A Death Displaced (26 page)

Harry!
She remembered the spirit that had visited her in the kitchen.
Don’t trust Ryan. Ryan’s not who he says he is.

‘Harry Cracknel,’ she said abruptly. It was a test; she threw the name at Ryan to take him off guard. He acted bemused and awkwardly laughed.

‘Huh?’ he played innocent, but Juliet saw the worry in his eyes; she saw his mind squirm, attempting to figure out what she knew and
how
she knew it.

Juliet said aloud what Ryan’s body language had confirmed. ‘You had Aldrich kill Harry, didn’t you? Harry Cracknel.’ She chucked piercing eyes at him.

He shifted on the spot; the shotgun swayed at his side. ‘How do you know about Harry?’ he asked, hesitantly.

Juliet shook her head in horror and let out a tense breath. ‘Put down the shotgun, and I’ll tell you.’

Ryan glanced at the weapon in his hand. He looked at it regretfully, like it was a limb he’d lose forever if he let it go. But eventually he put the gun down where he found it. He stood in a position that blocked off the others and gave him quickest access to the dangerous instrument.

‘Kim told me they were head over heels with each other, then out of the blue he dumped her. He said he never wanted to see her again, amongst some other nasty words, and then vanished from her life,’ Juliet explained.

‘Errh …’

‘You had Aldrich use his trick on Harry to make him dump her. Then you killed him and made him disappear, like you both made Samantha Crystan disappear.’

‘I … I love Kim. I wanted her for myself.’ He fumbled on his words. ‘I spent too much time with Aldrich. I was younger then. He told me my job had to have some perks, and he wanted me as a companion. He was extremely old and lonely … and, and … he told me that he never wanted to use his ability on me.’

‘Stop talking about Aldrich! It’s not about Aldrich,’ yelled Juliet. ‘Why should I let Kim stay with a murderer? I should tell her about you. You know …’ she laughed bitterly, ‘Kim thinks you’re such a sweetheart doing support work!’

‘Don’t tell her, please. Aldrich paid me a lot … I have money. I can give her everything she wants. And … and …’ He paused and looked at the dried blood on the floor. ‘Where’s Aldrich’s body? I can help you out.’

Nick butted in. ‘Hold on. Who’s Kim? Who’s Harry? And how do you two know each other?’

Juliet clenched her teeth, not wanting to talk to any of the Crystan boys. She sucked up her pride and speedily explained how she knew Ryan.

Ryan asked again, ‘Where’s Aldrich’s body?’

Tom looked up and told Ryan where the body was, and how to find it.

‘Juliet,’ Ryan started, ‘I’ll clean up Grendel Manor; I’ll get rid of all the evidence and dispose of his body if you promise not to tell Kim anything? Please, I love her. I did what I did because I was young and, and, I was afraid of Aldrich, and … Kim was beautiful.’

As input, Tommy said, ‘Sounds like a good deal to me.’

It was obvious to Juliet that Ryan deeply loved (or was at least unhealthily obsessed with) Kim, but could she let her best friend stay with a man like Ryan? Did she have a choice? She simply wanted to get away from it all. Her body ached and was most likely bruised all over.

‘This may be the best option we have, Juliet,’ said Nick. ‘But can we trust him?’

‘You can trust me,’ Ryan said in a desperate tone. ‘I’m in your debt. You’ve saved me from having to work for Aldrich for the rest of my life.’

‘I’ll trust you if Juliet trusts you,’ Nick made clear.

Is that meant to flatter me, Nicolas?
Her mind was hell;
Don’t trust Ryan. But I have to; how else will we get out of this? What about Kim? She can’t stay in a relationship built on blood and lies. But, I don’t want her to go through the pain of breaking up with her boyfriend of four years! And Nicolas, I was falling for him, but now all I see is his murderous brother, and Aldrich’s gruesome body.

She hated it; she strongly believed that telling the truth was the moral thing to do. But now she had no choice but to lie to her best friend. What would Ryan do if she took Kim away from him? Would anyone here be safe?

I have to get away from this place.
‘We can trust him,’ she decided.

Ryan said in a whispery relieved voice, ‘Thank you.’

‘Okay then, let’s leave this place.’ Nick nodded at Ryan, and headed to the front door. The twins followed, but Juliet waited.

‘You better treat Kim like royalty,’ she threw at Ryan.

