The Hiding Place, page 17
I jumped. My concentration wavered. The foot I was poised to place on the next step slipped. My ankle buckled beneath me. I yelped in pain and grabbed for the wall but, of course, it was gone. No wall, just air.
Fear snatched the scream from my throat. I tried to grab hold of something—anything—but it was too late. I was falling. I closed my eyes, prepared for the long drop…
…and I hit the ground almost immediately with a sudden, spine-cracking thump.
“Owwww. Shiiit.”
“Joe?” Chris’s voice called down. “Are you okay?”
I attempted to sit up. My back hurt a bit. It felt bruised, but it could have been worse—a lot worse. I looked up. I could see flashlights and vague silhouettes. Only a few feet above me.
We had found it, I realized. We were here.
I pushed myself to my feet. My ankle twinged again.
“Shit.”
I clutched at it. It already felt a bit swollen. I hoped I’d just twisted it and not broken anything. I still had to climb back up those frigging steps.
“I’m okay!” I shouted back up. “But I’ve hurt my fucking ankle.”
“Boo hoo. What can you see? What’s down there?” Hurst’s voice. As caring and compassionate as ever.
My helmet had been knocked sideways. I propped myself against one rocky wall, relieving the weight on my bad ankle, and adjusted it. I looked around. More wooden beams were set into the walls. They ran straight up from the ground. Between them I could see other shapes and patterns. They looked like they had been made by white sticks embedded into the rock. They formed intricate designs. Stars and eyes. Odd-looking letters. Stick men. I fought back a small shiver. On some of the walls there were fewer patterns. Instead, piles of sticks and yellow rocks were stacked tightly in large arched alcoves.
I didn’t like it. Any of it. It was creepy. Weird. Wrong.
I heard the others descending. Chris stepped slowly down into the cavern. Hurst jumped and landed beside me with a thud, almost immediately followed by Marie and Fletch. There was a pause as they all looked around, taking it in.
“Whoa. This is well cool,” Marie said. “It’s like something out of The Lost Boys.”
“Is it summat to do with the pit?” Fletch asked, displaying his usual abundance of imagination.
“No.” The word came from Chris, but he snatched it from the tip of my tongue.
This wasn’t something forged by miners. Mines were hacked, punched and hewn from the rock; it was clumsy and rough and industrial, done with heavy tools and machinery.
This was something different. It had not been formed by necessity or stoic workmanship. It had been created by, I sort of wanted to say, passion, but that wasn’t quite right either. As I gazed around, another word thrust itself into my head. Devotion. That was it—devotion.
“Shine your flashlight round, fuckwit,” Hurst said to Fletch, who duly obliged.
He turned in a circle, pointing the flashlight around the cavern. It only just reached the far walls, and rather than illuminating it seemed to accentuate the deep hollows and corners filled with blackness. It was probably just some weird effect of the light, but if you glanced quickly, out of the corner of your eye, it almost looked like the shadows were moving, shifting and ebbing restlessly.
“This is really weird,” Hurst muttered. “Doughboy’s right. This ain’t no mine.” He turned to me. “What d’you think, Thorney?”
I was trying, but thinking was hard down here. Even though the cavern was big and far less stifling than the narrow tunnel, I was still finding it laborsome to breathe. Like the air was wrong. Like the oxygen had been replaced with something else. Something heavier and sort of foul. Something no one should breathe, ever.
Poisonous gases, I thought suddenly. My dad had often spoken about the fumes released from deep down in the earth. Was that it? Were we slowly being poisoned while we stood here? I glanced over at Chris.
“Chris, what is this place?”
He still stood near the steps, venturing no farther. His face in the grimy gloom was pale, streaked with dirt, not scared exactly but tense. He looked much older than his fifteen years, like the man he would never become. Then his vivid eyes met mine and I understood. He hadn’t found this place. It had found him, and now he desperately wanted it to let him go again.
“Don’t you know yet?” he said. “Don’t you get it?”
I looked back around the cavern. At the high, vaulted roof. The wooden beams. And that was when something in my head clicked. Because when you looked again, it was obvious. Air that shouldn’t be breathed. A huge underground chamber. Like a church but not.
“Get what?” Hurst asked.
And right on the heels of that thought came another. The white sticks in the walls and the rocks piled in the alcoves. I limped forward, toward the nearest wall. The light on my helmet illuminated a star, a symbol like a hand and a stick figure. Up close, they weren’t pure white. And they weren’t sticks. They were something else.
Something you would expect to find in a place like this.
In a grave, a burial chamber.
“Thorney, are you going to tell me what the fuck is going on?” Hurst snarled dangerously.
“Bones,” I whispered, horror leaching the strength from my voice. “The rock—it’s full of bones.”
23
Sometimes, it takes a while for you to realize that something is wrong. Something is off. It stinks. Like when you stand in dog shit and it’s not until you’re sitting in the car, wondering where the bad smell is coming from, that it sinks in: the stink is coming from you. You brought it along for the ride.
