Wake Wood (28 page)

Slowly, infinitely slowly, as though the world was moving forward like a film in slow motion, a single frame at a time, Alice walked across the field towards Louise.

Behind Alice – slight at first, then, the closer Alice drew to her, appearing thicker – was an unmistakeable slick of blood that trailed from Alice’s finger.

Alice walked past the sign that marked the boundary of Wake Wood, took another step, fell to her knees and screamed … ‘Mum!’

Her cry was agonised, heart-rending.

Louise stood and watched as the hideous dog bites and deep, ragged, gouged teeth marks appeared
once
again on Alice’s face and neck, tearing open her flesh.

Alice continued to scream … and scream … She rolled over … writhing in distress …

Louise was catapulted back to the old house, reliving every horrific second of the end of her precious daughter’s life.

Her arms fell to her sides and she walked over the grass to where Alice lay, fatally wounded and bleeding. She reached her just as Alice became very still.

‘I’m so sorry, sweetie.’ Louise knelt on the grass, took off her coat, lifted Alice on to it and wrapped it tenderly around her daughter. She picked up Alice, cradled her in her arms, rose to her feet and started to walk back to the trees, struggling with Alice’s weight as she carried her along the fence line, through a gate and up the hill.

Large black birds circled above them, but Louise didn’t deviate from the course she’d set herself. She tried to imagine herself back in the old house. Putting Alice to bed as she’d done so often during the nine years her daughter had been hers to love and care for.

‘Now, sweetie, we’re off to bed,’ she crooned softly. ‘Off to Blanket Street,’ she murmured, cuddling Alice close to her. ‘The sandman is flying through the air, coming towards us with his bag of sweet … sweet dreams.’

She passed Patrick on the ground. Battered, bruised, bleeding from a myriad of small cuts, he looked groggily up at her. But she saw his eyelids flicker. He was alive!

She hugged the knowledge to her and suppressed her instinct to go to him and comfort him. He had to wait his turn. She had a more important task to complete first, for someone who needed her even more than Patrick. Someone who had no one else to turn to … someone who wanted to stay on this earth but couldn’t …

When Louise reached the clearing at the top of the hill she saw a faint streak of colour on the eastern horizon. Dawn was breaking. She didn’t look at her neighbours massed around the edge of the clearing, all wearing their black feathers, only at Alice.

Arthur was waiting. He guided her, once, twice, three times around the bonfire, before lighting it. Then he led her over to a spot on the eastern edge of the ridge.

He stepped back and Louise knew they’d reached Alice’s final resting place. She knelt at Arthur’s feet and placed Alice gently and carefully on the ground next to her.

‘My angel, we’re almost there. Almost home. I’ll just make up the bed for you, all warm and cosy so you can sleep tight and safe.’ Louise started to dig in the ground with her bare hands.

Patrick stumbled clumsily up the hill towards her. Tommy and Martin went to him and held him back. Louise looked up and saw him. She noticed that his wrists were bound in a clutch just like the one Mary had given them for Alice.

She looked away from Patrick and back at the hole she was digging. Oblivious to the damp earth clinging to her hands, clothes and arms, she continued to scoop
out
a shallow grave beneath the trees. The earth crumbled easily between her fingers. It wasn’t hard to remove and the whole time she worked she talked to Alice.

‘The bed will be warm … warm and comfortable, sweetie … You’ll sleep like a princess …’ When she considered the hole deep enough to hold Alice, Louise picked up her daughter, still wrapped in the coat, and settled her gently inside before dropping a kiss on to her forehead.

‘Are you comfy, sweetie?’

Alice stirred, curling into a foetal position as if she were lying in her own bed between clean linen sheets. Slowly and gently, Louise began to pile the earth she’d removed from the hole on top of her daughter, settling it and smoothing it over her slim young body as if she were covering Alice with a swansdown-filled duvet.

‘It’s story time, Alice. Once upon a time there was a little girl who went for a long, long walk in the woods. She walked and walked and walked and then discovered that she’d lost her way and couldn’t find …’

Louise concentrated on the story, ignoring the yellow beams of the torches moving towards them in the gloom, but she sensed people drawing closer and closer to her and Alice, and behind them – Patrick.

