Home.
Chapter 21
Jack
T hey’re dead.
The issue troubles me as I wander backwards, towing the fog with me and watching as she stands above them. It irks me, as if my protégées have been taken from me without consent. I frown at the vision, a melancholy etching my bones that makes no sense. I should be elated, touched by her offering in this final stand, but I’m not. I feel deadened, as if the weight of loss has become unbearably heavy rather than the light I assumed would come.
And it’s cold. Stone fucking cold. Selma’s warmth around my legs is suddenly gone, her panted breath at my shoulder fragmented back into the night around us.
“Where are you, baby?” I ask, still looking at Madeline.
No glow or mystic apparition comes to eclipse the gloom. It hovers around the space still, Madeline slowly beginning to move through it towards the stone. She halts a step or two, looking around her as if searching for something, her lips moving. I can’t hear her, though. There’s no sound as she starts moving again, feet slowly trudging to the place they all lie, lifeless. There’s nothing but silence, not even the sound of the sludge beneath her.
The crow jumps and clacks his wings, lifting from the stone and flying into the air as she approaches him, beady eyes focused on her. I watch him, wondering where the hell he’s come from as he squawks at her. She looks sullenly at the stone, her colour turning pallid as she finally sees what she’s achieved with her gun. I sneer at the thought, wrenching at memories of Selma’s corpse again to prolong my disenchantment, her equally violated frame on show when I found it.
I scan the area and blow out a frustrated breath, looking for signs of my wife other than this fog, but there’s nothing here. I thought she’d be here now, thought she’d come and show me what this has all meant, but it’s just Madeline and the stone she eventually puts her hand on. Nothing to finish this. No miracle of my wife coming home. Just a woman who looks like her again.
Misery crawls over me, a deep seated and clawing desolation. It binds my guts with a sickness, swathes of it rising through me as I gaze at the woman who holds my wife inside her. I should have shot myself when I had the chance. I should have pulled that trigger, let the bullet kill me. I could have made my own way back to Selma and Lenon then. Instead, I’ve waited for this to end, only to be dissatisfied with the fucking result. I’m alone still, regardless of all that she’s done. Desolate.
Even my damned dogs are dead. And for what? Nothing.
“Jack?”
Selma.
I turn slowly at the sound of her voice, not convinced of my own rationality, and look back into the trees behind me. She’s there, her body encased in nothing but white silk that drifts out in a light breeze, framed by the woodland she adored. I smile at that and gaze, unsure if she’s real or still a ghost, but at least she’s here again. Mad or not I don’t care.
“Are you real now?” I ask, ready to turn back for Madeline if she’s not. Perhaps I could go reach for that gun, use it and finish this off the way I should have done.
The thought makes me wander towards Selma, hoping she might have something more than ghosts and blurred edges to bring to me before I kill myself for her. I will if I have to, happily. I’ll put it in my mouth and watch her, let her take me through to wherever she is because I can’t go on anymore. Not now. There isn’t any point without my dogs to keep hurting.
She seems so still this time. No floating, no drifts of imaginary lines. I peer closer, observing her against the tree she softly fondles. She’s sharper now, crisp, like she’s part of reality rather than the cloudiness of feeling and sensation we had before. And the smile that breaches her lips as I watch causes a rush of heat to come at me, readying me for whatever she wants.
“You’re home, Jack.”
Me? I snort and glance back in the direction of the house, not knowing what she means as I notice Madeline lower herself to the floor, a choked sob retching her throat as her hand scrubs the stonework. I’ve always been here. Always been here harbouring these thugs, turning them into their worst nightmares, waiting for my next chance at revenge and using my memories to inflict retribution for her. She’s the one who’s come home. Finally.
Madeline hunches down to her knees, her fingers running over something beneath the fog. She just stares, a flitter of tears coming down her cheeks at whatever she’s found. I smile at that, too, knowing she’ll be free regardless of whatever atrocities she’s looking at now. The abuser is no more. She’ll move on with her life without him to threaten her existence, whether here or not, but that sadness etches back into me as I watch on, some part of me remorseful at the thought of not dancing with her again now my wife is back, not feeling her between us.
