Killing Woods Read online

  LUCY CHRISTOPHER

  Winner of the Branford Boase Award 2010, the Gold

  Inky Award 2010 (Australia) and the Prix

  Farniente 2012 (Belgium).

  Shortlisted for the Costa Children’s Book Award 2010,

  the Waterstones Prize 2010 and the Prime Minister’s

  Literary Awards 2010 (Australia).

  Recipient of a Printz Honor Award 2011 (USA).

  PRAISE FOR STOLEN

  As a teen, I would have adored this book …

  MAGGIE STIEFVATER

  A vivid new voice for teens.

  MELVIN BURGESS

  A stunning, scary and beautiful book.

  JOHN MARSDEN

  Tautly written and hard to put down.

  INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

  This book has stolen my attention right from its grabbing first line …

  MELODY’S READING CORNER BLOG

  … the perfect … exploration of what freedom really is.

  LET THE WORDS FLOW BLOG

  LUCY CHRISTOPHER

  2 Palmer Street, Frome, Somerset BA11 1DS

  From the Chicken House

  From the stories we hear in childhood, to our fantasies of freedom and fear, woods with their dark places and sudden bursts of light mean a lot to us. Lucy Christopher’s brilliant and frightening imagination takes an unexplained death, a complicated and emotional set of teenage relationships, and one black night in the woods to mix a sensual cocktail of terror and suspicion. It’s gripping, compulsive and totally dangerous. I’m still scared. And, no, I didn’t guess the truth.

  Barry Cunningham

  Publisher

  For Catherine

  Contents

  BEFORE

  1 Emily

  2 Damon

  NOW

  3 Emily

  4 Damon

  5 Emily

  6 Damon

  7 Emily

  8 Damon

  9 Emily

  10 Damon

  11 Emily

  12 Damon

  13 Emily

  14 Damon

  15 Emily

  16 Damon

  17 Emily

  18 Damon

  19 Emily

  20 Damon

  21 Emily

  22 Damon

  23 Emily

  24 Damon

  25 Emily

  26 Damon

  27 Emily

  28 Damon

  29 Emily

  30 Damon

  31 Emily

  32 Damon

  33 Emily

  34 Damon

  35 Emily

  36 Damon

  37 Emily

  38 Damon

  39 Emily

  40 Damon

  41 Emily

  42 Damon

  43 Emily

  44 Damon

  45 Emily

  46 Damon

  47 Emily

  48 Damon

  48 Emily

  50 Damon

  51 Emily

  52 Damon

  53 Emily

  54 Damon

  55 Emily

  56 Damon

  NOW

  57 Saturday. November. Damon

  58 Emily

  Acknowledgements

  A Note from the Author

  Stolen sample

  Copyright

  ‘I can see you

  Through the branches and the leaves

  So tenderly running

  So far

  So far

  From me’.

  – Quiet Marauder, Roda and the Bunker

  BEFORE

  1

  Saturday Night. August.

  Emily

  Something was draped across Dad’s outstretched arms. A deer? A fawn that was injured? It was sprawled and long-legged, something that had been caught in a poacher’s trap maybe. A mistake. So this is where Dad had been all this time, in the woods and cutting this creature free. I breathed out slowly, squinted at the mist that hovered around Dad like a ghost. I took my hand from my bedroom window, leaving the memory of my skin on the glass. Then I raced down the stairs, through the hall and into the kitchen out back. Throwing open the door to the garden, I waited for him there.

  It was ages since Dad had brought back something injured, and he’d never brought back a deer, though I could remember helping him free a roe deer from a snare in the woods once. Back then his hands had moved quickly and gently, darting from the wire on the doe’s leg and then to her neck for a pulse, stroking her constantly. This was something like that again. Saving another deer could be a good thing for Dad, something to take his mind off everything else, to help bring him out of his dark place.

  I heard Dad’s feet scuff on the cobbles in the lane, saw his movement. I tried to pick out the shape of the deer’s body, but it was all wrong. The legs weren’t long enough, neither was its neck. I took a step towards them. And that’s when it made sense: the shape.

