by Luca Veste
Death.
It was a similar smell to one I’d had the bad luck to encounter a week earlier. We’d found an abandoned fridge on a green near where we lived, and when we opened it up found an open packet of some kind of meat. I didn’t know how long it had been there, but this was what I was experiencing now.
It was like a weight on my shoulders as I moved slower around the wrecks and tried to work out a way back. A way home. I tried calling to Nicola, but got the same silence back.
I didn’t shout Mikey’s name.
Against my knees, my hands trembled as I crouched behind another car. Tried to will life into my limbs, so I could move. Get away. Forget everything and tear out of there like my life depended on it.
I didn’t believe in fairy tales. I didn’t believe in myths. In the stories we told one another to scare. The air seemed to sense my thoughts and shifted in response.
It was all in my head.
It was all in my head.
I was seeing, I was sensing, I was hearing things that weren’t real.
I could feel ghostlike fingers on the back of my neck. Goose bumps sprouted even farther on my arms and were joined with others. I choked back a sob as I suddenly lost years of my life and became a child again.
I wanted to be anywhere else. At home. On my little estate of houses. Safe. At home with mum and dad.
I was just a little boy.
I was alone.
Then, I heard a scream, and it jolted me alive.
I didn’t stop. I didn’t turn around. I forgot anyone else existed and thought of myself alone.
I ran.
Eighteen
Stuart’s sister was waiting for me at the house when I pulled up half an hour later. I took a deep breath and wiped my face another time, then got out of the car. I had called her from the car, needing somewhere else to go. Now I was outside—away from the relative safety of home—I needed to keep going.
I needed to know what was in his mind.
I’d been there a few times, but not for at least a year now. It was a simple semidetached house, but the street was obviously in a good area. Halfway between Manchester and Liverpool, tree-lined roads and bungalows at one end. The few cars parked there were all displaying newer license plates, and every house seemed to have its own drive.
No one had ever really questioned where Stuart got his money from, but I think we all knew now. He would sometimes mention his family, but it was all about him when he was talking. Now, we understood more. Help with a deposit here, the funding for a few overseas trips there. It would all have come into play, I imagined.
They may not have been in the tens of millions, but I guessed Stuart’s family was a lot better off than any of the rest of the group’s parents.
I locked the car behind me and walked toward Stephanie, who was waiting on the doorstep. There was an awkward moment, when I thrust out a hand to shake and she looked for a hug. We ended up in a strange half embrace eventually, before she opened the door and let us inside.
“I haven’t really been through anything,” Stephanie said as I wiped my feet and closed the door behind me. She flicked a hand across her hair and continued. “I don’t think my mum and dad are going to want to deal with this, so I guess I’ll have to at some point. I just wouldn’t know where to start.”
“I can imagine,” I replied, looking around the hallway and then into the living room. I’d only been there for parties, so the lack of bodies, disco lights, and an inordinate amount of booze made everything look very different. There were photographs on the walls where there would be some kind of banner hastily put up. With Stuart living outside of Liverpool, we were only ever there for birthdays or coming-home celebrations. Now, it looked like a home.
An empty home, but a home all the same.
“I’ve not really touched anything since…since he was found,” Stephanie said, halting over her words but somehow keeping her composure. “We looked for a note or something, but we didn’t find anything. Did he…did he say anything to you?”
I wanted nothing more than to be able to answer that question in a way that would give her comfort. I had nothing to say. I shook my head and looked down at the immaculately vacuumed floor. “I wish there were something. We haven’t really spoken all that much lately. Both busy, I guess. I wish I had though. Maybe if I’d known, I could have stopped him.”
“I’ve been saying the same thing every day. I suppose we can’t think that way, but it doesn’t make this any easier. There’s always going to be a part of me that thinks I could have done something more.” Stephanie turned away, looked at the sofa, then sat down on it. She leaned forward with her head in her hands, but her shoulders stayed still. She was holding it in, I guessed.
I was glad of that. I wasn’t sure if I’d hold up anymore if she lost it. “Would it be okay if I had a look around?” I asked quietly enough so as not to jolt her out of whatever silent act she was going through.
She waved a hand in response, and I didn’t ask twice.
I walked out of the room and through a hallway to a kitchen-dining room at the back. It was modern built, the tiled floor ending at the edge of the kitchen area and dividing it from the dining room part. When I’d been there last, the table that was sitting there now had been pushed up against the wall and filled with various bottles of alcohol. Now, it was tastefully set—a solid brown oak look that felt smoother than anything I’d ever touched when I ran my hand over it.
I moved back to the kitchen, looking over the fridge door, where a couple of letters had been attached with magnets. I didn’t pry but could tell they were nothing of interest anyway. A dentist appointment, a flyer for a local fish-and-chips shop.
I didn’t want to start rooting through drawers, but I stopped and thought about what I was doing. What I thought I was looking for exactly, I wasn’t sure, and Michelle’s meeting with me had only served to veer me farther off course.
