THE CAR SLOWLY EDGED FORWARD, the ground beneath, pockmarked tarmac and cobblestones. The derelict farmhouse’s timbers were bared like bones to the merciless sky, its hide chipped, and half of it slumped in falls of untidy bricks. Emerald moss blobs grew plump as cushions on every surface not already covered with white and yellow lichen. The front door remained, its small, mullioned window murky but intact. A tree had grown through the foundations, up through the chimney flume and spread with spindly victory above where the roof used to be. Strips of faded wallpaper flapped from exposed walls, and remaining windows beheld the brittle lenses of broken glass. The wind whined through drooping pylon lines which looped in lazy skipping-rope arcs.
‘Christ Almighty, nobody’s been here for years,’ Lines murmured.
Suspended in the air, white and bright as spectral fireflies, were tiny blobs which moved whenever the wind picked up, as if gravity had no power over them, and shifted into drifts in corners and cornices. It was too soon for dandelion puff-balls; certainly too wet for . . .
‘What is that? Snow?’ asked Lines. ‘Blossom?’
A tiny fleck landed on the window beside Ava as if greeting her. She smiled. ‘No, feathers,’ she said. Feather down – light as breath – pulviplume.
Beside the broken house stood an equally broken barn and, on the opposite side, a set of mouldering stables and kennel block. A sagging wall bordered the property a little way beyond the outbuildings with a gap in its centre point. The rain eased but the windscreen wipers kept their incessant rhythm, marking time like a metronome while the detectives gazed at their decrepit surroundings. The policemen seemed unable to look away from the main house. Ava loved the state of it: this was the planet if people disappeared – the end of human rule.
The men believed the house to be Mickey’s den. Ava sat very still, very quiet, and hoped they didn’t ask her to confirm this. She’d fulfilled her purpose and, if she remained unobtrusive, they’d ignore her.
Without looking at either Ava or Luke, the men exited the car and shut the doors, stood looking at the house, suddenly boys again, busting to explore. Ava watched as they approached the building. The detectives hadn’t ordered her to stay in the car; they’d temporarily forgotten her. She was free. Ava opened the car door a tiny bit.
‘Aves? What’re you up to?’ Like John, Luke was attuned to Ava’s strangeness, and would be more of a hindrance than help if she wasn’t canny.
‘I’m just . . . going to . . . stretch my legs,’ said Ava. ‘I’ll have a look at the stables.’ Of course Ava would want to look at stables. She loved horses, so Luke wouldn’t suspect her of mischief. She kept her voice neutral: ‘You can come with me if you want.’
Luke pulled his coat tighter around him. ‘Nah, it’s too damp for me. You just be careful though, yeah?’
‘Yes,’ said Ava, and eased out of the car. She stood beside the car as the men disappeared around the ruins. Still barely as tall as the Quattro, even if they turned back they wouldn’t have spotted her.
It was too quiet. There were birds in the trees but not on the farmhouse grounds, only their feathers. This was a wild place, free of human interruption: there should be birds everywhere. Their absence usually indicated heavy predation, with rangy carnivores killing everything remotely edible until extinct, or scared off permanently. Cats and foxes were the likely culprits. Abandoned properties usually teemed with them. But Ava could see no sign of either.
Ava breathed in through her nose deeply. The damp day made scents harder to discern and the wind shoved in fits and starts. Time was of the essence: the detectives might be finished at any minute so she couldn’t falter. To the right, she passed the barn, with holes in its roof, its floor stained with oil. Inside, ancient hay bales had turned gunpowder grey; disintegrated matter seeped from mouldy boxes. Smashed flowerpots and shattered glass – more feathers. No signs of rodents and no sign of feline pest control: no cat-scat, or acrid stink, or fluffy faces peering out at her. No bird nests in the eaves. Weeds thrived in gnarled batches. A corroding hulk of a Land Rover slumped in the corner like a shot rhino, tethered by ivy, its bonnet a crumpled grimace.
She turned to see the car then stepped out of sight of its windscreen with one small, casual step.
