Something Wicked This Way Comes

by Amy Rae Durreson

  I couldn’t—shouldn’t—tell Niall anything now.

  But he had already seen the names, and Martyn Armstrong had dragged him in. On the other hand, he probably hadn’t leapt to the same conclusion I had from four names and an implication in the policeman’s letter.

  Well, maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was so paranoid about this kind of scandal that I’d seen one where there was nothing. All the same, I now had to be very careful about what I said. More than just Felix’s dream of a new school depended on it.

  Niall came back with a glass of water. I took it and sipped, avoiding his gaze.

  “Better?” he asked, brushing his knuckles over my nape.

  Damn. I didn’t want to lie to him.

  Well, withholding information wasn’t exactly lying.

  “Let’s get this done,” I said and turned the next page.

  Next came a collection of newspaper clippings glued to the backboard. They all told the same story—in 1953, a twelve-year-old girl, Ellen Kerr, had gone missing from Blackburn Farm, Blacklynefoot. She had never been found.

  “What the hell?” Niall breathed.

  I couldn’t really add to that.

  There were three pages about Ellen Kerr. When I turned over the next, though, a different face stared out at me.

  In 1957, eight-year-old Alexander Forster had been thrown from his horse crossing the bridge at Blacklynefoot. His family had been alerted when the panicked horse arrived home riderless. They had found his body in the stream, his skull cracked open.

  Niall went completely still beside me. He said, “I didn’t know he died here.”

  I looked at the surname again. “You’re related?”

  “Distantly. It’s how my grandpa came by the lodge. Wee Sandy was his brother’s son—his only son. They emigrated afterwards, and the lodge was rented for years. Eventually Great-Uncle Les left it to Grandpa, and he retired here. Was he researching my family?”

  I looked at the clipping again. There was only one—not the collection there had been about Ellen Kerr. The paper looked old and soft. I told him, “By the look of it, this has been stuck in here since 1957.”

  “Again,” he said, “what the hell?”

  I turned the page again, dreading what I would find.

  1961. Ten-year-old Colin Howard, camping with his scout troop, had died in a fall.

  The next page was a thirteen-year-old runaway from Hawick. Janis Routledge had last been seen boarding the train to Carlisle after leaving school in September 1966. Below the report, Armstrong had pasted in a copy of the railway timetable, with the times the service stopped at Blacklynefoot Halt circled twice. The news report said she was believed to be heading for London, but Armstrong had put a bright red exclamation mark in the margin.

  After the next one, I went to get my tablet and opened a spreadsheet.

  “What are you doing?” Niall asked—the first thing he’d said in minutes.

  “Keeping a list,” I said. Wasn’t it obvious?

  It helped a little—gave me some distance from the horrible implications. I didn’t want to think yet about what this meant. What it had to mean.

  There were seventeen in all—eighteen if you counted me, though I had survived where the others had not. Include the four Eilbeck boys and that was over twenty deaths or disappearances, all attributed to accidents and bad luck, but all within a few miles of Vainguard. They took place between 1944 and 2016, every four or five years. Janis, the runaway, was the oldest, and the youngest was five-year-old Theo Suarez from London, on a pony-trekking holiday with his grandparents and twin sister in 1988, less than six months after I had survived the crash that killed my parents.

  I didn’t want to touch the album any more. Hell, I probably shouldn’t. It needed to be handed to the police, examined as part of a pattern of evidence that—

  Oh God.

  I stumbled to my feet, rummaging through my pockets for my phone.

  “What are you doing?” Niall demanded.

  “We need to contact the police, pass this on. It’s evidence. It’s—” I stopped. All the words I knew came from thrillers and American TV shows, and I couldn’t quite manage to say them here in the quiet of this country cottage where the rain was still whispering against the window.

  “What do you think this is?” He sounded genuinely puzzled.

  I waved my hand frantically at the album. “Isn’t it obvious? This is….”

  “What?”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, forcing myself to stay calm. “A serial killer. This is evidence of a serial killer.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  HE LET out a hard bark of incredulous laughter.

  I understood. Said out loud, it seemed impossibly melodramatic.

  “They’re accidents,” he said. “Some of them aren’t even that. Who knows where those missing kids ended up?”

  “There’s too many,” I retorted. “Come on—once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”

  He flushed angrily. “Don’t you bloody quote clichés at me. You’re not seriously suggesting that someone went jumping out at horses or pouring water over the road just in case someone might skid on the ice?”

  “It’s not impossible. Someone clever and cunning enough—”

  “Nobody did,” he snapped, his voice rising. “Nobody set it up. Nobody else was to blame—”

  “They could have done!”

  “How would you know? You weren’t there!” His voice had risen to a roar.

  I yelled back, “Yes, I was!”

  He closed his mouth on his next words, his eyes going wide. Then he said, very softly, “You were.”

  I barrelled over him. “And I don’t remember it all—I don’t remember what happened after the crash, but when I get flashbacks I hear one thing every time. I hear my mother screaming because there’s someone in the road, and my father swerves to miss him. That’s what I know.”

  Niall went completely still. So quietly I barely heard him, he said, “I saw someone too. Anton didn’t.”

