Darke

by Matt Hilton

  Girl was the anomaly. She wanted something too, but she’d never given a hint what it was. She was the flipside to Eric Swain’s bent penny.

  Kerry had almost completed a full cycle. From wondrous belief to acceptance, apathy to ignorant bliss, through disbelief. Now she was on the verge of acceptance once more albeit without the fuzzy comfort of wonder or awe. Those were never feelings that Swain had engendered in her. She felt no sense of abandonment after Swain vanished. Good riddance to old rubbish. She didn’t need him now, dropping hints alongside racial insults and misogynistic remarks — not to mention unthinkable demands — and it was good to be free of him at last, a genuine relief that left her almost lightheaded.

  The epiphany had also left her jittery with anxiety.

  Recalling where she’d last seen the Fell Man didn’t mean she’d find him there now, decades later. Nor did it mean he’d taken the girls he’d recently snatched back to his historical lair. He could have gone anywhere with them, and she might never find them.

  She cursed under her breath. Doubt was not helpful.

  Earlier, while waiting for the car rental office to open, she’d wolfed down a full English breakfast. She’d shared the small dining room at the B&B with some other early risers, and though she’d sat alone, she’d eavesdropped their conversations. They spoke in sombre tones of the two missing children, but there were also hints of subdued rage and even indignation in their remarks. Everyone had an opinion when it came to the abduction of children, and rightly so, but often it was misguided. More than once, Kerry heard the parents being blamed. That equated to Siobhan being blamed for the time when Sally was snatched from under her nose, and unfair. Kerry didn’t interact with the other guests; instead she sought out a newspaper from the evening before.

  The first girl, Hayley McGhee, nine-years-old, had been missing for the best part of ten days — just before Girl had shown herself to Kerry on Wandsworth Road — and Courtney Bell, ten-years-old, for two. The terrible truth was that it was probably too late for Hayley. She suspected her usefulness to the Fell Man had ended prior to him choosing Courtney as his next victim. Was it too late to help Courtney, though? How long did the abductor hold each girl before he tired of her and moved to the next? Years ago, when first he’d been active, his crime spree had spanned less than six months. Including Sally, he was suspected in the abduction of seven girls, which averaged out at one girl every four weeks: if Hayley and Courtney were victims of the same beast, then he’d upped his timescale. The awful likelihood was that the girls didn’t survive long before the urge to grab another victim grew too strong to resist. Similar patterns were seen in serial murder cases, where a spree that began slowly escalated towards the end. It was usually when the killer had been consumed by their need to kill that they grew reckless in their over-confidence, and were caught. If the Fell Man was reaching this accelerated state, then who knew how many children were in immediate danger? It might be too late to help Courtney, and sadly most probably for Hayley, but Kerry owed every girl, past, present and future that the Fell Man targeted.

  A weather front pushed in from the Solway Firth, funnelled inland by the converging coastlines of Scotland and England. Drizzle smeared the car’s windscreen, growing heavier by the minute. She could see nothing of the Lake District; lowlying clouds blanketed even the nearest fells. Huge wind turbines were indistinct giants moving in the murk. They were recent additions to the terrain, another change to the landscape of her youth. The climb grew sheer as she pushed the car up towards Caldbeck. Beyond the village, she followed a single-track road up and onto the moor. The clouds settled around her. Somewhere to her right was Knott, the highest point of an area known locally as the Back O’ Skiddaw, and to anyone else as the back of beyond. It was a wild region of barren moorland north of Skiddaw Pike and Blencathra, rarely frequented by the tourists and hill walkers who flooded the more picturesque fells to the south and west.

