The Border Part Four (5 page)

“So how did it go at the Hermitage?”

“Ben was there last week.”

“It’s all starting to make sense, isn’t it?” Mac continued. “What’s wrong, Jack? Is brotherly loyalty clouding your judgment?”

“I’m not loyal to Ben. I don’t even -” He stopped himself just in time.

“You don’t even what?” Mac asked. “You don’t even like him?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.” Leaning on his cane, Mac made his way over to one of the desks. “The loathing is palpable, you’re terrible at disguising your true feelings. Anyway, I figured I’d stick around for the rest of the day. Maybe I’m out of line, but I feel like maybe you could use a little help around the old place, and I’ve got nothing better to do. Besides…” Wincing with pain, he lowered himself into a chair. “I’ve missed this. I’ve missed following leads and getting to the heart of a story.”

Jack forced a smile, despite the sense of nausea that was creeping through his belly.

“I know you’ve suspected your brother for a long time,” Mac continued, watching him cautiously, “but it’s one thing to have suspicions, it’s another to realize that you were right. Are you going to be able to deal with that when the moment comes?”

“Sure,” Jack replied, feeling increasingly uncomfortable as he opened his laptop and saw a reflection of his own face in the dark screen. “I just wish I’d been able to prove it years ago. To get him the help he needs.”

IV

“Wake up.”

In the dream, Joe was back out on the dark moor, staring at Caitlin’s body in the nook of the tree.

“Joe, wake up.”

Stepping closer, he watched as blood dripped from the dead girl’s hand. He made his way around the side of the tree until he could see the hole in her chest where her heart had been removed. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen her in a dream, of course, but this time he felt compelled to go closer, and finally he reached out until his fingertips were just millimeters from the edge of the wound, where Caitlin’s skin had been torn aside and was now covered in spots of dew that glistened and trembled in the moonlit breeze.

“Joe, please… Wake up.”

Letting his fingers brush against the wound, he realized her flesh was ice cold.

“He’s here,” a voice whispered suddenly.

Looking at Caitlin’s dead face, he realized that her eyes were staring straight at him.

“He’s here,” she said again. “Joe, don’t turn around. Please, whatever you do, don’t turn around. Don’t look at him. If you look at him, that’s when he gets you.”

He opened his mouth to reply, before realizing he could hear footsteps crunching over the grass, getting closer.

“Don’t turn around,” Caitlin said again, her voice trembling with fear. “Joe, he’s right behind you.”

“I have to see him,” he whispered.

Slowly, he turned and watched as the tall, dark figure stepped closer, looming out of the thick mist that surrounded the tree. On top of the figure’s head, there were several large shapes protruding, like broken antlers.

“It’s the stag-headed man,” Caitlin said. “Joe, wake up before -”

Suddenly a doorbell rang.

***

Sitting up suddenly on the sofa, Joe realized someone was at the door. He froze for a moment, still half awake and half in the dream, before turning and seeing that Caitlin was standing next to him.

“You had a nightmare,” she said with a calm smile, reaching down and putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “I tried to wake you gently, but you were really far gone for a while. You must be so tired. You were talking, too, kind of mumbling in your sleep.” She paused. “It was about me, wasn’t it?”

“He was there,” he replied cautiously.

“I know.” She took a seat next to him, and the sofa even creaked slightly as she put a hand on his knee. “You’ve been through so much, Joe, and with no-one to really look after you. The stag-headed man -”

She stopped suddenly.

Waiting.

Watching his expression.

“You flinch when I mention him,” she continued finally. “You get this nervous twitch on the side of your face, and your eye squeezes shut for a second. He still haunts you, doesn’t he? More than you let on and -”

The doorbell rang again.

“Ignore it,” she told him. “It’s just someone trying to sell you something.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

They sat in silence for a moment, until footsteps finally headed away from the house.

“No-one believed me,” he whispered.

“I believe you.”

“You were there,” he stammered. “You saw him. That’s not about believing me, that’s about knowing what you saw with your own two eyes. He killed you and…” He paused, staring at her for a moment. “He killed you.”

“That’s right. He did.”

“You’re dead.”

