In a Dark, Dark Wood

by Ruth Ware

30

  THE AIR IS cold in my face and I feel completely lost. This place is totally strange to me – and I realise suddenly and piercingly that I was brought here unconscious and have no clue how I got here or how to get away.

  I’m shivering after the heat of the hospital and there are flecks of snow on the breeze. I look up as if searching for a miracle, and one comes, in the form of a sign saying ‘Taxis’ and an arrow.

  I walk slowly, shivering, round the corner of the building and there, at the sign saying ‘Taxi queue starts here’, is a single cab, light on. A man is inside, at least I think so, it’s hard to see through the fog on the windows.

  I limp closer – the flip-flops are starting to chafe the inner side of my foot – and knock on the window. It rolls down a crack and a cheerful brown face grins at me.

  ‘What can I do you for, love?’ he asks. He is a Sikh, his turban a smart black, with a pin in the centre with his taxi company’s logo on. His accent is a disconcerting mix of Punjabi and Newcastle that momentarily makes me want to laugh.

  ‘I … I need to get to …’ I have no idea where to go. Back to London?

  No.

  ‘I need to get to the Glass House,’ I say. ‘It’s a cottage, a house, just outside Stanebridge. Do you know the village?’

  He nods and puts down his paper. ‘Aye, I know it. Hop in, love.’

  But I don’t. In spite of the cold, and the fact that I’m shivering hard now, I hesitate, my hand on the door handle.

  ‘How much will it be, please? I’ve only got twenty pounds.’

  ‘It’s twenty-five normally,’ he says, taking in my bruises, ‘but for you I’ll say twenty.’

  Thank God. I manage a smile, though my face feels like it is frozen, and might crack with the effort.

  ‘Th-thank you,’ I say, not stammering now, but my teeth chattering with cold.

  ‘Get in, love,’ he opens the door behind him, ‘or you’ll freeze. Hop in, now.’

  I get in.

  The car is like a cocoon of warmth that folds around me. It smells of worn plastic and pine air freshener and old cigarettes, the smell of every taxi everywhere, and I want to curl into the soft warmth of its seats and go to sleep and never wake up.

  My fingers as I try to buckle my belt are trembling, and I realise how tired I am, how weak my muscles are after my hospital stay.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, as he glances back to make sure I’m buckled up. ‘Sorry. I’m nearly there.’

  ‘No worries, love. No hurry.’

  And then the buckle closes with a reassuring click and I sit back, feeling my body ache with tiredness.

  The driver starts the engine. I close my eyes. I am away.

  ‘Eh, love. Wake up, Miss.’

  I open my eyes, confused and bleary. Where am I? Not at home. Not in the hospital.

  It takes a minute before I realise that I’m in the back seat of the taxi, in my hospital clothes, and the car has stopped.

  ‘We’re here,’ he says. ‘But I can’t get up to the house. The road’s blocked.’

  I blink, and wipe the condensation off the window. He’s right. A road block has been put across the lane, two aluminium barriers lashed together with police tape.

  ‘It’s all right.’ I rub the sleep out of the corners of my eyes and feel in my pocket for the money. ‘Here you go, twenty, was that right?’

  He takes the money, but says, ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right, love? Looks like the house is shut up.’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  Will I? I have to be. There must be a way in. I imagine the police will have secured the property but I can’t believe they will have turned it into Fort Knox, not out here. There’s no one to come and disturb the scene.

  The taxi driver’s face is unhappy as I get out the car, and he watches me, the engine idling, as I edge round the barrier. I don’t want him to. I can’t bear him to see me stumbling up the rutted track in my pathetic flip-flops. Instead I stand with my hands on the barrier, trying not to shiver, and wave at him determinedly.

  He winds down the window, his breath gusting white into the cold air.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right? I can stay if you like, tek you back to Stanebridge if there’s nobody about. I won’t charge. It’s on me way back anyway.’

  ‘No thanks,’ I say. I grit my teeth, trying not to let them chatter. ‘I’m fine. Thanks. Goodbye, now.’

