The Nightmare Place

by Mosby, Steve

  That was where I drove to after work that day, and even though Hendricks and the possible second man remained on my mind, I stood in the garden for a time and stared down the hill towards the estate, picking the waste ground out from between the surrounding buildings. It was totally deserted this evening, and yet even from a distance, it unnerved me. The sight of it brought the images and feelings from my nightmare out into the real world. The fast-moving clouds. The wraithlike figure. The sense that something awful is coming.

  But I still had no idea what that something was.

  And why was that the case? Because I always woke up before it happened. I wondered about that now. I’d always assumed it was the nightmare that did it – that whatever happened next was simply too terrifying for my sleeping mind to endure. But thinking about it, maybe that wasn’t the case. Maybe it was me that woke myself up. Not because the truth was frightening in itself, but because I was too afraid to find out what it was. Because deep down, perhaps, I didn’t want to.

  The conversation I’d had with John in the hospice came back to me now. I’d told him that death would either be wonderful, or else it would be like nothing at all. And what had he said in reply?

  Maybe tonight I’ll stay asleep and find out.

  I stared down at that empty waste ground for a little while longer, and as I went back inside, I thought to myself:

  Yes.

  Maybe tonight I will.

  I dreamed of other things at first: regular dreams, interspersed with long stretches of blankness. My sleep kept breaking, but every time I drifted back off again, I willed the nightmare to arrive.

  Let’s do this. Come on.

  And sometime close to dawn, it did.

  It turned out that the regular waking had been fortuitous, because it blurred the edge between states, and I was still thinking clearly, convinced I was awake, when I realised the waste ground was in front of me. The familiar jolt of panic went through me, but I had the presence of mind now to dampen it down. The membranes were too thin at the moment, and if I got scared, or didn’t concentrate on the scene in front of me, I knew I’d immediately find myself back in the bed. Normally, that would have been a blessing. Tonight, I wanted to see.

  So keep calm.

  It was easier said than done, but the additional awareness helped. I forced myself to look at the scene before me, amazed – even slightly awed – by the level of detail my sleeping mind was conjuring up. The strangeness aside, it was indistinguishable from reality. The only differences were those fast-moving clouds and the strange green-blue colour of the sky – and the figure, of course, hanging there ominously in the centre of the waste ground. As always, it was grey and ragged and sketchy, as though scribbled on to the scene in pencil. And it was very obviously being held in place for now, leashed there in this moment of frozen time.

  As the rushing sensation began to build, I told myself:

  There’s nothing to be frightened of.

  Except I didn’t think that was true, and I suddenly wanted to escape. It was a strong urge – one I had to fight – and I knew I’d been right, and that it was why I always woke up.

  It’s just a dream.

  But it wasn’t. Something awful was coming, and I felt the terror of that running through me. Get out of here, my mind was telling me. What are you doing? I’ve spent so long hiding this from you: protecting you from it; keeping it secure and out of sight. You shouldn’t be here. Get out now.

  The clouds were moving faster and faster, and the rush in the air was louder than I ever remembered it being. The sense of impending velocity was reaching its pitch. On other nights, I must have—

  Get out now.

  I desperately wanted to, but I would never have a better chance than this. As I watched the grey figure on the waste ground, it seemed to be gaining substance. Its edges were shivering now. If I’d stared at it any longer, I might have woken up, so instead I looked up at that oddly coloured sky, that strange mixture of blue and green. The bright clouds were moving across it as quickly as I’d ever seen them, but they didn’t seem to be accelerating any more. The nightmare had reached a tipping point and balanced there. I stared and stared, but everything remained in place. Nothing else was happening.

  You don’t want to know, my mind told me.

  And that mattered, I realised. It was both the reason behind all this – the explanation for why it only emerged here in my dreams – and the key to unlocking it. I watched the clouds for a few moments longer, weighing all the competing impulses inside, and then I made my decision, for good or for bad.

  I want to know.

  Immediately the rushing noise ceased.

  The clouds were suddenly still, but for a second or two that odd colour remained, permeating the world. Then the blueness above began to intensify steadily, as the other colour faded and the sky began returning to normal. In my ears I heard birdsong, and then I felt the warmth of a summer sun on my upturned face.

  Very slowly, I lowered my gaze.

  The figure remained frozen where it was, but it had become solid now, and it was no longer grey. As the green drained from the sky above, it was coalescing in the person hanging in mid-step on the waste ground, rendering her increasingly distinctive. Already I recognised her, and I also knew who the scarred woman at the Packhorse really was. She wasn’t older than me at all. She just looked it because of whatever had happened to her.

  When the colouring was complete, the girl in the bright green coat finally began moving again, quickly and purposefully. But not towards me. Instead she was heading away across the waste ground, towards the embankment and the path and the thicket of trees it led through.

  I tried to move, but I couldn’t, and then I tried to wake up, but it was as though my mind had decided that I’d made my choice and could live with the consequences.

  Don’t! I screamed as the girl in the bright green coat reached the embankment.

  There was no way she could hear me, of course, not here and not now, but I shouted it anyway.

