Authors: Sarah Pinborough
He stared at Crouch, then at the others around them.
“What? What is it?”
Crouch said nothing, just swallowed.
Simon felt his heart beating faster. What now? “Has something happened?”
“Yes. Yes, it has.” Crouch’s voice had none of its normal gruff confidence.
“Look Paul, I’m really sorry. It’s your mum.”
Simon watched his friend’s knuckles tighten on the edge of the bar. “What’s happened to her?”
“I went up to take her some tea. Thought I’d wake her up while you were out, like I said. There was no answer and the door was locked.”
“Get to the point.” Paul’s voice could have shattered glass.
“Well, when I got inside I found her in the 286
bathroom.” He leaned forward and gripped Paul’s hand. “It wasn’t the girl, Paul.
The little girl didn’t get her. It was … She … she was in the bath. She’d … she’d cut her wrists.”
Paul stared. “She’s dead?”
Crouch nodded. “I think she must have done it last night when she went up to bed. After what she’d said.” He paused, his voice softer than someone his size should have been able to produce. “I think she wanted some peace.”
“How do you know what the hell she wanted?” Paul pushed away from the bar, sending the stool tumbling backward. “She was up there dead all night?” Turning, he ran his hands through his hair, his eyes flicking to the ground, then the ceiling, and then back to the ground again. “Jesus. Jesus. I’ve got to see her.”
“I don’t think that would be such a good idea, Paul. I don’t think—”
Crouch had come to the other side of the bar, but never got to finish his sentence as Paul stormed through the inner door.
Simon could hear his feet pounding against the ancient stairs and exhaustion flooded through his body. “I’ll go up after him.”
Simon had taken a couple of steps forward when a gentle hand stopped him. Alice Moore still looked somewhat like a wraith, her thin body frail and fragile, but her eyes had regained some strength. “No. No, I’ll go. I’ve known him since he was just a boy. I can look after him better than you. You get a drink for now.”
She squeezed his hand lightly. “This isn’t your fight, is it? I’m sorry you’ve had to meet us like this. This is a good community, really it is.”
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Simon smiled. “You’re preaching to the converted, Alice.”
Reaching up on her tiptoes, Alice brushed his cheek with a feathery kiss before tapping him gently on the arm as she moved away to go after Paul. Watching her go, Simon felt strangely abandoned, as if he had slowly been cut loose from everyone that he knew in this village. He may only have known Mary since the start of this insane few days, but the shock that she was dead, that she had killed herself, resonated inside him. Mary gone. Alex missing.
“Here you go, son. You look like you could use it.” Crouch handed him a glass of what looked like brandy, and then clinked it against one of his own. “I know I need one.” Both men had barely raised the drink to their lips before a soft voice cut through their thoughts.
“Um, someone better come and have a look at this.”
Looking up from his glass, Simon didn’t recognize the young woman who had spoken; she was just a tired and shell-shocked stranger, like the others that surrounded him. At the moment, though, he felt more closely bonded to these people than to any friends he had back in London.
Other people drifted toward the window, hauling their stiff joints out of their chairs, young and old moving slowly, stilted, bodies creaking from tense inactivity. Watching them as they approached the glass, Simon was reminded of zombies in some old 60s Hammer horror film.
Looking at the mix of old and young, all drained and pale with clothes untidy and crumpled, he couldn’t see James Partridge and Tom Tucker. After 288
being in the wood himself, Simon knew it was unlikely they’d made it out to another village, and he wondered what had happened to them. Maybe they’d headed to Tom’s parents’ farm like he and Paul had, and maybe after the discovery of their corpses Tom hadn’t had the energy to head back to the pub. In some ways, he hoped that was the case. It seemed the better option than thinking of the two grown men stumbling around lost in the woods being taunted by strange ghosts of children. Surely if they were dead their bodies would have been presented to the rest in some way or another. It seemed to Simon that Melanie liked her work to have an audience.
