Saving April

by Sarah A. Denzil

  But I don’t have long before I need to act. Outside, I can hear April sobbing down the phone. “My dad’s dead! My dad’s dead!”

  My heart pounds, but I can stand now. That’s something. There’s not enough time to get the bindings off my hands, but now at least I can move.

  Matt Mason lies still in the corner. I cast a glance at the golf club, considering it. But, no. I could never hurt her. Not even now. She’s still a child. I have no choice but to outrun her.

  The door of the hut swings open and April stands in the doorway. For the first time, I recognise panic in her eyes when she sees me on my feet. She looks towards the golf club, but I run at her before she even gets the opportunity. I use my full weight to slam into her on the way out, knocking her to the ground. My bare feet sting as I run over the rough terrain. I check behind me. April is back on her feet.

  The bright sunshine illuminates the blood all over my shirt. It could be my blood, it could be Matt’s, or even both. I’m a crazed, bound woman running through a field with my shirt soaked in blood.

  Footsteps follow me. She’s fast, but I have fear and adrenaline on my side. I have the will to survive for the first time in years. It’s taken all this to realise that I want to live. I don’t want to merely exist anymore, I truly want to live. It’s only when my freedom is threatened that I come to my senses. I’ve been trying so hard to escape the past, that I hadn’t realised I am right there stuck in the middle of it. I thought that moving out, boxing up all the memories, and putting the photograph albums away meant that I’d moved on. I was wrong.

  There’s a blur to my right. The red of April’s shirt flashes in the peripheral of my vision. I shift to the left. I can either run towards the road, or back into the woods. If I run towards the road, I have a better chance of escaping April, but I’ll more than likely be picked up by the police. If I run into the woods, I might be slower, but I also might be able to slip them both. I head towards the woods, forcing my aching thighs to move even faster up the slight slope. Sweat runs down my forehead, stinging my eyes and blurring my vision. I whip my head to the right as another red blur rushes through the trees, then to the left, sure that I saw something else. I swerve to the right to stop myself running straight into a tree, but in doing so, I lose precious seconds. April appears from between two trees. She’s smiling as she sticks one foot out and catches my ankle.

  I’m an easy target, unbalanced from the bindings on my wrists. I fall face down onto the hard earth, biting my tongue and hitting my forehead on a tree root. My mouth fills with blood and soil. I spit it out as I turn over. A small bundle of red and black pounces on me; straddling my waist with long legs, pinning my hands beneath her.

  She lifts a large rock.

  It’s not the crash that appears in my mind, which surprises me. Whenever I’m stressed or upset, the crash always comes into my head. Not this time. It’s a Sunday morning. I’m making breakfast for Stu as he’s reading the paper. Emma has a bowl of porridge that she’s smeared all over her face and her high chair. Stu is laughing at her and tickling her chin. It’s what I lost, but it’s also what I had. April never had this. She was never that little girl in the high chair. I’m luckier than most people in the world. I’ve had happiness.

  I gaze up at April and I smile.

  “I forgive you,” I say.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  April

  She goes over the plan one more time. Crush one of Mummy’s sleeping pills and put it in the bottle of gin. Then take another and put it in the beer. Wait for Mum and Dad to drink the entire bottle and wait for them to pass out. Get the whiskey from the kitchen and pour it all over the sofa where they’re asleep. Turn on all the gas rings on the cooker. Light the whiskey on fire. Run out of the house.

  She thinks it should work. She heard Mum telling Dad about the plan one night. Mum was drunk, again, and yelling at her dad. “I’ll drug you,” she’d said. “I’ll drug you and cover you in whiskey. I’ll set you on fire and watch you burn. You’re a good for nothing bastard and I want you dead.”

  April imagined her Mummy all scrunched over like a hunchback with spit flying from her mouth. She remembered how red faced and wrinkled she’d been. That night, April had written her mother’s words into her journal. Then she’d sat and started to think carefully about what she’d heard. That’s when she’d thought of the plan. She was cleverer than mum. She added the gas because it would look more like an accident, and in books and on TV, fires in homes were always about gas.

