by NJ Moss
With a creak that went right into my centre, the door at the top of the stairs opened and he walked slowly down, his figure a dim silhouette in the hazy bulb light.
“It’s time to face the truth, Grace.”
I writhed and tried to scream, but the tape kept my lips tightly shut. The chair leapt up and down; that was as far as my protest could go. My heart thumped in the back of my neck and threatened to choke me.
“You know what I’m talking about,” he said. “I pushed her.”
Fucking no. Please God, no.
I strained against the bindings with everything I had. A slight smirk touched his lips and he stepped closer.
“I pushed her down the hill. I mean, I made her go, I called her names. I’m always calling her names.”
Stop, stop, stop, stop.
He knelt and laid his elbows on his knees, tilting his head at me like we were old friends. “I said she was a baby. And she wouldn’t do it. And she did. She did.”
He was reciting my own words to me.
I couldn’t stop it anymore.
The cracks within exploded and shrapnel tore through my mind.
I didn’t want to, but I remembered.
I remembered it all.
41
Mother had told me to take Hope out on her new bike and I hated her for it: both of them, Mother for making me do it and Hope for being so smiley all the damn time.
I hated being lumbered with my little sister. I hated having to listen to her cheery voice, and most of all I hated the way Will’s face changed when he saw I’d brought a seven-year-old with me. Will was a rugby player, two years older than me, one of the coolest kids in school.
“Why is she here?” He nodded at Hope, who was lingering a few feet away near the fence.
Will and I were standing near the swings. Three ciders sat on the ground, the fourth plastic ring empty from where he’d presumably already drunk one. His hair was swept to the side, an ashy blond, and his pale blue eyes regarded me coolly.
“I invited you, Grace,” he said, an annoyed note in his voice.
“I know. I didn’t want to bring her. Jesus. She’s so annoying.”
He leaned down to his bag, grabbed the ciders, and quickly zipped them away. “Listen, I’ve gotta go. Try’n ditch the kid next time.”
He walked out of the park. My teenage world upended as I realised I wouldn’t be able to brag to my friends about getting with Will Yard. I’d already told them I was meeting him, so it would be doubly embarrassing. Maybe he was already telling his friends how lame I was, bringing my annoying little sister, about how he’d wanted to drink and maybe smoke and maybe do other things, exciting grown-up things.
She’d ruined it. Hope. I hated her. She was so annoying.
“Can we go home now?” she whined, leaning on her stupid pink bike, the ugliest bike I’d ever seen. “Please, Grace?”
I marched past her and we began the long walk home. As if that evening was not already a nightmare, the weather inexplicably changed and the sky darkened. Rain pelted down, soaking me through, drenching my hair.
Why won’t she stop smiling?
“You’re such a baby,” I spat, when we were near the top of Clifton Hill, the first words I’d spoken to her the entire walk home.
“You’re just angry that fat boy doesn’t want to kiss you.”
“He’s not fat. He’s got muscles. He’s a rugby player.”
“I bet he already has a girlfriend.”
“Shut up. You’re a stupid baby. Everyone says you are. Even Mum and Dad say you’re a stupid ugly baby.”
Her upper lip stiffened and even in the rain I could see tears were budding in her eyes. “You’re so mean.”
“Going to cry, baby?” I laughed sharply. “Going to cry and ride your little fucking baby bike home? Well? Are you?”
“I’m not a baby.”
I laughed again, low and mean. “Sure, sure. You’re not an immature little girl at all. When’s the last time you kissed a boy?”
“I don’t even want to do that.”
“Nobody will ever want to kiss a skinny bitch like you. I bet you’re going to be flat-chested when you grow up.”
“You’re so horrible sometimes! And I’m not a baby. I’m more mature than you. All you want to do is go to parks and kiss boys.”
“Kiss?” I yelled, trying to sound haughty. “God, is that what you think boys and girls do? You really are pathetic.”
