A Dark and Secret Place

by Jen Williams

  I know what you are, and I think you do too.

  Her stomach dropped away in a sickening lurch. The card wasn’t signed, and there were no other words on it—not even a little printed image of some flowers in the corner like most of the other cards. She snapped the card off the wreath and stood up, bile pressing at the back of her throat.

  “Hev? What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head, unable to respond. Somewhere very distantly, a dog was barking, over and over.

  I know what you are.

  Someone out there—someone who knew all about her mother and the Red Wolf—was playing with her.

  CHAPTER

  29

  THE WAKE WAS nightmarish. A dark backroom in a pub, platters of sandwiches and cocktail sausages—far more than necessary for the meager crowd—and glasses of sour red wine. Heather found that she couldn’t focus on any of the faces, or follow the threads of any conversations; instead, she kept returning to the card, and its bitter little message: I know what you are.

  Nikki checked in on her periodically, appearing with a paper plate loaded with cheese or a glass of coke, inserting herself into conversations that looked too painful or awkward, and Heather caught her eye more than once, surprised and touched by her friend’s thoughtful actions. However, when an old man she dimly recognized as a neighbor of her mother’s took hold of her arm and squeezed it, Nikki was on the far side of the room, having some sort of quiet argument with her aunt.

  “Very sad to hear about yer mum, very sad.” The old man squeezed her arm again, as if for emphasis. He had big blunt fingers, with fingernails that had been cut too close to the quick. “Do you know why she did it?”

  I know what you are. Heather shook his hand off, but he didn’t take the hint. Instead he continued to peer up at her. There were flakes of dried skin on the tops of his cheeks, and the capillaries on the bridge of his nose had burst long ago.

  “You mean, do I know why she threw herself from the top of a cliff?” Her jaw felt stiff and her stomach was rolling again. She swallowed down the rest of her drink, and put the glass on a nearby table, with more force than was strictly necessary. “Tell me, do you really think that’s a reasonable question to ask someone at a wake? A grieving daughter, no less.”

  “Well, I …” The man frowned dramatically. “There’s no need to be like that about it.”

  “Isn’t there? No need to be annoyed that you want me to drag out all my pain and misery for you to examine, my mother’s pain and misery, just for your morbid curiosity?”

  “That’s not …”

  “Yes, it is. God, I am so glad I got away from this shit hole when I had the chance. Can you believe I actually feel sorry for my mum, existing in this shower of vultures?’ Her voice had risen, and she could see Nikki making her way across the room, her eyes wide. “Actually, sod this. I’ll leave you to it.”

  Stepping out into the fresh air wasn’t the relief she expected it to be. Instead, she felt hunted, exposed. She briefly thought about calling Ben Parker, sure that hearing his voice—warm and kind—would heal her somehow, but she was tearful, and the idea that she would sleep with him and then cry over the phone to him the next day was mortifying. There was a bus stop nearby with a bus just pulling up, so she jumped onto it without looking at the destination. It was only when she sat down, crashing slightly too heavily into the seat next to a startled looking teenager, that she realized the glass of wine she’d downed had gone to her head. A second later her phone pinged with a message from Nikki.

  Where did you go? Are you alright?x

  Heather looked at it for a long time before slipping the phone back into her pocket. She got off the bus when she caught sight of another pub, a peeling and battered sign painted with a red lion. It was a murky little place, with sticky floors and a handful of stunted old men in corners nursing pints of bitter. The landlady, who was short and brassy, gave her a pinched look as she came in, but didn’t hesitate to pour the drink she ordered. Heather took her glass and a packet of potato chips, and set up at a small round table as far from the wide screen TV as possible, recognizing it as a beacon for men who enjoyed standing in groups making sudden loud honking and hooting noises at some sports related nonsense.

