When Darkness Falls, Book 2

by Ryan Casey

  It was going to turn the odds in my favour.

  I walked past Bobby’s door. Part of me wanted to go through there, into his room. I wanted to sit beside his bed with my eyes closed and pretend that he was still in there.

  I wanted to hear his little voice as he asked me all those questions he had on his mind.

  I wanted to stroke his hair, to kiss his head, and to be with him again.

  But that wasn’t going to happen.

  It was never going to happen again.

  So I kept on going. I walked past Suzy’s room, where Will stayed with her tonight. I walked towards mine and Sarah’s room, and I saw Peter’s room up ahead. I wondered if any of them were asleep. How could they be? Because what had happened affected us all. There was no getting away from that.

  I stopped outside my room. Part of me didn’t want to go inside because I remembered what happened the last time I’d gone inside a room when I didn’t know exactly what was on the other side.

  And another part of me was reluctant. Reluctant because I knew that going inside meant having a conversation with my wife. And I wasn’t sure I was ready for that conversation.

  The conversation that made everything—every awful incident—reality.

  But I put my hand on the door handle anyway and I turned it.

  When I stepped inside, I didn’t see Sarah in bed.

  That alarmed me. My immediate reaction was deja vu drenched fear.

  But then I saw her sitting at the side of the bed, head in her hands.

  I stopped. She looked over at me. I couldn’t see her properly, just a glimmer in her eyes from the candlelight.

  But there was only one thing I could do.

  I rushed over to her and held her. She wrapped her arms around me, tight. I held onto her even tighter, and together, in the dark, we clung onto each other as if it might somehow give us strength, and we cried.

  “It’s okay,” I said, as I held onto Sarah, the salty smell of her hair sticking in my nostrils. “I promise you, love. I promise you. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  She held me tighter. And then she looked back up at me, right into my eyes. “How?”

  I stroked her hair, wiped the tears from her eyes. “How what?”

  She paused a second, like she was trying desperately to string every sentence together; like speaking required digging into all her reserves. “How is everything going to be okay? How can everything possibly be okay?”

  I saw a path opening up, then. A path that I didn’t want to take. But a path I knew I had no choice but to go down.

  I swallowed a lump in my throat.

  I looked Sarah in the eye.

  “I’m going to find those responsible for what happened to our son,” I said. “I’m going to hunt them down. And I’m going to make them suffer.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The following morning, I stood in front of Sarah, Suzy, Peter and Will and I prepared to tell them what we had to do.

  What had to happen.

  There were no remnants of yesterday’s storm. The sky was bright; the sun was warm. If this was a sign of things to come then we certainly had to take it, especially considering the rather sedate winter we’d just had. The elements were being kind to us, generally, when you thought about how troublesome they could be. There was no telling how long that was going to be the case. But we had to hope that it would stay on our side, just a little bit longer.

  I looked at the grounds of the farm. I looked at the barns. The fields. I looked at the trees in the distance, the number of times I’d gone into there with Bobby by my side. And I wanted to believe we’d see those times again. I wanted to kid myself into thinking that those times repeating was some kind of possibility.

  But I wasn’t an idiot.

  I wasn’t going into those woods, teaching my son how to hunt. Not anymore.

  As I looked at the trees, I felt a shiver creep up my arms. It was a memory of something Bobby had said on the day he’d died. Something about the rabbit.

  It’s just in the wrong place at the wrong time…

  And even though I hadn’t understood those words at the time, they’d stuck with me. For some reason, they’d clung right to me.

  I didn’t understand them, sure.

  But now I saw exactly what they meant.

  Now I saw the truth.

  Those words had meaning. Just not at the time they’d been said.

  But they meant so much more now.

  “Remember what the group said,” I said. Speaking was difficult. My throat was raspy. But I knew I had to get my point across. If I didn’t, then I wasn’t sure how things were going to progress, or where things would go. We needed a goal. A sole purpose. And I had an idea exactly what my goal was going to be.

  “Jon. The leader of that group. He said they had another place. He said they were travelling to it and they didn’t think it was all that far away, too. Now, he might’ve been bluffing. There’s every chance. But something makes me think we should believe him. And if they really do have a place not far from here… you know what that means.

  I looked at the faces of my group. Sarah. Suzy. Peter. Will. And even though none of them were talking, none of them were responding, I could see in their faces—perhaps with the exception of Will, who was still too young to understand how we were going to progress—that they knew what I was implying.

  But they were still waiting for me to speak the words and make them a reality. They didn’t want to fill in the gaps for me.

  “We have to go out there. We have to look for a trace of them. The rain was heavy, but it’s stopped, so there’ll be a trace of them somewhere. Footprints. Or something they dropped or left behind. And when we find that trace of them, we keep on pursuing them. We keep on searching for them. We keep on—”

  “Hunting them?” Peter said.

  The way Peter spoke… it was like he didn’t approve, somehow.

  I looked right at him. Saw uncertainty in his face. “What?”

