I Confess

by Alex Barclay

  ‘So you want to draw the nuns on us?’ said Laura. ‘Throwing it out across the grass? No fucking way.’

  ‘To create a distraction,’ said Murph.

  Edie started to cough.

  ‘The drama,’ said Murph.

  ‘Can you just put the fucking thing out?’ said Laura.

  ‘It’s not on fire,’ said Murph. ‘It’s fine. It’s safe.’

  ‘I’m happy here with my cans,’ said Jessie, closing her eyes, smiling.

  Helen and Laura exchanged glances. ‘Locked,’ Helen mouthed.

  ‘Probably better off,’ said Laura.

  Murph was starting to disappear into a cloud of smoke. ‘Okaaay,’ he said, standing up. ‘Maybe open the door.’

  ‘Why are there flames, then?’ said Jessie, looking up at everyone.

  ‘What?’ said Edie, panicked.

  ‘If it’s not on fire,’ said Jessie. ‘Murph said it wasn’t on fire.’

  ‘I can’t see any flames,’ said Clare.

  ‘There really are flames,’ said Jessie. She pointed into the corner. ‘Are those not flames?’

  Murph rolled his eyes, but then he turned around. ‘Oh shit.’

  Edie ran for the door.

  Murph pointed to the corner. ‘Laura! Throw me that sheet, and that brush.’

  Laura grabbed them and flung them at him. He threw the sheet on to the flames and used the handle of the brush to poke at it. The smoke bomb was still smoking.

  Edie cried out from the door. ‘OK – this isn’t funny! Murph!’

  ‘What’s wrong with you now?’ he said.

  Edie was holding up the doorknob.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Murph. ‘Did that come off? I didn’t do that. I swear to God!’

  Murph’s eyes were so filled with fear that Edie started to cry. ‘Oh, God! No! No! No!’ She turned to the door and started slapping her hands against it. ‘Help us! Help! Help! Help!’

  ‘Shut the fuck up!’ said Laura, lunging for her. ‘For fuck’s sake. We’re going to get caught! We’ll be fucked!’

  ‘We’re surely fucked if we can’t get out,’ said Murph, striding past Laura to the door. Clare and Helen followed.

  ‘Seriously – how are we supposed to get out?’ said Edie.

  Behind them, Jessie stood up, swaying, holding her drink high, trying not to spill it.

  Laura was pointing to the hole where the doorknob should have been. ‘Can you not just turn the thing inside it?’

  ‘You can’t,’ said Murph. ‘You have to slide something in between the door and the frame to knock the latch back.’

  Edie was sobbing.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Laura. ‘It’s not like we’re not going to get out.’

  ‘And I don’t think that sheet worked,’ said Jessie.

  The others turned around, and saw the flames crawling along it.

  ‘Jessie! Get up, for God’s sake!’ said Clare.

  ‘Get over here!’ said Laura.

  ‘Will I throw some cider on it?’ said Jessie.

  ‘No!’ said Laura. ‘Get the fuck away from it!’

  ‘Don’t throw anything on it except water,’ said Clare.

  ‘Lads – what’s in those bottles under the counter?’ said Laura. ‘Could any of them be water? Those ones look like camping bottles.’

  Jessie bent, put down her can, and picked up a bottle.

  ‘No, no, no!’ said Clare. ‘Don’t let her near anything! Don’t!’

  Jessie started unscrewing the lid. ‘I’m only smelling it.’ She put it too close to her mouth, and tipped some on to her lips. ‘Oh, God no,’ she said, recoiling. ‘That’s kerosene.’ She swung the bottle wide, and everyone watched, horrified, as it sent an arc of fuel across the room.

  ‘Nooo!’ said Edie, hammering on the door, screaming for help.

  ‘Get her, Murph!’ shouted Helen, pointing at Jessie.

  Flames were starting to rise. Murph reached a hand towards Jessie. ‘Get the fuck over here now.’

  ‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ said Jessie. ‘Relax.’ But she took a step sideways, leaned too far, and then staggered back to the other counter.

  ‘OK – don’t move,’ said Murph. ‘You’re OK, there’s no fire there, but as soon as I get this fucking door open, head for Laura – her jacket’s nice and white, grab the back of it, and go.’

  Edie and Laura were slamming their hands against the door, screaming for help. Murph pushed in behind them and hammered at the door with the side of his fist.

