Just as it seemed he was too tired to continue, the boy caught sight of a campfire up ahead, the flames dancing and flickering between the trees. He heard something snap and saw sparks of fire rising in the smoke. Stepping forward, he found himself in a clearing where wood gathered from the forest was burning in a pit of soft gray ash, the sticks there like bones glowing in the heat.
The man was sitting cross-legged, his face somehow in shadow, but the boy could see his hands, resting on the stained knees of his jeans, and they were bright red in the light. They were red from the blood that was still seeping out of the jagged incisions he had made across his wrists. It hurt the boy to see that. The man was still bleeding, even though those wounds were so many years old now.
The boy sat down in the undergrowth, on the far side of the fire. The man’s expression was unknowable, but the blood was still visible, the cuts there vicious and terrible. The fire was cracking and spitting between them.
And finally, the boy’s father began to speak.
When I finished reading, I sat there in silence for a few seconds. I still had no idea what to say, so I found myself reading sentences over and over again, pretending I hadn’t finished while I tried to gather my thoughts.
“Do you like it?”
Jenny sounded anxious. Given my reaction so far, I could hardly blame her.
“I think it’s brilliant,” I said.
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
And I did. In terms of quality, it was miles ahead of anything I’d ever managed to write. Despite my unease with the subject matter, I’d found myself there with the boy while I read it—scared for him, but also intrigued by the man he was following. Jenny had added enough subtle detail throughout for the ending to seem inevitable when it arrived, and for understanding to flow backward from it. The boy lived alone with his mother, and the man calling for him was the ghost of his father, lost to suicide years earlier. The boy needed to talk to him, to understand what had happened and why. It was a metaphor for grief and loss, and for the damage done to those left behind in the wake of tragedy.
So, yes, I thought the story was brilliant.
Did I like it, though?
Not one bit.
It was far too close to the dream Charlie had shared with us, and the fantasies he’d spun, to be a coincidence. The four of us searching the woods for something we never found. The stories of a ghost among the trees. A man with bright red hands and a face that could not be seen.
But how was it possible for Jenny to know about any of that? As far as I knew, she had never spoken to Charlie at all, or to Billy or James. And yet this couldn’t possibly have happened by chance.
So there had to be some explanation for it.
“I think it’s amazing,” I told her again. “Where did you get the idea for it?”
But as I asked the question, I realized I already knew.
* * *
The next day, I arrived early for work.
Marie had given me a set of keys, so I opened up and set about my usual tasks. There were only a handful of customers to serve, and a single delivery to sort. I worked methodically but blankly, questions whirling in my head. In my own way, I felt as desperate as the boy in Jenny’s story, but there was also a part of me that didn’t want to know. A part of me that was frightened of what I might learn.
Marie turned up just after ten, at which point the shop was empty aside from me. I stood up, surrounded by piles of books in the sorting area behind the counter. My heart was beating fast. If I didn’t do this immediately, I might not do it at all.
“I need to talk to you about something.”
Marie stared at me curiously for a second.
“Well,” she said. “Good morning to you, as well.”
“Sorry.”
And then I just stood there. Marie sighed and put her bag down on the counter, then spoke more softly.
“What’s the matter, Paul?”
“Jenny’s story,” I said.
“What about it?”
“The one she wrote for the competition. ‘Red Hands.’”
Marie shook her head. “I don’t know, I haven’t read that one. Slow down a bit here. Talk me through what’s bothering you.”
“The story is called ‘Red Hands,’” I said. “It’s about a boy going into the woods. His father’s there—that’s who the boy is looking for—but his father is dead. He’s a ghost. He killed himself years earlier, and his hands are covered in blood.”
The description came out in a blurt, but I saw Marie’s expression go from curious to alarmed as I spoke. She might not have read the story itself, but she knew exactly what I was talking about.
“It’s based on something you told her, isn’t it?” I said.
“Oh dear.” She closed her eyes and rubbed the skin between them. “Yes, I think so. I had no idea she would write about that one, though. You need to be careful when you do that. Not all stories belong to you, after all. People can get upset.”
“I need to know what happened,” I said. “The real story.”
Marie opened her eyes and stared at me for a few seconds. She looked suddenly tired, and as though she were weighing me up in some way.
“Please,” I said.
“Your parents, Paul.”
“What about them?”
“Your mom and dad. They’re both still alive?”
“Yeah.” A flash of my father’s face. “Unfortunately.”
“You’ll miss them when they’re gone.” But then she smiled sadly and corrected herself. “Of course, that’s not necessarily true. But all right. What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
I already knew some of it, because Jenny had told me what she could remember. Several years ago, a man had come out to Gritten Wood, walked away into the trees, and committed suicide there. The rumor was that he had left a child behind. That had been the jumping-off point for Jenny’s story. From there, she’d imagined how that boy might feel years later.
Marie was silent for a moment.
“The strange thing is, I only told her any of it because of you,” she said. “This was a while ago. She was talking about you—she said there was a boy in her writing class that she liked. A new boy, from Gritten Wood. Don’t look so embarrassed.”
“I’m not.”
What I actually felt was a trickle of horror inside me. I only told her any of it because of you. The idea that any of this—whatever this was—might somehow be my fault was hard to accept.
“I just said to be careful,” Marie told me. “It was a joke, really. I said that the woods out there were supposed to be haunted because of what happened.”
“I never heard anything about it.”
“Yes, but you grew up there,” Marie said. “When something awful happens in a place, people there have a way of closing up. They decide the best thing to do is not to talk about it and hope it all goes away. Maybe sometimes it even does.”
“Someone really killed themselves in the Shadows?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I honestly can’t remember his name, Paul. This was a long time ago.”