He held up a hand. ‘All right, there’s no need to shout. I know it. What’s going on?’
‘I don’t have time to explain. Please. I have to find my daughter. But if you can’t help . . .’
‘I can help.’
Wyatt suddenly pushed his way between two trees and vanished into the woods. It was like a disappearing trick. One second he was there, the next – gone. Like it was a portal into another timeline.
I followed and found myself pushing through the tightly packed pines, their needles dragging against my cheeks and stroking my hair. Creepers clutched at my ankles. The path was so overgrown it was hardly a path at all. But Wyatt pushed through it ahead of me using his shoulders, one then the other, with the occasional grunt. As we walked, I told him what had happened, having to yell to make myself heard. Finding Greg and hearing his dying words. Wyatt had his back to me so I couldn’t see his reaction.
‘Guess their mother was right,’ he said after a long pause. The trees had been packed tight from the start, but . . . I knew it was my imagination, but it felt like they were squeezing even closer together as we pushed our way through. As if they were trying to block our way.
‘You knew her?’ I asked, as he muttered and cursed at the branches.
‘Yup. Knew her folks. They ran the gas station on the road outta town. God-fearing type, she was. They all were. Baptists. Go in there and you’d be likely to get a Bible reading along with your gas. After Lainey took her own life—’
‘Lainey? That was Greg’s wife?’
‘Yup.’
‘She killed herself? I thought she left town.’
He grunted into his beard. ‘Killing yourself is one way of leaving town, ain’t it? Anyways, after that happened, her parents shut down the gas station and moved somewhere far away.’
We emerged into a clearing. We were surrounded by pines that stretched to the mottled grey sky, as dark as twilight.
‘Are we nearly there?’ I asked, as Wyatt lurched off to the east. The rain hadn’t eased up and I still couldn’t hear the wind chimes.
‘Not much further.’
‘Were you around when the first murders happened?’ I asked. ‘In 1999?’
‘Yup.’
‘Did you know Abigail?’
‘Sure I did. Everyone knows everyone around here.’ The Penance town motto.
We had entered another thick patch. The rainwater that clung to the needles of the trees continued to drench our clothes as we thrashed our way through them.
‘What was she like?’ I asked.
He appeared to be thinking about it. ‘She was the kind of woman who would have been burnt at the stake if she’d been around during the witch trials.’
‘Because she was a hippie?’
He grunted. ‘She was more than that. She didn’t fit in, not round here. People were always after Logan, that was her husband, to rein her in. Folk didn’t like it, the way she went around collecting plants and herbs. There was a lot of talk about potions and spells. When she got the cancer, a lot of folk muttered about how the Devil was finally taking her home.’
‘Did people know about her and the teens she hung out with?’
‘There were rumours. As I remember, there was talk of doing something about it, and then the cancer came and it wasn’t a problem any more.’
‘And what did you think of her?’
He hissed with laughter. ‘I liked her. She was always happy to share her weed.’
We emerged into another clearing, exposing us again to the lashing rain – and, finally, I knew where we were. This was where Frankie had lost her phone.
And I could hear them. The wind chimes.
They were ringing out from behind the trees on the far side of the clearing. Wyatt shambled towards them. Then he stopped, sniffing the air like a dog that had caught a scent.
‘You smell that?’ he asked.
I sniffed. At first, all I could smell was the heavy aroma of wet pine needles. Damp earth and petrichor. And then I caught the scent too.
Smoke.
Chapter 47
Frankie managed to get into a sitting position. She quickly checked herself over. Her head was fine. Nothing was broken.
The same couldn’t be said for Nikki.
Frankie crawled over to where the woman lay on her back, not far from Everett’s corpse. Nikki’s eyes were wide open, a grimace of agony on her face.
‘I can’t move my legs,’ she said.
Frankie couldn’t deal with that right now. ‘What were you doing here? Does anyone else know we’re here?’