by Jack Lewis
Felicity elbowed him. “That’s enough, Eric. Get the box and sort this out. Lester is waiting.”
Jeremiah had lied to me. He’d told me he knew the woman, but not that he knew the man who had hit him. Maybe he hadn’t gotten a good look at him, though. After all, I hadn’t had time to see his face earlier, and I wasn’t the one who had been punched. Maybe I needed to give Jeremiah the benefit of the doubt.
Eric walked toward Jeremiah. Although he kept his arms crossed, I saw Jeremiah tense his hands into fists. He wasn’t one for letting bygone be bygones, I knew. The blood might have stopped in his nose, but the knowledge he’d been sucker-punched would still smart. I just hoped he wasn’t stupid enough to lash out with a crossbow pointed down at his groin.
“The box, Jeremiah,” said Eric. His accent was northern, even deeper and rougher than mine, and I considered myself a northern girl through and through.
Felicity took a step toward me. “What did he tell you about our little chat on the train?” she asked me.
“That he knows you from the old days. And you said a demon you worship is following him.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s enough, don’t you think?”
Beside me, Marion looked left to right, at me and Felicity. I could read the confusion on her face. “I’ll explain later,” I told her.
Felicity, facing me but with Jeremiah in her peripheral vision, lowered her crossbow an inch. I briefly wondered if I could grab it, but I just got the sense that that I’d get an arrow shot at me for the trouble. Or was it a bolt? I had no idea how crossbows worked. Felicity did, though. It was just a feeling that seeped off her. Of calmness and confidence.
“Eric’s right,” she told me. “Jeremiah lied to you. I gave him a warning when we were on the train. A warning he accidentally didn’t share with you, nor follow.”
Beside us, Eric took the box from Jeremiah. Twin feelings of tension and relief made me feel exhausted. The crossbow was still in play, but at least Jeremiah hadn’t lashed out. He’d kept his temper in check.
Jeremiah glared at Eric like he wanted to set him on fire with his eyes. “Back off,” Eric told him, but Jeremiah didn’t budge.
Felicity leaned closer to me. She lowered the crossbow further. I had almost convinced myself to try to grab it.
“I warned him away from Blaketree,” she whispered to me. “I told him to remember Lockpit, and the ritual. You might want to ask him about that.”
“Lockpit?”
It was too late. She turned away from me and raised the crossbow.
“How many arrows do those things hold?” I asked Marion.
“Bolts,” she said. “They’re called bolts. Looks like she has one loaded and five waiting.”
I wondered how far we’d get if I pushed Felicity out of the way and then told Jeremiah to run. I guessed that depended on two things – how good a shot Felicity was, and how quick Eric could run.
I knew the answer to the second question; Eric had gotten away from us pretty easily earlier.
So what about Felicity? Was she a good enough shot to hit us in the forest at a distance? And what if we ran in zig zags, surely she wasn’t that good with the crossbow?
There was no point running. Too much to risk, and for what? Whatever Jeremiah had gotten from the well meant a lot to Eric and Felicity, but it wasn’t worth risking my life over. No, we just needed to get rid of them and then go to the police.
“Jeremiah, just give them the box,” I said.
He looked at me like I’d just sold him to the Gestapo. “Felicity won’t use the crossbow. It’s all for show, just like her. You won’t know this, Ella, but back in the day Felicity was a real tart. Short dresses, caked in make-up, up to the heels in-”
I heard a click and then a swishing sound.
Jeremiah dropped to the ground, screaming. A bolt was buried in his thigh so that only five inches of the end of it were showing. Looking at the bolt wedged in his skin made my stomach dance.
Felicity locked another bolt in place and tried to draw the string back, then winced and squeezed her fingers into a fist. I then saw how mangled her hands were; bony but with swollen knuckles. Probably a repetitive strain injury, or arthritis.
She handed the crossbow to Eric. “Load it for me.”
I could feel my instincts firing inside me. Logic was slipping and I was about to descend into the mists of a fight-or-flight response.
