by Ryan Casey
Adam lowered his arm, as mechanical as a crane, and placed the stone back on the floor. We stared at each other for a few moments, the weight of discovery washing over us. First, we’d found out who the girl was—the dead girl. And now we knew that the house was probably related in some way. Maybe he’d killed her there. Maybe he’d taken Emily to her similar fate.
But something still didn’t make sense.
‘But what about the girl in the paper?’ I asked Adam.
Adam shrugged, still staring at the stone on the floor. ‘I guess we were wrong about that. Or maybe it’s the same girl.’
I shook my head. ‘But the P.S on the ring… and she doesn’t look much like she did in the paper. It wouldn’t make sense. Plus the dead girl we saw… she had brown eyes, like this girl. Donald’s daughter.’
Adam shook his head. ‘I don’t remember what colour her eyes were.’
We’d only opened up more questions. My head spun as we stood there in the pasty lighting. I wanted to go home and cuddle Carla. Adam stared at the stone. I could see from the glimmer in his eyes what he was thinking. ‘We can’t go out there now,’ I said.
Adam shrugged his shoulders and slumped his head towards the floor. He looked back up at me with a sarcastic smile on his face. ‘So when do you reckon we go out there? She could be waiting for us, Liam, and you want to wait?’
My stomach burned. ‘Look, I’m not saying we don’t go out there. Just… maybe we tell someone about it, and get them to come with us? Even Granddad?’ I knew it was a stupid suggestion, but it was all I had. I prepared myself to be shot down.
Adam’s chesty laugh confirmed my suspicion. There was no turning back now. He investigated the desk, shuffling papers about. He opened drawers, which were coated with cobwebs and dust. ‘A ha!’ He pulled a small, blue torch out of one of the lower drawers, flicking the switch on and off to test whether it worked. It emitted a pure white beam.
The reality of our situation began to settle in the recesses of my gut. The two of us had only just identified the dead girl, and even then, it felt like I hadn’t really learned anything more than I already knew. Maybe mystery just bred more mystery after all. At school, Mr. Blacksmith always said we are a product of our surroundings or something.
‘Adam, this isn’t right,’ I said. ‘What if we get caught?’
Adam shook his head and slapped my cheek. ‘Sort yourself out, Liam. We’re doing this together, right?’
His apparent lack of fear inspired and absolutely terrified me at the same time. I wondered if somewhere, deep inside him, he had the same worries as me and was just better at disguising them. He leaned against the door, and I pulled him towards me. His breath was sickly sweet—the smell of someone who had eaten something after brushing their teeth for the night. I looked down at my watch: 1:45 am. My nerves danced in my gut. ‘What about Gran and Granddad?’
Adam scoffed. ‘What about them?’
‘Well, they’re going to be worried sick,’ I said, looking into his eyes. ‘They could have an accident. They could walk into our room and find our empty beds. It’ll kill Gran, Adam. It’ll kill her.’
Adam flinched when I said the word ‘kill.’ He looked towards the ground.
‘Adam… I know you want to do this, but we need to go to the police. We need to tell them about Donald and about Emily’s dad and everything. It’s out of our control now.’
He looked in my eyes, and put his hands on my shoulders. ‘Cuz, I know you’re scared, and I’m scared too. But we’ve gotta go out and see what’s there. I know we’re only kids and people think we don’t care, but I know how much this means to you and it means the same to me, too. It means everything to me, and you mean everything to me because you’re all I’ve got left. I don’t have no mum and I don’t have no dad. This is all I have. Please.’
I was rooted to the spot. I forgot everything else. Adam’s eyes grew more and more watery in the dim light, and I felt a lump in my throat as I tried to speak. I searched my head for all sorts of words and ways in which I could reply, but I just couldn’t.
Instead, I rested my head against his head, smiled, and nodded. I grabbed him and gave him the biggest hug I’d ever given anyone in my life and let the tears fall down his back. The shoulder of my hoodie felt damp too. Adam’s hands dug into my back like claws as he clutched me.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Shut up, you haven’t done anything,’ Adam whimpered.
