Pretty Little Things

by T. M. E. Walsh

  And I do watch.

  I watch until the last bubble slips from Miles’s rosebud lips.

  This is not how I expected it to be. I always thought Miles had gone into the water and splashed around, but no one had heard him.

  I believed that I just never heard him.

  It’s a fact, Lottie . . . Children drown silently.

  Now comes the memory I’ve always lived with, as me, Charlotte. It’s playing like a film and I watch these shadows of the past.

  I see Miles’s face under the water.

  This is the part where I let you back in the light, Lottie . . .

  I scream for help.

  Mum hears first.

  I see her freeze on the spot, mouth open a fraction, her eyes hidden behind large dark sunglasses. Then she pulls them off her face and it’s then she knows what’s happened.

  She drops her plate of food, china smashing at her feet, and she runs.

  I try pulling at Miles’s limp arms.

  The sound of our mother’s scream – I can hear it even underwater – is animal-like, a pain that is indescribable.

  Joseph pulls me back from the memories he’s letting me relive. I see my uncle desperately trying to perform CPR on Miles, who is laid out on the hot stone.

  I should’ve been watching him . . . Miles.

  You weren’t you, Lottie. There’s nothing I would’ve let you do to save him.

  CHAPTER 70

  CHARLOTTE

  Time to go, little Lottie. Time to go.

  I look around me, trying to put an actual face to Joseph.

  I can’t see Him but I can feel Him inside my body now. He’s sharing me.

  Missing images start to spark and come alive. We’re outside a derelict wooden cabin, a canopy of tree branches overhead.

  I look down but I don’t see a child’s body that was once my own.

  I see my body as I am now.

  What is all this?

  Memories I’m letting you relive, little Lottie, as if we were one, not separate. See what I saw. Relive what I did in this shell.

  In my hand is a key with a fob, tatty and discoloured.

  It says ‘Pineway Lodges’ on it.

  The name is familiar, yet not. I feel as though I have been there, yet I can’t recall when, but it does feel like it’s a part of me.

  I move forward towards the door to the cabin but these legs don’t feel like they are mine, even if they look like they belong to me.

  My legs are clad in some type of overalls, feet pushed into black work boots. I feel the weight of this man inside of my body as he – we – take the steps up towards the cabin, slow and steady.

  I don’t know where this place is, where it leads, what’s behind this door.

  It’s then that I hear muffled screams.

  I feel Joseph’s euphoria. It’s like . . . it’s like something I can’t describe.

  It’s like riding a wave, Lottie.

  I’m scared and excited all at once. I feel fit to burst.

  Joseph’s hand – my hand – reaches in front and pushes the cabin door open wide and I can almost feel the smells that rush out from within.

  It smells like death, like a slaughterhouse, old blood and new.

  The girl is on the floor, bound, writhing around on plastic sheeting. As I approach, her eyes widen and I can sense all that has come before, all the death, savage and by my hand in some way I can’t quite understand.

  As I approach her, I feel panic inside me. Part of me is repulsed by her state, at what’s taken place here; the other – Joseph – is elated.

  As the girl thrashes about, the familiar outline of her face becomes clear and I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut.

  Her eyes, her hair. Under all the dirt on her tear-stained face, I know she is a part of me, my everything.

  Elle.

  Time to wake up to what I’ve done using your body, little Lottie.

  This is not me!

  Let me show you . . .

  Joseph’s hand, fused with my own, reaches for her gag, pulls it from her mouth.

  ‘Mum!’

  Her terrified screams tear at me inside, all but ripping my heart out, but I can’t stop any of this. I’m powerless to fight against the part of me that wants this.

  I did this, Lottie. I just brought you along for the ride. Unconscious, unknowing.

  Everything around me, the cabin, the wood, seems to flash past me on all sides, like a film on rewind.

  It stops abruptly and I feel the sensation of scalding hot water as my nails are scrubbed in a sink, my sink. The nailbrush bristles digging into the nail beds as they scrape the dried blood away from underneath them.

  I look down. Soap foams, pink and swirling in the basin.

