by Graham West
“Go on, you head off, son. Get yourself a sister!”
If only it were that easy.
His uncle’s place was a half hour walk at a brisk pace, forty-five minutes if you included calling in at the newsagent’s and buying a notepad along with a packet of cheap pens. The lanky lad at the checkout grunted something while managing to serve him without making eye contact. Darren reckoned he was fresh out of school and related in some way to the owner who hadn’t gotten around to teaching the kid basic social skills.
His uncle had left the radio on which, in an empty house, was comforting. It was never going to be home; it was merely a place he could stop while planning his future—if he had one, of course. Darren helped himself to a Coke from the fridge and set himself up at the kitchen table. He opened the notepad and stared at the blank page in front of him. How did he even begin?
Dear Jenny?
Okay, she knew he was her brother. His mother had told him on the last visit before she ended it all, so there was no point wasting ink reminding her of something she was probably still trying to get her head around. No, this had to be all about how sorry he was.
Darren groaned. Sorry didn’t cut it. She needed to know how he felt, and while English Literature had been one of his better subjects at school, he still wasn’t sure how to put something like that into words. He took a mouthful from the can and winced as the ice-cold liquid foamed in his mouth. The empty page glared at him, its crisp clean lines awaiting the pen. Darren Pascoe belched loudly and his hand trembled as he began to write. Maybe the words would come, released from the prison of his mind. It was nothing more than a scrawl, but at least the page was no longer blank.
Dear Jenny…
***
Dennis Blakely was finishing his second coffee as Rob arrived at The Lakeside Hotel with Jenny and Jake. He looked up from his breakfast and greeted them with raised eyebrows. “Anything?” he quizzed, replacing his cup and wiping his chin.
“Nothing, apart from a couple of police officers who thought we were dogging,” Rob replied without the faintest look of amusement.
Blakely laughed. “You? Dogging? So what happened?”
“We told them the truth. If we get some pictures they’ll take a look.”
Blakely nodded. “I’ve sorted out a family room for the day. You guys go and get some rest and take yourselves off home. We only have one night watchman but he’s covering the house and never heard anything. Larry’s arranged for an extra guy to cover the woodland, and we’ll be getting cameras there soon. I’ll keep you updated.”
Jake watched the hotel guests sitting with their plates of food and cups of freshly ground coffee. Blakely smiled. “You must be hungry. Help yourself. Breakfast and lunch is on my tab. I’ll sort it with the staff.”
Jenny gazed at her phone, flicking through the screens. “I’m not that hungry,” she mumbled.
Rob glanced at his daughter. “Are you okay, sweetheart?”
Jenny nodded, averting her eyes. “Tired,” she said. “I’ll just have a hot chocolate.”
Jake shrugged and gave Blakely a thumbs up. “It’s the works for me.” There was something about a hotel breakfast that brought out the glutton in him. He admitted it. If he lived out of a suitcase, he’d have been several pounds heavier.
Rob grinned. The smell of bacon was driving him crazy. “Me too. Let’s eat!”
***
The room was spacious, with a king-size bed and a single and two easy chairs facing a wall mounted plasma-screen TV. Jenny dropped her jacket on the floor and fell back onto the bed. Her eyes stung with tiredness but she feared drifting into a sleep that might bring her face-to-face with Amelia. Was it just a dream? A dream like any other dream? She had been surfing the internet looking for answers. There were plenty of sites offering interpretations to the complexities of the subconscious meandering during sleep, but she hadn’t found anything—nothing that made sense, anyway.
She picked up the remote and the TV screen burst into life, showing a morning magazine programme. They were discussing fad diets and later they’d be talking to a woman who planned weddings for dogs. That sounded bizarre enough to keep her mind occupied for a while. Maybe she’d make herself a coffee. Strong and black.
The plan relaxed her. She waited, staring at the ceiling. The woman on TV was talking about the eat-as-much-as-you-like diet. She was pretty sure Jake was on that. He ate like a horse but never put on an ounce. Maybe she should check out how that worked. But God! That ceiling is white—so white. Or is that the sun? It wasn’t the ceiling, it was white cloud. The hazy light faded and suddenly she was beneath a canopy of branches and leaves.
