by Sarah Dalton
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“Because… ” His nails grip into the wood of the picnic bench. He rocks forward and then back while staring at his shoes. Then he takes a deep breath and looks up to me, those brazil-nut eyes finding mine. “I look a lot like my father.”
“Eh?” Lacey says. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“He’s crazy,” Neil adds. “We should keep away from him.”
“No,” I say. “No… You mean… It was your father?”
A mist of tears cloud over Seth’s eyes. He blinks them away. “I saw him. He cut her.” His jaw clenches and he turns away. “I look like him. Amy is coming for me.”
“Why hasn’t she already killed you? She’s killed so many before,” I ask.
“I… I think she’s waiting.”
“What for?”
“Look, this is going to sound a bit crazy,” he says.
“Everything sounds pretty crazy right now,” I reply.
“A couple of years ago, when I was right out of school, I started working on a carnival over in Thirsk. A couple of us had this dare going on. It was stupid fun, you know, we were having a laugh. We had to go visit this psychic. She was total bullshit. She had the whole shebang going on, the tent, the crystal ball, the gypsy outfit… everything. When my mates went in, it was all the usual crap, you know, like ‘I see romance in your future’, ‘you are hiding a secret’, ‘there’s a career out there for you’, that kind of thing. Then I go in. At first it’s the same. She said I’d meet a nice girl, that I would experience heartbreak, and that I had some great task to complete, or some bull like that. Then she touched her crystal ball, her head snapped back, and her voice changed. It was like some demon was talking through her. Her eyes went black as night. I still see it all in my nightmares, I hear the voice, see the eyes. She said that I would die on my twenty-first birthday, that I would pay for the crime I ignored, that I have the eyes of a murderer.” He sighs. “My father’s eyes.”
“Whoa,” Neil breathes. I’d forgotten he was there.
“Yeah, man. Whoa indeed. Who the hell are you, anyway?” Seth asks.
“Neil,” he replies. “Mary’s friend, and the guy who will take you out if you hurt her.”
I turn back and raise my eyebrows. Neil shrugs his shoulders and grins. Who knew he had it in him? Probably not even Neil.
Then Neil says, “But, honey, I really have to go meet my boyfriend. Are you okay with Lacey?” and the moment passes.
I face Seth. “Just a second.” Then pull Neil away. “Do you believe him?”
“I didn’t think I would,” Neil admits. “But it’s so crazy it has to be true.”
Lacey shrugs. “I’m not convinced.”
“Holler if you need me,” Neil says. “I’m staying close, okay?”
I nod. Then I move back to the picnic bench and sit opposite Seth. There’s an electric crackle as Lacey takes her place next to me.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll throw a stone at his head if he tries anything.”
“Who’s Lacey?” Seth asks.
“She’s my dead best friend.”
“The one who attacked Amy?” he says.
I nod.
“Wow, your life is as messed up as mine.” His eyes pull me in. His smile puts me at ease. I want to believe him so badly. I want to believe he’s good.
“I know,” I say coolly. “Carry on with your story. Tell me everything.”
“All right,” he says. “I first saw Amy’s ghost a few months ago, at the fair. I was working the waltzers. I looked up at the woods by the fairground and there she was, standing at the entrance, staring at me. I thought I was seeing things. I thought I was going crazy. Then, on my walks home, sometimes I heard these noises, these footsteps behind me. But whenever I turned, she was gone. It carried on for weeks. I thought I was going insane.”
“Why hasn’t she acted?” I ponder.
“She did the night of the fair, when she saw us together.” He pauses and swallows again. “I… I’ve never been on… dates. I mean, I’ve been… I’ve met girls in bars before, but I’ve never taken them anywhere public like that. Not until you came along.” His grin warms me from toes to fingertips. I mentally keep myself in check. I don’t know if I can trust him yet. “I guess seeing me with a girl tipped her over the edge, made her want to attack. Then Damo got in the way…”
“So much death,” I whisper. “She’s so angry.”
