She freezes. It’s a woman’s voice. Diane, scruffy and confused, walking up from the fields.
Lauren calls out and Diane shines the torch towards her, then runs, her army jacket flapping. Lauren looks down in the waving light at her own clothes for streaks of blood. As Diane runs, Lauren notices she is looking past her, into the tall trees. When she arrives, she hugs Lauren close, taking them both by surprise.
‘I couldn’t get any sleep, so thought I might as well try looking for her,’ Diane says.
Lauren realizes her friend is wearing a heavy backpack. She smells like stale peaches and smoke. She hugs Lauren closer and rubs her back methodically. ‘You’re freezing. Thank God I found you.’ Her face is a mask of ivory-crème foundation that has sunken overnight into the uneven acne it was trying to hide, making her skin look as if it is cracking.
‘Thank you,’ Lauren says, her teeth chattering involuntarily. ‘What time is it?’
‘Five thirty,’ Diane says absently. She stays next to Lauren, but shines her torch into the trees around them, and then looks back over her shoulder. Lauren is so close she can see Diane’s eyes are scared under their dark, clumpy lids; she sees how young she really is.
Diane is paying attention again. ‘How’d you even get here? God.’ Her tongue piercing clicks against her teeth as she talks. She unzips her bag and digs out a woollen jumper and bobble hat that Lauren pulls on.
‘I was looking for—’ Lauren’s ribcage is cold and tight, like the icy bonnet of a car. She tries to catch her breath.
‘That was really dangerous.’ Diane’s voice is faint and her eyes keep flicking sideways and up ahead. ‘I just need to see something.’ She leaves Lauren and sprints a little further into the black, her backpack jostling against her shoulders.
‘What are you doing?’ Lauren’s voice is starting to sound as hoarse as Diane’s. The early morning is still and silent and her words carry.
She hears a murmur from the dark trees and trudges up towards it. She finds Diane crouching on top of a huge tree trunk. Diane puts her pinkies in her mouth and whistles. There is a leaf-rustling and twig-snapping behind her and a dog leaps out over the snowy bracken. It’s Lola, Diane’s grey and white lurcher, who bounds up to Lauren and pants stinky warm breath in her face. Diane coughs into the icy air and pulls out a creased packet of Richmonds from her pocket. Her hands are red with the cold and her nails flake purple glitter.
‘Are you up here looking for Ann-Marie?’ Lauren asks cautiously.
Diane blows smoke into the deep-grey air, from atop the tree trunk. ‘Yep. Uh-huh. Everything’s fucked.’
Rooks croak back at her.
‘I need to go home. Which way is it?’ Lauren feels as though she has been on a roundabout too fast. She is faint with hunger.
‘I’m not letting you go by yourself. It probably isn’t safe.’ Diane unscrews a thermos and hands the cup down to Lauren. ‘Here. Tea. Put your hands round it.’
Lauren holds it under her face and feels as though the steam is thawing her out. ‘Thanks.’ She takes a gulp.
‘This was for Ann-Marie. But you need warmed up. Climb up. Come on,’ Diane says, pulling on Lauren’s arm.
Lauren wishes she could smoke like Diane. School says it kills people if you do it too much. It’s Monday. The dread of school seeps into her stomach.
‘I’m waiting just a little. I want to see if she comes out. We sometimes meet here, though not this early. She said she’d see me later, but then wasn’t answering her phone. I just have a bad feeling about all this. Though she could turn up back at her house. I don’t know. Angela was on the phone to me—’ She stops and looks around as the trees creak. ‘We have to be quiet.’ She sees Lauren’s puzzlement. ‘There are bad people. A man did something bad.’ Diane starts lighting a cigarette, looking around furtively. Between clenched teeth she says, as if talking to herself, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to be the person everyone’s scared of?’
Lauren looks at her and guesses she probably won’t tell her what she is really talking about. She thinks back to Halloween and making herself scary. Imagining, as she put on her make-up, that she could drink someone’s blood. ‘I wish sometimes I was a vampire. I could just fly over this whole forest and find them.’
Diane laughs, blowing air through her nose. ‘I wish you were too. Do you want another cup? I’m trying not to think the worst. It’s like a dream. You and me, sitting here. Barely morning. We heard stories, me and her, or rather I heard a story about these woods. It’s better not to tell you. But that was the start of it.’
