“CALLIE! CALLIE!” she calls over and over again.
The faint sound of the fire department rings in the air, sirens getting louder with every passing second as I feel her struggling begin to weaken in my hold. I just hold her tighter until I’ve finally got my back to a car, waiting for her to calm down or give in. Not because she needs me, but because I suddenly need her. Memories flood me. Sirens and emergency crews. Machines and devices. Monitors bleeping and people in white uniforms coming into my home. The sight of blood, Selma’s vacant gaze. Lenon’s hand hanging out of that fucking body bag.
“Callie,” she wails again, now with little other than despair in her voice as she sinks down my body to the floor. I go with her, wrapping her into my chest as she lays her head into my shoulder and we gaze at the burning woodwork. “What have I done?” she mumbles, choking on a sob as a large chunk of the roof crashes to the ground. “She came to help me and I’ve killed her.”
My hand soothes through her hair, softly caressing her as I frown at her words and watch the smoke oozing and curling. It enrages the building’s inferno further, creaking and spitting flames further into the sky with every hiss.
I eventually move us further away, dragging her backwards towards a large truck as the structure groans and begins leaning. “What have I done?” she sobs out, her fingers lying limply at her sides. “She was my friend.” I kiss the back of her hair, remembering the feeling of dread and terror. “She was my best friend. My only friend.”
She shakes in my arms as the engines arrive and begin their work, until eventually she stops and just becomes still. There are no more tears, no more questions, only the ones she answers when the police officers ask. We don’t move when prompted. We stay there, together, watching the building burn and remembering our own memories for our own reasons as night draws in around us.
Time passes and the people around us disperse, seemingly bored now that the show is quieting down. The last of the embers are put out after an hour or so of the fire service battling, and all that’s left is a blackened shell of a building, which occasionally topples and crumbles some more.
“I’ll have to go back,” she eventually says quietly, still not moving as she slumps between my legs and watches the uniformed men at work. One of them clears a path to the door, the other dousing remnants of wood still half alight. “If he’s willing to go to these lengths, what hope do I have on my own?” I frown at her words, scanning the area for any evidence of someone doing this purposefully.
“What do you mean?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he did this to spite me,” she says, moving with another lamenting sigh and pulling herself up from the floor. “He probably knew Callie was in there, too. He never liked her.” I open my mouth, confused about what this has to do with another man as I stand up and brush some soot from my suit. She wanders away from me, her bare feet slapping at the littered ground around her, mingling with the debris. “I was his wife until two weeks ago, you know?” she says, picking up a piece of plank from the floor and then throwing it back again. She moves along the path the guys are clearing, hugging her arms around herself and looking up at what’s left. “But after the last attack, I left. This,” she says, waving her hand at the scorched remains, “was my attempt at freedom. Pretty useless against men that powerful, huh?”
Rage rears its way through me, rage and hatred for anyone who would do this to her. It brings with it more visions of Selma and Lenon, their mutilated frames filling my mind with anger and loathing to keep my fury live and willing revenge on anything that breathes.
“You should come home with me,” I offer, frowning and wandering up behind her to reach for her back. She turns and steps away from me before I can touch her, backing herself up to the house and sneering a little.
“Why? I hardly think that’s sensible, Jack. Playtime’s over. I think my husband’s proved that point, don’t you?”
“You’re not considering going back to him?”
“What else do I have? My house is nothing but cinder. My free life’s over.” She turns to look back at the crumbling structure. “Not that it ever really began.”
I stare at her for a moment, wondering why she’s arrived in my life, and then gaze at what remains of the house. She’s right. There’s nothing left here for her to salvage. Nothing apart from her hatred. I walk past her, considering my interest in that thought process and nodding at a police officer walking out.
“We’re done here,” the guy says to us. “If you could come to the station over the next few days we’ll fill out the report.” I nod again, for some reason certain that it’s my position to be involved. It isn’t. I don’t know this woman and shouldn’t care in the least for her, but I do.
