The Nightmare Place

by Mosby, Steve

That slight shift in its position. At the time, she’d imagined it was Johnson – not that she’d known his name back then – and then, later, had decided it must have been her imagination. Of course, it could never have been Adam Johnson, because he didn’t have a key to her house. When he’d abducted her, he’d needed to ring the bell. But it hadn’t been her imagination, either.

  A chill went through her as she pictured Peter in here while she was out, going through her things. She saw him pick up the photograph, perhaps as drunk as he was now, then replace it at that slightly wrong angle. In her house. Invading her space. As though he had every right in the world to be here.

  All without her knowing.

  ‘You kept it,’ he repeated, looking over at it. He sounded both happy and sad at the same time.

  ‘I just hadn’t got round to moving it.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’ It got her a frown, one he used his whole face to emphasise. ‘Know it’s not true. And it’s not nice to tell fibs.’

  ‘Peter,’ she said carefully. ‘We broke up.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  He took another step towards her, and this time she had no more room to retreat.

  Forty-Four

  I was barely conscious as Cooper dragged me upstairs.

  It was a small mercy, I supposed, because he hauled me like he was moving a heavy sack, gripping my hair and one of my arms. My head thudded against each of the steps. The next thing I was really aware of was him crouching over me on the landing, silhouetted against the small window.

  The pain in my scalp registered then, although it had been there the whole time, along with the tightness where he had been clasping my upper arm. It took another moment to make sense of what was happening and where I was. I had no memory of what had taken place downstairs, or even how long I’d been in the house. I must have tried to fight. The right side of my vision was blurred, and the cheek below it throbbed badly, as though there was too much of it to feel.

  I managed to roll over and rest for a moment on my knees and forearms. An inch from my eyes, the carpet was sparkling with curls of light. They formed, turned and faded.

  It looks like it’s been charged with electricity.

  And then he kicked me – stamped on me, really: down on my lower back. I barely saw it, but it turned me over on to my side. For a second, the pain wasn’t there, and then suddenly it was: the same raw, scraping agony as falling hard against a rough stone wall. I gritted my teeth and bit down as it flared. I had no idea what would encourage him, whether it would be fighting back or playing docile, but I didn’t care, didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

  Chris will be here, I thought.

  But not in time. And when backup arrived, the house would be locked up tight.

  Cooper stamped down at me again, this time driving his whole weight on to the side of my knee. It mashed my leg against the carpet, but didn’t do any real damage. Then he was crouching on me, and I wrapped my hands around my head as he began raining blows down on me: pounding on my upper arms and the backs of my hands. My biceps blew up, and then went numb from the repeated impacts. Each blow was like an earthquake, setting the whole world moving, and I could hear both of us grunting. When he stopped, and I opened my eyes, the landing seemed to be shuddering from the after-effects of the violence. But I was all right.

  The pressure lifted from my legs as he stood up, and then he spat on me. The spray landed on the back of my hand and upper arm, my hair.

  Chris, Chris, Chris.

  I was begging him to get here. Force the door down. Get in and save me. How long could it take?

  Too long.

  ‘Get up.’

  It was the first time he’d spoken, and his voice was full of contempt. I remembered again how the other victims had described him. A monster. A concentration of hatred. Not speaking as he assaulted them, either as though they were animals unworthy of communication or because he was too full of rage for words.

  ‘Get up.’

  He took hold of my hair again and yanked me to my feet. I went dead, but as soon as I’d got my feet under me, I pushed down and launched myself into him, aiming low: my shoulder into his solar plexus. He was too solid, and it wasn’t hard enough to wind him, but at least it nudged him slightly off balance, forced him to take a step back. It was a small space up here, and I thought maybe I could send him, or both of us, down the stairs. He wrapped his hands reflexively around me, and for a few seconds we wrestled on the landing. But then he let go and hooked a quick jab into my ribs. As my body moved with the blow, he caught me with a punch to the face and it sent my head flying into the wall.

