by Jackson Lear
“The police are here,” said Liz, with a half-smile and a half-you’re-grounded look. “It’s time for Amanda to go home.”
The weight of just how much trouble they were both in quickly fell upon teenagers, though while Josh was sure he could talk his way out of it, Amanda would be lucky if her mum didn’t fit her with a bell so she would know where she was at all times.
Amanda climbed out of Josh’s bed wearing borrowed tracksuit pants and a t-shirt, picked up her wet clothes, and crept past Josh’s dad as he stood in the hallway. The main saving grace his dad noticed was that Amanda had only discarded her jeans, t-shirt, and socks onto the floor. Hopefully she was still wearing her underwear.
The following morning, Josh had to practice rolling a condom onto a cucumber. He made the mistake of maintaining eye contact with his mum when she said, ‘penis’, ‘erect’, and ‘vagina’. He would remember the horror of that conversation for the rest of his life.
Claire sniffed her t-shirt. She would have to borrow another from Zoe’s closet. With any luck her jeans were still draped over the bathroom radiator. She pressed her hand against the one in Zoe’s bedroom. There was no heat coming from it. In all likelihood the one in the bathroom would be the same so her jeans would still be damp. She crept over to the chest of drawers, felt the floorboards creak under the carpet, and heard the murmuring from the kitchen drop in an instant. She grabbed a pair of green volleyball shorts then threw on one of Zoe’s black hoodies.
The kitchen chatter had started up again. Thankfully there were only two voices in earshot. Any more and Claire would be in trouble. She was is trouble regardless, but at least with only two guys in there she had a chance at kicking them out of the house. Her head spun and her stomach was ready to heave. Despite that, she had a plan. The floorboards had a different one.
An eighteen year old young man with a peach-fuzz soul patch glanced into the corridor. “Hey.”
“Hi,” said Claire, freezing at the sight of the two guys grinning at her. One of them was certainly Lewis. Unless Lewis bailed on them last night. If that was the case then this one was …
Claire drew a blank. The other might be Jus. Or was it Josh with a drunken lisp? She was promptly met by a burp that tasted like sick.
“Wow, you need coffee,” said Justin. He quickly poured her a cup.
“I don’t …”
“No, trust me. You need it.”
Claire looked over Zoe’s kitchen table. There was a carton of orange juice sitting perilously close to Lewis. Too close to reach without risking physical contact. There was half a loaf of bread open on the table accompanied with enough of a burnt toast smell to explain where the rest of it went. There was a single plate of crumbs. Two knives, though. The open tub of margarine had a blood-like smear of jam. The jam jar had a sharp stab of margarine.
Justin handed over a lukewarm cup of instant coffee. “There you go.”
“Thank you,” said Claire. She stared into the splash of milk and spoonful of sugar combination.
“Not how you take it?” asked Justin.
“No, this is fine.”
“Would you prefer tea?”
Judging by the state of Zoe’s kitchen, Claire didn’t want to risk any further chaos from two guys digging through more cupboards and drawers.
“This is fine,” said Claire. Then she took a sip of coffee. Her lips curled as though she had just sucked on a lemon.
Lewis and Justin shared a quick grin. “First time?”
“No,” said Claire.
“I wasn’t talking about the coffee.”
“And you don’t need to do the coffee all in one go,” said Justin. “But you do need a lot of it.”
“Orange juice as well,” said Lewis.
Claire nodded and took another sip of what she hoped would be the last coffee she would ever have to drink. There was a hum nearby that sounded an awful lot like her phone wedged into the bottom of her purse. Whoever it was could piss off.
“Toast?” asked Lewis.
“Yeah,” mumbled Claire. “I …” The colour drained from her face in a split second and was replaced with a slap of nauseating panic.
Lewis and Justin leapt away from the table. “Bathroom. Go.”
Claire left the mug of milky brown sludge and hurried to the upstairs bathroom.
