by Adam Nevill
‘Amber, now look—’
‘Josh. He was there, standing on the patio, and as real as you are right now. It was no illusion. And he was holding her. Her. His Black Maggie. I fired at him. Broke the window. But there was no one outside.’
Josh swallowed. In his eyes she could see bafflement and the usual concern, a belief that she was delusional, perhaps insane. But mixed in with his shock was an anxiety that she might even be right.
‘Come on. Let me show you inside,’ Josh said, to break the silence that settled thickly between them.
Amber didn’t follow.
Josh paused. ‘You’re safe. It’s OK. He’s long gone.’
Now it was her turn to have doubts. ‘How can you be sure he was here?’
Josh sighed and looked at the sky. ‘After we met, last time, well, I came back. And stuck around while you were in Plymouth. You seemed pretty convinced he was here. I couldn’t see how that was possible, but you were so bloody frightened. And I felt I owed you some peace of mind. So I came back and made a few enquiries. Random ones, really. And a few things turned up…’ Josh paused to squint and stare into the distance.
‘What? For fuck’s sake, what turned up?’
‘Break-ins, three bloody breaks-in. At your farmhouse. When it was still a building project. The builders should have reported it to you, but never did, because nothing was taken.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Someone broke into the building – your farmhouse – when it was a construction site. So I checked with the local fuzz about any similar cases round here. And there were a few. Maybe not connected, but all occurring at the same time. Food. Someone had been stealing food. Sheets had been pinched from washing lines. Nothing valuable. Some stuff from sheds. No money, no white goods. Basic stuff from gardens, from the back of shops. Milk off doorsteps. Like someone was scratching out an existence round here. Nothing major, nothing too obvious, nothing serious to attract much attention. So I made some calls and visited a few of the people who’d reported the thefts. And I found an eye witness. Someone saw Fergal. The guy who owns this field saw the bastard, which led me down here. I caught up with the farmer a few fields that way’ – Josh nodded to the west – ‘as he started work this morning. So I checked the caravan out and called you.’
‘Saw him? He actually saw him?’
‘His description matched. He disturbed Fergal right here, one evening after Christmas. And he watched the bugger run away from this,’ Josh stabbed a forefinger at the caravan. ‘Didn’t go after him because he said there was something not right about the guy. Said he was black with dirt, filthy. Worse than any tramp he’d ever seen. Reminded him of a coal miner, or some escaped convict from a film. Couldn’t believe his eyes when this lanky figure just streaked out of the caravan and legged it. But he did see his face, or what was left of it on one side.’ Josh shook his head in disbelief. ‘Same height, nearly seven foot. Gangly, face all messed up.’ He paused to wince. ‘Was pretty sure he only had one eye too. But he was alive, Amber. The prick was still alive and down here around the same time you signed the contract on that farmhouse.’
Josh nodded at the caravan. ‘The farmer showed me inside this morning. Lucky for us, he hadn’t got round to clearing the place out. Couldn’t face it. He just padlocked it after Fergal took off. Keeps meaning to have it hauled away as scrap. Fergal never came back once he’d been rumbled. He’s pretty sure about that. Come on.’ Josh walked quickly to the caravan. ‘It’s still unlocked. I told the farmer I’d call him when we were done. But I didn’t tell him a murderer on the run had been kipping in his field last winter.’
Amber felt as if a slow-acting drug was taking effect on her body and mind as Josh explained how he’d made the connection between Fergal and the caravan. Now she felt breathless and almost too weak to follow her protector through the long dewy grass. ‘God. Oh, God,’ was all she could manage by way of a response, as she walked in a daze up to the dented and stained door.
In her vague and formless thoughts, some kind of resolution, some answer, was trying to suggest itself to her, but her notions and ideas and guesses still made no sense. If he had been here, then maybe he was alive, and still hiding out locally, close to her home. But that didn’t explain why she had been unable to see him that morning after she discharged the weapon. Or the couple of times she had seen him outside, at the back of the house. It was like he’d just disappeared on each occassion. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said to herself more than Josh.
‘Makes two of us,’ he said over his shoulder, and then opened the caravan door.
