Alice Isn't Well (Death Herself Book 1) (6 page)

Chapter Eight

1941

Exhausted, with blisters on her feet after walking for hours without shoes, Wendy finally reached her street around midday. There were people all around, hurrying nervously from door to door, but although a few of them glanced at her, none of them stopped to ask if she was okay. After all, a tired, weak-looking little girl was hardly an unusual sight in war-torn London.

Even with bandages on her arms and neck.

Stopping on the street-corner, she stared straight ahead, looking toward the house where she lived with her mother. Or rather, what was left of it. She'd been so desperate to get home, but now she was scared to go much closer because she could see, even from a few hundred feet away, that something was definitely wrong. The house, and the two next to it as well, seemed to have been completely destroyed, with just a few sections of brickwork and wood left in place. She kept telling herself that if she went closer, she'd see that everything was actually fine, but for now she was too scared to try.

“Wendy?” a voice asked suddenly.

Turning, she saw a familiar face watching her from a nearby doorway. It took a moment before she realized that it was Mrs. Carmichael, the friendly old woman who always used to complain about children playing too close to her garden. She'd been quite a dragon once, but she'd seemed to soften after her two sons were both killed in action a year earlier.

“Are you okay?” Mrs. Carmichael continued, leaving her front door wide open as she stepped out. “I didn't think I'd be seeing you again, I thought they'd have sent you off somewhere for the duration.”

After staring at her for a moment, Wendy turned to look along the street again. There was a sense of dread in the pit of her stomach now, and she was starting to wonder if the other girls at the monastery had maybe been telling the truth. At the same time, she knew it couldn't be true about her mother, it just couldn't.

“Your feet are bleeding,” Mrs. Carmichael said suddenly.

Looking down, Wendy saw that she was right. Having not had the chance to fetch her shoes before leaving the monastery, she'd been walking barefoot for hours and hours, and the pain from her soles had been unnoticeable against the pain from her bandaged arms and torso. All the pain just seemed to have merged together.

“Oh, you poor little thing,” Mrs. Carmichael continued, stopping next to her and staring down with an expression of pure pity. “I don't think you're supposed to be here, are you? Where
are
you supposed to be? I heard you were taken to hospital, and then someone said the sisters of Barton's Cross had agreed to look after you. Maybe we should find a policeman and get him to help you out, eh? You can't be out here like this. You need to go back to the monastery, so that the sisters can take care of you.”

Ignoring her, Wendy stepped forward, keeping her eyes fixed firmly on the far end of the terrace where her house had once stood. She felt a shiver pass through her body as she realized that it was gone now. Where once there had been the brown bricks of the facade, now there was a clear view of the gray sky.

“You mustn't torture yourself,” Mrs. Carmichael told her. “It would have been very quick, you know.”

“What would?” Wendy whispered, spotting dark patches on the cobbles, as if the very ground itself had been burned. Taking a few more steps forward, she realized she was standing in the exact spot where the bulk of the burning plane had landed after crashing through the houses.

“Your mother loved you very much,” the old woman continued, with tears in her eyes, “and a mother's love never dies, you know. It's still with you, it's still in your heart, even if... Well, even if she's gone herself. As long as
you
remember, then that's all it takes for her love to live on in your soul forever. You understand that, sweetheart, don't you?”

Ignoring every word that Mrs. Carmichael had just said, Wendy approached the ruins of the house. Most of the wreck had been removed, but there were still pieces of charred wood poking up from the foundations. She felt a shiver passing through her chest as she saw what was left of the kitchen wall, but there was little else she recognized. The inferno had clearly incinerated the house.

“Such bad luck,” Mrs. Carmichael said after a moment, as she shuffled over to join Wendy. “Your poor mother was so unfortunate. Of all the nights to come home early from work, why did the fates decree that...” She paused for a moment, with tears in her eyes, before looking down at Wendy again and seeing the fresh cuts on the girl's feet. “Do the sisters of Barton's Cross know that you're here, sweetheart? I don't think they do, do they?”

