I try to roll off him, but he’s after me now. He grabs me and holds me still and I’m reeling too much from these thoughts I just had to do anything about it. Ed snaps off my collar. I feel the friction of it go. He pushes me aside into the leaves.
‘Caught!’ he yells, whooping.
But Mack’s out of the trees like a demon, barrelling into Ed and starting the fight all over. He must have been watching, ready to have my back.
I sit in the damp leaves. What just happened? My head’s still spinning from Ed’s punch. I lurch forward, dizzy, feel cold mud on my face. I don’t even care if the other boys are watching me lose it like this. I can still feel Ed’s pulse beating beneath my fingers.
When I look up again, Mack’s staring at me as if I’m a madman. He comes out of the shadows, stretches down a hand. ‘What’s going on, mate?’
I can’t look at him. I don’t know what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling. I don’t have a clue what’s going on!
Fight me. Fuck me. Which one? Which one first? What did I do to her? What did I really do?
Ashlee’s voice, teasing and teasing. Daring me.
What did she tell me that night?
I see the wide-eyed shock on Ed’s face, Charlie’s too as he comes out of the trees. They’re all staring at me like I’ve cracked. I crawl away and Ed passes my collar to me, as if that would make something better, tries to force it into my hands.
‘I don’t want it,’ I drag myself backwards. ‘I’m not playing any more!’
I get up off my knees, stumble away. That’s when I hear all our phone alarms go off at exactly the same time.
‘Game Over!’ yells Charlie.
‘Damo!’ yells Mack. ‘Wait!’
But I’m gone.
27
Emily
I breathe out so I can hear myself in the dark.
A nightmare, another one.
I stretch my fingers through blackness, grasp at air. I have the strangest feeling of brushing fur with fingertips. I’m home, in my bed. But something woke me. There was a noise, something that had sounded like an animal. I’m used to the sounds of the woods at night – the yip of a fox, the moan of a stag, the screech of a barn owl – but this was different.
I pad to the window and press my fingers to cold glass. This is like how it was two months ago when I was up and waiting for Dad to return. Like that night, there is a full moon again, pretty much. Unlike that night, my dad is not in Darkwood. If he were, I might race down our garden path and through the gate. I might pelt down tracks towards the bunker. I might launch myself at Dad. And she might have run.
I open the window, gasp in the cold air. It’s like I’m starting to believe, all of it. I get a glimpse of understanding of why Mum’s drinking every night. Right now I want to forget these thoughts I’ve been having too, forget what I found in Dad’s car . . . everything.
I look down the row of houses. No one’s lights have gone on, the back gardens are still and grey. If I crane my neck I can see the very edge of Joe’s garden at the other end of the row. When we were younger Joe would stick his hat on a fence post to show me he was home and free to play. Now his fence post is empty. There is no one walking on cobbles in our lane either, no glass shards tinkling against each other as another brick goes through another of our windows. No shake and hiss of a spray can as someone scrawls out their hurt on our walls.
I go back to bed and light a candle. Once Dad would tell stories by candlelight until I fell asleep. Now I watch the candle’s shadows on the walls, leaping and lurching like demons. As the flame flickers I start to drift. And, just for a moment, I think I hear it again: that noise that woke me. It’s something like a howl, something far away. I try to keep listening but my brain is heavy. What’s real and what’s in my dream feels the same, I’m sinking. But this time someone is sinking with me, watching me breathe. I can feel him waiting too.
28
Damon
The moon shines down hard and I don’t know where I’m going but I let my feet take me. I need to run ’til this roar inside me is quiet, ’til I get answers for these questions. I wake a huddle of crows – a massive murder of the things – send them screeching and squawking into the night. I run through the feathers and leaves raining down. Then I crash through a small wooden gate and I’m on a cobblestone lane, behind a neat row of houses. I’m somewhere on the edge of town.
I know this place.