“Have you found her?” she asks, looking at the building in a glaze. The guy looks back at her, removing his helmet and shrugging out of his overalls.
“Ma’am, we can’t see anything until the building’s declared safe.” She nods and carries on staring at the house. “The investigators will be here soon. You’re free to go. We’ve got your details.”
He nods at us both and smiles solemnly before disappearing to the back of a vehicle, the rest of his team joining him there.
I pocket my hands and gaze at her as she wanders through the carnage, trying to calm myself. I’ve become furious for reasons unknown. Enough that I can feel the need to beat something coursing my veins. Perhaps it’s Selma’s vacant gaze that I can still see because of the sirens, or perhaps it’s the acrid stink lingering around the place.
“Come home with me, Madeline. Think,” I say, turning to walk back to her. “If you still want to go back to whoever the fuck did this then you can go when your car’s ready. Give yourself some time first.”
She slumps to the floor again, letting her suit get grubbier than it already was and running her fingers in the soot.
“I have nothing, Jack. Nothing but the soiled clothes I sit here in and a bank account stuffed with money I’m apparently not allowed to use on my own,” she says quietly, her voice becoming less emotional by the second. “Look what happens when I try. Is that what you want? If I come with you, you’ll be in danger, too. He’s probably here now.” She chuckles, the sound filled with hatred rather than amusement. “Watching us. Getting ready to kill you for helping me.” I slowly glance over the area again, willing the bastard to be somewhere useful. “That should scare you, Jack.” Nothing scares me anymore. I have nothing to lose. Life is empty now, meaningless. “It scares me. He scares me,” she continues, her finger still tracing circles in the soot beneath us. “He’s got my life all wrapped up in his hands, ready to destroy it over and over again, and all because he can’t get his own way. I shouldn’t have tried to escape him. I should have known it wouldn’t work.”
I watch the light decrease in her eyes, watch Selma’s brightness disappear, and begin to see Madeline Cavannagh for who she really is. It’s disheartening for some reason, and she’s becoming darker by the moment, just as I did after their deaths. Her frame changes, her movements slowing to those of unease and anger as she snaps a piece of charred wood. Even her hair begins to somehow lose its lustre. It becomes bland of colour, the chocolate tones within losing their shine.
“Just come home with me, Madeline.”
“I fucking hate that name,” she suddenly spits, glaring up at me and snarling. “Fucking Madeline. Madeline can’t achieve anything, can she?” I raise a brow at her temper then back a step away from her. “Hate it. Madeline Cavannagh, What was I thinking? I don’t even have my own fucking life, Jack. Go back to your mansion on your own. Just leave me alone. I don’t want you.”
The three strides necessary to get to her and lift her from the floor with a firm grip, ready to drag her if needed, are swift and pitiless. She’s coming home with me whether she likes it or not. Maybe I want Selma’s vibrance back inside her, or maybe I just want to fuck this situation out to its conclusion before I let her go. Either way, she’s got now
here else and I’m not leaving her on this ruined ground alone.
“Get back to the car,” I order, pointing back the way we originally came. She glares at me and scuttles away from my tone. I let her move, give her that sense of freedom for now, but keep pointing at the street.
“Jack, I…”
“You don’t know what you want, Madeline. And you’re not likely to until you can think rationally. For now, you’re coming home with me. We’ll talk about it tomorrow when I bring you back for the reports.” A staring match ensues, one I’ll win one way or another regardless of her spirited attitude. She’ll be fucking lifted if required and carried back to the car. “Are you ready to explain who you think did this and why?” I grate out. She frowns, her face falling from anger. “Ready for the questions the police will have?” This causes further frowning and her mouth to open, about to protest. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, Madeline. You need to be clear thinking when you do it. For your sake.” She falters and glances back at the building. “If your friend was in there, it’s now a manslaughter investigation. You ready for that?” She eventually frowns, hugging herself again, and then lowers her head in defeat as she walks to the car compliantly.
