Hydra

by Matt Wesolowski

From: [Unknown number]

  I told you this was your warning.

  From: [Unknown number]

  You’ve had that warning now.

  I can’t help but feel a little sliver of fear pass under my skin. A part of me – some instinct – is desperate to reply to this unknown assailant, to insist I’m not scared. I do notice one thing that brings a degree of solace. These threats are entirely empty; they don’t detail any specific consequence if I continue this case. This is not a direct threat.

  It’s a smart move I suppose. But it doesn’t make me even consider stopping. I won’t.

  When Paulette has finished tending to her pets and offspring, we resume.

  —So the afternoon netball game … when you got to know Arla…?

  —Yeah, I got to know her. Well, as much as anyone could get to know Arla Macleod.

  —What about Alice?

  —Ha! If Arla was distant, Alice … she was something else entirely!

  —Go on.

  —It were like you was talking to a robot – it was like she had stock responses to everything. She had these wide, empty eyes and this great, big false smile. A proper little Stepford wife! There was no way in. And then there was Arla. Lived in a dream world. She was this gawky creature, stumbling through her life. And, like I said before, Alice was the prettier one: she had the looks and the body and everything, where Arla frankly just didn’t. Alice could have had the pick of the lads, and I know for a fact that there were plenty of them after her. She looked considerably older than her sister: she had, like, proper boobs, a proper figure, where Arla was just skin and bones. When I used to knock about in Sage Park after school, I started noticing Alice there a few times. But I didn’t know her. I never spoke to her.

  —So Alice was everything Arla wasn’t.

  —Yeah, that’s fair. You could see why Arla resented her. I did, for God’s sake and I didn’t even know her! Everyone else did too. Jealousy is a powerful thing, you know? Loads of girls used to say stuff about her behind her back. And it wasn’t like she’d even done anything wrong. I mean, there was nothing wrong with her. She was just so perfect, you know? Inscrutable.

  —Did you try and get to know her?

  —Yeah. She was a closed book though, was Alice. She didn’t let no one in. She spoke a lot through … like … it’s hard to describe, but she spoke a lot with her eyes. It was the way she looked at you. Alice had these big, wide eyes with these fluttery eyelashes. She never pouted though, never made a big deal of herself; it was just, she was … one of a kind, you know? For all Arla didn’t want to fit in, for all her rebellion, I reckon it was Alice who was the true rebel in that family, the silent rebel – that’s what they should have called her. Where Arla would kick off, Alice would comply. That way she would get the attention, the praise. Alice was the one with the power in that family, I tell you!

  —So you started talking to them both?

  —I did, and you know what? For all the daft rumours and stories flying about, they was just like normal sisters – just like a normal pair of girls. They’d talk about girl stuff, argue and that.

  —Argue?

  —So, like, when we first got talking, me and Arla were just chatting on about Skexxixx and that, as you do. Arla knew everything, all the theories behind the lyrics. She used to spend a lot of time online you see, when her parents were out with her sister. Poor lass. And I noticed that the whole time we were chatting, Arla’s phone kept buzzing, kept going off all the time, but she wasn’t even looking at it. That struck me, you know: it was kind of polite, like, old-fashioned, sort of thing. If I’m honest, it made me feel good, like she was giving me her full attention, you know? I liked that.

  But when Alice finished the netball game, she came over to where we was sitting and Arla just handed her the phone and was, like, ‘There you go, you’ve got about a zillion messages’, and rolled her eyes at me.

  Now if you think about it, this was in the days before everyone had smartphones with Facebook and lock screens and that. Alice and Arla shared one of those old Nokias. Arla could have read all those messages if she’d wanted to. That’s what I would have done – it was what pretty much every fifteen-year-old would have done. The fact that she didn’t read her sister’s messages told me that there was something more to Arla and Alice.

