Lost in the Echo Read online

  “Always.” Jake looked like he’d say something else; he’d looked like he’d been on the verge of saying something else for the past six months, but Will fell back into the security of a safe distance, giving just a quiet thanks, this time adding a promise to pick something up for Jake for all of his troubles. “You know where I am if there’s any, y’know, problems. I slipped a note in at yours with the details.”

  “Yeah,” said Jake, avoiding any eye contact now. “How’s Ryan?”

  “Ryan’s okay. If he comes over, let him have the key so he can stay at mine.”

  “Okay. And Elliot?”

  Will’s brow darkened and he refused to look at the house just a few doors down from his, the For Sale sign pounded into the front lawn. “Elliot’s…” He didn’t finish. He couldn’t, not today.

  Giving a frown, Jake glanced back towards Will’s cottage. “Listen, you take care, okay?”

  Will nodded. Dorset offered a whole week of running; no motorbikes, no houses that should have been homes, and no sweet men from a few doors down wanting a little more than just friendship. All Will needed now was to disappear into the background, maybe be forgotten, become lost in the echo of a wild heath and harbour, albeit one Elliot had grown up in, too, and made Will’s life a misery.

  Already feeling the promise of another summer’s day, Will made a point of pulling up outside the local corner shop for some essentials: energy drinks, bread, milk, ham, mustard— a pack of Turkish Delight bars. Some vices he couldn’t— wouldn’t leave behind. But in between the carrier bags, he didn’t realise he’d picked up two deep-red, cinnamon-scented candles until it came to packing them in the boot of his Rover.

  A gentle touch ran over the thin film covering one of the candles, and Will rested his head against the boot lid. He’d almost forgotten… How the hell could he have almost forgotten? Will glanced around. There was one last stop to make.

  The caretaker of the crematorium insisted on taking him up to a plot Will now knew how to find in the dark. Will waited for the man to move off, watching him duck and dive from headstone to headstone, coming up with the odd handful of weed or dead flower. A gentle breeze carried a flurry of blossom petals and a rich rose scent, and Will sighed deeply. The view from up here was stunning: one of the highest hills looking out over fresh fields to the left. But it was the view to the right that always caught Will’s attention. The dirt track was already busy with kids on their bikes, the sound of tyre on dirt lost to the distance. Not the most tactful of venues to see from a crematorium, but it was why Will had chosen this particular place. An echo of laughter always seemed to play around him up here, one that said a Kawasaki wouldn’t fit on the playground below and would most probably terrorise the hell out of the younger kids playing there now.

  He managed a smile, knowing the offer would have been returned. Eventually.

  “Good-looking young man.”

  A little startled, Will glanced off to his left to the caretaker still picking up weeds from a few graves down. A photo rested on the headstone at Will’s feet, a picture of youth at its seventeen-year-old wildest; all black hair, black eyes, a slight smile that always left you guessing whether a joke or the need to run was coming. Will was always left chasing after either one.

  “Looks as troubled as his dad,” said the man.

  Will heard the words, but what kept watch either side of the photo stole his attention. Two candles that matched the ones he held sat like bookends, wide apart from each other, with the photo-frame dividing them both. Whether the placement of one candle was older than the other, he couldn’t tell, but the intrusion drove something deep, and he set his jaw tensing.

  Unwrapping the candles, he crouched, now only focusing on the photo. The petals that had blown over the plot mimicked how a bedroom had never been kept clean for more than an hour, and Will never thought he’d regret missing the arguments that carried every touch of normality. He let his candles rest by the grave. Matches were in his pocket, and his hand hovered there for a moment, prepared to cause a flare that would let cinnamon and the undercurrent of rose calm everything the day was throwing at him. But instead his hand slipped across his knee, the candles now, as well as always, remaining unlit.

  “He wasn’t mine,” said Will, quietly.

  “Sorry. What?” said the caretaker.

