From the previous part…

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Honey grumbled.

Her friend ignored the comment and kept moving. “It’s not too much further. Come on!”

Honey shook her head in defeat and did as she was told. They emerged into a small clearing, the ground littered with fallen leaves. At one edge, the side of the building could be seen and in it was set a door. Trixie hurried over and pushed it open.

“Through here,” she urged. “Quick!”

“What if someone’s in here already?” Honey asked, in a faint whisper.

“What, indeed?” greeted a male voice, deep and hoarse.

Part Three

Honey let out a squeak and tried to back away. A large, male hand grasped her arm and pulled her into the shadows inside the building. Moments later, another hand clapped over her mouth. Honey’s eyes widened and she struggled to get away. The man was strong and did not let her go. He easily avoided the kick she aimed at his shins and seemed unworried by her thrashing.

“Will you quit that?” Trixie’s voice sounded exasperated. “Just let her go already. We don’t have time for this.”

The man laughed and released his hold. Honey drew a breath and tried to make for the door, only to find Trixie holding her back this time.

“Honestly, Hon, don’t you know your own friends when they attack you?” Trixie flicked on her flashlight, revealing the assailant to be an entirely unrepentant Dan.

“What are you doing here?” Honey demanded, her voice faint and tense at the same time. “Do you have any idea how scared I was?”

Dan tilted his head at Trixie. “It’s her fault.”

Honey frowned. “You were the one who scared me. It wasn’t Trixie who had me by the arm, or who covered my mouth so I couldn’t scream.”

He gave a negligent shrug. “She told me to be here. Presumably, she didn’t tell you that I’d be here. Therefore, it’s her fault.”

With a raised eyebrow, Honey considered this. “And it never occurred to you to just, for example, say hello, rather than scare me half to death?”

His serious expression gave way to a smirk. “No.”

“It wouldn’t,” Trixie commented. “Now, quit stalling and come on. We have work to do.”

“I don’t even see why I had to be here, since he’s here.” Honey’s voice gave away her disgruntled state. “I could have been at home in bed with a good book.”

“Oh, you have a role here,” Dan told her, in a voice that boded ill. “I don’t think you’ll enjoy it, but your presence is most definitely needed.”

“I don’t find that reassuring,” Honey answered.

Dan laughed. “You weren’t supposed to.”

Trixie took them each by an arm and tugged them away from the door. “Come on, will you? We’re wasting time.”

Once more, Dan laughed. It was a soft, sinister sound and the way that it echoed through the empty building made it more so. Honey shivered. Trixie ignored both of them and kept looking around for what she had come to see.

“Did you find it?” Trixie asked Dan.

“Yup. It looks just like you told me it would,” he replied. “Down that way.”

“And you’ve checked the building over?” she persisted.

He let out a breath. “Of course. It’s fine, Trix. Look, why don’t you go ahead? I’ve left the gear in the end room. Honey can come with me and we’ll meet you there, okay?”

Trixie nodded and disappeared around the corner he had indicated. Dan nodded in a different direction and Honey followed him. As they walked into the last room in the corridor, a strange sound filled the air. It echoed through the empty building in an eerie way, sounding part human and part metallic. Honey shivered.

“What was that?” she breathed.

Dan shrugged, handed Honey the flashlight and went to pick up a coil of rope. He ran it through his hands, a smile playing about his face. After a moment, he looked up at Honey and gave her an appraising look.

“What?” she asked, shifting nervously.

“Nothing,” he replied. He picked up another object, which looked like a long metal bar. “Let’s go.”

Holding the rope and bar in one hand, Dan took Honey by the arm and guided her out of the room, down the corridor and around the corner. He stopped part-way along, but not near any door or window. He began checking over the rope and recoiling it as he went. She watched him for a while, then asked what he was doing.

“We wouldn’t want it to break, would we?” he asked. “Or for the knots to come undone. I’m just making sure it’s all in good condition.”

“What’s it for?”

He looked up at her, but did not smile. “I’m pretty sure this will hold you.”

“What?”

“It’ll hold you,” he repeated.

He took one end of the rope, measured out a couple of feet, then tied it to the middle of the metal bar. He dropped the rest of the coil at his feet, then carefully tested the knots he had made. The expression on his face was of intense concentration and, as he finished, he looked up and smiled at her.

“Dan! What are you playing at?” Honey asked, her voice faint with shock and worry. “You’re really scaring me.”

“Am I?” he answered. He set the bar down on the floor and watched her for a few moments. Taking a step closer, he took the flashlight from her unresisting hand. “Times like these, you need to know who to trust. Do you trust me?”

She drew a breath. “Most times, I trust you absolutely. Right now, I’m feeling a little uncertain.”

The beam from the flashlight gave just enough light to see the flicker of amusement cross his face. “It’s time to choose. Do you trust me?”

Honey hesitated for only a moment. “Yes.”

“Good. Keep your head down.”

