The Burning Girls

by C. J. Tudor

  “Rosie Harper can look after herself. I was scared about what they might do together.”

  I let this sink in. “What did Emma do?”

  “I believe she stopped Rosie from seeing him.”

  “Just like that?”

  A small shrug. “I never saw them together again, but teenagers can be devious.”

  They can indeed.

  “What about Wrigley’s mother?”

  “Like many mothers, she struggled to see fault with her child. To be honest, I found her a little odd, preoccupied with her writing. She seemed to spend more time with her fictional coven of witches than with her son.”

  Something shifts rustily into place in my brain. Clunk.

  “Sorry, you said writing? She’s an author?”

  “Yes. YA. Popular with some of the children at school.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Annette Wrigley, but you’d probably know her by her pen name—Saffron Winter.”

  A sign hangs beside the front door. “No canvassers or unsolicited callers.” They’d have to be pretty determined salesmen to traipse all the way out here. I’m not even sure a Jehovah’s Witness would make the effort.

  Saffron Winter’s house isn’t visible from the lane, not even a sign. Just a battered postbox at the bottom of the long, rutted path. A car is parked outside. A dusty red Volvo. So, someone is home.

  Even though I am most definitely an unsolicited caller, I ring the front doorbell. No answer. But the car is here. I look back at it, and something catches my eye. Weeds around the tires, which both look a little flat. Okay. So, Saffron hasn’t driven anywhere in a while. Perhaps she walked or caught a bus. Not necessarily suspicious, but still.

  I look back at the house. It doesn’t look obviously neglected. The grass is cut, curtains open. But it doesn’t feel obviously lived-in either. There’s a hollow feel about it. Like one of those cut-outs they use in films. Convincing from a distance but, up close, you can tell it’s just a façade. I try the bell again. Then I knock three times, briskly.

  I step back, searching the windows for a face or a twitch of curtains. Maybe she isn’t home after all. And yet, something is bothering me. About Saffron Winter. About Wrigley. About all of this. If she received my message about Reverend Fletcher, she must have known who I was, so why didn’t she reply? Why hasn’t she been in touch since everything that happened last night? Why has no one seen her since before Fletcher’s funeral? Well over a month.

  I walk around the side of the house. There’s a gate, but it doesn’t have a lock on it. I unlatch it and walk down a narrow path to the back garden. I’m immediately struck by the fact that the back of the house is far less well maintained than the front. The grass is overgrown and the small patio area outside the back door is littered with cigarette butts. So Saffron is a smoker. Perhaps, like me, she enjoys standing outside of an evening, savoring a ciggie or two. Perhaps we could have been friends. And then I wonder why I am thinking of her in the past tense.

  I try the back door. Locked. Of course. People are more trusting in the countryside, but most aren’t careless enough to leave their doors unlocked. Especially not private people who don’t want anyone poking about in their home.

  I peer in the kitchen window. I’m not the tidiest person, but wow. The sink is piled with dirty plates. Packets and tins are stacked on every surface, along with pizza boxes and takeout containers.

  I step back, feeling even more uneasy, and glance at the cigarette butts again. The back door, like the front, has a Yale lock. We had them in our old house in Nottingham. One thing I do know about Yale locks is that it’s all too easy to lock yourself out, especially if you regularly nip outside for a cigarette and forget to pick up your keys. You don’t do it more than once without learning to give yourself an insurance policy.

  I look around and my eyes fall on an upturned garden pot. I pick it up. Nada. Okay, too easy. Where did I use to hide my keys? I walk back around to the front of the house. Then I kneel down by the rear bumper of the car and peer in the exhaust. Bingo. I hook the keys out. Back and front, from the looks of it. I regard the front door. Perhaps I should knock once more. I mean, I have keys so, strictly speaking, I’m not “breaking,” but I am still entering, uninvited.

  I raise my fist and hammer on the door once more.

  “Hello? Saffron? My name’s Jack Brooks, I’m the new vicar. Could I talk to you?”

