Carole stares in horror. Recognising the faces. The couple from the cottage. The man and the woman he killed up at the Dark Grove. "The sea captain and his wife. This is the sea captain. They never found him, remember? So why is his body here?"
"You said you saw him hanging? If he killed himself he wouldn’t have been given a proper burial. Being a murderer and a suicide he couldn't be buried on holy ground".
"Oh God, he has been here all the time. He's caused all this. I want this murdering bastard out of my house!" Tears start to roll from Carole's eyes. She begins to cry. To sob. Her whole body shaking. Her dreams of a place to remember her father turning into a horror show. Her relationship in tatters. Her boyfriend losing his mind back in London. And her young lover in her arms. But he's not her lover any more.
Geraint unwraps her arms from around him. He helps her to her feet and leads her out of the room. Out of the cottage.
Sammy trotting over to see what's wrong. Carole sitting on the ground, leaning against the garden wall cuddling her dog. The photograph still in her hand. Geraint watching all this reflected in Phillips' mirror, hoping he has no more part to play in this. He walks over to the pile of firewood which was the wardrobe. He sets fire lighters amongst the remains of Phillips' furniture and strikes a match.
Hidden by the sound of the crackling flames and the shattering of the mirror in the fire, the creaking starts again. Ifan hanging from the rope in the bedroom. Swinging slowly. Dead eyed. The barking of the blood hound thudding like a slow heart beat. Ebenezer looking on. Eye to eye with the corpse. Closing Ifan's eyes with his fingers. Cutting Ifan down. Rolling him in the sail cloth. Covering him with lime. Raising the floor boards. Rolling him into the floor. Replacing the floor boards. Ritual without ritual.
Leaving the cottage leading the dog. Sammy barking wildly.
Carole gets to her feet and joins Geraint who is looking into the flames of the fire, consuming what's left of Phillips' possessions. "People used to believe that photographs captured people's souls". She tosses the picture of Ifan and Mari into the flames. "Let's set them free. Good riddance". The picture crinkles up and is devoured by the flames.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Within the Woods
The car has made good time across England. Before it stretches a long open bridge across the massive tidal river. The biggest tidal range in Europe, surges and currents he once knew well. Across the bridge, signs of welcome in his own language to his own country. This world has changed, or has it? Soon he swings the car north into the heartland.
A turreted fairy tale castle he only previously saw through smoke. Castell Coch. The Red Castle. A romantic reworking of a building created to control his people by the richest man in the world. A man who took this wealth from deep within the heart of this land. A man whose coal he used to ship away from the ports which that same man had built in Cardiff for that very purpose. His own place in this cycle of exploitation makes him as guilty and as helpless as any other Welshman who dug or carted away the riches of his land for such masters.
The fast moving traffic taking him in moments passed places he once had to travail by train or coach. No smoke in the air now. Just a landscape long since stripped of trees to feed industry. Now stripped of industry. Open mountain now. Bare. Bleak under leaden skies that remind him of the smoke that used to hang over this land.
Smoke disappearing into the gloom of the trees. The flames have died, leaving only charred and burnt wood, turning to ash in the wind in front of his eyes. The embers of the last of Phillips' possessions. Closure. For her at least.
The photograph of Ifan and Mari now also ash in the wind drifting into these dark pines which have overrun their land. A place that newlywed couple would not recognise now. That place they knew is now hidden beneath these trees. Living trees which have sucked the life from this valley, creating a desert on this once fertile farmland.
Geraint empties a bucket of water over the embers. He turns to return the bucket to the cottage. Carole is standing in the doorway. "Is the fire out properly?"
Geraint nods. "Did you phone the police yet?"
Carole shakes her head. "I think we should go up to the Dark Grove, to see if we can find the bodies of his wife and the boy".
"Why? What good would that do?"
"It would put their souls to rest. Its the right thing to do. I can get my life back". A pause. "We can get our lives back Geraint".
So he is forever an afterthought. Screw this. "Leave it to the police". Geraint puts down the bucket and walks out of the gate.
