Obeying an emotional need to return to the edge and look down into the waves, but with a clear mind, not invaded by the entity, Simon knew what kind of thoughts would emerge. It would be bleak, but he needed to face what he had done before talking to Sarah, even in the knowledge that it was a matter of time before he would be doing the same to somebody else.
Without ethereal guidance, he searched for the greater part of an hour before he recognised the turning into the wood. It didn’t look like a turning at all now. There was a small dirt step, rather than a slope and it led to something more like a gap between tree trunks that someone might have used to shelter from the rain than a path. Upon entering the channel, however, it veered to the right, then to the left and then plunged on into darkness.
As his eyes adjusted, he felt his way ahead, one arm outstretched so that his hand encountered branches before they struck or snagged him. He resisted the urge to switch on his flashlight and crept on.
The air was clear and sharp. Creatures stirred amid the trees, watching him with eyes much more accustomed to this than his. He snapped their twigs and tripped over fallen branches, blundering into their domain until the trail came to an end, signalled by a change in the texture of the ground, from dirt that slid underfoot to a carpet of weeds and sucking mud. His heart picked up its pace as he recalled stopping the car, and the girl’s skinny arms in his fists, her body almost twisting from him as he marched her into the wood.
He had made her play Twenty Questions.
What had he been thinking?
He stomped through the undergrowth, mindful now of the pain he had caused her, fingers on pressure points that made her whimper, snapping her finger back into place.
People would be wondering what had happened to her. She wasn't a carefully selected vagrant. The Creature had decided that it wanted her and that was that. Its reasons were unknown. She'd be missed, on both sides of the Channel. A lover might have begun calling local hospitals by now. If she had parents, perhaps they would dwell on the memory that they hadn’t wanted her to go to England and they’d argue about whose responsibility it had been to prevent her leaving. Hours, days, weeks from now, they would be facing the prospect of being invited to identify her body, her clothes in a clear plastic bag; passionless talk of dental records.
She wasn’t necessarily dead though. He thought again of the wave that had snatched her, like a tsunami, freezing momentarily to absorb her legs before withdrawing the way it had come, dragging her with it, wrapping itself around her torso like a black, foamy tongue.
Dead would probably have been better.
Eventually the authorities would catch up with him. He had never been especially careful and now he had returned to the scene of his last delivery, a reckless thing to do, but he couldn't help himself.
Ultimately, he reckoned, he'd either be captured or shot dead. Either way, he wouldn't be able to work for the Creature anymore, which would be a great relief, but both eventualities meant leaving Sarah alone and he'd promised her that he'd never abandon her. He had no doubt that she'd visit him in prison every week, if it came to that, even though he'd order her not to come. She'd try to smuggle something in for him; get caught; try again.
He had to stay sane and strong for Sarah, but, in lieu of any authority or proper punishment, he berated himself a while longer, as the trees thinned out and more moonlight filtered through the leaves. Ahead, waves broke against the cliff.
He knew how this was going to end. He'd stand at the very lip of the cliff and observe the waves below, contemplating jumping, fantasising about hitting the rocks, but in the end he'd turn to face his ominous journey back to the car, back home and back to his life, such as it was, where Sarah would be surprised to see him and no less keen on answers than she had been earlier that evening.
He thought about what he would say to her.
Perhaps jumping wasn't such a bad option after all.
Dad had handed him the keys to the family special deliveries franchise and mum had looked at the floor. He didn't think it would do her any good to know that. It only made it more difficult to sleep.
And he was afraid of the forgotten things that might clamber up if he allowed Sarah to ask questions. He had to be empty to do what he did. The past was gone. The future was unknown. He could only survive in the present.
He stopped mid-step, eyes wide, before dropping to the ground and crouching, holding his breath.
Torchlight hovered in the mid-distance. He had been moving towards it as though it was the north star. Now, he flattened himself against the ground and the light washed in his direction. Head to one side, eyes open, he saw it sweep past him, then back. Lungs burning, he drew a very slow breath, knowing that he wouldn't be able to breathe out again without giving a signalling plume of vapour. He remained perfectly still on the damp earth as the light settled beside him. He closed his eyes for a moment, working to regain control of his desire to see more clearly and his desire to run. His heartbeat thumped in his ears.
Someone was looking for him or the French woman.
Perhaps, he thought, this person had seen him last night and had returned in the safety afforded by 24 hours. Or perhaps it was someone following the tracks, looking for evidence. Finding it. He'd been sloppy. He'd been exhausted. He'd been high. Twenty Questions.
He opened his eyes again when, in the distance, he heard a snort and saw that the torch bearer had given up on training the light in his direction and was now facing the other way, so that it created a halo, revealing a male figure, sitting on the ground, his elbows resting on his knees. The man was not crying but weeping. He had a coughing fit through the tears and wiped his face with his fists. He growled at himself in anger and thumped the ground, stamped a foot.
Simon didn't imagine that this was the boyfriend. The father perhaps. He wondered if this man had seen what he had done last night but had been powerless or too afraid to stop it, and had returned here, like him, to reignite his grief and have it soar. His cries went up, promising minute relief but ultimately falling dead among the branches. He sat in the middle, suffering, his breath hitching, waiting it out.
Every sound the man made caused Simon to wince. He could feel his throat burning, as though he was going to cry, but he didn't dare lose control.
The man's grief seemed both old and new, as if he was unhappy for many reasons, which were presenting themselves to him in a dismal procession.
