The Retreat(71)

Glynn. Shirley. Albert. David. All of us in our mid-thirties now, but we’ve known each other all our lives. We went to the same school. David and I were the studious ones, Albert somewhere near the bottom of the class, Shirley a nervous little thing who followed Glynn around like his pet lamb. Glynn, of course, was the class bully.

Now, Glynn pointed at me.

‘How would you feel, Malcolm, if little Olly was taken by the Widow? Shirley, what if Heledd was taken? And you, David, what if the witch came and took away Lucas?’

I gasped and stopped reading, looking up at Olly.

‘My dad was there,’ I said. ‘That’s why you wanted me to see this.’

He nodded.

My mouth was dry, fingers trembling as I turned the page.

‘I certainly wouldn’t want to risk her coming for Wendy,’ Glynn said.

I could hardly believe how serious they all looked. As if they believed Glynn and his crazy old mother. As if they actually believed a witch might come into the town in the dead of night and steal their precious children away.

Only Albert, who didn’t have any children, looked less afraid.

I banged on the table, startling them from their stupor. ‘This is madness,’ I said. ‘Perhaps, a long time ago, this crime – the crime of taking children into the woods and leaving them to be taken by a non-existent being – happened. Maybe, just maybe, it happened in 1945 too, though I find that hard to believe. It’s far more likely that Glenys got lost and fell into the river. An accident, that’s all.’

‘Except,’ Shirley said, speaking for the first time in that meeting. ‘All it would take was for one person to believe in the Widow. One person willing to murder little Glenys so there was no risk of their own child being taken.’

I called an end to the meeting. I needed to get out of there, away from the atmosphere that hung over that table. The others lingered behind. I heard them murmuring. Glynn’s booming laugh rang out as I left the pub.

I glanced up at Olly and Heledd. We’d each had a parent at that meeting – at least one, in Heledd’s case. It felt strange, like a reunion. Glynn’s daughter Wendy was the only person missing.

I read on.

Malcolm’s journal entry was broken in two. There was a space on the page before the next section began.

I’ve been staring at this page for fifteen minutes, trying to decide what to write, how to tell the rest of this tale. A large part of me is shouting at me to leave it, that it’s too dangerous to record. There will be repercussions. But I have to do it. Damn the consequences.

How brave I sound within the pages of my journal. How brave the coward sounds.

The facts.

Last night, a four-year-old girl went missing from St Mary’s children’s home. The girl’s name is Carys Driscoll. It’s all over the radio and local news, and the police are combing the area, trying to find her. Details are patchy, but rumours are running like wildfire through the town. It was all anyone could talk about at the library today, including a young woman who works at the home. She came in to return some books then hung around, a group gathering as she told the tale. I loitered on the edge of the group, the blood in my veins turning to ice as I listened.

Carys Driscoll was put into the care system after her mother, a heroin-addicted punk, died of an overdose when her daughter was three. There has never been a father on the scene. Nobody knows who he is, and the grandparents wanted nothing to do with the child. They have been trying to place her in a foster home or find someone to adopt her but, so far, without luck.

She was last seen at teatime, yesterday evening. Apparently, the children were then allowed outside to play for a little while. A member of staff was supervising them, but one of the children hurt himself and had to be taken inside for first aid. Then the children were called inside.

Nobody noticed Carys was not among them until this morning.

The woman faced down the cries of incredulity in the library with excuses. There are so many children, she said. It was getting dark. Carys was so quiet, ‘a little mouse’, that she tended to shrink into the background. The staff are overworked and tired. None of the other children said anything.

I am sure heads will roll at St Mary’s children’s home. But that won’t help poor Carys.

All I could think of was the conversation in the Miners Arms on Monday night. The faces of my fellow Society members around the table.

I told my assistant I wasn’t feeling well and left the library, leaving the gossips behind. I headed straight to Albert’s house. Rhodri Wallace – another old classmate – was in the garden, cutting the hedge. He was a likeable boy at school, good with his hands and popular with the girls. Now he was the most in-demand gardener and handyman in town. He raised a gloved hand when he saw me. His face was as pale and shocked as all the others I’d seen on the way over. I didn’t stop to talk to Rhodri – instead, I headed inside.

Albert was as horrified by little Carys’s disappearance as I was.

‘It has to be a coincidence,’ he said.

‘Do you really believe that?’ said I. ‘Two days after our conversation?’

His eyes were wide, disbelieving. If he was acting, he was doing a very good job of it. But maybe it was fear of being exposed. Or fear of Glynn.

‘You think one of the others took that child, took her into the woods to be sacrificed to the witch?’ He paced the room. ‘What does the legend say the witch demanded? What did the townsfolk do in the stories?’