Helen Phifer - The Girls In The Woods

‘Right you two, go in the kitchen and get yourselves something to eat. I need to sort your granddad out.’

His brother leant down and kissed the man’s forehead and Heath tried to force himself to move towards him to do the same but he couldn’t. His legs wouldn’t move. As his brother walked past he whispered in his ear ‘ Scaredy cat ’. His dad came over and placed his hands on his shoulders, then pushed Heath out of the room and shut the door behind him. Finally finding his feet, he went into the kitchen where his brother was sitting eating a packet of crisps.

‘He’s going to pop his clogs any minute.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I just do. You wait and see.’

Sometimes he hated how his brother was such a know-it-all. It made him feel stupid and like a big baby. He got himself a packet of crisps out of the cupboard and they both sat on the high stools near the breakfast bar waiting for their dad to come back in. After what seemed like forever he finally did; his eyes were red and he’d been crying. Heath had never seen his dad cry. He walked over and hugged them close to him.

‘Your granddad’s gone to heaven now; you can both go in and say goodbye.’

This time it was Heath who wanted to go in first – he desperately wanted to see what you looked like when you were dead – and it was his brother who lingered behind. He jumped off his stool and went to the room where the door was ajar. The first thing he noticed was how peaceful it was now that horrible sound his granddad had been making had stopped. He stepped inside. The sheets were no longer moving and he walked closer to look at the man on the bed. The second thing he noticed was how different he looked; his skin looked yellow but it was no longer scrunched up and wrinkled in pain. It was smooth, his mouth was open and his false teeth had slipped down. He’d expected his eyes to be closed but they were open slightly, staring straight ahead. Heath marvelled at how wonderful his granddad looked now he was dead – how much younger. It was amazing. Did everyone who died look like this? His foot kicked something soft and he looked down to see one of the pillows from the bed there. It puzzled him how it had got there; it wasn’t there before when they’d been in the room and his granddad hadn’t moved at all. His dad must have taken it from under the old man’s head but he didn’t understand why. He picked it up and felt a warm patch in the middle; placing it on the chair next to the bed he thought nothing of it. It wasn’t until some years later when he replayed that last scene in his head that he realised that the pillow was warm in the middle because that was where his granddad’s last breaths had gone. He had known all along that the grief his dad had shown had been filled with guilt – but he hadn’t known why until his dad’s own dying confession had confirmed the sneaking suspicion he’d always held. His dad had been the one to end his granddad’s life that morning all those years ago; he could have gone to prison but he’d decided it was worth the risk. The only regret that Heath had was that he’d had no means to photograph how wonderful his granddad looked, more wonderful than he ever did when he was alive. It was as if his true inner beauty had been revealed and it was something Heath never forgot; in fact he thought about it an awful lot. When most kids his age 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.