The Bone Keeper

by Luca Veste

  All the emotion of the past few days, the hate and anger . . . the fear, it came out of her in one mess of tears.

  ‘Oh, no, don’t cry, love,’ her mum said, pulling Caroline into her arms and stroking her head. ‘It’s okay. It’ll all be okay.’

  They stood in the open doorway like that for a few seconds. A mother and daughter, who hadn’t spoken for years, now embracing as if that time hadn’t existed. Caroline was a girl again. One who needed her mum, just for a few seconds.

  Caroline allowed herself to be led into the living room, still snivelling like an idiot as she settled on the sofa. Her mum shut down the lid of a laptop, placing it on the arm at the other end. She felt ridiculous now she was inside, but she hadn’t been able to help herself; seeing her mum and those doe eyes she possessed, had sent her into child mode without warning.

  She shook it off now, or tried to at least. She needed to explain what had happened as calmly as possible, otherwise her mum would never let this lie. Caroline could hear her in the kitchen, doing what almost everyone of her age tended to do in a crisis.

  ‘You still taking sugar?’ her mum said, popping her head around the doorframe that led into the kitchen. ‘I’ve only got sweeteners.’

  ‘That’ll be fine, Mum,’ Caroline replied, smiling even as tears continued to cascade down her cheeks.

  Her mum paused for a second, then disappeared again. Caroline wiped a hand across her face, clearing the dampness, looking around the room. It had been years since she’d last been there, but it hadn’t changed at all by the looks of it. Still the same photographs on the wall, the same furniture and ornaments. Everywhere she looked, she could see her brother’s face peering back at her. Before he’d become a teenager, older.

  Then, suddenly, they stopped.

  Dead.

  That’s what she believed now. That what she had tried to do had been a waste of time. She winced as she leant for too long on her side. The wounds would heal, but the scars would be there forever. A reminder, if she ever needed it.

  ‘I’ve just made a quick cup rather than a pot,’ her mum said, coming back into the room. She placed a cup on a coaster next to Caroline, then stood over her. Studied her, hard. Looking over every inch of her, as if she were considering every mark, every scratch, every bruise on her daughter’s body.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘I’ll get to it, Mum, but I need you to sit down first. Please.’

  Caroline’s mum hesitated for a second, then came over slowly and perched herself on the edge of the sofa next to her. She turned, hands clasped together in her lap, and waited for Caroline to speak.

  ‘I tried to find him, Mum,’ Caroline said, suddenly stuck for a way to explain what had happened. ‘I . . . I thought I could find him.’

  ‘Matthew.’

  ‘Yes,’ Caroline replied, even though she knew it wasn’t a question. ‘I’ve been looking for him for a long time, Mum. I never gave up on him.’

  ‘None of us did, Caroline,’ her mum said, a little defensively in Caroline’s eyes. She could already see why she’d not mentioned anything to her before. This defensiveness was always there under the surface with her mum – that was Val Edwards all over. Her mum. Still worried that people thought she’d given up on her own son after he’d disappeared.

  ‘That’s not what I mean, Mum,’ Caroline continued, glancing at the cup of tea next to her, then turning back to her mother. ‘I just want to explain what happened. I went to find him.’

  ‘Matthew?’

  This time it was a question. ‘No . . . well, yeah, but I mean . . .’ Caroline sighed, trying to get her thoughts in order. ‘It’s real, Mum. The Bone Keeper is real. And it took Matthew.’

  Another thing Val Edwards could do well was show no reaction to surprising new information. Her face remained passive, as if Caroline had just told her something of no consequence at all.

  ‘I met someone who knew all about it, who said he could lead me to where it stayed hidden. I shouldn’t have trusted him, but I was getting desperate. He . . . he hurt me. Bad, Mum.’

  ‘What happened? Did he tell you what happened to Matthew? Where he is?’

  Caroline breathed silently for a few moments, preparing herself. ‘I think he’s gone, Mum. This thing . . . it’s a monster. It was there. Back in those woods, over the water on the Wirral. In that tunnel. It wanted Matthew, but not to just do what it tried to do to me. It’d been waiting there for someone like him.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘I tried, Mum, I really did,’ Caroline said, feeling the tears beneath the surface again. She swallowed them back, or tried to at least. She had to get through this. Then decide what to do next. ‘I went to these woods, near Melling. It was waiting for me there. It tortured me for hours. It . . . it sliced into me. Into my skin. It was going to kill me. It said it would chop me up and hide my bones.’

  ‘So you would never be found . . .’ her mum whispered, a hand moving slowly to cover her mouth. ‘But it’s not really a . . . devil?’

  ‘I don’t know what it is, but yes, it’s all true. The stories they used to tell, when we were younger – it exists. I think it has for a very long time. I tried to ask it what happened to Matty, I really did, but it wouldn’t answer me.’

  ‘How did you get away?’ her mum said, a frown appearing suddenly on her face. ‘How are you here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Caroline said, moving closer to her mum. ‘I got away somehow.’

  ‘Tell me what’s been going on,’ her mum replied, holding Caroline’s gaze now, confusion still etched on her features. ‘From the beginning.’

