by Jack Lewis
18
Outside Sleepy Meadow the wind blew on the blades of grass and made them seem like they were stretching out toward us. Jeremiah leaned against the black metal gate with his arms folded and a disinterested look on his face. The village loomed a quarter of a mile behind him, across the fields and almost tucked out of sight by the crest of a hill.
A gust hit me in the chest and sneaked through whatever gaps it could find in my clothes. It didn’t make a difference. The chill I felt from my talk with Clive filled me with a coldness that layers and heat couldn’t change. It was a burden that made me feel a stone heavier now than when we had walked into the retirement home.
Sheep chewed grass in the fields adjacent to us. Some of them lay down, bunching together to shelter from the cold. It was a large field but the sheep had decided to stick to one half of it, and what should have been a sparse plot of land was covered in one half by chewed grass and the other by woolly creatures. At the other end of the field, I saw why they avoided one side of it. On the grass, across from a wooden turnstile, was a dead sheep. Its fleece was stained red and bleached bones stuck out from a hole in its torso. The sheep’s fleece seemed to spread out and melt into the field, as though it was being devoured whole by the earth.
“Did he say anything interesting?” said Jeremiah. His tone was relaxed, carefully so, but his eyes burned on me.
I could have kept it to myself, but I was getting bored of the games. Sometimes Jeremiah was way too easy to pull along, and he was so desperate for there to be a mystery here that he hung on everything I said. I wondered what he would have done without me. The guy had brains, more than I could ever hope for myself, and he knew what he wanted. But his natural attitude pushed people away. It had made the Jenkins family hate us, and it had gotten us kicked out of Sleepy Meadow. Jeremiah needed to change, but I didn’t see that ever happening.
I wondered what to tell him. It was stupid, but a part of me worried about saying anything. What if the story was true? Would I be putting Jeremiah in danger by telling him what I knew about Emily? Clive’s words chilled through me.
She knows about you.
This was ridiculous. Jeremiah knew the girl existed already, and he had read the letter. If she was going to come for him, she would have done it by now. The fact was, this was an urban legend. Nothing more. A sad little girl had died, and in the years that followed grief had given birth to a twisted tale. It was the only way some people could process the harsh reality of life; that all of us would meet our end at some point. They coped with the finality of death by imagining there was something else.
As much as I soothed my mind with rational words, I knew that they wouldn’t stick.
I shivered into my clothes. “Can we get away from this place?” I said.
Jeremiah sprang away from the gate. Sleepy Meadow was behind me, a once beautiful building rotted with age, and the steel bars of the gate pointed to the sky and warned people away. I felt like a prisoner released from a sentence, with Jeremiah waiting outside to lead me into a second prison, that of the real world.
“Come on then,” he said. “Let’s go back to the pub.”
Not the pub.
I shook my head. “Think we could go somewhere else?”
“There’s nowhere else to go, Ella. Can’t exactly get a cappuccino and croissant around here.”
We decided to take the long route back to town and walk through the fields that surrounded it. The grass was a weak yellow colour and the mud was hard and cracked. A cow stood lonely in the middle of an acre. Cobblestone walls divided the fields in sections, the stones looking like they could slip away and crumble at any second. I thought about the women killed in the woods. Had they walked this way to their deaths? Had their hands passed over the rough stones while the villagers marched them to their fates?
“Come on then, spill it. What did Clive say?”
My fingers throbbed with the cold. I put my hands in my pockets.
I decided I wasn’t going to tell Jeremiah everything. There were things that he didn’t need to hear, words that I felt deep down should not be spoken. Maybe I was trying to protect him, or maybe I just didn’t want to speak about it myself. I wanted to forget the nightmare. I decided I wouldn’t tell him about Clive’s warning.
“You saw what he was like. There wasn’t much he could tell me.”
“He must have said something.”
“How about you tell me how you found out he was the girl’s teacher?”
Jeremiah looked out across the fields as though he expected someone to be stood there. He flicked his coat collar up and ducked his chin into it.
“Remember the groundskeeper at the graveyard?”
I remembered the man with his mud-caked boots, throwing twigs into the fire. He hadn’t told me anything, and he seemed like the kind of guy who kept to himself.
“He didn’t know anything.”
“So he said.”
I screwed up my forehead. “I already asked him about the girl. He didn’t even know there was a death.”
“Like I said, a bottle of whiskey goes a long way around here.”
“You must have bought about fifty bottles by now.”
Jeremiah smiled. “I’m single-handedly keeping Marsha in business.”
