by Melody John
‘Jamie, mate, come on.’ Ted grabbed Jamie’s shoulder. ‘What did you do? Where’s Laura, mate?’
‘Park,’ Jamie said. The word seemed to slip out without him wanting it to, and his shoulders spasmed. Was he fighting it? Was it possible to fight the mesmer? ‘No. But the park. Dark. No one there. Stepped in dog shit lugging her over there. No. No. I didn’t do it. An accident. She made me. Provoked me. So goddamn irritating. Annoying little. Not my fault. It was an accident.’
‘She’s in the park?’ Dmitri pressed.
‘Jamie, seriously, man, what the hell?’ Ted demanded.
‘Park,’ Jamie mumbled. ‘Don’t. Cold. Don’t struggle. Don’t wake up. Heavier than you look.’ He shook his head. ‘No. No. No!’
‘All right, come on.’ Ted grabbed Jamie’s chin and forced his head around to look at him properly, forced him away from Dmitri’s fingers and away from Dmitri’s gaze.
Jamie sucked down a shuddering breath, and jerked away from Ted’s hands. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
Dmitri glanced over his shoulder at me. I was too scared to even nod my head.
‘Seriously,’ Jamie said. ‘What are you looking at me for? I didn’t fall asleep, did I?’
‘Maybe you did,’ Dmitri said. ‘It was like you were sleep-talking. You were telling about—stuff.’
‘What?’
‘Where’s Laura?’ I said. My voice was high and wavering with panic. ‘Where is she?’
‘Huh?’ Jamie frowned at me. ‘How the hell should I know? She never talks to me, or hangs out with me at all. It’s not like we’re friends. I don’t even like her.’
We all stared at him. Ted was wide-eyed with alarm, and David was tense and rigid beside me.
‘Seriously,’ Jamie said, looking between us. ‘What the hell is going on here? What are you talking about?’
‘Dude,’ Ted said. ‘You were—you were talking about Laura. You went a bit—I think you must have fallen asleep or something, it was like you were in a dream or—and you said—’
‘I didn’t say anything!’ Jamie shouted. ‘Will you just shut up about it! You just want to blame me because she clearly hates me, and she’s made you guys hate me too because you’re so blind you’ll just follow whatever she says!’
‘You did say it, though,’ David said, in a voice that was deadly calm. ‘We all heard you. You said you followed Laura out of the van. You hit her. And then you took her to the park.’
‘I—’ Jamie’s face went white. ‘I didn’t—’ He stared around at us. ‘You can’t believe that. Well maybe you lot can, but Ted—come on, man, you know me.’
‘Yeah…’ Ted said slowly, and I got the feeling that that wasn’t the endorsement that Jamie had hoped it would be. I wondered if Jamie had done something like this before, something that Ted knew about but was trying not to think about.
‘This is completely stupid!’ Jamie cried. ‘I don’t even care about her!’
‘You do take every possible opportunity to either hit on her or annoy her,’ Dmitri said.
Jamie scowled furiously. ‘Shut up. No I don’t. And, okay—suppose we do say that, even though it isn’t true—why the hell would I tell you guys about it if I had done something?’
‘You were dreaming,’ Dmitri said softly. ‘We all saw you. We all heard you.’ I could hear the layers of the mesmer in his voice, and for a second I realised that I was practically nodding along to his words, entirely convinced, and even with the beginnings of a memory of a sleeping Jamie mumbling a confession. Then I realised what I was doing, and managed to snap out of it, taking down a deep breath and digging my nails into my palms to clear my head.
‘That’s—’ Jamie was gaping, trying to come up with the words, but the mesmer was working on him too. I could almost see him scrabbling back through his memories, trying to work out if he really had been asleep after all. ‘I’m not—I didn’t—I—’
‘Where is she?’ David demanded. His hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists. ‘Jamie, I swear—’
Jamie shook his head. David’s voice seemed to rouse him a little, and he looked up angrily and began, ‘Look, this is such a stupid—’
But then Dmitri cut in again smoothly. ‘Jamie. Where is Laura? Tell us where Laura is.’
Jamie hung his head. His shoulders slumped, and I could hear him breathing very heavily, as though he’d just run a marathon.
‘Jamie,’ Dmitri’s voice coaxed. ‘Tell us. It’ll be really good if you tell us. We need to know where Laura is. Tell us where Laura is, Jamie.’
‘Park,’ Jamie mumbled. ‘Hid her. She was out cold. Hid her in the park.’
‘Where in the park?’
‘Dunno. It was dark. Trees. Bushes. Fallen down roof.’
‘Does he mean the park just up there?’ I asked in a low voice.
‘Jamie, which park are you talking about?’
Jamie jerked his head back. ‘There. On the way to the town. Grass. Trees. Dog crap.’
‘Okay,’ I said, then lowered my voice even further. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? We can go there.’
Dmitri nodded. He closed his eyes for a second, and seemed to shiver, then rubbed his fingers into his eyes. Jamie snapped back to alertness. He glared around at all of us, then flung open the passenger door and got out of the van.
