Bad Bones (22 page)

It was only when I stood beside my wide window, overlooking the removals van and the front of the house, that I noticed the fourth building in Priory Mews. How I’d missed it outside, I’ll never know. Too busy gaping at our place, I suppose.

From the moment I saw it, it unsettled me.

It was set well back from the others, surrounded by tall, narrow shrubs like leafy security guards. A broad gravel pathway led up to an imposing entrance. The house was three storeys high, its two lower levels topped with a series of windows jutting out from very high, angular sections of roof. One of these sections rose up even taller than the others, punctuated by chimney breasts. At the corners, the walls had the kind of inlaid stone you see on old manor houses and castles, like zigzag reinforcements.

The house was more than double the size of the others in Priory Mews. A long, glassy ground-floor extension had been added at the side. Above loomed the tortured, twisted grey branches of ancient
wych elms and silver birches in the back garden. A separate, modern two-door garage had been built closer to the road.

This, I later found out, was Bierce Priory, built in 1812. That extension was constructed in the 1920s, at the same time as our house. Even at first sight, even with the excitement of the moment sending my mood soaring, the Priory looked cold and austere. As if it was watching me back.

Despite my impressions of the place, I paid no more attention to the Priory that day. Now, merely writing the name sends a rush of horror through my guts. We had Chinese takeaway for tea, and Mum and I spent hours dragging cardboard boxes from one room to another. Dad spotted our new neighbours at No. 2 getting into their car, an elderly couple, and called them over with a whistle and a wave. I didn’t catch their names but they seemed taken in by that studied chumminess of his. He talked at them for nearly twenty minutes, while they smiled blandly.

I hooked up the TV in the biggest living room. The sound bounced off the bare floorboards as I sat on our threadbare sofa. I patted its stained
arm a couple of times.
You’ll be chucked out soon, old friend
, I thought to myself,
without a doubt.
I watched gangsters shoot each other while Mum scrubbed the bathroom and Dad clattered about. “Ellen! Where did you pack my… S’OK, babe, I found them!”

By eleven I was snuggled down on my mattress on the floor of my room. The pieces of my wooden bed frame were stacked in a corner, waiting for when I could be bothered to put them together. My anglepoise lamp threw a yellowy glow over the thick paperback anthology of ’70s
Doctor Strange
comics I’d got on eBay just before we moved.

I was starting at Maybrick High the following day, Thursday. I’d tried to squeeze a couple of days off, to start at the beginning of a week, but with the school only a two-minute walk away and me already being late for the start of the Maybrick term, I had no excuses. I yawned, clicked off the light and went to sleep.

When I got up, Mum had already left for work. Some things never change. She didn’t need to do that job any more, but she did it anyway. I had suggested to her that she could free up her job for someone who really needed the money, but she’d just looked
at me as if I’d asked her to boil her head. The only difference now was that she’d chosen which bank branch to work in, rather than letting the bank send her anywhere it liked. I imagined that the Hadlington branch was a little more prestigious than the last one.

I was up, washed and dressed nearly an hour before I needed to leave. I got through two slices of toast and a mug of orange juice, with first-day nerves jangling at my stomach. I made my sandwiches with a care I never normally took. Displacement activity, to mask the jitters. Cake in my lunchbox? Did I want cake today?

I still had forty minutes before I needed to leave. I took a slow tour of the house. The silence was only broken by the clump of my shoes on the floorboards and the sound of Dad snoring.

I told myself not to be such a wuss. No need to be nervous. Best school in the district.

I checked myself in the unhung mirror in the hall. My new uniform was embarrassingly fresh and unworn. My stomach knotted all over again.

Outside, the air was sharp and damp, a fresh autumnal morning. I looked across to our two neighbouring houses, but nothing was stirring there.
Opposite them, the Priory seemed a touch less sinister in the cold early light, glowering behind its spiky shrubs.

As soon as I walked out on to Maybrick Road, I could tell something was up. There was a steady flow of uniformed kids along the pavements. From the end of Priory Mews, you could just see the main entrance to the school, but kids were going straight past it. They were hurriedly crossing the road and taking a wide path that led down the hill, ending at the green metal footbridge over the river, which led to the park and the corner of Elton Gardens.

As a handful of younger pupils passed me, I stopped one of them.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Dead body!” said the kid excitedly. “A Year Nine’s put a picture on Facebook.” He and his friends scurried on.

A what? Surely he meant an animal or something? A larger group of pupils, who looked my age, also crossed the road and headed for the path. I wondered if some of them were my new classmates. I allowed curiosity to drag me into the flow.

The path sloped in long, graceful curves down to the river. To either side were broad stretches of grass, and beyond that sprouted bushy swathes of tall reeds and sedges.

As the flow of kids approached the river, I could see a gathering arranged in a ragged semicircle. I’d almost caught up with the group who looked my age, but hung back. I wasn’t sure if the best way to meet classmates was rubbernecking at the scene of an … accident?

A girl suddenly detached herself from the semicircle, staggered a few metres and vomited noisily on to the grass. A couple of her friends rushed to her side.

By now I was at the spot where the gathering of pupils had trampled flat a haphazard patch of the reeds. I could see something stretched out on the ground. Someone was saying that a woman walking her dog had found it a few minutes ago, that she’d already called the police. For a second, the scene flashed through my head: the dog sniffing around, not coming when called, taking a few licks.

I drew closer. I saw it in detail now.

My first day nerves vanished, replaced by icy horror.

It was a man, flat on his back on the damp ground, legs pointing away from me. He was dressed in dirty trainers, fleece tracksuit bottoms and a jumper. His limbs were straight, as if he’d calmly lain down on the spot. His face was upturned; dull staring eyes pointed at the grey sky.

His face was spotted with blood. Much more blood, long sprays of it, fanned out around his head like some hideous spiked wig. The top of his head was gone. He simply ended, just above the face, sliced open like a pepper.