Her jeans were crumpled on the floor mat. It was decision time. Mind over matter or give in to nature? She closed the door over, lifted the toilet lid, and sat on the floor with her back against the wall. The marching band between her temples had quietened down but the trapeze act in her stomach was warming up again.
Soon came a knock on the door.
“Are you alive in there?” asked Justin.
Claire pulled at her matted hair which had been soaked from the rain and left to dry on a pillow. “Yeah.”
“I have orange juice for you.”
“Leave it there.” She waited for the creak on the staircase. It didn’t come. She leaned forward to see if Justin had his eye peering through the keyhole. She yanked the door open.
No Justin.
She stepped across the landing and pushed Zoe’s door open, half expecting Lewis to be sitting on Zoe’s bed, stroking her head. Zoe was alone and soundly asleep. The chatter from downstairs returned.
Claire pulled the glass of orange into the bathroom and closed the door. Ten seconds after guzzling the drink her stomach started to ease. She drank some water from under the tap, gargled with mouthwash, found two pills under the sink that would ease the sting between her ears, and gave herself a deadline of half an hour to appear like she hadn’t spent the night spilling rum all over herself. There was no lock on the bathroom door. That ruled out having a shower.
She needed a plan. A better plan than her earlier one of creeping downstairs and hoping that the two unknowns were actually old friends whom she could tell to go home. Unfortunately she was pretty sure that her dad had been calling her for the last ten minutes. She barrelled into Zoe’s room and dug her phone out of her bag.
“Hey Dad.”
She was well practiced in faking a sick voice. She was also a pro with the abdomen grip and grimace to get out of school. But she had never had to fake being perfectly okay after belting out a night’s worth of garbled lyrics from the boy band Eighty To One while utterly shitfaced.
“Where are you?” growled Paul.
Claire dropped her voice so as not to wake Zoe. “I’m just about to head home.”
“I went to the Nesbitt’s this morning expecting to pick you up.”
Claire’s grip around her phone tightened.
“Guess who I found next door? David Nesbitt. Not in his house, no. In the neighbour’s front garden. Hungover. Surrounded by beer bottles and condoms. He says you went home last night but your door was wide open this morning. Where the hell are you?”
“I’m staying at a friend’s.”
“Then I’m coming to pick you up. What’s the address?”
“It’s okay, Dad. I’ll walk home.” And hope like Christ that no one would notice her complete change of outfit.
“Is Zoe there with you?” asked Paul.
“Yes.”
“I’m picking you both up.”
“We’re just going to walk home. Don’t stress.”
“Don’t stress? With all of these beer bottles and condoms lying in front of me and a dumbass kid who looks like he’s about to shit himself for having God knows how many under aged girls at his place last night? That’s right, Dipshit. Even if you’re both drunk you can go to jail for rape even if she consented. Statutory rape if she’s underage. Now, where the hell are you two?”
Claire checked Zoe’s breathing. She was alive and able to open her eyes, but no amount of shaking was getting her out of bed. “We’ll be home soon.”
Paul shot a quick breath down the phone. “If you’re not back home by the time I am then you are grounded for the rest of your life. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“You have less than ten minutes,” said Paul.
Zoe cracked one eye open and stared at Claire through a mountain of hair that covered her face.
Claire rummaged through the wardrobe and pulled out a t-shirt. “We have to go back to mine.”
Zoe closed her eye.
“Come on!” She pulled on Zoe’s arm.
“Noooo.”
“My dad went to pick us up and we weren’t there. We have to go. Now!”
“I’m staying here,” murmured Zoe.
“He’s going to kill us! Get dressed!”
Zoe rolled over and pulled the duvet up to her ears.
Meanwhile, the car in front of Paul’s could only have been driven by a bat-shit senile grandma, considering that she slowed for every bird that pecked at something on the road. Her senility was confirmed when she reached a roundabout. She should have gone straight. She had no indicator on so clearly her intention was to go straight. Instead, she went right and found more birds foraging on the road.
