by Alex North
So he shrugged. “Nobody.”
“Somebody.”
“I didn’t see anybody there. Did you?”
Owen considered the matter, then leaned back.
“That,” he said, “was Neil’s chair.”
“What was?”
“Your chair, idiot. It was Neil’s.”
Owen seemed angry about this, although once again Jake wasn’t sure what he was supposed to have done wrong. Mrs. Shelley had told them all where to sit that morning. It wasn’t like he’d stolen this Neil person’s chair on purpose.
“Who’s Neil?”
“He was here last year,” Owen said. “He’s not here anymore because someone took him away. And now you’ve got his chair.”
There was an obvious error in Owen’s thinking.
“You were in a different classroom last year,” Jake said. “So this was never Neil’s chair.”
“It would have been if he hadn’t been taken away.”
“Where did he move to?”
“He didn’t move anywhere. Someone took him.”
Jake didn’t know what to think about that, as it didn’t make sense. Neil’s parents had taken him somewhere but he hadn’t moved? Jake looked at Owen, and the boy’s angry eyes were clearly full of dark knowledge that he was desperate to pass on.
“A bad man took him,” Owen said.
“Took him where?”
“Nobody knows. But he’s dead now, and you’re sitting in his chair.”
A girl called Tabby was also sitting at the table.
“That’s horrible,” she told Owen. “You don’t know Neil’s dead. And when I asked my mummy she said it wasn’t nice to talk about anyway.”
“He is dead.” Owen turned back to Jake and gestured at the chair. “That means you’ll be next.”
That didn’t make sense either, Jake decided. Owen really hadn’t thought this through at all. For one thing, whatever had happened to Neil, he’d never sat in this particular chair, so it wasn’t like it was cursed or anything.
And also, there was a much more likely possibility. It was one he knew he shouldn’t say, and he remained silent for a second. But then he remembered what the little girl had told him outside, and how alone he felt, and he decided that if Owen could treat him like this, then why couldn’t he treat Owen the same right back?
“Maybe it means I’ll be last,” he said.
Owen narrowed his eyes.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Maybe the bad man will take the class one by one, and they’ll all be replaced by new boys and girls. So that means the Whisper Man will take you before me.”
Tabby gasped in shock, then burst into tears.
“You’ve made Tabby cry,” Owen said matter-of-factly. The teacher’s assistant was making his way over to the table. “George, Jake told Tabby the Whisper Man was going to kill her like he did Neil, and she got upset.”
Which was how Jake went up to amber on his first day.
Daddy was going to be very disappointed.
Eighteen
The day had gone better than I expected.
Eight hundred words might have been a relatively meager tally, but after not writing anything for months, at least it was a start.
I read it through again now.
Rebecca.
At the moment, it was about her. Not a story in itself, or even the beginning of one, as things stood, but the beginning of a letter to her, and one that was difficult to read. There were so many happy memories to draw on, and I knew that I would as I continued, but while I loved and missed her more than I could say, I also couldn’t deny the ugly kernel of resentment I felt, the frustration at being left alone with Jake, the loneliness of that empty bed. The sense of being abandoned to deal with things it felt like I couldn’t cope with. None of that was her fault, of course, but grief is a stew with a thousand ingredients, and not all of them are palatable. What I’d written was an honest expression of a small part of how I felt.
Groundwork, basically. I had an idea now of what I could write about. A man, a little like me, who had lost a woman, a little like her. And as painful as it would be to explore, I could do that, moving from the ugliness to the beauty, and hopefully some final sense of resolution and acceptance. Sometimes writing can help to heal you. I didn’t know if that would be the case here, but it was something to aim for.
I saved the file, and then went to pick up Jake.
When I arrived at the school, all the other parents were lined up against the wall, waiting. There was probably strict but unspoken etiquette about where to stand, but it had been a long day and I decided I didn’t care. Instead, I spotted Karen standing by herself near the gate and just went over to her. The afternoon was even warmer than the morning, but she was still dressed as though prepared for snow.
“Hello again,” she said. “Do you think he survived?”
“I’m pretty sure they’d have phoned by now if not.”
“I imagine so. How was your day? Well—I call it a day. How were your six hours of freedom?”
“Interesting,” I said. “I finally looked in our new garage and discovered that the previous owner decided to empty out all the junk by hiding it in there.”
“Ah. How annoying. But also how cunning.”
I laughed, but only slightly. The writing had taken away some of the unease from the man calling around, but it returned to me now.
“I also had some random guy snooping about.”
“Okay, that sounds less good.”
“Yeah. He said he grew up in the house and wanted to look around. Not sure I believed him.”
“You didn’t let him in, right?”
“God, no.”
“Whereabouts have you moved?”
“Garholt Street.”
“Just around the corner from us.” She nodded. “The scary house, by any chance?”
The scary house. My heart sank.