~
The drive is quiet again, but this time for different reasons. I spend most of it thinking of my wife and child. Imagining them. Trying to rid myself of the constant scenes of blood and mutilation as we swerve the roads to get back home with no care for the oncoming traffic. She spends most of it morosely looking at the road, barely engaging other to ask if I’ve seen her phone. I haven’t, not since she held it over her head in the bog. We’re just silent, nothing making anything easier for either of us until she sighs next to me, breaking me of my nightmares for a few seconds with her barren tone.
“You think things happen for a reason?” she asks, no longer giving a damn about how she looks or what leaves her mouth. I balk at the question, damn sure that nothing in this life happens for a reason regardless of ghostly figures. Shit happens. People die. Buildings burn. Humans are still as reprehensible in nature as they were a year or so ago.
“No,” I reply.
That’s all I have to offer on the subject as we finally breach the gates onto the main drive. She sighs again in reply, moving herself around as she gazes at the house’s lights in the distance.
“Quite the optimist, aren’t you?”
Optimism is for fools and religion.
I don’t answer, just keep on staring down the dark tarmacked drive so I can rid myself of her. She’s too much like Selma, too perfect, even in this scenario. I’ve felt her aura the entire time we’ve been together, hovering around us and bringing with it a sense of hope. From meeting her and dancing, to having her body on mine, and finally to this very second as I watch her move and labour as Selma used to. She frowns the same way, sending her pain to me without realising she is doing it. It’s comforting, soothing even, filling me with thoughts that are baffling.
It’s been nothing but damn well confusing as we travelled here again. I train my dogs; that’s all. I train them and make them pay for their sins. None of this is required, certainly not with the fucking hope of Selma attached to anything. She’s dead. Gone.
The few dim lights glimmer as we approach through the woods, then the security system kicks in, flooding the forecourt with dull illumination and shadows. I raise my eyes to the third floor, sneering at my dogs and wondering what I can do with them to alleviate this tension inside me. The house is in darkness, no lights left on inside, but I notice something flickering in Selma’s dressing room. I stare at it cautiously, but no sooner have I focused on the window than the strange flickering disappears.
I keep looking up, watching for signs of intruders or prowlers as Madeline gets out, but nothing happens. The curtains just hang, static. The room is dark again with no sign of anything to cause concern.
“Did you see that?” I ask, getting out and still staring at the window.
“What?” she replies, looking upwards and barely bothering with enthusiasm as she walks round to me.
“The light on the second floor?”
“No, it all looks dark to me.” Hmm. I must have been mistaken, or going mad, which is still possible given the ghosts around.
Rubbing at the bridge of my nose, I walk to the house, trying to remember the last time I slept. Wednesday possibly. Who fucking knows? It’s all been a fog of dogs and beatings lately. That and ghosts. Perhaps that’s the damn problem.
The moment I open the door she laughs lightly, following me in and keeping her distance as she glances around.
“You don’t lock this place?” No, I want the intruders, am desperate for them to come in and try defiling something that belongs to me again. “All this money and you keep it open?”
“They can come if they dare,” I grate out.
I head straight for the spiral, flicking on the lamps as I go, and then stand there, gazing up the black steps and waiting for sound. Nothing happens, nothing but the soft padding of her feet as she comes to my side and looks up with me.
“If you just show me a room I’ll get out of your way,” she says, putting her foot on the stairs. I grab her arm, halting her momentum and pulling her back off the step.
“I don’t use the upstairs. I told you it’s not fucking safe.”
She frowns at me, a look of surprise etched into her features as she wipes some hair back from her face and smears more soot over her cheek.
“How is it unsafe?” she asks, quietly pulling her arm from my hold and then rubbing at it. I growl beneath my ragged breath, irritated that she’s asking questions I can’t answer. It’s none of her fucking business anyway. None.
Why the fuck have I brought her here?
