The Six

by Luca Veste

  ‘I spoke to Chris a few hours ago. I told him what I think we should do.’

  ‘I’m guessing it’s the same thing Michelle wants to do,’ Alexandra said, sliding a finger through hair as it dropped across her eyes. ‘Bring this all out in the open? To tell them what we did?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, struggling to resist the urge to cross the room and sit down next to her. To place a hand on her leg, like I always did before. I screwed my eyes shut as I turned away from her and folded my arms again. Tried to ignore every part of me that wanted nothing more than to be normal together again.

  Absence hadn’t made the heart grow fonder. My feelings hadn’t changed at all.

  I still loved her with every part of my soul.

  ‘We can’t do that,’ Alexandra said, her voice soft but without a trace of question. ‘Not yet. We still all have so much to lose, can’t you see that? I don’t want to go to prison. None of us deserve that. We all made a decision last year and now we have to live with it and that means through all of it. No one said it was going to be easy, but that’s the call we made.’

  ‘We’ve all been ignoring the important part of this – Mark Welsh.’ I reiterated what I had said to Chris. What I’d discussed with Michelle. About how he was the important factor we could no longer ignore. ‘We’ve all been waiting for the police to knock on our door, but instead someone else has come. Someone who was there that night. Who saw what we did and wants a different outcome. Not prison. Revenge.’

  ‘You think I don’t think about what happened every day?’

  ‘It broke us apart, Alexandra.’ I breathed in and tried to control the feelings that were simmering away underneath the surface of every word I said. ‘I know you think about it. We spent years apart after we split before uni and then found each other again . . . only for this to happen and break us. I know you better than anyone – I know you think about it. That’s not my point. I just want to do something so we can actually deal with all of this.’

  ‘There’s still too much we don’t understand.’

  ‘What is there to understand here?’ I replied, feeling brave enough to face her again. ‘We’re in trouble. We have been since last year and we’ve ignored it for too long. Tried to pretend it didn’t happen and that we can just move on. Now, we’re all in danger—’

  ‘Is that what you believe?’

  I hesitated again, but not long enough for her to say anything. ‘Yes. There’s more than just what Michelle has told you. I went to Stuart’s house before hers yesterday. Spoke to his sister, who let me look around his place. I thought I could find some kind of suicide note, but if there was one they would have found it long before I got there. I just thought there must be some explanation for what he did, but there was nothing to find. Instead, I found something else. Want to know what it was?’

  ‘A red candle.’

  ‘A damn red candle,’ I said, finding myself on the other side of the room suddenly. I realised I’d been pacing up and down as I’d been talking. ‘Same as in Michelle’s house.’

  ‘It’s hardly a rare thing, Matt,’ Alexandra replied, but didn’t seem to have any conviction left in her voice. ‘People have them in their homes. I bet you’ve got one in here somewhere, from back when we moved in.’

  ‘Are you kidding me? First thing I did when we got back was get rid of the damn things. All of them. I didn’t care what colour they were, I couldn’t have them in the house.’ I stopped pacing, moving closer to the sofa where Alexandra was sitting. I perched on the arm of it across from her. Sighed as I locked my hands together and leaned forward. ‘And both of them in those storm lantern things? Some coincidence. Tell me – do you have any red candles in your house? Do you go out of your way to avoid them now?’

  ‘I . . . ’

  ‘Of course you don’t have any. You know what they mean to us now. Chris and Nicola are the same. Michelle too. And Stuart wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with them. Such a small, insignificant thing, but it’s a symbol of what we did that night. A daily reminder of the man we buried. And Mark Welsh. Moving his body across that field and then it disappearing. Now it’s back in our lives. This is no coincidence. It’s been a year this week. It all fits together. We’re in trouble, Alexandra. That’s the truth of it. How can we live like this?’

  ‘We have to,’ Alexandra said, her shout bouncing off the walls and around us. She was on her feet in an instant and I thought for a moment she was going to leave the room. Instead, she turned away, put her head in her hands and made a low guttural sound. There was a silence that grew between us. I was about to end it, when she lifted her head and looked at me.

