Hope island, p.21
Hope Island, page 21
Pain knifed into her abdomen as she rose to her feet. Disoriented, she spun to locate the hollow.
The only figure that remained in its centre was Egg. His body was crumpled, his arms contorted. She was glad that she couldn’t see his head. The children lay like scattered dominoes, their feet pointing to their victim like the hands of a clock. The wind must have flung them aside too.
Now the children rose, faltering as they found their feet, like newborn animals.
They were staring up at her.
With jerky, unnatural movements they began climbing the slope of the hollow, scrambling with hands and feet to make their way towards Nina, their pace increasing and their confidence growing as they learned to grasp the clods of sodden grass.
Nina couldn’t move. ‘What do you want?’ she moaned.
The children remained silent, their only sounds the scratching of their hands and feet, but the storm bellowed its laughter.
Nina saw hints of their faces. Sal Curtiz, David Priest, Chase Pickthall, little Noah Hutchinson smeared with mud or something worse.
Even in her panic Nina scanned the group for Laurie; even in her panic she experienced a glimmer of relief at not being able to see her.
Laurie was her only thought, her only plan. If Laurie wasn’t here, she still needed to be protected.
Nina took a last look at the approaching children, then spun and sprinted away.
The world had become nothing like its daylight form. The topography of the island had shifted in the dark and the storm. Nothing was where it should be. Tammy’s house might have been anywhere or nowhere.
Nina experienced only a series of tactile surfaces. The uneven ground beneath her feet. The blanket of rain pushing against her, the diagonal plane of the wind. The sky that had lowered to become a jagged rock surface above her head, its stalactites threatening to impale her.
Ahead of her was a wall of black within which she gradually perceived vertical strips. The woodland. She chanced a glance behind her before she reached it. The children had spread out, beginning to flank her. They were fast and she was tired, and everything hurt.
She plunged into the forest. The nicks of the branches were almost a relief: minor wounds in place of a more serious injury. She weaved through the trees at random, not even attempting to visualise a route.
Something tangled around her legs, tripping her so that her palms skidded and scuffed on a tree trunk, pain springing instantly from them. When she hit the ground something hard crunched beneath her; she thought of the bones in the shell midden. She whimpered and looked down, certain that she would see the outstretched arms of one of the children, but it was only a tarpaulin that had wrapped around her legs, and only a box of crackers that she had fallen upon. This must be Thomas’s den, his base ready for when he and his friends were required to fend for themselves. Robin Hood and Davy Crockett; it had sounded like a childish game. Nina considered huddling under the tarpaulin and praying that the children would pass by, but even in her panic she saw that it was the worst plan imaginable. This was their territory. She had to find somewhere out of their reach, or unfamiliar to them – but on an island this size, and with her so exhausted, the idea seemed nonsensical. She struggled to tug the tarpaulin away, rose to her feet, and staggered on. She used the trunks of the trees as handholds as if she were climbing rather than running.
She tried to summon remembered details about her location. On one side of the rectangular woodland were homes and the schoolhouse, she knew, but she had no idea which way she was facing now. The forest creaked and snicked and cackled around her. She heard new sounds of movement, too. Even though the children moved lightly – they must know every inch of this place – she heard the snapping of twigs, the brush of fabric on bark.
The children were everywhere around her.
She knew the woodland was small, but even so, she burst out of the trees before she was ready. She must have simply passed across one corner of the forest. Her momentum was difficult to check, even when she recognised that the glints ahead of her were far away – far below – and that she was fast running out of ground.
And then suddenly she was teetering on the cliff edge. She gazed out at the sea and at the boulders far below and she wondered whether a fall might be a preferable end.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The rain prickled on Nina’s arms, which were wrapped around her knees. Its tapping and teasing was soothing. She shivered with pleasure.
Her eyes opened and she found herself still within her dream. Everything was black at the edges. She blinked and tried to make sense of the pale circle above—no, in front of her. Her eyes closed again. It hardly mattered.
