by Luca Veste
We had gone there a few years earlier—a weekend break that we had a voucher for or something of that sort. We probably should have looked at the reviews for the place before going—we would have learned that the B&B, which boasted about having color TVs, wasn’t exactly rated all that highly. Still, we had stayed for the experience. And the stories we could tell about it for a long time afterward.
“I’m going to go find some stuff for the room,” I said, after we had settled in as much as we could in a place like that. We had twin beds, but I didn’t expect to have to sleep on them. Alexandra had brought nothing with her, deciding against going home before the journey north. She had her phone, and I had a spare charger. That’s all she needed, she’d said. Now, she gave me a list of things. When she was done, she seemed to change her mind.
“I’ll come with you.”
“No, no, it’s okay,” I said quickly, eager to leave. “Probably best we don’t walk around together all that much. Just in case.”
“What? In case we were followed?”
I grimaced, biting down on my lower lip. “We need to be careful. Until we work out what we do with this address. Agreed?”
Alexandra thought for a little longer than I’d have liked, then nodded. I hesitated, then crossed the room and embraced her.
She pulled me tighter, and I could have stayed there forever. Terrible online reviews be damned.
Instead, I left her sitting on the bed, switching on the television and flicking through channels.
Once outside, I prayed that I would get the chance to do that again.
I got back in my car and pulled out my phone. I didn’t want to go alone, but with Chris not answering, I didn’t have much choice. I tried again one last time, but after a few rings, the same voice mail kicked in.
I was about to pull the car away when my phone trilled its song. I half expected it, so my shoulders sagged in resignation as I pulled the phone off the cradle and looked at the screen.
Not Alexandra.
“Chris?” I said, hearing relief and fear mixed together in my voice. “Where are you? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he replied, and I could hear only despondency in his. Resignation. “I can’t find her.”
“But I’ve found him,” I said, unable to keep the excitement hidden any longer. Of approaching an endgame. Of finally taking control of our story. Of not being alone when it happened. “Chris, we’ve got him.”
“Who? The son?”
I nodded enthusiastically, then realized he couldn’t see me. “Yes. Someplace near the Peak District. Not that far away. He sold the farm to a guy and left a forwarding address and has apparently been in touch since. He’s going to be there, I can feel it. Where are you? We can go together.”
“I’ll come over to yours and meet you. I just need a little time…”
“I’m not there,” I said, pulling the phone away from my ear and placing it back on the cradle with the speaker turned on. I turned the engine over and shook on my seat belt. “Me and Alexandra decided to hide out. Remember that terrible place we went to in Blackpool?”
“How could I forget? It’s all you would talk about for weeks.”
“I’ll come get you. Whereabouts?” I drove away from the curb, signaling left and turning onto a side street that led me back toward the main road. “Chris?”
“I’ve got call waiting,” he said, then disappeared for a second. When he came back on, his voice was different. “That’s Nicola. I’ve got to go. Listen, don’t go there. Stay in Blackpool.”
“Nicola, is she okay?”
“I’ve got to go. Stay where you are. I will sort this out. Don’t go anywhere. I can handle this. Wait for me to deal with it. Don’t go alone.”
“Chris?” I shouted, but he was already gone. I pulled the car over again and tried to call him back but there was no answer.
I took the address from my pocket and looked at it again. The odds were that it was a bogus place—either it didn’t exist, or he wouldn’t be there.
Still, there was the feeling that I had come that far. I couldn’t turn back and hide in a bed-and-breakfast, waiting for it all to blow over.
It never would.
I had lived for a year with the weight of what we did in those woods.
I couldn’t do it any longer. I didn’t like the way Chris sounded and had a vision of him going off on his own, walking into a situation he couldn’t control. All in the mistaken belief that he could handle it.
That’s not how things would end. He didn’t know what he was dealing with.
I plugged the address into the GPS and drove off.
Blackshaw Moor was on the outskirts of the Peak District; a ninety-minute drive from Blackpool. Halfway through the journey, I stopped at the same truck stop I had met Geoff Welsh in Charnock Richard. Picked up a coffee and messaged Alexandra.
I’ve gone to finish this. I’ll try to come back. I can’t live in fear anymore. The silence has to stop. I love you. Always have and always will. X
I switched my phone off for the next hour, when the calls and messages wouldn’t stop. I didn’t look at any of them.
As I drove into the countryside, the roads narrowing and nature trying to claw back what man had lain, I felt my insides begin to churn. My heart was beating fast, as the road dipped and bent round, as I left the main highway and moved into denser and denser forest.
I had been there before.
I thought hard as I turned the radio down to try to hear my memories. There was something there, but I couldn’t grasp hold of it. On the periphery of my mind, refusing to share the answer with the rest of me. A bird swooped down past my side mirror, just as the tree line fell away and my ears popped as I went uphill.