‘Stop him,’ David said.
Jamie jabbed up two fingers at us, and took off running down the road.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘We just have to get Laura.’
‘No,’ David said, ‘we can’t just let him get away with this. We’ve got to tell the police.’
‘The police?’ Ted squeaked. ‘No, man, seriously—look, I know Jamie can be a bit—and that was like seriously out of order, but the police? He’ll get kicked out of uni, and—dude, come on, let it go.’
David looked at him in disgust. ‘You’re just as bad as he is, you know that.’ He poked me in the ribs. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’
We got out of the van. Ted huddled down in the driver’s seat and looked at us worriedly. David glowered at him, and set off for the park, so briskly that Dmitri and I had to half-jog to keep up with him.
The park was only a little way down the road, surrounded by a high wire fence with big bushy hedges growing very closely by them. We pushed open the squealing rusty gate to get in, and my heart sank. ‘This place is freaking enormous.’
The park stretched away in all directions. There was an open grassy space on the right that had evidently been used to play football, and beyond that was a line of trees through which I thought I could make out a playground. On the right was another, much smaller space with a greenhouse, fringed around with a massive border of hedges and bushes, broken up in places to allow a small beaten dirt path to wind its way through. I could see more green spaces through gaps in the hedges, and still more trees beyond that.
‘We should split up,’ David said. ‘I’ll go left. Lizzie, you go round the bottom and work your way up. Dmitri, you go right.’
Dmitri and I nodded.
‘You’ve both got your phones? Okay.’ He took a deep breath, and gave us a quick smile. ‘Okay. We got this, yeah.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, with a confidence I didn’t believe in.
‘Yeah,’ Dmitri said.
And so we split up, and began to comb through the enormous park.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I walked down to the bottom of the park. The faded little trails through the hedges and undergrowth gave way to an actual path, white and probably dusty in the summer, and now grey and pocked with potholes full of rainwater. A line of thick hedges backed the path, and I could see the faint gleam of a chain link fence behind them.
The air was cold, and when I breathed in deeply I could detect a tang of salt. It was faintly exhilarating, and I breathed in again, trying to gain courage. I could do it. I could. Laura. I could do this for Laura. And to win against Jamie.
‘Dickhead,’ I said out loud.
A nearby dog walker looked at me with wary caution, then hurried away from me down the path. I turned around, looked once more around the park, and then walked to the farthest right-hand side of the park, where the path dwindled out into a stony walkway that led to a dark alley that looked as though it ran behind the backs of the houses next to the park. It looked empty, but I ran down it to the end, my footsteps echoing off the walls. There was nothing there, apart from a few dog turds and a mouldy smell, so I ran back into the park, and began searching through the hedges that bordered the path.
The hedges were wet with the rain that had fallen during the night, and a wind came up and blew droplets of water into my face as I bent down and tried to peer properly underneath them.
‘You all right, love?’ An older lady in a light pink cagoule with a rainbow-coloured scarf around her neck looked at me with a concerned expression on her face. She held a long pink lead wrapped around her wrist, and on the other end of the lead, a tiny puppy with curly black hair pricked up its ears and looked at me with an identical expression to its owner.
‘Yeah,’ I said weakly, straightening up and brushing my hands on my jeans.
The lady seemed to be waiting for me to say more. I looked at the ground, then at the sky, then at her puppy. I gestured to it. ‘Your dog’s nice.’
‘Oh, thank you.’ The lady fluttered like a proud mother bird. ‘Yes. Thank you.’ She smiled down at the puppy, and I carefully eased past them. When I glanced back, the lady was walking on her way again.
The hedges were empty. I found a few empty crisp packets, and a half-empty bottle of Dr Pepper. But nothing else. The park was beginning to fill up with people, dog walkers, and parents with prams and toddlers heading towards the playground. I felt self-conscious, peering so obviously under the bushes and in the hedges, but every empty space made my worry grow even stronger. I thought I caught a glimpse of David, poking around by the trees near the play park, but then he passed out of sight.
I carried on searching, but there was nothing. My panic began to rise, and I felt my heart beating in my ears like a drum. I felt a bit sick, and my hands were shaking. Jamie couldn’t have lied. He wouldn’t have been able to, would he? Not under the mesmer.
Unless Dmitri hadn’t really used the mesmer after all. Unless he’d just said he had. Unless he and Jamie were actually friends all along, and he’d just said he was using the mesmer on him so we wouldn’t think that he had anything to do with Laura going missing. Unless Dmitri had been lying, had deceived us all, had made me think that he wasn’t like Liam when in fact he was exactly like Liam, maybe all sylphs were just like that, maybe that was just who they were and they didn’t know any other way except lying and manipulating and deceiving everyone around them.
‘Lizzie!’
My head snapped up at the sound of Dmitri’s voice. He was running towards me along the path; he skidded to a halt and waved his arm. I ran after him. ‘What? Did you find her?’
‘Come on,’ he panted.