"Please Geraint. Come with me. What if the police can't find their bodies? This might go on and on".
"How do you know where to find them?"
"I saw what he did with the bodies. I know where they are in the grove". Carole looks pleading. "Come on. You and I can put an end to this".
Geraint picks up his bike leaning outside the garden wall. Carole runs after him with Sammy following. She grabs his arm. She won't let him leave. He throws the bike back down. Defeated. She is going to have her way. He pulls his arm away and buries his hands in his pockets. "Come on then. Let's get on with it".
Not a word spoken as they walk. Geraint keeping his distance from her. Cold and angry. The very air is getting cold around Carole. The sky whitening up ahead. The weather can change so quickly up here. The trees seem to blot out everything including any sense that you are in the foothills of the mountains. Quite high up. The whiteness up ahead is low cloud. Soon to be fog. It can be cold here even at the warmest time of year. And Carole feels very cold and lonely on this narrow forest track right now.
Would this really work? Exhuming the bodies? Getting them taken away. Would there be a burial? A service to put them to rest? Would that work anyway?
Mrs. Jones' little exorcism was for the Sea Captain's Wife. Not for the Sea Captain. Nor the boy. How could she not have thought of that? No sign of her ghost since Mrs Jones had been there. But the Sea Captain? Has she thought this through? Oh God. And the one person she could talk this through with, is walking silently and sullenly a little distance in front of her.
Geraint peels off into the trees. Damn, she almost missed the pathway to Nant y Cadno. Geraint wordlessly leading off down the overgrown path towards the light beyond. Carole and Sammy follow. Breaking the tree-line. Crossing the open ground to the tumble down cottage of Nant y Cadno. Its history as a place built in one night to claim a stake on this land, now buried and forgotten in the forest. Its taken sixty or more years for the cottage to begin its fall back into the earth. Its walls are strong. It will probably still be standing here within the woods when her days are over.
Up ahead the Dark Grove. Black against the white sky. A rumble nearby. Low, continuous. Thunder? No. Moving away now.
Geraint is already climbing the slopes. Carole runs to catch up with him.
Carole slipping on the wet ground. Geraint reaching down to help her up. The smell changing, from faint pine to strong earth. Grass. The scent of flowers. Geraint pulling her into another world within the world of the forest. The trees older. Thicker. Having been here for centuries. Moss underfoot now. Her feet bouncing on it as she and Geraint and climb the hill hand in hand. Sammy scampering behind them.
Its getting darker now under the canopy of the trees, broken up with patches of sunlight through the breaks in the boughs.
Geraint turns to look at her for the first time since they left the cottage. "So where are we going?"
Suddenly she is not sure. "Let's keep climbing". The trees are not the same, irregular, and she can't remember any detail. Oh God, she has only been here once. What if she can't find the place she saw the Sea Captain dump the lovers' bodies?
Carole and Geraint walk into the circular clearing. Everything comes flooding back. Their bodies entwined. The fog drifting in. Pleasure. Abandon. Fear. Fear that they were not themselves. Fear that they are not alone. Fear that someone was coming. Coming through the
trees. Coming with murder on his mind.
"This is the place". Geraint looking around. Recognising the place where they were making love when she freaked out and dragged him away screaming. A mix of emotions as he looks at Carole in the dappled light. The girl he wanted, he had and had now rejected him. All in the space of a few days. The confusion and anger rising again.
"Yes. This is the place". Carole looking around. Trying to remember where Ifan took the two blood covered bodies. Only half remembered now, like a dream. Relived so clearly, and then, bang, its gone. What's the word for it? A phantasm. She saw ghosts. But it wasn't a fantasy. Come on, think...
"So where are the bodies?" He wants to get away. Fetch his bike and go home. Go back to his room and let this flood of emotion out where no one can see him. Especially her.
Carole starts walking towards Geraint, concentrating hard. Geraint steps back and slips. He falls into a hollow in the ground. Knee deep. Filled with stones and debris.
Carole shaking. "Here".