  ‘We have to live with it,’ she said finally, leaning against the door, looking like she was going to collapse to the floor in an instant. ‘There’s no other choice here. If we don’t keep going, then he wins. Don’t you get that?’

  ‘I just don’t see any other way out of this. Stuart’s already dead. Michelle could be next. Are we supposed to just sit around and wait for it to happen without doing anything?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she said, moving back to the sofa and lifting her bag up. She reached inside and pulled out a small laptop, opening it on the coffee table. ‘We’ve all read up about Mark Welsh, but how much did we look into the . . . man?’

  ‘What are you saying?’ I replied, moving onto the sofa next to her and looking at the screen. ‘Believe me I’ve thought about him. I’ve thought about little else but that night since.’

  ‘I’m not saying that. I’m saying you’ve thought about this wrong. You’ve thought about what happened to him and not who he was. That’s the key here.’

  I frowned at Alexandra, looking away from the boot-up screen on the laptop and trying to read her face. I couldn’t. ‘I’m not following you.’

  ‘If you and Michelle are right and there’s someone after revenge for his death, then there’s a bigger question we need to answer.’

  ‘What’s that then?’

  ‘Who was the Candle Man and what was he doing there that night? And I think we can find him.’

  1999

  Three months into the first year at university, it was New Year’s Eve. I was still a little too worried about the Y2K Millennium Bug to really enjoy the night. I’d woken from a dream that morning of a plane falling out of the sky and landing on the student halls. For some reason, I’d been outside and looking to the sky watching it crash onto the building. I was confused when I’d opened my eyes and found myself lying in bed, daylight streaming through the thin curtain that covered the window. There had been a part of me that still believed it was actually real for almost a minute after I was awake.

  ‘It’s all a conspiracy,’ Stuart said, handing me another drink. Vodka and Red Bull had become our beverage of choice since we’d started university. I reckoned about half of my student loan had gone on the drink alone. We were in the large common room at the student halls I now called home. Around thirty of us at least, with more arriving by the minute. Once people had seen the prices that nightclubs in town were charging for entry, it became the place to celebrate for those who hadn’t gone home during the break. My parents’ house was a twenty-minute bus ride from the halls, which meant the decision to stay had been easy. I’d seen them on Christmas Day, but came back soon after.

  ‘Just a way of keeping us in line,’ Stuart continued, sipping on his own drink and sighing in satisfaction. Music was playing on someone’s CD player they’d dragged down from their room. The more people that arrived, the lower the sound was. I could barely hear the different girl’s names that Lou Bega was singing about needing.

  ‘That’s all it is,’ Stuart said, when it became clear he wasn’t going to be interrupted from going on another rant. ‘Make us worry about something that won’t happen, so we ignore the fact there’s something else going on. Probably gonna raise taxes or privatise the NHS. We’ll all be sitting round feeling relieved about the lack of Armageddon to notice.’

  ‘
Yeah, right,’ I replied, laughing a little now. Stuart had only been a friend for a couple of months, but I had already been wound up by him on numerous occasions. It made me question whether he was ever serious about anything, but I couldn’t help but be endlessly entertained by him. And by the glint in his eye, I could tell he enjoyed it too. ‘I bet Tony Blair is sitting in Number Ten laughing at us all now, while holding onto a big conspiracy lever of some kind.’

  ‘Sure it’s got nothing to do with the moon?’ Chris said, sidling up to us with a smile on his face. When Chris and I had first met him, Stuart had launched into a half-hour rant about the moon landings being faked. It was impassioned enough to make us interested in listening to him, while also being ridiculous enough to be hysterically funny. ‘Maybe we’ll wake up in the morning with the news that they’ve really found aliens on a base up there and they’ve only just found out because we never actually went up there before.’

  ‘I’m telling you, that flag shouldn’t be moving . . . ’

  ‘Thousands of people, Stuart,’ Chris said, pointing his own drink towards him, but smiling as he did so. ‘That’s how many would have to keep the secret. And not one of them has ever come out and said a word. That doesn’t strike you as odd?’

