Stranger in the Woods: A tense psychological thriller

by Anni Taylor

  “What? Oh, Lucy, my goodness, that’s harsh.”

  “She apparently popped out to grab something for dinner and then lost control of the car. The car crash put her into labour. She came in by ambulance. She was quite confused, apparently.”

  “How terrible. That explains the nasty bump on her head.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “Oh God. So, this means, when the mother was in labour—after the crash—that’s when Elodie was abducted?”

  “As far as I know.”

  Elodie strained to hear more. What did abducted mean? Mum hadn’t said she was in a car crash. All of it explained why she hadn’t come back to make dinner. Elodie remembered how she’d wanted to get the house warm for Mum before she returned. To make Mum happy. She remembered going out to the wood shed—

  “Is the baby okay?” was the next thing Elodie heard the other nurse say.

  “Yes, thank goodness,” said Nurse Lucy. “She’s four weeks early, but she’s doing well.”

  “That’s a big relief. Does Elodie have anyone to sit with her? I mean, the mother is going to be kept busy with a new baby to care for.”

  “The father was just here, but he stormed off to look for a doctor, all angry and cursing.”

  “I hate it when they do that.”

  Nurse Lucy sighed. “Yep. I told him the doctor wouldn’t be long. Och, but I can’t blame him being anxious, considering the circumstances. I’d be out of my mind with worry, too. I’ll give him a pass.”

  “You’re a good nurse, Lucy.”

  “I try my best. Just like you, Ally.”

  They moved closer again to Elodie, continuing to check on her, touching things and moving them about. They spoke louder now, and they spoke to her, telling her what they were doing and that she was going to be okay.

  For a moment, Elodie could see shadows flickering through her eyelids and she thought she could almost see the nurses’ faces. But then her world went completely dark again.

  19

  ISLA

  When I woke at first light, Elodie was on my mind.

  The ghost of Elodie had been silently threading through my time here at Braithnoch from the moment I’d first arrived. She was everywhere, in the McGregor’s house, in the wood, on the moor and even inside this cottage. I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about the little girl who once lived here.

  I made my mind up. I was going to go to Elodie’s school and talk to Rory about her. I’d do a full morning of work on the portfolio and then head to the school.

  A nervous feeling uncoiled in my stomach. I had no business doing this. But something not entirely rational had taken over me. The path the abductor had taken from the forest kept drawing and redrawing itself in my head. I had to know more about what happened to Elodie and why Alban was keeping that painting on his wall.

  I ate a bowl of warm porridge, trying to relax and settle my nerves.

  Through the kitchen window, the sky behind the McGregor house looked clear and unusually bright. It’d be a great morning to do a photo shoot in the house’s interior, as it would be filled with light. The last thing I wanted to do was to deal with Jessica today, after what I’d overheard her telling Alban about me last night. But I had a job to do.

  Gulping the remainder of my porridge, I packed up my camera and lenses and then headed along the seven stepping stones to the driveway, and then onto the house.

  Jessica was bleary-eyed and still in her pyjamas as she answered the door to me. “Isla, so sorry, I was upstairs.”

  I patted my camera bag. “The light is great for an interior shoot this morning. Would it be all right if I—?”

  She shook her head before I’d had a chance to finish my sentence. “It’s not a good time. Rhiannon had a bad night. Nightmares about tattie bogles.”

  “Oh no. Poor little girl.”

  “She’s quite delicate. It was a shit of a thing to happen.” She eyed me coolly.

  Was she partly blaming me for the scarecrow hanging?

  “Yes, it was a terrible thing,” I replied. “Have the police found out anything more?”

  “Nope. Here’s hoping that Trent will be well enough to talk to the police soon and he can tell them what exactly went on that night.”

  “Definitely. Are you sure I can’t take just a few photos? I’m starting to realise that sunny days are not the usual here. And even the sun on sunny days doesn’t seem to last.”

