The Vale Girl

by Nelika McDonald

  ‘Let me in!’ he called, thumping on the glass, and Sarah ran to the window and opened it. He slid through it and jumped down to the floor.

  ‘What are you doing here? Are you okay? I can’t believe you’re here! When did you get here? How long have you been down here? I’ve been looking for you!’ The words rushed out of Tommy in a jumbled mess and he couldn’t stop staring at her. His hands flew out and grabbed her by the arms, her solid, actual arms and he squeezed them so hard she yelped.

  ‘I’m okay, I’m fine, I –’

  ‘Did he make you stay down here? Did he take you from the creek? I knew it, Sarah, I knew it. I should’ve come earlier, I’m sorry, I should’ve been there then, I would’ve –’

  ‘No, look, I’m fine,’ she said, and she glanced towards Graham, her lower lip clamped in her teeth.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Graham said. ‘It’s okay. If someone had to find you, I’m glad it was Tommy. He wants what’s best for you. He’ll understand. But he has to go now.’

  ‘What?’ Tommy looked from one to the other. Why was Graham talking about him as though he wasn’t there? What was going on here? He moved towards Graham. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘Tommy, you have to let me explain,’ Sarah said, but Tommy was distracted, he could actually smell her, oh God, her smell . . . What did she just say?

  ‘There’ll be time for that later,’ Graham said, and he put his hand on Tommy’s shoulder. ‘Son, you have to go, you can’t be here right now.’

  Tommy dragged his eyes away from Sarah and shoved Graham’s hand off. ‘Don’t touch me, you creep.’

  ‘But you have to go.’ Graham’s voice was getting louder now. His face was red and he was twitchy and tense, pacing in a tight circle and casting frequent glances at the staircase behind him.

  ‘Graham, it’s okay. Calm down,’ Sarah said, and Tommy stared at her. She put her hand on Graham’s arm and murmured soothing things to him, looking concerned. Tommy frowned. What the hell? She was acting as though she was worried about Graham. Why would she give a shit about him at all? She must have started losing her marbles. Oh God. Maybe she had started losing her marbles. He’d heard about this, Stockholm syndrome, when kidnappers messed with your mind so much that you started feeling sorry for them. Is that what was going on? It had to be. Graham was a psychopath of the highest order if he could manipulate Sarah like that. She wasn’t exactly an easy mark. Maybe he’d had practice, maybe he’d kidnapped other girls before. Well, his game was up now. Tommy squared his shoulders and gritted his teeth. He was getting Sarah out of there, and then he was going straight to Sergeant Henson. Graham would never see the light of day again, once Henson got his hands on him. Tommy regarded Graham through narrowed eyes. The same strange calm that had come over him when he fought with Cameron in the toilets had returned. The calm of having nothing left to lose. He took a step closer.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere without Sarah.’

  ‘Tommy,’ he heard Sarah say, and he turned to her and smiled.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘I’m here now. And we’re going.’ He allowed himself a few seconds just to drink her in again, the whole beautiful aliveness of her, before turning back to Graham.

  ‘I said, we’re going. You’re in my way.’

  ‘No.’

  Behind Graham, Tommy could see into a smaller room, through the door he had thought was a storage closet. What was that, some kind of dungeon? There was a bed and a pile of books, some clothes strewn on the ground. That was where she had been all week, trapped in that cage. Like a dog.

  ‘I can’t just let you take Sarah away. She can’t leave, I won’t let her.’ Graham sounded so matter-of-fact it made Tommy furious. How dare he think he had the right to say that! Did he think he was her protector or something? The man had a screw loose, just like people had always said. He was the one that Sarah needed to be rescued from.

  ‘You won’t let her?’ Tommy could not keep his voice in check. Graham shook his head, and reached around into his back pocket. Oh shit, what was he doing? Was he going for a gun?

  ‘Keep your hands where I can see them,’ Tommy shouted. That was better, that sounded like he was in control now, like a cop in a movie. Graham held his hands out in front of him, but he started moving, his eyes on Tommy, coming closer and closer to him.

