Remains Page 3

  Her words caught in her throat, sadness stealing what little voice she’d mustered. She sat for a minute before she could go on. Outside, the shadow of the house had reached Lucy’s car.

  “When I was staying at the hospital there was a lady who, every month, delivered shoe boxes, care packages, to everyone on my ward. Over thirty boxes filled with books, clothes, sweets made by the congregation of her church.”

  Lucy talked to the house, talked to Alex.

  “It was a decent thing to do, a kind thing, but at the top of every box—the first thing you saw when you opened it—she always put a Bible. Like one of those free ones you get when you stay in a cheap hotel.”

  The tone of Lucy’s words had changed, as if the darkness that stretched over her car had somehow found its way into her lungs. Her voice grew stronger.

  “It made me so angry that I went through every one of those boxes, I took out every one of her Bibles and I threw them all in the trash. I said to her, ‘People can wear your clothes, they can eat your food, but what good are your Bibles to us? What good are lies and false promises to people whose lives have crushed them so badly they had to book themselves into a hospital for the fucking insane?’ ”

  Lucy spat the words. “I told her, ‘I know there’s no God. I know that, because, if there were, he wouldn’t have let my seven-year-old son be kidnapped from outside his house. He wouldn’t have let him be terrified and alone with a man…’ ”

  Lucy ground her teeth, unable to stifle the sob that escaped her mouth.

  “‘…with a man who took a shotgun and pointed it at my son’s head…’” She clapped a hand over her mouth, as if stopping her words might somehow stop the terrible thoughts. She felt her tears streak the back of her hand.

  Lucy fought to keep herself together for Alex’s sake. She hated crying in front of him.

  “Oh, Alex. I’d give anything for you to be here now.”

  The knock on the passenger side window made Lucy start.

  She turned away, wiping her eyes, hiding her grief. Her pain was private, between her and her son.

  Matt leaned down and knocked again. When she was ready, Lucy wound down the window.

  “Are you okay?” Matt asked.

  Lucy nodded. Matt could see that was a lie.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

  “Neither should you.”

  “Doctor Bachman said you’d discharged yourself.”

  Nothing from Lucy.

  “He just called because he’s worried about you.”

  “Is that why you came here?”

  Nothing from Matt this time.

  Matt watched Lucy. Christ, she was so thin. She’d been in the hospital for six months. He’d expected that she’d look healthier when he saw her next, that all that time away might have helped her, that she might show some signs of recovering. She didn’t. She looked frail, beaten. She barely looked at him, instead staring ahead or away to that awful house. How had they come to this?

  “Did you get the papers?” He placed a hand on the half-wound window. Lucy noticed he was still wearing his wedding ring. “There’s no hurry for you to sign them.”

  Matt followed Lucy’s gaze up to 1428 Montgomery. For a long time the husband and wife watched the house without speaking, a facade of white clapboards and somewhere, in its heart, the blood of their son. The family who’d lived there had been away that night. No one knew what had drawn the kidnapper to take Alex to that house.

  “Do you think it ever gets any easier?” Lucy could hear the pain in Matt’s voice. She wanted to comfort him, but stayed looking up to the house.

  Matt took a piece of paper from his pocket. “I’ve…er…got a new number. Here.” He handed to it Lucy. “You can call me, if you want. Any time.”

  Lucy took the note. A year ago they’d been a family, shared everything. “Are you going to be okay?” He wanted to say much more.

  “No. I don’t think it ever gets any easier,” Lucy said.

  The house watched Matt as he returned to his car, like a child watch­ing ants on the sidewalk.

  8

  5:00am.

  Lucy had spilt the bottle of sleeping pills. She’d been drunk when she’d read the divorce papers. She hadn’t signed them.

  She’d stayed at the house until she couldn’t stand the silence any longer. Then she’d stopped off at a liquor store on the way back to her apartment. She hadn’t waited till she was home to open the bottle.

  Lucy’s answering machine blinked in the dark. A lone buoy in the sea of shifting shadows that haunted the monochrome apartment. There had been a time when Lucy had taken to sleeping with the lights on. Less places for the ghosts to hide. But then they’d started creeping into the light, and she’d stopped sleeping altogether.

