Dark Season: The Complete Box Set

by Amy Cross

  I can't deny, though, that there's a sense of mystery about him that appeals to me. He came to town a few years ago, and some of the local oldies say they think they remember seeing his father around. Apparently they look very alike, he and his father, although no-one seems to know where his father lived or where he is now. So much gossip! Sometimes I like being at the center of it all. Other times, I'm not so sure...

  "Jess would like to go to the cinema tomorrow night," I say as Patrick and I walk through the suburbs to my parents' house. "I said I'd ask you about it, but to be honest I'm not so keen. What do you think?"

  He doesn't answer, of course. Sometimes it's like talking to myself. That would infuriate me usually, but there's something about Patrick that suggests his silence is for a reason. A very good reason. And the truth is, I don't want to go and see a film with Jess because I have this awful feeling that Jess wants to steal Patrick away from me. I know she's jealous, and I feel she might be willing to offer him more than I'm willing to offer. She'd probably offer to kiss him, or perhaps more.

  "I don't think we'll go," I say, as if we've discussed the matter. "I don't think there's anything good on, and I'd rather just hang out. We could go and get soda, if you like?" I leave a gap for his answer, even though I know he'll say nothing. The truth is, I'll make plans out loud and then I'll wait to see if he shows up at the time I've suggested. Usually he will, but occasionally not. "Around five," I say. "That'd be good. I can't be out too late tomorrow night. I have college in the morning."

  We get to the driveway of my house, and we stop. I know he won't come in, but I still want to ask. "I'm sure there's some spare meatloaf," I say, hopefully.

  He stares at me.

  "Another time," I continue. "If you're serious about me, you'll have to meet my parents some time. Properly, I mean."

  We stand back as a car turns off the road and parks in the driveway. My father, ever suspicious, quickly gets out. "Dinner's ready," he says, assuming my mother will have everything on the table the moment he walks in. He gives Patrick a suspicious glance, and then he takes his briefcase inside.

  "If you come in some time," I say to Patrick, "he'll get to know you better and he'll like you more. Though I dare say you'll have to say a word or two." I smile, in a vain attempt to get him to smile. "Oh Patrick," I say. "If you don't want to talk to me, why do you spend so much time with me?"

  "Hey!" calls a familiar voice. I turn to the house. My brother John is standing on the porch. "Dinner!" he says. Instead of disappearing back inside the house, he waits, watching me with Patrick.

  "I have to go," I say. "Tomorrow, though," I add. "Or even tonight..." I turn and head into the house, hoping that perhaps later there'll be a knock at my bedroom window.

  Sophie

  Today

  The next morning, I decide to walk to John Tisser's house. First, I have to apologize for losing his sister's diary, and second I want to ask him if he remembers anything else from the period around the time of Rose's disappearance. With the diary gone, I could do with drilling his memory one more time. The diary was my only real link to Rose Tisser, it was my window into her world. I need to try to maintain that link even if the diary is gone.

  As I get close to John Tisser's house, however, I note a couple of ambulances parked outside. Walking up the driveway, I realize something's very wrong. By the time I get to the screen door on the porch, I have to step aside as medics carry a body out on a stretcher. It's covered with a sheet, but I have a horrible feeling that I know who it is.

  "Can I help you?" asks a voice. I turn to find an impossibly good-looking guy in the doorway.

  "I... came to see John Tisser," I say.

  "You a friend?" the guy asks.

  "I know him," I say. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but it'll do for now. "Is everything okay?"

  The guy steps back to let me through the door. "You'd better come in," he says. As I walk into the house, he shuts the door. "My grandfather died last night," he says. "I hope you weren't too close." A pause. "Does that sound wrong, wishing two people weren't friends?"

  I stare at him. "He's dead?"

  The guy nods. "Heart attack." He steps towards me and reaches out a hand. "Adam," he says. "Adam Tisser."

  I shake his hand. "Sophie," I say. "I sorry. I didn't know he was ill."

