“Did Doris like ‘Jerusalem’?” I gestured to the thin air next to Norman.
As soon as I’d looked at the nothingness I became aware of feeling a powerful desperation. It was the same feeling I’d got at Hill Top in the living room.
I could tell Connor was staring at me again but I concentrated on Norman’s awestruck face instead. “‘Jerusalem’ was Doris’s favourite song, how did you…?” He looked off into the distance and then a half smile played across his lips. “Of course… she must have been playing it when you broke into my house.”
The last four words were delivered in a much deeper, louder voice that didn’t seem to belong to him, and I winced at the change in his demeanour.
“By the way, Missie, if you’re going to go snooping around people’s homes, don’t be so damned clumsy. Pick up after yourself. And don’t be so obvious about it, I may be an old man who likes sitting in the local but I can tell when people are up to something!” He paused. “Whether or not they leave their silly books behind!”
To say I was on the verge of a slight panic attack was an understatement.
“Did you honestly think I wouldn’t know?”
I stared straight ahead. The only thing I could focus on at that moment was remembering to breathe. And even that was much harder than it sounds.
Norman looked to his right again, seeming to calm down after a few seconds, and then he smiled and turned back to me, the gun still pointed in our direction. “We used to sing Jerusalem at school when we were younger, before tourists started flooding through the village, back when it was a nice, quiet place to live. We bonded over that song, we even sung it at our wedding. She loved that song, still does. I can’t stop her playing it, even now!”
After giving me a worried look, Connor finally spoke up. “Don’t you know your wife’s dead?”
For a second the moon was swallowed up by some clouds and I tightened my hold on Connor in the darkness.
I heard Norman’s voice coming from the silhouette in front of us. “Of course I know that, I’m not stupid!” There was a brief silence and then he started talking again, more calmly now.
“Before she died… she was ill, she didn’t know what she was doing. She kept listening to that song, over and over again, and she became obsessed with building ‘Jerusalem’ in England. I kept trying to tell her,” he turned to the right again. “I did try and tell you, love. It was just a song, just a poem set to music. It had no bearing on our lives, or where we lived.” He looked back at us again. “But the illness had already taken over her mind. She thought that in order to create this Jerusalem she had to rid the village of ‘rotten outsiders’ and people who didn’t belong. People like your father.”
Connor shouted back angrily, “And you didn’t think to stop ‘er?”
With no warning, Norman pointed the gun just to the side of Connor and shot it. I jumped but Connor didn’t even flinch. I looked to check if he was OK but he was frozen in place, his eyes wide and unmoving.
Norman carried on as if he hadn’t just shot a near-deadly bullet. “I didn’t know! I thought it was just insane ramblings, I didn’t think she’d actually try and do anything! The last year of her life…” The sadness came back into his eyes. “I couldn’t stand to be around her; she wasn’t my Doris anymore. I left her in the house and stayed in the village most of the day. I had no idea she was…” he made a strange choking sound. “She was inviting travellers back to the farm and poisoning them. She only told me just before she died, showed me the bodies… and she made me promise to keep it a secret.”
Connor was shaking his head in disbelief. “Are you tryin’ to tell me that your wife was harbourin’ dead bodies somewhere in your house and you had no idea? Didn’t you smell them?”
Norman’s voice got louder, his teeth glinting in the moonlight as he spoke. “I’m not an idiot, boy! And neither was my Doris. She didn’t keep them in the house; she took them out to the barn.” He added sadly, “She was still relatively strong then.”
The barn. I knew there’d always been something sinister about that place. I thought, almost hysterically, that it’s a good job the Carters stopped the Farm Visit programme they had going with Little Forest Primary before Doris started sticking bodies in the hay for the kids to find. I thought back to mine and Connor’s conversation outside the farmhouse kitchen. “You can’t smell the barn from the house.”
Norman gave me a quick look of contempt before carrying on. “I went to the barn where she said she’d left them, had to scramble about in the muck to find them all. I had to move each body from our barn into the woods and bury them on my own. Of course, they were already quite… deteriorated… by then. You can’t even imagine…” He looked at Connor. “And then to have you bring it all up again…”
He looked devastated now, and was staring at the ground, gun lowered.
Connor spoke again, disgust oozing from his voice. “And what about Emma? John?”
Norman looked up again, lifting his gun at the same time. “Emma’s death was an accident.”
Connor laughed humourlessly. I wished I had his confidence when faced with the barrel of a gun. “Yeah yeah, that’s what the police keep sayin’. Somehow I don’t believe ‘em. Especially as her boyfriend seems to be stuffed in a tree!”
I flinched, remembering John’s brown hair protruding from the hollow, and watched as Norman had a similar reaction.
“Emma’s death was an accident; she stumbled upon me a little while after I’d been covering up the hole. Sometimes with all the rain we have, the surface becomes exposed again… I suppose she would have seen an old man covered in mud with a shovel, talking to his…” he paused, looking pained, “dead wife, about covering up the bodies.”