Wendy turned to her.

“I'll fetch a policeman,” the old lady continued, turning and limping away. “You wait right here. Everything's going to be quite alright.”

Left alone, Wendy made her way around the side of the burned house, unable to stop staring at the twisted wooden remains as she tried to work out which parts had been which walls. She had no idea which room her mother had been in when the plane crashed, but since people said she'd died quickly, she assumed she must have been upstairs. Then again, she knew adults sometimes lied to make things sound better, so she felt there was a chance her mother had suffered.

Maybe like the burning pilot.

Heading around to the rear of the wreckage, she found that – somewhat improbably – the garden gate had survived, still in perfect condition as part of the damaged brick wall. Opening the gate, she looked through into the garden and saw that although the lawn near the house was burned and covered in debris, the far end seemed almost untouched. She stepped toward that far end, and for a moment it was possible to imagine that the house was in one piece behind her, and that her mother might at any moment call her in for dinner.

More than anything else, she wanted to hear her mother's voice again.

“Wendy! Supper's ready!”

She felt a shiver in her chest as she remembered those words. Taking a deep breath, she wondered whether she might be able to change what had happened. She knew the idea was ridiculous, but still, in the back of the mind she felt that maybe, just maybe,
she
of all people might actually be able to make the universe re-order itself. She focused as hard as possible on the idea that the house hadn't been destroyed, and on the possibility of her mother still being alive, and she pictured the scene as it had once been. At first she just imagined it all, but then she forced herself to really believe it, insisting that there was no way it could all be gone in the blink of an eye. Finally, with just a hint of hope in her heart, she turned and looked over her shoulder.

At that moment, a faint breeze blew through the wreckage.

She felt her heart drop an inch in her chest.

“She's around here somewhere,” Mrs. Carmichael could suddenly be heard saying. “She can't have gone far.”

“We'll get her back to Barton's Cross,” a male voice replied, obviously a policeman. “They'll know what to do with her. She can't be out alone.”

Feeling a sudden sense of panic at the idea of going back to the nuns, Wendy looked around before spotting the gap behind the garden shed. Racing across the scorched lawn, she ducked down and wriggled into the gap, barely managing to squeeze through before stopping as she listened to the gate being opened again. She'd hidden in the exact same spot when she was younger, when she'd been playing with her father, but this time it wasn't a game.

“Wendy!” Mrs. Carmichael called out. “Are you here, child?”

Holding her breath, Wendy squeezed her eyes tight shut, praying for them not to find her.

“Wendy!” a male voice shouted, obviously the policeman.

Still, she held her breath.

“Oh,” Mrs. Carmichael said after a moment, “I should have made her come with me. Lord alone knows where she is now.”

“She can't have gone far,” the policeman replied. “If you see her again, let us know, but I'm sure she's a responsible young lady. She'll make her own way back to Barton's Cross.”

Staying behind the shed, Wendy opened her eyes and began to breathe slowly as she heard the garden gate swing shut. She still didn't move, worried that perhaps they were trying to trick her and that they were still out there, waiting to see if she emerged from one hiding place or another. Sure enough, after a moment she realized she could hear soft footsteps on the grass, coming closer. She waited for a face to appear and look down at her, but nothing came and as the seconds ticked past, she began to have hope that she wouldn't be discovered.

And then she heard the sniffs.

Just around the corner, edging closer, something was sniffing frantically, almost as if it was trying to locate her by scent alone. As far as she knew, that wasn't something policemen could do, but she held her breath anyway and listened as the sniffs came ever closer, until there was a pause and she waited to be discovered. A moment later, however, she heard the gate again, followed by footsteps in the path that ran along the side of the house, and she realized she'd been right: someone
had
stayed behind to see if she'd emerge, but they hadn't found her. She waited a few minutes longer, before figuring that this time she was probably safe. Crawling out, she looked around and saw that there was no-one around.

