Dark Corners

by Darren O’Sullivan

  I looked to my right, behind the torch that was pointed at me, and could make out the shape of another person, another coat, another Drifter. I couldn’t see their faces, but I knew at that moment who they were.

  Chapter 52

  July 1998

  Thirty minutes before…

  Neve had run so hard from the mine that by the time she reached the hut, she was sure she would throw up. She was the first one back, the first one to crawl through the hatch. Despite it only being an hour since she’d been in that space with all of her friends, drinking and laughing and daring each other on, it felt a lot longer. Still reeling from what happened, all she could hope was that everyone was all right. She took a moment to try to calm her breathing, rationalise her mind. Her body was soaked and cold, her muscles aching. She couldn’t get over how dark it was down there. The field she ran across had been permanently lit, and that light shrouded the whole village, giving a sense that the place didn’t really have a night, just two variations of day. One artificial, one real. But the lights had been out for nearly a year, and the night was catching up on lost time. On her run, she couldn’t see the ground beneath her feet, and on several occasions, she fell in the wet mud.

  As the minutes ticked by, Neve began to fear the worst. It was supposed to be a bit of fun, a final hurrah before they all went in their different directions. For a moment she feared something terrible had happened. The scream that came from Chloe’s mouth when she saw him down there was enough to make anyone’s blood run cold. But she pushed it back; Chloe was just panicking, like they all were. Her scream would be something they would laugh at in time to come.

  As if on cue, Neve heard the sound of a body slamming into the wall beside their entrance, and then she saw the shape of Baz slip through the gap. As he rose to his knees, Neve could see blood on the side of his head.

  ‘Shit, Baz, are you OK?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I fell over an old wheelbarrow or something. It’s so bloody dark down there I couldn’t see.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘No, a bit shaken up, but fine.’

  ‘Is no one else back yet?’

  ‘Not yet, just you and me.’

  ‘I’m sure everyone is OK,’ he said quietly, and Neve could tell it was a question more than a statement. The panic began to rise again, and it felt like if she didn’t talk it would take over.

  ‘I can’t believe he was down there.’

  ‘Me neither. Fucking weirdo.’

  ‘You think he’ll call the police?’

  ‘And say what, he was trespassing like us? No, he was just as wrong to be there.’

  ‘Do you think…’

  Before Neve could finish her sentence, Georgia crawled through the hatch and joined them, her mascara streaked down her face from sobbing. She was trying to say something, each word snagging on a breath she couldn’t draw. Reaching over, Baz took her firmly in his grasp and told her to take deep, measured breaths. Neve fell silent as she witnessed a side to Baz she’d not seen before. The class clown had a tenderness, a kindness. As Baz calmed Georgia, bringing her back from the brink of a panic attack, Neve crept to the hole in the wall. She knew she wouldn’t be able to see anyone running towards her, but she looked anyway, desperate for the rest of them to arrive. After a few minutes – or an hour, she wasn’t sure – Jamie and Michael crawled into the hut. Michael was pale and quiet. As soon as he cleared the entrance he slumped up against a wall, his head in his hands. Neve barely gave him a glance, her attention focused solely on Jamie. He was covered in dirt, out of breath, but otherwise unharmed.

  ‘You OK, Neve?’ he asked calmly.

  ‘Yes, are you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jamie said as he gave Neve a kiss on the lips. ‘Baz, Georgia, are you all right?’

  Baz said he was fine, and Georgia nodded, calmer but still unable to form words.

  ‘Where are Chloe and Holly?’ he asked, looking around at their group of five that should have been seven.

  ‘We don’t know,’ Baz said, his attention still on Georgia.

  ‘Shit. We have to go back,’ Jamie said.

  ‘I don’t want to go back down there,’ Georgia said, her words still catching on shallow breaths.

  ‘You can stay here, we don’t all need to go.’

  ‘I can’t either,’ said Michael, unable to lift his head from his hands, prompting Baz to walk over and rub his shoulder, reassuring his friend it was all right to not want to go either. ‘Jamie, are you coming?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Neve.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Neve, no.’

