Tana French - The Likeness

“He ran the other night,” Rafe said, grinding out his cigarette. “After the torch-bearing villager. He’s fast, all right, when he needs to be.”

“I didn’t have a clue where he was going; all I could think about was trying to keep up. For some reason the idea of being out there by myself sent me into a complete panic-I mean, I know we were only a few hundred yards from home, but that’s not what it felt like. It felt…” Justin shivered. “It felt dangerous, ” he said. “Like something was happening, all round us, and we couldn’t see it, but if I was on my own…”

“That was shock, hon,” Abby said gently. “It’s normal.”

Justin shook his head, still staring down at his glass. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t like that.” He took a quick, hard swig of his drink and grimaced. “Then Daniel switched the torch on and swung it around-it was like a lighthouse beam, I was sure everyone for miles around would come running-and he stopped on that cottage. I only saw it for a second, just a corner of broken-down wall. Then the torch went out again, and Daniel threw himself over the wall into the field. There was all this long wet grass tangling round my ankles, it was like trying to run through porridge…” He blinked at his glass and pushed it away from him on the bookshelf; a little of his drink splashed out, staining someone’s notes with sickly orange splotches. “Can I have a cigarette?”

“You don’t smoke,” Rafe said. “You’re the good one.”

“If I have to tell this story,” said Justin, “I want a fucking cigarette.”

There was a high, precarious wobble in his voice. “Knock it off, Rafe,” Abby said. She stretched over to pass Justin her smoke packet; as he took it, she caught his hand and squeezed.

Justin lit the cigarette clumsily, holding it high up between stiff fingers, inhaled too hard and choked. No one said anything while he coughed, caught his breath, wiped his eyes with a knuckle under his glasses.

“Lexie,” Abby said. “Can’t we just… You’ve got the important part. Can’t we leave it?”

“I want to hear,” I said. I could hardly breathe.

“So do I,” said Rafe. “I’ve never heard this part either, and I’ve got a feeling it might be interesting. Aren’t you curious, Abby? Or do you already know this story?”

Abby shrugged. “All right,” said Justin. His eyes were pressed shut and his jaw was so tense he could barely get the cigarette between his lips. “I’m… Just give me a second. God.”

He took another drag, retched a little, managed to hold it. “OK,” he said. He had his voice under control again. “So we got to the cottage. There was just enough moonlight that I could see outlines-the walls, the doorway. Daniel switched on the torch, with his other hand partway over it, and…”

His eyes opened, skated away from us to the window. “You were sitting in a corner, against the wall. I shouted something-called you, maybe, I don’t know-and I started to run over to you, but Daniel grabbed my arm, hard, he hurt me, and pulled me back. He put his mouth right up against my ear and hissed, ‘Shut up,’ and then, ‘Don’t move. You stay right here. You stay still.’ He shook my arm-I had bruises-and then he let go of me and went over to you. He put his fingers on your throat, like this, checking your pulse-he had the torch on you, and you looked…”

Justin’s eyes were still on the window. “You looked like a wee girl asleep,” he said, and the grief in his voice was soft and relentless as rain. “And then Daniel said, ‘She’s dead.’ That’s what we thought, Lexie. We thought you had died.”

“You must have already been in the coma,” Abby said gently. “The cops told us it would have slowed down your heartbeat, your breathing, stuff like that. If it hadn’t been so cold-”

“Daniel straightened up,” Justin said, “and wiped his hand on the front of his shirt-I’m not sure why, it wasn’t bloody or anything, but that was all I could see: him rubbing his hand down his chest, over and over, as if he didn’t even know he was doing it. I couldn’t-I couldn’t look at you. I went to hold myself up against the wall-I mean, I was hyperventilating, I thought I was going to faint-but he said, very sharply, ‘Don’t touch anything. Put your hands in your pockets. And hold your breath for a count of ten.’ I didn’t understand what he was talking about, none of it made any sense, but I did it anyway.”

“We always do,” Rafe said, in an undertone. Abby gave him a quick glance.

“After a minute Daniel said, ‘If she had gone for her walk as usual, she would have her keys and wallet on her, and that torch she uses. One of us needs to go home and get them. The other one should stay here. It’s unlikely that anyone will pass by, at this hour, but we don’t know the full extent of her arrangements with Ned, and if someone does happen to pass, we need to know about it. Which would you prefer to do?’ ”

Justin made a tentative move to stretch out a hand to me, took it back and clasped it tightly around his other elbow. “I told him I couldn’t stay there. I’m sorry, Lexie. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have been… I mean, it was you; it was still you, even if you had been… But I couldn’t. I was-I was shaking all over, I think I must have been gibbering at him… Finally he said-and he didn’t even seem upset, not any more, just impatient-he said, ‘For heaven’s sake, shut up. I’ll stay. Get home as fast as you can. Put your gloves on and get Lexie’s keys, her wallet and her torch. Tell the others what’s happened. They’ll want to come back with you; don’t let them, whatever you do. The last thing we need is more people trampling all over the place, and anyway there’s no point in giving them more to forget. Come straight back here. Take the torch with you, but don’t use it unless you really need to, and try to be quiet. Can you remember all that?’ ”

He drew hard on the cigarette. “I said yes-I’d have said yes if he’d asked me whether I could fly home, as long as it meant getting out of there. He made me repeat it all back to him. Then he sat down on the ground, beside you-not too close, I suppose in case he got… you know. Blood on his trousers. And he looked up at me and said, ‘Well? Go on. Hurry.’

“So I went home. It was horrible. It took-well, if Rafe’s right, it can’t have actually taken that long. I don’t know. I got lost. There were places where I knew I should have been able to see the lights from the house, but I couldn’t; just black, for miles around. I knew for sure, like a fact, that the house wasn’t even there any more; there was nothing left but hedges and lanes, on and on, this huge maze and I would never get out of it, it would never be daylight again. That there were things watching me, up in the trees and hidden in the hedges-I don’t know what kind of things, but… watching me, and laughing. I was terrified. When I finally saw the house-just this faint gold glow, over the bushes-it was such a relief I almost screamed. The next thing I remember is pushing the back door open-”

“He looked like The Scream,” Rafe said, “only muddier. And he was making absolutely no sense; half what came out of his mouth was pure gibberish, like he was speaking in tongues. All we could make out was that he had to go back, and that Daniel said we should stay where we were. Personally, I thought fuck that, I wanted to go find out what the hell was going on, but when I started getting my coat, Justin and Abby both went into such hysterics that I gave up.”

“And a good thing too,” Abby said coolly. She had gone back to the doll; her hair fell across her face, hiding it, and even from across the room I could tell that her stitches were huge and sloppy and useless. “What possible use do you think you could have been?”