by Dean Cole
- CHAPTER FOUR -
Full Moon
THE LAKE AT night is as beautiful as an oil painting, black trees surrounding it like sentinels, moonlight shimmering on the surface of the rippling water. A soothing chorus of crickets fills the air, as if a sea of them spreads for miles across the vast open wilderness.
‘Come on,’ says Elliot.
We interlace fingers and wend our way through the long grass shooting out of the peaty earth. When we reach a small, weathered dock jutting out from the bank of the lake I see what it is he’s been so keen to show me on the journey up here: a rowing boat sitting in the water, a rope securing it to the dock.
‘We’re going in that?’ I ask, my insides clenching.
‘The moon’s full tonight. Just wait until you see it from the water.’
Elliot abandons me at the edge of the bank and climbs inside the boat, heat flushing his cheeks, eyes twinkling with eagerness.
I cast the dark woods we just came out of a wary glance. We’re so far from town, from the safety of civilisation. Anything goes wrong and it’ll be a while before someone comes all the way out here to find us. I look again at the boat and get hit with another pang of unease. No, not unease. Something more disconcerting. A foreboding. But is it a worry worth heeding or just unwarranted fear?
‘What are you waiting for?’ says Elliot. He’s finished unfastening the boat from the dock and is beckoning me with a wave of his hand.
My stomach contracts as I consider rejecting his wishes. This is his gift to me, a romantic gesture for my seventeenth birthday which is just around the corner, and I don’t want to hurt his feelings. How could I justify spoiling such a touching offer for the sake of a petty fear?
Against my better judgement, I push my fears away, steel myself, and climb inside the boat.
Elliot propels us into the lake like an accomplished rower, the oars making gentle lapping sounds as the boat glides effortlessly across the water. My fingers grip the wooden bench my buttocks are glued to as I snatch glances over the port side of our water vehicle. Thoughts teem through my mind. How deep down does the water go? What creatures lurk beneath the glistening surface?
‘I don’t know if this is a good time to tell you that I can’t swim,’ I say.
‘I know you can’t swim,’ Elliot replies with a soft laugh. ‘That’s why we’re in a boat.’
He stops rowing when we reach what looks like the middle of the lake. He nods at me to look skyward. I follow his gaze and my jaw slowly falls open. He was right. The moon is a sight to behold from this spot, a glowing marvel in the middle of the star-filled blackness.
Elliot lets go of the oars and leans back, breathing deeply as if he’s drinking in the beauty around us. His enthusiasm for nature is one of the things I love most about him, even if I’m not half as agile or intrepid as he is when exploring it. I’ve watched him monkey up trees, scale craggy rocks and dive off high precipices into uncertain water. It isn’t just the longish hair he’s constantly tucking behind his ear and the v-shaped torso that give him the nickname Tarzan. Staring at him now, his face awash with peace, I get the sense that if he were to keel over and die at this very moment it’d be exactly how he’d like to go.
I shiver at the morbid thought, glancing over my shoulder at the distant bank. It’s almost invisible in the dark, obscured by mist rising off the water, creating the illusion that we’re farther away from the safety of land than we probably are.
‘Why do you make me do these crazy things?’ I mutter.
He chuckles. ‘Because I enjoy watching you face your fears.’
I throw him an indignant look.
‘Each time you overcome one challenge it makes you that little bit braver,’ he says. ‘I don’t like seeing you afraid.’
His words surprise me. I had no idea he felt that way. Suddenly I feel guilty for all the times I whined like an annoying younger brother, for admonishing him whenever he did something dangerous and daring. Even if it was only because I was worried something bad would happen to him.
‘I love feeling fearless,’ he says with a sigh, as a nocturnal bird hoots softly in the sentinel trees. ‘There’s something about being close to death that makes you feel truly alive. When you’re playing it safe, life feels dull. Like you might as well be dead if that’s all you’re ever going to feel. But knowing you could die in the next second reminds you how precious life is, it reminds you that the simple act of being able to breathe is the biggest gift there is.’