She takes out something wrapped in foil, and opens it up. A stack of cheese sandwiches. Lauren takes one gingerly and realizes she has never been so pleased to see flimsy white bread.
‘The start of it?’ she asks Diane. ‘It’s OK. I was told something like that. The story about the dog in the woods and the human leg?’
‘Someone told you, aye?’ Diane looks surprised. ‘That’s the one. I heard it a few times. Down at the Black Horse. Whether it’s true or just one of those stories.’ She resettles herself on the trunk, stretching out her legs as though they are cramping up. ‘Well, this guy – this bad manny we’re talking about – he hears that story in the pub the other month, his friend’s telling him it, and when he hears the ending, he doesn’t look right. Everyone who hears it gets a bit freaked out by that story, you know, but his face. It was different. He looked like he had seen a ghost, or whatever it is they say. He started sweating. He was worried. He wasn’t scared. He was worried. Like he was gonna be sick. That was what I thought anyway. The man telling the story, he was drunk, and he saw his friend’s reaction and he started saying, Don’t worry, I was having a laugh. It wasna my dog, it was my friend’s. It’s always somebody’s friend’s. Didn’t hear much more, but he left quickly. So I was telling this to Ann-Marie on the phone and she got all wound up about it. She wanted to start looking in the woods, questioning the guy. All sorts. Had all these plans. She said, This proves it, meaning his reaction, I knew he did it. She kept saying, I knew he did it. Then she got that tattoo and she got, you know, suspended. And I wouldn’t be surprised if she did all that stuff to get sent back here.’
Lauren looks around her. ‘The man. You think – he … killed someone?’
‘Yeah, that’s what we were thinking. And we know him.’ She raises her eyebrows. ‘We all know him. She wanted to talk to him. Get a confession, get proof, I don’t know what. Get to the bottom of it. That story, his reaction, it’s not going convict someone on its own, is it?’
Lauren looks at her. She doesn’t understand.
‘Never mind. So she had this plan. And she got carried away. We had an argument. But this is where we usually meet. Here.’
‘You should tell the police.’
‘Yeah … I think I will.’
‘I saw this house, way up the track. It was weird,’ Lauren says.
‘Yeah? Where? I only know the Loop.’
‘I’m too tired to go. It’s cold. Maybe I won’t be able to find my way back.’
‘Another walk’ll soon warm you up. C’mon. You want to find her, don’t you?’
It takes some time, fumbling through the pre-dawn grey. Everything looks the same to Lauren at first; then she recognizes the way the ferns make an ‘S’ shape and starts on the right track. ‘It’s up here. Come on.’
They walk for half an hour in the snow, keeping to the deer tracks. This time around, Lauren notices how close they are to a bigger track, through the trees, its tarmac overgrown. She sees the shape of a parked car. She looks again and tugs Diane’s sleeve. ‘Look. Isn’t that yours?’
‘What the hell?’ Diane sprints over the snowy undergrowth. Together they call Ann-Marie’s name. Lola circles the area like a wolf.
When Diane comes panting back, Lauren asks, ‘Can’t we drive home?’
Diane whispers her reply, ‘No. Better not. The keys aren’t in the ignition. We need to keep it there.’
‘But
who—’
‘They did. This bad guy and Ann-Marie. I’m telling the police as soon as we get back. Let’s just try and find her first. At least try.’
Lauren can hear the fear in her voice. Her eyes are wide and white.
After another few miles of trudging in the cold through the trees, they reach the dilapidated house. It looks jagged under the torch beam. Diane switches the torch off and darkness drops. When they’re close, Lauren stops in her tracks; then she edges a little further. ‘Are you sure you want to go in?’
Lola makes a noise that is half a whine and half a whimper, pulling back on her lead.
‘Well, no,’ says Diane, ‘but she could be in danger. Lola. Stay outside.’ She drops the lead. ‘We’ll only be a few minutes.’
‘We?’
‘Yes.’ She grabs Lauren’s coat sleeve. ‘I need to know where you are. I’m not letting you out of my sight.’
Lauren’s stomach lurches. She creeps to the entrance, telling Lola to stay behind, and cranes her head inside the gloomy hallway.
