In a Dark, Dark Wood

by Ruth Ware

  ‘Do you think?’ I looked up at the clear sky. It was not black, but deep, navy blue, a colour so pure it made my eyes hurt. Far up a satellite was travelling towards the moon. I tried to remember back, to Flo’s face as she read out the word, to her closed eyes and rapturous expression. ‘I don’t know. I’ve been standing out here trying to think it out, but I’m not sure it was her. She looked genuinely shocked. And she was the only person who really believed in the whole thing. I don’t think she’d have messed with the spirits by pushing it.’

  ‘So now you reckon it was real?’ There was scepticism in Nina’s voice. I shook my head.

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that. I think someone was pushing it. I’m just not sure it was her.’

  ‘So what – that leaves, Tom and Clare?’ Nina dropped her cigarette and ground it out in the snow with a hiss. ‘Really?’

  ‘I know. That’s partly what upset me. I think it was …’ I stopped, trying to disentangle my unease at the whole thing. ‘It wasn’t the message, it was the spite. Whatever you think, whoever you think did that, human or not, it was a horrible thing to say. Someone in that room wanted to fuck with our heads.’

  ‘And they did.’

  We both turned to look back at the house. Through the window I could see Clare moving around the living room, rounding up glasses and picking nuts out of the carpet. Tom was nowhere to be seen – I guessed he had gone up. Flo was loading the dishwasher in the kitchen with a nervous, savage energy, crashing the glasses in so hard I was surprised they didn’t break.

  I didn’t want to go back in. For a second, in spite of the snow, in spite of the sub-zero temperatures that were already making me shiver, I was seriously tempted to borrow Nina’s keys and sleep in the car.

  ‘Come on,’ Nina said at last. ‘We can’t stay out here all night. Let’s go back in, say good night and head straight up. Then first thing in the morning, we’re out of here. Right?’

  ‘All right.’

  I followed her back through the kitchen door, and closed it behind us.

  ‘Lock it, please,’ Flo said shortly. She looked up from the dishwasher. Her face was bleary, her mascara halfway down her cheeks, her hair straggling across her face.

  ‘Flo, leave it,’ Nina said. ‘Please. I promise we’ll help in the morning.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Flo said tightly. ‘I don’t need any help.’

  ‘All right!’ Nina threw up her hands. ‘You said it. See you at breakfast.’ She turned and then muttered, ‘Fucking martyr,’ as she left the room.

  20

  NINA FELL ASLEEP almost instantly, and lay there, sprawled out like a tanned daddy-long-legs, snoring away.

  I lay awake, trying to go to sleep, but instead I was thinking about the evening and the strange little group Clare had gathered around her this weekend. I wanted to leave so badly it hurt – to be back at home, in my own bed, with my own things, in the blissful peace and quiet. Now I was counting down the hours, and listening to Nina’s soft snores and behind that to the silence of the house and the forest.

  Not quite silence though. As I was drifting off there came a quiet creak and then a bang, not a loud one, just as if a door was banging in the wind.

  I was almost drowsing when it came again, a long slow ekkkkkkk, and then a staccato clack.

  The odd thing was, it sounded like it was inside the house.

  I sat up, holding my breath, trying to hear the noise above Nina’s snores.

  Ekkkkkkkk … clack!

  This time there was no doubt. The sound was certainly not coming from outside the window, but floating up the stairwell. I got up, grabbed my dressing gown, and tiptoed to the door.

  When I opened it, I almost screamed: a ghost-like figure was standing on the landing, bending over the bannisters.

  I didn’t scream. But I must have made some kind of choked gasp because the figure turned and put her finger to her lips. It was Flo, dressed in a white nightgown with pink flowers, bleached pale in the moonlight.

  ‘You heard it too?’ I whispered.

  She nodded. ‘Yes, I thought it might be a gate in the garden, but it’s not, it’s inside the house.’

  There was a creak behind us and we both turned to see Clare coming out of the bedroom, rubbing her eyes.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Shh,’ Flo whispered. ‘There’s something downstairs. Listen.’

  We all paused.

  Eeeeekkkkk … clack!

  ‘It’s just a door in the wind,’ Clare said, yawning. Flo shook her head, vehemently.

