Dark Peak Read online

  Dark Peak

  Adam J. Wright

  Copyright © 2017 by Adam J. Wright

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  1. The Fox

  2. Elly

  3. The Call

  4. The Key

  5. Edge House

  6. Battle

  7. Storm

  8. The Vault

  9. The Journal

  10. Murder Board

  11. Among the Pictures

  12. Into the Woods

  13. One of These Things

  14. Family Matters

  15. Silas

  16. Forget Me Not

  17. The Letter

  18. Flower Girls

  19. Old Ghosts

  20. Two Hands

  21. Night Call

  22. From the Shadows

  23. The Moors

  24. Discovery

  25. From the Grave

  26. The Visit

  27. Connections

  28. Freedom

  29. Drive

  30. The Blade

  31. Interview

  32. Blackmoor House

  33. Final Grave

  34. Exhumation

  35. Face Everything and Recover

  36. Confession

  37. Lost and Found

  Places to Visit

  1

  The Fox

  Relby, Derbyshire

  December 21st, 1987

  The winter evening was gloomy as Mitch walked through the frozen moors with his sister. The dark clouds formed a low ceiling over the world and seemed close enough to touch. Mitch wondered if he could reach up with his gloved hands and sink his fingers into the grey substance, causing the clouds to burst and send snow falling down onto the landscape. He liked snow. Sarah did too. But Mitch knew the idea of reaching the clouds with his hands was a silly one so he kept them by his sides, one of them holding Sarah’s hand in her cold, wet mitten.

  He wouldn’t normally hold his sister’s hand but she’d already slipped over twice on the ice and Mitch felt a duty to look after her. She was his little sister, after all. Maybe when she was nine, like him, she’d be able to walk across the moors without falling but until then, it was up to Mitch to keep her safe.

  “Come on,” she said impatiently, trying to run ahead and pull him along with her. “We’ll miss it if we don’t hurry.”

  He sighed the same way he’d seen Mum sigh when they were getting on her nerves, trying to show Sarah that he was more mature than she was. “I don’t know why you’re so excited,” he told her. “I see foxes all the time.”

  “No, you don’t, you liar.”

  He sighed again and tried to sound bored. “Sarah, the only reason I’m here is because you want to see the fox and you’re not allowed to go onto the moors. So I have to come and make sure you’re okay because I’m older.”

  “You’re not allowed to go onto the moors either,” Sarah reminded him as they trudged towards the distant woods where the fox had bolted. “I heard you telling Tilly that you are but you’re not. You were just trying to sound big in front of her.” A mischievous grin crossed her face. “You like her. Don’t you?”

  “Don’t be silly,” he said. Despite the cold snap in the air, his face felt suddenly hot. It was true, he did like Tilly. She was a tomboy, so she wasn’t into dresses and dolls and all those girly things. Instead, she liked to do cool stuff like playing soldiers or exploring the stream that ran along the bottom of her dad’s rapeseed field. Mitch liked her because she did all that cool stuff but he also liked her because she was pretty. He would never admit that to his sister, though.

  Sarah pointed at his face. “You’ve gone red, that means you love her.” Then she started singing, “Mitch loves Tilly, Mitch loves Tilly.”

  “Shut up,” he said. “You’ll frighten the fox away.” He was also scared that Mum might hear Sarah and come outside to see what was going on. But when he looked back, it seemed as if a great stretch of moorland had suddenly appeared between them and the house. He hadn’t realised they’d wandered so far. The walls that surrounded the garden where they’d been playing a short time ago looked small and far away. The black wooden gate Mitch and Sarah weren’t supposed to open but had come through to get to the moors was almost invisible.

  Suddenly, Mitch didn’t want to see the fox anymore. He wanted to go home. It was getting late and Mum was bound to come out into the garden to see what they were up to eventually.

  He wished they hadn’t opened the gate and left the garden to play beyond the walls. If they’d stayed where they were supposed to, they wouldn’t have seen the flash of red fur darting across the moors to the woods.

  At first, Mitch had been just as excited about chasing the fox as Sarah, and scrambling down the incline from their house to the frozen expanse of the moors had been fun. But now they’d gone too far. It was getting dark and they were a long way from home.

  He was about to tell Sarah that they should go back when she pulled her hand free of his and bolted towards the woods, leaving him holding her wet mitten while she sprinted across the frozen ground, squealing in excitement, “There it is! There’s the fox!”

  “Sarah, come back!” He tried to chase her but slipped on the ice, landing heavily on his side, his breath exploding out of him in a puff of mist. Scrabbling to his feet, he just had time to see Sarah disappear into the woods. “Sarah! Wait for me!” He ran for the trees, trying to ignore the pain in his side.

