“I know, honey, just let me get it clean.” She wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her arm and blew a strand of straight blonde hair out of her face. Her roots were showing, which was unusual. She also seemed tired, and Ashley wondered if she was a little bit drunk.
“Mum! Ouch!”
“I’m almost finished. Just— Oh, honey, your bracelet’s gone. I don’t remember the last time I saw you without it.”
Jude glanced at his naked wrist. “It must have come off when I fell.” He tutted. “Damn it.”
“It’s only a cheap rubber bracelet, sweetheart. Never mind.”
Ashley saw the sorrow on her friend’s face. It hadn’t just been a bracelet. It had been one of his many crutches. Even now, she could recognise his urge to pluck at the tight yellow band.
“So,” said PC Riaz, looking at Ashley, “tell me again what you two were doing in the woods?”
With Jude and his mum busy, Ashley was the only one who could answer the officer’s questions, so he focused on her. She cleared her throat and shifted in her chair. “We were bored. Sometimes we like to go exploring.”
The officer raised an eyebrow. “Exploring?”
“Yeah. There ain’t much else to do, is there? Anyway, we didn’t realise we’d gone as far as we did. We just kind of ended up there. Are we in trouble?”
Helen peered back from the sink. “Of course you’re not, love. You two are heroes. That woman owes her life to you.”
PC Riaz nodded. “It’s private property and you shouldn’t have been there, but I think we can excuse that. This woman is going to have a lot to thank you for. Can you tell me anything about her? I know you’ve tried already, but while we wait to hear from my colleagues, it might help if we keep talking.”
Ashley tapped her fingers against the table and avoided making eye contact. The memory of the woman in the farmhouse made her shudder. She’d been in such a terrible state, yet there had also been something oddly terrifying about her. She’d been wild and aggressive. Dangerous. “I think she was pretty,” said Ashley. “Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Like, really blue. She was, you know, naked – but she still had this locket around her neck, which was kind of weird. Oh, and there was blood, I think, but I’m not sure from where. It could have been her hands. The chains went right through them.”
“Oh my,” said Helen.
PC Riaz frowned. “The chains pierced her hands?”
Ashley nodded. “And her ankles. It was horrible.”
“I can imagine. You’ve certainly been through a lot today. What about the room the woman was in? Anything you can remember about it?”
“It was empty. The only thing I saw were these strange markings all over the floor.”
“Markings?” PC Riaz leant forward, placing his elbows on the table.
Ashley and Jude hadn’t yet mentioned the strange markings on the floor and walls of the farmhouse. Truthfully, it just hadn’t come up. When they’d first spoken with the officer, only the bigger picture had seemed to matter. Now the smaller things felt important. “There were these weird symbols on the floor,” she said. “The woman was sitting inside this big triangle. It was weird. Also, when Jude cut his hand, there was, like, a chunk of bone or something stuck in his palm. I pulled it out.”
Jude groaned and turned away from the sink. “Ash, you never told me that! There was a chunk of bone in my hand? Gross.”
PC Riaz looked at Jude. “Perhaps you should visit the hospital, young man. Don’t want to get tetanus.”
Helen grabbed him and gave him a squeeze. “He’ll be fine, officer. He has his old mum to look after him. I cleaned the wound. Just need to get a bandage on it.” With that, she started rooting around in the kitchen cupboards. She was acting frantic, moving quickly and clumsily.
PC Riaz returned his gaze to Ashley. “These symbols? Do you know what they were? Were there any words?”
Ashley shook her head. “No. Just lines and circles, stuff like that.”
“They were like magic symbols,” said Jude. “The type of thing you see in witchcraft.”
PC Riaz didn’t appear to find it absurd. He didn’t laugh and remained deadly serious. “And what do you know about witchcraft, son?”
“Nothing. Only from, you know, films and that. The symbols looked like hexes or spells. Arcane sort of stuff.”
Helen grabbed a bandage from a tin, and with a bemused tut, she grabbed Jude’s arm and pulled him over to her. “That’s enough of that, you. Sorry, officer, he has an overactive imagination. He wants to be a famous magician one day, don’t you, sweetheart? You should see all the tricks he has in his room, ha!”
Jude blushed.
“He’s really good,” said Ashley, seeing how embarrassed he was. He never did magic tricks for anybody except her. “And he’s right. It could have been occult symbols we saw. They were weird, whatever they were.”
PC Riaz took a sip of coffee and placed the mug down on a chipped wooden coaster. His radio was on the table and he stared at it for several moments. Ashley looked at it, too, wondering what would eventually come from the other end. Would the officers find the woman alive? Or would she be dead? She and Jude had left her alone out there, chained up in the woods. They had run away and left her. The sicko could have returned and murdered her, knowing the police were on their way.
One of us should have stayed.
I was too afraid. I was too afraid to stay.
I’m a coward.
“I’m sure we’ll hear something any minute now,” said PC Riaz, possibly sensing her unease. “Oh, I haven’t asked you, how did you get that cut on your face? Did you
