Dale's mind was wrenched back to the present when, after precisely nine minutes, the Dictaphone's red RECORD light abruptly winked out.
No battery. Shit.
Like any good pro, Dale always carried a supply. There was a new pack in his rucksack, and he was almost positive there were one or two loose ones kicking around, too. As he crossed the room to retrieve them, he suddenly became aware of how cold it was getting.
Damn skinflint landlord, turn the heating on!
But he was surprised to find that the heating already was on. The large wall-mounted radiator was almost too hot to touch. Temperature must be dropping outside, he thought, glancing out of the window at the rapidly deteriorating weather. Just then he noticed something lying on the floor beneath the radiator and stooped to pick it up. It was a long-barrelled iron key. The rust and level of discolouration told him it was very old. Puzzled, he looked around the room. It didn't seem to fit any of the locks, and how could it have found its way underneath the radiator? Just another mini-mystery to add to the rest he thought, laying it down on the bedside table.
After replacing the batteries in the Dictaphone, he hit the RECORD button again. The machine's red light lit up, and the timer obediently started ticking over again.
Each brush with the law had been another kick in the teeth for Barry, and another black mark on his record. He was still living at home and arguing with his parents a lot. One morning just before his eighteenth birthday, he got up and told his mother he was going for a walk. He seemed normal, she said. If anything he seemed a little happier than usual. It was giro day, she remembered. Barry always got up early on giro day to get to the post office before they closed for lunch. However, this time, instead of going to the post office, he went into the woods and hung himself from a tree. An old man out walking his dog found him a few hours later. It was a 'teen tragedy,' the local newspaper said.
Looking back from this distance, it almost seemed like another life. For the first few months after it happened it was all Dale could think about, and it was all anyone wanted to talk about around the village until the next catastrophe came along and brightened up their existence. The worst part about it was he hadn't spoken to Barry for a couple of weeks before he died, and the last time they did talk they had a mini-falling out over something so trivial Dale couldn't even remember what it was. He'd wanted to text Barry to sort things out. But always thought tomorrow.
Tomorrow, tomorrow.
In his darkest moments, he wondered how much he was to blame. Could he have changed anything? What was going through Barry's mind when he tied that knot and slipped the rope around his neck?
Dale had a dream once. In the dream, he saw Barry walking out to the woods in the rain. The light was failing, so it was either dusk or dawn. He was carrying a length of rope. Dale watched as his friend sat under an oak tree with the rope in his lap, caressing it with his fingers. He called out, but his friend didn't hear. When he awoke, he was left with the unwavering knowledge that the dream was a depiction of a journey Barry made many times. Always to the same spot, always alone. Every time he found a reason to walk back.
Except that morning.
Fuck!
The least Dale could have done was pay more attention. If his friend was in pain, he should have realized and done something about it. That's what friends are supposed to do. But people get too caught up in their own lives to notice what's going on in other people's.
Coulda, shoulda.
Didn't.
What Dale felt was shame. Pure and simple. He felt like a coward. After the initial shock came the bitterness and anger, which had largely dissipated, but the shame and remorse remained. He shook his head, hoping to dislodge the bad memories that lingered there. He thought the crushing guilt that chastised him for not doing more to prevent the death of his friend would never fade. But over time it did, to an extent. But there were still days like today when, for some reason, Barry imposed himself at the forefront of his mind and refused to move. Almost as if he was trying to convey a message from the Great Beyond.
The little red light blinked out again.
Huh?
He gave the machine a little shake, then hit the RECORD button again. Nothing. The Dictaphone was lifeless.
He took the 'new' batteries back out and examined them. They looked fine, but unless visibly corroded, a battery just looked like a battery. With a shrug he threw the faulty batteries in the waste paper basket and replaced them with the last two in the pack. Then he paused with his finger over the RECORD button. It certainly had gotten colder in the room. He could almost see his breath, and his fingers trembled. For a few long moments he couldn't find it within himself to depress the button. He glanced around nervously. He was still alone. Or at least appeared to be. All this supernatural mumbo jumbo must be getting to him, fraying his nerves.
Summoning every ounce of willpower, he finally hit the button again. He was so anxious that for a few seconds he forgot what he was doing before resuming the one-sided verbal exchange. But this time, his heart wasn't in it. Whereas before the activity had a kind of surreal excitement, now he just felt ridiculous. He actually breathed a sigh of relief when the timer indicated the fifteen minutes allocated time was up. He stopped the machine and held it for a while. It looked just like any other Dictaphone. But now, for a while at least, it was imbued with power, the power to change his whole way of thinking.
This was some heavy shit.
Needing something else to think about, he made himself a cup of instant coffee using the kettle and complimentary sachets in the room and peered out of the window again. Dark storm clouds were gathering, seemingly being drawn from all four corners of the globe simultaneously, as they often did along the Welsh coast. Violent storms could erupt and disperse without leaving so much as a trace.