‘Careful, Josh, don’t,’ Amber said, when he poked his head and shoulders inside the murk. Josh’s hands supported his weight on the outside of the door, and he used the strength in his arms to haul his head away moments later, one forearm immediately under his nose.
Amber shrieked. ‘What? Josh, what?’
‘The smell. Not the kind you get used to. We can’t go inside anyway. It’s evidence, or will be very soon. But you can see enough from the doorway. You can see how that pig lived in there.’
‘I … I don’t want to.’ She felt sick, and was sure she could smell the sebaceous, oily stench of Fergal’s clothes around her in the field, like a malevolent spirit released from its tomb; the same bestial spoor she had withered before in the dim sinuses of Edgehill Road.
‘Been treating his face with something. Couldn’t have healed properly. Those bandages look nasty. Milk’s gone off too. Toilet’s backed up. He literally lived in garbage. It’s all over the floor. Knee deep. Bet the bastard never opened a window either…’ Josh’s commentary on what he could see inside the dismal pall of the caravan’s interior, muffled by the arm across his mouth, increased Amber’s nausea.
Josh turned away from the door, wincing. ‘Police will have to go through it. Poor sods.’
‘Is there … is there a box? A wooden box?’
‘Box?’
‘Like a cabinet. Can you see? With a curtain across the front? Can you see?’
Josh shook his head. ‘Just rubbish. Rot. Stained bedding. Like a landfill. I’ll tell the police to look for it. This is the box from number eighty-two?’
Amber nodded. She liked them dirty. Like Bennet. Like Fergal. Hadn’t Knacker said that? Deranged and subservient, depraved and sadistic, filthy; their flesh as corrupt as their minds, as spoiled as she was. Black Maggie.
Amber cast her eyes around the field, at the very grass, looking for disturbed earth. ‘Has anyone gone missing, Josh?’
‘Missing? Here?’
‘Girls.’
His eyes saddened as he fully understood the question. ‘No. Nothing like that.’
‘Not yet. We have to find her and the bastard that carried her down here.’
Josh frowned, unsure how to react. Amber didn’t care what he thought of her or her crazy ideas. She’d taken her lead from Josh for too long, as well as the police, legal firms, representatives of traditional authority and order, purveyors of reason. And they had failed; failed to protect and hide her. Because they had failed to see, and to understand what she had been telling them for years. And Fergal had been here, and he had brought the Black Maggie to Amber’s door, to resume the cycle of terror and torture and rape in service of the thing that once inhabited a house in Birmingham.
She had believed herself tainted three years before on the dirty linoleum of an abandoned kitchen; the connection between her and old Black Mag must have been exploited by some invisible, intangible, remote means that made no sense to anyone but her. It had known she had come to Devon, or maybe known she would come to Devon. And then her actual presence, when she had arrived to buy the house, had drawn it to a specific location. Maybe those old Friends of Light and the Bennets had also understood how such an influence upon the living was possible, before it was too late for them too. Amber Hare-was-Stephanie Booth was the foothold in new territory. Death became Black Mag; murder, sacrifice. And how high the corn would
grow when maidens were laid beneath the green, green grass … But if Fergal had been near her home, with the box, all along … then maybe the resumption of her activity, her purpose, was largely dependent upon her physical presence. The Maggie had to be brought here, transported, carried to Devon. Which would make her range limited. Maybe she could sense Amber when close, could invade her senses, her mind, her sleep, at a psychic level undetectable to others. Maybe …
Amber lost her footing, her balance, and took several steps backwards to stay on her feet. ‘Jesus. Oh, Jesus Christ!’ She clutched her head from the impact of a sudden terrible idea inside her mind.
‘What? What is it?’ Josh moved across to her, held her elbows. ‘What is it, kid?’
Amber closed her eyes. Worried she might faint from the abrupt and horrible arrival of her most recent revelation, she drew one deep breath after another to steady herself. ‘I’m OK, Josh. I’m all right. Cars. Back to the cars. Now!’
‘Of course. Let me lock up.’
Josh walked off to seal the outlaw’s den with a padlock. Amber ran for her car, wiping at the tears on her pale cheeks.
