‘I don’t think any of this makes sense, Pip.’
Pip held her breath, scouring the driveway for the two lost figures. They were here, somewhere. They had to be. Those were the rules in this game between her and them.
‘Wait!’ she said, catching something in the corner of her eye. No, it couldn’t be, was it? She stepped forward, up to one of her mum’s potted plants – pots come all the way from Vietnam, can you believe? - and brushed the leaves aside.
Behind it, against the wall of her house. Two little headless figures. So faint they were hardly there at all, hidden almost entirely among the mortar between the bricks.
‘Found you,’ Pip said with an outward breath. Her skin was alive and electric as she pushed her face right up close to the chalk, some of the white dust scattering from her breath. But was she pleased or was she scared? She couldn’t, in this moment, tell the difference.
‘Up on the wall?’ Ravi said behind her. ‘Why?’
Pip knew the answer before he did. She understood this game, now that she was playing. She stepped back from the two headless figures, the leaders of their pack, and looked directly up, following their journey. They’d mounted the wall to climb, up past the study and up and up, towards her bedroom window.
The bones cracked in her neck as she turned back to Ravi.
‘They’re coming for me.’
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Darkness consumed her, the last chink of sunlight through the curtains glowing down her face before Ravi pulled them shut, tucking one half behind the other to be extra sure.
‘Keep these closed, OK?’ he said, just a shadow in the blacked-out room until he crossed the room to switch on the light. Unnaturally yellow, a poor imitation of the sun. ‘Even during the day. In case someone is watching you. I don’t like the idea of someone watching you.’
Ravi stopped by her elbow, placed his thumb under her chin. ‘Hey, you OK?’
Did he mean about Ant and Lauren, or the little chalk figures climbing up to her room?
‘Yeah.’ Pip cleared her throat. Such a meaningless half-word.
She was sitting at her desk, fingers resting on the keyboard of her laptop. She’d just saved a copy of the photo she’d taken of the chalk figures. Finally, she’d got there before the rain or tyres or feet could wash them away, disappear them. Evidence. She herself might be the case this time, but she still needed evidence. And, more than that, it was proof. Proof that she wasn’t haunting herself; that she couldn’t be the one drawing the figures and killing those pigeons during the foggy sleepless nights, could she?
‘Maybe you can come stay at mine for a few nights,’ Ravi said, spinning her chair until they were face on. ‘Mum wouldn’t mind. I’d have to leave early from Monday, but that’s OK.’
Pip shook her head. ‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘I’m fine.’ She wasn’t fine, but that was the whole point. There was no running away from this; she’d asked for it. She needed it. This was how she would make herself fine again. And the scarier it got, the more perfect the fit. Out of the grey area, into something she could comprehend, something she could live with. Black and white. Good and bad. Thank you.
‘You’re not fine,’ Ravi said, running his fingers through his dark hair, long enough now that it had started to curl at the ends. ‘This isn’t fine. I know it’s easy to forget, after all the fucked-up things we’ve been through, but this isn’t normal.’ He stared at her. ‘You know this isn’t normal, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know that. I went to the police yesterday like you wanted, I tried to do the normal thing. But I guess it’s down to me again, to fix it.’ She pulled a line of loose skin by one fingernail, a bubble of blood greeting her from the deep. ‘I’ll fix it.’
‘How are you going to do that?’ Ravi asked, a harder edge in his voice. Was that doubt? No, he couldn’t lose faith in her too. He was the last one left. ‘Does your dad know about this?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘He knows about the dead birds; we found the first one together. Mum told him it was the Williamses’ cat, though; that’s the logical solution. I told him about the chalk marks but he never saw them. They were gone by the time he got home; think him driving over them was why they disappeared, even.’
‘Let’s go show him now,’ Ravi said, the edge in his voice more slippery now, more urgent. ‘Come on.’