The sky leaned on the earth. It had weight. It was the colour of tarnished silver with deep purple bruises in the underbelly of the clouds. A storm was coming. The air felt full of static and had a faint, metallic scent. There was a hushed expectancy to the rolling landscape. As though the moor itself waited for the end. It wouldn't be long now.
Every door in the village felt locked and bolted. A couple of curtains twitched back into place as I passed by. No one was in the street except me. I could smell oncoming rain. My bones vibrated with the charge in the air and the answering hum in the earth. I was a connector, the last element waiting to be snapped into a circuit and light everything up. What could I do? There was nowhere left to go. Nothing left to try. I rattled along like a lone penny in the dark belly of a money box.
My feet took me back to the vicarage without conscious thought. I drifted from room to room. It was nearly 6:00pm. If Amy had been at school, she'd have been home long before now. If she wasn't, she should still be back by now to keep her cover. Unless she no longer needed to.
She might still show up. She might be walking up the lane right now… I ran out of the kitchen door and around the stables, staring down the track. Willing her to be there. No sign of her. The atmosphere was oppressive and more charged than ever.
Something was going to happen.
The fine hairs on the back of my arms rose. A few drops of rain and I was back inside, putting the kettle on. Amy would be wet through when she got in… It wasn't denial. It wasn't.
Later and darker. Time passed in strange lurches and jumps. I had no memory of getting from one disconnected scene to another. I was in the kitchen forcing myself to eat as much as I could because I knew I would need the energy later; I was pounding and kicking at Dad's study door, screaming at him to come out; I was picking up the phone, trying to think of people to call for help and putting it down, rejecting the choices I’d made or realizing I didn't have the number.
It was past 8:00pm.
Dad. One last try.
There was an assorted ring of house keys in a drawer in the kitchen. I grabbed the motley bunch and went back to Dad's study. One of them had to fit. I tried knocking without much hope. Silence. Fine. I glared at the lock; old fashioned, brass. I sorted through the keys that looked like they might fit and methodically tried them in the lock. Frustration was strangling hope, just as the fourth key caused the lock to give a 'click'. I pushed the door open.
Dad had half-risen from his desk. For a moment the past overlaid the present and a tall, gaunt, grey-haired man stared at me in outrage. I wasn't going to be put off this time. I needed help.
Putting my back against the door, I levelled a look at the man who might or might not be my father just then. "We n-need to talk."
"Emily Lynette, I'm really quite busy right now-" He glanced around, dazed.
"Y-you're always b-busy. And it's Emlynn. D-Dad, something's happened. Amy and G-Grace are in tr-trouble. You h-have to d-do something." I pressed my lips together. I'd never spoken to Dad like this. If it hadn’t been for the dire situation, it would have been liberating.
Dad’s expression was perplexed. My triumph crumbled into ashes. He didn't have a clue who I was talking about. In a flash of intuition, I realised that he wouldn't remember me either, if I wasn't standing in front of him. Think. What could I say to get him to remember? …Mum. I had to ask about Mum. It might be enough to shatter the Pattern’s hold on him.
"What do you want?" Dad backed away warily and sat at his desk.
"What was wr-wrong with M-Mum?" I demanded softly.
His grey eyes met mine and something gave way in his expression. The overshadowing of the past faded.
"I don't know what you're talking about…" Dad replied too quickly.
"Y-yes you do. And pr-priests aren't s'posed to lie." I shouted. I took a deep breath and tried to go on more calmly. "Mum was suh sick wasn't she?"
Dad stared at the hideous flower-patterned carpet as if it held all the answers.
"A brain tumour," he said finally. My face went numb. I couldn't feel my legs. The room was swaying from side to side… Then I understood - I was shaking, not the room. Dad didn't notice any of this.
"It had been growing behind her right eye for years before we knew anything was wrong. It was benign in the sense that it hadn't spread." He swallowed hard.
I had become a pillar of salt. I couldn't look away. Mum, rubbing her head as if it hurt. Mum, irrationally upset, her right eye seeming to bulge, like it was bigger than her left. Mum, who had kept all of this quiet and then driven her car off a steep hillside, with her children in the car.
Dad just kept talking. It didn't matter that I was there.
"It was too far gone to operate on. And your mum refused Chemo and radiotherapy. The chances of it working were slim anyway. She made me promise not to say anything…" Dad's voice was getting thick.
I wasn't the only one who choked themselves off when Mum died. For a second his face was Haze's face, was Clayton's face, was my face…the expression belonged to everyone who had ever lost someone they loved. Anguish and grief were universal, and it didn't matter if you tried to do good or not. You suffered just the same.
I would never fear my dad again. He was even more broken than I was.
"D-did Mum get d-depressed?" I had to know how this ended. I should be trying to get Dad to remember his other daughters but I needed to know. Amy and Grace deserved to know.
"It's a common side effect of a mass pressing on the brain, apparently. Odd moments, when June would suddenly be happy or sad or just say odd things out of context that didn't make sense." Dad shook his head.
My last question came out as a whisper. "Suh suicidal?"
Dad rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, pinching the bridge of his nose. "It has been known. I wondered about the accident… sometimes a sudden shift in pressure in the brain can make a sufferer feel nothing is worth living for. In rare instances they see the world as a dark place. Maybe your mum believed she was being kind, sparing her loved ones further suffering by…by…"
"T-taking us w-with her." My voice was flat. It was all so simple. So pointless. A stupid illness. Could have happened to anyone. Nothing supernatural. Nothing I could ever have fought. Mum would never have dreamt of hurting us, but the shift of pressure in her brain happened when she was driving. And Amy and I nearly died with her.
"I should never have let her drive. Not with you girls in the car." Dad's eyes were over-bright. It was as close to an admission of guilt as he had ever come. He really looked at me for the first time since the accident. "You look so much like her, Emily."
He didn't hate me. Didn't blame me. I reminded him of the wife he'd lost.
With a strangled sob, I threw myself forwards, arms outstretched to hug him. He shoved my arms away. His expression was hardening. I was losing him.
"D-Dad?"
"What are you doing here? You know the study is out of bounds." His voice was somewhere between his own and the creaking-wood voice of Reverend Weston, Kate's father.
"B-but Dad-"
"Not another word. Out! Now!" He grabbed my upper arm and half threw me out of the study. I stumbled, whirled around, pushing against the door as he tried to close it.
"Grace! Ay-Amy! They're muh missing…Dad!"
"Enough, Emily Lynette. Do as you're told." A final shove on the door, sent me sprawling on the hall floor. My hand stung where he had ripped the keys away from me. The lock clicked. The bunch of spare keys was locked inside.
"Dad p-please!" I thumped my fist on the door but there was no answer. I sat, panting, against the door frame. Dad had veered away from the pain of talking about Mum by diving back into the Pattern. He didn't fight at all.
I was going to have to find Grace and Amy by myself.
I Belong to the Earth (Unveiled Book 1) Page 55
