TWO: A Merry Chase

"Did you bring him inside?" asked the butcher, poking his head into the dense forest at the edge of the grove.

"No," Alice said, turning in a perpetual circle in search of the lost corpse. How could it be missing? She was gone not fifteen minutes, and the body could not have walked off on its own. She couldn't smell anything in the wind, not even the body's rotting.

"What?" the butcher stood in front of her, forcing her to come to a standstill. He folded his arms. "You let a little boy sit out here on his own?"

"Can't allow people to enter the spook's house, now can I?"

"You left a child on his own!"

"I wasn't the one who dropped him here for anyone to take!"

The butcher suddenly looked fearful again. "Does…is it…could it be that your aunt has him? The witch? Bony Lizzie?"

Alice did her best not to sneer, but still did not come off as exactly sympathetic. "Lizzie's been dead for years. She's no sort of threat here."

The butcher's hand made a dry rustling sound as he rubbed at his beard, still eyeing Alice with a touch of concern. "Then perhaps he ran off. He could be hiding in the woods."

"It's late to start a search now," Alice remarked quietly. "Sun's already going down."

"I'll round up some men from the village and we'll light some lanterns and find the child. He didn't tell you his name?"

"He didn't say a word." Again, it wasn't a lie.

The butcher hmphed. "Well, maybe some local mother is missing her child and can tell us his name. You get yourself back into the house for the night. If we find the child, I'll ring the spook's bell."

Alice agreed, albeit unhappily, and returned to the cottage. She was late for supper, which was now burned to the point of inedibility by the ever-punctual boggart. For once, Alice didn't mind; she was too preoccupied to eat anyway, what with the disappearing corpse and the wild goose chase on which she had inadvertently set the butcher and no doubt half the village men too. There was simply no good way for this scenario to end. Either the butcher and his men find the child's corpse, and see that the boy has been dead for weeks and thus catch Alice in a dangerous lie, or they find nothing and continue their search until the men lose their faith. Though she did so with no small amount of guilt, Alice began to hope that the men found nothing in the woods – at least until Tom returned.

She lay awake most of the night, drifting off to catch a few hours of sleep only when her body demanded it. Her mind could not be quieted, however, and she dreamed of bells and withy trees and finding corpses that looked like Tom when he was young. She was famished in the early morning, giving up on rest as the sun was rising. Shaking the sleep from her brain, she sat in the cold gray light of the western garden, the chill of the bench seeping into her skin through her dress.

Alice pondered the mystery that had been set before her, chewing it over in her mind. What sort of person would leave a child's corpse out for the local spook to find, and then take it away? The boy still had his thumb bones, Alice had noticed, and the body was not drained of more blood than would be lost from the deep wound in his throat. It could have just been a desperate person who lost their child and could not face their poor boy's death, and so left the body for the spook to deal with.

But who cut the boy's throat? And why not leave the body for the magistrate to find? And why take it away again?

Alice groaned in frustration, shivering in the early morning breeze. She stood, beginning to pace the perimeter of the garden, when the breeze came through again and she smelled it. Rotting meat. It was the same strange smell she had smelled the previous day, which meant –

Alice hurried down the lane to the circle of withy trees. Before she even reached it, she could just see in the shade the same odd shape she had seen the previous evening beneath the spook's bell. The missing body had returned.

"No." She spoke as if not accepting the truth would simply erase it. Someone had replaced the corpse at the bell. Why was it now suddenly convenient for this madman to allow the villagers to find the body? No doubt the butcher would return to ring the bell after finding nothing in the woods. The killer must be expecting Alice to move the body, to bring it into the spook's garden. If found, the body of a child in the spook's garden would be devastating, even more so than if found at the bell. Alice decided to leave it. She would not allow somebody to make her decisions for her. She would leave the body where it was. Knowing the breakfast bell would ring at any second, she turned her back on the corpse and went back to the cottage.

The breakfast that was waiting for her wasn't good. Alice was starved, and she had definitely had worse, so she ate her fill, blaming the poor cooking on the boggart always liking Tom more anyway. Everybody always like Tom more anyway. She certainly wasn't bitter about it – she would be the first to admit that she herself preferred Tom over anybody or anything – but it was becoming a grating inconvenience for Alice to be so disliked and distrusted by everyone she met, especially when she was continually working at her own peril to help the County. But in truth this was Tom's County, not Alice's. This was Tom's County, Tom's house, Tom's breakfast; even the boggart regarded Alice as a trespasser. It chafed on Alice most when she was alone, when Tom wasn't around to remind her with just his presence that she was wanted, that she was more than her dark heritage.

But Tom was out doing his job. He was the one who was supposed to protect the County, Alice reminded herself, and she was here alone. She did not have the resources to defend the village from a disappearing corpse, and it wasn't her responsibility anyway. Tom would be back sometime today or tomorrow, and he could deal with it himself. The spook never got much payment or thanks, but the villagers trusted him more than they trusted Alice. It simply was not worth her while to put her life on the line for those ungrateful, ignorant people. She should have left well enough alone in the first place, and not gotten the butcher involved, she could see that now. Alice thanked the boggart for the mediocre breakfast and thought herself right for leaving the corpse where it was, intending to show it to Tom when he returned.

Alice changed her mind before she had finished crossing the kitchen threshold. This was her mess. Alice had answered the spook's bell, she had involved the butcher and told him a lie. She would have to do something to solve this. She took an old blanket from the linen cupboard with her – the most motheaten one she could find – and returned to the withy trees, where the corpse of the child lay undisturbed as if it had never moved. But it had moved, it was not just a trick of the light or a weakness in the butcher's mind. Someone had deposited the corpse, removed it, and replaced it in order to prevent the butcher from seeing and cast Alice's story into doubt. Alice wrapped the corpse as gently as she could, retching from the rotting smell that was released as she moved it. Acutely aware of the disrespect she was paying the innocent child, she dragged the blanketed body into the garden and tucked it into a shady corner to await Tom's return. She felt a shiver creeping up her spine when she turned her back on the body and went back into the house.

The bell rang not two hours later, and Alice found the butcher alone at the withy trees, looking despondent.

"We searched all night." Alice noticed the purple bags beneath his eyes and the deep hoarseness of his voice. "But we didn't find him."

"Could've wandered his way back home by now." Alice's comforting words were a blatant lie, and she saw the last spark of hope leave the butcher's eyes. She bit her tongue to stop the pang in her heart from seeping into her words. It's not as if the truth was any sort of consolation. The butcher just sighed, his shoulders stooping, and started back toward the village. Alice watched him walk out of her sight, chewing her lip. She turned her gaze to where the body of the corpse had been. There was no evidence of it now, but Alice knew as soon as she returned to the garden she would have to find somewhere permanent to keep the body. She dragged her feet when leaving the withy grove.

As she neared the cottage, she felt a growing warmth; it was a feeling like crawling into bed on a winter's night, like a hot drink soothing her from the inside out, and she relaxed into a smile at the familiar sensation. A voice came from the back door of the cottage.

"Alice?"

Tom was back.


Here, have another chapter in the hopes someone will review.