Chapter 40
The two women have been walking nearly forty minutes when they come across a scrubby clearing.
It’s a relief after the boggy terrain they’ve been navigating, clambering across deadfall and ditches and mossy hummocks that rise out of the earth like the breaching backs of whales.
Here, the trees grow in a broad circle, trunks gnarled and ancient.
Their branches are thrust toward the sky in a way that makes Cathy think of old people with lined faces, throwing their hands up in the air in astonishment.
The ground beneath has been shielded from the worst of the snow, but in places the earth has riven and cracked, opening fissures from which burst clumps of gray mushrooms. In the dark they look like foam, boiling out of the ground.
Suzie frowns. “It’s too cold for mushrooms, isn’t it?”
Cathy shrugs. “I don’t know, man, mushrooms do all kinds of freaky things. Hazel once told me they have a root network which means they can all talk to each other. They’re fucking weird.”
Suzie nods in agreement, although she can honestly say she’s never given them much thought before.
Mushrooms of all kinds revolt her, all slippery and slimy and alien looking.
In fact, this whole place is spooking her right now.
Those fissures are suspiciously regular and straight, almost like furrows dug into the earth.
But they can’t be furrows, she knows, because who is planting vegetables all the way out here?
Flower beds, then, she tells herself, but she knows that isn’t right either.
What she does know is that they are unnatural.
She steps over one gingerly. Closer, the mushrooms are pointed arrowheads, black tipped. A warning.
“I want to go back, Cathy.”
Cathy is searching the edges of the grove, phone in hand. She exhales a silvery breath. “There’s a path here, see? The grass has all been flattened. It must lead somewhere.”
Suzie steps reluctantly forward and peers in the direction Cathy is pointing. Through a narrow gap between the sprawling beeches is what could be considered a crooked path, curving away from them into darkness.
“I think it looks like what you want it to look like.”
Cathy sighs loudly and dramatically, turning sharply to Suzie. “It’s too cold for passive aggression, sweetie. Just say what you mean.”
“I get it, Cathy. God knows I know how much you want to find your sister, but how long are we going to keep doing this? It’s nearly midnight. It’s cold. We haven’t found any sign of Hazel, or this house you’re so sure is just around the next corner. We need to call it a night.”
Cathy looks at her stonily. “Fine. You go back. I’m going to keep going.”
“You can’t go on your own.”
“Well, come the fuck on, then.”
Suzie watches as Cathy walks through the opening between the trees without looking back, feeling an angry heat spread over her skin.
It climbs her neck, flourishes in her cheeks.
It would serve her right if I didn’t follow her, she thinks angrily.
Maybe I’ll stand up to her for a change.
But Suzie doesn’t want to be alone out here either.
Something about this dark little grotto with the fleshy mushrooms spewing out of the ground makes her feel sick and heady.
It feels like the sort of place that if you stayed too long, you’d start hearing voices whisper your name from below the earth.
So she hurries after Cathy, her heart pounding as she leaves the clearing behind.
Five minutes later and Cathy stops so abruptly that Suzie almost runs into the back of her.
Her flash of annoyance is quickly replaced by a sensation of dismay as she sees what Cathy is pointing at.
They are on an incline, working their way downward into a deep valley.
The trees have begun to thin out, the ground growing hard and stony.
Overhead, the moon is haloed with a glittering aura, casting a silvery light over the snowy landscape.
It makes it easier to see the weather vane Cathy has spotted, there among the trees below.
They can even see a part of the shingled roof it sits on, and Suzie thinks if it were a windy night, they’d be able to hear the creak as it turned as well. That’s how close they are.
“It’s really there,” Cathy breathes, and Suzie notices the tremor in her voice. “Look, there’s lights on. See? Someone’s home.”
Someone’s home. Those words send a chill through Suzie, already shivery and cold to the bone. Someone’s home. But who? Cathy turns to Suzie and gives her a look of calm, sober compassion. Her voice is soft.
“I meant what I said back there, Suzie. I don’t mind if you want to go back. I wouldn’t blame you. I certainly wouldn’t be doing this for you if our positions were switched, but I suppose you already know that.”
“If I wanted to leave, I would.” Suzie forces a smile she doesn’t feel, reaching for Cathy’s hand. “But I can’t now. So you’re stuck with me.”
They start walking downhill, occasionally lifting their heads to keep that weather vane in their line of sight.
Suzie is happy to settle into silence, listening to the trudge and crunch of snow instead of the mad yammer of her own thoughts.
More than anything, she’s trying not to think too much about what they might find at the old Bray Farm and wishing she had a weapon, any weapon.
Someone’s home.
“Can I ask you something?” Cathy stops to light a cigarette, but her hands are shaking so badly Suzie has to take the lighter from her and do it herself.
“Why are you doing this? I don’t get it.
You haven’t seen Hazel since school. You weren’t at her wedding, so I know you haven’t kept in touch with each other over the years. Why go to all this trouble?”
Suzie buries her chin in her scarf. It’s a fair question, she knows, and she isn’t surprised Cathy is asking it. She’s just surprised it’s taken her this long.
“I’m not doing it for Hazel. I’m doing it because of her, and because of Abigail.”
