by S Gepp
The sound as the ground finally let go was that of tearing, ripping flesh.
Slowly they raised what they had come here for onto the edge of the dead waterway. They all caught their breath, and it was Randolph who said what they were all thinking. "Holy fuck. We've done it."
* * *
Chelsea lifted her arms. All the scars had closed over, healing so completely that not so much as a line marked that perfect skin. Her eyes stared directly at him, now as clear and bright as the first time he had sat down with her over a high school history book all those years ago. This was the Chelsea he remembered.
The Chelsea he loved.
With a speed that stunned him, she hurled him sideways. He slammed into the pile of stones he had constructed and then cared for for so many years. The landing was painful, and he fell so that too many of the rocks crashed down onto him.
She barely cast him a glance as she strode purposefully forward.
She had but one target…
Nathan stayed his ground, no idea of what he was actually going to do.
She slowed as she neared them. Her smile softened, her body language open and welcome. This was the university student, the popular girl at high school, the tennis champion, the English Literature student, the girl too many men fell in love with at first sight.
"Come, children," she whispered. She held her hands out. "Come with me."
Allan cried louder and pushed his head against Karyn, who hid behind Nathan, while Chantelle moved enough so she could grip his arm tight.
"No," Nathan said firmly.
"I shall get what I most desire," she stated quietly and confidently.
"Revenge?" Nathan asked boldly. Her smile was answer enough. "Or is it what you lost?" he added suddenly.
She stopped, her grin faltering.
Nathan held that cold gaze, eyes that stared through him, into him, beyond him. He forced himself to stand taller and prouder, and he wrapped his arm around Chelsea's shoulders, then kissed her softly on the mouth. She grasped his cheeks and returned it with fervor, hot tears coursing down her face. They separated shortly, yet reluctantly. Nathan removed her hands from his face. "Take these two and go," he told her, finishing with a final kiss to her forehead.
"No," Chantelle sobbed. "Don't…"
That was the response he had expected; no, hoped for. Still, he was already tentatively stepping forward. "Go on," he said, pushing it as far as he thought he could.
"Nathan, please," Chantelle begged.
Chelsea watched the scene, jealousy filling those beautiful features. Her eyes moved past the approaching boy to the weeping girl and back again. Her mouth twitched.
Nathan could feel that she was unsure now. He edged nearer. A subtle movement, cautious and slow, came from behind her. She was distracted by him; this was good.
Nathan stopped and stared into that gorgeous face.
A hand grasped Chelsea's shoulder and forced her to turn around. She did so, but reluctantly, anger now dominating all about her.
Francis brought his face in close to hers.
She stared back.
A moment's hesitation. A moment's anticipation.
Mouths parted. Eyes closed. Bodies relaxed. Lips met.
Francis's hands moved and wrapped themselves in the golden halo of her long, silky hair.
Chelsea's arms tentatively snaked around his waist.
The years fell away. It was the middle of 1991 once more; 2012 was still a future that was not even worth considering. Nathan was sure that the gray streaks in his father's hair faded, that his body became fitter, that his skin smoothed itself.
The kiss became briefly more intense, and then they parted, foreheads resting on one another, the smiles they shared meant for themselves and themselves alone.
The approach of five men bearing a heavy burden went unnoticed by the duo.
"Holy shit," Randolph muttered. "Is that…?"
"Doesn't matter," Julian hissed. "Keep on going. We have to do this."
"But…" Randolph tried. The words did not come. Brandon slapped his shoulder. He shook his head clear. They finally set the plastic bag down carefully. Julian pulled open a pocket knife and pierced the top of the bag beside the rusted zipper.
Chelsea swung her head to stare at him, her lower lip trembling. She began to shake her head, but Francis turned her face back to him with two fingers and grabbed her with both arms and just held onto her tight. This was the Francis Coulter of 1991; Nathan did not think he could remember seeing his dad look so content before.
Their next kiss was that of teenaged lovers in the process of discovering themselves.
Julian's knife sliced down in one fell motion. He waited a heartbeat and then pulled the sides apart, letting out an invisible cloud of putrid air that made all five men move away hastily.
Chelsea tried to fight against Francis, but he maintained his grip.
"Dad, no… Please, Dad, no…" Nathan gasped. The others merely looked at him, wondering what he was seeing that they weren't.
Francis suddenly grabbed Chelsea even tighter as her legs seemed to give way, stopping her from collapsing. Their lips remained locked together, and they sank to their knees.
A white mist formed around them, obscuring Chelsea's lower limbs, merging with the clothing she wore. The cloud flowed down the sleeves, enveloping her hands and, with them, Francis's body. It grew over him like a spider's web until their faces were the only parts that could be seen clearly in the fog.
"Dad…" Nathan sobbed, so quietly that only Chantelle could hear him. She was at his side straight away and grasped him about the waist, hugging him with as much strength as she could, pressing her head against him, holding him back. "Dad…" he repeated, even softer. All his resistance stopped; he just let Chantelle hold him.
The cloud finally encased them both.
And then it was gone.
Francis was on his side, alone, on the cold, damp grass, completely still.
