Unearthing Harry Sands

Holly powered her mother's Vauxhall Astra up the M6, her hands tightly gripping the steering wheel, her right foot maintaining a steady 65 mph. Her mother was sure to have reported it missing by now and Holly couldn't afford to be caught. She had to get across the border.
As she passed the turn off to Blackpool and the traffic started to thin out she relaxed her grip and sat back, deep into the bucket seats. She took a deep breath and glanced over to the passenger seat. It was littered with newspaper cuttings, print outs, an Ordnance Survey Landranger map number thirty-three and, sheathed in a clear plastic folder, a photocopy of an advert with a poem scrawled across it.
"Mum will understand. I'm sure," Holly said to herself. "I know she doesn't believe me but if there's a chance, even a slim one I know Aunt Morag will be grateful."
Her crossing into Cumbria was welcomed with leaden skies and heavy rain. Almost an omen, she thought. She checked the fuel gauge. Almost empty.
When she reached Carlisle she pulled into a service station, filled the tank up and plucked two ten pound notes from the wad in her purse.
'Gonna have to pull double shifts now to make my savings up again,' she thought.
After she paid up she drove into the almost empty car behind the garage and parked by a deserted burger van. It looked as lonely as her.
"Why is it just me on this crusade?" she said, thumping the dashboard with her fist. "Why does nobody over the age of nineteen believe anything anyone under the age of twenty has to say?"
She snatched up the sheathed advert and read over the poem once more.

If red but not found most certainly de parted
You'll find I'm third in line on the shore
Dressed in white, trimmed with these trees,
Nine plus or more

Silver's unsettled
Stolen kisses, no more
I bow in shackles

"You certainly were brave, cousin, to write it in code so he wouldn't understand," she said. "Sadly its pretty safe for me to say that you have 'de parted'. But not forever. I promise."
She started the car and turned the fan heater on trying not to dwell on what befell the cousin she never met. But as she reached for the road map to assess her route one of the newspaper cuttings slid off the passenger seat into the foot well. Holly reached down to pick it up but was unable to stop her eyes from catching the headline.
'Local Fifteen-year-old missing after party.'
Holly sighed and ran a finger over the date of the article. 'November 8, 1984.' She could hardly believe it all happened so long ago.
'Local schoolgirl, Harriet Sands, went missing on Monday November 5th. She was last spotted at approximately 11.30pm, standing at a bus stop on Fenchurch Street, by a couple walking their dog. Ms Sands had been at a party with friends who reported the missing girl left early to return home. She is described as intelligent and lively with shoulder length blonde hair, approximately five foot three inches in height and wearing a denim skirt, pink blouse and pink shoes. If anyone has any information in connection to her disappearance please contact Chester police on 456 2309.'
"Third in line on the shore," Holly mumbled. "Harry Sands."
Holly placed the article on the seat and then folded up the map. "If I could just get passed Glasgow by nightfall. I could find a service station and sleep on the backseat, " she said.
She rejoined the motorway and fiddled with the tuner on the radio. All she seemed to be able to find, apart from boring debates on speed cameras and the economy, was thrash metal. She left it tuned to the brain pounding beat of MetalPetals. She felt it matched her mood.
By the time she cut through central Glasgow, cursing the fact that the motorway scythed the city in half resulting in endless traffic jams, she finally reached the A82 and a quiet service station just outside Dumbarton. She parked up, finding a suitable spot shaded by a line of trucks that presumably pulled in for the same reason she did, and climbed onto the backseat.
As she snuggled up under a blanket she grabbed her papers and Harry's poem from the front seat.
"Dressed in white and trimmed with these trees. These trees," she muttered and scanned the advert the poem was written on. It was an advert for a holiday home in Sandaig. Harry's words were written on blank area of the advert that was the skyline above a hillock of trees. In front of the trees was a shale shore with a couple of old fisherman cottages. "He, they, whoever, took you to Sandaig forest. But what does dressed in white mean. You were wearing eighties denim and pink. And what does the rest of it mean," she said. "Okay nine plus or more. That's gotta be the length of time it took to leave Chester and get to Sandaig. I've already done five hours. Four plus to go, which means you must have been awake the entire time."
Holly shivered at the thought. Eight hours of not knowing your fate. How could anyone bear that?
She placed the pages on the mat and curled up to sleep.
Hours later there was a rapping sound at her window. It gave her such a fright she jerked awake. Her heart was pounding so hard she could feel it at the back of her throat and when her eyes acclimated to the light and who was peering through the window she gasped. It was the police.
Holly wound down the passenger window.
"Hello, Officer," she mumbled.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Just catching forty winks," she said, noticing his eyes were surveying the inside of her car.
"Is this yur car?"
"Erm. No. It's my mum's I'm just borrowing it to visit a friend," she said hesitantly, praying he would believe her.
"D'ya have yur licence or some form of ID?"
"Yeah, of course," Holly replied as she scrambled through her bag and thrust her licence at him.
As the policeman peered at it all Holly could think was 'so close. I'm so close. Please let me go.'
He handed her licence back to her. "I wudnae recommend sleepin' in your car. Next time you're up here book intae a bed and breakfast. It's no safe. Alright?"
Holly nodded and when he left and got into his squad car she sat back and let out a long, gasp of a breath.
After a quick wash at the services Holly checked her map. "Straight up the A82, then left onto the A87 at Shielbridge."
It was just after noon when she passed the picturesque town of Eileanreach, five miles from Sandaig, and found herself on the deserted, bleak A82. She trundled past banks of trees on either side of the road wondering if they were the forest she had driven over four hundred miles and nine hours for. Her body twitched with a mixture of nervous excitement and apprehension. 'Will I find anything or nothing?' she thought.
Ahead she spotted a farmer herding sheep and as she neared she slowed and wound down her window.
"Can you tell me where Sandaig forest is, please?"
"'Bout two miles down on the right. There's a sign post," the farmer muttered beneath his bushy moustache before turning attention back to his flock.

