by Luca Veste
“Ribchester” was a place name that would have made me giggle in normal circumstances. That’s what I had been known for in our group—a childish sense of humor. I would be the single person laughing at a terrible joke in any given situation.
It was a fifty-minute drive, and despite the driving I’d already done that day, I decided I had to do it now; otherwise, I may have talked myself out of it by the morning.
It was almost ten o’clock when I pulled up outside the semidetached house my GPS led me to.
An IP address from an email. Land registry records and some other information that was illegal to have access to. That’s all it took.
It was farther north than Liverpool, on the edge of Preston. If I’d traveled any longer on the road, I’d have ended up in the forest the town bordered.
In a ten-mile radius of this town, four people had been reported missing.
I switched off the car engine, silenced the music blaring from my phone, and unplugged the USB charger from it. I didn’t make a habit of going to strangers’ houses at night—couldn’t remember a time when I had done it, to be fair—and wasn’t sure if I should have taken more precautions. I stopped outside my car, after I’d closed the door softly behind me, and looked at the house. At the street. At the surroundings.
It looked normal enough.
Still, that’s how bad things happen: underestimating the threat of places that seem normal before turning into the opposite.
“You really need to get some sleep,” I whispered to myself, as my thoughts began to make even less sense than normal. I swiped a hand through my hair and, at the last second, texted Chris with the address I was standing at, told him to save it for me. If anything happened, at least he could point them here.
I breathed quickly and deeply once, then opened the gate at the end of the path. The squeak it made on its hinges was loud enough to make me jump a little. I let it swing closed behind me and made my way up a well-kept flagstone path. There was running water coming from nearby, and I realized it was a fountain on the front lawn, surrounded by stones.
Not what I had been expecting at all.
I breathed again, then knocked softly on the door. It felt wrong to ring the doorbell at that time of night, as if I were intruding in his life somehow if I was wrong about him. There was no answer for a good few seconds, but as I raised my hand to knock again, I heard movement behind the door. The sound of keys being sorted and then entering the door before it opened up.
“Dave?” the man behind the door said, holding onto the door between us. He didn’t look as shocked as I’d expected, but was perhaps hiding it well. “How did you…”
“I need to talk to you.”
Thirty-Seven
I thrust my hands in my pockets, so he couldn’t see that they were shaking. I couldn’t hide the sweat on my forehead or my pale pallor though. I just hoped he wouldn’t notice. Then again, if he was who I suspected, he would probably be able to recognize it in an instant. Looking for any weakness to exploit. I was waiting for him to turn in an instant—to become the man I believed him to be. Still, there was a part of me that wanted him to. To show himself.
If he was the Candle Man’s son, I wanted to see it.
I didn’t think “Peter” was the man’s real name, but I’m sure he knew my name wasn’t “Dave” either. I decided to let him have the veneer of anonymity a little longer.
“Of course,” Peter said, and opened the door further for me.
I moved inside, the heat from within the house hitting me in the face like a blast of steam. I hadn’t realized how cold it was outside and quickly undid my jacket. I was unarmed, I realized. I had come there with nothing to protect myself.
I really wasn’t cut out for this.
“Just through on the left,” the man said, moving behind me. “It’s only me in tonight—my wife is out at her club until eleven. I’ll have to go pick her up then, so I’m afraid I haven’t got much time.”
“That’s okay,” I replied, wondering how long he’d let me stay for anyway. How long he’d pretend his wife was ever coming back. “It shouldn’t take long.”
He followed me, sitting down on a floral-patterned sofa that was out of sync with the rest of the more modern living room. I stood near the mantelpiece, casting a quick glance at the array of family photos littering not only the surface, but also the walls of the room.
“You’re not his son.”
Peter couldn’t have looked more confused if he’d tried. “I’m sorry?”
“Nothing. Just something we were trying to ascertain for the, erm, story,” I said, hesitating over my reply. I could see from my response that he no longer believed me anyway. “Who are you really?”
He peered at me for what seemed an eternity but was more like a few seconds. “I don’t understand the question.”
“You’re all over everything I read about the Candle Man. Your username, or derivatives of it, seems to be on all things I can find online. Why are you so interested in him?”
Peter didn’t respond, but instead got to his feet and crossed the room. He came toward me and I tensed up in response, but he reached past me and took a photograph from the mantelpiece.
A photograph of a teenage boy I’d seen in very different circumstances.
“This is my son,” he said, showing me the picture and then turning it back around to look at it anew. “His name is Mark. He was nineteen years old the last time I saw him. He will have turned twenty a few months ago. August 12. A year I’ve had to sit here and wait for him to walk back through that door. We both know it’s not going to happen, but it’s as they say—it’s the hope that kills you. How many people go missing every year?”
“Quarter of a million, like we talked about last time.”
“He’s one of the ones that didn’t come back.”
“What happened to him?” I said, but I knew the answer already. In every news item, every This Morning appearance, every social media post about Mark Welsh, there was one person missing other than Mark himself.
