In the photograph Alex’s kidnapper smiled, his arm around his mom, hugging her. Emma looked tired but happy. “He was on his medication then. We went to the zoo. He was my boy again”.
Lucy couldn’t look at the picture. She handed it gently back to Emma.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.” Lucy began to pull herself to her feet.
Emma’s words pressed her back into the chair.
“I tried to get him put into the hospital but they wouldn’t listen to me. They said as long as he took his medication he’d be okay at home.”
Emma looked up from the photograph; her eyes full of tears. “But, he wouldn’t keep up his pills. Every time they started working he thought he was cured and stopped. I begged him to carry on. At first, he’d just say I was wrong, then, as he got sick again, he’d accuse me of plotting against him, of being part of some plan... He thought I was trying to poison him!”
Lucy had wanted to hate Emma for what her son had done, but she couldn’t.
“I kept calling the hospital, trying to get something done for him. They put him on a register, said someone would come and check up on him. They never did. He just got worse and worse. It was so black, the things he’d say… So horrible, things I couldn’t imagine.”
Emma gently returned the photograph to her pocket. The son she’d loved was not the man she was talking about now. Tears began to spill down her cheeks.
“I had no idea he’d do what he did. There were times when I stayed up with him all night because I was afraid he might hurt himself, but not anyone else. Not anyone else. I’m so sorry for what he did to your son.”
The words made Lucy want to scream—a raw vein of complete despair that she fought to keep under control, clawing to tear from her body. She clenched her hands into fists, dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands.
She’d wanted answers. She’d come looking for some kind of revenge. She’d hidden a knife in her jacket. But, sitting opposite this utterly broken mother, all she felt was empathy—a sickening, overwhelming empathy.
“It wasn’t your fault.” Lucy watched Emma quietly crying, her own face cold with her tears. It won’t ever be over, she thought. This is all the future holds for me.
After a time, Emma got to her feet. She crossed the living room to an old roll-top dresser. She opened the top drawer and removed a book. A brown moleskin notebook.
She handed the book to Lucy. “He wrote in this when he was ill. Kept it hidden. He thought I didn’t know where he kept it. I’m his mother, of course I knew. I’m not ready to look at it yet. Maybe it will help you, though.”
Lucy looked down at the journal in her hands. What Emma had said was still sinking in.
“I’ll make some coffee.”
Emma left Lucy alone.
Lucy suddenly felt very weak. She half placed, half dropped the scuffed, thumbed journal onto the arm of the chair. She wanted it out of her hands. Touching something that he had touched made her feel sick.
When she’d stood watching Emma’s house, crazed thoughts squirming through her mind, she’d convinced herself that the knife in her jacket pocket, the knife she’d gripped with white knuckles, might help her wrestle back some kind of control. She had no plan further than that.
She hadn’t expected Emma’s kindness, nor had she expected that his house would hold a broken reflection of herself. Now, looking down at his journal on the arm of her seat, Lucy felt she’d walked into a trap. The illusion of control that had lured her here was gone, replaced with the same terror that had sent her running from 1428 Montgomery.
The silence she’d taken for mourning had closed in around her. Now it was the silence before a scream.
23
The book was thick with his words. Even without opening it, Lucy could see that almost every page in the journal had been written on. Every fibre of her wanted to throw it across the room, rip it into little pieces, show it the same rage she’d show him if he’d been standing in front of her. Instead, she sat soundless and still.
Touching the journal was like touching something dead. Its cold, rough skin made Lucy snatch her fingers back. Her head was pounding, nausea rising into her throat. Had he written about Alex before he’d taken him, before he’d killed him?
This is what they’d all tried to protect her from. Matt, Bob Taylor, even Doctor Bachman. They’d obscured the truth, wrapped it in a series of half lies for her sake. But she needed to know, needed to know every single detail to try to make some sense of what had happened. They were Alex’s last moments—her last moments—and all their well-intentioned avoidance had just nurtured the madness that writhed inside her.
So, when Guzman had published her lurid account of Alex’s murder, Lucy hadn’t hated her for it. After all, she’d been the only one to tell Lucy the truth. The only one to give her the details she’d needed, no matter how devastating they were. But it was already too late for Lucy. By then the whispering had taken hold.
Two weeks ago, Lucy had been sitting on the painted white chair at the painted white table in room 23b at the William Tuke Psychiatric Hospital when a letter had arrived for her. It wasn’t signed, but it wasn’t the first handwritten note she’d received from Karen Guzman. It simply read:
This is where he came from.
And Emma Roberts’ address had followed. Two days later, Lucy had checked herself out of the hospital.
Lucy picked up the book: his book. After everything she’d done, she couldn’t fail Alex now. No matter how much it repulsed her, no matter what terrible secrets lay within the journal, she had to read it, had to face the man who had murdered her son.
24
No more.