  They heard a shout from outside, ‘Hello? Hello?’ It was a boy’s voice.

  They all screamed. ‘In here! In here! We’re trapped!’ They banged on the door again.

  ‘Hold on!’ he said. ‘I have a key. Hold on! Stop banging!’

  ‘It won’t work!’ shouted Murph. ‘The lock’s fucked. Who’s that? Is that Patrick?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Help!’ Edie started screaming. ‘It’s Edie! Help!’

  ‘Thanks be to fuck, Patrick!’ said Murph. ‘Thanks be to fuck!’

  ‘OK – wait! Wait!’ he said. ‘I’ll get something.’

  ‘Hurry up!’ said Edie.

  ‘Hurry the fuck up!’ said Laura.

  They could hear him rattling around outside. ‘OK, OK. Stand back a bit.’

  ‘Jesus, I don’t know if we want to do that,’ said Murph.

  ‘You’ve not much choice,’ Patrick said. They could hear the sound of metal in between the door and the door frame. ‘Get back!’

  They all held hands, and took a small step back. They heard the bang of a hammer against the metal, and the ping as it slid off.

  ‘Come on t’fuck!’ said Murph. ‘Jesus Christ! Hurry the fuck up!’

  ‘Shhh!’ said Helen, elbowing him. ‘You’re doing a great job, Patrick!’ she shouted. ‘Keep going. Keep going! Keep your eyes on it, your hand out of the way, and go.’

  Patrick tried again and the door burst open. They all ran. When they were clear, Murph stood, bent over, his hands on his knees. ‘Jesus, sorry, lads. I’m so sorry. Fair play to you, Patrick. Fuck’s sake.’ He looked at the others. ‘Lads, – we need to get the fuck out of—’

  ‘Where’s Jessie?’ said Clare.

  Everyone looked around.

  ‘What?’ said Patrick. ‘Was Jessie here?’

  ‘Yes!’ screamed Helen. ‘Yes! Oh my God!’

  Patrick turned and ran back.

  ‘Edie – go!’ said Helen. ‘You’re the fastest. Go!’

  Edie ran, quickly catching up with Patrick.

  Murph looked at Laura. ‘Was she not hanging out of the back of you – Jessie?’

  ‘What are you on about?’ said Laura.

  ‘I told her hang on to your jacket,’ said Murph, ‘because it was white and she’d see it!’

  ‘I didn’t hear you!’ said Laura. ‘I didn’t hear anything about a jacket. I just thought she was coming out behind me!’

  Edie and Patrick skidded to a stop at the side door to the dormitory as the wind tore a swathe from the black smoke billowing towards them. They froze. In the clearing, they saw Jessie standing, staring ahead, arms by her side. She was motionless, two steps from the exit, flames encroaching, high and loud and crackling. They screamed her name. She didn’t blink. They screamed again. Jessie closed her eyes, and they watched as she let the flames engulf her.

  Edie grabbed for Patrick’s arm, clawing at it with desperate hands, her fingers digging into his flesh. They turned to each other, wild-eyed, mouths open, chests heaving. In the fractional moment their eyes met, they made an unspoken pact: they would never mention what they had seen to another soul.

  Or maybe it was a shared granting of permission – to lose the memory to a confusion of smoke or shock.

  4

  Edie parked at the bottom of the steps to the inn. She glanced down at the folder on the passenger seat – research she had gathered on the history of Pilgrim Point. She wanted to be able to talk to the guests about it, or
include interesting details on the website or in printed cards she would leave in the bedrooms. When she bumped into Murph the previous summer, she told him her plans, and the following day, when he was meeting Johnny in town, he transferred four boxes of his late father’s research into the boot of Johnny’s car.

  Edie opened the folder and saw two pages, titled In a Manor of Silence. In all she had read about Pilgrim Point, the words of Henry Rathbrook were the ones that resonated the most – even when she learned that they were not an extract from the handwritten manuscript of a published book, but were among the scattered remains of patient files discovered in an abandoned asylum.