Geraint scrambles out of the hole in alarm. He's not ready to come face to face with dead people again.
Carole crouches down. The floor of the hollow is wet moss, covering loose stones beneath. She tosses the moss aside and sets about removing the stones, one by one. "Give me a hand".
Geraint reluctantly helps removing the stones. He pulls aside some more moss. Pulling up debris, moving the stones aside. Not really wanting to find anything, but getting this over and done with. The sooner this is done, the sooner he can get his bike from the cottage and get away from her.
Carole working frantically beside him. Hers fingers brush something too smooth to be a rock. Very smooth. Round. But cracked like a broken pot. A deep round hole. Then another. A skull. "Oh God".
Carole looks down at the skull, cracked on one side from Ifan's blows. Mari. Tears well in Carole's eyes. "We've found them. She pulls away at the stones and debris around. Two skeletons under the rotted remains of their discarded clothes. Lying side by side. Revealed after a century and more of being hidden in a ditch in a wood, yards from where they died.
Geraint is shaken. Not expecting Carole's madness to be based on any reality. "OK, we've found them. Call the police".
Carole reaches for her phone in the back pocket of her jeans. It's not there. "I've left my phone at the cottage".
Geraint sighs in disbelief. He produces his phone. "I have no signal. I can't stay here". Geraint walks back across the clearing and down the hill.
Carole looks down at the remains of Mari and Owain. Two lovers murdered here over a hundred years ago. She and Geraint have been swept up in the story. Now it should come to and end. No more tragedies.
The mist starts to swirl through the grove. Carole turns around to speak to Geraint. She is alone. Geraint is gone.
Phillips standing in the mist. Standing in the road as he has always done when that devil drives him from his home. Standing motionless. Emotionless.
Standing emotionless at her funeral. Decades ago. The people of Capel Celyn there at Bethlehem in numbers as his wife is laid to rest. Sympathetic faces. Suspicious faces. A couple of police. Watching him for emotion. But they won't see it.
Emotion on another face though. That of the red eyed school teacher she took to his home. The police should be watching him. He heard that the police had interviewed him, but he had an alibi for the time that his wife fell into the lake and drowned.
Phillips is the only one without an alibi. But nothing can be proven. Nothing will be proven. Rachel left the house alone to go to the lake for a walk. She must have slipped and fallen into the lake. She couldn't swim. Nothing unusual there. A tragic accident. Phillips had found her at first light when he went out to search for her. The hair falls over Phillips' face as he steps forward and looks down at her coffin deep in the grave.
Phillips standing emotionless looking down at the body lying in his dead wife's garden. The school teacher. Its taken weeks of waiting at the cottage door. Drinking whiskey and waiting. Waiting for him to pass alone. Striking up a conversation this evening. Reaching out to his wife's former colleague. Her lover. Driving the knife home repeatedly. A frenzy of anger unleashed on the man who caused him to kill his wife.
Digging in the freshly dug earth where the cess pit has been installed. A shallow grave for a shallow man. No one will notice the ground disturbed. Phillips covers the body in her garden at Pantyfedwen. She won't care. She won't be using it again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Coming Home
"Geraint, wait!" Geraint is pacing off across the open ground beside the ruin of Nant y Cadno. High stepping through the tangled long grass which would trip him if he tried to run. Sammy scampering at his feet.
Carole is slipping and sliding down the mossy lower reaches of the hill from the Dark Grove. Behind her the mist is looming over the hillside. Carole reaches the level ground at the foot of the hill and runs after Geraint. Not wanting to be alone here in a place of ruin and death.
Geraint leaving. Getting the hell out of here. Going as fast as he can away from this place with two dead bodies to where he left his bike. Only one dead body there. Rotting in a bag under the floor for over a hundred years. Tainting the place. Making it foul. Making it a bad place. And he knew that it was a bad place. So why did he get involved in all this? Carole. Who took advantage of him. He has to get away from her but she grabs him by the arm.
