Eyes of the Wicked

by Adam J. Wright

  Then he left the barn and walked the short distance to the place which was the real reason he’d come out here.

  Ruth’s grave.

  The rock that marked the place his sister was buried had been covered by snow in the night. Samuel knew the exact spot anyway and cleared the cold, wet snow away with his bare hands. By the time he uncovered the simple rock upon which he’d painted his sister’s name in red paint ten years ago, he couldn’t feel his fingers anymore.

  With numb fingers, he cleared an area next to the rock and sat on the ground next to the grave.

  Ten years ago, Ruth had still been here. Alive. If not for him, she’d still be alive and that bitch in the kitchen would be dead. If only he’d listened to Ruth. She knew what was coming. He had been her only hope and he’d let her down.

  And now she was buried here, in the frozen earth.

  He stroked the rock tenderly, even though he couldn’t feel it beneath his cold fingertips, and let his mind wander back to a time when Ruth was still here.

  It had all ended on Christmas Day, but it had begun three weeks before that, back in the days when he was Michael, not Samuel.

  The spiral of tragedy had begun when he’d received a phone call from Ruth.

  * * *

  December 6th, ten years ago

  “Michael, I need you.” Her voice sounded desperate.

  He sat up on his bed quickly. He’d been lying there reading a magazine about American muscle cars and daydreaming about driving along Route 66 in a souped-up Mustang. He’d only just passed his driving test and had to drive his mum’s Fiesta, but he dreamed of getting onto the American highway, putting the pedal to the metal, and leaving everything behind in a cloud of dust and exhaust fumes.

  The magazine fluttered to the bedroom floor. “Ruth, what the hell? Where are you? You didn’t come home last night. Mum is furious.”

  “Of course she is. I can’t do anything right. Listen, I need you to come and meet me, okay? Right now.”

  “All right. Where are you?”

  “Our favourite spot.”

  He knew exactly where she meant. They often sat on the East Cliff at Whitby, in the shadow of the Abbey, gazing out to sea and talking about nothing in particular. Sometimes they sat there, in the long grass, in silence.

  Michael always felt a sense of freedom when he sat there on the cliff, high above the sea, seagulls wheeling and crying overhead.

  “I’ll be there soon,” he said.

  “Don’t be too long.” She hung up.

  He went downstairs quickly, hoping to avoid his mother. She’d been in some sort of depression lately and had been spending a lot of time in her bedroom. With any luck, she’d be there now, and Michael could escape the house unseen.

  He got to the kitchen without seeing her but that was when his luck ran out. She called to him from the living room.

  “Michael, come here.”

  Sighing, he went to her. He found her lying on the settee in front of the TV. The sound had been muted but he could see some sort of daytime chat show on the screen.

  His mother looked like she hadn’t slept in a week. Dark rings surrounded her eyes and her hair was a tangled mess.

  She was still wearing the same black jumper he’d seen her in yesterday and the day before that. In fact, he was sure she’d been wearing the same clothes for a week and judging by the sour, sweaty smell coming off her, she hadn’t bothered to take a shower in all that time either.

  An empty bottle of gin lay on the floor next to the settee.

  “Michael, you won’t leave me, will you?”

  “I’m only going out for a little bit,” he offered.

  “No, I don’t mean that. I mean you won’t abandon me like your sister has.”

  “She hasn’t abandoned you, Mum.”

  She nodded emphatically. “Yes, she has. She didn’t come home last night.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be back later,” he said. Ruth hadn’t mentioned leaving home, at least not to him, and they told each other everything. If she planned to leave, she’d have told him.

  “She won’t,” his mother said. “It’s that thing growing inside her. It’s pulling her away from me.”

  He frowned at that, not sure how to respond. A week ago, Ruth had told them that she was pregnant. Michael had thought that was great; he’d be Uncle Michael, a title that he felt lent him an air of authority.

