The Guardian of Twin Oaks
by Valeriya Salt
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4 |
part 3
Inspector Lydgate greeted her on the doorstep of his office. ‘I’m glad your car is back on the road, but honestly, you shouldn’t have driven all the way to Bolsover to see me, Miss Moen. I asked you not to leave the village. You could’ve contacted me. I was going to go there anyway.’
‘The matter is urgent.’ Elsse ignored his remark and entered the office. ‘I was stalked and attacked last night.’ She lowered her voice when the frosted glass door closed behind her back.
‘Let’s start from the very beginning.’ Inspector Lydgate gestured to take a seat in front of his working desk. ‘What happened?’
‘Fist of all, the white Land Rover.’ Elsse exhaled. ‘It’s spying on me. I saw it yesterday near The Pit pub.’
‘How can you be so sure it was the same car?’ He frowned. ‘Previously in your testimony, you confirmed you didn’t remember the registration number of the car you saw on the M1.’
‘Yes, but I’m sure it was the Rabbit Man. I felt he had been watching me,’ Elsse continued, ‘Farmer Ted told me about—’
‘Ah, here we go.’ A broad white smile lit the Inspector’s face. ‘You’d better stop listening to the local folk. They’re ready to make up any bizarre story to attract as much attention to the village as possible. Twin Oaks relies heavily on tourism. As for Mr. Blyth, he’s in his late seventies. Bless him, he’s been living alone since his wife died twenty years ago. Since he retired from farming, all he does is collect rumours and hang around the village. Unfortunately, neither your feelings nor Mr. Blyth’s fairy tales can be used as evidence.’
‘Maybe so, but there’s more.’ Elsse moved her chair closer to the desk and told the inspector about her conversation with Zephire.
The inspector’s emotions reflected on his handsome face. He didn’t interrupt her, though. ‘May I ask how often you suffer from such... ehm... distressing visions?’ he asked softly when she finished.
She squinted. ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ What did I expect? I hardly can believe myself.
‘I’m really worried about the bruise on your forehead.’ The inspector shook his head. ‘It might be more severe than you think. I strongly recommend you to go to the hospital. It’s not far from here.’
‘I have evidence,’ she interrupted him, pulling her phone out and pointing at the last call. ‘Three o’clock in the morning. The call from the unknown number. I’ve also found this on the floor.’ With that said, she pulled out of her pocket a sealed plastic bag with a few black hairs.
The inspector bit his lower lip. ‘Unfortunately, the call doesn’t prove anything. As for the hair in the room, you should’ve complained to the pub’s cleaners.’
She nodded. ‘I know it’s hard to believe, but please—’
‘Did you talk to somebody in the village yesterday, apart from Mr. Blyth?’ the inspector continued.
‘No. Even if I had, I wouldn’t have given my number to anybody.’
‘It makes sense. The only thing I can do is to send a request to your mobile provider and try to track the caller. I’m afraid with all the upcoming Easter bank holidays we can’t rely on a quick reply.’
‘I understand.’ Elsse sighed with relief. ‘And the hair?’
His eyes flashed, but he only waved. ‘I’ll send it for analysis just in case... Meanwhile, I want you to help me as well,’ he continued. ‘Please, stay in the village until we clear up this mess.’
‘Thank you, Inspector, for your trust.’ She rose from her chair ready to go. He offered his hand for a goodbye handshake and, without waiting, squeezed her cold palm in his. ‘When logic stops working, mutual trust is the only way to know the truth.’
* * *
Elsse stood in front of the mirror in the tiny bathroom in her room. She splashed her face with the ice-cold water for the third time during this evening, but it didn’t help much. A dark shadow of her growing anxiety had been following her every step during the whole day. She remembered how she glanced in the car’s side mirror every few minutes on the way back from Bolsover. What did she see there? Nothing. What did she expect to see? The damn white Land Rover, of course. And now, she struggled even to open the room’s thick curtains.
She returned to the room to get rid of the gloomy thoughts and tried to focus on her endless emails and reports, but as expected, couldn’t focus even on the simplest tasks. It was just a nightmare, a bizarre dream fed by the conversation with Mr. Blyth. The phone call? Somebody dialled my number by mistake. A few hairs on the floor? Inspector Lydgate is right. I need to complain to the pub’s owner about their cleaning service. She switched off her laptop and reclined on the high pillows with her eyes closed.
She found herself on the unknown spot in the middle of the wood. The dusk was about to cover the trees. The whole world stood still as if somebody sucked all the noises and sounds out of it. Not a single bird’s tweet, not a crack of a fallen dry branch, not a hum of a stream nearby: complete nothingness.
She turned her head when she noticed a tall dark silhouette, lurking behind the trees a few metres behind her. ‘Hey, you!’ she shouted, but she was scared of her own voice as it thundered all over the wood. She recognised straight away the long fluffy ears and the dark coat with a wide hood.
