A Memory of Demons

by Ambrose, David

  ‘Turn back,’ she said.

  ‘In a minute.’

  ‘It can’t have come this far . . .’

  She stopped, because quite suddenly, as they rounded a long curve in the road, a bus like the one they were looking for came into view.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she said, ‘is it the same one?’

  Tom didn’t answer, just pulled out to overtake. As he did, it began to slow. It was making a stop. He pulled up in front, not blocking it this time, and they both ran to the door where a couple of people were getting off and one waiting to board. The driver was less aggressively paranoid than the last one, and listened with an open, understanding expression as Tom explained their problem and Clare checked out the passengers.

  ‘Your wife won’t find her back there,’ he said. ‘She got off at the last stop.’

  ‘Where was that?’

  ‘About a mile back. I thought it was kind of unusual, a little girl that age on her own. I asked her if she was all right, but she said her mommy was waiting for her.’

  Clare had rejoined Tom just in time to hear the last part. She didn’t react; she was used to it now, too distraught to feel pain any more.

  ‘Thanks,’ Tom said to the driver. They ran back to the car, scrambled in, and made a U-turn. After a mile, just as the driver had said, they saw a shelter that marked the last stop. There was nobody about, nobody to ask if they’d seen a little girl a few minutes ago. Tom stopped the car and they looked around.

  ‘She could be anywhere,’ Clare said.

  ‘Not if she’s still on foot.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t she be?’ Clare shot back, straight out of that pit of nightmare thoughts that any parent must be tortured by when a child goes missing.

  ‘Let’s drive around,’ Tom said, ‘block by block. We’ll work outwards from here.’

  ‘I’ll start over the other side,’ she said, already half out of the car.

  ‘If we lose each other, meet back here in fifteen minutes.’

  She nodded briefly, taking his words in only subconsciously. Her eyes and thoughts were elsewhere. She did not even shut the car door before she started to run across the road.

  18

  It was a modest, respectable working-class neighbourhood. The clapboard houses were mostly well kept, though some could have used a little repair and a coat of paint. Children’s toys were strewn here and there, along with the occasional line of washing. Cars were parked in driveways, some of them up on bricks where their owners could work on them. There was a lot of greenery, clusters of trees softening the gridlike structure of the place.

  A couple of times Tom stopped to ask people if they’d seen a little girl in a blue and yellow tracksuit. They hadn’t. After ten minutes of circling, he knew he wasn’t going to find her, and headed back towards his meeting point with Clare. There was no sign of her, but he was a couple of minutes early. He knew he couldn’t just sit there and wait, so he pulled over the road and began searching on the far side, hoping to see Clare somewhere.

  Three blocks in, he saw her in the distance, running. He accelerated towards her and honked. She glanced over her shoulder, but kept on running, signalling him to catch her up. As he drew level he leaned across and pushed open the passenger door. She was in before he’d even stopped, pulling the door shut, breathing hard.

  ‘Somebody thinks they saw her five, maybe ten minutes ago, heading this way.’

  She pointed to a smaller road that curved off and up a slight incline. Tom swung onto it. They both held their breath as they curved left for a hundred yards, then followed the road up and to the right. That was when they saw her ahead, a little figure marching along with that odd sense of purpose that children have when they know exactly where they’re going and what they have to do. She was unaware of them until Tom braked hard alongside her. When she saw them, she flinched and backed away.

  Tom was out of the car almost as fast as Clare, who was already squatting down, hands on Julia’s shoulders, when he reached them. He could see that Clare wanted to shake the child in anger and hug her for joy at the same time. Tom touched his wife gently on the arm. He didn’t know why. To reassure her, perhaps. To remind her he was there. Or maybe he was trying to draw the pain from her, to take it like a lightning conductor and disperse it in the earth beneath his feet. At any rate, it seemed to release something in her. She pulled Julia to her, holding on to her as though afraid to let go ever again.

  ‘Where are you going, darling?’ Tom said, trying to not frighten the child, trying to show her he wasn’t angry.

