A Dark and Secret Place

by Jen Williams

  “If he’s doing stuff that matches up with the original murders that the public never even knew about … is it possible it was someone else all along?”

  For a long second, Parker said nothing. When he spoke again, he sounded newly sure of himself. “No. Ultimately the evidence against Reave was strong, and while he’s been in prison, we’ve had no more murders like it.”

  “Until now.”

  He grimaced. “Until now.”

  “I’d love to hear more about it, if you have time.”

  The traffic had slowed, and he had a moment to look over to her. “It’s not normally an appealing subject for conversation, Miss Evans.”

  “Then you can’t know many writers. Call me Heather, okay? Bloody Michael Reave thinks it’s fine to call me Heather, so I reckon you can.”

  He chuckled reluctantly at that. “Fair enough.”

  When they reached the outskirts of Balesford, Heather asked him to drop her off by a row of shops—for reasons she couldn’t put a finger on, she didn’t want him to associate her with her mother’s house. Leaning back to close the car door, she made herself meet his eyes directly.

  “I meant it, you know, about having a chat. Balesford is a shithole but there’s a decent Chinese restaurant a few minutes from here. Really good Peking ribs.”

  “Well …” To her faint surprise he smiled. “I’m not sure that’s really appropriate, Heather.” She noticed it wasn’t a yes or a no, technically, so she smiled back.

  “You’ve got my number, DI Parker.”

  * * *

  Back inside her mother’s house, Heather went into the living room and picked up the book she had found earlier. A book of fairy tales, a wolf on its cover. She thought of the creepy story Michael Reave had told her, of the child that turned into a wolf when he drank from an enchanted stream.

  Reave was right, then. Her mother had been interested in this stuff. But why would it be here, lost under the sofa? As though someone had kicked it there.

  Remembering the torn page she’d found on her mother’s dressing table, Heather began to flick through it, looking for the story it had been ripped from. But quickly she realized this was going to be harder than it looked; many pages had been ripped out and apparently thrown away. There were still illustrations of round cheeked boys and girls, of bears and castles and soldiers, of fairies and goblins and boggarts, their capering figures appearing every few pages.

  No wolves though. No wolves left at all.

  CHAPTER

  11

  “NIKKI, IT WAS so fucking creepy I can’t even tell you.”

  “It sounds like it.”

  They were in Nikki’s living room again, the remains of a Chinese takeaway strewn across her formerly pristine coffee table. It was late, and the windows looked too dark to Heather. She was glad her friend had put all the lights on, and even the television with the sound off was a reassuring presence.

  “He wasn’t what I expected. But what do you expect? I don’t know. People like Fred West—he looks like he’s crawled out from under some bridge somewhere. Ian Brady has the most amazingly punchable face. Or he did. Jeffrey Dahmer looks like he has creep written through him like a stick of rock. But Michael Reave was like … I don’t know. A pub landlord from up north who looks after himself. Or,” she snorted with sour amusement. “Or the dubious love interest in a Mills and Boon. He broods.”

  “You think those people look evil or unpleasant because you know what they did,” pointed out Nikki. She was sitting on the sofa with her feet tucked under her. She had changed out of her shirt into a big purple jumper, but was still wearing her work tights. There was a ladder in the knee. “Look at Bundy, or Harold Shipman. They looked normal. Shipman looked like a kindly old man, and he’s our most prolific serial killer.”

  “Hmm.” Over the last couple of hours, both she and Nikki had taken a crash course in serial killer research. “Bundy. What a cunt.”

  “My mum would murder you herself if she heard the language you’re using in front of my porcelain figures. That story though …”

  “I know, right?” Heather snatched up one of the remaining prawn crackers and munched on it. “What a weird thing to come out with. And he reckons my mum was a huge fan of these things.” She paused, wondering whether to tell Nikki about the book, then decided against it.

  “It’s hard to imagine your mum having much time for grisly fairy tales, I have to admit.”

