Lights Out

by Amy Cross

  “And what does -”

  “She's ten years old, Essien,” she continues. “When I met my husband, in a cafe on a rainy day just after I came back to England, I was broken. Steve kept me going. But one of the first things I had to tell him, before things could get serious, was that by the time I came home to this country I was already pregnant.”

  Essien stares at her for a moment, before slowly turning and looking at Emily's sobbing face.

  “And yes,” Cassie says, “in case you were wondering... Every day I force myself to ignore the fact that she looks a little bit like you.”

  Her hand inches closer to the knife on the counter.

  “I think,” Essien says finally, as he turns Emily's head so that she's facing him, “that this might be the first time in my life that I've ever been truly surprised.” There are tears in his eyes now. “Looks like I set myself another little trap back then, in the tent in the desert.”

  “She's not a trap, Essien,” Cassie replies. “She's my daughter.”

  She pauses.

  Suddenly the fridge starts humming.

  As the lights flicker back to life, Cassie grabs the knife and throws it. Essien turns and throw his knife in return, but he's too late. Cassie's knife slices straight into his forehead and its tip cuts deep into his brain. At first he doesn't respond, and then his mouth opens slightly. His eyes are filled with shock, and then finally he lets out a gasp, leans back and slumps down dead against the floor.

  “Emily!” Cassie shouts, rushing forward and pulling her daughter away. “It's okay!”

  Emily lunges at her mother and hugs her tight, while sobbing loudly.

  Cassie pulls her back into the next room, and there they sink down together to the floor as Cassie puts her arms around her. As she does so, she notices for the first time that Essien's knife hit her in the shoulder. With adrenaline still coursing through her body, she instinctively pulls the knife out and tosses it aside.

  “It's okay,” she tells her, pulling her tighter and tighter before glancing back to the kitchen and seeing Essien's dead body on the kitchen floor with the knife poking out from his forehead. “I promise you,” she continues, as Emily's cries get louder, “everything's okay.”

  As she holds her daughter, however, Cassie realizes that her own words sound hollow. She tries to tell her that everything will be okay, but already she's starting to feel faint. Pulling the knife out, she realizes, was a mistake that went against all her old training. She reaches down, thinking to perhaps put the blade back into the wound and stop the flow of blood, but her fingers are too weak to wrap around the handle.

  Instead, she manages to take her phone from her pocket and, as Emily continues to sob, she brings up Anders' number.

  The call goes straight to voicemail.

  “It's me,” she gasps, barely able to get the words out.

  The phone slithers from her hands and lands on the floor, its screen already smeared with blood.

  “Help,” she continues, fighting the urge to close her eyes. “Anders, it's me. You have to come back to the house. He was here. I killed him, but... I need... Anders, please...”

  She hesitates, and then she hears the voicemail service cut off. She tries to reach out and call again, but she can barely move her hand at all.

  “It's okay,” she tells Emily, as she feels the last of her strength starting to fade away, “he'll come. I know he will. He'll come. If he doesn't, I'll still be watching over you, always. But he'll come. I know he will.”

  Her voice fades away, and her head slumps to one side, and now the only sound comes from Emily as she clings to her mother's body. Cassie's final words hang in the air, though, as if in some way they're still being spoken over and over again.

  “He'll come. I know he will.”

  Epilogue

  One year later

  “Don't run his little legs off!” Anders calls out, watching as Milo races past the fountain with a stick in his mouth. “Emily! Remember, he's getting old!”

  Emily runs past in pursuit of the dog, completely ignoring Anders' words.

  After opening his mouth to tell her again, Anders hesitates. Milo is running like a puppy, apparently free – for now – of arthritis that usually leaves him hobbling around. This has happened before, of course; these trips to the park have become a regular thing, and Milo always plays happily before going home for an afternoon-long nap. And while he might worry about his dog's joints, Anders can't suppress a smile as he sees that Milo seems to be really enjoying himself.

  Chuckling, Anders turns and limps back over to the bench. He winces as he takes a seat, and then he watches as Milo races back the other way with Emily – again – in hot pursuit.

  “She's doing better,” he says finally.

