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Chris Boucher

For Lynda

Chapter One

It was so very dark now the moon had set. Chloe shivered. What was it about darkness that made it so scary? she wondered.

Something was moving in the undergrowth off to the left. She could hear it quite distinctly. Fear prickled across her skin with a sudden feverish chill.

What on earth had possessed her to come into this stupid wood in the middle of the stupid night? She should have objected. They could have done this during the day. It would have been warmer for one thing. Just because the other four were up for it, that didn't mean they were right. They had no evidence the murder had happened after dark so there was no reason to hold the seance after dark either.

The shivering was momentarily vivid, a twitching shudder that seemed to run through her every muscle. What was she frightened of? she scolded herself. She wasn't a child for God's sake. This was only a patch of trees and undergrowth and stuff. She wouldn't have been afraid to be here in the daylight and there was nothing here now that wasn't here then. A few bits and bobs that only came out in the dark perhaps, but nothing big.

She found the urge to run was almost an ache, an itch inside the skull. She told herself it was just a race memory of predators that came for you in the night. Somehow, she thought, we all of us remember crouching, frozen in blind terror, as pitiless claws and teeth tore at us. And we know we've lost the light for ever. And we know we will never see the sun rise again.

Something was moving in the undergrowth off to the right now. Chloe found she could barely breathe.

'Bloody rabbits make a racket don't they?' Tommy said softly.

He was shorter than Chloe and though she couldn't actually see him in the suffocating darkness she still found his floppy-haired Hugh Grant impersonation reassuring -tall-sounding and confident. 'Is that what it is?'

she gasped, trying not to sound too relieved and eager. 'Rabbits?'

Off to one side Ralph said, 'Could be badgers. Fox maybe.' Ralph was taller and heavyset but there was no immediate comfort to be taken from his dour and plodding presence.

Somewhere close in front of her Meg snorted. 'It's probably me,' she said.

'I've got half a mile of sodding brambles wrapped round my ankles here.'

Chloe found Meg beautiful in a square-faced ugly sort of way, and so much braver than she was herself.

Joan said, 'It's most likely to be rats.' She was small and sharp-featured.

Chloe thought of her as elfin, knowing that elves were reputed to be malicious as well as delightful. 'Rats are drawn to any place of death.'

'Only if the corpse is still there,' Ralph said witheringly.

They're psychic,' Joan persisted. Absolutely the most psychic of all animals. Only we have greater powers.'

'Absolutely the second most psychic of all animals then,' Tommy mocked.

'I wouldn't care but these were my best chinos,' Meg complained.

Sensible choice," Ralph said, 'given the circumstances.'

'Well frankly,' Meg said, 'I think wellies and jeans are a bit insensitive even for a shit-shoveller. Given the circumstances.'

It's waste management, Ralph said. 'And it's only one part of the course.'

A binman by any other name'

'Oh, sorry I'm not reading something useful like EastEnders and Emmerdalel

'Media.'

'A showbiz wannabe by any other name?' Tommy chipped in.

'Don't you ever get tired of being a smart-arse?' Meg retorted.

'What did you mean about wellies and jeans being insensitive?' Chloe asked, thinking of the boots and jeans she was wearing herself.

'Show respect for the dead,' Meg said, 'if you want them to show respect for you. That's how I was brought up.'

'Really?' Chloe said, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice. She had never thought of Meg as coming from a background of spiritualism.

'No not really,' Meg giggled. She leant in from the darkness to whisper and Chloe could smell the beer on her breath. Come on Chloe, pay attention.

And stop taking everything so bloody seriously.