Bonnie was becoming withdrawn. She didn’t want to go to school, she didn’t want to join me visiting Zach at Crystal Forest anymore.
—Was there any particular reason she gave for not wanting to go?
—She said … It sounds crazy, as crazy as, well … She said the forest scared her. She said that she’d seen things in there. That had never been the case before. She said there was something terrible in there, some presence, watching her. She never went as far as to say she saw something in there, but she always kept her blinds closed when we were there. She didn’t want to go with Zach on his walks into the forest anymore. She wanted to stay with me the whole time. And at home she regressed a little bit. It was a really hard time. For both of us. She had nightmares every night and would climb into my bed. I just thought, no way. I needed to get this all sorted with Zach. So I went to Crystal Forest. I wanted to find out what the hell was going on.
When we spoke to Craig Kerr in episode three, he told us about the effect that Naomi had on Crystal Forest.
—I thought if I try and stop everything, work against him, Zach would push me away. So instead, I worked with James Cryer and the rest of his team. It was fire-fighting on a larger scale than I could have possibly imagined.
—How do you mean?
—I looked through all the books, all the finances, everything. I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. This was my brother. There were things I found that opened my eyes.
Naomi says she called a meeting with Zach and James to discuss her discoveries. Huge payments to families, to the bank accounts of teenage girls. Sometimes there had even been bank accounts set up in their names. There were properties, elaborate gifts. Whether it was innocent or not, it looked bad, Naomi says. It looked terrible.
—I had to make them see sense. I had to tell them that this wasn’t just me poking my nose in and stopping their fun, like I did back all those years ago. This was serious. Remember, Zach hadn’t had an album out since 2007. I could see the press starting to turn on him. I had to make that clear. So I said things had to change. We had to work on Zach’s public image. We had to make him look less weird, less sinister and he had to get some new music out there.
—Did you face resistance?
—They were like a couple of surly schoolboys who’d been caught. James wasn’t stupid though; he knew I was right. I said I’d help, and to be honest, I think they both welcomed it. I also saw how bad Zach had become.
—In what way?
—It was the degree of his paranoia. He was paying out ridiculous money for security, PIs, everything. After those poor girls died in 2007, it had only escalated. I never knew the extent of it all. All those things had affected Zach badly, and no one was helping him; there was no one to steer him right. He had security patrols all over the woods at all hours. He was convinced something was out there. That’s what got into Bonnie’s head – all that paranoia. It was so bad for her, for him, for all of us. And no one tried to stop it; no one told him no. That was where the problem lay.
Naomi tells me that it appeared, at first, that things were getting better. Her influence at Crystal Forest looked to be positive. Zach seemed more at ease. They were talking more. Zach was spending time with Bonnie. Bonnie, however, seemed to be getting worse. She was withdrawn, quiet, clinging to Naomi for much of the time, even though she was thirteen years old at this point.
There were, Naomi says, still a few girls and families left staying at Crystal Forest. She thought it would be good for Bonnie to be able to meet other girls her age, but she wouldn’t. She spent a lot of her time alone in her room. Naomi thought of trying a different approach.
—I actually had a few discussions with James, one to one, about stopping the visits, the girls everywhere. I wanted it to just be me, Zach and Bonnie. A family unit. Maybe that would help her. Maybe that would help Zach.
—How did James Cryer take that?
—Oh, he became very defensive, told me I was meddling. He basically said that it would look worse if we stopped the girls visiting. That’s where we clashed. I told him Zach had a teenage niece who was in crisis and she should come first. Things came to a bit of an impasse. So I decided I would start meddling, I would start sticking my nose in where it didn’t belong.
Naomi began watching James Cryer, just as James Cryer had watched her for years. She began turning up when he wasn’t expecting it, asking to look at files and plans. Cryer attempted to act the innocent, but Naomi tells me it was yet another performance, another character.
—I was getting to him. I knew that. He was pretending to be open with me, telling me I could look on his laptop, his phone, if I wanted to. Calling my bluff. I did it and I found something – something he’d tried to hide. It made no sense at first.
Searching through Cryer’s computer, Naomi found a file that had been concealed in a maze of dull, administration documents.
—It was called ‘SG plans’ and it was some kind of … design, for something in the forest – a technical document. It made no sense to me so I typed ‘SG’ into Cryer’s email.
—You got into his email?
—It was easy. His password was a version of my name wasn’t it? N40Mi.
—When I typed in ‘SG’ I found an email to a light-and-sound company about something they were building in the forest, not far from the house.
Could SG possibly stand for ‘special girls’? Naomi doesn’t know for sure, and says she only became aware of Zach’s ‘special girls’ after he was dead. Unfortunately, Cryer wasn’t stupid and had managed to hide a great deal of his emails, Naomi believed he’d done so in case he was caught.
—I hung around outside doors, I ‘accidentally’ walked in on him when he was on the phone. Nothing. It was making no sense. I knew there was something going on in the forest. So I started to put my foot down about certain things. Like the teenage girls. They had to go. I insisted.