Nathan was at his side as fast as his bleeding leg could carry him. He lifted his father's head and placed two fingers on the side of his neck. Chantelle's hands came to rest on his shoulders as the crying started in earnest.
Five men looked inside the bag.
The body was no more than a skin-covered skeleton, dressed in rust-stained, torn, white clothing, locks of long golden hair resting beneath the skull.
"Isn't that impossible?" Julian murmured.
"After all this, you're talking impossible?" Brandon whispered before turning his back on the remains. Death was not important; life was all that mattered. He started towards the children. Allan reached for him. He broke into a jog and took the boy from Karyn's arms, and they gripped each other so tightly about the neck they both struggled to get in a decent breath. But that was okay.
Julian took his cue and smiled hopefully at Karyn. Her expression was one of fear, made all the worse by the bruising that discolored her face, but he had moved only a few paces before she had him about the chest, something he was sure she had not done in so many years. His shoulder felt like fire, but his daughter's embrace felt like perfection.
Luke stood. He tried to feel the same happiness as the other two, but it didn't come. It seemed to him, looking at his daughter and her sharing of the grief of a boy they hardly knew, that Chantelle was drifting and… She lifted her head to look at him and gave him a smile that melted his heart as much as it had when she was only fifteen minutes old. Joy…and such sadness. Chantelle's attention returned to Nathan, Luke's to the man before the two of them. No matter what else, today, a good man, a trusted man, a friend had died.
Nothing would ever change that.
A noise behind them made Luke, Brandon, and Julian turn.
Randolph and Sean had gathered six knives, somehow amid their own grief when faced with all the reunions about them they had continued to do what they felt they must. They stared down at the bag and the single knife that remained—the one that rested in the middle of the ske
leton's chest.
Brandon rocked Allan back and forth. He looked at his son's still-distraught face, then back at his oldest friends. "I think," he said slowly and carefully, "that Troy admitted to his lawyer that he did something terrible twenty-one years ago. Something to his lawyer's girlfriend." Everyone looked at him, including Nathan. Chantelle fell against the teenaged boy, her bleeding stomach burning like a fever, but she paid it no heed. Not now. Karyn twisted around to look as well, as much an adult as any of them, the games and pettiness of high school sitting so uneasily in her head at that moment. Brandon pondered his next comments and chose his words carefully. "Francis was distraught. He loved Chelsea. He worked out where Troy had done the deed and came here after Troy's suicide and after all the coincidental accidents," he went on, "and he found the truth. He uncovered… Maybe it was the exertion of what he had done, maybe it was his grief…" He stopped there.
No-one argued.
"Revenge…" the wind whispered.
Nathan placed his father's head gently on the ground and let Chantelle wrap herself around him, both oblivious to their pain.
"Love..." the wind whispered in the same voice. "Love…"
It had come to pass, after all that time.
The greatest desire had been achieved.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
S. Gepp is an Australian, with two children, a number of university degrees and diplomas, and a resumé that looks like a list of every job you could ever have without really trying, including stints as a school teacher, scientist, editor and journalist. He has also been a performance acrobat, a professional wrestler, a stand-up comedian and an actor. He has been writing for 30 years and hopes to be a real writer if he grows up. A dull life.
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Chapter One
It was one of those rare mornings when Dennis Parkes woke at peace. Cautiously, he lifted his head, waiting for the quick, shadowy movements seen from the corner of his eye, the sibilant whispering filling the stale air of the small bedroom. There was nothing. Just still, silent darkness.
He thought of waking his wife, Swan, to share his sense of relief and happiness, but she had never heard the voices or seen the shadows move. If he woke her, she would be angry at being disturbed more than an hour before the alarm was due. It would ruin his mood. It would ruin the stillness. He eased his head back onto the pillow and lay awake, enjoying the silence, the peace.
Slowly, dawn lit up the window through the thin curtains, and birdsong twittered and whistled through the trees of nearby Ottmor Wood. If only all mornings could be like this, he would not need the medication, the therapy. It might even make his life with Swan less combative.
If only.
Wyatt Road lay quiet and sleepy on the outskirts of Anbal, a small village on the Wirral Peninsula. The commuter traffic, from Liverpool to the north and Chester to the south, bypassed Anbal on the M53 motorway. What little diverted through the narrow main street of the village itself passed the end of Wyatt Road without any thought of turning in. Wyatt Road was a dead-end. If you didn't live there and were not visiting, your only destination would be the turning circle just before the wooden stile leading to Ottmor Wood.
It was the quiet, more than anything, that had drawn Swanhild Parkes to number 20 when it came up for sale. A narrow mid-terraced house, it stood more or less equidistant between the end of the road and the wood. Built in the early 1930s, it had more-recent additions of a concrete driveway at the front, newly installed plumbing and electrics, and a narrow, but long, well-groomed garden at the back. That was eleven years ago, when she had persuaded Dennis that this should be their first family home. Now, standing at the kitchen sink, staring at the overgrown lawn, the legs of upturned plastic chairs like skeletal limbs reaching up from the long grass, she felt nothing but despair.