Seconds or minutes or hours later, something gripped her arm. She shook it off and gasped, then clamped her mouth shut for fear she might swallow water and drown – wasn’t she underwater, still? Her vision was blurred. She saw a thin stripe bisecting a blue circle and then, obscenely interrupting that neat pattern, an arm. It cast around and a hand grasped her again.
She yelped and pushed backwards with her feet, but her shoulders met something hard. She made a sound from her mouth that was no kind of language. They were going to drown her again. Her shirt clung to her, wet and heavy as canvas.
‘Mum?’
It was Laurie’s voice, clear and not filtered through water. Nina was unable to process what it meant.
‘Come out of there, Mum, okay?’
Nina brushed the hand away and thankfully Laurie released her grip.
She looked around. Rock. She was in a cavern. The Crow’s Nest. She didn’t remember climbing in here, but of course she must have done.
She opened her mouth. The last time she had been in here, she had been asked to scream. Now she found that she couldn’t even speak.
‘It’s only me, Mum,’ Laurie said.
That was hardly comforting. There was no guarantee Laurie could be trusted. Even if Laurie hadn’t been there in the hollow last night…
The vision of Egg being brought to his knees filled her mind. In her memory, he and the children around him all moved jerkily, like stop-frame animation.
He was dead. They killed him and Nina had only watched.
She was weeping now, silently.
‘It’s okay,’ Laurie’s voice said, so softly that Nina might have imagined it.
Nina’s sobs became bitter, almost laughter. It would not be okay. But staying trapped in this tiny cave was hardly an option. Her spine spiked with flashes of pain.
With difficulty, she shuffled to the mouth of the cavern, wincing at the rain and the sunlight reflected on the broad gleaming shield of the sea. She turned on the plateau and when she straightened her back it emitted several sharp clicks. She sidestepped gingerly on the slick rock until she found her footing on the larger boulder beside the Crow’s Nest.
Beneath the dripping hood of her cagoule, Laurie’s fair hair made a halo. Her lips were puckered in concern. She looked at Nina’s sodden shirt and her jeans black with wetness.
‘Hi,’ Nina said. She stifled a shiver.
‘What’s going on, Mum?’
‘I could ask you the same thing. Where were you last night?’
‘You know where I was. Gran didn’t know a thing about your plan, but I felt awful, like she’d been left behind.’
‘What brought you to the Crow’s Nest, though? Was it a coincidence that you happened to be passing this way?’ Nina had no idea if she was feeling her way towards an accusation.
Laurie’s forehead creased. ‘Don’t be an idiot. I was looking for you.’
‘You thought I was at the Open Arms.’
‘And I went there. I went to your hotel room, Mum. The door was wide open. People are worried.’
‘People?’
‘Just me, then. I’ve been all over. And now it’s way past lunchtime and I’ve found you.’
Somehow the accusations seemed to be going in the wrong direction. In her disorientation, Nina didn’t feel able to vouch for what she had seen during the night. The world around her hadn’t yet become solid enough for her to trust her memories; the cliff edge made her feel lopsided and defensive. Even so, she cursed herself for the urge to give herself an alibi, however weak. ‘I wanted to see this place again. It’s important to you.’
Laurie shrugged. ‘It was, yeah. I don’t know.’
Silence fell. They both looked out at the ocean. The wind drove tall humps towards the rock to burst in showers of spray. Nina shivered and thought of the driving rain the night before, and the corresponding dampness of her clothes now. It had been real. She had seen what she had seen. The children had murdered Egg.
She wondered if her grief would continue to grow, accumulating for Abram and Egg together. Egg had been a real human being, and she had liked him because of, rather than in spite of, his hopelessness. She hadn’t known him long, but she had already begun to think of him as a younger brother.
A voice inside her insisted that, however distant and ridiculous the idea, Laurie might somehow be a part of it all.
‘Do you want me dead?’ Nina said suddenly. Then she clamped both her hands over her mouth.