I moved back to the dining room, pausing at the table, as something caught my eye. I turned, but nothing seemed to jump out at me. I frowned, looking at the pictures on shelves in the alcoves. It was a mix of what I assumed was Stuart’s family and pictures of us.
Stuart in the middle of the group of six—2001, second year of university. Even though he was the last to join, he was the main focus. He was the leader.
Me and Stuart—2004 in Ibiza. I look exactly how I remember feeling: tired, drunk, and wanting to be just about anywhere else at that point.
Stuart and Michelle—I think around 2008. Twenty-four or twenty-five by then. An arm slung around her shoulder, pointing and laughing at the camera. His youth was disappearing with each photograph, but the dimples in his cheeks and glint in his eye hadn’t diminished at all.
That’s when it hit me. All of these photographs depicted memories—memories that would stay where they were and never be joined by any new ones. That’s what had been taken from us.
What we had taken from us.
I tore my eyes away from them. Tried to work out what I was doing. Instead of dealing with the grief alone, I had come there for what? An answer to a question I didn’t know?
You should be at home. You should be somewhere safe. Not here. Not here. Not outside.
I tried to ignore the pull of the recurring thought in my head and concentrated on what I was there for really.
Stuart had been lost for the past year. Just like we all were. Looking for something that would never come back.
Himself.
When I used to hear people talk about going abroad to “find themselves,” I used to laugh, roll my eyes, shake my head. Now I understood why someone might feel the need to do that.
Floor-to-almost-ceiling PVC doors looked out onto a back garden that was almost empty of anything but lawn. I looked out at the rapidly diminishing light outside and thought of Stuart doing the same. Alone in the house, no one to
call and speak with.
There were six of us in that group. And none of us wanted to talk about the past.
Other than Michelle.
I allowed myself to realize the truth; I didn’t know why I was there. What had made me think that by coming to Stuart’s house I would find some kind of answer? There wasn’t one to be found. I was simply opening up old wounds and driving myself into a darker place.
Get out. Get in your car, and drive home. Home is safe.
Stuart hadn’t been able to live with what we had done. That was all. Michelle was probably struggling with the same issue.
Still, there was that unanswered question that had ruined our lives for the past year.
What had happened to Mark Welsh? Who had taken his body?
We had all ignored it as best we could, but maybe Michelle was right.
I had to leave. I moved away from the doors and turned back into the room. My eye was caught again by an item on the table. This time I knew what it was that had caught my attention.
A candle on the table. In the middle. Housed in a small storm lantern that looked as if it was locked in some way.
It was red.
Burned down, so it was melted wax on a base.
Bloodred.
Nineteen
I was standing at the table, wanting to lift the candle from it and carry it away. Throw it somewhere it wouldn’t be found. Couldn’t be found. Ostensibly because I knew what it meant. Not just to me—to all of us.
It meant we weren’t free.
It meant we never really left those woods.
It meant we would have to go back to a place none of us wanted to go.
My hand hovered over the candle, almost as if I were willing it to relight.
Then, another thought came to me. What if this was just another red candle? What if Stuart just happened to have a candle on his dining room table and I was simply connecting two unrelated events? How many people in the world have red candles in their houses? My bet would be that there would be a large number of them. That’s all it was—another house decoration that wouldn’t have caught my eye at any other time.
Only, I knew that wasn’t the case here.
I knew all of us knew the significance of that color candle. The housing it was within. The relevance to our lives. There was no chance I would have something like that in my house now, so why would Stuart be any different?
Michelle was right.
This was what she was talking about back at the café.
My hands were shaking as I reached back to the candle, wanting to touch it. See if it was actually real. Wonder about its significance now. There was a reason for it being here, but I didn’t want to know it. Suddenly, I wanted to be anywhere else.
Not anywhere.
I wanted to be back in my own house. Alone. Away from it all. I didn’t want to deal with any of this. It was a mess, and even though it was a mess of our own making, I wasn’t sure I could do anything to make it right.
I looked at the candle again, and I was back in those woods. Seeing Alexandra standing over Mark Welsh’s body. Seeing the candle and hearing Michelle tell us what it meant. Even now, I refused to believe it. That we had stopped a serial killer. Those things don’t happen to people like us. We’re normal.
Or we were.
I didn’t think we could say that any longer. Our lives had taken a turn in one night, and now we seemed to be trapped in an endless nightmare. The worst thing about it—there was no escape from it. Not alone, in my house. Even there, all I could think about was that night and what we did.
Now, I knew—we had never really left those woods. Something was following us and keeping us in there.
“You okay?”
I moved quickly, banging into one of the chairs pushed against the table and swearing as pain shot through my knee. Stephanie was standing behind me, and I realized it was her voice I’d heard. I turned with a hand on my heart. “Sorry, you startled me. I was miles away.”