  “What you’re saying. You’re saying we put all logic aside and we hunt them down. We abandon this place. Right?”

  I raised my hands. “You’ve seen the state of this place. We’ve been ransacked. The animals are gone or dead. It isn’t what it used to be.”

  “But we can make it that place again,” Peter said.

  Silence followed Peter’s words. And I knew that in that silence, there was going to have to be a breakthrough from somewhere.

  “We’re being rash,” Peter said. “We’re putting ourselves in danger.”

  “And we’re any safer staying here?” I said.

  “We can make it so.”

  I shook my head. Looked at the rest of the people here. Suzy. Sarah. Will. I wanted one of them to step in, to back me up. But deep down I knew I was fighting my own corner here. I was making the choice for the group. In a way, the choice had already been made, and that’s what was causing Peter all his trouble.

  I wanted to reach common ground with him. I wanted to accept things from his perspective, and to find a way of reaching some kind of compromise.

  But I knew it wasn’t going to happen.

  Not when it was something I cared so strongly about.

  “If it was your son,” I said, my voice shaking. “If it were your son you’d do exactly the same. Don’t deny that.”

  Peter shook his head. “I can’t know what I’d do. And I don’t want to even entertain a loss like the one you’ve been through. But Alex. You have to see the truth. Vengeance is blinding you. And if you let it keep on blinding you, you aren’t going to come up from this in a better position. You just aren’t.”

  I heard Peter’s words loud and clear. I got what he was saying. And I saw truth to them. I’d seen what vengeance could do. I’d seen what its poisonous claws were capable of when they sunk their way into you. But the problem with those claws was that once they were in your flesh, there was no getting them loose.

  You had to cut them out.
>
  And the only way of doing that was by facing the root cause of the problem, head on.

  “Maybe we don’t all have to go,” Sarah said.

  I looked at my wife and tried to understand what she was saying.

  “Will. He shouldn’t have to go on a journey like the one you’re suggesting. But you… you should go. I can stay here with Will. I can make sure he’s safe. It’s the least I can do. After what happened.”

  I looked at Suzy as she looked at Sarah, at Will, tried to get her head around what was being proposed.

  “Sarah, I can’t let you do that—”

  “You can. You can because you’re… you’re stronger than me right now. I’ll keep him safe. I promise you that much. Even if my life depends on it.”

  Suzy walked over to her son. She put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Do you understand what Sarah is saying?” she asked.

  Will looked at the ground. Then, he nodded. “If you need to do it. If you need to help Alex find the bad people. I’ll stay here.”

  Suzy inhaled a sharp, tearful breath and held her boy close. Then she looked up at me and she nodded.

  I turned to Peter.

  He still looked reluctant. He hadn’t nodded or fully committed. But I could see in his eyes that he was thinking about it. He was contemplating it.

  And in the end he nodded.

  “I’m with you,” he said. “But I just hope you’re making the right decision. And I just hope it doesn’t backfire.”

  I walked over to him, patted his arm. “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.”

  He opened his mouth like he was going to say something else. Then he closed it, shook his head, and the moment passed.

  “Let’s just get this right,” he said.

  I nodded. “Let’s get this right.”

  I looked at Peter and Suzy.

  Then I looked at Sarah and Will.

  It might not be the most comfortable solution. It might not be the most ideal. But it was the best option we had.

  We were going after my son’s killers.

  We were going to find them.

  No matter what it took.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I stood by the entrance to mine and Sarah’s room and I prepared to make the most difficult decision I’d made in a long, long time.

  It was late afternoon. In an ideal world, we would’ve set off in the morning when we could guarantee there were plenty of hours of daylight ahead of us. But this wasn’t an ideal world. I was eager to get going. And besides, we were going to have to get used to being outside at night for a long time; finding places to camp. I hoped it wouldn’t be too long a journey because the thought of spending any serious amount of time away from Sarah was impossible to comprehend, especially with what we’d both just been through.

  But still. It was something that had to be done.

  There was no backing away from it. Not now.

  And the sense that this might be a longer journey than I was expecting lingered at the back of my mind, resurfacing time and time again.

  The wind blew heavily against the window. I didn’t look up at the window because it was too painful; too much of a reminder of what had happened and the dream I’d had in the nights beforehand. I didn’t see Sarah looking up at it much either, mostly through logical memory that it was a window that Bobby’s killers had got in through in the first place.

  But I was going out into that world. That dangerous world outside the window.

  And I didn’t know what I was going to find out there.

  Sarah sat on the edge of the bed. Her hands were pressed tightly together between her legs. She was looking at me the way she’d looked at me when we lost our first child. Just the similarity of that expression made me go cold, right to the core.

  “Don’t go,” she said.

  It was the first time she’d spoken up against what I was planning to do. I felt surprised. But to be honest, I should have expected it, at least partly. I knew Sarah and my views on vengeance and that kind of thing were drastically different in a world where we didn’t have real vengeance to think about. So why should they suddenly unite in this new world?

