It seemed so pointless. If the police couldn’t find Charlie a quarter of a century ago, what were a bunch of online amateurs going to achieve now? Regardless, they all had their own pet theory about how he had pulled off his vanishing act. Some thought his remains were out there in the depths of Gritten Wood, still waiting to be discovered. Others, that an accomplice had helped to spirit him away, and that he was still alive somewhere.
The thought of that made me shiver.
But even worse were the posts from people who appeared to believe the impossible. Charlie had thought a sacrifice would allow him to vanish into the dream world forever, and there were people online who genuinely believed he had managed it.
Which was ridiculous, of course. But at the same time, I remembered all too well the appeal that lucid dreams had had for me as a teenager, and how even though I hadn’t bought into the outer reaches of Charlie’s bullshit, that central idea of escape had still pulled at me. If I hadn’t believed him, perhaps a part of me had wanted to. So yes, it was ridiculous. But I had seen it happen myself, hadn’t I? I’d watched a belief take hold, and then the awful repercussions of that unfolding slowly and inexorably in real time.
The killers of Andrew Brook and Ben Halsall had believed.
It sickened me. What Charlie and Billy did that day had become a story, one that had grown and twisted over the years, and now at least two other children were dead because of him. It might have been absurd to believe Charlie had disappeared into a fantasy world, but in some ways he had achieved his wish. The murder had leaked out into the lives of so many others, and Charlie lived on in their dreams and nightmares, just as he’d wanted.
And because I had played my own role in what had happened, it was impossible to shake the feeling that I was partly responsible for the murders that followed in its wake. That, whether I had known about them or not, in some way they were my fault.
After a time, my mother began stirring in her sleep. Her breathing changed, and while it was probably my imagination, the soft beep of her heart monitor beside me seemed a little louder.
She opened her eyes.
I waited as she stared at the ceiling for a few seconds. She turned her head and looked at me blankly. And then she looked as sad as I’d ever seen her. It was as though she wanted to reach out to someone—to touch them—but a window was keeping the two of them apart.
“You can do so much better, you know,” she said.
I remembered the photographs I’d seen back at the house. My mother as a young woman full of hopes and dreams, laughing with such joy that it looked as though the whole world delighted her. The contrast right now was stark.
“Mom,” I said. “It’s me. Paul.”
She stared at me. I was worried she might react the way she had on my first visit, but instead, after a moment, her expression changed, the sadness softening into something slightly happier, yet still tinged with melancholy and loss.
“You look so grown up,” she said.
“I am.”
“Oh, I know. Or at least you think you are. Everybody does at your age. But that doesn’t stop me from worrying about you. My son, going out by himself into the big, wide world.”
I swallowed.
She wasn’t here with me right now, but I knew where her mind was and what it was seeing. I didn’t need to close my eyes to picture that final day at the railway station as we waited for the train together. Me heading off to college, with my bags resting on the platform beside me. I remembered what she had said to me.
It will be Christmas before you know it.
My mother smiled sadly now.
“And I know you’re not coming back,” she said.
For a few seconds, I said nothing. Just as I had at the time.
Then I leaned forward.
“No, I’m not,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to be.”
“Are you sad about it?”
She shook her head gently, then looked up at the ceiling and smiled again, this time more to herself.
“I’ll miss you so much,” she said. “But I’m happy for you. I want you to go out and do great things. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. For you to get away from this place, and everything that happened here. I want to throw you as far as possible, so you can grow big and strong somewhere better. So you can have a good life. I don’t care if you ever think about me at all. I’ll think about you instead.”
I didn’t reply. I hadn’t known what was going through my mother’s head that day, and I had never had a child of my own to help me understand the notion of unconditional sacrifice she was describing.
That’s all I’ve ever wanted.
For you to get away from this place, and everything that happened here.
All these years, she had known about the copycat murders. She had kept newspapers detailing crimes connected to me, and which I had been blissfully unaware of. She had let me have my escape, and then carried a weight in my absence that should have been mine.
She had protected me.
“I went up into the attic, Mom,” I said.
Her smile flickered at that. It was as though my words had interfered with her reception, interrupting the clarity of the signal she was receiving, like a burst of unpleasant static across the screen of her memories. I regretted it immediately. If she had done that for me over the years, surely it was my turn to shoulder the burden now. What mattered most was that her final days and hours were peaceful.
“What was that?” she said.
“Nothing, Mom.”
She breathed slowly. The seconds passed.
Then she frowned slightly.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” she said.
“What?”
More silence. Just that quiet breathing.
“I just can’t remember what it is,” she said.
I waited. I had no idea what time or place my mother was speaking from right now, as my own words had clearly disrupted her. Was she still at the railway station that day with me? Or were these thoughts coming from somewhere else entirely?
But there was no answer to that question. Whatever my mother had been dreaming before, she returned to it now.
TWELVE
Are you saying my son was murdered because of a ghost?
Amanda was still thinking about that question as she arrived back at the department. Instead of heading straight to her office, she got into the elevator and pressed the button for the basement.
It was certainly the place for ghosts down here. While the rest of the building had been modernized a few years previously, the basement remained untouched. The paint on the walls was coming away in patches, as though picked at by fingernails, and a couple of the overhead lights flickered as she walked beneath them. The corridors down here were silent other than an omnipresent buzzing sound. Whenever Amanda visited the basement, she was never sure if the noise came from the lights above, the wiring in the walls, or something else altogether. Or which of those options unnerved her the most.
The dark room, then.
When she reached it, she knocked on the door and waited. Even though she didn’t like it down here, it seemed easier to pay a personal call than to pick up the phone or send an email.
She heard movement from inside, and then the door opened a few seconds later. Detective Theo Rowan had a way of opening a door not quite as wide as you might expect; it reminded her of someone keeping the chain on at the arrival of an unwelcome visitor. But the reputation he had throughout the department was largely down to the work he did; in person, Amanda imagined he would be a surprise to people who had heard of but never met him. Theo was in his late twenties, with an athletic build and a mass of curly blond hair. And despite all the talk about him being creepy, he had a nice smile. It appeared now.