by Daisy Pearce
Alex pulls something from his pocket. It is my knife. I shrink back against the chair again. Mimi’s head slumps forward.
‘What are you doing?’ I babble. ‘Alex, what’s going on?’
He approaches me silently, with a calm confidence that sets my nerves singing. Alex moves behind me and I’m convinced he is going to slit my throat. My heart gears up. I drum my feet on the floor, I gnash my teeth. It’s feral, this feeling. I want to bite him. I switch my head from side to side and then try to bolt. It’s useless; the chair lifts with me, strapped to my back, and I half-run, crabwise, towards the door, hair hanging in my face, breath pinched in my tight chest.
He tackles me as I reach the doorway, pulling me back towards him so roughly I cry out. He yanks the chair back and me with it, head whiplashing as he sets me back on the floor. From this angle I can see Mimi’s prone body, the way her chin rests on her breastbone, eyes open and vacant.
Alex sets a firm hand on my shoulder. ‘Hold still. I can’t do it if you keep struggling.’
I hear the soft chink as the knife slides open. I’ve handled that knife often enough to be able to recall the way the mother-of-pearl handle will be cool to the touch, the satisfying sheen of the blade, the whisper of it. I would never have hurt her, I tell the voice in my head, and it replies, I know.
‘Hold still, I said!’ Alex presses against the chair and I slump forward, exhausted. He is cutting into the place where the ropes are tight across my back. I feel the heat of his hands, the coolness of the blade on my feverish skin. I let my breath fill my lungs, close my eyes. I want to tell him to be quick.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I can’t untie the knots. You’ve struggled too much and pulled them too tight. I have to cut you free.’
My arms are shrieking with pain after being pinned behind my back for so long. There is a crimson tint to my vision, as if my eye has filled with blood.
‘What have you done to her?’
‘Sedated her. She has a lot of medications; it’s easy to get them mixed up. Can’t think how they got added to her pot of tea, though,’ he remarks, drily. ‘I’m sure she’ll wake up in an hour or so. Here.’
I hear the fssst sound of the knife sliding against the ropes. I’m waiting, tensed. Alex’s hand grips my shoulder. His fingernails are rimed with dirt.
‘Did you do it, Alex? Did you push her down the stairs?’
‘Hold still.’
‘Alex? Is she right? Did you do it?’
Silence. I can feel the bonds weakening, the blood flow into my arms increasing in warm waves. The ropes slither away from me, ends frayed where Alex has cut them. When I turn to look at him he is folding the knife and holding it out to me.
For a moment I just look at it blankly. ‘Alex, did you push her? Yes or no?’
‘We have to get to the churchyard.’
My eyes widen. ‘Frances?’
‘Plan B.’ Alex nods. ‘He’s going to kill her.’
Frances – Now
The throb in my jaw has settled to a low hum, the blood drying in streaks all the way down to my neck. I am thinking about our old life. Back then I thought the worst of our problems was William’s gambling and my nagging boredom. How little I knew.
It is getting dark. The shadows stretch and shiver, the sky turning from peach to pink. A small electric light, designed to look like an old Victorian gaslight, hangs outside the back of the church. Moths, drawn to the soft glow, circle and flutter beneath the bulb.
We pass the grave of Mary Sayers, also known as Quiet Mary, who went into the river and never came out, just like Edward Thorn, pale and drowned. We stop when we reach the large yew, the one known as Quiet Mary’s Tree. The trunk is thick and ridged with scars, deep fractures splitting the wood. Sap has oozed and trickled and hardened. Beneath my feet the floor is soft with fallen needles.
‘You know what Peter Liverly once told us?’ William says, touching the trunk. ‘He said, “The roots of the yew are very fine and will grow through the eyes of the dead to prevent them seeing their way back to the world of the living.”’
He holds his hand out for me to take. I think about running. The shadows swell where the trees huddle close. I might be able to hide, hunkered down in one of the thickets back there. I might get all the way to the wall, find my way back to the hole they created, Squeezeguts. I might even be able to get round the church to the front gate and flag a car down. I might.