“I liked Abigail. She was gorgeous, wasn’t she? I loved her laugh.”
“Yeah.” Suzie nods thoughtfully. She hasn’t thought of Abigail’s laugh for years. All her memories of Abigail are covered by a smoky pall. “She was brave too. But stupid. It’s what made her such a daredevil. She’d do anything you asked her, no matter how risky. It got her into trouble, in the end.”
A sharp snapping stops both women in their tracks. A branch broken underfoot, as something large moves through the pines. They wait silently, wearing identical expressions of alarm.
“You think that was a deer?”
“Probably.”
“Let’s keep moving. Tell me about what happened.”
Suzie wraps her arms around herself. She hasn’t ever told anyone the whole story, not even Teddy.
It’s not that he wouldn’t believe her—he would, and that’s why she loves him—but because it would change the way he sees her, and Suzie thinks that would just about break her heart.
She is Teddy’s dream girl—he tells her as much often enough—and she couldn’t bear for that to change.
“You remember that creepy old house on Beeker Street? I think they’ve knocked it down now, but when we were at school it had stood empty for years and everyone thought it was haunted.
We used to dare each other to go up and knock on the front door or look in the window.
It was mostly the boys from the grammar school in the upper years.
The smokers and drinkers, the ones who used to take poppers in the car park at night.
It was stupid, really. Even at that age, I knew it.
But of course, Abigail wanted to go one better.
It was Halloween, and she wanted to break in.
She’d watched some YouTube video about picking locks or something, and she’d come out armed with a hairpin, convinced she could do the same. ”
Suzie swallows. Guilt sits heavy in her throat, a lump of cold, wet gristle.
“Me and Hazel were meant to stand guard, just in case the police or a nosy neighbor happened to be walking past, but at the last minute, I ran.”
“Why?”
“You know why. Because I’m a Goody Two-shoes. I was a prefect and a grade-A student. I didn’t want to get into trouble. I couldn’t. Even thinking about it now brings me out in a cold sweat. I ran, and I suppose I was hoping they’d change their minds too, maybe follow me. But they didn’t.”
Another cracking sound, closer this time. It is loud and very deliberate, as if something wants them to know it is there. Cathy marches on, pulling Suzie with her. They can see the lights of the house now, flickering through the trees. Not far now.
“I got to the end of the road, and something made me turn back. I think I was just sick of myself always doing the right thing, so I went and hid behind a parked car across the street.”
“You hid? Why?”
“To watch them. To spy, I suppose. I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d just gone home like I’d intended to. Because Abigail wasn’t on the porch anymore. It was just Hazel. Except it wasn’t.”
Now it’s Cathy’s turn to shiver. A dread crawls over her shoulders like an animal with heavy, damp fur.
“Even though the house was in darkness, the streetlights were on, and Hazel had two shadows. One of them was her own, and the other was long and runny, like tar. It looked like a black stain and it moved by itself, spreading over the front door and through the letter box. I watched it with my own eyes, Cathy. I know what I saw.”
Cathy can hear the defensiveness in Suzie’s voice, even though she hasn’t said a word in response.
Besides, she believes her. Cathy can remember the haunted look on Hazel’s face when she’d whispered, I’m scared of her too.
How big and round her eyes had been, how they’d looked all around them as if something was hiding just out of sight.
Then there was that black shape dragging itself down the hallway on the video. Oh, Cathy absolutely believes her.
“The smoke started coming out the window after only about a minute. At that point, I didn’t see any flames, but I could hear Abigail screaming to be let out, even from across the street. There’s no way Hazel didn’t hear her.”
Suzie swallows with an audible gulp.
“I don’t know how the fire started. I’m not sure anyone ever found out, and Abigail never said. All I know is she was inside that house screaming for nearly a minute while Hazel stood there with her hand pressed against the door.”
“Pressed against it?”
“That’s what it looked like. Like she was holding it closed.
I told myself to do something, but I was so afraid.
Not of the fire but of Hazel, and the way that uncanny shadow had moved.
I don’t know how long she waited, but after only a minute, Abigail had stopped screaming.
The absence of that sound felt like a knife in my chest. I was so sure she was dead, but then Hazel pulled the door open and Abigail fell through it, choking and gasping.
She was on fire, Cathy. Her legs, her hair.
That’s when people came running. Families out trick-or-treating, kids from our school.
A guy dressed as Freddy Krueger saw Abigail lying there on the porch and beat the flames out with his jacket.
When I heard the sirens coming, I ran home.
I never told Hazel or Abigail what I saw that night.
I never even told my parents. For a long time, it was easy to tell myself that I’d imagined what I saw, but then Hazel went missing and I just thought maybe here was a chance for me to do the brave thing instead of the right thing. ”
Another cracking sound, this time from behind. It’s hard to tell how far away it is. Cathy wonders if Suzie is thinking the same thing she is—about a long scarecrow shadow that creeps arachnid up walls. She opens her mouth to speak, but Suzie is already talking, pulling Cathy’s sleeve urgently.
“Oh my God, Cathy. Look!” She points at the house through the pines. “All the lights have gone out!”