  The road deteriorated the further she progressed, the tarmac pot-holed and crumbling at the verges into deep ruts made by the tyres of tractors and 4x4’s. Meeting another vehicle coming the other direction could be problematic, but it appeared she had the fells to herself. She slowed though, because if she drove off the road, the hire car would be mired to the axles in the boggy earth. Coming this way was a bad idea; she should have taken the motorway down to Penrith, and cut across the A66, then turned north again up past Mungrisdale where the roads were better maintained. Both routes converged near the small tarn above which Siobhan had taken the girls on their picnic before going to collect Dad from the train station. Their picnic had been off the beaten path, but to be fair, less than a mile from their family farm near the valley where the Caldew snaked off the fells towards Carlisle.

  Back when she was a kid, living on the farm, mobile phone technology was in its infancy, and poorer people like Siobhan and Gary Darke didn’t waste money on unnecessary luxuries. Kerry had no idea if her modern smart phone would work up here or if she was in a telecommunications black hole. She slowed, and stopped at a spot where the road widened as it swept around a bend. Thankfully, and surprisingly, her phone had a solid signal. She’d received a number of text messages, but had no time for them now. Comforted that she could call in reinforcements if needed, she slipped the car into gear and it crawled on again, observed by a flock of sturdy sheep that eyed her with an inquisitiveness that bordered on sinister.

  On a clear day, the sweeping view from the fells extended eastward to the North Pennines. But as she crested the highest point of the road and began the long descent towards Mungrisdale a sea of mist swallowed the landscape beyond fifty metres. The drizzle intensified, smearing the view even more. Kerry almost missed the turn off onto the higher fell, and had to reverse before making the tight turn. As she ascended the hill, she recalled the last time she’d descended it, and an inane conversation with Sally and Mam about their Christmas wish lists. Mid-way up, she found where her mam had pulled into the field where she’d laid out their picnic blanket. The ancient gateposts, weathered and pitted with algae growth, had toppled and a spill of dry-stone walling had cascaded across the verge. Deep tractor ruts between the collapsed posts were full of muddy water. She parked on the verge below the rock fall, and stepped out onto the gravel track. Her shoes weren’t fit for the terrain or the weather, but thank God she’d brought her duffle coat. She fastened the toggles up to her throat and pulled up her hood. Drizzle pattered on her face and exposed hands. She turned her back to the breeze, but it didn’t help: the misty rain enveloped her. Shoving her hands in her coat pockets, she bit her bottom lip and accepted her lot.

  She could have driven up and around the hill, through the forest to where Brandreth House squatted alongside a pond at the epicentre of a depression between the surrounding peaks. Doing so would announce her presence. Even walking, she could attract attention if she approached from the front of the house. She picked her way over the deep muddy ruts, balancing with one hand on a toppled gatepost, and stepped into the field of yellow couch grass. It had been years since sheep had grazed there, and the scrubby moorland grass and gorse had reclaimed the hillside. Further up, amorphous blotches in the mist, the wind-sculpted trees were knitted denser than she remembered, but then she was taller now than the Kerry who’d scurried among them, playing chase with Sally, decades ago.

  And she also remembered another girl who might have stood among them, waving sadly after them as she chased Sally down the hill, and the bearded figure that’d clamped an arm around her and dragged her backwards into the gloom.

  47

  She was soaked to the knees by the time she made it under the stunted trees. Her shoes were ruined, and her socks were fit for a bin. The thick woollen duffel coat kept off most of the rain and chill, but her face still felt slick. Periodically she licked and spat moisture from her lips. Stooping, she wound her way between gnarly trunks, but limbs as twisted as goblins’ fingers snatched at her hood and tried to wrench it back. Occasionally, sh
e could only progress on hands and knees, until she found spaces where she could crouch under the low canopy. Despite the discomfort, the trees offered cover as she approached Brandreth House, and the mist added to it. Almost, she felt like a disembodied soul traversing a spectral landscape: she was almost invisible.

  But the same could be said of an assailant who could creep up on her under the thatch of limbs. Her gaze darted back and forward, expecting the worst, and her earlier anxiety manifested as a distinctive trembling at her core. Her heart thundered. It was an effort to shake the foreboding fear that she was under a predator’s scrutiny, but what were the chances that the Fell Man crept around under those trees at any time, except for when pursuing an escapee? She sucked up the fear, used it to fuel her instead, and pressed on.