  She looked at him, still clasped as she was in her mother’s arms. ‘To see my mommy,’ she said.

  Tom saw Clare’s shoulders bunch as she fought to control the pain this gave her. He crouched down next to them, bringing his gaze level with Julia’s.

  ‘Let’s get in the car,’ he said.

  He saw her try to pull away from Clare, suddenly distrustful of them both. And he saw Clare slacken her embrace but still hold on to the child. He reached for Julia’s hand.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘No!’

  She pulled free of his grasp, looking hurt and angry, as though she suspected he was planning to betray her. In a way, he supposed, he was. All he wanted was to get her away from there. To get all of them away from there.

  But Clare saw how impossible that was even before he did. She looked at him and he knew, without her saying anything, that she was right. What could they do? Carry her away, screaming? Kidnap their own daughter? They had come too far. It was too late.

  ‘Where is your . . .’ she began, turning back to Julia, but couldn’t finish the sentence. ‘Where is it you want to go?’ she asked instead.

  Julia stuck out her small arm, rigid and uncompromising, pointing up the street. ‘There’s a windmill,’ she said, ‘then my house.’

  A windmill didn’t seem to make much sense to either of them. But they were past arguing.

  ‘Let’s go in the car,’ he said, offering his hand again. Julia remained suspicious. ‘We can walk if you like,’ he said, ‘or ride in the car. It’s up to you.’

  She took a moment to make up her mind, to be sure she could trust him and that this wasn’t some kind of trick. Then she reached for his hand and obediently climbed into the back of the car while he held the door for her.

  Tom and Clare tried not to look at each other as they got in the front. There was a strange embarrassment between them. The invisible wall that had been growing around Julia these last two days was now threatening to separate the two of them in some way that they could not fully understand. They both knew that it was something they should fight – must fight – but they didn’t know how. What they did feel, strongly and unspokenly, was that this was neither the time nor place to make a stand.

  He drove slowly, like someone searching for a specific address or street number. He could see Julia in his rear-view mirror, alert and filled with anticipation. The houses they were passing now were on the lower end of the social scale, more rundown than those nearer the main road. Some of their windows were cracked and patched with board, the cars outside them older and rustier.

  ‘Look,’ she said suddenly, ‘the windmill.’

  Her parents looked in the direction she was pointing. Sure enough, on the top of a house they were passing, was a curious contraption, a kind of home-made weathervane in the shape of a windmill.

  Julia now became excited and started jumping up and down, shouting, ‘There’s my house! There’s my house! There’s my house!’

  It stood back a little way from the road. Several trees, tall, thin and undernourished, grew around it in an unplanned straggle. It looked as if somebody made an effort to keep the place clean and tidy, but it needed money spending on it. But there were no broken windows, and the lace curtains that hung in them on both floors had been washed not long since.

  Julia was out of the car and running before Tom even thought of hitting the door lock. Not that keeping her trapped in
there would have achieved anything. He realized with a sickening sense of immediacy just how out of control their lives had become in the last hour. They were doing everything they had said they were not going to do – must not do – but she had left them no choice.

  Tom looked at Clare, and a moment later she looked at him, but their eyes did not meet. They were hoping, and at the same time admitting what a forlorn hope it was, that one of them would know what to do next. Certainly he felt out of his depth in a way he never had in his life before.

  Suddenly, without being conscious of having moved, he found himself running up the path after Julia, wondering what he would do when he caught her. Clare was with him. ‘Julia,’ he heard her call out, ‘come back.’

  Julia paid them no attention. Before they could reach her she had stepped up on the low porch and pulled open a screen door. When the door beyond turned out to be locked, she hammered on it with her open palm and shouted, ‘Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!’ It wasn’t the cry of a child running away from something and looking for protection. So far as Julia was concerned, her parents might as well have not been there. Even when they caught up with her and both of them reached out to pull her back, she didn’t react.

  The door was already opening. Tom looked up at the face of the woman who stood there.

