“I want them to die.”
Her voice was little more than a whisper in the still air. There were no more tears but the tracks were there, catching the moonlight on her skin. The blood had dried black on her swollen lips.
I should have stopped her. I thought it then and I think it now.
This was how it began.
*
It was the night of my 10th birthday, July 9th 1991. The last of the party guests were leaving, family and friends in ones and twos into the late summer night. I had said my goodbyes and snuck into the back garden to play with my new football. We lived near the coast so the taste of salt was on the air, a stiff breeze off the water cutting through the heat. Upstairs my younger brother was playing on the computer, downstairs my parents tidying and starting dinner.
A figure in the distance caught my eye, dark hair tied back, walking fast through the long grass into the woods. It was a girl I recognised from school, Katie Bridges. We were good friends but she hadn’t come to my party, despite being invited. It wasn’t really a surprise, everyone knew how she struggled to get along with the other children. I had plenty of friends but it often seemed like I was her only one. I watched her until she disappeared into the treeline.
Where could she be going alone? I thought. There was nothing out there but hills and forest.
“Mum!” I shouted, “I’m going to Katies. Back in an hour!” the lie was easy and, I thought, harmless. I took off before anyone could reply to stop me, sprinting through the gate and across the grass. I caught up within a few minutes.
Katie glanced over her shoulder when she heard me coming. She saw me but kept on walking.
“Go away Kieran.” she said, “Leave me be.”
“Can’t let you go alone.” I replied, voice filled with the confidence of youth. I couldn’t imagine that anyone wouldn’t want my company.
“So where are we going?” I asked, jogging to her side. It was just another afternoon adventure for me.
“Nowhere.” she said, turning her face away. “Anywhere. Away.”
That’s when I saw she was hurt. A bruise was forming around one eye. A deep cut on her lip too, which she was trying to keep me from seeing. Blood on her sleeve and the back of her hand where she had wiped it away.
I knew what had happened. Her mother had hit her again. Maybe her father, it was equally likely to be either of them. I didn’t say anything. I knew from experience she didn’t like to talk about what happened. Still, there was a swelling in my chest to say or do anything that might help. She was my friend, wasn’t she? But what could I do? In truth I had no idea. I passed a few moments in awkward deliberation, biting my lip as I kept pace alongside. The least I could do was stay with her until she calmed down, I told myself, then walk her home.
So on we went in silence. She wouldn’t speak to me despite my best efforts to engage her or raise a smile. We walked for so long I started to worry about getting back. I remember thinking it was strange that we hadn’t reached the beach. What direction were we going? I had never thought the forest went on that far. It felt as if we were going downhill too, which made no sense at all. Still, on she marched, eyes down and arms folded, me tagging along while growing increasingly nervous. The trees grew denser, the spaces between them darker. I looked up to see the sky was now overcast, felt the air growing cold. Katie hadn’t seemed to notice any of this, or she had and didn’t care.
Just as I was about to suggest turning back the forest thinned and I saw a clearing ahead. We stepped into it together, a small hollow in the rolling hills, ringed by pale trees with bare branches.
There was a stone well in the centre, maybe three and a half feet tall and five wide. Behind it rose a wooden statue of an angel with wings outstretched, hands folded in prayer, hooded face looking down.
We had both stopped. It was so still and quiet I could hear us breathe. Overhead the clouds rolled past, an ocean of grey stretching as far as I could see.
“What is this place?” I said, “Have you been here before?”
She didn’t reply but I could tell by her eyes she hadn’t.
We moved closer, dry grass breaking under our footsteps. I saw the sides of the well were mossy and worn with age. There were other pieces of old stone strewn around us, half buried remains of some ancient ruin. The angel itself was damp with rot and badly split. Many of the carved feathers had fallen from the wings and lay in the grass.
“It’s a wishing well.” said Katie, walking slowly to the edge. Her eyes were glassy, her voice little more than a whisper.
I tried to peer inside without getting too close. “Got a penny?” I asked, forcing a smile as I spoke. The place was scaring me and I didn’t want to show it. There was no face under the angels cowl just dark wood, yet I was certain it looked whichever way I moved.
Katie had placed her hands on the stone, staring down into the dark. I saw her take a penny from her pocket and hold her hand out over the well.
That’s when she spoke those words, quiet but clear.
“I want them to die.” she said. “My parents. I wish they were both dead.”
