The Final Child

by Fran Dorricott

  Alex tensed but didn’t move away. The knot was fresh, clean and not matted. The thought that Alex had been tied before, probably more times than I could count over the years, made a fresh wave of tears clog my throat.

  “Have you been in the house all this time?” I asked. “The police… What about when they came here?”

  Alex shook his head, mute, although I saw a bolt of panic in his face at the mention of the police.

  “Why didn’t you run?” I asked.

  Nothing.

  “Alex, where is he? Is he coming back? Are you hurt?”

  Alex said nothing. He just watched as the rope fell from his wrist, trailing on the concrete just beside a puddle of red wax that had melted from one of the candles. They couldn’t have been burning more than an hour or two. What did that mean for us? For Harriet?

  “Alex, we need to go. Can you stand?”

  He massaged his wrist gently. He was like a baby bird, fragile and unsteady. I fought the unease as I thought of Harriet. Was Peter with her right now? Would he hurt her? Did he leave Alex here for me to find, to distract me?

  “Can’t we talk for a minute?” Alex asked gently. “Just for a minute.”

  I stared at those candles again, watching the flames dance. How many times had I lit a warm candle to soothe my nerves? How hard had I battled to overcome my fears? Had it been because of this? The way they had left us with candles, down here in the dark? The puddles of wax were growing. Harriet was still out there somewhere.

  But this was my brother.

  “Okay.”

  * * *

  I listened with horror as Alex stuttered about Peter. Peter… How he had lured his own brother down to the lake in the middle of winter and let him die. How Dana had watched from the house, too far away to help as one of her sons killed the other.

  “He didn’t like most of the children that she brought home. He told me. He wanted a brother but he liked hurting the girls. He didn’t like the really young ones, or the loud ones. They tried to come up with tests to see what Peter actually wanted, tried to find one who’d care about him. He talked about Jacob a lot. Morgan – she was okay, too. He liked her for a long time, but eventually he got bored…”

  Morgan. The girl whose untold story had haunted me like a ghost my whole adult life. The girl who I had always been afraid of becoming. I would have thrown up if there was anything left, anything other than the hollowness deep inside me that threatened to turn me to stone.

  “Did he tie her up too?”

  Alex shrugged.

  “Are you saying you’ve been here since… What about later? When the police came to look for you? Were you here then?”

  “It was too late when they came. Dana made us move to the little house. She was worried about the police following your trail to get here. She said if they found me I’d have to go into care, because Dad didn’t want me any more.”

  “Of course Dad wanted us.”

  “No, Jilly. He wanted you. He didn’t want me. I was always getting in the way, trying to stop you setting him off. He…” His lip trembled.

  There was something unspoken between us, then. A small space that opened up, reminding me of how different we were now. How much I didn’t know about him. I hadn’t managed to save him, and so he had stayed with them. They had lied to him.

  I had never had a nightmare that was as bad as this.

  But there was Alex. He was here, alive.

  “Did he – did they… hurt you?”

  Alex shrugged again.

  “Not really.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I wanted to touch him from head to toe, be sure that he was okay. But there was something about this man that wasn’t like the Alex I knew. An animal wariness in the back of his expression that told a story of a life he hadn’t shared with me.

  “Can we go, please?” I asked when Alex didn’t answer. “My friend. I think he brought her here. To get me to come. She might be hurt. Do you know where she is? Where he might have taken her?”

  Alex’s eyes widened but then he shook his head.

  “You shouldn’t worry about her so much. She’ll be oka—”

  “She’s got to be here somewhere,” I cut him off. “I have to find her.”

  I started to edge towards the door. Alex was a grown man; he could follow me. I wanted to grab hold of him and drag him but I didn’t think I could. Even as thin as he was, he could take me if he decided to put up a fight, just like when we were children.

  “Come on,” I said then. “You know this place. Can you help me find her?”