  19

  She probably wasn’t more than thirty, but she had the washed-out look of somebody who had already learned to expect little from life but disappointment and frustration. She was actually quite attractive, but the sullen expression on her face defied anyone to think so, let alone to think of mentioning it. She wore old jeans with scuffed trainers and a shapeless sweater.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked sharply, her aggrieved look moving from the strange couple in front of her to the child with them.

  Julia, totally unafraid, looked right back at her and said, ‘Where’s Mommy? I want my mommy.’

  The woman looked at Tom and Clare. ‘What is she talking about? What does she mean, she wants her mommy?’

  ‘It’s hard to explain,’ Tom began uncertainly. ‘We don’t understand it. We’re her parents, and . . . I’m sorry, this is a mistake.’

  He took hold of Julia’s hand, this time resolved to carry her to the car by force if necessary. She tried to shake him off, but he held on firmly.

  ‘Where’s Emery?’ she demanded.

  A puzzled look came over the woman’s face. ‘Emery?’ she said. ‘What about Emery?’

  ‘His house has gone.’

  Julia pointed her free hand accusingly at a pile of clapboard near the door, where Tom saw an area of paint marginally less worn by the elements than the rest. It would have been about the size of a dog house.

  The woman, shaken, called over her shoulder into the house. ‘Joe, you’d better get out here.’

  ‘Who was Emery?’ Clare asked.

  The woman looked at her, as though focusing on her properly, on all of them, for the first time. ‘Emery was my sister’s dog,’ she said.

  Julia didn’t move. She was staring straight up at the woman, a frown darkening her face as she made sense of what she was hearing.

  ‘Jennifer?’ she said after a moment. Her tone was tentative, like someone seeing an old friend or a member of the family for the first time in years, yet not quite sure if it was really them.

  The woman caught her breath. ‘How do you know my name?’

  ‘It’s me, Melanie.’

  Tom feared the woman was about to faint and moved towards her. But the man she had called for appeared behind her and caught her. She was deathly pale, her eyes half shut, her hand going to her head to stop it spinning.

  ‘What’s going on?’ the man demanded, then looked challengingly at Tom. ‘Who are you?’

  He wore working clothes and was around forty. He was well built, with close-cropped hair and the aggressive attitude of a man who would lash out instinctively at anyone who threatened his dignity or self-esteem. In other words, Tom estimated, someone to be careful of.

  ‘You don’t know us,’ Tom said, ‘and I don’t believe we know you. I apologize for disturbing you. This is very difficult to explain, but our daughter thinks she knows this house.’

  The man’s hostile gaze fell on Julia. ‘She what—?’

  Again the child did not flinch. She glared right back at the man in front of her with a lack of fear bordering on contempt. There was something in her that Tom had never seen before, a kind of defiance, an anger that was older, more adult than her years.

  ‘Does the name Melanie mean anything to you?’ Tom said.

  The woman, who had started to recover herself by now, answered softly. ‘Melanie was my sister.’

  The man, Joe, extended a thick forefinger from a meaty fist. ‘You people better leave,’ he said, ‘and I mean now.’

  ‘Fuck you, Joe!’

  Tom barely had time to register the fact that Julia had spoken before he realized that Joe’s fist was now an open palm, sweeping towards Julia’s head with a force that could break her neck.

  With a strength and speed he didn’t know he had, Tom grabbed the man’s wrist and blocked the blow – ‘Don’t even think about it.’ he said. The words came from some atavistic depth in his body. The two men were locked eye to eye, and Tom had laid hands on him first. To a man like that, it was a licence to kill. But he saw that Tom meant business, and he hesitated. However, he wasn’t a man to back off easily.

  ‘Joe, please. . . !’

  The woman was pulling him back, her efforts all but useless against his brute strength. After a moment he relaxed and lowered his fist, but didn’t take his eyes off Tom.

  ‘We didn’t come here to cause trouble,’ Tom said. ‘In fact I don’t even know what we’re doing here. We’re still trying to figure it out. We’re just trying to understand.’

