The Girl Who Never Came Back (5 page)

Twenty years ago

Having played with Ruth for a few hours, Charlotte had finally managed to slip away. Now she stood alone at the side of the tow-path, facing the cave, and she knew exactly what she had to do.

And why she had to do it.

Placing a hand on her belly, where there was still a faint, fluttering pain, she tried to persuade her adventurous half to hold on just a little longer. She felt that there must be a chance she could revive that other voice in her head, if only she could prove to it that there was still some point in sticking around. It was quite obvious to Charlotte that the previous day's events had struck a mortal blow to Ettolrahc, and that her timidity in the face of her mother and sister had made her adventurous side give up on her entirely. Each tear that flowed down Charlotte's face had probably seemed like a dagger to Ettolrahc, cutting her again and again until she was struck down by death itself. There must have been a lot of blood, even if only a few specks had leaked out of Charlotte's body.

"It's okay," Charlotte whispered, staring at the cave's dark entrance. "I'll show you." It felt silly to talk to herself, but she felt that she had to give some kind of verbal encouragement to Ettolrahc. "We'll be brave together," she added, "and I'll show you that I'm not weak."

Despite these words, however, she felt desperately scared. The cave had always been considered out of bounds, and Charlotte's mother had warned her over and over again to never go inside. Still, in recent days, an argument of unprecedented ferocity had been raging inside Charlotte's head. The adventurous Charlotte had wanted to go exploring, to plunge into the darkness and see what might be found, whereas the cautious Charlotte had wanted to just play the way they always played on a warm summer's day. Eventually, the cautious Charlotte had won out, but in doing so she seemed to have struck a mortal blow to Ettolrahc. There had been a little unease between the two voices in her head, of course, but she had never guessed that the result could be blood. As she stood in the mouth of the cave, barefoot and nervous, she tried to ignore her fear, and she allowed only the faintest flicker of doubt to cross her features.

She couldn't help but glance back over her shoulder yet again, toward the house. She knew that her mother would react with horror if she knew about this little adventure. This was Charlotte's timid, respectful side; always worried about the repercussions, and always convinced that she'd end up being told off and sent to her room. This part of her, so often in control, was now just a passenger, as she forced herself to remember that everything she was doing, she was doing for Ettolrahc's sake. Ultimately, if it came down to a battle between Ettolrahc's influence and that of her mother, it was Ettolrahc who would win every time.

"Okay," Charlotte whispered, aware that there was no point delaying things any longer. "Okay."

Slowly, she started walking forward into the wet cave, her bare feet instantly feeling cold. She was convinced that at any moment, the witch of the cave might leap out and make her presence known, and Charlotte had already managed to conjure up all sorts of horrific visions of how the witch might look; perhaps she'd be a green-skinned, wart-covered monster with a stove hat; or maybe she'd be an old crone, with straggly long hair and rounded, swollen joints; worst of all, she might look like a normal woman, her power hiding deeper beneath the surface and behind a pair of calm, seductive eyes. Charlotte wanted to be ready for any eventuality, yet she also believed that the witch would probably be capable of surprising her with another form entirely.

Barely a few meters into the cave, the light was already low. Charlotte could hear water running somewhere beneath the rocks upon which she was standing, as a smaller river flowed somewhere in the darkness.

A drop of cold water fell from the wet roof and landed on the back of Charlotte's neck, causing her to take a shocked step back and, in the process, almost knocking her off her balance. She paused for a moment and took a deep breath, almost losing her confidence and bravery. Almost, but not quite. She steeled herself before reaching down and wiping some dirt from the soles of her feet, hoping that cleaner skin might give her a better grip on the wet rocks. As she made her way forward, she could hear drips deeper in the cave, echoing as they hit the water. It was like being in another world entirely, but she kept telling herself not to be scared: after all, at the first sign of trouble, she could just turn and run back out. Escape was always an option.

"Hello?" she called out. The word immediately echoed all around her, as if the witch had caught her voice and shattered it into a million little pieces.

She waited as the echoes died away.

Her belly gave another twist of pain, as if Ettolrahc was stirring. Charlotte felt certain that by proving her bravery, she could bring her old friend back to life and stop the blood. She just needed to keep going.

When she reached the edge of the rocks and looked down into the water, she knew she should turn around. Still, she'd been hoping to find something a little darker and more unusual, something that absolutely, irrevocably belonged to this new underground world, so she clambered up the side of another rock until she was balanced delicately on the top, looking down into shadows that looked as if they were ready to gobble her up. She wobbled a little, her dirty hands constantly seeking fresh purchase on the rock's dark, wet surface. Using her knees, she turned around a little and peered further back into the cave. The darkness seemed to go on forever, and she was tempted to think that maybe the cave never ended.