When I get back to the cottage I notice that the front door is ajar, just a little. I’m sure I remember closing and locking it. As I get closer, I see that the frame is splintered and cracked. Someone has forced it. I push the door all the way open and walk inside.
The cushions on the sofa have been thrown off and sliced open, spilling their foamy guts all over the floor. The coffee table has been tipped up, the drawers from the small cabinet yanked out. My laptop is in pieces.
The cottage has been ransacked. I frown, my mind taking a while to assess the situation. And then it dawns on me. Fletch and his sons, probably on instruction from Hurst. I guess he didn’t want to negotiate after all. Typical Hurst—if someone won’t give you something, you take it, by any means.
Except, I know damn well that they won’t have found what they were looking for.
I walk wearily upstairs. My mattress has been slashed and eviscerated, the clothes in the wardrobe pulled off hangers and dumped in a heap on the floor. I bend down to pick up some shirts and I can immediately tell, from the dampness and acrid smell, that they have been liberally pissed upon.
I check in the bathroom: shower curtain yanked down for no apparent reason, the top taken off the cistern and smashed. I could have told them that nothing they could do in here could disturb me more than the things I’ve already encountered.
Finally, I check the spare room. Ben’s room. I open the door. I stare at the lacerated mattress, the ripped-up carpet, and feel a slow burn of anger. I limp back downstairs.
I find Abbie-Eyes in the wood-burning stove, along with the folder that I discovered beneath the Angel. I crouch down and take them both out. They’re dusty and black but they haven’t been set alight. I wonder why? I place Abbie-Eyes on the coffee table. After a moment’s consideration I slip the folder inside one of the slit-open cushions, just to be on the safe side. Something is bothering me. Why didn’t Fletch’s lads burn them? Had they got bored of their destruction by this point? Seems unlikely. Did they run out of time?
Or was it something else? Were they disturbed, interrupted?
I suddenly have a very bad feeling. There’s a creak from the kitchen. I straighten and turn.
“Evening, Joe.”
—
I sit on the cushionless sofa. Gloria perches delicately on the armchair. Flames crackle noisily in the wood-burning stove. This is not as homely as it sounds. Gloria wears black leather gloves and holds a poker in one hand.
“What are you doing here?”
“Checking up on your welfare.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
She laughs. My bladder cramps.
“I saw you had some visitors today.”
“You met them?”
“They were leaving just as I arrived. We didn’t have a chance to chat.”
She glances around. “It strikes me that they were searching for something. Perhaps the same thing that you were hoping your old friend might stump up a wad of cash for.”
“They didn’t find what they were looking for.”
“You’re sure.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t have what they’re looking for. Not here.”
She considers this. “I have found, in my line of work, that it is beneficial to be in possession of all the facts.”
“I’ve told you—”
“You’ve told me FUCK ALL!”
She slams the poker down on the coffee table. Abbie-Eyes flies into the air and lands near my feet. A crack splits her plastic features. Her loose eye spills out of the socket. It stares up at me from the floor. Sweat gathers at the base of my spine.
“Fortunately,” Gloria continues, “I’ve done a little research of my own. It was interesting.”
She stands, walks over to the wood-burning stove, bends down and opens it.
“Let me take you back twenty-five years. Five schoolfriends. You, Stephen Hurst, Christopher Manning, Marie Gibson and Nick Fletcher. Oh, and your little sister, Annie. Never told me about her.”
She sticks the end of the poker into the stove, wedging it deep inside the logs. The flames crackle louder.
“One night, when you were out with your friends, she went missing. Disappeared from her own bed. There were searches, appeals. Everyone thought the worst. And then, miraculously, after forty-eight hours, she came back. But she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say what had happened to her…”
“I don’t see—”
“Let me finish. Happy ending, except, two months later, Daddy crashes his car into a tree, killing little Annie and himself and leaving you critically injured. How am I doing so far?”
I stare at the poker. In the fire. Out of the frying pan, I think wildly.
“Like you said, you’ve done your research,” I say.
Gloria begins to pace. “Oh, I left a bit out—a few weeks after your sister’s return your friend Christopher Manning falls from the school English block. Tragic coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Life is full of tragic coincidences.”
“Fast-forward to now, and you return to the village where you grew up. You plan to blackmail your old schoolfriend Stephen Hurst for a large amount of cash. What do you have on him? What is he hiding?”
“Someone like Hurst has plenty of secrets.”
“I’m beginning to think you do too, Joe.”
“Why do you care?”
“Because I like you.”
“You have a very odd way of showing it.”
“Put it another way then—you interest me. Not many people do. For a start, you’re one of the least likely teachers I’ve ever met. You’re a drunk, a gambler. But you have a vocation. You choose to impart knowledge to children. Why is that?”
“You get a lot of holidays.”
“I think it’s because of what happened here, twenty-five years ago. I think you’re trying to make amends for something.”
“Or just trying to make a living.”
“Flippancy is a flimsy defense mechanism. Trust me, I should know. It’s one of the first things to fall away when people are in fear for their lives.”
“Is that a threat?”