  When he reached the woods, the evening gloom had deepened into a night-time darkness that was pure black beneath the trees. “Sarah, are you in here?” he whispered. He knew he should shout but something inside him wouldn’t let him speak louder than a whisper, as if he should be quiet in here because something was lurking in the darkness and might come for him if it knew where he was.

  He knew that was silly but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was in these woods besides him, Sarah, and the stupid fox.

  He told himself Sarah needed him and he managed to call her name. There was a touch of panic audible in his voice but he shouted loud enough that she should be able to hear him.

  There was no reply.

  He had to look for her, had to walk into the darkness beneath the trees.

  You can do this, he told himself. You’ve got to do this.

  He stepped forward and almost jumped out of his skin when a dead leaf crackled beneath his wellies. Trying to breathe normally again, his heart hammering in his chest, he entered the woods.

  The trees around him began to rustle. He shrank back slightly. He was too old to believe in monsters, at least during the daytime, but right now standing alone in the dark woods with his heart hammering, he could believe anything. He’d seen programmes on telly about creatures that lived in remote places, creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. There was even a name for the study of such creatures. Crypto-something.

  These woods on the edge of the moors were remote. Had a crypto-something creature come out of the darkness and taken Sarah to its lair? Maybe she was alone in the dark right now, wondering why he hadn’t come to save her.

  That thought drove him forwards. He walked into the woods, searching the blackness beneath the trees for any sign of his sister. The rustling got louder and snowflakes began drifting down between the trees. Mitch breathed a sigh of relief. The sound wasn’t a monster after all, just the snow rustling through the branches overhead.

  “There are no monsters,” he whispered to himself. “No monsters here at
all.”

  The snowflakes were big and fat. They got in his eyes and stuck to his eyelashes, making it even harder to see. His cheeks and nose were numb with cold.

  Sarah must be cold too and she’s only got one mitten.

  He called her name again but the snowfall seemed to muffle his voice. The flakes were falling so fast now that they formed a white wall all around Mitch. “Sarah,” he shouted again but his voice barely croaked out of him.

  It only took a few minutes for the ground to become a white, slippery blanket. He couldn’t see the roots and branches hidden underneath the snow and every time he stepped forward, he had to be careful not to trip over them.

  He suddenly felt that he was being watched and spun around to make sure no one was behind him. A dark shape detached itself from the dark shadows beneath a tree and ran towards him. He screamed and turned away from the shape, breaking into a run that he prayed was faster than that of the thing chasing him.

  A buried root connected with his wellington and sent him sprawling in the snow. He landed hard, the air rushing out of him. He rolled onto his back so he could see how close the creature was.

  The approaching shape became clear and Mitch saw red fur and a long, bushy, white-tipped tail. It was the fox that had lured them into the woods. Mitch scrambled to his feet and brushed snow off his jacket and trousers. The fox eyed him warily for a second before slinking into the undergrowth, its paw prints the only proof it had ever been there at all.

  Mitch continued his search, trudging along carefully so he wouldn’t fall over again.

  The snowy woods looked like the land where the White Witch lived in Narnia and he wondered if this was all just a bad dream and he’d wake up soon, in his bed. Or maybe he’d come tumbling out of the wardrobe in his bedroom.

  After wandering among the trees and calling out Sarah’s name every two seconds, he realised he was lost. He had no idea which direction he’d come from. The heavy snowfall was filling in his tracks almost as fast as he was making them. No matter which way he turned, everything looked the same. More trees. More snow.

  Then he heard Sarah scream. He’d heard her scream enough times in the past to recognise that sound anywhere.

  He broke into a run, which was really a slow-motion bounding because of his efforts to avoid hidden roots and branches, and made his way to the area he was sure the scream had come from.

  “Sarah? Are you okay?” He peered into the darkness, searching for her. She’d probably screamed because she’d slipped in the snow and fallen down, so he checked the ground to see if she was lying somewhere.

  But all he could see on the ground was a set of boot prints, rapidly filling with falling snow. They weren’t Sarah’s; they were much too big.

  He called out her name again and then, suddenly, the trees around him began to spin. Mitch didn’t know if they were spinning or if he was spinning. His head felt cloudy. He couldn’t think straight anymore, couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He was falling but he didn’t know why. As his face landed in the freezing snow, the cold seeped into his entire body and the world around him faded away.

  The first thing he heard when he woke up was voices. They sounded distant and muffled, as if they were on a television in a faraway room with the volume turned down. Mitch opened his eyes slowly but it was still dark in the woods and he couldn’t see much. It had stopped snowing but he felt cold, colder than he’d ever felt in his life.

  He suddenly remembered Sarah. Scrabbling to his feet, he called her name, shouting as loud as he could. But because he was shivering and his teeth were chattering, that wasn’t very loud.

  The voices in the woods got louder, closer. The beam of a torch cut through the darkness and shone on Mitch’s face. He held his hands up against the glare.

  “Over here,” a man shouted. “I’ve found one of them.”

