by Susan Gee
*
Jacob was cold. Colder than he’d ever felt before. He wished he’d brought his gloves or hat, but it was beyond that now. The light had faded again and he was hungry. He opened the plastic bag in his pocket and took out the rest of the bar of chocolate and unwrapped it. It was hard, but he held each piece on his tongue until it melted. He knew that he should save some more, but once he’d started it he couldn’t stop. His stomach clenched and ached as he swallowed.
He’d gotten used to the room now. It had felt big at first – he couldn’t see in the corners when it started to go dark and it had felt like there was someone else in there with him the first night. He’d heard movement over from the corner and the sound of scratching on the floor.
As the hours went by, he stared at the black exercise book open on the floor next him and wished he’d never opened it. It sat there on the floor next to him, the only thing he had for company. He wondered how long had passed since he’d been in the room. It felt like days. Was it weeks? Was he even here?
He thought about his mother and her laugh. The way her hair curled over her cheek in thick ripples like the chocolate ice cream that she used to buy for him. A part of him didn’t want to leave, a part of him couldn’t. As though if he waited, she would come back for him, that something would happen to make all of this better again. It felt like nothing mattered now. He sat there in the cold room and stared at Maggie’s book, not knowing who anyone was any longer. He didn’t have anyone anymore. There was nowhere to go back to.
38
The snow caught the moonlight and glinted under a milky sky as Paula Garrity opened the garage door. The flats that were just over the over side of the road and she pulled her scarf up over her face before she went inside. The street was deserted and thick with fresh snow. Along the street the curtains were shut, lights glowed from behind them and the people were inside, sat by the fire, unaware of what was happening behind the flimsy wooden garage door.
Further down the road, a car had parked up under the trees. The headlights switched off as the car came to a halt. She waited a moment to see if the person got out, but the wind started to pick up and blew her hair in her face. It was just a normal car, an old blue Escort with shabby paintwork. It couldn’t be the police, not in a car like that. She decided that whoever it was was probably waiting for someone inside the house or one of the neighbours, it looked a bit like the one that next door drove. She turned away and walked into the garage. With a quick glance behind her she stepped inside, leaving the door of the garage open behind her.
The cold weather had been a blessing. There were few people out. She got into the front seat and tried the ignition. For a second she thought that it wasn’t going to start. The garage was dark and she couldn’t see in the corners. She had checked the back seat before she got in. It was stupid, but she’d imaged him sat there. Being in this dark little room was starting to freak her out.
She avoided the mirror, not wanting his face to be looking back at her. It had only been a couple of days, but even if he’d collapsed out there in the cold, someone should have found him by now. She had thoughts of him waiting for her in the darkness, wanting revenge. It didn’t make sense. She was worried that he’d tell someone she’d left him there.
As she reversed out onto the drive, she was relieved to get out of the garage. She opened the car door, went back and closed the garage back up. There was no one on the street, but she moved quickly. The streets were empty. There were a couple of cars on the road, but not many. The roads were still coated in a thin white sheet of ice that had been there for over a week now. Snow sat thick on the walls of the houses that she drove past.
Up the hill towards Lyme Park and parked up down one of the cul-de-sacs near the entrance. The huge iron gates were firmly locked and padlocked shut. She sat there and switched off the engine. There was a gap in the fence near the entrance. Probably a place that kids used to sneak in.
Smoke curled up from the chimney of one of the nearby houses as the moonlight glinted on the snow. There was an eerie silence and up here it seemed a few degrees colder. She saw it straight away, the old fallen tree in the snow where she’d left him. The ground was hard and uneven and she almost slipped as she walked over to the place. The snow had started to come down hard again and the trees were black, like thick inky lines cutting through the whiteness of the fields. It was peaceful and almost beautiful. As she leant over to see, she realised there was nothing. There was nothing at all. She turned around in a panic, thinking that there was someone behind her, but there was no one around. Just a couple of cars parked up on the hill.
She thought about asking in one of the nearby houses, but she knew that she couldn’t. Paula got back in the car and drove away. She was almost relieved as she pulled out and made her way back over the hill again. She could hardly breathe as she passed the field and decided that he must have started to walk back. It had only been a few hours before she’d turned around to come back for him, but he wasn’t there when she came back. The road was empty. The snow got heavier as she pressed play on the tape in the stereo. It was one of Jacob’s. The music played as she made her way back home. Perhaps he’d fallen on the ice. If he had, then she didn’t feel bad about it. She just wanted to make sure that nothing came back to her. It was clear that he wasn’t coming home. He had gone for good. She was sure of it.
By the time she was almost home, the grey sky was featureless and the snow had coated her hair with frozen droplets. As she turned the corner she looked behind her at the road. She had felt it all the way back. A creeping feeling in the back of her neck that someone had seen what she had just done, but it was stupid – if anyone knew what she’d done, they would have rung the police. If Jacob had been alright then perhaps he would have called them himself. Maybe he was doing this on purpose to make her suffer. It was a daft thought. No one knew and they weren’t going to know now. Jacob was far away up there. There were fields all around that area and it was so cold. He wouldn’t have lasted the night. She just had to look worried until he was found and if he was found up there it would look like it had something to do with the others. Nothing was going to come back to her. All she’d done was take him up there, she wasn’t responsible if something else had happened.
