“No, Dad!” I yell out from my room.
“Avery, I’m trying to make this go away.” He steps into the room and my heart sinks deeper as the cold empty man stares at me with disappointment. I’m an emotional wreck and that’s not allowed. I’m letting him down. He doesn’t understand me, he doesn’t know me and I am scared to tell him what’s happening inside me.
“Dad, he’s mine please. I want to put him by mom.” I sigh, unable to look him in the eye as I ask. He won’t like what he sees in my eyes today.
“Avery, what’s going on girl?” He walks closer to me. “I have never questioned this strange need to have him around. I never asked why you didn’t kill him in that shack, but now I am worried. You’re falling to pieces, making mistakes, missing work and killing in your home. So you need to tell me so I can understand why he deserves a place near your mother?” His hands are on my shoulders now as he bends to try and look into my eyes.
“He is the only one who ever made me feel. Anything.” His blue eyes search mine for answers I don’t have. “Daddy I don’t think I can do this anymore, I loved him and it has broken me.” Daddy, oh God Daddy. I’m dying and I need your help I want to beg him to save me but I can’t, he can’t know how weak I am.
“Go get in my car, we’re going home, baby girl.” He is out the door in a blink. I hear him tell them to take Eiran’s body to the farm under the cover of darkness tonight and to bury him there. My fear subsides just a little bit and I slip on a pair of ballet flats and go to wait for my dad in the car.
It’s a man’s own mind, not his enemy or
foe that lures him to evil ways.
SOMETHING IS WRONG. I feel it, I have this sense for knowing when things aren’t right. I have had her by my side long enough to know when she isn’t okay.
I called her all night and she didn’t answer, neither did Eiran, but he was so drunk he’s probably sleeping it off. My morning coffee tastes like shit and I consider whiskey before nine in the morning again as I glance at my watch for the hundredth time. She’s never this late to the office, she never doesn’t answer my calls. I dial again, only now her phone’s off and my gut sinks as I recall her kidnapping from years before, that’s when Eiran entered our little world and her strange killing spree started. She connected to him but never let him close. He became her pet project she had him find a place where she could taunt him. I never tried to understand them but I know enough to know that they are linked by something far deeper than either will ever admit. He’s going to be an issue where my plans are concerned. I need their bond broken even if I have to have him killed myself.
The pain is unbearable today and I know I’m already on borrowed time, I’m maxed out on pain meds and it’s too early to drink. I buzz the reception desk outside.
“Call my doctor please and have him come in.” I’m suddenly reminded he was with her last night, I’ll be asking him about that. I don’t like their union, albeit a night, there is a plan in place and her liking someone could fuck it all up. Harmon is sitting at my desk trying to absorb all the company information he can in as little time as possible. He is the future, my self-nominated saviour and I have faith in him. Maybe if I keep telling myself that enough times, I’ll believe that they can be the formidable force I want them to be. My desk phone rings. The line that is for stuff that no one on earth should know about. It’s never good when it rings.
“Callum speaking.”
“It’s me.” Rowan’s voice comes back at me and I know instantly something isn’t right.
“Where is she?” I ask Rowan because there would be no other reason to call me on this line.
“With me, Callum, something completely fucked up is happening to her and I’m taking her to the farm. She killed Eiran last night.” It takes me a moment to register what he said. He sounds tired, he sounds like I feel—beaten. He has a daughter he can’t love and he failed her in every way. He has no idea what to do with her, he never did, not when she was born and not now.
“She what?” Oh Eiran you fool I said go home.
“She slept on top of his dead body in her bathtub. Callum, she’s fucked up. She needs a break. She cried, you and I both know that isn’t okay for her.” He tries to explain it to me. None of us will understand her. She is like Shannon there is no understanding them, broken girls are dangerous women.
“I don’t have time for her to have a fucking break, Rowan.” I snap at him because I don’t, time is one luxury I don’t have at all.
