The Taken (22 page)

He thought about James Partridge and Tom Tucker wandering out in the woods in the dark. If, crazy as it sounded, that strange electricity was running through the entire edge of the trees, then they wouldn’t have been able to get to another village, either. So they were on their way to the Tucker’s or headed back to the pub. He hoped it was the latter for the younger Tom Tucker’s sake.

“How long do you think should we wait for them?”

“I guess we’ll give it twenty minutes or so. They both know the woods as well as anyone, so I can’t see them getting lost. If they haven’t turned up after that, then I think we should go back. It’s nearly dark now, and even with the torch I’ll find navigating our return a bit tricky.”

Simon said nothing. The idea of stumbling around in the dark and wet all night wasn’t appealing. Especially if they came across those giggly children again.

Funny how he’d stopped thinking they’d come from the local caravan park. It seemed everyone had ditched that idea, but no one was going to talk about it. If they talked about it, then they’d all have to admit to thinking like Paul.

Paul turned the flashlight off to conserve the battery and neither man spoke, leaning against the damp outside walls of the house, the yellow glow of the kitchen

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light leaking no farther than the window, as if the wattage didn’t have the power to spread the beam through the old pane of glass, leaving them once again in the gloom. The two strange children that he’d seen that morning on the way to the post office kept appearing in Simon’s head, especially the face of the little boy.

Shutting his eyes, he leaned his head back, the rain running both over and under his glasses. He needed to concentrate on that young face. Behind his lids he rewound the morning’s events. The two children had been playing on the corner of the street in the rain. Patty-cake. That was it. The girl was older and dressed more strangely, and the boy was younger. About eleven? Yes. That would be about right. He was wearing glasses, cheap but not the kind of huge NHS monstrosities Simon had been forced to wear as a child. The boy’s glasses had wire rims and thinner lenses. In his mind’s eye he could see the kid’s mouth moving, reciting the words of the rhyme, his accent jarring with his playmate’s. Yorkshire, that was it. Simon felt his heartbeat increase slightly. It seemed as if the name were lingering somewhere in the back of his mouth, there but not yet ready to come forward. What else had the boy done? Alex had said something to them about going home or not wearing the right clothes, he couldn’t remember exactly, and then—the memory seemed to play out in slow motion—the boy had pulled a New York baseball cap out of his back pocket and tugged it onto his head.

Jesus. Jesus Christ. For a second he wasn’t sure whether he felt hot or cold, the realization hitting him like a cricket ball in the face. The baseball cap.

That

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was it. The boy hadn’t smiled this morning—that was what must have stopped him recognizing him straightaway. In the photo that covered all the national papers during the first few days after he disappeared back in 1990, little Alan Harrison had been smiling. He’d had his glasses on and his Yankees baseball cap firmly on his head. His distraught mother said that he’d been wearing it the day he vanished. It was his favorite possession, brought back from a holiday abroad with his dad. Alan Harrison.

“Oh fuck.” Opening his eyes, he pushed himself away from the wall.

Paul spun round. “What is it? Have you seen something?”

“No. No … I’ve just figured out who one of those kids was that I saw this morning.” He could feel his hands shaking. “It was Alan Harrison.”

“Who’s Alan Harrison?”

Simon half-laughed. “It’s crazy. I’m crazy. Alan Harrison went missing in nineteen ninety. His picture was everywhere. I know that was him I saw this morning.” He paused and stared at Paul. “But how can that be? How the hell can that be?”

“How did he disappear?” Paul’s voice was more energetic, but he didn’t sound surprised. But then, Simon figured, Paul seemed more accepting of this whole fucked up situation.

“It was a weird one. Fucking horrible, actually. He had been over to a friend’s house to play and went missing during his bike ride home. The police found his bike all bent up on the side of the road like it had been hit by a car.”

Paul flicked the switch on the flashlight, lighting 220

them up, his eyes more alive than they had been since the awful events at Kay’s house. “I remember it. Didn’t someone come forward a few days later saying that he had run him down?”