I regard him as he stares dreamily up at the sky, half of his face bathed in moonlight, the other in shadow. A memory comes to mind. Once when I was younger, riding my bike along a rugged dirt track, I fell off and landed flat on my chest, knocking the air clean from my lungs. Lying there, struggling to breathe, alone and defeated in the muck, the pain so intense I was convinced I’d broken a rib, I knew the desperation to be in any situation other than this one was going to kill me. If the pain didn’t get me first, that is. But then my attention fell on an ant marching across the dirt — a six-legged, treacle coloured creature no bigger than a pea — and a peace I find hard to describe to this day fell over me. The pain washed away. My vision became still and crystal clear. I knew that if I died in that moment, none of that would matter. Because I’d been lucky enough to be alive, to witness this marvellous little creature, a miracle. Is that the same feeling he’s talking about?
‘I’m going in the water.’
Elliot’s voice snaps me out of my reverie. He stands, starts kicking off his shoes and pulling up his sweatshirt.
‘Elliot, don’t. It’s dark. It’s too cold.’
‘It’s perfect.’
‘You’ll freeze your balls off in there.’
He continues to undress, ignoring me.
‘Elliot, please.’
Down to his underwear now, he starts removing those too. I avert my eyes in embarrassment; it isn’t the first time I’ve seen him naked, but not in the way people might think.
‘Let’s hope there aren’t any sharks,’ he says with a wink.
And before I have chance to respond he does a cannon ball dive off the side of the boat. There’s a deafening splash as his body hits the water, spraying my clothes, my hair, both lenses of my specs.
My heart hopping in my throat, I scoot to the side of the boat and peer anxiously into the frothy blackness. There’s no trace of him where his body hit the water. Anxiety burgeons as I wait for him to resurface, seconds feeling like minutes. I edge closer still to the side of the boat, trying to blink him into view through my water-dotted specs, willing him to break through the water’s surface.
‘Elliot!?’ My voice reverberates in the frigid air, reminding me just how alone we are out here in the middle of nowhere.
The only response is the chorus of the crickets, which sounds less soothing by the second, more like some haunting, chanting taunt. Why the hell didn’t I listen to my intuition?
Still no sign of him. I feel the blood drain from my face. ‘Elliot!’
Then, suddenly, an explosion of water and laughter behind me. I twirl to find Elliot heaving his glistening body back inside the boat, hair plastered to his skull, his face beaming with mischief.
My nerves uncoil. My breath releases. I can feel my heart beating once more. ‘You fool!’ I shout. ‘Cold water’s dangerous. Mum told me it can kill you in minutes if you go into shock. What if you hadn’t come back up and I wouldn’t have been able to help you because I can’t swim?’
He’s laughing as he drops inside the boat. Water drips off his body and starts pooling at his feet.
‘I already told you, I do a breathing technique every day that I learnt from this Dutch athlete called The Ice Man.’ He demonstrates by breathing so deeply I can see his diaphragm expanding. ‘It helps train your mind and body to withstand cold temperatures.’ He shakes his hands. ‘Whoo! It’s especially cold down there tonight, though!’
I shield my specs from more flying water, gripping th
e bench with my other hand as Elliot’s weight rocks the boat. I reign in my anger, something I’ve been learning to do. Ever since the therapist told me that anger is just a cover emotion for fear. And we should listen to our fears, she says. She also says we should apologise when we’ve reacted out of anger, or the other person will go off and make their own assumptions about why you acted that way.
‘I’m sorry I snapped,’ I say. ‘It’s just —’
‘I know,’ says Elliot, snatching up his underwear. ‘Your mum worries. And it makes you worry, too.’
In the nippy air I feel my cheeks redden once more. It’s hard not to feel embarrassed about my problems, especially around Elliot, someone so brave and carefree.
The elastic on his underwear snaps against his skin. He bends and gropes the bottom of the boat for his sweatshirt. But as he struggles to find where he shed it, he loses his balance, and his foot slips on the puddle that has pooled beneath his feet. It’s like slow motion as I watch him, arms flailing, fear dawning on his face. Failing to regain his balance, he reaches out to grab the side of the boat.