  “Huh. Yeah. And the thing is, it’s a real story. As in, it’s a fairy tale that exists. More or less.”

  Nikki paused with a prawn cracker on its way to her mouth.

  “It is? How do you know?”

  Heather pursed her lips. “I’ve been reading up on the subject—there are a lot of people on the Internet who spend their time analyzing these things. Anyway, the Grimm’s tales have mostly been Disneyfied these days, covered over with sugar and lace and made more palatable, but it seems that once they were every bit as unpleasant as the story Michael Reave told me. The thing is, the Brother and Sister story exists, except he’s changed the ending. In the real story, at the third stream the brother is turned into a deer. And then there’s a lot of quite complicated stuff about kings and princesses, and eventually the witch herself is torn apart by wild beasts. His version was a lot snappier, it has to be said.’

  “Oh.” Nikki dipped another prawn cracker into the little plastic container of sweet and sour sauce. “Why do you think he changed it?”

  “Lots of these stories got changed, like I said, although not many were changed to be even more violent. Maybe he remembered it wrong, or maybe he was trying to tell me something.” Catching Nikki’s raised eyebrows, Heather shrugged. “He said he’d told me that story to demonstrate that I don’t know everything about my mum. But maybe there was another message, too.”

  “That message might well just be ‘I want to freak you out.’ Are you going to go back?”

  Heather nodded.

  “He knows something, Nikki. He wasn’t surprised at all when I told him what happened to Mum. Maybe they had a pact or something, maybe they were writing in code in the letters.” She trailed off, looking at the darkness outside the windows. “Whatever it is, I need to bloody know.”

  * * *

  Walking back to her mother’s house later, Heather found herself thinking of Michael Reave’s unpleasant fairy story again. It was true that her mother had been strict over her television and reading habits, to the point where Heather had often stayed late round friend’s houses, watching all sorts of horrors on VHS tape—the fact that her mum had banned them only made her more determined, obviously—and there had been an entire box in her wardrobe, carefully hidden under old shoes, containing books and comics her mum definitely wouldn’t have approved of. The idea that she had once collected especially ghastly stories, sharing them with a future serial killer, seemed impossible; a piece of a puzzle that would not fit together. Yet … there was something familiar about the story, even so.

  It’s just Red Riding Hood, she told herself. Whether you had an overprotective mum or not, all children become familiar with stories about little kids being eaten by wolves, and maybe you never really forget that first little thrill of horror you felt when you realized that the Big Bad Wolf has eaten Grandma and, ghoulishly, is wearing her nightie. That feeling of wolfishness, that creeping fear of the beast, sinks its teeth into all the old tales.

  “It’s all one story,” she muttered to herself. “Fear the beast, for the beast is hungry.”

  Inside the gate, Heather stopped. She had left the living room light on so it wouldn’t seem so spooky when she came back, but somehow that blazing square of yellow light, fuzzy and indistinct through the net curtains, only made her feel worse, like it was a portal onto something she didn’t want to look at. The pieces of one of Michael Reave’s victims scattered on the grass of a remote field perhaps, or her mum sitting at the kitchen table with her head all crushed in by rocks, dutifully scratching out
another letter to a murderer while bits of her brain dripped onto the paper.

  Shaking her head at herself, Heather went to the door and let herself in. The house was quiet and still, and she made a note to leave the radio on when she went out next time; the silence was too expectant somehow, too eager for her to fill it. She went upstairs to the spare room and changed into her pajamas and then went across the landing to the bathroom. In the seconds before she opened the door, her hand on the handle, she had a flicker of something wrong—a smell, a tiny noise—but it was too late. The door opened and something quick and dark flew at her face.

  Crying out, she jumped back, but the thing was already out in the landing, flying hectic circles around the light fitting and crashing repeatedly into walls. It was a bird of some sort. Heather bit down on the shriek that was building in her chest and thumped a fist angrily into the bannister.