‘Wait, we should text David.’ I tried to fumble my phone out of my pocket as I ran, but ended up almost ripping my pocket and dropping the phone.
‘What are you doing?’ Dmitri demanded.
‘Phoning David,’ I said.
‘What, are you mad?’ He tried to snatch my phone away.
I held it out of reach and backed away from him. My heart was pounding, and suddenly all I could think was, What if he lied, what if he’s been lying all this time, what if he’s been using the mesmer to make me forget what he is, what if he’s memsered me to forget…
Dmitri rolled his eyes. Then he took a deep breath. ‘Okay. Sorry. But you mustn’t text David.’
‘Why the hell not?’
‘You’ll see when we get there. I found her. I found Laura.’
‘What?’ My voice came out sharp and high and suspicious.
Dmitri seemed to see how rattled I was. He looked at me questioningly, but then said in a slightly gentler voice, ‘She’s trapped back there by the greenhouse. There’s a shed that’s half fallen down, and I think she must have crawled underneath. But there’s a sheet of iron or something, and I can’t lift it. You’ve got to use your power.’
I blinked. Oh.
‘So come on,’ he said.
I felt a sudden stab of shame at how swiftly I’d reverted back to doubting him. I ran after him, back over the grassy clearings and through the trees to the greenhouse. The greenhouse was a big structure, but a bit sad-looking; it seemed half-empty, with just a few bare flowerpots and an enormous green plant thing in one corner. Its leaves were long and thin, and sprawled out over the floor like the tentacles of an octopus. The greenhouse was surrounded by bushes on all sides, grown up high and out of control.
Dmitri squeezed along the side of the greenhouse, between the glass wall and the bushes. I followed with a bit more difficulty, ducking my head to avoid my hair getting tangled in the branches. Once through the bushes, there was a tiny, damp space littered with cigarette ends and empty cans. Past that, through more bushes, and in another space, we found the shed.
It looked like a prop straight from the set of a horror film; the walls were built fromgrey brick, but half of it had fallen down, and there was a pile of rubble spread out into the bushes that still crowded in on every side. The shed roof was a thick sheet of corrugated rusted metal, and it had slid off the top of the building and was wedged in the pile of rubble along with plastic bags, more cans and bottles, a few flowerpots, and lots of general rubbish.
‘Now you see,’ Dmitri said. ‘We can’t call David, unless you want to suddenly explain how you can levitate things.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ashamed. ‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I—I am sorry.’
He shook his head. ‘Doesn’t matter now. Can you see her?’
I squatted down onto my heels and peered into the rubbish dump. The top of the sheet of metal was leaning against the half of one wall that was still standing, and there was a small dark cave between the metal and the wall. It was dark, but I saw a patch of dirty blue fabric, and the black and white pattern of a saddle shoe. Laura’s saddle shoe.
‘Laura?’ I called.
There was a tiny sound from inside the cave.
‘That’s what I heard,’ Dmitri said. ‘I was in the bushes, looking, but I heard her.’
‘Sylph ears,’ I said. ‘Wonderful things they are.’ I turned around and gave him a quick half-smile to show him that I wasn’t being sarcastic. Then I stood up. I took a deep breath and pushed back my sleeves.
‘You all right?’ Dmitri asked, taking a few steps back.
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘Are you sure? You don’t sound very confident.’
‘No, I am, I just—I’m not very good at this.’
‘Why not?’
‘It takes practise. I haven’t been practising.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah. So. Anyway.’ I stretched out my hands towards the rubbish heap and concentrated. A coke bottle floated into the air, followed by a plastic bag and soggy copy of The Sun.
‘What are you doing?’ Dmitri asked.
‘Moving it,’ I said. ‘Duh.’
‘Yeah, I can see that, but that’s not very practical, is it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well you need to study it, don’t you. Look at it and see what bits you need to move to get Laura out. It’ll take too long if you just move it all one bit at a time, and you need to be careful with the pieces you do move. You might move the wrong thing and have it all come crashing down.’
‘Oh.’ I bit my lip. ‘I hadn’t really thought about that.’
‘Science,’ Dmitri said. ‘I think. Physics? I don’t know.’ He stepped closer to the rubbish pile and looked it at closely for a few moments. Then he said, ‘Okay, move those bricks here. That’s right,’ as I pulled the bricks into the air and set them aside, ‘okay, and now try those ones.’
As I lifted those bricks, there was a
sudden shifting and sliding, and a massive part of the pile suddenly slithered downwards, crashing and banging against the sheet of metal. The sudden noise made me jump, and I dropped the bricks I’d been levitating. They smashed into the metal sheet and set off a fresh landslide.
Dmitri jumped back from the cascade. ‘Oh my god, be careful!’
‘I’m sorry!’ I gasped. ‘I’m trying!’
Dmitri bent down and peered into the little cave. ‘Okay, I can still see her. Laura? Laura? Can you hear me?’
No sound came from the cave. Another brick slid down the pile and smashed into a bottle. The sound made me flinch.