  "He wasn't," says Adam. "Just keeled over last night.."

  I look at the chair where John Tisser was sat just yesterday, talking to me. "Out of nowhere?"

  Adam nods. "My grandmother thinks he must have got up to go to the toilet in the night. She found him this morning, on the floor by the window."

  I look at the large window overlooking the garden. "As easy as that?" I say.

  "As easy as that." He seems a little uncomfortable. "Look, this might come out wrong. But my grandfather was a grumpy 75-year-old man who used to drive buses and you're... well, you're not a grumpy 75-year-old man. How did you know him?"

  "I was... doing some research," I say. "On an old news story from the 50's."

  "Rose Tisser?" he asks.

  "Yeah," I say. "How did you know?"

  Adam smiles. I notice he has a cute smile, with dimples. "It's a big story in my family. My grandfather used to tell me all about it. Sometimes I think it was the only thing he ever had to talk about."

  I look around the room. "Did anything odd happen before he died?"

  "What's she doing here?" asks a voice, interrupting from the kitchen. I turn to see John's wife, who had ignored me last time, standing in the doorway.

  "I'm sorry about your husband," I say.

  "Don't take this the wrong way," John's wife says, "but please get this girl out of my house. I have a lot to do." She fixes me with an evil, hate-filled state.

  "I'll go," I say slightly stunned by the whole thing.

  "I'll show you out," Adam says.

  "You need to drive me to the funeral home, Adam," his grandmother says tersely. "We have to be there soon."

  "I'll be with you in a moment," Adam says to her. He leads me out onto the porch. "Sorry about that," he says. "Her way of coping with grief is to be an even bigger asshole that normal." He smiles. "Sorry, I know she's my grand-mother and I know she's just lost her husband, but seriously, she's so insane sometimes."

  "I get it," I say, but I'm thinking about something else altogether. "Listen, I know this must be a bad time for you. But when you're done with everything, do you want to meet up? I'd really like to hear everything you know about Rose Tisser."

  "Sure," Adam says. "What are you doing this afternoon?"

  "Nothing," I say. Wait, that makes me sound boring. "Nothing much," I correct myself quickly. "It's really not that important, I just want to know a few things that your grandfather didn't tell me, like what happened on the night Rose and Jessica died. Do you know that?"

  Adam smiles again. He really is kind of cute, though he's totally - and I mean totally - out of my league. "Meet me here at six," he says. "I'll take you out to where it all happened."

  Rose Tisser

  1959

  "Are you coming to the woods tonight?" Jess asks, as we cross the road in town. She's been going on about going to the woods all week, ever since she heard stories about mysterious lights in the trees. Jess has her head in the clouds half the time, always talking about supernatural rubbish and fancying herself as quite the paranormal investigator. "I've heard it's quite a light show."

  "It's too cold," I say.

  "Sure," she says, "without Heathcliff's warm embrace."

  I sigh. Ever since she read Wuthering Heights, Jess has taken to using the name Heathcliff for Patrick. She sees him as some kind of interloper, some kind of outsider. Just because his family isn't known around here, though, that doesn't mean he has some dark background. His family probably live a little way out of town, that's all.

  "Sorry," Jess says. "Listen, I'll cut you a deal. You come to the woods with me tonight, and I'll never call him Heathcliff again, okay?"
/>   I don't say anything. We keep walking.

  "Okay," Jess adds. "I'll never make fun again. How's that?" She steps in front of me. "Please, Rose old girl, I need to go and see these lights for myself, and you're the only one I feel safe being out with at that time of night. Don't you want to experience something unusual?"

  "At night," I say, rather archly, "I prefer to experience being safe, asleep in my bed."

  "With Heathcliff climbing through your window," she says. "Sorry. Look, that's the kind of sharp-tongued waggery I'll cut out completely if you just -" She grabs my shoulders and shakes me theatrically, jokily. "Come - With - Me!" She laughs.

  I think about it for a moment. "We have to leave before 10pm," I say.

