by Jen Williams
Eventually, she gave up on Fiddler’s Folly—she now knew, at least, where exactly the photo of her mother and Michael Reave had been taken—and began looking up Polaroid websites. Through these, she discovered that it was possible to figure out the rough date the Polaroid film had been manufactured, if not the date the photo had been taken. A long string of numbers on the back, very faded and almost impossible to read, revealed that the Polaroid film had been made in April 1982, which certainly fitted with the date scribbled in black ink. According to the website, back then instant film had been very expensive, and many families with Polaroid cameras would save their shots for important occasions. Feeling the coffee turn to a sour slick in her stomach, she imagined someone—possibly Michael Reave—buying the film, perhaps smiling over all the “special” moments he would capture with it.
She looked at the photo, which was lying next to her on the table. There must, she reasoned, be thousands like it—quick snaps of couples on beaches, their arms around each other. Very few, she suspected, would have such a dark history surrounding them.
She retrieved the photographs of the babies she’d found in the caravan from her bag, keeping them face down and on her lap, for reasons she couldn’t quite explain. It didn’t take long to figure out that, yes, these photos were from the same film run that had produced the photo of Reave and her mother. The film was produced on the same day in the same year, according to the codes on the back. It even told her on which shift the film was made.
Thinking of photographs, she remembered the one she had given to Ben Parker, of the fete and the red-headed girl who would grow up to be a PE teacher. Parker had said Fiona was there to pick up a certificate for some sort of nature scheme—on a whim, she put Young Nature Walkers Prize into the search engine. The scheme had ended some twenty years ago, but there were still a few remnants of it left online; someone had put the bare bones of a Wikipedia page together for it, logging the sorts of activities the children had to complete to get their certificate, things like rambling, pressing flowers, making a corn dolly. The scheme had been sponsored by Oak Leaf, the same environmental charity that had a hand in the very spa she was sitting in.
“More fucking coincidences.”
Except they couldn’t be. Heather sat back in her seat, ignoring her lunch. What did it mean? Did it mean anything at all? Inevitably her eyes were drawn back to the photo of her mother on the beach. Was it possible she had been with Michael Reave—her stomach turned over at the thought—while also seeing her dad at the same time? That could mean that the man who raised her was her dad, but she had no memory of her dad ever mentioning a commune in the north, and the idea of her mother playing two men off against each other felt wrong … But then, a lot of what she had thought she’d known about Colleen Evans had turned out to be a lie.
The other option was almost too horrible to contemplate.
“Doing more local research, Heather?”
She jumped. Bert, the old man who had made tea for them the other day, had appeared at her shoulder. Outside of his house and in the bright lights of the spa café he looked even more wizened, and he was peering at her with his head cocked, just as he had when they’d first met him.
“Uh, hello, Bert. Just, you know, getting a bit of work done while I’m here.”
He raised an eyebrow at that, and just as Heather was trying to sneak it back in her pocket, he saw the Polaroid.
“Is that of the beach? May I have a look?”
Heather froze. In that long awkward moment, she could think of no good reason not to hand the Polaroid over, so she passed it to him, feeling her face flush crimson. She was certain he would recognize Michael Reave. After all, he had one of the most infamous mugshots in British criminal history, and it was clearly the same person, down to the little flash of white hair at his temple. And then he would ask what on earth she was doing with such a photo … But instead, he just stared at it, his face very still. Eventually he nodded.
“Yes. How interesting. The Folly was in a bit of a state back then,” he said. “It went through an extensive restoration at one point, and I’m pleased to say it’s less of an eyesore now.”
“Do you know when that was? The restoration work, I mean?”
“Oh, in the mid-eighties, I think. Yes, that’s right.” He smiled, stretching dry lips across his long teeth. “They made the place habitable again.” He looked like he was about to glance at the back of the photo, but instead he passed it back to her politely. “Discovering you have history here, are you?”
Heather looked up at him sharply. “Why do you say that?”
He shrugged, a one-sided movement with his crooked back. “You said your mother’s friend was here at one point. Is that not her? In the photo.”
“Oh. Oh yeah, that’s right. Pamela.” She smiled. “To be honest with you, Bert, I just like looking at old photos.”
He tipped his head to one side, a motion that wasn’t quite a nod.
“Well. I’ll be letting you get back on with it then, lass.”
When he’d shuffled some distance away, Heather turned to watch him go. He didn’t seem like a typical spa customer, and she couldn’t imagine why he had dragged himself all the way up the hill on a rainy day, but as he reached the foyer she saw the blond woman come out from behind the desk to greet him, and watched as they chatted together for a few minutes. Perhaps, she reasoned, the receptionist was a relation—a granddaughter, or a niece.
