Chapter 33
By the time I got to Carlinsrest, it was late afternoon.
My legs were heavy and my feet were covered in the dust of dirt roads.
I kept an eye out for the old man and his wife on my way in, but I’d have to complete a quick chore before I could properly go looking.
I forced myself back toward the hardware and supplies store, hoping I’d beaten Rowan back down.
Fergus looked up at the ring of the electronic doorbell and barely concealed a huff of disdain.
He returned his focus to a box he was sealing up with an industrial stapler the size of his head.
Of course. Rowan had said Fergus was busy at the store.
I thought he’d meant the antiques shop. Rowan must have got Fergus to cover for him so he could corner me into his little ‘discussion’.
I marched past the rows of wood paint, twine and work gloves and dropped the truck keys on the counter. Fergus raised an eyebrow and looked behind me.
“Where’s the rest of the truck?” he asked.
“Up on the hill,” I said.
With your wanker boyfriend, I wanted to add.
Fergus frowned at me.
“I had to leave. Forgot I had them with me,” I said and felt like a coward.
Fergus shrugged and I turned to go.
“How are you getting on with your haunted house?”
I stopped.
I should have just left. I knew even then I should have just left. I was tired and already annoyed. I had better things to do, finding the old man for one. And Fergus had done nothing but tell lies and tall tales. Nothing he could say to me would do any good.
I turned around and considered him.
He was either pretending not to look at me or he was genuinely very interested in whatever items he was boxing up.
“I’m not falling for it,” I said.
“Falling for what?”
Either he truly believed he was innocent or he was a damn good actor.
“Another one of your stories.”
He put up a hand. “Only the truth this time.”
Fairy Mirror.
I sighed and stepped back up to the counter.
“What’s wrong with the house?”
He looked down at me, unblinking, and grinned. He reminded me of the Big Bad Wolf in an old collection of Fairy Tales I’d once had, smiling down at Red Riding Hood, mouth wide and charming and hungry. A bit like her smile.
“Do you really want to know?”
I didn’t break eye contact with him. After realising I wasn’t going to flinch, he huffed a little air out of his nose, as if laughing at some secret joke I wasn’t in on, then looked over his shoulder.
“Okay,” he said, leaning onto the counter, lowering his voice. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
He hadn’t warned me. He had done the very opposite of warn me, but I didn’t care. I leant forward to hear him.
“I knew a kid at school here. He moved to the area for a brief time when I was about nine, ten? He was from one of the cities, too. Like yourself. He and his mum. I didn’t know the whole story about why they were here, but they arrived quick and didn’t stay long.
Didn’t even last the whole year. My mum thought there’d been some trouble with debt collectors.
Or maybe a fella. Like I said, I never got the whole story, and they kept themselves to themselves for the most part.
I only ever saw him at school, and the only time I ever saw her was when she’d come to pick him up and drop him off.
Quiet people. Not really looking to stand out.
Except, he had this birthmark. A port wine stain, I think it’s called. ”
He traced a finger over the right-hand side of his face.
“From the corner of his eye, across his cheek and over to his ear. Easy to recognise. Probably why they came out all this way rather than to another town or city. Couldn’t hide a birthmark like that for long.
Anyway, after a few weeks he and I got to talking.
Started with schoolwork, then TV, what our favourite show was: The Demon Headmaster not that you’re asking.
And before you know it, we were pals. Well, as much as we could be within the hours of school.
He wasn’t allowed out after class or even over the weekend.
I had my mum ask his mum if he could come over one night.
She was polite about it, but it was clear a sleepover was never happening.
Every weekday she’d drop him off in the morning and be there to pick him up at the bell in the afternoon.
It was a real shame, because I thought he’d be quite popular if he was allowed out a bit more.
He had a dark sense of humour and nothing much seemed to scare him.
Not the spiders in the supply cupboard. Not one of the farm dogs when it got into the school yard.
Not even when Micky Campbell had a seizure in maths class.
In fact, he was the one putting his jumper under Micky’s head and telling the teacher to call an ambulance.
For a kid who was bundled away as much as he was, nothing much seemed to faze him.
“Except for one Monday, when I got into school after my paper round—I was always the first one in on Mondays—and there he was waiting at the school door, face pale, bags under his eyes and this thousand-yard stare. His uniform hadn’t been washed.
He still had the grass stains on his knees from Friday’s football when he’d slide-tackled me off my feet.
I called out to him, saying if I’d known he loved school so much I’d have set the two of them up weeks ago.
Poor kid nearly leapt out of his skin. He saw it was me and then ran straight into my arms. Back then, my dad would have looked at me funny if he’d seen me hugging another boy, but I could tell something was wrong so I just rubbed his back like my mum would do and waited till he was ready to start talking.
“After a while, the school receptionist arrived and let us into our regi class to warm up. Once we were alone, he told me what happened. His mum had been a bit distracted lately. She wasn’t telling him why and he was worried that—”
He stopped suddenly. I looked behind me, wondering if another customer had come in or—God forbid—Rowan had returned already. But there was no one. Fergus continued.
“He didn’t tell me what. I was thinking, oh shit, they’ve been found by whoever it was they were running from.
I told him they could hide out at my place if they needed, but he cut me off.
He said things were tense all weekend, she was snippy and forgetful.
He had to sort out dinner himself Sunday evening because his mum had conked out on the sofa.
She’d been up at all hours, acting antsy.