  "Wonderful," Jess says.

  "And we have to be back before midnight," I add. "It's simply too cold to be out exploring too late."

  "Of course," Jess says, but I know she doesn't mean it. When I say midnight, she knows we'll be out until all hours. But I have to show some strength and put my foot down, even if we both know it's ultimately futile. "You can even bring him," she says.

  "I don't think so," I say.

  "What about John?"

  "My brother? Are you crazy? He'd never let me come out if he knew."

  "Meet me on the corner of Pincer and 44th Street," Jess says. "Half past nine. We'll get straight to the woods, and all being well we should be back out well before midnight. Do we have a deal?"

  I nod.

  "Wonderful," Jess says. "You know, Rose, I can feel it. There's something in those woods. After all the false starts, this could be when we get some proper evidence!"

  "Sure," I say, already dreading being out so late on a crazy wild goose chase. But as Jess hugs me, I realize I have to go. For better or for worse, for reasons I can't even remember right now, Jess is my best friend, and I can't let her go into the woods alone. Forget mysterious lights: there are plenty of real dangers that need to be avoided, even in a small town like Dedston.

  Sophie

  Today

  Adam leads the way out of town, down past the river and through the woods. Normally I'd be pretty wary of following a stranger into such an isolated area, especially after what's happened to me recently, but this guy has the kind of face it's easy to trust. Besides, I guess I need to take a few risks if I'm going to uncover the truth about Patrick, and I have a can of mace in my bag, just in case Adam tries anything.

  After about a half hour walk, we come out of the woods near the beach, and I realize we're heading to the old lighthouse. "Is that where we're going?" I ask, looking straight ahead at the building.

  "You wanted to see where they died, right?" Adam says as the wind picks up.

  "I thought it happened at a house on Hoover Street?"

  "No," he says with a knowing smile, "that's just where bits of the body were found."

  It takes us another five minutes to get to the lighthouse. I know from my father's stories that this place has been abandoned since before I was born. There's a fence to stop people getting in, but over the years it's been worn down and Adam and I just stroll through. It's weird being here again, so many years after my father used to bring me out and let me explore.

  "Want to go inside?" Adam asks.

  "We can go inside?" I ask, a little surprised. My father always said the place was locked up tight.

  Adam leads me to a small metal blue door, which he opens easily. We step into the lighthouse and find the floor of the large round entrance room is covered in rubble. Looking up, it appears the first floor has entirely collapsed at some point in the past, showering the ground floor with wood, metal and pieces of abandoned furniture. The place seems old and cold, as if no-one has been here for years. It also seems fragile, like it's just been left here to fall down of its own accord some day. Looking up, I can see all the way to the base of the light-tower that perches on top of the building.

  "Spooky, huh?" Adam says. "I should warn you right now that this place is supposed to be haunted, if you believe that sort of thing."

  "Have you been here before?" I ask, unable to stop looking around at the wreckage all over the floor.

  "Sure," says Adam. "All the time. Me and some friends used to come here to hang out, smoke, that sort of thing. Not any more, though."

  "Ever seen a ghost?"

  He pauses. "No," he says, "but I know people who have. The two dead girls, Rose and Jess. People have seen their ghosts here. Again, that's only if you believe that sort of thing." He flashes a quizzical smile at me. "Do you?"

  "I don't know," I say, honestly.

  "The lighthouse was already abandoned when Rose and Jess died," Adam says. "It was abandoned a long time ago. There was... do you want to hear the gruesome details?"

  I nod.

  "There was blood everywhere. All over the walls, on the floors, on the steps. Jess Harper's body was just ripped to shreds. They found some of Rose's blood too, but not her body."

  "So this is definitely where they died?"

  Adam nods, before pointing to the other side of the room. "They found Jess's body spread all over there. Ripped apart. Blood spread all over the walls. It was like whoever killed them had so much rage, it couldn't be contained. Whoever did it, he just ripped those two girls up with his bare hands in a fit of pure anger. A lot of people thought it must have been an animal."