  The rum was good and dark. With each sip she felt the sharp edges of her shock grow a little fuzzy, although she still couldn’t help returning to the strange bouquet of wildflowers, and the note in the bathroom cabinet, with its little flurry of starling feathers as it fell into the sink. Then there was the trapped bird, flying around the landing crashing into walls, and the figure she thought she had seen standing on the edge of her mother’s property—except hadn’t Lillian seen it, too? She had asked about gentlemen callers, after all.

  She downed the rest of the rum and ordered a coke. Her stomach was too empty for any more alcohol.

  Perhaps the note in the cabinet really was from her mother. Perhaps Colleen had sent the flowers, too, arranging for them to be sent before she ended her own life. Was that even possible? If you paid the florist enough, if you had a pretty good idea where your predictable daughter would have your funeral, if you had clearly stipulated in your will that you wanted to be cremated. She might not know her mother as well as she’d thought—indeed, every day seemed to take her further away from who she thought her mother had been—but doing something like that would take a level of cruelty Heather couldn’t quite believe she had. Had she been cold? Certainly. But malicious?

  “This is insane.” A pair of old men at the table next to her looked up at her, and she turned away from them. At the center of everything was the biscuit tin full of letters, a little time bomb full of unanswerable mysteries and terrible shadows. She thought of Michael Reave and his scarred hands, calmly telling her about wolves and women who ate raw flesh.

  She got up to get another soft drink. On her way back to her seat, the news alert app on her phone beeped at her, and before she could look away, she caught the headline: THE LEGACY OF THE RED WOLF—SERIAL MURDERER INSPIRES NEW KILLINGS.

  Heather blinked, her phone slipping through her fingers to clatter to the floor.

  “Are you all right, love?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Scampering after her phone, Heather scooped it up and returned to her table, feeling the eyes of everyone in the bar resting like dirty fingers on the back of her head. She glared around at them all, ignoring how difficult it was to focus, and went back to her phone.

  The legacy of the Red Wolf.

  It was from The Post, the newspaper Diane worked for. After taking a moment to steel herself against the worst, Heather opened the article and quickly read it through. There was Michael Reave’s infamous mugshot, alongside a photograph of Fiona Graham, one of her standing with her students. The text included a quick rundown of everything that had happened so far, a summary of the historical murders and the details of all the victims, … and interspersed with that, everything she had given Diane: about Michael Reave being questioned and her impressions of him, the missing hearts, the flowers in the victims’ mouths, the fact that the police were examining the cards Fiona Graham’s students had given her for her birthday … It was all there. Diane hadn’t waited for the full story—she had taken the juicy scraps Heather had given her and woven them into a larger piece. She could see the joins. Here was a paragraph that was hers, word for word. And another two sections after that. Because what she had sent Diane had been a rough draft, a great deal of what Ben had told her was there unchanged, verbatim. Heather stared at her own words, and they winked up at her like razor blades.

  “Fuck you, Diane.”

  She could well imagine how it had happened. Diane reading over what she had sent, taking it to the other editors, and then, with every other paper leading with the copycat murders, the chance to whip the ground out from under their feet had simply been too delicious to resist. She could picture Diane nodding, agreeing. There’s no way we can sit on this.

  Heather sat with her fin
gers pressed to her lips, her heart thumping too loudly in her chest.

  He’ll know, she thought, staring at the bright little square of her phone screen. When Ben sees this, he’ll know I’ve spoken to the paper. He’ll know what I am.

  For the longest moment, she was paralyzed with indecision. Should she call Diane, demand the whole thing be taken down? Should she call Ben, try and explain things before he even saw it? Or, should she order a bottle of rum from the bar and start making her way through it? In the end, her paralysis was broken by her phone ringing. The number was Ben Parker’s.

  Fuck.

  “Ben?”

  “Heather …” There was a tone in his voice she hadn’t heard before. Her stomach did a slow somersault.

  “Listen, I can explain— ”

  “You know what I’m calling about then.” He sighed, and somehow that was even worse. His anger she could cope with, but instead he sounded tired, disappointed. “It was you.”

