What We Saw (21 page)

It was after tea, when Carla did her usual job of scavenging, that Gran told Adam to have a chat with me. She put her hand on my shoulder and smiled. Was she so naïve that she thought that I’d genuinely not heard about what had happened, or was she playing the part, just in case? Better to be safe than sorry, I suppose. I followed Adam into our room, moving Carla out of the way as I passed.

I perched on the edge of my bed as Adam shut the door and put his ear to it, checking that Gran and Granddad weren’t listening. For a split second, I deliberated the idea that maybe I’d got everything all wrong. Maybe Adam wasn’t really being completely honest about Emily. Maybe he was exaggerating things like he always did.

‘So, you got my note, I’m hoping?’

‘Yeah… well no, I don’t… what do you mean she’s missing?’

Adam sat back against the wall and scanned the room, biting at his already worn down nails. ‘She’s gone, Liam. Just… gone. Vanished. Her mum and dad don’t know where she is or anything. She’s just gone.’

My skin tingled as the room began to spin around me. My body went heavy under the reality of it all. ‘When?’ I asked.

‘Day before yesterday. Day you went running off with your dad. Found out that night that she’d done a runner in her sleep.’ Adam emphasised those last words. I knew what he was implying: kidnap. And who was I to argue with the suggestion?

‘And what’s this about Emily’s dad being mental?’

Adam rubbed his hands together and took a deep breath. ‘He cornered me when I was messing around down by the wasteground. Told me if I knew anything about this I’d be dead meat.’

I felt a streak of guilt run down my spine. If I hadn’t run off with my dad that day, none of this would have happened. We could have solved it earlier. Time was running out. Donald was already gloating and thinking people weren’t suspecting him, considering himself off the hook. For once, I had to admit to myself that it was my own fault. Adam was in the right, and he knew it. But nothing I could say could change anything now.

‘What are we supposed to do, Adam?’

Adam didn’t answer. He stared back at me instead, almost taunting me to come up with something myself. It was the least I could do for the runner I’d staged, leaving him here all on his own.

I contemplated my options for a moment and hunted for inspiration in the mash of jelly that was my brain. My head ached. ‘Do Gran and Granddad know you’re telling me about this?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, I think they have an idea. Gran wasn’t too keen, but they knew you’d find out eventually. And y’know, they know you give a damn about her. So it’s like, only fair really. That you do know.’

Give a damn about her.
I thought about how her hair tickled my face as we hugged. How her little hands shook as we touched each other’s fingers for the first time. I clutched my hands together, and told Adam the only rational thing that I could. ‘We go to the police.’

Adam blinked. ‘We can’t.’ He was completely still.

‘What do you mean, ‘we can’t?’ We have to, Adam, don’t you see? They’re going to be crawling the woods soon. We have to tell them about the body. About the ring and about everything before they find it. We have to point them in the right direction. Help them out.’

Adam’s kept his eyes fixed on mine. ‘This is our mystery, Liam. Not the police’s. Ours.’

I felt my throat closing up and hardening. For a second, I wanted to pound in his face, but I clutched my fist and resisted. ‘What the fucking hell do you mean it’s ‘ours’? Adam, you little idiot—a girl has gone missing. Her dad’s mental. And we sit around and do nothing? We’ve seen the body of another girl—god knows how old or young she was. How can you be so stupid? We saw the bruises on Emily. We know stuff. Stuff that could help. When will you ram it into your stupid little head that we aren’t good enough to solve this ourselves? We aren’t police officers. We’re nobodies. Just two little idiots who stumbled across something we shouldn’t have and let it swallow us up and ruin our lives. We’re obsessed. We need to take a step back. If you don’t, I will.’

Adam didn’t even move a muscle. He merely stared at me. His look was adult-like, that of a concerned father. ‘I can’t let you do that, Liam,’ he said.

My body grew hotter inside. I felt crushed and small again, miniscule. ‘What do you mean, you
can’t
let me do that?’

Adam reached into his pocket, and pulled out a piece of crumpled paper. ‘I know you’re probably sick of reading, but you need to take a look at this.’ He handed it to me.

I unfolded it. It was a newspaper article. Something about banking. Another thing about somebody seeing a UFO.

My heart froze when I saw her.