Jenny breathed in the heady scent of the forest and looked down. Moss-covered tree roots snaked beneath her feet like dormant reptiles. She looked up to see the lake that had swallowed Amelia in its stagnant murky depths. Something—maybe someone—was drawing her in. Trapped by her own mind, Jenny moved forward and looked down as a tiny frog leapt from the water onto the grassy bank. It looked up, studying her.
Jenny heard something moving behind her and spun around to find Amelia, her eyes red with tears. Just a child, probably no more than seven years old. She was staring straight ahead. Something beyond was holding the little girl’s attention. Jenny turned to see a man wading up to his knees in the water.
“Amelia!” he called, holding up his cupped hands. “I have found a little friend for you!”
The faintest of smiles crossed Amelia’s face as her father revealed a tiny frog, almost identical to the one that had leapt onto the bank just moments earlier.
“See, he wants to say hello!”
Amelia giggled and waved.
“But we must return him to his home. You understand that, don’t you?”
Amelia nodded. “Or he will die,” she answered sadly.
“That’s correct, my darling. It is not right that any living thing should be caged.”
The child began to cry. “But I am caged,” she said. “I am caged in that house. Why can’t I come with you?”
Her father smiled. Those eyes, set like pearls within his rugged complexion, were filled with sadness. “One day I will take you away from here, but not yet.”
“But you are my father,” Amelia sobbed. “I won’t ask for food, I will live on grass and worms. I just want to be with you!”
Jenny’s eyes closed. This is not real. I’m dreaming. I need to wake. I need to—
Suddenly she found herself alone, staring at the ceiling of her hotel room. The TV was still on. How long had she slept? Why had she allowed herself to drift? She sat up. Maybe it would be a good time to make that coffee.
But she could not continue to fight sleep night after night. Nor could she stop the dreams. Amelia was back and with a warning. Tears ran down her cheeks. Something was wrong—with her. She thought of Jake, the man she loved. She thought of the cottage, the dogs and maybe, sometime in the future, a couple of children. But now…now this! Maybe she should leave, and take herself away, just until she was free once more.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Darren looked down at the letters lying on the kitchen table alongside a can of Coke. One was addressed to Jenny Adams and the other to Elizabeth Adams. It felt strange writing to a dead woman, but this was good therapy. Even though she wouldn’t get to read it, he felt a kind of release. Writing stuff down on paper really worked, even though it had taken nearly two weeks to get those words just right. It cleared his mind and put stuff in order, like a filing system in his head. He folded the letters and slipped them into envelopes. It was Saturday, and the skies were clear blue. Graveyards always looked better in sunlight so Darren finished the dregs from his last can and set off.
He checked his watch and was satisfied that it was eight o’clock. He’d wanted to get there early, to reduce the chance of seeing anyone. If the bus was on time, he’d be there in half an hour, and maybe he could borrow a flower to place with the letter. It would probably be dead by the time anyone from the f
amily saw it, but the thought was there.
He pushed the envelope into the postbox, hoping that her father would pass the letter on if Jenny no longer lived there. This could be the first step—the beginning of a new life. Uncle Harry had told him not to build his hopes up, but hope was all he had at the moment. He couldn’t afford a girl; girls cost money. He didn’t have any mates, and even if he did, booze fuelled nights cost money too. The garage wages were meagre, to say the least, and at some point he’d have to start paying for his keep.
Darren stopped at the iron gates that seemed to tower above him like the entrance to another world. A world full of old neglected stone and marble. A field of bones. Why did people hold the decaying bodies in such reverence? Surely it would be better to scatter the ashes of those we love over a place they loved. Why does anyone need a slab of marble? He thought it kind of morbid.
It took him twenty minutes to find the place where Elizabeth and Hanna Adams lay. Darren had picked a single rose from the gardens surrounding the crematorium. He was sure they wouldn’t miss a single flower, but he still checked there was no one creeping around. People got pretty weird around dead bodies.