Josh caught up with her by the gate. ‘I know this is hard…’
‘You got some more time for me, mate? Today?’
He nodded. ‘What did you have in mind?’
Amber inhaled deeply to ease the constriction squeezing her chest. ‘I think I know where they are.’
EIGHTY-EIGHT
‘Here. He’s here. They are under here.’ Amber stood in the middle of the garage and pointed at the smooth, shining concrete floor beneath the soles of her Converse. She wasn’t cold, she wore a fleece and jeans, but her whole body was shaking and adding a slight warble to her voice.
Josh stood in the mouth of the garage as if unwilling to enter the space. He looked hard at where Amber was pointing, at the floor, and slowly moved his eyes up to her face. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Fuck.’ Amber looked at the ceiling, hands over her mouth, trying to think quickly enough to find the words to explain, to express what she wanted to say, what she needed Josh to accept. It felt hopeless before she’d even begun. ‘At night, Josh. After the dreams—’
‘Amber. You know what I think about—’
‘Please, please, please, listen to me. Please.’
Josh sighed. ‘OK. But I need to call the police very soon about that caravan.’
‘The police won’t find him alive. You will never find him alive. He’s dead, Josh. Dead. You were right.’
Josh never spoke, but could not suppress the usual mixture of embarrassment and pity he felt for her.
‘He was dead before I came back to Devon to live here. Before this place was finished. Don’t you see? That’s how I can see him. It’s why I can see him and why I can hear the others, even if they’re not there, like we are here. They’re ghosts. But the dead, the victims from number eighty-two are here. All of them. Or bits of them. Fergal brought them here. The trophies.’
‘Amber, please.’
‘Think. Think about it. Think like me for one second, yeah? Be a crazy girl, yeah? Margaret was missing hair. Ryan teeth. They’re here, those things Fergal took from his two victims. The other women, the girls, they were all missing body parts. Fingers. Toes. Maybe hair, but it wasn’t always easy to tell. Some of them had been buried for a long time. But think about the missing parts that were never found. They, the people, the presences, the ghosts, were all stuck inside eighty-two Edgehill Road because their remains were there. She kept them, kept them all close. That’s how it kept going, for a century. It’s what she needed to keep them with her. So that they stayed with her and couldn’t get away; even if the bodies were removed she had other mementoes.’ Amber peered about her feet, not even wanting the soles of her trainers to touch the floor.
Josh was frowning because he did not know how to react. ‘Bennet and his dad must have had a stash off-site where they kept their … their trophies. They died and left no records. If it was anywhere, the stash would still be in Birmingham.’
‘No it’s not. That’s almost like what we were meant to think. Because it’s all here. She has them. They, somehow … are a part of her. It’s how she keeps them close. Captive. Even though they are dead, they’re not free. She kept parts of the dead. The ones I have seen and heard. She makes me see them.’ Amber began to tear up. She thought of Ryan and sobbed, but quickly forced herself to stop. ‘And Fergal was alive, barely I’d say, but still alive when he brought her here, with her fucking entourage of the murdered, whose torments never, ever stop. I know it. This makes sense. To me, Josh. Please, for me, do this for me. Help me with this.’
She had worn herself down trying to figure out the final part of the puzzle, but it had finally revealed itself to her at the caravan: Fergal had been here all along, at the farmhouse, ever since the renovations, waiting inside the building, where she determined to winter. And he had been with her, the Black Maggie; he had always been in Amber’s home, with her, physically and otherwise, even after death. At the caravan he was just waiting for a chance to transport himself and his keeper into her new home.
Temple.
Josh had stepped towards Amber when she became too upset to continue. He tried to keep an instinctive smile from spreading across his face. ‘In here. They’re all in here, the murder victims from Birmingham, or bits of them? And this Maggie thing, that you claim Fergal worshipped, and Arthur and his old man too. Fergal brought it here from Birmingham? Amber. Amber, please.’
Amber wanted to scream. Her fists clenched so hard her cuticles began to hurt. ‘Yes!’