“Uh-huh. But that doesn’t mean I don’t still love you. Quite the reverse, actually.” She turned and looked around the dark, filthy room, as if for a moment she was contemplating the dirty plates and takeaway boxes, and the beer cans that had been left everywhere, and the funnels and bowls left over from his attempt to extract pure codeine from his prescription tablets. “I would have married you, you know,” she continued. “A girl knows these things real early when she meets a guy, earlier than he’d ever expect.” She turned back to him with a faint, sad smile. “That night, the night I died, I could already tell that you were a good man, the kind of man who’d make the perfect husband. I was teasing you, of course, and playing with your emotions, but I’d decided I’d be your bride. If you’d have taken me, that is.”

He nodded.

“What’s that?” she asked. “You
would
have taken me?”

“Of course,” he replied, his voice tense with the effort of holding back tears.

“Imagine us together,” she continued, resting her head on his shoulder. “We’d have had a really nice, smart house. Well-decorated, well-maintained, maybe even this place, but obviously very different. I’d have made you keep things tidy, Joseph Baldwin.”

“I know,” he whispered, as the first tear rolled down his cheek.

“And we’d have had children,” she added.

He nodded, too upset to speak.

“Three, at least,” she continued. “One by one, you’d have planted those seeds in my belly, and we’d have had three wonderful, beautiful, healthy children. Two boys and a girl, I think.” She smiled as they both stared across the dark, filthy room. “Megan,” she whispered. “The girl would have been named Megan, I’d have insisted on that. The boys, you could have chosen their names, but the girl would have been Megan. Megan Baldwin. She’d have been my little princess, and she’d have gone to ballet classes and…”

Her voice trailed off, and a moment later a little girl appeared in the doorway, dressed in a pink and white dress. She was smiling, as if she was waiting to be told how pretty she looked.

“The ghost of the child we never had,” Caitlin said after a few seconds. “One of them, anyway. Can you see her?”

He nodded.

“It’s like she’s real,” Caitlin whispered. “I think that’s really what she would have looked like.”

“I wanted that,” Joe sobbed.

“We’d have lived long, happy lives,” she continued, “and we’d have grown old together, and our children would have become strong, good people. It would have been perfect, but -”

He waited for her to continue.

“Tell me,” he said after a moment, sniffing back more tears. “Please, Caitlin, tell me what it would have been like. Don’t leave any details out.”

“He took all of that away,” she replied, “he -”

“Don’t talk about him. Talk about us.”

“There’s no us,” she continued, her voice suddenly sounding cold and scared. She was watching the door, and the little girl had disappeared, replaced by a patch of darkness and the looming, imminent threat of some other visitor. “Not after that night. Not after he cut me open.”

“I should have stopped him,” Joe sobbed.

A moment later, a figure stepped through the doorway. Tall and dark, he wore a crown of broken antlers, and although the light in the room was low, the side of his face was picked out just enough to see a rough, rippled surface covered in creases and dents, seemingly sewn together from the flesh of some long-dead animal. For eyes, he had nothing but a pair of gaps in the fabric, revealing the faintest glistening whiteness beneath, and his mouth was just a slit with tattered strands hanging down. There was no nose, just a slight bulge with clear, well-defined cheekbones on either side. It was the antlers, though, that struck fear into Joe’s soul. Twisted and bone-white, they jutted out from several spots on the top of the figure’s head, most of them broken near the base but a few of them reaching up a little further with sharp, jagged edges that could cut a man’s flesh, like a crown of death.

“Do you have any idea,” Caitlin whispered, staring wide-eyed at the stag-headed man, “how terrified I was when I died?”

“I’m sorry,” Joe replied, his head bowed low in shame.

“To see that face as the life left my body,” she continued, “was just… It was the most horrifying thing in the world. And the smell, too. When he leaned close to me, he stank of sweat and something animal.” She paused, meeting the stag-headed man’s gaze for a moment longer before turning to Joe. “Did they tell you that I peed myself?”

He shook his head.

“My bowels emptied too -”

“Don’t,” he hissed, squeezing his eyes tight shut.

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to know.”

“You want to remember me as pretty little Caitlin?”

“Please don’t tell me the bad things.”

“Look at me, Joe.”

He shook his head again.