  “Look, I spoke to a friend about what was happening. I didn’t think she would— ”

  “You didn’t think Diane Hobart, assistant editor of one of our biggest newspapers, would write a story about the Red Wolf? You know what, don’t bother, please. I’m an idiot.” She could hear him moving, as though passing the phone from one ear to the other. She pictured him in his office, perhaps glancing through the glass at his colleagues. “I shouldn’t have told you anything. It’s my fault, really. I know you’re a journalist, Heather.”

  “Ex-journalist. If you’ve looked me up, you know that much, too.” She bit her lip briefly, furious with herself and with everything. “I wasn’t taking the piss, okay? Last night … I really enjoyed myself. I genuinely like you, Ben. Please don’t take this to mean something it doesn’t.”

  “I think it means I’m a fool who has jeopardized an investigation. Which means I’ve put lives in danger.” He paused, and when he spoke again, she sensed him trying to distance himself. “Look, I’m really just calling to say I’ve canceled any further visitations with Michael Reave. I think it’s best, for you and the investigation, if you keep away from it all for now. We’ll be in touch if we need anything else.”

  Heather opened her mouth, not sure what she was going to say, but all she heard was another sigh, and a sharp electronic whine as he broke the connection.

  * * *

  Heather sat in silence, the hand holding her phone lying on her lap. She found herself picturing the walls in the bedroom of the first flat she lived in when she left home—when she ran away from home, really. The wallpaper had been cheap and peeling, and once she had torn off a strip, curious to see what was underneath. It hadn’t been worth it—her landlord had been furious, and underneath there had only been patchy blue paint, the color of cornflowers. But what if she had peeled it off to reveal something darker, some terrible landscape full of truths that were too horrific to look at. And they had been there all the time, lurking under the surface.

  She came back to herself abruptly to find a florid-looking man in a football shirt standing over her table. He had a pint of lager in one hand and was looking down at her with glittering, too lively eyes.

  “Cheer up, love, it might never happen.”

  “What?”

  He shrugged, glancing back at a crowd of mates, who were mostly watching the football. The pub had filled up quite a bit in the last hour.

  “Got a face like a smacked ass on you, innit? Just saying, you’ll feel better if you have a little smile.”

  Heather’s face grew hot all at once, and her heart skipped and stuttered. She stood up, and as she did something else seemed to flow into her, boiling up from the roots.

  “I beg your fucking pardon?”

  The man pulled his chin in, a ludicrously offended expression on his shining red face.

  “No need to be like that, love, I was just —”

  “You were just fucking WHAT?”

  Heather threw her full weight into the side of the table, sending it crashing into the man’s thighs with enough force to scatter the empty glasses. There was a bright tinkling crash as two of them smashed to pieces on the floor, followed by the traditional cheer from the side of the pub that couldn’t see what was happening.

  “Oi, you mad bitch!” The man staggered back, remnants of coke splashed brown against his cream-colored slacks. Heather walked around the table toward him, feeling like she was floating, filled up as she was with something dark and light. Almost as an afterthought, she picked up one of the empty glasses that was still standing, thinking to smash it against his giant, thick head.

  “You’re fucking right I am,” she said, pleased with how calm her voice sounded. The bloke’s mates were all looking at her now, a few moving forward with their hands held up. “I am one mad fucking bitch, you hideous little prick.”

  She lifted the hand with the glass, but then the brassy little landlady was there, hissing in her face to get out.

  “None of that, thank you very much! Go on, get out, we don’t want that in here.”

  Heather boggled down at the woman, and whatever had been inside her—some quick, calm, awful thing that had also been there on her last day in the newspaper offices—seeped away. She cast one more look at the bloke, who, with the landlady now safely in front of him, was calling her every name under the sun.

  “What is it about men?” she said to the landlady, her voice soft. “Can’t even have a quiet drink without them ruining it.”

