Mercy. Rebecca Lim

pity. Or your “help”.’

      Ryan’s voice is rough. He tries to open the front door without looking at me again, prepared to shut me and an entire world of sceptics out if necessary. But what I say next draws his shocked gaze.

      ‘I know where you went today and I think you’re on the wrong track. You should be looking at the house next door. If you’re going to dig, dig there.’

       CHAPTER 7

      ‘How did you know?’ he demands in a low voice, pulling me through the front door and slamming it behind us roughly.

      He’s still gripping the sleeve of the denim jacket I’m wearing when his mother calls from the kitchen, ‘Ryan, is that you, honey? Carmen?’

      Neither of us replies, each continuing to stare the other down.

      Footsteps come closer and he suddenly explodes into motion, pushing me ahead of him up the stairs. ‘Yeah!’ he shouts finally, from the upstairs landing, steering me away from Lauren’s closed bedroom door towards his, the room on the other side of Lauren’s bathroom.

      ‘I was worried … the dogs,’ Mrs Daley says below us.

      I get a faint glimpse of her standing in a doorway, eyes turned upward trying to see what Ryan’s up to, but he’s a blur of motion. Always running away. Everyone in this house nursing their secrets, their wounds, in isolation.

      Ryan yells, ‘Everything’s fine, Mum. I have a paper needs working on. Late with it.’

      Then I’m standing in the dimness of his bedroom, heart thudding, close enough to him to smell earth and sweat on his skin.

      It’s almost monastic, the room. Just a bed, a chair, a desk, two blank wardrobe doors that tell me nothing about the person that lives here. There’s no … stuff. Sports trophies, magazines, a stereo maybe, posters, smelly sneakers; things I would have expected in a guy’s room. It’s not so much a bedroom as a place to sleep, a kind of blank motel room tricked out in Louisa Daley’s signature spotless monotone shades. Only, there’s a giant picture of Lauren tacked above his bed-head, an impromptu shrine to his missing sister. She’s laughing into the camera, head slightly cocked, looking straight at us.

      I move closer to the portrait, study the wide mouth, the dark, lively eyes that are so like Ryan’s. But she’s a fine-boned ash blonde where Ryan’s hair is so dark it could almost be black. Physically, they couldn’t look less like twins.

      Maybe that girl was right. Maybe it did go deeper than the twin thing and I should just extricate myself now, say it was all a horrible mistake, sorry for sticking my oar in, what was I thinking? But I don’t. I like a challenge. Recognise it for a truth.

      ‘She’s beautiful,’ I say.

      He lets go of my sleeve, throws down his rucksack, deliberately ignores the comment.

      ‘How did you know?’ he demands again harshly. ‘About today. Don’t bullshit me, choirgirl.’

      ‘I saw you,’ I say. He doesn’t need to know that it wasn’t with my eyes. Trust doesn’t need to come into this. ‘You were digging around.’

      His gaze slides sideways to his abandoned pack, back to me.

      ‘Yeah?’ he sneers. ‘You followed me then. Did she put you up to this?’ He rolls his eyes in the direction of the stairs outside. ‘You my new little watchdog now? Got a crush on me, have you? That was quick work. You’ll get over it; plenty have.’ The look on his face is ugly, self-mocking.

      I meet his glare steadily. ‘It doesn’t matter how I got there. But the church is too obvious. No one would be able to hide someone who looks like Lauren in the Paradise First Presbyterian Church and get away with it! Especially if she’s some sort of live trophy. Think about how many people go in and out of that place in a week, use the church, the hall, the rec rooms, the outbuildings you were sniffing around today.’

      Ryan’s eyes are unfocused for a moment before snapping back to mine.

      ‘Someone would hear something, see something,’ I say. ‘That place, that room you’re looking for? I don’t think it’s inside the church grounds.’

      Ryan is so sunk in thought that he doesn’t realise what I’m saying. I know he isn’t looking for a body, but don’t ask me how it works, this knowledge. He’s looking for some kind of storeroom where a girl is being kept alive. I heard her, too, I almost tell him. She was breathing. It was dark. It has something to do with the fact she can sing like an angel.

      ‘But I’m getting evangelical music,’ Ryan insists quietly, no longer looking at me. ‘Hymns, snatches of a sermon. It’s got to be the church. It’s the only one in town. Because, funnily enough,’ there is no mirth in his voice, ‘the people of Paradise aren’t huge churchgoers. Contrary to what everyone else says and thinks—even my own parents—Lauren is not dead and she’s close. Close enough that I can sometimes pick up her dreams and her thoughts—the stuff of nightmares, Carmen.’

      It’s the first time he’s said my name, and for a minute I’m not sure who he’s talking to. Then I remember who I’m supposed to be, and I shake my head. ‘The manse would be the better bet,’ I say quietly.

      He looks at me blindly, his gaze still so inward-focused that he doesn’t ask how it is that I know for sure that the living quarters of the church’s minister are located outside the church grounds. But I saw the place he went to today, if only in illogical fragments. And there was no house there.

      ‘You know, the preacher’s private residence,’ I go on as his dark eyes finally settle once more on me. ‘It should be close to the church. That’s how it usually works. It’s likely to be less scrutinised, less frequented, but near enough to the church for you to hear the kinds of things you say you’ve heard.’

      I don’t elaborate that I’ve heard them, too, through him, through his skin. Voices raised in vigorous Protestant song. An organ. Bible thumping. But the sound was too distant, too faint, not immediate. I perceived snatches of brilliant sunlight, too, falling slantwise down a flight of stairs, blinding when it came. One door. Two. More stairs. The feeling of one room flowing into another. A clock ticking. The sounds of cars leaving a nearby car park in convoy after service, horns tooting. Ordinary things. But then that feeling of terror. With light came misery. The light brought pain and shame and a feeling of wanting to die. I was sure—don’t ask me how—that Lauren found the darkness almost more bearable than the light.