The Cove, page 24
part #1 of The Cove Trilogy Series
Spinning around, she scanned the floor. A broken chair leg lay in the shadows.
Scooping it up, Carrie turned back to the basement steps. She checked that the door could be opened from the inside. Then she waited for the pounding in her ears to quieten.
“Okay,” she whispered.
Chair leg in one hand, torch in the other, she stepped forward.
The door swung to behind her. She leaned back, stopping it from slamming shut, letting the catch rest against the jamb.
Satisfied she had a way out, she turned back to the darkness. The torch beam flickered. She shook the torch and the beam corrected itself.
Carrie descended into the basement.
44
At first, she was too terrified to move. She stood at the foot of the basement steps, trying to see beyond the edges of the torch beam. She thought about turning back. It would be easy to take the steps two at a time and run from the hotel. But she would be leaving Cal behind. Leaving Noah.
She willed her legs to move forward. They did, slowly at first, making her shuffle like one of the zombies from those stupid films Dylan would persuade her to watch with him. Oh, Dylan. How she longed for him to be by her side right now. The truth, she feared, was that when Dylan returned home tomorrow, they might never watch a stupid film together again.
Carrie crept forward. Smells assaulted her: rotting timber, mould, rust. And something else, sharp and putrid, like spoiled meat.
Wrinkling her nose, Carrie swung the torch beam from side to side. She was in a large room filled with old furniture and broken wine racks. Empty barrels lay on their sides, decaying and covered in mildew. Several open doorways led off into more darkness.
If the basement covered the same floor area as the hotel above, Carrie was standing at the mouth of a rabbit warren; a labyrinth in which she could easily get lost. Perhaps never find her way out again.
She turned on her heels, noting the position of the stairs, mentally mapping out her path. She swung back around. Which doorway did she take?
She pointed the torch beam into the first on the right, revealing another, smaller room. Water ran down its mossy walls. More wine racks lay inside, broken and rotting.
A quick check of the next doorway revealed a similar picture. Carrie pointed the torch at a doorway in the north wall. A long corridor revealed itself. She stared into the darkness beyond.
Was Cal down there? She strained to hear above the drips and splashes of water.
She advanced, the chair leg gripped tightly in her fist. There were more storage rooms on both sides. Most were empty. A few contained further remnants of the hotel’s old furnishings.
As Carrie crept further along the corridor, the air grew thinner and more pungent. The sweet, acrid smell she could not place grew stronger. Her heart pounded. Fear made it hard to breathe.
But she had to keep going. Noah’s life depended on it.
A new sound reached her ears. A sort of scrabbling and scratching. Carrie cocked her head. The sound grew louder.
Something clambered over her feet.
Carrie yelped. She spun around, pointing the torch at the empty ground. Whatever it was had scurried away.
Again, she thought about turning back. Then she heard more sounds coming from up ahead.
She could hear footsteps. Human footsteps.
Pressing the torch to her chest, Carrie plunged herself into darkness. It was Cal. It had to be. But what if it was someone else?
Carrie stood completely still, listening to the footsteps move further away. Then they were gone. Whomever they belonged to had disappeared.
She felt the walls close in on her. The ceiling lower. The air rush from her lungs. She had to go on. Whether that was Cal up there or someone else, she had no choice but to go on.
Pushing one foot in front of the other and keeping the torch pointed to the ground, Carrie forced herself along the corridor. Something glistened in the light. It was sand, she realised, and wondered how it had found its way into the hotel basement.
The corridor was coming to an end. The terrible stench grew stronger. And now Carrie knew where she had smelled it before.
In Cal’s room.
Terrified, she inched ahead. Torch light rebounded off the wall up ahead.
“Cal?” she whispered. “Are you here?”
She walked another metre into the chamber. Then froze.
The torch trembled uncontrollably in her hand, making the light shudder and shake.
“Oh, my God.”
The room was filled with piles of old furniture: tables, chairs and sofas all stinking and rotting and covered in black mould. But they were not the cause of Carrie’s horror.
It was the things on the table by the wall.
Animal parts – a severed cat leg, a bloody ear of an unidentified creature, the head of a fox missing its eyes – were laid out in a neat, deliberate row. Something else had been placed behind them.
The chair leg dropped from Carrie’s hand and clattered to the ground. She stumbled forward, almost tripping.
It was a child’s stuffed animal. A blue bear with a missing eye.
Carrie recognised it instantly. She had seen it countless times in the last two months, broadcast on television news bulletins and clutched in the arms of a little boy whose beautiful, smiling face peered out from fading posters around town.
The blue bear belonged to Noah. It was caked in old, dried blood.
Nausea erupted in Carrie’s stomach and shot up to her throat.
“Oh, God. No...”
Very carefully, she lifted Noah’s blue bear and turned it over. It had been his favourite. A gift from his father, purchased the day Tess had discovered she was pregnant. And now, here it was, in a place no child should ever have to see, soaked in blood.
And there was something else. If Carrie had any reason to doubt Noah was dead, it was quickly extinguished upon seeing what the bear had been perched on. A human skull. A child’s skull.