Naomi tells me that she did get her way in the end. The girls were all sent away. James Cryer, however, was not happy.
—After that the atmosphere at Crystal Forest became … charged. I just don’t think James was used to facing any opposition. I didn’t care. Until I got my way, I was intent on making his life a living hell. For Zach and for Bonnie.
—Did things get any better for her?
—She was scared a lot of the time, which wasn’t like her at all. She began to have … accidents in her bed at night. It was night terrors. She was becoming more and more withdrawn at school as well as at home. The things she said, her dreams, her fears … they began to get to me too.
—I’m so sorry that happened to her. What was scaring her so badly?
—Here, now, in the light of day, it sounds like kids’ stuff, but then, in the dark of the night, when you wake suddenly and you have your daughter sat beside you, bolt upright, or else standing next to the window, half asleep, her eyes pale in the dark … it’s frightening.
Her fear was always the forest. She would point out movements, shadows. We’d sit up for hours, listening to the wind in the trees. She called it ‘the whispering’, and she’d tell me the words that she could make out. They were telling her to eat, eat, eat she said. It was horrible, chilling. Then … then I started to hear them too; I started to see things as well.
—What sorts of things?
—Shadows, the glow of eyes. I thought it was all in my head. It had to be, right? I thought I was going insane, maybe we both were. I was worried. Really worried. Bonnie was starting to say she’d seen something in the forest – a creature with red eyes looking at her. I didn’t know what to do. I thought she might need psychiatric help. She just wasn’t the same girl anymore.
—How is Bonnie doing now? Is she any better? What about yourself?
It’s an innocuous question but Naomi stiffens. She pushes her sunglasses up her nose, and I sense a degree of tension between us. I wonder what to say, whether I should apologise. It is clear that Naomi does not want to discuss Bonnie’s curren
t life.
There is something else dawning on me too. I can’t quite believe how candid Naomi is being with me. The silence that has enveloped Zach Crystal for all these years is being discussed in a bar, for a podcast … with me, and by Naomi Crystal, sister of the star. That in itself is starting to dawn on me, and I can’t help wonder what is coming. This can’t be all of it. We can’t just pack up and go our separate ways, can we? Naomi looks at her phone and goes on. I notice she’s speaking more quickly now.
—OK. So I need to explain what happened next. Just after New Year, 2018, I went to see James to tell him to stay away from Crystal Forest for a while. I was now convinced his presence there was toxic, it was only making things worse for us all. He lived there, had for years, and I was going to tell him how important it was that we had time just the three of us. For Bonnie. I had everything planned out, what I was going to say. It was evening. James always worked late in the office in the evenings, doing admin. Bonnie was staying up in the tree house with Zach, so I thought this was a good time.
James wasn’t in his office though, when I went in. I noticed his computer was on, and I walked over to it. I’d already looked once but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to look again. Something told me he had to be up to no good. Maybe it was because he sent all those letters years ago. He was in his early teens and he’d sent a letter to everyone on the Hopesprings Estate, trying to find me. I never forgot that, the scale of it, the creepiness of it.
—What was on his computer? Anything new?
—Nothing. Nothing incriminating whatsoever. Just the same as last time: tax, finances et cetera. I was about to go and find him when there was a buzz from his desk drawer. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I opened it and there’s a phone. The screen’s locked of course, but I pick it up and wonder if I should try, just try something … and I put in my own birthday. It worked for the computer, didn’t it, putting my name in as a password? What do you know – the phone unlocks.
I start poking about, and bring up the photo gallery.
My blood runs cold.
The content of the pictures Naomi saw, she says she can never forget. Teenage girls in Crystal Forest. Sometimes James himself was in the pictures.
—I put the phone in my pocket and went to get Bonnie. We were getting out of there. All the rumours, all the vile things people were saying about Zach – it was him, it was all James. James used Zach as a lure to do these things to girls. All here, in Crystal Forest. I’m sure he had these pictures as some kind of sick trophies or some kind of reminder of his own power, what he was capable of doing, what he could get away with. I went to tell Zach. But then I remembered something: the email, ‘SG’. Suddenly, things started to make sense.
Rightly or wrongly, Naomi decided that she would confront James first, before she told the police, before she told Zach. She says that there was a terrible question burning inside her that overrode her pragmatism.
Bonnie.
Bonnie was thirteen years old and she’d stayed at Crystal Forest. Naomi had no doubt in her mind that her brother was innocent, that Bonnie was safe with him, but she’d had doubts about James since they were young. She needed to know if he’d attacked Bonnie.
