The Missing

by Daisy Pearce

  I watched as the groups wove among each other along the street, joining and detaching like shoals. I hung at the back of the biggest one, trying to shrink myself beneath the sheet, hoping no-one would turn around and say, ‘Who the hell are you?’ But nobody did. I felt a tug as some little girl grabbed my dust sheet and pulled at it, but she laughed and spirited herself away and I managed to gather it back over myself before I was revealed. As we approached Thorn House, I experienced a moment of apprehension. What if Edward doesn’t answer the door? What will you do then? Take a hostage? You’ll get yourself arrested. Think, Samantha. Go home. Don’t do this. Don’t.

  A little zombie stood on tiptoe to ring the bell but the door was already opening. They’d seen us coming. I hesitated, trying to stand behind one of the men at the back of the group despite the fact that my face was covered. Edward stood there beaming, a bowl of sweets held in one of his large, flat hands. I felt for my knife in my pocket. I had to be careful. I didn’t want to scare these kids.

  ‘Well, look at this!’ he exclaimed. ‘I see a Dracula and a mermaid and a scary-looking monster and, hello, who’s this?’

  ‘Frankenstein,’ a small voice said, dipping a hand in the bowl.

  Edward’s smile broadened even more. ‘Well, of course, Frankenstein was the name of the Genevan student but we’ll overlook that for now, shall we?’

  There was a ripple of laughter as he handed out more sweets. Some of the children were already running off. One of the fathers called out, ‘Mind the road!’

  There was a soft click as I released the blade from the handle. ‘Happy Halloween!’ the little zombie yelled, taking his mother’s hand. They were starting to disperse. I moved forward, slowly, the dust sheet trailing on the ground behind. Edward looked up, slightly puzzled but smiling.

  ‘And who are you? The ghost of Christmas past? Here you go then. Even the adults need a sweet from time to t—’

  His voice dropped off as I grabbed his hand, jerking him towards me. Startled, he dropped the bowl and it clattered to the ground, sweets spilling everywhere. My adrenaline had sharpened my focus and I pressed the tip of the blade into the webbing of skin between the thumb and forefinger. He yelped.

  ‘You’re coming over the road to my car,’ I said. ‘And you’re going to do it quickly.’

  ‘Edward?’ That was Mimi, walking into the hallway. She took in the scene, her husband standing too close to a ghost in a dirty white sheet with cigarette burns for eyes. She saw the spilled sweets, the bowl broken neatly into two halves. Her face flickered with worry.

  ‘It’s all right, love,’ Edward said, his voice slightly strangled. ‘You need to get another bowl before the next lot arrive. I’m just going to sort something out. Go on. Go on, dear.’

  ‘Alex wants another hot dog,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Tell him it’s fine. It’s fine, Mimi. Tell him he can hold the fort till I get back.’

  I increased the pressure on the blade so that the tip pressed into his skin and pulled him towards me so that we could stumble together like two drunks, out the driveway and over the road. When we reached my car I opened the passenger door first and ushered him in. He still looked pale but had regained some of his composure and did so gracefully, even leaning over to unlock the driver’s-side door for me. I pulled off the dust sheet and slid in, snapping off the radio.

  He looked down at the knife in my hand. ‘Carrying something like that around is going to get you in trouble one day,’ he said.

  I’d never really thought about it like that. I’d always thought of it as protection. ‘Just tell me. Just tell me and I’ll go. Why were you at the churchyard on the night of the ninth?’

  He sighed, long and loud. ‘I’ll tell you what I told the police. It isn’t unusual to see my car down at St Mary’s. I do a lot of work there, both for the youth group and the preservation of the woodland on the church ground. I raised a lot of money to get the roof of that church repaired just last year. I’m there a lot. But I wasn’t doing any of that on that particular night. I parked there, yes. But I was visiting an address nearby.’

  ‘Go on.’

  He looked out through the windscreen. ‘Mimi and I, we’ve been together a long time. Like most people our age we married young and kids came not long after. So sometimes it’s difficult to . . . keep the momentum going. We haven’t told the boys that we’ve been having marriage counselling because it’s not for them to know, but that’s how things are and that’s what we’re doing. Once a fortnight we visit a woman down there who has a studio in her home and she talks us through our problems. Is that enough information for you? Or would you like all the gory details?’