I take his hand. I don’t know why, but I do. Part of me still thinks he won’t hurt me. Part of me wants to see what he is going to show me. That’s the worst of all. I want to see.
‘Here.’ He hands me a small pocket torch. ‘Switch it on.’
William approaches the trunk of the tree and knocks against the wood, head cocked as though hearing a distant sound. He moves a little to the left and does so again. And again.
‘One, two, three, four,’ he intones, eyes glittering in the half-light. ‘Rattlesnake hunters knocking at your door. Give them meat and give them bone, and pray that they leave you alone.’
He curls his fist and taps a final time, listening, and this time I hear it too. The sound is different. Not a thud, but a thunk. A dead echo. In this part, the tree is hollow. William moves forward. He lifts the hammer two-handed, his face in the torchlight a perfect carving of concentration and force; lips drawn back from his gums, brow lowered, the cords on his neck standing out like cables. The hammer hits the tree with a thud, spraying flecks of wood into the air. He brings it back up and down, again and again, succeeding in making a small, splintered hole about the size of a saucer.
Breathless, he turns, cheeks flushed, oily with sweat. ‘Go on then. You wanted to know.’
‘What?’ I’m stalling, of course. My heart has fallen all the way to my knees. Goosepimples ridge my arms and shiver up to my neck. I know what’s inside there. The ring of my torchlight quivers.
‘It’s where we put her. When she was really gone.’
‘Who’s “we”, William?’
‘Me and Mum. She wasn’t about to let some jumped-up little goth ruin my life. I was going to university. I was going to get a good job. I had a future. Edie Hudson was about to destroy all that.’
I step forward, heart pounding, trying to take a deep enough breath to stay upright. Lights flash across my eyes. I wonder if I’m going to faint. The collar of my T-shirt is damp with blood. Another step. Another. I’ll need to stand on tiptoe to see inside; use the torch with my right hand and hold myself steady with my left.
‘“We’ll just make her see sense, William.” Those were Mum’s words. I didn’t wonder why Mum wasn’t mad. I was just so relieved that she could solve the problem for me. Because that’s what it was, Frances. A problem that I couldn’t fix. I had no control over it.’
He sighs. I watch his face soften with memory, his whole body seeming to go slack. I wonder how it must feel to have held on to this secret all your life, how heavy it must be.
I look at him in quiet wonder. ‘How did you do it?’
He laughs softly. ‘I didn’t. I couldn’t, in the end. Wasn’t brave enough. Mum stepped in. Thank God. She slipped one of Dad’s belts around Edie’s neck. She’d brought it with her. I think she must have planned it all along.’
I lean against the wood. It is dark and good and heavy. Without it I feel like I might fall down. William stares past me, seeing something I don’t.
‘Edie brought the whole gang with her, though. The Rattlesnakes. Jesus, those girls. You know what I did?’
I shake my head.
‘I threw stones at them. You should have seen them. They lost their minds! Thought it was Quiet Mary coming out the trees. Only Edie didn’t run. She walked right on in to see what was going on. She had no fear. It’s what killed her, Mum said. Fear keeps you safe. Keep going, Frances.’
I’m so close to the trunk now I can smell the damp wood, the old, musty scent of rot and age. Under my fingertips the ridges are cavernous, a
map to another world. A world where a young girl, long dead, is waiting for me.
‘I was meant to help Mum but in the end I just watched. I was shaking too much. Her face, Edie’s face, was beautiful. First time she’d ever looked that way. She reached a hand out for me and I stepped away. But I didn’t stop watching. I made myself. Right to the end.’
No wonder they all thought she had disappeared, I think. There would have been no noise, no blood, no crime scene, no struggle. A silent murder. I swallow. My mouth is so dry and I am cold all over. I keep thinking of William saying to me, ‘My mum is going to love you.’ What if she hadn’t? Would I have ended up like poor Edie Hudson, strangled in the cold and the dark until her heart stopped?
‘You know the thing I remember most? How Edie was so heavy that it took both of us to lift her. I asked Mum, “How do we know she’s really dead?” and Mum said, “Because she’s not breathing, dummy.” Then she laughed. Like it was a joke. Like it was fun, just a fun thing the two of us were doing together.’