The wind was a whine in the wires. The place was haunted – though not necessarily with ghosts. Ava believed in ghosts, but only as maudlin residue of extreme actions in unhappy places. Like Harry Price had said about Borley Rectory. Ava used her senses to explore the world, and while she was cynical about the presence of God or the Devil, she knew about hostile things and miserable places, that death was very much at home in this wretched zone. Something had occurred here; extreme actions that had not ended well.
A block of loose boxes stood opposite, paint peeling, their latches rusted orange. Ava stepped into view of the car again, waved to Luke and then peered into the stables. This wasn’t the den – only storerooms for broken objects. Her quick eye sought a souvenir in the first loose box, but there was nothing except corroding columns of water bowls and a stack of large dog beds. In the other stable, Ava saw a rope with a small leather collar and muzzle at the end of it, attached to a metal ring in the wall. There was a bowl, old straw and a duvet folded into a bed in the corner. On it, she spied a stuffed toy – a black teddy bear with distinctive yellow feet and one eye missing. Newspapers, yellowed and curled, were scattered on the floor, and Ava saw that the youngest was from 30 December 1967 – three days after Ava was born.
The kennel block gates creaked whenever the wind whipped through them. Ava didn’t want to show the policemen the real den until she’d seen it first; she wanted this time to be completely her own before all the noisy grown-up stuff started.
Her eyes were drawn to a single boy’s shoe – a black trainer caked with mud.
This was Mickey’s shoe.
The wall was a crumbly mass of weathered brick with a collapsed centre; and through the gap spread a scrubby piece of land occupied with nettles and weak-linked clovers. Down feathers landed on Ava’s nose, hair and coat. She pinched one between her fingers and studied it closely: the little bits were tipped brown at the ends. But, she knew, that the brown had once been red, bright red. Blood. These feathers hadn’t been moulted or plucked – they’d been torn out.
Ava stepped across the threshold, into the kennels and rounded the corner, pulviplume billowing in her wake.
The smell hit her with the force of a hammer-strike.
The wall concealed its secret but it had also concealed odours. Ava considered her sense of smell excellent for a human, but a dog would never have ventured further. Old smoke, spent fire, burned fabric; she could taste it all on the arch of her palate. Beneath it all was the vile ground note: death.
Ava paused.
In the field beyond lay more ruins and a row of standing stones as grim as decayed teeth in a phossy jaw. To her immediate left, tucked among withered elm trees, were two lock-up garages. A short apron of cracked concrete lay before the building, exuberant weeds sprouting from beneath. Ava’s feet crunched on the ground. Instinctively, she looked down and crouched. Below her feet were bones – thousands of them. Stained, bleached, weathered, marking a path to the garages. Smashed ribs and pelvises crunched underfoot. Tiny bones, hollowed bones: nothing bigger than those of a badger. There were more feathers too. Ava picked up a handful and sifted them in her palm: mostly avian but there were many Theria pieces; paw phalanges with cat claws attached, mice teeth, fur fronds. Ava’s sharp gaze shifted around her: no skulls. Where were the skulls?
This was why there was no life in this place: something was killing everything. Ava had followed Mickey only as far as this spot and then turned back. Back then, the carpet of crushed skeletons hadn’t been laid but last year was a while ago and since then a predator had been busy.
The first garage was securely locked down. The second was open a little at the bottom. A thick brown stain spread out from beneath the door not just in front but around the corner. Dried blood. The mess had dribbled out then set in gobs on the door’s architraves. At the base of the jamb was a single bloodied handprint: a desperate grasp, the thumbprint clear as if stencilled. Up close, the bloodstain was colossal and roughly the shape of South America. It didn’t sweep away and around the corner, as she had originally thought, but towards the garage door, then inside.
Ava faced the door. She studied the frame and the lip of the bottom. Trevor had taught her that such garage doors needed to be thrust upwards with decisive force otherwise they were prone to sticking part-way and then you had to heave – a waste of energy for such a simple task.
Ava reached down and curled her gloved hands around the bottom of the door then threw it wide open. Trevor was right: shove like you mean it.