My mind spun. ‘No, I am sorry,’ I spluttered. ‘I can be an idiot sometimes, and I know what you’ve been through, and I’m so sorry for that. Just sometimes with all the stuff with my mum and dad. It gets to me, too, and I just don’t know what to do or what to say. I just wish things could be okay again. I just wish I’d spoken about it more.’
Adam patted my back. ‘I’m here for you too, cuz,’ he said.
After what felt like ages, we parted. Adam shoved me back and wiped his face, disguising any remnants of moisture on his cheeks as well as he could. I felt the lump in my throat subside, as tears tickled my cheeks.
‘You know I’m here, Ad,’ I said.
He looked at me for a second and glanced at the floor, shuffling his feet. He reached for the door handle and, grasping the light cord with his other hand, readied himself for our descent into the darkness. ‘Yeah, yeah. You ready to do this, Liam?’
For a moment, I felt free of everything. All the weight and stress of my own problems seemed insignificant as I prepared for a journey into the unknown.
‘Let’s do this,’ I said, my voice cracking.
Adam tugged the cord and opened the door. We were engulfed in complete and utter darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I heard the cries of the night surround me. Adam went to take the first steps out of the cabin, but I pushed ahead of him. We had a rough idea where the house was in the day—we just had to keep following the hill upwards, and there it sat. But the night was a different matter altogether. The bright glow of the torch lit the place up like a crime scene. Nearby objects reflected the light as leaves danced along the ground in the gentle breeze. I grabbed Adam’s arm, and we began to walk.
I thought about Emily out here, all on her own. Tied up somewhere near the house. I thought about what Donald had done to the dead girl. To his own daughter. Had he done it at night? I pictured him luring her out there to see the woods, before finishing her with a shovel.
I still couldn’t get the smiling face of Beth Swanson from the newspaper out of my head. I shivered—something still didn’t seem right there. I guess that’s someone else’s mystery to solve.
A fox scurried past, its beady little eyes winking back in the soft glow of the light. I felt Adam shudder, his arm jolting in the firm grip of my left hand. I felt strong, somehow. Like I was looking after him, the way I always should have done.
The wind picked up and the birds began to chirp, probably confused by our presence. 2:00 am now. The trees reached out at us as the woods began to thicken, the branches clawing out like monster’s arms. As the hill began to steepen, it became incredibly hard to stay on both feet. I slipped on a few loose twigs, grazing my dirty right hand, and pulled Adam down with me. He pulled me back to my feet, my sense of power diminished.
Trekking up that hill felt like forever, every little movement catching my eye. The blue torch only shone for a few metres, so anything could be out there in front of us. Plus, it would see us before we saw it.
Adam stopped and turned the torch around, swamping my view in complete darkness. I shuffled round to see what his problem was, as he shone the light all around the way we’d walked and to the side of us. He stepped backwards, slowly.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
He paused for a moment, refusing to reply.
‘Oy, what’s u—’
‘Did you not hear it? I heard it in the woods.’
My eyes danced around the scene behind us. I saw things that hadn’t been there before. Things shaking
in the distance. The arms of the trees moving in, ready to grab me. My hands stung as the sweat of my palms seeped into the cuts from my fall.
‘Did you hear that, Adam?’
Adam didn’t reply again but pointed his torchlight at a spot in front of us—a tree stump that was hollow in the centre. His eyes were fixed on it and open wide.
‘Ad, did you hea—’
‘Look at that,’ he said, his eyes and torch still fixed on the spot.
‘Look at what?’
Adam raised his other arm, pointing towards the base of the tree. I followed the path of his arm with my eyes. At first, I didn’t see anything of great relevance, but as I stepped into the glow of the light, I saw what Adam had been so startled about.
A pair of white underpants. They had a little pink ribbon on the top of them and a pink design along the edges. I shuffled backwards. A coldness grew in my belly and worked its way up into my throat. I wanted the earth to swallow me up. Adam must have noticed me wobbling backwards, and grabbed my arm.
