Half Life

by Heather Atkinson

  “Wait, stop,” I say, sitting up.

  “What is it?” she says, sitting up with me. The sight of her with bared thighs, hair tousled and breathing hard does nothing to cool my ardour.

  “I want to make love to you, to prove the truth of my words with action but I can’t do it, it would be a sin, a mockery of the Holy Spirit.”

  “I understand,” she says quietly. “We can kiss, that is enough.”

  Slowly I remove her nightgown and my eyes stand out on stalks. I’d thought Clara had been beautiful but Kate puts her in the shade. She’s all smooth caramel skin and curves.

  “If I had any breath to take away you would have stolen it,” I say, awed.

  “You are so romantic,” she smiles, snaking her arms around my neck.

  I lay her back on the bed. “I don’t just have to kiss you on the lips.”

  “Oh, Tom,” she moans as my tongue finds the centre of her.

  A weeks passes and there’s still no sign of the light. Any worries I may have had about it not returning are obliterated by Kate and the happiness we share, which is still only slightly marred by Michael‘s persistent phone calls.

  I’m reading in the chair by the fire, awaiting her return, surprised when the door opens and Kate practically stumbles through the door. She looks shocked and dishevelled and I race to catch her before she falls.

  “Kate, what’s happened?”

  “Michael,” she mumbles.

  “What has he done now?”

  “He attacked me.”

  “My God, are you alright?”

  “I’m not sure, I feel so strange.” She holds onto my hands for dear life. “I think he really hurt me, I should have gone to hospital…” she pauses and looks up at me wide-eyed. “Why do you suddenly feel warm?”

  “Kate, Sweetheart, you need to listen to me.”

  She nods and stares up at me with those big eyes.

  “You’re dead Kate.”

  I didn’t think it possible but her eyes widen even more. “No I’m not. I only went out to the shop.”

  “Focus Kate, tell me what you remember.”

  “I stopped at the corner shop on my way home, the one at the bottom of the road. I needed a loaf of bread. I stepped out into the road, there was the squeal of tyres and I looked to the right and there was a black car coming at me. Michael was in the driver’s seat.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I…I remember being hit then a bit of pain. All I could think about was getting back here to you and suddenly I was walking up the path.”

  The wail of police sirens fills the air and we both dash outside. Kate attempts to run out of the garden gate but she weakens and stumbles, unable to get any further. I pull her back to me and instantly she recovers. At the top of the road we can see a crowd gathered, which stands aside to allow the ambulance and police cars to pass. It is then we see the shape crumpled up in the road, the limbs lying at odd angles.

  “Sally,” says Kate when she sees her friend join the crowd.

  Sally looks at the figure lying on the ground and screams before fainting dead away.

  “Oh Jesus this is awful,” cries Kate.

  She clings to me as she sobs her heart out. “When Michael said he was going to take everything from me I didn’t realise he meant my life too.”

  I just let her get it all out of her system then when she’s calmed down I stand holding her to me while we watch the circus up the road. The police take over the area and put up bits of blue tape everywhere. Once Kate’s body has been loaded onto the ambulance and taken away the crowd disperses, only a few ghouls remaining to watch as the men in bizarre white papery outfits start to sweep the area. Michael must have escaped because no one has been arrested.

  “Come on, let’s go inside,” I say, gently leading her back to the house.

  She refuses to let go of me for an instant and it’s a revelation to see her so vulnerable. I recall only too well what she is going through. Sometimes death takes you so fast you don’t realise what has happened. It’s an awful state of confusion and grief. Then you have to watch everything and everyone you know disappear and die, replaced by new things and strange people, which is just plain frightening. Suddenly you find yourself in a world you are no longer a part of and cannot understand and it’s horrible.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she says. “Please don’t let me go, don’t leave me.”

  “I wont, I promise. Shall I put on the television? It’s almost time for our show,” I say, thinking it will be a good distraction.

  “It can’t be that time already? It’s only just past lunchtime.”