“I don’t blame her,” Seth says. “What I saw that night… I’ll take it with me to my grave. It’s with me every day. Every day. She is with me every day. We’re connected—like rope on an anchor—and we will be forever.” He shrugs.
“What happened to your father?” The wind whips my hair. I pull it back over my neck, covering the scars from the fire. He’s probably already seen them, but I do it anyway.
“He’s dead. I didn’t lie about that. He died when I was sixteen.”
“How did he die?” Lacey says.
I repeat her question to Seth.
“A car accident,” he says.
“Only a year after Amy died,” Lacey says. “She might not have been strong enough to kill him. It’s taken me months to lift a stone.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I say.
“Right about what?” Seth asks.
I explain. Then I say, “How did you live with him, knowing what you did?”
Seth rubs the stubble on his chin. “It was my birthday, the night she died. My parents threw a party for me in the village hall. Amy was there with my cousins, messing around and playing games. It’s different here, in the countryside. We do things as a community. We invite everyone who lives around us. But I was being a dick that night. I hated that Mum and Dad had invited the whole village. I hated all the kids running around at my party. In my head I was old enough to be chugging back beers and smoking spliffs. So a group of us went out walking with a bottle of vodka and a couple of joints. It got late. The others went home. I was wasted. We all were. I don’t know how, but I ended up wandering towards the campsite. It was on my way that I saw him. I saw him with her. They were walking hand in hand, like… I dunno. It was weird. I don’t know why I didn’t speak up. I guess I wasn’t in my right mind. I wasn’t even sure if what I was seeing was real and I didn’t want to get into trouble for being high. But still, I couldn’t figure out why Dad was with Amy, you know? I guess he could’ve been taking her home, but then… why?
“So I followed them. I followed them all the way down to the moors. I stood there, frozen, as he killed her. He was like a wild animal; a beast form of my dad… some hideous werewolf version of him. I dunno...”
His voice softens to almost a whisper. “I wish he had turned into a werewolf. It would have made it easier to stomach.” A pause. A beat. Then he continues. “I ran. I went home, I slammed the door to my bedroom. I lay down. I passed out.” His voice quietens even further. “And I forgot.”
“What?” Lacey and I say it at the same time.
“My mind, it… changed. As I slept, my brain worked everything out for me. It tried to fix me, and by trying to fix me, it messed everything up even worse. Whenever I think back to the morning after, it’s like a cereal advert of family happiness. Mum made us a fry up. Dad winked at me across the table, knowing I had a hangover, and confessed that he had one as well. Mum said something about how Dad went out drinking with his old pals. And as it all went on, I never remembered, not once. Not even after they found the body, not even when I was questioned by the police.”
“Were you a suspect?” I ask. “You were alone at the time of the murder.”
He nods. “They took my fingerprints and DNA, but it was too confusing because of the party. She’d been interacting with too many people to draw any conclusions. They took Dad’s, as well. I guess he was careful. Smart. A real psychopath.”
“How did he get away with it?” I whisper.
“Ask him when he remembered,” Lacey says.
<
br /> I relay the question.
“Dad’s funeral. It hit me like a truck. One minute I’m tossing dirt on his coffin, the next he’s standing over Amy Willis, his face lit by the moon, a monster of a man. I spent the entire funeral having flashbacks, my mind a complete mess. I couldn’t believe it. I thought there was something wrong with me, that I was ruining the memory of my dad by making this shit up.” He shakes his head. His hands tremble.
“Did you tell your mum?” I ask.
“Never,” he says. “I’ve never said it aloud before.”
“You should have,” I say. “You should have gone to the police.”
“I didn’t think it would matter, what with him being dead. My mum… she doesn’t deserve to know what he did.” There’s a twitch along his jawline that makes me wonder if he is holding back information.
“How do you know she never knew?” I say.
“She doesn’t know,” he says firmly. “I’m sure of it. I’m positive.”
“You never thought your dad was a murderer, remember?” I say.
