by Amy Cross
The baby gurgled, clearly enjoying the attention.
“That's my girl! That's my darling little love-bug!”
Lowering her, Diana gave Rachel a kiss on the forehead before setting her back down in her pram, next to a doll. “Have you seen the weather outside? It's such a glorious day, and warm too, so I think it's absolutely perfect for our first proper trip through the grounds. Did you know that Mummy and Daddy own a big house with a huge garden? In fact, it's so huge, there are parts I've never even visited. Aren't we lucky?”
Again, the baby gurgled.
“Heading out?” Herbert asked as he wandered through with a cup of tea.
“I thought I'd show her the grounds,” Diana replied, reaching into the pram to make sure that the blankets were all in place. Even on a warm day, she was worried that Rachel might get cold. “We won't be long, but I want to take advantage of such lovely weather. It wouldn't do for the poor girl to spend all her time indoors.”
“Sorry I can't come with you,” Herbert said, stopping next to her and looking down at the baby. “I've got meetings all day. Bloody lawyers and -”
“Don't swear in front of the baby!”
“I didn't swear!”
“You said the b-word.”
“Is that swearing?” He shrugged, before taking a sip of tea. “My mistake. It's hard to keep up these days. Anyway, these dastardly lawyers insist on having yet another meeting to discuss something about the company. I swear, they must spend half their time sitting around and dreaming up fresh ways to keep themselves busy.” He took another sip. “And then they spend the other half drawing up elaborate bills for me to pay. Leeches and parasites, the lot of them.”
“We won't be long,” Diana said, kissing him on the cheek before wheeling the pram across the study, heading toward the open doors that led out onto the sun-drenched lawn. “We'll be gone just long enough for Rachel to see that she's the luckiest girl in the whole world.”
***
“Did you see it?” she cooed a short while later, turning and watching as the butterfly rose high above them and finally disappeared behind a tree. “Your first butterfly, Rachel. Did you see the colors? Weren't they glorious?”
Glancing back down into the pram, she saw that Rachel's eyes were closed.
“Having a nap, are you?” she continued, reaching down and adjusting the blankets yet again. “Well, that's alright. It's a lot to take in, isn't it? But don't worry, you're only four weeks old, and you've got your whole life ahead of you. And I promise, you're going to have a good and happy life. You'll have all the opportunities that I never had. Plenty of love, and no hardships whatsoever.”
Taking hold of the pram again, she began to push it across the lawn, heading toward the pond. After just a moment, however, she heard a rustling sound over her shoulder, and she turned to check whether somebody was following. There was no sign of anyone, however, and all she saw was the trees and – several hundred meters further away – the large manor house standing imperiously in the sun.
“Herbert?” she called out cautiously. “Margaret?”
She waited.
Nothing.
Figuring that she'd simply been mistaken, she turned and began to push the pram again, heading across the perfectly flat lawn until they reached the edge of the pond.
“Look at all the lovely fish,” she said as she parked the pram. Koi carp were swimming languidly through the water. “They're your father's pride and joy, Rachel. Well, they were until you came along. Now you're the apple of his eye. And of Mummy's eye too.” She looked back down into the pram and saw that Rachel was still snoozing. “All of this is going to be yours one day,” she added, with a hint of sadness now. “The house. The estate. The businesses. All of it.”
She hesitated, before turning as she heard another rustling sound. This time, it was as if someone had been traipsing between the trees at the edge of the forest, although she couldn't see any sign of movement and she knew that there wasn't supposed to be anyone else around. She waited, feeling just a faint flicker of concern, before telling herself that she was just being overly cautious. She'd noticed herself becoming almost paranoid over the past few weeks, constantly worrying about her daughter's safety and health, and she'd resolved privately to keep her fears a little more in check. Taking a deep breath, she looked back down at Rachel and saw that her daughter was still fast asleep.
“Wait right here,” she said, before stepping past the pram and heading over to one of the flower beds. “Mummy's going to show you something really beautiful. How does that sound?”
Reaching the flower bed, she crouched down and began to pick a few daisies. She was humming to herself now, and all the troubles of the difficult pregnancy and birth seemed to be fading into the past. She'd struggled for a while, having initially felt overwhelmed first by the prospect and then by the reality of motherhood, but now she was settling into a routine. She spent several minutes choosing just the right daisies, before getting back to her feet and heading toward the pram.
“Now -”
And then she froze, as she saw that the pram was gone.
“Rachel?”
Dropping the flowers, she hurried to the spot where the pram had been standing and looked around, but it was as if the entire thing had disappeared into thin air. She looked toward the house, but there was no sign of anyone on the lawn, and then she looked past the pond and over toward the wall. Then, finally, she turned toward the forest.
“Herbert?” she called out, trying not to panic even though her heart was pounding. “Herbert, are you here? Did you come down and...”
Her voice trailed off, and she quickly ran over toward the tree-line. There was still no sign of the pram, and the forest appeared to be just as empty as the lawn.
