The Silence

by Luca Veste

  There was silence for a few seconds, and I could almost hear the cogs turning in Chris’s mind as he tried to come up with another reason. Anything that didn’t put the blame on our inaction.

  “We’ve got to do something,” I said, the phone gripped tightly in my hand now. I could feel the anger and frustration threatening to boil over and tried to control it. “We can’t just sit here and do nothing. She’s our friend, and she’s in trouble. We have to do something. Now.”

  “Mate…”

  “It’s time, Chris,” I said as firmly and calmly as was possible. I didn’t think I quite managed it. I realized I had one hand in my hair, gripping it hard. I let go and forced myself to breathe in and out slowly. “Who’s going to be next? What if it’s you or Nicola? What if it’s Alexandra? There’s no time for this anymore.”

  “Listen, sit tight. I’ll be over in a minute.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but the phone had already gone dead. I stared at it for a few more seconds, then laid it on the arm of the sofa. I realized I must have sat down there at some point but wasn’t sure when. Sat there as the TV in the corner played BBC Breakfast on a low volume. Waiting.

  Chris arrived in fifteen minutes. Entered the house without the smell of expensive aftershave following him. “You look like you’ve not slept,” I said once we were in the living room. “What’s happened?”

  “I went home yesterday and spoke to Nicola,” he replied with a sigh. He ran a hand through his hair, which was unkempt and the very definition of the term bedhead. “I was up most of the night trying to talk her out of coming over here and beating some sense into you, as she put it.”

  I tried to remember a time when I had seen Chris in anything but a well-kept way. He always seemed like he’d just stepped out of a shower and spent an hour getting ready. That morning, he looked as if he’d just had a night on the booze and slept in a doorway. There was no smell of alcohol, so I took him at his word. “She didn’t take it well then.”

  “Of course she bloody didn’t. She can’t understand why this has all been brought up again, so long after it happened.”

  “You know the answer to that,” I said, feeling the anger bubble up again. “Did you tell her about Michelle before you came here? About her going missing?”

  “Are you kidding me? I left her getting ready for work. I didn’t want to make it any worse. Honestly, hours we were going over it for hours.”

  Something dawned on me then. “You agree with me, right?”

  Chris hesitated before he answered, then sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. “Yes. Yes I do. You’re right. There’s no way Stuart or Michelle would have a red candle in their home. Stuart wouldn’t…you know. And now Michelle. I’m scared.”

  I put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s gonna be okay. We can get through this.”

  “I just wish he would show himself. Instead of these…these games.”

  “We spent a year pretending that Mark Welsh’s body just disappeared of its own accord. I think we always knew this time would come. It’s the only way.”

  “But only if everyone agrees,” Chris said, staring at me now. I could see the lasting effects of the previous night’s conversations with Nicola burning in his bloodshot eyes. “We do this together or not at all.”

  “We need to find Michelle.”

  Chris swallowed and then nodded his head. “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Alexandra was here yesterday,” I said, waiting for a reaction of surprise from Chris, but he didn’t show anything. “She’s been thinking about things a lot.”

  “About you and her?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head and shrugging my shoulders What are you gonna do? style. “She has been trying to find out who the man in the woods was.”

  “Right. And how has she gotten on?”

  I talked him through what Alexandra had told me. Then, about my own investigation. About the online message boards that covered the Candle Man story and the possible murders. He didn’t interrupt until I told him about meeting someone at the truck stop.

  “You met someone from the internet on your own?”

  “Yeah, in a public place, Dad.”

  He smiled at that, but it didn’t last long. I told him about the conversation, but it wasn’t until I mentioned the fact I thought he’d met with Stuart that he finally sat down.

  “Jesus.”

  “I know,” I said, sitting down in the chair opposite where he was sitting on the sofa. “This guy was weird, Chris. Like, creepy weird.”

  “You don’t think he’s…you know?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure what to think anymore. There’s something not right with that guy, but I could just be paranoid about everything right now. It’s not like I’ve been sleeping well and this is all just…”

  “Crazy,” Chris finished for me. He sniffed and shook his head. “When did life get so complicated?”

  “Probably just after we killed a guy.”

  He stared at me for a second or two and then nodded his head. “Right. Yeah, you’re right. I just…I just want things back to normal, you know?”

  “I do, but I don’t have any other idea how to get back there without trying to get help elsewhere. It just makes sense. Now with this Michelle thing, what should we do?”

  “I don’t know. We can’t go to the police yet. Not until we convince Nicola and Alexandra it’s time. Hopefully with what’s happened with Michelle, that’ll change. I’ve got no idea where we would even start in trying to track her down.”

  “It’s probably too late.”

  I opened my mouth to argue with him, but I didn’t know what I could say that would change his mind. Plus, I knew it anyway.