Laurie was so close to her that her hood almost protected Nina’s face from the rain as well as her own. She didn’t answer. Nina blinked to clear her vision, then stared into her daughter’s eyes. There was nothing there that was bad or cruel. There was fear, certainly, and panic and perhaps revulsion, but no animosity.
‘Mum, you’re shivering.’
Nina nodded and then found that she couldn’t stop. Her shoulders chugged to amplify the motion until her entire body shook uncontrollably.
* * *
She was still shivering when they reached the cottage. The walk had taken longer than it ought to; the rain had picked up again, and the wind had gained ferocity. Nina had stumbled often, and each time Laurie took her arm she had flinched and pulled away. She had checked her phone every few minutes, but there was no reception; it was the same with Laurie’s. Nina hadn’t said anything to Laurie about the events during the night, though she had tried to summon her courage several times. She had been struck by the unsettling feeling that this was the same conversation as when they had arrived on Hope Island. Then, she had been attempting to speak the truth about Laurie’s father. To deliver the even more awful news about Egg was impossible.
Nina was grateful that Tammy wasn’t in the house. It wasn’t just that she was reluctant to face Tammy after having tried to flee the island. Tammy couldn’t be trusted any more than any other islander. Her paintings of men falling from cliffs were a nightmare that predated everything that had happened to Nina on Hope Island.
She fell upon the phone in the hallway, dialled 999, hung up, dialled 911. She did it again, twice, before she registered that there was no dial tone. She stared at the receiver, then at Laurie, who took it, listened and frowned.
‘Gran said that it goes sometimes,’ Laurie said. ‘And there was a storm last night.’
Nina nodded. She remembered Marie referring to the same problem.
For the first time, it occurred to Nina to wonder if Egg’s body was still up there on the hilltop, or whether the children would have dragged it away somewhere. Bile rose in her throat along with the image of his cracked skull.
She took the receiver from Laurie, careful not to let their fingers touch, and replaced it on its stand. The water dripping from her clothes had already made a dark pool on the carpet.
‘You have to warm up, and fast,’ Laurie said. ‘Do you want a bath?’
‘No,’ Nina replied instantly.
But Laurie was right about needing to get herself dry. Her shivering was uncontrollable.
She climbed the stairs slowly, stopping each time her shudders made progress impossible. Laurie followed her. Nina felt vulnerable: Laurie could trip her and send her toppling down the steps at any moment. But why here and why now?
They reached the landing. Nina watched her daughter warily.
Laurie opened the door of her bedroom. ‘Take off those wet clothes, Mum.’
Nina entered the room. She sat on the edge of the bed, grimacing at the sensation of sinking. She stood and obeyed Laurie’s command meekly. Her jeans were sodden, making a rigid shell, a denim exoskeleton. When she finally managed to peel them off, her legs looked sickly pale and thin. Laurie brought in a towel as she was bending to shrug off her long-sleeved T-shirt. They stood watching each other, the towel held out like a peace offering or a gauntlet.
Nothing in Laurie’s eyes suggested anything more than concern. If anything was unnatural, it was her ability to remain calm in the face of Nina’s erratic behaviour. But Nina had no idea whether Laurie would ordinarily be capable of such tolerance. She had no idea what Laurie was like.
The image of the night before was a static tableau in her mind. That view from above the hollow. The group of dark shadows within, and Egg – poor, dear Egg – on his knees in the centre. Nina found that she was able to insert or remove Laurie from the tableau at will, as though she were flicking between two spot-the-difference images. Laurie was there. Laurie wasn’t there. Laurie was part of this. Laurie was innocent. Nina tried to listen to the voice within her, but the shrill ringing sound in her ears overwhelmed everything.
She took the towel and began rubbing at her hair. The darkness beneath the towel was a relief. She balled her hands, pressing the fabric hard to her face. She pushed fluffy folds of it into her mouth.
She ought to scream. Let it all out. It would do her good. That’s what Laurie had told her on their first full day on the island.
