It was the end of year holidays, scorching hot out and not a breath of wind. Sweetpea Katrina Red was sitting on the front steps of the porch, looking out at Momma Kaitlin Joy’s pristine flower garden. Momma Kaitlin and her son, Benji, lived directly opposite the Reds in the little town of Criquet. In the town everybody knew everybody. The Joys were the owners of the smallest house – more of a cottage really – and the biggest garden. Sweetpea, who was not quite thirteen years old, had been around long enough to appreciate all the work that friendly, buxom Momma Kaitlin did in her garden and see the bravery in her care. She knew as well as anyone that the flowers would not last long. While Criquet’s springs provided just the right amount of rain and sunlight for the little buds to grow, summer was hot and unrelenting and autumn was skipped out completely so that the stifling heat was replaced by a sudden shock of biting cold. This wiped every pretty flower right out every time. Still, Momma Kaitlin Joy loved her flowers and she would spend hours every spring and summer day tending to them until the winter came and turned her proud smile into a remorseful sob about how fleeting their time had been.
Sweetpea sat and watched the flowers sadly, twisting a loose thread trailing from her T-shirt sleeve around her index finger absentmindedly. The sun rose higher in the sky as she sat, unmoving apart from the gentle twisting of her fingers, watching the tulips and daffodils and daisies pensively.
“Sweetpea! Sweet-pea!!!” her mother’s voice seemed to echo through the small house behind her. The girl sighed and got up reluctantly to help herself to some of the greasy fried Sunday breakfast her mother made more out of ritual than the thought of family bonding.
“Really... Sits out on the porch getting so burnt she will look like a charred piece of firewood by the time she’s twenty... Always outside doing nothing...”
Sweetpea sighed. It was the usual ranting of her mother. The same sort of words was spoken about her every day and she knew it was about her because she was the only Red child who still lived at home. Her father would be nodding slowly as he chewed on his burned toast with its thickly spread peanut butter and pretending to listen while her mother carried on about how uncivilised a child she was.
“Coffee?” Mrs Red offered her daughter, pointing her wooden cooking spoon at an old fashioned kettle that sat on the stove.
“Yes please,” Sweetpea answered quietly, waiting politely for her mother to finish pouring her a cup.
“Carrots? Beans? Eggs? Toast?” her mother asked as she swivelled around the kitchen with a big spoon which she normally used for dishing up stew.
Breakfast was fairly ordinary. Mr Red ate three times the amount of either of the others and talked about nothing other than finance; he was an accountant and never let them forget that it was his great knowledge of numbers and money that was keeping them out of debt. Mrs Red barely touched the greasy vegetables she had cooked and helped herself to enough coffee to keep her up till midnight – which she needed in order to finish off sewing Caroline Jame’s wedding dress before tomorrow – and Sweetpea ate enough to satisfy her hunger, drank a modest amount of coffee and said very little.
After breakfast, Sweetpea headed for the bus stop. Momma needed a good steak to cook for dinner and a fresh bottle of milk and Papa needed a newspaper and two six-packs of beer for the rugby match that he and his friends were watching that afternoon. Momma was too busy finishing off the wedding dress to go into the centre of town for the day’s shopping and since it was the holidays she didn’t see why Sweetpea shouldn’t do it for her. Sweetpea didn’t mind, not really. She had been to town on her own lots of times before and there wasn’t much else to do in any case. The money weighed down the pocket of her dungarees but she wasn’t nervous. There weren’t a lot of thieves in Criquet – in fact there wasn’t a lot of crime at all! Benji waved to her as she walked past his bedroom window.
“Hey there, Sweetpea!” he called.
“Hey,” she smiled shyly.
“Where you going?”
“Town.”
“Oh. Can I come with?” he asked politely. Sweetpea shrugged.
“Nothin’ special, Benji. Just some grocery shopping is all,” she murmured, straightening her glasses on the bridge of her nose nervously. Sweetpea wasn’t much of a talker; small and scrawny with boyish short hair and stick-out ears that made her look like a pixie, not to mention her full-circle glasses she was always scared people would pick on her if she made herself know. If she kept her little head down and didn’t say more than was necessary then they wouldn’t notice her as much and she would be fine, she figured. She didn’t like her physique, the bony limbs and big eyes which were magnified by her Harry Potter-style glasses, and she was scared to show people how she really looked in case they thought she was a freak.
“Oh,” Benji said, disappointed. He had wanted to go with her. They were almost the same age. Sweetpea had been his only friend when he was little. She never said much, just used to come and sit next to him at playtime in the schoolyard or help him water his Momma’s plants in the spring. Now that she had finished primary school it was different though. Benji was going into his last year at Criquet Primary come January and Sweetpea was going to a high school off in the big city, four hours drive away, as a weekly boarder. He would miss watching her out on the porch at the crack of dawn every morning gazing at the flowers like they were magic.
