The Secrets of Life and Death (5 page)

‘You looked after her, nursed her back to health for four months. You got to know her.’

‘We never bonded.’ A memory intruded, of the morning sunlight gleaming across Carla’s blonde hair, a shade lighter than Jack’s but straight, as she crooned to something she’d made up on an old guitar. ‘She never trusted me. And she used to feel high if she even left the middle of the circle. She fought me when I drew the sigils on her, even when she felt better.’

‘You can’t live with someone—’

Jack jumped up, startling the dog. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. I warned her, she escaped, she died. That’s it.’

Maggie stopped her, and for a moment Jack looked at her face, seeing the lines, the sagging skin under her chin, the grey hair that had somehow become white. Maggie was getting old, shit, she must be over sixty already.

‘Jack, I’m worried about you. You’ve grown … hard. You have a child to look after now, you can’t bottle up your feelings all the time.’

‘She was an addict. She whored her body to buy heroin.’ Carla’s casual stories of what she had done to get drugs had shocked Jack. ‘I warned her every day: if she left the circles she would die in minutes. I was amazed she managed to get across two fields and onto the train. All to get back to her addict friends. Even her own mother took three weeks to report her missing. Couldn’t give a shit.’

Maggie sighed. ‘Well, Sadie’s mother reported her missing the night you took her, and has been on television appealing for her daughter to come home ever since.’

‘And now she’s what? Barely alive for a few months or years, at best.’

Maggie snorted. ‘You think dead is better?’

Jack stepped into the living room. She looked through the doorway in the panelling that led down to the underground cell. It had been designed as a sanctuary for Catholic priests, and the sigils provided a haven for the girl. The orange light from the controls of an electric radiator cast a glow over the girl’s features, greying her sunken eyelids with shadows.

‘She looks dead now.’

‘Think positive. There’s a casserole for you in the bottom of the oven. Don’t forget the decoction mixture, it’s keeping warm by the stove, strain it in a minute. You can sweeten it with some honey. She needs at least four doses a day. You could do with a cupful yourself.’

Jack made a face, and settled on one of the two sagging sofas that decorated the room, otherwise lined with bookshelves in front of two of the panelled walls. A wood burner heated the room, flames glowing through the sooted-up window, and eased the draught coming under the door that led to the stairs. Life in the cottage suited her, raised out of the modern world as she had been, but she was beginning to see the appeal of modern heating systems. The dog leaned against her. His Arctic pelt was warm, and eight stone of bone and muscle felt like protection against everything but the nightmares. His head was turned towards the fire, an ineffable sense of wolf coming through the husky skull.
You can’t save them all …
Ches picked up on her sadness and whined, a soft graze of a sound.

The click of Maggie shutting the door in the panelling brought her back to the present.

‘She’s improving,’ said Maggie. ‘I’m leaving you with enough herbs to keep her going for a week. She’s already doing better than Carla did. Maybe this one will understand and be more cooperative.’

‘She’s a valuable asset. Don’t forget the little detail that I’m going to make thousands selling her blood.’ Jack looked out at the pale blue sky. ‘Like you did from me.’

‘Would you rather I’d left you to die?’ Maggie bent to kiss Jack on the forehead. ‘Warm up, look after Sadie. I’ll be back in a few days. I’ve got to help Charley move into her new student house.’

Jack pulled her sleeves down over her hands in an attempt to keep them warm. The back door clicked, Maggie’s car started up and pulled out over the gravel and cattle grid. She rested against familiar, baggy cushions, listening to the birds cawing in the centuries-old rookery. They nagged and squabbled outside, in the boundary beyond the cottage. The trees stooped and leaned against each other along the remnants of the hedge, half a dozen oaks that first reached for the light in Tudor times. She shut her eyes for a moment.

Ches took her fingers between his teeth and pressed lightly, before sweeping her palm with his tongue. She rubbed his head with the other hand, not sure who was comforting who.

The croaking of the birds stopped as the clapping of their wings signalled that the rookery had lifted. She looked through the curtains, but couldn’t see anyone outside. She waited, almost holding her breath, until the rookery settled again.

Sadie woke, with a recollection of almost making it to the surface a few times before, memories of choking, then sobbing in gasps that trailed back into sleep. Her stomach was cramping, her mouth full of the taste of vomited cider and burger.
Shit, I am never going out with Tash and Claire again
. Her ribs ached, her body hurt, her head …
What a hangover. Mum will go mad
.

