by C. J. Tudor
‘Why are you so afraid of me being here?’
‘I’m not. Just sick of it.’
‘Yeah, funnily enough, you don’t look so well.’
‘I’m tired. Cancer takes its toll, on everyone. There. Happy? Not such a perfect life after all. That what you want to hear?’
I stare at him. Maybe he’s right. Maybe things haven’t worked out so well for him. I think about what Miss Grayson said:
He is desperate … You are the only person who can stop him.
I fully intend to. But that is not why I’m here. First, I have other business. Business Hurst would understand. Saving-my-own-skin business.
I take the bag and thump it on to the desk. I see his eyes widen. He recognizes the battered, unbranded holdall. The faded and curling Doctor Who and Star Trek stickers.
‘What the hell is this?’
‘I think you know. But for the members of the jury –’ I open it and carefully place the contents in front of him – ‘it’s the crowbar you smashed my sister’s head in with, and your school tie, coated in her blood and your DNA.’
His mouth works, teeth grinding, chewing on this information like a bitter pill. ‘And what is this supposed to prove? Your sister was found. Alive.’
‘We both know that’s not what happened.’
‘Try telling that story to the police. I’m sure they’ll find you a nice comfy straitjacket to slip into.’
‘Fine. Try this. My sister disappeared for two days. Forty-eight hours. Where was she? What do you think the police would do if they were given this evidence? Evidence that you took her? Hurt her? How would that go down with the villagers, your councillor buddies?’
He stares at the plastic bag containing the crowbar and the bloody tie for a long time. Then he raises his eyes.
‘So I’ll ask you again – what do you want?’
‘Thirty grand.’
I wait. And then something happens to his face. I was expecting anger, denial. Maybe threats. Instead, he leans back in his chair and a sound bellows from his lips. Laughter.
In all the scenarios I played out in my mind, this is not one I expected. I glance nervously towards the window. Just darkness outside. I feel my tension rise.
‘Want to share the joke?’
He straightens and gathers himself. ‘It’s you. It’s always been you.’
‘Fine.’ I pick up the crowbar and the tie and put them back inside the bag. ‘Maybe I’ll just take this to the police right now.’
‘No, you won’t.’
‘You sound very sure about that.’
‘I am.’
‘If you try to stop me, or plan on calling your thugs, I should warn you that –’
‘Stop talking shit.’ He cuts me down. ‘I’ve no intention of hurting you. You see, that’s your problem. You’re always looking for someone to strike out at. Someone to blame. You never stop to think that you brought all of this on yourself.’
‘I don’t know what the hell you mean.’
‘I know about the crash.’
‘What’s to know? It was an accident. My sister and father died.’
‘Where were you going that night?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Convenient.’
‘The truth.’
‘The papers speculated that something must have happened, that your father was driving to hospital. Not long before the crash someone tried to call 999 from your house.’
I wonder how he knows this, or perhaps, more importantly, why he has made it his business to know.
‘Why don’t you just get to the point?’
‘Your father didn’t crash your car that night by accident.’
‘You’re wrong. There was evidence he tried to brake. Tried to prevent the crash.’
‘Oh, I’m not saying it wasn’t an accident. But your father didn’t cause it.’
He smiles and I feel my house of cards – my so-close-to-winning hand – fold and flutter to the ground.
‘You did, Joe. You were the one driving.’
34
The past isn’t real. It is simply a story we tell ourselves.
And sometimes, we lie.
I loved my little sister. So much. But the sister I loved was gone. I saw her walking around the house in the strange lurching way she had now – like her body was the wrong fit – but I didn’t see Annie. I saw something that looked like Annie, sounded like Annie. But it was a fake. A bad copy.
Sometimes I wanted to scream at my parents: Can’t you see? It’s not Annie. Something happened and she’s gone. There was a mistake. A terrible mistake, and this thing got sent back in her place. A thing that is wearing her skin and looking through her eyes but, when you look back, it’s not Annie inside.