Clutching the bear to her chest, Carrie stumbled back.
Something was happening to her. Reality was slipping away.
Was this where Cal had been coming at night? To see Noah. Down here in the darkness and decay of the basement.
She was going to be sick. She staggered away, the bear still clutched in her hand.
Confusion overwhelmed Carrie. She fell to her knees. She needed to vomit. To expel these horrific thoughts and feelings. But they would not leave her body. They were hers to keep.
How would she tell Jago? Tess? How could she explain to them what she had found? How could she ever look her son in the eye again, knowing where he had been coming each night?
How could she–
Someone was watching her. She could feel their eyes burning into her back.
Slowly, Carrie got to her feet. She turned, pointing the torch at a space behind.
Cal stood in the light, his skin as pale as bones. His dark, black eyes glistening and fathomless.
Carrie pressed the bear to her chest.
“Cal?”
Sadness emanated from him in waves, threatening to knock her to the ground.
“Cal, baby?”
He shook his head. Tears spilled down his face. He pointed a finger at the corridor from which Carrie had entered. He was telling her to leave.
“I can’t,” Carrie said. “I can’t leave you down here.”
She glanced back at the table. At the terrible things on top of it.
Cal lowered his hand. He shook his head. Then he turned and melted into the darkness.
“Cal!”
Carrie swung the torch. A large wardrobe stood at an angle away from the wall. Behind it was a door-shaped hole. The hole had once been boarded up with planks but they had been smashed apart, jagged edges still poking out at the sides. Cal had disappeared inside.
“Cal!” she screamed again.
He was gone. And she knew that this time, if she didn’t go after him, he would be gone forever.
Noah’s blue bear in one hand, the torch in the other, Carrie sprang toward the hole in the wall. And as she climbed through, she realised it wasn’t a hole.
It was a tunnel, narrow and low-ceilinged.
She could hear Cal running now. Getting away from her.
Carrie took off after him.
45
Every room of Grady Spencer’s house was drenched in light. As a small child, there had been much to fear in the dark. As a man, he had taken that fear and used it for his own purpose. Now, in his twilight years, it was as if the young child he had once been had awoken inside him, bringing back all his night time terrors.
For a while, with the boy here, those terrors had receded to the shadows. With the boy gone, they had slithered back out to taunt him.
Grady sat in his kitchen, a dark, sullen mood weighing him down. Caliban lay next to his feet, snoring gently. He was a good dog. A loyal creature. But he could never understand how it felt to be truly afraid. To be truly alone.
The journalist had taken some of that loneliness away for a few days. But the high Grady had felt from killing him had now come crashing down, washing over him like a great wave, filling his lungs. Soon, he would drown in darkness and loneliness. Unless he found someone new to keep him company.
He had thought the foster girl Natalie might keep him entertained for a while. Perhaps even longer than the journalist. But she had been too wary. Too cynical to be trusting.
There was the other one, he supposed. The one down below. But he had little interest in him. That one belonged to the boy. But if the boy didn’t come back...
Grady stared at his hands. Once they had been powerful enough to snap bones. Now they were the hands of a decrepit old man. But they were still strong enough to throttle the life out of a body.
Standing up, Grady shuffled over to the kettle and filled it with water. He would have to get a new one. This one had been dented by the journalist.
Placing the kettle on the stove, he lit the burner. As he waited for the water to boil, his gaze roamed to the hallway. The sound of emptiness was like a dying breath.
“Come back,” he mouthed, feeling the emptiness perforate his skin.
They had offered to take the boy to the farm. Away from Devil’s Cove, so Grady would not be implicated in his abduction. The boy could grow and learn the ways of the farm, they’d said. Grady thought the farm and all its teachings were meaningless. He had told them so, too. And he had refused to let them take the boy.
But they had taken him, anyway.
Grady had been left alone for a long time. His life had become wretched and empty once more.
Then the boy had come back of his own volition. He had chosen Grady over them.
But months later, the boy had left again. The farm had confused him. He’d no longer wanted to stay in his cage. Not the one upstairs at night, not the one down below.
The kettle began to whistle as the water began to boil. Caliban opened an eye. His ears twitched.
If the boy were here now, Grady would make him tea and bring it to his cage. Maybe he would let him drink it. Maybe he would scald him with it. A punishment for not following his master’s rules.
He could feel the hole opening inside him again, growing deeper. Threatening to open so wide he would fall in and never get out.
“Come back,” he said again.
And then Grady saw a curious thing. He saw the boy standing in the kitchen doorway, looking straight at him.
I’ve lost my mind, Grady thought. He shut his eyes, counted to three, and opened them again.
The boy was still there.
Across the kitchen, Caliban wagged his tail. Omitting an excited yap, he scampered to the boy, who crouched down to scratch between his ears.
Grady shook his head. The boy looked up at him, his strange dark eyes reflecting the old man’s image.
Suddenly, Grady exploded with a high-pitched cackle.
“Well, well, well,” he said, when he could catch his breath. “The wanderer returns!”
Cal gave the dog one last scratch and stood up.
Grady watched him, his heart bursting with joy. He had wished for the boy and the boy had returned. It was a miracle, pure and true.
