You Will Grow Into Them

by Malcolm Devlin

  Shortly after the night in the church, Cathy's father left again. He wrote Cathy a note saying he loved her more than anything else in the world and that he would see her one day soon. The note was written in Cathy's mother's handwriting. Her mother moved from the wine to the whisky and even I couldn't pretend it wasn't happening any more. Over the past few months, we drifted apart because Cathy had become harder and harder to find. She missed classes at school and she had excuses when I turned up on her doorstep. Her phone went straight to voicemail and she didn't answer her messages. We spoke only briefly on-and-off. She was disappointed we hadn't found anything in the church, but at the time, I didn't appreciate how much. I didn't appreciate how the not-knowing was killing her.

  I assumed she just needed time, so I hung back, waiting for her to know I was there for her.

  *

  That was how the thing happened with Simon. Because she wasn't talking to him either. We found each other because we were the closest each of us could get to her. We talked about her, we missed her together.

  I don't think either of us meant to hurt her. I don't think either of us thought anything would happen. I don't think either of us thought it would last.

  *

  The last time I saw Cathy was at school the day before she disappeared. She stopped me after chemistry and asked where I had been the previous evening when neither Simon or I had answered our phones. She looked tense, white-lipped, bracing herself for a betrayal.

  I lied to her. I told her an old, outdated truth, unearthed and scrubbed clean like it was new.

  'I went to the church,' I said. 'I saw the cross-hatch man.'

  And because it wasn't entirely untrue, it all came back to me. I described the church as it had felt to me. I described the darkness, the noise, the terror I had felt. And as she interrogated me further I did not need to lie again. The tears I cried? The fear I relived? They were real and she believed me completely. There was that look in her eye. The promise of something tangible she could bottle and take home.

  'I want to see,' she said.

  'You don't,' I said. 'You really don't.'

  *

  At the gate to the valley, PC Left and PC Right stop and turn around, flanking the gates like a pair of bouncers. They both stare past me as if I'm no longer there and even PC Left has turned cold and android. This is where the show ends. I put my hands on the small wooden gate and the cameras behind me go crazy. The flashes cut through the night, opening fragments of daylight beneath it.

  I see my shadow jittering ahead of me in sudden bursts of light, already eager to keep going, to take the overgrown path deeper into the ancient valley.

  I see the brambled hedges on both sides, a dark and uneven way descending into something chaotic. Up to the side, I see lights on in the church and wonder if anyone was there the night Cathy disappeared.

  And when I look back at the path, I see Cathy standing there. Caught by the edges of the camera flashes which are meant for me. Meant for me-as-her. Meant for her after all.

  She is wearing her coat and her bag; she stands tall and she looks at me in that way she always did. A wry smile, a raised eyebrow. An expression that says, 'Can you believe this shit?'

  Then the cameras stop and darkness takes her again. I hear voices chattering behind me and there is a faint smell like woodsmoke and rot. I don't know why I open the gate. I don't know why I lunge forward into the blackness. But I do know I scream her name so loud I barely hear the voices rise behind me. All I know is that I must see her; I must speak to her. I have to make her understand.

  I can't see where I'm going. I trip, I stumble, I persevere. Blind, I press forward, my hands outstretched, snatching at nettles and brambles.

  Maybe a cloud passes from the moon, maybe my eyes have just adjusted to the darkness but I see her then. I see her turning away from me and walking farther into the valley, I see a shadow eclipse her and she disappears.

  I say her name again, but she does not wait. Patches of moonlight mark her as she passes, a confident shape flitting in and out of the world. I hurry to catch up with her and my urgency cuts me a path.

  The way twists downward curving to the left, overgrown on both sides with fronds and brambles and the shadowy shapes of leaves and tendrils. The valley reaches up around me like The Red Sea; parted and poised to drown the unfaithful.

  'Cathy,' I say. 'Cathy.'

  It's an apology, a question, an explanation all rolled up into one word.

