I grasp my fingers round her collar, pull it across the leaves. It drag, drag, drags. So I do it again, back the other way, just listening to the sound. I’m remembering that dream in Shepherd’s car – that dragging noise – how that noise had made me think about shoes getting caught on rough ground. Made me think about someone being carried – pulled.
I dig my knuckles into the dirt, try to steady my breath. As many things ’til I remember!
So I suck on the joint. And I bend towards Ashlee’s collar ’til it blurs in front of me. I bring my lips to the leaves, kiss them. They’re rotting and cold. I shiver – badly. Because that’s how she’d be now – rotting and cold. In a hole and alone. Her pretty face gone. Her sexy, long legs disintegrating. No more soft skin. No eyes. Just her clothes left. Just bones.
I can’t stop shivering. I shout, muffle the sound by pointing my mouth at the earth. I taste mould and mud, dead leaves. Something makes my lips tingle. I take a vicious toke on the joint, breathe it in hard ’til I feel my throat go like sandpaper, ’til the taste of rotting things gets worse. Slimy leaves cling to my cheeks and I push them off rough. Another toke. My vision’s fuzzy now. And I want to punch myself. Why don’t I remember? Why don’t all this just come back clear?
I gather the leaves towards me, as if it’s a body I’m hugging, as if it’s her. Something crawls on my hand, something else in my hair. I press my forehead against soft, decaying bits of wood. I’m sinking into this forest, rotting too. Keeping my forehead against the leaves, I listen . . . listen . . . and her voice comes back. Distant. I don’t know if it’s a memory I got now, or if it’s her as a ghost. Right here.
I know . . . she’s saying. I know what you want.
There’s a whispery, chilling feeling around my neck. I see a million damp brown leaves . . . her pink collar . . . my arms clasping it all to me.
Shall I tell you something?
I claw at these words, pull earth towards me.
Damon . . .
Laughter.
There’s a beetle on my neck. A thought at the edge of me.
You’re not the only one I play with . . .
I breathe in pine needles. Cough. Images fling themselves about in my brain, like a cut-up movie on fast forward: a bundle of pictures that don’t make no sense. Sweat on her neck. Hands on my chest and moving up. Ashlee rubbing fairy dust into her gums, like she’s brushing her teeth with her finger. Ashlee punching me like Charlie does, short and sharp. Me pointing my fingers like a gun at her head. Mack’s hands, shaking.
And she’s laughing, laughing . . .
There are other ways to win collars.
You don’t always have to play the same game.
You don’t always have to play your Game.
Her voice bouncing off tree trunks and echoing round this hollow.
I flop on to my stomach, face against filth, woodlice in my hair.
She’d been talking about the boys.
‘Tell me how you play the Game with them,’ I’d said. ‘How do they win your collar?’
She’d been laughing like she was so clever. Laughing like it was a secret she was spilling.
I press my body into the earth. The images keep coming. I’m seeing her collar fastened tight round Mack’s neck. Round Ed’s. Even round Charlie’s. How many times? Who’d won it the most? I’m on the edge of something, a thought, can almost feel it. I grasp at the leaves. Feel mushrooms in amongst them, slimy cold slugs.
‘How did you play the Game with them?’ I say it again now, speak it into the earth, as if she can hear me . . . as if she’s here.
But there’s just the wind round me, moving through branches like a train coming.
I know what makes sense, though – the boys won Ashlee’s collar because she couldn’t fight like we could, because she was rubbish at the Game. But there’d been a few times I’d seen their collars round her neck too. It wasn’t always mine she’d won, not all the time. But Mack would never have let her beat him by fighting. Would any of them? So how did she win?
Do you want to know my Game Plan?
And suddenly she’s back, and she’s bending close to my ear and she’s telling me – she’s telling me!
But it’s a cold wind rushing through me too, and I’m up against these wet, stinking leaves and I’m still trying to hear.
Shall I tell you a secret?
I reach into the pile of leaves as if they’re her, grab a bundle and clasp my fingers round. It’s not the collar I’m trying to get at: it’s her.
