by S Williams
‘What?’ Trent’s voice barely makes it out of his body.
‘If you say so, Jamie. I guess only you and Mouse know for sure.’ Athene looks away from Jamie and at Mouse.
‘That night, when Bella got raped by her father, it was the night she’d spent with you in the bar. Playing pinball. She wrote it down in her diary. She wrote that at least she didn’t let you in the car. At least you were safe.’ Athene’s eyes burn into Mouse. ‘Were you safe? Were you really safe, or were you so connected to my sister that what happened to her happened to you as well?’
Mouse opens her mouth but no sound comes out.
‘This is all bollocks. I never raped Mouse. I never raped anyone! I’m sorry your sister got fucked-up by her parents, and I’m sorry you’ve had a shit life.’ Jamie waves the stick he is holding around, taking in the room. ‘And I’m sorry Trent burned this place down, killing your dad and pre-revenging you so you don’t get the chance to do it yourself, but it’s over, yeah?’ He looks at her, pity stamped on his face. ‘It’s all history now. What’s the point of dragging it back up in this way?’
Athene looks at Jamie with such sad eyes that Mouse wonders what sort of life she must have had, living in care homes then finding out her past was a horror story.
‘When did you get the diaries? When you came up last year?’ Mouse asks.
‘What makes you think I came up last year?’ Athene says, a half smile on her face.
‘The shopkeeper said she’d seen you.’ Jamie gives a little laugh. ‘Said she’d even got the special cigarettes in for you; the ones Bella used to smoke.’
‘They were hidden under the floorboards, there, weren’t they? The diaries.’ Mouse points at the gap by the old fireplace, where the hidey-hole could clearly be seen. Athene reaches down and picks up a book.
‘Dad has begun hurting Martha. The whole nightmare is happening again. It won’t be long until he’s sticking things inside her, like he did to me. I don’t think I’m strong enough to stop it.’
Jamie, Mouse and Trent look at the girl calling herself Athene. Mouse feels sick. Athene has modulated her voice, flattening it, and making it a little huskier. Making it more like Bella’s.
‘What…?’ Mouse begins.
‘It was written in the diary. Her last diary; the one she had on her.’ Athene points at the book on her lap, the pages open. She looks down and begins to read: ‘Today I found a cigarette burn on Thing’s back. It was so awful. That’s how it began with me. Hurting then healing. Blurring the difference. I need to end it. I don’t think I can face seeing it happen to someone else. I think I always knew this day would come. That’s why I called her Thing. I didn’t want her to be a real girl. Because real girls end up broken.’
Mouse can’t speak. All she can do is breathe; little sips of air to try to stop her heart exploding.
Athene lets the book drop, then turns to Trent. ‘What happened? What happened when you found my father? Obviously it’s not in the diaries. What happened when you came here, after the crash?’
Trent looks at the girl a long moment, and nods. ‘Yes. I guess I owe you that.’
70
Just After the Crash
Trent screamed into the night. In the distance he could hear the ambulance, but the noise was behind him, lost in the snowstorm.
When Mouse had blacked out, arm stretched toward the still body of Bella, Trent had run. At first he didn’t know what he was doing; just knew he needed to get away from the wailing sirens; from the two girls slowly being covered by snow like broken statues in the road. He ran desperately, blindly, anywhere except at the crash. Finally he looked around him, recognising where he was. He knew he was not far from Bella’s house, that if he cut across the moor it was only a mile to Blea Fell. He began to run again.
‘Bella!’ His scream was whipped away by the wind, broken into a thousand lost promises by the icy splinters of snow that seemed to be cutting into him like knives. Not that it mattered; he barely even felt them. All that mattered was that he stay conscious long enough to stagger across the moor to Blea Fell and confront Bella’s father.
Bella.
Trent let out another soul-wrenching sob and dragged his battered body across the moor. Even though he was half blind from the wind and the snow; even though one of his legs was busted and there was a gash in his head where the blood was frozen; he knew he would reach it. Blea Fell. Where Bella had been twisted and bent by her father so much that she had broken. And now she was dead, driven away by strangers to some morgue while her father slept soundly in his bed.