  He nods, still unhappy, and then revs the engine and I watch as his car disappears into the falling dusk, the red tail-lights illuminating the falling snow.

  Jesus, this drive is long. I had forgotten how long. I remember the run, when I met Clare coming up, my legs tired and aching and my skin cold.

  That was nothing to this. What has happened to my muscles in hospital? I’m not even halfway up and my legs are trembling with those muscle shakes that come after you’ve pushed yourself too hard and too fast. My feet in the hard plastic flip-flops are bleeding, but they’re so numb I can’t feel any pain, I only know what has happened from the smears of red that mingle with the flecks of snow.

  The mud, at least, has frozen, so I’m not fighting against the cloying lumps sticking to my feet. But when I stumble into a particularly deep rut there’s a crack, and my foot goes through the thin crust of ice into the freezing pool of muddy water beneath.

  I gasp and make a kind of squeaking whimper as I pull my foot painfully out through the sharp ice. It is a thin, pathetic sound, like a mouse being caught by an owl.

  I am so cold. I am so very, very cold.

  Have I been very stupid?

  But I have to carry on. There’s no sense in going back – even if I could flag down someone on the road, where would I go? Back to the hospital and the waiting cuffs of Lamarr? I’ve run away, absconded. I have to see this through. There is no way back.

  I force my feet, one in front of the other, my arms wrapped around myself for warmth, thanking God and Nina for the blue cardigan which is the only thing keeping me from hypothermia. The wind blows again, a low moaning howl through the trees, and I hear the snow shake and patter to the ground.

  One more step.

  And one more after that.

  I cannot tell how close I am – with the house empty, there are no glowing lights to guide me. I have no sense of how long I’ve been walking in this bitter cold. Only that I have to keep going – because if I don’t I will die.

  One more step.

  There are pictures in my head as I get closer. Flo, her face twisted with fear, the gun across her chest. Nina’s horrified expression, her blood-stained hands as she tried to staunch the flow.

  James. James lying in a pool of his own blood, dying.

  I know now what he was trying to say, when he said te … Leo?

  It wasn’t ‘tell’ it was ‘text’. He was asking me why I’d brought him here. And why I’d let him die like this.

  He came for me. He came because I asked him.

  Did I ask him?

  I’m no longer sure. Oh my God, I’m cold.

  It’s hard to keep things straight in my head.

  I remember the texts Lamarr showed me on that printed paper and I’m no longer sure if I’m remembering them from when she showed me, or before that.

  Did I ask James to come?

  I didn’t know that Clare was marrying James until she told me in the car. I didn’t know. So why would I have texted him?

  I must cling to that – I must cling to what I’m sure of.

  It must have been Flo. She was the only person who could have controlled all this – who chose the guests, who picked the house, who knew about the gun.

  She was in the house when the texts were sent.

  She knew I’d gone for a run.

  I think again of her strange intensity, of her huge, explosive, terrifying love for Clare. Is it possible that she thought she might lose Clare to James? That she couldn’t bear for him to come between them? And what better person to pin the blame on than me, James’s e
x-girlfriend, Clare’s best friend.

  And then … then she realised what she had done. That she’d destroyed her friend as well as her rival. That she had ruined Clare’s life.

  And she couldn’t take it any more.

  Oh my God I’m so cold. And so tired. There’s a fallen tree by the side of the lane. I could sit on it, just for a minute, just to stop the shaking in my legs.

  Step by laborious step I make my way to it, and sink down onto its rough, moss-covered side. I huddle my body down to my knees, breathing into my legs, desperately trying to conserve some warmth.

  I shut my eyes.

  I wish I could sleep.

  No.

  The voice comes from somewhere outside me. I know it’s not real, and yet I hear it in my head.

  No.

  I want to sleep.

  No.

  If I sleep, I will die. I know that. But I don’t care any more. I am so tired.

  No.

  I want to sleep.

