In another, more logical part of his mind, Michael wondered if people had been paying attention to the news lately, and had noted the number of women going missing in the area. Perhaps this one wasn’t the only girl to go out walking with a blade in her handbag.
He had had the sense to pick the boxcutter up and take it with him, at least.
Casting a glance back down the road to make sure there were no lights approaching, he opened the back doors of the van. Her body was a crumpled form in the back, her hands and her face pale shapes in the gloom. One of her shoes had come off, and her foot was thrust out at him. In the struggle, her tights had been laddered all over.
This was all wrong, of course. The rules were very clear about this—he never brought their bodies back to Fiddler’s Mill. It was unthinkable. The fact that he had come this far with it only demonstrated that the entire evening was a mistake, that there was something discordant in the night air. Abruptly, he wasn’t the barghest at all, he wasn’t the Wolf, he was just a man with a knife and a sleeve turning stiff and tacky with his own blood. If he wasn’t the wolf, then was he anything at all?
He slammed the backdoors shut and got back into the van. He drove. Once he was back within his woods, he knew that his mind would clear. When he walked back over his graves, and felt their hearts singing there, things would seem normal again.
But when he got back to Fiddler’s Mill, he found his way thwarted; the young people had sprawled their dwellings over one of the main access roads. He could see their lights and hear their voices, and a slow kind of panic began to grow in his chest; the panic of a prey animal, realizing that they had made a mistake, that they were trapped. He couldn’t get to his woods, he couldn’t get to the House. He was bleeding. He had brought a body back with him. This had to be where it all ended.
Michael was leaning over the steering wheel, convinced that the walls were closing in on him, that he could smell the musty cupboard and feel his sister’s hands taking hold of him, when a white face appeared at the open window.
“Michael? What’s the matter? Are you … are you bleeding?”
It was Colleen. She leaned through the window into the cab, her blonde hair falling forward over her face. In the light from the campfires, her hair glittered gold and copper.
“I had an accident.” For some reason, the pure concern on her face had chased away his anxiety. Suddenly it was easier to think. “I was out clearing away rubbish for some people. You know, just a dirty job to make some easy money.” He made himself smile. “But there was broken glass in the dump, didn’t see it until it was too late.” His arm, when he held it up, looked awful, and he saw her recoil. “It’s not as bad as it looks, honestly.”
“Jesus, Michael, I think maybe you should go to the hospital.” But she said it doubtfully. No one at Fiddler’s Mill was very keen on hospitals. The hospital might find out what drugs you’d been taking; the hospital might try to contact your parents, or the police. “Here, come out here where I can see it.” She held up a plastic battery powered torch—a lot of the young people carried them, for the woods at night.
When he was standing by the van, Colleen bent her head over his arm, shining the white light over his tattered sleeve. She made a small noise of sympathy and tugged at a piece of the material. Michael grunted with pain.
“Ok. All right. Do you trust me, Michael?”
“What?”
She looked up at him, smiling shyly. Again, he was struck by the delicacy of her.
“I have a first aid kit back in my camper. I can try and see if I, uh, can make it better? But I’ll have to cut your sleeve off I think, because it’s stuck in the wound. Although I think you’ll have to give up on this shirt anyway.”
Somewhere nearby, someone began plucking notes on a guitar, only to be laughingly shouted down by several others. For a moment, Michael found he couldn’t speak. Colleen still had her hand on his arm, apparently untroubled by the blood, and a few feet away, inside the van, a woman lay on a coarse blanket, her eyes staring sightlessly at nothing. It all seemed impossible. Colleen smiled encouragingly.
What is she?
“Come on, my camper’s not far.”
She was parked up a little way from the others, which Michael was glad of. Inside, it was cramped and untidy, with all the chaos that indicated it was home to at least two young women who kept unsociable hours. Colleen made him sit on the thinly cushioned seat that ran along one wall, and then pulled down a green plastic box from one of the cupboards. As she did so, a packet of plasters shed its contents all over the sink.
“Oh, whoops.”
Then she fetched some water and scraps of dry cloth, and a pair of huge fabric scissors. Seeing the look he gave them, she held them up, smiling.
“They’re Charlie’s. She makes her own clothes.”
For the next few minutes, they fell into an awkward silence as Colleen cut his sleeve away, peeling the fabric back from his tacky skin. Next, she wet one of the cloths and used it to wipe the blood away. As she did so, he watched the soft curve of her pale neck as a thin blush of pink moved up it.
“There, it’s not so bad, actually. Bit ragged, but …” She opened a small, brown bottle and the stink of antiseptic flooded the small space. She wrinkled her nose. “Ugh. Hold still.”
She swiped a cloth over the wound, and