  I stared at him, holding my breath.

  “It wasn’t Armstrong I saw,” he said, still in that almost inaudible voice. I wanted to lean in closer, but I didn’t want to remind him he had an audience. “It wasn’t anyone I knew. I wasn’t sure I saw him at all.” He swallowed hard. “He didn’t come to help. If he had really been there….”

  Anyone decent would have—would have flung themselves down after that careening car and helped Katie, called for help, tried to get her father out of the wreckage, done something.

  Wouldn’t they?

  Someone had done it for us in the end, hadn’t they? I didn’t remember it, but I had been told the information. A local had come along the road half an hour after us—in time to save me, but not my parents.

  Niall had drifted into silence, so I wet my lips and asked, “Who found you?”

  He frowned suddenly. “Armstrong. He was out with his dog.” He met my gaze warily. “Don’t make a conspiracy out of it. He could barely even get down the slope to us. He was an old man, Leon—too old and frail to be up to anything.”

  I wasn’t so inclined to assume the elderly were blameless, but he probably had a point about Armstrong’s physical condition. But the pattern was there. “How do you explain it, then? All these deaths, and he’s lurking around the edges of them all!”

  He glared back at me. “A fucking tragedy of a life.”

  “It can’t be coincidence.”

  He folded his arms. “We make our own coincidences. I’d put even money on it that you can never skim past a news story about a car crash, can you? You probably notice them more than anyone else you know.”

  He wasn’t wrong—car crashes, kids with knives, and runaways all caught my attention. “And what, you think the old man just took more notice of children dying than anyone else? This many of them?”

  “Seventeen over seventy years.” He rubbed his eyes wearily. “That’s not a co
nspiracy, Leon. That’s just the world we live in.”

  “No.” I wouldn’t believe that—wouldn’t accept that children’s needless deaths were nothing but a fact of life.

  “My daughter wasn’t the victim of a serial killer. She died because her dad was a shitty driver. That’s all.”

  “No!” I repeated and went to him. I put my arms around him. He didn’t hold me in return, just stood stock-still, his shoulders braced. I said, keeping my voice as steady as I could, “Once you hit that ice, there was nothing you could have done. What happened was not your fault.”

  He took a slow, shaky breath but didn’t say anything else or move to touch me.

  I closed my eyes, considering what to do. I still thought the album was profoundly wrong, but his points were logical, for all they were founded in self-doubt. If I did take it to the police, would I get anything more than the same doubts and possible disgrace for the charity.

  What would Felix do?

  That wasn’t a bad question to ask. Felix had decades more experience than I did at handling what looked like insurmountable problems. He had also known Martyn Armstrong, possibly better than anyone else left alive. I should phone him and ask for his advice. Now I thought about it, that seemed the obvious solution, especially if I waited until after I got the files about the orphanage from the archives. I’d have a lot more of the picture by then, and Felix would know what to do.

  I pulled back from Niall. He still had his eyes closed and his head bowed. I couldn’t quite believe that not long ago he had been bright and passionate in my arms. Our troubles had risen up around us on a grey tide, and I was too worried to be distracted even by him.

  And he looked too sad to ever accept a kiss again.

  I kissed his cheek anyway and said, “I won’t do anything rash. Look, I should be going.”

  He jumped, then said, “Yeah, sure. Of course.”

  “I’ll just grab my stuff out of the airing cupboard.”

  “Pick it up tomorrow. Do you need to borrow a brolly to get back to your car?”

  “Thanks.”

  He slipped away. I pushed my tablet into my bag and contemplated the album. I should take it to Vainguard for safekeeping.

  But I didn’t want to return to that quiet house.

  Niall came back with an umbrella, and I accepted it with a murmur of thanks. Suddenly everything felt awkward. He wasn’t raging at me anymore, but I was finding it harder and harder to believe he had ever kissed me so freely.

  He saw me to the door, and I picked my way up the drive in my still-damp shoes, soft drizzle falling around me. It had turned into the kind of rain which saturates the air so much that an umbrella barely does anything, and I was chilled and damp by the time I made it to my car. Vainguard stood behind me, grey and lumpen, and I was glad all over again that I could wait until tomorrow to go back through those forbidding doors.

  I turned the engine on and was about to pull out when I saw movement in the barn. After a second, I realised it was the gawky figure of a pre-teen boy.

  For a few horrible moments, I thought my earlier flight of imagination really had summoned up the ghost of Francis Armstrong. Then he came dashing out of the shadows, and I realised it was Mac, the older of the Elliot boys. I wound down the window and waved to him.

  “Hi,” he said breathlessly. “I thought you’d gone. I was about to give up.”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  He looked a little sheepish. “I was hoping to get that tour.”

  “Not today, I’m afraid. Hop in. I’ll give you a lift back.”

  “Thanks.” He didn’t hesitate.

  As we bumped down the drive, I said, because the point needed to be made clearly. “You really shouldn’t be here without asking. Not because you’re not welcome, but the place is in poor repair. If something happened to you when nobody knew where you were, there would be problems.”

  He hunched his shoulders. “Sorry. Doug goes nuts when he gets trapped inside too long, and I thought there would be no harm in coming over to ask.”

