The Hiding Place, page 6
I tell him that’s fine. I can live without the view of the road.
He also gives me an odd look. Not my audience.
After he’s gone I sink a couple more bourbons, smoke a cigarette leaning out of the back door then decide I’ve had enough, more than enough, for one day and head back upstairs to bed.
The cold has gone. It’s just the normal chill of the cottage. I approach the bathroom gingerly, but the toilet is still empty. I remove the toilet paper and relieve myself, wash and brush my teeth, flick the light switch and shut the door.
Then I have second thoughts. I walk back downstairs and pick up the house brick. I carry it back into the bathroom and place it on top of the toilet lid.
Just in case.
—
I don’t dream.
I have nightmares.
Normally, the alcohol helps with that.
Not tonight.
I’m walking up the stairs in my childhood house, except—in the way that dreams are—it isn’t my childhood house, not quite. The stairs are much narrower and steeper and they wind around in a spiral. I can hear a noise below me in the darkness: a skittering, chittering noise. Shadows swarm around the bottom. Above me, I can hear another noise. A terrible high-pitched keening sound, like an animal in pain, interspersed with cries: “Abbie-Eyes. Abbie-Eyes. Kiss the boys and make them cry.”
I don’t want to climb the staircase but I have no choice. Every time I glance back I see a few more of the stairs have disappeared into darkness. The shadows are creeping, just like the cold, and they’re gaining on me.
I keep climbing, the stairs winding endlessly up ahead of me and then, suddenly, I’m on the landing. I look back. The stairs aren’t there anymore. The shadows have crept up and swallowed them. Now they mill and scuttle restlessly, inches from my feet.
There are three doors, all closed. I push open the first door. My dad is inside. He sits on the bed. Well, “sits” isn’t quite the word. He lolls, like a puppet with its strings cut. His head lies on his shoulder, as though it’s having a rest from the business of being on top of things. Glistening tendons and stringy red strips of muscle barely hold it to his body. When the car hit the tree a jagged sliver of windshield pretty much decapitated him.
He opens his mouth and a strange wheezing noise hisses out. I realize it’s my name: “Joe-eeeeee.” He tries to stand. I pull the door shut again, heart thumping, legs trembling. I move on to the next door. This one will be worse, I know. But just like a character in a bad horror movie, I know I’m going to open it.
I push at the door then step back. The room is filled with flies. Bluebottles rise in a dark, buzzing cloud. Somewhere among them I can see two figures. Julia and Ben. At least, I think it must be Julia and Ben. It’s hard to tell as Julia is missing most of her head and Ben has no face. Just a red-and-white mass of blood, bone and gristle.
They stand, shadowy figures amid the flies…and then I realize they’re made of flies themselves. As I stare at them, they dissolve and pour toward me. I throw myself through the door and slam it shut. I can hear the flies batting themselves against the wood in a furious swarm.
Wake up, I think. Wake up, wake up, wake up. But my subconscious is not about to let me off so easily. I turn toward the last door. My hand reaches out and twists the handle. It swings slowly open. This room is empty. Except for a bed and Abbie-Eyes. She lies in the center, eyelids closed. I walk forward and pick her up. Her eyes snap open. Pink plastic lips twist into a smile: She’s behind you.
I turn. Annie stands in the doorway. She’s wearing her pajamas. Pale pink, decorated with small white sheep. The clothes she was wearing the night of the crash. Except that’s wrong. That wasn’t what my sister was wearing when she died.
“Go away,” I say.
She shuffles toward me and stretches out her arms.
“Go away.”
Then she opens her mouth and a swarm of beetles pours out of it. I try to run but my bad leg gets tangled and I crash to the floor. Behind me I can hear the chittering, skittering of hard shells and busy little legs. I can feel them crawling up my ankles, burrowing into my skin. I try to swat and brush them off. They scuttle up my arms and neck, into my mouth and down my throat. I can’t breathe. I’m choking on stinking, black bodies…
I wake, sweating and shaking, batting at my bedclothes, which are tangled and knotted around my naked body.
Shards of daylight poke through the semi-drawn curtains and jab at my eyeballs. I squint at my alarm clock, just as it starts to ring, sending peals of agony through my pounding head.
I roll over and groan. Time for school.
8
“Sir?”
“Yes, Lucas?” I point wearily at the arm waving in the air, and then, before he can say anything, I raise my own hand.
“If this is another question about Tinder, I think we’ve already covered the fact that dating apps weren’t exactly a thing in Romeo and Juliet’s time.”
Another hand shoots up.
“Josh?”
“What about Snapchat?”
The class ripples with laughter. I smother a smile.
“Okay. You’ve given me an idea.”
“I have, sir?”
“Yep. Take one of the chapters we’ve read and rewrite it as if it were set in the modern day. Pay particular attention to parallels and the themes of tragedy and calamity.”
More hands shoot into the air. I pick one.
“Aleysha?”
“What’s a parallel?”
“Something similar or corresponding to.”
