by Luca Veste
Then I heard her voice.
Quiet and scared. Filled with fear. Not far away at all. I covered it in seconds, brushing aside branches that flicked back and scratched my face. I squinted my eyes and slid down an embankment I didn’t see coming.
I almost crashed into her.
It wasn’t as large a clearing as the one from before, but smaller. More enclosed. It was completely closed in, flat ground covered in brown decaying leaves and broken twigs. They crunched under my hands as I got to my feet and grabbed Alexandra who was facing away from me.
‘Are you . . .’
I didn’t get the chance to finish my sentence, as she cut it off with a choked sob. I came to her side and followed where her eyes were transfixed on the ground.
The first thing I saw was the candle. Housed in a metal storm lantern. Burning. It was red. Blood red.
Like the blood on the young man Alexandra was standing over.
My first thought was that Alexandra had done this – that she’d run into someone else and managed to hurt them before they hurt her. Then I realised that the person on the floor wasn’t making any sound. Wasn’t breathing.
Another death.
I staggered backwards as I saw the scene properly for the first time.
The red candle, bleeding light from within its confined space.
The young man must have been around nineteen or twenty years old. Short blond hair that was dirtied by the mud underneath the head. His face turned away slightly, mouth open in one final exhalation. A gouge in his face that ran down from his temple to the jaw. One that ran along the jawline.
I couldn’t see the other side to see if there was a matching wound there.
There were other injuries.
Too many.
‘Oh no. . .’ I heard myself say, then bent over as my stomach contents threatened to release themselves. My throat burned, but nothing came out. My hands were on my knees, as my legs grew weaker.
I wanted to collapse there. To roll up into the foetal position and never move again.
When I closed my eyes, I could still see it. The body. What had been done to it.
Then I remembered Alexandra and forced myself to my feet. I couldn’t leave her there alone.
‘Come on,’ I said to her, as I placed an arm around her and tried to pull her away. ‘We can’t stay here.’
‘Look at him,’ she whispered in reply. Her eyes were transfixed on the body. The sky was becoming lighter by the second – the colour of it matching the candle burning on the ground. ‘We can’t just leave him.’
‘He’s gone,’ I tried, but I knew it was no good. I could see the music festival wristband on the young lad’s arm. Frayed at the edges. Spotted with blood. ‘There’s nothing we can do for him now.’
From behind us, the trees began to move and Stuart emerged into the small clearing.
‘What the hell . . .’
I turned to look at him and held one hand up. ‘Alex found him like this. What is this, Stuart?’
Stuart hesitated, then stuttered out a reply. ‘How am I supposed to know?’
‘A guy attacks you in the woods, then we find some lad dead only a few yards away? Did you know about this?’
‘I was near here,’ Stuart replied, indicating the invisible woodland behind him. ‘Maybe I heard something . . . I don’t know. I don’t remember properly now. He was on me pretty quickly and then I was just fighting for my life, or have you forgotten about that? Do you think he . . . did I . . .’
‘You interrupted something,’ I finished for him. I released Alexandra from my grip, walking towards Stuart. ‘That’s why he went after you.’
There was more movement and Chris and Nicola joined us, standing at the top of the embankment I’d fallen down. I spoke before they had the chance to. Both of them had clasped their hands to their mouths as they saw what was there. ‘This is why he went after Stuart.’
‘The man . . .’
‘Yes,’ I said, facing Chris now. I looked at the three in turn before glancing back at Alexandra. She was still staring at the young lad on the floor. ‘We need to call someone now. We can’t deal with this on our own. My plan is no good.’
‘No,’ Stuart said, shaking his head. His hands were balled into fists now. ‘You were right. This won’t just go away.’
‘We’ll be heroes,’ Chris said quietly, but I didn’t see any conviction in the statement. ‘We tried to save someone from . . . whatever this is. So what if he died.’