  There is a movement ahead. Shadow passing over shadow. Without thinking, I leave the path and plunge after it, into the snatching undergrowth, picking my way towards the steep bank, branches and saplings buckling before me. I glance up to see the jagged outline of the church far above. Stark against the velvet sky, its lit windows burn like beacons.

  Ahead of me, there is a crack in the rocky bank; a hole in the earth and stone, hidden by the years of untended growth and decay. An aperture in the shape of a broken star, just wide enough for someone small to squeeze into. Inside it is dark. It is cold and properly, absolutely dark.

  My resolve falters and I stop. I stare at the hole like it might stare back.

  'Cathy,' I say. A prayer.

  This time, there is a response. A rising hiss of white-noise feedback which resonates and echoes against the rock and the scrub.

  My eyes, which I thought were adjusting to the darkness, are undoing themselves. The opening in the bank ahead of me is becoming harder to see.

  It isn't my eyes. It's the darkness. The darkness is growing around me like thickening smoke. It spills from the gap in the rock and it surrounds me. There is a weight to it, slow and dense like molasses, a rich sweet smell of smoke and canker. It presses around me, cold and patient. I feel a shock of nausea rising inside me.

  The crack in the rock fades into the blackness, but before it is gone completely, something inside it shifts. A dark convulsion, somewhere darker still.

  I step back and something takes my right hand.

  It is cold like clay, strong and rough like knotted bramble. Shocked, repulsed, I try to free myself but I am tugged back by something strong and jagged, which cuts through my skin with a sharp and vivid pain. It digs into me with a thousand barbs as I try to wrench myself away. I feel a warm breath on my neck.

  The sound of static rises to a shriek. An empty numbness fills me, robbing me of my senses one by one until there is nothing left but that terrible sound and the knowledge that I am not alone.

  It is there beside me. It holds my hand.

  Someone behind me speaks. A name, not Cathy's but mine. Like a glimmer of light falling on something long forgotten.

  There is a hand on my shoulder; wide shafts of torchlight cut open the night and a voice, calm and reassuring murmurs in my ear. Like that, my hand is free, the sound of feedback is gone, its echo rings in my ears but the world rights itself, bobbing back into normality.

  And I feel movement as I am drawn back. There is a flash of light and for a moment the valley is full of people. There's Veronica, there's my mother, there's PC Right and PC Left. I am passed from one to the other; I am carried back, back to the little wooden gate. I am carried out to the lightning flicker of the press photographers, to the empty faces of the crowd, cross-hatched by the shadows of the halogen-bright trees. Faces that have witnessed everything and seen nothing at all.

  Two Brothers

  The day before William found the boy in the woods, a carriage arrived at Birchlands House.

  While Miss Frith was writing names on the blackboard – d'Artagnan, Louis, Philippe, Aramis – William slipped out of his chair. He ran to the window of the schoolroom in time to see his father step from the carriage onto the gravel drive, which the night's snow had painted a thin and even white.

  'Father's home,' William said. Not to his governess who had joined him at the window, but to himself, as though spoken words might corroborate what his eyes doubted.

  In previous years, before Stephen had left for the
school, their father's visits to the house had been rare. He spent most of his time at his club in Mayfair, and visited the house only on occasional holidays or when the shooting season looked promising. He had not been home when Stephen had left for Greyhurst, nor had he returned during the subsequent four months, when William had been alone.

  But now, the day before Stephen was due back for the winter holiday, the boys' father had come home. There was something about his arrival which felt wrong to William in a way he could not articulate.

  He ran to the door of the schoolroom and let himself out.

  Behind him, Miss Frith's voice rose to a wavering point.

  'Wait until you're called, William.'

  He ignored her. His father was a cold, unreachable figure and William disliked being in his presence. He had no intention of running to meet him, but he was curious to know what had brought him home. He edged part way down the stairs until he could linger behind the uprights of the banisters, remaining mostly hidden from the hall below.

