Echoes (Whisper Trilogy Book 2) (10 page)

II

Seventeen year-old Emma Barrett stumbled through the woods, her best friend Carrie beside her. Ahead, Cody, Alex, and Scott led the way, although she noticed the snipes and jibes had stopped along with the laughter and jokes the second they’d crossed the river. Although it was her fault in a way they had come here instead of camping at the site of the hotel, she was beginning to regret mentioning it. She couldn’t explain it, yet somehow things felt different over on this side of the river. The light was fading fast, and their shadows were merging into the gloom, with full dark probably less than an hour away.

Swatting a persistent fly away from her face, she stepped over a moss-covered boulder to continue after the boys. She knew well enough they were both keen on her. She wasn’t stupid, and she was no stranger to the attention of boys and how to make sure they stayed interested. It was Carrie who had told her how to do it. Enhance the positives. Hide the negatives.

Of course she hadn’t really seen any positives at first, but again Carrie had helped her. She showed her how to dye her hair from the indistinct dirty blonde it used to be to the jet black it was now, and also how to use makeup to enhance her eyes, which were a deep blue and by far her best feature. The rest was just cosmetic enhancements, like clothes which showed just enough skin to get attention without being labeled a slut or worse. As much as the new look had really helped her confidence, she still felt like a fraud and was the same shy, withdrawn girl on the inside. She would never admit it, but she would much rather be tucked up on the sofa with a good book than cold and tramping through the woods.

Alex glanced over his shoulder and grinned at her, a gesture which she ignored. He held his stare until he almost lost his footing on the uneven ground, which finally made him turn back to the path in front.

Although she flirted a little, she really wasn’t into Alex. He was too loud, too cocky. She only let him put his arm around her because she wanted Cody to notice. He was one of the few she thought really had seen her for who she was behind the hair dye and the lip piercing. She was pretty sure he liked her too. Getting together should have been a straightforward thing, if not for the complication which presented itself out of left-field recently.

She glanced at Carrie, who was walking head down, watching the ground to make sure she didn’t fall. Although she was mostly buried under her bobble hat and jacket, Emma could see the profile of her nose, and the determined frown as she tried not to fall and break an ankle in the growing darkness.

Emma was sure she had fallen in love with her.

She had always liked boys, and had never even entertained the notion of being gay, but the two of them had a little too much to drink at Royston Green’s seventeenth birthday party a couple of weeks earlier, and had kissed. Neither had mentioned it afterwards, both of them content to act as if nothing had even happened. However much she tried though, Emma couldn’t stop thinking about it. Somehow it had just seemed right. It was infinitely less complicated or embarrassing than dealing with the emotions of boys. Her uncertainty bred distraction, which in turn became confusion. How she would deal with it from here was still a huge question mark, especially now her feelings towards Cody had grown of late. She supposed it was all part of life, and something she would have to deal with as it came to her. Up ahead, the boys stopped walking, and it was only as she tore herself back to reality that those first icy fingertips of fear began to touch her skin.

The clearing was bigger than she’d expected it to be. Although the trees at its edges were thick and gnarled, nothing grew in the circle. It was completely bare. Emma inhaled, and could taste the electric charge in the air. It was almost as if it had an oozing, slimy texture against her skin. Perhaps worst of all was the silence. She strained her ears and listened, but couldn’t hear a single creature moving through the undergrowth. She glanced at the others, wondering if it was just her who had reacted in such a volatile way, however, the faces of her friends told the pretty much the same story. Even Alex, who just a few moments ago had been so confident and self-assured, was now frowning as he tried to make sense of what was happening.

“What is this place?” she said, her words flat and without resonance, killed dead by whatever atmosphere existed in the circle.

“Nobody knows for sure,” Scott replied. “People say this is where the Gogoku village once stood. Legend says the elders went crazy and killed everyone in the village before burning it down and sacrificing themselves in the fire. That’s why people say nothing grows here.”

“I’ve heard that story,” Emma said. “The story goes there was a curse put on the lands forbidding anyone from settling on them. Anyone who did would face terrible retribution. They say it’s why there were so many problems for the people who lived in the house over the years. When you think about it, it’s a hell of a marketing gimmick. You can see why they decided to build the hotel.”

