“A girl from around here who went missing ten years ago. My grandma tried to help her parents find her.”
“Was she a copper?”
Julian smiled thinly at the idea. “No, she was a psychic medium.”
Mia’s eyebrows lifted. “You mean she could, like, speak to the dead.”
“Supposedly, although if you ask me it was a load of bollocks, one big act.”
“I dunno, I kind of believe in that stuff.” For the space of a breath Mia’s eyes went away again, lost in whatever she saw on the horizon of her mind. She blinked back to the real world. “So go on, what happened with your nan?”
Julian told Mia about the day his mum took him to visit his grandma, about creeping downstairs to the seance, about his grandma’s changed, distorted face. She shook her head, wide-eyed. “This just gets weirder and weirder. So how did you find out who Susan was?”
“I went to this therapist a few years later, and he reckoned that unravelling the mysteries of the dream would take away its power. So Mum took me to the library and showed me newspaper clippings about a girl called Susan Carter who went over to a friend’s house one evening, but never got there. A big search went on for her, but they didn’t find anything. It was as if she’d vanished right off the face of the planet. Anyway, about a year later the police arrested this truck-driver who tried to snatch a girl off the street in Glasgow. His name was Michael Ridgway. This guy was a loner, a real oddball. When they searched his house they found a box with bits of jewellery and girl’s clothes and underwear in it. Turned out, they belonged to other girls he’d snatched.”
“I’ve heard about that kind of thing — about how serial killers keep trophies from their victims. I remember seeing on TV about this guy who killed people by biting their throats, and drinking their blood, like some kind of vampire. He kept their heads as trophies.”
“Yeah, well this sicko had been trucking up and down the country for years, abducting and killing girls. That’s why they called him The A1 Murderer. When the police found out he’d been on a job in this area the day Susan Carter disappeared, they showed his trophies, or whatever they were, to her parents. There was a necklace the same as one she’d been wearing when she disappeared. It was obvious he’d taken her. Problem was he wouldn’t admit it. And since no one had seen anything, and they couldn’t find Susan’s body, and you could buy the same necklace on any high-street, they decided not to charge him with her murder. But they did charge him with six other murders and locked him up for life.”
“They should’ve cut his balls off n’all.”
“Maybe, but it wouldn’t have made much difference. The guy was only in jail a few months before he died of a heart-attack. That’s when Susan Carter’s parents went to my grandma.”
“And did your grandma find out where she was?”
“Course not,” Julian said, with a derisive little laugh.
“So the man in your dream is Michael Ridgway.”
“No. I haven’t got a clue who the man in my dream is, or if it’s even a man.” Heaving a sigh, Julian closed his eyes. “Whatever it is, I just want it to leave me the fuck alone.”
Something touched his cheek. It was Mia. Her fingers moved along his jaw towards his chin. She was smiling — not a come on smile, a concerned smile. He flinched away. “There’s something else.” His voice came heavily, as if dragged through deep mud. “You might not feel so sorry for me, you might not even want to know me once I tell you.”
“Who says I want to know you now?” teased Mia.
“I’m serious.”
“If you think you can shock me, go ahead. But I’m telling you, it’ll need to be totally fucking out there to shock me.”
Julian cleared his throat, swallowed. As he opened his mouth, there came a sudden dropping sensation, like falling off a high place, and Mia’s face briefly swam out of focus. “When the dream came back, it was…was…” He stammered into silence. Part of him was desperate to keep quiet, but another part of him needed to go on. “It was different. This time I’m not the one being attacked, I’m the attacker. I rape and strangle Susan Carter, and it feels…it feels good. It’s the most powerful feeling I’ve ever had.”
Mia puffed her cheeks. “That’s pretty fucking out there.”
“You think I’m sick, right?” Julian looked shamefacedly from under his eyebrows. “You think I’m a pervert, like Michael Ridgway.”
“I don’t know what you are, but I’m pretty sure you’re nothing like him. I’m guessing you’re just fucked up, like the rest of us.”
Julian almost smiled, despite the way he felt. “Thanks.”
“What I’m saying is we’ve all got our own dirty little secrets.”
“Not all of us have recurring dreams about rape and murder, though.”
“Yeah, but it’s only a dream, right? I mean, just because you dream it doesn’t mean you actually want to go out and do it. Does it?”
“Fuck no,” exclaimed Julian. “No fucking way. It makes me want to puke just thinking about it.”
“Well then, there you go.” Mia hesitated, then went on slowly, reluctantly, as if she was saying more than she wanted to, “Look, Julian, I’ve come across some bad people in my time. I’m not talking about pricks like Weasel, either. I’m talking the kind of people you never, ever want to meet. And you can take it from me, you’re not a bad or evil person. You don’t even come close. You’re just an ordinary screwed up kid.”
What bad people? Julian wanted to ask, but he knew Mia well enough by now to know he wouldn’t get an answer. He drew some relief from her reaction to his confession, but still the thought kept nagging at him, you’re not normal, there’s something twisted and rotten inside you. There has to be.
They sat in silence a while, not looking at each other. “Hey,” Mia piped up, her dark blue eyes shining with some kind of inner excitement. “What if you’re the same as your nan?”
Julian frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well, what if you’ve got the same power she had. What if that’s why you keep having these dreams. Susan Carter could be trying to contact you to tell you who killed her.”
The idea had never crossed Julian’s mind for an instant. He tried to dismiss it with a snort, but there was a kind of perverse logic to what Mia said that made it cling to him like a cold limpet. “My grandma was a fake.”
“How do you know?”
“Mediums are all fakes. There’s nothing beyond this world. No ghosts, no angels, no Heaven, no God.”
“You can’t know that,” retorted Mia, suddenly tetchy.
“You’re right,” said Julian, surprised — he hadn’t expected her to be the type to buy into all that. “But it’s what I believe.”
“Well I think there is something else out there.” Mia challenged Julian with her eyes to argue otherwise.
He shrugged. “Whatever gets you through the night.”
Mia looked down at her lap, fidgeting with her hands. She glanced at Julian from beneath her fringe with uncharacteristic sheepishness. “Maybe we could try an experiment to see who’s right.”
“What do you mean? What kind of experiment?”
“We could do a seance, see if we can contact Susan Carter.”
Julian stared open-mouthed at Mia, unable to reply. Her words were like a hand reaching out to grab his throat. For a second, he wondered if he’d got her wrong, maybe she really was just a cold-hearted bitch. But then he glimpsed something in her expression, some hint of angst or even fear that seemed to suggest this wasn’t simply about Susan Carter. Right then, though, he was too thrown to give any thought to what else it could be about.
“Sorry,” said Mia. “It was a stupid idea.”
“Yeah, you got that right.”
“Can we just forget I said it?”
Julian sighed. “Sure. It’s forgotten.”
They sat in silence a while. The room was warm with the midday sun shining through the window, and the bed was soft. Julian yawned. “Why don’t you get some sleep?” Mia suggested.
Julian’s throat cinched up tight again. “Don’t you have to get back to school?”
“I’ll skip class. It’s only sports this afternoon anyway.”
