Now You See Me

by Chris McGeorge

  “That’s what she said. She said you wouldn’t believe me. So she said to say those words, exactly. Clatteridges, 18th August 1996—7:30 p.m.”

  Robin couldn’t think. He had boxed his hope up and put it to the back of the cupboard of his mind. Hope was the worst emotion that people in his position, the ones left behind, could ever feel. And now this Matthew was rifling through the cupboard trying to find it.

  He closed his eyes, and breathed in and out slowly, trying to gain some perspective. This could all be explained away—a coincidence or something like that. That’s all. Because it couldn’t...

  “She rang me,” Matthew said, his voice steadier now as though he were stating facts. “In the dead of night. A few years back. I didn’t know who she was or why she was calling me or anything. I couldn’t even understand her at first. Thought she was either drunk or on some kind of drugs. She seemed flustered, confused. But as she talked, she started to make some sense. She told me her name. Then she said yours. She said ‘Robin Ferringham is the greatest man I’ve ever known.’ The only man to trust. And she said that Robin Ferringham would never let anyone down.”

  This isn’t real. It’s a trick. Just a stupid trick.

  “I didn’t remember the call for ages—I think I might have even convinced myself it was a dream. And then I get put in this place, and you’re given nothing but time to think. And I remembered. I remembered her. And I remembered you.”

  A call in the middle of the night. Years ago. Clatteridges. Was it possible—really? “I don’t believe you,” Robin whispered harshly, although a more accurate sentence would have been I can’t believe you.

  “Can’t you just ask her?” Matthew said.

  Robin’s breath hitched. “Samantha has been missing for three years.”

  Silence on the other end. And then a small “What? No. No. That’s not... Please, Mr. Ferringham. You have to...” The call began to break up.

  Robin looked at the phone. He had one bar of signal. He muttered an expletive under his breath and heard a slight tut. He looked up, suddenly remembering where he was. The same old woman who had been looking at the crime shelf was standing over him with a copy of Without Her clutched in her hands. It looked rather ragged and well read, clearly her own copy. The woman went to open her mouth but Robin put the phone back to his ear.

  “Matthew,” Robin said. There had to be something else. He had to know for sure. “Matthew.”

  “If you don’t...” The voice was cutting in and out.

  Robin got up. The old woman was saying something. “I’ve been plucking up the courage to come and talk to you,” she was saying, but Robin couldn’t focus on her.

  Robin mouthed a sorry to the woman, who was still talking, and he pushed past her. “Matthew, are you there?”

  “Please,” the old woman said, behind him, “your book changed my life. It made me find peace when my daughter... Please, can you just sign it?”

  “Please just search... Standedge.” And then the line went dead.

  “Matthew,” Robin said, but knew it was no use. He looked at the phone to see the call had disconnected. He looked around, lost.

  “Are you all right?” the old woman said.

  Robin put his phone back in his pocket, sniffling himself. “I’m sorry. That was rude. Of course I’ll sign your book.” Sam would’ve approved. And he talked with the old woman for almost half an hour about her missing daughter and how to cope, and when she was gone, he wrote Standedge down on his copy, and underlined it twice.

  Chapter Two

  Robin found his way to the sushi parlor in somewhat of a fog. Emma was already waiting for him. When he sat down and put the carrier bag on the table, she raised an eyebrow. “Thought you didn’t read anymore.”

  Robin pulled out the copy of Without Her that he had written his notes in. Wren said that he could take it for free, but he bought it, not wanting to get her into trouble.

  “Haven’t you got enough of them?” She laughed. She was right—the hallway of his flat was littered with proof copies, hardbacks and foreign versions all stacked up with nowhere to go.

  “I wrote in it.”

  “Isn’t that the general idea?” Emma said, and smiled. “How’d it go?”

  “Fine,” Robin said, trying to keep his mind from what Matthew had said and thinking of nothing else. “The usual, you know. Slow. But I met some nice people. Have you ordered?”

