by Rey S Morfin
‘It’s ok, Rey, just calm down, calm down,’ I urged him. ‘It’s all going to be ok.’
‘No!’ he shouted back. ‘No it isn’t! She’s gone, Anna, don’t you understand? Nothing’s ever going to be ok again! She’s gone, why doesn’t that upset you?’
‘It does upset me, Rey, of course, but we need to compartmentalise right now, and we need to-’
Rey screamed again, and fire darted from his hands.
‘Rey!’ I shouted back at him, ‘Look at yourself! You need to stop this. You need to stop or we’re going to be caught. We’re going to be caught and we’re never going to find who really killed Laura.’
I heard myself say the words and it became harder to focus on the task at hand. I had to focus. I had to focus, because there was no time not to. We had a problem to deal with. We needed to deal with it urgently. We had to or everything would get even worse.
‘Robert did! She told me! She told me!’ Rey’s voice faltered. He sank, once again, to his knees. ‘He did it,’ he continued, softly, barely audible, ‘He did it… didn’t he?’
The smoke calmed, and the glowing eyes faded. Rey was himself once more (or, at least, whatever was left of himself).
‘It’s ok, Rey. We’re going to sort it. We are. I promise. But right now we have a job to do. Ok?’
He nodded rapidly once again. ‘Ok.’
We continued onwards, up the Trail, then veered off towards the hill that sat at the south end of the valley.
I was plagued by visions of the Shadow that had twice now taken hold of Rey. I couldn’t pretend to understand them, but I could also no longer pretend that they hadn’t been real. They had. At some point soon, I was going to have to face tonight’s very real truths. I was going to have to face that I wasn’t going to see my friend ever again. It was a horrible thought, one that made my stomach twist and ache, my heart drop, but it was at least a truth that fit into my understanding of reality. The Shadow, on the other hand, did not.
I had never been a believer in the supernatural. I had turned my nose up at churches, at gods, at pompous tradition and ceremony. I didn’t yet know if the sight of the monster within Rey challenge my (lack of) faith. I didn’t yet know the philosophical consequences of seeing such a sight.
Vampires, werewolves, and the like, I still felt sure weren’t real. They were stretching my understanding of the world too far, at least as we knew them. However, only hours earlier, I wouldn’t have believed in possession by smoke monsters, either (just thinking those words in that order seemed ridiculous), and yet there I had been, in front of one, staring at it with my own eyes. Twice.
Ghosts, then, maybe could be real. The logic followed, at least in my mind. People had spoken about being possessed by ghosts. Or maybe that was a completely different thing; a ghoul perhaps. Either way, if someone could be possessed by some demonic smouldering being (no, that wording was no better), then someone could maybe have been possessed by the wandering soul of the dead.
No. That seemed ridiculous as well. They seemed equally ridiculous. But if they seemed equally ridiculous, then maybe that meant they had equal chance of existing. And if I’d seen one exist, then this logic meant that the other did also. If ghosts, then, existed, then maybe I would see my friend again.
No. This wasn’t the time to be thinking about this. I needed to concentrate. I needed to be focused. There would be a logical explanation for all of it. I would find it soon. I would find it, and I would have to deal with the consequences; but I could not deal with them right now.
‘Rey, I…’ I started, ‘Look, ok, as much as I hate to even say it out loud, it’s very clear to me now that something… otherworldly is going on here. I’ve seen, twice now, what you’ve become-’
‘The Shadow.’
‘The Shadow, sure, yes, whatever you want to call it. I’ve seen it. We’re both agreed that it’s here. But I want to know something very specific, if that’s ok, Rey?’
‘Ok.’
‘Are there any others like you?’
‘Yes. Elizabeth is the same. And… and I think there’s another. When I first got here. I saw one. In the woods. But… but it wasn’t her shape. I think… I think there’s another.’
‘Ok, Rey. Thanks for telling me. It’s just that… I saw the fire, back there. I saw the fire you created.’
‘Yeah. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.’
