‘You stink, Elijah North,’ Bryony hisses. ‘You stink of lies and betrayal, but most of all you just stink.’
She’s walking faster than I can crawl. The rifle barrel swings like a pendulum. Bryony’s lips have peeled back. Her teeth, inexplicably, have sharpened into points. I imagine them tearing my skin, reducing my face to ropey tatters.
‘Please!’ I scream. ‘I got you a tree! A tall one, just like you asked!’
She snarls. Her lips split further apart. She looks more like a dog, now, than a girl. Rolling on to my tummy, I jump to my feet and flee.
‘Get back here!’ Bryony shrieks, her voice even fiercer than the storm. ‘It’s not too late to fix this! IT’S NOT TOO LATE!’
She’s wrong about that. We both know it. It’s too late for me, for dead Bryony, for soon-to-be-dead Gretel. I tried to save them, but I couldn’t. This always ends the same way.
For a while, as I run, the world retreats completely. When my awareness returns I find myself at the Memory Wood’s eastern boundary, with no memory of how I got here, or how much time has passed. Bursting free of the trees, I slip-slide along the track towards home. Lightning rents the sky. The clatter-crash of thunder is so violent that I sprawl on my belly and take a mouthful of putrid mud. For a moment I can’t find my feet, slithering eel-like through slime and ruin.
Up ahead, I see our cottage. Kyle is standing outside. He’s holding the same rifle Bryony was pointing, which is impossible, until I remember that Bryony’s dead, and the girl I saw in the Memory Wood wasn’t really there.
By the time I reach the front path I can hardly breathe. My clothes, sodden with rain, stick to me like a second skin.
Kyle raises his gun. ‘You fuckin’ slug,’ he says. ‘What have you done?’
‘She kissed me, Kyle.’
Behind him, the cottage door stands open. Rain has soaked the entrance hall. Grabbing the rifle, I tear it from my brother’s grip and cast it into the grass. Then I push past him and go inside.
Elissa
Day 7
From the ceiling, fuel drips and patters and, eventually, pours. Elissa cowers in darkness beside the hastily extinguished candle, petrol fumes thickening in her throat. Already, she’s feeling light-headed. How long can she breathe like this before the air begins to poison her?
She imagines Elijah standing upstairs, preparing to toss a lit match down the cellar steps and destroy the evidence of his crimes. Her horror is a scampering lizard inside her skull. Elissa envisions a yellow glow outside the door, a sudden rolling inferno within. She conjures the shrieking agony of burning skin, the savage intensity of underground immolation. Dying down here was always more than a distant possibility, but she never thought it would be like this.
Something cold and wet touches her finger – the edge of a petrol lake, creeping across the floor. A drip of fuel hits her neck and rolls down her spine. ‘God, oh God, hear me, please, I pray to you, please don’t let this hurt, please God, don’t let it hurt.’
She thinks of her mum, listening to a grim-faced police officer explaining that her daughter’s bones have been found. She imagines her visiting the Memory Wood, standing by the burnt-out cottage and peering into a blackened pit, and the image is so lonely, so desolate and goddamned bleak, that she begins to weep. Lena Mirzoyan didn’t deserve this. Neither of them did. She thinks of the chess Grand Prix, her hopes of winning, her years of dedication. All that sacrifice with no chance of reward. All those dreams turned to ash.
If she could go back, there are so many things she’d do differently, so many people she’d like to know better. If only she’d invested as heavily in friendships as in her game. In hindsight, it didn’t have to be a choice. At her funeral, there might be four attendees; six, if Lasse and Mrs McCluskey come along. Six people to commemorate a life, and she has no one to blame but herself. She’s hardly touched this world. When she’s gone, she’ll barely leave a mark.
Then, through the sound of cascading fuel, she hears something familiar: the rattle-snick of deadbolts. With an abruptness that shocks her, the door swings open, revealing the slashing white beam of a torch. The sight turns her insides to paste.
‘Turn it off!’ she screams, trying to shield herself from the wall of flame that will roll over her if the bulb’s filament ignites the air. ‘Turn it OFF!’
The light angles up, examining the ceiling. Then it flits around the cell, coming to a rest where she left the iPhone.
Please, she thinks. Take it. Take it away, punish me. Punish me, but don’t burn me. Whatever you do, please don’t set me on fire.
Elissa sways, so disoriented that she nearly collapses. Her vision begins to skip, turning the torch into a strobe. ‘Elijah?’ she sobs. ‘Hansel?’
He lurches forward, lower legs ranging into view. So fast that she has no chance to cry out, he brings down his heel on the phone, shattering the screen.
Elissa moans, retreats into herself, tries to block out her petrol-soaked dress, the incandescent filament.
Again, his heel comes down. Glass skitters across the floor. The iPhone is reduced to twisted metal. Still the violence doesn’t stop.
‘Please!’ Elissa screams. ‘Please! Why are you doing this? What have I ever DONE TO YOU?’
He kicks away the broken pieces and retreats through the open cell door. He’s gone less than a minute. When he returns, the torch is clamped in his teeth. She can’t see his face, but the light reveals his hands. In them he carries two petrol cans. Working with silent efficiency, he sloshes their contents over the floor.
Elijah
Day 7
I
Everything is falling apart. Everything.
I hardly recognize the cottage as I rampage through its rooms. Downstairs, a mishmash of muddy footprints darkens the floor. I wonder who made them. I wonder what they mean.
You know, says a voice I try to ignore. Of course you do.
I think of Bryony, in the Memory Wood. Her mortal head wound. I think of the blow that must have caused it and wonder how anyone could be so cruel.
You know, Elijah. You can’t run from this. Not any more.
I feel that wall inside my mind beginning to buckle. If it does, all the horrors stacked behind it will be turned loose. In the carnage, I’ll be devoured. ‘Mama!’ I shout, going from room to room. ‘Mama!’
The house breathes its silence like an accusation.
‘She’s dead, Eli, and you know it. Mama’s dead and gone.’
I wheel around to find Kyle standing behind me. He’s lost his trademark sneer. He watches me with eyes full of knowing.
‘Liar!’ I scream at him. ‘That’s just a dirty lie!’
Pushing past him to the hall, I race up the stairs. My breath comes in ragged bursts. When my vision falls to pieces I realize I’m crying – crying and shouting for people I should know are long dead. I reach Kyle’s room, and when I see what’s inside I nearly sink to my knees, because it’s empty, someone has emptied it, has removed all my brother’s things.
How can that be? How can any of this be?
Outside, the sky flickers and crashes. Devil-spawned shapes come alive in the shadows.
Staggering on, I reach my parents’ room, and that’s when I know everything’s lost. There are no sheets on the bed. The cupboard doors hang crooked, revealing an empty interior. On the dressing table, all Mama’s trinkets have disappeared, although that’s to be expected because, because—