You going to get mad Damon? You going to fight me? . . . You haven’t got my collar yet. You still owe me.
Her laughter is echoing round my skull. It’s laughter like rain, falling on my neck and spine, sliding everywhere: rain like that night. Rain that started when we should’ve been screwing. But what were we doing instead? I dig my fingers into dirt, grab fistfuls.
I’m breathing fast.
And I’m thinking about hands on her body, on her neck – and jealousy shoots through me, rushing in my veins like something dangerous. I cough to get the taste gone. Spit.
I should’ve made Mack tell me why he’s been acting so weird. I remember how Charlie’s been odd these past few weeks too, and how Ed’s been avoiding me. Have they all been keeping secrets? What were the games they all played with her?
I scatter the pile of leaves, throw them anywhere. I want to destroy this place. I want Ed to come along now so I can destroy him too! I remember my hands on his neck and how familiar it’d felt.
How jealous did I get that night?
I shake my head hard and the forest adjusts round me.
I’m a good person – that’s what Mack said. He said to cling on to it.
But maybe it’s hard to know who a person is when they’re drunk and out of it on dust – when they’re jealous as all hell. Like that, a person could do something so terrible they could block it. Couldn’t they?
I feel her laughter shaking my skin. Her neck against my fingertips. Anger firing me up like a match. I want to punch Mack’s face. Punch me!
I suck on the joint. Emily’s words are back now too, everything she’d said on the Leap: there was someone else . . . Dad just found Ashlee that night, he was trying to help.
And that drag, drag, dragging . . . over and over in my brain.
Someone could leave a body in that small clearing near the bunker and keep stumbling home. Someone could be so out of their head that they don’t remember a thing. Someone could hide evidence in a tree.
I want to scream but I suck this joint instead, like I’m possessed, like it’s the only thing I got left now, like if I suck for long enough and hard enough I’ll get the right answer – the one I want – I’ll be the good person Mack says. I won’t have done nothing! The trees are turning into shapes above me, shapes like bodies, with arms stretching down and pushing me into the earth. I smell rot.
Could I have carried Ashlee? Could I have found the nearest tree and passed out? Could I have done more than this too?
I gasp in smoke. Mack’s words are here, reminding me: If you even start thinking you’ve done anything . . . you wouldn’t be able to live with it.
And I wouldn’t.
I dig out my phone, try to focus on it enough to turn it on. I need to call Mack – he has to tell me what’s true, what he’s hiding. My throat goes tight as I think of his shaking hand around the skinning knife. The twitch in his eyes. Ashlee was going to tell me a secret that night. Maybe Mack knew it already. Maybe Mack was part of it. Maybe that’s why I got mad.
I’m down to the filter now, but I want every last leaf inside me. I suck right through. My hands are changing shape, merging into the forest, sprouting leaves. I’m becoming part of this wood, this tangle. I get a memory of Emily looking at the tatt on my back, how wide and pretty her eyes had gone then. It’s like it’s growing right out of you – that’s what her look had said. I reach to my back and touch where it starts. I don’t much feel part of my
old man no more, though. Only this wood. Only these rotting leaves. This dying stuff.
I chuck the phone at them, clasp Ashlee’s cold, silver heart-shaped dog tag inside my hand instead, wrap her collar round my wrist. I suck at what’s left of this joint ’til it burns my fingers, ’til it burns my lips. And my spine is moving like a wave, there’s a gulping sound coming out of me. My muscles are heavy; my head a rock carving through the earth. I’m sinking down. Sinking deep. Joining the worms. Joining Ashlee.
41
Emily
‘You’ve been a while,’ Mum calls from the kitchen. I’m slamming the door. I have been a while – out the whole day. So much has happened. My brain is rattling and I can’t put it all together.
Mum is looking round the doorway at me. ‘You all right?’
I must just be stood here staring. Can she tell I’ve been back to the woods, back to the bunker? Can she see my secrets?
‘Why are you so wet?’