The dark figure turned around, and she saw his heart-shaped pinkish nose, sniffing the air, his white whiskers moved constantly. He froze on the spot, and his massive black eyes stared at her for a second.
There was nothing spooky about the Rabbit Man’s mask. It was rather bizarre. The most terrifying was something that hid behind it.
He turned his back to her and kept on running, hopping from one hassock to another.
She ran after him. ‘Hey! Stop, please! Tell me. Tell me everything.’
A gloomy mass of a hill rose in front of her.
The tunnel. Debris of her last dream flashed in her mind, and she saw the next second the tunnel’s arched mouth swallow the Rabbit Man. She didn’t have time to think it over. The next moment, she stepped under its arch and was falling into the dark abyss. She screamed and woke up.
‘Oh, what a nightmare,’ she mumbled, trying to switch on a bedside table’s lamp.
The familiar loud purr blasted in her ears. ‘Good evening, Elsse. It seems like you don’t want to listen to me,’ the male voice reverberated around her, but this time, Elsse couldn’t see anything in the darkness of the room. ‘I want to warn you: more people are going to die today.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Elsse swallowed her anxiety back. ‘Tell me, what exactly do you want? Why am I here? Why me?’
‘Eleven will die, Elsse, although you can’t help them now,’ the voice continued.
‘Can you? Can you save all these people? Can you help them?’
‘No. Nobody can. However, you can protect many others.’
‘And how am I supposed to do that?’
‘You’re the one who’s in charge. You’re the one whom everybody would listen to. You’re the one’ — the purring intensified — ‘who can turn the line, make a loop, save them and us.’
‘Save from what?’
‘Electricity.’
She opened her mouth to ask the next question, but the purring stopped abruptly. The darkness dispelled. The early morning sunrays blasted through the curtains’ gap.
* * *
Elsse shot a glance at the big antique clock on the pub’s far wall. Half past ten. She ordered her usual breakfast: a cup of Americano and a traditional bacon-and-egg sandwich. A typically smiling waiter greeted her at the bar. Normally enthusiastic about everything, the waiter didn’t smile, and he sounded a bit preoccupied today, so Elsse picked her mug up and left him to watch the latest news.
The pub was empty on Easter morning, and Elsse enjoyed the rare minutes of silence, trying to catch up with the most important emails on her phone.
‘Good morning and Happy Easter!’ Inspector Lydgate’s voice sounded from the entrance, and the next moment, she saw him greeting the waiter.
‘Thank you for coming here.’ Elsse rose from the table when the inspector approached. ‘I know bank holidays are not the best time, but I assume—’
‘Ah, don’t worry about my holidays. I want to close this case as soon as possible.’ He waved. ‘By the way, what happened to your car?’
‘What?’
‘Haven’t you seen it yet?’ Inspector Lydgate gestured to the pub’s car park.
‘What the...?’ Elsse mumbled.
On the windscreen of her Qashqai, the massive pinkish letters stated: II.
‘I think it’s paint. Try to wipe it with vinegar or something like that,’ Inspector Lydgate continued. ‘I wonder what double-I stands for?’
‘It’s not letters,’ she whispered, ‘they’re numbers. Eleven. Did any major accidents happen in the morning?’
‘Yeah.’ The inspector eyed her with concern. ‘The train crashed near Bolsover. They were running some tests on the high-speed railway line. The locomotive and the first two cars derailed at almost two hundred miles per hour, killing two drivers and all the engineers and train staff in both carriages.’
‘Do you know why?’
‘Some electrical malfunction.’ Inspector Lydgate shrugged.
She sat back. ‘Just what Zephire said.’
‘Pardon?’ He sat next to her. ‘Do you want to say that your late night visitor knew about the accident?’
Elsse nodded. ‘I had another conversation with him last night.’ With that said, she told him the whole story. ‘What about the phone call and the hair?’
‘I’m still waiting for a report from your phone provider. As for the hair, the analysis may take longer than I expected.’ He sighed.
Elsse exploded. ‘Can’t you ask your lab to speed up?’
‘Unfortunately, due to the endless bank holidays it’ll take forever.’ He rubbed his smooth chin.
Elsse stared at him with hope, but it was just about to melt completely. After all, the chief inspector was limited to policies and procedures.
‘I have a good old friend in the Sheffield Hallam University lab,’ he said finally. ‘He owes me a lot. I think it’s the right time to return a favour.’
* * *
‘Any good news for me, Inspector?’ Elsse asked when Inspector Lydgate had arrived after two days since their last meeting.
These two gloomy, rainy days she had been forced to stay in her room not by the law enforcement but by the horrible weather, which seemed to want to revert to winter. Her hope to leave Twin Oaks any time soon was melting quickly, replaced by growing anxiety and fear. She was afraid to go to bed, to meet Zephire or the Rabbit Man in her dreams, afraid to fall into the endless tunnel again, afraid to stick between heavy dreams and the scary reality.