Lucy should be back soon.
The thought was quickly followed by a hot pang of guilt. How could he be so stupid? Letting let her go walking out there alone, in a strange area, after what happened last night? What if she had another... blackout? Or worse, a fit or some kind of seizure?
Shit.
Setting his coffee cup down Dale picked up his mobile, scrolled through the numbers until he found Lucy's, and pressed CALL.
Chapter 20:
Secret Garden
Lucy's feet sank into the boggy earth as she made her way across the field. She hadn't seen the bird of prey, or anything else worth photographing, for a while now.
At least I'm not lost, she thought defiantly.
How could she be lost? Sker House, the only visible landmark for miles, may be getting steadily smaller but it was still there, silhouetted against the greying sky behind her.
However, something wasn't right. She would walk for a while, then turn to get her bearings only to find that Sker House, all those hundreds or thousands of tons of limestone, concrete, and timber, had moved slightly. Logic told her that it was simply a result of her not walking in a straight line, but more than once the whole thing seemed to disappear altogether. Just for a split second, there was nothing but open sky. Once, she even saw it shimmer if it were a mirage. Then it took form and solidified before her very eyes. When that happened, she was suddenly torn between getting as far away from the place as she could and being drawn back there, where some indefinable part of her felt she belonged. The whole weird episode was accompanied by a swoony dizziness. At one point, it crossed her mind that she may have somehow inadvertently ingested some of those magic mushrooms that grew wild here, and the thought made her giggle.
Her pace slowed until eventually, she stopped walking altogether. She was in a field, both Sker House and the ocean somewhere behind her. She checked to make sure the house was still there. This time, thankfully, it was. The field was bordered with a spindly-looking hedge that was more brown than green, and the yellowing grass was completely absent in places exposing the raw, uncultivated earth beneath. She kicked at the soil. It was of a light brown, sandy consistency
, and came up easily. No doubt all the sand and salt blowing in from the beach made farming this particular patch of land particularly difficult. Judging by the state of the place, it had been a long time since anyone had even tried.
She didn't see a gate.
Then how did you get in?
Must've have climbed a sty, she thought, though she had no recollection of doing so. Climbing a sty in the country was one of those banal things you do without even thinking about, like crossing a road in the city. Moments like that were easily lost. Shrugging, she decided to head back to Sker to see how Dale was getting on with his assignment. If she could find that sty again. As she began to retrace her steps, her eyes were drawn to an unkempt corner of the field in the shadow of a large oak tree with withered, twisted limbs. There was something behind the tree, partially hidden by its great gnarled trunk.
As she neared it, she noticed that the hedge in that corner had been allowed to grow taller than anywhere else in the field, and what she had spied from afar was some kind of gate. It wasn't until she was within touching distance that she realized there was no hedge. What she had mistaken for a privet was actually creeper vines attached to, and covering, a stone wall, the kind painstakingly erected by carefully slotting bricks together without the aid of cement or adhesive like a giant jigsaw puzzle. The vines twisted and turned all over the uneven surface, tangled up and growing into in each other.
What the hell? Did she really just walk past all this?
It wouldn't be impossible. The creeper vines camouflaged the wall against the background, and unless you were at just the right angle, you would never even know it was there. She reached out and ran her fingers along the cold stones. It was probably just a boundary mark or something. Stepping back to take a look at the gate, she realized it was actually more of a doorway cut out of the stone wall. The door itself was a sturdy-looking wooden affair, built at chest height and reinforced with what looked like iron or steel cladding. In one corner was a heavy rusted padlock.
Lucy stared at the door, willing it to magically open. It didn't, so she stepped back and put her hands on her hips. The stone wall she had mistaken for a hedge was so tall she couldn't see over the top of it, even if she stood on tiptoe and craned her neck. She looked around for something to stand on, but the field was devoid of anything helpful.
Unless...
Lucy tentatively regarded the oak tree. Could it support her weight? At first glance she thought not, but it's spindly arms were held out almost invitingly. She gave the trunk a little knock. It sounded hollow, which probably wasn't a good thing, and tiny flecks of bark flew off in all directions. She'd never climbed a tree before. She'd never needed to, or wanted to, for that matter. But how hard could it be? She had a fleeting vision of falling off, shattering her leg in a dozen places, and being forced to endure the agony of dragging herself back to Sker House across all that rough terrain inch by agonising inch.
Still... The tree looked climbable. Dozens of brittle-looking branches jutted out of the trunk, some ends splintered to expose flesh turned grey by the elements. Yet the upper reaches of the tree were in full spring mode. Lush green branches, resplendent with bright leaves, canopied over her head. That proved the tree was still healthy and strong, at least. If she was extra careful, surely she would be able to scale high enough to peek over the top of the wall. Without any more pause for thought, she started climbing.
Three or four feet off the ground now, and still going. An unforeseen problem was that as she ascended, the tree the branches became thinner and more flexible. There weren't many hand and foot holes she trusted.