"Hello?" she called out again, starting to feel the cold, damp air on her skin. "My name's Charlotte Abernathy! I'm looking for the witch!" As soon as the words left her mouth, she knew that they sounded stupid and childish, but she still believed that this was the only way she could possibly revive Ettolrahc. Despite the freezing cold of the cave, she hoped that Ettolrahc might suddenly warm her from within.

Spotting another rocky outcrop nearby, she decided to go a little further. She strengthened her grip with one hand, while reaching out with the other to the next rock, hoping to straddle the two and then make a crossing. The job was delicate, and she knew full well that she had to be careful, but after a moment she was able to bridge the two rocks. Maneuvering her knees, she tried to swing one leg out to the other rock, but she found the distance to be a little further than she'd imagined. Pausing for a moment, she realized that she was in a difficult position, and that going backward would be no easier than going forward. Taking another deep breath, she used the tips of her fingers to grip the next rock before reaching over with her other hand. One of the voices in her mind told her to jump, while the other voice told her to be careful. The argument became increasingly heated, and the girl scrunched up her face as she tried to drown them both out, but finally she let out a gasp of frustration.

"Please!" she shouted.

And that's when her knee slipped against the first rock, instantly sending her tumbling down into the darkness below. Within just a couple of seconds, the only sound was the continued dripping of water from the roof of the cave, and it was as if Charlotte had never been there at all.

Part Two

Sinking

Twenty years ago

"Mummy!" Charlotte shouted, her voice filled with pain and fear and tears. "Mummy, help me! Please!"

She waited, gulping at the air as she tried to stay calm. The pain from her snapped ankle had become so intense and overpowering, she could barely even think. All she knew was that she was cold and alone down in the darkness of the cave, and she couldn't understand why her mother was taking so long to find her. Surely she must know? Surely she must have heard her cries?

Reaching down, Charlotte fumbled in the pitch darkness as she ran her fingers down her leg until she reached the site of the immense pain. The tips of her fingers ran against torn, bloodied skin, and suddenly she felt a sharp jolt of pain as her fingertips touched something hard and jagged. A piece of bone was jutting out the side of her ankle.

"Mummy," Charlotte whimpered for a moment, before realizing that whimpering would no good. She needed to be loud. "Mummy!" she screamed at the top of her voice. "Mummy! Help!"

Today

"And the last time you saw Sophie, was... what time exactly?"

Standing in the kitchen, the two police officers had cautious, sympathetic looks on their faces, which Charlotte figured they must have had drummed into them on some kind of sensitivity training course. They were doing a very good job of pretending to be taking the whole situation seriously, even though Charlotte was convinced that they were probably, secretly, finding it hard to deal with Ruth's histrionics. It had only been three hours since Sophie had gone down to play by the river, and Charlotte felt that it had been an overreaction to call the police. Then again, she was also very much aware that her sense of perspective was probably warped.

"I've told you this a thousand times already," Ruth said, fiddling with a tissue as she sat, red-eyed and tear-stained, at the kitchen table. She was filled with a kind of calmness that seemed poised to explode at any moment. "It was lunchtime. My husband was in here making a salad..." She paused for a moment. "My sister, as usual, was flitting about the place, and my mother, as usual, was drinking. It was about half twelve, and Sophie said she was going to go and play." Her voice began to tremble for a moment. "That's all she wanted to do," she continued, with tears rolling down her cheeks. "She wanted to play..."

"And how long was it before you noticed she was missing?" the male police officer asked, writing something in his notebook.

"About ten minutes," Ruth replied, taking a deep breath as she tore pieces off the tissue. "It can't have been more than that. I'm not a bad mother. I just let her play for a few minutes, and then I looked down toward the river, and there was no sign of her."

"I noticed she wasn't there a few minutes earlier," Charlotte added.

"You did
what
?" Ruth asked, turning to her sister with a shocked look on her face.

"Just a couple of minutes earlier," Charlotte continued hesitantly, wondering if it had been strictly necessary to make such an admission. "I didn't think anything of it at the time -"

"You didn't think anything
of
it?" Ruth asked, the anger building in her voice once again. "Are you fucking kidding me? My daughter disappeared from view and you thought there was no reason to
mention
it?"

"It wasn't just me," I reply, looking over at Tony. "You looked out the window too, remember? You saw she wasn't there!"

Ruth turned to her husband, and it was clear that she was quickly forming the opinion that everyone else was to blame for Sophie's disappearance.