Perhaps the way her cheeks trembled was giving me some sort of pleasure. Perhaps the pain in her voice lessened the blow of what I imagined Will was doing. Telling his friends. Making me a laughing stock.
She looked at the ground and let out a choking noise. For a moment I felt something, a pang of regret, and I saw myself going to her and placing my hand on her shoulder. I saw myself squeezing her supportively and telling her how sorry I was, I’d never be this cruel to her again, I loved her.
But then I remembered Will’s face, the way his eyes had glinted in mockery and disappointment.
“You’re the baby,” she huffed, as we crested the hill.
“Yeah?” I sneered. “If you’re not a baby, ride down that hill.”
“What?”
“If you’re such a big girl, ride down that hill, as fast as you can. Or are you scared?”
“I’m not scared.”
“So you’ll do it?” I goaded, knowing she wouldn’t, knowing I’d win, whatever the hell winning meant in these circumstances. “You’ll ride down the hill as fast as you can to prove you’re not a snivelling pathetic ugly baby?”
“It’s too wet—”
“That sounds like something a baby would say.”
“Another time—”
“You know you can’t do it.”
“Another time. It’s raining.”
“How cute, the skinny bitch is scared.”
“I’m not scared!” she screamed, tightening her grip on the handlebars and spinning the bike around in one fluid motion. “And I’m not a baby. You’re the baby!”
“Go on,” I taunted, walking over to her. “As if you’re going to do it. I’d do it, if I had my bike. I’ve done it before, actually, loads of times.”
Hope peered down the hill. A few strands of her auburn hair had come loose, spiralling. “Really?”
“Yep,” I lied. “It’s easy, even in the rain. For big girls anyway. Not for little—”
Hope climbed onto her bike and I was still smirking at her, secure in the knowledge she would step off the bike and bow her head and this argument would be mine, mine in that evil teenage-girl way that meant nothing. It meant I’d wounded my little sister again, tore down another brick of her self-esteem. And for what? Because Will fucking Yard wouldn’t be plying me with cider and stuffing his clammy hand down my knickers tonight.
“You’re really going to do it, are you?” I cackled. “Yeah right.”
“You’ll see.”
To my utter disbelief, she ducked her head and pedalled toward the lip of the hill. Her braid fluttered behind her and my voice broke in a scream, my primal instinct rising above my bully’s pride.
“Hope, stop. Hope, fucking stop.”
But it was too late. Hope was a stubborn girl. She was the sort of girl who’d search for hours for the perfect rock at Weston-super-Mare, skipping over the stones like a wraith.
I chased her, panting, tripping more than once. Everything was soaked. My throat was hoarse with screaming and I kept thinking, Please be okay, please be okay. I promised myself I’d never bully her again if she was okay. I’d always be a good older sister. I’d protect her like Mother and Father were always impressing upon me.
Let her be okay.
But of course she wasn’t. She was seven and it was raining and the hill was steep and what she’d done was reckless, stupid, and not her fault. No piece of the blame was hers. It all belonged to me.
42
“I used to joyride my dad’s car around the South West
,” the man said, but I was hardly listening. I was in an abyss of memory, all my fears stacked up, attacking me. “I liked to grip the steering wheel hard. I’d imagine I could feel every little bump in the road. I’d speed around roundabouts and my heartbeat, Grace, it would go mental.”
He looked at me expectantly. The duct tape burned against my lips. My tears burned hotter.
Hope, little hope, and it was me.
It was always you, the hateful voice inside of me hissed.
“Normally my dad would be working the night shift at the supermarket when I took the car out. He walked because it was close and the car wasn’t insured, wasn’t even in our name in any sense of the word.”
He nodded, as though proud. I worked my wrists in the duct tape. I was sweaty. It wasn’t very tight. Maybe there was a way out of this bastard’s trap.
Or maybe I’d die here. Like Hope died. Like I killed her.