  “The boy.” Will forced an angry sigh through his nose, refusing to look at the other candles. He’d have given anything forth is lad to carry his surname on something other than a piece of Government foster-care paper. Will glanced down in time to catch the blossom dance across the grave. How funny it was that the people responsible were always the ones who got to walk away unharmed.

  “Happy eighteenth, kid.”

  He stood, offering a polite thank you to the caretaker, then headed back down the hill to his Rover. He couldn’t light the candles, not with how easy it would be for the wind to distractedly catch the flame and take away the scent of life without looking back to see what it had done. Better it be left unlit: breath caught and frozen in anticipation of what might be. It hurt too much to think of losing in one breath of wind what damn well should have been.

  He reached the car, but moving with the living hurt too much. Each breath seemed to push his lungs into his ribs until his airway constricted. Hands went palm-flat onto the boot and he dipped his head, needing that breeze to breathe life into him. All that came was a soft vibration from his pocket.

  Giving a soft groan, he tugged it free.

  1725? Now?

  Please?

  The phone hit the window once, twice, then only the draw up of another car stopped him slamming it into the gravel to see how many stones he could send flying. Instead he slipped the phone back in his pocket, hoping he’d done enough damage that it wouldn’t work in his hands again. As he climbed into his car, he forced calm by straightening his collar. He needed this time away. Not to forget, just to remember. He needed the time to remember.

  CHAPTER 2

  TAKEN

  On the eastern side of Poole Harbour, a run of soft sea and sand held hands with a mass of forest and heath. They offered everything William loved about seclusion: a harbour only most locals knew about, a forest wrapped like a comic vampire’s cloak around it, all waggling eyebrows and scary music and creaking noises to boot. All to ensure it stayed masked in mystery. Like Elliot, he had this particular Dorset shore running through his veins and had grown up living next to the Arne Nature Reserve. It’s where he’d picked up his love of running, later his love of language.

  Give a boy a backyard that led from harbour to forest, and Will would have thought most kids would no doubt either grow up following a family heritage of fishing or at least venture out into the wilds of botany. But with spending many a time with dirt on his hands and knees as he picked up bugs, feeling them wiggle under his touch, Will had always carried a fascination with how animals signalled stress, love, and life, all through colours, codes, and wiggling bodies. Arne had given him his first steps into linguistics at a young age; most of his projects earning him a frown off his father as he’d watched Will from his fishing boat on the harbour. That distance seemed to grow with Will. His studies had given him all of the conversational turn-taking tricks he’d ever need, yet when it came to actual conversation between two living and breathing bodies, between him and his father, between the loves and losses in his life, safety in silence always seemed the easiest option. He had a lot to thank Elliot for on that score.

  Will frowned.

  Strange how the one time he’d found his voice, he’d helped cause so much damage.

  The drive had been long: four hours, making it close to two in the afternoon before he pulled his Rover alongside his log cabin. No boats were in the small harbour, no doubt most out already to catch their daily hold of cod. The cabin was set far enough away from the little home-away-from-home collection of holiday homes, from his father and the critical sneer of some of his old neighbours, and that suited hi
m just fine. He was close enough to keep his Wi-Fi connection, but not close enough for anyone to pop over and borrow a cup of sugar, or ask why he hadn’t called in a while.

  After checking that his phone still worked, and grabbing his bags and laptop from the boot, Will pushed on through to the coolness of the cabin, the musty smell of disuse not matching the white-sculpted interior design of the open-plan layout. His laptop was plugged in and turned on first, then food stored in hidden cupboards; pans and potatoes put on the hob for later, before Will made his way up to his en suite. After a quick shower to wash away the heat, Will padded his nakedness through to the bedroom. An array of casual clothing was already lined up inside his wardrobes, and he opted only for jogging bottoms. After a light sandwich and drink downstairs, Will settled into his assignments, determined to get most of it out of the way so he had little to think about but running and ghosts over the next week.