“I heard the people who lived here before, the Samsons, refused to come out here as part of the investigation into why the house burned down.” Alex said.

“A buddy of mine thinks they started the fire because they couldn’t afford to live in the house. He says it was all a big hoax.” Scott countered.

“No, that was the Amityville house with the Lutz family.”

“No, I’m sure it was here too. Same kind of thing. The wife really wanted the place and they bought it without thinking it through.”

“You’re confusing two different stories. As I said, the whole buying and realizing they couldn’t afford thing was the Amityville house. I know, because I read the book last month.”

“Come on, everyone knows you can’t read,” Scott said with a grin.

“Fuck off, Chubbs,” Alex countered. “I know about this stuff. The Samsons got the place cheap by all accounts. Less than it was probably worth because nobody would live there for very long without either moving on or ending up dead.”

“Everybody knows what happened. It was that Donovan guy who started the fire to cover his tracks,” Carrie said, moving closer to Emma and linking arms with her. “They say he murdered more people than he was officially held accountable for.”

“I remember him you know,” Emma said, watching her friends and unsure if she should go on. “When I was a kid. I used to see him all the time.”

“Bullshit!” Alex said.

“It’s true. You forget, apart from Alex, the rest of you are outsiders. I grew up in this town. These might just be stories to you. They’re not for me. Donovan, Annie Briggs, Will Jones. They were all people who lived in the community.”

“I didn’t realize you actually knew these people first-hand,” Carrie said.

Emma was staring at her feet, trying to ignore their eyes on her.

“It’s not something I ever really wanted to mention. I knew these people. I’m not sure I want to be here anymore.”

“Look, we’re here now,” Cody cut in, forcing a smile. “It’s getting dark, which probably isn’t helping with the bad vibes this place is giving off. I say we set up camp and get a fire going.”

“You still want to do this?” Alex said, glancing at Cody with a half-look of revulsion.

Cody held his gaze, and even managed a smile. “Yeah, I’m game if you are. What’s the matter? You scared?”

“No… of course I’m not. Let’s get this shit unpacked and do this.”

Alex dropped his backpack and started to unpack it. Cody followed suit, then one by one, the others joined in as the sun began dipping below the horizon.

III

The tents had been assembled in a rough circle around the small fire which crackled and licked at the air. Emma and Carrie were sharing, as were Scott and Cody. Alex was sleeping alone. The group sat cross-legged around the blaze, each doing what they could to ignore the atmosphere, which was all-consuming despite the light and warmth of the fire. Carrie and Alex were smoking. Cody was staring into the flames as the bottle of vodka made its fifth round of the group. Scott took a swig, finally starting to feel the buzz, then passed it to Emma.

“Just think,” Alex said, flashing a grin which looked ghastly in the dancing shadow of the fire. “This could well be the first fire to be lit here since the one which burnt down the Gogoku village.”

“You really think so?” Carrie said as she took a deep drag on her cigarette.

“Could be, I mean look at this place. It’s fuckin’ creepy. Who’d be stupid enough to come out here?”

“Apart from us?”

“Yeah, apart from us,” Alex said as Carrie passed him the bottle. He took a swig and handed it to Cody, who passed it straight to Scott.

“Hey man,” Alex said. “I don’t have any disease or anything. Are you too good to share a bottle with us now?”

“I just don’t want any.”

“Why, what’s wrong with you? You haven’t said two words since we came out here. This was your idea, remember?”

“Leave him alone, Alex,” Carrie said as she tossed her cigarette butt into the fire.

“I’m not having a pop at him or anything, but he was the one who dragged us to this place and yet he’s acting like it’s some chore to be out here with us. What’s the problem man?”

“Nothing,” Cody mumbled as he stared at the flames.

“Don’t bullshit me, it’s obvious you have some kind of issue. Spit it out.”