“You wish. Actually, what I’m giving you is a lifeline.”
She walks over. I flinch. She bends down and holds something out. A card. Blank, except for a phone number.
She reaches down and slips it into the pocket of my jeans, patting me gently on the crotch.
“You can reach me on this for the next twenty-four hours if you need my help.”
“Why?”
“Because, deep down, I have a soft spot for you.”
“That’s comforting to hear.”
“Don’t take it to heart.”
My eyes flick back to the poker. The fire spits.
“The Fatman is getting impatient.”
“I told you—”
“Shut up.”
The sweat is now trickling down between my arse cheeks. My stomach is a tight ball of cramp. I want to be sick, to shit and to piss all at once.
“He gave you extra time. Now, he wants his money.”
“He’ll get it. That’s why I’m here.”
“I know, Joe. And if it were just up to me?” She gives a dainty shrug. “But it looks to him like you ran. That doesn’t inspire faith. The Fatman wants to be sure you understand how serious he is.”
“I do. Really.”
She takes the poker out of the stove. The tip glows red. I glance toward the door. But I know I’d be in a headlock before my backside left the armchair.
“Please—”
“Like I said, Joe, I have a soft spot for you.”
She walks over and crouches down next to me. She holds up the poker. I can feel the heat.
Gloria smiles. “So, I’m going to spare your pretty face.”
—
I lie on the sofa. I have taken four codeine tablets and finished the bottle of bourbon. My left hand is bound in an old tea towel and resting on a pack of frozen fish fingers. It is now only mildly agonizing. I am not expecting to be playing a violin concerto anytime soon.
My skin feels hot and feverish. I drift in and out of consciousness. Not sleep. Just an illusory gray-and-black place peppered with strange visions.
In one, I’m back at the old colliery site. I’m not alone. Chris and Annie stand on the crest of a hill. The sky hangs above them like a bag of mercury, swollen with silvery light and fluid with black rain. The wind rages and tears with invisible claws.
Chris’s head is oddly misshapen, caved in at the back. Blood runs from his nose and eyes. Annie holds his hand. And this Annie, I know, is my Annie. The ugly gash is there on her head, deep and ruinous. As I watch, she opens her mouth and says softly:
I know where the snowmen go, Joe. I know where they go now.
She smiles. And I feel happy, calm, at peace. But then the clouds above them lower and swell, and instead of rain a cascade of shiny black beetles pours down. I watch my friend and my sister fall to the ground, engulfed in the scuttling mass of bodies until all I can see is a swarm of blackness. Devouring them, swallowing them whole.
My phone starts to ring. Saved by the bell, or rather Metallica.
I roll over and pick it up with my good hand. I squint at the screen. Brendan. I press Accept with a shaky finger.
“You’re alive?” I croak.
“Last time I checked. You sound like shit.”
“Thanks.”
“You love my honesty.”
“Don’t forget your pert arse.”
“Healthy eating, no booze. You should try it.”
“I’ve been calling you for days,” I say.
“Lost my phone charger. What’s so urgent?”
“I just…wanted to check you were okay.”
“Aside from missing my favorite pub, dandy. When can I go back?”
I look at my bandaged, burnt hand. “Not yet.”
“Feck.”
“It might be an idea to move out of the apartment for a while as well.”
“Jesus! Is this to do with your habit of owing money to unpleasant people?”
Guilt stabs my insides. Brendan has been good to me—more than good. He’s let me share his apartment, rent free. He has never lectured me on my gambling. Most people would have given up on me. But not Brendan. And now I’m paying him back by putting him in danger.
“Have you got somewhere to stay tonight?”
“Tonight? Well, there’s my sister. I’m sure her husband will be bloody delighted about that.”
“It shouldn’t be for long.”
“I should feckin’ hope not.” He sighs. “You know what my dear old mammy would say?”
“ ‘I’m losing my voice,’ hopefully?”
“When does a hare stop running from the fox?”
I groan. “When?”
“When it hears the hunter’s bugle.”
“Meaning?”
“Sometimes you need someone bigger—like the police—to sort out your problem.”
“I am sorting it. Okay?”
“Like you sorted it before—stealing money from the school safe.”
“I never took a penny.”
True. But only because Debbie—the secretary with the handbag addiction—got there before me. When I found this out we came to an agreement. I would say nothing if she paid the money back. I would also leave quietly (I was on my final written warning for tardiness, sloppy work and general shittiness of attitude by that point anyway). Oh, and she would owe me.
“That was different.”
“I remember. I was the one who brought you grapes every day in the hospital when you couldn’t pay your debts and someone made papier-mâché out of your knee.”
“You visited me twice in the hospital and you never brought me grapes.”
“I sent you texts.”
“You sent me porn.”
“Well, who needs feckin” grapes?”
“Look, I really will sort this.”
“Did I mention that I’ll have to share my sister’s spare room with feckin” hamsters that squeak their wheels all night?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Or that she has two young kids who think five o’clock in the morning is a perfectly acceptable time to play trampoline on their uncle’s stomach?”