‘Look, kid, a man wants you dead. A murderer. He is in Devon and knows you live here. That is a fact and that is very serious. And now we need to notify the police and have them search for him and pick him up. That is the plan. That is what we are going to do right now.’
‘Waste. Of. Fucking. Time.’ The shaking was getting worse. She was wasting time; the man she paid to protect her was wasting time. ‘Hammer. Sledgehammer. Drill. One of those things that smashes floors. One of them. I need to get one. Torquay. There must be a shop in Torquay—’
‘Whoa. Hold your horses. You are not going to smash up your house, Amber.’ Josh looked around himself, aghast at her, his face paler than she had ever seen it; she worried he might soon try to restrain her. ‘This place? Think. Think about how much money you spent on this house. The time that was spent making this beautiful. Amber? Where are you going?’
Amber broke from her position in the garage and raced through to the kitchen.
Josh followed her. ‘What are you doing now?’ He stopped moving and glanced at the dust on the kitchen counters. Peered at the floor, noticing the grey balls of dross.
Ryan had been inside the garage. Twice Ryan had been outside her room but he had returned here – down here where they were all stored. She recalled the night she’d opened the door and there was nothing inside the garage, nothing but an impenetrable darkness that slipped inside her and turned her mind inside out. In here, every time, right in here, inside the garage. The garage and the ground floor flat of 82 Edgehill Road: the black room. Both close to the earth she blessed, where she wintered.
Amber swept up her phone from the kitchen counter. ‘Fergal broke in here. He did not take anything. Why? Why was he here then? If he was still around he could have got to me any time I left the property in the last two weeks. What is he waiting for? You think alarms would put him off? Because he’s not waiting any more, Josh. He’s arrived. Got here months ago, before I even opened the bloody door. He wasn’t looking to steal anything from the building site. He came here to leave something behind. That is why he was here. The box. The wooden box was not inside that caravan. Nor was it inside number eighty-two when they found me. Think, mate, for God’s sake help me!’
‘Amber, Amber, calm down. Kid, please, calm down. Take it easy. Water. Sip some water. Catch your breath.’
‘His last words to me, Josh: “You’re not
having her”. Not having her. He wasn’t talking about Svetlana. He was talking about her, the bloody Maggie. He went downstairs with his face covered in acid. He was burning alive, Josh, but he still made it down those stairs to the ground floor flat. To get her. To collect her. That’s why he ran. To protect her. To get her the fuck out of that house. There was enough of her in me to know where I was, where I’d go, maybe she even made me come here, where she wanted to be. But for her to start this again, she needed to be here in person. Needed to be hidden here…’
Because she chose you.
I will come unto thee. For I have determined there to winter.
Amber slumped against the kitchen counter, her face pressed into the cold surface. Josh placed a hand, gently, upon her back and said consoling, comforting things that she could hear but never registered. She slowed her breathing, her heartbeat, and tried to clear her mind so she could think of the next step; the one she had to take today.
Josh’s voice eventually drifted back to her as if a radio had found its signal. ‘… and we can see someone. OK. Relaxants. Couple of tranqs and a cup of tea, kid. Let’s call the doc, and then I’ll call the police. But don’t worry, I won’t let you out of my sight. We will find him. I promise you. I’m not leaving this bloody county until we have him banged up.’
Amber turned her head to one side, rested it against her forearm. ‘Josh. If you really want to help me, you’ll come with me to a DIY store and then help me get that floor up.’
His face and shoulders seemed to slump. He removed his hand from her back. ‘I can’t. I can’t help you be crazy, kid. And that floor’s got to be six inches thick. You start breaking into the foundations and the whole thing could come down on you. This is just nuts.’
‘Then I will break this place apart myself.’
* * *
Amber leant on the kitchen counter, supporting her weight with her elbows, her phone pressed to her ear. Josh was still outside. He’d said he wanted to check the grass and flowerbeds under the walls for footprints. He had remained committed to the lines of inquiry and detection and protection he felt comfortable with; he’d stuck with what he could accept. And so had she. Occasionally she watched Josh’s head pass the kitchen windows as he made his inspection of the grounds, as much, she suspected, as an excuse to remove himself from the presence of a crazy woman as to establish the security situation at the property.