Leona Charles : Regrets

Well, Followers, I've never been one for regrets. In fact, it was Mum who told me that there are no regrets, only lessons. Yet, here I am, on a Sunday morning, alone in this little flat that seemed so amazing just a month ago. I was sure that Mum had wanted me to come here, to finish her work. But now, as I look down at the paperwork spread out over the table, the handwritten notes, the newspaper articles, the old photos, it seems so clear that she'd never have let that happen. If Mum were alive, she'd have told me that nothing was worth this trip. Why did it not occur to me, that in all the years she has been working on her book, she herself has never paid the town a visit? After all, she wouldn't have moved away to write it without good reason. Stuck here with a six month lease, I'm not exactly in a position to move away. The move itself practically drained my bank account. Why didn't I think it through more? I think of how easily I walked away from the old house. Our house. And I told myself that Mum would be proud.

I made it out to Glasgow to visit Freya yesterday. I wonder if I should make that trip more often, remembering the world outside of Silent Falls. Even years after Victor and Annabella, there are still so many people here who have never experienced life outside. Perhaps they don't even realise how unlucky they are, maybe they think that everywhere is like this. It feels so good getting off the train and stepping into a town where people talk freely, where no one looks at me as an outsider.

Freya met me at the train station and drove me out to her flat. Holly had warned me not to take this research too seriously. I hadn't dared to tell her about the weird experience on the train. She'd have never let me live it down.

Freya and John live in a Victorian house that's been converted into flats. She guided me up to their flat on the first floor and let me in. I was glad that we'd agreed to meet there rather than at mine. I thought of my little flat, with only the most basic possessions and the only personal items were the couple of photos I'd sat on a shelf.

This flat was so full of life. The spacious living room was painted red and black, with bright red leather sofas seated around a glass coffee table. A black marble fire place sat in the centre of the room, with elegant designs around the edges. Above this, there hung a large canvas, showing the happy couple on their wedding day, John wearing his suit and Freya in her flowing white dress, her long hair in ringlets down her back.

This was a home, I realised, dreading the idea of having come back here in a few hours time.

Freya laid out her research on the dining table, as we drank hot tea and ate digestive biscuits. I looked at the internet printouts, retelling the stories of Victor and Annabella.

“It was quite hard to find this,” she explained, laying out three different versions of the story. One, I noticed, had some vague illustrations, showing Annabella waving off her seven children as Victor drove the car out of Silent Falls. Another had a blurry black and white photo, showing pregnant Annabella, wearing a long white dress, her long black hair flowing over her face in the wind. A smaller version of herself stood beside her, holding her hand. I looked at the photo, disappointed that I couldn't see her face. I placed a finger on her bump, hoping to get some sort of picture in my mind. There was nothing, of course.

“I managed to find one in a history book, that I'd stumbled across in a second hand shop,” Freya continued to explain, placing her fingertips on the version with no pictures. “The others, were actually given to me by a lecturer. No idea where they came from really.”

“Are they all the same?” I asked, still looking at the photo of Annabella, as if I expected her to move.

“Just about,” Freya said, placing a hand on my version. “In this one, Annabella's oldest daughter, Abigail refuses to go to the hospital. She doesn't trust Victor and begs Annabella not to let him take her brothers and sisters. When her mother dies, it is said that Abigail inherits her power, and continues to cast cruel spells on the residents.”

My eyes were drawn to the little girl in the photo. She was so small, I wondered if she was the oldest.

“In this one,” Freya went on, looking at the last version. “It is believed that Victor has in fact killed all of Annabella's children. There are no real dates for this, it ranges from 1920s to the 50s, so it's hard to judge how much you can base on this curse. And so many things are never really reported outwith the town.”

She started to lay out some more printouts, some news articles from the early sixties. “We can't be sure if this was just the point where outsiders started to acknowledge Silent Falls. It's like no one ever knew that the town existed. These are some of the earliest incidents that we know happened.”

These were definitely older than any of the articles I had got from Mum's research. I looked at the headlines. BOY, AGED 4, KIDNAPPED FROM HOME. FAMILY OF SIX MISSING. MASS TEEN SUICIDES. I pulled the first article towards me, and began to read through the piece, talking about the four year old who was put to bed at 7pm as normal. When his mother checked him at 10pm he was fast asleep, but when she checked in the morning, he was gone.

The photo at the bottom of the page was blurry and faded, but I could make out the image of the little boy, his eyes staring right at me. It was Oliver Joseph.

“This doesn't make sense,” I said, looking down at the photo. The date on the article was 1963. There was no doubting him. “I knew this boy. I taught him, before he moved.”

I thought about Oliver and how tiny he was, how neglected he looked. I remembered those dreams where he appeared at my bedside. The little boy snatched from his bed.

