by R. H. Dixon
‘No!’ She struggled, ripped free and stumbled forward. Then she could feel his hands grabbing fistfuls of her shirt as she fell down and down into the black.
15
Pollyanna stayed by the window, watching Thurston. Only, he was Uncle Dean but with shorter hair, a recently shaven face and two blue eyes. Shortly after Callie and Smiler had left he’d dragged himself off the couch, making no announcement as to what he meant to do, and with all the finesse of a drunk had staggered outside. She could see him now inspecting the Bentley. Inside and out. His shoulders were hunched as if to accommodate the wound on his chest. They were plenty wide enough, she thought, to span the width of Hell’s back door. Not the front, though, because that would be a cavernous rift too big even for him. He lurched around the car, his left leg causing him trouble, and he touched paintwork and pulled open doors, carrying out the same searches in the same places over and over again. Pollyanna wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but his mouth was pulled taut in a grimace that showed he was having no luck. It was the same mouth that had recounted the tale of the unfortunate motorist and his family, and of Old Mally Murgatroyd and Whispering Woods.
She didn’t believe he was a film director any more than she believed he’d been an army sergeant. So who was he really? A good-looking sociopath who preyed on vulnerable and promiscuous women, selling them stories of heroics and materialistic wealth? Or whatever it took to reel them in. Pollyanna knew these things happened outside of soap operas. For real. She supposed this was the most likely theory.
She thought about Sarah Jane and Aunt Roxanne, of what might have happened to them. It wasn’t that she missed her cousin all that much. Most of the time Sarah Jane was nothing more than a self-interested bully who thought the world should revolve around her. In fact, if Thurston confessed to having bludgeoned Sarah Jane to death before burying her body beneath the ash tree outside, arguing that she’d deserved it, Pollyanna didn’t suppose it would take much to convince her to accept what he said. After all, she’d thought of killing her cousin many times. It had been a careful, complicated relationship that the two girls tolerated, encouraged by the will of two very close sisters; Pollyanna’s mother was Roxanne’s twin. Pollyanna, therefore, couldn’t accept that her aunt had deserted her. Couldn’t believe that she would have left her here all alone. Unless of course she was dead, which was looking the likeliest possibility. And it seemed to her that the man outside held the answer.
When Thurston came back into the cabin, at last satisfied that Callie and Smiler could indeed identify an empty engine bay when they saw one, he eased back down onto the couch. The shadows beneath his eyes were like thumb-smudges of charcoal.
Pollyanna feigned too much interest in her cigarette. She blew on the lit end and watched as flakes of ash crumbled down the front of her dress, leaving a talc-like residue. ‘What did you do to them?’ she said, her voice controlled.
‘What did I do to who?’
‘Aunt Roxanne and Sarah Jane.’
Thurston rested his head against the back of the couch and closed his eyes. That was the extent of his response.
‘Whatever you did to Sarah Jane, I don’t much care,’ Pollyanna said, as if that small pardon might coax the truth from him. ‘But I’d like to see Aunt Roxanne again.’ She picked at some loose skin next to her fingernail and noticed that the skin on the inner section of her left forefinger and middle finger were stained yellow above the knuckle with nicotine. If Thurston intended to answer, he made no show of doing so any time soon. She squeezed her right fist into a ball. ‘You have to tell me what you did to her!’
Thurston opened his eyes. He looked dangerous and unpredictable, like a wolf deciding how hungry it was. He said nothing.
‘Where is she?’ Pollyanna insisted. She began fiddling with a cigarette packet, flipping it round and round. Again and again. The tick-tick-tick noise it made against the arm of her chair gave the room more tension than it needed.
‘I. Don’t. Know.’ Thurston tapped the side of his head with the middle knuckle of his right hand. ‘Why can’t you just get it through your thick skull that I don’t know who your fucking aunt is?’
‘Because you’re a liar!’