  It wasn’t a deer Dad was carrying. It was a girl.

  Her neck was tilted back, her bare arms glowing in the moonlight. Her clothes were soaking. The garden gate creaked as Dad manoeuvred through, struggling. How long had he been carrying her? From where? I moved backwards into the kitchen. Dad had done things like this when he’d been a soldier who saved people, maybe he was being a hero again. Then I saw that this girl’s skin was grey, blue around the lips like smudged lipstick. Her long hair was plastered across her face, dark from the rain. I saw her green short-sleeved shirt and the silver bangle on her arm. I wanted to sweep the wet hair from her face, but my hand was half-raised when I stopped myself. I recognised her. I knew this girl.

  ‘What happened?’ I said.

  Dad didn’t answer. His face was red and damp; he wheezed as he pushed past me. The girl’s fingers trailed over my arm, and they were cold – dead cold – like a stone found in a cave. Dad laid her carefully on the kitchen table as if he were putting her to bed. He turned her head to the side and stretched out one of her arms so she was in the recovery position. He touched her neck gently, just like he’d touched the neck of the trapped roe deer so long ago. But this deer didn’t move, didn’t struggle or try to stop him.

  Her name was Ashlee Parker.

  I made myself bring my fingers to her wrist, waited long enough to be sure. I knew I should be panicking, should be calling an ambulance … but Ashlee Parker’s eyes were staring at me, fixed in position, brown and big.

  ‘She’s got model’s eyes,’ Kirsty had said once. ‘She’s beautiful. It’s no wonder Damon Hilary follows her everywhere.’

  Damon Hilary. Something twisted inside me when I thought about him – of how he’d react to this.

  I rested the tip of my finger on Ashlee’s cheek. I wanted to help her struggle and leap free, disappear into the trees. I could only hope that everything screaming through my head was wrong.

  ‘Is she …?’ I hesitated. ‘Is she … OK?’

  Dad didn’t answer. I don’t know what he thought, whether he hoped she would wake up. But I’d seen the small red marks on her neck, the blue speckles of bruises spreading out like flowers. I could see she wasn’t breathing at all.

  What had she been doing in the woods?

  How had she got like this?

  I don’t know how long we stood there, with the moon and stars shining through the kitchen window like spotlights. It felt like forever. Eventually there was a creak upstairs: Mum was up.

  ‘Everything all right down there?’ she called.

  Maybe she’d been waiting for Dad to return too, pretending to sleep like I’d been earlier, listening to the summer storm. I heard her slippers treading in the hall, then the kitchen door swung inwards and immediately Mum was complaining about Dad keeping us up wi
th worry, lecturing him about staying out during thunder.

  ‘You know how you get when the weather’s like this …’ she was saying. ‘You shouldn’t …’

  Then she saw Ashlee.

  She made a tight gasping sound as if she’d sucked up all the oxygen in the room at once. She looked at Dad then back to Ashlee. She stepped across and felt for a pulse.

  ‘Who is she?’ she said, her voice low. When he didn’t answer, she strode across the room and grabbed Dad by the shoulders. ‘What’s happened?’

  She moved towards the telephone on the windowsill, her eyes running over Dad’s muddy face and wet clothes, then over Ashlee again. The wheezing sound from Dad’s chest got louder.

  ‘Was she in the woods?’ Mum’s voice rose. ‘With you?’ Her fingers were shaking as she pressed the numbers on the phone. Eventually she got through. ‘We need an ambulance … police.’

  I wanted to tell Mum that this was Ashlee Parker from school. I wanted to say that I didn’t know what had happened, and neither did Dad, and that he was trying to save her … but the words stayed lodged in my throat like something half swallowed. Mum gave our address, hung up, went back to Dad. Her nails dug into his shoulders. Dad gulped air like a fish, one of his panic attacks starting. I knew I should go get his inhaler, or start talking softly to him – reminding him of where he was and who we were – but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t stop looking at Mum’s frightened eyes.

  ‘Tell me what happened, Jon!’ she demanded.

