The park is awash with people: countless men and women standing shoulder to shoulder in wave after wave.
Ciaran begged Emilia not to come. The morning after she watched the video, he knocked at her door with that familiar rap of the knuckles. He had been calling endlessly, leaving message after message asking her to please answer the phone. He had called straightaway – less than five minutes after the Henley video had been posted. He knew. He understood how her mind would react to that image: siblings, one alive, one dead. And not just her mind, her body too. It immediately shut down – like a computer that is so overloaded, so overwhelmed with information that it simply freezes before switching off entirely. It’s as though she has been thrust back in time, to when it first happened, to when she was unable to sleep, or move, or function at all. All she did was survive.
‘Emi,’ he said softly. ‘Please open the door. I know you’re in there.’
She rolled over, turning away from the front door, her nose to the cool leather of the sofa, and lifted her arm to cover her face as tears flooded down her cheeks. She squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want him to see her like that. Not again.
‘Emi, do you really think I don’t already know what state you’re in right now?’ She held her breath. ‘Do you think I don’t know that you’ll have spent all night staring up at the ceiling? Do you think I don’t know that you’ll have spent an hour in the shower this morning because you forced yourself out of bed but once you were there you just couldn’t bear to get out again? I know that you won’t have eaten anything today, you have a headache because you haven’t had any water in fifteen hours, and your face is probably like a panda.’
Please just leave me alone –
‘Freddie Henley’s body has been found. And Joseph – he’s alive … Please. Let me in.’
And she did. He came inside and held her on the sofa, stroking her hair, whispering over and over again that she was safe, that Sophie would be proud of her, that she had done so well – don’t let yourself be dragged back to that place, Emi.
‘I might go to the vigil,’ she whispered. His eyes narrowed, a slow shake of his head indicating his silent disbelief.
‘Please don’t.’
And finally, after more cajoling on his part, practically begging her, she promised that she wouldn’t.
But then – Isabella called.
The unknown number flashed up on the screen, and when Emilia answered a hushed voice whispered her name.
‘Emilia?’ she said. ‘Is that Emilia Haines?’
‘Isabella?’
‘Hi … yes, it’s me. Sorry for calling you like this –’
‘It’s absolutely fine. That’s why I gave you my number. Is there something I can help you with?’
‘I was wondering … no, never mind, it’s so bloody stupid –’
‘What is it?’
She paused, a gentle sigh fluttering through the speaker. ‘Are you going to the vigil tonight?’
The question lingered in the air as Isabella explained that she wanted to go, she felt like she needed to be there – to witness it, if just for a few minutes – she had even discussed it with the therapist she was seeing, but her family didn’t want to take her. They didn’t think she should go, thought it was dangerous, for them and her brothers, as well as for her. Their family had already been hounded, members of the public finding their house and treating them like some sort of circus attraction. But they would let her go with Emilia – Isabella had told them that they could be discreet, and Emilia would keep her hidden.
‘Please?’ she whispered.
Just a few hours later, Isabella was at her door, her mum staring worriedly out from the driver’s seat.
‘I’m never going to be allowed to go anywhere,’ Isabella sighed. ‘It’s like I’m a teenager again.’
‘It will get better,’ Emilia said, stepping out on to the front porch. ‘You just need to give them time. Shall we go?’
And now, here they are, surrounded by the communal pulse of hundreds of people.
Emilia leads the way, Isabella following behind, her head lowered, a thick woolly hat and hood pulled low over her face. Frozen leaves crackle beneath their feet. Inhaling slowly, Emilia breathes in the fresh air tinged with the smell of smoke. Somebody’s burning a bonfire.
People are leaning in close, passing a small flame from one wick to another, nodding to each other as they pass on the flickering light.
But how long will it take for the police to arrive, to force people to disperse? There is a tense, rippling energy in the air around them. And at some point, at some unpredictable moment, it will erupt – Emilia is sure of it. That’s how people react to scenarios like this one: they are already being attacked, targeted by some unknown evil, and now the people who should be solving it for them are seeking to hold them prisoner too. The only response will be rage.
They walk around the side of the crowd towards the front, where a woman is standing on the top step under a gazebo: the vigil organizer. She is clutching a microphone and scanning the crowd, which is becoming more dense every second as people keep on arriving. And there, on the steps in front of her, are large posters, the faces of ghosts staring back at the crowd.
Hayley James. Gregory Weiss. Freddie Henley. Luca Franco.