  Their mother hadn’t taken the news so well; it was after Ruth’s announcement that she’d taken to her bedroom and started drinking. Michael had no idea what her problem was. Okay, so Ruth was only sixteen, which was a bit young to have a baby, but he was sure she’d make a great mother. Better than his own, anyway. Not that there was a high bar to conquer in that respect.

  “You’re being silly,” he said.

  “No, I’m not. You’ll understand when you’re older.”

  “Mum, I’m eighteen. I understand stuff.”

  “You don’t know about the world out there. I’ve protected you from it all your life. I tried to protect your sister as well, but she fell prey to its evil.”

  He sighed and turned away. “You’re talking rubbish. You’ve been drinking too much.”

  He went back into the kitchen and put his boots on.

  “Michael, don’t go,” she called pathetically. “I don’t want to be on my own.”

  “I’ll be back soon,” he said, picking up the car keys from the kitchen counter and stepping out of the back door. “See you later,” he said as he closed it behind him.

  Once he was outside, he breathed a sigh of relief. The atmosphere in the house was cloying but he felt the cold winter wind blow its sticky tendrils off him.

  The day was perfect; cold and crisp with a pale sun looking down from a clear blue sky. Michael got into the Fiesta and turned the key in the ignition. The car was old and didn’t like the cold. It often refused to start on days like this. But today, the engine roared to life with just one turn of the key.

  He put the radio on and sang along with Taylor Swift’s You Belong with Me as he drove along the quiet country roads to Whitby. He imagined what it would be like to be behind the wheel of a Mustang, putting his foot down as he raced along Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles.

  Unfortunately, the speed had to remain firmly in his imagination; the Fiesta started shaking if it got over 60 and these roads were too narrow, with too many blind bends, to go fast anyway.

  Still, that didn’t dampen his mood. He was free of the house and his mother and he would soon be sitting in his favourite spot with Ruth. Nothing else really mattered.

  When he arrived at Whitby, he parked in the Abbey car park but didn’t go into the old ruins that stood on the cliff. Instead, he walked across the grass to the cliff, where Ruth was waiting for him.

  She sat in the grass at the cliff edge, looking out to sea. The winter breeze snatched her long, dark hair, making it dance in unison with the long grass around her that also stirred in the wind.

  Despite the low temperature, Ruth was wearing her denim jacket and jeans. Michael couldn’t remember ever seeing her in a winter coat; she seemed to be immune to cold.

  “Hey,” he said as he sat next to her. “What’s up?”

  She shrugged, her eyes still fixed on the sea. “I don’t know if I should tell you.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You called me and dragged me all the way out here and now you’re not going to tell me why?”

  She looked at him and her expression, which was usually carefree, was dark and serious. “When I called you, I thought you’d be able to handle what I have to tell you. Now, I’m not so sure.”

  He frowned at her. “Why? What’s changed since then?”

  “I’ve been sitting here listening to the seagulls.”

  “And they told you not to trust me?”

  “It isn’t a matter of trust. It’s a matter of how much you can handle.”

  He sighed, frustrated with her. She sometimes withdrew into these cry
ptic moods and when she did, nothing would break her out of them. He just had to wait until she gradually became her carefree self again.

  “Don’t tell me, then,” he said, lying back in the grass and looking up at the immensity of the sky. “I don’t care.”

  She lay on her side, facing him. “Don’t be like that. I’ll tell you part of what I was going to say, okay?”

  He shrugged nonchalantly. “Whatever.”

  Ruth pouted at him. “Come on, Michael, please listen to me. This is important.”

  He let out a dramatic sigh. “All right. Tell me.”

  She hesitated for a moment and then said, “I need you to protect me.”

  “I’ve always protected you. I’m your big brother.”

  “Yes, I know that, but I’m talking about a real threat to me and the baby.” She put a hand on her slightly swollen stomach.

  Michael leaned up onto his elbows. “What threat?”

  “Mum,” she said.

  He laughed, thinking she was joking. Their mother might be a little crazy, but she wasn’t a threat to anyone.