His father.
“You’re Mark Welsh’s father,” I said, realizing I’d made a mistake. I remembered his name instantly. Geoff. “Why don’t you say that on the forums?”
“I’d get bombarded with messages,” Geoff replied, nervously fiddling with a frayed thread on the arm of the sofa. “I’d get accused of all kinds of things. It made sense to stay anonymous. Have you seen some of the things they say about me on there? I wouldn’t get anywhere if people knew who I really was.”
I had seen a few mentions about Mark’s father, and none of them were kind. I remembered seeing his name mentioned in one news item. He had never met a journalist, it seemed, until I had come along and pretended to be one.
And Stuart, of course.
“You know about Mark, of course,” Geoff said, placing the photograph back on the mantelpiece. He walked over to the sofa and sat down with a sigh. “His mum told them I hadn’t seen him for more than ten years. None of the kids. Didn’t even know where they lived.”
“Is that true?”
“Yeah, sadly.”
“So, she didn’t want you involved in any of the media stuff.”
“Not at all. I didn’t have the right, apparently. I’d walked out when they were younger and didn’t know them anymore. Even that photograph is one I’ve printed from the internet since. All of them are. I tried talking to the police, but they took her side, so it didn’t leave me with much else to do. When they made sure I had nothing to do with his disappearance, I was just a nuisance to them. They were useless anyway. I know what they think. That he’s just buggered off with some girl or decided to go abroad to work. Like that’s the case.”
“When did you know?”
“That he had been taken by the Candle Man? It was a while later. I’m not sure. I spoke to my ex-wife briefly,
and she told me something strange. Something that was found in his bedroom that had annoyed the police…”
“A red candle.”
“Exactly. It didn’t make sense at the time, because the rest of his room was an absolute mess, she said. Just computer games and clothes everywhere. It’s the only time she told me anything about who he was now. Then, there’s this nice red candle in a storm lantern, just sitting on his bedside table. I asked her if it was hers, but she’d never seen it before. Then, she rushed me off the phone and didn’t talk to me again. Neither will the police now.”
“When did you make the connection?”
“After a few months, I was desperate. I was online, looking at missing people in the area when I stumbled on this Candle Man story. I found a couple more who had gone missing within a few miles of here, then it just spiraled.”
I turned away from him, scratching at my increasingly stubbled chin. Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn’t this. “Did you go talk to the police about what you’d found?”
“Of course,” Geoff said, scoffing and shaking his head. “They treated me like I had gone crazy. They didn’t take it seriously at all. Of course, by this point, while the rest of them still had hope, mine had gone. My son is gone, Dave. He’s been taken from me.”
“So you’ve spent the past few months becoming an expert on the Candle Man.”
“Yes. There’s nothing I don’t know about his movements, his actions. Everything. I’ve talked to other people who might have sons and daughters and brothers and sisters who are victims. Many, many people. Most of them, I’m pretty certain don’t have a connection to him at all. Some…I know some of them do.”
“How do you know?”
“The red candle—it’s not just a typical thing. Not one of those glass Yankee Candle things, or tea lights, or cheap sorts. It’s housed in a storm lantern that keeps it alight in any situation.”
I knew then what the difference was for the others. The candles that were found in these victim’s houses after the fact.
It was the last thing those killed would have seen.
“That’s what makes the cases different,” Geoff said, looking older and more frail than he had been back in the truck stop, when I’d first met him. “The candles. I’ve been narrowing it down, further and further each time. I’ve had some doors slammed in my face, some tough conversations, but I think there’s some kind of pattern. Only, I’ve run into a brick wall recently.”
“How so?”
“I’ve not found anything concrete for a while,” he replied, spitting it out in frustration. “Not since Mark…not since Mark went missing. I felt like I was getting close to him, but with no new leads, I don’t know. It’s not like it’s an official thing. Maybe Mark was the last one and that’s it. Now we’ll never find out who he was. I doubt that though. He’ll be back. I just need him to make a mistake.”
I tried to stay as stone-faced as possible, but I could feel the mask slipping. “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through…”
He waved me off before I could finish the sentence. “Platitudes. I’ve had enough of them. What I need now is answers. And I think you’re not telling me everything.”
I moved to the smaller sofa against the other wall opposite the window and sat down. Placed my hands on my knees and leaned forward. “The man you met a few weeks ago. He was my friend.”
“Was?”
“He died a few days later,” I said, speaking slowly so as not to dissolve in front of this man. “We’d known each other since we were kids. His death was very unexpected.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Geoff replied, then rolled his eyes. “Now it’s me with the platitudes. What happened to him?”
“He was hit by a train. They reckon it was a suicide, but…”
“You’re not sure if it really was.”
I shook my head. “He had a candle in his house. Red. In a storm lantern.”
Geoff’s eyes lit up as the information hit home. “You saw it?”
“Yes.”
