The Crossing Places

CHAPTER 26

Ruth swings round, heart hammering. At the same moment a particularly violent blast of wind throws itself against the house. The storm has arrived.

'A rough night,' says Erik in a conversational voice. He is wearing a black raincoat and is carrying an umbrella which has obviously just blown inside out. He throws the umbrella aside and steps forward, smiling.

'Erik,' she says stupidly.

'Hello Ruth,' says Erik. 'Did you think I would leave without saying goodbye?'

Erik takes a step closer. He's still smiling but his blue eyes are cold. As cold as the North Sea.

'The police are looking for you,' says Ruth.

'I know,' he smiles. 'But they won't look here.'

Why hadn't Nelson thought to guard this house, thinks Ruth in despair. But he thinks she is safely on her way to her parents. There's no-one to help her. She starts to back towards the door.

'What's wrong, Ruthie? Don't you trust me?'

'No.'

'I didn't kill them, you know.' He picks up the torque and examines it closely. 'I didn't kill those little girls. I'm not a Nix. I'm not an evil sea spirit. I'm just Erik.'

His voice is as hypnotic as ever. Ruth shakes her head to clear it. She mustn't be taken in.

'You wrote the letters. The letters told me where to find Scarlet.'

'Rubbish,' says Erik. 'You twisted the facts to suit your theory just as all academics do.'

'Aren't you an academic?'

"Me?' Erik smiles. 'No. I am a teller of tales. A weaver of mysteries.'

He is, she understands suddenly, quite mad.

Slowly, she moves towards the door. Her hand is touching the handle. Then Flint, realising that he is about to be left behind in his cat basket, sets up an unearthly yowl. Erik starts and jumps towards Ruth. What he means to do she doesn't know, but one look at his eyes decides her. She throws herself through the door and out into the night.

The wind is so strong that she can hardly stay upright.

It is coming directly from the sea, racing across the marshes, flattening everything in its path. Rain beats against her face, trying to force her back to Erik but she stumbles on. At last she reaches her car. Her trusty, rusty Renault. Madly, she scrabbles at the door.

'Looking for these?' She looks round and there is Erik holding up her car keys. He is still smiling. With his white hair flattened by the rain, he looks like a wizard. Not a comfortable Harry Potter wizard but a creature from the wind and the rain. An elemental.

Ruth runs. She darts across New Road, jumps over the ditch – already full of rushing water – that leads to the marshes and sets out into the dark.

'Ruth!' She can hear Erik behind her. He too is across the ditch and she can hear him stumbling over the coarse grass and low bushes. Ruth stumbles too, falling heavily on the muddy ground, grazing her hands on loose stones. But she keeps going, panting, gasping, weaving through the stunted trees, with no idea where she's going except that she must escape from Erik. He will kill her, she knows.

He'll kill her just as he killed those two little girls. For no reason. For the reason that he is mad.

She can hear him behind her. Despite his age, he's fit, much fitter than her. But desperation drives her on. She falls into a shallow stream and knows she must be getting near the tidal salt marshes. The wind is even louder now and the rain stings her face. She stops. Where is Erik? She can't hear anything now except the wind.

Exhausted, she sinks down on the ground. It is soft and reed stalks brush against her face. Where is the sea? She mustn't wander onto the mudflats or that will be the end of her. The tide comes in like a galloping horse, David said.

It is easy to imagine wildly galloping hooves in the noise of the wind, the white horses of the waves storming in across the marshes. She crouches amongst the reeds, trying to gather her wits about her. She must ring Nelson, get help, but, as she scrambles for her mobile, she realises that she has packed it in her bag. The wind screams around her and in the background she hears another, even more sinister, noise. A roaring, rushing, relentless sound.

She is lost on the Saltmarsh and the tide is coming in.