  Edie pulled up the hood of her rain coat, tucked her hair inside, and made the short dash up the steps. She pushed through the front door, and let it close gently behind her. Look where my rich imagination got me, she thought. The hall was exactly how she had pictured it on the day of the viewing. But how it looked and how it felt were on two different frequencies. Did it matter that each beautiful choice she had made could light up the eyes of their guests if the pilot light in their heart had blown as soon as they walked through the door? She would watch their gaze as it moved across the floors and walls, up the stone staircase, along the ornate carvings of the cast iron balustrade, and higher again to the decorative cornices of the ceiling, the elaborate ceiling rose, and the sparkling Murano glass chandelier that hung from it. Then she would graciously accept the praise that always followed, pretending not to notice the small spark of panic in their eyes or the tremor in their smile.

  It was as if a signal was being fired off inside them: no, we don’t smile at things like this, not in places like this, because something is not right. Something is wrong.

  She would see some beautiful, eager young girl arriving with her young boyfriend who had spent a month’s wages on one weekend, and he would beam as her eyes lit up, but Edie would see the rest. She knew it wasn’t because this girl felt out of place – everyone was made to feel welcome at the inn because everyone was welcome. But sometimes Edie felt that the reason everyone was welcome was not because that was her job, not because the vast extravagance of the refurbishment had plunged them into an alarming amount of debt, not because a family has living expenses, and Dylan has to be put through college, but because she hoped that one day, someone would walk in and they would light up and it would be pure, there would be no strange aftertaste, and the spell would be broken.

  Edie shook off her jacket and hung it on the carved oak hallstand. She paused as she heard the sound of a door slamming, and heavy footsteps echoing towards her.

  ‘Dad won’t let me go to Mally’s tonight!’ said Dylan, stomping half way across the hall. He stood with his hands on his hips, his face red, his chest heaving.

  ‘Dylan!’ said Edie. ‘Calm down, please.’

  Johnny appeared behind Dylan.

  ‘And why does it even matter,’ said Dylan, glancing back at him, ‘when you’re all going to be here partying anyway?’

  ‘Partying?’ said Johnny. ‘It’s Helen’s forty-seventh birthday – we’re hardly going to be dancing the night away.’

  Dylan looked at him, wide-eyed. ‘Oh my God! That is so mean!’

  Johnny stared at him, bewildered.

  ‘Mom – did you hear that?’ said Dylan. ‘Just because Helen’s in a wheelchair.’

  Johnny did a double take. ‘What?’ He looked at Edie, then back at Dylan. ‘Dylan – that had nothing to do with Helen being in a wheelchair. That was about us being so old that we don’t have the energy to dance.’

  ‘Well, that’s depressing,’ said Dylan.

  Edie started to laugh.

  ‘Well, I’d rather depress you than be accused of making fun of Helen,’ said Johnny.

  Helen was Dylan’s godmother, and he was fiercely protective of her.

  Helen was diagnosed with MS ten years ago, and had been in a wheelchair for the past three years, and still, when Edie saw her, she could get hit with the unfairness of it. Even though Helen was such a part of their lives. Before the diagnosis, Helen had been fit, strong, the director of nursing in the local hospital, living with her partner, who left her as soon as her symptoms started to really show. She was still in the relapsing-remitting stage, but her condition was slowly deteriorating. She had an older sister in Cork, but they weren’t close, and apart from her friends from the hospital, Johnny Dylan and Edie were the ones who helped her out the most.

  ‘Jesus, Dylan,’ said Johnny, ‘you have to stop attacking people because of some assumption—’

  ‘Says the guy roaring at Terry earlier,’ said Dylan.

  ‘I wasn’t roaring at him,’ said Johnny. ‘We were having a … discussion.’

  Dylan made air quotes.

  Johnny turned to Edie. ‘All that was going on with Terry is I asked him to board up the chapel windows properly, with decent timber, so they wouldn’t look like an eyesore, and instead he throws up some bullshit with streaks of paint and black God-knows-what all over it. Do you want the lads arriving in and seeing that?’

  ‘It’ll be dark,’ said Dylan.

  ‘Not in the morning when they’re getting the tour,’ said Johnny. ‘And what’s with you defending Terry all of a sudden? Last week he was the worst in the world.’

  ‘Because he thinks I’m the person who smashed the windows!’ said Dylan. ‘Which, I’d like to repeat, I am not. Terry spots someone in jeans and a hoodie running away from the “scene” and it’s automatically me.’

  Johnny gestured to Dylan’s jeans and hoodie, and shrugged.

  ‘Literally, everyone dresses like this,’ said Dylan.