  No reply. Except, did I see the net twitch upstairs? I debate. And then I stick the key into the lock. The door opens.

  “Hello? Is anyone home?”

  Silence. I step tentatively into the hall and immediately raise a hand to my nose. Urgh. It stinks. Stale and sour. Unclean. I take a few steps forward.

  “Saffron? My name is—shiiit!”

  A small black shape darts down the stairs and between my legs. Crap. My heart catapults itself into my mouth. Frigging hell. A bloody cat. And now I’ve let the damn thing out.

  I walk into the kitchen. I might need to find some food to tempt it back in. Now I’m inside, the kitchen looks even more like a bomb has gone off in it. I stare around. The piles of dishes in the sink are congealed with mold. The bin is overflowing on to the filthy floor. A cat-litter tray is piled with excrement.

  Christ. This is the sort of detritus that I might expect in student digs, not the home of a middle-aged woman. And a mother. I back out, wrinkling my nose.

  The living room is on my right. I peer in. Not as bad as the kitchen, but still pretty high on the disgusting scale. Pizza cartons, dirty plates and empty cans litter the wooden floorboards. Clothes have been piled in one corner. A sleeping bag is crumpled on the sofa and, all around, scattered over the floor, the chairs, stuck on the walls, there are drawings. They’d be good drawings if it weren’t for the subject matter. Graphic depictions of murder, mutilation, rape and torture. Satanic symbols. Pentagrams, the Leviathan cross, demons, devils. I stare at them, feeling my skin crawl.

  Is this Wrigley’s room? Is he sleeping down here? It certainly smells like it. There is the pungent aroma of sweat and hormones. But why would Saffron let him, unless she isn’t around? Unless she has left him here, on his own.

  I walk back into the hall and look up the stairs. I place a hand on the banister and start upward. My bad feeling increases. The awful smell—more unpleasant than stale food, sweat and hormones—is worse up here. Almost unbearable. I stick my arm in front of my nose as I reach the landing. Three rooms. To my left, I see a bathroom. To my right, a teenage boy’s room. And now I understand why Wrigley isn’t sleeping up here. It would be impossible with that smell. A smell which is coming from the room in front of me. The one with the closed door. Of course.

  I tell myself I don’t need to open it. I don’t need to know. I could call the police right now and let them deal with it. But I do need to know. I steel myself and push the door open.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  I turn and throw up. Without even thinking about it. A reflex reaction. I remain, bent over, saliva spooling from my mouth, for several minutes. Trying to regain control of my stomach, trying to stop myself from screaming.

  Finally, I straighten and turn back to the room. A body lies on the double bed. Or what remains of a body. Much has soaked into the mattress, bodily fluids pooling on the floor. The rest is a barely identifiable mess of rotting flesh and stained clothing. Pajamas. Strands of tangled dark dreadlocks.

  Saffron Winter.

  She must have been dead for at least a couple of months. Not much mystery as to how. The wall behind the bed is stained with a pattern of dark maroon flecks and splodges. On the floor, I can see a sharp knife, similarly stained russet.

  He killed her while she slept, I think. Slaughtered her. How many times did he stab her?

  I need to get out of here. I need to call the police. I need to…A floorboard creaks
behind me. No. I turn. Seconds too late. Something heavy crashes into my skull. So hard my spine cracks and my legs buckle. A moment of blinding pain. A realization that I am in big trouble. And then, darkness.

  A babysitter. Flo fumes. She lies on her bed, listening to Nine Inch Nails thrash in her ears. Mike Sudduth is downstairs. She presumes. She hasn’t been down to see him or say hello. Why should she? She doesn’t want him here. She doesn’t need him here. Whatever her mum might think.

  She knows that she has let her mum down, but she still feels furious. Screw this place and this shithole village. Screw Rosie and her inbred cousin. Screw her mum for bringing them here and screw you too, God.

