The Hiding Place, page 20
“Jesus fuck!” Fletch yelled. “Have you seen this?”
We turned. He was holding up one of the yellowed rocks, except it wasn’t a rock. It was a skull. Tiny. It barely filled his hand. Not an adult’s. A child’s. Nearly all of these dismembered skeletons were children.
“I think we should go,” I said, but my voice sounded distant and weak.
“Are you joking?” Hurst said. “This place is the balls. And it’s ours.”
That was when I understood what truly deep shit we were in. You didn’t own something like this. You could never own a place like this. If anything, it owned you.
Fletch grinned and chucked the skull at Marie.
“Dickhead.” She ducked and the skull hit the ground and split neatly in two.
“Gross,” Marie moaned. She didn’t look so great. Maybe it was the sight of all the bones, maybe it was the effects of the cider kicking in, but her face had gone a pallid gray color.
Hurst was prowling around the cave now, gouging out more bones from the walls with the crowbar, whooping each time. Actually whooping.
Fletch grabbed some more skulls and started to boot them across the cavern, like he was playing football. My gut twisted in horror. But I didn’t do anything. I just stood by. Like I always did.
“Here!” Hurst yelled, brandishing the crowbar. Fletch picked up a skull, clasping it like a bowling ball with his fingers in the empty sockets. He lobbed it toward Hurst. Hurst swung the crowbar. The metal and skull connected with a crack. The skull shattered. My stomach rolled.
I looked over at Chris for some help, some backup, but he just stood, arms hanging at his sides, staring blankly. As though, now that we were here, now that he could see what he had found, the trauma had shunted him into catatonia.
My voice finally broke: “For fuck’s sake, these are the bones of dead kids.”
“So?” Fletch turned to look at me. “Not like they’re gonna complain.”
Hurst just grinned. “Lighten up, Thorney. We’re just having fun. Besides, finders keepers, right?”
He picked up the half-skull from the ground. “What’s that Shakespeare shit? ‘To be or not to be’?”
He threw the skull into the air and whacked it with the crowbar. Fragments of bone flew across the cavern.
I winced, but I was distracted. I thought I had heard something. Coming from the walls. A weird sort of sound. Not scratching, exactly. More like a skittering, chittering sound. I thought about bats. Could there be bats down here? Or rats even. They liked dark underground tunnels, didn’t they?
“Did you hear something?” I asked.
Hurst frowned. “Nope.”
“Are you sure? I thought I heard something—bats or rats?”
“Rats!” Marie’s head whipped round. “Shit!” She bolted for a far corner and loudly threw up.
“Fuck,” Fletch said. “I knew we shouldn’t have brought her.”
Hurst’s face tensed. I wasn’t sure if he was going to have a go at Fletch or shout at Marie. But then there was another noise. This time more distinct. A small cascade of stones rattling down from the steps above.
We all spun around (aside from Marie, who was making heaving, groaning noises in the corner). The cavern hung heavy with the smell of vomit and sweat. Still, it seemed to me that the air felt cooler. Cold even. But not normal cold. Weird cold. Creeping cold, I suddenly thought. Like the shifting shadows. Not static. Moving, alive.
We swung our flashlights back in the direction of the noise. Toward the steps. They rose unevenly up into darkness.
“Hey!” Hurst called. “Anybody up there?”
Silence, and then another small fall of stones.
“You’d better get down here or I will come up and…”
His voice tapered off. A shadow reared up on the wall. Tall and spindly, clutching something in its elongated fingers, something that looked like a baby…
We all fell quiet, even Marie’s moans subsiding. I could hear the other sound again. The skittering, chittering sound. Closer. The shadow rounded the corner. My scalp tightened. Hurst raised the crowbar. Slowly, the shadow shrank and melted into a solid figure. A small figure in a gray hoodie, pink pajama bottoms and trainers. In one hand, she held a flashlight. In the other, a plastic doll.
“For fuck’s sake.” Hurst lowered the crowbar.
“You are shitting me,” Fletch muttered.
I stared at Annie. “What the hell are you doing here?”
27
We sit, the pair of us, in the back room. It is dimly lit, furnished only with two sturdy leather armchairs, a desk and a reading table. A faded but probably once expensive rug covers the bare floorboards. Tall bookshelves take up most of the wall space, jam-packed with books whose spines are all pleasantly cracked and worn.
Never trust a person whose bookshelves are lined with pristine books, or worse, someone who places the books with their covers facing outward. That person is not a reader. That person is a shower. Look at me and my great literary taste. Look at these acclaimed tomes that I have, most probably, never read. A reader cracks the spine, thumbs the pages, absorbs every word and nuance. You might not be able to judge a book by its cover, but you can definitely judge the person who owns the book.
“So,” Miss Grayson says, placing a cup of coffee on the table beside me then sitting down in the other armchair with a mug of Theraflu. “You have some questions.”
“Just a few.”
She sits back. “Probably the first being am I a crazy old woman with too much time on her hands?”