  ‘But you can see where he’s coming from,’ said Johnny. ‘He calls me to say he’s caught you and Mally in the confession box in the chapel—’

  Edie looked at Johnny. ‘Can we stop this—’

  ‘No,’ said Johnny. ‘He still hasn’t given us an explanation.’

  ‘Stop making it sound so creepy,’ said Dylan.

  ‘You were supposed to be in school!’ said Johnny. ‘The one day we’re in Cork trying to get stuff done—’

  ‘I don’t know why he had to call you,’ said Dylan.

  ‘Here’s why,’ said Johnny. ‘Health and safety. The chapel’s a building site, basically, you had no hard hats on you—’

  ‘Hard hats,’ said Dylan. He rolled his eyes. ‘Mally thought the whole thing was—’

  ‘Why would I care what Mally thinks?’ said Johnny.

  Dylan looked at Edie. ‘Seriously, Mom … what is his problem with her?’

  ‘I don’t have a problem with Mally,’ said Johnny.

  Dylan’s phone beeped. He took it out of his pocket, and read the WhatsApp message. ‘Well, I can’t not go now,’ he said. ‘Because Mally’s already on her way over here. In the rain. I can’t suddenly go “Oh sorry – go home. Oh – and I can’t come back with you later.”’

  Edie turned to Johnny, her eyebrows raised. He gave her a resigned look.

  ‘So she’s going to be here for the day while your mother’s trying to get the place ready for tonight?’ said Johnny.

  ‘They’ll be over at the house,’ said Edie.

  ‘Obviously,’ said Dylan. He looked at Johnny. ‘Can I go now?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Edie.

  ‘And can I go over to Mally’s later?’ said Dylan.

  ‘Yes,’ said Edie.

  ‘Thanks, Mom.’ He walked across the hall and they waited for him to disappear down the stairs.

  ‘Why do you always have to do that?’ said Johnny.

  ‘Oh, good God,’ said Edie. ‘Grow up. What is your issue with him going over there, all of a sudden? I don’t want to have to deal with any meltdowns tonight, and if he’s over there—’

  ‘She’s a bad influence on him,’ said Johnny. ‘She always ’s just in your face. She’s … nosy. She’s …’

  Edie gave him a patient look.

  ‘Look – I know she’s no fan of mine,’ said Johnny, ‘but that
’s not the point. They’re always … whispering and skulking about the place.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ said Edie. ‘They’re sixteen. Well …’

  ‘And that’s the other thing – why is a nineteen-year-old college girl hanging out with a sixteen-year-old boy? It’s weird.’

  Edie raised an eyebrow. ‘From the twenty-one-year-old with his eye on the sixteen-year-old?’

  ‘That’s different. And … different times.’ He put his hands on his hips. ‘And what makes you think he’s going to have a meltdown?’

  ‘Look at him,’ said Edie. ‘He’s exhausted.’

  ‘Because he was up all night watching Netflix!’ said Johnny. ‘He knows this is a big night, it’s important to you, and—’

  ‘Well, I hope it’s important to you too—’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. I said “you” because he doesn’t give a shit what I think. ‘He needs to get his head out of his arse!’

  ‘He’s sixteen,’ said Edie. ‘He’s cripped with—’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Johnny. ‘Anxiety – the Get Out of Jail card—’

  Edie stared at him.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Johnny. ‘But if he really had no control over his emotions, how am I the one who gets Angry Dylan and you get sad face? Or “Hugs”?’

  ‘We’re not getting into—’

  ‘No,’ said Johnny. ‘But—’

  Edie shook her head. ‘No—’

  ‘You know what you should do,’ said Johnny, ‘show him some of your “research” photos from the industrial school with those skinny little bastards running around out there – not a Netflick to their names.’

  ‘He’s already been rooting through my research,’ said Edie.

  ‘Jesus Christ. No wonder he has anxiety.’

  ‘Why do you have such a problem with it?’ said Edie.

  ‘Because it freaks you out,’ said Johnny.

  ‘It doesn’t freak me out,’ said Edie. ‘And I don’t have time for this. I have too much to do.’

  ‘I told you we should have got one of the chefs in,’ said Johnny. ‘We should have got staff in, full stop.’

  ‘We’re not going to get staff in when we’re closed for the season,’ said Edie. ‘And we’d have to pay them. But the main thing, I told you, was that I wanted to make an effort for my friends – which I still do. I just need time.’