Traces of Alys
Sarah Reynolds
1995- 15-year-old Emma sends her family a bunch of flowers and disappears. Her best friend Kate blames herself. That night in west Wales, Idris and his son find a crashed car, a teenage girl and a man trying to kill her. The girl can’t remember who she is. Their neighbour says it’s her missing daughter, Alys, finally home, and takes her in. Twenty years later, a body is found during renovations at a local park where Emma was last seen. Kate believes that she has, at last, found the end of Emma’s story; instead, it is only the beginning, as finally secrets will have to be faced. A family mystery about escaping, finding home, and what- or who-is left behind.
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EXCERPT
Drawing closer, he could make out a white Ford Escort, planted like an alien spacecraft in the blackberry bush. Lucky –a few feet to the left and it would have plunged off the edge, been gulped into the boggy crater at the bottom of the discarded quarry.
A movement in the stream of the headlights. For a moment Idris froze, unable to make sense of the scene. There was a wet smacking sound, perhaps a wheel, turning over in the mud. A dark figure hunched over what was it – a lamb? A ewe? And though he knew he ought to run to help, something inside him had seized up, he found his pace slowing, his body gripped by a murky sense of unease. He paused to wipe the rain from his eyes.
A man knelt in the mud, his back to Idris. He appeared to be pushing down on something. The movement was so vigorous and rhythmic that for a moment Idris thought he must be performing CPR. Not a lamb then, but a child.
Something was off.
The child was moving, trapped beneath him, arms pinioned by his thighs, one thin leg flailing in the mud. The rhythmic smack Idris could hear through the rain was not the sound of a tyre spinning in the ditch, it was the sound of her head, smashing into the earth.
Something lurched inside him, a cold clutch in his bowels. A sound gargled up from the pit of him: a stark, animal cry. He charged towards the man, catching him from behind and hauling him down to the ground in a clumsy embrace. The man was bigger than Idris, lean and muscled, but Idris was focussed. At fifty, he was still as strong and supple as a wire. He wrestled the man onto his stomach, immobilised his arms; he’d had worse spats with rams at tupping season.
Siôn wasn’t far behind. With his arm pressed down on the man’s back, Idris yelled out to his son: ‘Run back to the house! Call the police! Call an ambulance!’
But Siôn didn’t seem to hear him through the pummelling rain. He’d gone to help the girl. He must have picked up the torch from where Idris had dropped it for when Idris looked up, he
could see the child clearly, bathed in a pool of light, pale hair matted with blood and mud. Siôn knelt at her side, his face close to her ear, his lips moving.
She was breathing. At least she was breathing; Siôn was almost certain she was breathing. His own breath seemed to swell in his chest, bowing out his breastbone like a sail, the hammering of his heart like a battle drum. He heard his dad call out but he couldn’t make sense of the words, couldn’t grasp what was happening. One moment, the man was pinned beneath Idris and the next, it was Idris who was on his back, arms pinned under the knees of the stranger.
It was all so fast. Siôn tried to run towards his father, but his feet were block heavy, his legs rigid with panic. Idris reared up as if he would head-butt the man, but the man brought his forearm down on Idris’ throat. Idris’ eyes bulged white in the gloaming.
All Siôn had was the shovel. It sang out with a dull metal clunk and like a push puppet, the man’s body seemed to collapse in segments as he slumped to the ground. Dropping the shovel, Siôn sank to his knees, shouting his father’s name, grasping his shoulders, dragging him up from the mud. Gasping and rubbing at his throat, Idris lifted his palm in a gesture that said he was all right. He pulled Siôn into his arms and held him tight against his chest. The rain fell relentlessly, cold as daggers, loud as silence.
Clinging to his father, Siôn’s eyes fixed on the beam of the torch. Discarded in the grass, it threw a sparkling column of light up through the dark. Raindrops dazzled like starbursts in its shaft. Siôn’s gaze trickled down its length, to the ground where the stranger lay in a buckled heap. A snake of dark liquid emerged from the man’s ear, slid down the side of his face and disappeared into the mud.
Author Bio –
Sarah Reynolds is an award-winning bilingual writer. Originally from Surrey, Sarah moved to Carmarthen in 2009. She’s written two Welsh-language novels: Dysgu Byw and Cyffesion Saesnes yng Nghymru. Her short story, ‘Catch of the Day’ won the Rhys Davies Short Story prize and the short film adaptation, Helfa’r Heli won a BAFTA Cymru award. She has written numerous short stories, articles and scripts. Traces of Alys came second place in the Bridport Novel Prize. She is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Swansea University, and lives with her family in Carmarthen.
Social Media Links –
sarah-reynolds.com / www.instagram.com/sarahreynolds_writer / www.threads.com/@sarahreynolds_writer