  ‘You know what happened in those woods. The ones on the Wirral, twenty years ago. That’s the real beginning. But, I’ve never told you everything about what happened when we went through that tunnel . . .’

  ‘You were playing a game, with the other two. They said that’s where the Bone Keeper lived and you were all going through it.’

  Caroline started to nod, then stopped herself. ‘I heard him. In that tunnel. The other two didn’t, but I did. And I let Matty go in there. It’s my fault. I should have gone back for him.’

  ‘It’s not your fault . . .’

  ‘It is,’ Caroline said, her voice reverberating around the room. ‘I know it is. We waited and waited, long enough for Matty to be taken from us. Then, we ran from those woods.’

  ‘Darling . . .’

  ‘Mum, we left him there. He’s gone and it was my fault.’

  Forty-Three

  It was growing darker outside as she pulled up on the street outside the house. The area hadn’t changed much in the years since she’d last been there, but as she’d driven towards it, she couldn’t help but notice the subtle differences. The way traffic lights had appeared out of nowhere, suddenly added to the roads without her knowing. A few new housing developments dotted about the large village, new shops and storefronts.

  As Louise had got closer, the changes had become less noticeable. The road leading towards the woodland had been relaid at some point, she assumed, but apart from that, everything seemed to have the same feel about it, she thought. Then wondered where the memory was coming from.

  The traffic had been heavier nearer the village centre, but it had thinned out palpably now she was on the outskirts of the town. It had been years since she’d been there, but she remembered the way as if it had only been a day or two.

  She didn’t really remember living in the house, even as familiarity crawled over her skin.

  Louise turned off the engine, leaning forward and looking towards the place they had called home for just over a year. She wondered how they had been able to afford it, but then, she knew her dad always had money stashed away in places.

  She couldn’t remember why she knew that.

  Formby was always known as the posh part of the city. Where people’s lives were vastly different to those in the southern towns, where unemployment was higher and less investment
had taken place.

  Louise closed her eyes as a memory hit her. Visiting somewhere nearby, when she was much younger. Around four or five, she guessed. Standing on the beach, her bare-feet in the sand. Her mum, snapping at her brother in the back seat. Dad, driving, one arm dangling out of the window holding a cigarette. Ignoring them all, the shouts and screams seemingly not affecting him at all. Letting her mum sort out the noise, while he tuned them out.

  She could see it all clearly now. Sitting behind her dad, looking at the strong arm in front of her.

  Louise opened her eyes, trying to remember more but failing. She guessed her mum was behind those trips. The few photos she still had showed walks in Sefton park, in woodland dotted around various parts of the city. All for good reasons, she imagined her mum had thought. Healthy exercise, for what was fast becoming a sedentary generation.

  She wondered if that was why she avoided the woods even as an adult. If she had tried to forget her past all these years. Another way of not remembering what had happened.

  There was a streetlight near the car, a dull glow emanating from it. The street was quiet as she got out of the car, closing the door as quietly as possible behind her. She took a few steps forward, stopped, breathed in and out for a few seconds, then continued.

  Within seconds, she was standing outside the house.

  Louise stared at the windows, the stone adorning the outside, the front door, the small patch of grass. Waiting for something to emerge. Another memory. She closed her eyes, hoping that would help, but nothing came.

  She shifted to her left, walking alongside the house, looking for anything that would spark further memories, but it was dull and lifeless. It looked newer than the ones next to it. She imagined it would have been rebuilt, after the fire had torn it apart until there was nothing left but a shell.

  She wished she knew more about what had happened afterwards. About who had repaired and replaced her old life.

  There was a car parked in the small driveway, which meant someone lived there. The house had recovered and new people had moved in. She wondered if they knew what had happened there, all those years before.

  If they could tell her.

  Behind the house, she could see the trees, a couple in the back garden, as she moved around to the side of the house. She continued moving until she was on the road that led into the woods.

  A flash then. Something there, on the edge of her mind. She tried to hold onto it for a little longer, but it was gone.

  Louise turned back towards her car, imagining driving away and never facing this again, but something continued to drive her on. As if there was something pulling her towards them and she was a willing recipient.

  Now she was there, she wasn’t sure what her next move should be. Whether to allow it to happen. Whether she wanted to know.

  Yes you do. You need this.

  ‘Shut up,’ she whispered to herself, but she kept walking, down the small lane, towards the thicker woodland which her old home backed onto. She passed a sign, pausing to read its letters, hoping they sparked something.

  Formby Nature Reserve

  The wind picked up again, rustling in the trees that bordered the small lane. They grew thicker the further she walked, until the lane had almost become a tunnel. The lane ended abruptly and she turned to her right, knowing there was a golf course in that direction, wishing that she was going to stroll to the great expanse of perfectly manicured greens.

  To her, the city had always been as large as it had wanted to be. Enough hidden parts to never really be understood. To her left, one of its better-kept secrets.

  She began walking into the woods.