If this was the French girl's father, Simon admitted, then he had robbed the man of the one thing that was keeping him alive.
He wished that he hadn't come back and seen this. He knew that he could have gone anywhere to ponder his actions and come to terms with what he had done, but Sarah's questioning had driven him toward the extra flagellation that returning to the cliff would afford him. As good as he was at burying his emotions, this night would keep him in nightmares for the rest of his life.
*
Twenty more paces would have brought Simon to the edge and that was where the man had stopped, swinging his big head left and right, gazing down into the tumultuous waves. He was portly and ungainly, like a PE teacher he had once had, and he was wearing a short, waxy jacket that hissed when he moved.
Simon wondered if the man was working himself up to jump and again he felt contradictory urges: the muscles of his legs tensed, ready to spring from his hiding place and haul him back, because he had sent too many people into the unknown to watch it happen again without the demand of the Creature and yet any attempt to save him would mean giving himself away.
Suicide or not, the man's presence here posed questions that were becoming increasingly intolerable. The torch had fallen from his fingers and lay at his feet spilling light through fallen branches; a gust of wind tussled his hair and no other part of him moved. He didn't even appear to be breathing and Simon knew that it wouldn't be long before he toppled over the edge like a domino.
Terrified and surprised by himself, Simon found that he was drifting forward to stop him when the man bent down for his torch, groaned and, contrary to Simon's expectations, turned to retrace his steps through the forest.
Simon crouched, ready to defend himself, but while the man passed nearby, he continued into darkness, back towards the road, torch light fading.
Simon followed.
Near the cliff, where the ground had been damp, Simon had moved quietly, but now, despite his best efforts, dry leaves and twigs crunched underfoot, obvious to his ears. A small branch snapped and he cursed to himself, ducking, but the man ahead kept moving, making a racket himself and even tripping and falling a couple of times in his hurry to get out of the trees. Simon walked as quickly as he dared, determined to keep up; almost failing.
As the man reached the tarmac road, Simon was forced to stop because any noise now would give him away. The man walked up the hill and retrieved keys from his trouser pocket. A white Micra was parked on the verge up ahead and Simon knew that as soon as the man reached it, this episode would be over, without answers but, perhaps more importantly, without being seen. He had done his best. Now it was time to let go.
He had successfully kept a low profile over the last couple of years and had been lucky too, even passing undetected on the one occasion he had been stopped by police for speeding, so why in the hell was he now stumbling out of the forest and saying:
“Hi.”
The man turned as if yanked by a rope. His smart trousers and sensible, nylon jacket bore the marks of his venture into the woods, but nothing more so than his leather shoes, which were caked with mud. His hair was greasy, abandoned. His eyes, terrified, gave away the fact that whatever he had been doing in the woods, it was a guilty secret. He watched, dumbstruck as Simon descended the bank and moved towards him over the road.
“I saw you,” Simon said, with deliberate ambiguity.
The man's face slackened, but his eyes hardened. Simon assumed that he was making calculations, despite his apparent shock. The fight or flight response, but in slow-motion.
“What do you want?” the man asked.
Good question. He hadn't really had time to think about it.
“I heard you,” Simon said. “Are you ok?”
“Fine. Goodbye.”
Simon kept coming and the man stepped back, stumbling again. He seemed to be slurring his words.
“Why here?” Simon said. “Why this place?”
The man shrugged.
“Have you lost something?”
“Everything,” he said. And then: “Haven't we all?” It was the first thing he said that didn't seem to have been calculated, and he didn't regret his spontaneity; he was angry. Simon, on the other hand, was now having second thoughts. Since he had shown his face to this man, here where he had delivered the French girl, he couldn't let him leave. Perhaps it would have been better for him to have lived with the curiosity and anxiety than to kill, particularly as he had not been selected by the Creature. Wrong place. Wrong time. For both of them.
It might have sounded like a normal exhalation, but in fact it was a sigh; having decided to kill him, Simon became more bold.
“Why were you in the trees?”
The man sensed the shift in his tone and stood staring down at him for almost a minute. He clenched and unclenched big fists, struggling to remain calm. Seeing that Simon was implacable, he said very clearly:
“Let’s not make this worse than it needs to be. I’m walking away.”
“Tell me,” Simon said.
The man only shrugged. “You've decided that you have to kill me,” he said, “so what benefit is it to me if I tell you? You're not a torturer. So I'll take my chances.”
After all the pleas for help he had heard over the months, insane bargains, impossible promises and lies, no-one had ever spoken to him this coolly in such circumstances. His manner was detached, as though he didn't much care about survival and he found this experience sad not frightening.
“This doesn't have to be unpleasant,” Simon said. “Maybe we can make a deal.”
“You don't have anything to bargain with. I don't care what you've seen or what you know or what you think you know. I've seen it all.”
“Who are you?”
“I'm the one who's holding all the cards. And if someone like me has all the cards, what does that say about you, you dipshit? Go home,” he said. “Tell Sarah you love her. Make her understand. Something's coming. Make sure she understands. This is the warning I never had.”
The man turned, heading to his car without a look back. Simon demanded his name, but he had been right, he didn't have anything to barter with. The man had known Sarah's name and yet was completely unknown to Simon. There was little he could do but watch him crunch the stones at the side of the road, open up his door and get inside.
Make her understand.
This is the warning I never had.
The Micra's engine brought Simon round. He started towards the car, but skidded on the gravel, falling to his hands and knees.
“Wait!”
The car pulled away, bathing Simon in red light.