Sweetpea smiled and waved drawing him out of his reverie, and with that she was gone, sprinting like a little fox, down to the bus stop. The bus ride into town was when things began to change. Sweetpea settled into a seat next to the window and sat cross-legged reading an old paper someone had left behind.
Three children missing after fire ravages elite summer camp!
Sweetpea blinked hard; disturbed but intrigued by the unusual headline. This was the kind of story that made the city newspapers not the age-old “Criquet Weekly”. She scrolled her eyes further down the page to a picture of a massive building overcome by dark smoke that looked like it had come straight off the set of a gothic horror movie.
No bodies have been found... Immediate evacuation followed the discovery of the blaze and it was thought everyone was fine until roll call started... Three children still missing... Two boys below the age of ten and a girl of eleven... Fire brigade came too late to save the beautiful building... Elite summer camp in our own town of Criquet now reduced to rubble...
Sweetpea skim-read it, her eyes flicking to different points of interest, only registering short phrases before returning to the horrifying photograph of the fire.
“Shocking isn’t it?” someone nearby asked. The voice made Sweetpea jump.
“Sorry to scare you,” the person giggled. Sweetpea lowered the newspaper to find an older girl sitting right next to her, a charming smile on spreading across her pale moon-shaped face.
“It’s OK,” Sweetpea whispered, alarmed that she hadn’t noticed the girl when she sat down.
“Don’t think you’ve gone crazy or that I’m some kind of super-fast moving thing like a vampire or anything,” the girl giggled sweetly.
“I just got on now, at the last stop.”
“Oh, right,” Sweetpea answered, calming her. It was just the article that had made her jumpy. There was nothing wrong with the girl sitting next to her; in fact she seemed very nice.
“My name’s Carrie,” the girl said conversationally, extending an extremely elegant, ladylike hand for a shake.
“Sweetpea Katrina.”
“Long name. Mind if I call you Kat?” she asked kindly as they shook hands.
“Sure. I don’t mind.”
Carrie smiled, tucking a wild strand of bleach-blonde hair behind her delicate ear and revealing a glittery silver stud earring in the shape of a flower.
“So, you’re a local then?” Carrie asked, despite the fact that she could Sweetpea had returned her attention to the article in the newspaper.
“Yeah,” she whispered in timid response without looking up.
“I’m from Riverstone, off to the east. My parents wanted a change of scenery though. As if they hadn’t had enough of that already... Before Riverstone it was the big city, and before that the seaside and now we’re here. I mean really! I wish they’d just settle down, you know, like married couples are supposed to...”
Sweetpea wasn’t sure what to say. Why was the girl talking to her? She was pretty and energetic, wearing a light pink summer dress that made her look like the very spirit of a flower. She could talk to anyone in the whole bus – those deep blue eyes and the silky milk-coloured hair were already getting the attention of every young man around them – but instead of talking to any of the people who wanted her attention, she was talking to the bashful little runt of a girl in dungarees who wanted nothing more than to melt into the uniform grey of the low ceiling.
“I bet your parents are far more considerate of your desire to lead a decent life now, aren’t they?” she continued melodramatically.
“Dunno,” Sweetpea mumbled, sliding further down her seat.
“I bet you don’t always have to go wherever the next big thing is meant to be – watching your parents struggle through the worst kind of mid-life crisis! I mean it’s just plain insane!” Carrie gasped.
“At least you’ve been somewhere. I’ve never left the town,” Sweetpea muttered, lowering the paper to her lap. It seemed pointless to pretend to be reading it when Carrie clearly wouldn’t take the hint.
“Oh, Kat! Believe me, it’s better that way. The damn horror of all this moving,” she gasped theatrically, “it kills.” Sweetpea, or Kat as Carrie called her, nodded pensively. Then the bus stopped. It was her time to get off.
“Going now?” Carrie asked, though the answer was as obvious as the spring rain. Sweetpea nodded nonetheless.
“It was wonderful talking to you, Kat! I do hope I’ll see you around. Hey, maybe I’ll see you at the fete on Thursday, hmm?” she grinned, displaying a row of immaculately straight white teeth. She really was beautiful in every possible way, Sweetpea thought enviously.
“Maybe,” she answered thoughtfully, making her way towards the bus door.
“Seeya, Kat!” Carrie called. Sweetpea nodded and exited the vehicle, walking briskly along the pavement as she contemplated the bizarre occurrence that she and an older and much worldlier girl – one who could easily win the annual Criquet Beauty Pageant – were now friends. She dug her hands deep into her dungarees pockets and set about the shopping practically and efficiently, as she always did. The trip back felt long and uneventful without Carrie beside her, chirping away like a pretty little bird singing for its food. It was past lunchtime when she returned and Papa and Uncle Joe, his old friend from school, had finished all the leftovers from the meal Momma had cooked for the family. Tummy rumbling, Sweetpea sat her wares down on the kitchen table and made her way outside to see if any of the neighbours might offer her some food.
