Soon, we passed the Butlers’ cabin and reached mine.
I went to walk up the steps but Nikki put out an arm to stop me. Her mood had changed again. She was trembling and had gone pale. The ash smudge was still on her cheek. I stared at it for a second. Then, to my great surprise, she took a step towards me, took hold of both of my arms and kissed me.
We broke apart. ‘What—’ I started to say, but she put a finger to my lips.
‘I wanted to do it,’ she said. ‘While I still had the chance.’
I didn’t like where this was going. There was a voice in my head telling me to get out. But I had to ask. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You need to go inside, Tom.’
My entire body had gone cold.
‘What are you talking about?’
She wouldn’t meet my eye. She turned away. She was shaking. Was she crying?
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.
Chapter 35
They walked in a kind of diamond shape. Buddy at the front, then Frankie and Ryan side by side, with Darlene behind, gripping the forbidding-looking black handgun.
‘Follow me and don’t say a word,’ said Buddy.
‘We will kill you,’ said Darlene.
‘Bury you alive,’ said Buddy, clearly delighted by the idea.
‘They say it’s one of the worst ways to go,’ his sister said. She sounded like she was reading from the world’s dullest textbook, one she was being forced to read aloud in class. ‘Fighting for breath. Mouth packed with dirt. Panicking. Gasping. Knowing there’s no way out.’
‘We won’t bury you together, either,’ said Buddy. ‘You’ll be all alone.’
‘You’re freaks. Psychopaths.’ Ryan looked like he wanted to spit in their faces.
‘I said shut up,’ said Buddy. ‘I don’t want you to speak again until you meet Crow.’
Frankie was glad of the silence. Their voices were making her sick and she was scared, so scared. She reached out and found Ryan’s hand, squeezing it. She could hear wind chimes close by again, and was sure they were near the clearing where she had got lost last night. But there was no Nikki here to save her now.
Buddy had a flashlight that illuminated the path – the spidery, black patterns of the branches connecting directly with some primal part of Frankie’s brain. Something moved near her feet and she jumped backwards, letting go of Ryan’s hand.
‘Get a grip,’ hissed Darlene.
They reached the clearing. The wind chimes were louder now. It sounded like the forest was laughing at them.
‘We’re going to be okay,’ Ryan whispered to her.
Darlene laughed and told him to shut his mouth.
They reached the other side of the clearing. The wind chimes were clear and close. Buddy stopped and scanned the dense vegetation with his flashlight, searching for something. Then he pulled aside a low branch to reveal an overgrown path.
‘Follow me,’ he said. ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’
Branches reached out to claw at her as they pushed their way through, thorns catching on her clothes, something clinging to her hair. Frankie sucked in a breath as Buddy bent another branch out of their way. And then they reached the end of the path.
The flashlight revealed a cabin, the wood rotten and covered with what looked like moss, as if it had some terrible skin disease. Wind chimes hung from the porch roof, twisting slowly in the gentle breeze. The front windows were broken, most of the glass fallen away. The front steps up to the porch had rotted too.
The cabin was surrounded on all sides by trees. Abandoned. Long-forgotten. Protected by the woods. Looking up at it, Frankie found herself swaying and she had the first sharp stirrings of a headache. The diseased facade of the cabin appeared to shift, as if it were alive.
She couldn’t take it any more. She turned and threw herself at Darlene, hitting her with her shoulder, convinced she would hear a gunshot at any moment. But that would be better, wouldn’t it, than being taken to the man they called Crow – presumably their dad? Better than being buried alive, dirt in her mouth and up her nose, centipedes and ants crawling all over her, feeding on her . . .
Darlene had hit the floor and Frankie was running, straight into a wall of vegetation. Where was the path? She tore at branches, came away with handfuls of leaves, but there was no gap, nowhere to go.
She was yanked backwards by her hair and Darlene stuck the gun in her face.
‘I’m going to kill you,’ Darlene hissed, and Frankie braced herself. This was it.
‘What the fuck is going on?’