  “I'm not sure,” Cassie says from her spot next to him on the bench. “I don't know what's worse. When she's crying, I want her to laugh and play. Then when she's laughing and playing, I worry that she's hiding the pain too much.”

  Milo runs past again, and Emily is a little closer to him this time.

  “Good boy,” Anders whispers. “Feel young again.”

  “They finally knocked down the rest of the tower,” Cassie points out, looking toward the gap in the skyline. “Took them a while, huh?”

  Anders looks toward the horizon. For a moment, his eyes fix on the space where the tower once stood, but then he forces himself to look away. No point, he reasons, in thinking too much about the past. He knows he'll be tempted again, however, so he quickly gets to his feet and reaches into his pocket to check that he has dog treats and poo bags.

  “Time to go,” he says, just as his belly starts to rumble. “I need to get home and cook.”

  Cassie smiles.

  Still limping, Anders starts making his way toward the path.

  “Come on!” he calls out to Emily. “Put him back on his lead! I told the Duchess that we'd be back soon, she's going to come and eat with us!”

  “Have fun,” Cassie whispers, watching as they all head toward the gate.

  Once they're gone, she turns and looks back toward the skyline. She can't help watching the spot where the tower used to stand; she knows she should move on, but something about that gap in the skyline makes her feel good. Before, there was a sense of something being incomplete, of a mission unfinished. Now that sense has been replaced by the knowledge that finally – after many years – she was able to avenge the murder of Tom Dansing. The price was great, and she'd do anything to change what happened to Steve, but there's a part of her – the soldier part – that can't help reflecting on a job that was finally completed.

  And even now, all this time later, she still hears her own words echoing in the air.

  “He'll come. I know he will. He'll come. If he doesn't, I'll still be watching over you, always. But he'll come. I know he will.”

  Epilogue 2

  “Hey!”

  Startled from her thoughts, Cassie turns and sees that Anders has come limping back over toward the bench.

  “For once,” he continues, “don't spend the afternoon staring into space in the park. Come and have lunch with us.”

  He reaches out a hand.

  Cassie hesitates, wanting to tell him that she prefers these afternoons of quiet contemplation, but then something shifts inside and she gets to her feet.

  “Sure,” she says, and she starts walking with him toward the park exit, where Emily and Milo are waiting.

  “You can't keep sitting there like that,” Anders reminds her. “You have far too much to do. You can't sit around like some kind of bloody ghost.”

  “I know.”

  “You can peel the potatoes, for a start. I'm not a bloody housekeeper.”

  “No, you're not.”

  “And one of us has to vacuum.”

  “I was going to do that when I get back.”

  “I'm making a stew for dinner.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “And you need to do some work
on that website you keep talking about, Cassie. You keep talking about this business you want to set up, but it won't start itself.”

  “I know, Anders. You're right. I'm sorry.”

  “And another thing. Milo needs his monthly bath. If he gets fleas again, I'll kill him. If I can ferret Michael Essien out of a high-security penthouse, I can sure as hell get that dog into his bath.”

  “Yes, Anders. I can do his bath.”

  Anders is still complaining as they reach the end of the street and disappear around the far corner. Once they're gone, the park falls silent for a moment, before that silence is broken by the sound of children shouting nearby. And in the distance, the gap-toothed skyline still shows the spot where an entire tower block was once brought crashing down by two people who kept a vow to a long-dead friend.

  OTHER BOOKS

  BY AMY CROSS INCLUDE

  Horror

  Stephen

  The Farm

  The Haunting of Hardstone Jail

  Asylum (The Asylum Trilogy book 1)

  Meds (The Asylum Trilogy book 2)

  The Madness of Annie Radford (The Asylum Trilogy book 3)

  The Devil, the Witch and the Whore (The Deal book 1)

  Like Stones on a Crow's Back (The Deal book 2)

  The Devil's Blade

  Haunted

  Devil's Briar

  The Night Girl

  Last Wrong Turn

  Friend From the Internet

  The Haunting of Caldgrave House

  The Haunting of Blackwych Grange

  The Bride of Ashbyrn House

  The Ghosts of Hexley Airport

  The Curse of Wetherley House

  The Haunting of Marshall Heights

  The Ghosts of Lakeforth Hotel

  The Body at Auercliff

  The Soul Auction

  The Border

  Eli's Town

  Laura

  Annie's Room

  The Priest Hole (Nykolas Freeman book 1)

