The Last House on Needless Street(42)
She goes indoors and sits at her post, biting her lower lip to shreds. Maybe she was wrong not to follow. Maybe she missed her chance and he’s moving Lulu right now, taking her into the wild … Dee watches the forest with burning eyes.
Half an hour later, Ted comes back into view on the shadowed trail. Dee’s heart burns and leaps. There is distress in his every movement. He shakes his head from side to side as if in passionate argument with himself. Whatever needs doing is still yet to be done. She hasn’t missed it. There will be action, tonight.
Dee puts on hiking boots and lays out sweaters and a dark jacket, puts water and nuts in her pocket. Then she sits like a stone and watches Ted’s house. Clouds pass and the sun sinks lower over the treeline. Dusk covers everything.
When she hears the distinctive triple thunk of the locks, the creak of the back door, she is ready. She feels, rather than sees him leave the house in the black. As he passes under the streetlight she sees the backpack. It is full of something that bulges in odd angles and curves. Tools, a pick, a shovel? He moves along the road into shadow. Now there are no more lights, just soft night and the moon overhead, shining like half a dime.
She follows at a distance; his flashlight guides her like a star. When he stops at the entrance to the woods and looks around, she stops too, sheltering behind a tree trunk. He waits for a long time, but she lets the night speak, lets it tell him that he is alone. When he goes on into the forest, she follows.
As they pass the work site, Dee hears Ted come to a halt ahead. The trees are thinning, perhaps into a clearing. She crouches among the bulldozers. Ahead, to the east, she hears the sound of a shovel cutting the earth. She hears whispering. She shivers. It must be Ted, but his voice sounds strange, like leaves rustling or the creak of living wood. Her calves and thighs cramp but she doesn’t dare move. If she can hear Ted, he can hear her. The moon climbs and the night seems to grow warmer. Perfect weather for snakes. Shut up, brain, Dee thinks grimly. What can Ted be doing? She thinks about trying to edge closer but her every movement sounds loud as a gunshot. She sits and listens. Time passes, she doesn’t know how much, it might be an hour or longer. His whispering and the rhythmic cut of the shovel mingle with the night sounds of the forest.
At last there comes the sound of boots approaching and Dee starts. She has been teetering on the edge of sleep. She crawls quickly on numb legs under a digger. The moon is behind a gauzy screen of cloud but she can see enough. Ted carries something heavy on his back. The shovel in his hand is crusted with earth. He has dug something up. She struggles to her feet as silently as she can.
At the top of the rise to the west the moon gleams on still water. The lake, no more than a mile distant. An hour’s hike between Ted’s house and the place where Lulu went missing, Dee thinks, burning inwardly. Tonight Ted has proved that he can cover ground quickly with a heavy load. Yet the police just let him go. No matter what she tells them, they’ll probably just let him go again. They don’t care. Lazy, burnt out, incompetent … Dee realises that she is trembling. She reaches out blindly, and grasps a slender branch for support. The forest seems full of sibilant whispers. The dry scratching of a long belly sliding over leaves. Ophidiophobia, she tells herself. That’s all it is, Dee Dee. But now even the word is like a snake. It makes coils in her mouth.
She tries to take the next step. Tries not to think of what might be lying in wait on the ground in front of her. There are no snakes here, she repeats firmly to herself. All the snakes are asleep underground. They are more afraid of you than you are of them. But her breath comes fast. Her feet are welded to the ground. She is scared of the forest, of being lost in the trees, of being alone in the dark with a murderer. Most of all she is scared of the tree roots, which seem to twitch, looking at her with vertical pupils in the moonlight.
Don’t be stupid. Walk, she commands her legs. They aren’t goddamn snakes. Still she is paralysed, still as marble. Something rustles in the leaf mould close by. She can almost feel the long body approaching. Walk, she thinks, with every inch of her will.
Ahead, Ted’s dancing light flickers and then vanishes among the trees. Dee is alone with whatever is coming through the dark. Soft, constant sound of a muscular body sliding.
Dee opens her mouth wider, wider, until her jaw strains and cracks. She screams in silence. She turns and runs for home. The whispering sound follows her, slithering fast, almost on her heels.
She locks the doors and windows. She takes the clawhammer in hand and sits at her post. Her breathing is hoarse in the empty room. She looks at the old food wrappers and empty yoghurt pots that litter the floor. Ants crawl in and out of them. I’m getting like him, she thinks, trembling, disgusted. And I am just as much of a coward.
Ted comes home in the dawn. He unlocks his back door. As he goes in, she hears him calling, ‘Here, kitten.’ His voice is relaxed and friendly. Dee makes a list of things to get. It will be difficult, her mind will fight her, but next time Ted goes to the forest she won’t fail.
Olivia
Lauren hasn’t been around the last few weeks. I think she’s on holiday with her mama ted or something? I don’t know, I tend to tune out when he talks about her. No pink bike sprawled in the living room like a dead cow, no notes on the whiteboard, no screaming, no mess. The quiet, the peace – my stars! It’s been great.
It’s good that Lauren’s not here because Ted has really been getting out there. Lauren hates it when he dates. She screams at him. My goodness, she is the most unpleasant little ted.