  ‘Stop this! Both of you, stop it.’ Behind them, Sarah had slid to the floor and started to cry, ragged, exhausted-sounding sobs. Tommy swallowed hard, wanting with every particle of his being to go to her. But he couldn’t, because Graham was still coming towards him and not stopping. He had backed Tommy up against the wall in the corner next to the workbench, and he blocked the only path out of there.

  ‘I just want to tell you something,’ he said, and Tommy almost laughed.

  ‘I’m not falling for that, you sick bastard. Get back, now!’

  But he didn’t and then there was only a small space between them and Graham was pulling something out of his pocket again so Tommy pushed him as hard as he could and there was a sound, a bad sound, bone on timber, and then Graham was on the floor clutching his head, and Sarah was screaming.

  ‘Oh God,’ she said, and crawled over to Graham, pushing her fingers through his hair. ‘Are you hurt? Where are you hurt?’

  Graham said something unintelligible. His eyes were pinched shut and his face racked with pain.

  ‘What did you do?’ She turned to Tommy, who stared at her dumbly, his eyes on the figure on the ground.

  ‘He fell.’

  ‘You pushed him! I think he hit his head on the corner of the bench,’ Sarah said. ‘Oh God, Tommy. What did you do that for?’

  ‘I thought . . .’

  Graham moaned and his head rolled in Sarah’s hands. She murmured something to him and squeezed his hand and all of a sudden, Tommy wanted to cry. Something was terribly wrong here. Why wasn’t she grateful? Why wasn’t she thanking him? Why weren’t they leaving Graham Knight on the floor of his basement while they got out of that place and away from him as fast as they possibly could?

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said, but Sarah didn’t look up.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asked Graham, and he smiled up at her, reaching out to pat her forearm.

  ‘Just a bit of friendly fire,’ he said.

  His voice was so quiet that Tommy could hardly hear him. ‘What?’

  ‘He means you’re on the same side.’ Sarah rubbed her eyes. ‘Tommy, Graham hasn’t hurt me – he rescued me.’

  Tommy opened his mouth but no sound came out. His throat was dry and scratchy, and his head spun like a weathervane in a westerly. He looked from Graham to Sarah and back again. Was Sarah joking? She didn’t look like she was joking.

  ‘Why would he do that?’ Tommy asked her. ‘Why would he rescue you?’

  On the floor, Graham’s hand opened. A handkerchief was scrunched in his palm. That was what he had been reaching for in his back pocket. Tommy watched as he tried to aim it at his nose.

  ‘Stay still,’ Sarah commanded him, and he smiled a little, dropped the hanky and held his hand in front of his eyes, waggling his fingers and squinting. ‘Very pretty,’ he murmured, and Sarah closed hers eyes and covered her face with her hands.

  ‘Fuck. Fuck. I think he’s concussed. He needs to see a doctor. We need to call an ambulance.’

  Tommy looked at Graham, who was now closing one eye, then the next, experimentally.

  ‘Porridge,’ he said, an answer to a question nobody had asked. ‘Man down.’

  Tommy nodded. ‘So . . .’

  ‘It’s all over,’ Sarah said, and her eyes were as desolate as a vacant lot.

  chapter forty-six

  In the waiting room at Banville General Hospital, Sergeant Henson, Gertie, Tommy and my mother sat alongside me in a row on brown plastic chairs, watching Sale of the Century on the small television bolted into the corner of the ceiling.

  ‘In which French city would you find the Notre Dame?’

>   ‘Paris.’

  ‘Correct. Which vowel is not contained in the world salutation?’

  ‘E!’

  In a room just down the corridor, Graham was being seen by the doctor. He had tried to insist that FOD (foreign object damage) didn’t justify an ambulance, but I’d put my foot down. The nurse had told us that he’d be perfectly fine, but it was standard for patients admitted with head injuries to stay for a few hours for monitoring.

  Gertie had brought along some roast chicken and vegetables in a casserole dish wrapped in foil, but nobody ate it. She kept trying to offer bits of the food to Tommy, but he refused, his face drawn and waxy white. Sergeant Henson kept a loose arm over his shoulders.

  We hadn’t talked much.