He shook his head, half smiling. “I’d have been scared, too. I panicked, not knowing how much she’d seen or heard… and I walked towards her, not sure what I was intending to do… that’s when she screamed at me and started running away. The alcohol didn’t help with her balance and she fell over. I tried to stop her falling, even tore some of her dress off trying to help her, but… when I looked at her face, I saw she’d hit her head on a protruding rock and I assumed she was dead. So I left her.”
Connor sounded furious. “You left her there to die!”
Norman shook his head again, this time more violently. “I didn’t know she was still alive.”
Connor laughed. “And if she hadn’t have fallen, you’d have just let her go? Is that what you’re tellin’ us?”
Norman looked on the verge of tears, genuinely distressed, and I started thinking we may be able to get out of this after all.
Then Connor asked his next question.
“And what about your man? John? I suppose you’re goin’ to say he tripped and accidentally fell into the tree and died?”
At the mention of John’s name, Norman raised the gun fully again. “That boy wouldn’t stop; he was obsessed with Emma’s death. He was wandering through the woods late one night and he found me - when I was making sure you didn’t find the hole - and he already knew too much. I had no choice.”
I was getting angry now, and somehow I found the strength to speak up. “There’s always a choice when it comes to murder! He was twenty-six years old, what gives you the right to take his future away?” I spluttered the question out before falling silent.
Norman hesitated before answering, “I didn’t think I could do it, but Doris was quite insistent.”
Connor shot me another confused glance. “Is this makin’ any sense to you?”
I nodded slowly, not sure how to communicate to him that it was making sense to me. More than either of them knew.
Norman interrupted us before I got a chance to say anything. “I don’t care if it makes sense to you, you wouldn’t understand. I loved my wife with all my heart, I still do, and I would do anything for her.” This sincere declaration would have been touching if it hadn’t been for the sinister look that came over Norman’s face as he
finished his sentence. He turned to his right again and was smiling at the darkness when my phone started ringing.
Norman snapped his head back up and pointed the gun at me again. “Both of you, phones on the ground.”
We had no choice but to obey.
The moon became cloaked in darkness again as he kicked my phone away, before doing the same to Connor’s. After he’d thrown away our last hope, he stood back in front of us, looking at us both in turn. His voice was sincere but unapologetic. “I can’t have this getting out. No one is going to remember my wife as a murderer.”
The clouds uncovered the moon again and for a split second I thought I saw two silhouettes standing in front of me instead of one. It surprised me that I didn’t jump at this macabre vision; it didn’t shock me in the slightest. My brain must have accepted what was going on before I even got a chance to take it all in.
Connor was still brave enough to speak, but I could hear the waver in his voice now. From his direct questioning of Norman, I could tell he hadn’t seen what I’d just seen. Or if he had, he didn’t want to admit it to himself. “And how will people remember you? What you did to Emma? To John?”
Norman laughed darkly, then started smiling sadly. “There’s plenty of room down there, son. No one will know.”
I thought I was going to start hyperventilating, and I gripped onto Connor again for support.
Norman started walking towards us, gun still pointed at our trembling bodies. We walked backwards, away from the torch and the hole, until I felt the hard bark of a tree dig into my back.
We were cornered; we were going to die at the hands of a mad eighty-year-old farmer.
I didn’t think things could get any worse, but then Norman gave us a heart-stopping order. “Turn round and face the tree.”
I started pleading with him. If he was going to shoot us, couldn’t he just do it now? When we could see him? When we knew it was coming? I would not leave this world with my back turned to an evil gunman. A firing squad in Little Forest was just too unthinkable.
“Norman, what are my parents going to say? When they find out you killed me? My mum trusted you!”
That hit a nerve. No matter how crazy this Norman seemed to be, he must have remembered who his friends were. “Yes, your mum’s been very good to me.” He lowered his voice. “She’s one of the reasons I go to the pub so much, sit there all day instead of at home, where…” his head tilted slightly to his right. “Sometimes I go to Doris’s grave and just sit there, even though I don’t need to… I could talk to her just as easily at home. Too easily. Being at her graveside seems normal. Right.”
He lowered his gun and turned to his right in a dithering, confused movement. “Doris, she’s right. I can’t do this to her parents.”
The relief that flooded through me was indescribable.
Then I saw Norman’s face.
It looked like his skin was twisting and contorting, and I hoped it was just my imagination playing tricks on me in the dim light. He stood still and silent for a second or two and then started jumping around violently, as if he was having a fit. He was still holding on tightly to the gun as his limbs flailed about in a kind of demonic dance. It was what had happened to Sister Mary Eunice, times a thousand.
All of a sudden he stopped and turned back to us, gun held up again, all doubt and confusion gone from his face. He was smiling widely, seemingly without a care in the world.
The new and definitely-not-improved Norman told us again to turn round, this time with more authority in his voice. I complied and turned round slowly, looking up at Connor and seeing the same pure unadulterated fear that I felt reflected in his face.
I heard a chuckle from behind us; the sad, guilt-ridden Norman was well and truly gone. Doris must have completely taken over. “Look at that! It’s just gone midnight, how fitting. Happy Hallowe’en, kiddies!”
***
October 31st
Little Forest is the only place I’ve ever lived, and it’s the place where I’m going to die.
Tonight.