  But something won’t let me. Something inside me won’t let me rest.

  It’s not a desire to live – I don’t care about that any more. James is dead. Clare is hurt. Flo is dying. There is only one thing left – and that is the truth.

  I will not die. I will not die because someone has to do this – has to get to the truth of what happened.

  I get up. My knees are shaking so much that I can hardly stand, but I do, steadying myself with a hand on the fallen tree.

  I take a step.

  And another.

  I will keep going.

  I will keep going.

  31

  I DON’T KNOW how long it takes me. Darkness has fallen. The hours seem to drift together, blurring into the snow that is speckling the frozen mud. I am tired – so tired that I can’t think, and my eyes water as I walk into the wind that has begun to blow.

  My face is quite numb, and my eyes are wet and blurred when, at last, I look up, and there it is: the Glass House.

  It’s no longer the great golden beacon I saw that first night – instead it’s dark and silent, blending into the trees, almost invisible. A half moon has risen, and it reflects off the bedroom window at the front, the bedroom that Tom slept in. There’s a frost halo around it, and I know the night is only going to get colder.

  The darkness is not the only difference. There’s police tape across the door, and the broken window at the top of the stairs has been boarded over with a kind of metal grille, the sort you see on vacant houses in rough areas.

  I walk the last few painful yards across the gravel and stand, shivering and staring at the blank glass wall in front of me. Now I’m here, I’m not sure I can do this, go inside, revisit where James died. But I have to. Not just because of James, not just because it’s the only way I will ever find out the truth about what happened. But because if I don’t get inside, into shelter, I will die of exposure.

  The front door is locked, and there are no windows I can force. I pick up a rock and consider the huge glass wall of the living room. I can see inside, to the cold, dead wood burner and the flat blackness of the TV screen. I imagine heaving the rock at the giant pane – but I don’t. It’s not just the huge noise and destruction, but I don’t think it would break – the pane is double-, maybe even triple-glazed. It took a shotgun blast to break the one in the hall; I’m pretty sure my puny rock would just bounce off this one.

  I drop the rock, and make my way slowly, painfully around to the back of the house. My feet are totally numb, and I stumble more than once, seeing the blood coming up between my toes as I do. I push away the thought of how I will get away from here – I can’t walk, that’s for sure. But I have a horrible feeling it will be in a police car. Or worse.

  The back of the house looks equally unpromising. I try the long, sliding French door to the rear of the living room, prising my nails around the flat glass panel and trying to pull it sideways, hoping, desperately, that the catch is not locked. But it stays firm, and all I manage to do is rip my bitten nails. I look up at the sheer side of the house. Could I climb up to the balcony where Nina smoked?

  For a minute I consider it – there’s a zinc drain pipe. But then reality bites. I’m kidding myself. There’s no way I could climb that slippery glass wall, even with climbing shoes and a harness, let alone in flip-flops and with numb fingers. I was always the first person to fail the climbing ropes at school, hanging there pathetically, my skinny arms stretched above my head, before I dropped like a stone into a crumpled heap on the rubber mat, while other girls swarmed to the top and smacked the wooden bar overhead with the flat of their palm.

  There’s no rubber mat here. And the zinc pipe is slippier and more treacherous than a knotted gym rope. If I fell, it’d be all over – I’d be lucky to get away with a broken ankle.

  No. The balcony is not going to work.

  At last, almost without hope, I try the back door.

  And it swings open.

  I feel something prickle across the back of my neck: shock, disbelief, a kind of fierce elation. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe the police didn’t lock it. Can it really be this easy, after everything else has been so hard?

  There’s police tape across the opening, but I duck under it and half-walk, half-crawl inside. I straighten up, almost expecting sirens to go off, or a policeman to stand up from a seat in the corner. But the house is dark and quiet, the only movement a few flakes of snow scudding across the slate floor.

  I put my hand out to swing the door shut, but it doesn’t close properly. It hits the frame, but bounces back open. I grab it, to try again, and as I do I notice something. There’s a piece of tape across the tongue of the latch, preventing it from shutting completely.

