The Missing

by Daisy Pearce

  Nancy gingerly took the knife and quickly sliced into her own palm, drawing a shallow, hair-thin scratch before hurriedly passing the knife to me and closing her fist.

  Charlie lifted her voice. ‘Quiet Mary, can you hear us?’

  I could see blood smeared on the knife handle and absent-mindedly wiped it clean on my jeans. Is this what Edie did with them that night? A blood bond between friends? Perhaps they were just pushing me to see how far I’d go. This is madness, I thought, but I held my palm out anyway, feeling the blade open the skin there just above the mount of Venus. The pain was sharp and exhilarating, making me gasp. A silver cloud of my breath rose like a ghost. Blood seeped through the tear in my skin. Nancy took my bloodied hand in hers. It felt slippery and warm. A wave of dizziness, a warm tide, swept over me. I closed my eyes, feeling heady. What was in that pill?

  ‘The veil is thinning. Let our blood command you to rise, rise!’

  I opened my eyes to see Charlie with her bloodied hand spread against the bark of the old yew. Moya did the same, and Nancy next, urging me on. The trunk was sheened almost lilac-coloured and satin-soft with age. Huge, sombre-looking, like something primordial, the bark so thick we couldn’t comfortably fit in a circle around it. Instead we stood in a line, all four of us, heads bowed, hearts racing, palms pressed flat against the tree. When I heard the tapping at first I thought it was coming from somewhere beyond the tree. My mind turned to the gateway Charlie had spoken about, the one that led to worlds beyond this one. A jolt of fear rushed through me, brief and bright as a spark.

  One, two, three, four,

  Rattlesnake hunters knocking at your door.

  Give them meat and give them bone,

  And pray that they leave you alone.

  The air was cold against my teeth. I felt that wave again, building, building beneath me. It was like too much caffeine, a warm rush, sharp and anxious at the edges. When I opened my eyes it looked like there were shimmering auras around the Rattlesnakes, like the one I could see around the moon. I smiled at them, these funereal girls with their ebony plumage.

  ‘Now what?’ I heard myself say.

  ‘Quiet,’ Charlie said, her hand held up. In that moment, stiff and tall and regal in her black fur collar and silk slip, she looked like a murderous queen. ‘Do you hear it? Samantha, do you hear that?’

  I strained to listen but the blood was rushing in my ears so fast it sounded like a high wind. I looked over at Moya, her eyes white and round in the darkness. Then I heard it. A rattling, like stones being shaken in a hand. Old bones knitting together. My temples pounded. I itched all over. My muscles tensed, like fight or flight.

  ‘I hear it,’ I said.

  Something sailed out of the darkness, a small white object, striking the ground near our feet. It was a pebble. Water-washed smooth. Then another, from out there in the dark. It rolled to a stop in the grass.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Nancy called out in a quavering voice, and at the same time Charlie intoned, ‘It’s her. Quiet Mary. She’s coming.’

  I listened, straining to see into the blackness, where the frost had laced everything an icy blue. Then the cracking sound of branches broken underfoot. Someone was back there, in the shadows. I saw a movement, a shadow detaching from the black trunks of the trees, receding further into the dark. I didn’t even think about it. I peeled my sticky palm from the trunk and called out her name.

  ‘Edie!’

  My heart was instantly racing, my pupils were wide black moons. God, what was in that pill? I dashed into the shadows under the trees, moonlight speckling the ground like scattered silver pennies. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust but when they did I caught sight of a hooded figure a little way ahead of me.

  ‘Edie!’

  Nothing. I forced myself to stop running, to catch my hoarse breath. My lungs burned but I was still jittery with energy. I turned and turned again, feeling as if I was being circled. Eyes in the gloom, watching me. I heard the telltale rustling of her pushing through thicket and I rushed ahead towards the sound, heels drumming up clods of earth.

  ‘Hey!’ I shouted, as branches tangled themselves in my hair. ‘Hey, Edie, wait! It’s Mum! Don’t run, Edie!’

