It was Tabby who’d saved us.
She had run from Charlie to the Hidey at the back of the gym, and gone straight up to the dorms and she’d stayed there and bided her time until she heard the library window breaking. Then she’d gone back through the Hidey and arrived at Sickbay. It was there, on a shelf on the wall, that she’d found the plastic carrier bag full of our mobile phones, hidden there by Matron. She called the police herself and said the bad man had a knife, told them the address, and they’d come running. They’d all come running.
I don’t remember much of what happened between sitting with Maggie in the library and being brought outside. I think I must have blacked out, like I did when I ‘attacked’ Clarice in the Chapel. How long ago that was now. Some policemen came in, wearing vests and brandishing guns. There were shouts. People talked to me. People talked at me. I stayed in my bubble, not really hearing them or feeling them as they poked and prodded and covered my shoulders with a foil blanket. I told them Leon was in the French room cupboard. I definitely told them that. Then they cleared me out of the library.
By the time I got outside, it was early in the morning on Christmas Eve, and there were flashing lights everywhere. Police cars, vans and ambulances met my eyes at every turn. Bustle, noise and scratchy receivers barking orders from every shoulder.
I sat on the back of an ambulance, wrapped in my foil cape and staring at the lights until my eyes stung and watered. Tabby was in the back of another ambulance, sitting next to Brody, who was chewing a stick. Two police officers sat with them. Tabby was cuddling Babbitt and one of the policewomen was reading her a story. I kept looking down at my hands, thinking about what they did. How they’d killed someone. How I’d become a monster to kill another.
Another woman was asking me questions. A policewoman. I hadn’t really seen her face. She had short dark hair and talked in a Scottish accent. I didn’t know if I was answering her correctly. I was just watching the school. Watching the dusting of snow on the roof beginning to melt away as though it had never been there. Watching the front door as the stretchers were brought out.
First Clarice. I saw her red hair, dangling like a theatre curtain beneath the sheet covering her face.
Then came Leon, sitting up, his hand cuffed to the metal rung under the bed. I stood up.
The Scottish policewoman’s voice. ‘Nash, come back. Nash, you need to sit down, you’ve had a terrible shock.’ I kept walking towards the stretcher. ‘You need to stand aside, please.’
‘Leon.’
‘Nash,’ he said, his face brightening. ‘I’m gonna be all right. Where’s Dianna?’
‘I don’t know, Leon. I don’t know.’
‘Miss,’ said a tall dark policeman, with a beard this time, ‘we need to get him to the hospital now.’
I looked at the policeman. ‘He saved me. If it wasn’t for him, I’d be dead.’
‘All right, all right.’
‘No, listen to me,’ I said, grabbing the bearded policeman’s arm and not letting go. ‘You need to take that into account. I know he escaped, I know he did bad things before, but here—he did good things here. He didn’t hurt anyone and he saved my life. Please.’
‘You just tell that to the lady there then, all right? We’ll make sure it’s all noted down. She’ll look after you.’
The policeman gently moved me to one side as the bed continued past me. Leon winked, mouthing Thanks, before closing his eyes and being rolled off towards a ramp at the back of one of the waiting ambulances. As the bed passed me, I could have sworn I’d seen a tear fall down the side of his face to the sheet.
‘Nash?’ said the Scottish policewoman again. She adjusted the foil cape around my shoulders again. I hadn’t even realised it had come off. ‘Let’s go back to the ambulance now, okay? The paramedics are waiting to have a look at your neck.’
‘I want to see Maggie.’
‘They’ll bring her out in a minute. We’ll wait for her in the ambulance, shall we? Where it’s warm?’
‘No,’ I said, more firmly. ‘I’m waiting here for Maggie.’
‘Okay, well—you just keep that cape around you then.’
Two ambulances started down the driveway and police milled around in the empty spaces they’d left. Making calls. Talking about the news crews. Setting up caution tape. I looked at the white school minibus. Some cops were already marking where blood had been found. I heard two of them mention ‘the boy in the library’ and ‘twenty-seven separate wounds’, but I didn’t make the connection then. Other policemen were taking an empty stretcher down the path to the Orangery lawn where I’d told them I’d found Matron. I looked back to the front door. Waiting for Maggie.
‘Will you at least let them clean your face?’ said the Scottish voice again.
