by Lee Moan
He shook his head.
“How can you be so certain—”
“Shut up now,” he said. “Keep walking. I don’t know how long I’ve got.”
53
A bark of thunder rolled across the sky, filling Kelly with a deep chill. The storm was the worst storm she had ever experienced. Sitting in her Jeep she had begun to doubt the efficacy of her plan to wait for Sam, and more than once she had contemplated decamping to her lodgings for the night and waiting until the morning, but it was her belief in destiny that kept her here still. The lightning seemed to have eased off to intermittent flashes. But the skies were still choked with clouds, mostly gathered around the cemetery on the hill.
There was a brief flicker of lightning, silent, but pregnant with power, which lit up the Thorne house below. In that brief moment of illumination she swore she saw a figure in the garden at the rear. It was a small figure, but then she was quite a distance away. She squinted into the darkness, but there was nothing she could make out. The after image floated in her mind’s eye: a small, frail figure. A child? She couldn’t say. Then there was another flicker of light – but this time it was not from the sky. The rear porch light had come on, creating a small pool of orange light in the vale of darkness. A shadow extended from the rear of the house, a long thin shadow of a person moving. Then she heard a door slam, a small noise in the night.
Sam was home, she thought. The time has come.
She released the handbrake and let the car coast down the slope towards the Thorne homestead. She pulled the car into the side of the house and then got out. She was protected from the rain in the lee of the house and was able to walk around to the back without getting drenched. The security light was still on. The back door was ajar, banging against the doorjamb with the occasional gust of wind. She stopped, peering through the back window into the dark interior of the house. A shape moved stealthily across the living room, a silhouette that she could not make out until the figure crossed the path of the security light outside – and in that moment Kelly Burnett almost screamed because for a brief flicker of time she thought she saw the face of a little girl, a face so deathly pale as to be that of a ghost. But when she blinked and looked back she saw nothing but shapes and shadows.
Still, someone was inside, and she had to find out exactly who.
She put her hand on the creaking back door and let herself inside.
54
The gates of Ashworth House loomed out of the rainy dark, filling Rachel with a heightened sense of dread. Beyond the gates she could see squares of light in the upper floors of the mansion gleaming in the darkness. The Ashworths were at home on this terrible night, and God knew who else.
This was the end of the line.
She had known all along that she could have made a run for it. The shambling hulk at her shoulder was not quick or nimble enough to catch a young fit woman such as herself. She could have taken off into the boggy stretches of marshland either side of the road in a vain attempt at escape, but deep down she knew that this monster of vengeance was not going to be stopped by losing his guide. He would continue on towards his goal, would probably spend the rest of the night searching the island if he had to, and would eventually come to this place. No, she told herself, she had stayed with him to give herself time to think about what she could do to stop him. But now here they were, on the doorstep of the Ashworth’s home, and her astute brain had failed to come up with a single plan.
The truth was she didn’t much care for the Ashworths. Sam was friendly with Richard, but on the few occasions that she had met them, Rachel felt no affinity with Marine, and found Richard to be a pompous boor. But still, she wished them no ill. They had never been anything but friendly since the Thorne family arrived on the island, and they certainly hadn’t done anything to hurt them.
“Stop.”
Garrett’s voice cut through the air like a hammer blow. She halted obediently, her feet coming to rest in an ankle-deep puddle. She didn’t care. She was so wet and cold she could hardly feel her extremities any more.
Now was her moment. She either chose to run or—
Before she could even debate her choices, the huge, icy hand of Ben Garrett gripped the back of her neck. He turned her around slowly, so sure of his grip on her, taking his time. His eyes, deep and soulless, peered into hers for a long time. Then he looked over the top of her head to the house beyond the gates.
“You know them?” he asked.
She hesitated. If she told the truth and said yes, would that mean she was on their ‘side’? Would that immediately mark her as an enemy and incur his wrath and summary execution? If she said no, would that mean she was no more use to him, a response that would also carry a death sentence?
Her hesitation angered him and he shook her, only gently, but enough to almost choke the air from her lungs. “Answer me!”
“N-no,” she said, the answer forced out of her for good or ill. He stared at her again, his dead, expressionless eyes poring over her face. She waited for the snap of her neck vertebrae. It would be quick and hopefully painless.
“Tell me, Rachel, why I shouldn’t kill you right now?”
He was toying with her, her life so unimportant to him. After all, he now existed in a strange state of limbo, somewhere between life and death, where death was not the permanent force humanity had always believed it to be. What was life to him now? His mere appearance here on this dirt track outside the Ashworth estate, walking and talking, was an abomination, and turned the concept of life and death on its head.
His fingers tightened, pressing into the soft flesh around her windpipe. She began to splutter, clutching at his fingers.
“Tell me why?” he whispered.
“Because,” she began, but her words were choked off. Still enjoying the game, Garrett relaxed his grip only a fraction. “Because . . . my daughter died on that ferry. Same as you.”
