‘Save it, lady.’ He turns to Brenda. ‘What say you and me show these kids how it’s done, huh? I’m already thinking of a few things I’m going to ask for. The first being a top-up of this water bottle. Those cocktails were nice and all, but this water is something else. Don’cha think?’
Brenda shakes her head, but she’s smiling. Scott offers her his arm and she takes it, and the two of them shuffle off up the hill, in the direction their map had pointed them in.
‘Piss off then, James,’ Lucy says. ‘I’m starting to think this might be a race, and I’m not losing out to you or those two crazies.’ She tips her head towards Scott and Brenda, still close enough to have heard her, and Scott curls his spare arm around his back and gives her the finger.
James opens his mouth to speak, then closes it again. He’s pale too, like Brenda, and he’s shaking ever so slightly.
Amelia is looking at him too. ‘James, are you—’
‘I’m fine.’ He cuts her off and turns away from them. They watch as he heads off up the path behind Scott and Brenda. He quickly gains on them, but before he reaches them, he turns left and starts to hike up an unmarked trail.
‘Right then,’ Lucy says. ‘Where’re we headed?’
Amelia says nothing. She shoulders her backpack and heads up the hill, following the same path as Brenda and Scott. Before long, the others are out of sight, and the two of them are at the brow of the hill. There’s a cluster of worn rectangular stones arranged in a square, piled up at different heights on each side. Bright green succulents poke out of the gaps, and a fluorescent moss covers most of the flat surfaces. They stop walking and glance around at this place they’ve stumbled across. There are more rows, more walls.
‘I think these are ruins,’ Amelia says, running a hand across one of the stones. ‘Small cottages, maybe. Or some kind of shelter, anyway. Looks like they’ve been abandoned for a very long time though.’
‘I did one of those haunted house things once, for a piece,’ Lucy says. ‘I had to accompany a B-lister from The Only Way Is Essex – who couldn’t stop screaming every time someone moved – and that couple who’re always on morning TV talking about their psychic experiences. Best five hundred quid I’ve ever made. In fact, I’d do it again for free, just to watch that reality TV dork shit his pants again.’ She laughs. ‘I’m sure this spooky wee place is fine though. But I’d rather not stick around. How far to the next stage, do you think?’
‘Hmm?’ Amelia hasn’t been paying attention. She taps her watch. ‘You know,’ she says, ‘I just remembered . . . Scott mentioned he was going to message someone. Do you think he got through?’
‘Does it matter?’ Lucy shrugs, feeling a bit dejected that her funny anecdote has fallen on deaf ears. ‘We’re not with him, are we? They could be getting airlifted to safety as we speak . . . and we don’t have a phone.’
‘I think we’d notice if there was a helicopter coming in to land.’
‘S’pose so.’ She walks around the walls of the small building, peering over into the middle. Inside, the light is different. Darker, even though there’s no roof to block the sun. The walls on the inside are blackened, as though charred. She reaches a gap that was obviously once a door, but she doesn’t want to go in there. She’s not sure why, but there is something wrong with these buildings. These cottages or shelters or whatever they are. The energy is off-kilter. There’s a strange old-smoke smell that makes her feel sick. Or maybe she’s just tired and hungry, and fed up with this ‘adventure’. Whether the ruins are haunted or not, Amelia is not nearly as much fun as those TV people she’d hung out with.
‘Jeez,’ she says, breaking the silence. ‘Remind me never to accept another weird invitation again, will you? If something sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. Look at Tiggy’ – she pauses, walking around to the next building – ‘she was definitely too good to be true.’
‘We don’t really know that. We don’t know if these projections are real – I mean, Tiggy told me about it all, because I couldn’t see them for myself, but I don’t know . . . she might’ve been lying. We don’t even know if that was really Giles down there in the water, do we? He was too far away to be sure.’
‘Lying about glassing a girl at a party, or lying about not doing it? Plus, you went down there to the boat with her. Didn’t you get a better look at him? Didn’t she?’
Amelia shakes her head. ‘They’d already moved him by the time we got to the bottom. And I don’t know about Tiggy. I can’t work her out. She looked back at me from the boat, but I don’t know if she was trying to communicate something or if she was still in shock . . .’
