as it meant getting out of there. He made me repeat it all back to him. Then he sat down on the ground, beside you-not too close, I suppose in case he got… you know. Blood on his trousers. And he looked up at me and said, ‘Well? Go on. Hurry.’
“So I went home. It was horrible. It took-well, if Rafe’s right, it can’t have actually taken that long. I don’t know. I got lost. There were places where I knew I should have been able to see the lights from the house, but I couldn’t; just black, for miles around. I knew for sure, like a fact, that the house wasn’t even there any more; there was nothing left but hedges and lanes, on and on, this huge maze and I would never get out of it, it would never be daylight again. That there were things watching me, up in the trees and hidden in the hedges-I don’t know what kind of things, but… watching me, and laughing. I was terrified. When I finally saw the house-just this faint gold glow, over the bushes-it was such a relief I almost screamed. The next thing I remember is pushing the back door open-”
“He looked like The Scream,” Rafe said, “only muddier. And he was making absolutely no sense; half what came out of his mouth was pure gibberish, like he was speaking in tongues. All we could make out was that he had to go back, and that Daniel said we should stay where we were. Personally, I thought fuck that, I wanted to go find out what the hell was going on, but when I started getting my coat, Justin and Abby both went into such hysterics that I gave up.”
“And a good thing too,” Abby said coolly. She had gone back to the doll; her hair fell across her face, hiding it, and even from across the room I could tell that her stitches were huge and sloppy and useless. “What possible use do you think you could have been?”
Rafe shrugged. “We’ll never know, will we? I know that cottage; if Justin had just told me where he was going, I could have gone instead, and he could have stayed here and pulled himself together. But apparently that’s not what Daniel had in mind.”
“Presumably he had reasons.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Rafe said. “I’m sure he did. So Justin flapped around for a bit, grabbing things and babbling at us, and then he dashed out again.”
“I don’t remember getting back to the cottage,” Justin said. “Afterwards I was absolutely covered in mud, up to my knees-maybe I fell over, I don’t know-and I had all these little scratches on my hands; I think I must have been holding onto the hedges to stay standing. Daniel was still sitting beside you; I’m not sure he’d moved since I left. He looked up at me-there was rain on his glasses-and do you know what he said? He said, ‘This rain should come in useful. If it keeps up, any blood or footprints will be gone by the time the police arrive.’ ”
Rafe moved, a sudden restless shift that made the sofa springs grate.
“I just stood there staring at him. All I heard was ‘police’ and I honestly couldn’t think what the police had to do with anything, but it terrified me just the same. He looked me up and down and then he said, ‘You’re not wearing gloves.’ ”
“With Lexie right there beside him,” Rafe said, to nobody in particular. “Lovely.”
“I’d forgotten all about the gloves. I mean, I was… well, you get the idea. Daniel sighed and got up-he didn’t even seem to be in a hurry-and wiped his glasses on his handkerchief. Then he held out the handkerchief to me and I tried to take it, I thought he meant for me to clean my glasses as well, but he whipped it away and said, sort of irritably, ‘Keys?’ So I brought them out, and he took them and wiped them off-that was when I finally figured out what the handkerchief was all about. Then he…” Justin moved in the chair, as if he was looking for something but wasn’t sure what. “Do you really not remember any of this?”
“I don’t know,” I said, giving a convulsive little shrug. I still wasn’t looking at him, except out of the corner of my eye, and it was making him nervous. “If I remembered, I wouldn’t have to ask you, would I?”
“OK. OK.” Justin pushed his glasses up his nose. “Well. Then Daniel… Your hands were sort of in your lap, and they were all… He picked one of your arms up by the sleeve, so he could get the keys into your coat pocket. Then he let go, and your arm-it just fell, Lexie, like a rag doll’s, with this awful thud… I couldn’t watch any more after that, I really couldn’t. I kept the torch on-on you, so he could see, but I turned around and looked out at the field-I hoped maybe Daniel would think I was watching in case anyone came. He said, ‘Wallet’ and then ‘torch’ and I passed them back to him, but I don’t know what he did with them-I heard scuffly noises, but I was trying not to picture…”
He took a deep, shaky breath. “It took him forever. The wind was getting up and there were noises everywhere, rustles and creaks and little skittering sounds… I don’t know how you do it, wandering around there at night. The rain was coming down harder but only in patches, there were these huge clouds blowing fast, and every time the moon came out the whole field looked alive. Maybe it was just shock, like Abby says, but I think… I don’t know. Maybe there are some places that just aren’t right. They’re not good for you. For your mind.”