The wooden floor has been ripped up in places with splinters spiking up here and there like tufts of grass. In the dark, Lauren makes out peeling wallpaper and a rotten staircase. Beyond that is dark. Outside the wind rustles the trees.
‘Ann … Ann-Marie?’ she calls.
There is a creak and then a crash in the room next door.
Before the girls have a chance to react, the ground beneath them rumbles like a small earthquake and they freeze. There is the sound of crockery clattering from another room and they lose their balance, falling hard on the floor. As Lauren tries to scramble up in the dark, the heavy front door to their left creaks wide open and then bangs shut. A sound rattles through the house like a train passing. Diane shines the torch on the front door. It is covered in scratches, as if an animal has been at it. On the back of the door, there hangs a white dressing gown, blanketed in mould.
Lauren stays as still as she can. She feels a sense of dread creep into her bones and wants to whisper We need to leave, but her voice is stuck in her throat, the way that can often happen in a bad dream.
She looks down. They are standing in a perfect circle of broken crockery.
Diane grabs Lauren’s arm and pulls her close, switching off the torch.
‘Do you feel all that?’ she says, her voice shaky in the dark. ‘Something is here with us.’
‘I wanna go,’ Lauren whines. ‘It wants us to leave.’
‘But Ann-Marie,’ whispers Diane. ‘If she’s somewhere in here, I have to …’ She jumps as a blast of air makes the door slam again.
Tentatively they make their way around two ground-floor rooms with the torch, pausing now and again as the wind slams through the house, but all they can find are piles of debris, broken crockery and mouldering curtains.
‘Maybe we should try upstairs,’ whispers Diane in the darkened hallway. The staircase has been built side-on from the front door.
Lauren clutches Diane’s arm as she points the torch up the staircase, but the floorboards are rotten and begin to disappear, further towards the first floor. Then the staircase stops altogether. Still at the foot of the stairs, Diane shines a light in a hole in the roof above, catching the flutter of wings. The two girls jump. They flatten themselves against the staircase wall, facing the door. Lauren needs the bathroom.
‘Bats,’ Diane whispers. She stops and moves her hand around the wall of the wooden staircase. ‘There’s a …’ Lauren sees Diane is tracing her hand over a join in the wall. ‘There’s a hinge!’ hisses Diane.
Lauren touches Diane’s arm. ‘We should go home. Don’t—’ she whispers, shaking her head. ‘I don’t—’ She can’t finish the sentence.
‘She could be …’ Diane’s eyes are wide. ‘In the wall?’ She traces the outline of a door. Placing her fingers by the skirting board, she feels it starting to open.
It is much thicker and heavier than expected, with some kind of foam padding lining the inside. The space is like a small broom cupboard, with nothing inside except an ancient bucket, a mouldy rug and a pair of old work boots that look oddly familiar.
‘This is weird,’ says Diane, shining the torch along its bare walls.
They notice a dripping sound and the air feels damp inside. Diane points to the bare ground. The wind whistles low. Lauren looks closer and sees the rug is partially covering an outline of a square. When they lift it up, there is a handle in the middle. Diane pulls at it, and Lauren tells her to stop, but she opens it up and shines the torch into the black pit below.
A deep fear passes through Lauren as the beam lands on more stairs, leading downwards to nothing. ‘Ann-Marie?’ Diane shouts into the hole, blocking Lauren from the pit with her arm. ‘ANN-MARIE?’
They wait and listen. ‘Did you hear something?’ asks Diane.
‘No,’ Lauren whispers, looking out of the cupboard door. They need to leave, get help. Lauren can hear their breath in the quiet.
‘I can hear something rustling down there,’ says Diane. She grabs Lauren by the arms. ‘You stay up here.’ Her voice quavers in the silence. ‘She’s my best friend. And we had this plan. And something has gone very, very wrong. It’s my fault.’ Diane starts to climb down, her torch light disappearing. The cupboard is dark now. Lauren props the door open with one of the work boots. She lingers, listening, looking out of the doorway. She is too terrified to pee.
There is a low thud from the basement, and a clatter, Diane’s voice calling out.
‘Diane! Are you OK?’ Lauren’s voice is reedy. Perhaps Diane doesn’t hear her, because she doesn’t call back up.
‘Diane?’ Now she’s scared.