“Rachel?” she shouted, hoping desperately that she might hear a cry in response. She glanced over her shoulder, making sure that there was definitely no sign of the pram anywhere else, and then she began to hurry between the trees, desperately hoping that perhaps the pram had simply rolled away. “Rachel! Where are you?”
Stopping again, she took another look around, but all she saw were tall trees rising up toward the sky. She was still trying to tell herself that everything would be okay, that the pram had simply wobbled down a slight incline and disappeared behind one of the trees. At the same time, she could feel a sense of panic rising through her chest and finally she realized she could no longer hold back.
It was time to panic.
“Rachel!” she screamed, scrambling between the trees as she continued to search for the pram. “Rachel, where are you? Herbert! Help, I can't find Rachel!”
Once she reached the white wall at the far end of the forest, still with no sign of the pram, she turned and hurried out between two of the trees and began to race across the lawn, trying to get back to the house so she could fetch her husband. And then, stopping suddenly, she realized that by some miracle she could hear a baby crying nearby. She looked around, trying to find the source, and finally she spotted a hint of movement in the distance. To her horror she realized she could see a figure running with the pram, pushing it away from the house and heading toward another stretch of the white wall that separated the family's land from a nearby farm.
“Stop!” she shouted, rushing after the distant figure. “Bring her back! Stop!”
She almost slipped and fell, but she managed to keep going and eventually she ran past the corner of the house and set off after the figure and the pram. The land dipped down, forcing her to lose sight of the figure for a moment, and then she scrambled up a narrow incline before finally spotting the pram again. This time, to her relief, she saw that the figure was gone, and that the pram had simply been abandoned on the grass just a few meters from the wooden fence.
“Rachel!”
Running over to the pram, she felt an immense sense of relief as soon as she looked inside and saw Rachel wriggling in the blankets, seemingly completely undisturbed. Reaching down,
she pulled the baby out and held her tight, while turning and looking all around. There was no sign of an intruder now, but she knew that someone had pushed the pram a couple of hundred meters from where it had been left by the pond. Someone had tried to steal Rachel away.
“It's okay,” she said, as she turned and carried her screaming baby back toward the house. “Mummy's got you now. Everything's going to be fine.”
Chapter Three
Today
“Everyone knows it was the parents,” Jo read out loud from the screen, as she sat cross-legged on her bed in a room above the local pub, going through comments on an online forum. “They blatantly killed the poor little girl by accident and covered it up.”
She scrolled down and took a look at the replies, most of which offered some form of agreement. A few commenters demurred, suggesting that perhaps Rachel Stone had been taken by blackmailers or that she'd been sold to traffickers, but for the most part the forum's members seemed convinced that Herbert and Diana Stone knew more than they'd admitted.
“They got away with it,” she read. “They're rich. Rich people always get away with anything. Even murder.”
“They're a bunch of rich (MOD) (MOD),” another person had written, with the more colorful language having been edited out by a moderator. “(MOD) should (MOD) be (MOD) (MOD) that little girl.”
“She probably deserved it,” another commenter had suggested. “Dumb little (MOD).”
“People can be so lovely,” Jo muttered to herself.
She paused, and a moment later the jukebox in the pub below began to belt out yet another Robbie Williams song. Sighing, she looked at the time and realized she still had three hours to go before the pub closed at 11pm. She'd been planning to get some reading done before hitting the ground running, but the music was way too loud and now she was starting to think that she'd make better use of her time by getting out of the room for a while.
Besides, she'd quite liked the song Strong when she was younger.
***
“Everyone around here remembers the Rachel Stone mess,” the landlord muttered as he set a cup of coffee on the bar. “The Stones are the biggest family in town. They own everything round here that's worth owning, and then they own half the rest too. It's almost like a soap opera, watching what goes on up at that place.”
“Not that they ever mix with the likes of us,” added a man sitting next to Jo, raising a half-finished pint of beer. “They keep themselves to themselves, that lot. They reckon they're too good to mingle with us hoi-polloi.”
“So you never see any of them in here?” Jo asked.
The landlord chuckled. “The day I see one of the Stones coming into my pub is the day I get my eyes checked. They've got their big house up there, and their big garden, and their big wall with fancy security features. They don't want anything to do with us, and frankly we don't want anything to do with them. One of them used to drop by occasionally, the sister, but even she stopped when all the drama happened. Good riddance, if you ask me.”
With that, he turned to serve another customer, leaving Jo to look down at her coffee for a moment. After just a few seconds, however, she realized she was being watched, and she turned to see that the man next to her was eyeing her with a hint of amused curiosity.
“Are you one of them?” he asked finally.
“One of who?”
“You know.”
“I...” Her voice trailed off for a moment. “I'm really not sure what you mean.”
“You can tell me,” he continued, getting to his feet and briefly shuffling his stool closer before settling next to her again. “I heard there was a reporter in town, poking about and asking questions again. It's you, isn't it?”
“I'm not a reporter.”
“Tom,” he said, holding a hand out toward her. “I've lived round these parts my whole life.”
They shook hands. “Jo Mason.”