  Will woke a few hours later, cuddled around his laptop, and he focused sleepy eyes on the darkness outside his patio windows. Giving a chuckle, he checked his watch, stretched long legs under the table, and yawned. It was touching two in the morning and he’d only read one thesis. After shutting things down for the night, he cleared away his plate and coffee cup, then headed on up to bed. It seemed the better option. The covers were cool against his skin after he’d stripped down, the feel of almost silk-like material shaping his body like cling film, and Will stretched, for the first time allowing himself to relax into the soft comfort.

  “Hm.” Will brushed the flat of his stomach, just by accident at first as he shifted the sheet to get comfortable, but then, as his body reacted, a run of happy goosebumps chased a second, more deliberate touch.

  One arm covering his eyes, almost hiding him from loving the touch he played on his body, Will dug the flat of his feet a little harder into the mattress. The shy covering of sheet only added to the slow tease of the back of his hand brushing the length and thickness between his thighs. So easy… so easy just to slip between material and skin, maybe just to feather-play those fingers between navel and the vulnerability of everything hidden beneath the thin safety of the covers, to stroke, to please.

  Will arched his back slightly, letting a soft murmur escape his lips. How long had it been? How long since he’d known the feel of his body pressed into the mattress by someone else. Hearing a whisper in his ear, keep the touch light… a game of mutual consent, or shift it into something darker, where giving up control tipped the scales, and a harder tease with cuffs slipped around his wrists as that heated body above him shifted a cock deeper, dug that rough drag of nails down his thigh— harder.

  Control. He didn’t mind games of surrender, if only in the bedroom. He didn’t mind admitting how much he missed being held and fucked hard enough so that—

  Giving a cry, he twisted to his side; head now buried in his pillow, legs curled up in almost a defensive position as he gripped at the sheet, trying to stop the heat he could feel burning in his cock.

  Wrong. Today of all days, it was wrong.

  For a long time, he lay there with his eyes screwed shut, denying everything natural by touching his body, but like so many nights before, he buried the need to let go, each time becoming easier than the last. Scarily so.

  Control. Lack of it had fucked up so much in the past. So full control was always his now.

  The morning offered a lovely coolness, all low mist lying over harbour and heath, like a lingering exhaled vapour trail meeting the ground. Will stood on his porch, slipping on his running shoes. He knew his route by heart. This was his place, his home. Despite the brisk bite to the early hours, the promise was there of another heat-fuelled day. Usually he’d run with no T-shirt around here, but the heat demanded otherwise; the last thing he needed now was burning beyond repair. Clean jogging bottoms and a loose, white short-sleeved T-shirt were the safer option. Doors now all locked, and with enough water to last well into the day, Will let the branch and bracken crunch under foot as he sought out the freedom of the familiar track past the heath. He never wandered off the main tracks. Story of his life if he thought too hard on it.

  A run of stepping stones took him over a little stream. He knew once he passed the moss-covered boards lining the forest floor, he’d be well into the tall trees and occasional offer of waterfall that even most locals rarely found. Out there, the roots of the trees pulled free from the ground, making it feel like the forest itself was caught trying to uproot and run right along with him. Will could race under some, had hidden under most, and as soon as the first one came into view, all life melted away into the old feeling of running shoes breaking dry bracken and twig.

  A few hours into Will’s run, the halfway point came up close to lunch, and Will let himself rest against a huge stone as he took another sip of water. Off to the left, the old, disused mill with its rustic wheel had been given an island all to itself, or at least a decent river ran almost like a moat around it. A small waterfall nudged at the mill-wheel, trying to give it some life, but the wheel only whimpered a protest that barely carried on the breeze. Air and water would only move it so far before the wheel gave up, creaking back into its slow drowning. Will and the mill had stared at each other a few times over the years, sometimes leaving Will shaded to society, that feeling of not being as far away from life as he’d like. The blackness of the windows glistened like a widow refusing to let her grief fall, mouth quivering against the loss of life, of love, of history. He’d hated this place as a kid, mostly because of Elliot and being chased into there by him; now it just reflected how tired he felt, how, like the mill-wheel, life seemed to want to push him around despite his need to just fade into the background.