  Jemima, don’t!

  Thirty-Four

  The dream remained vivid after I woke the next morning: I still had that clear mental image of Jemima walking away from me across the waste ground. But however hard I thought about it, there was no real-life memory to anchor it to. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her walk away from me like that, and I had no idea what had happened to her afterwards. Not yet, anyway.

  But my head was full of other memories, and they played over and over as I showered and dressed. I drove to work early, in a kind of daze the whole way.

  I remembered the night of our attempted burglary of the Paladin, and how Sylvie had torn into Jemima about her coat and her attitude. Jem had always been a figure of fun in our gang, and I found myself wondering now if some nasty little part of me had even been glad it was her that was Sylvie’s target that evening, rather than me. I didn’t like to think that might be true, but how could I be sure? It was the kind of emotion you could easily airbrush out of your past, if all you cared about was keeping it a pretty picture.

  After that incident, we’d both separated ourselves away from the group. For Jem, that had happened almost immediately; she had never been cut out for Sylvie’s kind of behaviour, not really. It had been a more gradual transition for me, though, so I was able to observe first-hand how Sylvie’s derision for Jem only intensified. She never stopped being that figure of fun. Once she was outside the group, all that really changed was that it became more malicious – the bullying more overt and cruel. She never made any new friends that I knew of, and the rest of her school days were spent isolated and alone, hardly daring to show her face on the estate. To the extent that I remembered her at all, she was always hurried and huddled. Always trying to make herself invisible, to get from one place to another without being noticed.

  It was different for me. I didn’t make any new friends either, but I didn’t want or need to. I’d always been happy enough with my own company anyway, but
now I was keeping my head down, working as hard as I could: focused on making something of myself and escaping the traction of Thornton. In reality, I was only ever the vaguest of targets for Sylvie and her circle of friends. Leaving the group removed any protection they might have given me, but there was still something about me that kept Sylvie at a distance, shy of actual confrontation. They left me alone.

  But I recognised the danger. I knew how easily that could change. So it wasn’t just the desire to be alone that caused me to blank Jemima Field in the school corridors, and to shut down her attempts at conversation on the few occasions they occurred. It was mainly the fact that she had trouble written all over her – and by association, I would have too. I didn’t want that kind of attention. And anyway, if I could survive on my own, why couldn’t she?

  Why couldn’t she?

  I was thinking about all of that as I pulled into the department’s car park. There was a sense of dread about what was to come, and I sat in the car for a minute, preparing myself. But I was halfway there, and had to finish. While I still couldn’t remember what had happened to Jem, the file would be there to read. I had no choice now but to do so.

  It was still early. The incident room was completely vacant, and walking in provided a stark contrast to the twenty-four-hour flurry of activity of the last few months. It wasn’t just the lack of people, but also the files, which had been collated and organised, and were now neatly stacked and tied ready for storage. The investigation technically remained live, but after Johnson’s death, many of the seconded officers had returned to their original postings. Some would be in later, but there was nothing to justify or occupy a round-the-clock presence any more. For a short while, I would have the place to myself.

  I dumped my bag on the desk, and felt a slight tingle in the air as I took off my jacket. The ghost of the case, perhaps. But no, it was mostly Jemima. As I turned on the computer and opened the database, I was steeling myself for what I was going to find.

  The file only took a moment to load, and then there it was, right in front of me, a seventeen-year-old investigation. I began reading.

  Oh God.

  I had known this, I realised, somewhere deep inside me. Because flickers of it came back to me as I read. They were as indistinct as sudden memories of a long-forgotten dream, but they were there.

  You knew this.

  It had been 8.14 p.m. on a Saturday evening when Jemima was found lying in the small patch of woodland, known locally as the Edith Copse, which lay on the far side of the embankment, separating the waste ground from the school and shops beyond. That evening, a man named Joe Gardener had been taking the footpath and spotted what he thought was a girl’s body between the trees. Police and ambulance crews had been on the scene within minutes.

  She wasn’t dead, of course, but in some ways it was a miracle. The file included photographs of her injuries, taken at the hospital, and even across a distance of years I could hardly bear to look at them. She barely resembled a human being any more. But at the same time she was somehow still recognisable as the girl who had once been my friend. The girl I’d pushed away and turned my back on. I forced myself to look at the photos anyway, and as I did, I found myself remembering her shy smile, and how kind and sweet she had been. A promising athlete.

  I’m so sorry, Jem.

  I read on.

  Following emergency surgery, Jemima had been in a coma for two weeks, and then remained in rehabilitative care for over a year. On the evening in question, she had been severely beaten and raped. It was unclear exactly how long the ordeal had lasted, but it had culminated in an act of attempted murder, when the perpetrators dropped a paving slab on her head. It had been found at the scene, still angled between the ground and what was left of her face. There were separate photographs of the slab, of course, and it was obvious just from looking at it why the report suggested more than one attacker. One person on their own, however strong, would have struggled to lift it.

