Black Flowers (34 page)

Something was wrong.

Hannah turned back to the fence.

See if there’s another way in
.

That meant going into the wood. Holding the baton in her left hand, and using the trunks for balance with the right, she moved into the undergrowth there. Beneath her feet, the discarded branches cracked softly. She moved slowly, keeping away from the fence, trying to stay quiet. After a minute, she reached an old felled tree, propped up at an angle between the others. Someone had whacked it repeatedly at the base with an axe and sent it tumbling, but only halfway to the ground. It was still attached at the edge of the base by enormous, stretched tendons of wood, like a half-snapped stick. The chicken wire cut
across the top of the stump. The tree had just been half chopped down to make way for the fence.

She crouched and moved underneath. A little further on, she could see more trees laid out in huge piles in a break in the forest, properly felled this time, stacked like hay bales and tethered together with dirty rope.

Hannah stepped into that clearing, smelling the old, wet wood. On the other side of the fence, there were trees still standing, but she thought she could see something else between them, a little further away. It was hard to make out in the darkness. Was it corrugated iron? Like the back of a factory, or perhaps a barn—

Hannah heard glass smashing.

She flinched, ducking down out of instinct. The noise was distant and muffled. It had come from somewhere inside the compound, and in the silence that followed, her heart thudded solidly and her skin began tingling.

And then someone
shrieked
.

It wasn’t in pain, but in rage. She stayed crouched down in the undergrowth, stunned by the horror of it. It was barely even a human sound, more like the howl of a wild animal. Shivers broke out all over her; her skin went cold. And she knew for sure.

This wasn’t her farm … but somehow it was.

She was back home.

Round the back of the house, my vision starred over again. The pain in my stomach had seemed bearable only minutes ago, but it was flaring brighter and brighter now that I was properly moving. Every step I took made the world shimmer. Facing out across the land behind the farmhouse, I forced myself to stop and rest a hand against a rough wooden strut.

Deep breaths, Neil
.

Long, slow, deep breaths.

A few seconds later, the world began to resolve itself. The sparkling crystals of light in the air faded away.

This was the end of the compound. Twenty metres ahead of me, there was a long row of apple trees, and I could just make out the chicken-wire fence between them and the black woods beyond. On the right, halfway between the house and the trees, there was what appeared to be a concrete bunker, pale as a skull.

I stumbled down and across towards it, and had to put my hand out to stop myself as I reached it. Up close, I could see it was made of breeze blocks, each one pasted tightly in place. I leaned my shoulder against the wall and patted my way down the side, one foot crossing the other, barely able to stop myself tripping.

‘Ally?’

I said it too quietly, but I was terrified of making any noise. From the far side of the house, I heard a car door slam: an abrasive, grating sound, reverberating through the underwater pulsing in my ears.

I rounded the corner of the bunker, glancing back up the garden as I did. Just as someone screamed. It was a man’s voice. A cry of horror and loss and
rage
.

And then something shattering.

Come on, Neil
.

I forced myself down the side of the bunker, the house out of sight now, the concrete blocks scraping against my shoulder. There was a door up here. A way in. I had no idea if Ally was in here, or even if she was still alive, but there was nowhere else to go anyway. I was holding my stomach with my left hand, and could feel blood seeping and sticking between my fingers. The centre of me was blazing hot, but everything else seemed to be growing cold and shivery.

Nowhere else to go.

Nowhere else I would get to anyway.

The door was made of steel, flush with the wall of the bunker.
There were rivets around the edge and solid cylindrical hinges bolted onto the concrete at the far side. A metal strip had been soldered on nearest to me, stretching over the edge of the breeze blocks and fastened to a protruding iron ring. The padlock there was enormous. The metal loop arching from the top was as thick as my finger.

I reached out and pulled it. It barely moved.

‘Ally?’ I whispered.

There was a window a little past the door. I moved towards it, again nearly falling. It wasn’t really a window: just a square cut out of the concrete with three black, metal bars running down. No glass. I peered through, trying to make out something – anything – inside. The walls and floor seemed to be covered with white tiles, lined in-between with grime. It looked like a place you’d slaughter cattle.

‘Ally?’

The bunker sounded cavernous inside, like putting your ear to a shell and hearing the sea. For a moment, my words echoed around and there was no reply. Then I heard a scraping noise.

And a whisper:

‘Neil?’

Even through the stars in my vision, the pain in my abdomen, relief flooded me. A burst of energy. For a moment, my skin even felt warm again. And I could see her too. She was right there, standing in the shadows beside the window.

‘Ally,’ I said. ‘It’s me.’

Her hands shot out between the bars: small white fists that I gripped, and which unfolded and gripped me back.

‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘Oh my God, oh my God.’

‘It’s okay.’

She wouldn’t let go of my hands. She couldn’t move her own out any further because they were bound at the wrist with thick black tape.

‘You’re bleeding,’ she said. ‘Oh God, you’re bleeding.’

‘It’s not mine,’ I said, even though it was, and I could tell
there was far more of it now. I’d been shot and I was bleeding, and I was finding it harder and harder to stay standing. But I squeezed her hand. ‘I’m all right, I promise. Are you hurt?’

‘No. Not really – is it safe now? Are the police here?’