  She messaged Wrigley again, but he hasn’t replied. She feels sick and angry about that too. Is he ghosting her? Is he embarrassed? Maybe his mum won’t let him. Or maybe he is just like every other boy, who goes cold after they get their way—not that he got his way, but she had hardly been unwilling.

  She thinks about going on to Snapchat and chewing Kayleigh’s ear off about it, but right now she doesn’t really want to reveal just how crap her life has become. That’s the problem with social media. It’s not designed for negatives. It’s all about people showing their best side. Posing with filters, creating some sort of fake perfect life. But what do you do when life isn’t perfect? When everything feels shit. When you feel like you’re sinking into a deep, black hole and you can’t crawl your way out. LOFL.

  And then her phone buzzes with a message. She grabs it up. Yes. Wrigley.

  “How r you?”

  She smiles and messages back, “Okay. How’s your ankle?”

  “Not bad.”

  “Good.”

  “R u grounded?”

  “No, but Mum thinks you’re a jinx!”

  “Maybe she’s right.”

  “No. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Still feel bad. My idea to go up there.”

  “I wanted to go.”

  “I really like you.”

  “I like you too.”

  “Is your mum there now?”

  “No. But her boyfriend is here, keeping an eye on me.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “Not really. Just a friend.”

  “Okay. Well, hang tight. I’ll see you soon.”

  He signs off with two black hearts.

  She stares at the phone, feeling kind of warm inside. Okay, maybe all this would work out after all. She sits up and realizes she feels hungry. She missed breakfast and lunch and it’s almost five o’clock.

  She switches her music off and climbs off the bed. She opens the door and pads downstairs. She can hear Mike talking on his phone in the kitchen.

  “Two bodies. The next village. Christ. Well, it’s not strictly my…well, yes, I get it. I am just down the road. But I’m kind of in the middle of something right now. What d’you mean—‘what’? Writing up the story about the skeletons in the well!”

  She walks into the kitchen. He’s sitting at the table, laptop open in front of him, a cup of coffee steaming at his side. Make yourself at home, she thinks.

  He glances up as she walks in. “Look, I’ll call you back.” He puts his phone down and smiles at her. “Hi. How are you?”

  She stares at him. It occurs to her that Mum could do worse. He’s kind of good-looking in an old, craggy kind of way. Stubble. Dark hair that’s a bit long and streaked with grey. Lines radiating from pale blue eyes.

  “I’m fine.” She walks past him to the fridge. “But I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “I’m sure you don’t. But your mum asked me for a favor and I still owe her one for helping me out the other day.”

  She notices him glance at his phone.

  “Not keeping you from anything, am I?”

  “No, no. It’s fine.”

  “I heard you on the phone. Something about more bodies?”

  “Eavesdropping?”

  “You have a loud voice.”

  “Okay. The newspaper wants me to go and cover a story.”

  “A murder?”

  “Yeah. Two pensioners in the next village.”

  “Wow. It’s all kicking off in Nothing Happensville.”

  “There’s not been this much murder and mayhem since someone sabotaged the prize marrow at the Chapel Croft village fair.”

  She can’t help a small smile. “You should go.”

  “I promised your mum.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “No.”

  “Look, why don’t you text her and ask?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  She pulls her own phone out of her pocket. “Shall I do it?”

  “No. I can do it. It’s not like I’m scared of your mum or anything.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, maybe just a bit.” He picks up his phone and types a message.

  Flo grabs some cheese, tomatoes and butter from the fridge and starts to prepare a sandwich. She hears his phone ping with a reply.

  “What does she say?”

  “She says she’s on her way back. Ten minutes away. So, I don’t need to hang around if I need to go.”

  “There you are then.” She glances over her shoulder. She can see he’s debating with himself. “I’ll be fine for ten minutes.”

  “O-kay.” He closes his laptop and slips it into his bag. “But I want you to promise you’ll keep the door locked, and don’t open it to anyone you don’t know.”

  “I’m not stupid.”