  There, to my left. She’d feinted, swerving away from me. I turned sharply, feeling a branch whip across my cheek. The drumming of my feet was a cadence, her name, over and over, Ee-dee, Ee-dee, Ee-dee. I must be catching her up. My arms pistoned at my sides. I wanted to tell her to stop running, I just wanted to talk to her, I just wanted to explai— whumph! Something slammed into my shoulder with a flat whacking sound, knocking me off balance. I fell with an ugly grunt, tasting mud and dirt. A stitch roared in my side like boiling oil. For a moment I wondered if I’d been shot. Then I saw that hooded figure – Edie? – standing a little way off with something in its hand. A stick? A bat? I propped myself up, reaching out to her. There was so much I wanted to tell her. About how I’d missed her, how things would be different now, how she could have all the freedom and boyfriends she wanted if she’d just come home. I don’t mind, I wanted to tell her, but my voice snagged in my throat. I don’t mind the pain, Edie.

  ‘Please don’t hurt me,’ she said.

  I blinked. Her voice was deep and gluey with fear. No, I told myself, not her voice. Not Edie. My breathing was returning to normal but my right side was numb all the way to the shoulder blades. Whatever she’d hit me with was going to leave bruises like night-blooming flowers on my skin. My feet scrambled in the dirt, suddenly cold and stiff.

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ I told her.

  The figure moved forward a little, into a space where I could see her more clearly. She was cautious, almost hopping from foot to foot as if she would take off if I made any sudden moves, like a startled rabbit. ‘We’ve got a rabbit problem,’ Peter Liverly had said to me, and the rabbits in his bag had been bloody and stripped down to the raw meat. The smell of their tiny deaths was everywhere.

  ‘Why’d you hit me?’ I said, struggling to get to my feet. ‘I think you’ve broken my collarbone.’

  The hood slipped down to reveal an angular, bony face beneath a scrawl of dark curls. I saw fear etched on to its male features, drawn with a quick, sure hand. Disappointment settled in my stomach, plummeting like lead. I told him again I wouldn’t hurt him. He didn’t reply, simply pointed to me with a shaking finger. I looked down in wonder at the stiletto knife, clutched in my hand. I hadn’t even been aware I’d pulled it out. For a moment neither of us spoke.

  ‘I wouldn’t have hurt you, William,’ I said, although I didn’t know if that was true. Why had I drawn it if I hadn’t been prepared to use it? More to the point, a suspicious little voice in my head asked, why did you draw it if you thought it was Edie you were chasing?

  ‘You come near me with that, you’ll get done for GBH,’ he said. He had his breath back now, the fear replaced with a hostile expression I was more familiar with.

  ‘I’m sorry – I – I don’t know—’ I stood up, still holding the knife, my other hand reaching for my shoulder, which felt as though it was embedded with hot splinters.

  ‘Carrying a fucking knife,’ he muttered, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe it. He hawked a mouthful of phlegm and spat on the ground between us. ‘No one told me you’d be fucking tooled up.’

  He was tall and slight, like a stick of hazel. I didn’t know how I could have thought it was Edie. Rupert would say, ‘The mind sees what it wants to see.’ I laughed when I saw what he’d hit me with: his skateboard, gripped tightly beneath his arm. I bet if I went for him he’d have used it again.

  ‘You’re bleeding,’ he said.

  I looked at my other hand, the maroon stain it had left on my grey sweater.

  I laughed, shrill. ‘It’s fine. It’s nothing. I cut my palm open. God.’ I ran my hand over my sweaty face. He was looking at me, concerned. I must have looked like a crazy woman. Maybe I was. Maybe this was it, the slow burn of insanity. It started in the
dark with the frost and the rabbits, the candles guttering on graves. ‘William—’ I said. I thought about reaching out to him, but which hand to use? The one smeared with blood or the one holding the knife? I settled for taking a step towards him. He was looking away, past me, into the dark, somewhere distant and cold and underwater.

  ‘They’re not nice, those girls. Rattlesnakes. You shouldn’t hang around with them, Mrs Hudson. They don’t want to help you.’

  ‘You sound like my brother.’ I laughed. It hurt my chest, my shoulder. ‘I could say the same to you, of course. Besides, I have to try to find Edie. The police aren’t doing their job, so I have to.’

  ‘Is that why you came to our house and made my mum cry?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to do that, William. That wasn’t my intention. I just wanted to talk to your dad.’

  ‘Why?’

  I sighed. I’d no reason to keep Edward Thorn’s secrets but William was just a kid, and he looked as scared as I was. ‘Because your dad knows a lot of people. Important people. I thought he might be able to help me.’