Lurching forward, he bared his teeth. ‘Why don’t you tell me all about you, Polly?’ The way he shortened her name sounded like a curse.
She flinched. ‘Because we haven’t finished talking about you.’
‘But apparently you already know all about me.’
‘Only the lies. Tell me who you really are!’
Thurston grinned; an unfriendly sneer that made his eyes cruel slits of blue. ‘You want to know who I am? Okay, I’ll tell you.’ He nodded self-assuredly. Master of lies. ‘I’m Torbin Thurston, but no one calls me Torbin.’ He flicked his right hand in the air, a show of flippancy. ‘I always thought it too pretentious. My mother calls me Torby. Everyone else calls me Thurston. Including my dad. I never served in the army and nor have I ever professed to have done so. I’ve never faked blindness either. That would be weird. I have no association with the name Dean and I don’t know anyone called Roxanne. Or Sarah Jane. I’m the founder of Blue Bolt Productions and over the years I’ve produced twelve films. Three of them were indie award winners. I was born and raised in Durham, but these days my home is in Devon. I have no siblings. Or living grandparents. I left school with nine GCSEs. My favourite subject was geography. My preferred drink is water. Gin if we’re talking alcohol. Is that enough?’ He edged back in his seat. ‘No? Okay, let’s see. I never got bullied as a kid. I had my tonsils removed when I was fourteen. My favourite food is steak. Medium rare. I’m thirty-five years old and I’ve never been in love. If I could be an animal, any animal, I’d be an eagle. My favourite colour is blue. Dark blue. I have no idea why the sky is blue. I also have no idea where we are right now. Or why I’m here. My life in a tiny nutshell. Is that enough? Or would you like me to continue?’
Pollyanna lit a new cigarette and watched him through a thin veil of smoke. When she’d said nothing for a few minutes, he said, ‘Come on, your turn. Tell me who you are. Convince me that you’re not trying to set me up.’
She started at the accusation, then laughed. An uncertain, confused laugh. ‘Trying to set you up?’
‘You’re sitting there like that, but how do I know you can’t walk? How do I know whose daughter you are or what your motivation is? How do I know…’ He sighed and squeezed the bridge of his nose. ‘Just tell me your fucking story, kid.’
16
Callie fell backwards, her body responding to the fierce pull of gravity. She thrashed the air with her arms, fighting for balance and groping for something to hold onto because she knew the fall would be skull-clatteringly hard. As it was, she collapsed against something that held her upright.
Smiler!
He staggered but caught her, his hands firm on her shoulders. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. He was out of breath and panted the words in her ear. ‘I’ve got you.’
She murmured some confused response, unable to remember making a conscious decision to leave the magnificent black that had consumed her. The black that had felt like a luxurious velvet mouth, savouring her and rolling her about on a star-spangled tongue that ruminated old and forgotten words that nobody knew. An ancient language of nature and creation, too massive for human perception. Had she heard any of the words spoken just now? She wasn’t sure. Probably not. Her mind would surely be blown. And yet here she was now, standing on the pavement outside as if the church had spat her out. Perhaps she had heard but failed to understand those silver verses read aloud from an ageless golden tome. Written from the memory of all that had ever been. Translated from the dreams of all that had ever lived.
She blinked rapidly. Tried to focus. Turned to look at Smiler, to see what he looked like after their foray with the stars. She imagined his skin might glisten with cosmic dust and his eyes would shine with lightning. She thought that maybe the glittering b
lack had stripped away all that had turned bad about him, making him beautiful again. But this wasn’t so. If anything, he along with everything else around them had dulled, as though the world’s contrast button had been messed with. Or as though staring into the universe’s euphoria of rich black, which had bequeathed billions of untouchable electric dots of colour in a visual display that would have explained life itself had she stayed longer, had altered her vision, partially blinding her. Drunk on wonder, Callie’s head swum. What had just happened? Had she fallen into herself? Was that where she was now? In some deep part of her own psyche, seeking to cure what she had become.
