Chapter Fifty-Nine
Leah
Now
Archie isn’t here.
Nobody is here.
That’s not strictly true. There are the ghosts of the young Sinclair Sisters who once sang and danced and tried not to be broken by all that happened in this room.
It looks the same and yet different. The piles of rubbish have been cleared but it still stinks here. The bars that once striped the windows have gone. Probably taken as crime memorabilia. After our book came out, Carly saw the blanket we had supposedly been given by Doc for sale on eBay. Whether it was the actual one or not was impossible to tell.
The grubby mattress we had lain upon is also missing. It makes my skin crawl to think that somebody might lie on it and get a kick out of imagining three small, terrified girls, huddled together, fearing for their lives. Morbid fascination for the macabre is something I’ll never get to grips with. I turn and my heart stutters at the face I have never forgotten.
The shock of orange hair and bright red nose. The red mouth slashed into a grin. The graffiti clown laughs.
You’re back! he seems to say.
Fuck you, I reply.
There’s a creak.
The door begins to close.
Chapter Sixty
George
Now
George passes his mobile from palm to palm, as though it is as hot as the shame that burns inside him. Leah’s text still unopened.
What has he done?
Chapter Sixty-One
Carly
Now
Norwood looms larger than in her nightmares. Carly can’t believe she’s here but she’ll do anything for Archie. He really is the light of her life.
Will you ever go back? a reporter had asked her once.
Only in my nightmares, she’d replied but here she is, wide awake and utterly terrified.
A shadow. A movement.
‘Leah?’ she whispers. Scared to shout. Scared to move. Scared about what’s going to happen next.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Leah
Now
I push open the door that had begun to close in the breeze and step into the hallway. Outside, the staircase is patchy and rotten. The bannisters dangle precariously from their fixings. When we had escaped the room before we didn’t go upstairs, so I almost dismiss the idea, but what-ifs gnaw at me.
Archie could be up there?
Distributing my weight evenly, I begin to crawl up to the second floor, avoiding the holes. All the while holding my breath, as though that will somehow make me lighter.
I’m almost at the top when there’s a crack, a shift. I plummet to the ground.
Rockets of pain shoot through my spine. My lungs struggle for air. I roll onto my side, waiting for the dizziness to subside. I think of Carly’s tattoo. A comma, not a full stop. This isn’t over. I push myself to my feet. The muscles in my lower back spasm as I move, slower than I’d like but I can’t give up. I won’t.
A comma.
I wish Carly were here.
From outside I think I hear someone whisper my name. I listen but the only sound is my blood whooshing in my ears.
Picking up the wooden post that now feels heavier in my hand, I limp forwards, my thoughts racing, my body slow, following our invisible train of sorrow over to the main building.
The NORWOOD ARMY CAMP sign is still there. My breath rasps as I heft myself up the five steps I once pounded up, terrified Moustache and Doc were close behind.
The reception is pretty much as it had been, with the curved desk, the Welcome graffiti faded from black to grey. Curved above it, like a rainbow is another word, and this one causes a whimper to break free from my lips, which are clamped together in fright.
Today.
I am in the right place.
Up ahead, a noise. Not the police sirens I am so desperate to hear, but something else.
Somebody else?
In the cinema room some of the benches have been burned, ash heaped on the floor. The wind gusts through the empty window frames. A crisp packet crinkles from the direction of the ballroom.
Spicy Tomato Snaps.
All at once I can taste them in my mouth. Bile rises. I have never felt so scared. I push myself onwards. My back screams with every small step. The ballroom is in a worse state than before. To my left a heap of grubby blankets. I tiptoe around broken glass, discarded syringes, but I’m sure my pounding heart is audible even if my footsteps aren’t. The gaping holes in the ceiling from which the chandeliers once hung watch me. Every few seconds I look up, half expecting to see someone above me, but there’s no one here. I inch forward as quietly as I can.
There is still a huge mound of rubbish in the centre of the room. I remember the smell of it as I cowered inside with Carly and Marie. A bonfire waiting to be lit. I skirt around it, my memories causing me to tremble, when out of the corner of my eye I spot them.
Feet.
Instantly I clamp my hands over my mouth to contain my scream. The feet are too large to be Archie’s. But that doesn’t mean he’s not here, huddled inside the stinking pile. I creep towards the feet, unable to tear my eyes away from them. They don’t move. Do they know I’m here?
Thoughts ricochet. I don’t want to drive my post into the pile in case Archie is inside. Instead, I angle the corner of the wood and lift the rubbish so I can properly see the legs, the body, the face.
Oh God, the face.
Nausea rises hot and sour as the blank, lifeless eyes of my sister stare back at me.
Chapter Sixty-Three
George
Now
George can’t bring himself to open Leah’s text. He is lost in thought. Lost in shame.
And regret.
He has always felt at home at Francesca’s, his body falling into a level of relaxation that didn’t happen anywhere else, but now it feels different.
It feels wrong.
The cream fabric couch pops with yellow cushions, a light grey carpet swallows each footstep with its deep pile. George tries to imagine Archie in this room, but he can’t.