I reach for the coffee and take a sip. Unlike the slop she first served me at the school, this is rich and strong.
“It’s up there.”
“I imagine it is.”
“You sent me the email?”
“Yes.”
“How did you find me?”
“Process of elimination. I knew you’d become a teacher. I tracked you down to your last school, explained you were applying for a position here and I’d lost your contact details.”
“But that was before I applied for the job here.”
“That’s right.”
Something else occurs to me.
“Did the school mention how I left?”
“It came up.”
“So you knew I faked the reference I gave Harry.”
A glint in her eye. “I was impressed with your inventiveness.”
I let this sink in. All along, she has been playing me.
“And the folder?”
“I collated it. Marcus left it for you—I thought it would attract less attention.”
“But the text came from Marcus’s phone?”
“An old one he didn’t use. But then his iPhone was smashed and he needed a spare.”
“Why? Why go to all this trouble? This pantomime? You didn’t think to just call me? I hear that the mail even delivers such things as letters?”
“Would you have come back if I had just called?”
“Maybe.”
“We both know that’s not true.”
Her voice is sharp. And I feel rebuked. Like a child caught in a lie.
“I learned a lot,” she continues, “working with children all these years. One—never ask anything outright. They will only lie. Two—always make them think it is their idea. And three—make something interesting enough and they will come to you.”
“You missed out four—never let them light their own farts.”
A small smile. “You always used sarcasm as a defense mechanism, even as a boy.”
“I’m surprised you remember me as a boy.”
“I remember all my students.”
“Impressive. I can barely remember my last class.”
“Stephen Hurst—sadistic, amoral but clever. A dangerous combination. Nick Fletcher—not a bright boy, an excess of anger. A pity he couldn’t have found a better way to channel it. Chris Manning—brilliant, damaged, lost. Always searching for something he could never find. And you—the dark horse. Deflecting blows with words. The closest thing Hurst had to a real friend. He needed you, more than you realized.”
I swallow. My throat feels like sandpaper.
“You forgot Marie.”
“Ah yes—a pretty girl, cleverer than she made out. A girl who knew how to get what she wanted, even back then.”
“But we’re not children anymore.”
“We’re all still children inside. The same fears, the same joys. We just get taller, and better at hiding things.”
“You’re pretty good at hiding things yourself.”
“I didn’t mean to deceive you.”
“Then what exactly did you mean to do?”
“Persuade you to return. In which I succeeded.” She starts to cough, pulls a tissue out of her sleeve and covers her mouth. Once the coughing has subsided, she says: “I presume you found out through Marcus.”
I nod. “He was worried you’d get into trouble. I promised him you wouldn’t…as long as you told me the truth.”
She nods. “Marcus is a good boy.”
“He thinks a lot of you.”
“He’s my godson, but I suppose he told you that as well?”
“Yes. I never realized you knew his mum—”
“Ruth suffered terribly at school. I rescued her from the bullies one day and became something of a confidante.”
I think about the children I would see in her office. The ones she tried to help. It wasn’t much. But, in school, when you are scared and bullied, a small kindness is everything.
“Anyway,” she continues, “Ruth and I stayed in touch after she left school. When she had Lauren and Marcus she asked me to be their godmother.
“I would look after them sometimes when she was working, in the holidays. We remained close, especially Marcus. He still visits me for tea twice a week. He’s a very smart young man and we share a lot of the same interests.”
“Local history?”
Another thin smile. “Among other things.”
“So you used him?”
“He wanted to help. He doesn’t know everything, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Oh, you have no idea what I’m thinking.”
“Then tell me.”
I open my mouth and realize I have no idea what I’m thinking.
“You read the folder?” she prompts, taking a sip from her mug.
“Most of it.”
“Did you find it interesting?”
I shrug. “Arnhill has a grim history. A lot of places do.”
“But most places aren’t as old as this village. People presume Arnhill grew up around the mine. Not true. It was here long before the mine.”
“So?”
“Why does a village grow up in the middle of nowhere?”
“Nice views?”
“Villages grow in certain places for a reason. Clean water, fertile land. And sometimes, there are other reasons.”
Other reasons. I feel a sudden draft. A cool waft of icy air.
“Such as?”
“Did you read the articles about the witch trials and Ezekeriah Hyrst?”
“Myth, urban legend.”
“But there is often a grain of truth.”
“And what’s the truth about Arnhill?”
She wraps her hands around her mug. Strong hands, I think. Competent. Steady.
“You visited the graveyard. You noticed what was missing?”
“Children. Babies.”
She nods. “That’s what is obviously missing.”
“Obviously?”
“Arnhill has a grim history, as you said. A lot of death. But there are just ninety souls buried in the graveyard.”
“Don’t they reuse old graves after a while?”
“They do. But even taking that into account—and the fact that most people were buried in other churchyards after about 1946, or cremated in more recent years—there’s a shortfall. Put bluntly, there are not enough graves for the dead. So, where are they?”
