by Daniel Hurst
‘Everybody out, or I’ll get your parents here!’ he calls, so Rupert and I heed his warning and rush past him but not before stopping by the kitchen to claim that bottle of vodka.
As we leave by the front door, I notice that everybody is already well ahead of us on the street, but that’s exactly how I want it.
‘I’ll just text my mates and tell them I’m not coming,’ Rupert says, but I stop walking as he speaks.
‘Don’t tell anyone,’ I say. ‘People will just gossip about us. They’re so childish.’
Rupert doesn’t seem so sure, but I give him a smile that tells him to trust me.
‘Okay,’ he says with a shrug, and he returns his mobile to his pocket, which means we can start walking again.
Leaving in the opposite direction to everybody else, we head away from the main park in town and on towards the smaller one where I am sure that none of our classmates will be hanging around.
‘Are you drunk?’ he asks me as we walk quickly down the street.
‘A little,’ I admit. ‘You?’
‘A bit. But I could use some more.’
‘Me too.’
I unscrew the bottle and take a swig of vodka before screwing my face up at the foul taste and handing it to Rupert.
We keep walking as he drinks, and as we reach the end of the street, I struggle to contain my excitement. I can’t believe I’m alone with him. I’ve dreamt about this moment for so long.
This is going to be the best night of my life.
5
HEATHER
This has been one of the most boring nights of my life. I didn’t go to the corner shop for that second bottle of wine in the end, but maybe I should have. It would most likely have been the highlight of the evening. Instead, all I have done since Chloe left is lie on the sofa in front of the TV and debate whether or not to download that new dating app that my friends have told me to try out.
I’d have hoped that nearing forty would have made me exempt from looking for love in the virtual world. After all, isn’t that the domain of the youngsters these days with all their swiping and whatever else they do? Why can’t I meet a nice, charming man when I’m out on a walk? Does the future of romance really hinge on a bloody mobile phone app these days?
Maybe it does, and maybe I should listen to my friends, but for now, the app has not been installed on my phone, which means I am still no nearer to resuscitating my dying love life. Never mind. It’s Saturday. I can’t be productive all the time.
What I should do now is get up off this sofa and go up to bed. It’s approaching midnight and the quality of the programmes on the television is only going to go downhill at this point. But I’m so comfortable here and the knowledge that Chloe won’t be coming back tonight makes me feel okay about just closing my eyes and drifting off to sleep.
My sleepy state, combined with the bottle of wine in my system, helps me slip into slumber quickly, and it’s not long until I’m having a dream.
Or to give it the correct name: a nightmare.
It’s the same one I get at least once a week, and it would be comfortably familiar were it not so terrifying in its content. It always starts the same. The limp feet scraping across the foliage of the woodland floor. I can hear heavy breathing, but it doesn’t belong to the person being dragged. It belongs to me. I can never see myself in the nightmare, but I know that I am the person moving the body.
I know that because this isn’t just a nightmare.
It’s a vivid memory from my past.
After the feet, it’s always the belt buckle that I notice next. It catches the moonlight from overhead and shimmers, sending a wave of nausea rushing through me as I imagine somebody on the main road spotting it and entering the woods to investigate. Even though I know how this nightmare ends, I always feel like it will change the next time I have it.
But once again, nobody spots the shiny belt buckle, and I remain alone in the woods, or at least as alone as one can be with a dead body for company.
Moving my eyes up the corpse, I see the white t-shirt of the victim. It is now covered in two things that have blemished its appearance.
90% soil.
10% blood.
I always wish I could skip this next part and move on to the arms, which are currently hanging in front of me as I hold on to the hands and pull as hard as I can. But it’s impossible to see the arms without also getting a good look at the victim’s face.
The eyes are always open. But surprisingly, that’s not the worst part about his features. That would be the mouth.
It’s hanging open widely, giving the man a grotesque appearance, almost as if he is trying to scream, but he can’t summon the sound.
Of course he can’t. Without the capacity to get air into his lungs, he isn’t able to make a sound. Instead, the mouth gapes open uselessly, like a window into his soul, but the soul isn’t home.
I tend not to spend too long looking at the face if I can help it. What I usually do at this part of the nightmare is look behind me and see how far I have left to go before I reach the grave.
It’s always further than it looks.
Even though the nightmare begins with me dragging the body through the woods, I know that I first had to take it out of the boot of my car to get to this part. That would be the car that is parked about a hundred yards away from where I am now. That was as close as I could get it before the tree stumps became so numerous that it was impassable, leaving me to have to exert myself much more than I would have liked to get the body from the boot to the hole I just spent an hour digging.
Another quick check over my shoulder confirms that I am getting closer now, but as I already knew, another minute goes by, and I don’t seem to be any nearer. Everything is warped in a dream. Time. Distance. The whole fabric of society. It’s exhausting, both physically and mentally, and I long to wake up and release myself from this agony of an alternate universe. But I never wake up at this part, no matter how much I would like to.
I only wake up once the body is in the ground.
But now, here I am. I’ve finally made it.
I’m at the grave.
