‘What’s happening?’
They drew closer together. Beyond them, the fields and hedgerows looked hazy and indistinct as the rain blurred their edges.
‘He wanted to see it,’ said Beryl, as if that explained anything. ‘When it came into the world.’
“What is it?”
Michael took a step forward to get a look at the thing they were carrying, but the two sisters exchanged a look of disgust between them, as though he was a dirty child at their feet.
“You’ll see it again soon enough,” said Lizbet.
“Who was screaming?”
“Anna isn’t feeling herself. Go on up and have a look, if you’re so worried.”
“Where’s Colleen?”
The two women smiled identical, icy smiles. “She’s a good one, isn’t she? Too good for the likes of you.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You didn’t think you could keep her, did you, Michael?” Despite the shawl, Beryl’s face was wet, shining unhealthily. “What a fool you are.”
With that they hurried away from him, heading down the hill and back toward the commune, leaving a trail of watery blood behind them. Michael looked up at the big house. There were lamps burning in the living room windows, casting squares of brash yellow light out onto the gravel drive. The house had always seemed like a haven, a place where he could exist fully. He had slept with the lights on all night; had eaten dinners in a silence that wasn’t challenged; had washed blood from his hands and clothes, over and over and over. Yet tonight it did not feel safe. Tonight, he looked at it and saw what Colleen saw—an empty place that housed a monster, perhaps several monsters. He knew suddenly that if he went back there, if he went and opened the door now, his sister would be waiting for him with her kindly smile and her red coat. She wasn’t dead at all—none of the hearts buried in the woods belonged to her, not really, and she could still have him, if she wanted him.
He turned and ran back down the hill. The Bickerstaff sisters were already out of sight, vanishing into the cluster of tents, cars, and vans that littered the commune, but it wasn’t them he was looking for. There were a few people about, despite the rain. He caught glimpses of pale, uncertain faces, some of them slack from drugs and drink, others looking alarmingly sharp, their eyes going again and again to the big house, where the screaming had come from. Once or twice he thought he saw the big black dog running alongside him, a shape flitting across the spaces between caravans.
Colleen kept her campervan on the very edge of the gathering, but he already knew what he was going to find before he got there. He skidded to a halt, the taste of something foul in the back of his throat. The screaming red landscape shivered and beckoned, making the fields and the woods look insubstantial and dream-like.
The campervan was gone, along with the little tent just outside it where she liked to sleep sometimes. In its place there was a patch of yellowed dead grass and a light scattering of damp cigarette butts.
Colleen was gone.
CHAPTER40
THAT NIGHT, HEATHER did not go to bed. When they went off to their separate rooms, she waited half an hour or so for Nikki to go to sleep, and then she crept back down the hall to the living room, where she sat with her phone in her lap and her legs tucked up under her for the rest of the night. She listened, and she looked at Ben Parker’s number on the small electronic screen. There was no signal, but she could use the phone at the cottage to call him. As easy as that. Despite the late hour, she was almost sure he would answer.
But instead she stayed awake, one small lamp on next to her and a knife from the kitchen lying in easy grabbing distance on the sofa. She listened and watched, her body thrumming with tension like electricity through a wire. Someone here knew who she was. Someone here was playing with her. Why? What did they want?
Was the new Red Wolf watching her?
By the time Nikki got up the next morning, Heather had brewed a pot of coffee and put the knife away. In the daylight, the crisp green landscape around them seemed less threatening, and all the horrors of the previous night—whose daughter am I exactly—seemed ludicrous.
“You’re up early.” Nikki yawned hugely, taking the cup of coffee in both hands. “Raring to go?”
Heather smiled, although it felt sickly and false on her face.
“Not exactly. My head is killing me.”
Nikki sat on one of the kitchen stools, her mouth turning down at the corners. “A migraine?”
Heather nodded and sipped from her own cup, ignoring the slippery feeling of guilt in her chest.
“Bloody hell. Do you want to go to a doctor or something?”
“No, but I think I’m just going to lay low for the day. Maybe you could move your date with Harry forward a bit? Spend the day with him.”
“But …”
“Don’t worry about me, honestly. It’s hardly fair to drag you all the