  Plus, she knew about gas because her Mum would taunt her: “I’ll leave the gas on while you’re asleep. One spark and you’ll go boom.” Mum liked to tell her loved ones how she would murder them.

  They look happy when they’re asleep. Maybe I look happy when I sleep too, April thought. She didn’t feel it though. She never felt happy. Maybe she doesn’t even know what happiness is. People on television say they’re happy. They smile and cry and hug people. She didn’t do any of those things. But she’s aware of her nerves, because her heart is going fast. It’s a good plan, she reminds herself. She’s thought of everything. She has to make sure that she’s on the right side of the flames when the house starts burning. If she’s not, she might get hurt and she doesn’t want that. Only Mum and Dad should be hurt, because they keep hurting her and that has to stop. They have to be punished.

  The whiskey smells horrible. It reminds her of when Dad hits her around the head and tells her to fuck off. She’s not allowed to say those words but he can.

  “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” April says as she pours the whiskey over them.

  She puts one of Mum’s cigarettes in her mouth and lights it with a match. Then she cuts off a little of Mummy’s hair, and Daddy’s hair, and places it in her journal with the used match. She puts the little journal in her dressing gown pocket. They never found it, just like she knew they wouldn’t. They don’t pay attention to her, they don’t care about anything she does or says, and they’re too stupid to find her hiding place anyway.

  Then she hurries into the kitchen and turns on the gas. She leaves a trail of whiskey going into the kitchen, then throws the empty bottle on Mum’s lap. April’s heart goes pitter-patter as her mother rolls over in her sleep. But Mum doesn’t wake, and April can’t help but smile. That was the first time she’d felt scared. There was one night when she thought about calling it all off. She was in bed thinking about how the police might arrest her and put her in prison. But then she heard a noise downstairs and peeked through the bannisters on the landing. Mum was with another man. She decided then that it was worth the risk and she didn’t care about getting caught. They deserve it.

  She moves towards the door and lights a match. She throws it down onto the wet patch on the carpet where she poured the whiskey. It doesn’t light. She tries it again and again. The matches keep going out when she throws them. She creeps forward, lights the match, and bends down. Her fingers shake as she places the match on the ground. The whiskey lights. But it catches the bottom of her dressing gown and she has to pat at it with her hands to stop it going up in flames. Her heart beats really hard as she flails her arms at the flames, whacking them down. She breathes a sigh of relief when they go out. Then she grins. Singeing the bottom of her dressing gown was a good move.

  She waits until the fire gets going, watching with wide eyes as the sofa her parents sleep on catches fire. If the flames don’t kill them, the smoke will. Then she grabs the telephone and calls 999, moving towards the door and away from the flames. She starts to cry, because she knows that’s what they want to hear.

  Mum leaps up and screams as she catches fire. April is frozen for a moment, watching the flames all over her skin, standing with her arms outstretched. She’s like one of the zombie monsters in the films they like to watch, April thinks. She watches as Mum takes two steps before falling to the floor, with her hands clawing at the carpet. Her wails are like nails on a chalkboard. April backs away from her, feeling for the door handle. There
are sirens outside and it’s time to go.

  She opens the door, and runs out into the cold air. It’s a relief after the heat of the flames. She gently touches the bulge in her dressing gown that she knows is her journal. She needs to keep that close. She won’t let anyone touch it.

  The night is bright with the lights of the fire engine. As she’s running, she sees a man in bright clothes step down from the engine. He crouches down and opens out his arms, waiting for her to run into them.

  When he folds his arms around her, she knows that she has finished her plan. She’s done it. She’s got rid of them. Now she can find parents who don’t deserve to die.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Laura

  Squinting at the phone on my dashboard, I take a bend too fast and almost lose control. My hands are shaking every time I change gear. I can’t stop thinking about the journal. At first I’d thought it was a joke. I figured it was April messing with me by writing a fake journal. Then I found the match and the hair.