‘What’s wrong with my face?’ I said, not taking my eyes off the front door.
‘Well, it’s a little bit messy. Let’s just go and do that, shall we?’
I let her guide me back to the ambulance where a paramedic was waiting with some sort of medical wet wipe. I caught sight of my face in the wing mirror. My entire head was covered in dry blood. My blue eyes stared out. My vision went, momentarily, as a giant wet wipe was smeared across my face. The wipe came away red but the paramedic hid it quickly in a plastic bag and fished out another one, doing the same again.
‘Where has all that blood come from?’ I heard my voice say. ‘Did he get me?’
‘No,’ said the woman. ‘This is his blood. Okay, if you just sit down there, my love, so we can take a look at you. That’s it, thank you.’
‘His blood?’
The other paramedic started checking all round my neck. I felt it then. The soreness. The searing pain in my throat and my collarbone. It killed.
‘Oww.’
‘It’s okay, you’ve just got a bit of bruising there. Nothing serious.’
‘Nothing serious,’ I repeated. It still didn’t sound like my voice. I’d forgotten what I was meant to sound like.
I heard a rattling and a gaggle of people came out of the front door, followed by the next stretcher. Maggie.
I shook off the two paramedics and rushed towards her. I couldn’t see her for people—she was shrouded in policemen and women and ambulance crews. I couldn’t see if the sheet covered her face or not. I barged my way through the throng of bodies, and then I saw her face. Her brown eyes—open, beautifully alive.
‘All right, Nasher the Flasher?’ she said, her voice scratchy and one eye closed. ‘Nice necklace.’
She meant the purple choker where Charlie’s hands had tried to squeeze the life from my body just an hour before. I put my hand to my throat and winced in pain again. It was then that I looked down her body and saw the hilt of Charlie’s knife sticking out of her belly, a cluster of blood-soaked wadding all around it. My own stomach turned over at the sight.
‘You did it, Nash. You slew the dragon. Tu est … magnifique.’ She felt around at her side for my hand and I grabbed it and held it tightly.
‘We slew the dragon,’ I said.
‘No, I didn’t get close. I missed him. You went to town on the bastard. He looks like Swiss cheese in there.’ Her voice was getting weaker. She groaned with the effort of talking.
Twenty seven separate wounds, I kept thinking. I wanted to know what she meant, but she was fading. ‘You got him, Maggie. You got him.’
The bed didn’t stop moving so we couldn’t talk properly. I walked alongside her. ‘We didn’t watch Con Air,’ she mumbled.
‘Another time,’ I told her. ‘I’ll find out which hospital they’re taking you to and I’ll bring it in for us to watch there. Okay?’
She nodded. ‘I’d like that.’
‘Are you going to be all right?’
‘Yeah. I’ll survive. Worse luck for Saul-Hudson, eh? Back in this dump next term. Well, might take a bit longer, I dunno.’ She winced. ‘I’m all right. They got good drugs, you should get some. Nice.’ Her eyes started to close.
‘Maggie …’ I tailed off, then started again. ‘You’re a true friend.’
She started laughing. Really laughing. And then crying, from the pain the laughter was causing. ‘Aww, sorry, that just sounded so wet.’
I tugged her hair gently. ‘Oi you, I was trying to have a moment there.’
‘Let’s get two of those naff necklaces from Argos. “BFFs Forevs”.’ Her eyes closed again.
I tried to laugh. We’d arrived at the ramp of the ambulance. ‘I’ll see you soon, okay?’
She nodded. Though her eyes were watery, no tears escaped. Typical Maggie. The stretcher started to move again, up the ramp and away she went. Once again, I was guided back to my ambulance, where the paramedic was still waiting with his wipe.
Then the Scottish policewoman, whose name, I learned, was Krissy, asked me questions. Loads of questions. I told her everything I could, from the beginning. I told her how I’d found Matron. How Dianna had kept Seb’s letter from me and how everyone had shouted at her and she’d disappeared. How Charlie was on some antipsychotic drugs. I told them what he’d told me—how he had killed them all. The man in the village. The two tourists in the summer. Matron. Clarice. Probably Dianna too. How he left them in the forest for the Beast to eat.
‘What about Clarice’s and Matron’s families?’
‘Someone’s informing them,’ said the policewoman. She had told me her name but I’d forgotten it already. Krissy, that was it.