Her voice was suddenly full of hope, and it made the energy I’d felt evaporate. This whole time, she wouldn’t have understood a thing about where she was or what had happened to her; she’d probably been convinced she was going to die, maybe even accepted it. And now here I was. Now, she thought, it was going to be over.

‘The police are on the way,’ I said.

I had no idea whether that was true any more. I reached for my phone – gone. I remembered the tumble down the staircase. From back at the house, I heard another smash. Shouting.

I took her hand again. ‘It won’t be long. In the meantime, we need to stay calm, keep quiet.’

‘Oh God.’

‘It’ll be all right.’

‘Can you get the door open from out there?’

‘I’ll try.’

She let go of my hand, and I moved back carefully to the door. It was a pointless exercise though; there was no way of breaking the padlock with my bare hands. I wouldn’t have been able to do it with the garden fork, even if I’d thought to pick it up again. But what else was there?

For a moment, I just stared at the lock stupidly.

What the fuck was I going to do?

And then I whipped my head round, distracted by a new noise:
whump
.

Whump
.

Whump
.

Whump
.

And suddenly, the back garden was flooded with glaring light. I winced, blinking from the shock of it. The man at the house
must have turned on the lights through the compound. He was preparing to come and search out whoever had killed the boy.

And yet all I could do was stare at the sight in front of me.

At the garden that had been revealed.

Hannah remained crouched at the edge of the clearing, listening. There had been no other noises since the scream.

She didn’t know what to do. It was as though she needed someone to take her hand and lead her. Any exhilaration was long gone: that had been a weird illusion, one she could no longer remember now that this was
real
and she was actually
here
. What she wanted to do, more than anything else, was be anywhere else in the world than this place.

But right now, she didn’t even dare to move.

Then:

Whump
.

Whump
.

Whump
.

Whump
.

Somewhere close to the corrugated iron structure, a floodlight came on. It was pointing inwards, but enough light fell through the fence to illuminate the clearing and it revealed the hundreds of black flowers growing here. Hannah stared down at them in absolute, non-functioning horror. They had spread out here from the compound on the other side of the fence, like an army of ants eating their way steadily through the forest floor.

In her mind, she imagined them chirruping as their petals flicked open and closed – and an image came to her. Not one from her father’s story, but an actual memory. A woman buried up to her neck in the ground below a house. The woman had once talked very calmly and told her it would all be okay and they would get out of there together, but now her eyes were rolling, her mouth wailing, and the words coming out of it no longer formed part of any sensible language whatsoever.

Oh God
.

It was too much. The moment broke.

Suddenly Hannah was upright and moving. Back through the trees. Back towards the path. Mind blank – she had no armour against this. She was just determined to get out of here as quickly as she could. To get as far away from this nightmare as would ever be possible again.

At first, I thought my vision was starring over again.

The whole back field here was open, and every square metre of ground had been dug up and filled in again, so that it was uneven: tufted with patches of grass between ridges of bare, churned earth. All of it glistened under the floodlights, but it wasn’t my vision creating the stars at all, I realised, it was the flowers.

Hundreds of them. Black flowers covered the entire lawn, poking up from the ground, their petals fragmented and missing. They looked like baby birds, scrawny necks stretched out, mouths open wide to receive food. Blind and bedraggled and helpless.

Oh God
.

It was an enormous mass grave, divided into obvious sections. This was where the old man and his family had buried their dead. Cultivated their crop.

A door slammed somewhere back at the house.

I glanced around me, feeling helpless. There weren’t any rocks on the ground here at all, never mind one large enough to smash the padlock with. Even if there had been, I doubted I’d have had the strength to lift it. There was nothing to defend myself with.

I stumbled back to the window.

Ally’s face was pressed up to the bars, pale and frightened.

‘I can’t open it.’

‘Neil—’

‘Give me your hands. Let me try to unpick that tape.’

‘There’s no point. My leg’s chained to this fucking thing.’

‘What thing?’

‘Some kind of steel table. It’s bolted down.’

I pushed myself away from the wall and half fell along the side of the bunker, towards the end closest to the house. Checking the ground as I went. Looking for
anything
. Finding nothing.

I had no idea what we were going to do.

I’m sorry, Ally
.

Sooner or later he was going to come down here. Probably straightaway. I stopped at the corner: the only plan I could come up with was to wait here. The floodlight was blocked by the bunker at this corner. I could press myself into this sharp angle of shadow and try to attack him as he came round, before he had the chance to see me.

It was a fucking laughable idea. I realised that as an arc of pain went through me. My hands were slippery with blood, and I pictured rainbows of fire, and my stomach full of curling migraine-light. Barbara’s words came back to me.

And the policeman didn’t end up being tortured to death on a farm
.

A shadow began spreading down the garden. It seemed enormous, and it rippled over the ridges of earth. His footsteps sounded across: soil crunching beneath his boots, petals crushed silently.

I readied myself. Breathed in slowly and deeply through my nose. For the moment, the stars had faded away again. Now was as good as it was going to get—

Except then the shadow moved sideways a little across the black flowers of the lawn. And when he stepped into view it was several metres away from the corner of the bunker. Too big a
distance for me to close, even if I could have kept myself upright without the wall for support. I’d never stood a chance.

So I just leaned there, looking at him. Waiting.