  His father crossed the scarlet tiles beneath him, beckoning for his man to follow. Briggs was a stocky fellow, buttoned tight in his uniform as though it would burst off him if he exhaled without care. He carried a heavy valise in each hand and William saw there was a long-shaped package wrapped in grey cloth and slung over his shoulder. Briggs sensed William was watching. He glanced up to pinpoint him with dark eyes, and William shrank deeper into the shadows. Briggs turned away but remained a moment longer in the hall to exchange a few quiet words with Jessie, the maid. When he turned again, William could just about make out the dark wooden stock of a shotgun wrapped neatly inside the package on his back.

  His father didn't call for him that night, and William was content to be sent to bed early. He lay in his room, staring at the ceiling where shadows flickered from the ivy which fringed his window.

  If Briggs had brought a gun, his father was expecting guests. He'd been known to host modest shooting parties in the fields and woodland to the north of the property. At this time of year, pheasants or partridges were likely game, but in the past few months William hadn't seen much activity around the gamekeeper's cottages, the presence of which usually served as a reliable warning that a hunt was planned. On such occasions, the boys' freedoms about the house and its grounds would be curtailed. They would be expected to stay out of sight and out of earshot until all the guests had left.

  Restless, William rolled over in his bed. If a shooting party was to happen, then it struck him as unjust. It meant Stephen would return to be ignored by father, to be shut up in the school room with William. It was not the welcome home he deserved.

  *

  Stephen was a year older than William, but the way the two had grown up together, they may as well have been twins. Their mother had died when William had been six and, since then, the boys had been raised by the staff and Miss Frith, a slender, intense woman, who had shrank and shrivelled as the boys had grown older and stronger.

  With their father absent, the boys were left to their own devices, free to explore every inch of the grounds of Birchlands and to make them their own. The house was an austere, angular building, hemmed in by an uneven mosaic of lawns and formal gardens, linked with a network of die-straight gravel pathways which the boys' imaginations refashioned into Roman roads, the Battle of Waterloo or elephant trails across the Alps.

  Their father's one stipulation was that the brothers were forbidden from mixing with the children in the nearby village and it was a point on which the village children at least seemed content to respect.

  With no one else, the brothers became close allies, and if Stephen had not been told he was due to attend Greyhurst, they might have believed themselves inseparable.

  The day before he'd left, Stephen had worn his brave face and it was a poor fit. His eyes were raw from where he'd scratched out the tears he didn't want the staff to see.

  'If it were down to me,' he said to William, 'I wouldn't go at all.'

  It had not been down to Stephen. Greyhurst was not just a school, Greyhurst was a family duty. William would be sent there the following year, just as their father had attended when he'd been their age, and their grandfather before him. There were photographs in the house which showed their father, their grandfather, their uncles and great-uncles, looking sober in Greyhurst uniforms. There were long panoramic pictures of significant school years, regiments of pale-faced boys standing to attention. The family coat of arms, they were told, was embroidered on one of the score of pendants which decked the school's main hall. The brothers' future there had never been in doubt, let alone questioned.

  With Stephen gone, the days had ground by with little incident. William was ill-equipped for being alone. He had rattled around the house in search of distraction, wandering the grounds listlessly. He even came close to breaking his father's rule and considered crossing the southern field to reach the village, where the voices of the playing children rang like siren song, carried across the farmlands by the leading wind. Such courage was harder to muster with Stephen no longer by his side and the sound of the distant, raucous play left him only with a keener awareness of his isolation.

  The days had dragged, and as they mounted up behind him, the anticipation of Stephen's return had grown into something unmanageable. But with the anticipation, there was the bud of something competitive which had yet to bloom. He knew his brother would not have been idle over the past four months. He would come home full of stories about Greyhurst, his teachers, and his new friends, but William had nothing to say in return. He'd done almost nothing since Stephen had been away. Certainly nothing new; nothing that Stephen might find interesting, let alone be jealous of.