“Make a plan, Callum. My daughter is coming home with me.” His intended meaning is clear she is his not mine. I knew something was wrong, but this is perfectly fine by me, with Eiran out of her way my plans will be easier to implement. I just need her to pull herself back together.
“Fix this, Rowan, fast. Now isn’t the time for her to grow a fucking heart.” I snap. I’m in pain and I’m irritated.
“She always had a heart, Callum. We made her hide it away remember.” The line goes dead in my ear. Fuck.
I slam the phone down and look up to see Harmon looking at me with a smug smirk that I am getting used to now. “Want to talk about it?” he asks me. Do I? “Not really.”
“Avery problems? I take it she won’t be in for our special meeting today?” He’s so full of himself. If I had the strength I would smack him.
“No, we will have to reschedule.” I sit down at her desk, what happened to her. She was flawless and now she’s a disaster waiting to happen. Where is that fucking doctor? I’m hurting.
“Can you leave for a while?” I ask Harmon to go so I can drink before the pain consumes me. God, dying is almost as hard as living has been, can nothing just go as it should. I silently curse the woman I loved for this punishment. Images of her bruised broken body flash into my head and I’m reminded why it is I’m dying now. I started a war I couldn’t win with her. I loved her and didn’t kill her before she could kill me. I made a mistake and it has cost me my life. I taught Avery that love would kill her, so did Rowan. I’m a horrible human being, I never claimed to be anything else. A villain was born in my mother’s blood and I will die with the same darkness I have lived with. Madness was born in me, just like murder was born into Avery. Sometimes our inheritance isn’t worth living for anymore. I have money, power and anything I want in the world but I never found love, not even from the child I raised as my own. Love is reserved for the other people in this world, those that are not like us. Razor blades slice through my side as the pain intensifies leaving me slightly breathless another reminder of just how little time I have left. The office door swishes open as Mathew comes inside, his expressions tells me I look about as shitty as I feel today.
“You look like crap, Callum, it’s a bit early to be on the booze isn’t it?”
“I’m fucking dying. It’s never too early when you are dying. I heard you had an eventful night last night.” He looks like the cat stole the canary, oh yes Doc, I know everything.
“She told you?” he asks with a slight smile looking around the room to see if she is here somewhere. They had sex, good sex, it’s written all over his face and I want to punch him. She wasn’t meant for him.
“No, she’s having a personal day. You know there’s someone watching her all the time don’t you?” I smile. I still love playing the games. “Avery has a dirty shadow, nothing she does goes unnoticed, doctor. Watch out where you play. The other guy she fucked last night is dead in a bathtub.” He winces a little at the other guy comment. His ego is wounded, he thought he was special, poor fool, no one is special to that girl.
“I just had some fun, I think she did too. She doesn’t know it yet but she likes to be pushed around a little.” He’s trying to make me react so I don’t.
“Hmm. Just know what you are getting into, the score is pretty uneven where she is concerned eighty-seven dead bodies and she is still adding to it every week.” I need him to back off, I need her to want Harmon, to need him she has to fucking choose him.
“C
allum, Callum? Are you alright?” His voice brings me back to the room.
“No the pain is off the charts today. Like four hundred not ten.” I tell him as it slashes at my insides again. “And I have a fucking headache.”
“Callum, we need to talk about your plan, now, I’m being honest. There is really very little I can still do for you. You’re going to start going into rapid organ failure soon and we wanted to avoid that at all costs.” I know what he’s saying, time is a bitch just like my wife was.
“I need two days to finalise things then we can do it, Mat, I’ll be done. Thursday is the end.” He nods as injects me with something to dull the agony but it never does and hands me a joint.
“Smoke it, old man, it will help.”
He packs his things meticulously into his bag while I smoke the weed he just handed me and chase it with whiskey. “She liked you,” I say out loud, the drugs talking. “Or you’d be very dead already.” He frowns at me.