  ‘It’s inside the house. What wind could there be inside the house? Someone must have left a door open.’

  ‘Impossible,’ Clare said. ‘I checked them all.’

  Flo put her hands over her throat looking suddenly frightened. ‘We’ve got to go down, haven’t we?’

  ‘Let’s wake Tom,’ Clare said. ‘He looks tall and menacing.’

  She tiptoed into his room and I heard her whispering, ‘Tom! Tom! There’s a noise in the house.’

  He came out, bleary-eyed and pale, and we all crept slowly down the stairs.

  There was a door open, you could tell it as soon as we reached the ground floor. It was cold as ice and a breeze was blowing through the hallway, coming from the kitchen. Flo turned completely pale.

  ‘I’m getting the gun,’ she whispered, her voice so slight you could hardly hear.

  ‘I thought you said,’ Clare mouthed, ‘that it was loaded with blanks?’

  ‘It is,’ Flo whispered crossly, ‘but he won’t know that, will he?’ She jerked her head at the living-room door. ‘You first, Tom.’

  ‘Me?’ Tom said, in a horrified whisper, but he rolled his eyes and edged his head very quietly around the door. Then he beckoned silently, and we all followed him, in a sort of relieved rush. The room was empty, moonlight flooding the pale carpet. Flo reached up above the mantelpiece and took down the gun. Her face was pale but determined.

  ‘You’re sure about the blanks?’ Clare asked again.

  ‘Completely sure. But if someone’s there it’ll give them a pretty good scare.’

  ‘If you’re holding the gun I’m going behind you,’ Tom hissed, ‘blanks or no blanks.’

  ‘All right.’

  Whatever I’d thought of Flo, I couldn’t fault her courage. She stood for a moment in the hallway, and I could see her hands shaking. Then she took a deep, shuddering breath, and flung open the kitchen door so hard it crashed back against the tiled wall.

  There was no one there. But the glass kitchen door was standing open in the moonlight, and a light dusting of snow blew across the tiled floor.

  Clare was across the room in a moment, her bare feet soft on the cold tiles. ‘There’s footsteps, look.’ She pointed out across the lawn: big shapeless prints, like those made by wellies or snowboots.

  ‘Fuck.’ Tom’s face was pale. ‘What happened?’ He turned to me. ‘You were out of that door last. Didn’t you lock it?’

  ‘I— I’m sure I did.’ I tried to remember. Nina offering to help, Flo’s angry crashing. I had a clear memory of my hand on the lock. ‘I did. I’m certain I locked it.’

  ‘Well, you can’t have done it properly!’ Flo rounded on me. In the moonlit dark she looked like a statue, her face as hard and unyielding as marble.

  ‘I did.’ I was beginning to feel angry. ‘Anyway, I thought you said Clare checked?’

  ‘I just rattled each door,’ Clare said. Her eyes were huge, with shadows like bruises in the sockets. ‘I didn’t check every lock. If it didn’t open, I assumed it was shut.’

  ‘I locked it,’ I said stubbornly. Flo made a small furious noise, almost like a growl. Then she tucked the shotgun under her arm and stalked upstairs.

  ‘I locked it,’ I repeated, looking from Clare to Tom. ‘Don’t you believe me?’

  ‘Look,’ Clare said, ‘it’s no one’s fault.’ She walked across to the door and slammed it hard, twisting the key as she did. ‘It’s damn wel
l locked now, anyway. Let’s get up to bed.’

  We trooped back up the stairs, feeling the spent adrenaline in our systems fading to sour jitters. Nina was at the top of the stairs as I rounded the landing, scrubbing her eyes confusedly.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked as I drew level. ‘Why did I just see Flo stamp past holding that fucking shotgun?’

  ‘We had a scare,’ Tom said shortly, coming up from behind me. ‘Someone,’ he glanced at me, ‘left the kitchen door unlocked.’

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ I said doggedly.

  ‘Well, whatever. It was open. We heard it banging. There were footprints outside.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Nina was as wide awake as the rest of us now. She passed a hand over her face again, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. ‘Had they gone? Was anything missing?’