“What’s a calamity?”
“This class.”
The bell rings for lunch. I try not to wince at the noise.
“Okay. Get out of here. I look forward to reading those essays tomorrow.”
Chairs scrape and clatter as the children hastily make their escape. Doesn’t matter how interesting you make your lessons or how enthusiastic the students, the ringing of the bell always sends them scattering from the classroom like inmates released from prison.
I start to gather my books and stuff them into my satchel. A familiar dark head pokes around the classroom door.
“Hey!”
“Hi.”
Beth saunters in—Nirvana T-shirt, ripped jeans and Vans today—and perches on the edge of my desk.
“So, I hear someone threw a brick through your window last night?”
“News travels fast in Arnhill.”
“Yeah, but it never leaves.”
I chuckle. “Who told you?”
“One of the teaching assistants’ cousins works part-time with a woman whose brother works for the police.”
“Whoa. Better sources than CNN.”
“More accurate, usually.”
She cocks an eyebrow, which I presume is my cue to confirm or deny reports.
I shrug. “I guess someone didn’t like my lesson plans.”
“You think it was one of the kids here?”
“It seems most likely.”
“You have a prime suspect?”
“You could say that.” I hesitate. “Jeremy Hurst.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t sound surprised.”
“St. Jeremy? No. I heard you had a run-in.”
“You really do have great hearing. If you ever hear what the winning lottery numbers are…”
She grins. “Like I’d tell you.”
“So what do you know about—”
There’s a knock on the half-open door. We both look up. A slightly overweight girl with streaked blond hair and too much makeup for a school day peers in. “This Mr. Anderson’s class?”
“No, next door,” Beth says.
“Right.” She huffs and storms off.
“You’re welcome!” Beth shouts after her. She looks back at me. “Why don’t we take this conversation out of the classroom? I believe it’s lunchtime.”
“The cafeteria?”
“Screw that. I was thinking more like the pub.”
—
The worn chairs and benches are gone. The migraine-inducing multicolored carpet has been replaced by shiny wooden floorboards. Tasteful lamps are arranged on the windowsills and an array of fine wines and bourbons are available at the bar. There’s also an exciting new “gastropub” menu.
Actually, none of that is true.
The Fox hasn’t changed at all, not since the last time I was in here, twenty-five years ago. The same old jukebox sits in the corner, probably stacked with the same old tunes. Even some of the patrons don’t look as if they have changed, or moved, since the last century.
“I know,” Beth says, catching me surveying the pub. “I take you to all the best places.”
“Actually, I was just thinking that you can probably still smell my vomit in the toilets.”
“Nice. I forgot you grew up here. Well, not literally in here.”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“So, this was your local?”
“Kind of. Officially, I wasn’t old enough to drink. Unofficially…the landlord wasn’t too stringent about that sort of thing.”
I turn to the bar. I half expect to see Gypsy still serving behind it, but instead a young woman with huge hooped earrings and hair in a ponytail so tight her eyebrows look like they are being held against their will scowls invitingly at me.
“Getcha?”
I look at Beth.
“Just a Diet Coke, thanks.”
I glance longingly at the whiskey, then say reluctantly, “Two Diet Cokes, please. Oh, and a menu.”
“Cheese bap, ham bap, pork pie or chips.”
“Heston Blumenthal is quaking in his loafers.”
She stares at me and chews her gum.
“Chips and a cheese bap, please,” Beth says.
“Same, thanks.”
“Ten pounds sixty.”
Say what you like about her attitude, her mental arithmetic isn’t bad.
Beth starts to fumble in her bag.
“No, don’t worry,” I say. “I’ll get these.” I reach in my pocket and frown. “Shit. I’ve left my wallet at home.”
“No worries,” Beth says. “It’s hardly going to break the bank.”
I smile, feeling a little guilty. But only a little.
We pay and find a seat—not too difficult—in a corner near one of the windows.
“So,” I say to Beth as she sips her Diet Coke, “you were going to tell me about Hurst?”
“Right. Well, there’s probably not that much to tell. The boy is smart, athletic, good-looking and a sadistic little shit. And he gets away with it because of his dad.”
“Stephen Hurst.”
“You know him?”
“We went to school together.”
“Ah, right.”
“I hear he’s on the council now?”
“Yeah. And you know the sort of people that end up being councillors—”
“People that genuinely want to help their community?”
“And arseholes that get off on being in a position of power and use it to further their own ends.”
“Gosh, I can’t think which Stephen Hurst could be.”
“Yeah, he’s a piece of work. But then you probably already know that. You’ve heard about the plans for the old colliery?”
“The council wants to turn it into a country park?”
“Yep. Well, one of the reasons it has taken so long to get off the ground is because of Hurst.”
“How come?”
“Well, officially, because of difficulties with funding. Unofficially, Hurst has ties to a property company that wants to build houses on the land instead.”
“Housing? On an old mining site? That would take years for the council to approve—” And then it hits me. “Ah, I see.”