Simon nodded. “Yeah. But the man was insistent that he didn’t move Alan. In fact, he said he didn’t even stop the car after he’d hit the boy. His passenger supported his statement and the police couldn’t find any evidence of the boy in the bloke’s car or house. It was like someone came along and just took him.” He shook his head. “Who the hell would steal an injured child? That was the sickest bit. Who would abduct a kid in that state? The man had been going at over forty miles and hour. The boy would have been severely injured. The state of his bike gave that away.”

Paul smiled, but the expression shook at the edges. “Don’t you get it yet?

Melanie said to my mum that the Catcher Man brought her back.”

“What the hell are you driving at?” Simon had taken acid once at college and had felt reality as he knew it terrifyingly slide away from him. Now, standing there in the rain, he felt his stomach lurch in the same way.

“The Catcher Man steals lost children and then they’re never found. That’s what my mum said. That’s what we were brought up to believe.”

“But that’s crazy! That was just a story made up to scare you into not wandering off.”

“Is it?” Paul stepped up close, his face only a couple of inches from Simon’s, as if physically making him focus on the truth. “You’ve just said that the boy you saw this morning disappeared sixteen years ago. And I know, and so do you deep down, that Melanie Parr’s at the bottom of these fucking horrible deaths.”

He

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paused, and Simon could see the rain running through the tired lines in his friend’s face. “What if the Catcher Man does exist? What if all these kids in the town are children that have gone missing over the years? What if he takes them and keeps them with him?”

Simon tried to pull away, but Paul wouldn’t let him. He kept seeing Alan Harrison playing patty-cake with that girl in her formal clothes. Was that the outfit she went missing in?

“Christ, Paul. How am I supposed to believe any of this?”

“Look. If you’d asked me yesterday morning if I’d believed in ghosts, I’d have laughed in your face. I’m a feet firmly on the ground person. But now?” He shrugged. “All bets are off. All I can believe are the things I see and hear.

And you’d better start doing that too or else you really will go crazy.” He turned around, flashing the light out in front of them, and his voice softened.

“You know, this part of the world is strange. History runs over a thousand years deep here and some of that history is pretty cruel. Blood was shed in human and animal sacrifices. Women were burnt as witches. But under all of it was a strong belief in the pagan gods. I guess it’s like that in places where people are so close to nature. Maybe all of that allows things to happen here. Maybe the sheer belief of those centuries of people brought the Catcher Man to life. Who the hell knows?”

He turned back around and Simon didn’t think he’d ever seen a saner looking man.

Paul stared at him. “And if your eyes are telling you that you saw Alan Harrison on the street this morning, then for fuck’s sake, believe them.”

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Simon stared at his friend, a cold sick feeling settling in his gut. “Come on, then. Let’s go back to The Rock and let this insane drama work itself out. We can’t do anything about Melanie Parr here.”

They trudged silently back through the forest, the flashlight beam barely touching the country night, doing their best to ignore the giggle and sounds of movement that appeared so close and yet out of reach. At one point they froze as the echo of a man’s scream reached them, and Simon grabbed at Paul’s arm. “Was that Tom or James?”

Paul shrugged, pulling his friend onward. “I don’t know. Whoever it is, we can’t help them.” Thankfully, the scream was cut short and for a while there was just the sound of their own labored breath as they fought the treacherous wet ground beneath their tired legs. Just as they clambered up the last peak before the lights from the pub called out to them, a wail slid through the thick old tree trunks. “But I don’t want to play… I don’t want to play… Melanie…”

Listening to the terror in that lost voice, Simon stared at Paul. The only thing to believe was their eyes and their ears, wasn’t that what Paul had said?

Neither man spoke and Simon turned to look down at the pub. He’d never been so pleased to see a place in all his life, and shutting his ears to Tom Tucker’s torment, he broke into a trot, half-running, half-stumbling out of the woods and back into the village.

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Although The Rock was traditionally a pub rather than a hotel, it did a good trade in guests in the summer months and the rooms were cozy and clean. Stepping reluctantly out of the shower feeling as if she would never wash Mary’s story away, Alex reached for the thick, wide towel and walked into the bedroom to dry off. Pressing the textured material to her face, she shut her eyes and relished its clean smell. It was the kind of smell that took you back to the carefree days of your childhood, the fresh warmth making you smile and feel safe.

