The Memory Game

by Sant, Sharon

  Bethany closes her eyes and doesn’t answer.

  ‘Please, Beth, just one more little walk, I promise.’

  She staggers to her feet. Then her legs collapse and she falls back against Raven’s front door again.

  It doesn’t seem like Bethany can walk anywhere now. I wonder whether there’s a way I can get Raven home if I can find her. ‘Ok,’ I tell Bethany, ‘stay here, I’ll go and find out where Raven is, then I’ll come back for you.’

  Raven is at my house sitting in the living room with Mum; Roger doesn’t seem to be anywhere around. They’re drinking tea and Mum looks as though she’s been crying again. But there’s no time to listen to what they’re talking about.

  ‘Raven! It’s me! You need to see me!’ I shout as loud as I can. Raven doesn’t even look my way. I close my eyes and concentrate hard, trying to focus on her hearing me or feeling my presence. When I look up, she’s still talking to Mum in a low voice.

  ‘JUST LISTEN TO ME!’ I grab at photos on the mantelpiece, prints on the walls, the curtains, desperately trying to move something. I smash my hand along the bookshelf, but it goes through every book, hardly stirring the dust from their spines. ‘MUM!’

  Nothing.

  ‘Mum, Bethany needs you…. I need you…’ I can’t cry, I won’t cry. ‘Please… one of you… I can’t lose her, not now.’

  When I get back to Raven’s front door, Bethany isn’t there. I search around the outside of the house for her, and then I look inside in case she’s managed to find a way in, but everywhere is as deserted as it was before. Maybe she went home. If she went home, then perhaps she feels better. Or if she doesn’t, then surely her dad would get an ambulance for her. But then I think back to what happened earlier on, and the rage in her dad’s eyes, and I’m not so sure he would. I have to go and find her. The only thing to do now is get her back to my house before Roger returns and Raven leaves. If Raven is there and Roger is not, Mum will help Bethany for sure.

  Bethany is not at her house either. Her dad is still sitting on the floor of the kitchen staring into space, broken pots and bloody handprints all around him. He has an open bottle of something clutched in his hand. He has that look again, like when I saw him the first time, like someone who has forgotten what he’s for. I don’t know if he’d be any use to Bethany now, even if I did get her home. No, the only thing I can do for Bethany is get her to my mum. And that means I have to find her, and find her fast.

  The next best bet seems like the churchyard and that’s where I find Bethany. Not at her mum’s grave where I expected to find her, or even at mine. Instead, she’s huddled in the doorway of the church again and her eyes are closed.

  ‘Beth?’

  She slowly opens her eyes and looks up at me.

  ‘One more walk, Beth,’ I say, the relief flooding through me. ‘One more, can you do it?’

  But Bethany just stares, her eyes not really seeing me at all.

  ‘We have to get to my Mum’s. Raven is there and Roger is out. Mum and Raven can help you.’

  ‘Later,’ she says groggily, closing her eyes again.

  ‘Now! Get up!’

  ‘I’m tired, Dad,’ she whispers. ‘Can’t I have a piggy back?’

  ‘It’s me, David…’

  Her eyes open slightly and she tries hard to focus on me. ‘David Cottle… aren’t you dead?’

  ‘What’s wrong with you? We’ve been hanging out for weeks.’

  She frowns. ‘Oh yes, I know now. You’re from my school.’

  ‘You’re freaking me out. Get up; we’re going to my mum’s.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘My house. Raven is there.’

  ‘Do you think she’ll have green tea?’

  ‘Yes.’ I stand up. ‘She’ll have lots of it. And headache tablets and warm blankets.’

  ‘That does sound nice.’

  ‘Then you have to get up,’ I say in the sternest voice I can muster.

  She grabs for my leg and her hand goes clean through.

  ‘You have to do it on your own,’ I say.

  ‘I can’t,’ she breathes.

  ‘You can. You just have to concentrate.’

  She rolls forward onto all fours, then takes a deep breath and pushes herself up slowly. Grabbing for the stones of the archway, she staggers outside.

  ‘Come on, Beth, you’re up now. All we have to do is keep walking, it’s not that far.’ I know that it is, and I don’t think she can make it, but I have to try.

  But we only get to the stone wall at the edge of the churchyard and she pitches sideways and falls into the snow behind it.

  ‘Beth, come on, get up.’

  She doesn’t reply and her eyes are closed.

  ‘Bethany, please…’

  Nothing.