  I guess it was that naive belief that because we’d been through a tragedy together, we were going to come together in our reaction to it.

  But that wasn’t the case last time. So why would it be the case this time?

  When we’d lost our baby, my reaction was to lash out at the world. I lashed out at the doctors who saw to Sarah. I lashed out at the medication she was on, the herbal remedies she took, the diet she followed. I lashed out at everything and anything until there was nothing left to lash out on at all. And did I feel fulfilled at the end of it? Did I feel any better, in any way?

  No. All I felt was that desire to lash out even further.

  Sarah’s reaction had been different. She’d grieved. Of course she’d grieved. But she hadn’t let the process carry her away. She’d allowed those feelings to grow. She’d accepted them. But she hadn’t followed them down the path they could so easily have taken her on. She hadn’t let them dictate her life.

  She’d allowed them, accepted them, and she’d moved forward.

  Never truly recovering, of course. Was it possible to ever truly recover from something like that, after all?

  But still. She’d found a way to ride out those feelings, where I’d tried to suppress them into submission.

  And they’d found their way out in other ways.

  I walked over to her. Crouched opposite her. I took her hands in mine. “Sarah, you know I have to—”

  “You don’t have to.”

  I lowered my head. “You don’t understand.”

  “Don’t say I don’t understand. I’m going through this too.”

  “Sorry. That’s not what I meant. I just…”

  I stopped speaking then and just sat there with her in silence. And in that silence, I allowed myself to ruminate over what she’d said; over what she wanted me to do. Or not to do, in a sense.

  “You stay here and you look after Will and this place. And when I get back… things will get better again.”

  “How can you be so sure of that?” she said.

  “Because you’re stronger than I am. And you’re going to do what you have to do for this place. You’re going to do what you’ve always done.”

  I leaned towards her and kissed her. And I made that moment last, savoured it, because I knew damn well deep down that no matter how much I tried to dress it up, it could well be for the last time.

  “I’m coming back,” I said, as I looked into her tearful eyes. “I promise.”

  She sniffed and half-smiled, but it was forced, full of effort. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she said.

  We kissed again. And I wanted to stay here forever. But I knew the clock was ticking. I knew time was running out.

  I knew every moment that passed was another opportunity to make things right.

  I stepped away and walked over to the door. Sarah followed me outside, where I found Suzy saying her goodbyes to Will, Peter standing in front of the others, alone, silent.

  I walked over to him and nodded. He didn’t say a word back at me, clearly still not totally approving of this journey. But he nodded too.

  And then I looked back at Suzy as she held her son, as they said their farewells, and then as he went running over to my wife, standing by her side.

  Suzy walked over to me. She nodded too, wiping the tears away. Then the three of us stood together, the farm in front of us, the world we had to head away into behind us, waiting to be searched, to be investigated.

  I looked at Sarah and I wanted to go over there and say goodbye again. But I knew that if I did that, I wasn’t ever going to leave.

  I raised my hand and waved.

  Sarah raised hers too, waved back.

  And at that moment, it felt like time stood still. It felt like nothing else mattered, and that I could stay here forever; I could
find a way.

  But then I turned around and I walked away.

  Suzy and Peter followed me.

  The moment for forgiveness had passed.

  It was time.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Me, Peter and Suzy walked through the woods and hoped to find some kind of trace of humanity somewhere in the mud.

  The afternoon sun was low, mostly hidden by the trees, which were just about re-finding their leaves again. There was a silence to this woods that should’ve brought peace, but instead it just put me on edge. Because every moment of silence was another opportunity for the memories of what had happened to return to the forefront of my consciousness, gripping my chest tightly and holding on.

  I couldn’t let that happen. I had to keep busy.

  I had to keep searching.

  My feet were sore, and my eyes were heavy. I hadn’t slept a wink last night. Somehow, I didn’t think I’d be sleeping for a long time. Not when I knew what’d happened the last time I’d woken up from sleep to find my life destroyed.

  I feared that if I fell to sleep, I’d sink away into another nightmare, only to open my eyes to something much worse.

  And the fact that Sarah wasn’t here with us…

  It troubled me. Of course it did. I’d spent the bulk of those first days trying to find my way back to her amidst the rising chaos, and when I did find her, I’d vowed never to leave her again.

  But I knew this was for the best. She was looking after Will. Suzy had entrusted her with that much.

  Again, though. Part of me was uncertain, mostly because I felt like Sarah should be out here. She knew as much about self-sustainability—and more about survival—than I did, in truth.

  But then again maybe in her current mindset it was best that she wasn’t out here right now.

  That said… who was I to say that when I’d just suffered the same loss?

  “Can’t shake the feeling we’re going to be searching for a long while,” Peter said.

  I turned to him. He was the one of the group who’d said the least about my son’s death. He was remorseful, of course he was. He’d offered his sympathies. And I knew that his feeling was genuine. He was a good man, after all.