‘My parents are abroad, but they were due back today. I know their mobiles …’
‘We’ll call them, don’t worry. We’ll call them all. You just concentrate on yourself right now, okay? Let’s get you sorted.’
Another tinkling in the distance. The wheels of the last stretcher.
Charlie. A white sheet over his face.
I stayed sitting as they wheeled him straight up into another ambulance and slammed the doors.
‘You’re the hero, don’t forget that.’
‘Huh?’ I said, snapping out of my daze and looking at the policewoman’s face. ‘I’m not a hero. I’m a killer.’
‘You saved your friends’ lives. You saved your own.’
I didn’t even feel the cold when my foil cape slipped off my shoulders again and Krissy had to put it back on. Her radio crackled on her shoulder and she spoke into it. I heard the words ‘body’ and ‘lane’.
I knew it was Dianna.
‘They’ve found her, haven’t they?’ I said. She didn’t answer.
‘Okay, Sarge. I’ll let them know.’ She looked at me. ‘Yeah. In one of the lanes about two miles away from here in Bathory village. In a phone box.’
‘She was going for help. I know she was. Charlie must have seen her on the way here. We had an argument. I said she was useless.’
The policewoman took a long deep breath and blew out a cloud of bemusement. ‘My colleagues are searching Bathory Basics in the village. I’ve had word that a man’s body has been found in the upstairs flat.’
My eyes banged shut and my heart truly sank inside me. ‘His dad.’
She leaned into me. I could smell her perfume—the same as our Geography teacher wore. ‘You saved four people’s lives today, including your own. Don’t you forget that. I’ve got to inform my colleagues, okay? I’ll be back in a tick.’
Four people’s lives? Tabby, Leon, Maggie and … Regan. ‘Regan,’ I said aloud. ‘I left her in the kitchen when I …’
‘Nash, I’m here,’ came a voice behind me and I looked to see Regan standing to the side of the ambulance, beaming as though I’d just called her up to collect a prize. She didn’t have a scratch on her.
‘Oh my God,’ I said, and gathered her in for a hug. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine. I’m fine. I saw it, Nash! I saw the—’
‘Don’t say it,’ I said. I led her away from the ambulance so we were out of earshot of the two paramedics. ‘Where?’
‘Through the kitchen window. When I escaped the oven, I ran for the woods and that’s when I saw it. I followed it, up through the Landscape Gardens and up to the Birdcage. It led me to safety, Nash. The Beast saved me!’
‘You saved yourself,’ I told her. ‘Listen, don’t tell the police about it.’
‘Why not? They’ll want to know where I went, won’t they?’
‘Yes, but leave that bit out. Just say you ran and hid. If they go looking for it, they might try to capture it or kill it. We wouldn’t want that to happen, would we? Not now that we know it doesn’t mean us any harm. Okay?’
She seemed sad, but she nodded. ‘It’s just something we know about.’
‘Yeah. Just you and me.’
‘It means I won’t be the hero for finding it though.’
‘We have to protect it, Regan. It’ll be our …’
‘Secret?’ she suggested.
‘No, I don’t like secrets,’ I said. ‘It’ll just be ours. Okay?’
She grinned widely. It looked strange on her face, but not unpretty. ‘Okay. What’s wrong with your neck?’
I couldn’t even feel there was anything wrong with my neck, until I swallowed and then I felt it. Jesus, did I feel it. I went to the back of my ambulance again and wrapped the foil cape around me. Both the paramedics were at the front of the ambulance. The man was talking into the radio by the steering wheel. The woman was fiddling about inside her medical bag. I looked through the windscreen. Dawn was breaking on the horizon. Something was breaking in me too. I kept thinking back to him, lying there on the library floor.
The blood spurting from his neck; a graceful fountain of red.
The sound as I plunged the pencil into his flesh.
The sound as I pulled the pencil back out and watched as his skin closed back around the hole I’d made.
I only remembered stabbing him once. Twenty-seven times? That wasn’t me. That couldn’t have been me.
I only remember watching as the last rattling breaths left his body. And I did nothing but sit there, watching, hoping.
I’d enjoyed it. The power was in my hands. I’d killed him. I’d stabbed him over and over and over and over again. His blood covered my face. Some of it had gone in my mouth. I could still taste him. And I’d sat there and watched him die.
What a monster I had inside me. And I never even knew it.