  Battlefield (Nykolas Freeman book 2)

  Perfect Little Monsters and Other Stories

  The Ghost of Longthorn Manor and Other Stories

  Room 9 and Other Stories

  Fantasy / Horror

  Grave Girl

  Raven Revivals (Grave Girl book 2)

  The Gravest Girl of All (Grave Girl book 3)

  The Library

  Beautiful Familiar

  Dark Season (book 1, 2 & 3)

  The Hollow Church

  The Vampires of Tor Cliff Asylum

  Dead Souls (book 1 to 13)

  Lupine Howl (books 1 to 6)

  Dystopian / Apocalypse

  Ward Z (The Ward Z Series book 1)

  Terror at Camp Everbee (The Ward Z Series book 2)

  The Dog

  Also by Amy Cross

  THE FARM

  No-one ever remembers what happens to them when they go into the barn at Bondalen farm. Some never come out again, and the rest... Something about them is different.

  In 1979, the farm is home to three young girls. As winter fades to spring, Elizabeth, Kari and Sara each come to face the secrets of the barn, and they each emerge with their own injuries. But someone else is lurking nearby, a man who claims to be Death incarnate, and for these three girls the spring of 1979 is set to end in tragedy.

  In the modern day, meanwhile, Bondalen farm has finally been sold to a new family. Dragged from London by her widowed father, Paula Ridley hates the idea of rural life. Soon, however, she starts to realize that her new home retains hints of its horrific past, while the darkness of the barn still awaits anyone who dares venture inside.

  Set over the course of several decades, The Farm is a horror novel about people who live with no idea of the terror in their midst, and about a girl who finally has a chance to confront a source of great evil that has been feeding on the farm for generations.

  Also by Amy Cross

  ALICE ISN'T WELL

  (DEATH HERSELF BOOK 1)

  “There are lots of demons in the sky above London. The problem is, this one came crashing down to earth.”

  Ten years ago, Alice Warner was attacked and disfigured by an attacker in her own home. She remembers nothing of the attack, and she has been in a psychiatric hospital ever since. When she's finally released, however, she starts working as a security guard at an abandoned shopping mall. And that's when she starts to realize that something is haunting her, keeping just one step out of sight at all times...

  Meanwhile, seventy years earlier, a little girl named Wendy is left orphaned after a World War 2 fighter plane crashes onto her house. Taken to a monastery, Wendy is quickly singled out by the nuns for special attention. They say she has been possessed by a demon, and that there's only one way to save her soul. Fortunately for Wendy, however, there's someone else who seems to know far more about the situation.

  What is the shocking connection between Alice and Wendy, reaching out across the years? Does a demon really lurk in the girl's soul? And who is Hannah, the mysterious figure who tries to help Wendy, and who seventy years later begins to make her influence felt in Alice's life too?

  Alice Isn't Well is the first book in the Death Herself series, about a dark figure who arrives in the night, promising to help deal with the forces of evil whenever they appear.

  Also by Amy Cross

  MEDS

  (THE ASYLUM TRILOGY BOOK 2)

  “Welcome to the Overflow. And remember, all roads lead back to Lakehurst.”

  At the edge of a ruined town, a burned-out hospital houses one final, functional ward. There, a small group of doctors and nurses tend to patients who have been consigned to the Overflow. Unloved, forgotten by the people who knew them, these are the patients who will never receive visitors. If something happens to them, no-one will ask questions.

  When she starts work at Middleford Cross, Nurse Elly Blackstock thinks she's getting a second chance. She soon discovers, however, that this particular hospital is unlike any other. In one of the beds, an old man grapples with the horrors of his past, while in another there's a woman condemned to a life of darkness and silence. Ghosts stalk the corridors, and more ghosts are on the way. And watching over all of this is the hospital's administrator, Nurse Kirsten Winter, a woman who is desperately searching for someone named Annie Radford...

  Asylum: Meds is a dark horror novel about the lengths one woman will go to as she searches for the truth about the voices in her head.