Thunder boomed directly above them, its ferocity sending a wave of deepest chill across her shoulders. When she managed to meet Garrett’s eyes she saw something there in the black pits, something that looked like shock, maybe even pity. His hand, which she had been certain was about to crush her windpipe, suddenly flexed open and she dropped to the floor. She landed on her ass in the wet earth, the puddles of rain quickly soaking through her jeans and into every corner of her lower body. But she only sat there, rubbing her throat and looking up in wonder and fear.
He stared back at her, his face a shadow in the glare of moonlight.
“Go,” he said.
“What?”
“Go. Leave this place.”
He stalked past her over to the gate, and she watched him all the time. His hands grabbed both sides of the electronic calling box and wrenched it from the brick pillar. Sparks glistened in the dark, lighting up the nightmare figure. He dropped the box in the dirt then turned his attention to the gates themselves.
A sudden awful realisation began to dawn on her as she watched him tearing and hammering at the wooden gates. In her mind’s eye she saw two bodies beneath white sheets. Two victims. Garrett and her own sweet Becky. If Garrett was here, resurrected by some supernatural force, did that mean . . .?
Garrett tore the last of the left hand gate into strips of kindling and turned, rage flashing in his bone-white face. “Get out of here, woman! Find your daughter. I don’t know how long you have.”
Rachel felt the world around her swimming like a whirlpool of dark images. Her head felt light, empty of any substance. What this man had just said was insane. Wasn’t it?
“Yes. Your daughter’s alive,” he said, turning and disappearing through the shattered remnants of the gate and into the shadows beyond.
Slowly, shaking uncontrollably, Rachel got to her feet. In that moment she didn’t care about Lawkins or Richard and Marine Ashworth. She didn’t care if they met their deaths at this murderer’s hands.
If what Garrett had said was true—and there was no reason to doubt it giv
en the circumstances—she had no choice about what to do next.
Turn and run in the direction of home . . .
But she hesitated. She watched the giant for a moment, rain running down her face. “What are you going to do?” she shouted.
Garrett stopped and looked at her. His eyes were pinpricks of light. “Find Lawkins,” he said. “Put things right.”
She knew what he meant; saw the boundless malevolence in his dark eyes. She looked up at the dark house. Ashworth always held parties on weekends. She’d turned down numerous invites in the past. She could see three cars parked in front of the house. Almost everyone from the island council would be in there. If Garrett made his way inside . . . it would be a massacre.
She looked back in the direction of home . . .
Becky . . .
But Becky was dead.
Even if she had been resurrected like Garrett, it didn't change the fact that she was dead. The people up there were alive. But not for long, if Garrett carried out his mission.
Slowly, in a trance, she reached down and picked up one of the broken wooden posts. She rushed up behind Garrett and struck him across the shoulders with all her might. To her surprise, the giant went down on all fours, shaking his head and cursing under his breath.
Seizing the moment, she bounded over him, slipped through a gap in the fence and rushed towards the big house.
55
Kelly stood in the hallway of the Thorne house with her foot on the bottom step for several minutes, staring up at the rectangle of light which splashed across the landing wall. A strange snuffling sound occasionally drifted down to her, and a couple of times she thought she heard a sob. Every fibre of her being told her that she should leave right now. She was actually trespassing now, and if Sam came back now he would not be pleased to find her in his house uninvited. But her curiosity was too great. Who was it up there? It certainly wasn’t Sam or his wife. If it was an opportunistic burglar, then he was very quiet in his work and was certainly taking his time about it.
She decided to try a compromise. She would call out.
“Hello?” she said. She meant to have been louder, but it came out like a whimper. Still, she waited for a response.
Nothing.
“Hello?” she called out.
The rustling noise stopped abruptly. There was a period of absolute silence in the house. Kelly felt her heart thudding in her throat. Then:
“Mummy?”
A cold wave washed over Kelly, crawling up her back and over her scalp. She wasn’t entirely sure that she had heard correctly, but a voice had definitely spoken, a splintered, croaking voice. And the word had sounded very much like Mummy.
A child? It had to be a child, but that made no sense. Whose child?
She waited for more but nothing happened. The silence began to fill her ears like the hiss at the end of old cassette tapes. Slowly, she climbed the stairs, her eyes fixed on the light spilling from the first bedroom at the top of the stairs. On the landing she edged closer to the door like a stealthy assassin, holding her breath, mentally clearing her mind of all preconceived notions of who or what lay on the other side of the door.
Nothing could have prepared her for what she found inside.
56
The girl sitting on the bed was Becky Thorne. Kelly knew it was her without a shadow of doubt, even though the only time she had seen her she had been sitting on the other side of a crowded hotel lobby, her face turned away from her for most of the time. But the likeness was undeniable, and she had to force herself to admit it deep down in that personal place, even though her rational mind was screaming inside her head like a warning siren: IF YOU ACCEPT THIS AS TRUE YOU ARE GOING INSANE!
And yet, there she was, sitting on the bed which she had once called her own, an ordinary bed with a Bratz bedspread, pop band posters lining the walls and ceiling above it, and on the dresser to the left a selection of soft toys. Only there was a gap in the arrangement, a single toy missing from the carefully placed line up. There, in her hand, the girl was holding a battered brown moose.