  Lucy lay on the bed, her still eyes staring ahead, seeing nothing. The small case lay at her side, her arm draped over it, hugging it to her. She’d taken enough of the pills to fell a man twice her size.

  She’d thought about suicide before. Not straight after Alex’s death, but as time drew on and the unbearable emptiness left by his murder had consumed her. She knew there was nothing waiting, no tunnel to a better place, no comfort to be found in the lies other people told themselves. She’d been in that better place: her home every single day that Alex had been alive. Then he had taken a shotgun, placed it against her son’s head… When she slept, the dream was always the same.

  It was dusk at the park, the trees grew taller, their shadows longer, draining the bright colors from the climbing frame and swings. Lucy sat on the bench, its cracked paint pinching at the backs of her bare arms when she moved. She sat forward. She’d waited for hours, and now it was time to leave. Sometimes Lucy would briefly wake at this point, hitting reality like she was drowning, gasping for air before the current could drag her under again. She felt like she was screaming, thrashing to snap herself awake. But in her dream she slowly got up from the bench and headed towards the tunnel.

  The broken boy lived in the underpass, somewhere in the shadows. He was small, able to press himself against the walls, into the large cracks in the concrete, to hide in plain sight. His coat was padded, hooded and dirty. His hood was soaked with blood.

  Lucy stood at the tunnel’s entrance. Her legs carried her forward, inevitably forwards, towards him and her dream’s terrible conclusion. Somewhere she was fighting to wake herself, terrified and desperate to take control of her body. Here, Lucy stepped ever onwards until the tunnel swallowed her whole.

  The ceiling of the tunnel was riddled with cracks, snaking across the concrete like thick veins bulging at the surface of aged, grey skin. Behind Lucy, the light of a dying day lingered sheepishly at the underpass’s entrance. Ahead there was no light, no sign of any way out.

  The deeper she ventured, the colder the damp air became. It slipped beneath her thin cotton shirt, making her skin pull tight. She hugged herself, trying to stay warm, her breath like a ghost materializing on the air ahead of her. He was here. Somewhere, the broken boy watched her.

  Lucy turned fast to look back the way she’d come. This was how the dream always went! He wasn’t behind her. He wasn’t ever behind her! He was somewhere in front; tiny, bloody hands growing closer all the time.

  Her heart was slamming in her chest. She couldn’t see the dusk light, the tunnel entrance, the only way out, anymore.

  Any time now.

  Lucy held her hands out in front of her, feeling through the darkness, trying not to stumble, the tunnel, like an ever-developing photograph, forming foot by foot ahead of her.

  No! No! No! Any time now she would feel the wet, padded nylon of his jacket. Please, not again! She wanted to clench her hands into fists, pull her fingers tight, delay just a moment longer, but the Lucy in the dream never responded to her cries. And then he was there.

 
Lucy’s fingers grazed the fur lining of the boy’s hood. She snatched her hand back but he kept coming. He hugged her waist, clinging on tightly. She could feel the blood from his hood soaking into her shirt, cold, sticking to her stomach. She knew that blood was specked with bone. Please stop, make it stop. Lucy could feel him shaking. She looked down at the boy. At his misshapen hood pulled up tight, masking the terrible horror to come. She knelt before him.

  “It’s okay,” Lucy whispered gently. The boy turned to look at her. Lucy wanted desperately to look away but her gaze was fixed. As the hood turned, she could see that it was flat on one side. Where the boy’s head should have filled the hood, it hung loosely. Bloody and empty.

  The boy wrapped his arms around Lucy’s neck. He was cold; always so cold. Closer, he leaned in to her until he rested the hood upon her shoulder.

  “It’s okay,” Lucy whispered.