No sound came from her mouth. The towel only made her feel hot. She pulled it away and continued drying herself.
Laurie knelt before her open suitcase and the clothes Nina had crammed into it – was that really only yesterday?
‘I don’t have my clothes,’ Nina said, finally cottoning on.
‘I figured you’d rather wear mine than Gran’s. There’s no way my jeans will fit, but these might do.’
Nina let her drape the items of clothing over her outstretched arms. A plain black skirt and black leggings. A slouchy red woollen jumper. A grey vest with Oh yeah? scrawled in white.
‘Thank you,’ Nina said in the quietest voice.
When she was dressed, she felt like a different person. It was good. The jumper was wide in the neck and slipped off one shoulder. Nina finished towelling her hair.
‘I need to find a way to contact the mainland,’ she said. It was the only way of interrupting the madness of Hope Island. Out there in the real world, everything must still be normal, people were predictable, children were not murderous. Even when Egg had been alive, Hope Island had been close to lawless, and now there was nothing to hold back the chaos. ‘And I’m scared to leave you here alone.’
Laurie folded her arms. ‘Why?’
She couldn’t hold the truth in abeyance indefinitely. And she felt a sudden urge to tell someone what had happened, to hold the truth up to the light, to see its flaws.
‘Because last night Egg was killed.’
Laurie blinked but didn’t look away. Nina was unsure what reaction would signal guilt. Then she sighed. ‘Mum. You know that isn’t true.’
‘I saw it.’
‘And this was when you were prowling around in the dark, in the rain?’
‘Yes.’
‘And after you tried to leave the island because you don’t want to be here when Dad arrives.’ Laurie pressed her fingertips to the bridge of her nose, an action that seemed to Nina absurdly adult.
‘No. I mean yes, but that’s—There’s no link between those two things.’
Gently, Laurie took the towel from her and dropped it onto the bed. ‘Mum… I don’t know how you’re supposed to say this sort of thing… but you’re not acting like yourself.’
‘Me?’
‘You keep accusing people. Me, for one. You’re saying things that don’t make sense. What do you really think has happened to Mr Frears?’ She had the forced neutral manner of a therapist, but her meaning was clear. Tell me about these hallucinations.
Traps were springing up everywhere. Nina’s throat was dry and the act of towelling her hair had made her head spin. She could hear the rush of the ocean.
‘I don’t know,’ she said carefully. ‘I’m sorry. But I do need to call the mainland. They need to know about the phone lines being down, and they can tell us when it’ll be safe for the ferry to run. Will you come with me? The fire department have a radio line.’
Laurie hesitated, watching her with an unreadable expression. Then she nodded and led the way downstairs.
* * *
They saw hints of the commotion as they approached the harbour. Nina lifted the visor of the pink raincoat she had taken from the coat rack in the cottage, and peered through the driving rain to see figures hurrying in the area between the shops and the fire department. The sound of raised voices came from somewhere out of sight. She felt Laurie’s gaze as heat upon her face.
The door of the fire department hung open. The doorway was blocked with bodies and through the window Nina could see people in Egg’s office. She recognised almost all of them. They were the parents she had met on her doorstepping tour.
They were all shouting over one another. Nina couldn’t make out a single word. She rubbed her ears. The odd thing was that the noise, mingling with the thud of the rain and the hissing in her ears, was almost pleasurable, a soundscape richer than the sum of its parts.
‘Mum?’ Laurie said, small and far away.
Nina glanced at her but couldn’t begin to think what to say. She pushed between the people standing in the doorway. A few noticed her arrival and the change in atmosphere spread like a ripple in water. The shouting abated but the muttering seemed almost as loud. They all seemed wreathed in fog; steam rose from them as the rainwater on their clothing evaporated in the heat of the small room.
She tried to remember some of their names, but realised she had never learned most of them. Charlene Jenner, Ed Curtiz… Marie was missing, as were Dee and Harvey Hutchinson. The rest were a mass of faces with only one expression between them: utter mistrust.