—I told James I needed to speak to him, out in the forest. He refused at first, tried to fob me off. He said it was too dark, that we could do it tomorrow, during the day. I couldn’t give him time to think, to plan, to plot, to cover his tracks, so I told him I’d had someone from a lighting company on the phone, something about ‘SG’. That’s when I saw him falter, just for a split second, and I knew I had him. We walked out into the forest. It was January – pitch-dark and freezing cold. Horrible. He was getting mud all over his shoes and was in a terrible mood about it. At one point he tells me to stop, we’ve gone too far. So I get him to press on. He’s babbling, trying everything to get me to stop, but I won’t. He tells me he’s going back, and that’s when I pull the phone from my pocket. It takes him a few moments to realise, and finally, we keep going. We’re far away from the cameras and the perimeter fence, deep in the forest. It’s muddy, uneven, uphill. Then I see something and my blood runs cold.
Lights. Red lights. And there’s something between the trees, some shape. It’s not human. I can feel myself starting to get faint, and I turn to James. He’s staring, just staring into the trees, staring past me.
—That must have been terrifying.
—It was. But you know what, I thought of Bonnie, all her sleepless nights, all her terror and I thought, Fuck this. I start walking toward the lights. James is screaming ‘no’ at me, to run, to come back, but I just start climbing the hill, getting closer to the lights. About halfway up, there’s a clearing, and that’s when I saw it.
—What was it?
—Lights. A rig of lights in the trees. They were winking on and off all over. Red. In little pairs, like eyes. I think not just of Bonnie, but of all the girls they brought into the forest, all his ‘special girls’. I wondered then if Zach knew about any of this. Had Zach been fooled too?
I turn round and there he is. James. He’s seen what I’ve seen and his face changes. I can see this fury on it. He bares his teeth and runs at me. I start running too, higher up that hill, deeper into the forest. It’s so thick, dark, muddy, but I’m filled with this adrenaline, spurring me on.
I don’t know if it was that … or something else … It’s a dense forest, of course there’s wildlife in there. But I feel like … I feel like something’s running alongside me, in the undergrowth. The branches were grabbing at my hair, and from the corner of my eye, I swear I see movement, as if a large beast is staggering through the trees. I keep seeing flashes of something pale, hear this snorting breath. Maybe it’s James behind me – he’s panting, gasping like an animal. He knows if he starts screaming that security will get involved. He can’t have that. We break out of the undergrowth and reach a rocky ridge, where the ground just falls away. I climb up; the rocks are all slippery with leaf mulch and moss. I can see all these weird marks on the stones, like carvings, and the moon is shining down. Like a spotlight. James is at the bottom of the ridge, panting, gasping, nearly on his knees. I’m filled with revulsion, disgust. I think of him sat next to me on that bench all those years ago; the smell of him. His face.
I stand on the edge of that ridge, in the moonlight, holding out that phone. I tell him I’ll get rid of it if he answers my question. He says he’ll pay me, he’ll do anything. I ask him if he ever touched Bonnie. He’s looking at me, and I notice something, something behind him, in the trees. It’s like breath. Like someone’s breath in the night – clouds of condensation. And eyes. Red, glowing eyes. I’m frozen, totally frozen with horror. There’s something just out of sight in the dark behind James, something pale. He’s not seen it yet and I ask him again, did he ever touch her?
‘Not me, I swear,’ he says.
Then he looks around.
He sees it too and he screams; he starts climbing up towards me and the thing follows…
—What was it?
—Maybe there were other things in the forest, more than just lights? I don’t know. It was a … deer shape, but pale, bones showing through, its skin all black. Horns, a mess of them, like thorns on its head. A skull. A cloud passed over the moon, and it was gone. Just two red lights fading away.
James is screaming, gibbering, climbing up the ridge to where I am. He’s shouting that it’s true, it’s true and he’s reaching for me and—
Naomi breaks off. She’s pale, pulling herself out of the memory, back from that frozen night into the warmth of the bar. Ketchup and vinegar on the table between us, the smell of oil from the kitchen.
When she continues, her voice is faint.
—I don’t really remember exactly … It was all a blur. He slipped and as he fell past me, I smelled him. I smelled that same aftershave from when we were thirteen. Maybe that was a hallucination too, some sensory anomaly. There was silence for a moment and then a thud. He’d fallen
down the other side of the ridge. His head had cracked open like a crab shell when a gull drops it on rocks. All this stuff was leaking out and his legs and arms were twitching. I still see that, sometimes, when I can’t sleep. Along with those photos. The way he twitched. It was an accident. That’s all.
Accident or not, James Cryer was dead. Naomi Crystal pocketed the phone and let security know that she’d found James’s body. The rest, as we know is history.
As for the phone, the pictures, Naomi kept them. She says she should have passed them on to the police, she knows that.
—But I just wanted to wait. For things to calm down. This was going to be so bad for Zach’s career if it all came out. I know what the media would have said about him. Rightly or wrongly, I kept it. I didn’t tell anyone.
For Naomi, this was the opportunity to build a family, the family she and her brother had never had, the family she wanted for her daughter.
—Zach was distraught, obviously. He found James’s death hard to cope with.
—Did you ever tell him what you’d found?
—I always meant to. I planned to, but later, when he was better, when we were … I don’t know, more solid. He needed to get his career back on track first, for all of us.
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