  I was aware I was talking to him like a child. He was a child to me. When he shrugged he only made it worse and I had to blink to clear the image of him at nine years old, clutching my hand somewhere in the cold, clammy dark.

  I reached the doorway.

  “Don’t leave me.” It was barely even a whisper. So quiet I didn’t hear it for a second and by the time I understood what he was asking I was already in the hallway.

  A shriek erupted, exploding through the silence, a sound that was verging on animalistic. I froze in place, my head snapping back. Alex was still in the same spot, his hands at his chest, the wail coming out of him in increasing volume as he rocked back and forth like a child.

  Without thinking I darted back into the room. I ran to him and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. He was a head taller than me, his arms thin but surprisingly strong. I felt the muscles in his back tense at the contact and then melt again as I held him.

  The sound stopped as suddenly as it had started.

  “I’m sorry, Alex,” I whispered.

  The hug was awkward. He smelled foreign and complicated, like earth and detergent and sweat and rain. My brain was in overdrive. I thought of Harriet, of Peter Wood and the fact that he could come back any moment, and still I held Alex in my arms. I wanted to burst with joy and sadness and horror and everything in between.

  “Shh,” I crooned. “I promise I won’t leave without you.”

  THIRTY SIX

  Erin

  IT TOOK A MINUTE for Alex to calm enough to talk again. When he did he was pliant, exhausted by his tears, and I was able to guide him out into the hall.

  But he was on guard, glancing every way multiple times before taking several steps and then stopping to do the same thing again.

  “I have to find her,” I said as we reached the bottom of the stairs. “Do you understand, Alex?” I didn’t want to talk to him like he was stupid, but eighteen years in this place, with those people, had changed him. Ruined him. He had never been back to school, never had any friends. Just him, and them. All that isolation, that loneliness, that fear.

  I remembered the bathroom at Dana Wood’s other house, Godfrey and Harriet saying that the woman who had abducted so many children seemingly without effort had probably been drowned in her own tub… The oil slick of emotions in my stomach reminded me that I didn’t know this Alex. Perhaps Peter had done that to his own mother. Perhaps Alex had seen Peter do it. What would that do to a person?

  “Do you understand that I need to find her?” I pushed.

  Alex stared at me.

  “We don’t have to leave,” he said uncertainly. “She’s safe right now.”

  “How do you know, Alex? I can’t trust that. Peter could be anywhere—”

  “They’re always safe as long as they don’t run.”

  “He tied you up. He kept you here all this time. The police are at the other house. If he goes there, he’ll see them. He’ll panic. He’ll think I brought them there. He said no police. I didn’t call them because – because he said not to.” I fought the tears that rose in my throat. “I need to get Harriet home.”

  Alex’s gaze narrowed. “This is my home.”

  “Alex…” I couldn’t keep the despair from my voice. “This isn’t anybody’s home. Nobody has lived here for a long time.”

  “I have,” Alex said.

  I didn’t know what to say to that
so I didn’t reply. If I could just get him out of here, back to civilisation, I could call the police…

  “Alex, where are you going?”

  Suddenly he was running. I raced to catch up. He bolted up the stairs like a gazelle, his long legs taking the steps two at a time, and I struggled behind.

  “Wait!”

  He skidded to a stop at the top, slid around the bookcase over the doorway, and I panted after him, my legs burning. Then he ran again, into the house proper.

  I finally caught Alex after another flight of stairs, another corridor I didn’t recognise. It was shorter than the others we had come through and I could smell the rain outside.

  Alex was hardly out of breath but his nostrils flared in and out as he glanced about.

  “Alex, what’s going on?”

  He pointed. Up ahead there was a room. I had lost all sense of space. There were more windows here but I had no idea where we were.

  “What’s in there? Is it Harriet?”

  Alex just inched closer. I listened hard but heard nothing but the gentle patter of the rain and the gloomy shifting of long curtains half obscuring a view of grass and trees. The rest of the passage was dark and still.