He laid the flower on the grave and placed the letter, sealed in a plastic sleeve, beside it. Talking to a headstone and telling a heap of bones how sorry he was felt pretty freaky, so he waited for a moment, with his head bowed, before leaving. That’s what they did on the TV—bowed their heads and stood in silence. Job done. Now he would just have to sit tight and wait. Maybe he would pray too, just in case there was a god—a god who had already forgiven him.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sebastian Tint sat back in his old armchair, several pounds lighter than when he had left it to visit his wife’s grave. It had only been weeks but felt like years. They assured him that he was out of danger. There was no internal bleeding or trauma to the brain. He could continue doing whatever he’d been doing before, although now everything took a little longer. Still, it was good to be back home with Ricky, who had greeted him with such enthusiasm that he had almost taken a tumble and ended up back on the ward.
“Best leave the brandy for a few days,” Rob had warned him. “Just while you’re on the painkillers.” Sebastian wondered if brandy might be better than the pills. He’d certainly enjoy it a lot more, and a glass or two was pretty good for helping with his aching bones. But he decided to take his friend’s advice. At least he’d be able to watch what he wanted, and being back amongst his books was comforting, just knowing they were there, even if he never pulled a single volume from the shelf for the next twelve months.
There was a slightly musty smell about the lounge that reminded him of the old university libraries where, as a young man, he had sat for hours, poring over volumes of works by the world’s greatest minds. He had little time for sport, and his social life had revolved around the debating societies where he aired his views with an enthusiasm that impressed his peers. Few were able to win an argument with Sebastian Tint, yet he’d remained popular throughout the campus for his easy manner and a willingness to assist his fellow students. It was no surprise to the fraternity when he went on to teach.
He’d cared for his students. Maybe he’d cared a little too much, sometimes, taking upon himself the problems they’d often shared. But they had been the happiest times of his life, and now, with his body threatening to fail before his mind, he thought maybe it was time to dig out the old photographs and put together some kind of album. Jenny had told him that she could enhance the old black-and-whites on her computer by putting them all together on some kind of publishing programme. Apparently, the days of sticking pictures in books had long gone.
He flicked on the TV and scrolled through the listings. Sure enough, there were a couple of documentaries that caught his eye, so his evening entertainment was set. There had been no updates on the Melissa Ingram story, and nothing at all in any of the newspapers, not even in the daily rags who fed their readers on sensationalism with scant regard for the accuracy of the stories they peddled. He had considered telling Robert but, then again, it had just been a name. If he remembered correctly, Melissa was a hairdresser with a nomadic nature. Hardly likely to be involved with drugs and prostitution.
But it continued to trouble Sebastian. The Adams’ grave had not been revisited by the phantom blood dauber for a couple of weeks, but Rob seemed distracted. His mind was elsewhere and his eyes stared into another world. Maybe there was something else going on—something he was keeping to himself. He had denied it, of course. Everything was fine now. Jenny was happy and would be looking forward to her wedding day.
But Sebastian couldn’t suppress his gut feeling. It was times like this he wished he could find his way around a computer. What do they call those things? Search engines? That was it. A search engine—that’s what he needed. You could just type in a name and bingo! It would throw up every Melissa Ingram and any news concerning them. There might even be a photograph. If only he had a printer.
Rob would probably remember her face, even sixteen years on. Age would have hardly ravaged her looks beyond recognition in that time. Hopefully, he would frown and reply that he’d never seen the woman they were referring to in the news, and that would be the end of it.
Sebastian closed his eyes and tried to empty his mind. It was something his mother had taught him to do, when sleep evaded his young mind, but it hadn’t been working as effectively these past weeks. Maybe a couple more painkillers… They weren’t due for another two hours, but what the hell—he needed a nap.
