The Girls In The Woods. Helen Phifer
had been playing with action men or cap guns, he had spent all his time locked in his bedroom wondering how he could see more dead people.
There was a certain beauty in death which could not be achieved at any cost in life, even with the amount of plastic surgeons and cosmetic surgery available. When he was ten years old he knew that he wanted to be a photographer but he did have a backup plan. He would probably one day become a funeral director if his photography didn’t take off but his one passion in life was photography. What he really wanted to do was photograph the dead. He didn’t really want to have to deal with the grieving families; he just wanted to photograph their loved ones like his great, great grandfather had back in the Victorian days. It had been quite normal back then, but if you told anyone now that you liked photographing the dead they’d lock you up and throw away the key. There were some things you didn’t admit to and getting your rocks off over corpses was almost certainly one. He spent hours locked in his room studying the photos in the album they’d found when clearing their granddad’s house out. Luckily for him, he’d been on his own in the bedroom when he found the dusty album at the back of the wardrobe, wrapped in faded yellow newspapers. His brother had gone to the tip with his dad and a car boot full of their granddad’s belongings. At first he hadn’t realised just what it was he was looking at but he knew there was something strange about the pictures in the album. It had Memento Mori in gold letters engraved into the soft brown leather cover. He’d had no idea what that meant, but would try and find out. There was no one in the pictures that he knew and they looked as if they were very old. Not wanting his dad to throw it out on his next visit to the local tip, Heath ran downstairs and stuffed it into his backpack. It was his secret, and he wouldn’t tell anyone about it – not even his brother. Well, not unless he was going to help him somehow find dead people to take pictures of. That photograph album had started this obsession with death, be it in male or female form – although he much preferred females; they were so much more elegant and prettier than men. His warped obsession with death had now resulted in the dead girl in front of him.
She was his first and quite possibly his last; it was too risky. He’d briefly considered the implications before it all happened but he hadn’t realised just how seriously a missing teenager would be taken. He thought they’d assume she’d run away and that would be that – the reality had been far different. The police had been crawling all over the village, surrounding fields and woods looking for the missing girl who had been on her way to visit her friend who lived at the opposite side of the village. It had scared him, seeing the crowds of villagers that had gathered with their dogs and the many police officers who’d been drafted in to search for her. He’d known her since he had moved back to the village he’d lived in as a child and set up his business, taking her first photographs when she had been seven. Then every year since until she was seventeen. Sharon Sale had come to him alone this time, asking him to take some photos she could send off to a modelling agency, only he wasn’t to tell her parents because they would freak. She had told him she would pay him but he had shook his head, telling her that he would do it for her if she would do a big favour for him and she’d agreed. Perhaps if she’d known what it was he’d wanted she would have run away as fast as she could and never come back. He knew her by her name, just like he knew all the local children that the parents brought to him for their portraits to be taken.
It had been two weeks now and he deemed it safe enough to take her to the woods behind the cottage and bury her. He had already dug a deep grave in the early hours this morning; it had taken him hours but it had been worth it because the woods had been searched three times now, by police, the villagers (including himself) and then searched again with sniffer dogs. Yesterday they had publicly declared that they thought the girl had left the area. He wished he could keep her for ever but if they did come looking, how would he explain to them that he had a dead girl in the freezer in his garage? It was far too risky; he was a patient man and was happy enough to wait until the fuss died down, even if took a couple of years, before he tried it again. At least now he had started his own collection of photographs of the dead, and it was a work in progress – the best works of art weren’t achieved in a day. He would wait until the opportunity arose and it was the right time to do it all over again. He had no doubt that soon enough another girl with big ambitions of becoming a model would turn up at his doorstep and when they did he would be ready.
Annie Ashworth let out a sigh and turned on her side. The heat from the late afternoon sun was warming her skin and even though she’d tried her best to keep out of the direct sunlight she still had a warm, golden glow. Her husband, Will, had a deep, bronze tan, his normally clean-shaven chin was covered in dark stubble and his dark blond hair had lightened considerably with the sun. He looked the picture of complete health and happiness but she knew different. He was lying on his side with his back to her and her eyes fell on the angry, red scar which ran across his right kidney. It would take a long time for it to fade into oblivion and when it did she hoped the memories would go with it. She was so lucky he was still alive, that they both were.
She shivered at the thought of that man, Henry Smith, and his accomplice, Megan. What she would have given to have watched their bodies being brought up from the cellar of Beckett House in black body bags and wheeled out to the waiting private ambulances. But she’d had to go with Will; he had been so badly injured and she had needed to be by his side. Jake, her best friend and colleague, had stayed along with Cathy and Kav, their inspector and sergeant when they were both stationed back in Barrow, to watch on their behalf. They had brought Megan up first because her body had been the most straightforward to bag up. She’d fallen down the cellar steps from top to bottom at Beckett House and instantly broken her neck. Henry, though, had got what he deserved. That strange man/monster thing had sliced his throat open with its long sharp claws but not before Annie had watched the terror on Henry’s face as he had stuck his knife into its strange, grey body. Jake had told her when he came to see her in the hospital that even Matt the pathologist had been horrified to see the mess of blood and limbs. No one had ever seen anything like the strange creature that lived in the drains below Beckett House, and it had been badly injured by Henry because there had been a trail of blood which led to the huge drain in the corner of the cellar – but then it had disappeared. Search teams had been brought in with special infra red and thermal imaging cameras and apart from a trail of blood that stopped suddenly in the sewers there had been no trace of it. Annie suspected that it had gone deep underground to another lair and either died or gone into hibernation. She hoped for Martha Beckett’s sake that it had curled up and died. The last time she had spoken with the elderly woman she had arranged to have the drain filled in with concrete and the cellar door permanently sealed shut. She had told Annie about the long letter she had written detailing the history of the house and everything that had happened there. She had given it to her solicitor with strict instructions that when the day came that someone was eager enough to buy Beckett House they would be given a copy of the letter so they were fully aware of the circumstances. It had made Martha feel much better but Annie knew that the house would be snapped up by some property developer who wouldn’t be remotely interested in the letter or the history of Beckett House. They would turn it into luxury apartments and move on to the next project. Annie just hoped that history wouldn’t repeat itself and no one with small children moved in there. All of this had been kept hush, hush and out of the media for the sake of Martha who had kept the terrible secret of the thing hidden for years. One day they could make a film about what happened at Beckett House; it was that horrific no one would ever believe it was all true.
She picked up her Kindle. It was amazing how Will could lie there for hours and not get bored. Turning to face her he smiled as his hand reached out for hers and she held it tight. His fingers trailed across the baby bump and he let them rest there.
‘I thought you were asleep again.’
‘What do you mean, again?’ He opened one eye and winked at her, ‘I’m just making the most of the last day before we have to go back to reality. I’ve been thinking about it, and you know I’ll have to go back to work soon, don’t you?’
She nodded, wishing they could stay here – cocooned on this island for ever, away from the madness that seemed to take over their lives on a regular