She stayed in the café for another couple of hours, digging deeper into forums about counter-culture, about drug use and the history of Fiddler’s Mill, but didn’t find anything that suggested who might be trying to mess with her. Eventually, she packed up her things and left, heading out into a day that had grown a little brighter. The clouds overhead were breaking up, letting through tantalizing glimpses of a soft, dreamy blue sky, and she walked out across the grass with no clear thought as to where to go next. Nikki, at least, was away from the cottage and safe with Harry. They were probably downing pints in some quaint country pub by now, talking about old ghost stories and eating a ploughman’s lunch. The thought was a comforting one and she clung to it. Better to think about that than worry about what she might find when she got back—another note, a dead bird. Something worse.
She was so lost in those thoughts that when her phone rang it took her a few seconds to recognize the sound. Heather pulled the phone out, assuming it must be Nikki or even Ben, but instead it showed a withheld number. She pressed receive, and an automated voice told her she had an incoming call from HMP Belmarsh, and that she should stay on the line if she wished to be connected.
All at once, she felt exposed again. She looked around, but she was alone. The line of Fiddler’s Woods marched off to her right, and the big house was a small shape far behind her. Not sure what else to do, she waited to be connected.
“Hello?”
She knew his voice immediately. A surge of conflicted emotions made her look at her feet; he sounded worried. Did serial killers get worried? It seemed like too human a reaction.
“Mr. Reave? Why are you phoning me?” She paused, and shook her head. “How do you even have my phone number? I seriously doubt the police gave it to you.”
“Listen.” But he didn’t continue, and she could just hear his breathing, slow and measured.
“What is it?” Abruptly she felt furious, outraged that he could call her in the middle of the day and cause her stomach to tighten with what was undeniably fear. She wanted to hit something. Hit someone. “What do you bloody want?”
“Where are you?” There was a scuffling noise, and she pictured him transferring the receiver to the other ear. “Aren’t you in London?”
“It’s none of your business where I am.”
“I wish you hadn’t done that. God, I wish you hadn’t.”
Some of her anger seeped away then. He sounded more than worried, he sounded scared. And what could scare a murderer? The wind picked up, reminding her that she was
alone. I could just ask him, she thought. How well did you know my mum, really? Why were you so keen to talk to me? And am I the daughter of a serial killer? But she had a terrible feeling she already knew the answers—and to hear it from him would make it real.
“Michael, if you know something —”
“I knew they couldn’t leave well enough alone. I knew it was a mistake, to drive them away like that. They’re just like her, they see everything.”
“Like who?” His voice began to break up, tugged into electronic fragments by the fragile signal. “Like who? Who are you talking about?’ She glanced at her phone. The symbols showing the signal strength were down to a single bar. It was a miracle that he’d got through to her at all.
“They want to hurt me, like she did. You have to leave, are you listening? Get back to—” There was a strangled blast of pops and static. “… back to the ground, it’s harvest …”
“Michael?”
She heard a couple more disjointed words in the roaring electronic fuzz—“red,” perhaps, and “punishment”—and then the call dropped.
CHAPTER
41
IT WAS GROWING dark, and no one knew where Heather was.
It was a strange feeling, and more comforting than she would have expected. She headed for a strip of ancient woods that she was fairly sure ran along the back of the holiday cottage—a short cut through the trees, a chance to think about things. The scents of the earth, rich and thick, filled her nostrils, and she breathed deeply, as if by doing so she could cleanse herself of it all. Out in the woods, it didn’t matter who her father was, or what her mother had or hadn’t done.
The crunch of undergrowth beneath her feet, the rustling movement of small things, the murmur of wind. With each step she felt better.
She walked on, listening to the crisp noises of her footfalls, tasting the clean air on her tongue. She came to a large tree and stopped. The cottage should be close now—she should at least be able to see lights from its windows—but the woods ahead of her promised no such thing. And a darker interior voice was asking why she wanted to hurry back at all. What would she find back at the cottage? More letters, more feathers? Reave had sounded shaken on the phone, but should she trust him? Someone was certainly trying to frighten her, but why would Michael Reave care about that? Unless what the Polaroid suggested was true. She brushed her fingers against the bark of the tree, and saw that someone had carved a shape into it, probably with a knife. It took her a second to recognize what it was.
A heart.
It was cold and she was alone; she wasn’t safe, she was in danger, and terribly exposed.
“Fuck. What am I even doing here?”
She fumbled her phone out of her pocket and pressed it into life. The light from the screen display dazzled her, lighting up the bare trees and undergrowth in a painful fizzle of artificial glow. She blinked rapidly, alarmed at how little she could see, and turned the phone out into the night. No figures lurched into sight, but she was suddenly very aware of how large the woods were, and how tiny her light.
There was a crump of noise off to her left, like something heavy moving rapidly through the undergrowth, and Heather put her back to it and began to run, as best she could in the dark, the light from her phone weaving back and forth to summon an endless crowd of chaotic shadows. The noise behind her increased as whatever it was came after her, and Heather heard herself make a small noise of terror. She was in a nightmare, the earliest nightmare, the one where you were running from something terrible but your legs were hopelessly slow. Against her will she thought of the stories Michael Reave had told her, and Pamela Whittaker’s paintings. The woods are dangerous. The woods are where the wolf waits.