  I stared at the slab, thinking of Jemima as I’d seen her in the Packhorse, looking a good two decades older than she should have, with a scar that seemed to divide off the top quarter of her face. An eye that was pink and blind. This was what had caused it: an ugly piece of concrete that had left her skull in pieces and her life in ruins. She had been walking into the pub with an elderly woman – her mother, I presumed – which meant that both of them must be resident on the Thornton estate. And that seemed the cruellest aspect of it: that after all these years, they still had to live in the place where it had happened. At school, Jem had always seemed like a girl who would manage to escape eventually. But no. In the end, the place had done what it so often did. Destroyed someone and kept them.

  Of course, I knew it wasn’t really Thornton that had done that. The estate was just run-down buildings and people, and none of them were all that different or worse than you’d find in many other places. It was specific people who had done this to Jem. I scrolled through now to find their names.

  Already knowing deep down what I’d find.

  Ben MacKenzie – a cousin of Sylvie’s, one I’d never met – had actually been arrested before Jemima was found. He’d entered Swaine’s off-licence just before eight o’clock that evening, and the manager had called the police based on his appearance and behaviour. MacKenzie was dishevelled, acting erratically, and there was blood on his clothing. Five other people waiting outside were then detained at the scene. It didn’t surprise me to see Sylvie’s name amongst them, although I didn’t recognise any of the others. Even Nat, apparently, had bailed on the group by that point.

  It was later established that the six of them had spent most of the previous two days drinking and taking drugs, drifting from house to pub to house. Several other reported confrontations subsequently came to light, but nobody had phoned the police at the time. Nobody wanted the trouble. I racked my brain now, wondering if I’d seen anything, but if I had, I couldn’t remember it. I read on. Late that afternoon, the group had ended up in the Edith Copse, where the binge continued, reaching its climax when Jemima (don’t, I thought suddenly, seventeen years too late) had taken that short cut to the shops and crossed paths with them. And this time, the natural athlete hadn’t had the chance to run.

  Ben MacKenzie and the two other men present were sentenced to twelve years each. The three girls each received eight. Jemima was eighteen at the time. Even if her attackers had served their whole sentences, the last of them would have been free five years ago. I wondered if she ever encountered any of them in the Packhorse, or around the estate.

  Christ.

  I scrolled back through.

  The only explanation for the nightmare was that I’d known what had happened to Jem and suppressed it. The awful thing I’d always felt coming for me had simply been the truth about that. But even now, the memories wouldn’t come. I cast my mind back, but the date of the attack was meaningless to me. I would have been eighteen then too, and looking forward to heading off to university in a couple of months, but the day itself didn’t stand out in my memory. I hadn’t seen her that day – I was sure I would remember now if I had. Perhaps that was why I was never really present in the nightmare.

  But I did know something. All I could think was that I must have learned what had happened, flashed on that image, and then immediately frozen it. Don’t think about it. Back then, I had been so single-minded, so determined, so selfish. No distractions. No guilt. I was looking forward to university, pulling myself up and out, and wouldn’t have wanted to think about anybody else.

  You’ve got to do everything by yourself, haven’t you?

  Yes. And yet the truth was that I hadn’t. John had given me a hand up, but even back then, I’d been too arrogant to acknowledge it. And I’d already become too dismissive and self-oriented to extend one of my own downwards. I could have been Jemima’s friend and stuck up for her. I could have made things easier – or even, in some small way, helped to pull her up and out with me. But I didn’t. That wasn
’t the type of person I was back then, and it wasn’t me now either. I’d never been as good a person as John. Maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference to Jemima if I had. But maybe it would.

  I stared at the screen for a while longer, feeling a mixture of emotions. After a little while, it was the guilt and shame that won out.

  Maybe it would.

  Thirty-Five

  When Jane woke up, she had no idea where she was. Her body felt cramped and awkward, the muscles in her legs were aching, and she didn’t recognise the room around her. It sent an immediate jolt of panic through her: a flashback to her abduction. Tied up on the back seat of a car. She scrambled into a sitting position.

  Then she remembered. Of course, Rachel’s house. She was on the settee in the girl’s cluttered front room. Rachel had offered to top and tail in her bed, but for some reason Jane had preferred to sleep down here instead. The blanket Rachel had given her was tangled away at the back of the sofa. Evidently the heat of the night just past had caused Jane to fight it off.

  She sat there for a few moments in her pyjamas, rubbing her eyes and waiting for her heart rate to slow. Then she yawned, and stretched her arms to ease some of the tension from her muscles. Rachel was already up, and in the kitchen. Jane could hear her whistling through there as a kettle boiled. She presumed it had been Rachel getting up and passing through the room that had woken her.

  Another flashback then. As well as the physical discomfort of the night, there had been bad dreams. The earlier ones had already vanished, but she remembered the most recent one clearly. There had been a phone ringing, and she didn’t want to answer it because she knew it would be him on the other end. Adam Johnson. Calling to tell her in grotesque detail about something he had done, or was pretending to. There had been someone else there with her – Zoe, she thought – telling her with increasing urgency that she needed to take the call, that she had to, that it was very important. And the phone wouldn’t stop ringing, so eventually she did as she was told and picked up the receiver.