  ‘I thought—’

  ‘I know what you thought. You thought someone took your girl, maybe by force. But if you think that, you don’t know her at all, do you?’ He leaned closer. ‘Mimi liked her a lot, your daughter. Said being headstrong and stubborn were qualities that would stand her in good stead as a woman. She never had a problem with Edie in class. So maybe the problem wasn’t Edie, have you thought about that?’ His eyes dropped down to my hand again, the one still holding the knife. ‘Maybe the problem was you, Samantha.’

  He climbed out the car and walked over the road without looking back, a tall stooped man with grey in his hair and a smile for everyone. A man who championed good causes. I closed my eyes, the shock of his words rippling through me like a soundwave.

  By the time the Rattlesnakes emerged through the gate on Monday afternoon it was gone four, and the light was already fading from the sky. All three girls were present this time, crossing the road hand in hand like children. I noticed Charlie had a black beret on her head, slanted sideways over one eye. Everything about her was matt black, deep as a shadow. Next to her, tiny Moya and skinny ghost-girl Nancy just seemed to fade away. Charlie smiled when she saw me, one hand reaching into the pocket of her leather jacket to pull out a packet of cigarettes. Her lips were a deep, vampish red.

  ‘You want one, Mrs Hudson?’ She extended a cigarette towards me. The girls crowded round. It was like being mugged by shadows.

  ‘No,’ I told her flatly. ‘I want to do the ritual. Tomorrow. Full moon, right? I want to do it exactly the way you did it when Edie disappeared. Everything the same.’

  She arched an eyebrow, inhaling deeply on her cigarette. ‘Well, I don’t know about that. We’ll need to buy some stuff.’

  ‘Like what?’ The answer didn’t matter. I was already reaching for my purse.

  Charlie pretended to think, rolling her eyes. ‘Uh, we’ll need to buy some Thunderbird.’

  ‘That’s alcohol,’ Moya chimed.

  Charlie flashed her a look. ‘She knows that, dumbass. We’ll need money for candles too. And a little bit of dope.’

  I stared at her. She stared back. Flat, confrontational. She wanted me to say no. She wanted me to fight her, to fight for dominance. Not going to happen, honey, I thought as I handed over twenty pounds.

  ‘What time?’ I said. My heart was racing. Hope, the flame sparking in the cave. A pale light, distant and wavering as though in a breeze.

  Charlie looked at the others and then turned back to me, making my money disappear into the pocket of her shirt.

  ‘Eight o’clock. When the church bells toll, come through the gate. You’ll find us round the grave.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Quiet Mary. You’ll see it. We’ll lead you there.’

  She turned away and I noticed her leather jacket had an emblem drawn on it, an ouroboros with the word Rattlesnakes printed round it in a circle. The other girls chimed their goodbyes, turning away from me in a sooty flare of chiffon and leather, black winged birds from a fairy tale. I caught Nancy’s eye – they were such a pale blue they were almost transparent – and she immediately dropped her gaze. She was wearing a satin ribbon choker round her neck and had a crucifix drawn in felt-tip on the back of her hand, the ink slightly smudged.

  ‘Nancy,’ I said, but she hu
rried away from me, head down. She knows something, I thought. I made a note to try to talk to her the next night, to get her away from the group. I’d shake it out of her if I had to.

  ‘You must be mad, doing this,’ I said, not caring that I was talking aloud, that people were looking at me and sniggering, hands over their mouths.

  What if it could bring her back? I’d said to Rupert and that was my hope, that was my flame in the dark. But that’s the thing about hope: it doesn’t vanish. Not ever, not quite. It swells and shrinks like a tumour, turning the blood black in the process, ruining you. Even when I told people that I’d lost hope, I knew it was there somewhere, glimmering with the bright intensity of a comet. It filled me with excitement or despair or dread and yet even when I knew it was no good, I wanted it. Hope is a vice. It refuses to be snuffed out. I hate it. I love it.