I thought about being at the pub sat across from the stern landlady. The concern in her face when she warned us to stop what we were doing. To stop digging, stop asking questions. It was yet another thing I hadn’t told Jeremiah. I felt bad. He wanted there to be a mystery here. He was searching for a truth that by all rights shouldn’t have existed, yet I knew I did. I was here as a tag along, I realised, but this was his life’s work. Who was I to hold it back from him? I decided to throw him a bone.
“There was a phrase Clive used, and I just can’t get it out of my head.”
Jeremiah stopped walking. The wind groaned through cavities in the cobbled-walls.
“Go on.”
I had to tease the words out, as though they clung to my throat. “He said ‘There’s a sickness behind those young eyes’.”
Jeremiah’s face lit up. His eyes grew wide and almost bulged out of his face. He grabbed my arm, and I felt my muscles sting beneath his grip.
“Say that again. Tell me exactly what he said, word for word.”
“He was talking about Emily, about how she was clever and kind, but that she was sad. That there was a sickness behind her eyes.”
Jeremiah sucked in a breath so big it was like it took his lungs by surprise. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you, Ella? Don’t you remember that?”
He gripped me harder and shook me in excitement. I felt like a scarecrow tossed by the wind.
“You’re hurting me.”
He relaxed his grip. “Surely you remember?”
“I really don’t.”
Jeremiah looked up at the sky, as though some golden truth had rained down from the murky clouds. Then he looked back at me and his eyes swam with a fire red as his beard.
“It was in the letter. The one that started this. The person who wrote it said that, too.”
A shudder ran through me. I thought back to the letter. The sloppiness of the handwriting, almost like a child’s, but with the words of an adult. The invitation for Jeremiah to come to the village, the warning about the girl.
“It was Clive,” I said.
The air felt thick as though fog gathered around us, except I could still see for miles around. To the west, I saw the dark woods. The trees bunched together and created a border of shadows, as if blocking anyone from entering. It was like they were warning people away. I thought back to Clive’s painting, of the children playing on the borders of the forest, and the shadows watching them from beneath the tall elms.
Jeremiah put his hands to his face and covered it. Seconds passed while he just stood there with deep thoughts washing over him. When he moved his hands away, his face was pale.
“It’s all bullshit,” he said. His words we
re choked, as if they burned his throat as he spoke them.
I shivered into my coat. “What do you mean?”
“The letter, the girl, all of this. It’s just bullshit. It’s a fantasy, the wild imagination of a man who is losing his mind. If Clive wrote the letter, than it’s all a crock of shit.”
I shook my head. Part of me wanted to tell him about what happened to me in my room. Deep inside me I knew that it was real, that it wasn’t just the fantasy of a man losing his mind. Just knowing that meant I couldn’t tell him. I wanted Jeremiah to find his mystery, to have his glory, but I wouldn’t put him in harm’s way just to satisfy his ego.
Jeremiah walked over to the wall, swung his leg back and kicked the stones. A loose rock tipped from the top and tumbled onto the dirt.
“All of this, for nothing. A load of absolute shit.”
As Jeremiah took his frustration out on the shaky wall, the wind whipped around us. It pulled at my hair, stung my ears. Suddenly I wanted to get in the car and leave. I wanted to be far, far away from this grim village.
19
As we walked into the village the streets seemed greyer than usual, as if the rain had washed over them and carried away the colour like water over an ink stain. The main square was empty save for a man who walked with a dog that strained at its leash, and an old woman who pulled a shopping trolley behind her.
Jeremiah walked with his shoulders sunk so low that he looked like he was about to tip over. His face was set in a grimace, and his eyes watched the dirt-lined pavement flags as his boots pounded on them.
I had a crushing feeling inside me. Guilt sat heavy and clawed at my stomach. This was Jeremiah’s life, I knew. He didn’t have anyone to care about, that I knew of anyway, and every breath he took, every step he walked, was in search of some mysterious truth. He wanted to know that there was something out there.
“So it’s all bollocks,” I said, in as nice a tone as I could manage, “So what? You’ve investigated tons of cases, Jeremiah. You must have loads of proof that…things…exist.”
“Nothing,” he grunted.
“What about Bruges? What about Billy Wilkins? Surely you got proof of whatever happened there.”
He shook his head. His voice was gruff, his tone weak.
“You don’t understand. Any time I get closer to the heart of something, the proof just dissolves away. These things are so fragile, Ella. The things beyond what we can see, the mysteries that exist, they don’t want to be found. They don’t want us to know they are there.”
“I don’t understand.”
He looked at me with sad eyes. “Deep down I know that out of everything I ever investigated, at least some of it was true. But I’ve never been able to prove it. And until I do, guys like your professor and his tie-wearing friends will always think I’m a lunatic howling at the moon and chasing ghosts.”