I stand, heaving. It would be this place, wouldn’t it, that I find my way to now? My eyes dart up and right to find her bedroom, or the one I imagine would be hers. There’s a flicker of light behind her curtains. Candlelight? So, Emily Shepherd can’t sleep. Somehow that’s good to know. A little part of me wants to climb up to that window and crawl inside it. But why the hell would I want that? To see her? Talk? I get an image of her sleeping, her blue-grey eyes shut. I imagine telling her everything I just thought about in that hollow. I breathe, deep as I can. The air is sharp enough to razorblade my throat.
If I did climb up to her window, I really would be a madman. She’d be on the phone to the cops in a second. My skin twitches, trembles. Emily Shepherd won’t tell me what I want to hear, she won’t tell me nothing. The only thing she’ll say is that her dad is innocent.
I hear footsteps, coming out of the woods behind me. It’s one of the boys, following – Mack – coming to check I’m all right. I turn to face him. But as I do, I hear the footsteps are slow and careful. It don’t sound like he’s in a rush to find me. I wait. I’ll ask him everything – about Ashlee, about how he played the Game with her, about what happened to the rest of them that night afterwards and whether we all met up. I’ll make him help me work out these thoughts.
I see his tall body coming down the path. He’s loping, almost casual. Maybe he can’t see me properly with the moon at his tail because suddenly he’s barrelling into me, all tall and skinny and . . .
It’s not him. It’s not any one of the boys. When I see who it is I get this strange urge to laugh.
‘Joe Wilder?’
His eyes go big behind his glasses.
I step up close. ‘What are you doing here? Were you following me?’ I try to make my voice nasty, but I’m too shocked.
He’s got a camera hanging round his neck. He stares down at me with his eyes huge. I want to wipe the glasses off his face, stop that goggle-eyed way he’s looking. Then I realise what he’s staring at – I have gunk from that tree across my cheeks. And how hard did Ed punch me? Can Wilder see that damage too?
What else has he seen?
I move forward to grab him, shake him, but Wilder trips backwards. He moves away, stumbling on the cobblestones. This is the last thing I need! Wilder, of all people, knowing I’m flipping out. Knowing I been in these woods again!
‘I was just . . . I was . . . ’ He’s holding up the camera round his neck. ‘Pictures!’
‘You what?’
I get a memory that this was his excuse when I found him with Ashlee all those months ago, another time when I wasn’t expecting him to be in Darkwood. But he’s gone before I can ask him about it, racing away into the dark.
‘Wilder, come back here,’ I say. ‘What you been doing?’
I’m trying to keep my voice low; I don’t need Emily Shepherd or her mum to come out here either after hearing all this noise.
I start following Wilder ’til he skids up a garden path into a house. I hesitate, looking in. He lives on the same street as Emily Shepherd? Really? Now I know I should’ve grabbed him, stopped him and made him spill. What the hell was he doing in the woods anyway?
I go round to the street out front. It’s still as stones here, all the curtains closed and house lights off. I crouch beside cars, try to see myself in their side mirrors but can’t get much visual. It’s freezing, car windows starting to frost up, and I’m knackered-tired, but it’s a long way home from here. The quickest way is straight through the woods and out the car park again. But when the guys are still
in there wondering what the hell just happened to me? When I ran off like a loser? When I don’t even know what I’d say to explain it?
A hall light goes on in a house, and I move – crouching behind more parked cars – shivering. I don’t know where I’m going, what I’m doing. I want to call Mack, but I don’t know what to say. I try to make some sense of it in my fugged-up brain.
But there’s nothing – nothing!
Just Ed arriving. Just my hands on his neck. My hands on a neck.
The door of the car I’m crouching beside is open slightly, unlocked. And because I’m too cold to do nothing else, I get in. It smells funny inside here, all aftershave and mustiness, but it’s warmer at least. And there’s a mirror. I check myself in it, wipe off the tree gunk and see if I’ve bruised up. There’s a mark under my left eye already, can’t tell how bad it’s going to be yet, though. I find a freezing can of de-icer under the seat and hold that against my cheek to take the swelling down. Bloody idiot, Ed! Maybe I’ll wait here a few hours, just ’til I’ve got my head together . . . just ’til the buses start up. Mum will think I’m at Mack’s anyway.
