“Do you want to leave?”
I blew out a breath, digging around in my pockets for my cigarettes and lighter. Reassured by their presence I shook my head.
“No. It’s fine. I guess… maybe it’ll shake something loose.”
We got out of the car and picked our way carefully across the packed earth that formed a path into the trees beyond the car park. I knew that a wooded patch stretched for miles beyond here, right up to a small golf green to the east and a few farms and big, old houses scattered up to the north and west, towards Stanshope and Wetton. But it felt like the trees were endless. They were tall and dark, like an army of ghosts.
I shivered.
I led the way, although I didn’t know where I was going. The air was warmer in the cocoon of the woods, the wind relegated to a gentle whistling sound. Clusters of oak trees and silver birches surrounded us, blocking the sky and the way ahead. The light was weak and grey; it was darker in here than it had been in the car park, a feeling encouraged by the rich blackness of the soil underfoot. It would be so easy for the woods to swallow us whole. We probably had less than an hour before it got dark.
“Have you been here before?” I asked. I lit a cigarette, needing to do something with my hands.
“What?”
“Have you been here before? In these woods?”
“Yes,” she said. “A few times up at the other end. I used to live quite close. I came with my brother and my dad when I was a kid – for the golf course.”
“Why would you come here? It’s a horrible place.”
She shook her head.
“No, it isn’t,” she said.
I felt the words like a punch and Harriet looked at me with panicked eyes.
“I don’t mean it like that,” she added quickly. “Obviously it’s a horrible place to you. I just mean, it doesn’t have to be. It’s just trees and dirt and grass, farms and fields. But of course it’s horrible for you – because of what happened.”
The air had chilled again. I rubbed at my arms half-heartedly, trying not to let myself get angry.
“But this place,” Harriet continued, “didn’t have anything to do with the awful thing that happened to you. Just like my aunt and uncle’s house didn’t have anything to do with Jem and Mikey being abducted—”
I turned, unable to control myself now. “Do they still live there, then?” I snapped. “Do they feel happy there in that house?”
“Yes, actually.” Harriet shrugged. “I think they like knowing that they’ve got all of their memories, still. And Jem and Mikey’s favourite places. The tree out front they used to climb, the fountain in the garden they used to throw tennis balls into. It makes them – all of us, really – feel close to them… It’s how we dealt with it, I guess.”
“That’s not how my parents dealt with it,” I said. “We stayed in the house for a while. Until we could afford to move. I hated it. Hated that bedroom. I had nightmares – every night. I fell asleep in the bathroom a lot. When we moved it was better. Like a fresh start.” I shrugged.
We’d left the dog walkers’ path now. It would be so easy to get lost in here again tonight and the thought made me want to shrink into myself. Despite everything I was glad of Harriet’s presence by my side as the shadows lengthened, as the trees made our footsteps echo. It felt like being watched by a hundred pairs of eyes.
“You might have come from that way,” Harriet said then, gesturing towards a smaller dirt path that branched off. It was covered in tangles of leaves and undergrowth. “The other way leads up towards the river round that loop. It rained heavily the couple of nights before you were found, and there were flash floods and a couple of mud slides in the area. They couldn’t find any trace of a car, but given the state you were in when you were found the police surmised that you probably travelled a decent distance on foot.”
“I can’t have come that far,” I whispered. But we didn’t know how long I’d been walking before I collapsed in the car park. It could have been hours.
I let myself head towards the smaller path. Harriet followed a few steps behind.
“No,” she agreed. “But the police searched all of the houses and farms nearby. One of the theories at the time was that you were dumped here and he drove away. You had a pretty nasty head wound and people said that he maybe thought you were… going to die.” She went quiet.
“Go on,” I prompted.
“The police canvassed the area, talked to everybody who lived nearby, but never came up with anything solid. Either the folks had alibis or they were too far away, or the houses were empty. There are a few properties north of here that fit the bill for the isolation, but there was no evidence that anybody had had any children there. I think they even used, like, thermal imaging or something? The dog-trap situation was a problem.”