  There was a great expanse of bare land; what had once been green and luscious was now light brown and broken. Overgrown and uninviting. She imagined it had been a quad bike playground until recently, the owners of the land eventually becoming tired of the destruction and allowing it to grow neglected. Uniforms being called out constantly, as the town pulled together to get rid of the unwanted. She followed a narrow mud path away, into the thick treeline ahead of her, moving on instinct as she was swallowed into the dense woodland where the path ended.

  Louise kept walking, moving deeper into the denseness, trees becoming closer together, until all she could see around her in the dull evening light was trunks, fallen logs, and small patches of actual ground. The earth beneath her was uneven, rising into small slopes in parts, as she picked a spot in the distance and walked towards it.

  Her body seemed to know the way, as if it had been waiting to guide her there. Her eyes were telling her that it all looked the same, and yet she was taking turnings as if she knew them.

  She was moving on instinct, putting one foot in front of the other and trusting this base part of herself. The terrain grew thicker, the breeze coming off the river – hidden away behind the thick treeline – disappearing as she walked further, the forest taking hold second by second. She stopped to take a breath, forcing herself to ignore her greater thoughts.

  Why was she there?

  What was she doing?

  She leaned against a thick tree trunk with one hand, feeling the old bark crumble in her grasp. Her chest tightened, throat constricted, as if the further she moved into the woods, the greater became her body’s desire to leave. She closed her eyes, counted her breaths in and out, feeling herself calm with every exhale. Opened her eyes and removed her hand from the tree, wiping the stuck shards of bark off against her leg. She continued walking, stepping over the large, exposed tree roots on the ground.

  The air had become still as she’d travelled further into the middle of the woods, only the sound of her laboured breathing disturbing the quiet. No small animals scuttled around her, no birds nesting in the trees. It was almost as if they had decided to avoid this place along with anyone else.

  Louise found the first marking a minute or two later. A small, inverted cross, carved into a tree. That was quickly followed by two, then three more, different markings, all small and unnoticeable unless you were looking for them.

  She stopped to look at one, tracing a finger into the carving, the smoothness of the indentation.

  A memory of doing the same. A long time before.

  She realised she’d been waiting to see these markings. She’d known they would be there.

  She stopped, looking around her for something familiar and spotted a small ridge around twenty metres to her right. She crossed the short distance, her shoes disturbing leaves and mulch as she walked. As she reached the ridge, she could already smell the familiar aroma.

  Down a couple of feet, almost completely camouflaged from view, was what she had been looking for.

  She could smell death on the air, the same odour which seemed to linger in the other woods in the city. Louise trod more carefully now, watching her step as she walked slowly down the ridge towards the small, brick ruin of a building. It was a rudimentary shelter, and crumbling in places, but it had lasted for years.

  She had a couple of seconds to wonder if there were bodies buried underneath her feet here as well. Quickly discarded the idea.

  It wasn’t him. It couldn’t be.

  A perfect hiding place. One which was well hidden, barely known about, despite this being a nature reserve. There was a moment when she thought he wasn’t there. That the aroma of him had just settled on the area and couldn’t be shifted all that easily. She could feel his presence, something deep inside her that called out, being reflected from an unseen force.

  He was in there. After all this time. A place he had retreated to, years earlier.

  After.

  You have to walk with me now. We have to move on from here. You have to come with me into the woods and live your new life. Become just like me.

  She had resisted and he had disappeared. Dead, in her mind. Leaving her alone.

  Breathe, Louise. You’re here. Now . . . what do we do?

  She didn’t have to think about the question for long, as the air change
d around her and the darkness took shape and form.

  ‘Hello, Louise. It’s been . . . too long.’

  Forty-Four

  They were sitting at either end of the sofa, sipping quietly on their cups of tea, as if she’d just popped in for a visit. A silent visit, but one that had the semblance of normality nonetheless.

  Underneath the surface of supposed British awkwardness, Caroline knew there was more that had caused the silence to settle over them. She looked towards the window, ignoring the television in the corner for a few seconds, before deciding that perhaps it was the icebreaker they needed.

  ‘Who would ever think Liverpool would see this kind of thing.’

  ‘Seems like you’d know more than most.’

  Caroline watched the screen for a few more seconds, then turned to the window again. Outside, the light was dimming, as it became grey once more. Flowers sat on the windowsill, lilies. She frowned at them for a moment, then turned back to her mum.

  ‘We should go to the police. Tell them everything.’

  Caroline’s mouth was open; she’d been preparing to speak before her mum had jumped in and broached the subject.

  ‘It’s the only thing that makes sense,’ her mum continued, placing her cup down on the cluttered coffee table in front of her. ‘If you know more than you’ve told them, you should . . .’

  ‘Mum, that’s not going to work.’

  ‘Why? If he’s out there . . .’

  ‘That’s just the thing,’ Caroline said quickly, interrupting her mum before she could finish the thought. ‘I don’t know anymore. I’m not sure what to believe.’

  ‘Maybe this was someone different to who took Matthew. Another bad man.’

  ‘He knew too much.’

  ‘Who was in that tunnel?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Caroline replied, placing her own cup down on the opposite end of the coffee table. She spied the letters sitting underneath the detritus covering the surface. Unopened bills, stacked up. ‘It had to be him.’