  “Fucking bastard thing!”

  Her heart still racing, Heather went to the airing cupboard and extracted one of her mother’s old brooms. With some difficulty she attempted to push the bird toward one of the bedrooms, or back into the bathroom, but it just flew more frantically, making sharp, panicked calls as it hit the ceiling, the lampshade, the walls. Heather swore at it repeatedly, feeling her own fright simmer and ignite into a quickly growing rage. The thing was moving too fast to see it properly, but it was brown, with speckled wings and a slightly oily cast to its feathers.

  A starling, she thought bitterly. Of course it’s a fucking starling.

  Eventually, seized with frustration and impatience, she smacked the bird squarely with the thick end of the broom, and it dropped to the carpet with a thump.

  “Oh. Oh shit.”

  Dropping the broom, Heather went over to the bird and looked down at it, grimacing. The tiny chest was rising and falling still, and its beak was open enough that she could see its sharp black tongue. It was stunned. Quickly she went back to the airing cupboard and grabbed a towel, which she wrapped around the bird. It was light, barely any weight to it at all, and as she brought it up to her chest, a flood of memories threatened to overwhelm her; a bird wrapped in one of her old t-shirts, its heart beating against her heart; her dad’s face, pink and hectic and somehow afraid. And then later, her mother’s hands so white against a black dress, curling into fists.

  She shook her head and ran down the stairs to the front door. Outside, the cold air felt shocking against her flushed face and all at once she felt dangerously close to crying.

  “Bloody bird,” she muttered, walking over the grass to the trees. Instantly her socks were soaking wet and freezing. “Stupid bloody creature.”

  Crouching by the bushes, she unfolded the towel. The bird was still stunned, but its legs were moving a little, and Heather thought it was going to come to its senses soon. Best put it down right now, she thought. Put it under the bush and maybe a cat won’t get it.

  Instead she crouched and stared at it, remembering. She had been taking the long walk home from school, dawdling in the park with the usual suspects. Going home hadn’t been particularly appealing at the time, because every conversation with her mum seemed to derail into an argument—arguments about her clothes, about what she was studying, or whether she was really “doing her best” or just coasting along. Nikki and the others, Kirsty and Aaron and Purdeep—she smiled slightly, remembering their names—had been talking about some boy band or other that she wasn’t interested in, so she had wandered off, over into the tree line. It had been quiet there, and she had felt at home; certainly more at home than in the house, with her mother prowling restlessly from room to room.

  That was where she had found it, the bird. A broken thing in the grass. And she had taken a t-shirt from her bag and carefully picked it up, feeling the flutter of life under her fingertips as she did so.

  Shame and guilt, as painful and as unexpected as a punch to the gut, washed over her. Dwelling on old memories suddenly seemed very stupid. Heather stood up, filled with the need to wash her hands, and saw a dark figure standing over her. For the second time that evening she yelled and jumped backwards, slipping on the wet grass, but when she looked again the figure was gone—if it had ever been there in the first place. Angry and tired, she left the bird under the bush, still on its towel, and went back inside the house.

  CHAPTER

  12

  BEFORE

  ONE NIGHT, MICHAEL woke up in a darkness so complete it hummed. The safe, warm electric light that burned from the shaded bulb in the ceiling had vanished, casting him into the black; sending him back, in an instant, to the cupboard. Suddenly it was impossible to know where he was, who he was, which way was up. He gasped in great whooping breaths of hot, fetid air, air that tasted of musty clothes, of old food and fresh shit, of the red coat, the red coat, the red coat …

  He flung his arms out, and when his fingernails skittered against old splintered panels he began to shriek over and over again. Soon his mother would come storming up the stairs to see what the noise was about, her doughy arms trembling with rage, or his father, already whipping the belt from his trouser loops, or worse, perhaps she would come, smiling and kind, her sharp hands seeking his skin … but the noises from his own throat wouldn’t stop—he was a wounded animal caught in a trap, tearing itself to pieces. Abruptly he felt a hot muzzle press itself into his hand, a wet blast of breath through his fingers, and the sensation surprised him so much he clamped his mouth shut, his teeth nipping the end of his tongue.

