The Taken (24 page)

She sighed as she moved into the hallway. Maybe she shouldn’t have snapped at Alex like that, but she

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couldn’t help it. Alex was too young to know, to understand the sacrifices that had been made all those years ago. And it hadn’t been meant. That was all that had kept her going over the years and she imagined it was the same for the others. There was nothing angelic about Melanie Parr, and it wasn’t meant. Not much of a way to get through life, but country people were hardy. They knew how to cope. She knew how to cope. And she would damn well learn to cope with it again.

Her eyes drifted back to the empty blackness of the night through the window and, lost in her disturbed thoughts, it took a moment before she heard the steady drip of water. Where was that coming from? Turning, she looked to the taps of the kitchen sink, but they were shut tight. She listened again. Wherever it was coming from, it was inside the house. Mildly irritated, this combined with the bathroom door slamming convincing her that Daniel had left windows open somewhere, the torrent from outside no doubt soaking the carpet, she stepped into the hall. And then the world stopped. It seemed that Mary wasn’t so crazy, after all.

Melanie Parr stood in the hallway, her clothes and hair soaked from the storm outside, water dripping from the hem of her skirt and forming a large pool beneath her on the polished wooden floorboards. If I don’t get that up soon it’ll ruin the polish. Ada’s eyes stared at the water, and the feet at its center. One shoe on, one shoe off. Somewhere inside her breath rattled too fast in her lungs, the beating of her heart uneven. A dull ache shot down her left arm. She thought that maybe she should scream, but the tightness in her chest wouldn’t let the air out.

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She stared at Melanie, who smiled at her, water dribbling over her bottom lip as if a whole river were in her mouth, spilling out in a steady waterfall and running down her clothes. Melanie’s grin stretched as she spoke, her words gurgling so that Ada wasn’t sure if she’d said, “It’s time to play” or “Its time to pay,” but as the long-gone child took a step toward her, her cold, blue hands reaching out, Ada decided, from somewhere within her terror, that it really didn’t matter. Both were probably true; it was just a matter of perspective.

Alex woke up the way she had in the first few terror-filled days all those months before: with a sudden, sharp intake of breath, her torso reaching upward, heart beating so fast that for a moment she couldn’t let the air out of her lungs for the tightness of her ribs. Eventually, her eyes focused on the room around her instead of the horror that had allowed itself free rein in her mind as the subconscious ruled. Her hair felt sweaty and greasy against her head and she pushed it away from her face. Her skin was clammy under her fingers too.

That was bad That was worse than it had been in a long time.

As if a remnant of her dreams needed to remind her that the nightmare still existed in the daylight hours, a sharp knife twisted in her lower gut, forcing her to curl up in the sheets, her knees tucked beneath her chin, eyes squeezed shut. It was several minutes before she could open them again, the pain easing to a tolerable level. Maybe not something she’d have considered bearable a year ago, but she was learning fast that your limits could change. Part of the adaptability of the

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species; the good old human race. She still had a couple of months before things got really bad. The tears she bit back had nothing to do with the pain and everything to do with the sudden blackness she saw in the future. A few months and then … nothing.

Frustrated, she sat up again, ignoring the ache of everything that was her, body and soul. It was the dreams. That was it. That’s what had made the fear rear its ugly head. Think of Simon. Think of last night. Still alive. Here and now.

Glancing down, she could see his sleeping form in the gloom of the dawn, his body turned away, lost in his own dreams or nightmares or just the blackness of unconsciousness. His back looked broad and strong and she wondered just how much those shoulders could carry. How would he cope if she told him the truth? You never could tell with people. Maybe he wouldn’t find her attractive anymore.

After all, who wanted to fuck the living dead?

