Prologue
The nightmare started the same as all the others. Screaming, terrible and tormenting, pitched like an animal caught in a trap desperately squealing for its life. It rattled through Beth Belmont’s bones, causing sweat to prickle on her skin. In the early hours, she awoke gasping, the screams still ringing in her ears.
‘Hey, it’s okay, just calm down.’ Her boyfriend, Josh, rolled over and folded his arms around her, holding her close, waiting until the shaking subsided and her breathing levelled out. Beth lay wide-eyed and staring into the darkness of their bedroom at the swollen shadows in every corner. ‘It was just a nightmare,’ he calmly assured her as he ran his work-hardened hands in circles over her lower back.
Just a nightmare.
Drawing in ragged breaths from this latest twilight terror, Beth focused on that.
It was just a nightmare.
The Green Day T-shirt she slept in was soaked through, her long dark hair damp and matted. How long had she tossed and turned while the phantom in her mind shrieked like a banshee?
‘Let’s try and get back to sleep.’
Josh was always keen to return to his slumber. He had to be up at dawn, with the birds, for another day labouring on the new super school that was being built on the edge of town.
Beth wanted to sleep too, but the screams lingered. Each nightmare stayed by her side like an unwanted bedfellow. Even though she could no longer hear them, she could feel them, scraping down her spine like sharpened claws, picking her apart at her very core.
‘What are you even dreaming about?’ Josh had asked early on in their relationship, his tired blue eyes holding her in a concerned stare.
‘Nothing.’ Beth knew that the answer came a little too easily. ‘I mean, I can’t remember.’
‘Your nightmares, they seem … intense.’ He tilted his thick neck to watch her. Josh – who slept like the dead – never so much as whimpered in his sleep.
‘Really, it’s nothing,’ her voice was strained, so she forced a smile, ‘lots of people have nightmares. Like night terrors. Honestly, I can’t even remember what they’re about.’
‘Well, okay then. As long as you’re all right, babe.’ He’d kissed her forehead and Beth wished that his touch had healing properties, like the kisses bestowed on her as a child when she scraped a knee or an elbow.
‘Let Mummy kiss it better,’ her mother would say, leaning in close, smelling of musky Dior perfume and cigarettes, scents that she shrouded herself in. A cloak for the senses.
But there was no kissing her nightmares better, no willing them away. Each night as Beth tucked herself in beside her boyfriend of three years, she knew what was coming – at some point, she’d wake in a pool of her own sweat, gulping deep, frantic breaths as though she’d been drowning. And the screams would continue to linger on the periphery of her mind, even when her eyes were bloodshot and wide open, a reminder that no one was ever truly free.
One
Neat. It has to be neat.
I remind myself of this as I lift the fountain pen in my hand and begin to guide it slowly and gracefully over the paper. I need silence. Stillness.
The bare bulb above me shakes. The tremble spreads across the ceiling like a stain.
‘Fuck.’
The pen is down and my blood pressure is up. Fucking Mrs Norris in number five is hoovering. Again. And the old crone will labour over it as she usually does, thanks to her arthritic knee.
‘It’s bad again,’ she always says through those wrinkled lips of hers each time I pass her in the stairwell. What does she expect me to do? Carry her? Cure her?
Now my whole flat is whirring along to the guttural groan of Mrs Norris’s cheap hoover. I glance at the clock hanging above my electric fire, forgetting that for the past week it’s been stuck at eight fifteen.
Batteries.
I grind my teeth, already knowing that I’ll forget this addition to my shopping list, thanks to the noise which is now reaching down from above and scratching against my bones. My focus has weakened these last months, along with my body. But I’m not done yet. There’s still a fire in the pit of my belly, one that takes all my energy to keep stoking. My hands tighten into fists. I could shout. I could grab the baseball bat by the front door and smack it against the ceiling until my arms begin to ache. But Mrs Norris would just go on hoovering, because she’s as deaf as she is lame.
No. I need to finish this.
The radio, or the television. I could turn one of them on, try to drown out the drone from upstairs. But I’m not quite sure if I paid the meter. And if I didn’t …
Squeezing my eyes closed, I force the darkness to find me. One breath in, one breath out. Slow. And steady. Just as Roger taught me.
Silver-haired Roger with all his suggestions.
Something flutters in my core. It could be regret, or it could be a delayed response to the tin of baked beans I’d eaten at lunch which were four months out of date. But my mum always said up to six months was fine, especially for a tin.
It’s nerves. It has to be.
I look down at the paper on the table. So neat. So crisp. The bulb above me swings back and forth. I begin to hum, growing louder so that the pressure builds in my head, in my ears. Eventually all I can hear is my own internal melody, Mrs Norris and her hoover overpowered. I close my fingers around my fountain pen, gripping tight. I write down the first name. Then the second. And then I deliberate over the third, as this is the one that matters. This is the one that needs to stick, that needs to work.
Satisfied, I lean back and admire my handiwork. I’ve stopped humming. And Mrs Norris has stopped hoovering. My skin prickles in the silence. Now it’s working against me, needling up close and lingering on the back of my neck. When I was writing I needed it, but now …
I close my eyes, surrendering myself again to the darkness, and open my mouth wide. The scream I release is piercing, burning my throat. But no one will come running. No one ever does.
When I open my eyes again, I don’t know how much time has passed, only that my throat is raw and my palms are clammy. I imagine you running, sprinting through the sunlight. All of this hard work. For you. For us. For all of us.
I’ve never liked the woods. But you do. So this is where it needs to be. Where I need to be. Two trains and one bus, that’s what it’s taken to get me here. It’s late. And dark. The trees are still, not stirred even in a gentle rustling. The silence is suffocating. I should turn back. But I’ve come too far now.
I shake out my hands, fingers stiff. Cold – why is it so damn cold? With only moonlight to guide me, I scurry down a twisting path. Something stirs in the undergrowth. Instinctively, I crouch down low. Not that I need to. I’m surrounded only by shadows. No one else is here so late. But it’s not always that way. Some nights as I’ve wandered these woods, I’ve caught laughter on the breeze, laced with the scent of weed. I’ve let it fill my lungs and draw me back in time. But the spell never lasted long enough. The hoot of an owl, the rustle of leaves, I’m always snapped back into the moment far too soon.
But tonight I won’t let anything distract me. I feel buoyant with purpose. Tonight, finally, I get to act. If I could see myself, I know I’d be smiling. Too long have I waited, have I dwelt on how to proceed.