Each person gasped as they reached the window, staring silently, faces reanimated, even if their bodies were still. Taking one more sip of the fiery liquid, Simon reluctantly put his glass down and followed Crouch over to where there was still a gap through which he could see out.
“Bloody hell.” Crouch’s mouth fell open. “What the hell is that?”
Simon stared out beyond the sheet of rain falling on the road that divided the pub and the wood to what was holding the attention of the village residents.
Even though he had seen it before, he still felt his eyes widen as they were drawn in by the crackling blue light that danced across the tips of the trees, twisting through the branches like mad Christmas tree lights, chasing each other in a never ending loop.
“What is that?” Whoever had spoken didn’t turn from the window, still caught in a moment of wonder.
“It is what Paul and I saw in the woods last night. It stopped us from getting out.” When they’d returned the
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previous night, soaking and exhausted, Simon and Paul had shared the story of what they’d found at the Tucker farm and the events in the woods with the few people that were still awake, but some were dozing and some had focused only on the awful news of the deaths before retiring to grieve in quiet corners with their own families. The reality of the blue electricity sparkling in front of them was far more mesmerizing than when it had belonged in the ramblings of two men in shock.
“It looks like this time the point is to keep us from getting back into the woods. It seems that whatever’s going on in there, we’re not welcome.”
“What do you think is happening?”
“I don’t know. Some kind of showdown maybe. Alex is in there.”
A little boy, his nose not much above the roughly painted ledge, pointed over to his left. “What’s that, Mummy? What’s that little boy doing over there in the rain?”
Following the boy’s finger, Simon saw a very young child, maybe five or six, emerging from behind a tree lit up with the blue sparkling fire. He came into view but didn’t move any further, instead just standing and staring at the pub.
A few seconds later, another child appeared, this time a slightly older little girl, swinging out from around the sodden bark of an oak about ten yards farther on and coming to a halt when she too was facing the pub, still under the overhanging electrified branches above. Within seconds another came into view, then another, and then another, until there were thirteen children spread out along the edge of the wood opposite the pub, a mixture of girls and boys from 290
about four to fifteen, their clothes running from the flares of the seventies to present-day fashions. None of them moved, simply staring in silence back at the tired and weary faces peering out from the pub’s window.
“Yes,” said Simon, thoughtfully. “I think we can definitely say we’re not welcome in the woods today.”
The woman whose son had pointed out the first child protectively gripped him by the shoulders and wheeled him around, leading him to a far table where he had been working on a crude drawing of a horse. It didn’t take him long to settle back in and Simon was for a moment in awe of the child’s capacity to adapt.
Looking back at their new observers, he wondered how long it took for them to adapt to whatever existence they had now. A year? Ten? Twenty?
“Who are they?” Crouch’s breathless question seemed to speak for them all.
Simon stared out, straining his tired eyes to make out significant features. “I think they’re lost children.” He wasn’t sure what he felt more, fear of them or pity for them.
“What do you mean?”
“Look at them. Really look at them. I’m sure you’ll recognize one or two from national papers and television appeals. Even twenty years ago that kind of news would have been big down here. Just look at them properly.”
For a moment or two no one spoke and then a female voice gasped. “Oh, my god, but it can’t be.” Her hand raised up to the glass. “That boy… the third one along … He looks just like that Colin Brade that went missing … must be ten years ago.” Her voice rose slightly. “That is him, that’s what he was wearing, I’m
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sure it is. I remember ‘cause he was the same age as my little sister. …” Her voice was a blend of awe and disbelief. Simon knew how she felt; he’d gone through the same when he realized he’d seen Alan Harrison playing in the village streets. It was that LSD moment again, and he wasn’t sure he was ever going to shake it off.
A murmur of energy was running through the small crowd, some scoffing at the suggestion outright, despite the blue light, despite the deaths, and despite the evidence in front of their eyes, others pushing their faces closer to the glass, nodding as their breath steamed it up, blocking their view.