  The woods were filled with the sound of heavy boots running towards him. More torchlight appeared, bouncing up and down, illuminating the trees and throwing gnarled, twisted shadows all around Mitch.

  He heard his mum’s voice. “Mitch? Oh, my God, Mitch!” A moment later, her arms were around him and she held him tight. He expected her to feel warm but she didn’t; she was cold, as if she’d been out here a long time.

  After hugging him, she held him at arm’s length to inspect his face. Tears ran down her cheeks. “Are you all right? You had me so worried.”

  Behind her, he could see two policemen in black jackets and a number of people from the village. Because their torches were still shining on his face, he couldn’t see them clearly. He couldn’t see if Sarah was with them.

  “Did you find Sarah?” he asked Mum.

  Her eyes widened. “What? Isn’t she with you?” She looked at the area around them, her eyes searching.

  “She ran away,” he said.

  She sagged against him heavily and they hugged again but this time it felt to Mitch that it was him who was comforting her, not the other way around.

  She was sobbing, her tears wetting Mitch’s neck.

  The snow lay over the woods like a pristine, white shroud. All traces of Sarah had vanished.

  2

  Elly

  London

  Present Day

  When her phone began buzzing, Elly Cooper tried to burrow deeper beneath the duvet and ignore it. Sleepily, she murmured, “Paul, please turn that off.”

  After a few seconds, during which the phone continued its incessant buzzing like an annoying insect, Elly realised that Paul wasn’t next to her in bed. Then she remembered that she wasn’t in her own bed at all, she was in a hotel in London. As she became fully awake, she also remembered that Paul wouldn’t be in bed with her even if she had been at home. He was gone. From their bed. From their home. From her life.

  Groaning, she reached out for the bedside table and grabbed the phone, peering through half-open eyes at the screen. It was Jen, her younger sister. Elly answered the call. “Jen, what the hell are you doing ringing me at this unearthly hour?”

  Jen’s voice held a note of concern. “What? Elly, it’s half past ten. Don’t tell me you’re still in bed.”

  Shit. Elly’s eyes flew open and she wrestled with the duvet so she could get out of bed. The sun was beating against the dark blue hotel curtains and she could hear the London traffic outside. Half past ten, oh shit. Her meeting with Glenister was at eleven and she had to take the tube all the way to Islington.

  “Anyway, I called to see how you’re doing now that Paul’s gone,” Jen continued. “If you’re still in bed at half past ten, that answers my question. Do you want me to come over later? I have a free hour this afternoon before I have to pick William and Wendy up from school.”

  “No,” Elly said, rummaging through her suitcase for a clean bra and pants. “I’m not at home, Jen. I’m in London.”

  “London? What are you doing there? Elly, you’re not running away from your problem with Paul, are you? You need to be here and get it sorted, not run away to London.”

  Elly groaned in frustration. Even though Jen was two years younger, she always acted as if she were the older sister, treating Elly like a child.

  “I don’t have a problem with Paul,” Elly told her. “He has a problem with me, namely that I’m not the twenty-year-old blonde personal assistant he’s been screwing for the past six months. And I’m not running away, I have a meeting with my agent, a meeting I’m going to be late for if I don’t get a move on.” She whipped off the underwear she’d been sleeping in and replaced it with the fresh set. No time for a shower. Glenister was just going to have to take her as he found her and deal with it.

  “With your agent?” Jen sounded surprised.

  “Yes, my agent,” Elly said. “Paul may have left me but life does go on, you know.” She padded into the bathroom, phone pressed between her ear and shoulder, and checked herself in the mirror, mussing her shoulder-length red hair with her fingers so that it looked like she was purposefully going for a tousled loo
k.

  The grey trousers and white blouse she was going to wear for her meeting hung on the back of the door in here. Elly had hoped that the steam from her morning shower would get rid of some of the creases the clothes had acquired while being shut in her case during the train journey from Birmingham yesterday. Too late for that now. She took the trousers and blouse into the main room and began to get dressed while Jen rambled on about Elly being in denial.

  She put the phone on speaker and threw it on the bed. “I’m not in denial,” she said as she slid the trousers up over her legs, “but I still have to make a living. Even more so now that I’m living on my own income alone.”

  “You sound so cold,” Jen said. “You and Paul were together for five years. How can you be so nonchalant about it?”

  Elly sighed and shrugged at the phone, even though she knew Jen couldn’t see her. “What else can I be? Breaking down in tears isn’t going to bring Paul back. And it isn’t going to help me get on with my life.”

  There was a silence on the other end of the line for a moment and then Jen said, “Definitely in denial. And running away from your problems.”

  Elly groaned. “Jen, I haven’t got time for this. The only place I need to be running right now is to Islington to meet my agent. I’ll talk to you later.” Before Jen could protest, she ended the call. She needed to clean her teeth and get her makeup on.