  At two minutes to eight the next evening I arrived at St Mary de Castro feeling sick and anxious. The ground was gilded with an early frost, glittering in the moonlight. The moon itself was fat and waxy and ringed with colour. We’d inched into November and the air was singed with the scent of bonfires and ice. I breathed in, let the cold sharpen my lungs. I couldn’t stop thinking about Edie’s winter coat hanging on the hook at home where she left it. She’ll be cold, I thought, and suddenly there was a stone in my throat, a rock, and it was difficult to breathe. She’ll be cold.

  The bells chimed and I walked through the iron gate without hesitation. Since he’d been taken in for questioning, Peter Liverly hadn’t been up to the job of caretaking, and now the gates were left open most nights. His house, the little bungalow just beyond the old stone wall of the churchyard, had been empty since his release. Someone said he’d had hate mail. Another that masked gangs had been knocking on his windows at night, frightening him. We’d all seen the words that had been printed in thick black letters across his living room windows where the curtains hung drawn and still: pedo scum. I hadn’t seen the photos the police had found when they’d searched the church hall, the ones he’d taken of Edie and the other Rattlesnakes. Were they evidence? Would he be given them back? I’d have liked to find out where he’d gone. He didn’t deserve comfort. He didn’t deserve shelter. He killed rabbits and he stalked teenage girls.

  It was dark here, round the back of the church, despite the full moon. The street lights didn’t penetrate the trees and the frost gave everything a pale blue glow that crunched underfoot. In the darkness beside me, something rustled. I told myself it was the wind sifting through the dead leaves. There was still that wretched smell of rot and blight and I was walking carefully to avoid stepping on any rabbit remains. Up ahead I could see movement, the dim glow of candles in glass jars, the glowing orange heads of handfuls of incense sticks jammed into the soft ground. I headed towards it, drawing my collar up against the chill. There was the police tape, fallen into disarray. The night air was still and brittle as the ice beneath my feet. In my back pocket, the reassuring weight of my knife.

  As I drew closer, I saw Nancy sitting cross-legged on the ground. She was wearing gloves with the fingers cut off and holding a bottle in her hands. She was laughing too loud, her cheeks and eyes bright. She was drunk. Half the bottle was already gone. It’ll make her sick, drinking so fast. A rookie mistake. I saw Charlie encircled in a violet haze of smoke, the resinous smell of dope scenting the air. She was wearing a lace veil over her face, black of course, like a Victorian spiritualist. She motioned to me with a wave of her hand. I caught the glint of her smile through the darkness.

  ‘Where’s Moya?’ I said, looking around.

  Nancy looked up at me, her lips wet. ‘She’s not coming.’

  ‘Oh, shush,’ Charlie purred. ‘She’ll be here.’ Her head turned towards me. ‘She has very strict parents. They wouldn’t let her within ten feet of us.’

  ‘She lies,’ Nancy laughed, digging furrows into the earth with her heels. ‘She tells them she’s coming to the youth club.’ She hiccupped, burying her chin into the fur collar of her coat. ‘I tell my parents I’m at Charlie’s.’

  ‘And I tell my parents I’m working at the pizza place in Brighton,’ Charlie said. She was a little unsteady on her feet, dancing a slow waltz. She exhaled smoke towards the stars. ‘They think I’m employee of the month.’

  Nancy burst out laughing. The bottle fell from her hands and Charlie called her a clumsy bitch, which made her laugh even harder. There was something desperate about the sound of it, as if at any moment it could dissolve into tears.

  I turned to Charlie. ‘So teenagers lie to their parents? You think that’s new?’

  Charlie lifted the veil slowly from her face, casting it in elegant shadow.

  ‘I think it’s appropriate,’ she says. ‘You want one of these?’

  I looked down at her outstretched hand. Pills. Small and diamond-shaped. I reached out my hand and then hesitated. What would Edie have done? That’s an easy answer, I told myself almost immediately. She’d have taken one, no question.

  ‘What are they?’

  Charlie smiled, her head tilted to one side. ‘My little brother’s got ADHD. This is what he takes for it.’ She lowered her voice and leaned closer. ‘It’ll just help you focus, that’s all. You did say you wanted the ritual done right.’

  I took one from her and held my hand out for the wine. It was warm and sweet and cheap-tasting, but it washed the pill down. Charlie laid a tablet on her tongue and grinned at me.