But no. That couldn’t be the case because she could see Orion hanging low in the sky. His usual stance just to the side of Smiler’s head. Then she noticed other pale stars above the church, bedecking an anaemic moon’s darkening décolletage. It was dusk.
‘How can it be almost night already?’ she said, continuing to gaze upwards.
Still gripping her shoulders, Smiler shook her. ‘We need to get going,’ he urged.
‘But, what just happened?’ Callie had come over all lightheaded, like she was breathing thin air at high altitude. She couldn’t comprehend how time had moved so quickly. How it was that she’d entered the church during daylight hours what seemed like just minutes ago, yet the sun had completed its arc of the sky and night was now creeping forth, enveloping the churchyard in menacing obscurity. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Neither do I.’ Smiler eyed the church, his expression one of awestricken terror. ‘I don’t know what happened in there, it was...I dunno, it was…’ He struggled to find words to describe it. ‘Dark,’ he said at last. ‘Only, not a terrible dark. Just a dark like I’ve never seen before. It was full.’
‘It was amazing,’ Callie said. Her whole body tingled with the memory. ‘It seemed to amplify all sense of me.’
‘So much blackness.’
‘Like being caught up in a riptide, only I knew I couldn’t drown because there was no water, and it felt kind of nice so I didn’t want to fight it. Does that even make sense?’
‘Yes.’ Smiler nodded but by no means showed as much enthusiasm as she did. ‘That’s exactly how it felt.’
‘I’d like to do it again.’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘But it was so peaceful, how could you not?’
He considered this. ‘Do you think that’s what it feels like to be dead?’
‘Maybe we are.’
‘We can’t be.’
‘Why not?’
‘We need to go.’ He squeezed her shoulders again before letting his hands drop to his sides.
‘You didn’t answer the question.’
‘We have to get back to the cabin,’ he insisted. ‘Now.’
‘But we haven’t found help.’
‘After everything you’ve seen, do you really still hold out hope of finding someone to help us?’ Smiler pulled his shirt sleeves down over his hands and shivered.
‘Of course. What else is there to do?’
‘We need to get back.’
‘Why the urgency?’
‘I’m worried about Pollyanna.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we left her with Thurston.’
‘If you have such a bad feeling about Thurston, then how come you left her alone with him in the first place?’ Callie scoffed.
‘Because I thought we wouldn’t be long,’ he said, eyes downcast in disappointment at his huge misjudgement. ‘I thought I could change your mind. I thought I could make you see how hopeless it is trying to find help.’
‘You thought you could manipulate me?’ Callie was furious.
‘No!’ He held his hands up. ‘I didn’t mean that at all. I just wanted you to see the village. I wanted you to understand. But now it’s almost night time and that’s not good. Not good at all. The last thing we should be doing is wandering around this place in the dark.’
‘Why?’
He focussed on a window of the church, purposefully resisting eye contact. ‘There’s, er, something I haven’t told you about.’ He brought his hand up to his mouth to chew on the edge of his cuff.
‘Oh?’ Callie scowled and put her hands on her hips; trying to display more annoyance than she could muster.
‘When I said there are no other people here,’ he said, ‘well, there aren’t. But there are other things.’
Other things?
‘Oh piss off, Golden,’ she said. ‘Is this a ploy to hurry me back to the cabin?’
‘Not at all, I swear to God.’ Something about his face told her he wasn’t lying and a sense of fear was quick to fill the space between them like a plague of daddy longlegs, tingling bare skin with the same dread-feel as lanky appendages.
Other things?
There are other things.
A new chill penetrated Callie’s skin, her bones absorbing most of the cold but it left its sting in her flesh.
There are other things.
She shivered and looked about the churchyard, but saw nothing different.
There are other things.
The ubiquitous feeling of complete vulnerability that she’d had since arriving at Whispering Woods stepped up a notch, rendering her nerves as fragile as blown glass. Even the floating galaxies and unsaid truths of the church’s wondrous innards were fading fast, already in danger of joining last week’s dreams in a blur of irrelevance.