Mr and Mrs Ginger, the neighbours to her left, weren’t in but their troublesome son, Kane, and his best friend Scarlet May were. Scarlet and Kane were in Sweetpea’s class at school; had been since she was very small.
“Hey, Sweetpea!” Scarlet chortled, dusting some leaves off her short blue dress and pushing herself off the ground where she and Kane had been rolling around in the fallen leaves and laughing like maniacs.
“Hi, Scarlet,” Sweetpea answered timorously.
“And what about me!” Kane scoffed, appearing from beneath a pile of leaves and laughing raucously at the startled look on his neighbour’s face.
“Oh, Sweetpea, you’re such a cutie. Get scared so easily!” Scarlet cooed. Sweetpea stiffened. She’d never much liked Scarlet, the vain gossip who told on others who did naughty things but never confessed to the wrongs that she committed. A real teacher’s pet and insufferably clever and attractive too. Kane wasn’t so bad, just a real extroverted daredevil is all. He never meant anyone any real harm, and though cheeky he always came through and apologised. His one real flaw was her... Scarlet! How anyone could stand that know-it-all little princess with her long jet-black hair and belittling attitude made the leas bit of sense.
“Just got in from town,” she muttered eyes downcast.
“Oh, yeah? And, what? You’re hungry, eh, little scavenger? Momma left you no food ‘cause your Papa spent all his money on his favourite beer? Is that it?” Scarlet sniggered.
“Should’ve tried your lover-boy Benji down that side first, don’t you think, Midget? Before you came here sniffling like a sorry little piglet.”
“Scarlet!” Kane gasped. Tears started welling up in Sweetpea’s eyes. She knew that Scarlet was bad but she’d never seen her this awful before. Suddenly she felt like she’d rather go hungry than be around them any longer. With that, Sweetpea turned tail and ran.
“Sweetpea!” Kane called.
“Come back! We’re sorry! Really sorry, Sweetpea! Scarlet didn’t mean a thing...”
Too late, she was already on her way, tears and all, and she didn’t have the nerve to face them again... Not for a long, long time.
Surprisingly, the rest of the day was fine. Over a good lunch of roast beef and salad with the Mr Fig’s widow, Ms Natalie down at the bottom of the street, Sweetpea told her all about her encounter with Scarlet May.
“Haughty little bitch that one. Scum just like her low-life mother. Came from the city, you know, and not a penny to her name ‘till she got married to our Mr May, all right. Biggest mistake of his life!” Ms Natalie assured her knowingly through a mouthful of beef.
“She’s just jealous of you, Sweetpea. Don’t let it get to you,” she added a few glasses of wine later.
“Jealous? Jealous of what?” Sweetpea asked ponderously.
Of what exactly it was that Scarlet was jealous, Sweetpea never found out because at that point Ms Natalie fell into a drunken sleep.
The next few days were not terribly eventful. The highlight of each day was the trip to town which Sweetpea set out for after breakfast, and talking to Carrie on the bus. Carrie was fifteen, an only child and an ardent lover of drama. She wanted to be an actress when she left school, and not in just the silly little stuff like local soapies or sitcoms – the real-deal film star like Angelina Jolie or Nicole Kidman. “Kat” had to admit that she sure had the looks. What with her full, naturally red lips and long eyelashes, she could imagine the cinematographer loving his close-ups on Carrie. Kat wasn’t afraid to talk to her any more. Sure she didn’t talk as much as Carrie but that was fairly hard to do. Carrie wasn’t judgmental and, unlike Kat’s mother, thought that her tom-boyish haircut and clothes were cute and fresh. She reckoned her glasses made her look super-smart and that one day some incredible idea would spring up behind them and make Kat seriously rich and famous and then she’d be meeting super star Carrie in her own limo at some fancy restaurant for afternoon tea. It was fun inventing these kinds of futures with the fifteen-year-old and the end of every bus trip left Sweetpea yearning for the next. The two always ensured that they ran all their parents’ town errands just so that they could get the chance to meet again on the bus.
The big event was that Thursday – the Criquet Summer Fete and, though not as publicly advertised as the great market day –come party, Sweetpea Katrina Red’s thirteenth birthday. The Criquet Summer fete took place on the first Thursday of every summer holiday, a celebration of warmth, beauty and the end of a well-spent year. Sweetpea’s birthday was not nearly as exciting as the prospect of the fete.
It started off on a nightmarish note. Sweetpea awoke to the sound of tuneless singing and screamed when she discovered that her room had been invaded by various neighbours and relatives and a big cream-coated cake while she lay in bed embarrassingly topless (for she had gotten hot in the middle of the night) and exposed.
“It’s no worry really, honey,” Ms Natalie assured her after her tear-stained outcry and complaints about invasion of privacy.
“Your chest’s as flat as a stretcher any how. Nothing for people to see there.”