“Sometimes I’d go right up to Clifton. I’d drive to the edge and stare down at the River Avon. I don’t remember what I was thinking that evening. I try to bring it back, what was going through my head when I was sitting there smoking.” He paused and took the cigarette from behind his ear, lighting it and inhaling deeply. “I don’t remember what I was thinking the last time I was innocent. Something’s wrong with that.”
He paused and stared and smoked for a few minutes, and I was forced to sit there, wondering if he’d leap across the room and do vicious things to me.
The memory hadn’t been real. Deep down, I’d known something was twisted with me and my sister. I knew I resented the clicking seashells on her bracelet and her seaside smile.
I was a teenage girl, cruel, as we sometimes are.
“You remember how quickly the weather changed,” the man said. “Started pissing down in seconds.”
Of course I remembered. It was typical English weather. Rain, rain, go away, Hope had sung once, tapping her fingernails against the bedroom window, and I’d had to fight the urge to grip her hair and smear her face against the glass.
What was wrong with me?
“I didn’t feel like I was over the speed limit, but then, fuck, this blur jumped out. She crashed against the bonnet and went slapping over the roof and onto the tarmac behind me, a twisted thing lying in a red puddle.”
The image blared loudly, the red of a comic book or a graphic novel, one of those over-stylised films Troy liked. And yet it was also hazy, appearing and vanishing, as though my mind’s defences weren’t ready to quit.
“I threw the car door open. I felt like I was going to pass out as I walked toward her. I looked down and she wasn’t moving. There was nothing I could do. She was broken.”
He stared and smoked, one hand tucked in his pocket. I eyed the way his fingers shifted around in there. Did he have a weapon? He could slit my throat any time the notion popped into his deranged mind.
“Here’s the funny thing.” He exhaled a grey cloud of smoke. “Well, not funny. Odd. I’ve heard you mention her bike wheel was spinning. I’ve heard you say that quite a few times. But it wasn’t spinning. The bike was destroyed. I’ve thought about that, and I think you invented the bike wheel so you wouldn’t have to remember how messed up her body looked.”
I couldn’t refute his words. I felt raw and used-up, gnarled from all those sleepless nights and all the stress. I didn’t understand my memory, myself, because anything I consulted may turn out to be another lie. Madness had finally caught up with me.
He was silent for a long time. Finally he flicked the butt to the floor.
It was a dusty cellar, with a washing machine on one end and a wicker basket filled with shoes and boots opposite. There were more items, the detritus of life, but it was the shape of the room that interested me.
He was on one side of the rectangle and I was on the other. If he remained over there, he wouldn’t see me wriggling my wrist, working at the duct tape.
“I stood there for a long time,” he said. “I guess I was waiting for one of the house doors to open… for somebody to shout at me and tell me to stay there so they could call the police. But nobody came.
“Then you came running down the hill, a thirteen-year-old girl with tangled wet hair and mud all up your arms, your top all coated in muck, your jeans dirty. I think you were crying, but it was raining too much to see.
“You were choking and gulping between your words. You told me you’d pushed her and I asked you what you meant.”
I could feel the words on my lips, through the duct tape, the admission I’d given to this stranger. The root of my madness had been planted there. My mind splintered and a fiction took the place of reality.
“None of it seemed real. You know what I mean.”
Of course I knew what he meant.
“You told me you’d talked her into cycling down the hill. You’d called her names and bullied her.”
I pushed her, the teenage version of me croaked in my mind. I called her names. I’m always calling her names. I said she was a baby and she wouldn’t do it and she did, she did.
Mother was right about me.
“You kept moaning you’d killed your little sister. You asked me if she’d be alive if you hadn’t forced her down the hill. Maybe it was cruel, the answer I gave you. I said yes. She would be alive.”
I let out a sob, muffled by the tape, the same noise I’d made that evening. I remembered the sensation of it in my throat, and then I forced it away.
“I didn’t want to go to prison. You’d given me a way out. You begged me, Grace.”