  The smell.

  It’s the next thing to hit my senses as my surroundings rush around me once more. I can almost feel it, taste it, it feels so alive in the air. The mixture of fear, sweat, urine, blood. From all of them. Those poor girls.

  What have you done?

  I’m responsible for Caroline White’s death. How can I ever face Ruth again?

  I want to scream.

  ‘Mmm, you smell like death . . .’

  I baulk. That’s my voice, but I swear I didn’t speak a word.

  An image flashes past, and I see the glassy eyes of Bryony Keats. I bend towards her face and I know she’s dead. Lips plant a kiss on her clammy forehead.

  Then I’m dragging her from a ditch where she’s lain for some time. I put her in the back of a van.

  The images fast forward again and my hands are on the wheel. I’m driving somewhere. I see the sign for Roxham Canal.

  The scene merges into another now. Everything is so mixed up.

  I feel like my chest is crushed. I see Iain on top of me now; we’re writhing around on the bed, and I bite his shoulder. I draw blood.

  This can’t be me?

  I see flashes of conversations I don’t remember having, but that’s me I see with Savannah, Iain, Elle, Harry and Dale . . . the gaps in time.

  My missing minutes, hours. Days.

  Inside my head, I scream.

  I’m pulled away once more and I’m moving towards the garage.

  Hands are reaching for Iain’s toolbox, pulling it from the shelf, placing it on the floor.

  Inside I see the trophies, and the truth is hitting me now as fingers – my fingers – linger over each one in turn.

  Gold-star stud earring.

  Mood ring.

  Skull charm hastily put back after retrieving it from Elle.

  Woven friendship bracelet.

  Asthma inhaler.

  Fancy hair clip – wisps of hair still attached.

  Apple watch.

  Lip ring.

  I pick that up and in an instant I’m in John’s house. I’m dropping the lip ring on the carpet near the fireplace.

  Something else mixes in my mind. It’s a face. Ruby’s face. She’s terrified. Terrified of me, of the knife in my hand.

  I feel it – I feel the spray of blood as it hits my face, the sound of it against the plastic sheet. I see a flash of it then, bright, arterial.

  A pit of darkness opens up inside my stomach and I want to be violently sick. I force my mind back to the garage, to Iain’s toolbox.

  I see Elle’s bloodstained necklace.

  Time to remember, little Lottie.

  CHAPTER 71

  CHARLOTTE

  No, not again, I’m screaming from somewhere within this body I’m afraid to believe is really my own.

  What have I done?

  With a jolt, I’m back in the cabin and my own daughter is screaming at me, ‘Mum . . . please!’

  She’s thrashing against her bonds and screaming for Kenzie Dalton.

  It was her fault. Kenzie. If she hadn’t run . . . She shouldn’t have been with Elle anyway, leading her astray. Lottie, I did you all a favour with this one, remember that.

  You picked them up, didn’t y
ou?

  Careful, little Lottie. Don’t jump from thought to thought. Let me show you . . .

  They recognised the car. That’s why they both got in.

  I see it now, what happened.

  Elle avoided my eyes, getting into the backseat after Kenzie. I’m talking to them, but the words are muffled. I can’t know for sure what I – what Joseph – said. Luring them into a false sense of security.

  What was I thinking?

  You weren’t thinking, Lottie. I had to improvise. I wanted Elle.

  I can feel the sadness and aching rot of what I know is coming next and I don’t want to relive it.

  You will relive every moment, Lottie, don’t fight it.

  I glance in the rear-view mirror, see Elle, silently watching me, the back of my head, my hand each time I reach for the gearstick.

  Her eyes meet mine, quickly drop away.

  I’m aware of a car coming up behind us. I look into my wing mirror, see the driver as he comes speeding past us.

  Everything flashes forward again. I see a sign up ahead and I’m in a part of the county I don’t recognise, yet feel I should.

  Pineway Lodges.

  ‘Mum?’ she is saying. ‘Where are we? What are we doing here?’

  A darkness settles over me again and I’m terrified what that means. For me. For them.