  Stuart bridled and was about to argue when he noticed the look on Chris’s face and shook his head. ‘I’m not getting into this again.’

  ‘Only because you’ll lose the argument again,’ Chris replied, looking across the room and then waving towards someone. ‘Anyway, I predict this whole Millennium bug thing will be a bigger disappointment than The Phantom Menace. Nothing will happen and we’ll forget it was even a problem afterwards. I reckon this is all a distraction from the real truth anyway.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ Stuart said, suddenly interested again. I could see from Chris’s face that he wasn’t being serious, but Stuart didn’t know him as well as I did.

  ‘It’s simple,’ Chris replied, leaning towards Stuart as if he were about to reveal a huge secret. ‘They’re going to round up all Mancunians called Stuart tomorrow morning and force them into public demonstrations of penance as an apology for bloody Oasis.’

  I laughed as Stuart gave Chris a playful punch in the arm. Nicola arrived from the other side of the room, slipping an arm around Chris’s waist and leaning her head into him.

  ‘Oasis are the best band in the world,’ Stuart said proudly, sticking his hands behind him and mimicking Liam Gallagher’s signature pose. He began singing ‘Wonderwall’ out of tune. It wasn’t much different to the original to be fair, but still rattled my teeth.

  ‘They’re a Beatles cover band at best,’ I replied, rolling my eyes and pretending for a moment that I didn’t own all of the group’s CDs and had hated Blur with a burning passion for a long time a few years back. ‘And probably not even the best one in Manchester.’

  ‘What the hell are you lot talking about?’ Nicola said, releasing her arm from around Chris to sip from a bottle of alcopop. ‘It’s New Year’s Eve. The Millennium. Can we have one night when you three don’t argue the finer points of Northern music?’

  We murmured an agreement, lapsing into silence as the track playing on the CD player ended and The Vengaboys entered the fray. A collective groan went up. It was quickly skipped and The Offspring came on to a collective cheer.

  ‘Is she coming?’ I said to Nicola, as Chris and Stuart began talking animatedly about something else. ‘I haven’t heard from her.’

  ‘Who, Michelle? She’s over there chatting up some bloke from Birmingham. I couldn’t listen to his accent anymore, but she seemed to be enjoying it.’

  ‘You know who I mean,’ I said with a groan. ‘Have you spoken to her?’

  ‘I don’t know. She knows we’re all here, but I’m not sure if she’s going to grace us with her presence. Got those new friends in Chester, hasn’t she. Not sure she wants to be seen with the likes of us now. Gone all posh probably.’

  I chuckled in response, knowing it was just the usual sarcasm from Nicola. Truth was, she was probably more than a little defensive regarding her oldest friend. While three of us had decided to stay in Liverpool for university, Alexandra had moved to Chester instead. Michelle was forgoing university altogether, going straight into work as an office junior. It meant she had more money than any of us, but still didn’t mind slumming it with us for parties.

  ‘She’s doing okay,’ Nicola said, looking up and tilting her head a little. ‘Seems to have coped with the split well after a month or so of moping. Your name isn’t the first thing she says when we talk now.’

  I wasn’t sure if I was happy with that or not, but decided it was probably for the best. I wasn’t exactly moving on quickly myself, but if she was doing better, maybe I could finally do that.

  There was part of me that thought it was a bad decision, even if it was mutual. We both wanted different things, different experiences. I didn’t want to wreck the relationship. She didn’t want to resent me for not being able to enjoy university life to its fullest. It simply ended because both of us were scared. That was the reality of it. We were in separate universities, didn’t want a long-distance relationship; it wasn’t the right time for either of us.

  Mutual.

  That wasn’t true. When we’d started talking, I’d just gone alone with it, too scared to fight for us. Too worried about how I looked, or being even more hurt.

  I had simply accepted it and tried to move on.

