Isolated

by M. A. Hunter

  Stepping further into the room, I use my phone’s torch to scan the walls, starting immediately to my right, and slowly tracing the origins of each strand. Where I was searching for a light switch, there are pages taped to the wall, each bearing unfamiliar scripting. There must be a dozen or so A5 sheets, crudely torn from some kind of book, and each numbered chronologically. Ducking beneath the cords and leaning closer, I see the writing is in Middle English, the kind of words I recall reading in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales when I was at university.

  There is a large map of the UK next to these sheets stretching the length of the wall and pinned in place. It too is dated, with city names more common to the early nineteenth century, though some are still recognisable, including Winchester. There are also small red circles drawn around certain locations, but at a first look, there is no rhyme nor reason for them. Each circle has its own cord stretching to another part of the room.

  It truly is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

  Selecting one of the red circles, I gently press the string between my thumb and forefinger, and follow it across the room, almost stumbling on a sealed cardboard box in the middle of the floor. Jack catches my arm as I teeter backwards and corrects my balance. Continuing to follow the string, I come to a printed cutting from a newspaper. The paper is brown from age, and the ink is difficult to read because it’s so blotchy, but it appears to relate to a story about frogs poisoned near a druid site in North Devon. There are more newspaper cuttings taped at various points around the walls, some older than others, all relating to strange goings-on. As well as the frog story, I find a cutting about goats being mysteriously dyed blue during a turbulent storm.

  My head is spinning as I continue to look at each cutting, clearly collected over a significant period of time, but I find myself gasping again when I see Sally Curtis’s eyes staring back at me from behind the door Daggard is still holding open. It isn’t Sally herself, rather the image I’ve seen plenty of in the last two days – the image supplied by the family for use in stories relating to her disappearance. There are a number of red strings attached to this particular cutting from a broadsheet which disappear to the far corners of the room.

  The overwhelming nausea suddenly coursing through my body forces me to dart out of the room and drop to the floor.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I hear Jack saying to me as I feel his hand rubbing circle patterns on my back. ‘You lasted in there longer than either of us. Take a minute and get your breath back.’

  He’s right. I hadn’t realised at first but I hadn’t taken a single breath from the moment I laid eyes on that pig’s head. No wonder I feel so lightheaded now.

  I nod as I focus on taking as many deep breaths as I can manage.

  ‘You should probably get some fresh air,’ Jack encourages.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I reassure him, pushing myself back up to my feet but avoiding looking at the pig’s head.

  ‘Is this what I think it is?’ I say to Daggard and Jack at the same time, but neither meets my gaze. ‘Was Natalie Sullivan a practising witch?’

  Jack is the first to speak. ‘I don’t know. It looks like she was mixed up in something and because of the large sheet about Sally Curtis…’ His words trail off and he finishes with a shrug.

  I picture Natalie on top of that roof, dressed in those brilliant white robes, and how I’d thought she looked almost angelic.

  You need to find her. Find Sally. Tell her I’m sorry.

  I don’t want to believe what’s in that room, but I don’t think the image will ever leave my memory. The pig’s head is there every time I close my eyes, and I now desperately wish I’d never laid eyes on Natalie, nor heard her final words. I’m not usually squeamish, but I now understand why Jack sounded so terrified on the phone.

  ‘There’s something else you should see,’ Daggard says, moving his torch to a particular area on the floor.

  Following the beam, I see the cardboard box I stumbled into, but it’s what’s written on the lid of the box that has my legs turning to jelly.

  A name.

  My name.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Then

  Dorchester, Dorset

  Question after question tumbled from the detective’s mouth as Natalie’s mother watched on, an ever-increasing scowl forming on her face. By the time DC Rimmington had closed her notebook, Natalie was pretty sure she would never be allowed out of her parents’ sight again.