She had no idea where to go, but she knew one thing. She never wanted to go anywhere near Barton's Cross again.

Chapter Nine

Today

“Come on,” one of the forum's users had written, “no-one seriously believes that. Alice Warner killed him, end of story. The only questions are how and why.”

The comment had a 79% approval rating from 312 votes.

Although she knew she shouldn't read any more, Alice clicked to see the rest of the thread. Her eyes were sore and tired, and the laptop's flickering screen was bright enough to burn, but she couldn't help herself.

“That's what no-one else seems to get,” another forum user had added below the first comment. “Too many people trying to make excuses for that bitch when the truth is right there for everyone to see. She's a serious psycho and she should never have been let out. No-one's safe with someone like her around.”

Approval rating: 81%. 298 votes.

“She should've been sent to prison,” suggested another user a little further down, “not some cushy hospital.”

Approval rating: 90%. 301 votes.

“BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY,” an anonymous user had added in full caps lock. “PROBLEM SOLVED.”

Approval rating: 59%. 650 votes.

A faint flicker crossed Alice's face as she scrolled down and read more comments. A few people had come to her defense, but they'd quickly been shouted down and, besides, they didn't interest her too much. Messages of support just left her feeling cold, whereas the ones that vilified her, the really venomous comments that called for her to be locked up or executed or worse... Those, at least, sent a shiver through her body and made her feel alive. At least she knew those people were saying what they really believed, instead of trying to be polite.

Further down the page, she found that someone had added an image. For a fraction of a second, she was unable to work out what she was seeing, other than some text at the top that read NEVER FORGET. After a moment, however, she tilted her head slightly and then felt a punch to the gut as she realized she was looking at a photo of Officer Aspen's body with the top of his head missing and his broken lower jaw protruding from the mangled flesh, with stained teeth partially dislodged from the gum. He was on an autopsy table, and a tape measure had been placed next to her shoulder. She stared, not even blinking, and finally she leaned closer to the screen, taking in as much detail as possible.

Approval rating for this post: 75%. 1,190 votes.

“Could I have done that to someone?” she whispered. The idea was shocking, but unless her memory of that night ever returned, she couldn't know for certain. When more police had arrived shortly after Officer Aspen's death, they'd found no sign of an intruder. The official investigation had been inconclusive, but she knew what everyone thought.

They all thought she'd killed him.

For several minutes, she sat and simply stared at the image, before finally she clicked to open a comment box.

“No-one should be forgiven if they cause another human being to suffer and die,” she wrote. “The inability to remember is no excuse. It's obvious what Alice Warner did and she should pay for it.”

She read the comment over a few times before hitting the 'submit' button. As soon as the comment was posted, it had a 100% approval rating, and she sat back, feeling the knot of fear starting to fade in her gut. Checking her watch, she saw that it was almost 5pm, which meant that she only had five hours before she was due back at Barton's Cross for her second night-shift. Her weary eyes wanted to close now, but she knew she'd never be able to sleep so, instead, she opened another browser window and brought up a search engine.

“Plane crash World War 2,” she typed, “Barton's Cross Kellis Hill area London.”

The dream had been plaguing her all morning, to the extent that she'd begun to wonder whether it was truly a dream at all.

As soon as the results appeared, she began to scroll down. The second entry piqued her curiosity, so she clicked through and was immediately presented with an old image of something burning against a dark night sky. The picture was speckled and grainy, obviously scanned in from an old newspaper, and according to the caption it showed the aftermath of a Spitfire having crashed onto a row of houses. There was a long entry underneath, explaining the history of the incident, but even before she began to read the text, she already knew one thing.

The scene in the photo was exactly the same as her nightmare from the day before. It was almost as if -

Startled suddenly by a knock at the door, she looked across the room. No-one ever knocked on her door, not apart from Mrs. Cole, the landlady, and she wasn't due to pop by for at least another week. There was simply no-one else who could possibly come, not ever. She'd made sure of that. Nevertheless, a moment later there was another knock.