“Well that seems to happen a lot there,” Freya said, expressing no surprise. She pulled out more articles, some showing the same photo of Oliver. “These are sightings, even dreams. Some people say that he is in fact dead and he is appearing to people in dreams to tell them what happened. The first sighting is 1970, eight years later.” Freya pushed the article towards me, and I skimmed the story of Oliver fighting with children in a playground, unsupervised, and looking exactly as he did at four years old. “There are similar cases, with other children.” Articles were spread over the table, showing a range of children, boys and girls, all different ages. One was about a six month old baby, snatched from her cot, exactly the same as Oliver. The oldest was a fourteen year old girl in 1985.

“There are theories about cults, that steal children, and that they are supporters of Annabella, scaring the town into believing that her curse is still strong.” Freya handed me a bulging hardback notebook. As I skimmed through the pages, I saw scribbled notes on different theories, different books. “Some of these theories are my own,” she said. “But they're all backed up. There's a few books that will help. I've wrote down where you can get them from.”

I looked at the research in front of me, all of the work that was put into this. It was so much bigger than any other dissertation I'd ever seen.

“What made you study this?” I asked. “I'd never even heard of the town until my mum died.”

Freya sighed, and placed another article in front of me. POLICE MAN MURDERED AS HE RETURNS LOST CHILD HOME. I looked at the photo of the man there, in his police uniform, with a broad smile. This article was more recent. 2010.

“My dad,” she said. “He was out on duty, with a colleague and they stumbled across a little girl, eight years old, lost. She knew her address, and it was Silent Falls. She was pretty upset, said her mum would be angry at her for straying so far from home. And she was miles away. So they returned her home, and that was fine. But then they never came back. People went out to look for them and found them in a car wreck. My dad's throat had been slit. His colleague had been beaten pretty bad, and he was unconscious. He went to hospital, but they had to turn off his life support.”

Freya's eyes were fixed on the photo. I noticed a tear sliding down her cheek, and wondered how odd she'd find it if I gave her a hug.

“Did they find the killer?” I asked.

Freya shook her head. “But it was like they didn't even try. There were no appeals for witnesses. They checked in with the family of the little girl, who said they'd left there safely, and there wasn't any reason to doubt that, as they'd been found a good bit away from there anyway. I kept asking Mum to push them to try harder. I mean, he was one of their own. It was like everyone was scared to find anything out. And I started to hear whispers about Silent Falls, about the weird murders there, and how everyone there should just be left alone. So, I started my research.”

She gestured towards the paperwork all over the table.

“I'm so sorry about your dad,” I said quietly. “It must have been so frustrating.”

Freya nodded. “I don't mind if you want to take any of this stuff away with you, Leona. Just be careful where you go looking for answers, and maybe who you tell about your research.”

“Thank you.” She gathered up the paperwork, placing it back into a ring binder, into categories.

“Why didn't you ever try to have this stuff published?” I asked her. “It's really impressive.”

“I planned to,” she said. “I was so determined that it was just a town full of bad people, who covered each others' backs. And I wanted to expose them. But the more I found out, the less sense anything seemed to make.” I caught the photo of Oliver looking at me as she placed that article into the folder. “Dad's friend, Colin – a police man – told me I shouldn't be researching it, but I didn't listen. I was planning to go there, just to take some photos and get a feel for the place. But all of the trains were cancelled that day. Then I had a dream about Dad. I know it's just a dream, but it felt so real. He told me to stay away if I wanted to stay alive. He said some things should stay buried.” She closed over her folder with a shrug. “I handed it in. I got a First. And that was it. I was scared to take it further.”

She opened her notebook open at a page titled “Writers.” I looked down the short list. “All of these writers are dead. It's dangerous.”

My bag was heavy on the train home, and I held it close to me. There were a few other passengers on the train. No one talked, just as expected. But I felt them looking at me, perhaps because I was still an outsider here. I tried not to act suspicious as I stepped off the train, walking home as quickly as I could, desperate to get the research behind a locked door.

As I stepped into the building, I hesitated at Geraldine's door, wondering if she would help me. After all, she'd helped Mum before. But I didn't dare stop and knock. Freya had told me to be careful who I spoke to.

While I boiled a little pot of pasta, feeling more alone than ever in the flat, I powered up my laptop and sat with Freya's notebook beside me, open at the list of writers. The first was H. Bothwell, the writer of the story of Annabella and Victor. I put his name into Google, and eventually found his Wikipedia page. He had not published a lot, just a few more stories from towns I'd never heard of. He'd died in a car crash in 1980, aged just 36.

I looked over the next few names. One writer had committed suicide, another had drowned after falling into a canal. I took a break from the reading while I ate my dinner, playing the TV just so that I didn't feel too alone.

When I returned to the computer, I noticed an extra name added to the list that hadn't been there before. Abigail Charles.