  “The house is upside-down. I haven’t had a chance to clean up properly after going away. I’m afraid I’m very tired and so is Rhiannon. Neither of us got a good night’s sleep.”

  I’d never seen the house anywhere near approaching upside-down and I doubted it was in that state now. Jessica was obsessive about cleaning.

  “Oh, no problem. Hope you both manage to take a nap.”

  She flashed a quick, exhausted smile. “That would be lovely. Rhi’s not good with napping—she’s hit the terrible two’s and has decided that she’s too big for naps.”

  I was about to step away when my gaze fell to a fresh bruise on Jessica’s wrist, easy to see due to the loose sleeve of her top.

  Noticing where I was looking, she tugged her pyjama sleeve down to cover it.

  “Did you hurt yourself?” I couldn’t just walk away and say nothing. Not now that I’d seen the bruise.

  She puffed up her cheeks and exhaled in a short laugh. “Yes, stupid me. I don’t even know how I did that one.”

  “That one?” I said, startled. She’d just admitted to having more. Taking a breath, I told her what was on my mind. “Forgive me for saying this, but if someone’s hurting you, you don’t have to put up with it.”

  Shock registered on her face. “What? Oh, it’s nothing like that,” she gasped. “Gosh, no. Really. I’m a klutz. Always knocking myself about.”

  “Well, take good care, okay?” With a warm smile, I left without giving her a chance to protest further. I knew that a wall had been put up and it was pointless trying to press any harder. I didn’t believe what she’d said for a second. At least I’d said what I wanted to say. Maybe sometime, even months from now, she’d remember that someone told her she shouldn’t stay silent about this.

  She closed the door quickly as I stepped away.

  I wandered about the property, finding the best angles to take pictures of the house. The glass and smoked larch cladding looked incredible under the morning sun, a crystalline sheen on the windows. I was almost glad Jessica had sent me away. These pictures were going to be stunning. It was only when I checked the viewfinder that I noticed Rhiannon at her upstairs bedroom window, fingers against the glass. It wasn’t my intention to have a child in these photographs, but I guessed a homely touch suited this particular portfolio.

  A short distance away from Rhiannon’s bedroom was a room where the blinds were permanently halfway between open and closed—Elodie’s bedroom. She must have looked out on Braithnoch from up there just like Rhiannon, except her view was of the forest.

  I noticed another figure up there at one of the windows then. Jessica. She resented me being here. Maybe I understood why. If she hated Braithnoch, then she’d hate the person who was photographing it and trying to show it at its best.

  Happy with my pictures of the house, I uploaded them to my online storage and then started the walk up to the hills. I could take sweeping shots of the property from up there.

  I ended up spending a couple of hours in the hills. Venturing across to the rocky side of the hills to the left, I walked up close to the ruins of the stone house I’d seen before. This must be what Alban had been talking about—the original stone cottage that his ancestors had built.

  I began snapping some photos.

  An hour later I was done. The photos I’d taken this morning were going to look incredibly beautiful, sunrise glowing on the house and lush green land.

  I tidied myself up back at the cottage and then set out on the bike. I’d have lunch in town before picking up the rest of my pre
scription medicine—it should be ready by now. It worried me being without my full round of medication. After that, I’d head to the school.

  During my ride into town, I found myself stopping repeatedly to take photos. It really was a pretty day.

  Sitting in a café in Greenmire, I watched the residents pass by, while I indulged in a long and leisurely lunch. I had lots of time to kill before the day at the local school was done. At two-thirty, I picked up my prescription from the chemist and hopped back on my bike.

  The school was located next to a wide river that was fringed by willows and nestled between rolling green hills. I headed along the path that led to the school gates, trying to still my nerves and rehearsing in my head what I’d say to Rory.

  The bell rang at a quarter past three. It was an actual school bell, not a loud buzzer or a snatch of music. I didn’t think I’d even heard one of those before, except in a church.