There are other things.
‘What other things?’ she said, finding her voice at last; although it was strangely monotone.
‘Things that live in the woods.’
For a moment Callie couldn’t breathe. What was this new torment? ‘But you said earlier that we could cut through the woods!’
‘Yes, during the day,’ he said, as if she should know that already. ‘These things are nocturnal.’
‘What things?’
‘Things you wouldn’t want to encounter. Things I don’t want to have to tell you about. Not if I don’t have to.’
‘But you do have to.’
Smiler shook his head. ‘No I don’t. Not yet. I don’t want to spook you.’
‘Too late for that.’ A raven cawed far away. The noise carried on the wind like an eerie death-call straight to Callie’s ears. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, wishing she was back at the cabin. Subsequently she felt depressed that she thought of the cabin as a safe place right now.
‘Still, I’d rather not go into too much detail,’ Smiler said.
‘But I’d rather you did so I know exactly what it is that I need to avoid.’
‘Believe me, you’d know.’
There was another caw. Much closer this time. Callie and Smiler both looked up and saw a hunched black silhouette on the church roof.
‘Come on, let’s go,’ Smiler said. He took Callie’s hand and tugged her arm gently. ‘We have to get back to the cabin.’ When she didn’t move he started off without her, towards the church gates.
Callie gawped after him. ‘But will it be safe to walk back now?’
‘Possibly not.’ He carried on walking in the direction of the village and its bordering woods anyway.
Reluctant to be left alone in the dark and unsure what else to do, Callie went after him. ‘But what if we keep going that way?’ she said, pointing behind them to the far side of the churchyard. ‘What if we turn around and follow the stream?’
‘We’d end up back at the village. The stream runs in a loop.’
‘What about the road? If we follow the road, it’ll take us somewhere eventually.’
‘Same difference. It leads straight back to the village.’
‘Impossible.’
‘But true.’
‘What if we cross the stream and head out over the fields and meadows instead?’
‘Already tried it.’
‘And?’
‘I’ve never found anything.’
‘You mustn’t have walked far enough.’
Smiler cast a glance over his shoulder, admonishing her with narrowed eyes and thinned lips. ‘I walked for two days solid. Ended up right back at the village.’
‘Then you must have gone off track. Doubled back on yourself.’
He stopped walking and turned on her, his eyes almost as dangerous as Torbin Thurston’s. ‘Don’t patronise me, Callie Crossley. You think I only tried the once? You think I’d quit that easily?’ He kicked a stone. It bounced off a gravestone and left a chalky mark beneath the E in someone’s name. ‘Go ahead and try it, though, if that’s what you want to do,’ he said, waving a hand to indicate the stream that ran somewhere beyond the two new gravestones. ‘But I’m going back.’
Callie crossed her arms over her chest. ‘I thought you said you’d go wherever I wanted to.’
‘I thought you’d have more sense!’ His face softened then, as though he instantly regretted the rebuke. ‘Besides,’ he said. ‘I’m tired. And Pollyanna needs me. And it’s really not safe out here.’
Callie had seen the ferocious need in Smiler’s eyes. The need to get out. He wanted to escape this place perhaps even more than she did. But the things he’d kept hidden from her – a potentially dangerous past and a knowledge of nocturnal things in the woods – caused new uncertainty to fester. Even if she hadn’t started to doubt his intentions, her clothes and shoes weren’t suitable to endure bad weather if another storm kicked up. She felt she had no choice but to accompany him back to the cabin.
‘What about the lake?’ she said, falling into step beside him. ‘Have you tried crossing it?’
‘I’ve tried building a few rafts but was never able to get it right. They either fell apart before I launched them or start sinking so that I didn’t dare go far in case I drowned.’ He looked away then, shame evident in his boy-ish eyes. ‘I can’t swim.’