Backlit by the moon, the abandoned farmhouse glowed silver around its ragged edges, the light piercing through its cracks and crevices and the holes upstairs where the windows once were.
Pip stood about sixty feet back from the house, hidden inside a small huddle of trees on the other side of the road. She watched the old building, trying not to flinch when the wind hissed through the leaves, her mind creating words out of the voiceless sounds.
Her phone lit up, vibrating in her hand. Ravi’s number on the screen. ‘Yeah?’ she said quietly as she picked up.
‘We’re parked down the street,’ Ravi said, in a hushed tone. ‘Stanley just walked out the front door. He’s getting in his car.’ Pip listened as Ravi moved his mouth away from the phone, whispering unheard things to Connor beside him. ‘OK, he’s just driven past. He’s on his way to you.’
‘Got it,’ she said, her fingers tensing around the phone. ‘You two get inside as fast as you can.’
‘On our way,’ Ravi replied, over the sound of a car door quietly closing. Pip listened to his and Connor’s feet on the pavement, up the front path,
her heart beating in time with their hurried steps.
‘No, there’s no spare key under the mat,’ Ravi said, to both her and Connor. ‘Let’s go round the back, before anyone sees us.’
Ravi’s breath crackled down the line as he and Connor circled the small house, two miles away from her but under the very same moon.
A rattling sound.
‘Back door’s locked,’ Pip heard Connor say, faintly.
‘Yeah but the lock’s right there by the handle,’ said Ravi. ‘If I break the window, I can reach in and unlock it.’
‘Do it quietly,’ said Pip.
Rustles and grunts down the phone as Ravi removed his jacket and wrapped it around his fist. She heard a thump, and then another, followed by the pitter-patter of broken glass.
‘Don’t cut yourself,’ Connor said.
Pip listened to Ravi’s heavy breath as he strained. A click.
A creaking sound.
‘OK, we’re in,’ he whispered.
She heard one of them crunching against the fallen glass as they stepped inside – and that’s when two yellow eyes blinked open into the night at her end. Headlights, growing as they sped along Old Farm Road towards her.
‘He’s here.’ Pip lowered her voice below the wind as a black car turned up Sycamore Road, wheels churning against the gravel until the car ground to a halt off the side of the road. Pip had left hers further up Old Farm Road, so Stanley wouldn’t see it.
‘Stay low,’ Ravi told her.
The car door swung open and Stanley Forbes stepped out, his white shirt clawing the darkness away. His brown hair fell unkempt into his face, hiding it in shadows as he shut the door and turned towards the glowing farmhouse.
‘OK he’s in,’ Pip said, as Stanley entered through the gaping front entrance, stepping into the darkness beyond.
‘We’re in the kitchen,’ Ravi said. ‘It’s dark.’
Pip held the phone closer to her mouth. ‘Ravi, don’t let Connor hear this, but if you find anything of Jamie’s, his phone, his clothes, don’t touch them yet. Those are evidence, if this doesn’t go the way we want it to.’
‘Got it,’ he said, and then he sniffed loudly or gasped and Pip couldn’t tell which.
‘Ravi?’ she said. ‘Ravi, what’s wrong?’ ‘Fuck,’ Connor hissed.
‘Someone’s here,’ Ravi said, his breath quickening. ‘We can hear a voice.
There’s someone here.’
‘What?’ Pip said, fear rising up her throat, pulling it closed.
And then, through the phone and through Ravi’s panicked breaths, Pip heard Connor shout.
‘Jamie. It’s Jamie!’
‘Connor, wait don’t run,’ Ravi shouted after him, the phone lowering away from his voice.
Just rustling.
And running.
‘Ravi?’ Pip hissed. A muffled voice.
A loud thump.
‘Jamie! Jamie, it’s me, it’s Connor! I’m here!’ The phone crackled and Ravi’s breath returned. ‘What’s going on?’ Pip said.
‘He’s here, Pip,’ Ravi said, his voice shaking as Connor shouted in the background. ‘Jamie’s here. He’s OK. He’s alive.’
‘He’s alive?’ she said, the words not quite clicking in her head.
And beneath Connor’s shouts, now breaking up into frantic sobs, she could hear the faint edges of a muffled voice. Jamie’s voice.
‘Oh my god, he’s alive,’ she said, the words cracking in half in her throat as she stepped back against a tree. ‘He’s alive,’ she said, just to hear it again. Tears stung at her eyes, so she closed them. And she thought those words, harder than she’d ever thought anything in her life: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
‘Pip?’
‘Is he OK?’ she asked, wiping her eyes on her jacket.
‘We can’t get to him,’ Ravi said, ‘he’s locked in a room, the downstairs toilet I think. It’s locked and there’s a chain padlocked outside too. But he sounds OK.’
‘I thought you were dead,’ Connor was crying. ‘We’re here, we’re going to get you out!’
Jamie’s voice rose, but Pip couldn’t make out the words.
‘What’s Jamie saying?’ she said, angling to watch the farmhouse again. ‘He’s saying . . .’ Ravi paused, listening. ‘He’s saying that we need to
leave. We need to leave because he’s made a deal.’ ‘What?’
‘I’m not going anywhere without you!’ Connor shouted.
But something in the darkness pulled Pip’s attention away from the phone. Stanley was re-emerging from the shadows, walking back down the corridor towards the outside.
‘He’s leaving,’ Pip hissed. ‘Stanley’s leaving.’
‘Fuck,’ Ravi said. ‘Text him as Layla, tell him to wait.’
But Stanley had already crossed the rotted threshold, his eyes turning back to his car.
‘It’s too late,’ Pip said, blood rushing through her ears as she made the decision. ‘I’ll distract him. You get Jamie out now, get him somewhere safe.’
‘No, Pip –’
But the phone was in her hand by her side now, her thumb on the red button as she ran out from behind the trees and across the road, scattering gravel around her feet. On to grass and Stanley finally looked up, catching her movement in the moonlight.
He stopped.
Pip slowed, walking up to him just outside the gaping front door. Stanley’s eyes were narrowed, trying to cut through the darkness. ‘Hello?’ he said, blindly.
And when she was near enough for him to see, his face crumpled, lines crawling eye to eye.
‘No,’ he said, his voice breathy and raw. ‘No no no. Pip, it’s you?’ He stepped back. ‘You’re Layla?’