‘You know what will happen,’ Stuart replied quickly, turning to Chris and unfurling his fists. The muscles straining at the arms of his T-shirt began to relax. He flicked a lock of blond hair away from his forehead, then moved his hand onto Chris’s shoulder. ‘They’ll find cracks in our stories. There’ll be questions we can’t answer. It won’t take long for them to work out the truth. We killed him without knowing what he was doing out here. And then buried him. Did you forget that part? Do you not think they’ll notice that he’s been six foot under the earth? They will be able to tell that we tried to cover it up. Then it’s even worse.’
‘This is too much,’ Alexandra said, then repeated it again louder this time. ‘We can’t just walk away from him. From all of this. We’ve got to tell someone.’
‘Alex . . .’
‘No, Stuart,’ her voice was a shout now. Loud in the quiet woods. I looked around, suddenly nervous that someone would hear us finally and discover us all standing around another dead body. ‘We can’t, don’t you see? We have to do something.’
‘I want to go home,’ Chris said and he sounded like the boy I had first met in high school. Eleven years old. Quiet and scared. Not the thirty-odd-year-old I knew now. He was twenty years younger and wanted it all to be over. To go back to a normal that would never exist again. ‘We shouldn’t even be here.’
‘Well we wouldn’t be if it weren’t for you,’ Stuart spat out, disgust filling his features now. ‘I’m not going to let this ruin me. I have a life. So do all of you. What about your family? About work? This will ruin us all forever. Do you think they’re gonna enjoy having us splashed all over the newspapers? And what about the internet? Social media will crucify us.’
‘We didn’t do anything wrong,’ I said, pleading now. Every word was a stab at the heart of my life and all it was. ‘We just have to tell the truth. That’s all.’
‘It won’t matter. You think everyone will just believe we interrupted a killer and then made sure he couldn’t do it again?’ Stuart paused, breathed in deeply, as if to calm himself. ‘How do we explain that we buried him? That we were worried he was going to rise from the dead and get us before they came? It’s ridiculous. They’ll wonder why we’re all here. Why we didn’t call the police straight away. That man back there . . . it’s already over an hour since he died. Maybe longer. Even if we dug him up, cleaned him up, then put him near this body, they’ll still know. They’ll find his blood, our blood, everywhere. There isn’t a story we can make fit with what we’ve already done. With every passing second, we look more and more guilty. They’ll find witnesses. They’ll find out the truth.’
I opened my mouth to argue further, but I didn’t have any words to say. I couldn’t believe what we were doing. The relative calmness as we stood near two dead bodies. One we were responsible for, the other too late to save.
The world felt like a nightmare. Lucid and tangible, but not real. It couldn’t be. This wasn’t happening. Nothing made sense, yet when I closed my eyes and then opened them again, I was still in the woods.
‘We have to get out of here,’ Nicola said finally, breaking the silence. ‘I’m not going to have my life changed because of what you’ve done. Nor is Chris. We’re leaving and I’m not going to talk about this again.’
‘Nicola . . .’
‘No, Alexandra,’ Nicola said, folding her arms across her chest. Her face was reddening and her nostrils flared with anger. Her face had become even more angular and pointed somehow. ‘Don’t y
ou get it? It won’t be just them – it’ll be all of us. I’ve worked too long and too hard for something like this to ruin it. I won’t have it. Do you want your life turned upside down? Everything ends if we tell someone. We were too late to save this lad, but we’re not too late to save ourselves. He’s dead. Stuart obviously interrupted his killer and now he’s dead too. That’s all there is to it. We can’t change what’s happened, but we can change what happens next. I’m not going to let you all make a bad decision. It’s as simple as that.’
We let her words fall over us and I could see that she was right. This was over, unless we made things worse.
Each of us, in turn, seemed to make the same decision. It was Stuart who spoke first.
‘What do we do with him now? Do we bury him as well?’
I shook my head. ‘We leave him to be discovered.’
‘You know what this is, don’t you?’