  ‘If you do think of anything else I should know about,’ she finalised, proffering a card in the direction of Cheryl Sullivan, ‘don’t hesitate to get in touch.’ She turned back to stare directly at Natalie. ‘Sally’s parents are frantic with worry, Natalie, and I’m sure you’re just as keen as they are to see her return safely. If you do have any method for contacting Sally – whatever that may be – please use it, and tell her to at least phone and confirm she is alive and well. It’s hard enough sleeping rough in the height of summer, without these wintry breezes to deal with.’

  Natalie’s mum’s glare had reached its peak at that point, and as soon as the detective was gone, Cheryl was at her daughter’s bedside, threatening to clip her around the ear. ‘If you know where Sally is, you need to tell the police – or me – now.’

  Natalie genuinely wished she did have some method for communicating with Sally, but unless Currys was now designing walkie-talkies that reached other worlds, they were already beyond that point.

  ‘I–I–I don’t know, Mum, I told you! I have no idea where Sally is.’

  ‘But you have means to contact her, right? That’s what the detective suggested. What about Louise? She’s good friends with Sally. Would she know how to get hold of her?’

  It was a fair question, and despite Louise’s protestations to the contrary, if any of them would have a secret method of communication with Sally it would be Louise. Natalie simply shrugged at her mother’s question.

  ‘And what about your bloody leg?’ Mum continued. ‘What the hell did you do to that?’

  ‘I tripped and fell, that’s all.’

  ‘Have you never heard of disinfectant? You’re lucky it hasn’t blown into a full infection. Had that leg been left untreated for any longer they might not have been able to save it.’

  Natalie hadn’t heard the doctor or nurse mention anything about amputating her leg and it would be typical of her mum to exaggerate the situation to make Natalie feel worse.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum.’

  ‘Are you? Are you, Natalie? Wait till your father hears about this—’

  ‘No, Mum,’ she interrupted. ‘Please, don’t tell Dad I snuck out.’

  ‘It’s too late for all that, young lady. The school phoned your dad when they couldn’t get hold of me. Just count yourself lucky that he was away on an exercise and couldn’t get back.’

  Natalie could almost picture her father’s thunder-like face as he received the news that his precious daughter had gone behind his back and snuck out of the house.

  An hour later, and following a car journey of enforced silence, Natalie snuggled beneath her duvet on the end of her bed. None of them understood how difficult it was to be the youngest in the group, having to bow to every demand just so the others wouldn’t omit her from future activities. It hadn’t been Natalie’s idea to go to the woods in the middle of the night, nor had she wanted any part of it, but then Sally had said she wouldn’t be ‘one of the sisters’ if she didn’t come, and the thought of being ignored by the rest of them at school had changed her mind. She’d made the ultimate sacrifice: risking everything just to keep in their good books… and now it had cost her everything.

  Pushing her hand beneath her mattress, Natalie felt around until her fingers brushed against the spine of the book she was looking for. Carefully sliding it out of its hidden position between the bedframe slats, she opened the diary to a fresh page, and poured out her darkest secrets. She couldn’t write what had really happened beneath those claw-like branches in case anyone
else discovered the journal, so instead she wrote about the same fantasy version she’d rehearsed, before relaying it to the detective while her Mum listened on.

  A knock at the door had Natalie scrambling to hide the diary beneath the duvet. She had it hidden a second before her mum appeared in the doorway carrying a cup of tea and a packet of ginger nut biscuits.

  Her mum plonked herself down on the duvet, directly over the diary, and handed Natalie the steaming mug. ‘There’s something I need to ask you, Nat, and I want you to be totally honest with me. Okay? You won’t get into any trouble; I just want to make sure that you’re not being forced into anything you don’t want to be.

  Natalie kept her gaze straight while her pulse performed somersaults and her mind raced with frantic worry. Oh God, she knows!

  ‘This trip into the woods last night,’ her mum began, ‘was it just you girls there? I know that’s what you’ve all said to the police, but there’s still time to change your stories. I’m not sure I believe that the four of you snuck out of the base to play some childish game. Why go to the woods to play it? What was wrong with the playground down the road? At that time of night it would have been deserted, and nobody would have seen you there. It’s where the four of you go most of the flaming time anyway, so why not there? It just doesn’t make any sense in my head, unless the four of you were up to something you couldn’t risk getting seen doing.’