Biting the inside of her mouth, she looked toward the sound of the rain pattering steadily against the window, knowing she was being unfair. But it was hard to be otherwise. Life was unfair. Too unfair. Slowly peeling the covers back, not wanting to wake Simon, she eased herself out of bed and carefully pulled the remaining few painkillers out of her jeans pocket. At some point she was going to have to go back to the farmhouse and pick up her morphine. Nothing else was even going to touch the sides of her pain. Still, the over-the-counter pills were all she had for now. She padded silently to the en suite bathroom, and leaving the light off, shut the door, just making do with the pale light coming through the small bathroom window. Running the cold tap, she scooped a handful of

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water to swallow the pills with and then ran some through her hair before standing upright, enjoying the trickle of the water as it made its way down her naked body and staring out into the heavy gloom. Laura was out there somewhere with little Peter. How were they feeling now? Were they even still alive?

Standing there in silence, she could almost hear the ticking of all of Watterrow’s clocks, each man, woman, and child’s individual timepiece working away, unwinding, a cacophony of heartbeats that slowly came together as one, as if the village were one entity instead of a hundred or so tiny, inconsequential lives, breathing toward their eventual ends.

“Alex.”

The urgent whisper of her name came out of nowhere and she spun round, her eyes frantically taking in every corner of the bathroom. It was empty. Her own heart and its tiny, inconsequential beat now drowned out the collective as she stood frozen and wide-eyed. There was no one there. Oh shit. Here we go again. Her mouth dried.

“Alex.”

The word came from behind her, and she turned again, this time expecting to see someone or something other than herself staring back from the bathroom mirror, but it was only her own trembling eyes and half-opened mouth that greeted her.

Who the fuck was calling her if there was no one there? Maybe it’s Simon. Maybe he’s woken up. Maybe your fucked up body is playing tricks on you and it only seems like the voice is coming from in here. Stepping forward she tugged open the bathroom door and looked into the bedroom. Simon was still lying on his side, unmoved

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from when she’d left. She hovered in the doorway, most of her unsurprised to see him still sleeping, immune to everything. Because it wasn’t Simon’s voice, was it? And you knew that. It was the voice of a child. Still, she took a step forward, wanting to wake him, wanting to flick a switch and bring some bright yellow normalcy back. Suddenly her urge to touch him and feel his warmth was overwhelming.

“Don’t wake him, Alex!”

The urgency in the hissed voice stopped her dead, and despite the ache of loneliness inside, she slowly turned again toward the bathroom. Through the doorway the room’s emptiness taunted her, but stepping back into it, she felt her heart calming. Maybe this was madness. Maybe this was a dream or nightmare.

But whatever it was, she could deal with it. She was dying. She had terminal cancer and whatever was going on in here couldn’t compete with that. She pushed the door closed behind her, shutting Simon on the side of sanity. “Where are you? What do you want?” Her own whisper seemed to fill the void in a way that the other hadn’t, as if it wasn’t anchored to the here and now.

“We haven’t got much time. Look up, Alex. Look up.”

Her eyes lifted and her breath caught. The little boy that had come to her bedside was lying on the ceiling looking down at her, the bright checks on his tank top instantly recognizable. His arms were pressed to his sides, that slightly too long haircut hanging down, the mud still making a dry pattern on his sleeves, even though his face shone with dampness. His eyes bore into hers as she stared at him and could see fear and terrible loneliness in them.

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“What do you want from me?”

“You have to come in between. Into the storm. You have to come with me. While she’s busy.”

A flash of Ada Rose’s face consumed by pain and panic filled Alex’s head, and then she saw Mary— Mary in a bath gone cold with blood everywhere. Gasping, she clutched at the sink behind her. How was she seeing these things? Were they real?

“You’re the only one that can come. We have to go now.”

Gray reality attacked her so suddenly, the images of the women gone, that her legs buckled slightly under her.

“What if I don’t want to go?”

She stared at the boy again, and his face contorted with the effort of lowering one arm to reach for her.

“You have to. The children are there. No one else can go there. Please come.

Please come.”

Looking up at the desperation in his young face, she knew she had no choice. Her heart thumped loudly inside her. Whatever the in between was, that’s where she was going. She wondered for a moment if she were going insane as she contemplated what she was about to do.

“Who are you?” she whispered as she raised her hand to reach his.

“I’ll show you.”