I suddenly understand what she has done. She has led me here, slowly and carefully, taking the long road so I didn’t see exactly where we were going. Until now.
“I think that they were taken to another place,” she says. “A place that the villagers believed was somehow special.” She lets the sentence hang for a moment. “And twenty-five years ago, I believe that you and your friends found it.”
Places have secrets too, I think. Like people. You just need to dig. In land, in life, in a man’s soul.
“How did you know?”
“I’ve seen a lot of young people in my time, here in the village. Seen them grow up, marry, have children of their own. Some never make it that far. Like Chris.”
I think about a soft thud. A ruby-red shadow.
“He used to sit in my office sometimes. Before Hurst took him under his wing.”
“I don’t remember—”
“You were probably too busy scurrying past, hoping I wouldn’t tell you off for your untucked shirt, or for wearing trainers.”
I almost smile. The past, I think. Never more than a few careless words away. Except I don’t think any of Miss Grayson’s words are careless. She has spent a long time waiting to speak them.
“A few days before he died,” she says, “Chris came to see me. He wanted to talk to someone. About what you found.”
“He told you what happened?”
“Some of it. But I think there’s more, isn’t there, Joe?”
There’s always more. You just need to dig. And the deeper you go, the darker it gets.
I nod. “Yes.”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
28
1992
Annie looked around the cavern, eyes huge hollows in her small face.
“I followed you.”
“No shit. What were you thinking?”
“I wanted to see what you were up to. Are they skulls? Are they real?” Her voice trembled a little. She clutched Abbie-Eyes to her narrow chest.
“You have to go.” I walked—hobbled—forward and grabbed her arm. “C’mon.”
“Wait.” Hurst moved to block us.
“What?”
“What if she blabs?”
“She’s eight.”
“Exactly.”
“I won’t say nothing,” Annie muttered.
“See? Now let me get her out of here.”
We locked eyes. I’m not really sure what I would have done if Marie hadn’t moaned from the corner: “I don’t feel good, Steve. I want to go home.”
“Stupid cow,” Fletch spat, but it sounded halfhearted.
I saw Hurst debate with himself. He looked at Annie and me, then back at Marie.
“Fine,” he growled. “We’ll go. But we’re coming back. And I ain’t leaving without some mementos.”
“No!” Chris spoke for the first time. “You can’t. You can’t take anything from here.”
Hurst advanced on him. “Why the fuck not, Doughboy? This is ours now. We own it.”
No, I thought again. You didn’t own this place. It might let you think so. Might even want you to think so. But that was how it got you. That was how it drew you down here. That was how it owned you.
“Chris is right,” I said. “We can’t take anything. I mean, what if someone asks where we got human bones from?”
Hurst turned to me. “No one tells. And no one fucking tells me what I can and can’t do, Thorney.”
He raised the crowbar again. I felt Annie flinch. I gripped her tighter.
A slow smile spread across Hurst’s face: “Give me your backpack.”
Without waiting for a reply, he yanked it from my back and threw it to Fletch.
“Let’s grab some booty. We can stick some candles in these and scare the shit out of people on Halloween.”
Fletch caught the bag and knelt to gather up some more skulls. Hurst returned to the wall and began hacking at it with the crowbar, gouging out bones in a frenzy.
Annie clutched my arm. “Abbie-Eyes doesn’t like it down here.”
“Tell Abbie-Eyes it’s okay. We’re going, soon.”
She shivered against me. “Abbie-Eyes says it’s not okay. She says it’s the shadows; the shadows are moving.” She turned sharply. “What’s that noise?”
There was no mistaking that skittering, chittering now. It was all around us. Not rats. Or bats. They were both too large. Too cumbersome. This was a brittle, busy sound. The sound of something small but multitudinous. A mass of bristling shells and scuttling legs.
I understood a moment before it happened. Insects, I thought. Insects.
Hurst stuck the crowbar into the rock, gouging at a stubborn bit of bone. “Gotcha!”
The wall exploded in a mass of shiny black bodies.
“Fuck!!”
Beetles poured out in a glistening wave, like living oil. Hundreds of them. They swarmed out of the hole and down to the floor. Some scurried along the crowbar and up Hurst’s arms. He dropped the bar and started shaking himself, like he was doing some kind of crazy dance.
On the other side of the cave Fletch yelped. The skull he was holding swiveled in his hand and more beetles poured from the eye sockets and gaping mouth. The skulls on the ground shifted, pushed around by thousands of tiny insect legs.
Fletch threw the skull to one side and scrambled to his feet. In his haste to get up he dropped the flashlight. It hit the floor and went out, plunging half of the cave into darkness.
Marie screamed, shrill and hysterical. “I can’t see. Shit, shit, shit. They’re all over me. Help me. Help me!”
A scream welled in my own throat but I needed to think about Annie. She clung to me, paralyzed into silence. I wrapped my arms around her, whispered into her hair.
“It’s okay. They’re just beetles. We’re going to get out of here.”