  At the edge of the copse, she squatted, forearms on her knees. The trees ended at the top of a gorse-covered slope dotted with half-buried boulders covered in moss. At the base of the decline was a steep-sided beck, the stream’s water brackish as it wended around other boulders dislodged from the hillside millennia ago. More trees crowded the large house in the natural amphitheatre below, most taller and sturdier than those she’d crawled through, having been planted in the distant past when the house was still loved. Other trees had fallen, some tearing up the roots, and made a crosshatch of the woodland. Wild shrubs and bushes colonised the original gardens, and also the yard and outbuildings around the larger structure. Impenetrable bramble patches surrounded the rear of the house, and also cut off approach from the far bank of the stream.

  Just beyond the trees there was a hint of an expanse of sluggish water, but the mist made it difficult to tell how far it stretched. Kerry knew that the topography dictated the pond’s dimensions, and the shale-covered slope on the far side was less than a hundred metres beyond the house so it was not an endless sea.

  All of those extraneous details were distractions. She ignored the surroundings in favour of studying the house. It was better described as a ruin. Twenty-or-so years ago it had been decrepit, now it had been forgotten entirely, abandoned to be reclaimed by nature, dragged down into the boggy earth that surrounded it. The huge slate roof had sunk at the centre, pulled down by sagging walls, and a chimneystack had collapsed years ago, the pile of rubble now scattered across the yard was overgrown with weeds and bramble. Barely a window held a sliver of glass, and a door on the near side was bloated with rot. If not for two details, she would have conceded defeat and accepted her memory was possibly as misguided as her belief in ghosts.

  At a crouch she scurried down slope, and to the left, where she’d to push through a patch of discoloured gorse. The beck was only a few feet wide, and the boulders offered stepping-stones, so it wasn’t an insurmountable barrier. She crossed tentatively, her shoes struggling to find purchase on the slick moss. When she was across, she went ankle deep in mud that stank of decomposing vegetation. Gagging down her revulsion, Kerry used other rocks and exposed roots as steps to help clamber up the bank between two straggling thickets of bramble. Thorns caught at her jeans, and her coat. But she made it through and onto a path almost as muddy as the edge of the beck. Each footfall sank a few inches, and sucked free. There were faint marks in the mud that might have been tyre tracks, but who knew how old they were? She angled off the path and into waist deep couch grass, hopping from one tussock to the next, as she moved towards the side of the house and its bulging door.

  She paused to study one of the details she’d spotted from on the hillside. It was an old Land Rover, well past its mechanical prime more than two decades ago, and now was a hunk of rusty scrap metal. Its tyres had perished, split open, and the heavy vehicle had sunk down to the corroded metal wheel hubs, which had become buried in the encroaching morass. Brambles engulfed the rear of the Land Rover, and the cab and engine compartment spouted coarse grasses and even the limbs of a straggly bush that had put down roots in the void under the passenger seat. Only rusty springs were left of the seats themselves, and the dash was bloated and cracked, leaking puss-coloured foam. The unmistakable stench of rat urine wafted from the partially buried vehicle. Despite the passage of time, and the effects of atrophy, she could still equate the Land Rover with the one that puttered past her after Sally vanished. She could almost picture a face turned to hers from the driving seat, bearded and grinning in sarcastic triumph. Sally had been concealed in the back, and Girl had tried to warn her, but the last Siobhan had wanted to hear about was another of Kerry’s imaginary friends when she was frantic to find her other daughter. She turned away from it; it was too easy imagining Sally’s terror as she rode in it to whatever horrific fate the Fell Man planned.