I looked up at Adam. ‘Wait… is that—is that her?’

Adam nodded slowly.

I switched my gaze back towards the paper. The eyes. Her skin looked so soft compared to how she’d been when we’d seen her.
‘Search Goes On For Missing Girl.’
It was the girl off the news, all those nights ago. Beth Swanson.
How had we overlooked something this big?

Adam pulled the paper out of my hand and folded his arms. My jaw dangled somewhere below me. I couldn’t think of what to say. My mind raced and the back of my neck ached from the crash.

‘Is it… are you sure?’ My hands trembled. I squinted at the picture. She looked the same. Or at least, she looked similar.

Adam shrugged. ‘Something still doesn’t really fit. The P.S. on the ring. What does that mean?’

I tried to picture the dead girl’s face on the girl in the paper, but it was different when you were looking at someone alive and smiling. ‘Still, it does seem too big to be a coincidence.’

Adam nodded in approval. ‘There’s only one way to find out.’

‘What are we going to do?’ I asked.

Adam took a deep breath and cleared his throat. ‘We’re going to go out into the woods. Tonight. We’re going to break into Donald’s shed, and we’re going to solve this thing once and for all, cuz.’

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The moonlight shone down on the caravan site. The sky hadn’t been this clear since the two of us had arrived. It seemed an eternity ago that Adam and I were stargazing in the middle of the woods with Donald, moths dancing in the upwards beam of the torchlight.

Adam and I walked side by side, both of us eager not to fall too far behind as to display weakness or go too far ahead as to suggest leadership. We had to stay in this together. Sneaking out of the caravan was easy enough. We had a quick sleep after our conversation, which Gran and Granddad put down to our fatigue from the events of recent days, and woke up around 1am, courtesy of a novelty vibrating wrist-watch Adam bought at a museum gift shop. I’d laughed at Adam when he’d bought it, but I guess it had come in handy after all.

Sneaking past Carla was probably the hardest part in our heads, but she lay still in her bed. Only her eyes followed us, like auto-aim on the shooting games for our Nintendo. Gran snored in the distance somewhere as I curved my hands around the cold metal of the handle, inching it downwards, begging it not to creak. We held our breath as we shot out of the door into the cold air outside, clicking the door gently back into place. We couldn’t risk a gust of wind making its way into the house and disturbing Gran and Granddad. The final hurdle was the egg-shell sounds of the stones as we crossed the driveway, which we walked across like a tightrope. After that, we were free.

The gates to the wasteground creaked as we climbed over them, being careful not to misplace our feet on the iron bars. It was pitch black, and we didn’t want to take a torch in fear of attracting some unnecessary attention, especially with what had happened to Emily. There could be police around, or Donald could be out there waiting for us. It could be a trap.

A walk through the wasteground was usually second nature. We’d passed through so many times that it was just natural. Yet here, in the pitch black, movement caught our eyes and sounds taunted our ears. Adam and I held hands, our fingers twitching as we edged our way towards the grey steps on the other side of the wasteground.

When our feet finally hit the bottom of the steps, we paused for a moment. Adam tugged his hand away from mine and stuffed it back into his pocket as if he’d never held it. The two of us hadn’t spoken a word on our journey so far. We were completely focused on what we had to do, and terrified of the consequences we might face if we were caught—or worse.

As we reached the summit of the steps, I turned to the left and Adam tugged at my arm. He shook his head. ‘We can’t go that way.’

‘Why not?’

Adam exhaled and swung his head to the side, scrunching his eyebrows. His whispers were increasing in volume and pitch. ‘Because think about it—Emily’s place is that way. If we go past her place and her dad is about we’re in big trouble.’

‘But… the only other way is…’ I looked up towards the road ahead of us, which ran parallel with Emily’s road. Both led to the mouth of the woods. The cabin was a few hundred feet in, ready to greet us.

Donald’s caravan was on the upper road.

‘I know, but…’ Adam quietened his voice, as he shouted in the silence of the night. ‘We go past Donald’s and we can see whether his lights are on, whether he’s up. If he is, then we go in our old den or something. I dunno.’

‘Yeah, but what if he comes in and finds us? He’ll get suspicious. He’ll know something’s up.’