  We both turn as there's a scraping sound nearby. We look at one another for a moment.

  "Nothing," Adam says after a moment, once the sound has stopped. "Probably just rats. See? Told you it was spooky."

  I can't help wondering about Patrick. Everywhere I go these days, I imagine him following me. I guess most people would be flattered to have a vampire keeping tabs on their movements, but I find his attention pretty menacing. I wish I'd never got involved with this whole thing. In fact, I'm starting to think that the best option might be to scrape some money together and get out of Dedston altogether.

  "No-one knows what they were doing out here," Adam says, breaking my train of thought and bringing me back to the real world. "There were some crazy rumors about Rose's boyfriend, but nothing really came of it." He kicks some rocks against the curved wall. "Not that anyone had any better theories."

  "Unless it really was a vampire that killed them," I say.

  He smiles, as if it's the craziest idea he's ever heard.

  There's a creaking sound from high above us. I look up, concerned, but Adam laughs it off.

  "Old building," he says. "The light's still up there. It's huge. I'd show you, but the stairs look pretty dodgy." He puts his hand on the rail of the metal stairs and, when he shakes it, the whole section seems to be only loosely attached to the wall. "See?" he says.

  I nod. As interesting as this is, I'm not really learning anything by being here. I need to get that diary back from Patrick, but there's just no way. I'm not even sure I want to see him again.

  There's another heavy, loud creak above us.

  "We should go," says Adam. "It's getting dark."

  Another loud creak, and this time the sound of wood splitting.

  Adam looks up. "Come on," he says, and this time he sounds worried.

  Another creak, and suddenly there's a huge sound of splitting wood and the roof high above us crashes down, with the huge glass lantern from the top of the lighthouse tumbling toward us.

  "Move!" Adam shouts and he pushes me out of the way and into a small side-room as the lantern to the ground and shatters into a million tiny pieces. I look back and see the huge, heavy metal frame of the lantern wobbling from the energy of the fall. If that had hit us, we'd both be dead right now.

  "Like I said, old building," says Adam, clearly shaken. "You okay?"

  "Yeah," I say, and then something odd happens. Adam leans in to kiss me, and I let him. It's not much, not even a full kiss, but it's something. Our lips brush together, and even though I'm a little surprised, I figure there's no harm.

  "Sorry," he says after a moment, pulling aw
ay.

  "It's okay," I reply, waiting for him to do it again.

  "We should go," he says. "Come on, seriously this time." He takes my hand and leads me out of the side-room. We cross the main hall of the lighthouse which is now covered in shards of glass, and then we go outside, where it's really starting to get dark.

  We walk back toward town, not saying anything. I guess I should be thinking about that semi-kiss with Adam, but instead I can't stop wondering about Patrick. I keep thinking about the way the lantern suddenly came crashing down back in the lighthouse. Would Patrick... No, that's a crazy idea. If Patrick wanted to kill me, he'd just come through my bedroom window and rip me apart, wouldn't he? Then again, that lantern crashing down seemed awfully convenient, almost as if someone wanted us dead without raising suspicions. Is Patrick already out to get me?

  It's getting late as Adam walks me all the way to my house. Slightly against my better judgment, I decide to invite him in once I see that all the lights are off, which means my mother and brother must be asleep. I check my watch. How did it get to be midnight already?

  Since the house is usually a complete mess, I take Adam straight to my bedroom. I don't really know why I invited him in, and I definitely don't know why he agreed, but now there's this awkward silence between us. I guess I might have given him the wrong idea, but the truth is that I'm nowhere near ready to get involved with someone. Eventually we start talking again about the disappearance of Rose Tisser and Jessica Harper, and I can't help but mention the vampire angle, to see if he's curious.

  "There was something about puncture marks on Jess Harper's neck," I say, glancing over at the window. Is Patrick out there in the darkness, watching us? Feeling a shiver run through my body, I hurry over and pull the curtains closed.