‘Right. Anyway, forget that. What does your watch say? Where are we going? I want to get away from these . . . things.’ She scowls at the blackened buildings. ‘They’re seriously giving me the creeps.’
Amelia taps her watch again. ‘Bad news.’ She looks Lucy in the eye. ‘It’s telling me we need to go inside this cottage.’
‘What?’ She feels her chest tighten. ‘Go inside? It’s barely got four walls. I just told you: I’m not going in there. I don’t like it. It feels weird. We don’t know what these things are, or what happened here.’
‘They’re just old cottages. What’s the big deal?’
‘What’s the big deal? You do it, then. I’m not doing it.’
‘Lucy . . .’ Amelia’s voice trails off as the familiar beep sounds, signalling that a projection is about to start.
Lucy’s tracker vibrates hard, as if someone is trying to drill into her skull. She screams in pain.
‘Go into the cottage, Lucy,’ the voice says in her ear. ‘It’s the only way.’
‘No. I’m not doing it.’
‘My God, Lucy, are you OK?’ Amelia takes a few steps towards her. ‘What’s happening? Tell me . . .’
The vibration increases until Lucy feels her whole body shake. The noise is too loud. She grabs hold of the tracker.
‘Don’t!’ Amelia cries. ‘You’ll make it worse.’
‘Go inside the house, Lucy.’ The voice is more insistent now.
She tries to ignore it, but she can’t. Her teeth rattle. She lurches forward through the doorway and falls to her knees – and with that, the vibration stops.
‘Well done, Lucy,’ the voice says. ‘Now enjoy the show.’
Amelia is in the doorway, staring at her in horror. But she’s not staring quite at her; she’s staring above her, at the projection, which has soundlessly started to play, projected from Amelia’s wrist-tracker for them both to see.
‘Why . . .’ Lucy says. ‘Why is it only coming out via your tracker?’
‘I guess they want us to watch it together,’ Amelia says. ‘Maybe it’s something about me . . .’
But, of course, it isn’t about Amelia.
It was only a matter of time before this happened. Lucy watches as the camera view shows things through her eyes. She knows this because she recognises the glass door that she’s opening, which leads into a large modern house. Her hand on the door handle is encased in a black glove, and she can hear breathing – her own breathing – as it comes out in icy puffs in the darkness.
She remembers how cold it was that night. Remembers how she hesitated, giving herself one last chance to stop.
The camera view rotates as Lucy turns round, checking behind her, taking in the thick copse of trees and the heavy clouds hanging low in the darkening sky. As she turns back, her face, her whole body – and what she is carrying in one hand – are briefly reflected in the glass of the door.
Amelia gasps.
‘No,’ Lucy says weakly. ‘This isn’t real. It’s not me.’
The projection carries on. She walks slowly through the house, looking at the floor as she pours out the contents of the petrol can, making a long, thin snake. She stops at the foot of the stairs and the view tilts upwards, then back down as her foot is carefully placed on the first stair. A pause. Silence, but for the light sound of her breathing. The vi
ew tilts upwards again. Up, up to the top. Then another pause as the view rotates slowly to the left, before pausing again. More breathing. Then the carpeted floor of the landing, the petrol still flowing in a steady stream from the can. The view tilts up again. Straight ahead, there’s a partially open door and, visible through the doorway, the corner of a white blanket hanging off the end of a bed.
Her gloved hand comes into shot as she pushes the door open wider. The sound of breathing is louder, more ragged. Then it stops, and the faint sound of snoring comes from inside the room.
‘No,’ Lucy whimpers now, shaking her head as she sits curled up on the floor of the ruined cottage. ‘No.’
Amelia stands motionless, watching. ‘It’s only another trick,’ she says quietly. ‘Just like Tiggy and Giles.’
Lucy jumps to her feet as Lucy on-screen moves away from the door, the camera swivelling round as she makes her way back down the landing, past another door – with a pink teddy bear engraved on it, along with the words Milly’s Room. She hesitates. Her breathing stops for a moment. Then the camera shows the staircase, the image moving quickly as she hurries back down the stairs.