But now he would have to teach the boy a lesson. So that he would never leave again.
46
It was late. The house lay in darkness except for Jago’s bedroom, where he stood in front of the window, staring down at the street while Nat lay on the bed, a glass of bourbon whiskey in her hand and a cigarette hanging from her lips. Neither of them had spoken for some time now. Music filled the quiet. It was a band Nat had recently discovered from the early nineties; Mazzy Star. They were a far cry from the angry punk music she usually listened to, but she liked the mystery and reverb of the slide guitar, and the singer’s strange, ethereal voice. Somehow, it encapsulated what she thought midnight might sound like.
Nat turned and stared at Jago. She was relieved that their fight had been brief. Even though his words had been cruel, hurting her much deeper than she’d first anticipated, she was willing to forgive him. She knew what desperation felt like, how it could make you react in unpleasant ways. But she’d also made sure he knew that she was no pushover. Not anymore.
“Penny for them,” she said, as Jago continued to stare out at the darkness.
He shook his head. “I should have called her back. I should have gone over there.”
“I don’t think Carrie would appreciate you showing up on her doorstep right now.”
“But what did she mean? ‘I know how to find your brother.’”
“Maybe Cal finally started talking. Maybe what he did to you woke him up.”
“Then why didn’t Carrie come get me? If she knows where to find Noah, I should be there when she does.”
He turned. Nat grimaced at the sight of his swollen neck. She had cleaned the wound as best she could, soaking it with disinfectant that had brought tears to Jago’s eyes. She had urged him to see a doctor but he’d refused. She could see he was in pain. His movements were slow and stiff, his complexion pale. She had prescribed painkillers. He, alcohol. She wasn’t sure it was the best combination.
Nat took a drag on her cigarette and blew a stream of smoke up to the ceiling.
“You know how volatile Cal is,” she said. “I mean, Jesus, look what he’s done to you. Maybe it’s safer for everyone if you let Carrie do whatever she has to do. She wouldn’t lie to you about your brother, Jago. I don’t know her well, but well enough to know she’s not a bad person. She wouldn’t hurt your feelings just to protect herself.”
“Maybe. But I can’t just stay here doing nothing.”
“That’s exactly what you need to do. You have a hole in your neck. You should rest. And you should let me put a dressing on that. You don’t want to get an infection.” She looked away. “Besides, it’s making me want to puke.”
A smile rippled across Jago’s lips. For the first time in two months, Nat saw his eyes glimmer with hope.
“Do as Carrie’s asked you,” she said. “Give her until tomorrow.”
Jago’s face grew serious again as he returned his gaze to the window. “What if tomorrow’s too late?”
Finished with her cigarette, Nat dropped the stub inside an empty beer can. “It’s so cool your mum lets you smoke indoors.”
“She doesn’t.”
They were quiet for a long time, listening to the music.
It had been a strange few days. Honey was still missing. Nat hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell Rose what Jago had found up at the hotel. Far better to let her believe the cat had simply wandered off.
When Nat had wound up in Devil’s Cove last year, she thought she’d been sent to live in the most boring place on earth. Noah’s disappearance had changed all that. The last two weeks had made it even worse. Now, she craved the old Devil’s Cove, where nothing ever happened and every day was the same.
Perhaps tomorrow she would get her wish.
Letting out a heavy sigh, Nat sat up. Her thoughts wandered back to Grady Spencer’s house.
She could still smell the dust and despair on her clothes. And if she were being honest, she could still feel the fear that had gripped her at the top of Grady’s basement stairs.
She hadn’t told Jago about her visit to the old man’s house. She hadn’t had a chance at the seafront. But those uneasy feelings had followed her home and now they taunted her.
“What do you think about Grady Spencer?” she asked Jago.
“I don’t think much about Grady Spencer at all,” he said, turning around. “How come?”
Nat told him about her encounter. As she spoke, she saw Jago’s expression change from disinterest to deep concern.
“Don’t you think it’s weird?” She reached over and grabbed the bottle of bourbon from the desk. “I mean, he lied to me. He said cats got in through his basement window. But I saw the basement window. It was under a grille in the ground.”
Jago leaned out of the window, turning his head in the direction of Grady Spencer’s house.
“I just thought he was wanting company. He’s always alone and I’ve never seen anyone visit. But then, at the top of the basement steps...”
“What?”
Nat shook her head, feeling increasingly troubled. “I don’t know. It sounds stupid. I felt like he wanted to ... hurt me.”
By the window, Jago was frantically rubbing his chin.
“Maybe we’ve been looking in the wrong places all this time,” he said.
Nat raised an eyebrow. “You’re not saying Grady Spencer had something to do with Noah’s disappearance? Come on, he’s an old man.”
“You just said it yourself. He wanted to hurt you.”
“But it doesn’t make sense. What about Cal? Where does he fit into it?”
Something stirred inside Nat’s mind. Maybe it did make sense. Most murderers were known to their victims. Often, they were friends or family. Sometimes even neighbours.
A chill gripped her. Was that what Grady Spencer had been planning this afternoon?