  I am not Mum . . .

  I come crashing back from the void in my mind, and we’re in the cabin again, drawn to the rusty mirror that I know is on the wall, behind the plastic sheet.

  Go, sneak a peek. Tell me what you really see. Deep down you know.

  I feel like I’m floating towards the mirror now, my feet no longer touching the floor. The plastic brushes my body as I move around it. It feels wet on my skin but I don’t dare to imagine what that wetness is.

  I don’t need to, do I?

  The mirror scares me, I’m not ashamed to admit. I’m more than familiar with that sensation.

  Look, little Lottie, look . . .

  I do look.

  Blue eyes look back at me.

  My eyes.

  That’s my hair tucked away underneath the plastic suit. My nose, my bloodless lips, my pinched face. Blood that isn’t my own smears my cheek.

  It’s Kenzie’s.

  My fingers feel gritty. I drown out Elle’s screams as I raise both hands to stare at them.

  Soil. Thick, caked under the nails.

  I see all their faces: Caroline, Juliet, Melissa, Katie, Bryony, Jade and Ruby . . . I know Joseph is responsible for them all.

  This is me, little Lottie, and I’ve been hiding in you for far too long now. This is who I am.

  It’s my turn to have the light now, and always.

  CHAPTER 72

  Madeleine stared at the woman in front of her, open-mouthed, unable to comprehend what she’d just heard.

  A moment of stillness passed between the three of them.

  Charlotte let the tears fall freely down her cheeks.

  Dr Seaward looked serene, in awe at what he’d just heard.

  Madeleine scraped her chair legs back across the floor as she bolted from her seat and ran out of the room, not a word to anyone.

  When the sound of her footfalls stopped echoing around them, Charlotte’s eyes rose to meet Dr Seaward’s.

  ‘I don’t remember Joseph making that fatal cut on Elle,’ she said, between sobs. ‘It might not have even happened, things are so hazy. He’s only showing me what he wants me to see.’

  Dr Seaward leaned across the table and pressed his hand gently on Charlotte’s. ‘It’s going to be OK. We can cure this.’

  When her sad eyes reached his, he smiled, the lines around his eyes creasing. He meant it, she knew that.

  She believed he could help her.

  She tried to focus all her energy on remembering this other life, the other side of her that was suddenly so new, yet, in an uneasy sense, so familiar to her.

  ‘She’s in that wood somewhere,’ she said. She licked her dry, cracked lips. ‘If they hurry – DI Wood, the police – they might still find Elle alive. He didn’t have the strength to bury her deep . . . that much he has let me see.’

  CHAPTER 73

  Dawn was just breaking, the sun peeking up over the horizon by the time she saw the battered, graffiti-scarred road sign.

  It was all but hidden from the side of the road, not helped by an early morning mist, an unusual chill in the air for May, but as the car drew closer, Madeleine could just make out the words telling them that the turnoff for Pineway Lodges was coming up on the left.

  ‘Here,’ she said, turning to Charis in her seat. She was driving, and the knuckles on her hands had turned white with the tension that wracked her body.

  The sirens from the marked police cars behind them were loud, announcing the urgency, but to Madeleine they were a mere background distraction, a heavy, imposing white noise she tried hard to tune out.

  ‘Just what are you hoping to find?’ Charis said, voice terse. ‘Elle alive?’

  Madeleine didn’t answer.

  ‘It’s been days, Maddy,’ she said. ‘If she’s been left exposed to the elements . . . even if her wounds were superficial . . .’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Judging by what we’ve seen so far,’ Charis said, ‘Monroe has been consistent about being bloody thorough. She would’ve taken care of it.’

  Madeleine shook her head. ‘No, it wasn’t Charlotte Monroe.’

  Charis looked dead ahead, negotiating another sharp bend in the road as the markings began to disappear from neglect, the branches of the tall trees either side of the road turning the day dark, creating a canopy overhead.

  ‘Miles,’ she said. ‘Need I remind you what we’re facing now?’

  ‘I don’t need reminding.’