  ‘Jamie, yes.’

  ‘Neve, I don’t want you to. I don’t want anything to happen to you.’

  ‘Jamie, I’m going. Chloe might be stuck, Holly too. I want to help.’

  ‘Baz, please, talk sense to her.’

  ‘Jamie, if she wants to go, she wants to go.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘I get you want to protect me,’ interrupted Neve. ‘It’s sweet, but I am capable, and I don’t need your protection.’

  ‘She’s right, mate. Come on, we’re wasting time.’

  Neve held Jamie’s eye, not prepared to blink first. He nodded, defeated, and moved towards the hole to crawl back out into the field. She followed and Baz brought up the rear. Georgia and Michael exchanged looks; they didn’t want to go back. But they knew they had to, so they joined their friends. Quietly, they made their way towards the barbed wire fence, hoping at any moment both Chloe and Holly would dash towards them. With each step, Neve panicked, praying that she wouldn’t have to go back down the mine again.

  Chapter 53

  2nd December 2019

  Night

  ‘Neve, there’s no point trying to run.’ Another familiar voice came out of the darkness, deep and calming. Just like he would be if he was talking to a patient of his in the village practice. ‘There is nowhere to go.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Why are you doing this?’

  ‘Because we have to,’ Baz said calmly.

  ‘You don’t, you don’t have to do anything.’

  ‘We’ve waited a long time for this,’ another voice called out. One that was as harsh and cold as when I first saw her in the village.

  ‘Neve, over to the hole,’ a third ordered.

  ‘Please,’ I begged.

  ‘Neve, don’t make this any more difficult than it already is.’

  I didn’t move, I couldn’t. Fear had frozen me to the spot and sensing it, one of them grabbed my arm. I didn’t want to believe it was him, but as soon as he held me – as soon as he was close enough for me to see into Michael’s eyes – I had no choice but to accept I had been tricked.

  Michael led me towards the hole, his torch pointing towards the opening, and forced me to look. Below was just dirt and rocks. Nothing to suggest there was a person buried underneath. I closed my eyes because I still couldn’t look.

  ‘Open your eyes, Neve,’ Georgia said, her harsh tone bouncing around and into my ear.

  ‘I can’t,’ I managed to say between sobs. Georgia moved quickly over to me, grabbed my face and forced my eyes open, urging me to look down.

  ‘That’s enough,’ another voice called out; one I didn’t want to believe I’d heard. She was the one person who had been the kindest to me since coming back, she was the one person who had invited me into her home to play with her children. Obeying her instruction, Michael and Georgia let go and I fell to the floor.

  ‘Holly, no,’ I begged. ‘Please, no. Please. You have to stop.’

  ‘Do you know how long we have waited for this, Neve?’ she began, ignoring my plea. ‘Do you know how much work it’s taken to get you here, to keep you here?’

  ‘Please,’ I said again.

  ‘We tried once before, back in 2008. We tried to get you back to help find Jamie. We just needed you back so we could
tell you how fucked up we all are, because of you. We wanted you to help us find a way to be OK, like you were. But, despite our best efforts, you were too busy to care, too important for those of us stuck in the village.’

  I wracked my brain but couldn’t place when they had asked.

  ‘Look at her, she doesn’t have a clue what you’re talking about,’ Georgia barked. ‘Let’s just get on with this and go.’

  ‘No, I want her to understand,’ Holly said.

  ‘Me too,’ Baz added. Jamie had stopped crying and I could just make him out in the dim light nodding, as was Michael.

  ‘Fine,’ Georgia said, defeated.

  ‘You faked Jamie going missing to get me back?’

  ‘Finally, she gets it.’

  ‘Georgia, enough,’ Holly said. ‘Yes, we did.’

  ‘And when you said he had a history of going missing, you were lying?’

  ‘No, I have disappeared a few times,’ Jamie said quietly. ‘I always came down here, to find Chloe. I couldn’t ever remember the way.’