  She knows! She must do. Why else all these questions?

  Natalie’s fringe was soaked through with sweat as she watched on, waiting for the moment her Mum would ask the most pertinent question and her face would reveal the dark secret they’d yet to tell a living soul.

  ‘Were there boys in the woods with you?’ her mum asked.

  Natalie almost gasped with the surprise of the question – not one she’d expected.

  ‘No, of course not,’ she managed as her pulse spiked.

  Her mum was looking at her strangely. ‘You’re at that age when your body is going through all kinds of changes. I know what it’s like, having been through the same change back in the day. You probably have all manner of strange pains and sensations as your body transforms from girl to woman, and it’s understandable that you might be curious about certain aspects of that…’

  Natalie’s panic had swiftly reverted to awkward cringing. The last thing she needed was to talk about sex with her mother. Hadn’t she been through enough already today?

  ‘Mum, we didn’t go to the woods to have sex with boys,’ Natalie said sharply, hoping to end the conversation there.

  ‘No? If not boys, then… were you… I mean, did the four of you…?’

  From the way her mum was now squirming awkwardly on the bed, Natalie knew exactly what she was picturing, and was almost as horrified at the image. ‘Ooh, no, Mum, we weren’t having sex with each other. I’m not a lesbian.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with being a lesbian, Natalie. I read about it in Cosmopolitan. It’s actually quite trendy, and apparently one in five women these days has experimented with lesbianism in one form or another.’ Despite trying to sound comfortable with the prospect of her daughter coming out, Cheryl Sullivan’s body language suggested the opposite.

  ‘Seriously, Mum, I don’t have any problem with girls fancying girls, and boys fancying boys, but I’m not gay.’

  Her mum did a lousy job at hiding her relief, but it was still tinged with concern. ‘If not that, then what were the four of you doing in them woods? The only other conclusion I can draw is that you were taking drugs, but I thought we raised you better than that.’

  That should have been the story they concocted; the punishment might have been greater, but it would have been a far more believable story than the game of truth or dare. Natalie was certain DC Rimmington hadn’t bought the lie either, as she’d focused the majority of her questions on the game: who’d been asked what and what dares had been completed.

  ‘We weren’t taking drugs, Mum.’

  ‘No?’ her mum sniffed the air, as if half expecting the whiff of marijuana to prove Natalie wrong. ‘You would tell me if you were being pressured into taking drugs, wouldn’t you?’

  Natalie lowered her mug of tea, and fixed her mum with a sincere look. ‘I’m not taking drugs, Mum. I’m only thirteen.’

  With the lecture complete, Cheryl stood, leaving the ginger nut biscuits on the mattress. ‘Would you do me a favour? I have some letters that need posting. Would you be a love and take them to the postbox while I have a shower? Considering your dad will probably ground you when he gets back later, this might be the last time you get a break for freedom.’

  Natalie agreed and pushed herself from the bed, securing the diary back beneath the mattress when she heard the shower burst into life. Locating the envelopes on the kitchen table, Natalie scooped them up and headed out into the faint drizzle, the grey sky overhead threatening greater showers in the imminent future. Natalie half hobbled, half limped the hundred-metre distance to the tall round red letterbox, desperately hoping her mum would manage to calm her dad down before he began his angry interrogation of last night’s fable.

  Turning back for home, the last thing Natalie expected was to be confronted by a red-faced Louise. ‘What the fuck did you say to that detective?’

  ‘I told her what you told me to say. I told her about the game of truth or dare.’

  Natalie couldn’t understand why Louise looked so hot and flustered; after all, it wasn’t Natalie who’d let slip that the three of them had snuck out to the woods. Thanks to Louise and Jane’s mini-confessions in Mr Panko’s office, it was Natalie who’d been caught on the back foot when DC Rimmington had turned up at the hospital.