  NO! NO! NO! Somewhere, in another world, Lucy screamed for the dream to stop. Stop now! She begged, she pleaded, but still she placed her hand on the hood to comfort the boy. As she pressed in to the empty side of the hood, her fingers stuck to the wet material. Please stop! But she pressed further, wet fingers pushing, searching deeper for whatever horror lay inside. Lucy could feel the boy’s blood spilling from the dark mouth of the hood. It soaked her shirt. Still she pressed, collapsing the empty material. Then she felt it—a weight shifting inside the hood—bone grinding against bone, the last pieces of the boy’s skull collapsing at her touch.

  Nowadays, Lucy took the sleeping pills because most nights they stopped the dreams. If one day they killed her, it would be a happy accident. She blinked. That day was not today.

  Lucy stared into the darkness by her bed. She shivered and pulled her coat closed. The cold had followed her into the bedroom at around 4:00am. It seemed to have settled in the space beside her bed. Now, it pulled at each breath she took, drawing the warm air from her lungs and freezing it, returning it so cold she could feel it hitting her throat. Maybe it was the mix of sleeping pills and booze but the shadows by the side of her bed seemed much thicker than anywhere else in the room.

  Lucy stretched out a hand. She reached into the black the way the Lucy in her nightmare had reached for the broken boy. The air felt so cold it seemed to move over her skin. She reached deeper. When her fingers brushed against the lamp on her bedside table, she almost tore her hand away. Now, more than ever, the nightmare haunted her. Cold blood and broken bone, lurking in the gloom her fingers crept through. She found the base of the lamp, ran her hand quickly to the cord and flicked the switch.

  The energy-saving bulb blinked on, dim light pressing back the shadows as best it could. Still, it was bright enough to hurt Lucy’s eyes. As she turned away, it seemed as if the shadows turned with her, shifting fast on the edge of her peripheral vision.

  She closed her eyes. Her world was a sleep-deprived blur. She’d stopped moving but the world still swam inside her head. She didn’t trust her senses any more.

  Then she felt it.

  The cold that had watched her through the night clambered up onto her bed. She felt it move over her feet, crawling up her legs until it came to rest on her chest. She felt its weight, its broken form. She felt it reach into her mouth with her breath and scratch and scrape down her throat.

  Lucy’s eyes snapped open. The bedroom was still and silent. The weight she’d felt smothering her was gone. The bulb had warmed up, glowing brighter. It had won its battle against the night for now. In another room, Lucy heard the heating fire up. She sighed. Maybe she’d dozed for a moment, the Tamazepam and alcohol finally overcoming her. That didn’t explain why her sigh smoked on the air, white and then gone, like a ghost fleeing her lungs. Lucy exhaled again. She couldn’t see her breath anymore.

  She’d thought about it all night long. The alcohol and sleeping pills couldn’t numb or distract her thoughts. Lucy stood over the packing box. Each one of the dust-covered boxes had been labelled: KITCHEN, LIVING ROOM, BEDROOM, except one. She ran her fingers along the length of the tape sealing the box, drawing a trail through the dust. She followed with a knife splitting and tearing through the plastic tape.

  9

  It had pulled itself out of the box. Out of the darkness into the dim light of the green apartment. There it lay, in the silence. Repeated a thousand times, like a desperate prayer.

  Lucy’s phone began to ring. No one came to answer it. It rang until Lucy’s answering machine kicked in. Lucy was nowhere to be found.

  The laughter followed, Alex beeped and then there was silence once more.

  No one spoke. From the floor, the house on Montgomery watched on. Hundreds of photographs, article after article about Alex’s death, thousands of words written about that terrible day.

  “Hello? Er, hello?” Doctor Bachman wasn’t very good with answering machines. “Lucy… Hi, it’s Doctor Bachman here. Matt… er… gave me your number. Just calling to check in really, see how you’re getting on.”

  The box without a label had been full of paper, full of cuttings—every word written on Alex’s case that Lucy could find. Before the hospital, she’d begun keeping the reports on Alex’s death. She found that she couldn’t part with the paper recollections, the mentions of his name. She tore them from newspapers, cut them from magazines. When Mal Anderson had written a four-page special in the Sunday Chronicle, she’d driven for miles buying up every copy she could find.