But I didn’t. Because that would have sounded crazy. And I knew it was the last thing my parents needed to deal with. I didn’t want to be the straw that finally broke our family into pieces. I needed to sort this out. To put it right. So one day, before school, I picked up the phone in a trembling hand and called the doctor’s. I put on my best voice and said I was Mr Thorne and wanted to make an appointment for my daughter. The receptionist, who was brisk and efficient, but obviously not very perceptive, barked that she could fit us in at four-thirty that afternoon. I thanked her and said that was perfect.
When I got back from school I told Dad I had just remembered that Mum said she’d made an appointment for Annie at the doctor’s. Fortunately, he was only on his second can. He complained, but I said that was okay, he could tell Mum he had decided to cancel it. That did the trick. Dad didn’t want to risk going against Mum, making her mad. He stuck his jacket on and yelled for Annie to come downstairs. I said I’d go along too. On the way, I bought some mints from the shop. I offered Dad one. He took two.
The doctor was an overweight man with a nose full of red veins and a thin scraping of dry hair over his shiny head. He was friendly enough, but he looked tired and I noticed that the case by his feet was already packed, ready to go home.
He examined Annie, shone things in her eyes, tapped her knee. Annie sat in the chair, as stiff as a ventriloquist’s dummy. After performing his tests, the doctor patiently explained that he couldn’t find anything physically wrong with Annie. However, she had suffered a trauma. Missing for two days. Lost, maybe trapped somewhere. Who knew what had happened to her? The bed-wetting, the nightmares, the strange behaviour were all to be expected. We just had to be patient. Give her time. If there was no improvement, he could refer us to a therapist. He smiled. It probably wouldn’t come to that. Annie was young. The young are incredibly resilient. She would be back to her old self in no time, he was sure.
Dad thanked him and shook his hand. His own hand was shaking quite a bit. I was glad I had bought the mints. We walked home again. Annie wet herself on the way.
Trauma. Give her time. He was sure.
I wasn’t. I thought it was a load of bullshit and, for some reason, I felt like we were running out of time.
On top of this, I was dealing with Chris’s death. Or rather, I wasn’t. There had been a funeral, at the crematorium. It didn’t feel real. I kept expecting to turn around and find Chris standing beside me, blond hair sticking up like always, pointing out that the temperature of the furnace was between 1400 and 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, the body was consumed in two and a half hours and the crematorium burnt around fifty bodies a week.
Chris’s mum sat at the front. He didn’t have any other family. His dad had left when he was little and his older brother had died of cancer before Chris was born.
His mum had the same wild white hair as Chris. She wore a shapeless black dress and clutched a pile of tissues. But she didn’t cry. She just kept staring straight ahead. Occasionally, she mumbled something and smiled. Somehow, it was more awful than if she’d been bawling her eyes out.
I saw her a few times afterwards. She was still wearing the same clothes. I felt like I should say something, but I didn’t know what. When
ever I walked by Chris’s house the curtains were pulled. A couple of weeks later a ‘For Sale’ board went up.
I found myself wandering the village aimlessly after school, always ending up beneath the Block, staring up, wondering how it felt to fall so far, so fast. People left flowers and tributes. There was even one from Hurst. The temptation to take it, rip it to shreds and stamp it into the ground was almost too much.
I never did. Just like I never told anyone how I saw him that day.
Chris’s death had put me in a kind of paralysis. I had hidden the bag in the shed, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with it. I couldn’t think. Couldn’t seem to get my head in order. Every time I thought about the bag I saw Chris lying on the ground, his oddly deflated body, the thick, dark blood. So much blood. And then I would think of my sister.
Sometimes, I wondered if I was the one going crazy. Maybe there was nothing wrong with Annie. Maybe the knock I’d taken to the head had done something to my brain. Maybe I was imagining it all.
I was finding it hard to concentrate in school. Remembering to eat, to have a bath – those things didn’t seem important any more. My long, repetitive treks around the village became longer and longer. One night, a police officer stopped me and told me to go home. It was almost midnight.