I’d cried and sobbed, pleading with him not to tell my parents. Mother had made me promise to take care of Hope. Father had smiled at me, standing in the front window, his hand raised with the suggestion of a tremor. He was concerned I couldn’t do it. But I could; I’d prove I could.
Or kill her, ha-ha-ha, the mad thing inside of me cheered. The little bitch deserved it, right, Gracie?
“If you’d been calm I wouldn’t have been able to slowly back toward my car. If you’d been older you would’ve known you shouldn’t let me drive away. I called over to you before getting in. Do you remember yet?”
I remembered, and it fucking hurt.
If you tell anyone you saw me, I’ll tell your parents the truth. I’ll tell them you killed your sister.
“I got into the car quickly. I didn’t want to see the effect my words had on you.”
He’d driven off before I’d collapsed atop her, my hands in her soaked matted hair, crying for relief.
43
“When I got home I drove the car down the side alley. It was overgrown and covered in grass, and soon I was driving in mulchy mud. I stopped near the rusty barbeque our neighbours had abandoned, killed the engine, and let out a long breath. It made a shuddering sound and I realised I was crying. I’d been crying the whole way home.”
He was relentless, pacing up and down the cellar, waving his hands as he spoke. It was like he was possessed, and telling this story was the only way to exorcise the demon. He clawed at his pocket and withdrew a cigarette, lighting it efficiently.
I stared, playing the patient captive as I worked at the duct tape with small movements. I was reeling from all he’d told me, from all I’d remembered – appearing and disappearing like a drowning woman on the ocean’s surface – but Mia, Troy and Russ were waiting for me.
“I went inside and sat at the kitchen table, the one we got at the charity shop, with a few scuffs here and there, only sixty-five quid for the whole set, including the chairs. It was a bargain.”
His eyes shone with reminiscence. For a deranged moment, I felt myself smiling beneath the tape. I corrected the gesture.
“My dad was working the night shift, so I sat there. I sat and hugged myself. I was so scared, but I knew I could never tell anybody, not so they’d understand. I was as broken as that little girl.”
He shuddered as he inhaled a long plume. I turned my face away, unwilling to gaze upon the sadness. It reminded me too
much of my own.
“Finally, Dad came home. It was morning. The sun was rising in the kitchen. He asked me what was wrong when he found me paralysed at that charity-shop table. ‘The car’s out back. There’s blood on the bonnet. I think I’m going to prison.’
“He kept asking for more detail, but I couldn’t talk anymore. I was crying again. This was before I learned how to be cold, I guess, because I was blubbering like a little kid.”
There was real pain in his voice, or at least real-sounding pain. He worked his jaws from side to side. I got the sense he was sharing only a tenth of his thoughts: much of this was passing through him silently, as painfully as it had worked its way through me over the years.
“Eventually Dad left to look at the car.” He flicked the half-smoked cigarette away and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “When he came back, his face told me the rain hadn’t cleaned everything off. There was blood all over the bonnet and—fuck, I’m sorry, Grace. What’s wrong with me?”
He turned and frowned, and our eyes met. Terror flared in me… Did he know what I was doing with my hands?
But it wasn’t only fear of capture that made me want to scream. It was the pity I felt at his expression, as though I’d done this to him, hurt him in this evil way. And I had; I’d talked Hope into her death dive.
But it wasn’t fucking fair.
He’d knocked me out and tied me to a chair. He was a monster. He didn’t deserve my empathy.
“‘You fled the scene,’ my dad told me, and let me tell you, Martin Evans could put some real meanness into his voice. He grabbed the back of my neck and shoved me against the table, crushing my cheek. He started calling me names: sicko, freak, stuff like that, venting his anger and pushing me harder and harder against the table. I didn’t have the energy to fight. All I could do was tell him he was hurting me, and my voice came out wheezy.”
He became Russ for a moment, his voice shivering and afraid. My maternal instinct awoke, but I couldn’t allow myself to care about this man’s plight. He was my enemy. Shared experience didn’t change that.