No way. Wasn’t going to happen. Because Trent was going to burn his fucking house down.
‘Bella!’ he screamed again, howling into the storm. Behind him was a trail of blood, weaving this way and that, but always heading in the right direction.
Because even half-blind and fully-fucked, Trent could find his way to Bella’s house. The amount of times they’d Cathy and Heathcliff’d it on the moor; chasing each other across the rough land. Trent would have found the house in a coma. And when he got there he was going to torch it. He was going to find her father, smash his bloody brains in, and set fire to the house, like Bella had asked him.
Because it was the least he could do. Because it was all he could do.
He couldn’t bring her back, but he could finish what she’d asked him to do. Would finish.
He let out a yelp as he tumbled into a dip in the ground, hidden by the snow. As he fell, he screamed, pain exploding down his leg, scouring away the cold. He rolled over and over, losing all sense of anything apart from the agony, until he was stopped suddenly as he banged against something hard. His breath shot out of him in a plume of white pain. Nausea washed over him, and he wondered if he had smashed his head against a rock.
After a few moments, when the sickness faded, he peered up through the biting snow. In the blur of his vision, dark bony hands seemed to reach out for him, spindly fingers crooked and pointing. He blinked the snow away and jammed his frozen hand into his mouth. As his sight cleared he realised where he was, and let out a cruel laugh; hawking up a glob of blood and viscous matter as he did so.
It wasn’t a spectre from the underworld, it was one of Bella’s ghost trees. He was lying at the foot of one of the juniper trees.
Grunting, he hauled himself to his feet, swaying slightly. He reached his hand out to the tree to steady himself. On the trunk he saw Bella and Mouse’s names carved into the bark, like some kind of message for him.
Gritting his teeth, he pushed himself away from the tree and headed for the house.
71
Bella’s Room
Trent slides down to the floor, his back against the mildewed wall. The next track on Bella’s death-mix has begun playing softly; Placebo’s ‘Every you and every me’. Bella’s third choice. He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a soft pack of Luckys.
‘Their car was gone from in front of the house. I looked in the garage, but that was empty too. I thought there was nobody home. I guessed the police must have called. The hospital or whatever.’ He looks at each of them in turn. ‘But what was there was a can of petrol, sat in the corner of the garage. You remember how Bella’s dad used to keep a can for the generator, cos the electric was always going off?’
‘It still does,’ Mouse says.
He nods. ‘It seemed like a sign to me. I picked it up and took it into the house. Started splashing it all over.’ He looks at Athene. ‘I thought there was nobody there.’
‘But there was.’
Trent takes in a long, shaky sigh. ‘Yes. Your dad had locked himself in the study. He must have heard me ranting when I broke in. Talking about him and Bella. Psyching myself up to torch the place.
‘Once I knew he was there it only made me madder. Half with him and what he’d done to Bella, half with me and what I’d failed to do for her. I tried breaking the study door down. Kicked it with my boots and smashed it with my fists. I was screaming at him. Bleeding and
crying and blaming, but the door didn’t budge. After a while I just…’ Trent shrugs and pulls out a Zippo from his pocket. To Mouse it looks exactly like the Zippo Athene has. The same Zippo Bella had. ‘…I ran out of steam. I just sat down in the chair by the fire and lit a cigarette.’
As if to illustrate the memory, Trent snaps up the lid of the Zippo, the metal spinning candlelight off it the colour of butter.
‘And then I smoked my cigarette, all the time telling your father what I was going to do with him; how I was going to pay him back for all the things he did to your sister.’
Trent stares at Athene, his eyes containing all the flames in the room.
‘And when I’d finished my smoke I placed it on the arm of the chair, upright to let it burn itself out.’
Trent places his cigarette carefully on the wooden floor, the filter on the ground with the tube containing the tobacco pointing up like a roman candle.