“We did it, Jack,” Selma says.
I’m not sure what we did, but I smirk as I keep watching Madeline and wait for Selma to come to me, wrap her skin around me again. She does after a minute or two, her hand slotting so easily into mine just as it always did. I squeeze at it, feeling the flesh of her in my hold, and pull her into my back so we can watch together, know what we’ve done and remember this moment. She links her arms around me and rests her chin on my shoulder, her scent coming so quickly it nearly cripples any sentiment for Madeline I might have sheltered inside.
“You after a fucking?” I ask, remembering the first time I saw her in that dead-end town, her eyes watching me like a hawk as I entered the bar. She just sat in the corner, her nose in her book as a ruck of us walked in drunk. She giggles softly and cuddles tighter in, filling me with more memories of our son and the way they laughed with each other, clung on. “Will he come home, too?”
“Soon, Jack,” she says, brushing her lips over my neck. The feel of them sends shivers over me, riling my dick up into thinking about anything but our son, but she loosens her grip and walks past me before I get the chance to think anymore. I frown and follow her, gazing at the way her bare feet leave no impressions in the wet ground beneath. “We need Maddy home for that. In love.”
Both the statement and the lack of prints confuse me as I gaze over her frame again, watching the way it glides and glitters against the slow light that’s beginning to return around us. She’s so beautiful I almost don’t care, part of me wanting nothing more than to touch her again and feel the reality of her against me, but if she’s real there should be footprints, just like mine. There should be a presence of her against this earth, a weight in her balance as she lands on it.
“We just have to be patient, Jack.” I don’t know what that means as I keep following her, waiting for her to give me more answers to the thousand questions I have. “She really does look like me,” she says, standing feet from Madeline and casting her hand out to the right.
The fog starts clearing with her movement, ribbons of it reaching out onto the horizon before my eyes, creating pathways. I frown and survey its touch across the headland, watching as the flow of it bobs and dances, clearing further, wondering how she’s still doing it if she’s really here.
“Selma?”
“Mmm.”
I wave my hand to her, reaching for the back of her dress to ensure she’s real, but then notice the body Madeline’s leaning over for the first time. The abuser lies there, his body clear of my dog’s mutilation, just three bullet holes in his chest, blood seeping from them. I scowl and look for my dogs, needing to see them for clarification. They’re nowhere to be seen. There’s just his lifeless body becoming encased in mud and soil, the ground around them both coated with Selma’s mist as it bubbles below them.
Madeline’s crying as she clings to him, her naked frame shuddering in the dank air around us. Rivers of tears pour down her face as she mouths words, screams them in fact, as I gaze on, but still I hear nothing other than Selma’s soft breaths. I stand closer to them, still scanning for my dogs and wondering where they are.
“I can’t hear her,” I mutter, scowling. “Why can’t I hear her?”
I swing
my eyes to the crow, wondering why I can’t hear him either anymore. He jumps and flaps silently, pecking the stone, and then suddenly lifts as Selma throws her hands upwards and laughs. I watch as he flies higher, wings stretching up towards the sky with each laugh she delivers.
“Because you’re home, Jack. You’re here now, finally with me.”
I still don’t understand, but the words make me look back at Madeline, questioning where here actually is. Her here, or my here? Here has become a jumble of light and dark lately. Fog and daylight, warmth and freeze. Perhaps here isn’t even here anymore. Perhaps it’s somewhere else, somewhere we haven’t all found yet. “You wouldn’t let go, would you? My tenacious husband. Never one to be beaten. All of this to get you home.”
I chuckle at the sound of her laughter, unsure what the fuck to think, but the ground seems to weaken as she carries on laughing, bubbles of slathered soil inching along Madeline’s legs. She barely notices in her misguided grief, too absorbed in whatever pain she’s feeling to see what’s happening in the ground she rests on. Stupid girl. She’ll sink here if she doesn’t move. She’ll die as she wails incoherently over something that deserves nothing but hatred from her.
