The Taken (4 page)

The small yelp her terrified body allowed to escape was drowned out by the roar of thunder, and with the next bright sheet of light that broke the sky, the boy was beside her, his finger covering her own lips. Squeezing her eyes shut, Alex screamed inside. It’s just the morphine, it’s just the morphine, but Jesus, his finger is so small and cold and damp, just like he’d been playing out in the rain. It feels so real. It all feels so real.

The sensation on her lips didn’t change, and she forced her eyes open. It can’t hurt you. It’s not real. If you scream you’ll wake the others up. You’ll wake Mary up. She doesn’t need this. Not now. Not after today. And if the others come, you may have to explain. Explain the pills and the reason behind the pills. And this isn’t real. It can’t be.

Still, when she saw the boy beside her, his face wet with rainwater, glancing fearfully over to the window, she had to bite the inside of her mouth to stop the sound from escaping. How could her imagination make something up like this?

All this detail? The child was no more than ten, but his dark bowl haircut was like his clothes, all out of place, like something from the seventies. Even in the gloom she could make out the bright reds and yellows on his knitted tank top that sat

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over a wide collared shirt, patches of dried mud up the sleeves. Her mind felt hot. How come if his hands and face are wet, the mud is dry? Why did my head make that up? How can that be? How can any of this be?

Taking his finger back from her lips, the boy covered his ears with his fists and whispered. “She’s hurting him. She’s making him cry.” His voice sounded congested, as if he needed his adenoids taken out but no one had ever gotten around to it. “I don’t like it when she makes them cry. She’s going to make him jump.”

It’s the morphine, kiddo. It’s taking you on a trip. That’s all it is. That’s all it can be. Staring at him, she whispered back the only question she could think to ask. “Who are you?”

The answer was barely audible. “I don’t remember. He keeps us in the storm.”

Glancing again at the window, at the weather on the other side of it, he leaned forward to get closer to her, and she realized he smelled the same as the air did earlier that night. Dirty and damp. “They don’t know you can hear them. They don’t know you’re in between. Like us.”

Staring at him, his words weird and meaningless, Alex could see how wide and scared his eyes were, and despite her own fear she almost wanted to touch him to see whether that garishly old-fashioned shirt felt as rough as she imagined it would.

But then the lightning flashed again and he was gone. The room was empty. She sat frozen, listening to the clock ticking out the seconds of her life for a full five minutes before she crept out of bed and over to the light switch and flicked it on. Warm yellow light filled the room, bringing with it normalcy and sanity. Leaning back against the bedroom door, Alex stared at 31

the furnishings and empty spaces that she knew so well and finally let out her breath. God, that was weird. Too weird. Nightmares were one thing, but hallucinations? Those she could live without. Maybe the next night she’d halve the dose and see if it was any better.

Berating herself for the small edge of fear that came with the action, she flicked the switch again, sending the room back into darkness, and then jumped back into bed, curling up on her side under the duvet. Halfexpecting to hear more giggling, she was relieved to just have the company of the sounds of the rain. Tiredness washed over her as her body relaxed.

See? Just the morphine. Nothing more.

Allowing her eyes to shut, she drifted off to sleep, twitching slightly as her lips moved silently, unconsciously reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

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“Our father who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come… Thy will be done…”

Reverend Barker is crying as he climbs the stairs of the old church up to the bell tower, which overlooks the village that has been his home for more than thirty years. The words come out in a spray of spit that mixes with the wet air around him. “On earth as it is in heaven.” The village. His first parish. His last parish. His purgatory for a quarter of a century.

His feet slip on the old stone stairs and he falls heavily on one knee, the pain jarring up his body and forcing him to moan aloud. He has been unsure about what is real and unreal in the madness of the last few hours, but the sharp heat in his leg as he drags himself back to his feet is true, as is the feel of the rough wall under his fingertips, and he dimly accepts what is happening. The devil has come for him. And with that acceptance he realizes that he’s been waiting for it to happen for many years.