The old man reached for the pills at his side and swilled them down with a mouthful of cold tea. Just an hour, then he’d walk the dog and maybe give Rob a ring. Yes, that would be good. Today would be what the kids called a chill day. He’d start organising himself tomorrow.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jenny had dreamed frequently since that morning at The Lakeside Hotel, and those dreams had always taken her into the depths of Mosswood, where she found herself wandering aimlessly through the forest as the branches brushed her body. She was lost, and her heart thumped so hard that her chest ached. The only sound was that of her own footsteps on the carpet of bracken and decaying leaves, but through the gloom she saw no signs of life—no birdsong, not even the sound of the squirrels that had made the woodland their home. But she always caught sight of the girl dressed in a plain white nightgown. It was Amelia, though recently, Jenny had never got close enough to see her face.
The figure seemed to float between the trees, like tissue moving gracefully on a breeze, never talking, never turning. Each time, Amelia vanished at the edge of the wood as the Stanwicks’ house loomed before her, and each time, Jenny woke to find Jake at her side, waiting, almost as if he knew. She would shower, washing the scent of the woodland from her body. But it would remain with her, along with the abrasions that appeared on her legs and arms, the marks that the branches had left as she followed Amelia amongst the trees.
Maybe they had been nothing more than the results of a restless sleep. As a child, she had frequently woken to find scratches on her face and thighs. “She is such a fidget midget!” her mother would tell people. “She’ll fall out of that bed one night!”
But all this had happened before. Jenny recalled the smell of the stagnant water, her body lying motionless in a hospital bed while her spirit and soul sank beneath the surface of the woodland lake.
It had been over two years ago, and yet she remembered those visits to the Stanwicks’ home so clearly. Now Amelia, no longer imprisoned in an attic, was a free spirit—a spirit that she found herself following to the edge of the woods. But why?
Jake didn’t ask her about the dreams. He probably would have dismissed her nighttime adventures as nothing more than a natural reaction to the memories stirred up by the messages on the graves. He had been so supportive, and she had vowed to tell him everything. But what if the doubts began to creep in? Should he really commit his future to a girl haunted by the spirit of an anc
estor who had taken her own life over a hundred years ago? No, this was something she didn’t need to share. Everyone had their breaking point. Her future—the future with a man she loved—was something Jenny was reluctant to put at risk.
***
Dennis Blakely sat waiting in the hotel reception, scrolling through the messages from his wife. At any moment, Penny would walk through the door, which would have been okay if Kim wasn’t going to be watching everything he did. The two women would meet. They would talk. Penny would not see Kim as a threat—not at first, anyway. She was just a girl, years younger than her husband. But the sexual tension was there. They both felt it the moment they’d set eyes on each other, and Blakely was convinced it wouldn’t be long before Penny became suspicious.
It had been about sex. That’s how it began. But when Kim had found out that Penny would be staying over, she had wept. “I can’t stand the thought of you two together, in the same bed.”
Blakely reached across the table and grasped her hand but she pulled back. “Don’t!” she wailed. “And don’t pretend you won’t be fucking like rabbits, either! Just don’t insult my intelligence!”
Blakely felt a knot in his stomach. The thought of filling it with food suddenly seemed a bad idea. “I can’t stop her, Kim. You knew I was married. You knew I’d go back home at some point.”
“I know. I was stupid. I thought I’d be able to handle it, but I can’t. I can’t help the way I feel!” She stared at him. “I love you,” she said, the tears streaming down her face. “I’ve fallen in love with you. It’s not just about sex, no matter what you think.”
Blakely’s heart quickened. He had not experienced anything like this. Kim was right. He longed for her with an intensity that had become like a physical pain. He woke each morning, his heart racing as he reached for her. Maybe he loved her too.
Kim continued to cry and they were, he knew, tears of anguish. They made love that night, just as they had every night for the past couple of weeks, but it was different. He lay next to her as she slept and wondered if it was fate that had brought him to The Lakeside. Perhaps she really was that girl. They were meant to be together. She had an infectious energy that would keep him young. In the morning, they would talk about the future. Their future. Yes, it was uncertain, but they would face it together, hand in hand.