Cody looked up from the fire, turning his gaze towards Alex. There was something different about him. Something in the way the flames danced in his eyes, and the way in which the shadows were thrown across his face in an undulating mass by the incessant licking of the fire. For the first time since they’d arrived, the fear of the circle was, for the briefest of seconds, replaced by absolute terror at the bottomless look in Cody’s eyes.

“Drop it. I’m fine. I just don’t want to drink right now.”

“Okay, take it easy, I was just sayin’ that’s all.”

The conversation died off, and the group sat in silence for a while, content to drink, smoke or just stare into the flames.

“Hey Emma,” Scott said, shuffling closer to warm his hands on the fire. “How did you know Donovan?”

“She said she doesn’t want to talk about it,” Carrie cut in.

“No, it’s okay. I’ll tell it.”

She looked at them in turn, and now even Cody was watching her with a dark, brooding stare she was finding more and more attractive by the second.

“I was seven or eight at the time. It would have been maybe a couple of years before everything happened. Do you guys know the smoothie bar at the end of Main Street?”

“Yeah, I know it,” Alex said. “They serve those shitty smoothies that cost too much.”

Emma nodded. “That’s the building which used to be his office. By all accounts, he was pretty good at it. Anyway, my aunt Trudy was looking for a place in Oakwell, and had made an appointment to see Donovan, as he was pretty much the only realtor in town. My mother offered to go along with her to the appointment, as she knew Donovan and thought she might be able to help my aunt get a good deal. Either way, she couldn’t get a babysitter, so I had to go along to the meeting with her and Aunt Trudy.”

“Holy shit, so you actually knew him? Like to speak to?” Alex said, taking a sip of the vodka before sending it on its way again.

Emma nodded. “I was just a kid, although I remember him well enough. He was a big guy with broad shoulders. I remember his hair, blonde and parted at the side like some kind of cheesy game show host. He also smelled of really cheap aftershave. He reeked of the stuff.”

“You must have been terrified,” Carrie said, putting a reassuring hand on Emma’s leg.

“I wasn’t actually. Thinking of it now, of what he did, freaks me out no end. The truth is, back then I wouldn’t have had the slightest clue anything was strange about him.”

“Surely you must have known, I mean someone so disturbed can’t stay hidden completely, right?” Alex said.

“He was funny and charming. He was always telling jokes. My mother and my aunt were smitten with him. They saw him as the most eligible bachelor in town. He and my aunt actually went out once or twice.”

“No way!” Scott said, the booze having loosened his tongue a little.

“Yeah, it’s true. Nothing came of it, just a few dates. Nobody considered it at the time, I remember though when my mother asked her why they decided not to keep seeing each other, my aunt said there was something about him which made her uncomfortable. She said it was almost as if he were acting all the time he was with her, like he was wearing a mask. At the time they thought he was just a bit odd, maybe just a sign of incompatibility between them and neither of them really worried much about it. After the fire and finding out who he was and what he’d done… it’s creepy. All I know is that the few times I’d seen him, I wouldn’t have thought him capable of anything even remotely close to doing the things he had.”

“You must have suspected something. The guy was a psycho-killer for Christ’s sake,” Alex pushed, grinning like a hyena.

“You can ask anyone who knew him. A lot of people won’t talk about it now. They like to think if they can ignore it for long enough it might go away as if none of it had ever even happened. A lot of the older residents are like that. My guess is they’re either embarrassed about it or just don’t want to discuss it, I don’t really know. I can promise you this, though. Nobody had any idea what he’d done until they’d found his body and started to investigate him. The first reports were laughed off as impossible, then when people started to learn just how bad it was and how they’d lived for so long with a psychopathic killer, everyone clamped up and stopped talking about it.”

“I heard they dug up the garden of his house looking for bodies,” Scott said.

Emma nodded. “It’s true. They didn’t find any people, just animals. Cats, birds. Even his neighbor’s dog, which had been missing for a few weeks. They suspected he’d killed people too, but if he had, he got rid of the bodies elsewhere. They said he was thorough.”

“No loose ends.”

“Say again?”

Everyone looked at Cody, who was drawing with a stick in the dirt. He blinked, and stared back at them. “What?”