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost… What’s up? Have you found something?”
I looked back at the burned candle on the table and then back at Stephanie. Shook my head. “No, I was just thinking about when I was last here. We, erm, used to have parties and stuff. Not many here, like, just a couple. Didn’t look as nice when we had them. He really kept this place looking good.”
“He was always like that, even when we were kids. His bedroom would be spotless, while mine was like any other teenager’s room. My mum and dad would get mad at me all the time and ask why I couldn’t be more like him. I always thought it was weird though. He liked things in a certain way.”
I smiled but couldn’t rectify this version of Stuart with my own memories of him. He’d always seemed somewhat…flaky? I wasn’t sure that was the right word, but I didn’t think of him as orderly. He was always up to some scheme or other. Going off traveling, bouncing around from job to job. Nothing about this seemed to fit with what I knew about him.
I guess I didn’t really know him as well as I’d thought.
“What was he like in the time before? I mean in the weeks leading up to him…” I couldn’t finish the sentence, but I knew she would know what I meant. My heart slowed a little, as the initial shock of seeing the candle dissipated. The need to run out of there without looking back subsiding.
I still wanted to go back to the safety of my own house, but another part of me somehow gave me the ability to stay.
I had to know everything.
Stephanie closed her eyes briefly and turned her head away. “He seemed okay. A bit more skittish than usual, but you know what he was like. We just assumed he was about to announce some new path he was about to take. I always thought he’d disappear one day and we wouldn’t know where he’d gone. He’d do that from time to time—decide on a whim to go to India or Thailand for a month or longer. We’d get a phone call eventually, telling us where in the world he was.”
“That sounds like the Stuart I knew,” I said, pulling a tight smile that turned into a grimace of remembrance. “That’s how we’d find out as well. Or from a Facebook status update or something. Checking into an airport on his way to some foreign country.”
“Yeah, he was spontaneous to the extreme. I don’t know. About a month ago, there was definitely something going on with him. I don’t know what it was, but he looked like he hadn’t been sleeping, so I asked him about it. He didn’t really say anything, but he wasn’t himself. All he said was that he wished he could tell me more about his life, which didn’t make any sense. I knew loads about his life—he wasn’t exactly discreet about it.”
“That’s true,” I replied, thinking of the way Stuart could tell endless stories. Always funny, about the scrapes he would get into, the awkward situations, the safely dangerous ones. He always came through them at the end. “He could talk for hours. And he was never boring.”
“I suppose we never really know what’s going on in people’s minds. What they’re going through when we’re not around. I just wish we did.”
For once, I disagreed with her, but didn’t say so. I didn’t want her to know the truth. No one should hear that.
Stephanie didn’t want to know what Stuart was thinking about in the past year.
“I guess so,” I said, ignoring the part of me that wanted to tell her everything, just so someone else could share the burden of our collective guilt. “He never told you about anything he was worried about or anything like that?”
“I don’t understand,” Stephanie replied, her brow furrowing into a frown. “I don’t think he did. He wasn’t himself, but I didn’t take that to mean he was on the verge of…of hurting himself. He was just preoccupied. That’s all. Nothing that could have led me to think he was capable of doing that.”
At that, Stephanie buried her face in her hands and left the room, leavi
ng me standing next to the dining room table. I thought of going after her, comforting her in some way, but I didn’t think I could do that. I needed to think clearly.
The candle was still sitting in the middle of the table—a reminder of what can happen when you don’t think about what you’re doing properly. A reminder that actions have consequences.
We had killed a stranger.
He was an evil man. Someone who had killed who knows how many people, all over the country. Someone who the police were pretending didn’t exist.
Only, we knew the truth, but we couldn’t tell people that fact.
I moved quickly around the table, keeping the candle in the periphery of my vision, as if it might come to life. Checked to see where Stephanie had gone, but she seemed to have left him there alone. I took the opportunity. On the display cabinet against the wall, a few notepads had been left on one of the shelves. I flicked through them, seeing various dates and times. Appointments. Reminders.
On one near the bottom, I found something.
October. A year since—
Speak to M and C
Meeting with “Peter”—he knows more
Eye appt—26th Sept
I continued reading, but I couldn’t find anything else that referenced the murder. Or his mental state. Listened for any movement coming from outside the room, in case Stephanie was coming back.
I tried to think of someone called Peter and remembered that being his dad’s name. Or his uncle’s name. One of the two. On one of the pages, I recognized a sketch of his tattoo. Then, on more pages there were further drawings of it, as if he were trying to get it right. I wondered what that signified to him. A better time? Somewhere he wanted to return to?
I wasn’t sure.
All the time, the candle was behind me.
If I listened hard enough, I would hear what was becoming almost like a mantra in my head now.
Someone knows. Someone knows. Someone knows.
Twenty
We had managed to kid ourselves for a year now. An entire year. Somehow.