Lucy in the ruin turns away from the screen, but another screen appears, then another and another, whichever way she turns. ‘I can’t watch this,’ she says, just as Lucy on-screen steps outside the front door, the camera turning for a final glance up the stairs. Her breath coming out in a gentle wheeze. The view tilts down again, to her gloved hand rummaging in a pocket. She pulls out a box of matches.
Amelia staggers backwards, out through the ruin’s doorway.
There’s a whoomph, followed by the sound of crackling as Lucy runs out of the ruined cottage, while Lucy on-screen stares at the house, her vision fixed on the roaring flames.
Brenda
T - 6
Brenda and Scott make it up the hill and onto a flat plain. Scott lets go of her and limps across to the edge, but there is no barrier of any kind so he leans over for a quick careful look down, then steps back. Brenda follows close behind. They’re on top of steep cliffs. It looks like they’ve made it to the other end of the island, but it’s a long way down to the sea. She hopes they don’t have to go down there. The pain in her thigh is extreme now. It feels stiff and difficult to move. She daren’t touch it – the last time her hand brushed against her shorts the pain was excruciating, radiating all the way through her leg. She takes another small step closer to the edge and stands awkwardly beside Scott, trying to peer down at the sea without risking being blown off the edge by one of the frequent squalls. The waves crash into the rocks, and the movement is mesmerising. Hypnotic. She steps back before she loses her balance.
‘I feel like we’re at the end of the world,’ she says. ‘There’s nothing ahead. I’ve no idea where we are.’
Scott points to the left, the opposite side from the cliff path they’ve just climbed. ‘There’s land over there, in the distance. Another island, maybe.’
‘Or the mainland?’ Brenda feels a prickle of hope, but when she turns to look at where he’s pointing it slides away into nothing. She nods. ‘No, you’re right. Another island. A bit bigger than this one, do you think? Maybe we should start a fire or something.’
‘Smoke signals?’ Scott laughs. ‘Oh, hang on.’ He takes his phone out of his pocket and holds it up towards her. ‘Got a message. Remember I sent that WhatsApp earlier? Didn’t really think it would go through. I must’ve picked up that Wi-Fi Tiggy mentioned.’
‘Who did you send a message to? Are they coming to help us?’
He grins, rocks back on his heels. ‘You betcha. I messaged my mate Mark. He’s one of those people who always knows a way to get out of a bind, if you catch my drift.’
She doesn’t really, but she doesn’t care either. Scott’s mate could be a Russian spy for all she cares. Her own phone is in her handbag on the plane, and she’s no idea of anyone’s number – so if Scott has some sort of ‘fixer’ in his contacts, then good. She hopes he can come soon though, because the pain in her leg is starting to make her feel sick.
‘I’m hoping he can somehow find us with GPS, you know, with us having no idea where we are . . .’ His voice trails off, as if he’s just realised this.
What’s the point in asking for help if no one knows where to find you?
Brenda swallows. ‘Listen, I don’t normally take anything myself – I mean, I never get sick. But I don’t suppose you have any painkillers on you? I thought I saw you taking something when we first started out.’
‘They aren’t painkillers,’ he snaps. ‘What I mean is . . . they aren’t your usual over-the-counter type of things. I, um . . .’
‘I thought you were a health guru. I assumed you’d have some sort of herbal remedy.’
He laughs, then raises both his palms in a ‘you got me’ gesture. ‘Well, they do come from some sort of natural resource. You’re welcome to one, but, well . . . they’re not like M&M’s, you know. I’m not sure of your tolerance.’
She blows out a breath, readying herself, then slowly lifts the left leg of her shorts. She tries to roll it up, but her leg has swollen so much she can barely move the fabric.
‘Holy shit!’ Scott recoils from her as he takes it in.
Her skin is roasting hot, sticky with sweat and something else that she doesn’t even want to think about. A pale, gummy trail oozes from the wound towards her knee. The site of the snakebite is even redder, almost purple, a thick welt with a yellowing crust around the two puncture marks that seem to have swollen wide open.
Scott’s voice comes out in a choked whisper. ‘I thought you said it didn’t bite you?’