  I edged towards the open door to the garden. Give Dad time, I wanted to say. Let him explain. But Mum wanted answers, and that made me panic too … made me want to get away.

  ‘Dad found her,’ I whispered, saying what I wanted to be true. ‘She was in the woods, walking … lost.’

  Mum looked at me: the first time either of my parents seemed to notice me that night. ‘She’s dead, Emily.’

  Her words sent me feeling for the door handle, for something to hold on to. Then Dad’s sudden shout made me jump.

  ‘She wasn’t supposed to be there!’

  It was what he always said when he came out of a flashback. The same words. He was in a flashback again, he had to be. Mum was right. It must have started from hearing the thunder, from being out in that storm when he shouldn’t have been anywhere near it.

  Mum brushed the hair from Ashlee Parker’s face. ‘Did you do something, Jon?’ she asked very quietly.

  I lurched forward, wanting to stop Mum’s words, stop all of this. ‘How could he?’

  Mum held out her palm, wanting Dad to answer for himself.

  ‘He’s just in a …’ I said. ‘He’s just …’

  Dad’s hands were trembling. He was panicking badly, losing it, like I’d seen him lose it so many times before. Only this time was worse: his eyes were wilder somehow, still glazed in that nightmare. Did he even know where he was? Who we were?

  Mum kept looking at Dad. ‘If you know something, Jon – anything! – they’ll take you away, they’ll ask you, over and over …’

  ‘Away?’ Dad’s arms shook too. ‘Away, away …’ He repeated the word like it was snagged in his mind.

  ‘Away from us. The woods. You’ll be gone in a police car … Do you understand?’

  ‘Gone,’ Dad repeated. ‘Gone.’

  He looked from Mum to Ashlee Parker and then through the window to the woods like he was searching for something. Trying to remember. Trying to pull something back. He crashed to the floor like all his bones had snapped, his body juddering as he grasped at the worktop. I went towards him, but he held an arm across his face as if he thought I’d hit him.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, his eyes watery. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry …’ He looked at Mum desperately. ‘But they were shouting … the soldier told me I’d done it.’ He shook his head and murmured, ‘Me, me, me …’

  The same words. The same story about the soldier who’d yelled at him during that firefight: who’d told him he’d killed a civilian. Dad was remembering being in combat that last time, flashing back.

  Mum realised it too. ‘But this girl isn’t the same,’ she told him firmly. ‘Not the one you killed.’

  ‘The same!’ Dad wailed. ‘Same.’

  He lashed his fist into the kitchen unit; blood ran down the cupboard. When Dad got like this Mum usually told me to go to my room and sometimes she joined me. We’d listen to him shouting into the night, wrecking things as he raged. Outside the rain started again, heavy and persistent, but no more thunder. Dad gasped and gasped.

  ‘I was in the compound … and she was … she was there and I …’ Dad tripped on his words, stopped and tried again. ‘I didn’t mean to … but the enemy, they were hiding … out there in the dark … all around …’

  ‘You’re not in combat now, Jon! There’s no firefight! You haven’t shot anyone!’ Mum was almost pleading with him. ‘You’re in your kitchen. You’re with your wife and daughter. You’re an ex-soldier in a flashback, that’s all!’

  Dad blinked. Maybe Mum thought she had him back with us because she added, ‘But you have brought home a girl, Jon, and she’s dead.’

  ‘I didn’t mean …’ Dad turned towards the rain coming in sideways at the kitchen window. Was he waking up?

  ‘But the soldier … he told me. He said it was …’ He shook his head, kept murmuring, ‘… me, me, me …’

  2

  Sunday Morning.

  Damon

  The sun was hot against my eyelids. Bringing my hand to my neck I felt only one dog collar. Hers? I ran my fingers over its worn leather and stiff stitching, touched the tiny rips at the edges, its cold circular tag. Then I traced my fingers over its engraved letters: DH.

  So where was Ashlee’s collar?

  And what time was it, anyway?