  “I’m being serious,” she said.

  “Well, if you’re being serious, then you’re seriously mistaken. Mum wouldn’t hurt you. She might not have come to terms with the fact that you’re going to have a baby, but she wouldn’t hurt you or it. She’s not that mad.”

  Ruth shook her head. “You don’t understand. The reason I didn’t come home last night is because I was scared. I’ve seen the way she looks at me, like she’s planning something. Something bad.”

  “What? I think your hormones are playing tricks on you. Where did you spend last night, anyway?”

  “In a shop doorway.”

  “Are you crazy? It’s freezing cold. Think about the baby!”

  “I am thinking about the baby. That’s why I couldn’t come home.”

  He’d thought she’d been exaggerating her fear but if she’d been scared enough to sleep rough, she had to be afraid for her life. But why? Was she just imagining malevolent glances from their mother? That was the most likely explanation; Ruth knew their mum didn’t want her to have the baby, so she was imagining crazy things, probably fuelled by her wild hormones.

  “Well, you’re not sleeping outside tonight,” he told her. “You’re coming home and sleeping in your own bed where it’s nice and warm.”

  She nodded reluctantly. “I know. I can’t spend another night like last night. That’s why I called you, to make you aware of the situation. So you can protect me from her when I’m at home. Promise me that you’ll protect me, Michael.”

  “I really think you’re imagining this.”

  “Promise. Or I won’t come home.”

  He let out a long sigh to let her know that he thought she was crazy. “All right, I promise.”

  She grinned at him. “I knew you would.”

  He sat up and looked at the sea. The sunlight glinted on the water like a constellation of stars. A gull, circling overhead, called to its mate hovering beyond the cliff edge. When its call was ignored, it repeated the sound and flew closer to the other bird. They both wheeled away out of sight.

  “I think that gull was speaking to me,” Michael said, trying to look serious.

  Ruth shook her head. “No, it was talking to that other one. The one it flew away with.”

  “No, it was definitely telling me something,” he said.

  She looked at him and raised a questioning eyebrow. “All right, what was it saying, then?”

  “It was telling me that I have to get something to eat. I’m starving.”

  She punched his shoulder playfully. “Have you got any money?”

  He nodded. “I got paid yesterday.” He had a job at a garage near their farm. He didn’t work behind the till or anything like that; he just had to make sure the shelves were stocked and clean up petrol spills on the forecourt. It only paid minimum wage, but he didn’t need much money, anyway. He lived at home rent free and had his meals provided for him, when he could stomach them.

  So payday usually meant he could forego his mother’s terrible culinary creations and get proper food from cafés and the fast food places down by the harbour.

  “What do you fancy?” he asked Ruth.

  She smiled. “Fish and chips.”

  “Okay, you wait here, and I’ll be back in a minute.” He got up out of the grass and stretched.

  “Are you sure?” she said. “You’ve got go all the way down the steps and back up again.”

  “If you want fish and chips, then you shall have fish and chips.”

  She clutched her hands in front of her breasts and pretended to swoon. “My hero.”

  He made his way back across the car park to the top of the 199 steps that led down to the town. As he descended, he mulled over what Ruth had told him. Could she be right in thinking that she needed to be protected from her own mother?

  Michael just couldn’t see how that could be so. Their mother wasn’t exactly a danger to anyone; she was more pathetic than dangerous.

  * * *

  He lifted his numb fingers from the stone that marked his sister’s grave. At some point during his remembrance, he must have cried because he could feel the tears drying coldly on his cheeks. The backs of his legs were getting wet from sitting on the ground, melted snow soaking through his jeans to his skin. He didn’t care. At least he could feel the cold. Ruth couldn’t feel anything anymore.

  He should have listened to her.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The front door of 37 Carlin Way, Haxby, was opened by a gruff-looking bearded man in his forties. When he saw Dani and Battle on the doorstep, he shook his head as if in disgust. “I just have to say that this is an invasion of our privacy. The police shouldn’t be calling round people’s houses on Christmas Day. It just isn’t on.”

