The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

I want to talk to someone. Being with the gods makes me feel more alone than being alone. With Lauren gone, I need things that remind me who I am. I am so afraid that I’ll just disappear and never come back.

This isn’t making me feel any better. I feel stupid so I’ll stop.

Dee

Everyone on Needless Street had a flyer through the door. Still, when yellow diggers come down the road like lions, she catches her breath. Their great metal mouths are still crusted with the dirt of old kills.

Dee comes out of her house to watch. It seems safer, somehow, than staying inside. A couple of the other neighbours are standing around, mouths and eyes wide.

A man with orange hair steps out in front of one of the diggers. He shouts to the driver. His big dog strains and whines so he takes it by the collar. ‘I hope you’re not going to use that neon paint to mark the trees,’ he yells up at the driver. He is pointing at some canisters that sit in the truck. ‘It’s toxic.’

The driver shrugs and adjusts his hard hat.

‘I’m a ranger,’ the man says. In his hands the dog trembles with eagerness. ‘It’s terrible for the ecosystem.’

‘Got to mark it somehow,’ the man says comfortably. ‘Neon stands out day and night.’ He nods and the engine roars. The digger moves off like a dinosaur.

Breath tickles Dee’s neck, lifts the hair on her nape. He is so close to her that when she turns, thrilling, his beard almost grazes her cheek. She can smell his distress, like crushed nettles on his skin. Ted sways. She realises that he is very drunk.

‘No,’ he says. ‘They can’t, they can’t do this.’

He says some other things and Dee replies, she couldn’t say what. She can’t hear through the buzzing in her head. She knows that look, of a secret nearly revealed. Ted has it in his eyes.

When he runs up the trail after the diggers, she catches her breath. He’s running towards something, she’s sure of it. Something hidden in the forest. Dee knows she can’t follow Ted. He’d see and then it would all be over. She must desperately hope that whatever is hidden cannot be accessed in daylight.

She goes indoors and sits at her post, biting her lower lip to shreds. Maybe she was wrong not to follow. Maybe she missed her chance and he’s moving Lulu right now, taking her into the wild … Dee watches the forest with burning eyes.

Half an hour later, Ted comes back into view on the shadowed trail. Dee’s heart burns and leaps. There is distress in his every movement. He shakes his head from side to side as if in passionate argument with himself. Whatever needs doing is still yet to be done. She hasn’t missed it. There will be action, tonight.

Dee puts on hiking boots and lays out sweaters and a dark jacket, puts water and nuts in her pocket. Then she sits like a stone and watches Ted’s house. Clouds pass and the sun sinks lower over the treeline. Dusk covers everything.

When she hears the distinctive triple thunk of the locks, the creak of the back door, she is ready. She feels, rather than sees him leave the house in the black. As he passes under the streetlight she sees the backpack. It is full of something that bulges in odd angles and curves. Tools, a pick, a shovel? He moves along the road into shadow. Now there are no more lights, just soft night and the moon overhead, shining like half a dime.

She follows at a distance; his flashlight guides her like a star. When he stops at the entrance to the woods and looks around, she stops too, sheltering behind a tree trunk. He waits for a long time, but she lets the night speak, lets it tell him that he is alone. When he goes on into the forest, she follows.

As they pass the work site, Dee hears Ted come to a halt ahead. The trees are thinning, perhaps into a clearing. She crouches among the bulldozers. Ahead, to the east, she hears the sound of a shovel cutting the earth. She hears whispering. She shivers. It must be Ted, but his voice sounds strange, like leaves rustling or the creak of living wood. Her calves and thighs cramp but she doesn’t dare move. If she can hear Ted, he can hear her. The moon climbs and the night seems to grow warmer. Perfect weather for snakes. Shut up, brain, Dee thinks grimly. What can Ted be doing? She thinks about trying to edge closer but her every movement sounds loud as a gunshot. She sits and listens. Time passes, she doesn’t know how much, it might be an hour or longer. His whispering and the rhythmic cut of the shovel mingle with the night sounds of the forest.

At last there comes the sound of boots approaching and Dee starts. She has been teetering on the edge of sleep. She crawls quickly on numb legs under a digger. The moon is behind a gauzy screen of cloud but she can see enough. Ted carries something heavy on his back. The shovel in his hand is crusted with earth. He has dug something up. She struggles to her feet as silently as she can.

At the top of the rise to the west the moon gleams on still water. The lake, no more than a mile distant. An hour’s hike between Ted’s house and the place where Lulu went missing, Dee thinks, burning inwardly. Tonight Ted has proved that he can cover ground quickly with a heavy load. Yet the police just let him go. No matter what she tells them, they’ll probably just let him go again. They don’t care. Lazy, burnt out, incompetent … Dee realises that she is trembling. She reaches out blindly, and grasps a slender branch for support. The forest seems full of sibilant