He rakes his fingers through his hair and then rubs the stubble on his chin. His face, his shoulders, they are tense. His eyes are drawn, haunted. “I know.”
“How did his dad get an alibi?” Lacey asks.
“His mates covered for him,” Seth answers, after I’ve repeated the question. “A couple of years ago, after I’d pieced together the mess that was my head, I asked one of dad’s old friends about the night Amy died. He told me that Dad had gone to him, told him he’d cheated on Mum and that he couldn’t tell her. My dad’s friend took pity on him and gave him an alibi so that Dad didn’t have to admit anything to the police. I could have punched him. But I really wanted to go back to me on that night, and save Amy.”
It’s then that his expression breaks through my reserve. I can’t help it, I reach forward and I take his hand in mine. I run my thumb along his knuckle. There’s the smell of rain in the air, lingering in low misty clouds. It takes me back to those moments on the moor, when our lips brushed together. For an instant, the world melts away, and a hot desire builds from my gut.
“Mary,” Lacey warns. “He could be lying. Don’t get too close to him.”
At first I think she means physically. But then I realise that she means to protect my heart.
“One child died,” I say, half to Lacey, half to myself. “If Seth did it, there would be more dead children.”
“Lacey doesn’t believe me,” Seth says. “I don’t blame her. It’s a crazy story. But it’s the truth. I swear.”
“I think if your dad had survived that car accident, there would have been more murders. When someone kills a child, like Amy, they don’t do it for motive, they do it for…” I shudder, “pleasure. It means they’d do it again.”
Seth nods along with me. “I think you’re right. I’ve thought about it again and again, over the last four years. Dad had two faces. My dad, and a psychotic killer. The problem is, I share his face, I have his eyes, and I’m the only way she can get revenge.”
Chapter Fourteen
On a rusty swing in the campsite park, I sit and push myself back and forth. Lacey sits atop the frame, cross-legged, like a yoga trained ninja.
The air is thick with rain that hasn’t fallen. Each time I swing forward, my eyelids are covered with the mist from the low fog. And when I swing back, the wind sucks my hair forward, blocking my view of the moors and the woods. The same moors where Seth’s father killed Amy.
“I believe him,” I say.
“I know,” Lacey replies. “I want to believe him, too.”
“But you don’t.”
“Even if his father did it, that doesn’t mean he can’t still be psychotic. What if it runs in the family? What if he learned to be violent from his father?”
“There are so many what-ifs,” I say, “that I don’t know what to think anymore.”
“You should eat,” Lacey says. “That’s one thing I know.”
“How are we going to stop Amy killing Seth?” I say. I plant my feet on the ground and stop myself swinging any further.
Of all the questions buzzing around my head, this is by far the loudest. And it’s messed up, because I should be thinking about how to stop Amy altogether, how to send her to whatever hell dimension or eternal plane of peace she should go to, but all I can think about is how I want Seth to survive.
I put my hand in my pocket and thumb my phone. When he left Five Moors, he finally gave me his number, and even his home address. Then he smiled and left with his head hung low, kicking the occasional stone from his path. I think of fifteen year old Seth, wandering onto the moors, watching his father commit the worst act in the world. I want that image out of my head. I want it to have never existed, to never have happened.
I want the world to be better.
I want Seth’s life to be better.
I want Amy to still be alive.
I want Lacey to still be alive.
I want Seth.
I want him.
“Whoa, Mares, what are you thinking about? Your expression, it’s like pain,” Lacey says. “You look like a girl with the weight of the world on your shoulders, like you’re about to have your heart kicked in.”
“Maybe I am,” I mutter.
A breathless Neil jogs around the corner of the playground. “Guys, I have news. Lemarr knows where that ghost walk guy hangs out. Apparently he drinks in The Nag’s Head, around the corner. We should go and talk to him, see what he knows about… You all right? You look terrible, Mary. Did Seth’s story check out?”