  ‘She was eight, Maddy. Eight years old and she deliberately let her brother drown after ensuring he got into difficulties. What makes Elle so different?’

  ‘She didn’t let him die. It wasn’t Charlotte. It was Joseph.’

  Madeleine couldn’t hide the emotion in her face, her eyes trained dead ahead, one goal in mind. Find Elle Monroe, no matter the likely outcome.

  ‘I can’t see it, Maddy. I’ve never even heard of DID.’

  ‘What I saw in that room, when I heard Charlotte reliving all that Joseph was letting her see, all for the first time?’ Madeleine said, glancing at Charis. ‘It wasn’t an act. It was real and it was frightening.’

  Charis let her words sink in. ‘Say this is real, that this Joe killed the girls through Charlotte, using her body . . .’ She sucked in a deep breath. Exhaled, gave a shake of her head. ‘Why’s Elle different?’ Charis asked again.

  ‘Charlotte Monroe isn’t one hundred per cent monster, Charis,’ she said, turning to look at her. ‘I know what I saw in that room. I was the sceptic, but what I witnessed . . . hell, it was believable, it was real. There’s another identity in her. She’s seriously ill. She was trying to protect Elle all this time. She’d never hurt her, not as Charlotte.’

  ‘But she would when under the control of this Joseph?’

  ‘When Joe has control, Charlotte remembers nothing; she has no knowledge of anything. It’s like a break in time for her, a blackout.’

  She turned to glance at Charis and saw the doubt on her face.

  ‘Look,’ Madeleine said, ‘I know it sounds crazy. Don’t you think I spent time in that room thinking this was nothing more than some act to shirk responsibility for what she’s done?’

  Charis didn’t answer her.

  ‘Why bring us the toolbox? Explain that,’ Madeleine said.

  ‘Who knows why?’

  Madeleine’s attention was soon drawn to the derelict-looking frontage of the entrance to Pineway Lodges. The surrounding boundary fence was falling apart, the wood rotten, the gaping holes in the slats like a sagging mouth, teeth missing.

  Charis slowed the car as they drew near. She looked up as the overhanging branches of a tre
e scraped the top of the car’s roof.

  ‘You’ve got no idea where to start looking, Maddy.’ She stopped the car, quickly following after her when she opened the passenger side door. ‘Even if we get the drone up there looking for disturbed ground, it could take days.’

  The dog-unit van pulled up beside them.

  ‘Madeleine,’ Charis said. ‘Let’s get the cadaver dogs out there now and bring an end to this.’

  They both stood, staring at the entrance to a place that looked dark and foreboding.

  ‘We might not find either of them: Elle, Kenzie.’

  Madeleine zipped up her jacket when rain started to fall in a soft, hazy sheet. Drops were already clinging to the ends of her hair.

  ‘Charlotte painted a pretty vivid picture of this place when Joe let her remember,’ Madeleine said as she shoved the gate to the site wide open. They could see a derelict building once used as a reception and information hub further up the path.

  ‘. . . We’ll find them.’

  CHAPTER 74

  They’d been on the site for about thirty minutes, and the search was about to get underway.

  Madeleine stood outside a building that had once been a shop selling souvenirs and essential equipment, food and medical supplies.

  It had long stood empty.

  Madeleine stared at the signage, all weathered and decayed. She eyed the site map under a plastic casing.

  The map’s colours were washed-out but the writing was still legible.

  Madeleine’s eyes swept over the locations of the cabins and open land.

  ‘If you were a raving loony,’ Charis said, coming up beside her, ‘where would you terrorise and kill teenage girls?’

  Casting a sideways glance at her, Madeleine said nothing as she prised open the plastic casing and pulled the map from inside.

  ‘Talk about pot luck, picking the right cabin,’ Charis said. ‘It’s like a lottery. What scale is this map? Looking at this, the cabins are spread quite far apart from each other.’

  ‘That was the whole idea behind this place.’ Madeleine scanned the area in front of them, the Herts and Beds Scientific Services vans parked up and the SOCOs walking ahead of them.

  Madeleine stared at the map again until she spotted a description that made her pause.