‘You okay?’ Francesca places a tumbler of water on the glass table in front of him. She doesn’t like hot drinks near the couch. Will it really be so different living with her to living with Leah? Suddenly, it all feels frighteningly real. No longer only the distraction of sex, a loving touch from a gloveless hand, but in a bills-to-pay, meals-to-make kind of way.
‘I got a text from Leah.’
‘What does she say?’ Francesca’s eyes are bright with tears. She’s finding this as difficult as George.
‘I haven’t opened it.’ George knows Leah will have found the goodbye note by the bed, opened his wardrobe to find only empty hangers. He’d taken the coward’s way out and he was ashamed. Leah deserves better than this. Archie deserves better than this. Already he misses them both with a ferocity that hurts. He loves Leah. He loves her so much.
‘I think I’ve made a mistake.’ George begins to cry.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Leah
Now
Oh God, no. Please no.
She’s dead.
I know this with certainty but it doesn’t stop me shaking her shoulders.
‘Wake up,’ I whisper loudly. ‘Please. Wake up.’
She doesn’t.
She can’t.
My fingers stray to her wrist, fumble to find a pulse that isn’t there. My head drops to her chest but there is no thump-thump-thump of her heart.
Yet I still can’t quite accept it.
‘Wake up. Please. You have to.’ I shake her shoulders once more before I sit back on my heels, my eyes trained on her face that still looks beautiful to me.
It’s as though my heart has been ripped from its cavity and I claw it back, clutching it to my chest, not ready to give into the numbness that whispers that it’s hopeless. That everything was always leading up to this. I was too late to save her and I am too late for…
‘Archie!’ I openly scream his name now, picturing him hiding somewhere, eyes screwed up tight the same as when he has a middle-of-the-night nightmare. The lifeless face of his aunt forever etched on his tender young mind. How will he ever recover from this?
‘Archie!’ My arms windmill wildly as I rummage through the rubbish, terrified I’ll feel a limb. A skull. Hair. But there’s nothing. He isn’t here. It is both a relief and a disappointment.
I stand, but I catch sight of her again and my paper-doll legs veer out of control. I sway wildly.
‘I’ll be back,’ I whisper to ears that can no longer hear. Reluctant to tear my gaze away from her glassy eyes that will never again see the beauty in the world.
Or the horrors.
‘I’ll be back,’ I say once more but, even to me, my promise is gossamer-fine, easily broken.
I trail after the wisp of memories of three girls hand in hand who were as desperate to stay hidden as I am to be found.
‘Archie!’
His name echoes through the windowless rooms. The ghosts of the past whisper, You know where he is.
And I do.
The decontamination chamber. Where everything ended last time.
Where everything will now begin.
Chapter Sixty-Five
George
Now
George vows he will make it up to Leah somehow. He swerves in and out of traffic, slicing through lights on the cusp of turning from amber to red. He screeches onto the empty driveway. Leah’s car is missing.
Where is she?
It isn’t like her to take Archie out in the evening, she must be distraught to upset his bedtime routine. He can picture her face crumpling after reading his goodbye letter.
Why had he written it? He’s such an idiot.
He needs to call Carly and Tash. Leah must be with one of them. She has no other friends. George is her best friend and he has let her down.
The house is cold and dark. He slinks inside like a scolded puppy with his tale between his legs. There is no scramble of paws.
Where is the dog? Has Leah taken him with her to keep Archie amused while she pours her heart out to her sister or her best friend?
It doesn’t feel right.
Why haven’t Tash or Carly come here?
George strides up the stairs two at a time. The envelope he addressed to his wife still stands against her bedside lamp. He picks it up and runs his fingers across the unbroken seal and thinks how lucky he is that he got here first. That she hasn’t read it. He can make it right.
All of it.
But still. Where is she? Archie? The puppy? Something is off. He sinks onto the bed. Their bed. Pulls out his phone to call her and sees her unopened text.
Archie is missing.
The bed rocks beneath him as he reads, seasickness swirling in his stomach. He pounds down the stairs and throws himself into his car.
Archie is missing.
George hares towards Norwood, calling the police as he drives.
‘Please hurry.’ He garbles out the details. The operator tells him to stay where he is. Not to put himself in any danger. He cuts the call and tosses his phone onto the passenger seat where his wife should be. His eyes flicker to the rear-view mirror. The sight of Archie’s empty booster seat is a punch to the gut. He should have believed Leah that Simon was back. He’s going to kill the bastard with his bare hands.
I’m coming-I’m coming-I’m coming.
He grips the steering wheel tightly.
He hopes he’s not too late.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Leah
Now
Twenty years ago I had made this trek, the security of my sisters dulling my panic. Now there is only me. Injured by my fall, my back shrieks with protest but I don’t care. I don’t care about anything except finding my son. I burst out of the main building. It seemed inevitable that I would be greeted with a clap of thunder, a flash of lightning, but the sky is a flat, cloudless grey and it’s worse somehow. The silence. A storm would no longer faze me. I am incredulous that I was ever scared of the weather. This sharp-tongued fear relentlessly licking at my organs, coating my insides sour, is like nothing I’ve ever experienced.