‘We can’t do anything about that now, cuz. We have to keep going on,’ he said.
I nodded. Neither of us had to say anything to know what the other was thinking. The size, the chirpy little teddy bear on the left hand side. If they were Emily’s, there was nothing we could do about that now. Nothing we could do about letting her down or failing her.
‘It’s all my fault, cuz,’ Adam said, breaking the silence as we edged closer to the summit of the hill. My mind went blank.
‘Don’t be silly, Adam. It’s no one’s fault. We don’t know anything yet, who they belong to, or—’
‘If I hadn’t have been so jealous of you and Emily maybe we could have stopped this somehow.’
That was the first time Adam ever mentioned being jealous of us. I stayed silent, refusing to get involved in a debate about the way things had turned out. We could not change the past now. Maybe I had stolen Emily from Adam and maybe that was the wrong thing to do. But it was done, and that was that.
We clambered up the last stretch of the hill on our hands and knees now, ants crawling across our bodies. The ants didn’t bother me anymore. They were all so insignificant compared to everything else.
That’s when I saw the light.
It was small at first and only just caught my eye as it swayed from side to side in the distance. It began to grow, its glow creeping across the ground ahead of us. Adam looked at me and did a double take at the light before fixing his eyes on it.
I froze, like a victim to Medusa’s gaze. Adam lay static, too. Maybe whatever it was would go away or turn around. The light continued its approach along the ground towards us. Somewhere behind us, from where we’d just come, there was an almighty clatter, like a rock crashing towards the ground, but we were too terrified of what headed in our direction to pay much attention.
I saw the bright light shining from Adam’s hand and opened my mouth to urge him to turn it off, but I couldn’t. An invisible force clutched at my neck and restricted any air from escaping. My arms were numb. Woodlice crawled across my hand, inspecting this strange new terrain. The light continued to grow and the sound of footsteps, hard against the uneven ground, were audible now. I closed my eyes as tight as I possibly could and began to cry. I’m going to die, I’m going to die. My breathing was frantic. I wanted to get out of here, wanted whatever was about to happen to be done with. Please be a police officer. Please be someone out for a walk. Please be Granddad…
I opened my eyes, reluctant to look ahead. The light engulfed us both now. I felt naked and exposed in the only part of the woods visible to human eyes. I tilted my head upwards to the source of the light. Adam was still frozen in front of me, looking up ahead. I felt his heart rattling through his ribcage into the side of my arm.
The figure in front was hard to make out because of the light in our eyes, but I knew who it was. The white light of Adam’s torch lit up those recognisable green wellington boots, the bottom of those slightly scuffed beige pants tucked in at the sides. He reached down for the knickers and put them in his rucksack. He tilted the torch towards his face and shined the light at his chin like Granddad did when he told us spooky stories.
The dark, slicked back hair. The narrow rims of those wide glasses, perched against his big nose. And that ever-present smile. ‘Sorry I startled you, boys, but I think we all know we’ve got a lot of talking to do, don’t we?’ Donald said.
My limbs sank into the ground. I wanted to wake up back at home, before any of this happened. This was it. No more hiding and no more secrets: just the truth.
Donald continued to smile and looked between the two of us. ‘Up you get. There’s something we have to go see.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
My whole body shook as we followed Donald’s lead. My throat felt like sandpaper had scratched against it for hours. I could not speak, and I could barely walk. I felt like a prisoner being led to execution.
I couldn’t get the knickers out my head. The way that Donald had picked them up and put them into his rucksack. I knew what he was doing. Clearing up his tracks. And we’d been stupid enough to fall right into them.
Donald did not speak at first. I wanted to run away. I needed him to say something, I needed to confront him and ask him why. Why us? What had we ever done wrong or to upset him? Why Emily? And why his daughter? But I choked as I tried to speak. I could only walk, following the light like a moth, dazzled by the glow.
As we reached the flat ground I saw the house up ahead, its dark exterior even darker than the night sky above. As terrifying as the woods were, this was worse. In the forest, we could run or hide behind a tree. We could even find a log to hit him with if we needed to. But here, out in the open, there was no hiding.