  We were too late. She hadn’t made it to her mum’s house. That meant she had either decided to hide somewhere else or was already gone. Those were the only two options I could see. If it was the latter, nothing we did would save her now. If it was the former, by trying to look for her, we could simply be leading a killer to her hideout. I sighed and bit down on my lower lip hard enough to make me wince in pain. Ran my hands over my head and held them at the back of my neck. “We can’t do anything unless we’re all on the same page. Police-wise, I mean. We have to talk them into it.”

  Chris winced and tensed up. “That’s the problem. I don’t think Nicola is going to be convinced.”

  “Even if Michelle turns up…you know? Won’t that be enough?”

  He shook his head in response. “She seemed pretty adamant that she wanted us to just forget the whole thing and even if someone was coming after us, that it could be dealt with. I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but I guess she means getting rid of the problem?”

  “Don’t go thinking that hadn’t crossed my mind,” I replied, feeling the anger come back into me now. I remembered how scared Michelle had been and was suddenly filled with the urge to deal with the issue myself.

  Could you really kill again?

  The answer came to me quickly and that worried me.

  Someone who hurt my friends?

  My family?

  Yes.

  Yes I would.

  Thirty-One

  What do we do now, then?”

  I looked at the clock in the alcove and saw it was coming up on 8:30 a.m. I didn’t think Chris would want to sit around all day—especially with me—so I got to my feet. “Go home, get showered, and go to work. I’m sure they’ll let you off with being late for once. We need to make sure we lead as normal lives as possible before we decide to do anything. I don’t have a boss other than myself, so I can do the brunt of it. I’m going to try to find Michelle.”

  “You’re going to need help with that,” Chris said, straightening up and trying to add an inch or two to his height. It didn’t help—he was still the least intimidating man I’d
ever met.

  “It’s fine. If I find her or get anywhere near her, I’ll call the police. Let them deal with it. I’ll give you a call later and let you know what’s happening. If I don’t get anywhere, we can arrange a meeting between all four of us. See if we can talk the other two into doing what we think is best.”

  Chris rubbed some life into his eyes and stood up. “You’re right. Not sure how useful I’ll be, but I haven’t missed work in a long time. They’ll be okay with me being late. I’ll ring them from the car and come up with some sort of excuse. Thanks for…well, you know.”

  “No problem. That’s what mates are for.” I gave him a brief hug at the door and waved him off. Closed the door behind me and went back in the house.

  I thought about being the last one.

  I didn’t know what order we were being targeted, but for the first time, I considered the idea that it could be me that was the only one left at the end.

  I wasn’t going to let it get that far.

  My phone pinged with a message just as I was about to shower and try to make a plan. A message from Alexandra.

  Just spoke to her mum. Still no sign. Will call soon. x

  I wanted to deliberate over the kiss at the end of the message, but I couldn’t think about that then.

  I thought about Alexandra being next, and that was enough to keep me moving.

  A shower is a good place to think, I’ve heard often. I stood under the water, turning the temperature up high enough to almost scald my skin. The cubicle steamed up and I closed my eyes, enjoying the heat on my body.

  I didn’t think of anything for a few minutes. Allowed my mind to drift and just listen to the muted music trying to blast its noise over the water streaming down. I would have sang along to it, if I had any sort of voice.

  Stuart’s face came to me. The way I always remembered it. Earlier twenties, laughing and joking around. Not a care in the world. Always ready for a good time. Then, it morphed into another image of Stuart I’d seen over the years. The guy on New Year’s Eve in 1999. Another time after that.

  The Stuart from the woods.

  What if Stuart wasn’t the body on the tracks? What if the reason he was in the woods was because…

  I stopped myself before I could think any further.

  Still, no major breakthroughs. No bright ideas. No clue as to how I was going to find Michelle.

  Just, nothing.

  Instead, I tried to think of reasons not to call the police and tell them everything straightaway. Tell them what I knew, who it could have been, and hope they found Michelle alive.

  The only reason not to was that I would be going against the rest of my so-called friends. We all needed to be in agreement.

  That was the pact.

  I was drying off when I heard the doorbell ring downstairs. I tried to look out of the window, but couldn’t see who was at the door. I swore quietly to myself and pulled a T-shirt over my top half and pulled jogging bottoms on.

  The doorbell rang a couple more times and a bang on the door made me shout from the stairs as I came down.

  Whoever it was knocked once more before I managed to get the door open.

  “Nicola,” I said, hearing the surprise in my voice and then tried to stamp it down. “Are you okay?”

  She didn’t say anything, pushing past me and into the house. I followed her inside, taking the towel I still had around my neck away and leaving it on a radiator in the hall. I found her in the kitchen, leaning on a counter and biting one of her fingernails.

  “You’ve heard?” I said, stopping at the doorway. She was the only one in the group who hadn’t changed all that much in the years since we’d grown up together. Whenever she was angry about something, it seemed to change the atmosphere around anyone in the vicinity. It used to set me on edge—especially when I was the subject of her impatience. Eventually, it became a running joke between us. Not that I spent any time trying to rile her. I reached over and flicked the kettle on. “Cup of tea?”

