Written in the Blood (18 page)

Leah Wilde.

Eight years old in this photograph.

Twenty-four years old when she sat downstairs tonight.

Etienne tapped the photograph against her chin, thinking. The girl offered something incredible. Something too life-changing to
be
credible.

Decided on her course, she reached out to the telephone beside the bed. Keyed in a number long committed to memory.

The phone rang four times before a man answered.

She closed her eyes. Opened them. Turned the photograph of the smiling girl on the bicycle face-down on the bed.

‘I believe,’ she said, ‘I’ve found someone you may wish to meet.’

C
HAPTER
17

Yosemite National Park, California, USA

A
ngel River stood in the RV’s doorway and peered out at a fresh Sierra Nevada morning rich with the scent of pinesap and wood smoke. Already the sun filtering through the tree canopy carried a sharp heat, warming the forest floor and adding a note of damp mulch.

Having spent most of the night too frightened to sleep, Angel had succumbed to exhaustion just before dawn. She was, as a result, the last to rise.

At the twin benches still dragged together from last night’s feast, her family – Mom, Elliot and Hope – and her new
depths-of-a-nightmare
family – Ty, Regan and Luke – were hunkered down and enjoying a late camp breakfast.

Sitting beside Ty on one of the benches, her mom spotted Angel hovering in the doorway and waved her outside. ‘Ah, the sleeper awakes. Come and check out this breakfast. I think our woodsman surpassed himself.’

Ty raised his head and grinned. ‘Grab a plate, Angel. Plenty for everyone. You know what they say about breakfast.’

‘Most important meal of the day!’ the others chanted in unison.

As if this was normal.

As if nothing had happened in the night.

As if they were two happy families, growing into one.

Angel stepped out of the motor home and crossed the patch of ground to the picnic tables, limbs stiff. She stared down at the food.

Boxes of cereal and cartons of milk. Orange juice, cranberry and pomegranate. A skillet full of crisp bacon. Sausages, tomatoes and hash browns. A serving plate piled with pancakes. Loaves of bread, cut into slices, a few of them toasted. Jars of preserves. Peanut butter and chocolate spread.

‘I can do you an egg,’ Ty said. ‘Or even a waffle, if you like. How about a couple of waffles? Butter, cream, strawberries and syrup. The works.’

He was wearing the same wizard T-shirt as the day before:
THAT’S WHAT I’M TOLKIEN ABOUT
. It looked a little greasier this morning. Ty looked a little older this morning, too. And, weirdly, a little fleshier, as if the cholesterol from last night’s feast was riding high in his cheeks.

His jaw was streaked with soot. Toast crumbs and jam clung to his stubble. His eyes didn’t blink as he watched her.

He knows
, Angel thought.

It was real. And I saw. And he knows.

She smiled back at him; had to, to keep up the act. Mouth drawn wide, lips curled back over teeth. That was how you did it, wasn’t it?

Picking up a plastic plate, she dumped bacon onto it from the skillet, added a hash brown and two slices of bread. The nearest empty space was opposite Ty. She wasn’t going to sit there. No way. She walked to the far end and squeezed in between two large plastic coolers.

‘You OK, hon?’ her mom asked.

Angel nodded. She made a crude sandwich from the bacon and hash brown, added a squirt of ketchup, mashed the other piece of bread down on top.

‘Gonna have some fun today,’ Ty said.

Shaking, Angel raised her sandwich to her lips and bit into it. The food was a dense slug inside her mouth. She worked it with her tongue. At the far end of the table, her mom poured a glass of pomegranate juice and told the others to pass it down. Angel received it gratefully, nearly choking as she knocked it back.

She heard a buzzing by her ear, and saw a large bluebottle land on top of her sandwich. It skated around in a figure of eight, a metallic-looking bead with red compound eyes.

Disgusted, she waved it off.

‘Careful, Angel,’ Ty said. ‘
Calliphora vomitoria
. They lay their eggs in dead animals. Hundreds at a time.’ He grinned again. ‘Someone hasn’t taken a shower this morning.’

‘Ty,’ Angel’s mom warned, digging him with an elbow.

‘Sorry, sorry. I just . . . it’s educational.’

‘Not while we’re eating, it isn’t.’

Angel placed the sandwich back down on her plate. She wiped her mouth. Saw the fly loop around the table and settle on a loaf of bread.

‘So,’ Ty said, addressing the group. ‘Are you guys all set to see the giant sequoias today? Think you’d like that?’