Dan grabbed her arm, pulled her to him in one smooth motion and pushed her through a low opening in the wall that she had not previously noticed in the gloom. The flashlight flicked out and the next thing Honey knew, she was hurtling down a smooth, metallic passageway with no way of knowing which way it would turn next. The joins in the metal made her jolt about once per second, but she dared not try to slow down because she could feel Dan’s proximity behind her and hear the sounds he made as he slid.

With an abruptness that caused her to tumble head over heels, the chute ended and Honey found herself at Trixie’s feet, in the light of a flashlight that had just been flicked on. Dan managed to remain upright as he landed a moment later. As Honey felt her face turn red with embarrassment, Trixie began to hoot with laughter.

Dan reached down and hauled Honey to her feet. She dusted herself off and turned on him.

“What did you do that for? How did you know it was safe? There could have been anything down here!”

Trixie controlled her laughter long enough to interrupt. “It’s the only way down here. The stairs are too rotten to use.” She waved her flashlight at the pile of debris in the corner, which had once been a flight of wooden stairs with a quantity of old furniture and boxes underneath. “And he knew it was safe because, one, he came here yesterday and checked, and two, he knew I was already down here.”

“That’s no excuse,” Honey complained. “He could have explained to me what was going to happen, rather than just push me into a void.”

“It’s too late to change that now.” Trixie stifled another burst of laughter. “We’ve got work to do. Now, stop glaring at him and come over here.”

“But, Trixie,” Honey wailed, “if you can’t get down here, other than by that, that… thing… how do we get back up again?”

“That’s why he’s here,” Trixie explained, pointing to Dan. He was wearing a rather disturbing smirk. “He’ll help us back up again when we’re finished, but for now, we’re not finished, so can we please get on with it?”

The other two eyed each other for a time, Honey’s face brimming with suspicion and outrage, while Dan continued to smirk in quiet amusement. After a long moment, Honey looked away.

“Okay, then,” Trixie began, in a cheerful voice. “This was once the laundry room, but after a while they started sending the laundry out and so they used this room for storage instead. When Dr. Wilson got attacked, they put all his things down here in boxes – not his medical files, of course, but his personal belongings. He was about to come back to work when he died, so no one had bothered to take them out to his home, but then he didn’t come back because he was dead and no one bothered to get them.”

“And you’re suggesting they’re still here?” Honey asked. “After all this time?”

Trixie nodded and pointed to a box near the bottom of a pile that was almost as tall as she was. The label, ‘Dr. Wilson,’ could still be discerned.

“And we’re looking for what?” Honey queried.

“Evidence of the link between the Greengage family and the Wilson family.” Trixie pulled down boxes until she could get to the first relevant one and opened the top. “I’m pretty sure it’s going to be here, somewhere.”

Honey paused for a moment, then nodded. She found another box, set it on a wobbly old table and began sorting through it. Dan found a third and joined in the hunt. The three worked together in silence for some time before Dan spoke.

“I think I’ve got it.”

He held up a sheet of notepaper, covered in the same dainty handwriting that the girls had seen on the back of the photograph. Trixie took it from him and began to read it aloud.

‘Dear Dr. Wilson,

‘I hope you will remember me. We met at our mutual cousin Cynthia’s wedding a number of years ago. In the time since then, our family has suffered a terrible tragedy, as you possibly know. Cynthia tells me that you are very interested in such cases as our son’s and I was hoping that you could recommend to me what to do, as I am very troubled and upset.

‘You see, some years ago, when he was a boy of ten, our son Stephen was terribly injured in an accident. A car knocked him off his bicycle and they told us he was going to die and there was nothing to be done to save him. He did survive and, for a time, we thought he might recover fully. Ever since the accident, though, he has been a different boy from the one we knew and now he has done a terrible, terrible thing and has been locked up in an institution.

‘Please, Dr. Wilson, can you tell me how to get treatment for my boy? The doctors where he is are so terribly heartless and just look upon him as something like an animal. I know that they won’t ever let him out, after what he did, but there must be more that can be done for him. I am so desperately in need of advice and Cynthia thought that you would know what to do.

‘Sincerely,

‘Jennifer Greengage.’

“Is that what you’re looking for?” Dan asked in the silence that followed.

Trixie nodded. “I think that explains it, don’t you?”

Honey considered the matter for a moment. “Kind of. But why wasn’t this in the patient file? Why is it here?”

“Maybe he didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that he had a personal interest,” Dan answered. “Maybe he considered this personal correspondence. There’s other letters here, too, from family members of patients. Dozens of them. I think he must have been pretty compassionate.”

“He did this because he wanted to help people,” Honey surmised. She smiled. “He’s kind of like a pre-runner to the Bob-Whites.”

“What should we do with it?” Dan asked.

“Put it back where we found it,” Trixie decided, after a moment’s thought. “Let’s quickly look through the rest of the stuff and then get out of here. I don’t think we’ll find anything else.”

At the end of ten minutes, they had read a couple of other notes from Jennifer Greengage, but not found anything else of interest. They packed everything up, much as it had been when they arrived and readied themselves to leave.

“So, how is it that we get out of here?” Honey asked, with a look of dread on her face.