Again I look over to where Emily Shepherd’s house is. What would it be like to walk up to her door and ask to speak to her? I could do it. I could make her help me work this out. She could tell me how her dad fits in. She could show me where that bunker is too. I could find Ashlee’s collar.
Maybe.
I shut my eyes. Every single inch of me wants to sleep. But I can’t, because I’m thinking about the boys and how we don’t keep secrets from each other. And I’m thinking that whatever Ashlee had told me that night couldn’t have been about them, couldn’t have been so bad. And I’m thinking that I’ve been keeping secrets, secrets even from myself.
29
Emily
Saturday morning and I’m browsing through the newspapers online. There are hundreds of articles about the death of Ashlee Parker. Most just report the facts that the police have revealed, but some articles have an opinion on whether Dad meant to kill Ashlee, or whether it was an accident because of a flashback. Some articles say he should get a murder sentence, others say it was manslaughter. There are whole discussion boards devoted to what kind of killer Dad is, whether he should get special treatment because of the things he’d done in the army. But not one article or blog post, or even comment on a discussion board, thinks he didn’t kill Ashlee Parker at all. Not one suggests it was someone else who did. I stare at one of the photographs of Dad that’s been used in some of the articles. In it, Dad is wearing battle fatigues and he’s squinting at the camera lens. Other articles have used Dad’s mug shot from the police station – the photo where his eyes are half closed and it doesn’t look like him.
Ashlee looks sweet in all the photographs that come up of her – happy. Especially in that photo where she has the blue check scarf tied around her neck, where her long blonde hair is straight and pretty around her face – that photo the whole world has probably seen by now. She’s laughing in that photo, even her eyes are smiling. She’s totally breath-catchingly beautiful, someone who has her whole life ahead of her.
Only she doesn’t.
I take out Dad’s sketch of the deer being chased by the wolf and hold it next to this photograph of Ashlee. Both the deer and photographed Ashlee have huge beautiful eyes. They both look excited: free. And they both seem to come from another place – are too beautiful for this real, dark world I’m stuck in. A heavy, horrible feeling starts in the pit of my stomach and works its way up to my throat. Dad must have been sketching Ashlee when he drew this – who else?
Mum’s still asleep when I go downstairs and into the garden. I hiss at Florence who’s got her tail up like she’s stalking something, scare her off it. Then I almost chicken out when I’m outside Joe’s back door. I look up at his bedroom window and just will him to see me out here so I don’t have to go inside. But it’s too late, his mum’s already throwing open their back door and bustling me in, all fake smiles and trying to feed me before I’m even inside.
‘You’ll catch your death,’ she says, then realises the words she’s used. She mumbles something quickly, rubs her hands on my arms to make me warm.
‘Can I go upstairs?’ I say, already moving for the hall.
Finn, Joe’s little brother, stares at me from the doorway of the living room, almost as if he’s trying to work out how close to me he can get now. Before everything, I might have bared my teeth and played a game with him and he would have laughed and loved it. Not now.
Joe’s heard me coming – he pulls me into his bedroom when I get to the top of the stairs. ‘Are you here because of Damon?’
I frown at him. ‘What?’
Is Joe still bothered about that detention I had? Really? Joe has dark rings under his eyes, which isn’t like him. He’s also got one of his school sports jumpers on with his jeans, which looks odd, especially on a Saturday, but which is like him. I sit on his bed, realising I haven’t been into his room for ages. He still has the same things on his walls, though: the photographs of the birds and the sweeping shots of Darkwood taken from the top of the Leap. There are piles of schoolbooks on his desk, and his computer is open to where his photos are stored. Joe clicks out of this when he sees me looking. I touch the sketch in my pocket – I have to tell Joe about it while I’ve got the nerve. It’s why I came.
Before I can, though, Joe sits close beside me. ‘Did Damon tell you he was going back into the woods? Did he say it the other day?’
My fingers freeze on the sketch. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Damon Hilary being here last night, in the lane, Damon Hilary in Darkwood! Didn’t you see him?’