Come on girl, you can do it! Don't quit now!
She manoeuvred herself adjacent to the wall. Just a little higher...
The moment she reached the summit, a lot of things happened at once. Afterwards, she would spend a long time dissecting events and their relevance. The thing she remembered most profoundly was the sun as it broke through the dark clouds, bathing her with angled rays of warmth and light. The moment was so dazzling it seemed to come from a divine source. Lucy stopped for a split second to savour the experience, lifting her face to the heavens to feel the full effect. But even as she basked in the spontaneous sun shower, she looked down over the wall, and into...
The garden. The secret garden.
Though her eyes had precious little time to drink in the sight, and when she recalled it later she could never be sure how much of what she saw in her mind's eye was real and how much blank space had been filled in by her imagination, what she did see would stay with her forever.
The centrepiece was an ornate little pond, surrounded by a rock garden and a beautiful little marble fountain. A path led to the pond from the little locked gate, lined by ranks of flowers of all different sizes, varieties and colours, and a little wooden bench had been placed in one corner in the shade of a willow tree. In addition to the flowers, various other plants were on display, every one of them lush and well-nourished, though Lucy couldn't identify any of them. Botany was never her strong point. Skirting the perimeter were immaculately maintained hedges, trimmed into shapes which her mind would later twist into various animals. A rabbit, a miniature giraffe, maybe a lion. The garden was bursting with life and vitality, providing a welcome contrast to the bleak countryside around it like an oasis in a desert.
Unbeknownst to her, the secret garden would haunt both her dreams and her nightmares. It became a place she could retreat when the world got too much, and on those occasions the garden was always sunny and warm, the gate hanging wide open to receive her, negating the need to climb petrified trees just to get a look. It was safe, serene.
But how different the same place can be. Sometimes, she found herself in the other secret garden. This time it was dark and cold. Things slithered and writhed in the shadows, and something hidden in the far corner made a low, guttural growl. In this version, Lucy would walk up the path toward the little pond, where she would stop and stare deep into the murky black water, hypnotized by its soft lapping sound. Then she would notice something beneath the ripples, something white and translucent. Curious, she would lean in closer. Then the hand would break the surface. Paralysed with terror she could only watch as it extended into a bloated, fish belly-white arm, reaching for her.
On some fundamental level she understood the message the nightmare was trying to convey. The secret garden was a place between worlds, of equal light and dark, where anything is possible. Your wildest dreams, or your darkest nightmares. But that level of understanding came later. Right then, at the moment of discovery, all Lucy felt was wonder. She couldn't believe her eyes. How could a garden like this, so lush and healthy, exist unnoticed in the middle of a wasteland?
She was reaching around to unhook her camera when the third thing happened. Something touched her. It felt more like an animal than a person. Or a bird, fluttering its wings against her upper thigh. In that moment, whatever illusion she was under shattered, she instantly lost her grip on the branch, and then she was falling. The journey to the topsoil took a very long time. Had she really been that high?
Then she hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud, and the wind was pushed out of her with a loud oosh! There was a sharp pain in her side, and the world went grey around the edges.
She had no idea how long she was unconscious. Or even if she was. There was the sensation of drifting on clouds, although that could have been because that was all she could see from where she lay. It was the weird fluttering against her leg that brought her back to reality. She could feel it, like leathery wings beating against her leg. When she tried to move her head to investigate, the pain hit like a blinding flash. She had landed on her face, as ungainly and unladylike as you could get. Her jaw throbbed, she could feel the left side of her face swelling, and the coppery taste of blood filled her mouth. Her tongue flicked around, checking for new cavities or chipped teeth. Thankfully, there didn't seem to be any. She touched a finger to her nose and it came away bloody.
It was proving a day of new experiences. The first time she had climbed a tree, the first time she had fallen off one, and the first time she had given herself a nose bleed. Struggling to her feet she hunched over, holding her ribs with trembling arms. There seemed to be less pain that way. When she stood up, the world swam in and out of focus a couple of times before finally settling on a slightly skewed, off-kilter view. She saw Sker House roughly where it was supposed to be, and made an unsteady beeline for it, the secret garden already behind her.
But still that damn annoying thing on her leg!
She swatted at it impatiently, and felt something hard and bulky. It was moving, vibrating urgently. Her phone! Of course! There was no animal. She fished the device out of her pocket, pressed RECEIVE, and in her best telephone manner said, “Hello?”
“Lucy!” It was Dale. “Where have you been? I've been calling you for ages. Kept going to voicemail.”
“Sorry, didn't hear it,” Lucy replied, the fog beginning to clear.
“I thought you'd... never mind. Is everything okay? You sound half asleep.”
“I'm okay,” she slurred. “I fell off a tree.”
“What were you doing up a fucking tree?”
“I found a garden. I think it's the secret one Machen was talking about. But the gate was locked. I couldn't get in, so I had to climb a tree.”
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