I barge around the tall stone lying between us, ready to lift her from the ground before she gets sucked under the bog. She doesn’t falter one bit as I get in her sights. She just lays her head on his chest and weeps more, bestowing some chant from her lips that I still can’t damn well hear.
“Madeline, get up.” Nothing, no movement other than continued heaves of her back as she sobs out absurd anguish, one hand still scratching the stone. “Madeline?”
She doesn’t flinch at my forthright tone. There’s nothing but Selma’s laughter carrying on, her dress fluttering in my eye-line as I try to get Madeline to move. And where the fuck are the gashes and gnarls my dogs would have left on this body she cries for? Where?
I stand again, irritated at my sudden confusion. Why are there shots in his body at all? She didn’t shoot him; she shot my dogs so Selma could come home. I watched it happening in front of me, saw her fire the gun at them and walk over, triumphant in a job well done. She was so damn fierce, Selma’s face haunting her own as she took those steps.
“I don’t understand,” I spit out, annoyed at whatever the hell this is. “Selma, make her get up.” The bog slathers again, making me more anxious of the ground that begins sucking the body she’s resting on downwards. “It’ll swallow them both. Why won’t she get up?”
She only smiles at me and begins walking backwards away from the situation, a peaceful look on her brow as she reaches out a hand and beckons me back to her.
“Don’t worry, Jack. It’s not our concern anymore,” she whispers, mist starting to form around her again. I stare, bemused at what the fuck she’s playing at. Madeline will die here if I leave her. She won’t make it out of this bog. The fact that Selma’s so cold towards her turns my stomach, making me question the bitch I know she can be. “Come on, Jack. We’ve got some catching up to do.” She winks, her hands pulling her dress higher as she continues backwards.
“The hell is wrong with you?” I spit, circling in front of Madeline and reaching down to drag her from the bog if need be. “Madeline, get up. The bog. Hold onto me.”
“He’s coming, Jack. Leave her now. You’re mine. Come remind me what I’ve been missing.”
I growl at her, aroused in a flat fucking second and yet unable to leave Madeline alone here to die. She’ll get her fucking. She’ll get it and moan my damned name for days because of it, but not until I’ve got the woman who made this possible away from her own demise. She deserves more from me, more from us. Life is what she deserves.
A life free of concern.
“Mrs. Blisedy?” The words come from behind me somewhere. I swing round, searching the ground for the voice as it climbs the headland behind me. It’s distant, the tone of it muffled by the bank hiding us. I stare into the distance, waiting for a sight of whoever it is on my land. No one should be here other than Bob. It’s not Bob, and the thought of someone seeing her naked pisses me off, some latent part of me clinging to the memory of touching her even though Selma stands ten feet from where I am. “Madeline Blisedy, are you up here?”
Chapter 22
Madeline
I can’t breathe, don’t want to. I’ve lain here for so long, nothing but tears coming to choke whatever breath I had left when I saw him, that I’ve run out of air to pull in. He’s dead. Here beneath my body. Killed by my hand, the bullet holes trickling out the blood I’m lying in. I don’t know how, and no matter how much I’ve screamed out her name, or screamed out Jack’s name, no one’s come to help. I’m alone with him on this ground.
Guilt racks through me with every passing second. It courses through every fibre I’ve got, filling me with dread and torment as I try to will him back to life under my hands. He might have been a monster, might even have been the man who abused me to the point of near death, but he didn’t have to die.
He didn’t have to die.
“Why?” mumbles out of me. “WHY?”
I don’t even understand what happened. Selma wanted the men dead. She made me do it somehow, made me stand and point that gun at them. I felt her inside me, twisting my hand, forcing me into it because of her pain. And I did it for her. I did. I looked at all three of them, looked at the fear wide in their feral eyes, and pulled the trigger anyway.