It’s important to take a breather at this point before one last push. Sucking air into my lungs, I can feel the cold hitting the inside of my body. It was a cold night when this happened in the real world, but it’s always colder in the nightmare.
With my last bit of energy restored, I crouch down and kneel by the body, placing both my hands on the dirty white t-shirt and feeling the man’s ribs as I do. Soon, there will be no flesh covering those bones, the decomposition of the skin meaning that this male who once looked quite pleasing on the eye will now just look like everybody else who has been dead for a while.
A pale, white skeleton.
Without further ado, I get it over with. A groan and a strong push are all it takes to send the body tumbling down into the four-foot hole before me.
The corpse hits the bottom of the grave with a sickening thud, and I always wonder what it was that made that noise. The skull cracking as it hit the ground? A hip bone smashing as it slams into the hard soil? Or maybe that’s just the sound that every body would make if pushed into a deep hole without anything underneath it to cushion the fall.
Somehow, the spade always appears in my hands at this point, and I’m digging before I know it. I can hear the soil hitting the body behind me, but I never turn around to check on my progress until I have reduced the pile of disturbed earth by at least half. That way, I know I am closer to finishing.
When I do turn around and check, there’s always an arresting sight waiting for me. The white t-shirt is now completely submerged, covered entirely with dark and dirty soil. The same goes for the legs and the arms. The only thing I can see at this point that reminds me that there is a body in this hole are the two white trainers sticking up and the ghastly pale face still watching me as I work.
I rush through the rest of the soil and make sure not to look again until I am c
ertain the body is completely buried. Then all that is left to do is pat down the surface of the ground and make it look like it wasn’t dug up in the first place. It’s not easy to do, mainly because my arms are burning from the lactic acid after so long pulling a dead weight and flipping a spade. But finally, my work here is done.
The nightmare is almost done too.
I know it is, and I wish I could wake up right now while things are still relatively pleasant. But I can’t. Not yet. That’s because one more thing has to happen before then.
The sight of the soil on the surface of the grave beginning to shift tells me that thing is almost here.
Try as I might, I can’t look away. Oh, how I wish I could. But it’s futile. I am frozen stiff, almost as stiff as the body I just buried.
The body that is now seemingly working its way back to the surface.
A hand breaks through and claws at the air. A second hand quickly follows.
But it’s the third thing that’s always the worst.
Suddenly, the man’s head rises from the ground and stares right at me, eyes wild, teeth clashing together.
This is the part where I wake up.
MY LOUD SCREAM welcomes me back into the real world, and I gasp for my breath as I look around the room and try to get my bearings. I realise I’m in my living room, lying on the sofa, the empty bottle of wine on the table in front of me.
I guess I fell asleep down here. Silly me. Now it’s time to get up and go upstairs to my bed, where hopefully the nightmares are finished for the time being. But then I notice my mobile phone flashing at me from where it sits on the table beside the empty bottle. Picking it up, I see the notification on the screen that tells me I have six missed calls from Chloe.
I’m just about to call her back when she rings me again, and I answer it within one second.
“Hey? Is everything okay?’ I ask her, worried about what the panic could be.
I’m wondering if she had an argument with Zara and is no longer sleeping over. That wouldn’t be a disaster. I could arrange for a taxi to come and get her. But then she speaks, and I realise her reason for calling is not as innocent as that.
I also realise that I was wrong when I figured that my nightmare was over.
In reality, it seems like it is only just beginning.
6
CHLOE
I’ve just got off the phone with Mum, and although she has assured me that everything is going to be okay, I don’t quite believe it.
It’s hard to do that when I’m staring at a dead body.
It all happened so fast. One minute we were laughing and running around this park as we passed the vodka to each other; the next, he dropped to the ground and didn’t get back up.
I tried my best to help him back to his feet, wondering what it was that he could have tripped over, although I think he just lost his balance because he was drunk. But he didn’t move. That was when I saw the edge of the water sprinkler sticking out of the ground. His head had landed right on top of it.
It had cracked his skull open.
And there was so much blood.
Rupert is dead. The fact I couldn’t feel a pulse tells me that. I checked everywhere for one and not just the obvious places. But I felt nothing. No heartbeat at all.
It’s difficult to comprehend what it feels like to have your hands on somebody’s skin and feel no signs of life from within.
Now the cold has set in too, and Rupert’s skin is freezing to the touch. I almost want to put my leather jacket over him, but I know that would be pointless.
You can’t warm up a corpse.
I wish Mum was here now, but I’m aware I’m going to have to wait a while for her to arrive. How long? Based on where we are, I’d estimate about ten minutes unless she speeds, which she doesn’t usually do. Then again, she isn’t usually responding to a call about her daughter standing over a dead body. Maybe she will be here in five in that case.
An icy wind blows around me as I stand shivering in the park. It’s funny, but it didn’t feel creepy when I was here with Rupert to keep me company. But now he has gone and left me here alone, I’m scared.
What if someone has seen us? What if someone is watching from the trees? There are woods to the left of this park. Anybody could be in there.
What if the police get here before Mum does?