I can barely breathe. I stare at William as if I have never seen him before, and it’s true: in a way, I haven’t. He is a statue with eyes as cold and hard as fossil. I think of all the times he’s talked about how much he loves his mother, how she made so many sacrifices for her boys, what a good person she was, so giving. Then I think of Edward Thorn, implicated in a crime he didn’t commit, and my heart sinks.
‘Your poor dad,’ I say.
‘What else could he have done? The murder weapon was his, his car was parked nearby. He’d have taken the fall for it, too, if they had ever found Edie’s body. Mum knew that. But in the end, just like all the Thorn men, he lost his nerve.’ William’s head turns slowly to look at me. ‘What about you, Frances? Will you lose your nerve?’
I stare at the hole he has beaten into the tree. It is an empty socket, black as the devil.
‘Go on, Frances,’ William says.
He’s right behind me. I’ve forgotten about the hammer in his hand. I take a deep breath, stand on the ends of my toes and shine the torchlight into the hollow.
Samantha – Now
I run. Alex won’t let me drive, saying I will end up wrapped around a tree. He insists we take his car but his hands are shaking so much it takes him three tries to get the key in the lock. I can smell alcohol on his breath. By the time we get to the edge of town there is a queue of traffic that grunts and inches along; flared red brake lights and fuming exhausts.
‘Why are you doing this, Alex?’
He stares wordlessly ahead, eyes red and watery. Finally he says, ‘Because this is my fault. I showed Frances the photo of Edie. I made sure she saw it. Then I made sure William knew she was asking questions about his past. But I never meant for all this to happen.’
I put my hand gently on his arm. ‘No. None of this is your fault.’
‘I just wanted him to suffer for a change. He deserves it.’
I stare at him, head throbbing. Poor Alex. Watching as his older brother – the apple of his mother’s eye, by her own admission – moves away and gets married and settles down while he’s left behind meeting lovers in the dark and confined at home, too cowed by a matriarch to break free. He wipes his face with his hand, swearing as we approach yet another set of traffic lights turning red.
‘It’s rush hour. We’re not going to make it. I’ll try a different way as soon as we get past these traffic lights.’
‘No. Not quick enough.’ I’m opening the door. A car blasts its horn as I lurch out on to the road. I can hear Alex saying, ‘Sam, Samantha, don’t do this’, but I stumble over to the pavement and then around the corner, down through an alleyway that will take me to the end of Eastleigh Avenue. I pinball off the walls, my woozy head clotted with dried blood. There is an urgency buzzing in my chest, those bees again, building their hives. I laugh aloud.
As I emerge through the end of the alley I realise I can see the spire of St Mary de Castro through the poplar trees. There is a sudden flare of agony in my head, white flashing lights popping in my field of vision. I bend double with my hands on my knees and wait for it to pass. I can feel the knife in my back pocket, my phone in the other, and I wonder about calling the police. But there’s no time. I have to keep moving.
As I round the corner the perfume of the honeysuckle and jasmine that grow over the church walls overwhelms me. I lean against the iron railings and use them to prop me up, staggering towards the large iron gate. Thank God. I’m coming, Frances. I’m coming, Edie. I reach the gate and push against it. It doesn’t move. I lean harder, straining until the muscles in my arms tremble and a fresh blast of agony detonates in my skull.
‘Fucking move!’ I yell, rattling the gate back and forth. The large padlock holding the gates closed rattles uselessly. What now? I think, hopeless, knees buckling, head pounding. What now?
I think of Peter Liverly’s bungalow and the wall that runs along the back of it. Didn’t Edie once say they’d got in that way, over the wall maybe? I can’t scale that.
I have to.
I stumble towards the bungalow but a horrible feeling – something akin to dread, bloated and toxic – balloons inside me. I’m too late, I think, desperately, I’m already too late.
Frances – Now
The torchlight lances through the hollow like a needle, a single beam revealing cobwebs and wood slick and black with damp. A nest of woodlice, startled by the intrusion, scuttle deeper to safety. I lift myself higher on my toes, pointing the light downward. The smell in here is rich and pungent, the smell of rotting leaves and black earth. There is a rustling as something in the bowl of the hollow – a mouse, maybe, or a rat – escapes.