  “Far from it.” He slings his bag over his shoulder and grabs his coat. “Tell your mum I’ll call her later, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Lock the door after me. Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  She sees him out of the front door then locks it firmly behind him. Jeez. She walks back into the kitchen and pours a glass of orange juice. She brings it over to the table and sits down with her sandwich. She’s just about to take a bite when there’s a knock at the front door. Seriously? She puts her sandwich down. It’s probably Mike, she thinks. He’s probably forgotten something. Still, she should check.

  She gets up and walks through the hall, into the living room. She peers out the window. Her eyebrows rise. Really?

  She walks to the front door.

  Don’t open it to anyone you don’t know.

  She unlocks the door and yanks it open.

  “What are you doing here?”

  When I was a child, my favorite book was The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark.

  I used to repeat it to myself when Mum punished me. I would recite: “Darkness is exciting, darkness is fun, darkness is beautiful, darkness is kind.”

  Of course, as I grew older, I saw through the lie.

  Darkness is only exciting and fun when you’re the owl. A hunter, a predator.

  If you’re the prey, helpless and alone, darkness is death.

  I blink my eyes open. All around me, thick, impenetrable black. I’m lying on my side, my shoulder cramped under me. My cheek is pressed into rough, bristly carpet. I can feel the fibers tickling at my nose, some trapped in my throat. I cough. Hot, sharp pain envelops one side of my head. Something sticky is crusted around my ear and neck. I want to raise a hand to touch the pain, but I can’t move it. My wrists are bound behind me. I can’t feel my feet but I’m pretty sure they’re similarly restricted. Hog-tied. Helpless in the dark.

  I try to quell the panic. Move a little. Fresh pain shoots through my skull as it connects with metal. Only a few inches above me. I roll the other way and my nose bumps into more coarse fabric. I try to straighten my legs and find I can’t.

  I’m trapped, confined. In a coffin. Buried alive. The panic swells and threatens to bubble over. No. Push it down. Stop it. Not possible. There i
sn’t much air, but there’s still air coming in from somewhere. And a smell…grease and oil.

  I strain my ears. Outside, I can hear something. Birds. Evening song. I’m above ground. Confined. And the realization is not as horrific as being buried alive, but almost. I am in a car trunk. Saffron’s car trunk. My brain draws on foggy memory. Standing, staring at her body. Hearing a noise behind me. Starting to turn, and then the blow. A crippling pain in my head as something crashed into my skull. But just before the blackness, a glimpse. Silvery-green eyes.

  Wrigley killed his mother. And he’s been living with her body, pretending she’s still alive. The messages I received must have been from Wrigley. My stomach rolls. Not just at the thought of Saffron’s decomposing corpse but at the thought of that boy—that psychopath—touching my daughter. Flo. Oh God. Flo. I need to warn Flo.

  And then I hear another sound. Footsteps crunching on the shingle driveway. Getting closer. A clunk. I squint against the sudden shaft of sunlight. A tall silhouette stands over me. My vision adjusts.

  For a moment, I don’t recognize this stranger. Through my fog of fear and pain I realize that his hair is shorter, shorn right down to his skull. It makes him look older. The baggy hoodie has gone too. He wears a charcoal T-shirt and his arms are sinewy with muscle.

  “Hi, Reverend Brooks.”

  “Wrigley.”

  Except my tongue is sluggish and it comes out, “Wugglah.”

  He smiles. And I notice what else is different. The twitching, the strange jerking movements, have stopped. He stands, tall and perfectly still.

  “Your twutch?”

  “Oh, that. Yeah.”

  He suddenly convulses. Limbs jerking uncontrollably. Then he straightens and laughs.

  “Good act, right? Poor wriggly Wrigley.” He perches on the edge of the trunk. “You ever see the film The Usual Suspects? Great film.” He leans in and whispers, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was pretending he didn’t exist.”

  He hops off the trunk. “People don’t like to stare at a cripple. They’re embarrassed. All they feel is pity.” He winks. “You can get away with a lot that way.”