The Taken (13 page)

What have they done to her? What have they put inside her? This isn’t real. This can’t be real. Dead people don’t come back. They don’t come back and they can’t hurt you.

Rolling her head back up, her eyes widen and for a second her sobs stop. Melanie is standing against the bedroom wall, her arms hanging down at her sides, where she hadn’t been just a moment ago. The little girl smiles.

“But we’re not dead, Kay. Not all of us. Some are just in between. And it’s amazing what you can do in between if you really try!” Her smile stretches and to Kay her red gums look like blood. Melanie looks toward the door. “I think Paul’s coming” she whispers. “Shall we play fishing?” She looks back at Kay, raising one finger and waggling it very slowly. “You shouldn’t have told, Kay.

You should never have told!” Still waggling that small finger, she disappears into the wall, as if she’s stepped backward and through it.

Kay feels a moan build up in her chest and against the tape that is stuck so hard to her mouth as terror envelopes her. No no no, this isn’t happening to her, not to her, not to Kay Keeler, who people say could have been anything she wanted, but all she wanted to do was marry Phil Chambers and have a family, and who was so lucky to get all she wanted from her quiet life, this couldn’t be 124

happening to her, not to her, dead people don’t come back, there is no Catcher Man … For a moment, she shuts her eyes, unaware of the strange moist sounds escaping from her nose as she cries, and then looks down again.

Her vision focuses on the six or seven thin strands of something—is that fishing rope? LETS PLAY FISHING, KAY—that have been twisted together, and they leave her stomach from the small gap in the tape to form a thicker rope, stretching out like a thin, dry umbilical cord directly in front of her. Her terrified eyes follow its taut line to the door handle only feet away.

“Anyone home? Answer me.”

Pauls voice is getting closer, in the hallway, and he pauses there for a second before she hears the creak as his weight hits that first stair. He’s coming closer, coming closer toward her, toward the door, and with that thought everything stops. Suddenly everything is clear, so crystal clear she could be on the other side of the room looking at herself.

Everything is falling into place, and she screams, oh god she screams, and as the muted sound escapes in only a frustrated hum, her panic makes her move, and this time she doesn’t care about the twitching of pain inside, she cares about nothing except that Paul is coming up the stairs. Her fixed eyes stare wide, as if she can will him to stop, to PLEASE GOD JUST STOP JUST STOP JUST STOP because the fishing wire is attached to the door handle, six strands, six strands of it, and what would be logical to be at the end of fishing wire, well, fishing hooks, of course, and oh god the door opens outward not in and the fish hooks were inside her and what would come out what would come out?

He is on the landing, she can hear his heavy cautious 125

tread and she is screaming inside for him to stop, to GO AWAY, to GET AWAY FROM

HER and if she screams any louder she will explode, her head already twisting from side to side. Blood has started to dribble from the tape, she can feel it running down her naked legs as ifherperiod had come, and he is only seconds away and she doesn’t want to die, she doesn’t want to die. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be, not for her, please god don’t let her die, let her wake up now, please wake up now. Anything at all, just make this stop, stop right now and the handle is turning and all she can see is the rope and the handle, the rope and the handle and oh god this is really happening and there is the splash of liquid on the floor below as she lets go of her bladder and nononoNONONONOOOOOOOO. …

Paul reached for the old, round handle and twisted it, pushing hard. Nothing happened. It must be locked. Shit. Whoever was playing these weird jokes must be on the other side of that door, and despite his nervousness he just wanted to get to the bottom of it and let everything get back to normal. Still, it didn’t stop him glancing nervously back down the stairs. He’d checked all the rooms downstairs pretty thoroughly and the landing below was empty, but he still shivered as if for a moment someone had been watching him. From the other side of the door he thought he could just make out that awful laugh he’d heard through the letterbox. “Kay? Kay? Are you in there?” He banged on the wood.