"It's not my fault I got made redundant," shouted Dennis from somewhere behind her. She had almost forgotten they were mid-argument. The same argument they had had almost weekly for the last three years.
"No," she said, agreeing. "But it is your fault that the grass hasn't been cut for weeks."
"You know it hurts my back."
"We can't afford to get someone in anymore," she said, striving to be both truthful and understanding. "Since you can't do it, I'll have to do it at the weekend."
"I'll worry if you do that. I don't want you to do that."
His voice almost whined. She hated it when he whined.
"Yes, well, there's not much choice, is there?" She turned from the sink to face her husband. "Now, I have to get to work."
"I'll move the car," said Dennis. "May as well go to the shop while I'm out."
He turned and began burrowing through the accumulated clutter under the stairs for his shoes.
Swan wanted to be even more truthful. She wanted to tell her husband that he was a morbidly obese, out-of-work man in his early forties, and that it was no wonder his back and joints hurt, given the weight they were carrying. But she knew the redundancy had hurt him badly, destroyed his confidence, shoved him into depression, and that the weight gain was almost completely due to emotional eating since then. He was not currently fit for work, mentally or physically. She wanted to tell him these things, but she knew it would just deepen his depression and worsen an already terrible self-image. He needed to know she supported him, still loved him, despite all that had happened.
Dennis had found his shoes and, with some difficulty, put them on. Breathing heavily, he led the way out of the front door. Swan shrugged on her one and only coat and followed.
Dennis reversed his old Peugeot 405 out of the narrow driveway and waited, the engine idling. He felt comfortable in the car, able to relax, away from whispered voices, away from Swan. Alone. It had been bought for the long drive to his last place of work, and he held on to it stubbornly after the redundancy. Big and impractical it might be, given how little driving he now did, but it was his. And it was the only thing that connected him to his old life. His purposeful, employed life. When he hadn't felt quite so worthless. When he didn't spend days in introspection and deepening depresssion. When he felt confident his wife loved him.
Swan's Vauxhall Corsa reversed out, and the bright pink of the bodywork pulled a slight smile out of his frown. Even she agreed she bought it more for the colour than the car itself.
They waved to each other as she drove off, and Dennis waited until he saw her safely negotiate the junction at the end of the road before he put the Peugeot into gear and headed for the shops.
Just get the essentials and back home.
But did he really want to be home? There was nothing there but an empty house, another long day of watching the clock ticking slowly by, the flash of movement from the corner of his eye—and the voices.
He wanted to tell Swan, he really did. But how do you tell your wife that you hear voices in the home you share? She already thought him fat and useless, blamed him for his depression and for failing to get another job. To admit to hearing voices and seeing things would finally convince her he was completely insane. She would probably leave. He couldn't risk that.
Only two other people knew about the voices and the shadows: his local general practitioner, Dr. Banks, and his one and only friend, Travis Newman. The only two people he had told differed in their reactions.
"It's not that unusual," Dr. Banks had said. "Particularly in someone suffering from clinical depression, like yourself."
"But what do the voices mean?" said Dennis. "Why are they mostly unintelligible? Shouldn't they be sending me messages from God or something?"
Dr. Banks smiled. "The mind is a complex thing," he said. "It can push bad and unpleasant thoughts aside if it doesn't want to deal with them. It separates them, and they become a different part of you."
"You mean like another person in my head?"
"Not quite, but another aspect of you, certainly." Dr. Banks removed his
narrow-framed glasses and held them in his right hand, twisting them back and forth as he spoke. "These are things you don't want to have to cope with just now, so they're pushed into the background. And mostly, that's where they stay. But every now and then they push back, and that's where the voices are coming from."
"So it's all in my mind," said Dennis. "Does this mean I'm psychotic or something?"
Dr. Banks shook his head. "No. It's not any kind of psychosis. It's dissociation. Like I said, it's quite common among those suffering from depression."
Travis, on the other hand, saw things slightly differently.
"So, you hear voices. Are they always in your head, or sometimes from outside?"
They had been sitting in their local Sainsburys cafe, meeting up during Travis's lunch break from his nearby office job, and before Dennis went shopping. Talking with Travis boosted Dennis's self-confidence enough to make it round the aisles without panicking.
"Sometimes in my head, sometimes not," said Dennis, keeping his voice low. He was sure some of the old people at neighbouring tables were listening.
"I don't reckon it's anything to do with depression," said Travis, casually dismissing what Dennis had told him about the doctor's opinion. "I think it's a lot simpler than all that stuff."
"Oh yes?" said Dennis, doubtfully. As a general rule, he sided with doctors over laymen, but he always had time for Travis's thoughts on matters, however outrageous they might turn out to be. "And so what do you think it is?"
"Simple." Travis leaned closer, lowering his voice to a whisper. "Your house is haunted."
2
Cady entered the house when Uncle Fritch gestured him through the door. Ezzy waited for him at the end of a short hallway. He walked after her, hurrying as she turned right. A doorway to the kitchen stood on the left after he took the turn; he caught a glimpse of an older woman in an apron cooking something that smelled terrific. Ezzy walked past, then took another right. Cady followed and stepped into a large foyer.