  “We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important, sir,” Battle said, stepping past the man and into the house.

  Dani followed, wondering if Maureen’s husband would be so stand-offish if he knew that two people’s lives were at stake.

  “Maureen Williams?” Battle asked, entering the living room, where a woman with dyed black hair sat on the sofa.

  She was sitting with a cup of tea while two boys, who looked to be five or six, played with toys among a pile of boxes and discarded pieces of wrapping paper.

  “Yes, I’m Maureen,” the woman said, looking from Battle to Dani. “What is this about? I’ve already talked to the police about Tanya. I don’t see why you have to barge in here on my day off.”

  “Mrs Williams, a delivery was made to the hospital on the evening that Tanya went missing. The driver spent at least five minutes inside before returning to his van. Is he someone you know?”

  She frowned at the cup of tea in her hands as if thinking, then said, “Oh, you mean Samuel.”

  “Samuel?” Battle asked.

  Dani took her notebook from her inside pocket and wrote the name down.

  “Do you know his surname?” Battle asked.

  Maureen shook her head. “No, it’s just Samuel. He makes deliveries to the hospital quite often, so we have a chat sometimes. You know, just pleasantries, that kind of thing.”

  “Do you know the delivery company he works for?”

  “No, sorry. He hasn’t done something wrong has he? Because he’s a very nice young man. I’d hate to think he was in some kind of trouble.”

  Keeping his cards close to his chest, Battle simply said, “I’m going to need a description of Samuel.”

  “All right. Well, he’s probably in his late twenties. He’s got dark hair, kind of collar length.”

  “Kind of?” Battle asked.

  Maureen shrugged. “Well, you know, it’s hair. People have different haircuts at different times.”

  “What was his hair like when you last saw him? On the evening Tanya disappeared?”

  “Collar length. And he’s tall and thin. Well, perhaps wiry would be a better word.”

&
nbsp; “When you say tall,” Dani said, “could you approximate his height?”

  Maureen pursed her lips. “No, not really.”

  “Over six feet? Under six feet?”

  “Over. He’s very tall.”

  Dani wrote that in her notebook, along with everything else Maureen had said.

  “He was wearing a baseball cap,” she said to Maureen. “Did it have any kind of logo on it?” She hoped that the cap might bear the logo of the delivery company.

  “It did have a logo,” Maureen said, nodding.

  “Can you remember it?”

  “Yes, it said NY. You know, for New York. I think it’s the logo of a baseball team or something.”

  The New York Yankees, Dani thought. That wasn’t going to help much; there must be thousands of those caps sold every year.

  “What else do you know about him?” Battle asked Maureen.

  “Nothing, really.”

  “You must know something; you chatted with him every time he came into the hospital. What did you talk about?”

  “Like I said, we just exchanged pleasantries, the way you would with anyone. We talked about the weather, that kind of thing.”

  “Mrs Williams, he was in your Reception for five minutes. You didn’t spend all that time talking about the weather.”

  Her husband, who had come into the room and was leaning against the wall behind Dani with his arms folded, spoke up. “I think that’s enough, don’t you? She’s told you what he looks like and that she doesn’t know anything else. It’s time you left.”

  Battle wheeled on him. “We’ll leave when I say it’s time to leave. A woman and her daughter have gone missing and their lives are in danger. Until I’ve exhausted every avenue of investigation, I’ll say when it’s enough.”

  The bearded man shrank back against the wall and Dani was sure he was wishing it would swallow him up.

  Turning back to Maureen, Battle said, “You didn’t spend five minutes talking about the weather. During any of your conversations, did he tell you anything about himself? Anything at all?”

  She looked into her cup of tea for inspiration and then looked up at Battle. “Well, you know, he might have mentioned things about himself sometimes. He talked about his sister quite a lot.”