She had started to worry that perhaps Jacob had told someone what she used to do to him when his dad wasn’t around, but she’d been through all the stuff in his bedroom and there was no sign of a diary. It didn’t matter how that policewoman looked at her, she couldn’t prove anything. Jacob had written things about her in a book that she’d found and put in the rubbish weeks ago.
If he hadn’t kept trying to cause trouble, then she wouldn’t have had to go through all of this. She threw her shoes in the cupboard. Something made her turn around towards the window, but there wasn’t anyone there. She was getting paranoid. There was no one watching her. She was imagining things again. It had been happening a lot the last few days. All the worrying was getting to her, but she knew that it was in her head. It was just the stress of not knowing what happened to Jacob. It didn’t make sense.
She put her coat on the rack and made her way upstairs to shower. Jacob Clarke had gone and he wasn’t coming back. He would have been found by now. He must have walked off over the fields somewhere. If he’d taken the road someone would have seen him. It was typical of him to be so stupid as to take the wrong route.
She started to hum as the snow fell thick and fast on the hills. Whatever happened now it wasn’t going to matter; she would deny it if he came back and told anyone. He had been gone for too long and no one knew anything. She was wrong though. Someone was watching. Someone had been following her since Jacob went missing.
*
Mr Anderson sat in the front seat of his old blue car. He had followed her all the way through Stockport to Lyme Park.
He was surprised when she’d pulled into the park and stopped at the gates. He’d had to drive on and nearly missed her pull into one of
the cul-de-sacs nearby. He was about to get out of the car and walk down to see what she was up to when she’d driven back out again and past him so quickly that she’d almost clipped the front of his car. It was the third time she’d driven up there and then gone back home. As though she knew that Cage Hill was her destiny. He kept his distance as she went past the park and on towards the hills. He found it intriguing that she kept going back, it was an invitation for him. It had to be.
The road was icy and it was dark, but he’d managed to pull into the side of the road where there was a little patch of ground that led out onto the farmyard on the other side of the road. He’d sat and watched as she stopped on the top of the hill. At first he thought she was getting out to look out over the fields. It was a good view from up there, but surely she couldn’t see properly in the dark. All he could see was the lights from the odd farmhouse across the valley. The moon was the only light. Then he wondered if she’d knocked over something, an animal perhaps.
It had crossed his mind that her car might have broken down as she’d stopped so close to Lyme Park. His mouth had gone dry in anticipation as she got out and had a look around at the side of the road. It was hard to see what she was doing. She just stood there staring before she got back in again and drove off.
What was she doing? As he started up the car she’d gone back to the park and pulled over. He’d followed her from a distance until she’d gone again. There was mild panic on her face and she looked up down the dark and slippery street.
Afterwards she’d got back in the car and driven away. It didn’t make sense. Mr Anderson had to see what it was that she kept going to look at. He went to where she’d been and was greeted by bare ground. There was just an old tree. She’d come to his place like she was teasing him. Like she knew that this was what he wanted for her.
Mr Anderson made his way back towards home with Jacob Clarke on his mind. He could hear his voice in his head, telling him what mattered. Mr Anderson started to do something he’d not done for as long as he could remember. He started to imagine what someone else might be thinking, thought about Jacob Clarke and where he might have gone. He remembered how Jacob wanted to know all about the place where his mother was taken. Mr Anderson thought about the look on his face when he’d given him the book about the asylum. He had taken that book and held it so tightly in his hands.
Mr Anderson had waited for Jacob Clarke to turn up on his doorstep, asking if he could spend the afternoon in his garage, just so that he didn’t have to go home. He wanted to forget and move on from him, but it wouldn’t go. He was always in another world, that boy. An embarrassment. All those odd little drawings he did. He feared the worst. He didn’t want to, but he was still missing and he knew that he didn’t want to go home. He had heard the argument the day he’d gone missing. He’d heard movements from inside the house in the middle of the night as though someone was still awake when the rest of the world was sleeping. Something had happened there and someone in Jacob’s house knew about it, he was certain of it.
He was surprised that he felt bad at the idea that Jacob was gone. Jacob was the only person who had ever really showed an interest in him, other than his mother. He wondered if Jacob Clarke actually mattered to him.
As a car over the road started up, he thought about Jacob’s stepmother. The way her mouth had puckered as she said his name, as though it was disgusting. He could talk to Jacob and he understood him, he knew that. There weren’t many that could, but he was living the same life as him, connected by just a few bricks in a wall he knew the boy better than he knew anyone. She had been up to Cage Hill so often that he couldn’t help wonder if she thought that Jacob had gone there too.