Emma felt the metal, cold against her temple. It surprised her, made her want to pull her head away. She looked out of the kitchen window, out at the heavy rain streaking the glass. The moment she’d put the photograph back into her pocket, she’d lost his face. Recently, if she wasn’t looking at the photograph, she had trouble pulling an image of him from her memory. The details were distorted, as if she were trying to recall a stranger, not her own son. She knew there was a part of her, so tired, so ashamed, that wanted to forget him. That part grew every day and she hated herself for not stopping it. In truth, she didn’t want to, and it was that truth that had led her to the end.
She’d thought that, when the time came, she might be thinking of him. Instead she found herself hoping the rain would stop for Lucy’s sake. Emma closed her eyes.
In that moment, all that existed was the sound of the gunshot. It tore through Emma Roberts’ small house like a huge and furious animal. It stole the scream from Lucy’s lips, drowning her horrified cry in its terrible noise.
The journal dropped from Lucy’s hands. A loud crack from the kitchen, the gun clattering onto the tiles, was followed by the sound of the dead weight of Emma’s body thudding to the ground.
Then there was an awful quiet.
A sob burst from Lucy’s lips. She gripped the arms of the chair, trying to hear over the sound of her own hitching breaths, desperate for a sound, any sound, to reassure her that what she dreaded was wrong.
No sound came.
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get her breathing under control. All the air had been sucked out of the room. She pulled herself out of the chair, she swayed on her legs and almost collapsed. She managed to stumble to the lounge doorway. There, she clung onto the doorframe to hold herself up, “Please…!” She coughed the words, gasping for the air to speak.
The door to the kitchen was ajar. From where Lucy stood she could see the tiled floor. She could see the gun. The acrid taste of gunpowder caught in the back of her throat. She could smell burnt hair, seared skin. Had she done this? Had she caused this? Darkness was bleeding into her peripheral vision. Lucy gripped the frame so tightly the wood cut into her fingers.
&n
bsp; “Emma? Emma, please!”
The hallway was shrinking as she staggered towards the kitchen. Growing darker. Like the tunnel to the broken boy. This had always been the killer’s home. He’d lived in it until he’d taken his own life. Had run through this hallway as a child, raced into the kitchen, to Emma’s side, watched her peeling vegetables for Sunday dinner, waiting for her to turn and smile. No! No, that was Lucy, that was her mother, standing at the sink peeling carrots in the house where she grew up. She could see her, see her smile. Why can’t you be here now?
Why does everything have to be so wrong?
Please make it stop.
Make it stop!
The darkness was spreading, black hands now reaching across her eyes. She fell against the wall.
She was close enough now to see the blood.
Deep red on the bone-white tiles, Emma’s blood swelled towards the kitchen doorway: a growing pool pumped from her shattered skull by her dying heart. Ripples spread through the blood, the waves growing weaker as the thick fluid stretched towards Lucy.
From the direction of the blood, she could tell Emma’s body must have fallen just behind the kitchen door. She could see Emma’s feet now, her legs appearing. Unable to stop herself, Lucy leaned forward to look around the door.
25
At the last moment, Emma had tried to turn away from the gun. The impact of the bullet punching through the back of her skull had thrown her into the cabinets that lined her small kitchen. She’d whirled around, as metal and bone corkscrewed through the tissue of her brain, turning almost a full circle before slamming the hollowed out remains of her head down onto the worktop and slumping down on the tiled floor below.
In the living room, Lucy had been struck by Emma’s kind features. Now those features were gone. Emma’s face ended abruptly just above her top lip.
Lucy clung onto the kitchen door, but her fingers were slipping…
The darkness blinked in.
Emma’s left hand lay open by her side, an island of pale skin drowning in her blood.
Lucy’s fingers lost their grip. She was falling.
Falling into the black.
Into nothing.
For a moment it was all gone.
Emma’s obliterated face.
The blood and bone cast high over the kitchen walls.
Only the darkness existed.
And in it she was safe. Safe from the horror.
Safe from the unending grief.
And Alex was there, too.
She could feel him reaching out to her.
Alex, I love you so much.
She could feel him drawing closer.
The cold coming closer.
Why are you so cold?
She felt him touch her face.
Can I stay here?
Please, God, let me stay here.
Plea… Her knees slammed down on the kitchen tiles. The pain jolted her awake. She was back, falling into the blood, knees first, now her upper body was toppling forward over Emma’s corpse.
She threw her hands out to stop herself, planting them down on Emma’s legs. She screamed, immediately wanting to snatch them back, propel herself backwards, away from the body, but she was too weak. Instead, she knelt over Emma, sobbing, begging to be swallowed back into the darkness again.
Emma’s blood seeped into the material of Lucy’s trousers.
Eventually, she found the strength to lift her head, and rocked backward so she was sitting on the kitchen floor. She brought her hands up to wipe the tears from her face. She stopped when she saw they were covered in Emma’s blood.
Across from where Lucy sat, on the other side of Emma’s body, was a patch of the tiled floor where no blood had run. It had spread around the space, but the shape it outlined remained clean. It made Lucy think of a bone jutting out from a wound.
As she pulled herself back to her feet, she thought it was her shadow she saw moving across the kitchen wall.
It wasn’t.