‘I don’t see her.’
‘You’re not looking hard enough.’
I draw the light down, down. The faint shimmer of sunlight that comes through the leaves is lacy and finely grained like an old photograph. Behind me I hear a sound – it’s familiar and yet I don’t place it, my concentration elsewhere, falling into this dark hole with the wavering needle of light. A whisper of leather, the clink of a belt buckle. I’m not listening, not really, and by the time he puts the belt around my neck – gently, like a caress, so I don’t flinch or fight back – it’s too late. I feel it draw tight about my windpipe and try to make a sound; it comes out like air from a puncture, whiiiii. I put my hands to my neck and it’s funny because it’s William I’m looking for to save me, William who I’m trying to call out for in my high, whistling gasp. Help me, William, someone is attacking me. It takes me a good minute to realise that the person attacking me is him. My fingers scrape uselessly for purchase against the strap and I hear him grunt as he tightens his grip, leaning against me, crushing the air from my chest.
His voice, low and thick, presses against my ear. ‘I wish Mum could see me now.’
My throat burns, my heart’s a fast-running drum. Stars flash in my vision.
‘I’ll tell her what I’ve done. She’ll be so proud of me.’
My nails tear at the trunk of the tree and I don’t feel the pain of the splinters. There’s a lightness in my head as if my skull is disintegrating, all of my bones full of air, hollow, like the tree. Stars, stars. I blink and they come back. His hand on the back of my neck, holding the noose of the belt together. He sounds genuinely happy. ‘I’m doing it, Mum! I’m doing it!’
There is a gurgling sound in my chest. It forces its way up the thin reed of my throat. My face is hot. Black dots swarm in front of my eyes. This is it, I think, this is death. William tightens his grip for the final gasp.
Samantha – Now
They didn’t want to show me but I looked anyway, because I am dogged, because I am that bitch with a knife. ‘Who stabbed you, sir?’ the police had asked William, handcuffing him and helping him to his feet, and he had pointed and said, ‘That bitch with the knife.’ I hadn’t answered, of course. I was too busy looking into the hole in the tree, using the torch I’d picked out of Frances’s cold hands.
Aut
umn’s coming. That’s what the weather forecast says. Cobwebs are strung in the hedgerows glittering with dew and mist lingers over the churning water of the Ouse, the sky a softly smudged charcoal. I’m wearing a beanie hat to cover up the scar on my crown, the one William stove in with a hammer blow. The doctor says it’s healing nicely but they want to look at my brain to be sure. I wonder what they’ll see in there? Holes where the light escapes? A dark shadow creeping across the scan? I hope not. Despite it all, I still have a lot left to live for.
I knew it was Edie as soon as I saw her. I grew those bones inside the cage of my own. They had to cut the tree open to get inside, like a surgery. I saw the photos they’d taken of the scene. Like I said, they didn’t want to show me at first, but I reminded them I’d already pictured it in my head a thousand times.
Weeds and ivy had grown through her ribs. Spiders had built nests in the cavities of her eyes. Tangled around her sternum was a silver necklace with a dragonfly pendant. That’s what got me. I held that photograph in my hand so long it started shaking. The bones were old and yellowed and dirty, her clothes rotted away. Her jawbone was missing, as was her lower left foot, taken by scavenging animals slipping through the gaps in the trunk. Next to her in the dirt was a leather belt I was not able to identify. Leather, with a large bronze buckle. It was Alex who identified it as belonging to Edward Thorn.
I’m walking slowly down Eastleigh Avenue with my shadow long behind me. There is the smell of bonfires on the air; woodsmoke and charred ash, the embers of damp leaves. There’s a figure waiting by the gate. I don’t know if they see me. I don’t know if they feel the same nervous energy I do, the feeling of ropes breaking, ballasts burning. Bottles clink in my bag. I’ve got four, and my trusty lighter. A pack of cigarettes in my pocket because we all know that smoking will kill us, but today is not that day.