I mumble something about being in the park with Joe and getting caught in the rain. Half-true. But shouldn’t I be telling Mum everything? About the sketch and how I gave it to Damon? About what Joe just said? I have no idea how to start. There’s too much, too many things uncertain.
‘Why such a rush?’ She’s still looking at me.
And I’m still thinking about Joe, still wondering if anything he said could be true.
‘Is it trick-or-treaters?’ Mum suggests. ‘You wanted to avoid Halloween?’
‘Something like that.’
The curtains are drawn across the windows of the front room – I think it’s Mum who wants to avoid Halloween. This year she’s scared of how people might be with us, the tricks they might play. I go through to the kitchen to find her sitting at the table with a mug of half-drunk tea. No wine today.
‘Bed early, then? Movie?’ she says. ‘We don’t answer the door?’
I nod. I’ve turned into a kind of zombie, my brain has so much to think about it’s not thinking at all. I stare at what Mum has on the table: a pile of papers about Dad’s case, stuff Mum’s been meaning to sort through for ages. I’m not expecting this – no wine and sorting papers and on Halloween. Maybe she’s starting to get on with things. Maybe this means something’s changed. Is it because of me? Because she thinks I finally believe Dad’s manslaughter plea? I can’t tell her now that I’m more mixed up than ever.
I can’t tell her that Dad doing manslaughter is the thing that makes the least sense of all. I mean, with Ashlee getting to the bunker that night. With the sketch Dad drew. With the things Joe’s just said.
‘Do you want to see your father before his next hearing?’ Mum says. ‘He’s put in a request form. It might be the last time before he . . . well.’ She bends to stroke Florence before she adds, ‘But it’s your decision.’
I shrug like I don’t care, but my heart is pounding and I’m feeling all that stuff again – everything I thought I’d managed to push away. I’m thinking that if Dad wants to see me again then it means he still loves me. And if he still loves me then it means he’s a good person. And if he’s a good person then it means he didn’t do anything bad that night – he didn’t kill Ashlee Parker, on purpose or by accident. I shake my head angrily.
Mum turns back to the piece of paper and makes an X through a small box. This gets me panicky all over. I open the fridge and stick my face inside. If Mum knows I’m upset then maybe she’ll get upset again too, maybe she’ll go back on the booze. I don’t want two parents missing in action any more. The artificial fridge light blinds me and something smells off in here, but I wait until I’m sure I can keep the tears inside me. I grab the first thing – milk. As I make Mum a fresh cup of tea I look out at Darkwood and remember being inside there with Damon just this morning, leaning against him in the bunker. I think about what Joe said. That Damon played rough? That Dad drew Damon instead of drawing himself? That Damon could have hurt Ashlee? I drop the teabag twice when I’m trying to get it into the bin. I’m thinking of how Ashlee had looked wild in Joe’s photograph, how she’d looked dangerous and beautiful.
When I put the tea in front of Mum, I move the form aside, away from any more marks from her pen. ‘Let me think about it,’ I say.
Before I go upstairs, I check the deadlock on the front door and peer out at our lane, but there are no kids trick-or-treating. Perhaps Mum and me are worrying about nothing – everyone is too scared to come anywhere near our house now.
I put on warm, dry clothes. Then I sit on my bed, remembering the strung-out look in Damon’s eyes this morning. Could Joe be right? The things he’s told me don’t feel right, but why would Joe make up that stuff? Just because he’s angry about a stupid cross-country team? That’s ridiculous. I throw my phone on to the bed. I need to get that sketch back. Need to look at Joe’s photos again. I thump my head on to my pillow and remind myself of the things that should be facts: Dad has confessed; the police are certain enough to charge him with murder; Dad carried Ashlee Parker out of the woods and into our kitchen; Dad was in a flashback that night; it’s not only me who saw Ashlee in the sketch Dad drew.
But who was the wolf?
I walk over to my desk, run my hand over Dad’s papers, his shirt, his Swiss army knife. I could use that – I could carve an A into the inside of my left arm and make it bleed. Does killer’s blood look any different from normal blood? I pick up Dad’s combat shirt instead. Holding it makes me think about him returning from service, how I used to think of him as a hero. This is what I need to destroy, these memories. I need to see the facts without the feelings. Look at Dad as a whole.