Each photograph shows a happy, smiling, young, vibrant person, their life snuffed out – and for what? For the deluded beliefs of some psychopath.
And more will follow.
A loud buzzing comes out of the speakers, followed by a screech of static.
‘Sorry!’ the woman at the front says, holding her hands up with an embarrassed grimace. ‘Didn’t mean to deafen you all.’
There’s a smattering of nervous laughter among the otherwise silent crowd.
The woman looks out and some people in the front nod encouragingly, their faces sombre. She lets out a wavering breath and lifts the microphone close to her lips.
‘Thank you all so much for being here,’ she says, her words slightly muffled. ‘I know how much it must have taken to leave your homes at a time like this, especially when you’ve been told not to. And you have no idea how much this means to so many people who have been affected like I have. My name is Gina Franco – Luca was my brother and Hayley was one of my best friends. And I lost them both. Hayley was the first known victim of the Confession Room. And we hoped more than anything that we would find Luca alive. We didn’t know where he was or what they had done with him. But we knew without a doubt that he wasn’t responsible for what had happened to Hayley. And we knew that he wasn’t responsible for the other murders. Even when the police were treating him as the main suspect. We hoped that maybe he was out there, just too afraid to come home.’
She pauses, chewing on her bottom lip, as if she is trying to process what is happening. What has happened. Emilia remembers that look. She witnessed it every day in the mirror in those moments where it would suddenly hit her, and both her body and mind would have to take it all in, living through the trauma again and again.
‘But that hope was useless. They took Luca away from us too. We don’t know why they killed both Hayley and Luca. We have no idea why whoever is doing this has decided to act in this way. None of them – not Hayley or Luca, not Gregory, not Freddie – deserved to die for what they had done. No person can choose who lives or dies. And that’s what these bastards are doing. They’re playing God.’ Her brow lowers, fury flashing across her eyes. ‘And what are the fucking police doing?’
Anger begins to ripple out from her, like a stone thrown into a pond. The crowd is less still, less silent. That feeling, the feeling that was hanging in the air when they arrived, is growing, thickening, a storm ready to break.
‘They’re not solving what’s happening, they’re not doing anything except blaming the wrong people, innocent victims, and telling us to stay in our homes and hope the big bad wolf doesn’t blow them down. Well I say, fuck them! And fuck the wolf!’
Cheers erupt, the crowd moving together, shouting, booing, roaring with approval: a hive mind buoyed by anger and fear and resentment.
Emilia scans the outer edges of the park, searching for police, for signs that they are going to make a move, to shut it down. But they haven’t entered. They are remaining in their cars, parked around the perimeter. Waiting.
Emilia looks back at Isabella, her face falling as she takes her in. Her hand is lifted up to cover her eyes and she is rocking back and forth, exhaling forcefully through pursed lips.
‘Isabella?’ Emilia whispers, leaning towards her.
Her body tenses. Just a minor movement, all her muscles clenching.
‘Do you want to go?’
She nods quickly, her eyes glassy. ‘I thought I would be okay but … this is too much.’
‘It’s okay … let’s go.’
Emilia turns her back on the podium, steering them through the ever expanding crowd, her shoulder knocking against people, not even stopping to throw a cursory apology over her shoulder. They need to get away from here.
They break away from the hordes of people, at last finding themselves in the outer reaches of the crowd, before emerging into the clear air of the road beyond the gate.
‘I think we left at the right time,’ Emilia says in a low voice as they climb into the car. ‘It’s going to turn at any moment. I can feel it.’
Isabella grimaces, her eyes flitting away from Emilia’s as she pulls the door towards her, clinging to the handle.
They spend the entire journey back to Isabella’s house in silence. Every so often Emilia glances over at her, but she is staring blankly out of the passenger window, her hands clasped tightly on her lap.
‘Thanks for taking me,’ she mutters finally as Emilia stops the car directly in front of her house.
‘You’re welcome,’ Emilia responds with a smile.
Isabella sighs as she glances to the front door which has already opened at the sound of the engine – Melanie, Isabella’s mum, waiting anxiously for her daughter.
‘My life is never going to go back to normal, is it?’ she says flatly.
‘It will,’ Emilia says. ‘Eventually it will.’
‘No,’ she answers. ‘For the rest of my life, I’m always going to be “that girl” … I’d give anything for them to have chosen someone else.’
‘Why do you think they did choose you?’
‘Because of what I confessed on the forum.’ Isabella’s face tinges with embarrassment. ‘That’s how they found me. That’s how they found all of us.’