‘It’s ok, Rey, it’s honestly ok.’
I stumbled on a branch underfoot, regained my footing, then continued.
‘There’s a story - in Redbury - about a man. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. They called him the Burning Boy.’
‘I… I haven’t heard of him, no.’
‘His name,’ I began, ‘was William. William Myerscough. He died, here, in Redbury, about fourteen years ago, in the middle of a fire which killed three people. Everyone said that he’d caused it.’
I stopped talking in an attempt to work out the best way to share this story.
‘Maybe I’m starting at the wrong point. Really I should mention the foxes. Before any of this happened, William was a quiet, introverted kid. His main friends were a bunch of young foxes who used to play in his garden. His mum didn’t like him feeding them at first, but he kept doing it anyway, and she eventually gave in. She could see that it was making her kid happy.’
I paused.
‘But… he was lonely. And, I guess, like all lonely teenagers, he was troubled. Everyone knew he dabbled in drug use. He’d spend days on end without leaving the house. In the few days before the fire, Laura and I…’
Rey winced at her name.
‘…came across a dead one. A dead fox, sorry. It had those demonic eyes. At the time, I didn’t make any connection between it and the fire. I mean, why would you? But then, seeing you with the same eyes… with the smoldering skin… and the… it’s connected, it has to be.’
Rey exhaled deeply.
‘A few days later, the fire starts from William’s house. Spreads across half of the town. Most people got out in time, but… as I said… not everyone.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘I remembered the fox that Laura and I found. And then I mentioned it to Joyce, and she set me on this path. Then I ran into the Vicar, he was the most useful. Seemed to know the whole story. But really it was all because of Max having those eyes too.’
Rey furrowed his brow.
‘Max? He had the eyes? He was afflicted?’
‘Apparently so.’
‘But how?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know how the foxes had it either. Maybe they were around someone smoking it?’
Rey stayed silent. I could tell what he was thinking: there was something we didn’t fully understand yet.
‘But if-,’ he started, before being caught off-guard by the sight in front of him.
In the depths of the woods to the East of (or South-East of? I couldn’t quite place us) Redbury, miles from the beaten path, was a farm of sorts. To call it a ‘farm’ may have been over-stating it. There was a small wooden shack overlooking a small clearing, surrounded by a newly-installed barbed-wire fence. The shack didn’t look like it had seen much use in recent time, with cobwebs hanging from the roof, and walls which were visibly dirty.
It was the clearing, however, which stopped Rey in his tracks. Whoever’s farm this was, they weren’t harvesting any of the usual suspects, not vegetables, not cannabis. Instead, they were harvesting a small violet flower.
‘What the…’ Rey started, and then trailed off. He dropped the body where he stood, and wandered over to a gate in the fence. A quick tug revealed that it was open, with only the rusted metal holding it in place. Rey rushed immediately over to the plants, bent over, sniffed them, then grabbed a bunch and ripped them forcefully from the ground.
When Rey exposed the plants’ roots, memories came flooding back. There were men (boys, really) that Laura and I used to hang out with. We didn’t see them often, but whe
n we did, there was always something “not quite right” about them. Even Laura, who was typically oblivious to these kinds of things, was wary.
This root in front of me, (the Root, I now understood) had always been there. It had always been present. While Laura and I hadn’t partaken, we’d always been around it. It had always been at the centre of our social circle, it had always been there when-
‘This is it,’ Rey announced. ‘This is what I took.’
‘Yeah, I know, Rey.’
He looked to me. ‘What should we do?’
‘About this? Nothing. We have enough to deal with.’ I gestured at the first signs of light trickling through the treetops.
I walked over to the shack and tested the door handle. It was unlocked. As I suspected, it housed a wide variety of gardening equipment. I ignored the fertiliser, the generator, the carefully-drawn timetables, and went straight for the two shovels. If the tools were available, we should take advantage of them, I thought. I threw one shovel to Rey, who fumbled the catch, recovering only after it bounced off the ground. He nodded.
