The Running Grave полностью

‘I told you, I want to. Stay there, I’ve got to give the scissors back.’

She found Emily standing exactly where she’d left her when she returned.

‘OK, shall we—?’

‘My brother killed himself and it was all our fault,’ said Emily jerkily. ‘Mine and Becca’s.’

‘You can’t be sure of that.’

‘I can. It was us, we did it to him. He shot himself. You can get guns really easily in the materialist world,’ said Emily with a nervous glance at the shoppers passing the toy shop window, as though she feared they might be armed.

‘It might’ve been an accident,’ said Robin.

‘No, it wasn’t, it definitely wasn’t. Becca made me sign a thing… she told me I’d suppressed what he did to us. She’s always done that,’ said Emily, her breathing rapid and shallow, ‘told me what happened, and what didn’t happen.’

Despite her genuine concern for Emily and the urgent need to get back to the group, this was an opening Robin couldn’t ignore.

‘What does Becca say didn’t happen?’

‘I can’t tell you,’ said Emily, shifting her gaze back on to the rows of happily paired animals smiling out of their neat cellophane-wrapped boxes. ‘Look,’ she said, pointing at a family of four pigs. ‘Pig demons… that’s a sign,’ she said, breathing rapidly.

‘A sign of what?’ said Robin.

‘That I need to shut up.’

‘Emily, they’re just toys,’ said Robin. ‘They aren’t supernatural, they’re not signs. You can tell me anything, I won’t give you away.’

‘The last person who said that to me was in Birmingham and he didn’t – he didn’t mean it – he—’

Emily began to cry. She shook her head as Robin laid a consoling hand on her arm.

‘Don’t, don’t – you’ll be in trouble, being nice to me – you shouldn’t be helping me, Becca will make sure you’re punished for it—’

‘I’m not scared of Becca,’ said Robin.

‘Well, you should be,’ said Emily, drawing deep breaths in an effort to control herself. ‘She’ll… do anything to protect the mission. Anything. I… I should know.’

‘How could you threaten the mission?’ asked Robin.

‘Because,’ said Emily, staring at a pair of small pandas in pink and blue nappies, ‘I know things… Becca says I was too young to remember…’ Then, in a rush of words, Emily said, ‘But I wasn’t really small, I was nine, and I know, because they moved me out of the kids’ dormitory after it happened.’

‘After what happened?’ said Robin.

‘After Daiyu became “invisible”,’ said Emily, her tone putting quotation marks around the word. ‘I knew Becca was lying, even then, only I went along with it, because,’ fresh tears gushed forth, ‘I loved… loved…’

‘You loved Becca?’

‘No… not… it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter… I shouldn’t be… talking about any of this… forget it, please…’

‘I will,’ lied Robin.

‘It’s just Becca,’ said Emily, struggling to regain control of herself again, wiping her face, ‘telling me I’m lying all the time… she’s not… since she went away… I feel like she’s not who she was before…’

‘When did she go away?’ asked Robin.

‘Ages ago… they sent her to Birmingham… they split up flesh objects… they must have thought we were too close… and when she came back… she wasn’t… she was really one of them, she wouldn’t hear a word against any of them, even Mazu… Sometimes,’ said Emily, ‘I want to scream the truth, but… that’s egomotivity…’

‘It isn’t egomotivity to tell the truth,’ said Robin.

‘You shouldn’t talk like that,’ said Emily, on a hiccup. ‘That’s how I got relocated.’

‘I joined the church to find truth,’ said Robin. ‘If it’s just another place where you can’t tell it, I don’t want to stay.’

‘“A single event, a thousand different recollections. Only the Blessed Divinity knows the truth,”’ said Emily, quoting from The Answer.

‘But there is truth,’ said Robin firmly. ‘It’s not all opinions or memories. There is truth.’

Emily looked at Robin with what seemed to be frightened fascination.

‘D’you believe in her?’

‘In who? Becca?’

‘No. In the Drowned Prophet.’

‘I… yes, I suppose so.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t,’ whispered Emily. ‘She wasn’t what they say she was.’

‘What d’you mean?’

Emily glanced through the window of the toy shop, then said,

‘She was always up to secret stuff at the farm. Forbidden things.’

‘What kind of things?’

‘Stuff in the barn and the woods. Becca saw it, too. She says I’m making it up, but she knows what happened. I know she remembers,’ said Emily desperately.

‘What did you see Daiyu doing in the barn and the woods?’

‘I can’t tell you,’ said Emily. ‘But I know she didn’t die. I know that.’

‘What?’ said Robin blankly.

‘She’s not dead. She’s out there, somewhere, grown up. She never drow—’

Emily gave a little gasp. Robin turned: a woman in a white top and trousers had come around the corner of the shelves, holding the hands of two boisterous little boys, and Robin knew Emily had momentarily mistaken the mother for another UHC member. The two little boys began clamouring for Thomas the Tank Engine models.

‘I want Percy. There’s Percy! I want Percy!’

‘You’ll really say I felt faint?’ Emily whispered to Robin. ‘In the bathroom, and all that?’