  ‘The last time we found him, he’d not eaten in three days.’

  ‘I just wanted to find her, to say I was sorry,’ he said, before breaking into fresh sobs on Holly’s shoulder.

  ‘Jamie…’ I said, my voice trailing off. I couldn’t find the words to beg him for forgiveness. If I hadn’t insisted we came down here to celebrate the end of the summer, our last summer as kids, maybe, he would have been all right. Maybe he would have married and settled and been happy, like he wanted to be.

  ‘It’s not just me,’ Jamie said. ‘We’ve all struggled.’

  ‘So have I, I promise, I have these dreams…’

  ‘Dreams! You wanna talk about dreams, Neve? We all had dreams, to get away from this place, to have a happy life. You took all that from us.’

  ‘Then we see you on Facebook, your new business and your new London life and we think: how is it fair that we are here, we can never leave, and she gets to do what she wants?’ Georgia said, her voice tight.

  ‘The final nail was you announcing your engagement. Not only did you manage to escape this place, but you managed to find someone to love,’ Baz said, his voice less commanding, less in control of his emotions.

  ‘Baz, I didn’t make you do anything.’

  ‘We were so scared, we looked to you and you told us it would be OK. You said you had a plan. And we would all be OK.’

  ‘I was just a kid!’ I said again, my voice bouncing off the walls, coming back to me sounding less honest.

  ‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ Michael said. ‘You still don’t see. None of us got away with it. No one.’

  ‘Georgia’s dad knew something was wrong, and, after he was released, she confided in him.’

  ‘And he will never let me leave his house, not until the day he dies. I’ve tried to leave, but each time he threatened to talk to the police. It ruined his life. So, he keeps mine.’

  ‘Baz… was in love with Chloe.’

  ‘I still am,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I’ve gone the other way,’ Michael said. ‘I can’t be intimate with anyone. Because when I try to let myself be open to the idea – when I try let the walls down – I see her, and I remember how you made me bury her body down here,’ Michael said, pointing to the dark hole near my feet.

  ‘And I… well, I have to watch my husband battle every day. The man who fathered my children, who struggles to let go of that night, and what you made him do, because he thought he loved you.’

  I looked at Jamie, and then at Holly. It made sense why everyone comforted her when we were looking for Jamie. How his mother embraced her. She was Jamie’s wife. And her little one, I now saw the resemblance. The same dark hair, the same pale complexion.

  ‘You ruined us all, Neve. Tonight has been a long time coming.’

  A new voice spoke from the darkness behind my childhood friends. Raspy, tired. When she stepped closer, I gasped. It was Brenda. I didn’t understand, this was our secret, our mistake, how did she know? How long has she known?

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘They told me.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Six months ago.’

  ‘Brenda, I…’

  ‘For twenty years I didn’t know what happened to my girl. Twenty years of visiting a gravestone that had an empty coffin underneath. And I always knew you had something to do with it. I did. When Jamie told me, I knew we had to get you back.’

  ‘This was your idea?’ I asked, knowing the answer.

  ‘I wanted to know everything, everything about that night and what happened to my daughter. I wanted to know her last words, if it was quick. I wanted to know where she was. So, they brought me here. Until then, I didn’t care where you had gone. You were the girl who led my daughter astray. People here think I hated her, but they were wrong. I loved my girl. I wanted her to be safe. I wanted her to be away from you. They told me about their attempt to get you back, to have it out with you. To beg you to help them let go, just like you had. I gave them a better idea.’

  ‘You can’t do anything, the police—’

  ‘Have no idea where you are. And no one besides your dad will be looking for you. Even if he knows something and goes to the police, as of last week, everyone thinks he has dementia.’

  I was stunned. Did Brenda mean my dad was not losing himself? I wanted to believe it but couldn’t. They were trying to derail me.

  ‘I don’t believe you. He has been forgetting things, misplacing things. He’s been leaving ovens on…’

  ‘Neve!’ Georgia continued, enjoying herself. ‘Who had a set of keys? Who could go in and out of his house whenever they wanted?’