“I don’t know how to tell,” I reply. “If the police never had enough evidence to convict his dad, how would I be able to find out for certain?”
“But you believe him,” Neil says.
“Yeah, but is it enough?”
Neil doesn’t reply; instead he motions for me to get off the swing, and then he wraps a large arm around my shoulders and gives me a squeeze. “Come on, let’s go find this ghost walker guy.”
“It’s only afternoon, though,” I say. “Will he be there?”
“Apparently he goes there every day before his ghost walks,” Neil replies.
I pull my phone out of my bag. “I should text Seth so he can meet us there.”
“Is that a good idea?” Lacey says.
“It’s his life on the line, Lacey. He has a right to figure out how to get rid of Amy,” I reply.
She frowns. “Okay.”
On the walk to the pub, Lacey is very quiet. It’s obvious that she doesn’t believe Seth’s story, but I can’t think of anything else that makes sense. She doesn’t understand that I have to go with my gut, and my gut tells me Seth is innocent.
Neil opens the door of The Nag’s Head and holds it open for me. It swings back as Lacey is stepping through, going straight through her.
“Thanks, Neil,” she says with a mean-spirited, sarcastic edge.
I flash her a look. It’s not like Neil can see her. Or that she even needs the door to be open.
We step through into the pub and the usual wall of chitter-chatter plus background music hits you in the face. It’s a proper “old-man’s pub”. The kind you find in the most remote of places. You can tell who the locals are because they turn around and stare at you with more than a little hostility; the old men wear flat caps and Wellington boots. They wouldn’t look out of place stomping through fields with a shotgun draped over one arm. The women are caked in make-up, with skirt suits in pastel shades. I imagine one of them in the passenger seat of a convertible, a headscarf tied neatly under her chin.
But it’s not all wealthy farmers in the pub. The thing about England is that no matter how posh the area is, it’s always near to a council estate, and in one of the rooms, a raucous game of pool is going on. I peek into the room to see beer sloshing over the sides of pint glasses, hitting the sticky carpeted floor. It smells like cheap antiperspirant and farts.
“What do you want to drink?” Neil
asks.
He can’t persuade me to have a real drink, so instead he heads to the bar for a Coke and a pint of real ale, the ten pound note already in his hand. I wander through into the room with the pool players. It’s there that I find the guy from the ghost walk—Igor.
He sits at the small bar in the second room with his top hat next to him on a separate stool. His lanky hair, balding on top, straggles over the sides of his shirt collar and rests on the shoulders of his black waistcoat. There is the gold chain of a pocket watch peeking from his waistcoat pocket. He’s a man who would look out of place whatever the era. In the 21st century he is a Victorian Goth. If you transported him back to Victorian times, he would appear unkempt and scruffy—a man to be avoided.
“He can’t be that good of a ghost hunter,” Lacey says. I’d almost forgotten she was there. The sound of her voice makes me start. “He never even noticed me on the ghost walk.”
While I’m mulling over how much help Igor will actually be, Neil presses a cold glass of Coke into my fingers. I’d not even noticed him approach, or the way the pool players had stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at me.
“All right, love?” A lanky chap winks at me.
I reply with a half-hearted smile, hoping it’s enough to convey “I don’t want to be rude, but please don’t talk to me”, before following Neil towards our ghost walk tour guide.
Neil clears his throat. “Um, Mr. Igor?”
Igor turns and angles his chin down so he can examine us over his odd little spectacles. He is older than I thought, with hair greying at the roots and burst blood vessels around his nose. “What is it? Who are you?”
“We were at your ghost walk last night,” Neil continues.
He looks at Neil and then me, his eyes impatient, his fingers tapping the side of the pint glass. “And?”
“We wondered if we could talk to you, about… ghosts,” Neil whispers, leaning forward on his toes.
Igor sighs. “Not again. Look, I come here for a bit of peace and quiet, not to be hassled by teenagers. If you want a freak to point and laugh at, there’s a circus outside Leeds with—”