  Flicking the lid back on his water bottle, then clipping it to his jogging bottoms, Will pushed away from the stone, then from the mill. A few blackbirds flew from the trees, crying disgust at his interruption, and Will nodded an apology. “Sorry, lads. Your turf, right? Not mine so— ah, fuh—”

  Something blinded him, just a small flash of light through forest leaf up ahead, and Will hit the forest floor, tasting nothing but dirt and grunting away the leaves from his face. A curved root jutted from the ground; it sat there grinning a little too proudly at its collusion with the light and how the root now had Will’s running shoe jammed there in its mouth. Will sat up and grabbed at his shoe. Wincing at the ache in his ankle, he rubbed at his foot first, not liking how the deep throb called cut to his running day. “Just like you to fall and have no one around to fall for, Will,” he mumbled. Managing to work his running shoe back on, Will sighed and pushed up off the forest floor, rubbing at his eyes and the irritation the light had caused.

  Barely even managing to straighten, Will grunted as an arm slipped around his waist, forcing him to hit the floor again, this time his shoulder and hip taking the brunt of the ground as he landed on his side. Legs came around his, holding him still, just as arms crushed a bear hug around his ribcage. Will shouted out, and a crunch of twig from roughly the same direction as the light was heard above his head just before a blindfold was roughly pulled into place, turning Will’s world black. The man crushing his ribs, he came with a friend, and one who was content enough to nudge at Will’s shoulder and force him face-first into the roughage. Will’s arms were wrestled behind his back, tied, then as dirt-filled fingers dug into the side of his mouth, Will’s lips and jaw were forced open and a gag pinched into the corners of his mouth. Will grunted, and a hard breath roughed his ear as something sharp, cool, and very dangerous pressed against his cheek.

  “Keep real still, beauty. And real quiet.” The knife twisted slightly, now scratching a path down Will’s jaw, all to trace the curve of his throat. “Or struggle,” whispered a voice. “But I guarantee you won’t like me by morning if you do.”

  Will stilled, his hard breathing the only stress-release point he allowed himself.

  “Oh, I like you like that.” Will was dragged to his feet and pulled back into someone as an arm went around
his throat. The knife was kept by his cheek, but as Will was pushed forwards, he dug in with his heels, grunting out his fear with not being able to see where he was going. He didn’t want to move forward blindly.

  “Okay, beauty. The hard way, then.”

  A push up of his short sleeve, Will felt something sharp dig into his skin, then cool liquid entered his bloodstream, sending his arm cold right down to the fingertips. Life started to spin, then numb at the edges, even the warm summer breeze brushing against his cheek disappeared, taking with it his instinct to stand and run.

  CHAPTER 3

  DARK DREAMS

  That constant creak, creak-creak came. Will lay there on his back, licking across dry lips as he tried to shuffle through images that explained the noise. Again, just that constant creak, creak-creak, like an unhinged door pushed gently by a breeze. A draft shifted his hair against his face, then swept down his chest, over his abs, his legs— his feet— to sweep back up. It eased the sweat he could feel lining his body and brow, and helped focus how muggy his mind felt. A gentle lapping added a soft beat to the breeze, and a shift of sheet came at Will’s side. Somewhere deep down it made perfect sense to him that the cool sheet covering him would ruffle if a fan was placed close to the bed, but the images didn’t quite connect yet; nothing connected but the heavy tiredness still trying to pull him down. The comfortable feel of the bed beneath his body offered a place to ground reality, but his arms were held wide, slightly raised, almost as if he were caught mid-fall into some strange, screwed-up dream, the likes of which he hadn’t tasted since his college days and the rare few lines of coke.