Berserk (8 page)

Cole climbed into his Jeep. Salisbury Plain was about two hours away. He could be there by dusk.

* * *

For a long time, Tom could not move.

The corpse of the child still lay where he had found it, wrapped in chains and virtually buried in filth. It had been a girl; he could see her long hair and she wore the rotten remnants of a dress. It may have been pink once, but burial had bled all colour to a uniform brown. Between the chains he could still make out the patterned stitching on the chest, flowers and butterflies and everything a little girl would love. It was a long dress, sleeveless, something for the summer, not this cool autumn day. Her leathery skin seemed unconcerned at the chill in the air. Her face (
it should be looking the other way, not at me, it shouldn’t have turned to me
) was a mummified mask of wrinkles, a dead young girl with an old woman’s skin. The creases around her eyes and the corners of her mouth were deep, home to muck and tiny, squirming white things. Her mouth hung open, filled with mud. Her eye sockets were moist, dark, and not totally empty. The eyes sat like creamy yellowed eggs, waiting to birth something unknowable.

Her hand still touched his arm. He remained motionless, staring at the places where her fingers squeezed, the slight indentations in his skin, hairs pressed down, redness around where her fingers touched him because
she was squeezing him.

Tom gasped, realising he had not breathed for many seconds. A breath shushed across the Plain, shifting grasses and setting a spread of nearby ferns whispering secrets. He could not take his eyes from the girl.

“That’s not squeezing me, it’s just touching me,” he whispered, staring down at the bony hand. He raised his other hand, ready to lift her mummified arm and set it down across her chest. “I shifted her . . . she moved . . . her arm lifted and fell, all because I shifted her . . .” He breathed hard between each phrase, trying to force away the dizziness that blurred the edges of his senses, determined to ignore the feeling that the corpse was about to move again. Every instant held the potential of another squeeze, another touch.

But her fingers are pressing
—

Gravity, it’s gravity.

—and a small slick thing slipped from a hole in her shoulder and scurried across her body.

Tom crawled backward out of the grave, pushing with his feet, pulling with his hands. There was no sign of Steven down there, not exposed at least, and he could not go back in to go deeper, he just could not. Jo would be frantic by now – it was mid-afternoon already and the sun was dipping to the west, ready to kiss the horizon and invite in the dark – and he suddenly realised just how many hours he had lost here. His shoulders and arm ached from the exertion, and his heart galloped hard.

“Oh Jesus God fucking hell,” he moaned, closing his eyes and trying to understand what he had done. It was a moment of reason in madness, clarity in confusion, but the moment was chased away. He felt it leave, lifting its legs and sprinting from his consciousness as a strange voice forced its way inside.

Are you Mister Wolf?

Tom’s eyes snapped open. The child’s corpse was shifting. He could not see actual movement, but the moisture across its body reflected and wavered in the light of the sinking sun, the reflections stretching up and down, left and right, repeating their rhythmic movements. As if the body were breathing.

No
. . .
no, not Mister Wolf.

Tom was shaking, his eyes watering. He wondered whether it was that giving the corpse an illusion of movement.

“No,” he moaned, filthy hands pressed to his face as if to squeeze out the truth. “No, no, no.” He scrabbled to his feet and backed away. His heels tangled in the outstretched legs of one of the excavated skeletons, and as he tumbled backward the voice came again, an invader in his own mind.

Don’t leave me again, Daddy, not after so long!
It was wretched, this voice, and pathetic, and altogether terrifying.

Tom fell back into a skeleton’s embrace. The impact shook its arms and they clanked against him. Bones cracked and crumbled. He screamed. It was a full, loud screech that hurt his throat, and the sound and pain brought him briefly up from the dark depths of disbelief that were pulling him down, drowning him. He found his footing again and backed away, treading carefully this time so that he was not tripped, stretching his legs back over the bodies he had dug up and laid out to view. He kept his eyes on what he could see of the corpse wrapped in chains. He could not really think about the chains, not yet. That was for later. Their reason for being there, their intention . . . that was for much later, when he was away from here and crying in Jo’s arms, begging her to go home with him, continue their life, accept the lie and try to find their way with Steven’s memory intact and unsullied.