My life wasn’t flashing before my tear-filled eyes and no treasured childhood memories were entering my muddled, exhausted mind. There was no time to remember friends or family, no chance for bravery of any kind and absolutely no hope that I’d somehow be saved from this crushingly swift fate.
At twenty-one years old, my time was up.
Considering what had happened to me over the past couple of months, it seemed darkly poetic that everything should catch up with me at Hallowe’en.
It would make a sensational headline.
If I was ever found.
For just one second, the sheer terror of my current situation was overridden by another - more unexpected - feeling: wonder. Pure and simple wonder that the tiny village I’d lived in my whole life could harbour such sinister secrets. Wonder that the place I’d always moaned about being boring was actually anything but. Wonder that I could have ignored all the signs for so long.
My persistent tears had at last succeeded in blurring my vision and everything in front of me was now in an eerie soft focus; the ground, the grass and the trees were now just smudges in the darkness.
With my sight impaired, the sounds of the forest suddenly bombarded my ears. I could hear the cold autumn wind blowing shrilly through the leaves of the surrounding trees, the scuttling of some small, nearby animal, and the calm hooting of a distant owl.
But there was only one sound that I was waiting for; the sound that would be the last I ever heard.
At this gut wrenching thought, my trembling legs finally crumbled and I reached out to hold onto the rough bark of the tree branch in front of me, scratching my already bloodied hand in the process. I didn’t even register the pain.
I was just steadying myself when I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. Blinking frantically to remove my cloud of tears, I shifted my now slightly clearer gaze to the large hollow tree about ten feet away. I saw a silhouette of someone standing next to the bark and for one brilliant second my heart leapt in hope.
The Woman.
I blinked some more, wanting to get a better picture of my possible saviour, but felt a familiar sick feeling clawing at my stomach as my vision cleared and I realised there was no one there.
No one could help me now.
My desperate thoughts were cut off as the distressed voice next to me rasped, “I’m so sorry, Beth.” Connor sounded as frantic as I felt, his accent completely lost in his fear.
It was the first thing either of us had said since we’d realised it was the end.
I didn’t even try to reply; the effort of talking seemed impossible. I wanted to tell him that it was alright and that it wasn’t his fault, but words - like my courage - failed me.
I let the stinging tears run freely down my damp, dirty skin as I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and waited for the gunshot.
***
In the few seconds that I was waiting for death, I thought I saw a brown blur ahead of me, disappearing behind the hollow tree where John lay rotting. I didn’t think much of it, though; my brain was slowly shutting down, getting ready to join my body when that, too, would give up.
I closed my eyes, wishing now that Norman would just hurry up. Was he having second thoughts, battling the orders that Doris was no doubt giving him? Or was he just deciding which one of us to shoot first? I’d been holding the madness in me for too long and I knew it was only a matter of seconds before I gave in and started choking on my own desperate tears.
Then I heard the sound.
But it wasn’t the sound I was expecting. There was a rustling, a dull thud, and then a much louder noise as if someone had fallen over. I looked up at Connor, seeing a mixture of shock and hope on his face. We both turned round slowly.
***
Will was standing there, a large rock in his hand and an expression on his face that told me he was very close to throwing up.
His wild eyes darted from Norman’s moti
onless body on the forest floor to me and Connor, and he seemed to register the gun before looking me over, taking in the blood, the dirt, and the desperation that was no doubt still lingering on my face. He opened his mouth to say something but closed it again within a second.
I suddenly found the strength that had been rapidly leaving my body just moments before and ran over to Will, knocking into him so hard that he nearly fell over. I put my arms around him, not caring that I was covering him in blood and mud, and buried my face in his chest.
Will hesitated for a moment - possibly still in shock from what had happened - and started stroking my hair. “It’s OK, it’s OK now. Jesus Christ…”
I pulled back from him, peering up at his face through my tears. “Will, I’m so sorry I said those things. I didn’t mean it. Oh God, thank you.” My thanks dissolved into unintelligible mutterings and Will went back to trying to calm me.
I’d almost forgotten Connor was there, and it made me jump when he spoke. His voice was still shaking. “Will, I can’t thank you enough, man. How did you know we were here?”
I looked up at Connor - who was now standing over Norman, holding the gun to him in case he moved - and when Will didn’t answer, I glanced back at him; he seemed to be thinking of what to say.
After a few seconds, he shrugged and said quietly, “I was in the woods, listening to music.”
I laughed to myself, unbelievably thankful that his odd behaviour of hanging out in the forest had saved us.
“I heard a gunshot, and I was worried that Beth had got herself into trouble so I tried calling. When there was no answer I just ran to where I thought I heard the shot.” I saw Connor raise his eyebrows questioningly. “We’ve both… er… been investigating in the woods lately; I figured she’d be involved.” He looked at me, not knowing what to say.
“There’s no need to investigate anymore, Will. I’ll tell you later.”
“What the hell happened? Did he shoot at you? Are you hurt?”
I shook my head tiredly. “He shot to the side of Connor…” I trailed off and stopped talking, afraid that I’d soon start throwing up.
“Jesus. Did he kill Emma? John?”
I nodded gravely. “Well… with a bit of help. It’s too much to think about at the moment.”