What We Saw

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I heard the cries of the night surround me. Adam went to take the first steps out of the cabin, but I pushed ahead of him. We had a rough idea where the house was in the day—we just had to keep following the hill upwards, and there it sat. But the night was a different matter altogether. The bright glow of the torch lit the place up like a crime scene. Nearby objects reflected the light as leaves danced along the ground in the gentle breeze. I grabbed Adam’s arm, and we began to walk.

I thought about Emily out here, all on her own. Tied up somewhere near the house. I thought about what Donald had done to the dead girl. To his own daughter. Had he done it at night? I pictured him luring her out there to see the woods, before finishing her with a shovel.

I still couldn’t get the smiling face of Beth Swanson from the newspaper out of my head. I shivered—something still didn’t seem right there. I guess that’s someone else’s mystery to solve.

A fox scurried past, its beady little eyes winking back in the soft glow of the light. I felt Adam shudder, his arm jolting in the firm grip of my left hand. I felt strong, somehow. Like I was looking after him, the way I always should have done.

The wind picked up and the birds began to chirp, probably confused by our presence. 2:00 am now. The trees reached out at us as the woods began to thicken, the branches clawing out like monster’s arms. As the hill began to steepen, it became incredibly hard to stay on both feet. I slipped on a few loose twigs, grazing my dirty right hand, and pulled Adam down with me. He pulled me back to my feet, my sense of power diminished.

Trekking up that hill felt like forever, every little movement catching my eye. The blue torch only shone for a few metres, so anything could be out there in front of us. Plus, it would see us before we saw it.

Adam stopped and turned the torch around, swamping my view in complete darkness. I shuffled round to see what his problem was, as he shone the light all around the way we’d walked and to the side of us. He stepped backwards, slowly.

‘What’s up?’ I asked.

He paused for a moment, refusing to reply.

‘Oy, what’s u—’

‘Did you not hear it? I heard it in the woods.’

My eyes danced around the scene behind us. I saw things that hadn’t been there before. Things shaking in the distance. The arms of the trees moving in, ready to grab me. My hands stung as the sweat of my palms seeped into the cuts from my fall.

‘Did you hear that, Adam?’

Adam didn’t reply again but pointed his torchlight at a spot in front of us—a tree stump that was hollow in the centre. His eyes were fixed on it and open wide.

‘Ad, did you hea—’

‘Look at that,’ he said, his eyes and torch still fixed on the spot.

‘Look at what?’

Adam raised his other arm, pointing towards the base of the tree. I followed the path of his arm with my eyes. At first, I didn’t see anything of great relevance, but as I stepped into the glow of the light, I saw what Adam had been so startled about.

A pair of white underpants. They had a little pink ribbon on the top of them and a pink design along the edges. I shuffled backwards. A coldness grew in my belly and worked its way up into my throat. I wanted the earth to swallow me up. Adam must have noticed me wobbling backwards, and grabbed my arm.

‘We can’t do anything about that now, cuz. We have to keep going on,’ he said.

I nodded. Neither of us had to say anything to know what the other was thinking. The size, the chirpy little teddy bear on the left hand side. If they were Emily’s, there was nothing we could do about that now. Nothing we could do about letting her down or failing her.

‘It’s all my fault, cuz,’ Adam said, breaking the silence as we edged closer to the summit of the hill. My mind went blank.

‘Don’t be silly, Adam. It’s no one’s fault. We don’t know anything yet, who they belong to, or—’

‘If I hadn’t have been so jealous of you and Emily maybe we could have stopped this somehow.’

That was the first time Adam ever mentioned being jealous of us. I stayed silent, refusing to get involved in a debate about the way things had turned out. We could not change the past now. Maybe I had stolen Emily from Adam and maybe that was the wrong thing to do. But it was done, and that was that.

We clambered up the last stretch of the hill on our hands and knees now, ants crawling across our bodies. The ants didn’t bother me anymore. They were all so insignificant compared to everything else.

That’s when I saw the light.

It was small at first and only just caught my eye as it swayed from side to side in the distance. It began to grow, its glow creeping across the ground ahead of us. Adam looked at me and did a double take at the light before fixing his eyes on it.

I froze, like a victim to Medusa’s gaze. Adam lay static, too. Maybe whatever it was would go away or turn around. The light continued its approach along the ground towards us. Somewhere behind us, from where we’d just come, there was an almighty clatter, like a rock crashing towards the ground, but we were too terrified of what headed in our direction to pay much attention.

I saw the bright light shining from Adam’s hand and opened my mouth to urge him to turn it off, but I couldn’t. An invisible force clutched at my neck and restricted any air from escaping. My arms were numb. Woodlice crawled across my hand, inspecting this strange new terrain. The light continued to grow and the sound of footsteps, hard against the uneven ground, were audible now. I closed my eyes as tight as I possibly could and began to cry. I’m going to die, I’m going to die. My breathing was frantic. I wanted to get out of here, wanted whatever was about to happen to be done with. Please be a police officer. Please be someone out for a walk. Please be Granddad…

I opened my eyes, reluctant to look ahead. The light engulfed us both now. I felt naked and exposed in the only part of the woods visible to human eyes. I tilted my head upwards to the source of the light. Adam was still frozen in front of me, looking up ahead. I felt his heart rattling through his ribcage into the side of my arm.

The figure in front was hard to make out because of the light in our eyes, but I knew who it was. The white light of Adam’s torch lit up those recognisable green wellington boots, the bottom of those slightly scuffed beige pants tucked in at the sides. He reached down for the knickers and put them in his rucksack. He tilted the torch towards his face and shined the light at his chin like Granddad did when he told us spooky stories.

The dark, slicked back hair. The narrow rims of those wide glasses, perched against his big nose. And that ever-present smile. ‘Sorry I startled you, boys, but I think we all know we’ve got a lot of talking to do, don’t we?’ Donald said.

My limbs sank into the ground. I wanted to wake up back at home, before any of this happened. This was it. No more hiding and no more secrets: just the truth.

Donald continued to smile and looked between the two of us. ‘Up you get. There’s something we have to go see.’