  ‘You can’t go to sleep!’ I shout, almost scream at her. I have to get her up no matter what. But she doesn’t move. ‘Beth, please!’ I cast around for something, anything to keep her with me. I drop to my knees beside her. ‘Tell me what snow feels like, Beth. Tell me what this feels like now.’ The sky is still full of fat snowflakes which are starting to cover her already. ‘Please, I need to remember snow, I need to know how it feels!’

  Her voice is a tiny whisper. ‘It feels… it feels like…’

  ‘How, Beth, how does it feel?’

  ‘Like a soft blanket to die under,’ she murmurs.

  ‘No!’

  I glance up and see a figure coming from the direction of

  Yarrow Lane. ‘Bert!’ I run towards him waving my arms. ‘Bert, come quickly.’ I jump up and down in front of him but he carries on walking. ‘Please, you have to come she’s going to die.’ If I can just get him to look behind the wall he could save her. I will him with all my strength. Stupid old git, just look behind the wall. But he carries on down the lane, huddled in his great big duffle coat, his boots crunching through the snow.

  I run back to Bethany.

  ‘Beth,’ I shout. ‘There’s help nearby. You have to make a noise, something, or he won’t know you’re here.’

  She’s still and silent and disappearing beneath the snow. I can feel tears burning my eyes but I can’t cry.

  ‘Just one tiny noise, Beth, that’s all you have to do.’

  But Bert’s already on his way past the churchyard in the direction of the pub and I know it’s too late.

  It stopped snowing a couple of hours ago. The sun has risen; a blinding white disc in a pink sky behind the bare trees. Bethany is where she fell last night. She’s covered in snow, melted in places, but it still hides her from sight. I lay next to her and kept talking, but she never answered. I wonder if the vicar will be here soon to open up the church and maybe he’ll see her. I stand up and look over the wall for him. After last night I know that I won’t be able to make him see Bethany but I feel like I should at least try.

  Something warm slips into my hand and takes hold. For a second, I don’t realise what it means. But then I think about it. I can feel something.

  I daren’t look around.

  ‘David,’ she says.

  I shake my head. I don’t want it to be true but the warmth of her hand in mine is too good to ignore.

  ‘Look at me,’ she says.

  Slowly, I turn to face her. She’s still barefooted, in the same clothes that she ran out of her house in last night, but there’s not a mark on her skin and she looks… she looks really pretty.

  ‘You’re dead?’

  She looks down at her hand in mine and gives it a squeeze, like she’s testing it out. ‘I think I must be. I don’t feel sad, though.’

  ‘It’s my fault.’

  She smiles, that smile that she saves for me. ‘It’s not,’ she says. ‘You did what you were meant to.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything. I was supposed to protect you.’

  She shakes her head and there is such tenderness in her look that I feel like I could burst. ‘You were here for me,’ she says, ‘but not to save me. You were here to
wait for me.’

  ‘I… I don’t understand.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ she says. ‘Perhaps we’re not meant to.’

  Together, we look down at her lying under the snow.

  ‘So, what now?’ I ask.

  ‘Maybe we’ll just hang out here until whatever is supposed to happen next happens.’

  ‘What do you think that is?’

  ‘Maybe your dad and my mum will come and get us now.’

  ‘Do you really think that’s what is going to happen?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She shrugs. ‘But we’ll find out together.’

  And she grips my hand a little tighter.

  Also by Sharon Sant:

  Sky Song (book one of the Sky Song trilogy)

  The Young Moon (book two of the Sky Song trilogy)

  Not of Our Sky (book three of the Sky Song trilogy)

  Runners

  The Jackie Chan Fan Club

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Sharon Sant was born in Dorset but now lives in Stoke-on-Trent. She graduated from Staffordshire University in 2009 with a degree in English and creative writing and is now pretending to research a PhD in literary studies. She currently works part time as a freelance editor and continues to write her own stories. She is an avid reader with eclectic tastes across many genres, and when not busy trying in vain to be a domestic goddess, can often be found lurking in local coffee shops with her head in a book. To find out more you can follow her on twitter: @sharonsant or find her on facebook: you can also go to her website:

  www.sharonsant.com

  The Memory Game © Sharon Sant

  E-edition published worldwide 2013

  Kindle edition copyright Sharon Sant

  All characters and events featured in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are entirely fictitious and any resemblance to any person, organisation, place or thing, living or dead, or event or place, is purely coincidental and completely unintentional.