“They never knew when exactly I left him,” I said quietly. “How long I’d been out here, away from Alex. There was a two-week window and I couldn’t tell them anything. Maybe we were in one of the farmhouses just temporarily or something and he let me go. Or maybe, like you said, I was hurt and he thought I was gonna die anyway. Who knows?”
I felt the panic rising inside me. The trees were too tall, too close. I sped up, stumbling, my breath coming in spurts. Then I felt Harriet’s hand on my shoulder, warm and solid.
“Let you go?” she asked. “What makes you think he let you go?”
I fought the panic. “I was seven years old, Harriet. Alex was – older. He was well-behaved. Maybe I made the Father angry. Maybe Alex was better than me.”
Better. It was the first time I’d realised that this was how I’d felt, all that time after I came back, this was what I was afraid of. What if Alex was dead, and I wasn’t, because he was better than me somehow?
“How do you know you didn’t just escape?”
A laugh that was painful and full of everything burst out of me. “I just do, okay.”
“But how? You were the only one who was found alive. You could have been at a service station and managed to get away. Maybe in one of the lay-bys. There’s a petrol station not far from here with a decent-sized parking area, no cameras, and we know he travelled across counties often, so he probably had to refuel at some point and maybe you managed to run. Maybe you thought you could get help—”
“I wouldn’t have done that!”
My voice shattered the ticking quiet of the wood, startling a dark bird that dove out of a tree with a fractured caw.
“I wouldn’t have left him,” I said, this time more quietly.
I couldn’t have left him.
“You might not have had a choice.”
“Stop,” I said tiredly. “Please stop. Let’s just walk, okay?”
* * *
I cut blindly through the thicker undergrowth where branches and brambles caught at my jeans, ignoring the path now. I shook them off, anger still simmering, hiding the fear beneath. The woods seemed to groan around us. Wind tossed the leaves. It felt like the dips and hollows were trying to catch me, drag me right back to the darkness.
I reached a spot where there was a steep incline. I looked up at the bank, with its golden leaves and hidden traps just waiting to suck me down.
“Are you going up there?” Harriet asked. “You’ll kill us both. It’s got to be a forty-five-degree angle.”
I clenched my fists inside my coat pockets, and then pulled them out and started to climb. Harriet let out a bewildered sound but followed. We scrambled up, my weak ankle screaming as I grabbed onto roots and branches and rocks.
When we emerged at the top, where the land evened out and the trees stretched dizzyingly high above, I felt a sickening twist in my belly. Like a shadow at the corner of my vision.
“I…” There was nothing special about these trees. Was there?
I closed my eyes against the beginnings of twilight, tried to remember how this might have looked at night. I pictured silver-gilded shadows. I felt sweat bead on my back and the hairs rise on m
y arms.
And then I remembered sliding, darkness, brambles and bark clawing at my bare hands and my back as I fell. The smell of fresh dirt all around me. My whole body wet, trembling, hands and feet like ice…
“Erin?”
Harriet was at my side. I opened my eyes, saw the weak silver-grey light of the early evening and the autumn-jacketed earth again. I lifted my hand to my face, almost surprised to find it clean of blood and dirt.
“I’m fine.”
“Did you remember something?”
I spun. Harriet’s green eyes were alight with curiosity. I wanted to be angry with her. I wanted to want to slap her away for being so transparently excited. But I couldn’t deny the excited lurch in my own stomach. I’d remembered something.
But it was just a feeling. Nothing real.
“Just the darkness.” I unclenched my hands and stepped away.
“Is that all?” she asked pointedly.
“I think I fell. I was soaked, maybe from the river. I fell down there.” I pointed down the hill we’d just climbed. I could almost feel the graze at the base of my back, the thudding in my skull.
“That’s a long way down. Especially for a kid.”