  ‘The detective knew all about us being at the woods,’ Natalie continued. ‘Why didn’t you warn me you were going to tell her?’

  Louise looked offended by the slight and quickly scanned the immediate vicinity for any beady eyes poking out from behind curtains. ‘Not here,’ she said. ‘Meet me at the hut.’ She turned to leave.

  ‘Wait,’ Natalie tried. ‘I’m grounded and my mum will be expecting me home straightaway.’

  Louise fixed her with a hard stare. ‘The hut. Two minutes.’

  Natalie watched her walk away, knowing that Louise would head down the next alleyway that ran behind the hut and the nearby houses before coming out the other side, closer to the entrance. It wouldn’t really matter if Natalie used the same route, but she sensed Louise would be angry if she did, so Natalie headed back down the road, towards her own house, but hurried past as she got near. With any luck, her mum would still be in the shower and wouldn’t notice if Natalie was a few minutes late back.

  The hut – an outbuilding of sorts, intended to host after-school activities – was set back from the main road, and was where Louise, Natalie, Jane and Sally would usually congregate after school for the drama club run by Pete, one of the servicemen. Natalie was surprised to find the hut unlocked, and as she proceeded through the double doors, soon found Louise huddling close to the small electric fire, the only source of heat in the large yet quiet building. Natalie headed over, and stretched her hands out over the warm orange light.

  ‘They still haven’t found her,’ Louise began, rubbing her arms for warmth. ‘That’s despite me telling them where we snuck through the fence and approximately how far we went into those woods.’

  ‘Why did you tell them anything, Louise? The plan was to only tell them we’d snuck out once they knew.’

  She smiled wryly. ‘Because I knew one of you two would freak out inside Panko’s office and let it all slip anyway. It was safer just to admit it. Worse to have been caught in a lie.’

  There was some logic to Louise’s thought processes, if indeed that was the real reason she’d spoken out. It was just as likely that Louise would have been the one to have buckled under the glare of Rimmington’s interrogation.

  ‘I wouldn’t have told her anything,’ Natalie said defensively. ‘I can keep a secret. If anythi
ng, Jane probably would have caved first.’

  Natalie felt bad throwing their other friend under the bus, but Jane had done little to support Natalie earlier at school, so she was fair game.

  ‘Yeah, you’re probably right,’ Louise snickered, and the tension in the room lifted a fraction.

  ‘Do you think they’ll find her?’ Natalie asked, instantly regretting it when Louise’s face turned a dark shade of crimson.

  ‘Why would you ask me that? How the hell do I know? It wasn’t my idea to… to go through with it. It was all Sally’s idea, remember? She wanted us to do… that. I agreed with you that it was a bad idea, but you know how difficult it could be to go against Sally.’

  Natalie wanted to correct Louise and tell her that she was as much to blame for last night’s tryst as Sally, but knew there was little point. If Louise had now convinced herself that she’d been sceptical, no amount of argument would change her mind back.

  ‘But what if they find evidence of what we did?’

  Louise pulled a face. ‘And how are they going to do that?’ She paused, studying Natalie’s face. ‘Wait, did you tell them? Did you tell the detective why we were really there?’

  It was Natalie’s turn to look hurt. ‘Of course I didn’t! Do you really think I’m capable of betraying my friends like that? It’s bad enough that my dad is going to yell and scream at me when he gets back tonight, without them knowing anything about that.’

  Louise continued to consider her, until her face softened again. ‘Good. Well don’t be forgetting what will happen if any of us admit the truth.’

  ‘What if Jane lets something slip?’

  ‘She won’t! I’ve dealt with Jane; she’ll keep her gob shut. You’re the only loose end I’m now worried about.’

  ‘Fuck you, Louise!’ Natalie snapped. ‘I said I won’t snitch and I mean it!’

  Louise took a step back from the fire. ‘All right, calm down. I just had to be sure. No need to go all menstrual on me.’