Although after what she’d just heard, maybe it was only her in this village that had been allowed innocence as she grew. Well, that may have been the case, but she was making up for it now.

Allowing herself only a moment of the towel’s comfort, the feeling too bittersweet to last, she moved it to her hair and rubbed vigorously, studying herself in the mirror. So far, not too bad, she concluded. She had always been slim, although now her limbs were veering

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towards thin and maybe her ribs were just a little too prominent above her jutting hips, but she still had shape.

Looking analytically at her hips and breasts, she dropped the towel on the bed, letting her wet dark hair hang loose and wild around her face, its length tickling her back. How long would that last? How long until she became ‘painfully thin’? Wasn’t that what people called it? She smiled at the irony.

She’d taken four of the eight painkillers Crouch had given her, but they hadn’t kicked in yet. Yes. She was beginning to understand pain. No more innocence for her. Paul had been robbed of his childhood, and she of her adult life. No one got away unscathed.

Peering more closely into the mirror, she wondered whether her face had thinned or whether that was just her imagination, darkly rotting her flesh away from the inside. She felt she was definitely looking older, and dark circles hung from her eyes, enhanced by the day’s events. Looking into her subtly dying reflection for a moment, the fear gripped her again, but she pulled its fingers away, one by one. Things were worse for Kay. Worse for the reverend. She met her own green gaze and spoke to it.

“I’m still alive. Right here and right now, I’m still alive. And that’s all that matters.”

The knock at the door made her jump.

“Wait a minute!” Not remembering whether she had locked the door when she’d come in, she darted into the bathroom and grabbed the dressing gown hanging there, pulling herself into it. By the time she reached the handle, she’d tied it.

Simon stood in the doorway holding a plate of 225

sandwiches in one hand and trying to carry two glasses of wine in the other. He waved the plate at her. “Could you?”

Smiling, she took the plate. “Thanks, but I’m not really hungry. Did you manage to get help?”

He looked tired, the bags under his eyes almost matching her own, and he shook his head. “No. No, we didn’t even get out of the forest.” He paused, and she sensed there was more to his story than he was letting on, and she realized that she didn’t care at the moment as long as her own flesh and blood were okay.

There’d been too much death and dying. The details could wait until later. “Is Paul okay?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, he’s fine.” His eyes slipped away. “Crouch just told us what Mary had to say about Melanie Parr. Paul wanted to speak to her about it, but apparently she’s asleep. Are you okay?”

“Yes, I guess so. I’ve slept for an hour or so.” She paused. “Look, can we just leave all this at the door for a while and pretend the world is normal. I really need that. More than you could know.”

“Sure. I think my brain needs a time-out from ghosts and secrets too.” He grinned at her, for a moment shy and embarrassed under her gaze, and she felt her defenses crumbling. I’m alive. Here and now I’m alive, and that’s all that matters.

“Do you want to come in? I may not be hungry, but I could do with that wine.”

Following her in, he gave her the glass and stood awkwardly at the end of the bed as she sat down. Sipping the red liquid, she watched him. Yes, she liked him. She liked his goodness. She could see it in him. She raised an inner eyebrow at herself. She also liked his eyes and his smile. In fact, she pretty much liked everything about him.

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Tonight they were all on a level playing field; she could feel it in the stormy air. The natural world had shifted and all their clocks were ticking loudly. Kay hadn’t been expecting hers to stop, but stop it did. Had she heard it loudly railing at her as she hung there in her bedroom listening to Paul’s feet on the stairs? Probably. Surely everyone heard it in the end.

Well, she’d had enough of listening to that sound in the dark, alone. Tonight, she was just the same as everyone else, and what was wrong with wanting to be normal, just for a few hours?

As if feeling her scrutiny, he put down his glass on the small sideboard and took a step toward the door. “Maybe I should go back downstairs. You’re obviously just out of the shower. Probably need some time to yourself.”

“I want you to stay.” She stood up, her face serious. “Stay with me.” She took a step forward so they were so close they were almost touching and looked up at his face. “I don’t want to be alone tonight. And I don’t want to be with them downstairs.” But even that wasn’t the truth of it. Not really. And this wasn’t the time for coy game playing. “I want to be with you.”