“Avery isn’t going to kill me, Callum. Not before I kill you if that’s your concern. It was fun, but I rarely go back for seconds and I’m not going to be in town long after Friday.” Closing his bag up and looking at me with the pity I loathe, he nods at me. “She is different though, something very special in her.” I hear the evil undertone and the angel of death twinkles in his eye. The darkness inside him likes the pitch black inside her, they are a dangerous combination.
“I suggest you leave her alone, Mat. I have her future very well planned out and you, my boy, are not in it.” My threat clear he gives me a knowing nod one villain to another. There’s a reason I don’t trust doctors, Shannon, him and countless others in between. They’re evil fuckers all of them. We talk about my plan for the future as I get high and the sweet smoke takes my pain away. I need him to know she has a future all mapped out.
“See you Thursday, Callum. Take it easy. I’m looking forward to it. Don’t ruin my fun.” The slimy fuck leaves me to smoke, drink and wrap up my business and my life.
There is nothing else for me, no redemption and forgiveness doesn’t come for those who are born damned, so I’m happy knowing I will not be going to a better place. I don’t deserve one, I’m not nor have I ever been worthy of anything good, my life is a testament to that. I’m a living breathing tragedy and I will suffer the tragic end I deserve, but I will do it on my terms and in my time. The only thing I will keep in this world is the sliver of dignity that I have hung onto through this disease. I sit at my desk and sign my new will and testament, the one that splits my assets between Avery and Harmon should he honour his appendix to the contract within two years of the date of signing. Should he not do so his half goes to my sister Amya. I may not live to see it but I can die in the hope that my dream of a suitable successor will come true. Slipping the notarised documents back in the envelope, I get up to go and deliver them to my lawyers on the third floor as Harmon is coming back into the office. He’s a twenty year younger version of me, without a death sentence tightening around his neck, regret sneaks into my mind as I think of all the things I would have done differently. There aren’t many, the biggest one is I would never have shoved the girl who held my heart out of her bedroom window. My path was changed that night more than any other of the defining moments that came before or after, that night left my feelings exposed. That night turned me into a vicious rapist. It tipped me over the edge and started a free fall into madness that I still cannot stop. Once upon a time, I was just a boy with a gun in his hand and the desperate need to belong in the world. Now I’m a sad, bitter old man with an empty heart and home and I’m too weak to hold a gun to kill myself.
I stop Harmon in the middle of the reception area holding out my hand, I shake his. “It’s up to you and her now. I’m done. Try not to fuck it all up at once.” He looks confused like he really thought I would be here longer, but also like he has no idea what to say to me at all. “Bye, Harmon.” I let his hand fall and walk away from everything I have built with the blood of my family.
All wrong-doing arises because of mind.
If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?
ON MONDAY NIGHT, I felt something. On Tuesday, I killed the one person I think I might have loved. On Wednesday, I woke up in my childhood room with tears burning my cheeks. On Thursday, I saw my father’s eyes as he cried and tried to tell me the news that Callum died. On Friday, I sat between the graves of my mother and dead lover. I wished for the little girl that used to swing in the tree that is now burnt and fallen to come back and breathe her life into me. On Saturday, I couldn’t get out of bed and Sunday, I drowned in the wine from the vineyard store. On Monday, I got dressed but never left for work, my dad tried to talk to me and I cried, so he left. In a week, I have lost everything that held me together and as I fall apart slowly and painfully I don’t even try and keep any part of me I let it all shatter and break apart.