  They ate in relative silence. Emma talked a little about her day—complete now, as there were only morning appointments on a Saturday—although she never went into too much detail about her patients. The most she elaborated was about the increase of hypochondriacs having absolutely nothing wrong with them. The rise of WebMD had been the bane of Emma’s existence.

  Robin stayed silent, only half listening to her and picking at his food. He managed some salmon but that was about all he could stomach. And then—was Emma talking to him?

  “What’s wrong?” she said, staring at him with the intensity of a general practitioner and a sister all in one.

  “Nothing,” Robin said, knowing that wouldn’t work, but doomed to try.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Robin looked around and then back to her. “Have you ever heard of Standedge?”

  She thought for a moment. “No, what is that—a band?”

  “I don’t know,” Robin said.

  She stared at Robin. She was only four minutes older than him—but caught in the path of one of those stares, it felt like four minutes made all the difference. “What happened?”

  Robin looked away, rebuking the challenge. “Nothing.”

  “Ah, good,” she said, her demeanor changing. “Do you want coffee or shall we get the bill?” Which was subtext and reverse psychology all at the same time. Sometimes Robin thought Emma would give even a clairvoyant a headache.

  Robin caved. He opened up the hardback and showed her the notes he’d made, guiding her through the conversation with Matthew. Ending on Sam.

  She listened closely, not betraying her feelings until she had heard the full story. When Robin was done, she was quiet for a moment, thinking. After a beat, she said, “And this is what’s got you all—” she waved a hand at him “—whatever this is?”

  Robin was a little taken aback. “Did you hear...? He said Sam. He said he’d talked to Sam.”

  She sighed and looked at him sadly. “It was just a stupid prank, Robin. Your first impressions were correct. He was having you on. Somehow—who knows how—he got your number and thought he’d have a bit of fun with you. And it sounds like he had a great time.”

  “You didn’t hear him talk about this thing. This Standedge. And his friends. He sounded... He sounded like he’d lost something. Someone.” Robin stumbled over what he was trying to say, and didn’t want to say what was next, as though it would make it real. “He sounded like me.”

  “Robin...” Emma started.

  But Robin interrupted. “You remember that day you came to my flat with the laptop and told me to write it down. The day I started writing Without Her.”

  “You were sitting at the kitchen table staring at a bottle of Jack Daniel’s,” Emma said.

  “Yes,” Robin said, “I was lost. And you helped me. You helped me find a way through it. Matthew sounded like me that day. He sounded lost too.”

  “And what?” Emma said, almost flippantly. “Sam has led him to you.”

  Robin threw up his hands. “I don’t know—maybe. I...I don’t know.”

  Emma’s phone rang, and she looked at it before declining the call. “I have to go but we’re talking about this later. Don’t let this open old wounds, Robin. It was just some idiot getting some jollies at your expense. Don’t play his game. Focus on other things. Don’t you have a meeting on Monday with your publisher?”

  Robin wasn’t even thinking about that. Th
e publisher wanted to talk “Book Two” and so did Barrows. The Without Her money was running out. They were moving on to the next project—they had the luxury.

  Emma got up. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Sure,” Robin said. And as Emma turned to go, he called after her, “One more thing.” She turned back. “Did I ever tell you about Clatteridges?”

  Emma shrugged. “No. No, you didn’t.” And then she was gone.

  Robin turned back to his plate and looked down at the notes he made. Emma’s arguments were in his head—a stupid joke, just a prank, just a load of rubbish.

  But what if Emma was wrong?

  Chapter Three

  Robin got home a little after 1:00 p.m., his head still buzzing with Matthew’s words. Emma’s had faded into the background, and the hardback he was carrying seemed to pulse with the secrets he had written down.