She smiles a little, looking nervous, and takes another step from me, crossing onto the large ornate Chinese rug and glancing around quietly. It’s the same rug I enjoyed fucking my wife on by the fire. The same one my son played games on, squealing as I tickled him.
“It just damn well is, Madeline,” I snap, dismissing the thought of fucking her there, too, and walking away towards the kitchen before the urge gets any stronger. “Stay away from the stairs.”
“Oh, okay,” she says gently.
I storm on, animosity in every step, filling the house with my belligerence. Fucking woman. A woman with too many questions, ones I’m not ready for. I’ve never had to answer them before. In all this time I haven’t needed to. Where the fuck I’m going to put her, I don’t know. It won’t be up those damned stairs, though.
I stare at the kitchen table, frustrated at my thoughts, then look at the drinks cupboard. A fucking drink, that’s what I need. A large one.
“Erm, where do I go then? I don’t want to get in your way any more than I have to,” she says, her voice as light as a damn feather as I hear her feet enter the kitchen.
I don’t know. She sure as hell isn’t coming into my bed where I can pretend I’m still happily married and life is full of roses. Tangled sheets and morning breakfasts. Words of love whispered in ears. The effortless sense of closeness and harmony that Selma brought with her.
I march to the cupboard and lift out a bottle of whiskey, hoping that rationality will follow. I don’t bother with a glass or any sense of refinement. I just lift the damn thing and glug, content in the thought of getting viciously drunk and forgetting for a while.
“Jack?” Christ, I wish she didn’t sound like Selma. It’s all I can hear. That British lilt hangs around her every word and makes sense impossible. I glug some more, tipping the bottle higher for more down force. Perhaps if I drink enough she’ll fuck off and leave me alone. “Jack? Please, I don’t know…”
I stop drinking and throw the bottle at the wall, stupefied by my own absurd reaction to her. She jumps at the move, her body vaulting away from me. I watch her from the corner of my eye, hoping she’ll be too terrified to talk again and will run off into a corner so I don’t have to look at her.
&n
bsp; “I’m sorry. Please, just… You offered help and I don’t know where to go.” She flusters, her frame quavering and nerves pouring from her. I suppose she would be if she’s been beaten by a coward. It’s something I can use to my advantage, something that’ll help alleviate this insanity from going any further until she leaves.
“Past the back of the spiral, fourth room on the right,” I grate out, turning my body back to the cupboard and grabbing another bottle. She can stay in one of the old servant’s quarters. There’s a bed in that one. “Lock the fucking door, Madeline.” Unscrewing the next lid, I turn to fully face her and lift the bottle to my lips again. She shakes a little more as she looks me over, cowering slightly, probably scared of my advancing rage as her feet still back away. “That’s it. Go hide.”
It doesn’t take long before she makes the right choice by both of us. She backs out further, her feet silently gracing the floor, and then finally leaves me standing in the kitchen alone.
My hands spread on the old wooden table, the one Selma chose, and I look out through the window into the night. The images and visions spring forth rapidly, reminding me of what is waiting for me in Madeline’s arms. Selma’s hands. Her sweet singing voice. The sight of her smiling. The smell of her. They crease and blur into each other, finally becoming muddled and distant as I keep swigging more liquor.
“Why are you still here?” I mumble, succumbing to the chair that offers itself for use. I collapse into it, allowing it to hold me steady rather than the swaying that has begun. “You should be gone by now.” Not coming back in reincarnations to taunt me. The whole fucking world could have come here today. Every one of them, and the only one who did has to be a doppelganger of my wife?
I stare out into space, searching for answers that aren’t there. “Did you make this happen? Why?” Nothing answers me. No light outside or spectral image. No help of any kind. There’s only silence and the occasional whistling wind as the trees outside creak and groan. “I miss you so much, baby.” I do. And I’m lost without her. Homeless. Heartless. Void of care or consideration. I exist for only one reason—to punish those responsible.
The Spiral Page 8
