“Yeah. Long time ago.”
“Thirteen years. I think about it every day,” he says. I turn to study him, his face set and unsmiling. His eyes flick over to me. “She was my sister. Maria.”
I am uncomfortably aware of my heartbeat, of every hollow and dip in the ground. The hacking respiration of the engine as we turn off the road and onto a twisting path cloistered by trees. My memory of the missing girl is distorted: a car crash, a broken window. My mother saying,Oh, that poor family, and shaking her head.
“Ah God, Andrew. I’m so sorry.”
“Like you said, a long time ago. Both my parents died in that crash. They were taking Maria into town when the car hit a patchof black ice—at least that’s what the inquiry said—and spun off the road. It happened a little further back that way.” He jerks his thumb the way we have come, back toward the red telephone box. “Their church set up a memorial by the side of the road, but it’s all overgrown now. People forget, don’t they?”
“I suppose they do. Yeah.”
“The crash didn’t kill them. That’s the funny thing. The car actually landed upside down in a flooded ditch, so in the end the coroner said they probably drowned. They said my parents were likely both unconscious when it happened, so I suppose that’s a blessing, isn’t it?”
He laughs softly but without humor. I feel dreadfully sad for him, the sensation like a lit ember, burning into my chest.
“When the fire department pulled my parents out, Maria’s booster seat was empty and she was nowhere to be seen. They questioned me, as if I might know what happened even though I wasn’t there. I told them the same thing I told the police: If you can explain how a three-year-old child manages to climb out of the wreck of a fatal accident with no injuries, then I’d love to hear it. They assured me that wherever Maria had gone, it couldn’t be far from the car. That’s what they kept telling themselves. That’s what they kept tellingeveryone. After five days, they advised me that the rescue was being scaled down to a retrieval operation. That means—”
“They didn’t expect to find her alive. I know.”
Overheard, the trees form a dark canopy, the light falling through it diffuse and grainy as dusk. Andrew shifts into a lower gear as the truck hits a divot in the ground hard enough to make the seat belt bite into my shoulder. Here, it’s almost as if there’s no path at all. We lurch and dip over roots and rabbit holes and small mossy hummocks that swell like waves. The tires throw up a sprayof dirt. A few moments later, Andrew pulls up beside a fallen tree girdled with lichen, jolting us both forward in our seats.
“I should have warned you. It’s bumpy. Come on. We have to walk from here.”
He unclips his seat belt as I take a long look around me. We’re in a large, overgrown clearing where the firs grow thick and close together, casting the ground in shade. They are tall—taller than I remember, even as a young girl—slender columns that rise and rise and seem to hold up the sky. When I step out of the truck, my foot sinks into a soft carpet of pine needles and boggy ground with a wet, unctuous sound like an old man clearing his lungs. I check my phone again as I grab my bag and see that there is no signal here after all. The text to my sister pinpointing my location is markedUNSENT.
We hike for forty minutes or so, through dense thickets and overgrowth that spills from rocky ledges and between roots, nettles, and briars boiling out of the cracks. I point out the broad fan of a dryad’s saddle on the trunk of a tree and a cluster of tiny, dimpled amethyst deceivers embedded in moss. By the time we reach the farmhouse, I’m sweating, my coat unzipped. The house stands in the center of a broad, scrubby clearing. I glimpse outbuildings, long fallen into disrepair, roofs caved in like sunken gums. Beyond, the upward sweep of the pines toward the ridge gives the impression of standing in a crater.
“I’m working on it from the inside out,” Andrew tells me, almost apologetic. “So don’t judge it too harshly.”
“I like it,” I say, and although it’s not a lie, it’s not quite true either. I don’t really care about the boarded windows and collapsingroof, the scatter of broken slates on the ground beneath. I don’t mind the long straggly grass or the ivy that is swarming the walls and weakening the brickwork. I just want to find my devil’s fingers.
As we move out from under the trees, a movement catches my eye. A weather vane, up there on the roof. It’s old, oxidized copper turned the light blue-green of sea-foam. At first, looking at the curved body and finned tail I think it depicts a whale, but as it swings to the side I notice the long neck and mouth full of teeth and realize it is some sort of monster. It creaks. The nearby trees sigh, hush, hush.
“Right. I’m going to grab some stuff and then I’ll take you to the spot,” Andrew tells me, fishing the keys from his pocket. “You can come in or wait here, I don’t mind which.”
I tell him I’ll wait inside out of the drizzle. The hallway is narrow and dark, musty smelling. I drop my rucksack on the floor and peel off my coat with some relief, arching my back until I hear it crack.
Andrew walks ahead of me to a small doorway beneath the stairs. I wrinkle my nose. The house smells vegetal, like the water that collects at the bottom of vases, old fishtanks coated with algae. It’s cold and mildewy and old-fashioned, and I’m glad I don’t have to stay here too long. I run my fingers over the textured wallpaper.
“You got a flask in that rucksack of yours?” Andrew calls as he ducks through the darkened doorway. “I’ve got one you can borrow if you want.”
“No, I’m okay, thanks. Looks like you’ve got some nice oak flooring under this carpet.”
“Yeah.” I hear the creak of stairs; his voice muffled as he movesfarther away. “I’ve been finding a lot of original features. It’s one of the good things about buying an old house. Last year I found an old laundry chute that had been boarded over. I think it probably dates to about the eightee—”
It takes me a moment to realize he has stopped talking. I lift my head, straining to listen. Take a few steps forward. The door under the stairs is standing open. It is darkness beyond.
“Andrew?”
Thud.The sound is so heavy and blunt that I freeze, one hand on the wall. Coldness crawls up my back. I look around as if for assistance, but there is just the front door standing open behind me, the empty woods beyond. Has he fallen? I cross to the cellar door and peer down the staircase.
“Hey, Andrew! You okay down there? You want me to turn on the light?”
I flick the switch but nothing happens. There is just an empty clicking sound. The power must be off, I suppose. I listen for movement, waiting to hear his voice—I’m okay, nothing broken!—but there are just dust motes, the dark descent of the stairwell. Outside I can hear a bird calling,churr, churr. What was it he’d said about this place?Nothing for miles around except birdsong.The thought is both soothing and frightening, all that distance. All those trees.
“Have you hurt yourself? Andrew? Did you fall?”
I switch my head left to right. Behind me, the gloomy hallway with the faded Persian runner. To my left, another door, slightly open. I catch a brief glimpse of a dirty lino floor covered in old newspapers turned yellow. The kitchen maybe, or a bathroom. He did say it was in a state of disrepair. I pick at the flaking paintwork around the cellar door. I’m getting restless. I don’t know what to do. That thud had been heavy, it hadweight. What if he’s collapsed downthere? Injured? The idea of being alone out here with no phone signal while a man bleeds out on the dirty floor is so dreadful that I do the only thing I can think of to do at that particular moment.