She dropped the coin and we watched it fall. A spark of light caught on the metal as it turned, a piece of the sky snatched into the dark, pulled down to vanish in the silence below.
There was a flash of wind, a feeling like we had been plunged into icy water. I gasped for breath, shaking with the fear that had growing in me since we had arrived.
We shared a look then turned and ran together, side by side, back the way we had come.
*
The sun came back out as we returned but it still felt like we had been gone for hours. I recall expecting a rollicking when I got home but no-one said a word. When I burst in the back gate my brother was still playing on the computer, my parents still tidying and sorting dinner. I checked the clock and found I had been away less than 30 minutes. Had I misread the clock?
“That was quick.” my mum said as I came in, “Pity Katie couldn’t come today. Is she alright?”
She gave me a look that said she knew about Katies problems. Everyone in town did but nothing ever changed.
“Yeah. She’s ok.” I replied.
I didn’t tell anyone where I had been with Katie. What we saw and what was said. Not then, not ever.
*
Katie was woken that night around 2 am. The house was quiet but she could feel that something was wrong. She sat up in bed and stared at her door. There was a pull in her thoughts, a call, telling her to come and look.
She crept out into the hallway and peered downstairs. All the doors were closed. She took the first step down, listening. She would be in trouble if her parents caught her out of bed but she couldn’t resist anymore than she could resist breathing. There was something down there, she knew. Something she had to see.
There was still a light on in the living room but nothing made a sound. She held her breath and opened the door.
Katies father sat there, still and grey, eyes open and staring. Her mother lay motionless beside him, face down on the carpet.
They had both been dead for hours.
*
That’s how she told me it happened. There were other stories but I never wasted my time with them and neither did the police. The local paper said two heart attacks.
Katie was taken in by her grandma, a chainsmoker in her 60’s who had only met her once since she was born. I never learned the details but Katies parents had long fallen out of touch with the rest of the family. Still, she was a kind lady and done everything she could for the girl now in her care. Her own house had been a tiny one bedroom, so she put it up for sale and moved in with Katie until they could find somewhere suitable.
The town pried and watched and gossiped, from the old ladies down to my schoolfriends. It wasn’t right but anyone who has lived in a small town knows how poisonous they can be.
I didn’t see Katie in person again until a few weeks later (her grandmother hadn’t let her out of her sight since arriving). She came over for lunch then the two of us sat out in the garden. My mum brought us some drinks and tried not to fuss over my friend.
Katie waited for my mother to be out of earshot before speaking.
“We need to go back.” she said.
I told another white lie to my mum, said we were going to Katies as her gran didn’t want her away too long. Once we were out of sight of my house we turned towards the trees, taking the same path we had the night of my birthday. We walked for almost an hour but couldn’t find anything. We kept ending up on the beach, no matter which route we took. Katie wanted to keep looking, she was desperate and I understood why. But I didn’t really want to go back there. That place had terrified me but I couldn’t say no to her.
So we searched, back and forth over the same ground until we were both filthy and exhausted. We searched until we knew we would be in trouble and even then she didn’t want to go back.
She finally gave up when the sun was going down. We took a seat on one of the hillsides overlooking our homes. She had been crying and I hadn’t noticed.
“Can’t tell anyone.” she said, “About what happened. About the wish I made.”
She was looking down at the ground to hide her face, a tremor in her voice.
“Please Kieran, promise me. Not ever.”
I didn’t hesitate.
“I promise.” I said.
*
I can touch on this memory only lightly. It is a delicate thing, fragile and perfect, a ghost in glass. I see us sat side by side, gentle clouds above and warm grass below. The only sounds were the distant waves, a rolling whisper in dusks tender hush. Two children alone on the edge of town, dirty hands and secrets, eyes alive in sunset light.
*
In the weeks that followed I tried to forget that place, the angel and the well. As enticing as the mystery was, I couldn’t deny I was still frightened. Some things are better left in the dark.
Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be so easy.
Two months after his death, the grave of Katies father was dug up and the body taken. The same night her house was burnt down with her grandmother inside. They found Katie in the street, alone, catatonic with shock.