“I know. I think it’s why—”
“Why you don’t remember. Your head injury. It makes sense. I always wondered if your injury had happened before, if that might be why you were in the woods. I thought maybe… that might be why he left you.” Harriet grimaced. “I’m sorry if this upset you. But I’m glad, I guess if that’s the word, that you didn’t remember something worse.”
I swallowed hard. “Hey,” I tried for a light tone. “Remember last night when I said I’d never take the woods again, even over certain death? Next time hold me to that.”
Because I wasn’t sure there was anything worse than this. I’d been running. Why would I have been running if I hadn’t left Alex behind? I couldn’t fight the thoughts any more, the fears that had eaten me alive for eighteen years.
If I’d escaped, and left my brother behind, what did that say about me?
FIFTEEN
Erin
ON THE DRIVE BACK to my house my thoughts returned to Monica. What had prompted her to freak out like that? And what were those gifts she was talking about? I hadn’t thought much of it earlier – in the light of day – but it was getting dark now, and tension bubbled deep inside me. I texted her again, but got no response.
“Thank you,” Harriet said. “For your patience today.”
I surprised myself by laughing. “Thank you for driving. Pity it was a waste of time.”
Harriet shrugged. Again there was that humming static between us. It felt less like awkwardness now, though, more like a different kind of tension.
“Will you be okay staying here tonight?” she asked hesitantly as we pulled up outside my house.
I snorted to hide the feeling in my chest. I knew I should go and stay elsewhere, but where was there I could go? I didn’t want to sleep at Mum’s again. I refused to be driven out of my own home.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “But thanks.”
She left soon after and the air felt empty when she was gone. A neighbour closed the boot of their car and I jumped, heart slamming in my chest. Stupid. Stupid arsehole for breaking into my house to scare me. Stupid Monica, not texting me back. Stupid Harriet for taking me back to those woods.
Inside I poured myself a drink, put on a TV boxset in the background, and busied myself with cleaning. The place was still a bit of a mess from when I’d thrown everything about while checking if anything was missing – and it hadn’t exactly been spotless before. I lit homemade candles over the mantelpiece, glad for their glowing warmth. Something about candles soothed me, although their naked flames had frightened me once.
Over the years I had figured out how to love them, their light so soft and yellow, and the ones I’d made recently smelled like a pine forest, fresh and green, which reminded me of Christmas. It was like overcoming that small fear had allowed me to feel like an adult, Erin instead of Jillian…
When it got late enough I blew out the candles and snuck upstairs to my bedroom. I lit more upstairs, ones in jars. When I climbed into bed I left a couple burning on my bedside table to hold back the dark.
It didn’t work. My dreams were plagued by shadows all wearing Alex’s face. The sky was just beginning to get light when I started to consciousness. I had been dead asleep, the most recent dream leaving a residue like a low moaning sound I could hear deep inside my chest.
“Hello?” I called into the dimness. The candles were still burning, their light casting writhing shadows. I slipped from my bed, unsure what had woken me. A cold draught snaked around my bare legs. I grabbed a hoodie from the back of a chair and threw it over my shoulders.
My heart was pounding. I couldn’t tell whether I’d been woken by a noise or just by my dreams. I pushed my nails tightly into the palms of my hands and grabbed my phone. Crept out into the hallway. The house was still and quiet now. I was going mad.
Then I heard it again. A clatter that was like somebody walking on the lino in the kitchen. I had definitely locked the door, and all of the windows were shut tight. Maybe I’d accidentally shut a neighbour’s cat inside – that had happened once in my old house…
The stairs opened out into the hallway. There was nothing down here. Just the burnt-down stubs of the candles I’d blown out hours ago, standing like sentries on the mantel.
I headed for the kitchen. The worktops were limned with silver moonlight, spotless and shining where I’d cleaned them earlier. The tap dripped. The window was open, just a crack – its little silver key no longer sitting in the lock. But that wasn’t what caught my eye.
