The Killing Woods

  ‘We won’t stay long,’ I say.

  I turn on to the track I used to run down, and the wind kicks up in a cold angry gust. I’m breaking one of Dad’s rules to bring Damon here but it doesn’t feel so terrible to disobey him, not now. Several times I look back to check Damon is still behind me – he moves like a cat. Each time his eyes are roving around, as if he’s looking for something, or searching for a part of Darkwood he knows. He looks lost. And like he’s thinking about every tragic thing in the world. It makes me wonder whether people other than soldiers can get post-traumatic stress disorder. Could Damon have it because two people he loved died? Could I get it over what’s happened? Could Mum? Maybe this whole town has it, everyone touched by violence somehow and suffering? I hear a rumble of thunder.

  ‘Do you want to keep going?’ I say. ‘We’re almost there.’

  Damon nods, determined. A few more steps, though, and the rain starts. I feel the drops on my cheeks, soft and light and irregular at first. I’m surprised at myself. In this past year I thought I’d got good at watching for storms, for being prepared for when they’d arrive, always being hyper-aware because of Dad.

  At the hedge before the clearing, I turn back. Rain has plastered Damon’s hair to his cheeks; his lips look thin and a little blue. They remind me of how Ashlee’s lips looked that night too. I look at the bruise under his eye and see it’s gone puffier. The rain goes up a notch, turns to cold, hard bullets.

  ‘We should shelter inside the bunker.’ I raise my voice. ‘Just until this stops.’

  I’m too cold to think properly – I must be – because I’m grabbing the sleeve of Damon’s duffle coat and I’m pulling him through the hedge and the rain is falling and we’re slipping on wet leaves. Damon slows as we go through the clearing, his eyes on everything. He wants to stay and look.

  ‘It’s too cold,’ I say. ‘Look later, after the rain. We need to get inside!’

  I drag him to the bunker entrance and pull back the camouflage netting. Then I lift the bunker’s lid and tumble down into its blackness, pulling Damon in after me. We hit the floor with a jolt, one after another. I’m shivering too, but at least in here the rain’s not on us. I turn back to pull the cover over, only then realising that I’m trapping myself inside with him. Joe would go mental if he could see this. So would Mum. But I’m on my own.

  32

  Damon

  Emily is shouting something. Torch. Do I have one?

  ‘I’m not a freakin’ boy scout,’ I snap, giving her the lighter in my pocket. She takes it, goes away quick.

  I don’t mean to be nasty, but suddenly I’m weirding out and I don’t even know why. I thought I’d be fine coming here. I thought I’d realise something – that I’d just feel it. I thought I’d know, without any doubt, that Jon Shepherd did everything he’s accused of. Maybe I’d get that strange feeling again, like the one I got in the hollow last night. Or maybe I’d see Ashlee’s collar hanging on a tree and that would be proof. All I’d need.

  I get a pang as I remember last night – how it’d felt, just for a second, like Ashlee was running with me in the woods.

  But there’s no collar here, none I’ve seen. And I didn’t recognise nothing as we walked here. I don’t think this place is near Ashlee’s shortcut track, either.

  I slide down the wall and sit on a concrete floor that’s dusty and damp at the same time. Ashlee would’ve loved this place. She’d have thought it was the perfect place to hide. I think about it – pushing her against the bunker wall, touching her, doing it while the Game was on. She’d have loved that too.

  I can hear Emily moving around. And I can’t help it, I think about doing it with her too, making our own heat. Emily’d be softer than Ashlee somehow, more unsure, I don’t think she’d tease. Maybe she’s never even done it at all, not with no one. Maybe I’d be her first. I stop and realise what I’m thinking – these thoughts are sick, they’re worse than that. But, here in the dark, I can’t shake them. Because I’m thinking that when a girl like Emily does it with someone, she probably means it. She probably wouldn’t play games.

  There’s a sudden flash of lightning. I see weird shapes on the walls, then dark again. I stretch my hands into it, I can’t really see my fingers but, like this, I can imagine them pressing, into someone, against a neck. I can almost feel it.

  Another rumble.

  I’m thinking of my fingers on a pulse. Anger.

  Something clatters from where Emily is. Another rumble of thunder. Another flash. I get a vision of this place as a small square room, Emily crouching in the corner. It’s strange to be in a bunker now, before even joining the army – strange to be in this bunker. My old man’s bunkers would’ve been bigger than this, stopped up with sandbags and boiling hot during the day. He’d have slept with his boots on and his gun beside him. Even though this bunker’s never seen any combat, it still smells like rust and spent shells and waiting. Maybe bunkers always do.

  There’s light – gold spears on the wall – Emily Shepherd with an old lamp in her hand. She puts it down beside me, then clears out what looks like a gun slit, lets in light from the forest floor and some sideways rain.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  She’s looking at me careful. Do I look like I’m freaking out? Or is it because I’m sitting here like an idiot, not doing nothing?

  ‘I’m fine.’

  I’m not, though. I’m thinking that someone else wouldn’t have passed out drunk on a forest floor and left his girlfriend alone. A cold drip of something slides down my neck, clings to my spine. For one crazy moment I want to tell Emily everything, about last night and the images I’d had, about how I don’t remember what’d happened. I want to say how her dad’s plea might be right after all – because if I passed out, because if Ashlee walked back home past this place . . .

  Emily’s staring at me like she wants to tell me something too. She’s got this really intense look in her eyes. I think about all the things I’d said to her the other day on the Leap and I look away.

  I can see this place properly now: a small concrete room with a corrugated iron roof. And those drawings! There are animals, swirling dark lines, stick figures hanging from trees, a gun, a twisted-up face. They’re everywhere. So, Jon Shepherd really was screwed up!

  ‘This used to be an Operation Base,’ Emily tells me.

  But, of course, I know this already. She keeps explaining how there are bases like this in woods all over this country, built for a war that never got here. ‘They built it so civilians could fight too, so they could wait for when the enemy arrived like a secret resistance.’

  I think of my old man waiting – all those months overseas – only to be blown apart by something he never saw, by another kind of secret resistance.

  ‘My dad used to wait here,’ Emily says. ‘Ever since he came back from combat, he stayed out here in the dark.’

  Her face is close to mine, I feel the faint heat from the lamp, her blue-grey eyes still asking questions of me: What happened that night? What do you know? What can you tell me? I used to be good at keeping my cool, but now . . . now . . . can she see my skin twitch? How I can’t meet her gaze? This is what being on edge is: not playing the Game like Mack thinks, not even joining up for the army . . . this. It’s not knowing what I did that night. It’s knowing I should tell someone. Knowing I can’t.

  Emily’s fingers are reaching out as if she wants to touch me; I don’t move away. ‘This bunker is at least ten minutes’ walk from Ashlee’s track home,’ she says. ‘Did you know that?’

  So I was right with the distance thing. ‘You still think someone else did it, then?’ I say. ‘Someone set your dad up?’

  Her fingers hover in mid-air. ‘I don’t know.’

  And I’m surprised by that.

  I remember Joe Wilder coming out of Darkwood last night, the shock on his face when he’d seen me, how he’d told Emily Shepherd to keep away. What else has he told her? How else does Emily think Ashlee got he
re that night? Has she made any connections yet?

  ‘Ashlee could’ve got here by mistake,’ I say.

  But I can’t say no more. I can’t say how Ashlee could’ve got here because of my mistake.

  I stand, press my hands against the lid covering the exit. I feel like I’m being buried by this place. I need to be outside, searching for Ashlee’s collar and phone. If I find them here, it means that Shepherd stalked Ashlee and tried to hide the evidence. Doesn’t it? It means that I can stop this guilt. I want to crawl up the wall and tip out into the rain, start searching.

  ‘It’s too wet,’ Emily says, watching me. ‘There’s lightning.’

  ‘Just like that night too.’

  Why doesn’t this make me remember something? How could I have been so drunk that I slept through a storm?

  Emily presses her fingers to my arm. I look down. A part of me wants to snap those fingers off me, still wants to hurt her. That part wants to be gone and running through these woods, searching ’til I find Ashlee’s things. That part wants to run further – out of Darkwood and all the way up north. Away from these mixed-up thoughts. But I don’t listen to that part. I stay and look at Emily’s fingers, and I want to hold them. I don’t understand how I can both hate and want this girl at the same time – how she can be two people at once. How I can be, too.

  Emily’s saying something about calming down, about how we can’t leave yet. I stare at mud on the bottom of her jeans, mud like stains, like blood. I feel dizzy, rub my hand across my neck. Then I pause with my fingers wrapped round it. What kind of pressure would it take? Could it be done by accident? I think of that first day with Mack in the woods – that first time I threw a punch. I’d wanted to know how hard I’d need to press to do that too. I try to breathe deep, I can’t flip out here. Not with Emily watching.

  ‘You’re freezing,’ Emily’s saying, coming a little closer. ‘You’re shivering.’

  But I don’t feel cold. I move away. If her fingers stay there any longer, I really might grab them. I might grab them and hold her. I might tell her everything.

  I bend to search the bunker. I pull open drawers from a chest in the corner, then lurch on to the floor and run my hands into the edges of this place. There’s dirt and bird crap and things blown down from the trees, a bundle of logs that I tip over as I push through.

  Emily joins me. ‘What are you doing? You’re messing it all up!’

  ‘I need Ashlee’s things,’ I explain. ‘Need to know where he put them.’

  ‘There’s nothing here! The police took everything except the stuff you see. They searched all around!’

  ‘They must be somewhere!’

  She shakes her head. ‘The police think she lost her phone before she got here, in the woods.’

  Her phone. Course. Emily doesn’t know about the collar. No one does. Just me, just the boys. Just Shepherd . . . maybe.

  I run my hand along the gun slit. I am shaking – I can feel the movement of me but still can’t feel the cold. There’s no phone. And no collar. Nowhere.

  ‘He hid it somewhere in your house, then?’ I try.

  ‘The police searched.’

  ‘It’s not just disappeared!’

  Emily shrugs. Maybe the police are right, and Ashlee dropped her phone in the woods, and maybe I dropped her collar someplace else. There are a hundred reasons why these things haven’t been found yet. They’re submerged in mud. A fox had them. The storm buried them in leaves.

  But if they were here . . .

  Emily is stepping towards me again and I still don’t know if I want her to hug me or shove me. Instead she pushes something into my hands. A piece of paper, crumpled. I open it. It’s some sort of drawing. It’s like the ones on the walls, only smaller and more detailed.

  ‘Maybe you should look at that,’ she whispers.

  And she’s different now – scared – won’t hold my eyes.

  I don’t know how long I look at this bit of paper, but the bunker seems to roll round me as I do. It’s like I’m in a ship, sinking. Because this thing – this picture I’m looking at – it isn’t an ordinary drawing. Ashlee’s face is staring back from it. Only her face is also a deer’s face, and that deer is running through woods. She’s beautiful, half-wild. I blink, look at all of it, make sure.

  There are wolves chasing this Ashlee-deer too, drawn in dark detailed lines. There’s one wolf in front, bigger than the others. More desperate. Enjoying this chase.

  ‘My dad drew this,’ Emily says. ‘He must have drawn it weeks, maybe months ago, before Ashlee died . . . I found it in his car . . .’

  Her words drift away. I look at the wolves’ faces, the excitement in the deer’s eyes. I have a feeling about what Shepherd was drawing. Does Emily see it too? Did her dad tell her about it? Did Joe?

  I trace the muscly shoulders of the wolf in front of the pack, the way its mouth stretches back into what could be a snarl or a smile. Shepherd must’ve looked out from this gun slit and seen us, heard us all. He got the movement right, that feeling of running through this wood. The darkness. The chase. He got her right.

  Emily is still staring at me really intensely, like she knows something, like she’s waiting for me to tell her everything. It’s freaking me out. Now I’m proper shaking. Because I’m thinking – when Emily looks at this sketch, who does she really think chased Ashlee here that night?

  What does she really think about me?

  33

  Emily

  His eyes are wild. But what was I expecting? That he’d be relieved? That he’d see the sketch and be OK? Tell me it doesn’t mean anything?