  He threw his keys on the kitchen table. The room wasn’t a total mess, but it wasn’t exactly clean either. There was an organized stack of dirty dishes on the draining board, which Sam would never have accepted. Robin, on the other hand, had let standards slip since she had gone. He only really tidied up when he was expecting company, and besides Emma, no one came around anymore. His friends had been Sam’s friends as well, and meeting them felt wrong without her. Evidently they felt the same way because he hadn’t talked to most of them in a year.

  He put the kettle on and turned to find his laptop on the kitchen table. He looked at it for a few seconds before sitting down in front of it. He opened it up and logged in. Emma’s voice was in the back of his head telling him not to, but he went to Google and typed the one word that had been swirling around in his head for hours: Standedge. He clicked Search and was absorbed.

  Standedge was the name of a canal tunnel in Marsden, Huddersfield.

  Huddersfield.

  That couldn’t be a coincidence.

  The last time he saw Sam was in this very room. He was sitting in this very chair, poring over a laptop just as he was now. It was 8:15 a.m. on August 28, 2016, and he had been up all night, trying to make an article slightly more interesting. Sam came into the room with her suitcase, and he didn’t even look up.

  He did now. The kitchen was empty, but he could almost see the ghost of her standing there in the doorway. She was going to the station. She made her money as a traveling lecturer, always on the move. Robin didn’t like her being away but was proud of her for being so proactive. And she was good at her job. Universities were always fighting over her.

  That day she was going to the University of Huddersfield. She kissed him—he didn’t savor it enough—and she told him again how to look after her cacti, after he had somehow managed to kill the last batch.

  He looked away from the empty doorway to the kitchen windowsill. Her cacti were lined up on it. The same ones from that day. Alive and kicking. Waiting for her to come back.

  Huddersfield.

  What did it mean? Did it mean anything? He didn’t know. But it was another piece of the puzzle. There was no way the number, the nickname and Huddersfield could be a coincidence.

  He pressed on.

  The first website he clicked on was the Standedge Visitor Centre. Standedge was the longest canal tunnel in England and looked like it was a fairly successful tourist spot, with guided tours in the summer on canal boats. Was this what Matthew was talking about—going through?

  The second website he visited detailed the history of the tunnel, which he skimmed. It seemed to have an extensive past—built over a period of sixteen years from 1795 to 1811, costing around sixteen thousand pounds, being the deepest and the longest canal tunnel in Britain, connecting a village called Marsden to one named Diggle. Any other time, he probably would have been quite happy to peruse these details with interest, but it wasn’t what he was looking for.

  Scrolling through the rest of the results, he found nothing really relevant.

  So he searched “Matthew Standedge.” This came up with mostly the same results.

  He searched “Matthew Standedge disappearances,” and he finally found what he was searching for on the third result.

  It was an article from a Huddersfield regional paper. The more he read, the closer he got to the screen.

  This was it. He opened the copy of Without Her and ripped out the marked-up page, clicking his pen top.

  The Mystery of the Standedge Five

  by Jane Hargreaves

  Police are baffled as five local young people go missing inside Britain’s longest canal tunnel. At 2.31 p.m. on the 26th of June 2018, six local university students and a Bedlington terrier entered Standedge canal tunnel from the Marsden end, on a traditional narrow boat. Two hours and twelve minutes later, the boat emerged on the other side (the Diggle end) with only one of the students, knocked unconscious on the deck, and the terrier. Five of the students, Tim Claypath (21), Rachel Claypath (21), Edmund Sunderland (20), Prudence Pack (21) and Robert Frost (20), disappeared without a trace inside Standedge. The survivor, Matthew McConnell (21), claims to have no knowledge of what happened to his fellow students.

  The disappearance of the Claypath twins is of personal importance to the Chief of local police, their father, DCI Roger Claypath, who issued this statement earlier today: ‘My wife and I are devastated by the disappearances of our children and we are actively seeking to bring the right party to justice. We are pursuing a number of leads, but it seems that Matthew McConnell, who we thought of as our children’s friend, had the means and the knowledge to carry out a horrific act of deception and murder. As is public knowledge, McConnell was employed by the Canal & River Trust to give tours inside the tunnel, which is why the students were allowed to pass unattended. Given his station, he knew of the various ways out of Standedge from the inside. Timing is still an issue and we are still trying to create a timeline of what exactly happened. We ask that the press respect the families of those dealing with this tremendous loss, including my own.’