  “I’m afraid not, it’s almost seven thirty at night.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  “Time will move differently for you now, faster. Hours become minutes and minutes nothing at all. It is a blessing otherwise madness would surely ensue.”

  She just nods, releasing me so I can switch on the television. When I sit back down again she snuggles into me and I stroke her hair soothingly. We watch it in silence and when it’s done I leave the television on, not wanting to release her again to switch it off.

  “So what happens now?” she says. I’m relieved to hear her voice is stronger, some of the fear gone.

  “We just wait.”

  “For what?”

  I kiss the top of her head. “I’m not sure but we’ll know when it happens.”

  “What if the light comes back for you and leaves me here?”

  “That wont happen.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I wont go without you.”

  “You can’t…”

  I press my finger to her lips to quiet her. “We either go together or not all. Do not fear, I will never leave you.”

  She stares up at me, wonder in her eyes.

  “What is it?” I say.

  “I’ve just realised that Michael did me a favour.”

  “What can you mean?”

  She touches my face. “Now I have everything I’ve ever wanted.”

  “Oh sweet girl,” I say, kissing her.

  Daylight brings with it visitors. Sally and Simon enter first, followed by a dozen more people. All are dressed in black and red eyed from crying.

  Kate and I leap to our feet and retreat to the back of the room to watch.

  “Oh God, is this my wake?” says Kate incredulously.

  “I think so.”

  Kate’s eyes settle on Georgia. “Mum,” she breathes in a heartbreakingly childlike voice.

  We watch as Sally acts hostess, offering round tea and sandwiches then she settles onto the couch beside Simon, who wraps his arm around her. She buries her face in his shoulder as fresh tears pour down her face.

  “I can’t believe Michael did this to her,” begins Georgia. She sits in the chair by the window as though it’s a throne and everyone listens as she speaks. “I thought he was a pig, especially after he destroyed her career but I didn’t think him capable of murder.”

  “He carried out his threat to the full,” says Simon. “When he said he’d take everything from her, he really meant it.”

  “But why? He’d won, she’d moved away and was trying to start over,” sobs Sally. “Why did he have to take her life too?”

  “Because he thought he could,” announces Georgia. “After everything he’d already done to her he thought he could get away with that too. But he wont because there’s too much evidence against him. There were two witnesses and the police have taken forensic evidence from his car. This time he will pay for what he’s done to her.”

  “Kate did another good thing before she died,” says Sally. “She proved that awful Marguerita Swirls was a fake. Her real name was Maud Swathes with a long history of fraud. I feel like such an idiot. I brought her here to perform an exorcism.”

  “You did what?” says Georgia incredulously, but the thought appears to amuse her. “Kate must have loved that.”

  “Oh yes
. So much so that she bashed Marguerita over the head and chased her from the house.”

  “She never did believe in ghosts, thought it a lot of rot. Why did you bring in an exorcist anyway?”

  “Because this house is haunted.”

  The same scepticism that used to be in Kate’s eyes comes into her mother’s. “Really?”

  “Really,” adds Simon. “I never used to believe in it all either but after a visit here once I’m a believer. Me, Sally and our friend Nick were chased out by a poltergeist who threw things at us.”

  “Well it’s all quiet now.”

  “Thomas must have some sense of occasion,” sniffs Sally.

  They all lapse into silence, too grief-stricken and exhausted to talk any further. They are all genuinely mourning Kate’s loss, it hangs in the air like a great black bird. Not like my funeral. My family seemed to be rather embarrassed by it all and the associated rumours of suicide. Then when they’d all gone my wife went upstairs to my bedroom with her lover. It had been humiliating to watch but this wake is full of love and sorrow and all the mourners have naught but Kate on their minds.

  Still she clings to me, tucked under my arm safely, watching the scene with anguish in her lovely eyes. Then I spy someone stood in the kitchen, I can see him through the open doorway, a man in his early forties with light brown hair, dressed in blue jeans and a white t-shirt. He’s looking right at us.