  She’d begun hiding them from Matt. She filled drawers, and when the drawers were full of words, of pictures of that black house, she’d moved on to boxes, suitcases, anywhere she could find with space enough to cram her son’s name. When she’d arrived at the hospital, her pockets had been stuffed with paper.

  “I… er… I’m pretty free for the rest of the week. Why don’t you give me a call and we can have some coffee?”

  Lucy had read every word written about that night, she’d ringed sentences, phrases, highlighted and collated. She’d worked as a researcher for years, she knew words, knew their power, knew they would lead her to an answer. They always had.

  She just had to keep looking.

  “Well, you’ve got my number. Give me a call. And Lucy, I know it’s hard, but you should get rid of this answering machine. Buy a new one, record a new message. Take care, Lucy. Bye.”

  The house had crawled from the box, its image spilling from the table where Lucy had first unpacked her notes, onto the floor. There it lay, in the silence, repeated a thousand times like a curse.

  10

  The shadows massed outside 1428 Montgomery, squirming and stretching, spreading across the porch. The torch blasted them apart.

  “Shhh! Turn it off!” Rod grabbed the torch from Jesse and smothered it with his hand. “Stupid! You want the whole neighbourhood to see us?”

  Jesse’s eyes could barely get any wider. “Wha... I?” For a moment Rod thought he was going to cry. He handed back the torch. Jesse pulled the sleeve of his red hoodie over the light, muffling it, but not switching it off. Now, everywhere he shone his torch glowed crimson. That didn’t make him feel any better at all.

  Rod turned to the rest of the shadows. “Right. Are you ready?” He looked at each member of the group in turn, his tone growing increasingly foreboding as he moved along the line. “No, are you sure you’re ready?”

  In the dim light of the dampened torch, three shadows nodded one by one to Rod, their nine-year-old leader. Glen, Rod’s best friend, also nine, and joint organizer of this outing, pushed his glasses back up his nose. His mom had made him get these ones on the advice of the optician’s assistant, “You’ll grow into them,” she’d said. “You’ll thank me in the long run” That was what his Mom always said when she had no grounding at all for what she was saying. She knew Glen couldn’t argue with her though, as “the long run” hadn’t happened yet, so how did he know he wouldn’t be thanking her when it did? S
he said it so often he was sure he’d be thanking her for something when the time came. He doubted, somehow, it would be for the RSI he’d get from constantly pushing his glasses back up his nose.

  Glen nodded he was ready, and turned to Jacob, Rod’s seven-year-old brother. Jacob nodded on cue. Next to him, Jesse, also seven, nodded with wide, wide eyes.

  Rod looked back to the house, drew in a deep, slow breath, building the atmosphere, and then he began: “It happened in April. Same month as Glen’s birthday. There were cop cars all over the street. Isn’t that right?”

  Glen nodded.

  “Glen lives next door, he saw the whole thing. Didn’t you?”

  Glen nodded; then pushed his glasses back up his nose.

  Jesse drew the beam of the red torch across 1428 Montgomery’s dark porch. He followed a trail of cracked and peeled paint low across the clapboard-panelled wall until he picked out the legs of a bench. They had one on their porch at home, too. His Mom and Dad spent long summer evenings laughing, drinking and playing cards on theirs.

  This bench was nothing like the one they had at home. He wished he was at home now. Resting on bowing beams, a long cushion had rotted, bulging, bloating and finally splitting open. Its innards hung black and wet, dripping into a dark puddle on the deck beneath.

  Rod’s voice almost set Jesse running. “It took them hours to bring out the bodies. Even the most hardened cops… After they’d seen that room, what he’d done to the kid… They wouldn’t go back in there again, couldn’t face seeing it again.”

  Glen nodded.

  Jesse moved over the bench with the weak beam of his torch. He pushed the red light into the corners of the bench, around by the back legs, where the darkness was thickest. He imagined seeing a boy curled up between those legs, dead eyes waiting to flicker and find him.

  Jesse swung the torch from side to side, from corner to corner of the bench. There was no boy. No dead eyes watched him. He tried to be calm, like the older boys, but he was terrified.