'No,' he moaned, filthy hands pressed to his face as if to squeeze out the truth. 'No, no, no.' He scrambled 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, 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 was imagining this voice, he could have never invented 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.
'Gone where?'
Silence, loaded with potential. He could feel something in his mind, a presence remaining, hanging quietly back.
'I'm not talking to you,' Tom said, shaking his head and standing.
Please—
'No, I don't mean I don't want to, I just mean I'm not. It 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 badwolf!
'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. Misterwolf!
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!