  “Kate, there’s a strange man staring at us.”

  She looks in the direction I indicate and instantly she looks happier. “It’s my dad,” she breathes.

  She beams brightly and it is so good to see her smile again.

  The man holds his hand out to her and I see the same swirling light vortex open up behind him.

  “Looks like it’s time to go,” I say.

  “You’re coming with me?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “It is, more than anything. Can you finally leave this house?”

  I take one more glance about my beloved home then look down at Kate. “I can because my love lies elsewhere now.”

  She smiles radiantly and kisses me then hand in hand we walk towards Kate’s father, who holds his arms out to us both…

  Georgia watches her daughter and who she takes to be Thomas Galbraith head into the light with her husband and she is filled with peace. Robert had told her only last night he would see Kate home safely, that she was still here lost and confused, although she did have a friend. But now Kate knows Michael will pay for his crime she is free to move on and be happy.

  Georgia has been able to see spirits ever since she was a young girl and Kate had inherited the same ability. She’d hadn’t even known it herself, her invisible friend being the spirit of a little girl named Dorothy who’d died in the Victorian era. But Georgia herself had suffered so much for her gift that she didn’t want her daughter to endure the same, so she’d schooled her not to believe in the supernatural. Her own denial made her sixth sense lie dormant, until she’d moved here and Thomas Galbraith had set it off again. Georgia is glad she’s had him to lean on because death can be so terribly confusing. Lightness replaces the sadness weighing her down. One day she will join them and they’ll be a happy family again. She is keen to meet Thomas too, he seems such a nice boy.

  THE END

  THE DINNER PARTY

  The chatter of her guests drifted into the kitchen as Sabrina plated up the main course and she frowned as she tried to make out their words. It was mundane talk about work, the weather, what the kids were up to. Nothing about her. The paranoid knot in her stomach eased and her grip on the fish slice loosened.

  Alright breathe, relax, everything’s going well. They’re all having a good time and they loved your scallops, she thought to herself. Just keep calm and you’ll get through tonight.

  She repeated this mantra over and over to herself as her therapist had suggested. Concentrating on the words helped focus her mind, keeping her thoughts off the catastrophe that had been her last dinner party.

  A plate in each hand, she plastered the smile to her face and strode confidently into the dining room. The first thing she saw was her husband Peter’s water glass sat on the table cloth and not the coaster where it belonged. A drop of moisture slowly slid down the exterior of the crystal, widening the stain that already defaced the pristine white material.

  The knot of anger twisted inside her, causing the muscle at the base of her jaw to pulsate angrily.

  “Sabrina are you alright?” said Janet, her best friend with concern.

  She realised the whole room had gone quiet and everyone was staring at her uncertainly as she stood rigid in the doorway, clutching two steaming plates of beef wellington.

  Just keep calm.

  The artificial smile returned.

  “Fine thank you,” she chirruped, putting one of the plates before her friend.

  “Looks lovely,” Janet smiled and everyone nodded in agreement.

  When she put Peter’s dinner before him she placed the water glass back on the coaster with a meaningful look. He bowed his head and glanced nervously at the rest of the table, who all appeared glad they weren’t him.

  “Sorry Sabrina,” he mumbled.

  Just keep calm.

  “It’s fine,” she replied with forced cheer.

  The conversation gradually recovered as she brought out the remaining four plates and they all tucked in eagerly.

  “Another triumph Sabrina,” smiled her brother, Dale.

  Everyone mumbled their concurrence through enthusiastic mouthfuls.

  “Thank you,” she preened, basking beneath the praise. The tension inside her relaxed and she took a swig of wine to steady her nerves.

  It’s all going well, they like it.

  At that moment, her other friend, Kelly, scraped her knife across Sabrina’s best china plate, setting her teeth on edge. The room filled with an anxious silence, all seven heads slowly turning to look at Sabrina whose hand gripped the stem of the wine glass so tightly it threatened to snap. She glared at Kelly with barely-concealed fury.