‘Yeah!’ Elliot shouted.

‘You want to hear a fact? They’re named after a Native American fella. Guy called Sequoyah. He invented some system of writing for the Cherokee. Fascinating stuff. We’ll head over to Mariposa Grove after we pack up breakfast. Some of those trees are a couple thousand years old. Hey, Angel. You looking forward to that?’

Angel stared at her plate. She forced herself to nod.

It took them half an hour to pack up. Angel took a shower in the space-age cubicle at the vehicle’s rear, scrubbing her body and her hair and her face. When she switched off the water and stepped, steaming, onto the bath mat, she thought she heard a thump – or a bang – from under her feet, directly over the RV’s luggage bay.

For most of the night, she had lain in bed too terrified to sleep, thinking they shared the motorhome with a corpse. Now she knew that wasn’t true. Locked away in the darkness of the vehicle’s underbelly, the beautiful woman with the seaweed eyes and the sunlight hair was alive. Angel felt bile rising in her throat. In a way, this was even worse. She had been locked inside a nightmare of her own, but this new revelation brought an urgency with it. It meant she had to do something. And soon.

Dressing quickly, she brushed her teeth and pulled a comb through her hair. Back in the main living space, she glanced out of the window and saw that everyone was outside.

Not everyone. Not the woman. She’s underneath you, Angel. Alive, but perhaps only barely. Stuffed into that vault like a sack of meat.

Inside the RV’s kitchen, she slid open a drawer and rummaged through a heap of cooking utensils and cutlery. She found a short filleting knife, and managed to slip it into her bag just as her mom opened the door.

‘OK, hon?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Sure?’

‘Of course.’

‘You OK with Ty?’

Angel grinned. ‘Yeah, Mom. I’m fine.’

‘Great. I really want you guys to be happy.’

‘I know.’

Her mom reached out a hand. Squeezed her arm.

They arrived at Mariposa Grove twenty minutes later and parked up. Ty and her mom swivelled around in their front seats. He flashed them all a grin. ‘OK, Bradies, Mariposa Grove. Some of the oldest trees in the world. And some of the largest, too.’ He began to list them, reeling off names as if from a football roster. ‘We’ve got Grizzly Giant, we’ve got the Fallen Monarch, we’ve got the Clothespin tree and the Telescope tree.’

Reaching over, Ty massaged the top of Angel’s mom’s bare leg. ‘Then we’ve got the Faithful Couple. Two trees that grew so close their trunks fused together.’ He slid his hand around the inside of her thigh – high up,
really
high up – as if no one was watching, as if it was OK to touch her there while her kids sat opposite and stared.

‘Oh, Ty,’ her mom said. She picked off his hand, cheeks colouring.

He grinned as if nothing had happened. ‘Right, gang. Let’s go bag us some trees.’

On any other day, Angel would have found herself struck mute with awe at the grove’s inhabitants. The flared bases of the giant sequoia trunks reminded her, in a curious way, of elephants’ feet; as if she walked beneath a herd of enormous beasts whose bodies were lost in the clouds. Angel recalled a Dali painting she had once seen:
Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening.

Funny name for a painting. Even funnier that she should remember it.

The giant sequoias laid an additional texture over the dream-like nature of her day – one filled with tree-legged creatures stalking ancient groves, of smiling monstrosities disguised as middle-aged geeks, of beautiful women sealed in motorhome coffins.

Although, occasionally, she felt Ty’s eyes upon her, he didn’t seem to pay her that much attention. He joked with her mom, pointed out the various trees to Elliot, grinned and goofed and wandered about.

There’s a woman locked inside our RV. She’s alive, although who knows for how long. You have to do something.

Angel studied Regan and Luke, wondered whether it was possible that they knew. But of course it wasn’t. She knew enough about serial killers to know that generally they didn’t have kids. And even if they did, they didn’t
collaborate
with them, forming some kind of Addams Family-style hunting party. It just didn’t happen.

That woman might be dying. And you’re walking through Mariposa Grove thinking about Dali’s elephants and psychotic stepfamilies.

Up ahead, Ty peeled off to chase Elliot around the base of a particularly huge sequoia. Taking her opportunity, Angel went to her mother’s side. ‘Mom, can I grab the RV keys a minute?’

‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing. Just need to use the bathroom.’

‘They have bathrooms here.’

Ty was still on the other side of the sequoia.

‘Mom, please.’