  I patted down my chest, felt over the mattress and pillow. Nothing. But I’d caught her. We’d gone all the way, just like she’d promised. So why didn’t I have her collar? Or why didn’t she have mine? I tried to force my brain to think, remember. Her sweet rosey perfume was still stuck inside my nostrils. I tasted mud on my teeth, in my gums; I tasted Ashlee’s fairy dust. Forcing my eyes open properly, I made my gaze move across the bed, looking for Ashlee’s thin, shiny pink collar. It wasn’t on the floor either, hadn’t fallen off me in the night. I was curved like a banana on top of the sheets, still in my dad’s old combat shirt, still muddy. There was dirt and leaves everywhere, and I was wet … soaked through. Sweat? No, rain. There’d been a storm last night. I must’ve been pretty fucked up not to remember that straight up. Even my boots were still on.

  But there was no collar … nowhere. Maybe I’d dropped it in the woods? Ashlee would kill me if I’d lost it. They all would. We’d have to get her another before we could play the Game again.

  I sat up, immediately wishing I hadn’t. My collar felt too tight around my neck and I fumbled to get it off, my hands still drunk and awkward. Touching my neck made me feel even sicker. I chucked my dog collar on to the pillow, then pulled my shirt off too. Pressing my hand to where my tatt started on the base of my spine, I tried to breathe deeper. Everything about me stank, but there was no sick, or piss, on the carpet, not that I could see. I remember Ed boasting once about being so drunk after the Game that he’d pissed in the corner of his room. He’d said something about being as drunk as Mack’s dad, then he’d had to duck quick from Mack’s fist.

  I knew I should text them, find out who won.

  I should text Ashlee.

  I felt down my damp, clinging combat trousers, but there was no phone there. Had I lost that too? My head hurt too much for thinking, maybe I’d drunk away my brain cells. We’d been going at it pretty hard in the car park first, and then, of course, in the woods. After Ashlee had given me that fairy dust, the woods had changed into something mixed up.

  ‘Fairyland,’ Ashlee had said, giggling. ‘Just slip down into it.’

  But what else had I slipped down into? Ashlee?

  I stared at my boots
like they could give me memories. Mud was all over them, a leaf caught in a shoelace. They looked about as battered as my brain. I could remember my face against something damp, the smell of earth … there were still bits of leaf and bark in my hair. I pushed the boots off me rough, kicked them under the bed. I grabbed the covers and pulled them over my face to stop the sunlight, burying myself. I wanted sleep. I wanted Ashlee to touch me and do what she must’ve done the night before all over again, but this time so I could remember it. I wanted a cuppa.

  I lay there, but no cup of tea or Ashlee magically appeared, not even sleep. Too much head pain. I kept my eyes closed anyway. Last night hadn’t been like the other nights, and it wasn’t just because of the sex Ashlee had promised. For a start, there’d been that fairy dust. Ashlee had spun some story about fairies in the woods, how we’d see them once the dust kicked in.

  ‘Just go with it,’ she’d said, rubbing that stuff into our gums.

  She was good at getting drugs, but she’d never got this shit before. Charlie had laughed like a hyena. I’d seen his face stretch into a snout.

  ‘You get special treatment,’ she’d whispered to me, dusting my gums so much I’d gagged.

  And later, we’d been on the forest floor. We’d been going all the way. I tried to remember the feel of it … the feel of her. The softness of her skin around me. Her warmth.

  Nothing!

  What was the point of fucking if you couldn’t remember it? What was the point of any of it if you got head pain like this? Had someone punched me real hard at the end of the Game? Was that why it wasn’t coming back? Was that why I didn’t have her collar, neither? I squinted ’til I finally saw my phone on the table beside the bed. Punched out a message to her.

  What you doing sexy?

  Did it sound too keen? Like I didn’t care about her at all, just wanted the sex? Did I sound like an arse?

  I sent it anyway. Then I put my head back on the pillow and waited for her reply. She’d send me something cute, maybe even a photo. She’d been doing that a lot lately: letting me see her in her bed, in her pyjamas, showing me the undies she had on. But right now with the way my head was, even if she just told me she’d had a good time last night, even that would do. Even if she just told me who’d won the most collars, who’d won the Game.