Just Before I Died. S. K. Tremayne

This is not her style, she is not sly or conniving, and she looks as shocked and alarmed as me.

      ‘Mummy, what’s wrong with the dogs?’ Lyla’s face is even paler than usual. ‘Where are they going?’

      My blood thumps. I wonder if it was me that dumped this here, or lost this here, and I have simply forgotten. Part of my amnesia. Yet why such intimate waste? Blood, tissues, hair.

      Abruptly, Lyla grabs at my hand, her fingers freezing, and lets out a piercing scream.

      ‘Mummy! I can hear someone coming!’

       Hobajob’s Wood

       Wednesday evening

      ‘What? Where?’

      I clutch my daughter’s hand, very tight. It is so dark now I can hardly see the bare frozen twigs of the dead trees on the other side of the clearing.

      ‘Lyla, what can you hear?’

      She shakes her head and tilts her face, listening intently. My words are clouds of mist. The twigs tinkle in a subtle breeze, like sentimental chimes. It could be minus five. We need to get away, get far away from this wood and this sickening trail of trash.

      ‘Lyla, come on.’

      Lyla shakes her head at me, almost angrily. ‘Listen!’

      I strain but can’t hear anything unusual. ‘There’s nothing, no one. Come on, Lyla—’

      ‘No! That’s him!’

      She’s almost screaming. Her hearing is ten times better than mine. Needles of fear prickle my fingers.

      ‘Who? Lyla, who can you see?’

      ‘No one!’ she says, whispering now. Hard and low. ‘But I can hear him, he’s out there, I know it! Mummy, he’s watching us, it’s him, the man on the moor, in the freeze.’

      ‘Stop this. Let’s go! When we get home we can call the police.’ I pat my raincoat pockets for my phone. I have no phone, of course, and anyway it wouldn’t get a signal out here, but it does have a little torch. But I left it charging in the car. So we don’t have any light. We have to leave right now.

      ‘Lyla, come on, we have to go.’

      ‘But what if he sees, Mummy, what if he catches us on the way? He’ll do it again … He’ll take you to the lake.’

      ‘What are you talking about?’

      ‘Mummy, Mummy, look!’

      She is chattering with cold, or terror. Helpless, I stare around at the quiet wood. In the gloom, the leafless, frosted, moss-hung trees seem to edge towards us, their dark, frost-rimed fingers lifted to the twilit sky as if they were once a crowd of trapped, imploring people, burned to blackness by an awful fire.

      Is that someone, or something, in the trees?

      ‘Mummy, he’s so close! That way, over there!’

      I look and think, for a second, I see movement. But no, there is nothing here, is there? Just us and the dogs and the dead birds, and my hairbrush, and a hideous used tampon.

      My resolve is snapped, by a crackle of frosted twigs, a human footfall.

      ‘Mummy!’

      Lyla bolts. She wrenches from my grasp and goes sprinting down the frosty path, out of the woods, towards the distant car. She is a faster runner than me, she runs so much on the moor. But I must not let her out of my sight. I hear the dogs barking wildly as they scatter into the woods, not pursuing us: pursuing someone or something else. Or they are being pursued in turn.

      ‘Felix!’ I shout. ‘Randal! Come on!’

      Lyla is racing away, a dim little figure, getting dimmer in the dusk. Trees and brambles snag at me, lacerate my hands and neck as I stumble on cold, mossy rocks. I urge myself on; it is so dark, I can barely see, but I can hear my daughter. I fall, cracking a knee on an icy tree stump. Ah. Ah ah ah! I shout at the sudden sparkling pain, and look ahead. Lyla has stopped, on the path, by a little wooden footpath sign.

      She turns in the gloom, and shrieks, ‘Mummy, he’s coming! He’s coming after you! Right behind you!’

      ‘Lyla—’

      ‘Don’t look back, Mummy, get up get up!’

      I can hear crashing noises behind me, something big emerging from the cold heart of Hobajob’s Wood; the dogs, or someone else?

       Someone I know.

      Pushing myself to my feet, I start running, again. But Hobajob’s Wood wants to lock us inside. Dead branches block the path, ice patches crack as I trample my way, breathing chilly fog. I have reached the ancient stone wall, toothed with new icicles. Climbing over, I jump down, the crashing behind me as loud as ever – but I am too scared to look back.

      There. The car. A welcome grey shape in the deathly twilight. I see Lyla is already inside, her face pressed to the rear window, her eyes wide with fear.

      The cold car door handle stings my hand, I yank it open and fall into the seat and twist the key into the ignition, but Lyla shouts at me, ‘Wait, Mummy, the dogs, where did they go?’

      ‘They ran off, but they’ll find their way back. We have to go.’

      ‘No! He’ll kill them.’

      She is right, she is wrong, she is screaming, I open the door again, to the frigid dark air, and see – what? Who? Something? – and there is Felix, crashing over a fence, leaping it in one go, three foot high. He tears towards us, leaps across me into the car, wet and cold and doggy and yowling. He jumps on to Lyla, clearly terrified.

      Forcing Felix away from her face, Lyla cries, ‘Where’s Randal, we can’t go without him!’

      I can hear something. Getting nearer.

      ‘We can’t wait any longer!’

      ‘Over there!’

      I stare, helpless, into the dark pillars of the trees and the crouched shapes of bushes. It is now too dark to see anything for sure. It is as if I am drowning again in the black waters of Burrator. Even as it formed, the ammil is beginning to melt. Drip, drip, drip. The black ice dwindles.

      ‘Hide, Mummy. Duck down so he can’t see!’

      It feels ludicrous. Surely he will see us. He’ll have heard us slamming the car’s doors. But I don’t know what else to do.

      Lyla is nearly crying. ‘Duck down low, Felix, Mummy, please hide.’

      I do as she says; cower low in my seat. Maybe he will run past. Maybe he has got Randal. Maybe he’s been watching all along, for weeks.

      The seconds pass. Felix whimpers. Lyla shushes him, fiercely.

      Seconds become minutes. He is here, he will open the door.

      My fingers and lips are numb from the cold. I try to keep my breathing as quiet as possible. And I wait.

      Nothing happens. The silence endures. From crashing and panic to total immobility and total calm. The cold is the only noise, like a steely ringing in my ears.

      My limbs ache from this cramped position. I need to stretch. We’ve been here ten minutes. Nothing has happened. Was there ever anything? I begin to doubt. The brush, I definitely saw the brush, and the dead birds, and the tissues – but was that tampon, stained with blood, really mine? Was any of it really mine? There’s no sure way to tell.

      Maybe we just panicked. Overreacted. People dump litter all the time in Dartmoor. Adam loathes them. Says he will set the dogs on them if he ever finds them, let the lurchers tear the yobs apart, limb from screaming limb. See