“Yup. Basically, Hurst Junior is a chip off the old block. And Daddy is on the school board, so every time Jeremy does something that would get any other kid suspended Hurst Senior waltzes in, has a chat with Harry, probably about funding for the new sports center or the extra science block we need, and guess what? Nothing happens.”
I feel a familiar anger start to stir in my gut. Same as it ever was, I think.
Barmaid of the Year approaches again, brandishing our cutlery like weapons. She plonks it down on the table.
“Chips’ll take a mo.” We’re out of ketchup.”
“Okay.”
She stares at me for a moment longer than is comfortable and I wonder if saying, “Okay,” has somehow offended her. Then she stalks away again.
Beth looks at me. “You really do know how to make friends and influence people, don’t you?”
“My natural charm?”
“Don’t kid yourself.”
I take a sip of Diet Coke then I say, “Julia Morton was Hurst’s form tutor last year, wasn’t she?”
She nods. “But I wouldn’t read anything into it.”
“No?”
“No. Julia could deal with Hurst. She didn’t take any shit and he didn’t give her too much. She was a tough cookie. She didn’t crumble easily.”
And yet she did, I think. She beat her own son to death. And why not use the gun? A moment of madness? Or something else?
As if she can read my mind, Beth says, “That’s why what happened just doesn’t make any sense.”
“You said she was depressed?”
“She’d suffered from depression, in the past.”
“But depression doesn’t just go away. She’d stopped taking her medication. Maybe she had some sort of relapse, a breakdown?”
She sighs. “I don’t know. Maybe. And maybe if she had just killed herself, I could understand it. But to kill Ben? She doted on him. I’ll never understand that.”
“What was Ben like?”
“Bright enough, plenty of friends. Maybe a little easily led. That got him into trouble a couple of times. But a good kid. Until he went missing.”
“Ben went missing? When?”
“A couple of months before he died. Turned up after twenty-four hours, and after the whole village had been out looking for him. Wouldn’t say where he’d been. It was out of character, not like him.”
I let this sink in. Missing. But he came back.
“I never read anything about that.”
She shrugs. “Kind of got swept under the carpet with everything else that happened. Anyway, afterward…” She pauses. “He was different.”
“How?”
“Withdrawn, distracted. He stopped hanging out with his friends, or they stopped hanging out with him. This sounds awful, but he smelled, like he wasn’t washing. Then he got into a fight. Hurt the other kid quite badly. That’s when Julia asked for some time off and took him out of school. Said he was having ‘emotional issues’ because of the divorce.”
“Why did no one else mention this?”
“Seriously? Who’s going to say anything bad about a dead kid? Besides, everyone just blamed Julia for his behavior. His mother was nuts. Must all be her fault, right?”
I think about that unnamed school source. I want to ask more but, right on cue, our charming waitress emerges back at the table.
“Cheese baps, chips.”
“Thanks.”
She thuds the plates down and glares at me again.
“Sorry,” I say. “Is there something wrong?”
“You’re renting the Morton cottage?”
“Yes.”
“You know what happened there?”
This seems to be the question of the week.
“Yes.”
“So, what are you?”
“Sorry?”
“Some kind of ghoul?”
“Erm, no? Actually, I’m a teacher.”
“Right.”
She considers this, then she reaches into her pocket, takes out a card and holds it out to me.
Not wanting to incur further wrath, I take it: “Dawson’s Dust Busters.”
“What’s this?”
“My mum. She’s a cleaner. She used to clean the cottage for Mrs. Morton. You might want to give her a call.”
Possibly the strangest sales pitch I’ve ever had.
“Well, I’m not sure I can stretch to a cleaner right now, but thanks.”
“Suit yourself.”
She wanders off again. I look at Beth. “Whoa.”
“Yeah, she’s a little—”
“Rude? Weird? Scary?”
“Actually, Lauren is on the spectrum. So normal social conventions can be difficult for her.”
“Right. And someone employed her as a barmaid?”
“You don’t think every kid should be given an equal chance?”
“I’m just saying that the hospitality industry might not be the best career match.”
“Judgmental.”
“Practical.”
“Tomayto, tomahto.”
“Actually, it’s tomahto. I’m very judgmental on that one.”
She grins. She grins a lot, I think. Makes me want to do the same, use muscles I haven’t exercised in a while.
“Anyway,” I say, sticking the card in my pocket, “you were saying?”
“Nope.” She jabs her fork at me. “Your turn. So why are you renting the Morton cottage?”
“You too?”
“Well, it is a bit weird.”
“It’s convenient, it’s cheap. And years ago it wasn’t the ‘Morton’ cottage, it belonged to a little old lady who used to throw scraps of bread to the birds and swear at the schoolkids who cycled past. It’s just a building. It has history. Most places do.”
Although most places do not have an infestation of beetles in the waste pipes. I fight down a shudder.
Beth regards me curiously. “So, talking of history—is it odd, coming back here?”
I shrug. “It’s always odd coming back to the place where you grew up.”