  Streams of kids emerged from the school gates. Threading through the crowd, I stepped inside the school, stopping to ask an older child where Mr Kavanagh’s classroom was. The boy pointed to the right, telling me it was the second-last room, right next to a willow tree.

  Be bold, I told myself. The worst that can happen is that you sound like a bit of an idiot.

  I poked my head inside the classroom and immediately spotted Rory. Windblown hair framed his long face, thick glasses perched on his nose. He wore skinny jeans and orange shoes. I was reminded of Hamish’s description of him—like Einstein crossed with a hipster. It was fairly accurate. A chatty mother had Rory’s attention, holding tight to her chubby toddler-son’s hand. A bored looking boy of about eight sat on a chair, swinging his legs. I slunk back a little, intending to wait my turn, but Rory noticed me.

  A frown flickered between his eyebrows. “Just a moment,” he told the mother. “Isla, isn’t it? Are you here to see me?”

  “Yes. It’s not anything urgent.” I smiled self-consciously as the woman turned and inspected me with curious eyes.

  “Oh, I’m done here,” said the woman. “I’m glad to hear my Lyall is doing better with his literacy. He’s a lot like his father. I don’t think that man has so much as read a set of Ikea instructions in his life, let alone a book.” She nodded at the teacher as she laughed, as if prompting him to laugh along with her.

  Rory did laugh, and to his credit it sounded natural. “It would be a boring old world if everyone was the same.”

  He ended their conversation with a promise to push Lyall a little harder to get his work done. The boy on the chair—Lyall, I assumed—didn’t seem pleased with that. The woman hung around in the classroom as Rory motioned for me to come and sit on a chair near his desk.

  “Was there anything, else, Flora?” Rory asked the woman.

  She gave a small, sheepish smile. “No, I guess not. Come on then, Lyall, we’d better go, or Mr Kavanagh will set you some work to do.”

  A confused Lyall jumped up and fled the classroom, his mother following.

  “It’s a small town,” Rory told me once they were out of earshot. “There’ll always be a few who are looking for morsels of gossip. Flora Penwright is unfortunately one of them. Nice lady, but you have to be careful what you tell her. I’ve learned that the hard way.” He puffed up his cheeks and exhaled. “Now, what can I do for you?”

  I noticed that the Scottish had a way of ending a sentence on an upward inflection that sounded honest and casual, while their eyes might tell a different story. I guessed that he knew I wasn’t here to chat about the weather.

  “It’s really nothing important,” I started. “I’m just…curious. I just wanted to ask you a couple of things. About Elodie.”

  His expression barely changed, but his fingers curled around the pen that he held. “Oh yes?”

  I’d already decided not to ask about Alban first up. That was going to be a difficult subject to broach. I stuck to the script I’d rehearsed in my head.

  “I’m meant to be doing a perspective on the McGregor family,” I started, “for the photography portfolio. And that naturally includes Elodie. I’d like to put something of her in the portfolio. To that end, I’d like to know more about her. Who she was and all of that.”

  “I think the best source for that might be her parents,” he said carefully.

  “I did try asking Alban, but the subject of Elodie seems just too raw for him. And Jessica hasn’t been well, so I don’t want to bother her with this.”

  “Jessica’s unwell?”

  “She’s not sick, exactly. I guess it’s stress. Which is understandable, after all she’s been through.”

  “Yes, of course. Okay, well, Elodie was a lovely girl. A great sense of humour. Very serious at times, but deep thinkers tend to be. She’d argue a point if she thought she was right. She wasn’t at the top of her class, academically, but she was one of the most curious and eager to learn students I’ve ever had the pleasure to teach.” He paused. “She wasn’t perfect. There was an incident in which she pushed another child. We never did get to the bottom of that one, as Elodie unfortunately died the week after.”

  “You have no idea why she pushed the other child?”