  “No, I don’t want a bloody cup of tea.”

  I left it boiling but switched on the coffee maker instead. “Michelle.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, facing her and folding my arms across my chest. “But I intend to find out.”

  “Yeah, good luck with that. She’s probably shacked up with some bloke she’s met on Tinder and forgot all about the bullshit that’s going on. A quick lay to get over her dead ex.”

  “Hang on, that’s not fair,” I began, but Nicola waved me off with a dismissive wave of her hand. I saw her breathing harder, seemingly trying to keep a lid on her anger and about to fail. “What’s going on? Why are you here if not because you’re worried about Michelle?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “You’re gonna have to give me a bit more to go on than that.”

  Nicola pushed away from the counter and walked toward me. “Is this all a game for you? Is that what it is? A way of making us do something stupid and confessing to something we didn’t even really do?”

  Whatever I’d been expecting her to say, this definitely wasn’t in the ballpark. “I don’t understand…”

  “Just because you can’t get on with your life, doesn’t mean we all have to live in the past. You might have convinced Michelle that someone had broken into her house, but it won’t work with me.”

  It took a second, but it came to me then.

  It won’t work with me…

  My heart started beating harder now. “What’s happened, Nicola?”

  There must have been something in my expression because she hesitated for a moment, before going on the attack again. “You know damn well what’s going on. I don’t know what your game is or what you hope to achieve, but I’m not going to crack on this. We’re not telling anyone about that man dying or about Mark bloody Welsh and his whining mother on every TV show going. It’s that simple. I’m not giving everything up just because you can’t handle the guilt. It wasn’t just you there that night; we were all there. It’s our decision, not yours, and I won’t be bullied into doing something because of you. No matter what you leave in my house.”

  I cocked my head at that, allowing the final puzzle piece to click and turn my blood cold. “What was left in your house?”

  “You know damn well—”

  “Nicola,” I said, my voice echoing around the kitchen as I shouted and stopped her in her tracks.

  Her mouth closed instantly.

  “I haven’t been to your house in a while. I didn’t leave anything there, and I definitely don’t have the first clue why you think I would do something like that. You know me better than that, surely?”

  Nicola peered at me, her eyes softening as the anger seemed to subside a little. It wasn’t gone for long. They became mixed with fear, but shone somehow brighter. “Are you telling me…”

  “It was a candle, wasn’t it?”

  She seemed frozen in place, rage barely confined. Staring at me and not blinking.

  “Oh my god,” I said, moving away and facing the doorway. I shivered, realized I was barefoot in the kitchen, the tiles burning cold underneath my feet. I turned back to her and she hadn’t moved. “When did this happen? Does Chris know? He was only here an hour or so ago.”

  “He doesn’t know,” Nicola replied, her voice quiet but with an edge I didn’t like. “I found it after he left early this morning. It was just like the one we saw in those woods—in a storm lantern. It was left on the back step. I wouldn’t have even found it this morning if I hadn’t needed to empty the recycling. Chris is going to freak out when I tell him about this. I didn’t even know he was coming here. We…we had a disagreement last night. He wants to go to the police as well. Obviously you were persuasive when you saw him yesterday. I am very much in the not-telling-a-single-soul ca
mp.”

  “I know. It doesn’t matter now. Michelle is gone. Stuart was first. Now he’s after you or Chris, and I’m not going to let that happen. We need to come up with a plan. We need to find her before it’s too late.”

  “If he’s got her already, then it is too late,” Nicola said, and her voice was firm. Decided. “We both know that. I’m not going to the police, Matt. That’s off the table as an option. If I have to stop this guy myself, I will. He’s not going to ruin my life.”

  “There’s not many ways out of this,” I replied, pulling out a chair from the dining table and sitting down. I turned to face Nicola. “We need to think this through carefully. All of us. If something has happened to Michelle as well, then…I don’t know.”

  “We can beat whoever this is,” Nicola said, moving across the kitchen and leaning on the chair opposite mine. “I’ve got no doubt about that. We just have to come up with a way of finding out who it is. That’s the first step. If we fail along the way, we always have that backup idea of getting help, but that’s all it will be. We’ll be asking for help, because we can’t see a way out of the problem.”

  “I can do this,” I said, hoping she believed me more than I believed myself. “If I can’t, then we have to go to the police and tell them everything. We’re in too much danger not to. Does that sound okay?”

  Nicola didn’t answer, looking at the ceiling and sighing audibly. She dropped her gaze and looked me in the eye.

  “Find him. Find Michelle. Then we can talk about what the next steps will be.”

  I nodded in response, didn’t ask what the next step would entail.

  I didn’t need to. I knew what she meant.

  Thirty-Two

  Nicola left me, and I tried to eat something before abandoning the endeavor when it became clear I was feeling too nauseated. There was a battle going on inside my head—one side wanting me to ignore what was happening and go back to work, the other wanting something else entirely.

  I got dressed when it became clear that the latter side was always going to win.