Then she came to a complete stop and waved a group of kids across the road when there was no traffic light or zebra crossing in sight. She had the right of way. They didn’t. She was doing the world a favour by letting the kids get to their destination without dangerously crossing the road. Paul stared into her rear view mirror, daring her to lock eyes with him.
He would never live this down. Zoe’s parents were out of town so she was staying in Claire’s room. She had stayed over before. No problem. Then she and Claire turned sixteen.
They neglected to mention that the birthday party they were going to was for an eighteen year old they barely knew. In the space of one night Paul had managed to lose both girls under the promise that they had permission to go from Zoe’s parents. God help them all if any of those condoms were actually used.
As it turned out, the party was a little more spectacular than the girls expected. Three hours into it came the inevitable: “The police are here!”
Claire and Zoe ran. The two guys they had been talking with ran as well. Then the weather turned against them. The girls were clever enough to hide at Zoe’s empty house to dry off. They were not clever enough to remember that Claire’s dad was supposed to pick them up from David’s that morning. That might still have been doable if Zoe hadn’t mentioned to that the house would be empty until Sunday.
There was no way Claire could get Zoe out of bed and back home in time. Nor could she leave her in bed while two touchy-feely guys were downstairs trying to figure out how to make pancakes.
She needed a plan. A brilliant one. It turns out, “My dad’s coming,” is an effective way of getting two eighteen year old strangers out of the house.
She did her best at cleaning up the kitchen and dragging her friend the fifty metres to her house. Zoe barfed in their front garden.
Claire was grounded for the rest of her life.
The following Monday began as usual with a full school assembly. The only difference was the presence of Inspector Douglas, the senior-most police officer in Luxford. Next to him as a detective from London. The students had never been quieter.
Fifteen year old Catherine Shievers had disappeared that Saturday night, sometime between 10:30 and midnight while Josh, Anthony, Patrick, and Amanda were wandering through a not-quite deserted area of Luxford, and while Claire and Zoe were running from the police with two guys they had only just met.
Josh sat in his school’s counsellor’s office with a string of teenagers waiting in the hallway, all coming up with the worst case scenario for why the police wanted to talk to them individually. As far as Josh was concerned the detective was a freaking psychic. What he didn’t know was that Amanda’s mum had told the police that he was the mastermind of several midnight rendezvous with people of Catherine’s age.
Elizabeth Millan, now operating on four hours of sleep, had dark puffs of skin under her eyes and a strong smell of tea on her breath. “Where do these late night meetings take place?” she asked.
Josh stared blankly at the detective. “Different places.”
She allowed him to point out all of the locations on a map that he and his friends visited, even if she was only really interested in where he was on Saturday night. “Why there?”
Josh’s bravura faltered for a moment. “We went to see a ghost.”
Millan glanced quickly at the recorder sitting on the table. “Did you see one?”
“No, we didn’t get there in time.”
“What happened on Saturday night?”
“Me and my friends … My friends and I wanted to hang out. We heard a ghost story about someone slowly walking through Luxford. I didn’t think it was true but we wanted to see, because maybe it was. But we found a dog on the side of Ashdown Road. It had been taped up and stabbed. We tried to cut the tape away and bring it to a vet, one near Patrick’s house, but the dog died before we even moved it.”
The detective studied Josh carefully without giving any hint of a reaction away. “What kind of dog was it?”
“Grey and mangy with splotches of different colours. I don’t know the type. It was a bit greasy as well, like a dog at a junkyard. It had been stabbed a couple of times in its chest.”
“What time was this?”
“Eleven. It was spitting with rain when the dog died. We didn’t want to stay any longer in case whoever did this was still nearby. We walked Patrick back to his house, then Anthony, Amanda, and I went home.”
Detective Millan nodded slowly, connecting possible dots between a murdered dog and a missing girl.