“Probably. Although I prefer to think of it as having character.”
“Oh, it does.” She nodded again. “I saw it was up for sale over the summer. It’s not really scary at all, obviously, but Adam used to say it looked strange.”
“Totally the right place for me and Jake, then.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.” She smiled, then leaned away from the railing as the school door opened. “Here we go. The beasts are loose.”
Jake’s class teacher came out and stood by the door, looking over the parents, then calling over her shoulder for individual children. They came scurrying out one by one, their book bags and water bottles swinging at their sides. Mrs. Shelley, I remembered. She looked somewhat unforgiving. I was sure her gaze landed on me a few times, but it moved on before I could tell her I was Jake’s dad. A boy I presumed was Adam joined us and Karen ruffled his hair.
“Good day, kid?”
“Yes, Mum.”
“Come on, then.” She turned to me. “See you tomorrow.”
“You will.”
After they headed off, I waited some more, until I was the only parent still standing there. Finally, Mrs. Shelley beckoned me over. I walked across, effectively summoned.
“You’re Jake’s dad?”
“Yes.”
Jake stepped out to me, staring down at the ground and looking small and subdued. Oh, God, I thought. Something had happened. That was why we’d been left until last.
“Is there a problem?”
“Nothing major,” Mrs. Shelley said. “But I still wanted a word. Do you want to tell your father what happened, Jake?”
“I got put on the amber square, Dad.”
“The what?”
“We have a traffic light system on the wall,” Mrs. Shelley explained. “For naughtiness. As a result of his behavior today, Jake’s the first of our children to move up to amber. So not an ideal first day.”
“What did he do?”
“I told Tabby she was going to die,” Jake said.
“And Ow
en too,” Mrs. Shelley added.
“And Owen too.”
“Well,” I said. And then, because I couldn’t think of anything more sensible to add: “We are all going to die.”
Mrs. Shelley was not impressed.
“That is not funny, Mr. Kennedy.”
“I know.”
“There was a boy here last year,” Mrs. Shelley said. “Neil Spencer? You might have seen about him on the news.”
The name rang the vaguest of bells.
“He went missing,” she said.
“Oh, yes.”
I remembered now. Something about the parents letting him walk home on his own.
“It’s all been very unpleasant.” Mrs. Shelley looked at Jake and hesitated. “It’s not something we like to talk about. Jake suggested that these other children might be next.”
“Right. And so he’s . . . on amber?”
“For the next week. If he moves up to red, he’ll have to go to see the headmistress.”
I looked down at Jake, who appeared utterly miserable. I didn’t much like the idea of him being publicly shamed on a wall, but at the same time I was frustrated with him. It seemed such an awful thing for him to have said. Why would he have done that?
“Right,” I said. “Well, I’m disappointed to hear about this behavior, Jake. Very disappointed.”
His head sank lower.
“We’ll talk about it on the way home.” I turned to Mrs. Shelley. “And it won’t happen again, I promise.”
“Let’s make sure it doesn’t. There’s something else too.” She stepped closer to me and spoke more quietly, even though it was obvious Jake would still be able to hear. “Our teaching assistant saw him at lunchtime, and was a little concerned. He said that Jake was talking to himself?”
I closed my eyes, my heart properly falling now. God, not that as well. Not in front of everyone. Why couldn’t things be simple?
Why couldn’t we just fit in here?
“I’ll talk to him,” I said again.
* * *
Except that Jake refused to talk to me.
I tried to coax the information out of him on the way home, gently at first, but after being met by repeated stony silences, I lost my temper a little. I knew it was wrong even as I did, because the truth was that I wasn’t really angry with him. It was just the situation. Irritation that things hadn’t gone as well as I’d hoped. Disappointment that his imaginary friend had returned. Concern about what the other children would think and how they would treat him. Eventually I fell into a silence of my own, and we walked alongside each other like strangers.
Back home, I went through his book bag. His Packet of Special Things was still there, at least. There was also some reading to do, which I thought looked a little basic for him.
“I mess everything up, don’t I?” Jake said quietly.
I put the papers down. He was standing by the couch, head bowed, looking smaller than ever.
“No,” I said. “Of course you don’t.”
“That’s what you think.”
“I don’t think that, Jake. I’m actually very proud of you.”
“I’m not. I hate myself.”
Hearing him say that was like being stabbed.
“Don’t say that,” I said quickly, then knelt down and tried to hug him. But he was completely unresponsive. “You mustn’t ever say that.”
“Can I do some drawing?” he asked blankly.
I took a deep breath, moving away slightly. I was desperate to get through to him, but it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen right now. We could talk about it later, though. We would talk.
“All right.”