  So I asked Arla who’d been messaging her sister and she was, like, ‘Someone she met on holiday – her boyfriend.’ And she drew the word out, proper long and slow, like she were wringing all the life out of it. That sort of reassured me, you know, like that was how sisters behaved, like Mickey-taking and that.

  —What was Alice’s reaction?

  —Oh, she went proper beetroot red and put her head down, just stared at the phone. She didn’t even say nowt.

  —Do you know who the boyfriend was?

  Paulette goes quiet at this and stares out of the window at her children. I can just see they have one of the dogs on the trampoline on the lawn. The animal looks like it’s having the time of its life. She shakes her head. I move away from the subject for now.

  —So you became friendly with Arla. And Deborah Masterson did too. A lot has been made of you three at the school.

  —Ha! It’s so ridiculous! All of that nonsense were cooked up in the mind of Tracey Allitt and her mates. Tracey said that me, Arla and Debs Masterson liked to ‘intimidate people’ or some bollocks. Do you want to know something?

  —Go on…

  —No one, not one, single, other person stood up after the papers and that documentary came out and said, ‘No, it didn’t happen like that at all.’ Everyone knew that nothing like that happened, but it seemed like no one wanted to spoil the story about what Arla done to her family. Poor little pretty Alice and her good Christian mam and dad, eh? Their whole lives ruined by their bad daughter.

  —Why do you think that was?

  —I think … It’s hard to put into words, but the story of Arla and me and Debs as this pack of psycho Skeks was like a shield or a cloak or something. It were easy to be quiet and get behind that story instead of looking a bit harder at the whole thing. It’s sort of like a reverse mob-mentality – ‘mob-silence’, if you like.

  —Mob apathy?

  —Maybe.

  —But it’s true you were also a fan of Skexxixx, yes?

  —Yeah. Not as obsessed as Arla, maybe, but yeah, I loved all that. I had his posters all over my bedroom. My mam hated it. Just like everyone else’s mams did.

  —I’ve actually been looking into Skexxixx, specifically his Through the Mocking Glass album. I can see how a lot of the themes and concepts in the lyrics could have made sense to teenagers like you and Arla.

  —Yeah, you’re right, they did. You see, that album, the whole thing was about escaping, about getting away from your life, the pain, you know? Through the Mocking Glass, Skexxixx himself, the whole thing… And it wasn’t about suicide either; that’s another misconception the papers and the TV gobbled up. It was deeper than that. There was more to it. But no one could be bothered to look into it. The whole concept of escapism, of not being accepted, of finding a place of your own, a world of your own, even – it was passed off as a silly teenage craze! Do you understand how insulting that was?

  —I think I get it.

  —You sound like you get it more than most other journalists and that who’ve looked into Arla. It sounds proper cringe, but that album literally saved my life back then, in school. They meant so much to me, those songs. I still put them on sometimes, if I’m having a bad day. And they still do the job. Sometimes, when I listen to them, I get sad cos I wish … I wish they could have saved Arla too. You see, whatever it was that were wrong with her started in school, you know? That were obvious to anyone. Then afterwards, when we became proper mates, I knew that … I knew that there was really something going on with her. Something really wrong…

  —Her mental health?

  —Yes and no. Like, both equally – yes and no. You know I blame myself sometimes
. Like, I wish I could have helped her. But I just had no idea what to do. When she … done it … there were no warning or anything.

  —I’d like you to have a think back to school. Do you remember anything significant, any incidents where you really worried about Arla?

  At this point there is a distinct change in Paulette. She drops her gaze, twiddles her fingers, looks shifty.

  —This isn’t about blame, Paulette. You were only young too. Arla was—

  —The games.

  —The what?

  —Just … I mean, we used to play all sorts of different games…

  —Video games, you mean? I’m confused.

  —It’s silly really. We were just a bit immature. They were childish games … stupid. Daruma-san – the ghost that follows. Christ. I thought I’d managed to forget all that.