I woke several times a night, clawing at the air to escape the nightmares. In one, Chris and Annie stood on a snowy hill. The sky shimmered behind them, a dappled candy-pink. The sun was black, haloed by a silvery light, like an eclipse. Chris and Annie looked perfect again, whole. Like they did before they died.
All around them, there were snowmen. Big, round, fluffy white snowmen with long, twiggy arms and lumps of shiny black coal for their eyes and mouths. As I watched, their crooked smiles twisted into snarls.
You can’t stay here. There’s nobody here but us snowmen. Go back. GO BACK!
The sun plummeted below the horizon. Chris and Annie disappeared. The candy-pink sky bubbled and boiled, darkening to a deep crimson. Flakes started to fall. But not white. Red. And not flakes. Blood. Huge, fat drops of blood that burnt like acid. I fell to the ground. My skin was melting from my bones. My bones were melting into the ground. The snowmen watched with cold, black eyes as I dissolved into nothing.
The next morning, I knew what I had to do.
I got dressed in my school uniform, like usual. I left at the normal time. But my bag contained a few other items packed carefully under my textbooks.
I walked briskly out of the house. I didn’t head down the street, towards the school. I headed up, towards the old pit. They had fixed the broken fence. Put even more warning signs up. DANGER. KEEP OUT. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. There was supposed to be a man from the council who patrolled the site to make sure no other kids got in there. But I didn’t see anyone this morning as I walked slowly along the perimeter. It didn’t look so secure. The fence was still a bit wobbly, and there were gaps between the mesh panels. It didn’t take long for me to find one that was just about big enough for me to squeeze through. Although it was a squeeze. My school blazer caught on a sharp bit of wire and snagged. I tugged it free and felt it rip. I cursed. Mum would tear a strip off me for that. Or she would have done before. Now, I realized, she probably wouldn’t even notice.
I trudged on, up the hill. It looked different this morning. It was cold, but the sun was shining. It didn’t exactly brighten the place but it did somehow soften its sharper, bleaker edges. It also threw me a bit. Which way was the hatch? At the bottom of the next steep rise, or was it the one after that? I stood and looked around. But the more I looked, the more uncertain I felt. Panic began to nibble at the edges of my stomach. I needed to be quick. I couldn’t be too late for school.
I started one way then changed my mind and doubled back the other. Everything looked the same. Shit. What would Chris do? How did he find it? And then I remembered. He didn’t find it. It found him.
I stood and breathed slowly. I didn’t try to think, or look. I just let myself be.
And then I walked – to my left, up one rise, down and then up another, steeper hill. I scrabbled down the rocky slope. At the bottom was a small hollow, shielded by scrubby bushes. Here, I thought. I couldn’t see it. All I could see was rubble and rocks. But I knew it was here. I could almost feel the ground humming beneath my feet.
I approached cautiously. Trying to train my eyes not to scan the ground. Not to look too carefully. And it worked. Suddenly, I made out the shape of the hatch in the earth. I crouched down. Up close, it wasn’t quite closed. There was enough of a gap for me to wedge my fingers underneath and move it. I tried and, satisfied I could do it, I lowered it down again. I didn’t plan on going down there right now. I couldn’t turn up to school covered in dirt and coal dust. Plus, I couldn’t risk someone spotting something and coming up here to investigate.
I had to come back later. When it was darker. When I could do what I needed to without anyone stopping me.
For now, I took the items I had carefully packed in my bag and hid them beneath a scrubby bit of bush. Then, because I didn’t want to run the risk of not finding the hatch again when I came back later, I draped an old red sock I had brought with me around one of the branches. It would do. The first part of my plan finished, I stood and made my way back out of the site and down to school.
The day dragged, yet it also went too fast, in the way it always does when you’re waiting for something, yet also dreading it. Like a trip to the dentist’s or the doctor’s. I’d happily have traded a pulled tooth for what I had to do this evening.