I remember that night. The sound of the fire trucks woke me, blue lights flashing as they passed. I got up and went to the window. Where Katies house would have been was the flickering light of fire, above it the black on black of smoke against the sky. My breath fogged the cold glass and I wiped it away. Behind me my father had entered the room and I hadn’t even noticed. He put his hand on my shoulder but neither of us spoke, just watched. I could hear the sound of the blaze by then, tearing and eating the building away like some giant animal come alive in the flames. I saw the silhouettes of fireman, saw an ambulance arrive. The beast roared and the roof came down, swallowed into the blaze below. Then my father snatched me up, turning me away from the window and holding me tight like he hadn’t for years, arms wrapped around as if he could keep me safe from all the hurt that waited in the world.
*
No-one seemed to know the truth of what had happened or why. A veil of secrecy had quickly dropped over the events, which was understandable.
The local police, who had never previously been shy of chat and gossip, were suddenly tight lipped. Even the mention of the Bridges family name drew dark looks.
As for Katie, she was taken into social care as she had no remaining family. This meant she had to move into the city as our small town had not so much as a post office. It was all people talked about, though it seemed to me they cared more about the drama than the girl herself.
I actually heard people say she was cursed. They said it like it was a little joke, under their breath. Like it might actually be true and they were afraid to face it. Even my mother, who always had a soft spot for Katie, began to speak about her as if she was something dangerous. As if misfortune was contagious. As if the scared girl, who had come crying to our door when her father broke her arm, was better off gone. Best forgotten.
I remember looking at the burned remains of her house on my way to school. Seeing where the roof had collapsed over her bedroom and wondering where my friend slept now. Even months later, as autumn faded into winter, people couldn’t help but stop and stare when they passed. At the boarded windows and black scars left by the flames. At the pools of rain and fallen leaves scattered among the rubble. The tragedy of it all seemed to have a pull on the whole town, something we couldn’t leave behind. The cold ash heart of us.
*
I stayed in touch with Katie despite what people thought or said. My father took the letters I wrote and posted them for me. He never said it aloud but I think he admired the loyalty to my friend. He and my mother argued over it more than once. I recall listening from my room, ear to the door, when I heard him say to her “It’s up to the boy. And I won’t have anyone tell him otherwise.”
*
I didn’t see Katie face to face again until we were in our twenties. She came back to our town and found a job, rented a flat. Said she still felt like this was her home. It had always been her plan to come back, she told me, through childrens homes and foster families she had always known she would return.
We managed to remain friends but it wasn’t the easiest to find time for each other. I had college, a part time job, family and a close knit group of friends. They all seemed wary of her, especially the ones who remembered her from our childhoods.
As time passed Katie built herself a life, working hard and taking her chances where she got them. Within a few years she started studying law at the closest university. I was so happy for her. I remember meeting her every few months for drinks, my measly life updates paling in comparison to her own.
When I was 23, I was driving to the airport with my girlfriend Hazel. We had been seeing each other on and off for a few years, then in the last month moved in together.
A driver in the opposite lane lost consciousness at the wheel, swerving in front of us. It happened too fast for any real thought, just a split second reaction. I remember Hazels voice, we were talking about the flight times. Then seeing the other car cut across us, a flash of the other driver slumped in his seat, the impact, blurred lights and colours, the car spinning and turning over then another crash as we came to rest in trees near the road.
When I opened my eyes we were upright, surrounded by greenery. I could hear people shouting nearby. The side of my face was wet and there was broken glass on my clothes and in my hair. As my head cleared I saw the blood sprayed across the window, saw other small white pieces in my lap. They were teeth and parts of bone, and none of the blood was mine. When we hit the last tree a branch had come through the passenger window, striking Hazels jaw and killing her instantly.
I am trying but these are only words, you understand? There are limits to what I can convey with them. Regret, guilt, pain, loss. All these things and how I hate myself for feeling them, when I survived and she didn’t. I can’t explain it.
*
Hazels funeral was the hardest day of my life. I had never really experienced tragedy before, all my family and friends were healthy and well. Katies parents was the closest I had been to death.
People blamed me, I knew it. It wasn’t right but they did. I had been driving and I had walked away without a scratch. They would never say it aloud but it was all over them. They stank of it. I saw it in their eyes, the way they held themselves, the silences between words. My parents and brother were there for me through it all, but there was only so much they could do. You can’t shield someone from all the hurt in the world, no matter how tight you hold them.
Afterwards I told them I wanted to be alone and they reluctantly obliged. I drank myself stupid, drank until I boiled over. Screaming at the walls and the unfairness of it all.