  Enough time had passed that a weak grey light was visible around the edges of the door ahead. I followed Alex, a few steps behind. I glanced around for something I might be able to use as a weapon if Peter found us, but short of breaking up some furniture I couldn’t see anything.

  “Alex.” I reached out for him. He dodged my grip but I tried again, this time snagging the sleeve of his t-shirt. “Alex.”

  “Jillian.” He turned and his eyes were wide, the whites almost grey in the shadows, the blue that deep ocean colour I remembered.

  “Help me out here,” I said. “This is fucking weird.”

  He stood completely still, like a ghost.

  “You think it isn’t for me?” His tone was clipped. “You think this is normal? You think I haven’t dreamt about this day? I’ve waited and waited and now you’re here and you can’t wait to leave again.”

  His face was so impossibly sad. I felt my heart shatter, the pieces piercing my belly, my lungs. I wanted to collapse into his arms again, let him hold me, careless of the years that had passed since I saw him last. But I knew he couldn’t.

  “Alex,” I repeated his name again, the word on my tongue sounding foreign and heavy. “Did Peter tell you where he was going? Did he tell you what he did with Harriet?” Did he tell you to distract me?

  Alex shook his head and his shaggy hair bounced. I wondered how long he had been in that room downstairs. How long those candles had been burning. How long we had left before Peter found me here. He must be here, somewhere. Biding his time. This was all part of the game.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Alex said. “Things aren’t black and white.”

  He yanked his arm away from me, his focus snapping to the room ahead.

  Watching Alex walk away broke something inside me. The fear I’d felt on reading that note slipped under the hotel door, that blinding, tongue-clenching terror, slowly subsided. I’d found Alex, and now I could find Harriet. I needed to let somebody know where I was. So, as Alex – this stranger with Alex’s face – opened the door ahead, I slipped my phone out of my pocket. My battery was way into the red, 3%. There was one bar of signal. I found Wendy’s name in my recent call list. The battery wouldn’t manage a call, but a text might be okay. If I could get it to send. I’m at Dove Manor, I typed. Send help. Emergency.

  “What’s taking you so long?” Alex turned. There was something about his expression that was unfamiliar.

  “I’m coming.”

  I shoved my phone back into my pocket quickly.

  “Hurry up,” he said.

  He led me into a bedroom. The floors had once been polished or waxed and still shone in patches where footsteps hadn’t worn the surface to dullness. There were two single beds with metal bed frames, their white bedsheets now grey. One bed had a teddy bear on it, well-loved and missing an eye. The other one was empty, but its sheets were mussed.

  “What is this…?”

  I turned, my eyes drinking in the sight. The undecorated walls, the plain white sheets, the early morning light around the edges of the curtains making everything look ghostly. It looked like a sick ward. Like an orphanage. Orphanage. My brain latched onto the word and the shiver returned so hard I felt bedbugs crawling on my skin. I rubbed at my arms.

  Alex caught my movement and he frowned.

  “Don’t you know?” he asked. “Don’t you remember? This was going to be our bedroom.”

  How could I tell him that I had hardly remembered anything at all until an hour ago? How could I tell Alex I’d forgotten what had happened to us, to him?

  “I don’t…”

  Alex held his arms out as though this was a ballroom or grand library worthy of showing off.

  “Look,” he said.

  I noticed the mussed-up sheets again, saw the disturbed dust on the floor, a set of footsteps tracking to and from the bed, and the pieces clicked together.

  “This is your bedroom,” I said. “This is where you’ve been staying.”

  Alex started to shake his head.

  “You said it was going to be our room,” I carried on quickly. “Did we ever stay in here…?”

  “Our bedroom,” he repeated instead of answering. “Look.”

  He wandered towards the huge window. I followed, slower. There was a radiator that was long dead; the air was icy. He swept the curtain back, releasing a flurry of dust motes.

  He pointed. The sun was rising, red like blood. The garden spilled out below. A gentle slope down to the lake. The same landscape I had seen an hour ago.