  The wreck confirmed she’d found the Fell Man’s lair, but the second detail told her more. Despite the apparent abandonment of Brandreth House, part of it was still in use. The second detail that brought her off the hill wasn’t something she’d spotted but heard. Up on the hillside the drizzle had made it difficult to differentiate but closer to the house, she could distinguish the continuous thrum of a motor from the rain pattering through branches. There was no hint of occupation otherwise, no newer car parked nearby that she could see, no lights visible within, but someone made the crumbling mansion their den.

  Crouching alongside the Land Rover Kerry felt for her phone.

  But it was too soon to call the police.

  She needed evidence that the house was a crime scene first. Even the presence of the Land Rover wasn’t absolute proof that the Fell Man had ever used the place; in all likelihood there could be other old cars of a similar make and model to be found abandoned in farmyards all across the fells.

  A minute or two more, and she would call the police.

  That was all it would take to confirm she’d discovered his lair, if she shook off the bloody nerves and took a closer look.

  Her motivation for coming to the house had changed. Once she wanted answers, closure, but now if there were any hope at all for saving Hayley or Courtney, she’d take the risk. Yet something held her back, and it was the unholy terror of an eight-year-old girl rather than a detective inspector. The devil of her past was more terrifying than the one she’d allied with recently. Erick Swain had been a kitten by comparison. She groped for her phone, but her hand drew away from it. She slowly extended her fingers to her side, and was relieved when the indistinct figure in her periphery didn’t melt away from them.

  Girl was there beside her.

  Girl reached out insubstantial fingers and touched hers. Her touch was like the flutter of a moth’s wings against Kerry’s skin, and then Girl withdrew her hand once more. Kerry desperately wanted to look at her, to thank her for the support, but she wasn’t allowed. Yet it was enough that Girl had drawn close, and made the brief connection for the first time ever, to get her moving again. She rose quickly, and jogged for the house before she lost her nerve. Girl flitted behind her.

  ‘Is this it?’ Kerry whispered under her breath. ‘What you’ve wanted to show me all these years? Oh, God! I wish I’d paid more attention to you back then, and tried harder to get my mother to listen when you showed me who’d taken Sally.’

  She got no reply, but didn’t require one. Girl wanted her to enter the house, otherwise why accompany her as close as her shadow? When she headed for the rotting door, Girl moved around her and was on her left, and she shook her straggly hair, violently enough for Kerry to catch her meaning and move ahead. She picked a route through thorny tendrils, and stepped over a collapsed wall almost obscured by undergrowth, and into the original front garden. For a moment the drizzle became rain, and it battered down, drumming on her hood. She could hear nothing else, and it wasn’t easy to see beyond the length of her probing hands, and Girl was little more than a distorted image at her shoulder.

  A window on the ground floor was open to the elements. Jagged teeth of glass clung to crumbling putty in disintegrating frames. Taking a peek inside, Kerry found a room blighted by the elements. The floor, rotted carpet and all, had give
n way, and the ceiling had collapsed. Huge chunks of plaster had blown from the walls exposing rotting laths like the ribs of a decomposing corpse. Miraculously the flowery pattern on ancient wallpaper could still be made out on some of the fallen plaster. Mould and fungi colonies decorated the corners, and the rags of curtains were black with mildew. The room was a Petri dish seething with cultivated life. She could almost imagine the spores invading her lungs and becoming insidious growths: no way would she enter the house via that room.

  It had never been Girl’s intention. She bent at the waist, nodding at the main portal at the front of the house. Kerry gritted her teeth. However, she moved for the door. Once the house had been grand, and the main entrance was fitting. It boasted a huge recessed door, with thick sandstone pillars to each side. The steps up to the door were worn, and green with algae, and the door looked as if it hadn’t been opened in half a century. A paved path led from door to garden, to a grand gate where a carriage once might have arrived to collect the landowners, but was now caged in by tree limbs and bushes. The paving stones were all warped and cracked and pushed askew by tree roots. It was doubtful that the Fell Man gained entrance to his lair via that route, which was probably why Girl urged her to enter that way.