Bang, bang, bang.
She said she wanted to be free of them, that she wanted to kill them. I didn’t even flinch, somehow strengthened by her push behind me and the chill from her touch, but not this. I didn’t shoot Lewis. I didn’t. Oh god please tell me I didn’t. Someone tell me this isn’t real.
My fingers rough the stone in my grasp, as if it’s the only thing that’s grounding me. He’s still warm beneath me, and I can almost feel his chest rising and falling if I close my eyes tightly enough, hear his heart thundering away. Bang, bang, bang. The noise keeps rumbling through me, shot after shot, the sound of their bodies hitting the ground as they fell coming, too. It’s never-ending, filling me with hatred for myself, hatred for her, and even hatred for a man I thought I loved in some way—Jack.
What was the point if they’re not here with me now? Why? Why make me do all this if only to leave me alone and lost again.
A distant sound comes at me from somewhere in my mind. I let it wash through me, not caring for anything but lying here some more, trying to find some explanation for my actions. There’s nothing, though, no matter how long I lie here. I killed my husband, the smoking gun still on the ground beside me showing the truth for all to see. It makes me curl in on myself, coiling tighter to shield myself against anything in the tangible world they’ve plunged me back towards.
“Madeline?”
My eyes crack open slightly, the sound of a man’s voice taunting me with that real life. I don’t want it. I don’t. I don’t deserve it now. I’m no better than the body I’m lying on, worse actually. It makes me spiral inwards further, knees pulling up to my chest as I stare at the grey stone in my grasp and try to keep listening for a heartbeat in this soaking chest I’m on. None. Dead. Nothing but ooze and gore, his blood still warm and wet against my ear.
“Can you move? Jesus.”
Move? Why would I move anywhere? I can’t remember doing anything of my own volition lately. It’s all been about them and what they want, what they need. It’s never been about what Madeline wants, what Maddy needs. He never even saw me, did he? It was always her he saw when he looked at me, always her he felt when he held me. And now they’ve gone. They’ve gone and left me to deal with the aftermath of their actions on my own.
“Hold still. Don’t move a muscle.”
I’m not moving any muscle. I’m staying right here with Lewis, hoping to cling to what memories I have of the Seine and his smile. Why did he have to turn into that monster he became? Why? None of this would have happened if he’d just been the man I fell
in love with. We should be in our garden now. In love. Happy. Instead he’s here, his body decomposing with every breath I pull in and out. I can’t even blame them. This was me. My hand. My body.
I sigh into him, a passive lull settling as the weight of my actions finally begins to find a home inside me. It’s getting colder with each passing minute, my bones sensing the loss of heat from him. Maybe when he’s as icy as Selma’s fog I can figure a way out of what I’ve done, find something to tell the police when they come for me.
A sharp shriek catches my strained attention, pulling me from my blurry haze. It’s my crow. He’s there, hopping about in the fog, wings batting the mist towards me and clearing the view in front. I smile a little at him, my hand relaxing its grip on the stone, not knowing if he’s real or not but finding comfort in something familiar. He reminds me of Selma’s ring, of the love they shared and the warmth I felt with them. I hope they’re happy now, I do. I hope they’ve found each other again somehow, even if it does mean I’m alone.
He jumps, gliding over the murk to land by my side, his sharp beak nipping by my hand on the stone.
“What do you want now?” I mumble, my throat scratching. He pecks again, furiously flapping and fidgeting to rouse my attention further.
“Just hold onto him. I’m nearly there.”
I shake my head at the sound of the man’s voice behind me again, not giving a damn if he’s nearly here or not. I don’t even know if he’s real or not, let alone what he’s coming for. And if he’s coming to help me, he can turn back around and go home. I don’t deserve help. I’m as damned as Jack was with his dogs, as loathsome in my vengeance.
The crow shrieks again, louder and more intent. I squint, trying to shield myself from his wings as he keeps up his unrelenting tantrum.
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