It was a long time before the girl raised her eyes to meet Kelly’s. They were still a bright blue, but deep black circles underlined them. Her skin was as white as a china doll’s. There was a moment of recognition. The girl’s brow knitted in confusion and sadness.
“I remember you,” she said, her voice not sharp and light as it had once been, but dull and rough-edged. “The lady in the hotel.”
Kelly didn’t know what to say or even how to reply. The fact of this strange apparition talking to her was paralysing in every sense. She wanted to recoil, to take a step back or run from the room, but she couldn’t. She felt rooted to the spot in the doorway. Powerless.
“Are you with my daddy now?” the girl asked.
“What?” Kelly said, barely a whisper, an exhalation of breath. Answering the girl’s question sounded even more absurd.
“You must be,” the girl said, her voice tinged with anger. She looked down at the moose doll, stroking its soft fuzzy yellow antlers. “You’re in my house. And mummy’s not here.”
She glanced around the room, as if seeing through the lilac-painted walls to the rest of the house.
“I only wanted to see mummy,” she said dreamily. “I was scared when I woke up in the doctor’s. I can’t remember how I got there. I was so frightened. The noises in the sky. The flashing lights. So frightened. That man was there. The big man. I wanted him to stay but he didn’t. He walked away, and I was alone. I just wanted Mummy.” She hugged the tiny doll to her chest, brushing her cheek against its soft antlers. “Mummy would tell me what’s happening. Mummy would make it all right.”
The girl’s words, so nakedly open, brought tears into Kelly Burnett’s eyes. She crouched down to the girl’s eye-line, her knees popping noisily in the momentary still. There was a lull in the storm.
“Becky?” Kelly said, using her most gentle voice. “Do you remember what happened to you?”
Becky looked at her, eyes blank, marked only with a taint of bitterness. “I was on the ferry. With Daddy.” Her gaze drifted to the left, eyes narrowing in remembrance. “I fell into the water. Daddy let me drown. He didn’t save me. He let me drown.”
Kelly was momentarily stumped by this accusation. No father would surely allow their child to die.
“Honey,” she said softly, “your daddy –”
She was interrupted by the sudden banging from downstairs. At first she thought it was the storm starting up again, but when she turned her head to listen she heard muffled voices, men’s voices, one of them unmistakable to her, and then heavy feet on the stairs.
Kelly’s heart rate jumped into high gear. She stood up, drew in a deep breath, then faced the open door, preparing herself for the imminent meeting with the man she adored more than any other in the world. The man she was destined to be with.
57
Sam stopped on the landing directly outside his daughter’s bedroom. The landing light was blinding to him after so long in the dark, and he had to raise a hand to protect his eyes. He squinted, trying to make out the figure standing in the corner of Becky’s room. His first thought was that it was Rachel, Rachel come back to make things right again, to build the bridges that he had single-handedly brought to ruin.
But it wasn’t her.
It was Kelly Burnett. His heart plunged in his chest. Her hair was wet and matted from the rain, her plain white dress clinging to the contours of her stomach, but she still looked stunning. People like her always did, Sam thought dolefully.
“You,” he said. “What are you doing in my house?”
Kelly could only stare back at him, an expression of fear and anxiety on her face. Then she reached out, placing her hand on the door which was half open and obscuring the part of the room with the bed in it, and she gave just a gentle shove, enough to send it swinging slowly and soundlessly to its full extent. Sam watched it glide, his eyes drawn to the vision sitting on his daughter’s
bed.
The anger and malice in his face vanished in an instant, and his eyes became wide and filled with moisture.
“Becky?” he said.
He stumbled forward, legs suddenly feeling fat and heavy, his breath running short in his chest. He knew that she was not the true Becky, the Becky who had been with him on the ferry that day. He didn’t understand what was happening but he didn’t care either. In that moment, he forgot the grief that had consumed him since the ferry tragedy. He wanted to throw his arms around her and hold her tight for as long as he could. He dropped down on one knee in front of her and lifted his arms for the embrace. That was when she looked up, eyes filled with hurt and anger and she shuffled down the bed, hugging the doll close to her in a show of resentment.
“You let me die, Daddy,” she said. “I remember. You let me die.”
58
Rachel reached the large oak door of the mansion and grappled with the handle. It turned, the big door swinging open. She glanced behind her and saw Garrett's bulky form at the gate, climbing to his feet. She slipped inside and slammed the door. She found bolts at the top and bottom of the door and slammed them both home. Momentarily safe, she backed away into the large entrance hall. She fumbled in her soaking wet pocket and found her mobile phone. She'd been too terrified to use it in front of Garrett. Muddy water dripped from the Motorola as she held it up. She shook it out and wiped away as much as she could before pressing the on switch and waiting for the display to light up. The green light came on.
“Yes,” she said to herself. “Come on.”
Then she saw the words NO SIGNAL flashing in the upper left-hand corner.
“No, no, no!” she screamed.
Noises outside. Footsteps in wet earth.
She sucked in her breath and looked at the glass panels in the door. A tall shadow passed across them. The shadow paused in front of the door. Rachel moved further back in the darkness until she bumped into the bottom rail of the staircase.