The view was spectacular. Green and bronze fields as far as I could see. The hills turned into mountains it seemed, as the land opened up and nature won its battle. Trees in the distance swayed in the wind, as the road became smaller and stone walls became its border.
It was like nothing I’d ever seen before.
Only, I felt like I had. I felt like I had driven this same road and had the same reaction.
I continued on the narrow road, passing cows in the grasslands around me. Farther up, I noticed sheep on the hills, red numbers marked on their bodies. A few cars had pulled over, people in walking boots and hefty coats readying themselves for treks through the countryside.
I had seen all of these things. It was possible that I was simply merging it all with other places I’d visited over the years, but with every moment that went by, I couldn’t shake the feeling of flashing back, rather than forward.
Remembering, rather than foreshadowing.
I had to slow down for a couple of riders to trot past on horses. The quintessential English country pursuits on a single stretch of road. A few spots of rain fell on the windshield and turned the sky darker overhead. The clock on the dashboard clicked over to four o’clock, and I could feel the night drawing closer.
I didn’t want to be there without daylight.
The GPS told me it was less than a mile to my destination, as I took the right turn of a fork in the road and entered a path that didn’t seem to exist on the map. I could see the route on the map change, but the place was still marked. Driving became more difficult, as the disused ground beneath me became more unsuitable for the car. Potholes and broken concrete. Gravel replaced normal tarmac, as the GPS decided I’d arrived without anything in sight.
Only, I knew where I was going.
I followed the path only traveled by those who knew the place existed. The tree line returned, broken branches littered the way, and I felt myself ducking down every time I passed the thicker forest.
The road climbed higher over the final hundred or so yards of the journey, until it came to a stop.
I knew where I was.
>
I guided the car through a stone wall, with a narrow entranceway, until an old farmhouse was revealed. You could barely see the windows for the ivy, which was overgrown, creeping over every available surface. It clung to the brick, twisting and squeezing its prey.
Another view of the house came to mind. One that looked more inviting, coming to life in the summer sun and the sound of an excited child’s laughter.
I stopped the car, parking twenty feet from the front of the farmhouse.
The front door didn’t open at my arrival. There was no twitch of curtains, not that I’d have been able to see them anyway. The sky overhead drizzled down on my head as I got out of the car and heard my feet crunch on the gravel lying on the ground. To the side of the farmhouse, a crumbling structure of wood peeled and cracked, and a memory flashed in my head.
I was a child. Or a little older. I wasn’t sure. I was standing in the same place. The house was different in the blink of an eye. Filled with people I knew. Recognized.
Liked.
Loved.
It was a home.
I walked into the lean-to at the side of the house and ducked through a small opening. Inside, tiny pinpricks of light came through holes in the roof, not enough to make it completely light. Still, it didn’t matter.
There were candles dotted around the entire room.
Red candles. In storm lanterns. On every available surface.
And that memory came again. As if I’d stood there before. Seen the same things before. Only this time, it was more distorted. More blurry. My mind was filling in blanks that didn’t exist before.
I wasn’t breathing. The silence wasn’t silent.
There were sounds. All around me.
I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t speak.
I could only stand there, waiting.
And when the blow from behind me came, I welcomed the darkness that followed it.
1993
We were sitting watching WrestleMania. Chris had managed to get a VHS copy of it somehow—probably managed to convince his mum that he desperately needed it—so we had made a plan to have a sleepover at his house. It was July, last day of school, and we went straight around to his place.
It was ace.
“If Bret Hart puts Yokozuna in a sharpshooter, it wouldn’t hurt him at all. His legs are too fat.”
“The sharpshooter can hurt you whatever size you are,” I said, grabbing a black licorice from the pile of candy we had in front of us. “Anyway, he’s gonna get Banzai Dropped before that anyway.”
“You don’t think Bret will win? It’s WrestleMania…the good guy always has to win.”
“Not always.”
We watched it, giggling at the girls in bikinis that came to the ring with Lex Luger. Laughed until it hurt when Bobby Heenan came in riding a camel backward. Shouted along with the crowd when the Mega-Maniacs threw money into the air.
“We’re going to this farmhouse during summer vacation, and my mum said you could come too. Do you want to?”
“Yeah, should be okay. Where is it?”
“Somewhere called the Peak District. Never heard of it.”
“Neither have I.”
“It’s my nan’s place. Been in the family for years, but no one stays there anymore. I think they’re gonna try to sell it.”
That’s how things were organized between us. Easy and stress free. We spent every day together, it seemed. Usually at his house. Now, I would be going on vacation with him. I just hoped it would be soon. I didn’t fancy spending a week on my own during summer break.
“Do you think that good doesn’t always win?” Chris said, as the commentators built up to the main event on the screen. “You know…can bad win as well?”
“I guess,” I replied, then glugged down another glass of Coke. “It would set it up for SummerSlam.”
“I’m not talking about the wrestling.”