I went through to my office, and touched the trackpad so that I could look back over the day’s work. I hate myself. I’d told him off for that, but if I was honest, they were words I’d thought about myself quite a lot over the last year. I felt them again now. Why was I such a failure? How could I be so incapable of saying and doing the right thing? Rebecca had always told me that Jake and I were very much alike, and so perhaps the same thoughts were going through his head right now. While it might be true that we still loved each other when we argued, it didn’t mean that we loved ourselves.
Why had he said such an awful thing at school? He’d been talking to himself—but, of course, that wasn’t really the case. I had no doubt at all that it was the little girl he’d been speaking with—that she’d finally found us—and I had no idea what to do about that. If he couldn’t make real friends, he would always have to rely on imaginary ones. And if they caused him to behave the way he had today, surely that meant he needed help?
“Play with me.”
I looked up from the screen.
A moment of silence followed in which my heart began beating harder.
The voice had come from the living room, but it hadn’t sounded like Jake at all. It had been croaky and vile.
“I don’t want to.”
That was Jake.
I stepped closer to the doorway, listening intently.
“Play with me, I said.”
“No.”
Although both voices had to belong to my son, they seemed so distinct that it was easy to believe there really was another child there with him. Except it didn’t sound like a child at all. The voice was too old and throaty for that. I glanced at the front door beside me. I hadn’t locked it when we got back home and the chain wasn’t hooked. Was it possible someone else had come in? No—I had only been in the next room. I would have heard that, if so.
“Yes. You’re going to play with me.”
The voice sounded like it was relishing the prospect.
“You’re scaring me,” Jake said.
“I want to scare you.”
And at that, I finally moved into the living room, walking quickly. Jake was kneeling on the floor next to his drawings, staring at me with wide, frightened eyes.
He was totally alone, but that did nothing for my heart rate. As had happened before in the house, there was a sense of presence in the room, as though someone or something had darted out of sight just before I arrived.
“Jake?” I said quietly.
He swallowed hard, looking like he was going to cry.
“Jake, who were you talking to?”
“Nobody.”
“I heard you talking. You were pretending to be someone else. Someone who wanted to play with you.”
“No, I wasn’t!” Suddenly he seemed less frightened than angry, as though I’d let him down somehow. “You always say that, and it isn’t fair!”
I blinked in surprise, and then stood there helplessly as he began stuffing papers into his Packet of Special Things. I didn’t always say that, did I? He must have known I didn’t like him talking to himself—that it bothered me—but it wasn’t as though I’d ever actually told him off for it.
I walked across and sat down on the couch near him.
“Jake—”
“I’m going to my room!”
“Please don’t. I’m worried about you.”
“No, you’re not. You don’t care about me at all.”
“That’s not true.”
But he was already past me and heading for the living room door. My instinct told me to let him go for now—to allow things to cool down and then talk later—but I also wanted to reassure him. I struggled for the right words.
“I thought you liked the little girl,” I said. “I thought you wanted to see her again.”
“It wasn’t her!”
“Who was it, then?”
“It was the boy in the floor.”
And then he was out of sight in the hallway.
I sat there for a moment, unable to think of what to say. The boy in the floor. I remembered the raspy voice that Jake had been talking to himself with. And, of course, that was the only explanation for what I’d heard. But even so, I felt a chill run through me. It hadn’t sounded like him at all.
I want to scare you.
And then I looked down. While Jake had gathered most of his things together, a single sheet of paper remained there, a few crayons lying abandoned around it. Yellow, green, and purple.
I stared at the picture. Jake had been drawing butterflies. They were childishly imprecise, but still clearly recognizable as the ones I’d seen in the garage this morning. But that was impossible, because he’d never been in the garage. I was about to pick the sheet up and examine it more closely when I heard him burst into tears.
I stood up and ran out into the hallway, just as he emerged, sobbing, from my office, pushing past me and running up the stairs.
“Jake—”
“Leave me alone! I hate you!”
I watched him go, feeling helpless, unable to keep up with what was happening, not understanding.
His bedroom door slammed.
I walked numbly into my office.
And then I saw the awful things I’d written to Rebecca there on the screen. Words about how hard everything was without her, and how a part of me blamed her for leaving me to deal with all this. Words my son must have just read. And I closed my eyes as I understood only too well.
Nineteen
Pete was sitting at his dinner table when the call came through. He should have been cooking or watching television, but the kitchen behind him remained dark and cold, and the living room was silent. Instead, he was staring at the bottle and the photograph.
He had been staring at them for a long time.
The day had taken a heavy toll on him. Seeing Carter always did, but this was much worse than usual. Despite the fact that Pete had waved away Amanda’s comment, the killer’s description of his dream about Tony Smith had gotten to Pete. Last night he had been determined to forget about Neil Spencer, but that wasn’t possible now. The cases were connected. He was involved.
But what use was he? An afternoon spent investigating visitors to friends of Carter’s inside had proved fruitless—so far, at least. There were still several to look at. The sad truth was that the bastard had more friends in prison than Pete had out of it.