  Only now I knew its secret.

  “Why did she take us?” I asked.

  “Family,” he said, simply. “She wanted a family. Peter had to approve. Siblings are best because they stick up for each other. You can figure out if they’ll protect each other, choose the brave ones.”

  Alex didn’t look at me as he said this but I felt my heart stutter in my chest. Did he remember that night? Did he remember what I had done? How I had gone on without him? How I had never gone back? I could almost taste the dirt in my mouth, feel the grazes from the leaves on my bare stomach, my back, my knees. Feel the throbbing in my head, the blood in my eyes.

  “Why you? Why did they keep you all this time?”

  Why aren’t you dead?

  “Because…” Alex sighed. It was a long sigh, a heavy one that seemed to carry years of questioning. The same question I had asked, only in reverse. What did Alex have that I didn’t? Was I a coward for running, even though he told me to? Or was I a coward for not coming back? But how could I?

  “Peter chose me.” Alex swallowed hard. His eyes were wet and I wasn’t sure whether it was from fear or sadness.

  “You were special,” I said softly.

  “You have to understand, Jilly. I made a choice. I decided to live.”

  I understood that. Probably better than anybody. I thought of the verge. Of how I had let him push me, and how, when I had woken there alone, I had left him behind.

  “I understand.”

  “I knew they wouldn’t let both of us leave. I knew that if you stayed, you would die. So I made the other boy help us, and we ran. And then… I knew we wouldn’t make it. You were too slow. I needed you to go faster. I thought if you went ahead, that would help. And when you fell… I thought I’d hurt you. I panicked. I didn’t know what to do. I came back here and they were nice to me. This room was… Do you really not remember the promise they made in the beginning?”

  “I—”

  “They were going to let us live here. And we wouldn’t have to go to school and we wouldn’t have to deal with Dad any more.”

  “Alex, why do you keep saying that about Dad?”

  Alex shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand,” he muttered. “You never did.”

  “
I don’t remember…”

  Alex pointed again. Just to the left I could see the little potting shed; it had been so ominous in the darkness and now it was just a wooden shack. “They took us there, first. From the car to the shed. We were terrified. Do you remember the darkness? They blindfolded us.”

  “Dana and Peter?” I asked.

  “They left us there. For hours. Until we had calmed down. They needed to make sure we wouldn’t run straight away like some of the others did. And then, when we stopped crying, when we were calm enough, they brought us inside.”

  I couldn’t remember it exactly, but I recalled the blindfold and peeking at the house and feeling Alex’s hand in mine.

  “They took us to the basement first, to show us what would happen if we didn’t behave. That’s where we stayed, downstairs, until we were good. And then they brought us to the conservatory. It was so warm even with all that glass. So different from the shed. Everything was better then. We had cake and rules and… That’s what we were going to get if we kept being good.”

  “That doesn’t make it okay, Alex. Just because they promised us nice things. That woman took your childhood—”

  “Jillian, don’t you understand what I’m trying to say? She was trying to offer us a different life. We would never have to go to school; we would always have a friend. We just didn’t all deserve the life she offered.”

  I tensed. Alex’s tone had changed. He was gripping the ledge of the window, his knuckles white. I saw fresh scratches on the back of his hand. Four of them in a jagged row, marring the pale, hairless skin.

  I trained my gaze back on the shack, suddenly aware of how close to him I was standing. The smell of him. The size. He was skinny, sure, but I could see, again, that quiet strength I had felt in our embrace, and, for the first time, I was afraid.

  “What did you do,” I asked eventually, “that made Peter put you in the basement today?”

  Alex turned to me, his expression deadly serious.

  “Nobody put me in the basement. I was upset so I went down there. The rope grounds me, helps me to think. It’s like Dad’s ‘naughty step’ – you remember the one he’d put us on when he was watching TV and we got too loud? Or – was that just me?”