And that’s the fatal mistake.
The full weight of his body hits the wood with bone-cracking force, almost overturning us into the lake. I steady myself by grabbing the seat, wincing at the sound of his skull making contact with the sharp edge of the wood, like a hard-shelled fruit hitting concrete from a great fall. Unresponsive, limbs hanging loosely over the side of the boat, a crimson rivulet emerging from the crown of his lolling head, Elliot slips into the water. I reach out to grab his leg, but it’s as if a beast from the depths has him in its maws and is dragging him under with greedy force.
I grip the edge of the boat and start snatching at the air in a vain attempt to seize him before the water takes him. But it’s no good. His body floats away from the boat as if it’s being carried by a nonexistent current. I stop and stare in horror at his face floating just above the water a few feet away. His eyes are dead and still, his mouth gaping open, allowing water to pour in, where it will find his lungs. His head begins to submerge until all I see is the tips of his pale fingers just below the surface, as if they’re reaching out for me, someone who can’t swim, to save him …
I woke with a start, my heart pounding like a cantering horse, my body soaked in sweat. It took a moment to remember where I was, but then it slowly came back to me. That soft rumble and whistle wasn’t the wind, it was Kat sleeping on the pillow beside me. The antique furniture around me wasn’t a hallucination, it was the contents of the manor room I was staying in for the weekend.
A dream. No. Not a dream. A memory. And not just the fragment of a memory, those faded films that loop like broken records in the recesses of our unconscious. This felt so real I could smell, taste and touch every part of it, as if I was right there again, that night on the boat, a decade ago.
Was it a malfunction in my brain? Were the pills affecting the part of it that stored memory? Or was this something unexplainable? The same something that had made me predict that car wreck on the M1, the day before it happened. Sensed Aunt Muriel’s brain tumour before the doctors had given the official diagnosis. The thoughts swirled like leaves in a gust of wind and disappeared before I could catch them …
I lay there in the stark quiet of the darkened room, staring at nothing. As unsettling as it had been to relive Elliot’s fatal last moments, the dream had brought about a morbid comfort. I had him back for a moment. My handsome Tarzan sitting beneath the enchanting moon, the way I wanted to remember him. And then he was gone again.
A dull feeling that had become a familiar friend since that fateful day crawled into my soul and decided to curl up there. The years hadn’t made the longing wane. If anything, they only made it stronger. I wanted more than ever to hear his voice one last time. To take back the words I said but never meant and replace them with the ones I never got to say: ‘I love you.’ They hadn’t erased the shame. The shame I felt for being useless, responsible for his death because I wasn’t brave enough to jump into the water and save him, even if it would have led to both of us ending up dead. Or the horror I experienced lying in that boat for forty eight hours before the emergency services finally showed up, shivering and in shock, Elliot’s dead body floating in the water.
Would the pain ever go? Did I want it to? Something about it felt comforting, familiar. It kept us connected. Forgetting, being healed, seemed selfish.
I dabbed my still moist brow with the back of my hand. The background silence of the room was unbearably loud. I rolled my head to one side and stared at Kat. Moonlight from the window dappled her face and chest, which was rising and falling with each intake of breath. She continued to slumber, her eyes concealed behind a silky eye mask embroidered with the words Diva Sleeping. Any reservations about sharing the bed with her had gone. She provided an unexpected comfort against the isolated feeling brought on by this haunted and remote place. Even if my presence didn’t offer her the same consolation, evident from the steel-pointed umbrella sitting ready on her bedside table in lieu of a weapon.
My eyes drifted up to the window. The moon was shining as full and bright as it had done that night on the lake. Squinting at its blurry edges through my unspectacled eyes, another memory came to me. There had been a full moon the last time I woke after having one of these ‘dreams.’ A coincidence or not? Anything seemed possible in the wake of the evening’s ghostly events. They had made the weekend take on a different tone, plunging every belief I held into question. Had I really witnessed authentic evidence of spirits, though? Had those knocks proved there really was a link between this experience and another one we couldn’t see? Could I really believe what Esther, the all seeing woman who talked so expertly about souls and the universe, had revealed to us in that torch lit nursery room? So many questions, I thought, rubbing my temple as I sensed a headache coming on. And I thought the pills were supposed to stop me overthinking.