Something in Chris’s voice made me tear my attention away from the screen and look at him. He was staring out his bedroom window as the daylight outside began to give way to the summer evening.
“What do you mean then?”
The room became smaller and more quiet, as Chris shifted uncomfortably on the floor and away from me.
“Sometimes, I think there’s only bad, and there can’t really be any good without it, you know?”
I didn’t, but I nodded along anyway. Chris sometimes went quiet for long periods and I wondered what he was thinking half the time. I knew he didn’t like our status in school—that he would say things sometimes about what he wanted to do to those who picked on him.
“I just wish there were a way of getting the bad thoughts out,” Chris said, reaching over and picking up the last piece of candy in the pile and breaking a Refresher bar in half. He handed me the other piece. “If we did that, then it would be good all the time, don’t you think?”
I wasn’t sure what to think, and the match was about to start on the television. “Macho Man” Randy Savage in gold and white. Yokozuna following Mr. Fuji holding a Japanese flag. Bret Hart in his pink shades and pink-and-black costume. “Yeah, you’re right,” I said, leaning forward and readying myself for what was about to happen. Excited and nervous. “If we only had to do something a little bad to make things all good, then maybe everything would be great.”
“Exactly.”
I turned my attention back to the screen, but something next to the television made me frown. “What’s with the candle? Can I blow it out? I hate those things.”
“No,” Chris shouted, startling me into silence. He was on his feet, standing next to the burning red candle, a hand out as if he were protecting it. “You can’t mess with this. I need it.”
I shrugged, thinking he was just being a weirdo, as he sometimes was. He started murmuring something under his breath, but I was already engrossed in the wrestling. As he was, eventually. Sitting next to me and shouting and hollering alongside me. After it ended, we argued for hours about whether it was right that Hulk Hogan came in at the end of the show and won the title in like twenty seconds or something, after Bret Hart had been cheated. I forgot about the conversation that happened before it.
The words he’d said, as I stopped listening and tried to watch the main event.
“Here comes a candle…to chop off your head.”
Forty-Two
Flashes of darkness. Consciousness fading in and out. The sound of grunts and moans. My body being moved without my say. The smell of rain and mud in my nostrils. Trying to gain control of my senses but failing every time.
I could hear my own voice, but I didn’t think it was under my control.
The sky darkened each time I managed to open my eyes. I tried to move, but my limbs wouldn’t respond. My eyes felt covered in a film of fog.
My head was stuck in a vise. Squeezing it until all I could hear was the sound of my own pain. It had taken form and was now all there was. Pounding and throbbing.
It began to subside, as I felt the ground underneath me begin to solidify. The world was spinning, and I couldn’t move.
I can’t move.
I tried to speak, but all I heard was a gasp of agony. My head felt as if it were being split in half. I could taste copper in my mouth. Pennies. Blood. Wetness on my face. Sharp, stinging pain in my left temple.
All my senses returned in stages. I opened my eyes carefully, blinking rapidly in the darkness.
Someone was singing close to me. A rhyme that reminded me of being a child. Of primary school and tuneless songs.
Oranges and lemons…
There were pinpricks of light surrounding me. I could feel dampness and cool air rushing over me. I tried to speak again, but my throat simply croaked and snapped shut.
Say the bells of Saint Clements…
I moved my head,
and an explosion of pain came with it. It blurred, and I was above myself in a split second, hovering outside of my body and looking down.
You owe me five farthings…
It came to me piece by piece. A spark of recollection.
Of the smell of expensive aftershave. Drifting toward me from behind. Of someone standing over me as I struggled to stay conscious. A face so familiar suddenly becoming alien. Strange.
My friend becoming a stranger.
Then, there’s nothingness. A clean slate where memory should have been.
Say the bells of Saint Martin’s…
I opened my eyes and stared into the face of death. The smell became overpowering. Decay and putrefaction. Desolation and destruction.
She was lying on the ground a few yards away. Her face turned to mine. Eyes open and staring lifelessly. In the flickering light, I could see dirt and blood dried on her face and neck.
I didn’t want to believe it was her. I had failed her. Failed us all.
I should have known. I should have protected us.
Michelle began to move slowly. Being dragged away. A grunt of effort around the words in the song. I tried to follow where she went but couldn’t manage it.
Michelle was dead.
Stuart was dead.
And Chris was a stranger now.
That was when I saw them again. Red candles in storm lanterns. Two candles. Three. Four.
I continued to count them until I ran out of vision.
The slide and scrape of a body being dragged. A tune being hummed still. I didn’t remember the words past the opening lines.
A distinctive thump, as Michelle was dropped somewhere. Then, the sound of a shovel being driven into dirt and poured over her.
I could almost see it.
“Stop, please,” I heard myself whisper. The tune stopped and the sound of footsteps came closer to me.
I felt his presence over me and turned my head slowly to look up.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” Chris said, a look of anger and disappointment on his face. “You should have stayed away.”