Cruel Minds (23 page)

Emily was running out of forest. Fifty metres to the west, she could see the jetty jutting out over the lake. A lantern sat at the end, illuminating the surrounding water and the small rowboat that jostled and pulled on its tethers. There was something else on the jetty, long and crumpled like a pile of cloth. Emily squinted in the dark. The pile of cloth moved. It moaned and squirmed.

“Marcia!” Emily breathed. She was still alive. Adrenaline racing through her veins, Emily moved towards her. She kept low and to the shadows, wincing at the crunches and snaps of the forest floor beneath her feet. She edged closer, suddenly aware of the danger she was putting herself in. The only weapons she possessed were the torch and her bare hands.

The jetty was five feet in front of her. Marcia lay on her side, turned away from Emily. Coils of rope bound her arms to her torso and tied her ankles together. Her clothing was muddy and torn. Marcia shifted her head. Streaks of drying blood caked her hair.

Emily looked back into the forest and across the shore of the lake. Then, pulse racing, she stepped out from the trees. Fear gripped her, squeezing the air from her lungs. She moved quickly, stealing glances over her shoulder as she made her way to the end of the jetty. Her eyes moved to the boat. As she came closer, Marcia thrashed violently. Her moans became frightened sobs. She rolled onto her front and began choking on the gag in her mouth. Emily rushed to her side.

“It’s going to be all right. You’re safe now. I’m going to help you.” She put her hands on Marcia’s shoulder and felt her flinch. “I’m not going to hurt you. I have to turn you over so I can untie you.”

With one hand on Marcia’s shoulder and one on her hip, Emily rolled her over onto her back. Light from the lantern spilled across her face.

Emily stopped breathing. For a second, confusion fogged her mind. Then, she fell back onto her haunches. She’d been mistaken. Lying on the jetty, tied and gagged and peering up with terrified eyes, was Melody.

It took another five seconds before Emily came to her senses. Springing forwards, she pulled the gag from Melody’s mouth.

“Help me!” Melody cried. “Please, help me!”

Her eyes moved over Emily’s shoulder, growing wide with terror.

Emily spun around in time to see a shadowy figure, then a large chunk of wood swinging towards her head.

T
he pain in her temple forced her awake. She tried to open her eyes and found she could only manage the right one. Her vision filled with a vast black field of countless stars. She watched them sway from left to right, right to left, the motion repeating over and over until she felt sick.

She tried to sit up but was unable to move. The surface beneath her head was hard. She smelled damp wood, mould, spoiled water. She tried to move again but it was as if her wrists and ankles were cemented together. A wave of pain swelled up from her temple. Emily wrenched her head to the left and vomited. She choked, drew in a breath, then coughed as forcefully as she could, expelling the burning liquid from her throat.

Her vision returned to the sky. Why wouldn’t the stars stop moving? The world turned yellow, then red, then black.

***

S
ounds woke her. The rustle of leaves as a breeze shouldered its way through the forest. The rhythmic splashing of water, followed by the patter of raining droplets.

Pain ripped through her head. Emily opened her good eye. She lay in the boat, trussed in ropes, her body trapped beneath the centre thwart. Trying to ignore the searing pain in her temple and the taste of blood in her mouth, she titled her head. The boat was still moored to the jetty. She could hear Melody’s muffled sobs coming from somewhere above.

Emily felt eyes upon her. A shadow sat at the edge of the jetty, legs dangling over the water.

“You’re awake.”

Emily thought she recognised the voice. The shadow moved into the light, peeling away layers of darkness. Marcia peered down at Emily, then turned to look back at the jetty. Behind her, Melody’s sobs grew even more pitiful.

“Sorry about your head. I didn’t know what else to do.”

Emily tried to move her hands and succeeded in wriggling her fingers. Attempting to rotate her wrists was rewarded by a stinging bite from tightly-coiled rope. She winced, then returned her one-eyed gaze to her captor.

“I don’t understand. I saw the Land Rover, the blood.”

“You saw what you were meant to see.” Marcia’s gaze returned to the jetty. She picked up Emily’s torch and flashed it towards the trees. Shoulders heaving, she turned to Melody, frowned, then pushed herself off the jetty and into the boat.