Adam’s face was flat. He took a deep breath. ‘We’ve gotta try, Liam. It’s the only way.’

I rolled my eyes, out of view in the dark. ‘Okay, whatever. Now’s not the time for arguing. Let’s just get it done with.’

We approached Donald’s caravan on our tiptoes. My palms dripped with sweat. I didn’t want to look at the caravan in case I saw something. I’d rather not know. I was ready to run.

A jolt of fear lanced through my body as a light flickered on from the caravan. I went rigid.
He was awake, and he’d caught us. This was it.
I clamped my eyelids together.

The next thing I felt was a nudge.

I peeked through my eyes to see Adam grabbing my shirt. ‘It’s automatic,’ he mouthed, behind clenched teeth.

I felt tingly and light headed. I tried to calm myself again and pretended that I knew that it was an automatic light all along. Adam shook his head and carried on walking. I followed behind him, catching my breath.

I poked my head over the hedge as we walked past where Emily’s van was on the other road. There was a dim light glowing from somewhere inside—probably the living room or their bedroom.
Good job we took the top route after all.

When we reached the mouth of the woods, my head began to pound. I remembered what the doctor said and what Gran had said about resting, but it didn’t matter right now. It wasn’t important. Emily was in danger and something was in that cabin—something that could help us solve things once and for all. It had to be.
Maybe she’d been tied up in there or…
No. I didn’t want to think about the negatives. Only the positives.

Adam turned to me as we stumbled into the entrance of the woods. An animal called out somewhere in the trees. The trees were thick, like giants. It was so dark that the only thing visible was the brief outline of the cabin a few hundred metres into the woods. I was glad we wouldn’t have to walk any further than this. I grabbed Adam’s arm and we sped up, the sound of twigs cracking under our feet. As we turned to the right to make our way to the entrance of the shed, something rustled next to us. In my mind’s eye I pictured Donald’s anger and his bloodshot gaze as he suffocated the dead girl in soil and ants. I felt eyes staring back at me, waiting, before a small animal sprinted away from me.
Just a deer. Only a deer.
I patted Adam on his back as my chest loosened.

‘It’s not far up here,’ Adam whispered, his eyes scanning the woods. My arms felt cold and stiff. I didn’t want to look around, so I kept my focus on Adam. I didn’t want to see anything else. Not an animal, not anything.

We reached the door of the cabin and gave it a push. Nothing.

‘It’s no use,’ I whispered to Adam, shrugging.

Adam tapped his nose and reached into a pocket before pulling out one of Granddad’s hammers.

‘How did you—’ I was interrupted by the clang of a hammer against the rusty padlock. I crouched down and covered my ears. I didn’t want to hear the racket we were making. I didn’t want to know it was happening.

A few seconds later, I heard an almighty tumble and felt the warmth of a light behind me. I spun round, kicking up twigs, and saw that Adam had opened the shed door—in doing this, he had triggered a light. Adam lay on his hands and knees, half in and out of the shed.

My stomach sank as I realised a light was visible from the woods for all to see.

‘Quick, Adam,’ I shouted. ‘Get inside.’

Adam sat on his knees and stared at the hammer, stunned by his own strength. I jumped up and dragged him inside the shed before slamming the door shut. I collapsed back against the door, sweat dripping down my forehead.

We’d been loud and clumsy, but the main thing was that we were inside.

I looked around: the carpet was beige and stained with mould, the woods trying to swallow the cabin up and make it green. The walls were lined with books about nature and wildlife, the dust decorating their edges in the glow of the dim light. In the corner, there was a small, dark wooden desk and a chair with an old, green cushion on it, like one of those you’d find at an uncle and auntie’s that hadn’t redecorated for years.

But no sign of Emily. A few documents were scattered across the table. Pictures nestled in rusting frames.
How old was this stuff?

Adam looked round in awe, as if he were in a museum of things he’d always wanted to see. His mouth was wide as he looked up at every spot in the cabin. Our eyes danced around the interior, trying to focus and make sense of something that could give us a clue—maybe a cellar door, leading down to some secret underground lair. Maybe keys to some secret hiding place where Donald had carried out all his actions in the past and where all those gruesome truths were locked away. But there was nothing of immediate note. Just books, photos, and dust.