I told her I was going to call them, but she stopped me. She said for me not to do anything until she gets here. She sounded surprisingly calm within two minutes of me explaining what had happened, which is not at all what one would expect from their parent in this situation. I was waiting for her to shout at me, or scream at me, or burst into tears and cry down the phone at me. Something that would let me know how angry, afraid and shocked she was at what had happened. But while she did seem stunned at first, she quickly gathered her thoughts and started to make a plan, and the first part of that involves me staying exactly where I am and not touching anything else until she gets here.
Checking the time on my phone, I see that it has been three minutes since our call. She should be well on her way by now, moving through the dark streets in her car and probably trying to stop her hands from shaking so much as she grips the steering wheel. I know my hands are shaking right now, and there’s no way I’d be able to drive at this time, even if I had passed my test, which I haven’t.
Thinking of driving tests reminds me that I still haven’t replied to Zara’s messages since we got separated after the house party. She was expecting me to follow her and the rest of our college mates down to the big park where the party would continue, but obviously, I decided to try my luck with Rupert instead and here we are now at a different park. I felt bad for not letting my best friend know where I had gone, but I didn’t want to jinx anything with Rupert, which is almost comical now considering what has happened.
Looking down at the young man in front of me, I feel terrible for him, his family and everybody at our college who is going to be stunned by his death. I expect they will hear about it soon. It’s only a matter of time until the police are called. I expect it will be Mum who makes the call herself when she gets here. She probably just wants to make sure that she is here when the police do turn up and start to question me, so she can look after me and not allow them to trick me into saying something that might implicate me in this whole awful ordeal. As a policewoman herself, she must know all about that.
But that shouldn’t be a problem. Rupert tripped and banged his head. It was an accident. Anybody can see that.
Ignoring Mum’s advice not to touch anything, I kneel and run my hand over Rupert’s face. He could have been my first boyfriend. I almost loved him already, even though it had taken me until tonight to act on it, and from the way he had been behaving just before he fell, I was certain that he liked me too. It was only a matter of time until we kissed. I wonder what it would have felt like. I’ve fantasised about it ever since I saw him that first time in the college common room, but I bet it would have been even better in real life.
Unless...
The thought of kissing Rupert’s cold, dead lips only flashes through my mind for the briefest of moments before I shake my head and return to my feet, feeling as if I might be sick. I wish I wasn’t so wasted because at least then I would have half a chance of being able to think straight. As it is, I feel like the park is starting to spin all around me, and I’m quickly losing my grasp on reality.
Has this really happened? Am I standing over a dead body?
Am I actually alone in a park right now, waiting for my mum to turn up and call the police?
Then I feel it. My throat contracts, and a horrible taste rushes up into my mouth before I bend over and grimace as the vomit bursts out from my insides. It’s violent, and tears stream in my eyes as I fight for breath in between heaves. I haven’t been sick in years. I can barely remember the last time that I was. I must have been about ten. I ate something that didn’t agree with me. I think it was chicken curry, but I cou
ld be wrong. All I do remember is that I spent most of that night bent over the toilet in the bathroom with Mum holding my hair back as I spewed up into the bowl. Fortunately, this wave of nausea is over much quicker than that time, and I put my hand over my mouth as I feel the burning sensation of the stomach acid ravaging my larynx.
But then I make the mistake of turning around and looking at Rupert’s body again, and I feel like I could be sick a second time. Either that or I could start crying, although I feel like the amount of alcohol in my system is somehow preventing me from doing that. I feel wired rather than distraught, but I know that will change just as soon as I sober up and the reality of this situation hits me like the tidal wave that it is. There’s no doubt it is going to be the hangover from hell.
I check my phone again and see that it has been five minutes. Mum is still not here. I guess she hasn’t been speeding. I wish I had some of her sanity. I feel like the park is starting to spin all over again, and this time, I have no choice but to drop down to the floor to try and control it. But that doesn’t do the trick, and now I’m lying down on the cold, damp grass, face to face with Rupert’s twisted and dead expression.
He looks awful.
I feel awful.
But all I can do is hope that Mum knows of a way to make this all better.
7
HEATHER
It’s not easy sticking to the speed limit when I know my daughter is in such peril, but it’s vital that I do. If I have learnt one thing in my life, it’s that the simplest of mistakes can lead to the greatest problems, so there is no way that I’m going to tempt fate now by making the silly mistake of driving too fast.
All it would take for this night to get even worse would be for a police officer to see my speeding car and pull me over. Not only would that delay me in getting to Chloe, but the officer would want to know where I was going and why I was in such a rush. I could hardly tell them the truth that I am responding to a desperate phone call from my daughter in which she has told me one of her college friends has just died, and she is standing beside the body. Somehow, I don’t think that answer would go down well. There’s also the fact that I have consumed a bottle of wine this evening, and while I don’t feel drunk right now, there is little doubt that I would be over the limit if I were to be breathalysed. I wouldn’t be much use to my panicking daughter if I got carted off to a prison cell before I helped her figure out what to do with the dead guy she is currently with.