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Outside, the gray of dawn is starting to break despite the thick clouds and heavy rain and as he reaches the top he can hear laughter from downstairs, and the sound of one shoe tapping against the stone as she comes up after him.

“Don’t you remember me? I couldn’t move my legs. Look how they move now!”

Her giggle is young and full of malice and glee and empty emotions that she shouldn’t know at that age. That no one should know. Listening to her approach, he doesn’t even realize he’s still reciting the Lord’s Prayer, and even if he did he wouldn’t expect it to bring him comfort or any hope of salvation. The Lord has abandoned him. He’d abandoned him a long time ago. He’d seen what they’d done, and for the past thirty years Reverend Barker has known he’d been speaking sermons in a soulless church that his disgusted God has vacated.

Still, climbing onto the small raised wall and clinging to the side, he feels a wave of self-pity rush through him.

I didn’t know what else to do! I was very young! I didn’t know what else to do!

Forgive me!” Whether he’s speaking to her or his God he’s unsure. Whichever can give him the opportunity of salvation.

Looking down, he is sure that in the gloom he can see children peering out from behind the gravestones. A few are smiling up at him, unpleasant smiles, their teeth and eyes glinting sharply in the pale light, but others are hiding their faces or covering their ears. He doesn’t know which group terrifies him most.

Rain stings his eyes. It is madness, of course. All madness. It has to be. The madness of guilt catching up with him. Below, a boy in a baseball cap, sitting cross-legged on a tomb so old that the name has worn away long ago, waves and winks, his finger curling, signaling for the vicar to come.

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“There is always a choice, Reverend. Everyone always gets a choice.” Her voice is young and playful, yet so very vile. The devil’s voice. Squeezing his eyes shut, he presses his face into the granite. He doesn’t look at her. He doesn’t need to. He knows she’ll have one shoe on and one shoe off, her knee-high white socks pulled neatly up to her knees under her tartan skirt. Her blond hair will be perfect and her eyes clear and innocently blue. Just as she was then. Just as she always will be. For ever and ever, amen.

“Now, your choice… “she purrs almost seductively, the tone jarringly wrong in a child, “is do you want to jump, or do you want me to push you?” She giggles again. “You see? Everyone has a choice. Even you.”

Tears are running down his face, and keeping his eyes closed, not wanting the last thing he sees to be her or any of the children-things below, he forces his shaking fingers to loosen their grip and lets himself fall forward.

“Thy will be done…” The words are lost in the rain as he hits the ground, snapping his spine. And then there is silence.

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Dawn was breaking when Alex opened her eyes, still tired but knowing that sleep had gone again for another day. It didn’t stop her lying there for another ten minutes and trying to drift off, but as it did every morning, the panic eventually took hold, Dying. I’m dying. Really dying, and the only way she could deal with it was to get up and do something. But shit, she was exhausted.

Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she grabbed her dressing gown from the back of the door and crept down to the kitchen. Coffee. That’s what she needed. And maybe some toast. Something to shake away the unsettled feeling that had been left behind by the weird dream or whatever it was she’d had in the night. The memory of the whole surreal experience hadn’t faded like dreams normally do, and she could still almost feel that cold finger on her lips.

Sighing, she waited for the kettle to come to a boil on the old stove and then poured herself a very strong

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coffee laden with sugar. She’d be buzzing for hours on that amount of caffeine, but at least she’d feel awake. Leaning against the warmth of the oven, for comfort more than a need for the heat, she gazed aimlessly out into the gloomy day. The rain was still coming down hard, and it didn’t look like it was likely to stop, but the wind seemed to be dropping. For a while at least. Not that she really minded the rain. There was something special about summer storms.

Something outside of normal that she’d always loved. Yes, she loved the hot, clear days best, but if she couldn’t have those, then storms would do.

At six a.m. she’d eaten some toast, emptied the dishwasher from the previous night, and was about to go upstairs and shower when Simon wandered into the kitchen, dressed but disheveled and waving his mobile phone in the air at about shoulder height.

Alex smiled. “You’re dreaming if you think you’ll get a signal on that thing out here.”