She unglued her eyes in the dim light, realising that she was not at home, nor in her own bed. She retched, but her mouth was dry, her lips cracked when she tried to move them. Her tongue was spongy and heavy and she gagged on it. She trembled a hand to her face to brush her hair back. One wrist clinked, and she stared at a metal bracelet, padded with something.

The dark little room was like a prison cell. Stone walls glistened with damp and a lantern glowed from a rusty hook. Tales of kidnap, rape and murder crept into her mind, and filled her mouth with bile. She looked around, found a bowl on an upturned box beside her, and heaved into it. Tears erupted from her, spewing sobs and vomit into the old plastic bowl, her ribs aching with the effort. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t—

When she next came to, she realised someone was standing over her, and she flinched away. There was a woman, slim and boyish-looking with feathery, shortish blonde hair. Her green eyes glinted in the low light as she leaned towards Sadie. Her features, even her lips, were bone white.

Sadie whimpered and put up the shackled hand to hold her off.

The woman ignored her, knelt on the floor, and put her arm behind Sadie to lift her against one shoulder. Sadie tried to wriggle free, but was too weak.

The plastic cup was half filled with what looked like flat beer, but as soon as Sadie’s nose got near it, it stank like mouldy compost.

‘No!’ she screamed, nausea and terror rising inside her. She leaned back, tried to push the woman’s hands away, but her arms shook. Her fingers felt numb, as if they were swollen, and Sadie clenched them into loose fists. The cup was pressed against her lips, not gently, and the stuff poured into her mouth. She swallowed the first mouthful on reflex, the second because it didn’t taste as bad as it smelled and she was so thirsty. Then one hand wavered up, heavy, to knock the cup away, the liquid spilling over her clothes. The cold seeped into her.

The woman eased her back against the pillow. The mattress twanged like the folding bed Sadie remembered from family holidays in the caravan by the sea. Showering off the sand in the plastic bathroom, meals around a table overlooking the beach, fish and chips vinegary in paper, followed by individual trifles from the site shop. The days before Dad had left them. Sadie cried, cramped with longing for home, her mother, for the old days. She hadn’t seen her father for years; her mother had become her whole family.

She tried to push herself up the bed, away from the woman, but one arm was held back. She turned her head to look at her wrist. The bracelet was trailing a chain. The woman waved the cup at her.

‘I’ll get you some more. When you’ve drunk it, you can have as much water as you like.’

Her soft footfalls padded up a few steps, retreated into another room, revealing a glimpse of books crooked on a shelf, and sunlight on a wall.

It’s daytime? How long have I been here? I have to get out.

The door squeaked to half shut, shadows gathering and deepening around Sadie. She lifted her head to look at the small room. The walls seemed to be real stone; a tentative hand felt clammy roughness. It – the dungeon – was just big enough for the bed and a space beside it. A wooden box served as a bedside table, and a scrap of flowery carpet covered the floor. She pulled at the chain, but her muscles were weak, and her arm heavy. Nausea, and the taste of meat and cider, surged back into her throat with every movement. She swallowed hard, feeling dizzy.

Lying back, the world revolving and buzzing, she tried to remember what had happened. She remembered the girls staggering in the road, both laughing, even when Tash broke the heel of her shoe, Claire trying not to cough when she inhaled her first cigarette.

The woman returned with the cup and a bottle of water. Sadie opened her mouth again, her lips numb, tongue uncooperative. The first word came out as a husky moan.

‘Please …’ She coughed, and once she had started, she couldn’t stop. She started gasping for air, fighting to sit up. The woman lifted her easily, and tucked a couple of cushions behind her as Sadie was bowed forward. She laboured to get her breath back, for the spots in front of her eyes to go. Her ribs and stomach muscles stabbed with each spasm.

‘Easy. It will pass. Just relax.’

The attack receded, and Sadie remembered snatches of similar episodes, and vomiting, her breath dying away until she felt like she was drowning.

‘I know this is confusing,’ the woman said. ‘You’ve been ill, really ill.’

‘I won’t tell anyone … please, just let me go.’ Her voice came out like a wheeze. She took another raggedy breath in, panted out. In … out. She realised her heartbeat was slowly thudding in her ears. As she relaxed, it started to slow. ‘Why,’ she started, and then needed another breath.
Are you going to hurt me, kill me?

The woman seemed to understand. ‘You need to be here. You’d die if you left this room. It will take time to get better.’