  He scuffed his foot on the ground. His head dipped. ‘I wish she’d come back,’ he said. ‘Edie, I mean. We weren’t serious, me and her. But I still wish she hadn’t gone, you know?’

  ‘Did Edie know that?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘That it wasn’t serious?’

  ‘Huh?’ He sounded genuinely confused. I felt a ripple of that old familiar anger, as sleek and sinuous as a cat coiling about my legs. I tightened my grip on the knife. The buzzing in my head was making it hard to think straight. I stepped forward.

  ‘Did my daughter know you weren’t serious about her? Or did you lead her on, the way all the others did?’

  ‘Mrs Hudson, listen – I’m – I’m not here to—’

  ‘Why are you here, William? It’s a cold, dark night in a graveyard. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Ch-Charlie.’

  ‘Charlie?’

  ‘Yeah. She told me it would be funny if I hid in the dark and threw those stones. To frighten you. She wanted to make you believe in Quiet Mary the same way they all do.’

  William swallowed noisily. He flattened himself against the tree behind him, his fear of me real and almost comical; large round eyes, slack jaw. It came from him in waves. I’d forgotten that he was just a kid, that he was just as scared and confused as I was. I took another step forward. I looked down at the knife in my hand. I should put it away, I thought, but I didn’t. I could feel my fast pulse in the tips of my fingers, the cushion of my palm. The pearl handle felt cool to the touch, the blade a delicious weight, smooth and clean. I liked the way light ran along it like water.

  ‘I swear on my mother’s life, Mrs Hudson, I don’t know anything about your daughter!’

  ‘Shh,’ I told him, pressing the knife against his skinny throat. He whimpered. I pressed the tip in the soft spot behind his earlobe, nicking the skin there in a series of little cuts, like stitches. I was numb, amputated. It was like I’d stepped outside my body.

  ‘Please!’ he whispered frantically. ‘Please don’t do this . . .’

  Suddenly I heard voices, moving through the trees. Low rustling sounds, the scuffle of leaves, someone calling my name. William slumped a little and I looked at the blood on the tip of my knife with mounting horror. Had I done that to him? Turning round, I could see torchlight slicing through the dark, hear Tony Marston’s familiar, dense tone saying, Come on, Samantha, come on out of there. William shook his head, muttering, Oh my God, and all the while I felt hollow, scooped out on the inside and left like a cave, dark and wet and empty. The frost would creep over me in the night like white lace. In the morning I’d shatter as the sun rose, my frozen body blown to the wind like flakes of snow.

  Later, in the back of the police car, I felt the first warmth creeping back into my fingers and toes. Tony turned down the radio, which had already begun to play Christmas songs. He rubbed his forehead, flicking the indicator on as he made a right turn.

  ‘What’s going on, Sam?’

  I stared at him in the rear-view mirror, unsmiling.

  He sighed again. ‘You pull a weapon on a minor, you’ve been taking God knows what, you’re covered in blood – just help me out here, please.’

  ‘He said she made him do it. Charlie.’

  ‘I know, he told me. Poor kid’s terrified. Some girl put him up to coming into the graveyard to give you a fright. I don’t know what’s wrong with people. The world’s gone to hell.’

  The rumble of the engine, the drone of the heaters. I tipped my head backward and leaned into the seat, suddenly sleepy.

  ‘I mean, you’re lucky you’re not under arrest for that knife.’

  ‘It’s an antique,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Yeah? Well, so am I.’

  ‘How did you know I was there?’

  ‘Your brother Rupert called me. He’s worried about you. Said you were going off to do some sort of voodoo with Edie’s friends.’

  ‘Ah.’

  We let a minute or two pass. He cleared his throat. ‘Those girls aren’t going to help you find her, Sam. They’re as bad as the psychics that keep calling. You stay away from people like that. And you stay away from the Thorn family. All of them.’

  The click of a lighter. He passed me a lit cigarette. ‘Smoke that and stay awake. I don’t want you burning the car down.’

  ‘He was frightened of me.’

  ‘I’m not fucking surprised. You had a knife on him.’

  ‘He smelled bad.’

  ‘Yup. The whole place smelled bad. We’ve had complaints. Dead rabbits everywhere. That man, Liverly, he’s gone to stay with his son. Indefinitely.’ His eyes flicked to me in the mirror again. ‘There’s been a bit of a backlash since he was taken in for questioning.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Sam, listen. I know how much you’re hurting. I know it’s hard for you to feel like you’re doing nothing, but this – this isn’t helping find your daughter.’