I wanted to reassure him, but from my conversation with Professor Higson I got the sense that he did believe Jeremiah was crazy. Higson was a man grounded in reality, who didn’t believe something until he saw proof within the pages of a book. To him, for something to be real it had to be set on paper. Displayed on a projector. Stand firm before the poke of a scientific finger. I realised that his need for proof restricted his mind like the tie around his neck restricted his breathing. Jeremiah was free. He allowed himself to look beyond all that, and to actually trust what he felt.
I couldn’t let him be so downcast. Though he seemed calm I felt him shake, as if he sat on top of a fault line that was starting to tremor. I reached forward and put my hand on his shoulder.
“I cracked the cipher,” I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before, but I thought that if I did - ”
He jerked his head up and glared at me with a steel stare. The wind flicked his hair around, made him look like a mad man.
“You did what?”
“I know what the diary says. I mean, not all of it. I only translated some. I couldn’t bring myself to read the rest.”
“I need to see it.”
His tone was urgent, his voice strong. His shoulders bunched up, as though the weight that made them sag had been cast away.
“It’s in my room. I really don’t think you should read it though,” I said.
My breath was cold as it left my lips.
“There’s something going on, Jeremiah. There’s a truth to all of this. When I think about the girl, I feel…I don’t know. Like I’m filled with ice.”
If he heard my words, he didn’t show it. Instead he took off in great strides that stopped just short of being a run. I walked after him. As we moved through the village and toward the pub I glanced from time to time at the houses we passed. Most looked dark inside, as though the residents saved electricity by living in darkness. In some I was sure I saw eyes watching me through drawn-back curtains.
Jeremiah pushed the pub door open with a force that made it slam against the wall. Marsha looked up from behind the bar and stopped pouring gin into a glass.
“Watch my bloody door,” she said.
Jeremiah ignored her and headed straight for the stairs.
“For God’s sake wait a second,” I said.
He shrugged off my words and pounded up the staircase. His boots rang off in deep thuds as he reached the top, turned down the corridor and stopped outside my room. I finally caught up to him and stood outside the door. He twisted the handle, but the door didn’t budge.
“Unlock it.”
“Just listen to me,” I said. I felt like I needed to get the words out. I had to warn him about what he was about to read, and about what could happen to him if he did.
When he looked at me, his jaw clenched. I stepped back a little and felt a shiver run through me. It was like looking at a mad dog.
“You’re scaring me,” I said.
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them, his face softened.
“I’m sorry. I just need to see it. Please open the door.”
Stood outside my room, I realised that I didn’t want to go back in. It felt like a cold energy throbbed from it. I put the key in the lock and heard it whine as I twisted it. I reached for the handle, felt the metal sting against my skin. My heart thudded in my chest.
Jeremiah pushed the door open and stepped into my room. He looked around him.
“Where is it?” he said, eyes darting from wall to wall.
I nodded over to the desk by the window.
“In the drawer.”
He strode over and ripped open the drawer. His forehead creased.
“It’s empty.”
“Try the other one,” I said.
He pulled the drawers open one by own, finding each of them empty. I rubbed my temple and wondered if I’d put the diary somewhere else and just forgotten about it. I knew that I hadn’t. That night, after feeling the presence watching me in the bathroom, I had put the diary in the drawer so that I didn’t have to see it. Now it was gone.
20
Jeremiah slammed the drawer so hard that the desk wobbled and the floorboards whined underneath it. I felt a chill run through my body and for a second I thought of telling him about the busted radiator to give him another reason to have a go at Marsha. From the heated look in his face I knew that was a bad idea.
“Where is it?”
I walked over to the desk and slid open the drawers. Part of me dreaded opening them and seeing that the diary was there. I didn’t know where it had gone or who had taken it, but a part of me felt happy. I hoped someone had stolen the diary and taken it far away. I hoped they’d walked into the fields in the dead of night and buried it in a mound of dirt.
“It was right here,” I said.
Jeremiah raised his fist and pounded the desk. The sound made me jump. I had never seen him like this. He always wore a grimace on his face, but now his features twisted with pure anger.
“This is all bullshit. I’m ready to call curtains on the charade.”
Do
it. Let’s get in the car and get the hell out of here.
But I knew that couldn’t happen. If we took off, where did that leave the village? Were people going to die because of this girl? Was I going to have to live with the knowledge that I knew about it, and that instead of doing something to stop it I fled into the night?
What if she followed me?
“I swear it was here, Jeremiah. I translated a page and then shut the thing up in the drawer.”