  The woman gave her a sour look, and then Heather was back out on an unfamiliar street. It had been a bright afternoon when she’d gone inside the Red Lion, and now it was early evening, cold and dark, with a miserable light rain moving through the freezing air. Heather stood, breathing it in. As her temperature dropped, the adrenaline washed out of her blood, leaving her ashamed and tired and slightly numb.

  Stumbling slightly, she made her way back to the bus stop.

  * * *

  Back at her mother’s garden gate, Heather paused to send off a final text to Nikki. They had exchanged texts all the way home; most of Nikki’s sounded worried, all of Heather’s were apologetic. She had promised, somewhat rashly, to make dinner for Nikki’s mum and Aunt Shanice in an attempt to say thank you for their kindness, and her head was full of how many people she owed apologies when she opened the front door. She clicked the hall light on and stopped, staring at the floor.

  Petals, as red as droplets of arterial blood in the dim light, were scattered across her mother’s biscuit-colored carpet, leading across the hall and up the stairs. There was also a smell, a hot stench like old garbage or meat left in the sun too long. Heart in her throat, Heather made her way up the stairs, trying not to think of fairy tales where children followed a trail of breadcrumbs into the darkest part of the forest. Did Michael Reave have a version of that story? Of course he did.

  The trail led into her mother’s bedroom, and there on the dressing table was a small crumpled pile of darkness. A bird—a starling, in fact. A very dead one. The small cavity of its chest had been split open, and inside it, glistening unpleasantly, Heather could just make out more of the petals. They were the delicate pink of dog roses, just like on the wreath at the funeral.

  CHAPTER

  30

  CATHY STOOD IN the entrance to the pub, for a brief moment uncertain what to do. Compulsively she took out her phone from her pocket and glanced at the screen, just in case a notification there could poke her into one direction or another. There was nothing.

  Okay, she thought to herself, a hand resting on the door. Turn around and go home now, if you want, get back on the bus and send her a message saying you couldn’t make it after all. But if you do that, you’ll always wonder what she was like. Forever. That’s not really a choice at all, is it?

  The door opened and a man stepped out, pulling his collar up against the cold. He glanced at Cathy curiously, then he was past her. The glimpse she got of the pub interior was warm and cozy, so after taking a second to push her hair
out of her face, Cathy stepped inside. Almost immediately she spotted the woman, whose name was Jane Bailey.

  My mother. My birth mother, anyway.

  She walked over to the table, and the woman looked up. Cathy felt a smile break out on her face even as she felt like crying.

  “Hello, uh, I’m Cathy. Wow. I can’t … I mean, it’s amazing to meet you.”

  The woman didn’t look amazed. Mostly, she looked pained, and she met Cathy’s gaze only for a handful of seconds before gesturing to the chair across from her at the table. Cathy hesitated. Shouldn’t they hug? Wouldn’t there be a tearful embrace? She reminded herself of what her husband, David, had said; that this might be difficult in ways she couldn’t predict, and that went doubly for her birth mother. She sat down.

  “Here.” There was an extra glass on the table. The woman picked up the bottle of white wine she’d been working her way through and poured a glass. “White okay? I suspect we could both do with a drink.”

  “White’s fine, thanks.” Cathy took a moment to study Jane Bailey. She was a little older than she’d been expecting, maybe a few years older than her mum had been when she’d passed away. She was well dressed, with an expensive looking navy-blue turtleneck jumper and white jeans, and she had gold hoops in her ears. Her hair was an unlikely shade of purple-red—something out of a packet. “And thank you for meeting me. I understand that it can’t have been easy, but it means a lot to me.”

  “I won’t lie to you, part of me didn’t want to come at all. I thought all that …” Jane paused, fiddled with a thick gold band on one slightly pudgy finger. “Well, I thought it was all behind me. That was sort of the point. How did you find me, anyway?”

  “My mum passed away. Well. I mean …”