He was staring somewhere in the middle of the room, eyes unfocused, remembering. I thought of that small unmistakable shot of current up the back of my neck and I wondered, for the first time, how often John Naylor had really been following me.
“Finally Daniel straightened up and said, ‘That should do it. Let’s go.’ So I turned around, and…” Justin swallowed. “I still had the torch on you. Your head had sort of fallen on one shoulder, and it was raining on you, there was rain on your face; it looked like you were crying in your sleep, like you’d had a bad dream… I couldn’t- God. I couldn’t stand the thought of just leaving you there like that. I wanted to stay with you till it got light, or at least till it stopped raining, but when I said that to Daniel he looked at me like I had lost my mind. So I told him at least, at the very least, we had to get you out of the rain. At first he said no to that, too; but when he realized that I wasn’t going to leave otherwise, that he’d have to physically drag me all the way home, he gave in. He was absolutely furious-all this stuff about how it would be my fault if we all ended up in jail-but I didn’t care. So we…”
Wetness shone on Justin’s cheek, but he didn’t seem to notice. “You were so heavy,” he said. “You’re such a little slip of a thing, I’ve picked you up a million times; I thought… But it was like dragging a huge sack of wet sand. And you were so cold, and so… your face felt like something else; like that doll. I couldn’t believe it was really you.
“We got you into that room with the roof, and I tried to make you-make it less… It was so cold. I wanted to put my cardigan over you, but I knew Daniel would do something if I tried; hit me, I don’t know. He was rubbing things off with his handkerchief-even your face, where I’d touched you, and your neck where he’d felt for… He broke off a branch from those bushes at the door, and he swept out the whole place. Footprints, I suppose. He looked… God. Grotesque. Walking backwards in that awful eerie room, hunched over with this branch, sweeping. The torch shining through his fingers, and these huge shadows swinging on the walls…”
He wiped his face, stared down at his fingertips. “I said a prayer over you, before we left. I know that’s not much, but…” His face was wet again. “May perpetual light shine upon her,” he said.
“Justin,” Abby said, gently. “She’s right here.”
Justin shook his head. “Then,” he said, “we went home.”
After a moment Rafe clicked his lighter, hard-all three of us jumped. “They showed up on the patio,” he said. “Looking like something out of Night of the Living Dead.”
“We were both practically screaming at them, trying to find out what had happened,” Abby said, “but Daniel just stared past us; he had this terrible glassy look, I don’t think he really saw us. He put out one arm to stop Justin going inside, and he said, ‘Does anyone have any washing to do?’ ”
“I don’t think any of us had the foggiest clue what he was talking about,” Rafe said. “It was not a good moment to go all cryptic. I tried to grab him, to make him tell us what the fuck had happened out there, but he jumped back and snapped, ‘Don’t touch me.’ The way he said it-I almost fell over backwards. It wasn’t that he shouted at me or anything, he was practically whispering, but his face… He didn’t look like Daniel any more; he didn’t even look human. He was snarling at me.”
“He was covered with blood,” Abby said bluntly, “and he didn’t want you to get it on yourself. And he was traumatized. You and I had it easy that night, Rafe. No”-as Rafe snorted-“we did. Would you have wanted to be in that cottage?”
“It might not have been a bad idea.”
“You wouldn’t have,” Justin said, with an edge to his voice. “Believe me. Abby’s right: you had it easy.” Rafe shrugged elaborately.
“Anyway,” said Abby, after a tense second. “Daniel took a deep breath and rubbed his hand over his forehead and said, ‘Abby, get us each a full change of clothes and a towel, please. Rafe, get me a plastic bag, a big one.