As it happened, Josh and the gang were just two streets over from Catherine’s house when she disappeared. The worst of it was hearing his mum’s voice still rattling inside his head, shrieking that he could have been abducted and that he missed a potential murderer by minutes. Maybe even seconds. Maybe her son had actually seen the abductor drive off with Catherine stuffed in the back of a car, either dead or screaming for help.
His mum shouting at him wasn’t nearly as bad as the reaction he got when Amanda’s mum came over and scared shit out of him.
“What time did you get home?” the detective asked.
“I don’t know. It was a minute or two before the power went off.”
“Only a minute or two?”
Josh nodded. “I was still trying to get out of my wet clothes.”
“While you were out, did you see anyone on Saturday night?”
Josh glanced back through the recesses on his mind, but he was pretty sure they had tried to remain out of sight from any adult, so when one did pass them they were already well hidden behind someone’s wall. “I don’t think so.”
“Which way did you go home?” The detective waved her hand back to the map.
“From Ashdown Road we walked east to Falstaff, where Patrick lives. He went to his house. Anthony, Amanda and I walked back home. We went south along Grove Street to Laurel Street, then west until Fielding, and then south to my house.”
The detective eased into a curious smile. “You’re good with directions?”
Josh shrugged. “My dad makes me do it like that when we’re in the car.” The only thing more annoying was that his dad reiterated every time they drove around that it would all make sense when Josh started to drive.
Though it was impossible for him to imagine, the detective had kids herself and recognised a look of guilt on a child’s face when she saw it.
Josh stared through the map, his mind being drawn to the devils of imagination as the distance between the abductor and his friends pulled closer together. In some scenarios he heard Amanda screaming from the back of a car, banging for help, while he was on the street trying to chase the car down. The driver grinned into the side mirror, allowing Josh to cling onto the hope of being able to catch up and save Amanda. But even in his imagination he was never fast enough.
“Did you see Catherine?”
Josh gentl
y shook his head. “No.”
“Did you ever speak to her?”
“No.”
“Is there anything you would like to tell me? Even if it doesn’t seem useful or related.”
A flash of all the bad things that ever happened in town gnawed at him. The dead dog should have been the height of it, but no. Now a fifteen year old girl was missing. Someone he had seen in school. Eventually, Josh found what he wanted to say. “Banyew and Portal Close are haunted.”
It didn’t seem like it was the first time the detective had heard that line. “What makes you say that?”
“Just ... stuff happens.”
“Like what?”
“Anthony found his teddy bear stuffed in a glass jar with a dead bird inside the bear. Amanda had toys and clothes go missing. Her mum thinks Amanda’s throwing them out because she doesn’t like them. But Amanda isn’t. They just disappear. There are lots of dead animals being cut open. And ...” Josh trailed off.
“And what?”
He had to say it. Telling the truth was better than letting someone find out the long way. And if he didn’t tell the detective now then she would find out from Patrick or Anthony. “We used to hang out in a house on Strachen Road.”
The detective nodded, her eyes narrowing. That was Catherine’s road, one that, on a clear day, you could see all the way to London past the long expanse of fields. It was also two streets west of Ashdown where the kids had been wandering around that night. Perhaps they had seen something after all.
“It was empty. We didn’t break anything,” said Josh.
“Did you go inside?”
“Yeah. One of the windows was unlocked.”
“When was this?”
“Four years ago, I think.”
While it was probably unrelated to Catherine it might offer some link to the haunted part of Josh’s story. “Was there something creepy about this house?”
Josh nodded. “We used to go there all the time. One day there was a badger inside. And some toys were pulled apart and stuck back together. They were neatly arranged on a shelf in the closet. There was a tea set that Amanda used to have. I don’t know how long they were there for but the badger was still alive and it jumped out of the closet. It felt like something was hunting us and we ran as fast as we could. We thought it was the ghost of Luxford.”