“Look at me,” she said firmly. “Respect me enough to look at me. You’re one of the few who can now, so look at me.”

Slowly, he opened his eyes and looked at her, and this time he saw that she was how she’d been that night, with bloody wounds all over her body and a thick, open hole in her chest where her heart had once been. Reaching down, she took his hand and moved it to her chest, forcing his fingers into the gap.

“Please,” he whimpered, “don’t make me…”

“It’s your fault,” she told him, her voice trembling a little. “You’re the man. You should have found a way to save me.”

He shook his head as tears streamed down his face.

“It’s okay, though,” she continued, as the stag-headed man stepped closer. “I came back, see? I was dead, but I found a way back. I had to crawl through the mire. Do you have any idea what that’s like, Joe? To crawl from the world of the dead, back to the world of the living? To crawl through the darkness and the pain, to have to keep low in case the angels spot me and drag me back? I made it, though, and now I’m here to make sure that the man who killed me pays for his crimes. He will, you know. He’s here, he’s in Bowley right now, he’s one of you.” Leaning closer, she kissed his forehead. “I’m with you, Joe. Even when you can’t see or hear me, I’m with you and I see everything you do.”

“Everything?” he whispered.

She nodded.

Looking up, Joe saw the stag-headed man staring down at him.

“Something’s about to happen,” Caitlin whispered, her lips still touching the side of Joe’s head. “Listen to the silence of the town, and then listen to it being broken.”

“I don’t hear anything,” he replied.

“Come to the window. Ignore him and come to the window.” Getting to her feet, she held Joe’s hand until he stood and followed her. When they got to the window, she unfastened the latch and swung it aside. “Get some air in here,” she continued with a faint smile, before turning to him as the stag-headed man stepped up behind them. “Do you hear that? Do you hear the vast silence?”

Staring out at the street, Joe realized she was right. The town
was
silent, but it was the kind of silence that builds as a kind of buzz, getting stronger and stronger all the time until it has to break.

“And now,” Caitlin continued, with a tear in her eye, “it’s all about to happen again. In three… two…” She paused, as a tear ran down her cheek. “One.”

***

“Where is she?” Jane shouted, racing around the corner as she tried to find the source of the scream that had suddenly filled the town square a few minutes earlier.

“Down there,” a woman replied, pointing along the alley. “Oh God, it’s awful. It’s just the most horrible thing!”

Hurrying past her, Jane reached the door at the back of the old Bailey’s warehouse. Stopping, she saw a couple of onlookers consoling Harriet Lucas, who’d obviously been the one who’d made the grim discovery.

“Jesus,” Jane said, stepping forward as she looked down at the bloodied corpse on the concrete floor. There was blood everywhere, spilled across the floor and also smeared on the wall, while the girl’s dead eyes stared up and her mouth was open, as if she’d died while calling out. On her chest, above the heart, there was a telltale hole that looked to have been torn through her ribs, and as Jane edged closer she saw that the heart was missing. Knocking something with her foot, she looked down and saw that one of the girl’s shoes had come off.

“It’s Hayley Maitland,” said one of the women nearby. “The poor girl, who’s going to tell her parents?”

“Who found her?” Jane asked, making her way around to take a closer look at the dead body. Her heart was pounding, but she knew there’d be time to panic later; she’d immediately slipped into the cold, detached mode that always fell upon her whenever she was faced with something awful.

“I came to put some supplies on the shelf,” Harriet replied, staring in shock at the bloody scene. “We don’t normally use this part of the building, but we needed some extra space today. So I came through and… and…”

“It’s okay,” one of the men said, putting an arm around her as she began to sob.

“Have you touched her?” Jane asked.

“No.”

“Have you moved anything at all?”

“No, I just…” Harriet paused, before breaking down again.

Crouching next to the body, Jane looked at Hayley’s blood-smeared face. Leaning close, she realized she could almost see the fingerprint patterns caked into the blood. The girl’s front teeth had been partially smashed, and her nose was damaged, most likely broken. There was a cut on her right eyebrow, too, consistent with her head having been slammed against a hard surface. Looking up, she spotted a tell-tale patch of smeared blood on the wall. Already, she was starting to put the sequence of events together.