Emily rocked from side to side. Nausea swam in her stomach. She watched as Marcia untethered the boat from its moorings, then used an oar to push away from the jetty. Sitting down on the centre thwart, feet either side of Emily’s body, she slotted both oars into the rowlocks.

Marcia began to row, expertly cutting the oars through the water. As the boat moved away from the jetty, Emily had a sudden and clear vision of what was going to happen to her. A bolt of panic shot through her chest and up to her head. She pulled her left arm up and her right arm down, trying to free herself. The rope bit deeper, slicing through skin.

Her vision spiralling, Emily rested her head on the bottom of the boat. Marcia rowed for a minute more. Then, pulling the oars out of the water and resting them on her knees, she leaned back and picked up the torch. Blinding light flashed in Emily’s face. She squeezed her eye shut.

“I’m sorry this is happening to you,” Marcia said. “I want you to know that this wasn’t supposed to happen. You seem like a nice person. Perhaps if we’d gotten to know each other a little better we might have become friends.” She paused. “But you’ve brought this upon yourself. I hope you realise that.”

Emily struggled to find her voice. Panic sat on her chest, its hands around her throat. Lowering the torch, Marcia pointed it at the side of the boat. The light bounced back in a soft glow, allowing Emily to make out her features. She was surprised by what she saw. Instead of the hardened face of a killer, she saw fear and guilt and regret.

Conscious of Emily’s gaze, Marcia reached for the torch. A bloodstained bandage was wrapped tightly around her hand.

“Why are you doing this, Marcia? Why is Melody tied up?” Emily asked, finding her voice at last. “Is it because of Franklyn? Is it because of what he did to you?”

Switching off the torch, Marcia plunged the boat back into darkness. She picked up the oars again. “What would you know about that?”

“I know what your mother told me. That Franklyn attacked you. That Sam chased him away.” Emily paused before she spoke again. “You killed Sam. He loved you.”

The oars hit the water and Marcia began to row.

“I didn’t kill Sam,” she said, her voice pushing through clenched teeth. Was that anger Emily could hear? “I didn’t kill anyone.”

Confused, Emily tried to sit up. Her neck hurt. Her heart throbbed. Her eye felt as if it had been scooped out and dumped into the water. She lay back down, forced to stare at the stars once more.

In the darkness, she heard Marcia let out a long, faltering sigh.

“If you didn’t kill anyone, who did?” Frustration momentarily pushed Emily’s terror to one side. “Can’t you just tell me what the hell is going on here? If I’m going to die surely I have the right to know.”

She fell silent. As she waited for a reply, she looked up at the swaying stars. Melody’s sobs were still audible but further away now.

“Tell me what you know,” Marcia said.

Emily drew in a breath and felt pain in her chest. “I know that Oscar didn’t hang himself. I know that he was a private investigator searching for Franklyn. I know that your mother lied to me. The night Franklyn attacked you, he didn’t run away. Somebody killed him.”

“And how would you know that?”

“Because I just dug up his body.”

Marcia lifted the oars. Water ran off the paddles and cascaded into the lake.

“Melody was there that night,” Emily said. “Did she kill Franklyn? Did she kill the others?”

In the starlight, she saw Marcia turn and look out across the lake. She remained unmoving for a long time before she spoke again.

“Before we came to Meadow Pines, I was so happy. I loved my friends, my school. Dance classes on a Tuesday evening, gym on Thursdays. Life was good. Then Pamela took it all away from me. She brought me here to Meadow Pines, tried to convince me that it was exactly what we needed. Of course what she really meant was that it was exactly what
she
needed.

“I hated her for it. I wanted to run away, back to my home. Back to my friends. I was twelve years old. Who takes a twelve-year-old to the middle of nowhere and isolates her from the world? No TV, no phone. No one to talk to. How was that ever a good idea?”

The throb in Emily’s head intensified, pulsating from her swollen eye and temple and down to her jaw.

“It must have been hard,” she said.

Marcia spoke through clenched teeth. “Like you can’t imagine. Meadow Pines was such a mess when we found it. Aside from not wanting to be anywhere near the place, I knew it would be a huge mistake to take it on. But Pamela was insistent. She was absolutely convinced it was meant to be. The setting, the house—it was all perfect in her eyes. Never mind the money that was needed to get the place into some sort of inhabitable shape before we could even think about opening it up to guests. But if you know anything about Pamela, it’s this—she’s stubborn as hell and she never gives up. So, regardless of what I wanted, off we went to live in the middle of the forest without electricity or proper running water. She spent every penny we had and borrowed a whole lot more from the bank. I was already thirteen by the time Meadow Pines opened. Come opening day, Pamela was in so much debt that even I lay awake at night worrying about it. But I’d never seen her so happy. Especially when people finally started coming to the retreats.”