  He turned to where Clare crouched with her arms wrapped protectively around Julia.

  ‘You said Melanie was your sister’s name?’ Clare asked.

  The woman nodded.

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘Nobody knows. She disappeared nearly ten years ago. Walked out of the house and never came back.’

  The slam of the screen door made them all turn. Joe disappeared into the darkness of the hall, emerging almost at once with a leather jacket that he was pulling on.

  ‘I’ve got to go to work,’ he said, starting towards an old Chevy parked near where Tom had stopped. ‘And I better not find you people here when I get back.’

  They watched him go. For some reason nobody said anything until he had made a U-turn with a screech of tyres and disappeared from view. It was only then that they realized Julia too had disappeared.

  Clare and Tom experienced another of those surreal moments of panic like the one they’d had at the hotel, when she had vanished as if by magic from under their noses. They both looked around, calling her name. It was Jennifer who noticed a movement in the house.

  ‘She’s inside,’ she said.

  They ran in after her. Julia was just disappearing up the dark staircase that led off the cramped hall. Their feet clattered on the uncarpeted wooden steps. There was no sign of her on the landing. Tom and Clare had no idea which way to turn, but Jennifer started pushing open various doors one after the other, revealing sparsely furnished rooms, a couple with unmade beds, one serving simply as a storage space for household junk. There were two or three still to go, but she stopped in front of one as though suddenly sure that this was where the child would be. Yet she hesitated before pushing open the door.

  ‘Julia?’ Tom called out. ‘Are you in there?’

  There was no reply. He looked questioningly at Jennifer, not wanting to take the initiative in her house, but wondering what she would do next.

  ‘This was my mother’s room,’ she said. ‘It’s ours now. Mine and Joe’s.’

  She reached out and pushed the door open. It made a creaking sound, but Julia, who was standing on the far side of the room, paid it no attentio
n. The room was not large, though probably the largest bedroom in the house. There was only one window, with the drapes not fully opened and still cutting off the light. Various articles of male clothing were scattered on the floor and over the backs of a couple of rickety-looking chairs. A row of women’s clothes hung more neatly on a rail against one wall, with a curtain that could be pulled over them to create a makeshift closet. The only real piece of furniture was an old dressing table with a mirror. On it were various articles of make-up, skin creams, tissues and so on – plus two or three photographs in old-fashioned frames. It was one of these that Julia was holding in her hand and gazing at intently.

  After a moment she turned to look at her parents, untroubled by their presence; in fact there was a smile on her face as though she was glad to see them, anxious to show them what she’d found. She held up the photograph so they could see it.

  ‘My mommy,’ she said triumphantly.

  Tom glanced at Jennifer, who did not object as he took the picture from Julia’s outstretched hand. He felt Clare press against him to get a closer look. The picture was poor quality, a patchwork of opaque shadow and brilliant sunlight. It was taken outside the house they were in. Tom recognized a swing-seat he had noticed on their arrival, rusting now, but in the picture adorned with a yellow-and-white striped cover and cushions. On it sat a woman in young middle age with her arm around a girl about Julia’s age. The woman had dark hair cut short, a pleasant face with a kind smile, but oddly deep-set eyes – an effect enhanced by the poor quality of the photograph. All the same, there was something troubled and troubling in those eyes, as though they had been gouged by years of worry and weeping. They were too old for the face they were in.

  ‘Who is this?’ Clare asked, pointing to the girl who was with the woman. She knew who it was, of course, just as Tom did; but they needed to hear it from Julia.

  ‘It’s me,’ she said, as though they were teasing her by pretending not to recognize her.

  But there was no resemblance between the girl in the picture and Julia. For one thing, the girl in the picture had dark hair. The face was more square and the features stronger; or perhaps it was just the expression she wore that made them seem so. She was unsmiling, almost glowering at the camera. It was not the face of a child whose life was filled with fun and laughter. Not the face of a child like Julia.