At sunset I pulled on a coat and walked out into the night. It was late autumn and raining heavily but I didn’t care. I knew where I had to go. Into the forest by the coast, a coin in my hand.
I was looking for a way to fix things, the only way I could think how.
I walked the path myself and Katie had when we were 10, through the woods between the hills, head down and wrapped in pain. Battered by wind and rain, desperate, crying out inside for a way to make it right.
I didn’t notice when the rain had stopped, when the air had grown still. It was the trees which caught my attention, those skeletal branches. I stopped. In the failing light I could see only hills and valleys and forest in all directions. Yes, I thought. This is the way. I put my head back down and kept walking, marching on until the trees parted at last.
There it was ahead of me, after all these years. Nothing had changed in all this time. The old stone well, the pale trees, the angel with the hidden face. I thought I could make out the footprints of two children in the dirt and leaves.
“Thought you might be here.”
I spun around in fright to see Katie, breathing hard, hand on knees. She was soaking wet, wiping strands of hair from across her face.
“Couldn’t let you go alone.” she said.
The world seemed frozen for a moment, a pause as the pain of the last week rushed up on me. Then the dam broke and I stumbled forward, melting into her arms. All the strength left my body and I sunk to the ground in tears. If you have ever felt like this you will understand. When it all comes out and you don’t care what anyone else sees or hears.
“I know why you’re here, Kieran.” she said. “It won’t work.”
“What? How do you know?” I was still drunk I realised, slurring my words.
“Because I tried.” she looked in my eyes as she spoke. “My father. I made a wish here to bring him back, months after he died. But it wasn’t him, Kieran. It wasn’t my father I brought back. That pull woke me in the middle of the night, like before, the urge to go into the dark and see. When I went downstairs it was there, in the house, sitting where he had sat. Rotting flesh and hollow eyes. It didn’t have any teeth, stomach was bloated. The smell nearly made me vomit. It had already killed my grandmother. I saw her body on the floor.”
Her voice was cracking, brittle with the memories of her childhood.
“Then It saw me. It looked at me, Kieran, with those empty eyes. Tried to speak, to say my name. When it got up I panicked and locked myself in my grandmothers room. It was trying to get in the door. I knew I had to fix it. I had to fix the thing I had done. So I used a lighter and lighter fuel from her room to start a fire. Then I climbed out the window, went back to the front door and locked it inside.”
I didn’t know what to say to her. Sat on the cold dusty soil, her confession had cleared my head.
“I don’t know how it works, this place.” she got to her feet, “It isn’t always here. You have to want something, want it more than anything else in the world. It has to be at sunset. You can’t look where you are going, you have to keep your head down. I don’t know everything you can wish for, only some of the things you can’t. You can’t turn back time. Or make something out of nothing. You can’t … change.”
She paused, looking away through the trees.
“You can’t change yourself.”
“How many times did you try?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe half a dozen before the night of the fire. I was a child, alone, with the weight of those things … it was hard to stay away. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Kieran. I just wanted to make it right.”
I thought of her back then, a ten year old girl, life slipping through her fingers. I had no idea what it must have really been like.
“I know how you are hurting.” she said. “I know it as well as anyone can. But this isn’t the way. You don’t want that for her, what happened to my father. He wasn’t a good man but he didn’t deserve that. What I done to him.”
I rubbed a fallen feather between my fingers, the soft wood breaking apart in my fingers. I knew she was right.
“This place is evil, Kieran. We both know it. A trap for desperate souls. When I came back to this town I didn’t know if I could find it again, but now that I have I know it should be destroyed. We should destroy it and never come back. So no-one else can be poisoned by it.”
So we did it. Smashed the well to pieces and dropped the stones down into the dark, not one ever making a sound. When that was done we covered the hole with hundreds of broken branches stripped from the trees.
It must have taken hours.
Last we pushed over the statue. It took us both, rocking it back and forth until it finally tipped. It broke into pieces as it hit the ground, each rolling away into the dust.
We didn’t look back, just left together in silence. When we reached sight of home we parted without a word.
*
I had nightmares for months afterward, something I never suffered from before or since. I would wake screaming for help, not knowing who or where I was. The things I saw in those dreams have never left me. A faceless girl floating on a bottomless ocean, body tattooed with black words and symbols. There are hands just beneath the surface, thousands, millions of them reaching for her. Then angels in a cold desert, surrounding a pit in the earth. They pull each others bodies apart and drop the pieces into the silent void below. They are screaming but no sound comes, only the parts of them falling, always falling, tiny lights vanishing into nothing.