“I’ve already heard this,” Emily said, her patience fraying at the edges. Her pain had worsened. The ropes bit into her skin. “Fast forward a few years and Meadow Pines wasn’t doing so well again. You were in debt. One more knock and you stood to lose everything. What happened with Franklyn?”

Stars flashed in Marcia’s eyes. One by one, they faded into darkness.

“We were struggling with the competition. Thanks to a boom in mindfulness meditation there were retreats opening all over the place. We couldn’t keep up with the mortgage payments and the bank was threatening to take Meadow Pines. Pamela was going to lose everything she’d built up. You see, regardless of my feelings, I knew that she wouldn’t be able to take it. Some people just aren’t built for what our world has become. They’re too sensitive. If Meadow Pines closed and Pamela had to return to the world, she would have cracked. That was what we were facing when Franklyn came back.”

“Marcia, what happened that night?”

“What Pamela told you was true,” she said, her voice turning to stone. “The first part, at least. It was day nine of the retreat. She and her guests were doing their meditation thing before calling it a night.”

“You don’t share her beliefs?”

“I’m more of a humanist really. Be nice to each other and hopefully people will be nice back. Pamela has always had more spiritual leanings. She’s experimented with most faiths but she’s never once forced anything upon me. All that she ever asked was for me to keep an open mind. And I have.”

Marcia took in another breath and let it out. On the floor of the boat, Emily managed to wriggle her way along half an inch, so that her head rested against the inside bow. She still couldn’t see over the edge but now she had a better view of Marcia.

“What happened next?” she asked.

“I was in the kitchen with Sam. We weren’t seeing each other then but I knew that he liked me. I wasn’t so sure about him.” Grief filled the cracks in her voice. “He was cleaning up the kitchen. I offered to take the food waste outside to the composter. It was already dark. I was about to head back to the house when I heard a noise. At first, I thought it was an animal moving through the foliage. Then I felt someone watching me. It’s funny how you can feel that, isn’t it? Like someone’s touching you with their eyes.” She paused as she readjusted the oars resting across her lap. “I saw Franklyn crouched down behind a tree. At first, I just thought he was being weird. Then I got scared. I asked him what he was doing. He started to cry. I went to him—I’m not a completely terrible person. I do care about people and their feelings. When I got closer, I could hear him whispering something.”

“What was he saying?”

“
I am nothing. I am nothing. I am nothing
. Just like that, over and over.” Marcia paused to catch her breath. “I had no idea what had just happened to him. I came closer. He started punching himself in the side of his face. I tried to stop him. He screamed. Before I knew what was happening, he’d shoved me backwards. I must have hit my head against a tree because the next thing I remember was waking up on the ground in the middle of the forest. Franklyn was on top of me, and he was...”

Marcia fell quiet and still.

“I’m sorry,” Emily said, horror stealing over her body. “I’m sorry he did that to you.”

Marcia straightened, wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. She was quiet for a minute longer, her shoulders heaving up and down in the darkness, her breaths becoming steadier. At long last, she spoke. “As soon as I realised what he was doing to me I screamed as loud as I could. He put his hand over my mouth. I tried to bite him. He broke my nose. But I kept fighting. The whole time he kept shouting,
I am nothing! I am nothing!
He’d lost his mind. I felt around on the floor for a rock, a piece of branch, anything I could use. But he stopped me. He pinned my arms to the ground with his hands. I screamed again. Suddenly, I heard footsteps running towards me, and shouting ... lots of shouting.

“The next thing I knew, I was free. Franklyn was on the ground beside me. It was dark and it was raining hard but I knew it was Sam. I heard him beating Franklyn. Kicking him. Punching him. Stamping on him. I’d never known him so furious. Then, somehow Franklyn managed to escape. I heard him run off. I thought that was the end of it. I tried to sit up. Everything hurt. I could taste blood. I called to Sam for help but it was as if he didn’t hear me. He got to his feet and chased after Franklyn.”