Eventually he put a blanket over her, headed up to their room—first I’d heard they’d been sharing a room—and packed his bag, just in case, and settled in for the night. ”
Fergus looked about again and leaned in closer.
“At about two in the morning he was woken by a sound. A creak. After jumping awake he remembered where he was and figured it was just his mum in the living room. He thought she’d woken up in the dark and was making her way up to bed.
Then he heard a different sound. A voice.
His mum. She was calling for him, but her voice was hushed slightly.
Y’know, like when you’re trying to get someone’s attention in class but without alerting the teacher writing on the board upfront.
He got up and listened at the bedroom door.
She was quietly calling him to come downstairs.
His first thought was that they’d been found, that they had to go, now.
He quickly, quietly, got dressed in the uniform he’d left hanging on a chair, grabbed his bag and opened the bedroom door.
“The landing was dark and it was dark down the stairs in the living room too. He thought she was keeping the light off so as not to alert whoever was looking for them. They had to be outside. At this point his heart was pounding already, so when the bathroom door opened behind him it took everything in him not to cry out.”
“What was in the bathroom?” I asked.
“Not what, who. It was his mum, hiding behind the door. He said it felt as if his brain had broken. He was sure he’d heard her call him from downstairs.
As if answering his question, he heard his mum call for him once again.
From downstairs. All while he was looking at her hiding in the dark of the bathroom.
‘Come down to the kitchen,’ the voice downstairs said.
The mum peeking out from behind the bathroom shook her head and mouthed, There’s something in the house.
Then she reached out a hand to pull him into the bathroom with her. ”
I gripped the edge of the counter so hard my knuckles turned white.
“What did he do?”
“He went back inside the bedroom and barricaded the door.”
“He didn’t go with his mum into the bathroom?”
“He said he couldn’t know for sure which one was her.
So, he pushed one of the beds up against the door, then he opened the bedroom window and escaped out over the roof.
Winded himself landing in the back garden.
He ran to the only other place he knew in the village.
He ran to the school and waited for daylight.
“After he finished, I gave him one of the sandwiches from my packed lunch and thought for a bit. Maybe he’d had a nightmare or something.
Maybe someone had come to the house sounding an awful lot like his mum.
Either way, I told him he was coming over to mine after school and he wasn’t going to argue.
He agreed. Too knackered to fight, probably.
He was quiet all day in school. The teacher could tell something was up, but he was done talking about it, so she let him sleep in the classroom through lunch.
I kept guard. After what he’d told me, I didn’t want to let him out of my sight.
I thought maybe after talking to my parents, we could figure out what to do.
“But then, right as the bell sounded to let us out of school, who turned up but his mum. Right on time, like she always did, as if nothing had happened. I didn’t know what to do.
I wanted him to come home with me, but I knew I couldn’t overrule his mum.
He stood frozen next to me. Probably thinking the same.
She stepped forward and lowered her voice.
“‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘It’s all going to be okay now. It’s over.’
“I’d no idea what that meant, but it seemed to mean something to him. He took her hand and away they went, back down the lane, back to the house.
“Next day, he didn’t come in. Nor the day after.
Or the day after that. I asked the teacher where he was.
She said they’d moved on again. I was a bit miffed he’d just up and leave like that, especially after how much he’d worried me with that tale of his.
I’d hugged him while he shook in my arms and then he’d disappeared without so much as a ‘See ya around’.
A few weeks went by and it was another Monday, just before school closed for Christmas break.
Must have been close to midwinter because the sun didn’t come up until just before the school bell rang.
I’d arrived early, like every other Monday, and I saw someone waiting at the gates.
It was him. He was back. But as I got close, I saw he was missing that birthmark.
So instead of the ‘Hello’ or ‘What the hell were you thinking leaving without saying goodbye?’ I was planning on shooting his way, I said, ‘What’s happened to your face? ’
“‘I changed it,’ he said, ‘so Mum could be safe.’
“I stopped approaching at that. Made up some excuse like I’d forgotten my PE kit or something, turned around and ran home. When I came back to school, as I inevitably did as my mum chucked me back out of the house, he was gone. No one else had seen him that morning. And I never saw him again.”
My stomach clenched.
“His house was my house, wasn’t it?”
Fergus stared at me, stony and cold for a moment.
Then the skin around his eyes cracked into wrinkles and he heaved a creaky laugh.
“Got you,” he said. “Got you proper that time.”
My face flushed hot. He was making it up. He’d made the whole thing up to mock me. And like an idiot I’d believed him.
He kept laughing, mouth wide, wide enough that I could see all of his teeth at once.
The high ringing in my ears grew.
My eyes locked onto the loaded, industrial stapler on the desk, his hand laid close by.
Then there was a real ringing. The electronic bell.
Rowan stood in the door, face flushed, mouth gaping with words that would not come. The sight of him shook the thundering blood from my ears. He must have chased down after me. Every vengeful imagining left me and my cheeks burned.
“Tamsin, I—”
Fergus interrupted him before he could finish.
“Your new pal is a gullible one.”
“What?” Rowan frowned.
“I just told her the old my-not-mum-called-me-from-downstairs urban legend and she believed me. Have you never heard that one before, pal?”
Rowan rolled his eyes. “Ferg—”
“What?” Fergus grinned horribly. “You know what these tourists are like. They all think we believe in fairies and goblins, like we’re fucking idiots.”
I turned and wordlessly walked for the exit.
“Tamsin—”
Rowan’s voice followed me out the door, just audible over the screaming blood in my ears.