Almost slipping on an icy step onto the next road, she listened out for more shouts and calls, but there were none. She had no chance of catching several teenagers, who were all wearing trainers and had a head start. Two women came from around the corner with a group of children wearing skeleton outfits and holding plastic pumpkins that were bursting with sweets. She bent over, panting at the roadside as she held her waist, hoping that the stitch would pass before jogging back towards the scene. The women took the children into a house with a green light glowing in the window.
With every breath she took, a white mist coiled from her dry lips and dispersed into the darkness. Several lights were on in the terraced houses, curtains shut; no doubt their inhabitants were enjoying the fact that their working days were coming to an end. She hurried past the closed bakery, taking a shortcut behind it.
Gardens backed onto each side of the path. She almost kicked the chair that had been dumped against a fence, only just making out its outline as she squinted. Grabbing her phone from her pocket, she held its torch out and managed to avoid the half-singed mattress and the old fridge. She flinched as a dog bounded against the other side of a fence, barking and snarling. She picked up the pace a little until she crashed into a man coming from the opposite direction. ‘Sorry, I didn’t see you coming.’
His dark clothes and silent step had concealed his approach. She stopped and waited for him to pass but he remained standing right where he was. She flashed her phone up towards his face but he turned away. He oddly went back the way he came from, back towards the high street. Her vision was almost blurred as she tried to identify him, then she inhaled. Smoke and sweat, that’s what she could smell.
She pressed Briggs’s number on her phone and shivered. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t defend herself, but he’d unnerved her. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Harte, uniform have just arrived but the boy they attacked, he doesn’t want to say anything and is claiming that they were all just joking around. He then ran off too. I suppose we now have nothing.’
Her shoulders dropped.
‘Did you catch any of them?’
‘No. I lost them on Bentley Street.’ The man in front of her turned onto the high street and she exhaled. ‘See you in a minute.’ It was definitely the rude man from the café.
She ended the call and picked up the pace. As she came out onto the high street, she waved at Briggs and hurried across the road. PC Smith and PC Kapoor had joined him in the car. As Gina went to speak, she spotted the man standing at the street corner. Why was he staring at her? Like before, he was playing with the cuff of his coat, but this time he didn’t have his beanie hat on. She could see that he had no hair – or did he have a bit of hair? Maybe a crew cut? She glanced back at Briggs who was poking his head through the open window of PC Smith’s car. The rude man grinned before turning away and going back towards the backs of the gardens.
Briggs headed over to her. ‘I hate days like this when you don’t have much to go on. We’ll pull the CCTV from the church but I don’t think it will give us much. It’s not exactly covering this area well. I suppose we tried and we can only hope the boy comes forward to tell us more about the assault. You okay?’
She tore her stare from the brick of the closed accountant’s office where the man had just been standing. ‘Yes.’ But she wasn’t. When she got home, she was going to make sure all her doors were locked to the max and she knew she’d struggle to sleep. ‘That rude man in the café. I just saw him standing over there. Did you see him?’
‘No, he wasn’t there when I looked and I was looking for witnesses. In fact, after all the kids scarpered, there was no one around.’
That meant he’d been lurking around at the backs of the gardens, watching. She knew she’d got on the wrong side of him by the way he stared at her. The nape of her neck tingled.
Chapter Four
Now
Thursday, 29 October
As Tilly tripped over a clump of tree roots in the middle of the woods, she shrieked. ‘Katie, wait. This stupid dress. I know I shouldn’t have worn it and I don’t know why we came this way, I’m covered in mud.’
‘Don’t be silly. Logan is going to love you in the dress and it’s Halloween. No one else will be going as Frankenstein’s bride. It’s more original than my witch dress.’
Tilly rubbed the trail of blood from her knee before pulling the splinter out. ‘I can’t get up.’ She grabbed her phone and lit up the scene. ‘Why did you have to bring me this way? We should have got the bus.’ A few drops of rain began to fall.
‘But then we wouldn’t have this.’ Katie held up the bottle of cider that the old man purchased on their behalf from the corner shop.
‘I still wish we’d got the bus. It’s creepy out here and, besides, my mum would freak if she knew I was out here at night, especially with the flood warning out.’ Tilly grabbed onto a thick branch and pulled herself up. ‘I look a complete mess now.’
Katie pulled out her phone and took a photo. She batted the moth away with the other hand as it fought to reach the light on her screen.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Instagramming it. Send.’ She laughed, wiped the rain off her screen and popped her phone back into her bag.
‘Wait till later.’ Tilly shook her head and laughed. ‘Have you got any tissue or a make-up wipe?’
Katie nodded and began rummaging through her bag. ‘Here you go.’
As she cleaned the wound that the splinter had left, Tilly noticed her phone lighting up. ‘And queue the smarmy comments. Thanks, friend. I hate you sometimes.’
Katie giggled and opened the cider. ‘Did you hear the story about these woods? I think it was years ago, probably fifteen years ago or twenty years ago or more, I don’t know.’ She took a swig and offered the bottle to Tilly.
Tilly shook her head. ‘I don’t want to know while we’re in the woods. Tell me later when we’re at the party.’
‘You’re going to hear it anyway. Watch where you step. I know it’s a Halloween party and all, but I don’t want you to turn up covered in real blood or even dog muck. Right, the story. It was Halloween night, years ago, like proper olden times. A farm boy found out that his young love had been secretly seeing his older brother and his world fell apart when she told him that she’d accepted his proposal. He loved her more than anything but she didn’t feel the same. His rage built so much that he dragged her out into the woods where he’d already dug a hole. She said she didn’t love him and she also said that he was mad, so he buried her alive right where we’re standing. The story doesn’t end there. He not only took her life, but he slashed his own throat with a knife and died on top of her grave. Some people say that he rises every Halloween to look for another girl to bury, taking his revenge, over and over again. Logan told me that this happened only a few years ago; he’s heard the stories. A girl who looked just like the farm boy’s love is buried somewhere in these woods, trapped with her killer’s spirit forever. She roams on Halloween, along with all the other girls he’s exacted his revenge on. They don’t know they’re dead and search for a way out, but they can’t leave the woods. Imagine those poor girls, banging and clawing at the coffin as the oxygen was sucked out of the air. They never found his recent victim or any of them. It’s as if the earth they’re buried in fed on them; fed on their fear and misery. They still lie buried in these woods. I can feel them.’