  ‘I – I don’t…’

  ‘His cleaner,’ she smiled as she jangled a set of keys, her torch light bouncing off them. ‘We’ve been in and out of his house for weeks. Even while you slept.’

  ‘No…’

  ‘And I’m his doctor, Neve.’

  ‘You made it up? What about the oath you took…’

  ‘No, no…’ Baz protested, his hands up. ‘No, I couldn’t do that. I want to help people, and I have helped your dad, I will continue to help your dad, he hasn’t done anything wrong. Your dad really does have memory issues. He’s had them for months. But…’

  ‘But I saw your dad in with Barry,’ Brenda continued, ‘and I pushed our dear doctor to tell me what was wrong, so I could use it against you. It was perfect. I knew if we could get you back, we could keep you back.’ She smiled.

  Hearing Baz confirm what Georgia was saying made my head spin once more, and leaning over, I was sick on the hard floor beside me.

  ‘Why…’ I managed to say, between heaving.

  ‘We assumed – even as heartless as you are – you’d not leave your poor, unwell dad to fend for himself.’

  ‘The hardest part though,’ said Brenda, ‘was getting you back here in the first place. We had to be so patient, Neve. We watched, looked closer at your life. I’ve even been to your café a few times.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Then we found out Oliver had left you,’ Michael continued.

  Hearing his name snapped me from the foggy sea I was trying to swim through. It was impossible to process what they were saying, about me, about my dad and being back here. Now they spoke of Oliver. Of someone who none of them knew. I looked at Michael, confused.

  ‘I met your lovely fiancé three months ago. I wanted to buy a house and went to his property agency. Nice guy.’

  ‘No, I don’t believe you.’

  ‘We ended up becoming quite good chums really. We spoke of family life. He spoke of you often, and then, one day, he said you’d split.’

  ‘And then we knew… we knew if we pushed you, you’d come home,’ Georgia said.

  ‘Neve, we were there when you got drunk and the shop was broken into. That was us. We obviously had no idea the safe was open. We only wanted to trash the place, leave you feeling vulnerable enough to
want to help when Holly messaged.’

  I thought about the shadow I had seen in London outside the shop. It was one of them. I thought Holly and I connecting when we did was a coincidence. But none of this was coincidence; I saw that now.

  ‘Yes, Neve. We planned this for a very long time,’ Brenda said triumphantly, as if reading my mind.

  ‘What are you going to do to me?’

  ‘Oh, fucking hell, Neve, are you that stupid? We’re going to leave you down here with my daughter.’

  ‘You can’t do this. They will find you.’

  ‘Yes, we intend them to. Once you’re dead, we will escape from down here. We will lead them to where “he” kept us, another part of this godforsaken mine. They will find you, and they will find Chloe, and we will lay her to rest properly. And the Drifter would have vanished again. This place loves a mystery. We’ll replace one for another. And my daughter will finally get her rest.’

  ‘The media will love us for a while, but they will quickly move on to bigger stories in other places. And we will get on with our lives. One secret swapped for another.’

  ‘But who was…’

  ‘The Drifter? We don’t know. Some poor soul who looked after the mine probably.’

  ‘The man I’ve been seeing… it was you…’

  ‘Bingo. That night at your café in London, that was me,’ Michael said.

  ‘And outside your dad’s house. That one was me,’ Jamie confessed.

  ‘I was there when you went out with Holly, searching the woods,’ Georgia said, smiling menacingly.

  ‘Down the lane. Me again,’ Michael said.

  ‘Where have you all been hiding?’

  ‘I took them in,’ Brenda said.

  I thought about the last time I saw her at her window, when I knew I’d seen a person behind her. And on my first night back, after Brenda and I spoke, someone was watching from her bedroom window. It wasn’t my imagination; it wasn’t a ghost; it was them.

  ‘Now, Neve, time to get in the hole.’

  ‘No, please. Please don’t, I beg you. I’m sorry, I’ll go to the police, I’ll go to the police right now.’