Dan disappeared into the chute, his shoes squeaking against the metal as he climbed.

“When he gets to the top,” Trixie explained, “he’ll call down that he’s done. You go next; use the rope to help yourself up. When you reach the top, call me and I’ll follow.”

Honey looked dubious, but she took up the rope when told to do so. For a few minutes, she struggled to climb back up, without success. Her shoes did not have enough grip and she did not have the upper-body strength to climb the rope. As time passed, she became more and more distressed until Dan called to her.

“Just hold on to the rope and I’ll pull you up,” he suggested. “Stop trying to climb and just let me help.”

Honey took a breath. “After what you did to me before? You’re asking me to trust you again after that?”

Dan’s laughter sounded even more sinister than it had before, as it came down the chute. “What choice do you have?” he asked.

Honey took a breath and agreed. Before she had time to be afraid, she was back up the chute and face to face with Dan.

“See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked.

She looked up into his face. “Yes, actually, it was.”

Dan shook his head and called down to Trixie, who soon emerged from the hole. The three made their way to the door and slipped outside. They walked together out of the grounds and onto the street, unseen by anyone. As Trixie drove back to Sleepyside, Honey slumped in the passenger seat.

“I am never doing something like that again, okay?”

Trixie laughed. “I’m not promising anything.”

Back in the clubhouse, they went over the things they had discovered, having agreed that they had taken the investigation as far as they wanted it to go.

“So, what do you think, Honey?” Trixie looked over the material they had scattered over the table. “Does this qualify as a skeleton in the closet?”

Honey shook her head. “I don’t think it does. I don’t think Di wants to hear it, though.”

“That’s what I was thinking. I don’t think I’m going to tell her anything about it, but I can, in good conscience, tell her we didn’t find anything really awful, can’t I?”

“I think so,” Honey answered, nodding. “I mean, it’s all very sad, but it’s not scandalous or anything. I just don’t think that Di would want to know it.”

Trixie began to gather the things together. “In that case, I think we’re done. We can hand all of this over to Mrs. Lynch and I’ll tell Di it was all in her imagination.”

Later that day, the pair made an appointment with Mrs. Lynch and took all of the things over to the Lynch Estate. When Harrison answered the door, they did not get very far inside before they were interrupted.

“What are you doing here?” Di demanded, as soon as she saw them.

“Relax, Di.” Trixie smiled at her friend and tried to be reassuring. “We’re just here to hand over the things we found to your mother and let her know what we discovered.”

“You’ve found something horrible, haven’t you, Trixie?” Di asked, grasping her friend’s arm so hard that Trixie winced. “You’d better tell me this instant!”

“Why do you think that?” Trixie asked. “It’s fine, Di. Really. We went there. We saw some old photographs and things. We brought them back and you can look at them, if you want to. There weren’t any nasty surprises among the photos. Your relatives all seem pretty normal and none of them were even all that ugly.”

“Which we never expected they would be,” Honey added. “Considering that you’re related to them and you’re beautiful, you wouldn’t expect you to have ugly relatives. And we didn’t expect to find nasty surprises, either.”

“Really?” Di looked sceptical. “No nasty surprises? Not even one?”

“It’s all completely okay,” Trixie added. “There was absolutely nothing shocking in the attic. We went for a look around town and saw the building where your grandfather once worked. It’s derelict, though, so I don’t suppose you’d like to see it. We had a chat with some people in town. It seems a nice place.”

“And that’s it?” Di still looked sceptical.

“And that’s it, really,” Trixie explained. “You didn’t need to worry about me unveiling skeletons from your family closet. It’s certified skeleton-free.”

“I’m so relieved,” Di breathed, closing her eyes. “I can’t believe that it didn’t happen. I was so sure you were going to tell me something so terrible that I’d never be able to get it out of my mind.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re happy,” Trixie answered. She gave her friend’s arm a pat. “I told you it would be okay and see? It’s all turned out just fine. Nothing to worry about at all.”

Di nodded and smiled. “Thanks for doing this for me, Trixie. I know I couldn’t have done it myself.”

After a little more conversation, Di went on her way and allowed Harrison to take the two visitors to see Mrs. Lynch. While they were waiting, Trixie glanced up to make sure they were really alone. She took the envelope and drew out a photograph, gazing at it for a few moments before she put it away once more. Beside her, a shiver ran up Honey’s spine.

“What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” Trixie murmured, as she put the photograph away. “I think we’ll just keep this little piece of her history to ourselves, don’t you think, Honey?”

Her friend nodded. “Ignorance, in this case, is most definitely bliss.”

The End

Author’s notes: A big thank you to Mary N. for editing. Your help and encouragement are very much appreciated!

For those who are curious as to what may be next, I anticipate one more story in this universe. I suspect that Honey will not go into any Dark Places in that story, however. *veg* After that, I think there might be a kind of spin-off. I hope that I will be able to get some of the back-story that these characters are hinting at, especially Dan and Trixie. I know that Dan, in particular, has another story to tell here.

Back to Dark Places