I turned to see Michelle standing in between two trees, almost masked by overhanging branches. She was dead-eyed, staring at the body on the floor. She stretched out a hand and pointed towards the young lad’s body. Then above it, at the candle. ‘It’s him.’
‘Who?’ Stuart said, but Michelle ignored him as she came closer and stood over the body.
‘They’ve been saying for months that they weren’t connected.’
‘What are you talking about, Michelle?’ Chris said quietly, as he released himself from Nicola and moved to Michelle’s side. ‘You’re not making any sense. Maybe you should go back . . .’
‘No, don’t you see?’ Michelle replied sharply, making Chris take a step backwards. ‘There was a documentary about it last year. It’s been all over the internet since then, but the police keep saying it’s not real. This proves it is. Look at it.’
‘Look at what?’ I tried, glancing at the others but they were looking anywhere but at the body or Michelle now. ‘Tell us what’s going on.’
‘The candle. It’s what he leaves in all of their houses.’
‘Who does?’
Michelle placed her hands on her hips and nodded her head. ‘It’s him. We killed the Candle Man.’
Nine
‘What are you talking about?’ Nicola said, looking at Michelle with an air of exasperation.
‘It’s this serial killer, who has been murdering people for years . . .’
‘Michelle, this isn’t the time for conspiracy theories,’ Stuart said, folding his arms in frustration. ‘It’s not the time.’
‘What is it time for then? Time to kill someone else?’
Stuart opened his mouth to shout back at her, but thought better of it. I moved closer to Michelle. ‘Talk to us.’
‘I can’t . . .’
‘I saw that thing on TV,’ Alexandra said, not looking at any of us. ‘There’s all these missing people that have never been found. There’s this theory that a serial killer killed them, going back decades. They made a documentary and there’s this true crime podcast all about it. They reckon some of them are connected by something they found after they went missing.’
‘Red candles,’ Michelle said, pointing at the one on the ground again. ‘This means it’s real. That . . . man. He was the Candle Man.’
‘I know about this,’ Stuart said, rolling his eyes at Michelle. ‘It’s been debunked. Some of the people reported as missing and dead are actually alive and well. They turned up a few days later and that hasn’t been reported.’
‘Yeah, but look at this.’ Michelle gestured towards the body and the candle still burning away at its head. ‘You think this is normal? It makes more sense than you disturbing someone in the middle of the woods while having a pee, then getting attacked with a machete for your troubles, doesn’t it?’
‘It does make sense,’ I said, a wave of nausea washing over me. It was beginning to fall into place.
We had killed a serial killer. Interrupted him while he was offing another of his victims and stopped him in his tracks.
I had a sudden urge to giggle. To laugh myself silly with the ridiculousness of it all. Maybe that would make me wake up. Instead, I pinched the skin under my left bicep and again felt only a dull pain.
Still awake.
‘I’m only telling you what I know,’ Michelle replied, turning her back on us all and walking back into the woods. I considered going after her, but thought she wanted to be alone.
‘You think this could be . . .’
‘A serial killer’s victim?’ I finished the thought for Chris. ‘I don’t know. We’re not exactly thinking straight, are we? It makes a weird kind of sense, though, don’t you think?’
‘Maybe.’
I forced myself to look again at the boy on the ground. Very late teens, I guessed. And when I let my eyes wander around the entire scene, it did look ritualistic. The way the candle was positioned, the marks made on the body.
‘I think she’s right,’ I heard myself say, then turned away from them and faced the trees for a few seconds. When I turned back, Alexandra was standing in the centre of the group.
‘It would make sense,’ she said, her voice cold and devoid of emotion. ‘That documentary might have been a Channel 5 special, but there were a lot of coincidences in it. The candles being one of them. They had a couple of police spokespeople on it though, who weren’t having any of it. But what if this is it?’
‘Or a copycat?’ I asked, knowing no one could give me an actual answer. We didn’t really know what we talking about. I suppressed the urge to scream, swallowed it down instead. When I continued, I was surprised at how calm my voice sounded. ‘Where were the missing people from?’