‘I will. I swear.’ He looked down at his feet. His shifty eyes were too creepy on that pale, blemished face. Juliet would
never
know what Kim saw in him. Ryan kept his head lowered but peered at Juliet, smiling. From the angle he was at, it seemed almost like a sneer, but Juliet cautiously gave back a neutral look.

As she exited Grendel Manor, she felt that awful paranoia again, like earlier when she’d realised  the shotgun had been left on the step, and when she’d pondered if leaving the twins with Aldrich was a good idea or not.

Is this another mistake, trusting Ryan?

She sure hoped not.

She got in the front of Nick’s car, because Tom and Tommy were already in the back, and said, ‘Just take me back to Chanton.’

Chapter 21

Small, rough stones flung into the air as Nick pulled away in his black Vauxhall Corsa. Parked on the gravel area was a silver Peugeot 206; it hadn’t been there when they’d arrived, so it must have belonged to Ryan.

Nick drove fast over the private road then towards Chanton. Juliet, Tom and Tommy were silent, the tension in the car palpable. Nick was angry at Tommy for always affronting him, and had to repeatedly remind himself to calm down, drive safely.

The mixture of sadness and anger, guilt and fear, and shock and grief was cruel.
Juliet can’t stand to look at me.
He glanced sideways at her, but she stared out of the window into the dark.

He realised that he ached to walk to the cliff edge and see where it was Aldrich had pushed his mum’s car over, with her body inside. It would be like visiting her grave. But now it was too late. He could never return to Grendel Manor.

The silence was thick. As he drove, the shadowy, wiry trees of the roadside taunted him. He finally knew what had happened to his mum, but was anything any easier now? Was he any happier?

Chanton came into view. ‘Stop here,’ Juliet said in a cold voice.

It was still a long walk to the town from where they were. ‘I can drive you closer,’ Nick said sheepishly.

‘I said stop here.’

He pulled over, and Juliet opened the door and stepped out. She arched and looked inside the car, not quite at Nick, but distantly past him. ‘Delete my number. If anything ever leads back to me, I am placing everything on you three. I never want to see you again.’ Her voice started out solid, but Nick thought he detected a crack towards the end.

With a slam of the door, she walked away.

‘Yuh definitely ain’t gettin’ any now,’ said Tommy.

Nick swung his head around. ‘You can walk back to Amiton if you carry on,’ he spat the words.

‘Urgh. Chill out.’ Tommy puffed his chest and then let it go, looking away angrily.

Nick started the car back up and drove towards Amiton. His eyes welled a little at the thought of Juliet’s strict words.
Did she mean it?
He looked at the moon, hazily visible through island clouds. For some reason, gazing up at the moon gave him a sense of hope.

Maybe things weren’t so bad? He barely knew Juliet anyway. Aldrich was dead. And they were off the hook.

When he pulled into the drive of his dad’s house, he turned to face his brothers in the back. ‘Please don’t tell Dad anything about this yet,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m not ordering you around, so don’t be annoyed, Tommy, but we have to be delicate about this. Dad needs to know so that he can finally move on. He deserves to know, but I think we should all tell him together, okay?’

Tom nodded and then Tommy did too.

Nick half smiled and said, ‘Thank you. I’ll come over in a couple of days and we’ll talk to him. We all need time to clear our heads first, so we can talk to him sensibly.’

‘Yeah,’ Tommy grumbled, ‘and I’m starvin’.’ He had a glazed and evasive look in his eyes that made Nick worry. But then, Tommy
had
just killed a man. Surely that would affect him.

The mention of food made Nick’s stomach stir, and he grimaced at the sudden pain in his belly. He hadn’t even had lunch, and now it was evening.

‘Me too,’ he said. ‘Oh yeah, Tommy, your arm … hide that scab from Dad. And your jacket; the sleeve is torn off.’

Tommy fidgeted, taking the jacket off completely, then bundled it up to hide the torn part. ‘I’ll chuck out my jacket and … I dunno … tell him I cut myself at college.’ He laughed a bit dopily and a bit distantly. ‘I liked this jacket.’ He manoeuvred the passenger seat in front of him and hunkered out of the car. Nick watched him walk towards the front door.

Before getting out, Tom leant close to Nick. ‘Can I come over your house later? I still need to talk to you. After everything today I just want to get it off my chest,’ he said plainly.

Nick had almost forgotten about Tom’s personal matter. ‘Yeah, that’s fine. I’m going to eat first and shower. Do you want me to pick you up?’

