Chapter Forty-Five
1
Wendy Jones walked aimlessly through the downpour knowing that she could not go home, not while she was consumed with guilt. The last ten months had been torture. Her father spent more time at the hospital than at home, her mother had locked herself away in her room for days on end and it was all her fault. She had carried it around with her all that time, the knowledge that she had been a big part of what had fractured her family. If it had not been for her everything would have still been normal.
But she could not take the entire blame for the way things had turned out, the others had played their part too.
The next crash of thunder was so loud that she felt the pavement shake under her feet. She was already soaked through but she knew that she had to find some sort shelter before the lightning came. Wendy had always been afraid of lightning unlike her little sister. As soon as the first rumbles of thunder sounded across the sky Jane would run to the nearest window, press her nose flat against the glass and watch as the lightning seemed to make rips across the dark storm clouds.
Wendy hated thinking about her little sister. It forced her to remember and that was the last thing she wanted to do. She needed to forget, to think of something completely different.
Her mind drifted to the old building at the far end of the woods and the girl they had left behind.
It had seemed like fun at the time and that was the main problem when it came to being involved with Amanda and Sarah, they could make anything sound like a good idea. Half of the time Wendy wished that she could resist the other two but it had taken so long for them to finally except her into their little group and at such cost.
Jane had looked up to Wendy in much the same way Wendy had looked up to the other two girls. Everywhere Amanda and Sarah went Wendy went and little Jane would not be far behind. Her little sister was always ruining things, getting in the way and trying to join in. The other girls had made fun of Wendy, telling her that she had to look after the baby and asking her who the father was as if Jane was her child.
Her accident!
If that loud mouth Sarah only knew the truth she would not have been so smug. She would have kept her big trap buttoned if she had known that Jane had been as much her sister as she was Wendy's.
By the time her mother's affair with Jim Wilmot to come out during an argument between Wendy's parents Jane was already three years old. Wendy had always kept it to herself, never even letting her mother and father know that she had overheard everything.
Her parents drifted further apart and the more miserable they became, the more she resented her little sister. It took years for her parents' relationship to grow back to resembling what it had once been but by that time Wendy hated her sister so much that she couldn't even look at her.
Or at least she thought she had.
Last year on a stormy night she had watched her little sister die. Only after she had seen her last breath leave her did she realize how much she had really loved her.
The sharp scream sirens and the blue flashing lights snapped Wendy out of her haze and back into the down pour. She hugged her arms tight around herself, trying to gain some fraction of comfort, as she watched the car skid around a corner to the left and disappear from site. Soon even the sirens went silent leaving only the building rumbles of thunder and that horrible memory to keep her company.
2
The police car screeched to a halt outside the house on Granger Street where a large crowd of people had gathered, some of whom were already trying to force the front door open. Constable Morton unbuckled his seat belt and sped out of the car and into the downpour before his partner had a chance to think.
"Get away from there right now!" he shouted, pulling away the last couple of men from the from the door and working his way up to the front of the crowd.
"Out of my way copper!"
The dark haired giant towered head and shoulders above Morton and the policeman knew that his uniform was the only thing saving him from a beating. He held up his left hand in front of him like a shield while his right moved to the mace spray pouch on his belt. The tall man took a couple of steps towards him and Morton pulled out the mace, showing him that he meant business.
"Back up right now." he yelled in an attempt to intimidate the man. Where the hell is Bryce?
As if in answer to his thoughts his partner calmly made his way to where Morton stood. At seven feet tall Bryce made the dark haired giant look average height.
"Come on now ladies and gents, just back up a bit and give us room to work." Bryce's tone was calm but firm.
Everyone but the giant backed away.
"You heard," Morton shouted keeping the spray pointed toward the man. After a few seconds, which seemed more like minutes, the giant finally joined the others. "Right Bryce, Keep an eye on them."
Morton had messed up more than once that day and after the bollocking Galvin had given him he knew that he was lucky that he wasn't sat behind a desk for the rest of his life filing parking tickets . It was bad enough that he had been posted to a hick town like Eastlake without that. He knew that he could not afford another cock up, he had to play this one by the book.
Morton turned away from the crowd and pressed the doorbell. There was a chime from somewhere along the hallway and after what felt like an eternity of silence he crouched down to the letterbox and turned his head slightly towards his colleague.
"What's this bloke's name again?"
Bryce pulled his notebook out and flipped through a few pages until he found what he was looking for. "The woman from next door said he's called Alan Stephens.
Morton turned back to the letterbox and opened it. The nosy neighbour had heard noises coming from the house for the past couple of days. The screams an hour earlier had been the last straw so she had called the police. Probably just another domestic knowing my luck.
"Mr Stephens, this is the police."
A soft sound, almost like a muffled cry, came from the somewhere in the darkness. Morton pulled his torch his torch from his belt and pointed it's beam through the letterbox.
"Shitting hell!"
"What's up," asked Bryce moving close in behind his partner.
"I think we might need some help, it looks like a fucking slaughter house in there!"
3
The storm was almost directly over head by the time Wendy reached the corner of Granger Street. At the far end of the road she could just make out the blue flashing lights form the police car that had passed her earlier through the heavy sheets of rain.
There seemed to be some kind of commotion. Even from that distance she could hear the jeers and taunts from the angry mob of people clustered outside the house where the police car was parked. She hastened her pace towards the crowd glad of any distraction that would take the memories of Jane and the trapped girl out of her mind, even if only for a moment.
Another police car screamed past her as she neared the crowd and came to a halt behind the first. Three officers jumped out of the vehicle, two of them taking control of the mob outside while the other ran into the building.
Two old women stood a little away from the main group and Wendy walked over to stand by them, not really wanting to move in too close.
"Who would have thought it?" said the woman closest to her, totally oblivious to the young girl's presence.
"I know, and such a nice family too." replied the other, also unaware that Wendy had joined them.
"Yeah, there was screaming and all sorts coming from that place earlier." commented the first woman
"I know," the other answered. "I could hear it from all the way from my house two doors down."
"So was it you who called the police?" asked the first woman.
"Well I was going to do it as soon as my soaps finished but by then they were already here."
"Yeah, I was thinking the same thing."
Wendy let the women's voices fade and mix with the murmurs of the crowd as two police men hurried out of the house, each holding an arm of a man dressed only in a pair of bloodstained boxer shorts. Wendy could not believe her eyes when she realised who it was. Red smears covered Alan Stephens' body from head to toe. He didn't try to fight the police as they bundled him into the back seat of the second police car and quickly drove away before the mob could converge on them. The remaining policemen made sure that the crowd kept their distance as they secured the building.
Wendy had no idea what had taken place inside that house; she only knew that she needed to be as far away from that place as possible. Suddenly home seemed like a much better option
She walked back the way she had come to Stonehouse Street, the long road that would lead her to the relative comfort of her own house. She needed to tell parents everything about that night almost a year ago and what had really happened to Jane.
As she walked through the teaming rain she could not help feeling that somewhere in the shadows someone was watching her.
Author's Note
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