TODAY IS FRIDAY again and we stand in the little graveyard like we used to on Sundays. Dad and me and a lady I think I remember but cannot place. She’s beautiful and her skin is covered like my dad’s while a big man holds her hand as she wipes her cheeks with an old fashioned hanky. Callum’s half-brother, Harmon is here, we met once—he’s a dick. The Catholic priest drones on and I don’t listen to a word of the drivel that he spews. Callum didn’t believe he was going to heaven anyway, he was comfortable with the fact his soul couldn’t be saved. My tears have dried up again, I don’t like to cry and the last week has made me hate it. Everyone has tears except for me and Harmon, he seems to hate crying too by the way he looks at them all. I’m fascinated. He looks so much like Callum, only his eyes are amber not green and he isn’t frail or wrinkled, he’s strong and young. He even dresses just like the old man, the signature O’Reilly three piece suit even when it’s as hot as hell out. Over twenty years I never once saw Callum in anything else. My dad wears jeans, he is sort of old school cool with his ink and greying hair and beard. Even now he has jeans on, he doesn’t change who he is for anyone—ever. I see a shadow behind the remains of the tree I used to swing in as child, standing away from the few who cared is the doctor that started this spiral into mayhem for me. I swallow a very heavy realisation—he killed Callum. No, Callum asked him to die before it got too bad. He killed him, the anger starts to bubble even though I know he wouldn’t have had a choice with Cal, he did it and I hate him for it. I try to stand still as the sharp acid of my rage starts to burn inside me. I shuffle my feet and look at my dad next to me, he grabs my hand and squeezes it. When I look up again Mathew’s gone, but I will find him. I drop the single white Arum Lily onto the coffin as I step right next to the gaping hole in the ground and it swallows up part of my soul as they fill it in.
It turns out the beautiful lady is Callum’s sister, Amya. She was around when I was a baby and even took care of me, I remember her face but nothing else. The big man with her is her husband Robin. They all laugh and tell stories of Callum and my mom and how Robin was the one who did all their tattoos, before he left no one else had drawn on my dad. Cupcakes, wine and café stories that couldn’t sound less like Callum if they tried, the Callum I knew was different. He was the man who killed the devil, ruthless, loveless, cold, calculated and above all lonely, but he gave me the attention my father wouldn’t. We all sit on the patio and drinking and eating, Harmon’s silent almost the whole time, I don’t think he really knew his brother at all besides a few phone calls. I’m not sure they had anything to do with each other. I feel his eyes boring into me and as the sun starts to sag close to the horizon I can’t bear anymore of this and I excuse myself to my room. I close my door and kick off my shoes, a shower is what I need. I cannot face a bathtub yet, as much as I would love to soak in one I just can’t get Eiran’s dead body out of my head.
When I emerge from the bathroom, my dad’s sitting in the chair by the window looking out at the vineyard and the almost night sky that isn’t dark or light. “Want to talk about it yet, kid?” he asks and I think I might want to bu
t I am not sure I can.
“About what, dad?” I ask softly because truth is I have no idea where to start, I was closer to Callum than him because he shut me out. Dad was detached, he taught me to kill, that was our connection, but there was nothing more. The deep bond that should be shared between parent and child was missing.
“All of it if you want.”
“You remember when I was kidnapped and I came home with Eiran?” He doesn’t turn and face me which is better really, I think I might just spill some very ugly truths not even he is ready for. Looking into his tragic eyes will make it harder.
“I remember, you changed after that. Killing became easy for you.” He’s right, it did. It no longer felt like work, but became a release for the insanity inside me, I wanted to love Eiran instead I killed.
“He raped me, not one of you even asked me if I got hurt because I filleted him, you all thought I was fine. I cut a man apart and you all thought I was fine.” My Dad’s back goes ramrod straight and stiffens where he no stands up his hands pressed against the windows.
“Worst part of it was how much I liked it, how he made me feel. He made me feel a little tickle under the hard shell that you and Callum made me wear. I fell in love with the boy that stole my virginity, then I spent ten years torturing him by fucking other men and killing them so he had to clean up, dad. Still want to talk about it?” He nods I can only see the back of his head and a reflection of his face in the glass, he was always just a reflection of his loss.
“Eighty-seven dead bodies and not once did you or Callum try to stop me. At least Callum would yell and scream and make me feel like I should try not to. You never uttered a word.” I take a minute to let the things I’m saying sink in for both of us, facing truths like these isn’t always easy. My father didn’t care enough to try stop me from being a heartless murderer.
My Black Hole Heart (Colour #3) Page 6