‘And then I light another. And I smoke it and place it next to the first. Like a cigarette clock. I think that I’ll just sit there and wait him out. At some point he’ll come out of the room and I’ll beat him to a pulp. Then I’ll burn the place down. No hurry. So I just sit there, smoking and making my cigarette stopwatch.’
In the silence that follows Mouse suddenly understands; gets what Trent is saying. ‘Until you fall asleep.’
Trent nods. ‘Passed out. Fell unconscious. Whatever. Do you remember what you said to me, Mouse? That last time? When I was in your room.’
Mouse nods. ‘I said that one of these days you were going to burn the house down.’
He dips his head slightly, acknowledging. ‘And you were right. When I came to, the place was full of smoke and the police were pulling me out. Apparently when I found out I’d killed him all I did was laugh.’
He shrugs. ‘I can’t remember.’
‘That’s why you stayed in prison so long,’ Mouse says. ‘Because you didn’t show any remorse.’
Trent closes his eyes and leans his head back on the wall behind him. Out of the small phone speaker, Brian Molko sang about how there had never been so much at stake. Finally Mouse takes his hand and squeezes it, before looking at Athene.
‘So how bloody sad is this? You spend your childhood in a home, then find out who you are, only to discover that your sister was killed in a tragic accident, and your parents were monsters. Then you come here for closure or whatever, and find the diaries, and a whole new shitstorm is opened up, and you think Bella might have been murdered.’
Mouse looks around at the diaries and the candles.
‘And maybe you think you can get revenge, but the fact is you’re too late. We’ve already done it for you. Trent sending himself to prison. Me shutting myself down and never leaving, when all I ever wanted was to leave this fucking village and live somewhere with Bella. There’s nothing you could possibly do to us that we haven’t already done to ourselves.’
Mouse feels Trent squeeze her hand back.
‘Can I say something now?’ Athene looks at them, still with that half smile playing across her features.
Mouse hitches her breath. ‘Sorry, of course.’
‘Thank you.’ Athene glances at them all in turn, as if to try and work out how everything has fitted together. How everything has come to this one place. Finally she begins to speak.
‘Once I found out who I was it was pretty much as you thought. I came up here to try and find out what happened. From the way Bella wrote about you both I didn’t think you killed her, but I had to be sure.’ She smiles sadly.
‘We were so young and fucked-up,’ begins Mouse, but Athene puts her hand up to stop her.
‘I know. I understand. But as I said, I had to be sure. And now I am. I know neither of you killed her. Not on purpose and not by accident.’
Trent’s face creases in confusion.
‘What do you mean? I told you she was trying to save us. She didn’t crash us on purpose. It wasn’t suicide.’
‘I know, I’m coming to that, but first we need to correct you on what you got wrong.’
‘And what’s that?’ says Jamie. Mouse had forgotten he was even there.
Athene smiles and spreads her hands wide. ‘I’m not Martha.’
Three words. Three words that ring in Mouse’s head like a bell from a ghost ship.
‘What do you mean? Of course you’re Martha! Otherwise how could you–’
‘I’m not. I’m sorry but I’m not. My name is Athene.’
Mouse feels the trickle of soil on her neck again. ‘But if you’re not Martha, who are you?’
‘You know who I am.’
Yes, you’re Bella, a voice inside her screams, but she knows that can’t be true. She shakes her head.
‘Do you know that extreme cold can actually help preserve a person’s body? Slow down the metabolism?’ says the young woman brightly. ‘That even as the extremities shut down, the blood rushes to the core areas, protecting and guarding for as long as possible? That even if a person isn’t breathing they may still be alive, somewhere deep inside?’
Mouse stares at her in horror, the meaning behind Athene’s word sinking in. ‘But the injuries…’ she begins, but has nowhere to go.
‘Wait.’ Trent leans forward. ‘What do you mean?’
‘She was dead,’ insists Mouse. ‘Half her head was caved in! There was no breath coming out of her mouth!’