  My mother had not let go of me since she came into the waiting room. At the moment she had one hand clutching my wrist in her lap and the other resting on my back, drawing circles, triangles, then squares. Tommy wouldn’t even look at me. I knew they were all waiting for me to tell them what had happened, but I didn’t know where to start. My own head was aching from trying to make sense of everything that had just happened and I was worried they were all angry at me. It made the words clog up in my throat. I felt as if I’d set a bomb off that day at the creek and the pieces of it had sprayed through the air like confetti, leaving everyone around me with shrapnel wounds. I was the nucleus of all the damage and destruction, the trail of ill effects had been set in motion by me. They were right to be angry. All of this was my fault. And now I was going to be arrested.

  On the other side of Tommy, Sergeant Henson was staring at the television screen, feigning absorption, but his knee jiggled up and down in impatience. Gertie reached out and laid a hand on his thigh, and he stopped. She smiled at me. And I thought, well, maybe she isn’t angry. I could just speak to her. I’ll pretend the others aren’t here, and I’ll tell Gertie what happened. So I did.

  ‘Sarah.’

  I was in the water when I heard my name. I turned around and Cameron Wolfe was standing on the bank, alone. There was no entourage with him, no cheerleaders, he hadn’t brought his bag or anything else, and he was smiling at me, a thin, terrible smile. I knew something awful would happen as soon as I saw him smiling like that. It felt inevitable, like it had already been decided: This was where it ended.

  ‘Fuck off,’ I said, and he laughed.

  I looked around me, but it was pointless. I knew there was nobody else around; that was why I came here. Cameron’s eyes moved down my body and I ducked under the water. His smile faded. He walked across the bank to the tree where I had put my clothes, and pulled my school dress off the branch. He held it out in front of him, dangling it from a crooked finger.

  ‘Marjorie saw you leave school,’ he said, friendly and conversational, swinging the dress back and forth. ‘She saw you and she came and told me. So I followed you.’

  On the tips of my ears, an army of tiny hairs stood to attention. ‘What do you want, a medal?’

  He laughed again, a big hard laugh. He twisted my dress up like a rope, and ran it through one cupped hand and then the other. Again. On the bank behind him there was a flurry of movement, a flash of the dog hurtling through the bush and the shiver of leaves in his wake.

  ‘That’s not what I want,’ he said. Someone poured cement down my throat.

  ‘I said, fuck off.’ It came out high and broken. Cameron laughed again. He crushed my school dress into a ball and threw it into the water. It unfurled and landed a few metres away from me, so I started to wade towards it. Shadows blossomed and shrank on the surface of the water.

  ‘Stop,’ he said.

  I didn’t, so he bent down to pick up my shoes, and threw one in an arc over my head. It landed in the water with a plop. He held the other one out towards me.

  ‘You want this? Come and get it.’

  I didn’t move. Goosebumps rose on the back of my neck. The dress began to float away. Cameron was still smiling, shaking my shoe at me and walking backwards along the bank. I shook my head, and he shook his back, mocking me.

  ‘Come and get it, Sarah, or I’ll come in there and get you.’

  I started to cry then. I was trying so hard not to but I couldn’t help it. Now that he’d actually said it, no part of me could pretend he was here for any other reason. The more I tried to stop crying, the faster the tears came, my chest was heaving as I gulped air, but with each breath I took my throat closed over a little more.

  ‘No,’ I whispered, and he threw the second shoe into the water.

  ‘Okay.’ He started unbuttoning his shirt and my chest caved in.

  ‘No! I’m coming,’ I said, and began to make my way through the water. I thought that if I did what he wanted, maybe he’d be nicer to me. And I thought if I made it onto that bank, then I could just run. Catch the tail of the wind and get out of there. But I’d underestimated him. He was never going to be nicer to me, there was no nicer, and he was never going to let me get away. I didn’t even look at him as I came out of the water, just started running as soon as my feet hit ground, but he was waiting for it and grabbed my arm and twisted me back to him, punching me in the cheek and pushing me down to the dirt. Pain ballooned in my skull.

  ‘That was stupid,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘Stupid Sarah.’

  He held me down, pinning my shoulders to the ground, and forced his knee between my thighs.

  ‘Are you going to stay still?’ he asked, and I nodded mutely and closed my eyes as my fingers roamed over the dirt of the creek bank, looking for something, a rock or stick to hit him with, but finding only dirt and leaves. He let go of my shoulders and I started to plead with him.

  ‘Please don’t do this, please just leave me alone. You can get up now and just walk away, I won’t tell anyone, I promise, I won’t ever tell anyone, please –’

  ‘Shut up, Sarah. And stay still.’

  ‘No, no, please, it’s not too late for you to stop, it’s not too late.’ I was wriggling underneath him, shifting my hips centimetre by centimetre so my fingers could find new ground, still scrabbling with my nails, ripping in the dirt, and then closing over something. A stick, but it wasn’t moving. I turned my head and saw a tree dipped over the water as though it was drinking from it, its roots protruding where the bank of the creek had eroded. That’s what I held, a root, but there were low branches too, I just had to grab one. Cameron’s breath was hot and heavy on me now, I snatched at the tree and he felt the movement underneath him and punched me again. The hurt of it spilt across my face and crowded into my cheekbone, my head throbbed and a demolition ball swung into the back of my eyeball. A tooth fell onto my tongue, and I put my hand to my mouth. My fingers came away red, but I didn’t want him to know he’d hurt me, so I let my hand fall back onto the dirt and wiped them against the tree.

  ‘You could make this easier for yourself,’ Cameron said, panting, ‘if you do as I say.’

  The blood in my mouth tasted metallic, elemental, and I thought of a rhyme all the kids used to say whenever we saw Sergeant Aramore.

  What-is the col-our of a two-cent-coin?

  Cop-per, cop-per!

  Just a few more centimetres. One last try. And there it was.

  In my fist, a broken branch the thickness of my thumb.

  Cameron’s hands slid down my torso, and in my head I thought only: I need to stop him. There was nothing else, it was as simple as that. I had to stop him now, and if I didn’t it would very soon be too late. I looked down at my hand and it was moving already, like it wasn’t even part of me, then I closed my eyes and it brought the stick up and rammed it into his side. I heard a wet squelching sound and I pulled it out, hearing a scraping ripping-flesh sound, and his scream. He was moaning and gasping but he didn’t get off me, so I did it again. And maybe again. Then he did roll off me and there was blood everywhere, all over the creek bank and all over me, and him, so much blood. I didn’t pull the stick out, just let go of it and started scooting backwards, away, putting dis
tance between us, and he closed his hands around the stick and looked at me, his face bleached white, eyes wide and surprised.

  ‘Sarah, you stabbed me,’ he said.

  I turned and vomited up water at the base of a tree. When I looked back up, he was silent and not moving.

  I don’t know how much time passed then. I didn’t go near him. I couldn’t even look at him. I went to the deepest part of the creek and I just stood there, I don’t know how long for. I just stood there. I heard the dog return and, a little while later, my name again.

  ‘Sarah.’

  It was Graham Knight, on the creek bank, a lead for the dog in his hands. Well, why not, I thought. Graham shows up everywhere else.

  ‘What’s happened here?’ he asked, and I frowned at him. What has happened here? Well, what did he think? Maybe a party? A carnival or travelling circus passing through? It seemed like such a ridiculous question, but then when I went to tell him, I found that actually I did not know. I was just going swimming, and then Cameron came, and now his body lay a few metres away from me and the marrow of my bones had frozen solid. I looked at his hair, caked with mud and blood, and his hand on the bank, flung out beside him in a petrified wave.

  You did that, I told myself.

  No. I could not have, I replied. That boy is dead.

  Because you killed him.

  Really? Well, say it, then.

  ‘I killed him,’ I said.

  I started laughing; because that’s the sort of thing someone would say as a joke. I killed him! And the other person would gasp and run to the body, but it would just be someone sleeping, and they would jerk up in surprise and bang foreheads with the person who had gone to them, and tiny bluebirds would circle around their heads. But Graham didn’t go over to Cameron’s body. And Cameron didn’t move.