  Paulette stops again. She looks out the window and her body slumps. I notice the tumble dryer has stopped, the dogs are quiet – all we can hear are the birds tweeting in the trees. In this moment, I can almost feel the past upon us, peering in through the windows. Things are starting, just starting to add up … twinges, hints.

  I want to use this natural break in proceedings to play you something that I recorded a while back. It’s significance will become apparent when we hear from Paulette again. Interestingly, many of the staff at Saint Theresa’s refused to be interviewed for the television documentary, and all my attempts to speak to them have come up against blank walls. I do, however, manage to make contact through Facebook with a man with the surname of Marsh. He agrees to answer a few questions about his days at Saint Theresa’s.

  Mr Marsh is around seventy years old and no longer lives in Stanwel. I speak to him briefly on the phone. Please accept my apologies for the audio; the signal was very poor. And when I tried to call back, the number had been disconnected. So I’ll play you all I managed to render from our brief chat.

  —You were the caretaker at Saint Theresa’s for nearly twenty years. Were you familiar with the students?

  —You see a lot. You see more than folk think. You see … [Indistinguishable] … and the kids and that, like…

  —Were you aware of Arla Macleod and her ‘gang’? Were they known throughout the school?

  —No, lad. No they … [Indistinguishable] … but I don’t say nowt cos you get ’em …. [Indistinguishable] … then they’re knockin’ on your doors. Knockin’ on your windows all night. Bloody kids!

  —Excuse me? Knocking on doors? Did you ever get trouble like that from Arla Macleod and her friends?

  —No lad, no! You can’t … [Indistinguishable] … and I didn’t cos I don’t want no trouble, me, you see.

  —Trouble?

  —Bad news, mate, bad news. You go kick a wasps’ nest and … [Indistinguishable]…

  —Arla Macleod specifically, though – her gang – do you remember them?

  —It’s not about that though … [Indistinguishable] … be careful what you say. They’ll come for you!

  —What? I can’t hear. You’re breaking up…

  —Just … [Indistinguishable] … It’s more than … [Indistinguishable] … silly games and that … [Indistinguishable] … boiler room. That bloody boiler room … [Indistinguishable] … They’re in your garden all night, every night. They don’t stop. They don’t shut up! They don’t leave you alone!

  After this the line goes dead and I couldn’t get in touch again. Mr Marsh vanished. And I had nearly forgotten about the interview completely, until I talk to Paulette. When she mentions the ‘games’, I’m reminded of something in the garbled audio from Mr Marsh.

  —In relation to these games: did Arla ever talk about a boiler room?

  —Who’s told you that?

  —Someone who once worked at Saint Theresa’s. It might be nothing. But when you mentioned games…

  —Oh, yeah … Arla’s games…

  —You say that with a degree of trepidation.

  —Look, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to go into all that, really.

  —What makes you say that?

  —It’s just … Oh it was silly really, all that stuff. It’s not real, none of it.

  —But it’s an aspect of Arla that hasn’t really been explored in any detail. Can you give me an idea of what it was all about?

  —Well, I’ve always been careful not to mention any of it to anyone, you know. You see, Arla was … For all she were unpredictable and angry, she were right childish at heart, you know?

  —How so?

  —Well the ‘games’ – she used to harp on about them. Maybe it was something we should have taken more notice of. I don’t know.

  —So, let’s get specific: what sort of games are we talking about?

  —They were all, like, stuff she’d found online. All these daft urban legends from Japan and Korea. Remember that film Candyman, where you say ‘Candyman’ five times in the mirror and he turns up with a hook for a hand and it … it doesn’t end well for anyone who does it? Arla’s games, they were like that. Proper odd. Always about ghosts and that. The way she went on about them was sort of embarrassing. She were like a big kid…

  —Did you ever play any of these games with her?

  —Look, it were all her – all that Daruma-san stuff, it was Arla!

  —OK, I believe you. Arla was … troubled. She had a lot going on.