  McConnell is currently recovering from a head injury (that the police believe was self-inflicted) in Anderson Hospital. He will be transported to a holding cell when he recovers while the investigation team finalises the case against him.

  The bodies of the five missing young people have yet to be recovered. A source said, ‘The bodies are not in the tunnel, as the police have sent divers into the canal. They seem increasingly frustrated in trying to find out what happened to the five students. DCI Claypath has people working around the clock to try and bring this story to an end, no matter how tragic it may be.’

  Huddersfield Press reached out to the Canal & River Trust for comments on the situation. They refused to comment, other than to give sympathies to the families affected by this tragedy.

  Robin stopped reading and looked down at his notes. He’d been writing without knowing it. He’d listed the names: Tim Claypath, Rachel Claypath, Edmund Sunderland, Robert Frost and Prudence Pack. And he’d circled McConnell. Matthew McConnell. Everything he read lined up with what Matthew said. Five kids, students, went missing inside the tunnel, but Matthew was left behind.

  This supposedly happened on June 26 this year? Less than two months ago. How the hell had he not heard about this? This should have been national news; this should have been in every newspaper in the country. But he hadn’t heard a thing about it—hadn’t even known what Standedge was.

  And leaving the paper’s website, he found that the other results were irrelevant. Only one result about this mass disappearance—it didn’t make sense.

  He searched “Matthew McConnell Claypath Standedge Tunnel 26th June 2018.” This only brought up one page of results. In addition to the newspaper article, there were a number of articles, all from one other website. He clicked on the first link and went to a site that seemed like it was from the early days of the internet. At the top of the site in big red text was the masthead, THE RED DOOR. Robin wa
s immediately suspicious—it felt like a site that housed a million viruses—but as he read the first article, it did seem to have useful information.

  McConnell Pleads Innocence in the

  Crime of the Century

  by The Red Door 17/07/18 16.44 p.m.

  Matthew McConnell, the lone survivor of the Standedge Incident, has once again pleaded his innocence, as he was transferred from Anderson Hospital to HMP New Hall. The Red Door (the only outlet to witness his arrival at New Hall [Ed: What’s up with that?]) heard McConnell’s shouts that he was innocent and didn’t remember anything after entering the tunnel on the 26th of June 2018.

  You guys know I love a good mystery but the deck is stacked against McConnell on this one. There are just too many factors that go against him. You see, Standedge is, actually, a set of four tunnels. The left one is abandoned, the right two are working train lines and the ‘middle’ one is the canal. McConnell worked as a tour guide, meaning he would know this and be able to navigate the abandoned tunnel with ease. What’s more, he’d have the keys to be able to unlock the large gates blocking the tunnel entrance. And furthermore, a couple of McConnell’s acquaintances (you know, the ones that weren’t spirited away) said that the guy had a beef with the guys he went on his swan song voyage with.

  Now, this is still crazy. How McConnell pulled off this crime is insane. He killed everyone, transported the bodies to a secret location, got back to the boat and cleaned up after himself, all in time to bonk himself on the head and collapse on the deck before the boat reappeared at the other end. That’s seriously wacky!

  Unless... Maybe McConnell’s innocent. Maybe Tim Claypath, Rachel Claypath, Pru Pack, Edmund Sunderland and Robert Frost just simply disappeared. And whatever force evaporated them also knocked out McConnell in the process. Food for thought.

  Maybe I should investigate some more! God, I love this job!

  What do you guys think? Comment down below and be sure to subscribe to The Red Door feed to keep up to date with all the weird news you can handle. Peace!