Glancing up, obviously surprised to see her there, Simon almost dropped the tiny handset, and this time she couldn’t help a laugh. “Sorry I startled you. I’m an early riser. Do you want a coffee?”

“Yes, thanks. I’m not very good at lying in myself. Too many nights spent in hotel rooms around the world and having to report at god-awful times in the mornings.” His own smile was slightly sheepish as he sat down, but Alex found she liked it. She also liked the way his hair was still ruffled from sleep and blond stubble was starting to come through on his chin. Great, she thought, absently finger-combing her own long dark mane into some semblance of tidiness, just the

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complication I need. An attractive reminder of everything that couldn’t be.

Glancing at the phone he’d tossed down on the table, she couldn’t help but wonder who he’d needed to call at this time in the morning. Probably a girlfriend. In fact, definitely a girlfriend. Somehow, the idea of him being a taken man made her feel better. And anyway, after seeing her first thing in the morning, he wouldn’t exactly be finding her very sexy. She was well aware of the bags under her eyes and the tiredness that clung to her skin, and the pajamas she’d chosen to wear were hardly adding to her sophisticated image.

As she poured the water into his mug and slid it over to him, the checked trousers and top felt all too obviously awful. But then style hadn’t really been at the top of her list of considerations recently. Biting her lip, she was angry at herself. Why the hell did she care, anyway? What would be the point of him finding her as attractive as she did him? It would all just end in more pain for her, which she could live without on top of everything else. Live without. Live without or die without.

He added a sugar to the mug. “Is the signal bad round here then?”

“Well, the phone companies will tell you differently, but you can barely get a signal in the village on a clear blue-skied day.” She nodded toward the window.

“But in this, you’ve got no chance.”

“Christ, how great is that. Obviously all us Londoners would go into complete mental meltdown at the thought of no mobile phones, but there is something appealing about a life that quiet.”

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Grinning, she put two slices into the toaster for him and drawled in her strongest Somerset accent, “Well, we may be slightly backward down here, but we do have landlines. There’s one over on the wall by the fridge if you want to use it.” She raised an eyebrow. “Cordless and everything.”

“Thanks.” He smiled again. “And sorry if it sounded like I was accusing you of still burning witches down here.”

“Ah, but we do. Although only on Tuesdays.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” He held the handset to his head for a moment or two, then quizzically clicked the receiver button down. “I think you may have spoken a little too soon about the phones. It seems as if this one isn’t working.”

Swapping the phone for the plate of toast, Alex held it to her own ear. He was right. There was no dial tone; just emptiness.

“I guess the storm must have brought the lines down.” She clicked the button again, just to double check. “It was pretty fierce out there last night.”

Checking her watch, she saw it was coming up for half-past six. “Look, why don’t you eat your breakfast, and then at seven we’ll wander down to the shop. Alice is always open by then and we can try her phone. It may be just the lines up this end of town that are gone.”

“Sounds like a good plan. It’d be nice to take a look around, as well. Driving up yesterday I could see how beautiful this part of the world is. I bet even in this weather the village is pretty stunning.”

“Oh, yes,” she grinned, placing her plate and mug in the sink and heading upstairs for the shower. “We’re full of country charm down here.”

“I can see that.” He retorted to her retreating figure, 41

and Alex allowed herself a brief moment of happiness at the mild flirting. Maybe the pajamas weren’t that bad after all.

She quickly showered and pulled on her jeans, a white T-shirt, and a sweater before scraping her still-wet hair back into a ponytail. There was no point in drying it, because the minute she stepped outside it would be soaked again. For a second she glanced at her unused makeup bag, then grabbed it and shoved it into the top drawer of her dressing table, out of sight. There was no point in it. He’d made one flirtatious remark, and all her resolve had dissolved as if she was a giggly schoolgirl without a care in the world. Yanking her socks on, she dragged her oldest sneakers out from the bottom of the closet. And that definitely wasn’t how it was. Another two months or so and then it was seriously downhill for her. And there was no point in trying to forget it. As if she ever bloody could.