‘Oh she was dead, all right,’ says Athene.
‘Then what…’ begins Trent, but the look on the girl in front of them silences him.
‘Or at least she was when the ambulance arrived. As I said, extreme cold can shut down the extremities, sending all the body’s survival capacities to the core areas; protecting the last vestiges of life. The part of the brain known as the amygdala; the vital organs. Even in certain death the body tries to survive.’
‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ Jamie says.
‘He’s not here.’ Athene smiles at him. ‘Jesus Christ. But miracle of miracles, I am.’
‘You’re her baby. You’re Bella’s daughter,’ Mouse whispers.
72
Bella’s Last Day: The Ambulance
Bella was strapped to the gurney, keeping her as still as possible as the ambulance sped towards the hospital twenty miles away, its sirens screaming across the moor. The paramedics worked hard, but didn’t really give her any odds; the damage to her head alone meant she wouldn’t be counting buttons any time soon. Still, sometimes the cold slowed down the dying process, lowering the metabolic rate, giving the victim a slim chance. Out of the back windows the second ambulance could be seen, transporting the girl’s friend, blue lights scarring across the snow. The police would be searching for the other one, following his blood through the moor, although the weather had turned into full blizzard, making it almost impossible.
‘Clear!’
The medic placed the defibrillator pads on the girl’s chest and watched the monitor. Her shirt and jacket were bloody ribbons on the ambulance floor where the paramedics had cut them off, looking like streamers at a horror party. The paramedic, Lissy, clenched the corded pads, waiting for the light on the defibrillator unit to turn green. When it did she pulled the triggers, sending a thousand volts into the girl’s heart, spasming the muscle, attempting to kick start it back into function. The young body bucked against its straps, then fell back on the gurney.
‘It’s no go, mate,’ said the other medic. ‘She’s too far gone. And anyway,’ he nodded to the damage that had been inflicted on her skull. ‘What would be the point?’
Lissy shook her head. She wasn’t going to give up just because there was no point. Having no point, in her mind, was the point. Otherwise they might as well be judge and jury. One of the things she loved about her job was that she got to help without any of the hindrances of having to decide. All she had to do was turn up and do absolutely everything she could. Others could work out the hard stuff.
‘Let’s give her our best punt before we write h
er off. We’ll do an intra-c, one more defib and if that doesn’t do it call it a wrap. Agreed?’
The other medic nodded. Agreed.
An intracardiac injection, where adrenaline is injected straight into the heart muscle, can sometimes stimulate it back into action, but might also have a price to pay via brain function. Lissy didn’t think that would be an issue in this case. Brain function was definitely low on the pecking order of immediate problems. She unlocked the little wall cabinet where the single shot syringe was kept. She brought it up to her face, checking for air bubbles, and removed the plastic cap, exposing the thin needle. Carefully she injected the prone body, sliding the steel deep within her chest, straight to the heart.
Fifteen seconds later they shocked her again. The young body bucked against its ties as the electricity surged through, then lay still. Graveyard still. Morgue still.
Lissy sighed. It had been worth a shot.
‘We’ve got a pulse,’ said her colleague unbelievably. ‘Fuck a duck but we’ve got a pulse. Nice one, Igor!’
Lissy felt a surge of energy in her own tired body as she checked the readings on the ECG unit and saw the wavy lines that meant the spark of life was still present.
‘Right! The clock is ticking! We need to keep her going until we hit base.’
Lissy stroked the unconscious girl’s hair, careful not to snag any of the strands. The hair was matted with blood and what appeared to be engine oil.
She looked at her partner, eyebrows raised. ‘Did we get a name?’
‘I’m guessing Bella,’ he said. ‘Her friend kept slipping in and out of consciousness, but she said Bella.’
Lissy nodded and looked down at the girl. She felt a tightening in her head. The broken body they had just shocked couldn’t have been more than fifteen. Sixteen, tops.
‘Don’t worry, Bella, we’re taking you to a hospital.’