‘No, I’ll drive over. Text me when you’re ready. I like to drive. It helps me think.’

Nick nodded, then gently said, ‘Tom …’

‘Yeah?’

‘Make sure Tommy’s alright, will you? I was pretty hard on him, and even though what he did was wrong, it might have been the only way out for us all.’

Tom shrugged in an understanding manner. ‘Okay, I will do.’ He got out of the car and quietly closed the passenger-side door.

Although the drive back had been awkwardly quiet, it really did seem silent now. Nick reversed out of his dad’s drive and headed home, arriving within a couple of minutes.

The trees that shrouded the front garden reminded him of the woods on Aldrich’s land. He hurried out of the car and got inside as soon as possible. The first thing he did was strip off his clothes. They were filthy, stained with mud and grass.

When he caught himself in the mirror, he gasped at the bruising that covered his naked body. The longer he stared at it, the more it hurt. He tried to cheer himself up by laughing about it.
I look like a rainbow.
There was a throb in his head where the branch had rebounded.

He put his clothes in the washing machine and ran a shower. The shower was a place of thought, and he didn’t wish to think just yet. He wanted to be clean, have some food, and have everything back to normal.

Lathering every inch of his body, he hummed a random tune to distract his mind until he rinsed down, stepped out, and dried himself. He tried hard to ignore the sheer agony of the bruises.

He found clean clothes to wear, a baggy hoody and joggers to lounge around in, then pecked at a bag of crisps while he microwaved a tomato and cheese pasta bake meal.

When his stomach was full and bloatedly sick from eating fast, he plodded to the snug and flumped down onto a beanbag chair. The ceiling was discoloured and needed repainting. He stared up at it and let his eyes close. Sleep took him, but he awoke an hour later. He checked the time on his mobile to make sure he hadn’t overslept, and to see if Tom had texted him yet.

The nap refreshed him, so now really was the time to think. The tears came.
Mum …
He cried for twenty minutes straight, staring at an imaginary pit of darkness where hope didn’t and couldn’t exist. On the edge, he could have easily slipped in.

Not yet, no.
He’d been there before. Depression. He knew that forlorn place; it had a paradoxical comfort to it, the safety in hiding away from life, not being able to face the day, succeeding in not failing by not even trying. Or was it failing to fail, or failing to try, or …?

He shouldn’t want that relationship with Depression again, not after his steady climb out of it.
No, it’s too easy to be depressed.

But he stayed close to the pit for now. They had been long-time huggers after all.

His mind lingered.
I never want to see you again.
Until he’d met and lost Juliet
,
he hadn’t realised how much he wanted a nice woman in his life. He’d avoided serious relationships for ages, and now that he wanted one, he couldn’t have it with the woman he desired.

Sullenly, he thought,
Janet Morgan could always set me up with someone, like she said she could.

An image of the glistening portal came to mind.
What was that thing?
He thought about the children. The portal had saved them from being sacrificed into fire, but where were they? They’d still been taken from their parents. And what was on the other side? Was it really better than here?

He imagined all the things that could be in the Otherworld: exotic beings, magic, fantastical landscapes, deities, ghosts, demons, fairies, all types of mythical creatures. Or maybe he was getting carried away again. Maybe it was another pit of no hope. But if there were other beings on that side, then what use did they have for human children?

The portal’s gone. It buried itself. There’s no point thinking about it.

Even with it gone, he made a spur-of-the-moment promise to himself: if he ever found another way to the Otherworld, then he would try to find Katie Baker and discover the fate of the other children who had vanished across the years.

His mind plodded on to ponder the life of Aldrich. Had he been immortal? He’d hinted he was extremely old … Nick almost wished he was alive still. Aldrich and Juliet were the only other people he knew about with paranormal abilities. Now he couldn’t talk to either of them.

Then his heart twanged, reminding him how Aldrich had murdered his mother. He screwed up his face and said mentally,
I’m glad he’s dead. He can’t ruin any more lives now. I’m glad.

Did he regret not killing Aldrich himself?
I, erm,
no. I’m not a murderer.
Tommy did what Nick couldn’t morally do. If Tommy had murdered an innocent person, Nick would have wanted nothing to do with him … but this was Aldrich, and that made it
almost
acceptable,
right?
Though, he wasn’t sure if he could look at Tommy in the same way ever again.