  “Don’t worry this time. We’ll sort that tour out yet.”

  He brightened up. “Yeah?”

  “Sure. How long were you waiting?”

  “Not too long. I sat in the barn and read.” He added, with heartfelt emphasis, “No one in my family will leave you alone to do that. They have to know what you’re reading and why and wouldn’t you rather talk to your family or play a nice game with them. They don’t get it!”

  I laughed. “That does sound frustrating. What are you reading?”

  He named the latest Rick Riordan, and we talked about heroes and myths. It was hours before sunset still, but the afternoon was so grey with rain that I had switched my lights on.

  And as we swung into the farm’s driveway, they caught someone standing by the hedge.

  It was the old man I had seen at the pub, and again I felt his malice hit me like a blow. I jumped, almost swerving, and then we were past him, the beams of the headlights falling off him so the shadows swallowed him up again.

  “God, I hate that guy,” Mac said.

  “You’ve seen him before?”

  “Yeah, all over. He must be local. He’s always standing by the road and glaring at us when we drive past.” He giggled. “Doug says we should start making, y’know, hand gestures at him, but Mom would kill us.”

  I laughed, happy to make light of it. The old man had unsettled me too. “And it would serve you right. Come on. Let’s get out of this weather.”

  It was very quiet outside the guesthouse—even the rain was soft enough to be inaudible. A breeze rattled the trees, and the rush of the stream seemed louder than usual.

  Then, very distinctly, a horse huffed somewhere nearby.

  Mac froze. Then he squashed back into the shadows of the porch, beckoning frantically. I followed him, puzzled.

  “Did you hear that?” he breathed.

  “Of course.”

  His eyes went wide. “But it’s them!”

  “Who?” I whispered back, caught up in his intensity.

  “The night riders. Hide!”

  I almost laughed, but he was genuinely afraid.

  Then I remembered how many times I had heard the same sounds deep in the night and wondered for the first time why anyone would be secretly crossing this border by night in the twenty-first century. It made no sense.

  The sounds continued, quiet and muffled but most definitely real—hooves, the faint creak of leather, the soft subtle noises of a whole group of riders passing through the courtyard before us and following the track down to the river.

  But there was no one there. The light was dim, but I could still see across the valley to where the fells rose up, rain-blurred and dank. There was nothing moving out there save the rain.

  The sound must be carrying from somewhere hidden—the road or the other side of the river. That was the only logical explanation.

  But my ears told me they were right there, only a few feet away.

  Another hallucination, then.

  Except Mac could hear it too. It wasn’t just me.

  I thought of Rob’s dog, Dimwit, frozen with fear on the first day here. There had been no rational explanation for that either.

  This was insane. What was I thinking to even consider that something—dear God—supernatural was happening?

  Except that despite all my logic and reason, I could still hear invisible riders passing through the whispering rain.

  When the last hoofbeat faded along the track, I turned to Mac. He was staring at me, a thrilled grin starting to spread across his face. He said, “You heard them. I thought it was just me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mom and Dad can’t. Doug can’t—I made him stay up and listen, and he didn’t hear them at all. But you did! Do you hear them at night?”

  “Yes,” I said, because he deserved the truth, especially if everyone else was doubting him. “There must be some explanat
ion.”

  “They’re reivers. They’ve gotta be! They still sneaking over the border. That’s why I bought the ghost book—I wanted to see if they were in there!”

  “Were they?”

  His shoulders sagged. “No. But we heard them, right?”

  “Yes,” I said reluctantly.

  “So we can tell them it’s true.”

  I sighed again. “Here’s the thing, Mac. They didn’t believe you, did they? Why would they believe me?”

  “But you’re an adult.”

  “They’ll assume I’m either humouring you or messing with you. Even the best people in the world aren’t much good at believing in things that don’t fit the way they already think the world works.”

  He considered it for a while, then said, “Oh.”

  “Even I may not believe in it later, once I’ve had a chance to reason my way out of it.”

  “Seriously?”

  I closed my eyes and hoped I was getting this right. “So you better keep reminding me that it’s true. Come inside. Your parents must be wondering where you are.”

  He grinned at me again, bright and relieved, and darted into the guesthouse ahead of me.

  Chapter Seventeen

  BY MID-EVENING, I hated the rain. My mind was overflowing, and I wanted to move, to go striding up the hills and along the ridge until the movement made every stray worry fall back into place. But the rain had set in, pounding against the windows, and there wasn’t even the light of the moon to guide me.

  I didn’t want to believe in ghosts.

  And yet….

  Maybe there had been something in the woods, in the barn, in the windowless chapel. Maybe the thread that bound twenty-one dead children wasn’t an incredibly subtle serial killer but something else—something which defied reason and logic and the usual rules of cause and effect.

  Niall had called Vainguard cursed. Surely he hadn’t meant literally?

  “Anton didn’t see him,” he’d said, and Mac had almost echoed him with “Doug can’t hear them.”

  This was insane. I was insane to even consider it.

  I tried to read but couldn’t concentrate on my book. I tried watching a film, but the wireless connection kept crashing, and I kept forgetting who had done or said what.