I looked at Donald. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He looked sad or disappointed even. The bag in his hand was like a rucksack, and it looked rather heavy. I wondered what could be in there, and if we could grab it from him and run, but it was no use. My heart battered my ribcage as dark thoughts whispered in my ears. He’s going to murder you. This is it.
Adam stopped, freezing like a statue. I could see his legs shaking. I slowed down and stood next to him, with no real idea of where we were going to take things from here, or how we were planning to handle the situation. My mind was blank and my fingers rattled against my palm.
‘Donald, we just can’t,’ Adam said. His voice was croaky and the words sounded forced. ‘We just can’t.’
Donald turned towards us both, his eyebrows scrunched up. It was hard to read his thoughts, and even harder to see beyond his eyes and into the deranged brain underneath. Adam was completely rigid in Donald’s torchlight, dazzled like a small animal in front of a car. Donald was the predator, waiting for an opportunity to mow him down and indulge in his prey.
Adam began to cry and collapsed to the ground in a heap. His hands clutched at the grass below and tore it up, before he rubbed his forehead against the muddy earth. ‘I just—we can’t, Donald. I don’t know why, but we can’t. I can’t.’
He began to thump his head on the ground, the damp soil underneath splattering upon impact, like a meteor crashing into the Earth’s surface. I looked at Adam and at Donald. We both exchanged a glance before Donald nodded at me. I walked towards Adam and pulled him from the floor. His body was limp, like he was magnetically attached to the ground. Grabbing his shoulders, I dragged him back to his feet. Mud tattooed his head. It ran and smudged down his face with his tears. The wet soil dripping down his cheeks looked like thick, crimson blood in the glow of Donald’s torchlight.
I leaned towards him and grabbed his shoulders, resting my forehead against his, regardless of the patch of mud on his head. Adam’s bottom lip quivered. Thick beads of saliva dripped down his chin.
‘I’ll sort this, cuz. I really will,’ I whispered. I turned past Adam and walked towards Donald, eyeing him up as he towered above me.
His eyes shifted around the field before meeting mine, tilting
his head.
‘I don’t get it, Donald.’ I clenched my fists together. ‘Why you’d do what you did to your daughter and why have you done what you’ve done to Emily? Cause I know it’s you. We both know it’s you. We’ve known for a while. We’ve seen the initials on the ring and we’ve seen her in the photo album. I guess we just figured that it would be best to wait and find out as much as we can because we’re kids and that’s what we do. But we know it’s you. And it doesn’t matter if you do something to us, anything to us, because you’ll get found out, and that’ll be the best thing. I’m not fucking scared of you anymore.’
The last part of my speech was a lie. I shook from head to toe. But I still felt better. I’d said it. That was it. That was all I had to say.
What chilled me most about the whole scenario was the way that Donald looked back at me with his mouth slightly ajar as I finished my speech. Maybe it had been because I’d sworn at an adult. That was the first time I’d sworn at an adult and they’d heard me. Or maybe it was the realisation that we knew. Maybe he really didn’t know that we were on to him all along or how much we knew anyway. But now it was out in the open. The truth was out there. No more lies or games. I looked back at Adam for some sort of approval. It did not feel right, me standing up like this, but Adam just looked back at me too, wide-eyed. He had stopped crying. His sniffing was the only thing breaking the deadness of the silence right now.
Donald slammed his mouth back shut and clicked out of his trance. He looked up to his left at the stars above, which barely peeked through the thick layer of cloud. His hand stroked the handle of the bag, his fingers clawing round it. He turned back to me. His eyes were damp, and his mouth straight. Out of nowhere, he grinned and let out something of a chuckle.
‘Boys, I really am sorry about all this. About how you’ve been dragged into things. But you should come with me to the house. You need to see what’s there. You don’t have to worry about me.’
He smiled as he delivered the last line and looked towards Adam, who shuffled behind me. ‘Dragged you into things.’ I felt even more uneasy now that he had spoken and acknowledged that something really was going on. Reality felt strange. I did not like it.