‘I’m … chained up.’ Tears tickled down her face to her chin.

The woman handed her a fistful of tissues.

‘Cry it out. It’s all you can do. I can’t explain it yet but you have to stay here. You wouldn’t last five minutes out there. My name is Jack. Go on, drink some more. It will help.’

‘Help?’ Sadie choked.

‘Just drink.’ Jack held out half a beaker of the foul liquid.

‘Then will you let me out of this … dungeon?’

‘It’s not a dungeon, it’s a priest hole,’ Jack said. ‘They used to hide Catholic priests in here. It’s a sanctuary.’

After the last earthy mouthful, Sadie could feel herself slumping back on the cushions, relaxing. ‘The police must be looking …’

‘I thought that,’ Jack’s eyes met hers, calm, ‘when I was kept here. Now, sleep.’

Sadie willed her eyelids to stay open.

She awoke with the words ‘Let me go home’ echoing in her mind. The light was different now, darker. The box beside the narrow bed had a bottle of mineral water on top of it, unopened. Sadie struggled to crack open the top, and drank deeply. A twinge reminded her of her full bladder.

Wiping the water from sticky lips, which split as she touched them, she leaned forward to see through the doorway. There was a light spilling through the gap onto the stone walls, which seemed to be covered in some weird symbols, like graffiti. Her hands looked strange in the gloom, her fingers thin, and the skin dry and crazed like old paint. She started to examine her clothes. Old, soft pyjamas, several sizes too big.

Someone must have undressed her and redressed her in these old clothes.
Oh, God.

Somewhere, a phone rang. Sadie could hear the distant voice answer.

‘Hi, Maggie …’ The woman must have turned away because Sadie couldn’t make out the words. Then: ‘No, she’s come round again, but she won’t be ready for weeks, maybe months …’
Months?
Terror gripped her bladder again.

The voice faded away to a murmur. Sadie’s bladder spasmed painfully. Maybe they would let her out to the bathroom.

‘Excuse me?’ she tried. She started coughing again, but this time it passed by itself. Holding ribs that ached with every breath, she shouted again. ‘Hello? I … I need to pee.’

Footsteps approached, this time the padding of smaller feet, followed by the snout of a dog in the doorway, nudging it open with a creak. Maybe it was the light, or the steps up to the threshold, but Sadie’s first thought was that it was the size of a pony. It seemed to fill most of the opening. Its eyes were pale, light fur sooty along its snout, around its eyes, like a giant husky. It gazed at her, sniffing the air, but it didn’t seem hostile, and she relaxed a little.

Jack appeared, and hauled it back by its collar.

‘Out of the way, Ches.’ She seemed to be carrying a plastic bucket and, with complete horror, Sadie noticed the toilet roll under one arm.

‘No.’ She slid back up the bed, an exposed bit of shoulder touching the dank stone. Jack just put the bucket between the box and the bed, and took the lid off.

‘Just get on with it.’

‘You must have a toilet!’ Sadie slapped Jack’s outstretched hand away, panicking. ‘No!’

Jack sat back on her haunches, observing Sadie with those light green eyes. Ches gazed over her shoulder, his grey eyes even lighter.

‘No one’s trying to hurt you. I told you, you can’t leave the priest hole yet. I can wait until you pee yourself again, but that would be a lot worse for both of us.’

Sadie dashed a hand over her face, smearing tears across her cheeks.
Again?
‘Please, let me go home.’

Jack looked at her and it seemed like her stern expression was a bit softer. ‘Look. Think of me as a nurse. You’d let a nurse help, wouldn’t you?’

‘No,’ she said, but her bladder was agony now.

‘You’re too weak. You’ll fall.’

‘I won’t!’ Sadie found enough energy to shout back, and flapped a hand at Jack. ‘I can do it myself. Please!’

Jack shrugged, stood, and walked up the steps.

The door swung shut behind her, the light fading to a pool over the bucket. Sadie moved her body to the edge of the bed, struggling to find some tension in her arms. She swung her bare feet onto the bit of damp carpet, the shackle knocking against her thigh. She could see the chain ran down to a ring in the floor. Her legs, always slim, were like sticks. They shook, and she had to cling to the side of the metal bed, ease the loose trousers down, and balance on the bucket. For a moment, she felt like she would burst, her bladder squeezed by the position but unable to let go. Then, with a pouring sound that filled the room, along with the acrid smell of urine, she put several inches of liquid in the bucket.