A different voice piped through above the general hubbub. “And that girl’s Maggie Ray! That one there, near the end. Jesus … Jesus …”
For the next ten minutes the noise levels climbed high, the villagers reanimated as they argued and debated the identity of each of the silently watching children. Some remained anonymous, leaving Simon wondering sadly just who had lost them and why no one had fought harder to find them, but most were identified nearly positively from images consigned long ago to memory and now dredged up. Looking out the window, Crouch and he the only people not speaking, Simon thought he might feel more sorry for the children if they weren’t smiling so unpleasantly. So inhumanely. Teeth glistening. Occasionally, he was sure they glanced sideways to each other as if confirming their part in a secret joke. An involuntary shiver slid down his spine. What are you doing in there Alex? How can you possibly be able to do anything against this? His heart clenched and he forced it to relax. But she’s still alive. She may be in there, but she’s still alive.
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Around him the identity of another child was confirmed by majority decision and then one question dug into his ears, slicing through the excitement.
“But how can this be? How can they be here?”
The words silenced the room, and Simon thought about Paul upstairs, and poor dead Mary, and Melanie Parr and everything he’d seen since the madness had descended.
“That’s easy.” He spoke softly, to himself and to all of them. “The Catcher Man took them.”
Silence fell so heavily that Simon could almost see it settling like dust across the old pub.
“What can we do?” Crouch’s words were hollow, as if he knew the answer before it came.
“Nothing. Just wait. That’s all we can do.”
The huddle of people barely moved, just occasionally fetching a chair or barstool before continuing their vigil. After a while, Paul and Alice came downstairs, eyes red from crying but calmed, and joined them in the wait.
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As she and Callum walked side by side through the wood, her stride steady, Alex could hear the rustle of movement in the trees around her, the sounds keeping up with them but maintaining a slight distance. The noise was tentative and hesitant, as if there had been a shift in the balance of power between her and the children.
“Why don’t they just come out?”
“I think they’re afraid of you. They’re like me. They’re not the ones gone bad.
Melanie’s sent those to the edge of the wood.” He smiled. “I don’t think she knows you’re here.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. Alan Harrison and that girl ran off pretty fast.” The thought of the encounter with that little boy unsettled her. She hadn’t felt the same since she’d grabbed him. It wasn’t like the cancer pain, but deep in her core she could feel a cold space, as if someone had cut her open and then sewed her back up with a lump of ice left inside. And there was tingling 294
in her hands like painless pins and needles. Maybe it had started when Callum had showed her what happened to him, but after the Alan incident she had felt the change. Something about it frightened her and she just wanted to find the children and get back to her own life, or at least what was left of it. While she still could.
A branch cracked loudly behind the trees to her left and she stopped walking.
“Why don’t you just come out?” She was surprised at how strong her voice sounded as she called out. Until now her words had seemed flat in the in between, as Callum’s had in the bathroom. This time they were strong and resonant. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
For a second nothing happened, and then, almost shyly, Alan Harrison was the first to emerge from behind a tree. The viciousness in his face was gone and he looked at her with a mixture of awe and trepidation. Following his lead came the girl in the tunic, her eyes still a little suspicious, and then five or six others emerged. A couple of the smaller ones quietly whispered to each other, their eyes fixed on Alex. She stared at Alan Harrison and the girl who held his hand. So that’s why Melanie didn’t know she was here yet. The children hadn’t told her.
“Alan says you can help us.” The girl in the tunic dress retained some of her defiance, and Alex wondered if it was some of that spirit that had led her to whatever situation had brought her there. “But you have to hurry. She’s going to do it now. She’s going to push one of them into the ravine.”
Nodding at her, not needing to ask who she was, Alex turned, and with the children in tow like the pied
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piper, she moved up the bank, strong legs climbing. Her heart and head were pounding. How did they think she could help them? She couldn’t, of that she was sure. Behind her, she could hear excited muttering. How disappointed would they be when they found out they were mistaken? That she was just like them, in limbo, somewhere between life and death, no real use to anyone? What would they do when they realized that? Still, she thought, glancing down at her mother’s dress and taking a kind of comfort from it, she’d think about that later. For now, she had Melanie to deal with.