‘Where?’ Rey asked.
I pointed to a spot about twenty feet away from the clearing, where the greenery seemed thickest. ‘There.’
Some time past as we dug the hole and by the time we were done, the sun had fully risen. We climbed out of the pit and surveyed our work.
‘Deep enough?’ Rey asked.
‘Yeah. It’ll have to be.’
We threw the sheets and their contents into the hole, and I immediately covered it with the loose soil that had piled up on one side.
‘Anna… Shouldn’t we… shouldn’t we say a few words?’
I gave Rey a filthy look. ‘Like what? What is there to say?’ I spat, more viciously than maybe I had intended.
Rey silently picked up his shovel and assisted me in covering the body. Even if there had been time to give Robert Kamryn a eulogy, I couldn’t think of two people less-suited to give it: his killer and his victim.
We returned to the shack, placing our shovels back exactly where we had left them, hoping to not give any indication that we’d been here.
As I exited the shed, I saw Rey inspecting the crop with burning eyes.
‘What are you doing, Rey?’
He turned to me.
‘We should destroy it. Don’t try to stop me.’
‘I won’t, Rey. In fact, I think you’re right. It’s done nothing but damage. Burn it to the ground.’
Rey nodded, turned back to the violet flowers, and raised his arms. He exhaled deeply as if urging the Shadow to return.
It did not.
While Rey’s eyes glowed, his skin barely smouldered, and there wasn’t a sign of the fire that had raged from his arms just hours before.
The more he forced it, the weaker his eyes burned.
‘Where are you?!’ he screamed with anger.
I walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder.
‘It’s ok, Rey.’
Rey’s chest rose and fell as he recovered his breath. ‘Why can’t I…’
‘It’s ok. We can come back. We’ll put an end to it then. We’ll destroy it.’
13
An Innocent Man
At this time, in reality, I was in pieces. I was coming to terms with the fact that Laura was truly missing, and that there was a very real - and very likely - possibility that I wasn’t going to see her again. Anyone who has ever lost someone close to them knows exactly how this feels. Anyone who hasn’t lost someone still has this terrible misery to come - it is inevitable.
Of course, I could write chapter after chapter about these emotions, about the introspection, about the impact on your previously-unquestioned philosophical beliefs. However, as I say, the loss of a person isn’t uncommon. Many readers will have been through the same, or similar, and I don’t believe I am able to add anything substantial to the discussion. For this reason, I will not patronise you with the finer details of my hysterical contemplation, only commenting on such where it is relevant - and I will instead focus on the mystery that plagues Redbury.
We had buried Robert’s body in the hills, wrapped in worn, yellowed bed sheets which were patched with browning, drying blood. Was that what he’d deserved? Was that what anyone deserved?
Anna and I made the walk back to town largely in silence. The rising sun poured streams of light through the thinning autumnal trees, creating a light mist on the ground as morning dew evaporated from the local flora. It created a scent of freshness, signalling that the new day had dawned - but we were yet to sleep, and I didn’t yet feel that I could.
With Anna walking behind, I could feel the eyes staring at the back of me. Whenever I turned around, however, she seemed to be looking elsewhere. I knew she was staring at me, though, she had to be after what she’d seen.
What was she thinking? Did she think I was a monster? Was she going to tell people? But who would believe her if she did? And what would be the purpose?
No. She’d helped me out back there. She’d helped me with Robert. She’d helped me with my mistake. Was it a mistake? He may have been innocent of this crime, but that didn’t make him innocent. I knew that. Anna knew that. Maybe that was why she helped me.
Then why she was staring? Because she’d seen what I’d become, but didn’t know what she was supposed to do about it? Was she scared of me?
I turned around quickly, stealing another look at Anna, who, again, seemed to be focussed only on where she was stepping, rather than glaring at me. But she must have been. I’d just missed her. She must have been.
What would these changes mean when I returned home? Would it change anything? No. Not if I kept them under control. I had to keep them under control. There was only one change that was certain: Laura wouldn’t be there for me.