“Whoever’s in there, I’m going to break this door down now, and then I’m going to want some answers!” The door didn’t even rattle, and he stepped back confused. Even if it was tightly locked there would still be 126

some give in it. He may not be very strong these days with his expense account lunches and too infrequent visits to the gym, but he was still a relatively powerful man and the wood didn’t seem that thick. Could something have been pushed up against it? Maybe Kay and Laura had done it to protect themselves from someone else. Maybe whoever had scribbled that message in the window. But if so, why weren’t they saying anything? And how did anyone know I would be coming along? How could anyone have written that message with my name? Isn’t that just a little bit weird? The kind of weird that made Mum run inside terrified yesterday? His frustration was growing and he ran his hands over his drying face as he studied the door.

Glancing around the frame and hinges, he almost smiled. Of course. It opened the other way. How fucking stupid was he, he thought as he grabbed the knob again and yanked the door firmly open, ready to face whoever was on the other side.

It seemed for a split second as if there was some resistance, as if a small child had grasped at the handle and tried to stop him from coming in, and then it was gone. These strange old houses … The thought died before it really began, and for a second nothing seemed to make sense as he let go of the door handle, all his energy needed to understand what his optic nerves were desperately trying to process. He wasn’t ready to face the person on the other side. Not ready at all. It was her eyes that he saw first, and it seemed that that was all he could see, would be able to see, despite the fact that his peripheral vision, almost tunnel-like, told him that Kay, Kay Chambers, his childhood friend, was hanging naked from a beam in her bedroom. But 127

it was her awful eyes that held him, wide and terrified and so full of hate, hatred for him, above the tape that covered her mouth. His own mouth hung open as he stared, and as his brain tried to pull itself back from madness, he wondered if she was still screaming behind the shiny black gag.

A wet, slick sound tore his eyes downward and he started to moan, no tape to hold his anguish in. Something had come out of her, was still coming out of her, red and bloody like afterbirth, slowly slopping to the ground beneath her pale legs, trailing on the floorboards. A glint of steel flashed teasingly from its tangled nest within the shiny gray and pink mess that seemed to have crawled toward him and his mind struggled to comprehend its meaning, before looking back up at the twitching, defiled body strung up before him.

Kay’s head was hanging down now, those deathwatch eyes hidden from view, but the sight of one foot, her left foot dancing by itself beneath the redness, below the destruction of her stomach, made the bile burn in his chest. Rolling outward into the corridor, unable to trust his balance to keep him upright, and not wanting to collapse there where he stood, not amongst all that… he slid down the wall, his eyes squeezed shut. Hugging his knees to himself, he started to shake.

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“Paul?”

Despite Simon and Mary’s protests, Alex had come after Paul, hoping that maybe if they spent some time alone she might get him to open up about Melanie Parr and whatever it was about that long-gone child that bothered him so much.

Keeping her head down against the torrent of rain, not really knowing why she was bothering since she was soaked through already, she pushed her tired limbs up the cobbled street. It wasn’t like Paul to be so closed up, to have secrets that he didn’t want to share. From the corner of her eye she saw that the door to Kay Chambers’s house was slightly open. She paused for a second and stared at it. Maybe Kay had burned something baking and was letting fresh air in. Or maybe she’d let Paul in and he hadn’t shut the door behind him properly. Looking up the street, there was no sign of her cousin—in fact, there was no sign of anyone; not even in the country would

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people go out in this weather unless they had to, and she figured he must be in with Kay.

She tapped on the wood. “Kay? You home? The door’s open.” Only silence answered her. “Kay? Laura?” Again nothing. Stepping into the well lit hallway, she left the door open behind her. “Hello?” The air felt damp, as if the rain had been slowly penetrating the opening for some time, and Alex moved farther into the house. The same uneasy feeling she had in the church was tapping at her heart and stomach.

“Kay? Paul?” Her voice dropped from a shout and she fought to keep it above a whisper, her nerves jangling slightly. It was the middle of the day—what was there to feel nervous about? Oh, I don’t know, she answered herself, children that visit in the night and disappear, dead vicars, people obsessing with a dead girl. What’s there to be nervous about in all that? Her inner sarcasm made her smile a little. Irony was something she was getting good at these days, even if it did tend to be tinged with bitterness.

