Melissa Ray has been trapped beneath Simon Rhyes's kitchen for the past three days, and no one has even suspected that it is her inept chemistry teacher who has taken her. Neither Sady, Adam nor Hunter have guessed that it is Rhyes who they have been exchanging emails with, either, even though his internet alias is his first name spelled backwards. But then, who would guess? Melissa Ray definitely did not believe that she would end up where she is. She believed, as all people do, that her life was her life, that nothing horrible or important or exciting would ever happen to her; this illusion of safety is common to everyone, and it is with this same illusion that Adam clicks send, ridding himself of the final email that he will ever exchange with Nomis.
The disappearance of Melissa has sent most of Falridge into panic as the city police scour the area for traces of a body. Only yesterday they found what they believe was a scene of intense struggle, and a murder, closing the option of a runaway. The area behind Silas Fletcher's home was strewn with torn pieces of fabric and blood, enough that the victim could not have possibly lived beyond the fight. The forest was scoured, detritus on the ground pushed aside, a body searched for. There was no hope that she was alive, they said. Mrs. Ray insisted that her daughter was not dead, and so the police grudgingly agreed that she may be alive, promising to get in touch if they were to receive any news. They sent in a sample of the blood they found, scraped from the back of a leaf, and a sample of the fabric from the scene. Then they searched the house, and found the desiccated, rotting remains of Silas Fletcher, the skin torn from his mutilated body, flesh eaten away as if by a wild beast. And so another death was added to the toll, and the possibility of Melissa Ray being alive was officially reopened. Some people, frightened for their lives, packed up and left Falridge. Hunter, Adam and Sady had taken to sleeping in the same house each night, taking turns between Adam's and Sady's; they were not wholly frightened by the death of Silas: they were recharged by it.
In another house, not far away, Michael Pitch engages in a similar activity to Adam, tapping send on a decidedly different device, and then he looks down at his phone rather dejectedly as he scrolls through the messages. Ever since Melissa went missing, he has been calling her and sending her texts periodically, as if the fact that her phone is ringing out means that she is not dead, that she's alive. He listens to the sound of her voice mail message, smiling slightly when he hears her laugh and tell him to shut up, will he? before reciting the usual message: "Hi, this is Melissa Ray. Leave me a message after the beep."
"Hey," he says, quietly. He is lying on his bed, on his back, staring emptily into space. He runs his free hand through his hair, mussing it further. For some reason, he feels the need to speak to her as if she's actually there, when he calls her. As if he needs to make up for the time that they've lost, are losing. He doesn't quite know why, but he knows that he is buried deeply in this mess of a relationship, and he finds himself not quite wanting to get out.
"Um. So, mum's gone sort of crazy. I'm not allowed to leave the house after five, now, even though curfew's at seven. She wants to keep me safe, I guess. But then, you weren't." He blinks, and he finds that it is too hard to open his eyes again, so he simply leaves them closed. "Where are you, Mel?" He has asked this question countless times. If one were to look through the voicemail messages of Melissa Ray, there would be seventeen from Michael Pitch, all of them consisting of a brief summation of the new ways in which Annabelle Pitch has gone 'crazy', and then the question of Melissa's whereabouts, the voice of the boy speaking breaking in the same place before pausing for a long moment. Similarly, each one is ended with a curse word, and the sound of Michael's fingers fumbling to end the message. This time is no different.
He swears and ends the call, dropping his phone onto the bed beside him and roughly dragging his hand across his face before draping his arm over his eyes to block out the light, closing them tightly and seeing only the blackness behind his eyelids. He has about seven different items of homework to complete, but none are appealing, when he thinks of Melissa. And he can't help but see, in his mind, Felicity Greaves's deranged, mangled body, battered and filthy and stiff. But the hair on this body is raven black, and the sunken face is Mel's, and she's wearing his favourite jumper that she always borrows when she's at his house and is cold, though she takes it off when she leaves, because she doesn't want to deprive him of his favourite. Suddenly, he wishes he'd let her take it. He wishes for a lot of things. And one of them is sitting in a chair, bloody and bruised and tired, fifteen metres away from him, below the house next door. But he doesn't know that. No one does.
YOU ARE READING
After Dark
Teen Fiction"Falridge was originally called Fall's Ridge, named after a strange phenomenon where many of the town's occupants threw themselves over the edge of the cliff that borders our forest, falling to their deaths on the sharp ridges of rock below..." Sinc...