  She was clever. So clever that it made me very afraid. Her diary was underneath the bed, but it was phoney. In it she’d written about how Matt and I hit her. None of it was true. She said that I locked her in the space under the stairs and beat her for stupid reasons like not cleaning up, or tidying her room, or because I was drunk. The diary confused me at first. I couldn’t work out why she would say those things. That’s when I decided to search her entire room.

  It was only when I figured out the false back on her desk that I found the real journal, the one she’s been writing in since she was seven years old. It’s not a book I ever see her with around the house, this is something she has kept very secret. It’s a small, dark blue book with a spine that has been Sellotaped back together several times. I was afraid to turn the pages in case they fell apart.

  She hasn’t written in it often over the years. There’s the terrifying plot to kill her parents, a plot that I realise is real. I remember when I was told her parents died in a fire. I felt for her. I loved her for what she had suffered. They were drunks who passed out with cigarettes and a bottle of whiskey spilled all over themselves, the gas from the stove left on in their drunken stupor. I knew what it was like to have drunks for parents. I knew what she’d suffered.

  But I didn’t know this.

  In her journal there were charts documenting the amount of time I spent at work, alongside the amount of time I spent with April. She wrote sad and smiley faces next to them. Underneath those charts it said: NEEDS TO BE PUNISHED. The words made me shudder. Matt’s whereabouts had been documented, too. April figured out the affairs long before I did. She’d jotted down every time Matt was physical with me. There were more accounts than I realised.

  I’d repeated the past. I married my father.

  But the journal wasn’t the worst item I found in April’s room. As clever as she was, she was still a thirteen-year-old child, and she wasn’t half as good at hiding things as she thought.

  I went through everything, and I found a shoe box hidden under a pile of clothes in her wardrobe. That’s when I found the bodies of the mice she’d killed. Some of them were cut open, with their entrails pinned down with little corkboard pins. I dropped the box when I first opened it. I dropped it, and watched a stiff, dead-eyed mouse roll across the floor. Then I ran to the bathroom and I threw up.

  My daughter.

  How could I let this happen under my own roof? Why didn’t I know? I’m a failure.

  I brush away tears, and pull over behind the Ford. Now I know why the street seemed emptier, Hannah’s car wasn’t there. I’d read about April’s plan in her journal. She’d decided to enlist Hannah with the sign and with a letter, then frame Hannah for Matt’s murder. That’s where she got lucky. Hannah ended up so involved with saving April from us, that she didn’t see what was really going on. The police already think she’s obsessed with us.

  The passenger door of the Ford is flung open. I get out of the car, and examine my surroundings. We’re next to the field that leads into the woods. Despite the warmth of midday, I shiver. This is where she has lured her victims.

  I’ve already called the police, but now I need to do more. I need to be brave. This is my daughter, and my responsibility. If I’m the one who has failed her, I’m the one who truly needs to be punished. I’m going to confront her, and I’m going to stop her. I climb over the fence and into the field. That’s when I see people running through the field. I have to get to them.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Hannah

  “I forgive you.”

  April pauses with the rock raised. She thinks I’m talking to her, but I’m talking to myself. All these years I’ve carried the blame. I was the one who was speeding. I was the one with the tears in my eyes so that I couldn’t see. I was the one who missed a buckle on Emma’s car seat. I know that Stu made it difficult, he was annoyed and pressuring me, but it was me who made the decision to drive recklessly. It was all me, and I’ve shouldered that for all these years.

  Now I’m ready to let go. If I am going to die, I’m going to do it without this great blame pressing me down. I’m going to leave this world without the weight of that guilt.

  But April has paused. Her eyes have changed. They are narrowing, as though she doesn’t understand what is happening.

  She raises the rock even higher. But now I have a slight opportunity. I have a sliver of time on my side. I twist myself to the left as the rock smashes down. It catches me, but it only scrapes some of the skin from my scalp. Using the momentum I gained from moving away from the rock, I rotate to the right, unbalancing April. She lets out a small cry as she falls onto the forest floor, allowing me to twist onto my belly and scramble away from her.