  ‘You made the right call at the right time,’ Nicola continued, laying a hand on my shoulder and giving me a small squeeze. ‘Both of you. Who knows what will happen in the future.’

  She smiled and walked away before I had the chance to respond. I didn’t see her again until a minute after midnight. We had collapsed into the street en masse, counting down the seconds before the clock struck and once I’d checked the skies for any planes coming down, I began shouting and cheering with the rest of the party. Chris grabbed me and pulled me into a bear hug, quickly joined by Stuart who jumped on top and almost brought us down onto the floor.

  We staggered across the pavement, trying to keep our balance, before knocking into the back of another small group of people.

  I could sense the mood change instantly. The cry of shock and alarm quickly changing to recrimination. I lifted my head, just as the first lad squared up to Chris. I moved towards him, putting a hand on his shoulder, as the stranger in a bomber jacket moved his head in Chris’s direction. Pulled him backwards, as Nicola appeared as if from nowhere and began screaming in the group’s general direction. A woman standing with them was quickly in her face, towering over her and pointing a finger towards Nicola. I must have made some kind of noise, as the woman was distracted and looked towards me. Nicola grabbed her finger and twisted it. I was dragging Chris back, as bomber jacket aimed a headbutt towards him when it happened.

  The guy was suddenly on the floor.

  A sound had stopped us all in our tracks and a silence fell over us in an instant. A loud crack as the guy’s head had bounced off the pavement.

  Stuart stood over the guy in the bomber jacket, shaking his hand out, as blood began to seep out of the man’s head and pool around our feet.

  Twenty-Five

  On the screen of Alexandra’s laptop, she had Google Maps open and was zooming in and out of an area I was familiar with.

  ‘Brock Hope,’ I said, waiting for her to explain what this had to do with anything. ‘The forest where the music festival was. I’m not sure . . . ’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it for a long time,’ Alexandra replied, sitting back and leaning her head against the sofa. ‘When Mark Welsh’s body disappeared and wasn’t found, I started thinking about the reasons for it. We have the so-called mythological serial killer—’

  ‘The Candle Man.’

  ‘Yes, but I wonder if he’s not so much a myth, but rather a generic thing that’s been made up to explain some missing persons, that’s all. Anyway, there’s whole forum
s dedicated to the story. All coming back to the red candle aspect.’

  ‘You think you know who the man was. The one we killed?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure,’ Alexandra replied, her expression changing, darkness entering it again. ‘With all these stories happening across the country, it’s difficult to pin down any kind of location. So, I started at the end instead of trying to work all of that out.’

  ‘The music festival?’

  ‘More specifically, the surrounding area. What do you remember about the place?’

  I blew out a breath. ‘Not much really. Kinda concentrated on events more than the views. Woods, tiny country roads, big field where we watched the bands.’

  ‘Farms,’ Alexandra said, reaching across and scanning the map on the laptop screen. ‘The whole area is surrounded by farmland. Old places that have been in families for generations, some of them. Bits and pieces sold off over the years, but this is countryside proper. That’s what I’ve found. I’ve struggled to get anywhere with this information, but I’m onto something, I think.’

  ‘You think the Candle Man was a farmer?’

  ‘I think he lived on one of the farms close by,’ Alexandra said, ignoring my sarcasm and continuing on. ‘Look, I know I’ve not got enough yet, but what if some of these stories are true? Red candles in storm lanterns are probably a popular item, but when you add in missing persons, it makes it a bit more coincidental. What if he was clever? What if the other murders happened in other parts of the country, but this is where his main place was?’

  ‘Great, so we just speak to all the people who live in these farms and see if they’re alive or not. We’ll find out who hasn’t been seen for a year and might have a brother or something who likes revenge.’

  ‘Well, you never know,’ Alexandra said, rubbing the back of her neck with one hand, as if she was trying to massage the stress out of herself. ‘It’s something we should really look into though. I don’t really fancy travelling all the way down there and knocking on random farmhouses. What the hell would I say? I don’t even know if it’s one or fifty-one different farms.’