I lay the shirt out flat on my desk and make myself think of things – bad things – like how Dad turned away when we tried to hug him, how he screamed at Mum, how he kicked Florence once when he was drunk. How – sometimes – even I was frightened of him. How he confessed.
But even now something still nags at the back of my mind . . . won’t let me believe Dad is evil. Can’t let me. That something won’t let me believe Damon is bad either.
But who else is there?
What else could have happened that night?
I pick up Dad’s knife and I stab it. Straight into the middle of Dad’s shirt, near where Dad’s heart would be. I rip the knife through the material. I keep hacking until the bits of material in front of me just look like that – an old uniform, not Dad’s – until it looks like rags. I don’t feel any better from doing it. The words Joe just told me about Damon are still in my head too. Everything is still shot through with holes.
42
Damon
It’s murky dark when I wake. Dusk? Past that. I don’t know where I am. I get this fear that makes my ribs hurt – something’s happened, something bad. I start scrabbling in the dirt, touch cold leaves, my hand tightens around a collar. Am I playing the Game? I rub my fingers across its heart-shaped tag.
Then I remember.
Ashlee.
She’s gone.
Dead.
I breathe in hard. A whole heap of other images and thoughts come back at me too. And I’m gasping like I can’t get no more air.
This is all my fault.
I need to get out of here – go to the cops. What does it matter if I don’t remember it all? If it’s all a jumble in my head? What the cops think now ain’t true. Can’t be.
But I’m too wired. The cops will smell the joint, and how’s that going to go down? And the forest is swaying. I’m not sure I can even stand.
I feel around for my phone, shove it deep in my cargos. My vision is shaking, unsure. I need to get out of here before I do anything else stupid. But my legs are weak. I’m trembling like a full-blown druggie, out of control. How long was I out for? How strong was that joint? My brain’s fuzzy as fuck! I turn my body in the way that feels right; I let fate decide. One way down this path and I’ll go back to town and what I know I’ve got to face; the other way and I’ll keep walking out of here, follow the river to someplace new. I could disappear
entirely, become a missing person on a milk carton: someone last seen. It’s my feet’s choice.
Then I freeze. I’m hearing voices. Not anyone’s I recognise. I go straight into Game mode, kick leaves and twigs over where I been and head towards the trees. It’s like footsteps are everywhere, echoing through this wood. Then I get why: this is like Ashlee said it would be tonight, it’s Halloween.
‘People will come into Darkwood to look for ghosts,’ she’d said.
I hear shouting and laughing coming from somewhere near where the car park must be.
Somehow, I find that deer path I was on before. My steps sound like a rhino’s, though – dried leaves, nut husks, bracken, twigs, all this making me loud. I’m stumbling into trunks. I’m seeing people crouching in the dark spaces between trees, laughing and jeering. One of them runs his finger across his neck in a sign like I’m dead. When I look again, they’re gone. It’s just dark space. Maybe I should go the long way round, get on to the path that’ll lead me out near Emily’s house instead.
Emily.
I stumble again. Was it only this morning when she’d been with me inside that bunker? She’d been nice to me, too nice. Her eyes had been the colour of oceans. I could’ve drowned. Pulling out my phone again, I think I might call her. But I don’t have her number. And anyway, she wouldn’t want to hear from me. She thinks I chased Ashlee through these woods. She thinks I chased Ashlee that night. Maybe she thinks I did more than this too. Because she still don’t think it’s her dad that killed Ashlee, does she?
I tip forwards against a trunk.
Is this what Emily’s telling the police right now?
I’m getting that feeling again, that tingling on my neck like I’m being watched, like someone is trailing me. I spin around, squint at the dark. If anyone is here they’re still as me. When I hear someone running, fast and close, I slink back into the shadows. This wood is alive, full of the fairies and druids and ghost hunters like Ashlee said it would be tonight. It’s freaking me out. And I need to get everything straight before I go to the cops, straight as I can. I need to get these drugs out of my system!