He slapped his knees, getting to his feet quickly and pacing up and down in front of the bay window. “He’s back. This is huge. I mean…I know what price it’s come at, but I don’t think you’re just here for your own health. You want to know what I know. But this is unbelievable. I’ve waited so long for this. Of course, I hoped it wouldn’t happen, but now at least we’re not in a cul-de-sac of noninformation anymore.”
Geoff continued talking, his words spilling out at a rate I couldn’t keep up with for the most part. It was the most energetic I’d seen him and a world away from the broken man he’d been a few minutes earlier. I looked at the clock on the wall and saw I’d been there for twenty minutes already.
“Wait,” Geoff said suddenly, stopping and facing me again, as if he’d just noticed I was still sitting there. “You say his body was found?”
It took me a second to find my voice again. “Yes, it wasn’t easily identified, but the family managed it.”
Geoff frowned and then his shoulders sagged a little. “Maybe I’m mistaken then.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the obvious—none of the other victims have ever been found. Why would he wait a year and then leave a body behind? It wouldn’t make any sense.”
No. It wouldn’t. Because he’s bloody dead and this is someone else.
I wanted to shout the thought in his face, but managed to control myself somehow. He could read my intentions, however, as his expression changed a little. Softened.
“Listen, I’m sorry if I’m being thoughtless,” Geoff said, sighing as he did so. He looked at the ceiling, shaking his head. “I just get a little overexcited. You have to understand, I’ve spent a year in the dark waiting for something to happen. I’m sorry about what happened to your friend, but maybe he holds the key to all of this. The Candle Man’s first mistake.”
I didn’t argue with him, but I couldn’t agree. Instead, I waited for him to come to the conclusion himself.
“They never know before,” he said quietly, dropping back onto the sofa, his large frame making the old furniture squeak in protest. “Why did he come and see me? Has he changed his methods? Has everything I learned become irrelevant?”
I didn’t want to hurt him anymore, omitting the facts as I knew them. I wanted nothing more than to tell him that he didn’t need to keep searching for his son’s killer anymore.
Only, I remembered the stories of the Moors Murderers. About the child who was never found. How his family could never move past their tragedy until he was.
For Geoff and his wife and the rest of the family, this nightmare would be forever.
“I’m sure that’s not the case,” I said, standing up and preparing to leave. I shouldn’t have been there. I wasn’t sure I should have been anywhere in my current state. Spots in my vision, a growing pain behind both my eyes that would eventually become too difficult to ignore. “I’m sorry to make you bring this all out again.”
Geoff peered at me, his eyes turning a deeper shade of gray. He seemed to accept something that had been obvious to him. “You’re not a journalist, are you?”
“I have to go.”
“Tell me the truth,” Geoff said, rising up, and he suddenly looked a foot taller than me.
I thought if it became physical, I could have defended myself, but in that moment, I wasn’t sure. “I’ll see myself out.”
“I deserve to know what’s going on here,” Geoff said, and he was pleading now. He took hold of my arm and stopped me in my tracks. It wasn’t a hard grip, but it was still enough to make me pause. He looked at me through watery eyes and said one word. “Please.”
I couldn’t. I wanted to. More than anything I’ve ever felt in my life before. I wanted to give him the closure that he desired, but I knew it wouldn’t change a thing. All it would do was r
uin all of our lives. My friends.
I needed them more than giving him closure.
I had never felt more selfish in my life.
“I knew my friend met with you,” I said, hoping he would believe me. “I thought you might have been someone else. I can see you’re not now. I wish I could help you, I really do, but we’re looking for the same ghost.”
“There must be something you can tell me.”
I shook my head and pried myself away from his grip on my arm. He didn’t look a foot taller than me anymore. He looked exactly like he was—a man ten or fifteen years older than me, who looked at least a decade more than that. Someone who had been beaten by grief and the worst of not knowing the truth.
And shame. And guilt. Guilt of not seeing his children as they grew older. Always thinking he’d have one more chance to connect with them. Then, Mark disappears, and that chance goes with him.
He would be in my nightmares, I thought. The look in his eyes. It would join the others.
“I think the reason it was different this time is because it’s over,” I said carefully, placing a hand on his shoulder briefly before moving away from him. “I just need to make sure, that’s all. And I promise, you’ll be the first to know if I learn anything.”
I left the room, feeling his presence following me. I took hold of the door and looked back. He was standing in the shadow of the living room doorway, looking at the floor. He lifted his head and looked at me with a blankness in his eyes now.
“I knew from the start you weren’t who you said you were,” he said, leaning against the doorjamb and folding his arms around himself. “I knew you were carrying something like what I am. I hope you’re right. I hope I don’t have to think about that thing anymore.”
I nodded and left, feeling my phone in my pocket vibrating a couple of times.
Outside, the temperature had dropped further, spots of rain falling as I jogged to the car. Even inside the vehicle, the cold seeped through and into my skin. It spread across my body like the numbing tide of an icy sea.