  ‘How would you know what’s helping? You’ve given up.’

  Tony looked pained but said nothing as he pulled up outside my house. He switched the engine off and the two of us sat quietly in the dark for a minute, smoking. I saw the curtains of the house twitch over the road. I felt like waving at them. Fuck, I felt like flashing them. Top up, tits out. Come and see this, Graham, that woman over the road has finally lost her mind. Samantha Hudson, brought home in a police car. It wasn’t the first time a police car had drawn up outside our house but usually it was Edie inside, clothes ripped from fighting or banned from whichever shop she’d stolen from. ‘Can’t you keep her?’ I’d joked as the officer had brought her in, except, like every good joke, there was a hint of truth to it, wasn’t there? Pleading, almost.

  Finally, Tony said, ‘Samantha, do you remember what it was like to be fifteen?’

  I nodded. I was crying again; I didn’t know where these tears had sprung from. I was like a leaky tap these days, crying in jarring fits and starts until my eyes were red and sore.

  ‘Me too. It’s confusing. All those hormones. All that Brylcreem. I used so much of that stuff my mother would put sheets on the backs of the armchairs to stop me staining them. I was out of school, working in a factory, crazy with lust. You remember how it was?’

  ‘I remember.’ I’d been sixteen years old when I lost my virginity to a young man named Alfie Burrows who lived next door. We did it in his treehouse at the height of summer and played Alice Cooper records when his parents weren’t home. I told him when I grew up I wanted to be a botanist. He said he would be a famous footballer. That autumn he moved away and never wrote to me again. One year later I would meet a man called Mark Hudson at the bus stop outside the greyhound racing who would later breathlessly promise not to ejaculate inside me but do so anyway, rolling a cigarette on his hairy stomach afterwards and saying, ‘Women never get pregnant if they’re on top anyway, don’t worry.’

  ‘Teenagers are st
upid,’ Tony said, interrupting my memory. ‘They’re dickheads. They make shitty decisions and think they know it all. I know she was a handful, Sam. I know she made your life hard sometimes. But at the heart of it that’s all Edie is, a typical teenager. She’s made a bad choice and she’s probably somewhere regretting it right now and trying to figure out how to come home. All right?’

  ‘I don’t know if I believe that any more, Tony.’

  Over the road, the neighbours had come out on their doorsteps, arms folded. Peering into the street. I lifted my hand and waved imperiously, like the Queen herself.

  Frances – Now

  St Mary de Castro is just outside the centre of town, ten minutes from the high street. The building itself is tall and imposing, looking more like a red-brick castle than a church. It’s modern, too, tall and airy and spacious, without that perfume of old churches: damp stone, old books, mildew. The churchyard itself is around the back, through a pair of rusted iron gates. As you step inside, a little sign has been erected to show you what wildlife you might see. Slow worms, finches, rabbits and mice. The sky is hazy and dull with a prickle of heat in it that suggests a summer storm. There is no one else around as I make my way down the churchyard path. I’d expected it to be hard work, but I find the grave after a few minutes’ searching. It’s by a large holly tree that’s ringed off by an old metal fence. Edward Thorn, 1935–1997. Steadfast husband and father. ‘I am nearer God’s heart in the garden than anywhere else on earth.’

  There’s a tangle of ivy over his grave, and flowers, long dead, tied to the headstone. The cellophane crinkles noisily in the breeze. Alex must have been here, or Mimi maybe. Whoever it was, they haven’t visited for a while. By the looks of things, no one has. I straighten up, knees popping, wondering idly if William will come and visit the grave before we head back to Swindon. I doubt it. William rarely mentions his father, except to suggest he was weak and somehow contemptible. My mind keeps circling back to the crow that flew into the greenhouse roof yesterday afternoon, cracking its skull wide open on the glass. ‘A bad omen,’ Alex had said. ‘It foretells a death.’ Of course I’d laughed, but now, standing here in this churchyard, surrounded by the headstones of people who once lived and breathed and loved, their remains feeding back into the earth – bonemeal, I think, my stomach queasy – it’s harder to dismiss the omen of a death, even one heralded by a bird.