Once again touching the cool damp of her fingers, she felt moisture spring out of every pore in her naked body, not sweat but rain, stale and musty, ripe with the scent of the earth as if it had fallen centuries before and yesterday. A rain from a time where no clocks ticked. Her breath hissed in, shocked, but the boy’s fingers closed tightly around hers.

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“It’s always raining in between. Now shut your eyes.” There was so much sadness in his young voice that she followed his command and let her eyelids settle shut, sealing her in darkness, and she folded her other hand protectively around his. She felt her hair lift slightly with the hint of a breeze, and then they were gone.

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The air shifted and she knew before she opened her eyes that the bathroom was gone, perhaps so far away that she wondered briefly if she’d ever find it again.

Beneath her feet she could feel damp leaves and twigs pressing into the soles of her feet. I’m not dressed, I didn’t get dressed… Her lids flicked upward and the thought stopped. She may have been naked when she took the boy’s hand, but she was clothed now. Above her bare feet there was the hem of a dress, almost ankle-length, bright even in the weird green glow that filled everything, a gypsy-white cotton dress flowing out from her slim waist. Without even looking at the bodice she knew there would be a small embroidered pattern of blue flowers there, and lifting her free hand she ran her fingers over it, proving its existence. It was her mother’s dress. Alicia’s dress. The one she was wearing in the old photograph on Mary’s dresser. The one she was buried in.

Alex’s dark hair hung over her

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shoulders and she touched it, needing a sense of her own reality.

Maybe this is a dream after all. Or maybe, like Alice in the book that had terrified her as a child, she’d just tumbled down the rabbit hole to a world of surreal insanity. Perhaps that was closer to the truth. Under the dry fabric of the dress she could still feel dampness coming from within her skin and soaking the inside of her lungs as she breathed in and out. It’s always raining in between.

She looked down at the child holding her hand, her eyes squinting to see. There was no darkness or sunlight, instead only the sickly green glow lighting everything as if she were wearing night vision goggles or watching a surreal effect in a movie.

“Is this real?” Even her voice sounded watery. The little boy shrugged.

“It is for me. It is for us. There is nothing else.”

Seeing the tiredness and age in his young eyes, Alex thought about her cancer.

There was always something else. There was always death. Although here, wherever this place was, maybe death wasn’t so close-by. Her body felt odd, almost numb, the pain and discomfort she was so used to living with no longer there, as if along with time her cancer had stopped. Just for a while. Was that what happened in the in between? Did the clocks stop?

“How did you get here? Where is here?” She asked the question and then shook her head, distracted. She could hear sounds and laughter in the rustle of the trees and for the first time, she really looked around her, past the green hue and the dress and the madness. “We’re in the woods. I know these woods!” Her 245

excitement lit her eyes. “Is this where Laura and Peter are? Are they lost in the woods? We’ve got to find them. Can you help me find them?” These were the woods she had played in as a child, the woods Melanie and Paul had played in all those years ago, and although the place the boy had brought her to might exist above or below her normal perception, the landscape would surely be the same. If anyone could find the children here, it was her.

“Laura? Laura? Can you hear me?” Alex called out into the trees and for a moment everything fell silent, the trees and the children who played hidden within them. And then a yelp came from somewhere deeper in the wood. It was Laura, she was sure of it.

The little boy tugged at her hand, pulling her against the bark of a nearby tree. “Not yet. Not yet. I need you to see first. I need you to see how I was taken.”

Alex stroked his hair. “But Laura and Peter need me. I have to help them.

They… they’re not like you.”

He shook his head vehemently. “You can’t help them if you don’t understand. You can’t help any of us. I have to make you understand.”

Setting aside her frustration, Alex took in the anxiety of the boy, his young desperation to make her do what he wanted. Who was she to dictate how it should be? This was his place, not hers, and he’d led her this far. It was time to trust him. She peered into the still green trees. If time were different here, then maybe a few more minutes would do no harm. Crouching down so that she was at eye level, Alex nodded. “Tell me what it is I have to understand. Tell me what happened.”