As the bare wooden sign with white lettering that read 'Sandaig Forest' came into view Holly began to shake. There was no turning back now. The pathway into the forest was a dirt track that was slightly overgrown indicating not much traffic every went down it. 'No wonder he or they brought you here,' Holly thought.
Cautiously Holly turned onto the track and followed it as it wound through the mature coniferous wood. On a more inauspicious day she would love to walk through these woods and marvel at the majestic pines but her mind wasn't on sightseeing. She kept her focus on the road ahead instead. She had no idea what she was looking for but rather hoped that something would fatefully draw her attention.
When the road ended she found herself parked in front of a crumbling white house.
"Could this be it?" Holly said. "Dressed in white!"
Every nerve and fibre in Holly's body was screaming at her to stop. To go back. She was terrified of what she might find in that house, but her heart was in control.
"This was my cousin. My defenceless cousin," she said and stepped out of the car.
Outside the air was warm and the sun was shining through the tops of the conifers. 'A good omen,' she thought.
She crept up to the wooden door hanging off its hinges and pulled it open. Inside it was dark and damp. A strong musty smell of damp wood and earth mixed with charcoal hung in the air like a shroud. She took a left and stepped into a room with a wooden floor and a window that looked out toward the islands in the distance. Such a beautiful location, tinged with horror. In the middle of the room the floorboards had been lifted and Holly could see a fast flowing stream running beneath the house.
"No wonder nobody lives here. This place is probably condemned," she said as she looked up at the beams of sunlight streaming through the gaps in the roof. They shone down on something that glinted faintly on the floor.
Holly bent down and noticed a delicate bracelet, a little tarnished but otherwise in good condition, beside a broken chair. But when she picked the bracelet up her eyes were drawn to something else behind it. Something that filled her body with gut twisting terror-a coil of rusted chains bolted to the stone wall.
"I bow in shackles," Holly cried. She shivered violently and tried to swallow the lump in her throat but it was too big. Tears poured down her face as she reached for the chains. "What happened, Harry?"
No sooner had she said it a black crow landed on the stone frame of the window. It took one look at Holly, squawked and then flew off toward the shore. Holly watched as it landed on a large grey driftwood log beside a rise in the grass banking that didn't look natural.
Holly dashed outside and bounded over rocks, streams and mounds of mossy grass. Upon reaching it she knelt down and started to claw at the grass, slicing back the layers of time until she felt something smooth that rustled between her fingers. She leapt back.
'Plastic bag,' she thought.
Her heart thumped in her chest so fierce she could hear her blood pumping in her ears. She knew what she had to do but part of her didn't want to do it. Part of her wished she was back at home, on the sofa watching TV and not knelt down in a desolate place in a different country on her own searching for what she knew would just be bones. She reached out to tear the bag.
"Holly!" a voice screamed.
Holly spun round and saw three policemen and her mother standing by the crumbling white house. A heavy wave of relief swept over her that made her feel so weak and lightheaded she almost fainted.
"Mum," Holly cried and stumbled towards the open arms of her mother. "I've found her. I've found Harry. I've found her."
Holly threw her arms round her mother, desperate to feel the warmth and comfort of someone she loved, desperate to feel alive and reconnected to the world again.
"I thought I'd lost you too," said her mother, tearfully.
"Never. I just wish I knew who did this to her?" she said as she watched the three policemen make there way towards the remains of Harry Sands. One of them took off his helmet to reveal a shock of white blonde hair that glinted like silver in the sunlight.
Holly froze. "Silver," she gasped. "Silver."
"What's wrong, Holly?" asked her mother.
"Harry's diary. Silver. Silver hair. Silver Penny. David Penny. He's the one who killed her," Holly blurted.
"Holly you're not making any sense."
Holly delved into her bag and pulled out the wad of news clippings and frantically riffled through them.
"The newspaper report a two weeks after her disappearance. It mentions entries in Harry's diary. Here," she said holding it up to her mother. "It says her diary mentioned a person Harry had a bit of a crush on but Harry didn't call him by his real name in her diary. No girl would. She called him SP. The police couldn't work out what that meant. But look at the photo beside the report. It's of Harry and her friends. She has her arm around someone called David Penny. But look at his hair. It's bright white. Like Silver," Holly gusted with excitement as she rustled in her bag for the sheathed copy of the note Harry left. "And look at this. This was her message in a bottle, which I reckon she threw into the stream that runs under the house, it says 'Silver's unsettled. Stolen kisses, no more.' Silver Penny. SP"
Holly's mother took Holly's head into her hands and kissed her forehead. "Well, give this to the police. Let them take it from here. They'll get him. You'll see," she said as Holly watched a tear trickled down her mother's cheek. Her mother brushed the hair from Holly's forehead. "Your Aunt Morag will be very proud."