  For the remaining weeks, this understanding galvanised William. He set about finding diversions for himself, if only so he would have something to tell Stephen about, to prove how he could cope on his own.

  He took walks around the gardens, finding the longest path which did not cross itself; he asked the gardener, Mr Granville, for a patch of earth to work with and they had planted potatoes together in neat little rows. So that he might look brave, he slipped out before supper one evening and threw his uncle's leather-bound King James, spinning and flapping like a startled jackdaw, until it landed behind the crenellation over the south portico. So he might look agile, he clambered the vine, hand-over-hand, at the side of the door to retrieve it again.

  At night, he would lie in bed imagining what more he could have done while left alone in the house, and by the time his father arrived at Birchlands that afternoon, he'd fashioned a complex mythology of stories and anecdotes which never happened. It was a stockpile of cultivated lies to feed Stephen over the course of the holiday. He would ration them and use them to counter whatever true stories Stephen told, and in this way, Stephen would never know that William had been lonely at all.

  *

  The following morning, Jessie woke William early and busied herself spreading his freshly pressed Sunday suit across the dresser.

  'Your father wants you to breakfast with him,' she said. Ushering him up and out of bed, clucking over him with an impatient frown. Jessie was from the village, young and inexperienced but keen and inexpensive. She had a round freckled face fringed with stubborn ginger curls that refused to stay pinned out of sight beneath her headscarf.

  William had asked her once about the children in the village, and now she would talk about little else. She told him about how they played in the snow. They would wrap up warm, and gather amongst it, drawn to it like moths.

  'The whole lawn out there is untouched,' she said, nodding at the window. 'If we was in the village, we wouldn't let all that lovely snow go to waste now. We'd have made a man of it, tall as you. Taller.'

  'I was saving it for Stephen,' William said. It felt like a foolish reason when he said it out loud. He didn't look up at her. He imagined she didn't know what it was like to be left to play alone.

  His father and Miss Frith were in the breakfast room
when he arrived. Miss Frith looked pale, sitting upright and silent, more discomforted by his father than William was. His father was reading the newspaper and although he glanced up when his youngest son came in, he didn't say a word. William took his place at the table and waited.

  A breakfast of toasted bread and cold sliced meat had been laid and the three ate in silence. The newspaper held his father's attention. He ate around it, refolding it with great expansive flaps, which whomped and cracked like a fire under a clear flue.

  When he was done, he folded the paper and set it aside. He looked at William directly.

  'Your brother, Stephen, is due to return today on the 2.12 train,' he said. 'I propose we meet him at the station.'

  It wasn't a question but his eyes held William as though he were expecting an answer. Thoughts tumbled over each other in William's head but none lingered long enough to make any sense. His father didn't talk to him, his father didn't talk to Stephen. And yet—

  'Yes,' William said. 'Of course.'

  *

  The train station rang with conflicting noise and industry. For all the steam and smoke, the winter had taken a claim on it. The glass of the roof was muted by a mottled layer of snow and a barbed wind cut across the platforms picking at the coats of the porters.

  The cold made William retreat inside himself as they waited. He pulled his coat tight about him and ducked his head as far as he could beneath his raised collar. On any other occasion, Miss Frith would have subjected him to a stern lecture about the importance of posture, but the cold had got to her too. She had nearly disappeared into her heavy coat and her sensible shoes, and her breath came out in short little puffs which lingered about her like a veil.

  Only William's father seemed unaffected. His own posture was good, the sort of thing Miss Frith would approve of with a curt nod and a pursed-lipped smile. He stood straight-backed and patient; his features, those solid, dependable lines and contours you often saw on the marble busts of well-bred Englishmen. He looked across the platform with a quiet confidence and a sense of expectancy which William thought misplaced. If anyone should be looking forward to Stephen's return, it should be the brother who had missed him so desperately and not the father who had barely acknowledged him for the first twelve years of his life.