  A second later and the man was in the doorway, the beam from an old electric torch chasing away the confines of the cupboard to reveal the room, exactly as it had been. The dog wasn’t there.

  “It’s nowt but a power cut, lad.” In the dazzle from the torch, the boy couldn’t see the man’s face, but the shape of him was so unlike anything from home—the red coat the red coat the red coat—that he felt the air transform, becoming clear again, slick and clean and free of terror. “Come downstairs if you’re going to take on so, I’ve all the candles out. Is your mouth bleeding?”

  * * *

  The next day was wet and blustery, but the man made him put a coat on—again too big, the bottom of it came down to his knees—and they went walking outside. The area around the house was green and isolated; Michael could see fields and hedgerows, and a tangle of dark woods. It was this that the man led him toward, their trousers quickly becoming heavy with water from the tall grass, and as they passed under the dark twisted trees, Michael shivered and blinked, feeling more awake than he had for days.

  “This is Fiddler’s Wood,” said the man. “It’s ancient.” There was a clear note of pride in his voice. “Primrose, wood anemone, yellow rattle, dog roses. Bluebells, in the spring. Flowers that mean a place is old, that a place is a leftover from the ice age.” He looked down at Michael, his false eye dull. “You don’t care for flowers none, I expect, but that’s not what I’m going to show you.”

  Not far from the wood’s edge, they came to a small domed building, sunk deeply into the black dirt. It had been built from red brick once, but the colors of the woods had leeched into it. Green moss and yellow lichen covered it, until it looked like a natural thing, a growth on the forest floor. There was a low padlocked door set into the front of it.

  “This is an ice house,” said the man. “A lot of big old houses have them. I want you to think about your mother, lad.” He dropped his hand onto Michael’s shoulder, and Michael felt cold fear move through him like a shower of stones.

  “What’s in there?”

  “Your mother was not a good woman, but I imagine you know that better than most. Your whole family is …” He stopped and pushed the boy forward slightly. “But I don’t want you to remember that, lad. I want you to remember the last time you saw her. You got that? Are you listening to me, boy?”

  He stepped forward, smoothing a key from his pocket, and he unlocked the door. Cold air moved across the boy’s face. It smelt brackish and strange, like water left to stand in
a bucket for weeks.

  “Are you thinking of it, lad? The last time you saw her?”

  The boy did not move. He was remembering the odd feeling of weightlessness in his stomach as they’d fallen down the stairs, the delicious sensation of hurting that which had hurt him.

  “Remember the time when you had complete power over her,” said the man. He settled his hands on Michael’s shoulders again and gently pushed him through the door of the ice house. The ground sloped away ahead of them, and Michael felt his over-sized boots moving through a gritty kind of sludge. The daylight from the door revealed a dank room, the walls smeared with creeping black mold, and it was cold, much colder than outside. There was a shape in front of them, resting on a long, low stone bench. Michael looked at it. The man squeezed his shoulder.

  “Remember the power you had then, lad. Remember it.”

  The shape was his mother. She looked small, curled in on herself. Her limbs were dark, as though her skin were one big bruise, and he could still see the flash of white bone poking through her arm where it had torn itself free. The yellow smock was no longer yellow. Her face was turned away from him, but he could see the jut of her jaw and her cheekbone, which looked larger than it had. He imagined her staring at the far wall, imagined her whispering into the dark. Dirty beast, filthy little shit. Michael made a small strangled noise in the back of his throat.

  “No,’ said the man, firmly. “Look at what she is now. She’s nothing. Do you see?”

  He pushed the boy forward sharply, so that he almost fell onto the corpse. All at once Michael was inches away from the torn flesh of his mother, her rotten fingers like small brown sticks.