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We didn’t speak then for the rest of the journey except to comment on the excursion, dimming light, or how we were both hungry and ready to eat.
We reached the beach as the sky turned a brilliant orange and pink.
‘I don’t think I will ever get used to this,’ I said but I wasn’t expecting a response because of course it was too spectacular for words and I had already said too much when no words needed to be spoken at all. I laid all the food out on the blanket, and we began picking and talking about the camp life, and Avril asked if I had intentions to go back out spearfishing again. I stopped swallowing. A tomato sat in my throat as I felt it swelling up. No one had expected me to start spearfishing again, since Clara. Avril was talking about me getting back out there as though the incident had never happened.
I swallowed hard and the tomato began making its way down my oesophagus.
I went to answer her question the best way I could, then stopped myself.
But a scream, loud and piercing, carried across the beach towards us.
Avril was on her feet and looking up and down the beach.
‘Was that an animal?’ I asked. ‘It sounded like an animal.’
‘It wasn’t an animal.’ Avril sounded adamant.
‘Human then?’
‘The child.’
‘Adi?’ I asked.
Avril looked at me.
‘You’ve seen him too?’ I asked, for I knew it couldn’t have been the other boy who never strayed too far from his mothers’ sides.
Avril sat back down on the sand, but she seemed agitated. The sound had obviously bothered her.
‘Should we try and see if he is okay?’ I asked.
Then when it came again, louder this time, Avril was up and running along the beach. I found I was following her instinctively. She was right to run. What if the child was hurt or in trouble?
The moon provided us with enough light if we needed it, but we relied on our ears to work out where the sound came from and where it would lead us.
We ran up the beach for what felt like a long time before we came across the remains of a fire. Someone had poured water over it. There was no smoke but there was the scent in the air. Avril stood with her hands on her hips, looking up and down the beach. Eventually, we heard a rustle from the bushes in front of us. I tentatively took a step forward and Avril grabbed my hand.
‘Sadie, wait.’
I looked at her. ‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ I said. I knew it would probably be Adi, the little boy I had met walking to the beach, and he had been perfectly sweet. I hadn’t seen him since, which was a bit strange. You could walk around theentire island in two hours, but the shrubbery and trees in the middle of the island were dense and it would be perfectly easy to live or get lost amongst those and not be seen for a long time.
I took another step forward, reaching out with my hands to part the foliage.
‘Sadie, I really think you should be careful. You don’t know—’
Before she could finish what she was saying a pair of hands shot out of the bushes and grabbed both of mine. I screeched loudly and went to step back, trying to pull away as I did, but the hands were latched on tight. I looked down at them, long bony fingers, which looked as if they belonged to a female, and even with only the soft lighting I could tell the hands were covered with blood. Horrified, I pulled harder, writhing both my arms until the grip was finally loosed and my arms were free. I looked down at my hands and from the little light that was left I could see dark shades in streaks.
‘Oh God, oh God.’ And then I looked up. The hands had gone and in their place was the face of a woman. A young woman, blood smeared across both of her cheeks, but it was her eyes that spoke to me first, intensely staring into mine. Then her mouth opened. It was barely a whisper, but the one-syllable word was easy for me to hear and understand.
‘Run.’
24
THEN
‘You’re shaking.’ Avril bent down to wash my hands of the blood in the shallows of the sea.
‘She gave me a scare,’ I said, my teeth chattering so hard they were clattering against one another, despite the heat of the evening.