Sweetpea’s face flushed to the shade of a beetroot, but whether this was out of shame or anger it was hard for even her to tell. The cake was very dry, apart from the souring cream and the mixture of melted birthday candles. All the people who had been singing to her were crowded around the kitchen table when she came down in the atrocious canary-yellow sundress Momma had bought her as a present and insisted that she wore, along with the matching gloves Papa had bought even though it was already 25 degrees and not yet ten o’clock. Unfortunately the dress made her legs look even more stick-like than usual and the strong smelling gel that her elder sister Clara had smothered in her hair made her look like a nine-year-old boy stuck in his sister’s dress. Breakfast was an uncomfortable nibbling of toast in front of what felt like thousands of curious guests, including a sniggering Scarlet May all dolled up and prissy as ever. The coffee was too weak but Momma gave her the stern eye when she was about to spit it out – the look that told her what was ladylike and what was not. After answering everyone’s questions about her scholarship to the high school in the city and her hopes for the new year, Sweetpea excused herself and bolted upstairs and into the shower for what would have been the longest and most tranquil shower of the year had the electricity not gone off in the middle and the rose spurted her with sudden Arctic coldness. Swearing angrily under her breath, Sweetpea clambered onto the bathroom floor and hauled a towel over her gaunt body, shivering. Once she was dry and dressed in her favourite T-shirt, a pair of smart black jeans and her oversized takkies, she felt a lot better. Clearing the memories of the early morning from her mind as she wiped her face with a cloth and brushed her teeth, then combed all traces of the horrible gel out of her hair, Sweetpea wondered what lay next.
Sadly, the day didn’t improve just yet. It turned out that her big surprise birthday present was a set of cheap dental braces that looked like rusty chicken wire and cut her gums painfully.
“Don’t you ever say we didn’t give you the best,” her mother beamed.
“You’ll have the finest teeth in the whole of Criquet when these are off!”
“And when will that be?” she moaned quietly, eyeing her humiliating reflection in the mirror with dismay.
“Oh, two or maybe three years,” her father answered as if two or maybe three years was quicker than the snap of his fingers. Sweetpea felt like screaming, but she smiled and thanked her parents instead.
“Oh, my, God! What did they do to you, Kat?! That is cruelty!” Carrie gasped.
“Tell me about it,” Sweetpea puffed. They were sitting at a little coffee shop in town. Carrie had said it was her treat seeing as it was her friend’s special day.
“Some special day this has turned out to be.”
“Hey, I’m sorry Kat... Look here now. I got you something special,” Carrie smiled, pulling a small cardboard box out of her hand bag.
“Oh, Carrie. You didn’t need to get me anything!” Kat gasped.
“Oh please! I know you’ll like it a helluva lot better than those damn wires in your mouth,” Carrie grinned, placing the box in her friend’s hands tentatively.
“Happy birthday, Kat.” Sweetpea smiled and removed the box’s lid slowly. Inside was a sterling silver chain with a tulip pendant hanging from it.
“Wow,” she breathed.
“Carrie this must have cost...”
“Oh, shut your damn trap about the cost, Kat! It’s not polite,” Carrie smiled teasingly.
“Thank you so much! It’s beautiful...”
“Here,” Carrie said, “let me put it on for you.” She tightened the clasp of the chain at the back of Sweetpea’s neck and beamed.
“It looks lovely on you.” Kat grinned and thanked Carrie once again. The older girl swatted the air with her elegant hand and said it was no trouble, then leaned forward to finish off her coffee.
The fete was fantastic! Every family was there, either running a stall or browsing and buying, and there were jugglers and fire-eaters and dancers. There was a live band and people walking around with candyfloss and toffee apples for sale at “bargain prices”. There was something so exotic and energising about the fete and Kat and Carrie couldn’t wait to see everything! Benji gave them complementary flowers, picked from Momma Kaitlin’s garden and told them all about the handcrafted puzzles and toys at the Joys’ stall, Kane marched up to them to advertise his stall but lost his nerve when he saw Carrie up close, blushed and mumbled something about her looking very quickly before quickly turning tail. After a few hours of roaming around, the two girls went to Mrs May’s ice-cream stall for soft-serves.
“You haven’t seen Scarlet have you, Sweetpea?” Mrs May asked, a concerned look plaguing her young-looking face.
“No, Mrs May. Sorry. Why?”
“Oh, nothing. I’m sure she’s just fine. Haven’t seen her since the morning is all... And she did promise to help me with the stall.”
“Maybe she forgot,” Carrie suggested. Mrs May shrugged.
That evening when the fireworks went off, Scarlet was still missing. People were looking every where – at the fete, near the fete, at home, at the school... Everywhere.
“I don’t like this,” Sweetpea said eventually.
“Little rat isn’t she?” Carrie grumbled.
“Yeah, but even so... Nobody goes missing round here – nobody! This isn’t good.”