She stormed up a slope, crashing into and through small bushes. Twigs and thorns caught at her skin and clothes, pulling her back as though the very woods were against her. Reaching the top of the slope, where she hoped to be able to figure out where she was, she stumbled, going to her knees in the mud. There was a smell, a combination of the wild, dark earth and another scent that seemed older, and stranger. She scrambled back to her feet, and there was a new sound very close—panting, quick and hot.
The barghest. Black Shuck. The hound that haunts the lonely places.
All thoughts of finding a path driven from her mind, Heather threw herself back down the small hill, careening forward with her arms held up to ward off the blow she was sure must be coming. Now, she was certain that several things were after her—creatures that ran on four legs, that could smell her fear—and they were on all sides, chasing her down. Drink from the river, she thought wildly, drink from the river and become a wolf.
The ground dropped away below her and before she could react Heather sprawled headlong into the wet and busy earth. All the air knocked out from her, she could do nothing but lay there for a long moment, the mud seeping into her jeans. She’d fallen partly into a bush, and the leaves were pricking her through her coat, as though she lay in broken glass. The noises had stopped, but as she picked herself up and looked around, the sense that she was being watched had increased tenfold. Eyes in the forest, watching.
“What do you want?” her voice wavered, untrustworthy. “Who are you?”
Silence. It was a deeper silence than that she had experienced before; no small animals moved through the undergrowth, no night birds called—even the wind seemed to have stopped. Something was listening. Much to her own surprise, she realized she was still holding her phone; when she’d fallen, some instinct had caused her to clasp it close to her chest. She held it up, activating the screen, and slowly turned the small oblong of light back and forth, all around her. The empty forest looked back at her, full of distrust and lies.
“I know you’re there,” she said. Anger, familiar and comforting, began to seep through her limbs. She was cold, wet, and frightened, she had been scratched all over and her right knee had taken a serious knock, and all because someone was playing silly buggers in the woods. “Say something, or piss off. All right?”
There was no reply, but in the corner of her eye Heather caught the slightest movement in the shadows. She spun the light toward it but whatever it had been was gone. However, it was possible now to see the path, and even beyond that, the clearing that led to their cottage.
She headed that way gladly, wincing as various cuts and bruises made themselves known. The cottage stood in its own cocoon of silence, soft lamplight glowing at the window. Heather was still some distance from it when she thought she saw the figure again—someone was standing at the back of the cottage, near one of the bedroom windows. She gasped in a breath, ready to shout, but in another heartbeat the shape was gone again, if it had ever been there in the first place.
Heather ran the rest of the way back to the cottage, crashing in through the door, half convinced she would find the shadowy figure in the kitchen, blood dripping from his hands, but instead she found it empty. The cups from that morning’s coffee were still on the table; the lamp she had left on was still casting it’s soft, yellowish light. Half convinced that this quiet scene of domestic contentment must be hiding something, she did a quick search through every room in the cottage: no notes, no feathers, no photographs. The windows and doors were locked. She poured herself a glass of wine in the kitchen, and fired off a series of messages to Nikki while she sipped at it. Hey where are you? Are you staying with Harry? Pls let me know!
She hesitated, then added: I think someone chased me in the woods tonight. When you get this message, pls give me a ring.
Heather put the glass of wine down and went to her own room. She shrugged her coat off, grimacing at the mud on her hands and face. Although it seemed incredibly likely that Nikki’s date with Harry had just lasted longer than they had predicted, the empty cottage had left her deeply unnerved. Did they even know who Harry was really? He was basically a stranger, and she had let her friend go off with him. Again, she thought of calling DI Parker, but when she glanced down at her phone, she
saw that all her messages to Nikki had failed to go through. Still no phone signal.
“All right.” She pulled her jumper up over her head and threw it on the floor; there was mud on her hat, too. “I’ll have a shower and try again. No need to panic yet.”
Wincing from half a dozen new bruises, Heather went into the small en suite bathroom to have the hottest shower she could summon.
CHAPTER
42
HEATHER WOKE IN the night with a start, her heart thumping. She had been sure she wouldn’t be able to sleep, so she had laid down on the bed after her shower, thinking only to rest her aching limbs for a moment. Yet, now she had the sense of having been ripped from a very deep sleep, a sleep populated with vivid dreams of the woods at night, and …
She heard it again. The sound of something heavy moving outside, the crunch of footsteps on fallen leaves. Not, she noted, the loud and casual stomping of someone—Harry, for example—making their way home, but the careful tread of someone who didn’t want to be heard.
In an instant she was up, pulling on the last of the clean clothes from her suitcase. Once she put on her boots, she headed out into the hallway toward the kitchen. She had no clear idea what time it was, or how long she’d been asleep, but the living room was empty, and all the lights were off. Nikki’s bedroom door was slightly open and a quick peek inside confirmed her bed was unslept in. Heather’s stomach dropped.
