The Shadow House(18)

Turning back to the sink, she plunged her hands under the scalding faucet.





ALEX





7


Kara woke up from her nap grouchy and miserable. I held her close and sang her favourite songs, but she wouldn’t stop grizzling. ‘Poor baby,’ I crooned. ‘Those teeth are really giving you grief, hey?’ She snuggled into me, whimpering.

I nuzzled her back, thinking of the boy on the bike and the note in my mailbox.

I remembered making up stories like that when I was a kid. There’d been an old fungus-covered tree stump in our primary school playground, and we’d all believed for years that if you touched the tree you’d catch the fungus like a disease. I’d had nightmares of mushrooms bulging under my skin like boils. But something the kid said had spooked me. She brings things, he’d said. Something dead. It made me think of the box I’d found on the doorstep, the bird corpse inside.

Of course, I had enough worries without buying into a children’s story. While I breastfed Kara, I watched Ollie’s video again. Then I googled dark web mystery box. The results showed a surprising number of recent news reports, some from major outlets, with headings like Dangerous Craze Goes Viral and Unboxing Trend Takes Disturbing Turn. And under the videos tab, I found clips with captions like The scariest thing I ever saw. Warning, disturbing content. Recordings of other teens, mostly boys, all feverishly unpacking boxes ordered from the dark web, pulling out everything from used clothes and sinister-looking photographs to animal skulls and even a bloodied screwdriver. I scrolled through the list, checking each screen grab … and then there he was. My baby boy, standing tall and skinny in the shirt I’d bought him for his last birthday. The title of Ollie’s clip read Dark Web Box Goes Horribly Wrong.

Nausea roiled in my gut and I broke out in a sweat.

Clicking on the link at the bottom of the video, I discovered that he’d set up his own channel. There were three other videos. Warning: scary content. Astonishingly, he had thousands of subscribers and even a Patreon page. The videos had almost a million views each.

Gently lifting a milk-drunk Kara onto my shoulder, I carried her to Ollie’s room. He still hadn’t come home; if he didn’t show up soon, I’d have to go and look for him. Pushing open the door, I wrinkled my nose at the potent smell of adolescence. We’d only just arrived; how was it already so strong? Where had the sweet, sleepy, crumpled-pyjama scent of his younger years gone?

The room was a mess – the curtains were drawn, the bed unmade, and he still hadn’t unpacked – but I saw no evidence of clandestine filmmaking. Kara laid her head on my shoulder and sucked her fingers. I patted her little bottom and turned in a circle, accidentally stepping on Ollie’s favourite green-and-orange hoodie. I nudged it aside with my foot. It was tempting to tidy up, but Ollie hated me going in his room and we’d already fought enough for one day.

And then Kara straightened in my arms, cooed and reached out for something behind me. ‘Buh,’ she said, banging excitedly on my shoulder.

My heart sank. I turned to find Ollie standing in the open doorway. ‘Hi,’ I said.

‘What are you doing in here?’ he said. ‘Why are you creeping around in my room?’

‘I wasn’t creeping.’

‘You’ve got no right to go through my shit, it’s none of your business.’

‘Well, actually, mate, your shit is very much my business. You make it my business when you plaster yourself all over the internet, when you order illegal items and have them delivered to my house.’

‘Illegal? What are you talking about?’

‘I’ve seen the videos, Ollie. The dark web? Are you kidding me? That’s where paedophiles and hitmen hang out! And, I swear to god, if you’re messing around with drugs at your age, I—’

‘It’s not … There weren’t any drugs.’

‘What was that powder, then?’

He didn’t answer.

‘Honestly, Ollie, I gave you the benefit of the doubt with all that stuff at school. I believed you when you said you weren’t involved, but now what am I supposed to think?’

He dropped his gaze.

Kara wriggled in my arms. I cleared a space for her on the floor and put her down, keeping half an eye on her in case she swallowed something radioactive. ‘Where did you get them?’

‘Get what?’

I wanted to shake him by the shoulders. ‘The boxes.’

Ollie hesitated. ‘I bought them.’

‘Obviously. But who from?’

‘Dunno.’

‘What do you mean, you don’t know? You obviously communicated with someone. You gave them money – probably my money – and an address. Who? A company, an individual?’

‘I don’t know, okay?’

I chewed my lip. I didn’t know much about the dark web, but I did know that the point of it was total anonymity. He probably had no idea what he’d got himself into. ‘Listen,’ I said, trying and failing to keep my anger in check. ‘I get that things have been hard for you lately, but I would’ve thought that given what happened at school, you’d have more sense than to, to’ – I paused, trying to articulate exactly what I thought he’d done – ‘make things any fucking worse.’