“What about those kids from the paper?” Carrie queried. Kat gulped, not wanting to think about the possibilities of what might have happened to Scarlet May.
“Come on, Kat,” Carrie said, “I know what we can do.” With that she extended her hand, waited for Kat to grasp it and then tugged her along to the police department. A young man was sitting on a low-down arm chair, waiting. He looked about seventeen or eighteen, cleanly shaven and handsome, with long muscular arms which were dark from his time in the sun.
“He-llo-o, gorgeous,” he murmured as Carrie walked in with the scrawny bug-eyed girl in tow. Carrie’s smile was like treacle and her voice as soft as silk, as she sat graciously down beside him and swept Kat up onto the chair on the other side of her as if she was weightless.
“Hi there.”
The young man grinned.
“Here about your little sister?” he asked, nodding in Sweetpea’s direction.
“I was actually wondering why you were here?” Carrie cooed.
“Uh... A few friends of mine ‘ave been fishin’ down by the lake. You know, other side of town...”
“Oh?” she raised a skinny bleach-blonde eyebrow histrionically.
“Yeah, and they keep seein’ blood comin’ up in the water and it’s no fish’s blood either... Then yesterday, my pal Cormac found a severed hand just floatin’ in the lake. He found a ring on it,” the man said, pulling a Ziplock packet containing a white gold wedding ring embedded with fine crystals in it out of his trouser pocket.
“Whoa. That’s a beauty,” Carrie exclaimed. Kat leaned over her so as to see.
“What’re you here for?” the man asked as he replaced the packet in his pants pocket.
“There’s a girl missing,” Carrie whispered conspiratorially.
“Another one?” the man gasped.
“What do you mean another one?” Sweetpea exclaimed.
“All week there’ve been missin’ people – Henry and Martha and Kenny down south of Criquet and about five or six people north of Criquet – not to mention those three kids from the summer camp,” the man whispered, his eyes wide and glassy with shock.
“And you said nothing happens round here,” Carrie whispered fiercely in Kat’s ear.
That night, Sweetpea got into bed feeling all sweaty but not because of the heat. She dreamed of the lake that she used to go skating on in the winter... In her dream the water was as red as tomato sauce and the fish jumping out of the water turned to severed human hands which crawled along the bank towards her, clawing at her feet.
She woke with a jolt, hair damp and plastered to her head with perspiration, tears slowly seeping from her big brown eyes. Sweetpea felt for her glasses on the bedside table and pulled them on shakily. The clock on her wall told her it was just after six, and yet she could hear sounds outside her window. The thirteen-year-old rolled up the blinds and peeked through the open window. People were walking around outside, fully dressed and businesslike, with flasks of coffee and walky-talkies. Quickly, she backed away from the window and headed for the bathroom, had a quick shower and brushed her teeth. She pulled on some pants and a loose grey T-shirt before clambering into her usual denim dungarees, sports socks and oversized takkies. Downstairs, her parents’ bedroom was empty, the bed already made and the curtains opened. A mug of freshly brewed, still steaming coffee sat next to a plate of toast with tinned tuna spread on it on the kitchen table. There was also a note which read:
Out looking for Scarlet. Will be back with lunch. Don’t go wandering around. Stay put. We don’t want you missing too. Love Momma and Papa
Sweetpea sat down to eat her solitary breakfast and drank the coffee slowly and thoughtfully. She fiddled with the tulip on the chain around her neck and was reminded of the stunning flowers in Momma Kaitlin Joy’s garden.
Missing people, severed hands and bloody lakes... She scowled at her uselessness. She was supposed to be a good, futile little girl and sit around and wait for the others to find something, but they hadn’t been at the police station yesterday. The policemen said they were too busy already and the only one besides Sweetpea who had taken the young man seriously was Carrie, who, it had to be said, might just have said that because the pair had been flirting outrageously throughout the entire trip. Kat slammed her fist against the table in frustration.
The day went by slowly. By lunchtime, her parents had still not returned and Sweetpea had been so bored that she had eaten the entire remains of their tinned tuna. Sunset came and went and still nobody in the house besides a scraggy thirteen-year-old girl who sat toying with the tulip pendant she wore around her sun-kissed neck. By nine o’clock, Sweetpea was feeling very scared. She rang both her parents’ cell phones from the landline again but neither one picked up.
“Right. That’s it,” she told herself, carefully sliding the tulip necklace underneath her T-shirt.
“Time to find out what’s happening.”
Kat had never been out so late by herself. The street was eerily quiet. Most houses had already switched their lights off and the sign posts were blotted out by shadow. She walked all the way down to the lake, feeling her way like a blind girl. The lake was illuminated by the light of the bright full moon, making everything seem even spookier than on a normal night. Suddenly there was the sound of voices. Sweetpea ducked down into the reeds on the bank of the lake just in time to see two dark silhouettes drawing near. She cowered helplessly among the damp reads, watching the two looming figures out of the corner of her eye.