  ‘Nothing I noticed.’ Tom looked at me and Clare. ‘Anything you can think of? Telly was there. All the obvious stuff like that. Did anyone leave their wallets lying around? Mine’s in my room.’

  ‘Mine too,’ Clare said. She turned and glanced out at the drive. ‘And all the cars are still there.

  ‘My bag’s in my room, I think,’ I said. I put my head round the door to check. ‘Yup. It’s there.’

  ‘Well … looks like it wasn’t robbery they were after,’ Tom said uneasily. ‘If it wasn’t for the footsteps you could almost think it was just a faulty lock.’

  But there were the footsteps. There undeniably were.

  ‘Think we should call the police?’ he asked.

  ‘We can’t, can we?’ Nina said acidly. ‘No landline and no bloody reception.’

  ‘You had a couple of bars yesterday,’ I reminded her, but she shook her head.

  ‘Must have been a blip. I’ve had nothing since. Well, look on the bright side, there’s no smell of petrol so with luck, it’s not the crazed locals with their jerry cans come back for a second bonfire.’

  There was a silence. Nobody laughed.

  ‘We should go back to bed, try to get some sleep,’ Clare said at last. We all nodded.

  ‘Want to pull your mattress in with us?’ Nina said unexpectedly to Tom. ‘I wouldn’t want to be by myself.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Tom said. ‘That— that’s very kind. But I’ll be fine. I’ll lock my door, just in case anyone’s after my virtue. Not that I’ve got much left.’

  ‘That was nice,’ I said to Nina after we had said good night to Tom and Clare and were huddled up in our own beds. ‘What you said to Tom, I mean.’

  ‘Nice, schmice. I felt sorry for the poor guy. Plus he looks like he’d have a mean right hook if anyone did break in.’ She sighed, and then rolled over. ‘Want me to leave the light on?’

  ‘No, it’s OK. That door’s locked now – that’s the main thing.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ She clicked off the light and I saw the glow of her phone. ‘Gone two. Bloody hell. And still not a single bar of reception. How about you? Got anything?’

  I reached for my phone.

  It wasn’t there.

  ‘Hang on, I need to put the light on. I can’t find it.’

  I flicked the switch and looked around, beneath the bed, beneath the bedside table, then inside my bag. No phone. No phone anywhere, in fact – just the unhooked charger trailing across the floor. I tried to remember when I’d last had it. In the car maybe? I remembered using it at lunchtime. But after that, I couldn’t be sure. I’d got out of the habit of checking it here – with no reception it seemed pointless. I thought I remembered taking it up here to charge it before supper, but maybe that was Friday. Most likely it had slipped out of my pocket in the car.

  ‘It’s not here,’ I said. ‘I think I must have left it in the car.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Nina said. She yawned. ‘Just remember to find it tomorrow before we leave, yeah?’

  ‘All right. Night.’

  ‘Good night.’

  There was a rustle of duvet, as she huddled down. I closed my eyes. I tried to sleep.

  What happened next …?

  Oh God. What happened next. I’m not sure I can …

  I am still sitting there, trying to put my confused tumble of thoughts in order when the door swings wide and the nurse comes back in pushing a trolley.

  ‘The doctor wants to have a wee look at your scans but he says very likely you can have a bath after that. And I’ve got some breakfast for you here.’

  ‘Listen,’ I try to sit up against the slipping shifting pillows. ‘Listen, the police outside the door – are they here for me?’

  She looks uncomfortable and her gaze slides off to the small square of glass as she sets out Rice Krispies in a little carton, a jug of milk and a single clementine. ‘They’re investigating the accident,’ she says at last. ‘I’m sure they’ll want tae speak to you, but the doctor has to sign you off. I’ve told them, they’re not barging into a hospital ward at this hour. They’ll have tae wait.’

  ‘I heard …’ I swallow, hard, my throat hurting as if something is trying to escape – a sob or a scream. ‘I heard them say something about a d-death …’

  ‘Och!’ She looks annoyed, banging the locker drawer shut with unnecessary force. ‘They shouldna be worriting you, with your poor head.’

  ‘But it’s true? Someone died?’