"Wait for me. Please Geraint". She pulls him to a halt and hugs him. "I was right. It'll all be over now. You'll see. Once we talk to the police".
"Once you talk to the police. Leave me out of this".
Carole looks up. Geraint's face hard. Angry. A child-man. Not a man yet. A good boy, but unable to cope with this.
Was she really able to cope with this? The aftermath of a century old murder-suicide. How to explain this to the police? Regardless, she has to finish this. Shake off the ghosts, put them to rest, and get back to her life. Here and in London. And there's still Peter to resolve. "You're right. OK, I'll deal with this once I get back to the cottage. You go home. Don't mention this to anyone".
Geraint nods. Carole leads him off through the trees, down the overgrown pathway to the road. Out on the roadway Carole lets Geraint go, expecting him to head back to Capel Celyn. But he turns with her and heads back towards the cottage. His bike. Of course.
Carole and Geraint continue up the road, wordlessly. The mist rolling in fast now, descending and thickening. In a couple of minutes they are walking through thick fog, the only sound their footsteps and Sammy panting as he trots beside them. The deadened sounds amplifying Geraint's silence. Still angry. Still very hurt. Carole reaching for something to say. Not finding anything.
The mist cools them, their clothes now wet against their bodies. Carol shivering, wishing for a hug that is not coming. The dampness on her face could be mistaken for tears.
The tall shadows of the trees looming over them, just visible through this low cloud. The gloom and the trees. Enclosing them, oppressing them. And then the break in the trees on the right. Her cottage. It will be truly hers once that body is gone. Strange, the swirling mist looks like smoke rising from the chimney. The light playing tricks on her. She thinks she can even smell the smoke. It must be the remains of the bonfire.
Sammy bounding forward, barking, and trotting excitedly through the open door, tail wagging. The open door? She shut it, surely? Locked it? No, she doesn't have her keys nor her phone. Leaving her house unlocked? City living had taught her never to do that. She'd never have done that today unless she was so obsessed with closure. Finding the bodies.
Why would the door be open? Could that body have got up and walked away? What a stupid idea. "Sammy?". She can hear the dog barking excitedly inside. A growl. Carol stops at the gate. The same growl Sammy made when they first got here. Something's wrong.
Geraint is getting on his bike, wordlessly, with his back pointedly to Carole.
"Gera
int. The door wasn't open when we left".
Geraint looks at her quizzically. "Really?" Sammy barking. Angry growls now. Then a yelp and a whine. Then nothing.
Geraint gets off his bike, and sweeps passed Carole into the cottage. Into a foggy gloom with fire light. A fire in the hearth. "Sammy?". His eyes taking a second to adjust light in here. The dog lying on the floor in the middle of the living room. Neck at an unusual angle. Sammy looking asleep but broken. What the? A smack to the back to his head. Blood in his nose and mouth. Stars in his eyes. The floor rushing up to meet him but he doesn't feel the impact.
Carole hears the thud, and the silence. No more barking. Silence. No wind in the trees. Nothing. "Geraint?". No reply. "Geraint, what's wrong?" Silence. Should she run away? Why? Because her dog and her boyfriend... Her friend aren't making any sound? Geraint was in no mood for games. Would he jump out and scare her to get back at her? He's very hurt, and very angry. Anything could be going on in his head.
Fear rises in her stomach. Fight or flight? No she's not bloody running away, not after digging up bodies. What could be worse than that? "Geraint!?!"
Carole rushes towards the cottage. Firelight in the gloom. Oh God! Things on the floor, taking shape. SLAM!!! The door closes behind her. The 'atmosphere', very strong now. And a different smell. Familiar, evocative and suddenly very frightening. Petrol.
Carole spins around. A figure wearing a hoodie blocks the door. Oh Jesus Christ! The arsonists!
She takes everything in. Her dog. Dead at her feet. Neck snapped. Who would do that to an animal?
Geraint, lying on the floor. Face away from her, blood on the top of his head. A holdall bag and a petrol can nearby.
Clang! A tyre iron hits the stone floor. Carole jumps out of her skin.
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