Inspector Lydgate sat next to her on a low wooden bench off a public hiking path, which started in the village and disappeared in the fields.
The day was warmer but dark and misty. Elsse went outside, in the milky fog for a short walk where the inspector found her.
‘The news is rather peculiar,’ he started. ‘Your vandalised car. No footprints around it or on the path out of the car park. No fingerprints on the car as well.’
‘What about the paint?’
‘Apparently, it’s lipstick.’ He shrugged, glancing at her. ‘Our night guest is partial to make-up.’
‘Bizarre. I lost my favourite pink lipstick a few days ago,’ Elsse said. ‘I thought I must’ve left it in the guesthouse.’
‘I’m not trying to tell you you’re the only person in the region wearing pink lipstick, but I don’t believe in coincidence, either. Not in this case.’
‘What about the hair?’
‘This one looks even crazier.’ He made a meaningful pause. ‘The hair doesn’t belong to a human but to an animal from the feline family. Moreover, the same hair was found on Mrs. May’s body. The problem is...’ he paused for a second. ‘Mrs. May didn’t have cats. In fact, she was allergic to their hair.’
‘Are you sure?’ Elsse jumped from the bench. ‘Then, it proves that I wasn’t hallucinating or having a nightmare. Zephire talked to me. I saw him. He killed Mrs. May.’
He interrupted her, annoyance in his voice: ‘Miss Moen, I hope you understand that I can’t add it to my report. There must be some logical explanation. Somebody has planted it to scare you and slow down the investigation.’
‘Madhouse!’ Elsse turned away, back to the heavy greyish mist that became even thicker and didn’t want to leave the air. ‘What about my phone’s log?’
‘The provider confirmed no calls were made during those two nights.’ He shrugged.
‘Again. No evidence.’ Elsse nodded. She looked directly into his eyes but didn’t see a response. ‘You don’t think that I could organise all this mess and kill the poor old lady together with eleven members of the rail network, do you?’
‘Of course, not.’ He turned away from her.
‘And yet, Zephire thinks that I’m the one, who’s causing all these deaths.’ She exhaled. ‘His words have been following me for the last few days: “You’re the one, who’s in charge. You’re the one whom everybody would listen to. Save them from electricity.” If only we could know what he meant.’
‘Crazy.’ Inspector Lydgate waved.
‘“You’re the one who’s in charge.” In charge of what?’ Elsse kept musing aloud. ‘“You’re the one whom everybody would listen to.” Who should listen to me, and why? Because I’m in charge?’
Inspector Lydgate stared into space, into the mist, which almost surrounded them. The fields, the path, the village’s cottages, everything farther than a few dozens of metres was drowned in it.
He started again after a pause. ‘I can imagine how difficult it must be for you, planning a fresh start in a new country, but—’
‘Fresh start? For what?’
‘That is what you’ve arrived here for, haven’t you?’ He squinted, studying her face. ‘Most people do, coming to this country to start a new life.’
‘Oh please, save me from local arrogance.’ She chuckled. ‘I don’t want to brag, but I’m a valuable specialist in an important industry. Your country has invited me to work here. That’s why I’m here. Your country and your industry need me. I don’t need them. You should’ve known that from my background check.’
‘I’m sorry. I meant no disrespect. I didn’t question your skills or your knowledge, but... wait...’ He stammered. ‘You’re a land surveyor, a consultant, so to speak.’
‘Yes. I advise certain types of equipment, machinery, drills, which the company require to construct the high-speed railway.’
‘“You’re the one whom everybody would listen to”,’ he repeated. ‘Of course, because it’s your job to advise. Everybody will listen because they’re waiting for your decision. You’re the one because nobody else can do what you’re doing.’
‘Are you saying I’m here because of my job, because...’ A sudden idea flashed in her mind. ‘Are there other entrances to the pit, apart from the main one?’
‘Yes. A small tunnel in the wood to the west from the village.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s still open. It hasn’t been in use for over fifty years, though. I don’t understand—’
‘If your idea is correct, and I’m here due to my job, which results in building the new high-speed line, then we need to check this second entrance,’ Elsse said. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about it.’
‘A bad feeling about the tunnel?’ Inspector Lydgate frowned. ‘You’re not going to go there to check it for ghosts, are you?’
‘I’m afraid we need to.’ She nodded. ‘I saw the tunnel in my dreams. I’m pretty sure that on the current construction plan the railway goes through this place.’
‘What dreams? What construction plan?’
‘Is this wood far from here?’
‘About ten minutes drive from the village. Maybe a bit more in this weather.’ He gestured to the thickening milky air.
‘I need to go there. I need to see the tunnel. The Rabbit Man guided me there.’
‘Okay.’ Inspector Lydgate sighed. ‘You can’t leave the village. I’ll accompany you there.’
* * *
Copyright © 2022 by Valeriya Salt
