Dead petals, p.23
Dead Petals, page 23
The fuzzy image appeared to stare at him.
Daddy
The whisper touched his ear, like a gentle breath.
“You want your daddy?” he asked.
Daddy
Help
Please help
The outside light seemed to change, like a shadow had passed over the house, and then he couldn’t see her in the glass any more. The moths were gone. He shivered, yet felt strangely serene.
He hooked a finger over the knot in his tie and dragged it loose.
She was haunting him.
But why?
She wanted her daddy. Okay, he could understand that. But why was he involved in this? Just because he was there when she died? If she wanted her father why the fuck couldn’t she just go to him?
He thought about calling Trixie, but after last time he doubted if she would help him, wasn’t even sure if she could.
You’re on your own with this.
But he didn’t want to be involved at all. What did she want him to do? Go tell her heartbroken parents that their dead daughter was haunting him?
No way. If she needed her father, she’d have to find another way.
He was done with it.
Emma lay dead before him, her throat bruised and her eyes full of blood. Dead and dying moths lay around her head and writhed, tangled in her golden locks. Not far away, a crow watched him with its beady eye, its claw curled around a branch like an old man’s fist.
He found that spot on her breast bone where he could flex her ribcage and pump her heart.
He leaned on the heel of his palm.
Oneandtwoandthreeandfour...
After the compressions, he turned his face to listen for signs of life.
There were none.
He pushed back on her forehead, raising her chin to open her airway, but as he leaned down to cover her mouth with his, her eyes snapped wide. She grabbed his collar and dragged his face down to hers, her grip far stronger than any little girl could possibly be. The inside of her mouth was black, and her breath stank of death.
“It’s in the shape of a zigzag!” she screamed.
Gary woke gasping and grasping at his throat where she’d held him. The room was frigid, his breath rolling out in wispy vapour clouds. The air felt cold enough to crack.
The sound of a child sobbing filtered through the night.
Whispering, like icy slivers, floated through the darkness.
Something fluttered against his face, and he screamed, sure it was one of the moths that had been tangled in Emma’s hair.
But that had only been a dream.
He wondered if he was still dreaming, but this felt solidly real. He dragged the quilt close to his face, controlling his breathing so he could listen.
Small sobs broke through the whispering.
Emma?
He’d left the curtains open, the streetlight casting slanted shadows across the walls and ceiling. Moths touched and bumped against the net curtains.
The room looked like a charcoal drawing, all black lines and deep pits of darkness. The door was open, just an inch, just a crack. He scanned the wardrobe, the dressing table, back to the window...
Oh my God! There was something in the window!
His fists clenched around the quilt, his knuckles white, his eyes pinned wide in the darkness.
She was twisted in the net curtain, around and around like an insect entombed in a spider’s web. He could just make out her shape, her small, pale hands folded across her chest.
A passing car illuminated her pale, doll face, her coldly glinting eyes staring at him through the layers of net. The curtain was wrapped tightly around her waxen features like a death-shroud. Her mouth stretched wide against it in a silent scream.
I’m cold, she whispered. So cold.
Gary broke free of the paralysing terror and clawed across the bed, tumbling off the mattress onto the floor.
Help me! she shrieked after him. Help me, Daddy! Help me! Help me!
He scrambled away from that thing, that wraith.
Daddy! Help me! HELP ME!
He crawled to the open door and threw it open so savagely that it bounced back. He wriggled onto the landing, rolling onto his side and kicking himself away with his bare heels, only stopping when his shoulder pressed up against the banister and he could go no further.
He turned, fearfully, to see if she was still on the windowsill, but she wasn’t, she was rushing toward him like some tiny demon, the white veil rippling across her face and billowing out behind her.
She hunched over him, her arms rigid at her sides, her hands curled into claws. