The Killing Woods

  But I tell the cops everything. Finally. I let it out, don’t even worry about what happens next. Then I’m sinking down, my head against the table. It’s like Emily’s hand is still on my arm, like it was when we were in the waiting room earlier, and I’m glad to feel it: that warmth. I shut my eyes, keep sinking, into some other dark place that doesn’t feel so bad. I don’t need to worry about waking up, not this time. For the first time in months, I let myself go . . . just sleep. And I don’t dream.

  NOW

  57

  Saturday. November.

  Damon

  I’m running my fingers over Ashlee’s collar. The police took the photos they needed of it and I’ve cleaned it up. It’s buckled and ready. I go to where she died, on the edge of the clearing round Shepherd’s bunker, and I lay it there. I don’t look left, don’t want to see the mess of that bunker – don’t want to think about how I’d wanted to hurt Mack there either. Shepherd’s drawings were burnt off in that fire – that’s what the police said – I don’t want to check. I watch a beetle marching slowly forward. Then I dig about in my pocket, find my own collar. I lay that on the ground too so Ashlee’s collar is circled inside.

  ‘You won, Ash,’ I whisper.

  But she lost too: lost everything. And somehow I don’t think she’s in Fairyland right now, neither. I bite down hard on my lip as I think about all that again, taste blood. Mack should be here, doing this with me. I thought about asking Charlie and Ed, but they’re not speaking to me all that much right now – too weirded out by everything; they still can’t believe what Mack did, what Ashlee wanted. Or maybe they feel guilty for their part in it all. They’ve been in the police station pretty constantly, but they won’t visit Mack in custody. Though Ed, at least, will probably end up there soon enough anyway, maybe his brother too – seems the cops are coming down hard on their drug possession.

  I sit on the cold winter ground and stare at those two collars. I hear birds singing, even now on a freezing mid-November day, even when there are puddles iced over and only a few berries left on branches. If Emily was here, she’d be able to tell me what those birds are, give me some fact that makes them special. Hearing these birds makes me think of the first day I saw Emily in Darkwood, that very same day I’d heard that my old man had died. That was the first day I’d fought Mack in here too. Sometimes I wonder whether I should’ve stayed with Emily that day, whether anything would’ve been different if I’d watched the birds instead of running off with Mack . . . taken that other path.

  I dig my teeth into my lip again. I should be thinking about Ashlee right now, not Emily, that’s what I came here for. But I’m thinking of all sorts of things, everything inside me blurring into one mess of noise. Strangely, I’m thinking of my old man most of all. How it’s about a year since he died. How he would’ve been ashamed over the Game I started in these woods. I grab a stick and draw his tree tattoo – and mine – into the dirt; I do it just from memory. I’m remembering Emily’s face when she’d looked at my tattoo in the bunker – she’d thought I was a mystery then, someone with stories. I want her to look at me like that again.

  When I’m done, I rub my hand over it all, smudge the tree into the earth again, smash it up like that bomb smashed Dad. I guess whoever built and buried that IED out there in the desert will never know how far that blast travelled. But all things ripple out, cause shrapnel. Maybe if I’d never started the Game, Ashlee would never have died. Or maybe Ashlee would’ve got to Fairyland some other way. I don’t know. But I’m still responsible, still could’ve stopped it . . . If I’d just seen what Ashlee was doing all those nights . . . realised.

  Maybe.

  I hear a noise behind me, a light cough. I turn. Emily. Found me. How long has she been there?

  I get up silently, leaving the collars circled into each other. I don’t even bother to wipe the water from my eyes as I walk to her, because she’s seen it all anyway, hasn’t she? She knows who I am, the all of me. Somehow she’s still here. I wrap my arm around her shoulder. I want to keep her safe and exactly like she is – this girl who sees the whole of things, who, even now, isn’t scared of these woods . . . who’s not scared of me . . . who, even now, is helping.

  I try to turn us away from this place, but she resists.

  ‘Squirrels,’ she explains, pointing.

  I follow her gaze and see them. Two of them, darting in and out of Shepherd’s bunker. I’m looking at it again before I even realise. ‘Hiding food?’

  She nods. ‘For winter.’

  I don’t look for long. The bunker’s too blackened and ruined, too dark.

  ‘Come on,’ I say.

  But Emily stays, looking, listening. ‘There are deer here too,’ she whispers. ‘They’ve been watching us.’

  I see them when I look in the spaces between the trees. I see sunlight falling through bare winter branches and on to their backs.

  ‘You’ve got eyes like an owl,’ I say, smiling a little.

  I squeeze Emily’s shoulder tighter, rest my cheek against the top of her head. And the deer are gone, leaping quicker than a heartbeat and jumping deeper into the woods.

  58

  Emily

  Istore the image of the deer in my mind like a photograph. I’ll tell Joe. It’s something he could talk about in his project – those sunlit deer backs – those cracks of light even there.

  Damon and I walk back together in silence. In the lane he pauses. ‘You’ll be all right today?’

  I nod. He hugs me. It’s a soft sort of hug, hesitating. I know he wants to kiss me. I see it in his eyes, in the way they haven’t left me since I found him in the clearing. There’s something grateful that’s winding through his body now, entwined like his tattoo. I watch his copper eyes, get lost there a while. I can’t do it yet. I reach down and take his hand instead, thread my fingers through his, just like I’d imagined doing so many times before. I bring our hands up to my mouth and brush my lips across the backs of his knuckles. He tastes like the woods, like dirt and trees. It’s not a real kiss, not yet.

  ‘Good luck,’ he says.

  Then he’s walking back towards town and to his own home, his shoulders slumped. He’s got his own journey to make today.

  As I walk, I text Joe to say about the deer. He texts me back fast, invites me around to his place later: Got a whole bunch of films. And Mina’s coming too. Tell me about the deer then!

  Mina. It gives me a smile when I think of her and Joe hanging out so much now. Maybe it wasn’t only me who Mina was trying to be friends with after all.

  I’ll be there, I message back.

  Then I look at the message Kirsty sent me. Since the truth’s come out about Mack and Ashlee she’s been trying to be friendly, even invited me to hang out with them all in the park again. It’s just because she feels guilty, and maybe one day I’ll go and say hi; probably I won’t.

  Mum is waiting at the kitchen table, reading Dad’s letter all over again. Dad knows everything now; Mum’s still not sure he believes it, though. That’s partly why we’re going today: to see him in his new place, to see what he believes, to see what he wants to do now too. What he wants from us. Even though I’ve read Dad’s letter a heap of times, I wrap my arm around Mum and look over her shoulder and read it again.

  It’s quiet here – I read – Not so bad.

  Mum’s got a theory. She thinks Dad knew all along that he didn’t kill Ashlee. She thinks Dad confessed because going to prison was another way out: an exit from the life he couldn’t cope with. She thinks he might have killed himself otherwise, like some of the pictures on the bunker walls seemed to suggest. But I don’t know about that. Someone would have to be in a very deep, dark place to knowingly take the blame for a death.

  Damon and I have talked about this. We think the pictures Dad drew were warnings: Dad was trying to get the fears out of his head and make them known. He drew Mack and the rest of the boys as wolves chasing Ashlee because he was scared of what might happen in t
hat Game. He drew ways of killing himself because he was scared of that too.

  Dr Daniells, Dad’s psychiatrist, says that Dad was in a flashback so severe there’s every chance he had no idea what was really going on that night. Dr Daniells says that during Dad’s flashback – when he’d heard the thunder and lightning, when he’d heard the movement and noise from the boys’ game – he might easily have thought it was soldiers. He might have thought he was back in combat, back in the place he’d been trying to avoid for so long. When he’d heard Mack yelling to Ashlee that she’d done it, he might have thought Mack was the same soldier who’d told him he’d killed a civilian. Dad had read those psych reports over and over – he knew what he was capable of, what they’d warned him he could do again. Maybe he’d believed it.

  I linger on Dad’s words at the end of the letter: I’m looking forward to seeing you again. I hope he means it.

  I help Mum get things together for the trip. The weather forecast says it’s going to snow so we’re packing a thermos of coffee and blankets. I help her carry it all to the car – Dad’s car. The air is cold enough to slice into me. Mum doesn’t talk, maybe she’s nervous. She’d thought Dad was one kind of person for a long while, and then the opposite for another long while, and now it’s all changed again. As Mum loads everything into the car, I pick the rest of the ‘abandoned car’ notice from the windscreen.

  Before I get in, I take one last look at Darkwood: its tangle of briars, the sunlight weaving through it all and turning leaves golden, all that light and shade, all those things hidden and seen. I see a flash of a robin’s chest lighting up like a ruby.

  ‘There’s magic in those trees,’ Dad had told me once.

  And he’s right: there is magic and light all woven through them in a patchwork, there’s darkness and secrets too. But there are no wolves, no more dark games. It’s just a wood again, sparkling in morning frost.

  In the car, Mum glances over at me. ‘You ready?’

  I nod.

  We’re almost halfway when the snow starts. It begins lightly, falling like stray thoughts. It’s gentle and delicate, like how I know I’ll need to be with Dad now. We’re driving without the radio, the only noise the low drr of the motorway tarmac as it races by beneath us, just the swish of the wiper as it sweeps away flakes. I press my palm to the window.

  Dad knows.

  I’m not sure what the plan is for him now, but I don’t think he’ll be coming home: not straight away. When Dad’s charges were dropped he agreed voluntarily to go into a psychiatric hospital, and now he’s waiting for assessment. I press my forehead to the window glass. Perhaps sadness and anger and violence aren’t only in Dad. I’d seen that stuff in Ashlee and Mack too, even Damon, even Mum, even me. It’s in us all, tangled in our own dark forests, wrapped with the secrets we keep.

  Mum looks across, probably wondering why I’m so quiet. ‘Nearly there.’

  She’s got the blue top on that Dad gave her years ago. It’s too big for her now, but the colour’s still nice on her. Her fingers are tight around the steering wheel, her nails bitten back so much I see blood. She doesn’t smell of booze.

  Dad will be in some sort of family meeting room when we see him. He won’t have handcuffs and there’ll be no sheets of Perspex between us. We’ll be able to hug him. Perhaps we could coax him to return to us, slowly and gently, with water and love and sunlight: like how we used to coax snowdrops up through hard winter ground. Then, out of nowhere, I remember it – Dad’s hug, the strength it had, the smell of his combat shirt pressed against my face, the rumble of his laugh. I remember him crouching beside me, patting the earth.

  ‘Snowdrops come from a deep, dark place,’ he’d said. ‘They’re made tough enough to push through snow.’

  I’d rested my head against Dad’s chest until I could hear – and feel – his heartbeat.

  Now I look out of the window at the motorway verge. No snowdrops here yet, not for weeks. They’ll come, though.

  ‘How long will we stay?’ I ask Mum.

  She flicks the indicator, goes into the slip lane to come off the motorway. ‘As long as he wants. Long as we want. The hospital’s not as strict as the prison.’

  I reach across, find one of her hands on the steering wheel, and we drive like that together. After a while the road narrows and there are fields either side. I think about Damon and the journey he’s making today, how he’ll stay with his brother in the city for a few days . . . how, from there, he’ll visit Mack in the youth offenders’ institute. They’ve charged Mack with murder, like Dad was; Damon said they had to. But already there’s been talk of that charge changing. The papers are reporting that what happened that night was a horrible accident, something gone too far. The police will probably take everything into consideration, look at Ashlee’s films, realise who she was too.

  With my free hand I type Damon a message, wish him the same he said to me this morning: Good luck. I tuck my phone into my inside coat pocket so I’ll feel it against my chest if a message comes back.

  And there it is – finally – the psychiatric hospital where Dad has been taken. It’s huge and grey and rises like a mistake among all these fields. I look up at the windows. Can Dad see us already?

  The snow must have started falling here earlier, there’s already a layer on the ground as I step from the car, it crunches under my trainers. I feel cool light flakes on my cheeks, my hair. I don’t pull my hood up.

  ‘Ready?’ Mum asks.

  We walk towards the hospital. I want to scoop up snow and press it into Dad’s hands – show him how sunlight falls on ice and makes diamonds in it. I want to walk with him in Darkwood again too. I want him back. I’m looking at Mum and she’s smiling, just a little. And we move quicker now, until we’re half-sliding across the car park, the sun bright in our faces.

  ‘Race you,’ I say.

  We’re coming, Dad, I’m thinking, we’re almost there.

  Just before the entrance I pick up a handful of snow and hold it. As it starts to melt, I see the tiniest leaf left behind. It’s light green – almost yellow – perfectly miniature and beautiful. The smallest piece of art there is – frozen, yet warming in my hands. And I take it for Dad, a small crack of light in this dark.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book has been a long time coming, consequently a whole bunch of wonderful souls are due thanks for helping me get it here. Without three people, in particular, this book would not have happened: Catherine Atkins, my friend, unofficial editor and general beam of light; Andy D, my writing partner and part-time muse; and Linda Davis, this book’s patient agent and my inspiring and kind friend.

  Mum, Dad, and Barb – thank you for your ever-loving patience always, and for reading so much so often. Derek Niemann, for your always considerate and positive writing advice. Julia Green, for inspiration and your ‘sunbeam effect’. Cam McCulloch, Hannah Alexander, Dan Burrows, Kristen Wheeler, Maya Farrugia, Hemanthi Wijewardene and Penny Lawson – thank you for reading and offering advice. Special thanks to Sarah Benwell for quick reading in a slow spot. Roma Arnott – for long rides through the countryside talking about killing and violence. And Nicola Barr, who came into my life like a flash of brilliant lightning.

  Thank you to all who helped with the technical research. In particular, Nick Tucker, Francis Jones, Andy Smith, Dr Harvey Wickham, Paul Wells, Matt Bone, and magical Johanna David. Thank you to Pat Johns and Colin Titcombe for helping me discover bunkers in the woods. Thank you to everyone on Facebook who helped with random research questions, and to the helpful soldiers on the MOD live chat site. AJM, thanks for the debrief. Thank you to Cercopan, a wonderful charity doing amazing work in Nigeria, who were so helpful when this book was originally set in Africa!

  Thank you to my publishers, Chicken House and Scholastic, for all their assistance, faith and support. Thank you to the readers of Stolen and Flyaway who have been so patient in waiting for this one.

  A special thank you to Simon Read and
his band Quiet Marauder for providing the soundtrack to this book. You can check them out here – www.quietmarauder.co.uk

  Last but not least, thank you to Topaz the wonderhorse, and Ella and Ollie the superdogs, for company during those long walks through the woods.

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  I thought I knew my writing process: I find a setting I want to explore and from there come the characters, theme and ending. Previously, nearly everything I’ve written has arrived as an idea almost perfectly formed. The Killing Woods was different. Much like the activity of walking through dark, unfamiliar woodland, this book has been ‘felt out’ as I went along. All I knew at the beginning was that I wanted to write about a wood, and I wanted the story to be dark – the rest has been tentatively discovered, by torchlight, often hiding behind my hands and crawling forward on my knees. Writing this novel has made me realise that there are many ways to approach creativity – in a conscious way, but also in a subconscious way. It has also made me think about how darkness can be a source of inspiration and, often, a necessary part of creativity. Dark places aren’t just deep, endless pits of despair – they can be times of discovery and creation, and they are often unavoidable. In a curious way, it is the darkness that illuminates the candle.

  The characters in this novel discover more whole versions of themselves through acknowledging their hidden, ‘darker’, sides. Writing this novel has made me realise that the creative process, as well as the process of life itself, can be acknowledged in a more ‘whole’ way too – as a time of, and drawing from, darkness as well as light; a time to rely on the subconscious as well as the conscious.

  If you have felt disturbed by anything in this book, or have been travelling through a dark place that you’re not sure you want to travel through alone, look for the beams of light, the ‘helpers’ – your friends, the people you could talk to, the helplines and professional help, and read some Jung. Most of all, don’t forget the beauty out there in the world, the sunbeams threading the forest that return each morning.