“I told you, woman. You want money? Then you have to win the competition. You win the competition, you get money,” a gruff voice said cuttingly.
“But I don’t want money,” a woman’s voice said stoically. The man laughed.
“ No, but I do. And you want to be safe, don’t you?”
“Yes, but it’s not really the money you are after is it?” the woman said daringly.
“You want safety, lady. I’ll give you that if you give me money. My boss wants money from me so that he can rule this little place you call a town. If I give him that money, I will become second in charge – live the high life. Got it?” the man barked.
“Isn’t there another way?” the woman asked, as the silhouette on the right hand side trembled like a flower in the wind.
“Afraid not, pretty,” the man chuckled and then it looked as though the one silhouette had devoured the other, both were moving so quickly and there were the sounds of a struggle coming closer and closer towards Sweetpea. Then she saw feet, close enough for her to touch if she stretched out her hand – four feet: two in thick sun-weathered boots and two in fancy red high heels. Suddenly there were screams – high pitched and terrifying – and Sweetpea saw first blood and then a heavy metal blade bleeding more of the same wine-coloured substance clatter to the ground. She heard the body fall and saw the woman’s torso – a plain white dress torn to reveal a great stab wound gushing out thick red blood all over the soil. Sweetpea wanted to look away but found that she couldn’t. She felt the urge to retch but fought it, desperate to stay hidden. She could hear the woman’s gasping breaths and final rasping pleas as the weathered boots dragged her by the hem of her dress, into the reeds not far from Sweetpea. She didn’t have to turn around to know what the heavy splosh in the lake meant. The boots returned from the water and a large, finely wrinkled hand retrieved the blade from its position in the low grass. The lake was still behind Kat. When she was sure that the man had left, the girl slowly crawled to the edge of the lake. The woman’s body was long gone but the blood was not. It was slowly being dispersed into the water. Sweetpea felt faint and then, all of a sudden, she was leaning over the edge and regurgitating all the tinned tuna she had eaten into the murky lake water.
Sweetpea sat and watched the vomit sink into the wretched lake, tears streaming down her round little face. There was a slurping sound coming from the other side of the lake, kind of like a rude little kid drinking his Coke to quickly... The girl crept slowly towards it, curious. On the other side of the lake was nothing other than grass and no one to be seen anywhere. She crouched down and wondered about the noise. Was she starting to hear things now? Then, suddenly there it was again. The slurping sound seemed to coming from right underneath her. Nervously Sweetpea shuffled backwards, eyes trained on her feet. The soles of her takkies were sticky with some kind of gunk. It smelled really awful. She bent down to get a closer look and almost puked all over again. There was some kind of filter system that had become overgrown with moss. Water from the lake was being pumped through a clear ivy-coated tube and spurted out into a drain with a sickening slurping noise – a drain that was big enough to hold a woman’s corpse. It was the drain which Sweetpea had been standing on.
Sweetpea ran home to find a big bowl of spaghetti and an apology note from her parents saying that they had had their phones on silent the whole time and that traffic on the way to the big city police department was hell. The youngest Red child loved pasta, normally, but right then she couldn’t eat a thing. She ran straight to her parents’ bedroom to tell them everything but stopped just outside the door, thinking. How could she explain what she’d seen, why she’d been there in the first place? Would anyone believe her? Sweetpea lowered her hand from the doorknob and decided to sleep on it. Maybe in the morning things would be clearer.
Kat dreamed she was a mermaid swimming through a tunnel of murky water with blood dripping from the walls. She woke up panting and crying and screamed when she discovered that not everything had been a dream. There was blood on her bed sheets. Had the man seen her? Had he come after her and stabbed her? Was he still there? Was she going to die?
“Sweetpea Katrina, what the hell is going on?!” Momma fumed, rushing into the room in her dressing gown and slippers.
“I – Last – you... blood -” Sweetpea gasped, trying to figure out what to say.
“Oh, stop your fussing, Sweetpea. I know it’s new and all but you’ve heard of it, haven’t you?” her mother hushed her, taking a good look at the bloodied bed sheets.
“Got some stuff for it in the bathroom. Vanity cupboard, mind, right hand side.”
“What?” Sweetpea spat.
“Really, you’ll get used to it. A few days a month is all. Right curse but don’t mind it,” Momma said smilingly. Something clicked. Sweetpea was safe. Her mother had no idea why she was so panicky and there was no man and no sharp blade in the room.
“You – you mean I have my period?” she mumbled. Her mother nodded and instructed her never to bring it up again and always to restock on the necessary supplies when she went shopping and not to wait for her mother to do so. Sweetpea nodded slowly and made her way to the bathroom.
That day, Mrs May was reported missing. Sweetpea thought it looked as though the woman’s front yard was already in mourning. The heat had the daisies wilting and the roses had lost most of their petals already. She told Carrie all about the previous night on the way to and from town. The two agreed to go to the lake that night and find out what was really going on, and get some proof for the police.