Please
. . . the voice said in his head, and Tom screamed again.
So cold
. . .
so alone
. . .
I hurt.
It was the accent that terrified Tom the most. The words were bad enough, and their implications, but the accent was one he could not place, a smooth-flowing speech that he was sure he had never heard before. If he were imagining this voice, he could have never envisaged something he did not know.

“This is real,” he said, and though she did not speak, he knew that somewhere in his mind the dead girl smiled.

* * *

Tom backed farther away, knelt in the heather and stared at the open grave. The bodies he had brought out were catching the setting sun. He could smell their decay, even this far away. Perhaps they would rot faster now that they were uncovered. Some were skeletons, others had traces of skin and flesh . . . and the little girl, with her wrinkled skin and those ping-pong ball eyes loose in their sockets . . .

Even from where he was now he could see her hand, resting across her chest and ready to grab again. “Tendons tightening,” he whispered, “and muscles contracting, out of the cold ground at last, just something natural that’s making her fingers move like that.” He looked down at the scratch marks on his arm.
Almost as if she didn’t want me to go.

Those words, that accent, the idea that she was not as dead as the others. “That chain.”

Steven,
the voice said, and although he jumped Tom did not stand and run. He should have. Any sane thought would have told him to run as fast as he could. But sanity seemed to be setting with the sun, inviting in its own breed of darkness.

“My dead son,” he whispered to the air.

Not dead, Daddy.

“I’m not your daddy.”

There were tears, the unmistakeable sound of sobbing inside his head.
I know,
the voice whispered at last,
I just wanted to say it again.

“Not dead?”

You didn’t find him, his skelington?

“No.” She said skeleton like a kid, with a ‘g’ in there.
I wouldn’t have made that up, would I? If I were imagining all this?

Then he’s not dead. He’s
. . .
gone.

Please
—

“No, I don’t mean I don’t want to, I just mean I’m
not
. I
can’t
be. This isn’t happening.” Tom turned to leave. He would abandon everything he had done for the sake of his mind; losing it would not help Jo, not on this anniversary of Steven’s death. And he
was
dead. His son was dead. Thinking any other way would drive Tom mad. He smiled, almost laughed, wondering how true madness compared to what was happening to him now.

He pinched the back of his hand until his nails drew blood, then wondered what germs would invade his bloodstream from the muck on his skin.

“I’m going home,” he said, setting out for the hole beneath the fence.

Not that way! Bad man, nasty man, big bad Wolf!

“I’m not hearing this.”

This way, another way,
please
Daddy
!

“I’m not your—”

He’s come to kill you and
—

“You can’t know this.”

A loaded silence again, filled with a promise of something incredible.
I know so much more,
the little girl said. And though she still sounded scared and panicked, her words held power and control beneath the surface.

“I’m leaving.” But even as Tom set off across the Plain, he heard the distant sound of a car engine from beyond the artificial boundary bank.

That’s him,
the voice said, quieter and more controlled.
He’s a bad man. Very bad. He has only death in his head.

“And you have life?”

No, freedom. I don’t want to be here anymore, Daddy! Please come and get me, pick me up, hold me and hug me and I’ll tell you where to take us to be safe. The man’s coming now! I can feel him. Mister Wolf!

Tom heard the engine’s tone change as the vehicle came to a stop. It rumbled on for a moment and then cut out. He strained to hear the car door opening and closing, but it was too far away.
I could be doing this to myself,
he thought,
making this up to try to cover what I’ve done.
He looked down at his filthy hands and clothes, tainted with soil from a grave. The back of his hand still bled. The blood was startlingly red against the mud drying across his pale skin. Autumn colours.

What would he tell Jo?

I’ll help you find Steven,
the little girl said.
My name is Natasha.

“How do you know my son’s name?”

It’s at the front of your mind. And Jo, as well.