  Stars everywhere – and a second of no sound at all.

  Then I was falling. He caught me and threw me backwards. I was expecting to hit the wall again, but this time I went through space, a bright light flashing ahead of me, and my upper body landed on the softness of a bed.

  Stand up. Immediately.

  And that was when I saw her.

  Oh God, no.

  Sharon Hendricks was lying at the foot of the bed, naked and curled into a foetal position. Blood had matted in her hair and spread in watery rivulets down the back of her shoulders, like hair dye that had run. More blood dotted the wall beside her, and the bottom of the duvet. But she was moving, at least, breathing softly.

  I turned around, the room moving slightly faster than me. Cooper was standing in the doorway, just staring at me, his fists bunching and unclenching by his sides. It was the first time I’d seen him clearly in the flesh. He was solid and physically compact, but not as tall as I’d been expecting. There were fresh grazes down one side of his face. Not from me, I didn’t think. I couldn’t be sure they had come from Sharon Hendricks either, but found myself directing a thought at her anyway: good for you.

  See what else I can add to that before we’re done.

  ‘Police are on their way,’ I said.

  It surprised me how strong my voice sounded, but Cooper continued to stare at me with the same dead eyes. Silent again now. He didn’t care. Beneath that blankness, he barely even seemed human any more. It was like facing off with someone who had completed their transition into a literal monster. This was always going to be his final destination.

  Suddenly, moving like a boxer, he came at me.

  I managed to block the first punch, more out of instinct than design, but he was already throwing another. I had no chance. The room blew up, the centre of my vision flashed bright white, and my legs went from under me. Shit. I rolled on to my side on the bed and cupped my face, moving my hands away just enough to see blood all over my fingers, but then my eyes filled with tears and the sight blurred. Bizarrely, the impact had been so hard that there wasn’t much pain yet.

  He was going to kill me.

  It wasn’t like I hadn’t known it before, but a part of me had suppressed the thought. Chris would save me, or else I’d fight him off. But neither of those things was going to happen. He was going to kill me, and Chris would look down at me and think, you always had to do everything by yourself, didn’t you?

  Cooper grabbed hold of one of my heels and yanked me back, so that only my upper body rested on the bed. I felt his hands fumbling at my belt, but it was more of a sound than a sensation: the clink of metal. I didn’t have the strength to fight him. I just wanted to cry. Ridiculous.

  And then my phone started ringing.

  At first, it was just a buzz against my upper thigh. Then the chirruping sound was loud in the bedroom.

  Cooper paused.

  A moment later, his hands left me, and I felt him step away.

  ‘Answer it,’ he said.

  Lying on my back, still cupping my face, I said, ‘What?’

  He tapped the outside of my leg playfully.

  ‘Answer your phone.’

  Forty-Five

  They talked – or rather, Jane listened.

  Peter was very drunk already, and he kept swigging from the bottle of vodka. It was difficul
t to understand him through the increasing blur of the alcohol, but she could follow enough. Since he’d moved out, he had found life hard. The plan had been for him to stay at a friend’s house for a while, but the friend had quickly grown frustrated with Peter’s failure to move on, and with the promises of help with the rent and utilities that failed to materialise. In the end, he’d thrown him out.

  At first, that had been okay, but then Peter hadn’t been able to afford his own rent. He didn’t say, but it was obvious he’d begun drinking more and more, and as cheap as the vodka he was holding now might be, it still cost money. He was due in court in a couple of weeks for non-payment of council tax. The way he described it, necking from the bottle, you would have thought the whole thing was desperately unfair: that it was something that had happened to him rather than something he’d caused.

  All these months, he said, he hadn’t stopped thinking about her.

  She was sitting beside him on the bed when he said that, and she didn’t reply. She simply rubbed her hands together and waited for him to go on.