As Eric put the tip of the crossbow on the ground, put his foot on it and drew back the string to load the bolt, I thought about what to do.
Jeremiah’s face was pure white now. He was whimpering and clutching at the bolt. He looked like he was ready to either pass out or try to remove the bolt himself.
That was the worst thing he could do, since there was no telling which veins or arteries the bolt had hit.
Eric passed the crossbow back to Felicity. As she grabbed it, I knew that would be my last chance to fight back. I would have loved to have punched the bitch.
Jeremiah had grabbed the bolt in his thigh and gritted his teeth and was about to pull it out.
My choice made, I kneeled beside him. I put my hand on him. “Don’t pull it,” I said. “If it hit an artery, you’ll lose too much blood.”
Marion took tissues from her handbag and handed them to me. I dabbed Jeremiah’s wound, and the white paper quickly turned red. He was bleeding enough as it was.
Eric grabbed the box from beside Jeremiah. “Can you get it working?” asked Felicity.
Eric nodded. He walked toward the well. With his back to me I could tell he was opening the box, but I couldn’t see what was inside. Then, it was too late. Whatever he’d done to it, it ended with him dropping it down the well again.
Felicity raised the crossbow. “You might think about coming after us. If you do-”
She stopped talking.
She had heard something, and I heard it too. A dog barking. Then another. Then voices.
-22-
“Your friend is in the hospital. They’ll pull the bolt out and fix him up, but they tell me he’s a very lucky boy. The nurses weren‘t so lucky. They had to cut some of his jeans away, and I’m told they caught sight of his fat arse.”
The detective grinned from across the table after he said that. His name was Neil Withers. He had a squashed face but his eyes were kind, almost on the verge of a laugh. His grey hair was short and neat, and his stubble on just the right side of fashion versus laziness. His glasses told me two things; he liked new things, and he liked them to be designer made. Detective Withers had taste.
The one sitting next to him was Brad Cromwell, who actually looked a little like his namesake Oliver Cromwell, the old British Lord Protector, with his hair receding at the front but long on the side, his stern face and his tuft of grey goatee beard below his bottom lip, as though he’d missed it when shaving.
Cromwell was more serious than his partner, and not just because he had a fresh black eye. Every time I looked at it, I couldn’t help but think we’d gotten ourselves into deep shit.
“Is talking about arses really appropriate for an interview?” I said.
“We aren’t interviewing yet. Besides; this is voluntary.” He pressed play on a digital recording device. “The time is 14:26. Myself, Detective Sergeant Withers, and Detective Constable Cromwell. Now, Ella. Can you tell me why you were in the forest, and everything you did in the lead up to us finding you?”
The last hour had happened so quickly, I’d barely had a chance to process it. When I thought back, I remembered Jeremiah groaning in pain, the bolt in his leg, and then the gradually more menacing pitter-patter of dogs running toward us.
By the time the police and their dogs arrived by the well, Felicity and Eric had run away. I doubted they could outrun the dogs unless they had a car nearby, but it made sense that they would have parked on a lay-by or something. Either way, they were gone.
That left me, Marion, and Jeremiah, who now looked simultaneo
usly ice cold yet had beads of sweat on his forehead. I kneeled beside him as the first of the dogs approached.
They were Alsatians. Big enough to tear me apart, but showing the kind of controlled aggression you only found in dogs trained for it. I knew they wouldn’t attack us, nor would they let us move away. So instead of getting them riled up, I squeezed Jeremiah’s arm to reassure him while he groaned in pain.
The idea of touching him was weird as hell. Maybe we’d graduated from employer-employee to…not friends, but warm acquaintances. But hugs? Nope. Not even handshakes. On my birthday last year, Jeremiah had punched my arm. That was it. So comforting him by squeezing his arm felt strange, but it felt like the right thing to do.