‘I lied. I think I was in some sort of denial. Besides, I didn’t want to make a fuss.’
‘Make a fuss? For Pete’s sake, Brenda. They would’ve sent help for you, like they did for Giles. You need medical attention. You might need an antivenin – do you even know what kind of snake it was?’
She shakes her head slowly. Having the breeze on her leg feels good, and she doesn’t want to roll her shorts back down. ‘I thought it was just an adder, maybe, or a grass snake – not that I really know anything about them. Snakes in general, I mean. I hate them. I can’t even look at a picture of one without feeling like I’m going to have a panic attack. But it had this weird white mouth – I couldn’t stop staring at it. It was sort of mesmerising.’
‘That doesn’t sound much like a harmless grass snake,’ Scott says. ‘Jeez, if you’d gotten help sooner, it’d be nothing but a memory by now. But that’ – he points at her leg – ‘that does not look good.’ He turns round, looking here and there, as if trying to find somewhere for them to sit. There’s a raised, flat rock. Behind it, a couple of crates that look like they’ve been abandoned for some time. They’re peppered with bits of moss and spatterings of bird droppings. He shifts one of them and the lid slides off. ‘Well, what d’ya know?’ He takes out a bottle of water, offers it to Brenda, then takes out another for himself. He flips off the cap and drinks greedily. ‘This stuff is gooooood. I can’t work out what’s in it, but did you notice that James never drank any of his? No alcohol either. No prizes for guessing what his big dark secret might involve.’
Brenda takes a sip. ‘You think this water is drugged? And that James is a recovering addict?’
‘No such thing, in my book. You’re either addicted or you ain’t. I’m the latter of the two. I know what I like, but I know I don’t need it. I just like it. All that vitamin stuff I sell to those yoga-hippies and alpha-moms? Total B-S.’ He takes another swig, then reaches into the deep pocket in his shorts – this time pulling out a small plastic bag. He holds it up, shakes it. It’s full of different-coloured, different-shaped pills. ‘So . . . I got uppers, downers, sleepers, jiggers and holee shit that’s good’ers. Looking at you though, I think you might need some combination therapy.’
‘Anything. Please. I just need to get rid of this pain.’
‘Okey-dokey,’ Scott says, digging a
round in the bag. He hands her a pink capsule and a small round yellow pill. ‘Knock yourself out. Literally.’
‘Don’t we need to keep going . . . and get to the house?’
He shakes his head. Pops a red capsule in his mouth and washes it down with the rest of his water. ‘Don’t worry about that. My mate Mark will find us. I promise.’
Brenda sucks in a breath, lets it out slowly. If the snakebite is going to kill her, she might as well float off on a high.
Amelia
Amelia is glad to have some time alone. She’s not a person who gets stressed very often, but the collective tension of the group is starting to get to her, and those last few, horrific minutes there with Lucy in that hellish burned-out cottage had been too intense. She taps her tracker, willing it to tell her where to go next, and hoping that wherever it leads will give her a chance to pull herself together. What happened with Lucy had pushed her to the brink, and she’s glad that Lucy has run off on her own. It was all from Lucy’s own memory, but the shock had been clear on her face. Amelia would need time to come to terms with what had just been shared, and Lucy would need to do the same. Just like Tiggy, Amelia can’t quite believe that Lucy is a monster. There had to be a reason why she set fire to someone’s house – a house where there was at least one person inside. She doesn’t even want to think about the kid’s bedroom. But something drove Lucy to do what she did, and until she knows what it is, she will reserve judgement.
She heads down into a dip along the coastal path, a narrow, winding track lined with parched bracken and occasional thorny fronds of wild brambles. It doesn’t appear that any of the others have gone this way. The sandy path is damp in parts, but there are no footprints.
She pauses for a moment to take in the view. To her right, the vast ocean is dark and impenetrable, nothing visible for miles. The water is calm for now, the waves undulating gently. The path becomes steeper again as she climbs out from the dip, and she feels the burn in her calves as she presses on. There’s barely a sound, except for the high-pitched screech of a kittiwake nearby, circling and swooping – letting her know that there’s a nest and to keep her distance.
The Last Resort Page 14