Page 40 of The Cut
Lynette’s laugh was buried under the gravel in her voice.
‘I were there. I saw everything. Heard the motorbike, when we was watching the fireworks. He were the only one who had a scrambler … rich kid …’ Her eyes shot to the camera and she cut herself off, tightening the dry lips of her foul mouth. ‘Anyway,157it’s all water under the bridge now.’ She snorted at her own private joke, hawking up phlegm, and pulled down her cap, trying to shield her face.
‘I’ve had enough now, just give me the money so I can go.’ Lynette was scratching at her arm.
‘Just one more question.’
‘Fuck’s sake.’
‘Why did you hate Annabel Maddock so much?’
‘Because she were a prick-tease. Thought she were better than me. Thought she were so special. Like she were above everyone else.’ Lynette shifted in her seat. ‘I don’t know what he saw in her. She stank of manure … Farm girl.’
It was a ghastly face, racked with the ravages of time and a resentment that had burdened her for thirty years.
Lynette began to cough violently. ‘She were asking for it.’ Her face reddening, as if the vile words stuck in her throat.
‘She were the monster.’158
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FEBRUARY 1994
‘Master betrayed us … We ought to wring his filthy little neck. Kill him! Kill them both.’
Swaddled deep in a tight claustrophobia of darkness, Mark Cherry’s eyes suddenly open with a sharp intake of breath. He claps a hand to his mouth. For a second, he can’t remember where he is. He reaches out to touch the wall by the side of his bed, but his fingers find wet canvas.
‘Sod off, Cherry.’ The heel of Chris Davis’s foot donkey-kicks him in the ribs. ‘Keep your hands to yourself … faggot.’ The hissed whisper from the pungent bundle next to him is a stark reminder of exactly where he is.
The door of the tent is half open. Lying still, not daring to move for fear of another kick to the ribs, he listens; cold breath filling the damp air with vapour. A globule of rain runs down the half-stuck zip, pooling in a little indent by the opening, as tiny rivulets of water creep towards his bed. The patter on the tight canopy overhead is like fingertips on a drum skin. Outside, sheet lightning illuminates the boughs of a tree, jagged shadows of branchy limbs reaching out across the sky, their nails scratching at the door.
The campsite is nestled in a small clearing between the Pentwyn Reservoir and the thick woods of Dol-y-Gaer. They’d pitched their tents earlier that day, after the exhausting coach ride, clearing what remained of the snow and hammering tent stakes into frozen earth. Finally, exhausted, they had built a fire and eaten160half-cooked sausages and beans heated in a jerry can, cowboy style. Chris Davis had passed around a bottle of dandelion and burdock laced with Bacardi, which had made Mark feel really rough. He’d tried to take away the taste with a mouthful of Colgate, then immediately thrown up.
A low mist had crept from the surface of the lake into their small encampment as the boys and girls had finally retreated to their tents. Pen y Fan was invisible, shrouded in cloud, but its looming presence could be felt. Mark had immediately thought of the Dead Marshes, lying at the foothills of Mount Doom; he’d fallen asleep dreaming of Frodo and Sam and of a creature tied to a tree, wailing at the injustice of his wrongful incarceration.
Under the covers, the illuminated hands of his watch tell him it’s 2 a.m., the witching hour. His head is thumping with tiredness and a hangover from the drink. He can hear the snores of the other boys, slowly becoming synchronised, all of them breathing as one. The trickle of water from the door seeps under his sleeping bag, soaking freezing water into his feet. He closes his eyes and tries not to shiver, as the hard, damp ground seems to fold around his shoulders, sucking him down into another troubled sleep.
‘BAGGINS!’
The shriek that wakes him the second time sounds exactly like a winged creature of Sauron. Mark sits bolt upright again and listens. Was that screech in his dream or did that come from outside? The rain has stopped now and a gentle wind plays through the trees like notes on a flute, luring him outside into the darkness. Mark eases himself towards the tent door and slowly pulls on the tag of the zip. The cold hand of night presses against his face as he peers through the split canvas opening. His eyes slowly adjust to the reflection of the moon glittering on the surface of the undulating lake. A brief second of clear vision before clouds,161moving across the sky, cloak the world into a starless night. There is nothing out there, just the sound of ice lapping against the bank and the scent of grass and manure. Mark inhales deeply. He is about to retreat into the safety of the tent when he spots movement in the woods. Something darting between the trees.
‘There’s something lurking out there.’ Mark glances back. His trembling whisper to the line of snoring bodies gets no response. They are all dead to the world. He worms his way to the edge of the tent. He can’t do this alone.
‘Ben?’ He reaches across to shake the shoulder two doors down, but the bundle of bags and coats stuffing the sack crumples under his touch. Another shriek, similar to the one that woke him the first time, pierces the silence, higher and further away now. Mark freezes, his throat constricted, terrified to his core.
‘It’s just a fox,’ Mark whispers to himself, trying to shore up his courage, ‘nothing to worry about.’
His mind is racing as he clambers to his knees, pulling on his damp parka and Wellington boots from the foot of his bed, but as he slowly peels back the tent flaps and eases himself out into the damp air, his heart begins to pound. There is something wrong. He can feel it. There is something in the forest.
A flicker of light in the distance burns bright for a second and then vanishes. There is now just an impenetrable wall of black at the edge of the woods, but as Mark emerges the cloud cloaking the sky eases away like a curtain to reveal two figures perched on the picnic bench by the shore of the lake. Moonlight brushes arms and shoulders wrapped in an embrace. Mark creeps on to his haunches and moves out slowly on his hands and knees. He can hear the sound of someone crying.
‘I’m not afraid of him.’ The girl being held in an embrace is clearly upset. ‘But I feel so sorry for him.’162
‘I know.’ The other speaks in a low whisper, barely voiced. Something indistinguishable follows and then he hears, ‘but you’re safe with me’. Mark can just about make out what they are saying.
‘I’m just not ready.’ Annie Maddock’s face is suddenly clearly visible in moonlight.
