably. A nest of dead rats rotting on top of one another, and… Stop! Stop that! You’ll make yourself panic, you’ll make yourself scream!
She lay in this grave-like space, soundlessly crying with fear, trying not to breathe too deeply, trying to reserve as much of the foul but breathable air as she could. There was nothing to do but wait. Wait and try to stay sane.
The car still circled the house, slower, slower, until finally it drove away. Kirsty allowed herself to relax just a little, but she stayed where she was, just in case. Sure enough the car returned about ten minutes later as if the driver had been trying to flush her out. It parked right in front of the house, only a few feet away from where Kirsty was hiding.
She heard the door open, heard footsteps, too slow and softly deliberate to betray any clue of gender, of mood or intent. Footsteps crunched softly on leaves, then creaked with sudden, shattering volume on the stairs just above her head. Whoever it was was trying to open the front door, rattling the handle angrily. The boards above Kirsty groaned. She heard the familiar sound of a cigarette being lit, the click of the lighter, the fizz of the paper. Then Lee’s voice, ‘I know you’re there!’
Kirsty felt one tear seeping from her now tightly shut eyes. It merged with the trickle of blood from her scalp and ran into the stinking earth with the blood from her palms.
‘Leave her alone. Leave us alone! Hey!’ He pounded on the door with such force that the boards above Kirsty’s head shook. Little puffs of dust fell into her wet eyes. ‘Whatever you think you know about me, you fucking well don’t, all right?’ He hammered at the door again ‘You don’t know anything and if you start filling her head with all this…shit, I’ll…’ He gave one, final
, kick at the door. The wood just above Kirsty’s left eye splintered. She could see dim, dirty light through the gap.
The boards shifted and groaned again, as he turned, walked slowly down the steps. She heard footsteps receding, a car door opening and slamming shut, the faint jangle of keys. The motor started and the car drove away – neither slow nor fast – and kept driving. Still, she made sure to stay hidden for the next hour or so and when she finally emerged, turning over and shuffling out like a bear, the light was painful and her damp, numb legs refused to support her; she tumbled over like a new-born foal and lay for long minutes in the dirt until the sensation stole back into her legs with a prickly, vicious electric that made her cry out. Lee’s half-smoked cigarette lay just beside one cut palm.
Lee must have been the person in the woods, the one in the car. It was Lee who had forced her to hide under the house, Lee who hated Sylvia enough to threaten her. Sylvia knew what he was really like, knew long before Kirsty, and had left the tarot card as a warning to her. But where was Sylvia? Had she run, or had she been taken?
Twenty-Five
She drove home, almost catatonic, and arrived back at the flat with no memory of having driven at all. The unforgiving bathroom light showed that something under the house had left a hessian-like print on her cheek, along with a smudge of something oily and brown. A nasty, smoky stench rose when she shook her hair loose with smarting palms, and beneath that, from her very skin, something more fetid, rotting and dark.
She spent half an hour pulling out tiny strips of glass from her palm with tweezers. The shower uncovered lots of other little smarting wounds and sudden vulnerabilities. When she washed her hair some of it came out at the roots.