Three dogs surrounded us now. The low timbre of their growls reverberated and sent tremors of fear through me. Marion was the only one of us to stay standing. She approached one of the dogs, who nuzzled its head against her leg. I couldn’t believe it.
She must have seen the look on my face. “They know me,” she said. “From searching for Ashley.”
It all made a horrible kind of sense.
They were sniffer dogs. Why would the police and sniffer dogs be out in Devil Forest? To search for a missing person. For a girl.
Whatever the hell the recording had picked up, it wasn’t a hoax or a trick that Hannah Oriel Rigby was on there, just like Ashley.
I felt my head start to spin a little, and pangs of worry made my chest ache. This meant that Jeremiah’s niece really was missing.
A man who I now knew to be Detective Withers approached, with his friendly smile and his grey hair. Police constables fanned out around him. One of them ordered the others to spread out in different directions, and the men and women in their yellow hi-vis jackets trampled on through the forest.
Withers and two constables stopped just in front of me, Jeremiah, and Marion. One constable held the leash of two Alsatian dogs. I saw the dogs’ backs tremor a little; on any other dog it’d be a sign of outright aggression and impending lunge, but on a police dog it was a warning not to make any stupid moves. A warning that even Jeremiah had to heed, given the circumstances.
Withers nodded at Jeremiah’s leg. “I need to know what happened to him, and what you’re doing out here.”
Marion took a step forward. “What’s happened?”
Withers gave her a look full of history. I couldn’t say what it was, just a more meaningful look than two acquaintances would have shared. I guessed Detective Withers had been involved in the search for Ashley.
“A girl’s gone missing,” he said. “Hannah Rigby. Someone saw her walking toward the woods, then nothing. Then I find you three; two strangers, one with an arrow in his leg, no less.”
“Bolt,” I corrected, and then immediately regretted it when Withers’ eyes turned stern. It was only then that I saw how grey they were, how much they resembled like little rocks.
It was important how we handled this. Our ghost hunts and investigations were one thing when all we were doing was traipsing around abandoned buildings.
This was serious. A missing girl, a forest full of police. Anything we said that even hinted at the paranormal would be treated with contempt at best, and might even land us in trouble at worst. It’d make us look like either stupid time wasters, or suspicious.
“I need to know one thing right now,” said Withers, “and then I can deal with the rest of the bullshit later. Have you seen a girl? Have you heard her? Have you seen anything that can help us find out where she is?”
I shook my head.
Jeremiah raised a finger and pointed at the well. I wanted the forest floor to open up and suck me deep into it.
“The well?” said Withers.
Jeremiah was beyond words now. He just pointed and groaned.
Withers nodded to his constables. “Get the fire crew out here. They’ll need a winch. Have someone bring the high-powered torches and see if the girl is down there, and get this man to the hospital.”
“She isn’t in the well,” I said. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
“He seems pretty insistent.”
“Trust me. It’s the pain talking. She isn’t down there.”
“Then you better start talking about where she is.”
The forest felt colder now. Vaster. I looked around. There were hundreds of places for a person to get lost here, and I wished I could help.
“I don’t know. Really. I’ll tell you about the bolt, everything, and we’ll help you look for her, but we haven’t seen her.”
Withers eyed me. His stare was a ten-ton drill bit boring deep into me looking to hit a vein of truth. He took out a little notepad.
“Names,” he said.
“I’m Ella Hornby. He’s Jeremiah Lasbeck.”
“I’ve heard that name before,” said one of the constables, a pretty girl with her hair tied back.
Marion eyed Withers. “Listen. I didn’t know it at the time because I was ignorant, and I trusted that you and the rest of the force knew how to do your job, that you knew what to do. But I know more now, and I know fuck ups were made when you searched for Ashley. Tell me about the search catchment areas. Have you divided the forest into quadrants? We did that too late in Ashely’s search. Have you…”
“One second, Marion,” said Withers. He talked into a walkie talkie. “It’s DS Withers. Can you run a name check on a Jeremiah Lasbeck and Ella Hornby for me?”