I lifted my phone and started to dial.
Right in the middle of the floor somebody had arranged candles into the shape of a heart. Not my candles. Thick red ones. The red wax had run off, coating the linoleum floor with puddles that looked like blood. Their wicks were still lit, the fire still going.
It was a message.
* * *
“You don’t share the house with anybody?” the police officer asked. He was a different one than the last one, and younger still. He had a scab under his nose where he’d nicked it shaving and I stared at it.
“What? Uh, no, just me.” I rubbed my hands on my knees.
“Looks like a prank to me,” he said, his tone verging on unkind.
“No, but…”
“There isn’t any sign of anybody breaking in. Maybe somebody has a key? Do you have a key for that window?”
“Yes, but nobody else has one. There’s… I mean there should be one in the lock but there isn’t.” I felt my cheeks flush. When was the last time I’d had company? Would Monica have done something like this, to fuck with me? Jesus, maybe it was her in the house the other night, too.
“Just seems funny to me. A flaming heart. I bet it’s somebody you know. A joke. Really I should give you a warning.” The policeman shook his head as if I was a drunk teenager who’d been caught stealing a traffic cone. He wandered back into the lounge and catalogued my candle-making supplies laid out on the dining table.
“Those are mine,” I said, attempting to make my tone light.
“It’s not funny. It’s a waste of resources.” The officer frowned. “You mentioned you had an open case with us.”
“Yes. Another… break-in.”
“Right. Well, here’s my card. Give me a call if you find anything is missing. Otherwise, Miss Chambers, I suggest you get all of your window keys back and tell your friends to stop playing jokes on you.”
I didn’t know what to say to that so I clamped my lips shut and folded my arms. Anger rose inside me. It wasn’t a joke, and I wasn’t wasting their time. Was I?
After he’d gone I wandered back into my kitchen. The candles still sat there in that stupid heart shape. I stared at the window. Then, angrily I stomped back upstairs to bed, where I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep
.
SIXTEEN
8 NOVEMBER 2016
Harriet
“DID YOU HEAR WHAT I said?”
Sharon peered at me over the top of my computer monitor. It was after 1 p.m., and most people had settled back down at their desks already. My salad sat in a Tupperware pot in front of me, hardly touched.
“Sorry, what?”
Sharon rolled her eyes. She liked doing that – rolling her eyes, shrugging her shoulders, waving her hands about like a child wafting at a bee. It just added to the impression I had of her, which was that she had no idea what she was doing either. She’d said as much, once, about how she wasn’t sure how she’d ended up in this job but she was good at it. Like me. It meant we usually got along fine, even if she was my manager and she was meant to know better – and take less of my shit.
“I said you don’t look well. Are you okay?”
“Sure, just tired. Headache.” I hadn’t stopped thinking about the woods since yesterday. And how awful I’d felt leaving Erin outside her house last night. How afraid she’d looked. There was something else going on, too. The way she’d kept checking her phone, as though she was desperately hoping for a message.
“Earth to Harriet?”
“What?”
Sharon leaned in, her acrylic nails clawing either side of my computer terminal as she gripped the other side of my desk.
“Go home, H,” she said. “You’re no use to me like this.”
“But—”
“You’ve been distracted recently – and you’ve not taken a holiday all year. I’d rather you take some time now than in January when I actually need you. Take your laptop home if you have to. Just keep in touch.”
It felt like a dismissal, but perhaps it was a blessing. I hadn’t taken any holiday because it hadn’t seemed worth it. She was right, so I didn’t argue.
I threw my work laptop and uneaten lunch in the boot of my car and pulled out of the parking space, not really sure where I was going to go. I had more interviews lined up for later this week but I couldn’t even really think about those now. It was all Erin, fear after her break-in and remembering my own worry after that lift trick the other night… It was probably nothing, but to get into the building you needed a key.
The Final Child Page 11