The kitchen was empty except for the chill of the fresh air that had taken up its surly residence, lingering on the surfaces just long enough to deposit the damp carried on its back before moving relentlessly on. The wood of the door frame was cold beneath her touch as she ran back into the hall, a morbid shiver running down her spine. Cold as death. As if any warmth of life had left the house itself.

Standing at the base of the stairs, she stared upward for a second before starting to climb, not calling out this time. Kay was probably just having a nap. She knew the other woman wouldn’t be upset at Alex 131

wandering around her house given the circumstances, but Alex still felt like something of an interloper as she made her way up the creaky stairs.

Halfway up, she froze, a giggle wafting down to her. An awful giggle followed by whispered words that she couldn’t make out. Her ears strained to hear. Who was that? It’s the giggle you heard last night. Inside and outside, then inside the closet. The one that scared the little boy so much. She doesn’t know you can hear her. She doesn’t know you’re in between. Pushing the thought that she didn’t really understand to one side, she concentrated on what was real, what she could feel, the thick solid banister under her fingers. It felt cool against her hot skin.

As she rounded to the second flight, Paul’s huddled figure came into view. For a horrible moment, Alex’s breath caught in her throat at the sight of his body curled in on itself protectively against the wall above her, so still, so lifeless, and her legs pushed faster to reach him. Flashbacks of finding the vicar burst into life behind her eyes. Not again. Surely that couldn’t happen again. What was going on here?

“Paul?” This time she could barely force a whisper, and her hand shook as she reached forward to touch his shoulder.

His arm was warm, and as his head rose slowly, Alex felt her breath run out of her lungs. “Oh God, Paul, you scared me. Are you okay? Are you okay?” Crouching beside him, she clutched at his face, wanting so desperately to feel the warmth of his skin, the softness of his cheeks. His eyes were hollow sockets, the color almost drained from their pupils, and he groaned, 132

twisting his face away feebly, the weight of his skull heavy in Alex’s arms. She pulled him back to face her, her anxiety making her almost aggressive.

“What happened, Paul? Where’s Kay? Where’s Laura?”

He met her gaze for a moment before his eyeballs rolled backward, back toward the door.

“She’s in there. She’s dead.”

His emotionless words hit her hard, as if the air in them were punching her backward. “Kay’s dead? But she can’t be.” Alex stared at Paul waiting for some kind of response, but he kept his eyes away from her, still focused with almost lifeless dread on the open bedroom doorway.

Pulling herself to her feet, feeling them shake slightly below her, Alex glanced into the bedroom. For a second she felt the world shift beneath her as she looked into the nightmare that had been her friend’s death, and for a second she thought the grief might be overwhelming, destroying whatever was left of her spirit inside, but as she forced her eyes to take in the full view, a coolness washed through her as if the rain had somehow finally seeped inside her skin.

This can’t touch me. This is done. This can’t touch me. In that instant her own clarity, her sudden composure, terrified her as if she was the still center of a storm.

“Where’s Laura, Paul? Did you see Laura?” Her voice felt like it was coming from someone else, but it was strong and calm. She stared at her dead friend, whose future she had envied, like she’d envied everyone she knew over the past few months, the irony not lost on her. Kay, who’d been so full of life, was dead and gone;

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but Alex, riddled with cancer, was still living. They all fought their own battles, but they were all dust in the end. It was all just a matter of time.

Paul stayed silent, but he shrugged slightly, and Alex wondered what damage had been done to him in that split second. How many more battles would he have to fight inside because of this?

She looked down the corridor, and seeing the closed door to Laura’s room, made her way toward it, the colors on the walls seeming brighter, like she was even seeing more clearly. Maybe you’re not reacting like other people would because you’re not like them. How about that? Not anymore. Not like Kay, but not like them, either. Paul and the others can’t hear the clock ticking as loudly as you can. You’re in between. She reached for the handle.

“Nooooo! No! Don’t touch it! Don’t touch it!”

Forgetting about the door, forgetting about everything as Paul’s scream slashed at her, she spun around to see him stumbling to his feet, those agonized, urging eyes pleading for her to freeze where she stood.