*
I didn’t see Katie often in the months that followed. It wasn’t her fault but she brought back too many difficult memories.
I moved away from the town for several years but could never settle. One morning I woke up simply knowing I had to go home. I had to be with my family and friends.
My brothers wedding wasn’t long after I returned. I saw Katie at the reception that night, sat alone on the steps outside the venue, champagne in one hand and cigarette in the other. Despite her success she still wasn’t great at making friends.
She turned to see me as I walked towards her. We hadn’t spoken in years but she smiled, took my hand to help her up. Then we were face to face, alone in the moonlit night. The sound of music and dancing inside seemed to melt away until there was only us, together. We kissed, wrapped in the night and each other, as if from nothing.
My life changed in that moment, finding something I never knew I needed. We spent the night together, then another. She moved into my flat the next month and we were engaged in the weeks after that.
No-one else approved but it didn’t matter. We had never let each other go, not really. Even when the world didn’t want her I always would.
I believed I had learned a lesson, to realise what you have and hold it close
*
Everyone has hopes and fears. Everyone has their wishes and their demons. Can you hear yours now? Do you listen to what they say? Some can give you hope and drive you on. Some fill your heart with the things you have lost or will never have. The trick is to learn which are which.
*
I need to skip on years again, so many it makes me feel old to write it. The world has started to feel shallower as I age. Smaller, narrower. There is less colour, I think.
Katie has a wonderful career, we have a beautiful home together and a good life. I am her husband, though I sometimes wonder what else. Somewhere along the way I lost my ambition and drive.
I have been feeling uneasy for a long time now, it has been growing beneath the surface of our lives. Last night I couldn’t shake it, couldn’t get my thoughts away from it. I sat staring at the door, a pull in my chest, something telling me to come and look.
Katie had told me she was going meet a friend for a few hours. She often did and I had never thought anything of it.
It was sunset. On the horizon great clouds rolled in from the ocean, dark giants embracing the land. I followed her footsteps in the mud though I didn’t need to. I knew where I was going, driven by fear like a fire in the night.
I walked on, head down. The air grew still and quiet, the trees thin and pale. I saw it ahead of me. The hollow. The well and statue were there, standing just as they had been when I first laid eyes on them. A path was worn into the dry grass.
Katie was there. She sat on the edge of the well, looking down into the black.
“Knew you would figure it out eventually.” she said.
Now that I had arrived I didn’t know what to say.
“I couldn’t stop.” she said, “I couldn’t stop trying to make things better. But I made mistakes, mistakes I couldn’t fix. It was like a fire I couldn’t put out.”
I stood there in the dust, hearing the truth I already knew.
“There were no twists or tricks or hidden evils. I got exactly what I wished for, every time. And it ate me away. Now nothing is right, nothing is clean. Everything I have left is poisoned by it. I’m empty. Can’t you see, Kieran? Everything I have is worthless.”
She looked me in the eyes and I could see it, at last. All the years of lies and fear.
“I could never fix my mistakes no matter how I tried.” she said. “I wished for my father to come home. I wished for people to notice me, to care about me but all I did was make them hate me. I wished…”
Her voice cracked and she hung her head, closed her eyes. Tears rushed down her cheeks and fell into the dark.
“So many wishes for things I wanted ended up hurting people. I wanted you. I always wanted you. So I wished that you loved me. But it isn’t real, is it? Because you never had a choice so it isn’t really you. And now it can never be real. And that’s my fault too.”
She didn’t look at me. Didn’t even open her eyes. She just pushed forward and was gone, vanishing into the silence of the night below.
I should have stopped her. I thought it then and I think it now.
This was how it ended.
*
Now I long for something lost.
There are no answers in this pain, no truth to find. It is just another broken piece of many.
I close my eyes and here she is. Eyes and voice and lies and fear.
How much of my life was my own? Which decisions were forced upon me by the wishes she made? Did I have no choice in the woman I loved?
If I can’t trust myself, then what remains to me?
What is left to believe in.
I know she didn’t need to make that wish. She didn’t need to ask for something that was already hers. All she had to do was tell me.
Because I’ve always loved her and I always will.
Whatever is after this life, I know she still needs me.
So I know what I have to do.
I can’t let her go alone.