  “These things happen all the time amongst kids. It was a good friend of hers, actually, so it was probably just some wee tiff between pals. I was just trying to give you a well-rounded view. People tend to put the dead on a pedestal and I think it does them a disservice. Elodie was a living, breathing little girl. She was real. Anyway, it was also true of Elodie that she’d be the first to stand up for the kids who were getting picked on.”

  “Oh. Of course, kids do fight. But I wonder, did Elodie seem unhappy at all in those last weeks?”

  His fingers uncurled and curled again on the pen. “You’re asking some very specific questions, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  I felt my chest tighten. “It’s just that, after you left the other day, I started wondering if there wasn’t something more to you wanting to see Elodie’s paintings.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I steeled myself. “Rory, you don’t go to all that trouble of going up to a former student’s bedroom to check their paintings just because. You had a strong reason.”

  He exhaled, considering my words. “If you think I had some kind of bad intent, let me assure you that I didn’t.”

  “No, I don’t think that. I’m just curious, that’s all.”

  “Well, I’m afraid I can’t tell you too much. I did notice something a little odd about Elodie’s drawings at school, and it made me wonder if she drew the same way at home. I knew she was pretty prolific with her art.”

  “What was unusual about her pictures?”

  “Nothing extreme. And I’m no children’s art expert. But I’ve noticed that kids tend to draw themselves larger than life. Which stands to reason—they do play the starring role in their own lives, after all. But in Elodie’s pictures, she tended to draw herself smaller than everyone else, even smaller than much younger children. And she was not really ever doing anything. She’d draw other people having fun—playing, throwing balls, swimming—but not Elodie herself. She drew herself with her arms by her side.”

  “Okay. And the pictures in her room were the same?”

  “Yes, they were. At least, the ones that had her in them at all. She often left herself out. Which is another unusual thing. If kids are drawing a group of their friends or family, they usually draw themselves front and centre.”

  “So, it was like she was invisible?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Did you draw any conclusions—from her drawings?”

  “As I mentioned, I don’t pretend to be an expert. I’m just a teacher. It did seem to me though that she was trying to erase herself. She’d become increasingly quieter in class and things like that as well.”

  “That sounds really sad.”

  He nodded, exhaling.

  I drew my mouth in, nibbling on my gum and trying to figure out how to say what I wanted to ask h
im next. I’d been surprised by how open he’d been so far, and I didn’t want to say anything to make him close up. “You still have an interest in finding out about Elodie… don’t you? I mean, even though she’s gone now?”

  He hesitated. In the silence, I felt as if I were falling down a rabbit hole.

  “Yes, I admit that the whole thing has haunted me,” he said finally. “I still want answers.”

  Taking a breath, I clasped my hands together firmly. “Can I ask if you think Elodie’s pictures have any connection to her abduction?”

  His fist closed on the pen. “I’m not putting together those kinds of conclusions.”

  “Okay, but is it true that you have put some thoughts together on the abduction?”

  He blinked at me, then sighed under his breath and glanced away. “Okay, yes, a part of me has wondered if her art has anything to do with what happened to her. I mean, the jury is still out as to whether the guy was passing by the town or whether he’s a local. If he’s a local, would she have had an interaction or two with this person before—something that had a terrible effect on her? That’s what plays on my mind.”

  “I appreciate your honesty, Rory. Did you ever talk to the McGregors or go to the police with your concerns?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. The police took an interest at first. They were looking for any possible leads, any clues, as you can imagine. And I told them my thoughts on her paintings. They came here to the school to talk with me and see her work, and as far as I understand, they did go to the McGregor house to take a look at her work there. But nothing came of it.” Letting the pen drop, he rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Alban was angry with me after that. Told me to stay away from his family.”

  “Wow, that’s odd,” I said, even though I’d already guessed as much. “Did you know what made Alban so mad?”

  He shrugged. “Eh, I don’t know. Perhaps because I spoke to the police rather than Alban himself. He’s very protective of his family.” He eyed me with a direct gaze. “Perhaps we’re better to leave this discussion here. It’s starting to veer off track.”