  I push myself forwards with my legs and feet, my arms a hindrance underneath my weight. April is on her side, and the rock has fallen from her hands. There are sirens in the distance. I might live, but I won’t escape arrest.

  “Stop it, you’re ruining everything!” April yells.

  I twist onto my back and meet her eyes. I want to develop a connection with her, make her understand what she’s trying to do. Maybe I can reason with her. “You want to kill me, but you have nothing to punish me for,” I say. “If you kill me it’s just murder, April. There’s no reason to do it, only that you want to.”

  She clenches her fist and teeth, screws up her eyes like a child having a tantrum, and lets out a frustrated scream. “Why have you ruined it?” Then I see her gaze moving across the grass, searching for the stone.

  I have to get away from her, because I want to live, and April isn’t going to accept that. No, she’s out for blood now. She’s angry and nothing else will do. So I have to work hard at pushing myself along the ground, working my legs so that I keep moving. I’m still unbalanced with my hands tied beneath my body, and getting onto my feet will take up too many precious seconds. This is preservation now. I’m letting my instincts take over, moving in hurried, jerky movements.

  April finds her stone, but the sirens are getting louder. She only has moments to murder me before the police arrive. If they see her kill me, she’ll more than likely be taken into custody. I’m nauseated just thinking about April’s age. She’s too young for prison. She’ll be put in some juvenile centre and released when she’s an adult. I shudder.

  I need to get on my feet. I need to run.

  As April is coming for me, I get on my knees and lean forward so that my face is in the dirt. There, I can shift my weight back onto my heels and lean back on my feet, pushing up my body. I force my body up until I’m at full height, feeling the effort in my thighs. My head whips around, trying to find a flash of movement close by. What was that? My head whips around again. This time it’s April running at me through the trees.

  April’s eyes are fixed on mine. She runs with her shoulders leaning forward, as though meaning to charge me down. Without my hands, I’m unbalanced, but I can still move out of her way. That’s when I see the other flash of m
ovement. I wasn’t imagining things. We’re not alone in the field. But April is determined. Her mouth is set into a grimace as she charges towards me. Her free hand is clenched, the other is wrapped around a rock. There’s a slight trickle of blood coming from the corner of her mouth where she’s bitten her lip. She’s like a spectral waif, all pale and skinny, but with the face of a monster.

  I don’t move and I can see the flicker in April’s eyes as she wonders why. She turns her head to the left, but it’s too late. April doesn’t make it. Before she can attack me, she’s knocked to the ground. April’s stone rolls out of her hand, and Laura pins April against the grass. As April squirms underneath her mother, Laura calmly takes each wrist in her hand. Laura has weight behind her, not just the weight of her body, but the years of caring for April. Years where she has dressed her, bathed her, cooked for her. Where she’s told her off for not going to bed on time or for talking back. That spectral waif disappears before my eyes, leaving a teenage girl behind. I’m not sure which is the most frightening.

  “That’s enough,” Laura says. “It stops now.”

  As the sirens finally make it onto the street, April starts to cry.

  *

  “When I found the mice, I came straight to find you,” Laura says. She takes a sip of hospital tea and smiles weakly. “I’d put a GPS tracker on April’s mobile phone. I forgot all about it until that moment. I’m sorry I didn’t get there sooner.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you when you said that April lies,” I reply. “How did the police interview go?”

  “It was awful. I had to sit there and hear her tell lie after lie. The police know she’s lying now. They’ve read her journal and seen the mice. They have the match from the house fire her parents died in. They have your witness testimony, and they found zip ties in her room. I can’t believe it. She was my little girl. How could I not see it?” Laura shakes her head and I stay silent, letting her get out everything she needs to. “I keep thinking about the zip ties in her room. And the way she wrote everything in her journal. She was still just a kid, you know? For all her planning and plotting, and the way she hurt so many people, she still wasn’t clever enough to destroy them, because at the end of the day, she was just a fucking kid.”