"I might have glanced over," Tony said hesitantly, "but I wasn't exactly looking for her."

"Let's all stay calm," said the female police officer, turning to Charlotte. "When you say a couple of minutes -"

"Two, tops," Charlotte replied. "I just looked out the window and noticed I couldn't see Sophie, but I figured she was just out of sight. You know, behind a tree or something. Doing kid stuff."

"Well that's alright then," Ruth said, fixing her sister with a look of pure hatred. "Maybe that's still where she is, huh? Behind a fucking tree?"

"Ninety per cent of the time," the male officer said, interrupting what was threatening to turn into a full-blown tirade, "children are found very quickly once we've been called in. It's simply a matter of making sure that people in the area are aware of the need to keep an eye out. I want to make it very clear to you that the odds of someone snatching your daughter are very small. Most likely, she's simply wandered off somewhere -"

"Or she's hurt," Ruth interjected.

"We're not ruling anything out," the male officer replied.

"I'm afraid our family doesn't have a very good track record when it comes to missing children," Ruth said bitterly, staring at Charlotte with an expression that made her anger very visible. "Ask my sister."

"I'm sorry?" the officer replied.

"Ask her," Ruth continued, her words dripping with disdain.

Charlotte felt her heart sink as everyone in the room turned to her. She'd known that the subject would have to come up eventually, but she'd been hoping to put it off for as long as possible. Whenever she had to talk about her past, she always felt that a whisper of suspicion was laid at her feet, now more than ever.

"It was twenty years ago," she said with a sigh. "It's really not going to be relevant."

"What happened?" the female officer asked.

"It doesn't matter..."

"Please," the male officer said, "let us be the judge of that. Just tell us what happened to you."

"I was eight years old," Charlotte replied, figuring that there was no point delaying the inevitable. "I was playing in the garden with my sister, with Ruth, and..." She paused for a moment, trying to think back to that long-ago day before hitting the mental wall that always prevented her from remembering. "I don't really remember it very well," she continued, "but apparently I went off by myself, down to the river, and I ended up going into this small cave up near the bridge, and..."

"And she disappeared," Ruth said, as if the words sickened her. "To cut a long story short."

"For how long?" the male officer asked.

Charlotte and Ruth exchanged a worried glance.

"A day?" the female officer asked. "A couple of days?"

"A year," Charlotte said eventually, before clearing her throat nervously. "There was an extensive search. I'm sure you have records in your system somewhere. Police dogs, helicopters, national appeals, you name it. Everyone looked for me, but eventually, after a few weeks, the media moved on and..." She paused again. "They could never work out of I'd had an accident, or been snatched or whatever, but after a year they'd pretty much given up on the idea that I'd ever be found -"

"That's not true," Ruth said firmly.

"Yeah," Charlotte replied, "it kind of is. Ask Mum. And then, exactly a year later to the day, I came wandering up to the house from the bottom of the garden, from near the river. No memory, no recollection of where I'd been or anything. I was just... back!"

"Maybe the witch took you," Ruth muttered with clear disdain.

"There must have been an investigation," the male officer said, clearly taken aback by the tale.

Charlotte nodded.

"It was all Charlotte's little mystery," Ruth said bitterly. "She always claims she doesn't remember a thing, and that we should all just stop asking where she was. She acts like it doesn't really matter. An eight-year-old girl vanishes for a year, and when she comes back, everyone's supposed to just shrug and get on with their lives."

"I didn't say that it doesn't matter," Charlotte replied, forcing herself to stay calm. "I said that I don't remember what happened."

"And you don't want to find out, either, do you?" Ruth replied.

"Not particularly," Charlotte muttered.

"See?" Ruth said, turning to the police officers. "See what I have to put up with here? What kind of person doesn't even care about what happened to her while she was missing?"

"And you really don't know where you were for a year?" the female officer asked. "That... must be quite a difficult thing for you to get your head around."

Charlotte shrugged.

"She refuses to try psychotherapy," Ruth muttered. "It's like she doesn't want to know where she was for a whole year. Either that, or she's lying her ass off and she just doesn't want to say."

"This isn't about me," Charlotte continued, determined to get the focus back onto Sophie. "What happened to me is just a coincidence. It's not gonna help anyone find Sophie any quicker, is it?" She paused. "I mean, that's why we're here, right? To find Sophie? Not to rehash everything that happened with me."

"But in both cases," the female officer added, "the missing child was eight years old?"

Charlotte nodded wearily.

"Same age," Ruth said firmly, "same place, same family. Is that really a coincidence?"