They halted a few feet away from her as she continued to fill in the grave.

No more than the lightest whisper on the wind at first, a chant grew in volume and intensity, becoming
gradually
more and more audible as the seconds ticked past and she filled in the grave.

‘Go back to the trees and lie among the roots … Go back to the trees and lie among the roots …’

Arthur looked at Patrick and signalled to Martin and Tommy, who stepped up either side of him and brought him forward. They propelled him next to where Louise was kneeling, still piling earth into the grave. Alice was almost covered with dirt but she was still moving, her chest rising and falling with every breath she took, her outline clearly visible beneath the coating of earth Louise was heaping over her.

Louise was still talking but only to Alice, and Alice alone.

‘… and although the darkness was drawing near, now the little girl knew she didn’t have far to go. The cottage and safety were only a few short steps away, not far … not far for her to walk at all now …’

Louise finished piling up the earth she’d removed. Leaning forward, she patted the mound of loose dirt, flattening it until it was level with the surrounding ground and there was no trace left of Alice and nothing to indicate where she lay.

The clutch binding Patrick’s hands suddenly sprang and dropped off.

Louise took her time over smoothing the surface of her daughter’s grave, making sure it was weed- and stone-free.

‘A few short steps and the little girl would be happy for ever and ever. The door would open and her
grandma
would take her into her arms and carry her into the warmth of the cottage, and the door would close for ever on the cold and the darkness and the night …’

Louise lay across the simple grave. Cold tears slipped down her cheeks. Around her the woods fell still and silent.

Patrick sensed Martin and Tommy loosening their hold on him. He moved forward. Martin patted his back reassuringly as if he were trying to tell Patrick that he’d been forgiven.

Patrick stooped down beside his wife and whispered, ‘Louise?’

She looked up at him. Her eyes were empty, bereft even of hope.

He held out his hand to her to help her up from the ground. She took it.

But before Louise could rise, the earth erupted beneath her like a volcano. Dirt sprang up and showered, shooting into the air like a fountain, spraying over Louise and Patrick.

A hole opened. Alice’s hand snaked up through it from beneath the ground and grasped Louise’s foot in a vice-like grip.

Louise screamed. Alice’s hold on her ankle tightened, pulling her downwards into the grave.

Louise looked up at her husband and pleaded, ‘Patrick!’

Patrick grabbed hold of both Louise’s arms. He pulled her upwards, closer to him with every ounce of strength he could muster.

Alice proved stronger.

Inch by inch, Louise was slowly dragged down until she was waist deep in the earth.

Tommy and Martin ran forward with Arthur. They grabbed hold of Patrick’s arms and chest, gripping him tight.

‘Help me to get Louise out,’ Patrick begged.

Despite the combined efforts of all four men, Louise was still being pulled, deeper and deeper into the earth. The ground was level with her chest when her hands slid from Patrick’s grasp.

He shrieked, ‘No!’ and tried to grab her by her shoulders but she slipped from his fingers.

She continued to slither downwards. Earth covered her up to her neck … her chin … her lips … her eyes … her hair … and then she disappeared completely as a second shower of earth shot up, erupting from the spot that had swallowed her.

Patrick wrenched himself free from the men who were holding him and flung himself headlong on to the grave.

He cried out, ‘Louise!’ He dug frantically with his bare hands, scrabbling with his fingers in the earth that had already settled. But no matter how deep he probed, he only found yet more earth.

He continued to excavate, emptying the grave Louise had made, piling the earth around him like a dog digging a hole. But he found only earth … and more earth … and more earth.

‘They’re gone, Patrick.’ Arthur laid his hand on
Patrick’s
shoulder. ‘They’ve both gone. You won’t find them. Not now.’

‘Louise … Alice … I have to …’

It was a long time before Arthur finally managed to stop Patrick from digging.

‘SO SORRY FOR
your loss’, ‘How are you really?’ and ‘Are you coping?’ were phrases Patrick came to loathe as the hours after Louise’s disappearance evolved into days … weeks … and eventually months.

