The Mysteries of Brambly Hollow

dying,’ Meli thought as she recalled the blood in the barn. “Do you think Finn could have killed Elsa?” She gulped and toyed anxiously with the hem of her blackened shorts when Bill only averted his gaze; his silence said it all. That didn’t bode well for them. On aching limbs, Meli pushed herself to her feet. What was to become of them? What did Finn have planned? She recalled the smell of petrol she’d noticed during the night. Had the smell gone? Or had she just got used to it? Fine filaments of hair stood up from her neck. Damn Finn and his audacity, he had no right to imprison her, to treat her this way. She began pacing: jerky, weary steps over the wooden boards. Dead man walking. Fear looped itself around the tail of her spine and then shot to the top as the harrowing words, referring to people on Death Row, leaped into her head.
    “We’ve got to get out of here. There must be a way.” Wheeling round in a full circle, her desperate eyes flicked into every dingy corner of their prison. The window. Throwing herself towards it, she launched herself onto the work bench with surprising agility. On bended knees, she was able to redouble her earlier attempts to beat the glass into submission, using her right fist as a sledge hammer. Was the seventeen year old Finn, with the mental age of a child, capable of cold bloodedly striking a match and roasting them? She began to beat even harder. Burning to death had to be top of her list of ways not to die.
    With a triumphant cracking sound, a network of splinters appeared. The next hefty blow punched a hole through the weakened pane. But her sense of elation was as short lived as a snowflake on a hot griddle. No daylight poured through to illuminate her grubby face. The reason they hadn’t been able to see out became depressingly apparent; not only was it due to the congealed cocktail of grime obscuring the glass, but also because Finn had boarded up the window from the outside. She began to think that Finn wasn’t as simple as she’d given him credit for. Sagging down onto her heels, her face crumpled fleetingly with defeat.
    But did Custer flee with his tail between his legs before the battle of Little Big Horn? Did Scott throw in the towel at the first sign of snow on his epic trek to the South Pole? By comparison their predicament was almost uneventful. “Come on,” she urged Bill, spurring them both to action. “Finn’s sealed the window. Help me, let’s see if we can break through.” Maybe, if they put aside their differences and worked together, they could prise a gap in the boards? Together they pushed and shoved, sweated and panted, shards of glass sticking into Meli’s bare knees like they were pincushions, but to no avail. She had to give Finn credit, he’d done an annoyingly excellent job. Eventually, their fingers cut and bleeding, they were forced to give up.

Chapter 27

    “ This is all your fault,” Meli suddenly accosted Bill, after she’d spent ten painful but thought filled minutes plucking splinters from her bloodied knee caps.
    “How so?” Bill shot her an indignant look.
    “You must have suspected that I was here, otherwise you wouldn’t have come looking. Why didn’t you tell someone? Or bring someone with you? Then we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
    “It’s hardly my fault you came sneaking around here and upset Finn. If you’d kept your nose out of everything. If you hadn’t brought the Lodge in the first place, none of this would have happened. Even Elsa would probably be alive.” He was on his feet, and the patiently watching shadows, taking advantage of his anger, leaped onto his face and burrowed themselves into the deep furrows and creases of his taut features.
    What a load of male chauvinistic twaddle, and totally unfounded. Meli’s flesh prickled with the injustice of it. “So now it’s my fault?” Meli’s voice rose several octaves. “I can’t believe that you of all people could accuse me of anything. You and Elsa should never have kept Finn secret, you should have had him locked away somewhere secure.”
    “Why can’t you see beyond the end of that long nose of yours and understand that Finn is my son, and I care about him and want the best for him?” The shadows glittered furiously in Bill’s eyes, like hot coals.
    “Well, you didn’t do a very good job of it,” Meli hurled the accusation at him with the ferocity of a cannonball, watching with some satisfaction when he flinched under the