  We both flinch when thunder cracks. Damon is shaking, really shaking; he’s looking at the pictures on the walls then back at the sketch. He’s seen Ashlee in it, he must have done – why else would he be reacting like this? But has he seen Dad there too? Does he think this picture is proof that Dad watched Ashlee in the woods? Is it evidence that what happened that night wasn’t an accident? I move away from him, let him be. He buries his face hard into the wall of the bunker.

  I want him to tell me this sketch means nothing.

  He keeps quiet.

  When he sits up, his eyes are dark holes, the bruise like a shadow on his cheek. He’s stretching his fingers forward, they’re shaking, he’s stroking the dark lines of the wolf in that picture.

  I stay silent. Because, after all, it might not be my dad he’s seeing. And if Damon can’t see Dad in this, like Joe couldn’t, then maybe I can relax.

  Damon breathes out so slowly his breath waits too, hangs in the bunker air. ‘This picture . . .’ he starts, his voice husky and quiet. ‘It’s not . . .’

  I watch him. His eyes flick to the gun slit and he frowns as he thinks. Then he stands, goes to the slit and peers out.

  ‘Your dad was looking out at the woods from in here, wasn’t he? That’s how he saw it all?’

  I lower my head. Damon’s got it. He sees everything in this picture I’ve been scared about. There’s a sharp twist in my guts, and it takes all I have to stop a sob from escaping. How can I pretend this sketch means nothing now?

  ‘Ashlee in the woods,’ Damon murmurs. ‘. . . months ago. And Shepherd saw it . . .’

  He’s trying to understand. I bite hard on my lip, taste blood. You were right about the killer’s blood, that’s what I should say, you were right about it all. Now I wish I hadn’t shown him this sketch. Wish I’d never found it. I should have torn it up. I should have believed Joe when he said it meant nothing. I am an idiot. Stupid!

  ‘Have it,’ I say, pushing it at him. I don’t want to see it any more.

  And maybe this is a mistake, but if Damon has this sketch, it will be his decision what to do with it next. Not mine. And if he tells the police? Then it’s not my fault if Dad stays in prison for life. I don’t have to feel guilty. My throat goes tighter. I want to throw things.

  ‘Why are you showing me this?’ Damon says.

  But that’s obvious, isn??
?t it? Because it can’t just be me who sees, this evidence can’t just be up to me. Damon’s face is pale as he watches me, the hollows under his eyes loom. Again, he looks like I feel.

  ‘You need to get warm,’ he says. ‘Fast.’

  He reaches across and touches the side of my neck. I gasp. His fingers are like streaks of ice. He frowns as he looks at me. Whose face is he seeing right now? Mine or Dad’s? Mine or a monster’s? Why is he being kind?

  I press my hands to the floor, try to steady myself. I’m half expecting to touch mouse fur or moth wings or the curled up legs of a spider . . . something dead. Damon finds a candle, lights it and holds it close. It doesn’t make me warmer. But it does make the walls glow orange. I feel like a trapped animal, shivering.

  Very slowly, he crawls towards me. I hear the rustle of his coat as he lifts his arm and places it around me. ‘Are you warmer?’

  I don’t answer. But I shut my eyes. I try to will myself warm. I think I hear Damon’s breathing change, get lighter. I know it shouldn’t feel good to be this close to Damon, especially not now. I know he’s only doing this to make me warm, so I don’t die of hypothermia. I know he must hate me even more after seeing this sketch. But, even so, I could stay here, just like this, for a while I could. I could concentrate on how Damon smells like damp clothes and dirt. I could listen to him breathe. Just for a few moments. Just until I’m warm. I feel his heartbeat making a rhythm like the rain. We’re quaking like leaves now, both of us. And I don’t know why we’re leaning like this, against each other, why he’d want to. Shouldn’t he be running with that sketch, running to the police to change everything?

  Maybe I should tell Damon about Dad’s scruffy, unkempt hair, the wispy, greying beard. Maybe I should say how, in those last few months, it was almost as if he’d been trying to look like a wolf.

  ‘Your skin’s like chilled meat,’ Damon says. ‘You’re freezing!’ He shuffles away to pull off his soaking duffle coat. ‘Have this.’