The blood smeared, something sliding on it as it moved across the tiles. Lucy screamed. She saw its shadow unravelling on the wall in front of her. Whatever the blood had spilled around, whatever unseen thing had crouched by Emma’s body, now climbed to its feet. Lucy could feel the terrible cold that radiated from it, reaching out towards her.
She stumbled wildly backwards, twisting to get away. Her feet skidded in Emma’s blood and she was sent crashing into the wall. The impact punched the air from her lungs and she collapsed, half through the kitchen doorway.
She lay on her side, wheezing, frantically trying to suck in enough air to pull herself back to her feet. Lucy’s eyes darted over the doorway.
Where is it?
Her legs trailed into the kitchen behind her.
Where is it?
She was sure it was the same terrible cold that had pinned her to the bed in her apartment, and she was sure if it caught her now she would never leave Emma’s house.
Lucy kicked her legs into the air: a futile attempt to fend off the thing. She could feel the cold gaining on her, pulling at her ankles as she lashed out. At any moment that pull would become a grip, and then it would have her.
She rolled onto her front. Grabbing handfuls of carpet, she managed to scramble onto all fours. Less than an hour ago the hallway had been heavy with silence, now it echoed with the blasting sound of her panic.
She crawled along the hallway. Had it followed her from 1428 Montgomery? Had the thing she’d dragged from the darkness with her Ouija board followed her here? Had he returned home?
She was an easy target, easy prey: exhausted, struggling to breathe, hauling herself along the floor. She could feel the cold advancing, gaining on her. One thought pushed her forward: if she didn’t get out of here, if she didn’t get away from here, she’d never see Alex again.
She staggered to her feet, and slid along the wall, leaning into it for support. She snatched a look behind her. It was there, she could feel it, the way she had felt Alex in the darkness, unseen but close. She fell against the front door, fumbling for the lock.
26
Lucy tore open the door and ran, stumbling down the wet steps from the unremarkable house on the unremarkable street. The sudden cold of the freezing rain stung her face, shocking the darkness from her sight. Emma’s last wish had not come true.
Lucy ran, without looking back, until she hit the side of her car. She’d torn the dressings Doctor Bachman had applied to her sliced feet. Her shoes felt wet inside. She could feel the blood squelching in her socks. There was pain too, but only faintly, fear and adrenaline keeping it at arm’s length for now.
She shut the passenger side door and slammed her hand down on the locking pin. Rain drummed on the roof of the car. Her fast breathing fogged the windows. She wiped her hand over the glass so she could see. Her fingers left a trail of Emma’s blood behind them. She watched Emma’s house. How could she hide from something she couldn’t see?
She started the engine and pulled away from the curb. She drove fast, too fast. The roads were icy, the freezing rain turning to sleet as night reached in from across the bay.
Lucy drove for hours. She drove in circles. She thought about driving to the William Tuke Psychiatric Hospital. She drove until the car was running on fumes. Then, she drove back to the house.
27
Doctor Bachman didn’t return. Lucy waited for him. She waited until her car ran out of gas and fell silent. Then she waited on the street. She stood where the children had raced, wailing across the overgrown front lawn. She stood before the house, small and vulnerable.
She watched the upstairs windows for any sign of the grey figure that had first drawn her inside. What if it hadn’t been Alex? What if it hadn’t ever been Alex?
Knotted grass twined around her ankles a
s she crossed the lawn. Was it trying to stop her, or maybe hold her in the house’s shadow long enough that it could study its catch before devouring it?
Lucy stepped up onto the porch. She noticed the door immediately.
It was ajar.
I knew you’d come back.
She stepped hesitantly across the slick boards.
Closer, closer, come closer.
This was her last chance to turn around. Whatever lay within the house had let her leave once; she was sure it would not let that happen again.
She remembered the words she’d spoken, that first night after she’d left the hospital: “Doctor Bachman says I shouldn’t come here. Well, where else am I supposed to go?” There was a terrible finality in those words now. She started to laugh. An awful sound that bubbled up from inside her, that clawed its way out, broken and full of fear. So dark, that when it left her mouth, she was surprised it wasn’t a scream.
Lucy pressed the front door open, pressed it back into the black that lay beyond. And then she followed it.
She tried to be quiet, tried to be small, to go unnoticed as she stepped painfully across the dim hallway towards the stairs. She clung to the wall as she climbed the staircase. If she pressed herself into it, maybe she wouldn’t be seen. If she stepped lightly, maybe she wouldn’t be heard.
When she reached the top of the stairs the stench was waiting for her. The stink of rancid meat. It grew stronger with every unsteady, frightened step she took towards Todd Lowe’s room. She followed the wall through the darkness. She could feel the wounds on her feet spreading open, sharp pain flaring, each time she put any weight on them. The memory of broken glass tearing into her soles played over and over in her mind. Only now she saw it slicing through the fingers that traced the wall, now it scraped across her belly, now it flashed out of the shadows at her eyes—her fingers grazed the letters carved into the plaster: SKINNED FACES WATCHING. She snatched her hand away.
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