Kat was all ready, heart thumping beneath her thin black T-shirt and legs trembling in her black cargos. This was it. Carrie knocked on the window at nine, as planned, suitably dressed in a black jumpsuit and rubber-soled shoes. The two snuck out and headed for the lake with the stealth of hunting leopards. Sweetpea showed Carrie the drain on the far side of the lake.
“Only one thing for it,” Carrie whispered, producing a small screw driver from her pocket.
“You can’t be serious,” Sweetpea whispered nervously.
“How else are we going to find out what’s been going on, Kat?” Carrie replied as she began unscrewing the screws holding the filtering lid over the underground waterworks. Once it was done, she removed the lid and peered down.
“God, it reeks!” she hissed quietly. Then, pinching her nose, the blonde-haired fifteen-year-old dropped down into the tunnel below.
“Carrie?” Kat called, sticking her head down the hole and craning her neck to see her friend, blanching from the thought of what they were doing.
“I’m here, Kat,” was the response, though Sweetpea couldn’t see where it came from. After a sharp intake of breath, the scrawny girl plummeted down into the tunnel. She landed with an awkward clatter on hard concrete covered with murky lake water. The smell reminded her of a sewer and abattoir combined. There was very little light in the tunnel and not much space between her head and its roof. The only sounds were the sloshing of water as it channelled downwards before her and swirled around her feet, as well as the soft pitter-patter of her takkies as she waded downhill deeper and deeper into the stream of toxic lake water. There was no sign of Carrie any where and it was too frightening to call out, as everything seemed to echo and the light was getting dimmer and dimmer the further she went.
The night wore on. Hour after hour past walking in the watery tunnels. Luckily the water never reached higher than Kat’s waist because it was tiring enough wading through that much of it. It started draining out eventually. Kat walked on sleepily, heart still hammering beneath her now infamously flat chest where the pendant of the tulip stayed all the while. She felt the water levels lower and after about another twenty minutes the water was nothing more than a trickle running through a grate just like the one that had been covering the opening above ground. Sweetpea looked around for Carrie but there was still no sign of her and it appeared to be a dead end. Maybe she had unscrewed the grate and then swung it closed after dropping through? Sweetpea squatted beside the grate to check. Sure enough two of the screws were missing. With a small smile of relief, she pushed the lid aside and jumped through the hole. This time she landed in a room that smelled strongly of flowers. The smell was so intense... And the air so hot... Everything blurred as her glasses slipped to the floor with a clatter... Then her body fell too and everything went black.
Sweetpea awoke sweating and shirtless, as seemed to happy every day this summer. The nights were too hot, she thought miserably. She couldn’t afford another episode of people barging in when she was topless. Her hands scratched around the bed – no, the floor – for her shirt. Had she fallen out of bed too? No shirt anywhere near... Something dropped on her bare back; a liquid that was kind of warm. It dripped again and again. A leak from the pipes? Seriously? What was going on? Sweetpea opened her eyes meekly. Everything was blurred. She fiddled till she found her glasses and them pressed them onto the bridge of her nose. The floor was concrete, not wooden like her bedroom floor, and the drops of liquid on her back were red. Some were already dry, she realised as she fingered her back gingerly; congealed blood. What was scarier than even that realisation though was that the blood was not hers. It was someone else’s and it was dripping through the floor boards of the room above her. Where was she? Sweetpea extended her arm slowly trying to see if maybe she’d fallen asleep in her cargos or dungarees and not her pyjamas – maybe then she fell asleep with her cell phone in her pocket. She could call somebody if she was in trouble... But she hadn’t fallen asleep in her cargos, or at least if she had she wasn’t wearing them now. Instead of pants, there were vines – live vines – creeping around her calves and slowly making their way up to her thighs, growing around her! Their leaves and thorns scratched her skin as the vines tightened. Sweetpea tried to sit up but found she couldn’t. The vines held her legs too tightly.
“Poor girl,” a familiar voice said with a chuckle. It was the man from the lake. She knew it even before she saw his tattered boots enter the room. The voice had haunted her every thought since that night.
“Thought you and your friend could help out? Well, it’s too late now! May’s flowers were weak, but we’ve discovered the place with real potential – your lovely neighbours! Mrs Joy sure does love her flowers and she does everything she possibly can for them. Pity her water supply is rather testy now...”
“You’re killing the flowers?” Sweetpea gasped in confusion.
“Killing the flowers?” the man laughed and snorted like a pig.
“Heavens! What a monster I am, killing flowers... No, pet.”
The boots came closer as he continued, “I’m not killing the flowers. People are giving their lives especially so that the flowers win every competition around. They’ll have your life too as soon as my vines have had their fun.”
“I don’t understand,” she groaned, writhing on the floor as the vines crept up her legs.