"This is some kind of sick joke," Tony said, still staring out the window. "It has to be. Someone's doing this on purpose, to torture us." He paused, before turning to the police officers. "Couldn't that be it? Someone wants to mess with our heads, and they know about what happened before, so they've done this because they want to watch us squirm. There's no other explanation."

"Do you have any enemies?" the male officer asked.

Ruth shook her head.

"Miracle of miracles," Charlotte muttered under her breath.

"The house is very remote," the female officer pointed out. "Where's your nearest neighbor?"

"About four miles away," Ruth replied, her voice trembling. "We've already phoned everyone in the area, but no-one's seen her. They're all going to keep an eye out and search their out-buildings, just in case she turns up." She paused for a moment. "You need to..." Her voice trailed off, and she put her head in her hands, clearly starting to sob. "Divers," she blurted out eventually, taking big gulps of air. "You need to check the river! She might -" Before she could finish, put her head in her hands and began to sob. "You need to check the river," she said eventually, as tears dripped down onto the kitchen table. "She might have been washed away..."

"We're going to do everything in our power to find your daughter," the male officer said, glancing over at Charlotte for a moment before turning back to Tony, who had hurried over to put an arm around his wife. "I need someone to draw up a list of any places in the area that she might have gone. Parks, buildings, school... any place she might be familiar with. If she's lost, she might head to a familiar location and hope that someone comes to find her. Children sometimes do that if for some reason they're disorientated. If that's the case, we need to get to her before nightfall. I'm sure the temperature could get pretty low after dark."

"There are a few places," Tony said. "There's are a couple of parks we go to sometimes, and there's the dog shelter, and -"

"Can you write them down for me, Sir?" the office said, passing him the notebook and a pen. "Anywhere you can think of. It might seem silly, but we have to check every possible location. Would you describe Sophie as being worldly-wise? Do you think she'd be good at looking after herself?"

Charlotte couldn't help but grin at the suggestion.

"She's eight years old," Tony said, as Ruth continued to sob at the table. "How worldly-wise can an eight-year-old girl be?"

As the discussion continued, Charlotte waited a few minutes before slipping over to the door and heading out into the garden. She'd been feeling suffocated in the house, as if somehow everyone was blaming her for Sophie's disappearance. Standing on the porch and staring down toward the river, she waited for some sign of life; anything that might indicate Sophie's sudden return. Although she fully understood the seriousness of the situation, she hadn't yet given up hope that this was all some kind of huge misunderstanding, in which case Sophie might suddenly come running home, breathless with excitement after some kind of adventure and completely shocked that anyone was worried about her. That was the best-case scenario, at least.

"This must be very difficult for you," said the female officer, coming out to join her. "I'm sorry, we weren't introduced properly. I'm Eve Locklear. I do a lot of cases like this."

Charlotte nodded, preferring not to shake the woman's outstretched hand.

"I hope you don't mind," Eve continued, "but I'd like to ask you a few questions about the time you went missing."

"It's a pretty simple story," Charlotte muttered. "I went missing, and then a year later I came back. Apparently, anyway."

"Apparently?"

"It was twenty years ago," Charlotte replied, hoping to head off any questions as quickly as possible. "I was a kid, I really don't remember anything. Most of it, I just know from what I've been told."

"But you were away for a year?"

Charlotte nodded again.

"And you don't remember anything at all from that year? Not even a place or a face?"

"Nothing," Charlotte replied. "Before you mention it, my sister was lying. I
did
go and see a psychotherapist. I had several extremely tedious and expensive sessions before I finally figured I'd tried enough and there was no need to put myself through any more of that crap. I wasn't making any progress. Whatever I forgot, it's probably best left undisturbed."

Eve paused. "Were you examined for -"

"Yes!" Charlotte said firmly, keen to cut the question off. "I was poked and prodded once I came back and generally examined at great length. There was nothing wrong with me, and nothing had been done to me." She sighed. "That's the first thing everyone fucking things."

"But you must be curious about what happened," Eve replied. "If it was me, I'd be going crazy until I got an answer."

"People always say that," Charlotte replied with a sad smile. "People always think I must be traumatized by the whole thing, but the truth is, I've managed to rather successfully compartmentalize things and not think about it too much. I don't know if that makes me lucky or unlucky, or smart or dumb, but it's the truth. I'm not haunted by nightmares, I don't wake up sweating in the middle of the night, I have a perfectly reasonable sex life, I don't use drink or drugs to self-medicate my fears, I just..." She paused, aware once again of a faint tightening sensation in her chest. "I get by. I deal with any doubts I have, and I get on with life. There's no point wading back into the past."