Awake, he felt as though he were trapped in a nightmare world. Asleep was worse because his dreams were laced with the scenes and knowledge of Louise’s horrific disappearance. Again and again he relived that crucial moment.

The look of sheer terror on her face and in her eyes when she realised she was about to be buried alive.

He needed no reminder of how impotent and helpless he’d felt when he’d failed to save his wife. When all he could do was look on and watch the tragedy unfold before his eyes. That feeling hit him anew every single time he thought of it with all the force of his initial despair, devastation and misery.

Whereas once he’d loved mornings, now he dreaded them even more than evenings. Evenings meant firelight and memories he could lose himself in to the point where they seemed more real than the day he’d just lived through.

Mornings brought the bitter, harsh consciousness of
his
solitary state. Louise may have no longer been in his bed, his house, his life, but she was his first thought on waking and his last at night – on the rare occasions when he was fortunate enough to sleep.

Locked into the backwater town of Wake Wood, imprisoned by the promise he’d made Arthur, for the first time since he’d been born he was completely and utterly alone in the world. And he hated it. It was almost as though he’d been dropped into a lonely limbo, where he continued to exist merely as an entity to mark time until the Fates decreed that he could be allowed to join his beloved wife and daughter.

His neighbours were sympathetic but not overly so. He knew there were some people in Wake Wood who would never entirely forgive him for the lie he’d told Arthur about how long Alice had been in her grave. And whenever he thought of Peggy O’Shea, Ben, Mary Brogan – every one of them valued and valuable people the community could ill afford to lose – and the violent and brutal way they’d died, he didn’t grudge the townsfolk their anger.

The days when he had a lot of work and a number of animals to attend to were just about bearable. The worst were the quiet ones when he had nothing to do except potter around the cottage, where everything reminded him of Louise – and to a lesser extent, because she’d only lived within its walls three days, Alice.

Like Louise had been with Alice’s possessions, he couldn’t bring himself to touch, much less throw out, any of Louise’s personal belongings. He left her clothes in her wardrobe and dressing-table drawers, her coats
on
the rack in the hall, her shoes in the cupboard and her jewellery in the case on her dressing table.

The only thing of Louise’s he moved was her handbag from his car when he found himself clinging to it and crying for the third time in the week after she’d gone.

The freezer was still full of her favourite tuna steaks, the cupboard stocked with her preferred brands of muesli and biscuits. He knew she wouldn’t – couldn’t – return.

But that didn’t stop him from looking to the door every time he heard a noise outside. Or jumping up whenever a car entered his drive. Or racing to the telephone if it rang – and always hoping for the impossible.

That Louise was about to walk back into the cottage and his life.

He took to driving around the back lanes so he wouldn’t have to travel down the main street of the town and pass the shuttered door and windows of Louise’s pharmacy. He ate most of his meals in country pubs so he wouldn’t even have to go into town to shop for food.

Whenever Patrick saw Arthur – and Arthur took care to see that they met most days – his senior partner reminded him that the town desperately needed a pharmacist. Arthur suggested that Patrick consider either renting the place to another pharmacist or selling the shop and the stock – most of which, as Arthur pointed out, was rapidly going out of date.

Patrick did think about it, but doing something about
the
pharmacy required an effort he wasn’t prepared to make for months. He wasn’t even sure where Louise had kept the keys to the shop.

As the weeks passed he made a few half-hearted attempts to find them. When he discovered that they weren’t in any of the cupboards or drawers in the cottage he fetched Louise’s handbag from the hall cupboard, where he’d stowed it after taking it from his car.

He placed it on the table and sat and looked at it for a long time before he finally gathered enough courage to unzip it, and even then he felt that in some way he was violating Louise’s privacy. Prying into her personal effects when he had no right to.

He tipped the contents of the bag out on to the table. The keys were at the bottom. Louise’s purse was heavy, as was her make-up bag that he’d seen her use so many times. He didn’t open either. He set them aside along with her mobile phone, pen and notebook. He picked up a small, handbag-sized atomiser and sprayed it on his wrist. The room was instantly filled with Louise’s perfume. He closed his eyes, revelling in the sweet familiar scent. He could almost believe that she was with him again, walking across the room … He could have sworn he heard her voice calling his name …