“Hello?” Alice said tentatively.

“You had a friend pop over last night while you were out,” Mrs. Cole replied. “I heard her hammering and calling your name, so I had to come up, didn't I? Told her you were out working. That was right, wasn't it?”

Alice paused. “A... friend?” She said that last word as if it was completely alien.

“I told her she can't come banging around in the middle of the night, but could you maybe say the same thing to her? I don't want complaints from my other tenants.”

Another pause, before Alice got to her feet and headed to the door. After sliding the latch free, she pulled the door open a little and peered out at Mrs. Cole.

“A
friend
?” she asked again.

“She seemed nice enough. Dark hair, seemed a little... I dunno, serious.”

Alice paused again. “I'm sorry, are you sure it was
my
door she was knocking on?”

“She was calling your name, too. Why? Weren't you expecting anyone?”

“I...” Yet again, all Alice could do was stare blankly for a moment. The blunt truth was that having spent the past decade in a psychiatric hospital, she didn't have a friend in the world, certainly not someone who should have been banging on her door. “I really think there must be a mistake. Did she tell you her name?”

“Yeah, it was...” She paused, frowning as she tried to remember. “Hannah!”

Alice paused. “I don't know anyone named Hannah.”

“Well, she knows you.”

“That's impossible.”

“Look,” Mrs. Cole, continued with a sigh, “I don't mind people dropping by, you know I don't. Entertain to your heart's content, so long as there are no disturbances for the other residents. And I don't want anyone sleeping over, either. That's my big rule.” She flashed a smile. “Sorted?”

“Did she leave a number?”

She shook her head. “Black hair. A bit intense, if you ask me.” She turned to shuffle away, before glancing back at her. “What's wrong? Got so many mates, you can't keep track of them all?”

Alice paused for a moment, before gently shutting the door and sliding the latch back across. She still had no idea who Mrs. Cole was talking about, and she was quite certain that there must have been some kind of mistake, perhaps a moment of confusion. One thing she knew for sure was that she had no friends, no acquaintances, no colleagues, no family members... There was no-one who should be knocking on her door. Still, she felt no need to make a fuss, and she figured that whoever had been knocking the night before, they'd realize their mistake and they wouldn't be coming back. She certainly didn't know anyone named Hannah.

Heading over to her bed, she spotted the small plastic box she kept on the table by the window. It wasn't much, but she used it to store the very few precious things that actually meant anything to her. She opened the lid and looked inside, seeing the only two things she'd added so far: her release papers from Adenguard Hospital, and the train ticket that had brought her to London. She allowed herself a faint smile, and then she reached into her pocket to take out the bus ticket from the previous night. She knew it was silly to save something so inconsequential, but at the same time she felt proud that after everything that had happened, she'd not only been able to get a job but she'd actually gone through her first night without making any major mistakes. She figured that one day she'd put all these items into a scrapbook, a kind of history of her new life.

Pulling the piece of paper from her pocket, she began to straighten it out before, suddenly, a second piece fell down to the floor. Reaching for it, she frowned as she saw that it was another bus ticket. Holding them side by side, she realized that she actually had two tickets, both purchased at the same time for the same bus journey on the same night, as if she'd had someone with her when she went to work the night before. She hadn't, though; she'd been quite alone, and she remembered sitting quietly at the back seat of the bus, waiting for her stop. Reaching into her other pocket, she took out the return ticket from the morning, but there was a duplicate of that too.

“One to Barton's Cross,” she remembered saying to the driver.

One ticket.

One seat.

Yet now she had two tickets each way, apparently purchased at exactly the same time. Setting a copy of each into the box, she closed the lid and then tossed the duplicates into the bin by the door, and she told herself there must have been a simple mistake.