Laura. Gone.
I traipsed onwards, skirting deep puddles in the path back to town.
She wasn’t going to be there any more.
I kept walking.
I wasn’t going to see her again.
I felt the rage building inside of me, but this time I kept it hidden. When I glanced again back at Anna, she didn’t seem to notice my increased breathing, my clenched fists.
I knew at that point that I wasn’t done. If Robert truly wasn’t to blame for Laura’s death, then I was going to find the real culprit, and I was going to exact the same revenge as I had on her father. I was going to create justice in an unjust world.
I was admitting to myself, I realised, that Robert hadn’t been the guilty party. I was accepting that I had been led astray, that I’d been lied to.
The trees grew fewer and farther between as we approach the boundary of the woods. I turned to Anna.
‘I need to go… deal with something,’ I said.
She looked concerned. ‘Deal with what, Rey? What do you need to deal with?’
I just shook my head.
‘Do you want me to come?’
It was kind of her to offer, but I shook my head again. ‘I’ll see you later.’
‘Ok, Rey. Ok. But make it soon. You need to get some sleep… I’m worried about you.’
Anna flashed me a sad smile, which I repaid in kind. I turned north, and began my walk back into the woods. This time, I wasn’t headed for the hills, or the campsite, but back to Elizabeth - back to the Witch who lived in the valley.
I found the journey hard. I hadn’t slept in the last 48 hours - with the exception of however long I’d been asleep on that bench. The fatigue was now so great that the adrenaline wasn’t enough for me to power through. The walk was a struggle, taking me almost double the length of time as it had when I’d first made it - and this time, I already knew the way.
The sight of the house in the woods was no less strange on my second visit, but after all I’d seen over the past two days, I’d come not to question it. There were more important matters at hand.
When I arrived, the door was open, as though Elizabeth was waiting for me. Sure enough, w
hen I arrived, I could hear the kettle boiling, and the breeze wafted the scent of freshly-baked goods.
‘Come in, Rey! Come in!’ shouted Elizabeth, sounding shrill and almost as though she was pleased that I’d come to see her.
‘You knew I was coming?’ I asked. I stepped through the front door, leaving it open. I was very conscious that the door might swing shut at any moment, and this time, Elizabeth may not have been so gracious as to allow me to leave. But did that matter? Did it matter any more if I was walking into a trap?
‘When will you learn, Rey? I know these things,’ Elizabeth announced as she entered the living room, tea tray in hands.
Elizabeth beckoned me to the old armchair that stood in the middle of the room. I took the seat without worrying enough to question it. Elizabeth sat opposite me, and stared, waiting for me to begin.
‘Well, Rey? Let’s have it,’ she prompted.
‘It… it feels as though you know exactly what I’m going to say.’
She smiled. ‘Maybe I do.’
‘So… is there any point in me asking it?’
‘Well, Rey, I might know how this conversation will progress, but you certainly do not - and the only way you’re going to find your answers is by asking. So yes, Rey, I would most certainly ask. I promise that I will humour you.’
‘Why did you do it?’ I asked, trying to remain calm.
‘Do what, Rey? Please, be specific. Why did I show you where Laura was, or why did I push you to kill her father?’
‘I…,’ I trailed off. ‘Yes. All of it. Why is all of this happening? Was it you? Did you do all this?’
‘I’m not going to answer these questions unless you’re going to be specific, Rey. I don’t want my answers to be misinterpreted.’
‘Ok. Why… why did you show me the campsite? Why did you show me where Laura was?’
Elizabeth chuckled. ‘Oh, Rey, you know the answer to that. I did that because you asked me to!’
‘I said…’
‘You said you wanted to know where she was. So I showed you.’
‘You could have just told me… if you knew. You didn’t have to show me. I didn’t need to see that. That was cruel,’ I insisted, clenching my fists as I felt the rage begin to build again. Elizabeth looked to my hands.