  ‘I can’t say about that. I cannae discuss other patients.’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘I’ll have tae ask you tae calm down,’ she says, and spreads out her hands in a professionally soothing gesture that makes me want to scream. ‘It’s not good for your head to be getting upset like this.’

  ‘Upset? One of my friends is probably dead, and you’re telling me I shouldn’t be upset? Who? For God’s sake, who? And why can’t I remember? Why can’t I remember what happened before the accident?’

  ‘It’s quite common,’ she says, her voice still in that soothing cadence, as if she’s speaking to a small child, or someone hard of understanding. ‘Following a head injury. It’s tae do with the way the brain transfers short-term to long-term memory. If something interrupts the process you can lose a bit of time.’

  Oh God, I must remember. I must remember what happened because someone is dead, and the police are outside, they are going to come and ask me, and how can I know, how can I know what I’m saying, what I’m revealing, if I don’t know what happened?

  I see myself, running, running through the forest with the blood on my hands and on my face and on my clothes …

  ‘Please,’ I say, and my voice is close to cracking, close to pleading, and I hate myself for being so weak and needy. ‘Please tell me, please help me, what’s happened? What’s happened to my friends? Why was I covered in such a lot of blood? My head wound wasn’t that bad. Where did all the blood come from?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says softly, and there’s real compassion in her voice this time. ‘I don’t know, pet. Let me get the doctor and perhaps he can tell you more. In the meantime, I want you to eat some breakfast, you’ve got to keep your strength up and the doctor will want to see an appetite.’

  And then she backs out of the door with the trolley in front of her, and the door swings shut, and I am alone with my plastic bowl of Rice Krispies popping and clicking away as they soak into sugary mush.

  I should get up. I should force my weak, woolly limbs to do their duty, and I should swing them out of bed and march into the corridor and demand answers from those police officers outside. But I don’t. I just sit there, and tears roll down my face, and drip off my chin into the Rice Krispies, and the smell of the clementine is heady and overripe, reminding me of something I cannot remember, and cannot forget.

  Please, I think, please. Pull yourself together, you stupid bitch. Get up. Find out what happened. Find out who’s dead.

  But I don’t move. And not just because my head hurts, and my legs hurt, and my muscles feel like wet tissue.

  I don’t move because I am afraid. Because I don’t want to hear the name the police are going to sa
y.

  And because I am afraid they are here for me.

  21

  THE BRAIN DOESN’T remember well. It tells stories. It fills in the gaps, and implants those fantasies as memories.

  I have to try to get the facts.

  But I don’t know if I’m remembering what happened, or what I want to have happened. I am a writer. I’m a professional liar. It’s hard to know when to stop, you know? You see a gap in the narrative, you want to fill it with a reason, a motive, a plausible explanation.

  And the harder I push, the more the facts dissolve beneath my fingers …

  I know that I woke with a jump. I don’t know what time it was, but it was still dark. Beside me Nina was sitting up in bed, her dark eyes wide and glittering.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ she whispered.

  I nodded. Footsteps on the landing. A door opening very softly.

  My heart was beating in my throat as I pushed back the duvet and grabbed my dressing gown. I remembered the kitchen door swung wide, the footsteps in the snow.

  We should have checked the rest of the house.

  At the door I stood listening for a second, and then opened it with infinite caution. Clare and Flo were standing outside, their eyes wide, faces bleached pale with fear. Flo was holding the gun.

  ‘Did you hear something?’ I whispered, as low as I could. Clare gave a single, sharp nod, and pointed to the stairs, her finger stabbing downwards. I listened hard, trying to still my shaky breathing and thudding heart. There was a scratching sound, and then a clear, definite thunk, as of a door being softly closed. There was someone down there.

  ‘Tom?’ I mouthed. But even as I did, his door opened a crack and his face peered out.

  ‘Did you … that sound?’ he whispered. Clare gave a grim nod.

  This time it was no open door. No wind. This time we could all hear it: clear footsteps as someone made their way through the tiled kitchen, across the parquet floor of the hallway, and then the soft, definite creak of a foot on the first of the stairs.

  Somehow we had drawn together into a little knot. I felt someone’s hand scrabbling for mine. Flo was at the centre, the gun raised, though its muzzle was shaking badly. I put my free hand out to steady it.