My baby. My boy.
At least the hammering rain would make me feel I wasn’t quite so alone. That I was recreating the past that, if not granted a happy ending, was at least satisfactory.
We were all alive.
Then.
My stomach roils. I push the image of the ballroom away. Glassy eyes staring up at me. Grey skin. Blue lips. I can grieve later. Now is not the time to fall apart. It is as though my feet remember where to go. This time there is no circling around back to the main building. The decontamination chamber looms in front of me. The rusting DANGER sign still in place. I have left the wooden post back in the ballroom and feel small and vulnerable but filled with an unmatchable fury. My mother’s instinct roaring louder than the beat of my heart, which I know thuds in sync with the life I created. The life I will save, even if it costs me my own.
Abandon hope all ye who enter here. I hadn’t noticed that last time but I notice it now.
Simon, I am coming for you.
I step into the entrance where I once huddled with Marie while Carly covered our footsteps in the wet earth outside. This was where Carly had dropped her shoes and Moustache and Doc had found them. Holding the door open for light, I scan the floor. My body jolts as though it has been shocked when I see two small trainers I recognize. Thomas the Tank Engine’s face beaming from the heels.
Archie is here.
I try to calm my breath before I move on. Then, Carly had fumbled for our hands and I’d held tightly onto hers as we edged our way into the next room. Now mine are empty. I ball them into fists.
I am ready.
The smell of the shower room rises, slime still thick on the walls. I search through the gloom for a piece of the pipes that had littered the floor last time where they had been wrenched from the walls. There is nothing I can use for a weapon. The graffiti is everywhere.
This is the building it all ended in!!!
This is SO cool!
Creepy as fuck
I know what I’d do with three girls in here!
Wanker, someone had written underneath.
Lastly, by the open door, a sign. THIS WAY next to an arrow.
Ghouls and ghosts are everywhere. I rub my arms to feel my flesh, the warmth of my blood coating my bones.
I am here.
I am here again.
Following the arrow, I try not to think of the true-crime fans’ mounting excitement when I feel nothing but dread. In the corridor, the hole in the roof has stretched wider. I raise my face and can see both the sun and the moon vying for dominance, casting their glow into the place that I do not want to step into but must.
The morgue.
Although I am trying to be strong, I am crying as I tentatively open each of the lockers that are too small to hide an adult but would easily house a small child the way they had before. The memory presses down on me, heart-wrenching and overwhelming. Carly pushing Marie and I inside. The feel of dust and grit on my skin. The soft click of metal on metal as she closed the door. The sense of suffocation despite the stagnant air being plentiful.
Three blind mice. Three blind mice.
Has Simon locked Archie here?
See how they run.
Please don’t let my boy be here.
He isn’t.
That leaves only one place.
It feels as though I am walking towards the gallows as I approach the chutes – contaminated clothes, contaminated shoes. They are bigger than I remember but I still doubt that I will fit through the way I had before, the way Archie would now. Momentarily I wonder whether I should instead locate the end of the tunnel and work my way inwards, but my gut feeling is that I’d be wasting valuable time. There was no marker and it might be impossible to find. It might have caved in by now.
> I pull open the hatch. Above hang large metal hooks. I jump and catch one in each hand, my shoulder sockets burning as I dangle there helplessly, feet scrambling for traction as I try to hoist up my weight so I can slip my legs inside the chute.
I can’t get the angle right.
My arms aren’t strong enough. I lift my legs once more. My hands slip from the hook. I have no choice. I’ll have to dive in head first.
Archie.
The thought of plummeting into blackness with nothing to break my fall is terrifying but not as terrifying as the thought of my baby being down there with the dark, and the cold, and the beetles. I steel myself, hands clasped together as though I am in prayer, ready to dive into a waterless pit. I am gripped by utter terror.
Archie.
I am free-falling through time and space. It takes an eternity and it takes no time at all. I crash to the ground. I can hear the snap of my wrist before I feel the searing pain. My mouth pressed to the ground is full of dirt.
I roll over.
My ears are ringing from the fall and my mouth is full of blood where my teeth clamped around my tongue, but I can see. There is a circle of light pooling from a torch. My head feels heavy on my neck as I look around the room. The ground is strewn with empty spirit bottles, shards of glass where some of them have smashed, crushed cans, cigarette butts. Quite the party. I can almost see the true-crime fanatics, torch pointed under their chins, faces waxy and pale as they recount our final steps. I shift my gaze and see something that lights me with happiness until fear dampens my fleetingly joyful glow.
Curled into himself is Archie. But he is too still. Too quiet.
And he isn’t alone.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Carly
Now
‘Leah,’ Carly says. ‘You found us.’ She begins to cry.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Leah
Now
‘Thank God. You’re alive. Marie is… Is Archie…?’
The Stolen Sisters: from the bestselling author of The Date and The Sister comes one of the most thrilling, terrifying and shocking psychological thrillers of 2020 Page 25