  Just. Keep. Calm.

  They all leant back in their chairs, as though expecting Sabrina to leap across the table at the offender.

  “S…sorry Sabrina. I d…didn’t mean it,” stammered Kelly.

  Deep breath. Relax.

  “I know,” she smiled, the muscles in her face aching with the effort of twisting her features back into that insincere grin.

  As Sabrina returned her attention to her plate there was a collective sigh of relief. The main course passed uneventfully and everyone drunk deeply of the wine to settle their jangling nerves. By the time dessert was finished the majority of the guests were rather inebriated. Sabrina brought out the cheese board, her forced smile turning into a happy, relaxed one.

  I’ve done it, she thought with relief. Almost there.

  Her calm was shattered when she saw Dale quietly arguing with Anna, his perfectly blond perfectly botoxed wife.

  “Would you care to share with the group?” frowned Sabrina, green eyes narrowing.

  “It’s nothing,” spat Dale, his furious gaze fixed on his wife.

  “Anna?” said Sabrina, her voice icy.

  “You’re all too afraid to say it but I’m not,” she snapped, getting to her feet and staring at Sabrina defiantly. “I’ve had enough of tiptoeing about, afraid of upsetting you. I want to know what happened at the last dinner party. What made you go mental and start throwing hot food at us?”

  “Anna sit down,” thundered Dale, horrified.

  “No I wont. For God’s sake Dale she scalded you with gravy and Janet, you had second degree cauliflower cheese burns.” She glared at Sabrina rebelliously. “And you ruined my brand new Karen Millen dress.”

  There was a moment of silence as they all watched Sabrina cagily, uncertain of what she was going to do. However she just stared at Anna, a half smile playing on her lips as she twisted the stem of her wine glass absently.
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  “For God’s sake say something,” exclaimed Anna, unable to tolerate the silence any longer.

  “You really want to know, do you?”

  “Yes because this has gone far enough. Dale dropped a carrot under the table earlier and he’s too scared to tell you.”

  “Anna, for Christ’s sake,” said Dale, trying to pull her back down in her seat but she shrugged him off.

  “Well I’m not scared of you. Your pastry was dry, do you hear me? Dry.”

  There were shocked gasps from the other guests while Dale screwed his eyes tight shut, as though he couldn’t bear to watch. Everyone subtlely shifted their chairs back from the table in case they needed to get out of the way quickly.

  But Sabrina merely leaned forward in her seat, wearing the same creepy half smile.

  “Alright. I’ll tell you.” The smile disappeared and her eyes turned cold. “I saw you Anna. With Peter.”

  Anna flushed bright red and her eyes widened momentarily before she recovered and decided on denial. “What do you mean?”

  Sabrina’s gaze remained steady and hard as she continued. “I mean I saw you both together in our bedroom. On. Our. Bed.”

  It went so quiet it seemed all the sound had been sucked out of the room.

  “What do you mean? What is this?” demanded Dale as his wife slumped back in her chair, eyes filling with tears.

  “I’m so sorry,” Anna wept.

  Slowly Sabrina turned her gaze on Peter, her husband of twenty years, who looked completely dejected.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he muttered weakly.

  “I’m not surprised. I waited and waited for you to work up the nerve to tell me but you never did, you pathetic gutless little worm,” Sabrina snarled, the disgust clear in her voice.

  Sweat broke out on Peter’s brow and his hands shook.

  “Twenty years of my life I wasted on you,” she continued. “I even let you give me a nervous breakdown. Well no more Peter. We’re over.”

  “Sabrina, please…”

  His words were cut off as he clutched at his stomach in agony, face paling.

  “I put poison in your beef Wellington,” said Sabrina icily. “Just yours,” she added when she saw the panicked expressions on everyone’s faces. “I warned you when we first married Peter, don’t ever cheat on me.”