Aware that I needed to use the bathroom, I pushed myself into a sitting position and fumbled for my specs. I slid them on and peered through the gloom, hoping they wouldn’t reveal any unwanted visitors lurking in the room’s shadowy corners. Careful not to wake Kat, I eased myself out of bed, wincing as the mattress springs protested. I tiptoed over to the door, pulled it to as quietly as I could and slipped out into the corridor.
The lights were off in the house, making it difficult to see as I crept, barefoot, along the blood-coloured runner. The place creaked and echoed in the quiet, the tall ceilings and hard surfaces amplifying the slightest noise. The weather had calmed considerably, but a low, eerie wind still whistled outside. A tree swayed through a far off window, the branches casting finger-like shadows that danced up and down the panelled walls.
I regretted not grabbing Kat’s lighter. The bathroom was near impossible to find in the dark, especially since each door looked the same as the last. Had Mrs Brown said it was two doors on the right? Or was it three? I should have grabbed a shirt, too. With the central heating turned down and no warmth rising from the lounge’s open fire, the air was practically refrigerated. My bladder was about to burst and my toes felt like they’d been sitting in ice water when I did eventually find the right room. I slipped inside and pulled a dangling light switch, squinting as a bright bulb buzzed into life.
The decor of the bathroom was as antiquated as the rest of the place, with chequered floor tiles and a claw-foot bathtub. A steady drip echoed from the toilet cistern. I don’t know if the fixtures were authentically old or modernized versions designed to stay in keeping with the age of the place, but out here alone, at this ungodly hour, that was the least of my concerns. The only thing I cared about was making sure the lady in black wasn’t in there, ready to lash out at me for interrupting her private business. Relieved to see no sign of her, I tiptoed over to the toilet.
But as the moments passed I couldn’t help but fret over how at mercy I was to the manor’s disembodied residents, standing there in my boxer shorts, urinating. The sho
wer curtain was drawn shut, just like you see in scary films, that scene where the killer or the demon face is hiding behind there, about to jump out. My neck prickled with unease as I avoided looking at it. I tried to reassure myself it was just my mind playing tricks; there was no one, no thing, in the room, only me. But how could I be certain when just hours before I’d heard the supposed sound of ghosts knocking on the walls? An eddy of fear continued to whirl around my stomach as I finished my business and shook off.
Keeping a watchful eye on the bathtub, I hastened to the sink to wash my hands. The plumbing gurgled into life as I twisted the taps. A large mirror provided a clear view of the shower curtain as I soaped my hands. No one was standing there. Why then did it feel like eyes were boring into my back?
A scene began to play in my mind: a decaying hand sliding out from the side of the curtain, the pale, purple-nailed fingers gripping the fabric — until a noise downstairs snapped me back.
I dried my hands swiftly and opened the door, stood there listening in the gloomy silence. The boards beneath my feet creaked, but other than that it was dead quiet. Then a loud crash came out of the silence. Sharp and clangy, like kitchenware hitting hard flooring. Adrenaline flooded through me and I froze statue-like, hairs standing to attention. When my feet began to move again, I was heading in the opposite direction of where the racket had sounded from, fleeing back to my room — but then I paused.
Curiosity got the better of me. Was this the paranormal activity Hilderley Manor was so famous for? And what if I could witness it for myself, erasing months of doubt over whether or not what I’d been seeing and feeling, this apparent supernatural phenomena, was real or not?
I ventured over to the staircase, stopping at the summit and peering down into the dark hallway. No spirits lurked in the spacious gloom below. Steeling myself, I began down the steps, my bare feet falling quietly upon each polished step, trying not to make a sound, trying not to slip and break my neck. A thought occurred midway: I should go back and get the camera. How would Josh Mendy at The Gazette react to a photo of a ghost captured in the infamous Hilderley Manor? But I didn’t want to risk missing something I might never get to see again, didn’t want to risk waking Kat and facing her wrath.