Time to Die

‘I’d best be off. Mind if I say goodnight to Josh before I go?’

‘He’ll go mad if you don’t. Can you get him to brush his teeth while you’re up there? He’s going through a defiant stage, it takes forever to get him to bed.’

Je

‘Everything all right, sweetie? Are you scared to sleep with the light off?’

‘Nope,’ Josh said, sitting up as he pulled a comic from under his pillow. ‘I’m reading.’ He flipped the pages of the comic book with the same stance as his father reading the Financial Times.

‘Oh I see. Well don’t stay up too late eh, you need your sleep.’

Je

‘Je

Je

‘The dark woods. With the blackbirds. It’s a bad place.’

She crept back to her nephew, keeping her voice low. ‘I don’t understand. Where did you get this from?’

Josh shrugged, and giggled as he pointed to a character in the Beano magazine. ‘He’s called Pongo, he’s farty. Can you read it to me?’

‘Only if you promise to go to sleep when I’m done.’ Je

‘Everything all right now?’ she said, an open invitation to disclose more.

‘Uh-huh. I love you,’ Josh said before snuggling into his pillow and closing his eyes.

Je

She activated the soft round nightlight and switched off the bulb on the wall, casting the room into a bluish glow. Joshua looked so small under the Spider-Man duvet cover, his vulnerability raising her emotions until they formed as a lump in her throat. She clicked the door behind her and tried to decipher the message. It had to be related to the Raven, but how? Stay away from the woods? The woods where Felicity Baron was killed was miles away. Unless he meant the woods around the boathouse? No. These were fresh concerns. A new warning for her ears only. Chances were he didn’t even understand it himself, hence his inability to elaborate. It was as if someone had whispered in his ear and the words came from his mouth. Je

Je

Would they start on her family next? Thoughts loomed heavy and daunting in her mind. Joshua had told her not to enter the woods, but as she parked the car outside her home, she knew that was exactly where she needed to go.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Bert

Mother was even more unbearable after she bought Bert the cards. Each evening she leaned against his bedroom door, her long black skirt casting shadows in his room, on his things. They were the same clothes she’d worn the day Callum died. Bert remembered the heavy material of her skirt dragging a crimson trail of blood as she carried Callum’s body to the car. The skirt was far too big for her now, and the slim buckled belt had tightened several notches around her waist. Perhaps it made her feel closer to Callum. Or maybe she was trying to remind him of what she had lost. Either way Bert didn’t care.

‘Bert,’ she rasped, through a pinched mouth, delivering shrill utterances that made him wince. Her once pretty features were locked in a scowl, her colourless skin stretched over jutting cheekbones, exasperated by the tightly wound bun in her hair.

Bert ignored his mother in the hope she would go away. At first he had appeased her, making up sickly sweet words of love, the kind Callum would be likely to say. I love you mummy. I’m always with you mummy. One day we will be together and you can read to me again. But after a while, the words ran dry. The very sight of her made him angry, and he was fed up with her constant need for reassurance. He wanted to slap her, to stare into those misty eyes and tell her that he was her son and he needed her here, looking after him, making him feel his existence meant something. But she was just a shell, filled to the brim with bitterness and pain. She coughed. Bert carried on with his sketch of the woods. He was trying to figure out a way he could make them private. He didn’t know who owned them, but as far as he was concerned, they were his. If he sowed enough thorny bushes, dug enough ravines, it would keep out the campers who sometimes came to explore.

‘Bert. Do you have a message for me, Bert?’ mother said, in rapid bursts of staccato. She crossed her arms, her elbows pointing sharply either side as she waited for her message from beyond the grave.

Bert grimaced. It wasn’t as if he got any special treatment for passing them on. As soon as he’d given her the message, she would snatch away the words, repeating them over as she sobbed to her unseen ghost.

‘Bert. Are you listening to me?’

Anger rose with each syllable his mother uttered. He pushed his pencil into the paper, growling as the leaden point snapped in half. ‘Leave me alone,’ he said, pushing past her to the back door. ‘Just fuck off and leave me alone!’

Mother’s tightly laced leather shoes clip clopped against the bare floorboards as she chased him to the door. ‘How dare you!’ she thundered, her words laced with disgust. ‘How dare you speak to your mother like that!’

Bert laughed wildly as he flung the door open, sending it rebounding against the wall. Still laughing, he mocked her inability to leave the house. She could no longer visit Callum’s grave. Even her steps to the oak tree were unsure and faltering, and always after dark.