  Suddenly I understand why the door kept swinging open that night – why, even after we locked it, it was never secure. The lock is the kind that just immobilises the door handle, stops it from turning the latch. But if the latch itself is pushed back, the handle is useless. It feels stiff when you rattle it, but there’s nothing holding the door shut but its own inertia.

  For a second I think about ripping the tape off – but then I realise how stupid that would be. This – finally – is proof. In front of me, hidden innocently within the door frame, is cast-iron proof that someone set James up to die, and whoever placed the tape was that person. Carefully, without disturbing it, I push the door shut and then I drag a chair across the kitchen to rest against the inside of the glass.

  Then, for the first time, I look around.

  The kitchen looks strangely undisturbed. I don’t know what I was expecting: fingerprint dust, perhaps, that silver sheen on every surface. But as soon as I think about this, I realise how pointless it would be. None of us ever denied being in the house. Our prints would be all over the place, and what would that prove?

  I want more than anything to crawl upstairs to one of the beds, and sleep. But I can’t. I may not have much time. By now they’ve probably discovered my room is empty. They’ll know I can’t have gone far under my own steam – not without money, shoes and a coat. It won’t take them long to find the taxi driver. And when they do …

  I walk through the kitchen, my footsteps loud in the echoing silence, take a deep breath, and then open the door to the hallway.

  They’ve cleared up, to some extent anyway. Much of the blood has gone, along with most of the glass, although I can feel the occasional tiny sliver crunch under my plastic soles. In its place there are markings on the floor, on the walls, bits of tape with notations I can’t read in the darkness. I don’t dare switch on a light. There are no curtains to draw and my presence would be visible from right across the valley.

  But there are specks left here and there, dark rust splashes of something that used to be James – and now is not.

  It’s the strangest thing – he is gone, and his heart’s blood is still here. I kneel on the soft wooden parquet, pitted with chunks of glass ground in by our shoes and marked by the soaking blood, and I touch
my fingers to the stained grooves of the wood, and I think This was James. A couple of days ago, this was inside him, keeping him alive, making his skin flush and his heart beat. And now it’s gone – it’s lying here, wasted, and yet it’s all that’s left of him. Somewhere his body is being post-mortemed. And then he’ll be buried, or cremated. But a part of him will be here, in this house.

  I get up, forcing my cold, tired legs to work. Then I go to the living room and grab one of the throws off the sofa. There are dirty wine glasses still on the table, from our last night. Fag butts are stubbed out in the dregs of wine, Nina’s roll-ups bloated into soggy white worms. But the planchette has been packed away, and the paper has gone. I cannot suppress a shiver at the thought of the police reading those deranged scrawlings. What did it mean, that long, looping murderrrrer? Did someone write it deliberately? Or did it simply float up from the group subconscious, like a sea monster surfacing from someone’s inner-most fears, and then sinking back down?

  The throw smells of stale cigarette smoke, but I hug it round my shoulders as I glance up at the empty pegs above the fireplace, and away. I can’t really bear to think of what I’m about to do. But I must do it. It’s my only chance to get to what really happened.

  I start at the top of the stairs, standing where we all stood that night in a little huddle. Flo was to my right, and I remember putting out my hand to the gun. Clare and Nina were on the other side, Tom behind us.

  The scene, with the quiet and the darkness and my own thudding heart, is so close to that night that for a moment I feel almost faint, and I have to stand and breathe through my nose, and remember that it is done, James is not coming up those stairs. We killed him – between us, with our drunken hysterical fear. We all held that gun.

  I have to force myself to retrace what happened next, James’s body tumbling down the stairs, Nina and I stumbling after. This time I walk down slowly, holding the bannister. There is still glass on the stairs from the broken window, and I don’t trust my flip-flops in the darkness, not with the skidding shards underfoot.

  Here was where Nina tried to resuscitate James.

  Here was where I knelt in his blood, and he tried to speak.