‘Lauren,’ Diane says from below, out of breath. ‘The torch. I fell and dropped the torch. I think it …’ She sounds as though she is scrabbling around.
Lauren hesitates, making sure the cupboard and the trapdoor are securely open, then starts to make her way down the stairs slowly, sick with fear and vertigo, running her hands along one wall to steady herself. Then she sits down, as she did when she was younger, and moves down the stairs on her bum. In the basement she crawls on her hands and knees towards Diane’s voice.
‘I’m here,’ Diane says blindly. ‘I’m here. I’ve found my car keys.’
Lauren’s hand touches something round and rubbery. The torch. She breathes out, wanting to cry with relief. The beam of the torch scans a mess of papers, dirt, boxes, sacking, and a bare, soiled mattress in one corner. Then she sees Diane, in front of a branch she presumably tripped over. Diane makes her way back to Lauren and puts her arm around her shoulders. ‘Hold my hand,’ Diane says, taking the torch. Lauren moves round so her back is against Diane’s. She swivels her head to watch the torch beam. Black grime and a fetid, meaty stink coat the walls. Something lacy is lying among the paper. There are long freezers and a washing machine. Metal loops are built into the wall by the mattress. Mounted on the wall is a thin, curved sword, encased in a black sheath.
The sword. The Ace of Swords signifies clarity, raw power, triumph.
They move over to the wall and press themselves against it, back to back. Lauren can feel her breath in the dark. It’s easy to be scared now.
‘I think I imagined it,’ whispers Diane. ‘I don’t think she’s—’
There is a rustling in the corner in front of Diane, towards the back of the room. Maybe a rat, Lauren thinks. Maybe.
Diane swivels the torch towards the sound and lands on a pair of feet lying upwards. She jumps backwards, jolting Lauren forward. By turning her head, Lauren can see the feet are large, male. Diane clutches Lauren’s arm tightly, as if to say Don’t. Diane has pulled her sleeve over her hand, and Lauren feels the bulk of the car keys pushing against her skin.
Diane flicks the torch around the room again, checking for signs of anyone else. She is breathing hard now. They stand stock-still, listening. The rustling sounds again, from the corner. When Diane moves the torch back, the feet are gone.
Dian
e nudges Lauren towards the sword on the wall. They are nearly there when Diane screams and almost falls, the torch light vaulting. Lauren springs back, grasping at the brick wall behind her. Someone, the owner of the feet, is crawling on the floor.
‘Get off me!’ Diane yells.
It dawns on Lauren that the person has a hold of Diane’s leg and is trying to pull her to the ground. There is a deep groaning sound. Something between strength and pain.
Lauren tries to take Diane’s arm, but misses in the dark. Diane is shuffling forward, trying to get closer to the wall. There is a thick rattle from above them and Lauren realizes Diane is trying to grab the Japanese sword from the wall. It is just beyond her grasp. Struggling and kicking against the man on the floor, she reaches again. Lauren tries to help, but she is too short. Finally, Diane manages to ease it off with her fingertips. It falls. Diane catches it. Lauren hears the whack of metal on bone, followed by another moan. Dropping the sword with a clang, Diane springs away, pushing Lauren ahead of her. They are running towards the staircase, the torch in Diane’s hand throwing a shaking light ahead of them. When she reaches the stairs, Lauren looks back to see if the man is following them. She hears a strange sound: a freezer rushing its way across the concrete all by itself, behind her, pinning him to the wall. Lauren’s body won’t move up the stairs as fast as she wants it to. She runs as carefully as she can in the thin beam out of the house.
Fear streams through her burning muscles as she runs back into the forest. Diane is close behind. They race in the direction they came from and eventually Lauren feels she can’t run any further. They both walk without speaking, in shock. Diane stops suddenly and doubles over, her hands on her knees, retching. She wipes her mouth with her sleeve.
Lauren’s throat burns with bile and she remembers she is dying to pee. ‘Look the other way,’ she says to Diane and crouches by a tree. As she does so, she sees part of a path up ahead that looks familiar. The best option they have is to try and retrace their steps. Lauren is so alert, she feels animal.
She shows Diane, who looks deep in thought. As they begin the long walk back in the dawn light, Diane says, ‘There was a plan. And it was all about finding out what happened to your mum.’
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