“My wife.”
In my mind
. . .
so what else does she see, know of me?

Please, take me out of here, out of the hole. Come and take me, and I’ll show you what happened here. I can, you know. My real Daddy told me how. If you touch me I can show you, even though I’m
. . .

“What?” Tom asked, scanning the fence for any signs of movement. “What are you? Dead? Dead and wrapped in chains?”

Wrapped in chains because I’m not dead,
the little girl’s voice said.

“Not dead.” Tom turned and looked back at the dark hole in the ground, the fragmented bodies arranged beside it.

Please, I’m very scared. And lonely. Take me, hold me, and I’ll show you everything. And if you believe, I’ll try to help you find Steven. Please!

“Why would you do that?” He was talking to the air, the Plain, the sinking sun, and yet already he was certain he would receive an answer. Tom felt peculiarly comfortable with his newfound madness. Perhaps acceptance was insanity in its purest form.

Because my Daddy loved me, and I think you love Steven the same way.

“Where is your Daddy?”

Daddy!
the voice shrieked, and Tom winced as if he had been punched.
Daddy is here! With me! He’s here in these chains, and Mummy and my little brother, all dead now, with
—

“With their heads cut off.”

Natasha was silent for a few seconds, and Tom heard her sobbing again.
They wanted me to be alive. Down here, alive, with all the crawling things.
She sounded so vulnerable, so small, such a child.

“They?”

There’s time to tell
. . .
but not too much. Not now. No time now!

Tom looked back over his shoulder at the mound, the small woods where he had found the crawlspace beneath the fence, and he wondered how he could explain this new madness to Jo. He had always been the strong one, the one to comfort her when tears came and memories shadowed the present. Now, covered in mud and with the stench of old corpses on his skin, how could he possibly explain?

In the dusky light he saw someone climbing the fence.

It’s him! Mister Wolf! Help me, please, don’t let him put me back in!

Tom tried to imagine being buried alive, thrown down into the pit with all those bodies, surrounded by dead family. But the thought that galvanised him into action was the certainty that if he were discovered, he would never get away from here. He had uncovered an horrendous crime, a monstrous lie. Madness or no madness, he had to flee.

And whether Natasha was real or a made-up presence in his mind, she was about to take control.

* * *

Cole parked a hundred feet behind the other car. He remained in his Jeep for a few minutes, lights off, scanning the surrounding area for any signs that he was being observed. He kept reminding himself that this was a fifty-five year old office worker he was following, but caution had always been his way. It had saved his life more than once and now, so close to this place, his hackles were up.

He had not been here for ten years.

He stepped from the Jeep, shut the door quietly and rested one hand on the pistol in his coat pocket. Day was slipping into dusk, and he wanted to investigate Roberts’ car before full darkness fell. This was a bad time of day to be sneaking around with one hand on his .45 . . . but yet again, he reminded himself of whom he was following. Roberts was hardly going to be perched on a hillside with the cross-hairs of a .30-30 centred on the back of Cole’s head.

Still . . .

Glancing left and right, Cole made his way quickly to the parked car. He approached from the passenger side, keeping well away from the vehicle, closing in only when he was certain it was empty. He tried the door. Roberts had left the car unlocked. Other things on his mind.

Yeah, his dead son.

Cole shook his head. There was no time for pity.

He climbed the bank and stood at the security fence, staring out across the Plain. Although he had not been here since that fateful day ten years before, he could still remember every detail about this place, every point of reference that would lead him to where the bodies were buried. To his right lay the small woods, to his left in the distance a slight hill was already merging with the darkness, and in front of him, somewhere past the fence, would be the rock shaped like a rugby ball standing on end. He sniffed the air and remembered the scent of the moors. He closed his eyes briefly and heard the familiar silence. Even the feel of the place on his skin and in his guts was something he still understood so well; that gravity, that sense of the raw power of nature sleeping here. He was back, and it felt as though he had never been away, as if every day of the intervening ten years had been wiped from existence. God knew he had lived that day in his nightmares enough times to make it last forever.