“The flowers are being given new life. They will live forever and grow huge. The water system’s infected with a lot more than just May’s blood, you know. My special concoction’s there too... Soon the entire town will be poisoned. Then they will bow to the only man with the cure _”
Here he stepped dramatically out before her so that Sweetpea could see his whole muscular body.
“Me.”
It was the handsome young man who had been flirting with Carrie at the police station. Sweetpea couldn’t stifle a gasp of shock.
“Where’s Carrie?” she shuddered as the vines entangled themselves more tightly about her, now all the way up to her belly button.
“Why Carrie. She’s helping me,” he grinned. Sweetpea’s face fell. No!
“You liar!” she growled. The man laughed but was cut short by an arrow which came soaring out of the air and plunged deep into his heart, killing him. He fell with a thud to the ground.
“Kat!” Carrie yelled, racing towards her. She too was covered in vines but was managing to fight them, tearing apart the wall as they tried to hold her back.
“Carrie!” Kat screamed.
“He wanted me to be the spirit of the garden,” Carrie gasped as she pulled a blade from the dead man’s pocket and began to cut Kat free.
“How did you get the bow and arrow?” Kat asked.
“Long story... Bottom line is you have to leave me and get Scarlet and the others... Bottom level... Cut them free... Alert the police about the water and... run,” she choked. The vines had crawled up her neck.
“Carrie!” Sweetpea shrieked, but the girl had been strangled beyond recovery. Then the vines returned to wherever they had come from and Carrie’s body disappeared with them. Through tears, Sweetpea followed her friend’s instructions. She found all the missing people, most of whom were already dead. Three were still all right though, including Scarlet. She freed them and they ran and ran until they reached a door that led outside. The four children ran until they were home.
The summer holidays lost their happiness after the truth about the man and his water scheme arose. No one knew how to fix the damage that the water had already done. The only good thing was that Momma Kaitlin’s flowers had yet to wilt. School started and Sweetpea sat next to Scarlet on the bus, neither one saying a word on their way to their new weekly home. Scarlet was very grateful to Sweetpea and was always polite and helpful, but there was still the thought of the old Scarlet and Sweetpea – the nasty bully and the timid victim – hanging un-mentioned between them. There were a lot of thanks and courtesy but no apology. Scarlet was sincere in her ways now but she there was something holding her back, something that made her stop every time she thought of saying that she was sorry. Neither girl knew what it was that held Scarlet back but both knew that until she admitted to the wrongs of her old ways, they could not be true friends.
The roses and daffodils and daisies had all faded and died but the tulips in Momma Kaitlin’s garden were as alive and big and beautiful as ever. Sweetpea would gaze at them every day that she was at home and think of Carrie, and cry. She thought of the first time they met. The girl was so wonderful and exquisite she had thought her the very spirit of a flower – and now that’s exactly what she was. The thirteen-year-old insisted upon everyone calling her Kat. She was Sweetpea no more. She wore the tulip pendant every day beneath her scratchy school shirt, and always she thought of Carrie.
“You suppose high school will be difficult?” Scarlet asked gently on their way there the first day.
“No,” Kat answered certainly. She fingered the tulip around her neck pensively. Carrie was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her. Before she’d only had the flowers to look to. Now, when she looked at the flowers she was looking at Carrie. After everything that the holidays had brought, how bad could high school possibly be?
Near the end of summer, when the sun was getting weary of the day, the tulips would sway before Benji’s eyes and he’d think of Kat. Her tulips immortal were before him - the last remaining memory of the bravery of a shy and scrawny little girl who was now on her way to high school. He thought of her and her chicken wire braces and round glasses and how timid she had been before the tulip girl came. He looked back at the tulips immortal and smiled. They had made her see her beauty and now Kat wasn’t scared any more. She wasn’t shy any more. It was wonderful... But she wasn’t there any more. Kat was at school. Only the tulips had stayed behind with Benji. He was never worthy of the girl, he thought sadly. The tulips seemed to smile at him. Perhaps Carrie would have cared for him too. She gave him comfort every day in the garden even though she was dead. Or was she dead? Benji looked again at the note the man had left him. He had found it the day that Kat left for school, early in the morning, next to his pillow. It read:
“I leave you my tulips immortal with the soul of a beautiful maid at the core.”
Whether the beautiful maid was dead or alive was not specified. Benji sighed and walked over to the secret grate in the ground behind the flower beds. Papa Joy had made it when he was a just a boy. No one knew about it except Benji, and he couldn’t help noticing that it looked a lot like the one that Kat had found. Since he figured he had nothing better to do and probably wouldn’t be missed – although it would be a brilliant feeling to hear Kat calling out for him – Benji unscrewed the cover of the tunnel – or was it just a ditch? – and took one more look at his mother’s beautiful tulips before plummeting down into the darkness. It was time to find the tulips’ soul.
(8062 Words)
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