‘Hang on. . .’ And my brain is now turning. Damon in the woods? Last night? Damon in the lane behind my house? Just thinking about that gives me a little jolt and I don’t know why.
As I look at Joe, he sighs. ‘It was almost midnight or something. You didn’t see him? Really?’
I shake my head. ‘How did you?’
‘My art project!’
‘What?’
‘Last night it was full moon, almost, and that makes the best cracks of light.’ He throws his hands up like he’s trying to convince me of something. ‘I was taking photos?’
But I still don’t get it. ‘What was Damon doing there?’
‘Not taking photos, that’s for sure.’ Joe bends his head to mine. ‘But maybe, maybe he was taking something else?’
Joe looks at me like he wants me to understand something.
‘What?’ I say again. ‘What are you even on about? Why is it so strange that Damon was in there anyway?’
Joe’s so close I smell the soap on his skin.
‘Why isn’t it strange?’ He sighs again as he looks at me. ‘OK, so how about this? What if Damon was in Darkwood last night . . . to take away evidence, to hide it better?’
‘Evidence?’
‘Have you forgotten everything?’ Joe rolls his eyes. ‘Evidence could be used against him in a trial, yeah? Evidence could prove he was involved in Ashlee’s death!’
‘But why would there be evidence against—’
Joe shakes his head to keep me quiet. ‘What if Damon wants to hide evidence before the police can find it? What if he’s trying to cover something up?’ Joe lowers his voice like there are people listening, like he’s in some sort of film. ‘C’mon, it makes sense, and you know it. No one really knows what Damon was doing with Ashlee that night – only his mates – and you know how tight they all are, they’d lie for him. What was he doing back in the woods alone if not hiding something?’
I breathe in, move away across the bed. ‘Damon was drinking in the car park that night. They all were. That’s what he told the police. The police believe it.’
Joe raises an eyebrow. ‘But do you? Really? You didn’t once.’
‘It doesn’t matter what I believe,’ I say, I hear my voice falter. ‘Or what you do. The case is good enough decided.’<
br />
For the first time since I’ve got here Joe’s quiet, thinking. I’m scared that if I don’t say something about this sketch soon I won’t have the guts at all. But still, my lips won’t open, the words won’t come.
‘I think Damon’s panicking,’ Joe says eventually. ‘I think he did that detention with you because he wanted to find out what you know. And after he’d realised that you’re not going to believe what he wants you to? Well, he’s hiding something, he has to be.’
I hold up my hand. ‘Joe,’ I say. ‘You don’t need to do this.’ I’m staring at him, but he stays serious. Stubborn.
‘I think we should go to the police.’
I chew on my lip, look at his carpet. I remind myself of why I’m here: not to talk about Damon or any more theories, to talk about Dad. To tell Joe about this sketch. ‘Joe, we’ve been over all this stuff about Damon,’ I murmur. ‘A hundred times.’
‘We haven’t been over everything.’
‘You don’t have to do this.’
Joe’s only doing this to get me out of this slump – to stop me lying about in bed all day pretending to be sick. But it’s not fair to Damon to pretend he’s a suspect any more. It’s not fair to anyone.
‘Listen,’ I add. ‘The police never charged Damon with anything, so . . .’ It feels like there’s something very big in my throat, stopping me swallowing. I try to talk through it. ‘The police don’t think it’s anyone on that list we made – you know that, so maybe we should stop pretending.’
Joe’s jaw is tense. I’m surprised by how committed he seems to this idea, how he’s not letting this go. I put my hand back on the sketch to take it out of my pocket.
‘Your dad didn’t do anything,’ he says firmly. ‘It’s someone else. And Damon Hilary’s the obvious choice.’
I stare at the pulse beating in Joe’s neck. Can I still have this little bit of hope, even now, this tiny sliver of belief that Dad is innocent? Is it still possible to believe that someone else killed Ashlee? Even after what I’ve found? Even if it’s Damon that’s the someone else? I shake my head roughly.