  ‘That’s my girl,’ she purred.

  I looked down and saw the candles in jam jars at the compass points of Mary Sayers’s grave.

  ‘What’s so special about this grave?’ I asked, squinting at the headstone. Lost to the Waters, She will Return.

  ‘It’s Quiet Mary,’ Nancy said, passing the bottle to Charlie, who wiped the neck with her sleeve. ‘We’ve been trying to summon her.’

  ‘We have summoned her. I’ve seen her,’ Charlie said. ‘One time I even spoke to her.’

  ‘What did she say?’ I asked, lighting a cigarette. I wanted some more of that awful wine.

  ‘She said, “The water’s so cold, Charlie, I can’t breathe. Help me. It’s so dark down here. Help me.”’

  I wished she’d lift the veil again. I didn’t like not being able to see her face.

  ‘Tell her what she looked like!’ Nancy hissed, her eyes round with awe. She swigged from the bottle again.

  Charlie stepped closer to me, pale hands swimming before her. ‘Like the fish had been eating her. She had pondweed coming out of her eyes.’

  Nancy was leaning back against the grave, listening with the rapt attention of a child to a bedtime story. I had a feeling this was one she’d heard before.

  ‘Quiet Mary found a way back,’ Charlie said into the darkness. ‘She found a path into our world and we can open the gateway just enough for her to come through.’

  ‘Where’s the gateway?’

  ‘Behind you.’

  The dope made my head swim a little as I turned slowly, aware suddenly of how fast my heart was beating, my fingers twitching with my pulse. I was nervous but there was also a flash of excitement that ran through me like a shiver. I wanted to see what would happen. I wanted to feel how Edie must have felt. The way the night had stretched out for her.

  ‘It’s just a tree.’

  ‘That’s right. The tree is the gateway.’

  I stamped my feet, urged my hands to be still. ‘Shall we get on with it?’

  ‘What about Moya?’ Nancy said.

  ‘We have to wait. It has to be four. An even number.’ Charlie again. I wondered how she knew so much about rituals and spell-casting and then I remembered someone telling me that all magic relied upon was the strength of your belief in it. Everything else was window-dressing.

  Charlie suddenly sighed dramatically, hunching her shoulders as if in pain. She stretched out a hand to me, black-tipped nails over the cold stone.

  ‘She’s waiting for us,’ she whispered. ‘I can feel her prese
nce drawing closer.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  Charlie didn’t answer. Behind her I saw movement and for a moment my heart rose into my mouth, my vision blurred. It was her! But no, it was just Moya, walking at a brisk pace, long coat dwarfing her small frame.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ she said breathlessly. ‘My dad’s a miserable bastard. Am I too late?’

  Everyone looked to Charlie, even me. It’s a pantomime, I told myself, but I couldn’t help feeling swept along with it – the candles, the graveside, the smell of old stones and frost as sharp as blades. The Rattlesnakes themselves looked like psychopomps, black shrouded creatures taking the newly deceased into the afterlife. I shuddered again. It’s the cold, I told myself. I took another sip of the wine.

  I helped Nancy to her feet and we wordlessly drew closer to the large yew. Moya took my hand on one side, Nancy on the other. We formed a loose circle in the darkness, the candlelight making our faces stutter and seize. What would Rupert think if he could see me now? I wondered, and immediately dismissed the thought from my mind. I had to do this right. I had to get into Edie’s frame of mind. I had to find some trace of her, anything. Rupert had told me it was desperation, and I’d answered simply, ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Mrs Hudson? Samantha?’

  The girls were all looking at me expectantly, except of course for Charlie with the veil obscuring her face. Her head was turned towards me, though, and her voice was as smooth as antique silks.

  ‘We need your knife. Hand it over, please.’

  I hesitated. Moya squeezed my hand. Go ahead, it’s okay. As I passed it to Charlie I couldn’t help saying, ‘Be careful with that, it’s sharp.’

  ‘I should hope so,’ she whispered, and took it from me, expertly flicking it out and turning it so the blade caught the candlelight. She extended her other arm and slowly carved a line in the skin of her palm. Blood welled to the surface, deep and rich and slow-moving. I stared at her in horror as she passed the knife to Nancy and said, ‘Your turn.’