‘OK. OK, honey.’ She pulled open her bag, rifling through its contents. ‘I wish I knew what’s up with you today.’

Ty was still out of sight. He wouldn’t remain hidden for long. Finally her mom pulled out the bunch of keys. ‘Here you go. Make sure you lock it.’

‘Sure.’ Angel stuffed them into her bag. Turning away as Ty emerged on the path ahead, she tried to look casual. She took a circuitous route back to the RV, glancing over her shoulder every few yards to make sure he wasn’t following.

Up ahead, the motorhome waited in a line of dusty vehicles. Ty had reversed their RV into its bay so that the rear faced into the trees. Its windows were dark mirrors, reflecting the sun. For a moment Angel thought she saw it shift on its springs, a subtle tilting. But she knew she imagined it. Thought she did . . . perhaps.

Moving quickly, she ducked along the side of the motorhome to the back. She stared up at its curving metal body, at the chrome ladder reaching all the way to the roof, its racks of running lights. The vehicle seemed to exude a cool malevolence. An awareness.

Angel shivered. Reaching out, she placed a hand against the metal. She thought she could feel a vibration, a humming; a heartbeat. But of course it was probably the refrigeration unit, or the plumbing, or something simple like that. Even when stationary, she knew these beasts only slumbered; they never truly died.

Then Angel heard the scratching. Faint. Oh-so-faint. It stopped, and she took her hand away. Stepped closer. Inclined her head.

There
. It was back. A ticking, or a scraping.

She glanced around. The RV was parked further into the undergrowth than its neighbouring vehicles; it screened her from curious eyes. No one lurked nearby.

The luggage bay lay behind a flip-down hatch low to the right, beside the licence plate. She had seen Ty opening it when they’d picked up the vehicle from the rental depot, revealing a crawlspace deep enough to stow a couple of king-size mattresses. They’d left it empty. Even with the seven of them on board, the RV was simply so huge they hadn’t needed the extra space.

Angel forced herself to move. She fumbled in her bag and pulled out the keys. The smaller one opened the luggage bay. She slid it into the lock, twisted it, paused. Took a breath, held it.

Removing the key, she flipped down the hatch.

Darkness inside. Shadows.

A smell that was a mixture of sweat, urine and fear. And there, towards the very back of the crawlspace, two spots of seaweed-green light. Angel stooped, resting her hands on her knees, tilting her head to give herself a better view.

Eyes. That’s what those two green spots were. The woman’s beautiful green eyes, blinking out at her from deep within the motorhome’s belly. Angel heard her own breath echoing inside the chamber. Felt her heart beating in her chest.

It’s true. It’s all true. He put her here. He put her here last night and then he lay down beside Mom and went to sleep. And then he got up this morning, as fresh and carefree as a choirboy, made us all breakfast and drove us down here to see the giant sequoias, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like we were all a big happy fucking family and there wasn’t some stranger locked up in the trunk.

THAT’S WHAT I’M TOLKIEN ABOUT.

Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.

‘Are you hurt?’ Angel whispered, straining to see the woman’s features. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘
Yuhhh
 . . .’ the RV’s prisoner stammered.

Something scraped inside the chamber. The eyes flickered. Grew larger. Now Angel saw an arm, clad in a black cardigan sleeve. A hand, slim and graceful, fingers caked in mud.

Cracked nails. And blood.

‘You’re OK,’ Angel told her. ‘I’m going to get help. What’s your name? Tell me your name.’

‘
Geor
 . . .’ the woman rasped. ‘
Georgia
.’

‘OK, Georgia. You hold on, all right? You hold on.’

Angel’s hands were shaking. Her knees, too. Her whole body. She fumbled with her bag, nearly dropped it, yanked it open. Searched around inside. Found her phone. Activated the screen. Brought up the keypad. Typed
9 . . . 1 . . . 1.

The voice came from behind her. ‘Curious little pooch, aren’t you? I knew you’d seen me last night.’

Angel screamed. She spun around. Saw at once the lettering on the T-shirt right in front of her:
THAT’S WHAT I’M TOLKIEN ABOUT.

Ty reached out and plucked the phone from her fingers. He stared at the screen, shook his head, and tucked it into his shirt pocket.

The woman inside the luggage bay moaned and scrabbled backwards, seeking the sanctuary of darkness.

Ty grinned and, even in her terror, Angel thought:
You’re older. You’ve aged. Since this morning. How can that be?