“Roger,” crackled a voice on the end of the line.
Withers then turned to his constable. “You know this man?”
“Sir. I recognize the name, but I can’t place it.”
Please don’t be the blog, I thought.
“He’s Hannah Rigby’s uncle,” said Marion.
Withers’ eyes turned predatory then. “You’re the missing girl’s uncle, you’re in the area where she was last seen, and you have a crossbow bolt sticking out of your leg. Becky, take all three of them to the station now. And you, Marion. What are you doing with them?”
Hatred suddenly twisted into Marion’s face. “What are you really asking me?”
“You’ve got questions to answer, too.”
“Are you going to arrest me?”
“You can come to the station either under caution, or choice. Either way, you’re answering all of my questions. All three of you.”
The sterner detective with a receding hairline approached Marion. He put his hand on her arm. “Come on. Just a few questions, and then-”
Marion punched him. The blow caught him completely by surprise, and he staggered back and landed arse-first on the ground. A uniformed police officer shouted, and soon three of them were putting a struggling Marion in handcuffs.
The detective’s walkie-talkie crackled. “Sir?” said a voice.
“I hear you.”
“Nothing came back on Jeremiah Lasbeck. But Ella Hornby has a record. Four arrests.
Withers walked away while the person on the other end of the walkie talkie reeled off my arrest history, leaving me feeling cold, tired, and finally understanding how bad this all looked.
That was how I found myself in the back of a police car for the fourth time in my life. Blaketree was such a small place that they put me in the car at the edge of the woods and just two minutes later we stopped outside the police station. We could easily have walked it there, but rules were rules.
Now I was facing Detective Withers with his fatherly smile, and stern Brad Cromwell with his receding hairline. They knew I had been arrested before, they had caught me in the same forest where a girl had gone missing, and they had seen Jeremiah with a bolt sticking out of his leg.
I knew how deep this put us. The bolt was one problem because of how suspicious it looked. It would be difficult to get accidentally shot by a crossbow, unless there was a rogue hunter stumbling around the woods, mistaking Jeremiah for a wild boar. No, if you got shot by a crossbow, there was usually a reason. I knew that Withers was wondering if that reason was linked to
Hannah Rigby.
Then there was Jeremiah being Hannah’s niece. How suspicious did that look? Add to it my sketchy past – that really wasn’t sketchy at all – and I understood why I was sitting behind a desk in a police interview room. I wasn’t happy, but I understood.
The question was, did I cooperate with the police, or did I ask for a solicitor and then no comment my way through the interview?
People always say you shouldn’t talk to the police. That anything you say in an interview could incriminate you. And the circumstances made me look bad enough. Then again, there was a missing girl out there. If anything I had to say could help, then I had a moral duty to talk, right? Even if it meant I got into trouble.
Withers had a sheet of paper in front of him. The text was printed too small to read. He tapped it twice. “You’re no stranger to a police station,” he said. “Want to tell me about that?”
He was trying to faze me. I wasn’t a hardcore criminal, and he knew that, but I could tell when someone was trying to get under my skin.
“Shoplifting and vandalism,” I said. “The cornerstones of rebellious youth.”
“Not everyone breaks the law when they’re young.”
“Most do. They just don’t get caught. What’s adolescence if you don’t break a few rules?”
Talking about my past, about how I used to act while living in one of my less-than-stellar foster homes, started to irk me. “Those convictions are supposed to be off my record, anyway.”
“We keep records of offences until a person reaches 100 years old. You might not have a criminal record now, but they show on your police records.”
“And what does spray painting anarchy signs and stealing a few bottles of cider have to do with this?”
Detective Cromwell crossed his arms. The guy had his piercing stare down to an art form. I felt like an ant under a magnifying glass.
“Here are the facts, Ms. Hornby. A local girl has gone missing. Only for three hours so far, so there’s every chance she’ll turn up at home after playing out with her friends. But with things that have happened in Blaketree, we’re concerned.”