Another police car, or another ambulance, was coming down the drive. As it got closer, I could see there were no flashing blue lights. Maybe it was Clarice’s parents. Or Dianna’s mum.
I stood up and went round the side of the ambulance.
The car was getting closer still, but it was so dark I couldn’t make out its colour or shape. Just the lights, getting brighter and coming down the drive faster and faster. It parked up hurriedly on the grass verge, just outside the turning circle. I kept on walking towards it. The closer I got, the more details I could make out. Big car. Square lights. Soon I could see the colour of it. Blue.
A blue Volvo Estate.
My dad’s car.
‘Miss, come back here, miss,’ came the Scottish voice, but I kept running towards it. No way was I going to look back. No way was anyone going to stop me from running towards that car.
My dad got out of the driver’s seat. My mum got out of the passenger seat, not even closing her door.
‘Mum! Dad!’
‘Nash!’ she screamed. It was her, it was Mum. Dad was running too. He was shouting for me too. I kept running and running towards them, running hard, as though I was being chased again, but this time the only thing chasing me was the need to hold my parents again and have them hold me and tell me everything was okay. Their faces were white and terrified.
‘Nashy! Baby, my baby, what’s happened?’ said Mum, as I ran into her arms and breathed in her familiar scent of Marc Jacobs Daisy and coconut shampoo. Dad grabbed both of us in his wide embrace and squeezed us.
‘It’s all right, she’s all right. We’ve got her, it’s all right.’
‘Ow,’ I said.
Mum pulled back and cupped my face in her hands, her cheeks streaming with tears. ‘What the hell’s happened here? Look at you, you’re …’ She saw my neck. She looked into my eyes. It was like she didn’t recognise me for a moment. ‘Oh my God, what’s he done to you? We heard it on the news coming down …’
‘I’ll tell you everything—just don’t touch my neck, okay?’
They hugged me again, but this time I didn’t feel a thing. Because a voice was calling me from somewhere else.
The car. I swallowed, painfully.
‘Nash?’
It wasn’t in my dreams and it wasn’t in my nightmares. He was there. He was real.
Getting out of the back of the car, his foot in plaster, shaking off the chequered blanket we always slept under. My brother. My Seb.
‘Oh my God.’
I barely heard my dad, saying how he’d got lost in some Colombian village, which didn’t have a phone signal. How he’d broken his ankle hundreds of miles from a hospital. How these nice villagers took him in and sent a scout to the nearest town to get help. I heard it, but I didn’t take it in. When I reached him, and felt him against me and held him in my arms and he held me back, I could feel everything. The pain in my head, my back, all around my neck, my hands, my knees. I cried like rain through the trees. Everything hurt and everything was wonderful, all in one mightily painful punch.
‘I kept hearing you in my head, the whole time,’ he whispered to me. ‘You kept me going.’
I didn’t ever want to let go of him.
‘You too,’ I squeaked.
‘What d’you do, burn the joint down?’ He laughed, pulling away from me, his eyes wide as he looked around at all the police cars and flashing lights. I looked at him, his face illuminated by the brightness. He was sunburned. He looked older. There were new lines under his eyes. And thinner. His jawline was more obvious. And stubbly like Dad’s.
‘I missed you so much,’ I said, clasping him in again for a hug and squeezing my eyes shut so tightly I saw stars.
When I opened them, I saw the woods beyond him and the rising sun ricocheting back at me from the tree trunks.
He hugged me again. ‘Did you get my letter? Did you get the pencil?’
‘Yeah.’ I sniffed. ‘I got the pencil.’ And I started crying all over again. And I tasted blood in my mouth again.
‘It’s all right, it’s all right.’
But though I was comforted by his presence, and though I’d always believed everything he said because he was Seb and Seb was my big brother and he was always right, this I didn’t believe. This didn’t feel all right. It didn’t feel like this, whatever it was, was over. It felt like he was too late to pull me back this time. Like I had changed. Like something new and dark and monstrous had just been let out of its cage.
‘Hey come on,’ he said, pulling back and holding my freezing face in his large warm hands and crying like no big brother should. ‘It’s over. It’s finished. We can have Christmas now.’
‘Yeah.’ I nodded, looking beyond him into the woods again where I just caught sight of it—a large black shadow, slinking slowly away, between the trees and out of sight.
* * * * *