  —She did. Look, all these ideas she had about escaping into another world, it was like she was still a little kid. But when I look back now, as an adult, I see why she did it. It’s all dead obvious. And that’s why when I listen to that album, those old songs, and think about Arla, it makes me so sad. She took all that Through the Mocking Glass stuff literally, like, she didn’t see it as a metaphor.

  —So that’s the games. What about the boiler room – does that have some significance for you at all?

  —It does. It’s … it’s a horrible story that I’ve spent every day since trying to forget. I didn’t know anyone else knew about it.

  —Do you think you can tell me about it? It may help ease the burden?

  —Can’t make it worse, I suppose. You see, what happened down there in the boiler room, that was the beginning of the end. That was when Debs stopped hanging about with us.

  —Really?

  —I … I guess if you look back, that could have been thought of as ‘bullying’. But it … it wasn’t though, not really. We weren’t like Jobba or Tracey Allitt or any of them. It was just a game…

  —Arla’s game?

  —Yeah. Look, when we were at Saint Theresa’s it wasn’t like it is now. A lot of the buildings were still old – falling to bits. Me and Arla and Debs, we used to spend our lunch hour just sort of wandering around the corridors. When you were girls like us you would do anything to avoid Tracey Allitt and Jobba and all them. There was only so much we could take – getting called mingers, moshers, meffs, slags. It grinds you down, soaks you through like rain. Being a girl at that age, your ego’s fragile enough without all that bullshit.

  So, we found this one place on our wanders, and we claimed it as our own – just for one lunchtime. No one ever knew we’d even been there. Well, obviously someone did, but at the time we didn’t know that. It was the boiler room.

  —Where was it?

  —There was this door just round the corner from the caretaker’s office and it said ‘boiler room’. We were wandering near it one lunchtime, and we heard someone coming. We panicked, thinking it was Tracey or whoever. And Arla tried the boiler room door and it opened, just like that.

  We shut the door behind us and it were so weird, it were like stepping into an airlock or something. The air down there, it smelled different, it felt different down there. It were like, I guess you could call it another world. I was filled with that … you know, that excitement you get in your belly when you’re doing something you shouldn’t. It was so alien in there too; loads of exposed pipes and wires and stuff all over. There was this metal staircase going down and the ground just sort o
f fell away into darkness below. There was a few lights on somewhere down there, but it was still proper gloomy, proper spooky.

  —Was the caretaker there?

  —Mr Marsh? I doubt it. Marshy would have heard us straight away. He was like Filch in Harry Potter, but he’d have eaten the cat rather than had one as a pet! We were probably all squawking and making loads of racket, but we got all the way to the bottom of the stairs without anyone coming in. It were like that darkness just swallowed us up.

  Arla didn’t care, though. She just … the lass was fearless. She was in the lead and when she got to the bottom, she was, like, ‘Come and look at this!’

  We got down there, me in the middle and Debs at the back. Debs was proper shitting herself; she was all, like, ‘We shouldn’t be here … we should go.’ But Arla wasn’t listening.

  Down at the bottom, it was huge – these great passages leading off into the darkness. There was loads of junk down there; all dusty props and old sets from the school plays and that. This was Marshy’s little empire – all these piles of chairs and wood and metal, and tools all hung up on the walls. And in the middle of it all there was this old bath, like an old school bath with feet. It was just sat down there surrounded by all these piles of paint pots and junk. I remember we all just started giggling and laughing – it looked so out of place, this bath with these brass lion’s feet, all stained with rust and paint.

  The longer we spent down there, in that silence, with no one knowing we were there, the more we began to relax. Arla found this huge wall of light switches and started switching them on and off. Debs was screaming at her to stop, saying they might control the lights in the head’s office or something. Arla told her to stop being such a baby. One of the switches set off this strip-light that lit up the bottom half of the boiler room properly. It was one of those fluorescent tubes but it didn’t work properly, and when Arla hit the switch it kept flickering like it was a rave or something.