‘All over the place,’ Alexandra replied, turning her head away from me slightly. I realised then that she hadn’t made eye contact with me since we had buried the man. I tried now, but she turned away from me. ‘Even a couple up by us in Merseyside. Cumbria, Yorkshire, down south. Round here, probably.’
‘We can’t do anything now,’ Stuart said finally, standing up and brushing his hands down his T-shirt. ‘And I’m not digging another grave. None of us have touched him, have we?’
I shook my head, looking around at the others doing the same.
‘It’ll be like we’ve never been here. He won’t be found for a while. By that time, they won’t be thinking of digging around the place. They won’t put the two things together. And even if they do, we’re still in the clear. As long as none of us talk about what we did here tonight.’
‘We should move him,’ I said finally, vocalising a thought that was running through my mind. I went with it. ‘Think about it.’
‘Okay. I thought about it. Not a chance.’
I gritted my teeth and tried not to rise to Stuart’s signature sarcasm. The type that only surfaced when he was hungover or coming down from whatever recreational drug he’d taken the night before. Even in his thirties, he hadn’t changed. ‘Think again. Look, we’re not that far away from the other body. If they search the area – which they will – they’ll see the disturbed ground through those trees and wonder what it is. They’ll dig it up and find him. Then what do we do? We need to put him further away.’
Stuart sighed and put his hands on his hips. He opened his mouth to protest, but Chris shushed him. ‘Matt’s right.’
‘I know,’ Stuart said, seemingly coming to terms with what we were going to have to do.
We had already learned where the phrase ‘dead weight’ came from.
This time it was more difficult.
We wrapped him in a spare sleeping bag that I retrieved from my car. Brand new in the packaging, so none of our DNA would be inside, we guessed. The first bit of luck we’d had.
Then, as daylight began to creep overhead, we moved him. Stumbling through the woods, sweating and struggling, we carried the dead boy to the other side of the woods.
Finally, we reached it, and we were able to lay him down again. Stuart removed the sleeping bag carefully, then walked away.
I stood over the teenager for
a few seconds, before I felt Chris’s hand on my shoulder. Heard him whisper my name, then we moved back the way we had come.
‘Do you think anyone saw us?’ I said, surprised I could still talk. My whole body screamed with exhaustion. ‘I didn’t look around us. Anyone could have been in . . .’
‘No one saw us,’ Alexandra replied, catching up and then passing us in an instant. ‘I was watching the whole time.’
I wanted to say something else. To run alongside her and be of comfort. I simply didn’t know what I would say.
She knew what we had all done. What we all were now.
I didn’t know if there was a way back from it.
*
I tried talking to Alexandra as we started the drive back home, but she was staring out of the passenger window at the passing scenery. On the single lane A-road behind my car, Chris and Nicola were probably having the same trouble. I tried to see if they were talking in the rear-view mirror, but they were too far back.
Michelle and Stuart had seemingly forgotten about the argument they’d had before, sitting together in my backseat. Michelle was staring ahead, her eyes tired and unmoving. Stuart had passed out as soon as I’d started driving.
‘We had to do it,’ I said, breaking the silence in the car. I couldn’t seem to bear it for any period of time now. ‘We had no choice.’
‘Who are you trying to convince – us or yourself?’ Alexandra replied, not even willing to turn to me when she spoke. I could hear it in her voice even then. She had been the last holdout. She didn’t want to leave the woods behind. In some way, I guessed none of us ever would, but I couldn’t see any other choices than the ones we’d made.
‘He’ll be found,’ I tried again, thinking again of the young lad Alexandra had found a few yards from the man we’d killed. ‘It probably won’t take that long at all. There was nothing else we could have done for him. You know that. No one will ever know we were there.’
‘We will know,’ she said, her voice flat and dry. ‘And isn’t that enough?’