Finally, the bell rang and I walked out of class, worried someone might call my name or stop me, half hoping they would. No one did. I didn’t hurry, though. I still had time to kill before the day started to fade to dusk.
I did my usual walk around the high street. I had some cash on me that I had nicked out of Dad’s wallet the night before, so I bought some chips – even though I wasn’t hungry – and picked at them in the bus shelter, before chucking half the tray in the bin.
I wandered around a bit more, then sat on a swing in the deserted playground for a while. When the street lights started to blink on, like startled orange eyes, I began my walk up towards the pit.
I’d packed a torch in my bag, as well as an old woollen hat of Dad’s that I pulled right down over my head, almost over my eyes. I checked out the site for any signs of security, but the street was empty and silent. I slipped through the fence before that could change.
I didn’t need the torch just yet, even though, now it was almost the end of October, the light was fading fast. I didn’t want to draw any attention to myself. Also, for some reason, I felt that I would find my way better in the dark. Despite a couple of trips and stumbles – putting a tear in my school trousers this time – I was right. I reached the bottom of the steep incline and could just make out the red sock, a darker shadow on the bush.
I’d made it. And now I was here, again, I was crapping myself. I knew I needed to be fast, or else I’d chicken out entirely. I heaved aside the hatch, scraping the skin from my knuckles. Then I retrieved the fireworks that I had hidden beneath the bush, stuffed them back in my bag and took out my torch.
After a final glance around I lowered myself into the hatch and climbed down the steps.
It didn’t take long. Once I’d lit the fuses on the fireworks I barely had time to scramble back up the steps and shove the hatch across the opening before I heard the first muffled bangs. I grabbed my bag and got to my feet. The metal hatch rose before clanging back down again, dust puffing out around it. And then it just kind of collapsed into the ground.
I backed away. I’d only taken a few steps before I felt the earth shudder, a rumbling roar that seemed to rise all the way up from the soles of my trainers to my chest. I knew that sound. There had been a rockfall down the pit when I was about Annie’s age. No one was hurt, but I always remembered that rumbling roar as somewhere deep below the ground, the earth folded in on itself
.
It was done, I thought. I just had to hope it was enough.
It was almost eight when I got back home: tired, dirty, but oddly exhilarated. Just for a split second, before I pushed open the back door, I was possessed by this insane notion that suddenly everything would be okay. I had broken the spell, slain the dragon, exorcised the demon. Annie would be herself again, Mum would be cooking tea and Dad would be reading the paper, singing along to the radio like he used to sometimes when he was in a good mood.
All crap of course. When I walked in Dad was slumped in his usual position in front of the television. I could just see the top of his curly head above the armchair and I was sure he had already passed out. Annie wasn’t downstairs, so I guessed she must be in her room again. The smell in the house was worse than ever. I covered my mouth and rushed upstairs to the bathroom.
On the landing, I paused. The door to Annie’s room was wide open. That never happened any more. I walked forward.
‘Annie?’
I peered inside. The room was in semi-darkness, as always. Just the thinnest haze of twilight seeping through the thin curtains. The bed was unmade. If the smell downstairs was bad, up here it was almost unbearable – stale urine, sweet rot and something like bad eggs and vomit all mixed up at once. The room was empty.
I checked my bedroom. Also empty. I knocked on the bathroom door.
‘Annie? Are you in there?’
Silence. There was no lock on the bathroom door. Dad had taken it off when Annie was little, after she locked herself inside one day.
Mum and I had sat outside and sung to her, to keep her calm. All the while, Dad had worked on the lock to get it off the door. When we finally burst in, Annie had gone to sleep, curled up in just a nappy and a T-shirt on the bathroom floor.
I stared at the closed door. Then I grasped the handle, which felt oddly sticky, pushed it open and pulled on the light. My world swam.
Red. So much red everywhere. All over the sink. Smeared across the mirror. Splodges trailing over the floor. Rich, glistening, fresh.