“Sure you're not a reporter.” He tapped the side of his nose and offer a conspiratorial nod, before glancing around again and then leaning even closer. “Why else would you be here? You people pay for stories, don't you?”
“I'm really not a reporter,” she told him again, although she held back from admitting that she'd been hired as a private detective.
“So if I knew something about the Stones, something juicy, you wouldn't be up for slipping me fifty quid?”
“I'm really not a -”
She caught herself just in time. The old man stank of booze and tobacco, and all things considered he didn't strike her as being a particularly useful source. At the same time, she was struggling to see how she could start her investigation if she couldn't go to the manor house and meet Rachel, and she figured a little local color might help. Reaching into her pocket, she took out a £50 note that she told herself she could write off as an expense.
“How about sixty?” he asked.
She set the note on the table, and after a moment he took the money and slipped it into his breast pocket.
“Diana Stone murdered that little girl,” he continued authoritatively, leaning closer. “You might not hear many people saying it, but I'm telling you the truth. That woman was always trouble. I used to know someone who did some cleaning up at the manor house, before everything got so closed off, and she told me Diana Stone wasn't right in the head.” He tapped one side of his forehead. “She wasn't right before she gave birth to little Rachel, and she definitely wasn't right after. They had a load of doctors up there to check her out, but nothing ever got done about it. And then after the baby arrived, she went completely round the twist.”
“She had mental health problems?”
“Whatever you want to call it. The rest of the family got worried, too, but they didn't do anything. And then suddenly that little baby went missing. I mean, it doesn't take a genius to put two and two together, does it?” Sniffing, he took another sip of beer. “Mark my words. It was the mother who did it, and that's why you still hear the poor little girl crying some nights. I mean, of course she hasn't been able to leave this mortal realm, has she? Not when she was killed by her own mother.”
“I'm sorry?” Jo replied. “Who's been heard crying?”
“Who do you think? Rachel Stone.”
She raised a skeptical eyebrow.
He nodded. “Ask anyone around here. Half of them'll deny it, of course, 'cause they're superstitious. But the other half'll tell you right to your face. Anyone who goes past that house late at night hears the same thing, coming from just the other side of that big white wall.” He leaned closer. “The ghost of little baby Rachel still cries every night. If you ask me, a brave soul should follow the cry some time. I reckon they'd find a set of bones if they dug deep enough.”
“You think Rachel died and her ghost haunts the grounds of the house?”
“It's not just me! Everyone thinks it!”
He turned to another, older man who was sitting at the far end of the bar and keeping his own company.
“Hey Baz! You've heard it, haven't you?”
The other man glanced at them, but his dour expression suggested he was in no mood to join the conversation.
“Tell this young woman!” the first man continued. “You were cycling past one night and you heard the ghost of Rachel Stone, as clear as you can hear me now! It was just last week, wasn't it?”
“Ah, go away,” the other man muttered, sticking a finger up before looking back down at his pint.
“That's Baz,” the first man said, turning back to Jo. “He doesn't like talking about what he heard, but that doesn't mean he didn't hear it. A lot of people are like that around here. They reckon that if they don't talk about it, it didn't really happen. But none of them'll ever cycle past that house at night again.”
“Because of a ghost baby?”
“Because of...”
He paused, before shaking his head and looking back down at his pint.
“Sometimes when you don't understand something,” he muttered
finally, “it's best not to go poking about. Sometimes it's best to just accept you don't understand, and steer clear. It's not like we need to understand, not down here. After all, none of us is ever gonna get invited through the gate of that place.”
“So that's your juicy £50 tip?” Jo replied, starting to feel as if she'd been shaken down. “You think Rachel Stone was murdered by her mother, but you've got nothing to back it up? And you also think she's haunting the place?”
“Go out there tonight,” he replied, checking his watch. “Wait 'til midnight, or near enough, and then you'll hear that poor girl crying in the dark. I don't know how the Stones can still live at that house, not with what they must hear night after night. And they all know it was Diana who killed the girl. If you ask me, the guilt must've been eating away at them for years, and now they don't dare leave. Besides, they probably buried the poor little bugger up there somewhere. If they leave the house, there's a risk she'll be dug up. So they're trapped, listening to her cries night after night. I reckon that'd be enough to drive anyone to drink. Don't you?”
With that, he took a long, deep sip of beer.
“I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as ghosts,” Jo pointed out, glancing toward the window and seeing the branches of a bush blowing in a light breeze, silhouetted against the moon. “If there were, we'd all be haunted, every moment of our lives.”
Chapter Four
15 years ago
The slap was hard, harder than he'd intended, but it shut Diana up immediately and caused her to pull back in shock.
“I'm sorry,” Herbert stammered, shocked by his own reaction, “but you were getting hysterical.”
Looking down at his pale, trembling hand, he realized there had been a time when he'd sworn to never hit a woman. That time was now gone.
“I'm telling you what happened!” Diana hissed, with dried tears on her cheeks and fresh tears already rolling down across their tracks. “The pram was taken and I saw someone pushing it toward the fence, and then I ran after them and they must have given up and fled, but someone tried to kidnap Rachel!”