As the wind cut through the streets, a siren screamed on its way up the hill. He wondered if she’d put him in the cellar, the place that he was always sent to, but he didn’t think so. There was one place that Jacob could have gone to. He might not have known him for every long, but they did have a connection. They were like family now and Mr Anderson had a feeling that he was right. If he was, then that it was always going to be an unbreakable bond: a cord that tied them together forever. He had the feeling that he knew where he was. His stepmother had proved it and he knew he was right.
Mr Anderson knew where the old asylum was. He’d been down the long driveway before now, he’d even wondered if this was a place where he could bring the people for his family before he took them to Cage Hill.
39
Mr Anderson looked up at the middle window of the derelict hospital. It was just over the top of the road from Lyme Park. Jacob Clarke would have known that too if he’d read the book he’d given him. It made sense that his stepmother had been coming back here now; perhaps she knew he wanted to come here, but she didn’t know why. Mr Anderson smiled.
The grand building was surrounded by woods, an endless mass of black trees. As Mr Anderson made his way up the gravel path, his breath made clouds in the air. It was cold. The biting freshness of the wind made his ears sore. He liked it here already. He imagined it would feel cold here even on the hottest of summer days. A piece of hardboard had been hammered to one of the trees on the drive with the words, ‘Keep out! Private property!’ painted in red onto the wood. The paint had dripped down and left trickles running down the board and down the trunk.
At the side of the road was an old car that someone had left there to rot. As he glanced up at the many windows he wondered how many people were left here to do the same.
‘Hello!’ he shouted.
He was greeted by silence.
Mr Anderson looked over his shoulder at the thick woodland that circled the hospital, it felt like there were shadows in the forest, people through the trees. This was a good place, it was hidden from everyone and not far from Lyme Park. Maybe later this could be his place too. The boy had led him here for a reason. It wasn’t somewhere people would come.
There was something about the place that felt like the past hadn’t quite left it. As though there could be someone still left here, wandering the corridors or the surrounding woods. He remembered a picture in the book that Jacob had taken of a woman with long black hair as pale as the snow and as thin as the black branches of the trees. He could imagine her now, walking the grounds, waiting down one of the dark corridors. The boy had a nerve if he was here. Mr Anderson made his way up the stone steps of the hospital and looked back at the black bony trees that stood bare-limbed and still in the cold January air.
The place had been closed down after remains were found in unmarked graves around the property. He thought of Jacob’s mother being here and it didn’t seem right. Despite the way he felt about other people she had been good to him when no one else had been. He wondered what had happened to her when she was in here. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good. After she came back the visits to his house stopped. The singing stopped too. The walls between the houses only revealed silence and he imagined her sitting in a chair – a ghost of herself. He remembered her walking the streets and coming home with bags of shopping, but she was vacant. Sometimes she’d walk past him and not even notice he was there. As though whatever they’d done to her here had left a part of her locked in this old building. Once the history of the place came out no one wanted to buy it, but he could recall the words of his mother: ‘It’s not the dead that you need to worry about.’ He often thought that this was the place that ended Jacob Clarke’s mother, not the cheating husband, the breakdown or the motorway bridge. This was the place that really took her, because she never really came back from here.
It’s enough to make you mad, just being here, he thought.
He wondered if he should go inside, or if this was just a stupid idea. The door was open and he wondered if it was always left that way – open to the elements and to anyone stupid enough to want to go inside. He hesitated, going in; it was stupid, but he half-expected Jacob’s mother to be stood on the other side of the door, in a long white gown, hair loose and tangled.
The buil
ding was vast, a huge old frontage with giant rectangular windows, a stained white curtain catches the wind like a torn flag from one of the smashed windows above. Ivy had crept in through the broken glass and started to edge its way up the walls and over the beams on the ceiling. It might have been a beautiful building once.
A long corridor stretched out in front of him. The ceiling was arched and tiled, walls broken and plaster falling off the walls. Paint was peeling away from the architraves and the smell of damp was overpowering. It was still cold in here. As though they weren’t even inside. An old cabinet was upturned in the middle and papers scattered across the floor in among the rubble. There were various rooms along the corridor, each with the doors open. He glanced in as he passed. Each one seemed worse than the last. The empty beds and old clothes hung up had just been left there as if waiting for the occupants to return. At the bottom of the corridor, where it started to fade into darkness, was one room facing him. The door was black.
As he walked towards the door he wondered if Jacob Clarke’s mother had walked these corridors. He could almost see her gown in the torn curtains that hung from the window and her face in the swirls of dirt in the broken walls.
Mr Anderson looked down at the rusting old metal wheelchair at the side of the room and the heap of old blankets left to rot on a curled-up mattress. This place must have housed more women that he could imagine. He could almost hear the screams through the walls.
‘Hello?’ he shouted, but there was nothing, no sound, but silence.
He wished he’d gotten here sooner, but whatever was behind that door, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go in. With every step, he could feel the past aching to be heard. The doors on this corridor were all heavy oak. It must have been the staff offices. He hoped he didn’t have to go further. The thought of what was above made him feel cold.