  Inside, though, it felt strange to hear. Because she hadn’t thought about him very much. While the relationship had been deteriorating, she’d talked to her therapist about it, and had been comforted by the woman’s advice. Part of breaking up with someone is that you’re no longer responsible for how they feel. That seemed right, and it had been a relief to be excused from feeling guilty about whatever Peter might be going through. And after he’d delivered the key through her letter box so casually, she’d more or less put him out of her mind, rarely thinking of him at all.

  She hadn’t considered that he might miss her. In fact, she’d thought so little of herself that it seemed impossible he would. His life since their break-up was a blank spot in her head, entirely unknown to her; she had filled it, if anything, with happiness for him. A period of adjustment and recovery, perhaps, but always with the idea that he must be dealing with things at least as well as she was, if not much better. He’d always seemed the stronger of the two of them.

  Apparently, she had been wrong.

  ‘I never stopped missing you. Messed up. You meant everything to me.’

  When he said that, she believed him – or at least believed that he believed it. Because it was more likely that what he really regretted was the direction his life had taken, and that he didn’t need her so much as someone. Regardless, she didn’t need him. She was sure of that. She didn’t want him either.

  It seemed like on some level he knew that.

  ‘You’re with her now, aren’t you?’ He drained the last dregs from the bottle. ‘That fucking dyke.’

  It took her a moment to work out what he meant. When she did, she almost laughed. She hadn’t thought about Rachel like that. She’d never even considered it.

  ‘Don’t call her that.’

  ‘I’ve seen you with her. Are you happy?’

  ‘I don’t know what I am, Peter. But yes, maybe I am. I’m certainly happier than I was.’

  ‘That’s good.’ But he sounded miserable when he said it. ‘Can I have a hug anyway? I’ve missed that.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She wasn’t scared. Despite the situation, having listened to him, it felt like she was now the stronger one. So she turned to face him, and put her arms around him. It was a second before he returned the gesture, as though he was afraid of how it would feel, and then his hands pressed gently against her back. She smelled the familiar scent of his neck, then turned her head away, looking over his shoulder towards the headboard of the bed, just holding him.

  ‘I’ve missed this so much.’

  He sounded far away. A minute or so later, he was snoring on her shoulder.

  Jane eased away from him, then laid him down gently on the bed, making sure he was on his side. Let him sleep it off, she decided. When he woke up, they could talk properly. She would explain that it was over between them, and that it was unacceptable for him to come here any more. She would have the locks changed if it came to it, but she didn’t think that would be necessary. She was much better at saying no than he was used to.

  He was still snoring as she picked up the heavy sports bag and left the bedroom.

  Through in the lounge, she checked the phone on impulse, finding two messages. She listened to them. They were both from the police, one from a man asking her to get in touch, and the second from Zoe, who indicated that the matter was urgent. She had left a mobile number.

  Jane noted it down on the pad by the phone, then hung up and dialled.

  Forty-Six

  Afterwards, I could never remember the call.

  I have no idea why – whether the trauma of what I was undergoing pushed the memory into the same nightmare place where what happened to Jemima had gone, or if I was simply too woozy from the assault to take it in.

  There is no transcript, but Jane has been interviewed, and I’ve been told how the conversation went, at least as far as she remembers it. Upon answering the phone, the first thing I said was:

  He says to tell you that I’m going to die.

  I said that over and over again, apparently, without any emotion in my voice at all.

  He’s going to rape me, and he’s going to kill me.

  He wants you to know that.

  He wants me to tell you.

  I don’t remember any of that. I’m glad there’s no recording of the phone call – that the conversation is gone now – because I’d hate to hear myself say those words. I do have one vague recollection, though, albeit more of a hint at a memory than an actual one: I was struggling to hear Jane while she was talking to me. Not because I was disorientated, but because it sounded like there were other people on the line. There were women talking over each other, all at the same time. I couldn’t make out their voices, as they were too far away, but sometimes they dovetailed with what Jane was saying, and sometimes they obscured it. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought it hadn’t just been the two of us on that line. That we hadn’t been alone.

  From her testimony, I know that Jane began panicking, and obviously had no idea what to say. She understood what she was listening to: that she was talking to a woman who was about to be murdered, that help was far away and wouldn’t reach me in time, and that there was nothing she could do about it. All those things were clear. For a few moments, she said, her head went blank.

  But then the training kicked in. If she couldn’t do anything else, she told the police afterwards, she wanted to console me. So using her natural empathy, and without even thinking about it, she put herself in my position, and in that moment she regressed to her own abduction. She recalled exactly how she’d felt when Johnson had taken her, and everything that she’d seen, and suddenly she realised that there might a way she could help me after all.

  So she blurted something out.

  That’s the only bit of it I really remember.

  Zoe, there’s a hammer under the bed.

  She was confused, of course. A moment after she said, it, I realised she was thinking about my bedroom – that she must have seen the hammer when Adam Johnson abducted her and took her there, and presumed that that was where I was right now. There was no way she could know what Sharon Hendricks kept in her bedroom.

  Even so, the urgency with which she said it was compelling. I have suddenly remembered something important was the tone, and it’s vital that I tell you. I sensed a thin, impossible web of connections, an interlacing of voices and history, and even if Jane couldn’t possibly know what she was saying, I still believed her.

  Cooper had moved back over to the wall while I’d been on the phone, leaning against it with that vacant expression on his face. Now he unfolded his arms and walked back towards me.

  I threw my phone at him as hard as I could. There wasn’t really time to aim, or even try to, but the distance between us was so short that I was bound to hit him somewhere. Some unconscious instinct took the projectile straight into his face.

  ‘Fuck!’
>
  The contact was only solid enough to slow him for a moment, not to do any real damage. I scrambled backwards across the bed, turning as I went, knowing I had a second or two at most. As I did so, I caught sight of Sharon Hendricks, her back to me, and then I half fell off the far edge, my forearms landing hard on the carpet, blood pattering down from my nose, head full of stars and close to passing out. Stay with us! I pressed my chin to my chest and looked backwards under the bed.

  It was there.

  Not like mine at all. This hammer was a professional DIY tool, made of moulded black and yellow plastic.

  I scrabbled for it, knocking the handle and setting it turning. My legs were still on the bed, though, and I felt Cooper’s hand encircle my ankle – and then he was dragging me backwards across it. My arms lifted off the floor, but I clung to the underside of the bed with one hand, concentrating on finding the hammer with the other. I couldn’t even see it now. It was just my fingers stroking at the carpet, searching, searching, and then closing around the plastic handle as my grip on the bed gave out and he hauled me back towards him.

  I turned over as I went. The momentum took me to the far side of the bed, close to him, and once again I didn’t have time to aim: just punch up and out with the hammer as best I could. The head landed firmly, straight in his mouth, and I knew it was a solid blow from the way he jerked backwards, half falling away from me, hands flying to his face.

  I felt a burst of exhilaration as I got to my feet, still unsteady but shrieking at him now. I don’t know if it was from desperation, or fear, or if it was an attempt to summon some last thread of strength, but it was there. And I was still shrieking as I stepped forward and swung the hammer as hard as I could into the side of his head.

  Part Four

  Forty-Seven

  For Miriam Field, it’s the waste ground.

  It’s a real place, and it’s one she is forced to see every day, so to some extent she has become inured to it over the years. Miriam is a practical woman, after all – some say hard, even cold, as though she has no reason – and she knows deep down that it’s only a patch of ground. It is where the thing happened to Jemima, not what happened. On their daily walks, Miriam manages to close her mind to the latter – and of course, nothing lingers here. There are no ghosts. Perhaps that’s even sad in a way, because ghosts would imply an afterlife of a kind, and at least then there might be something for them both to look forward to.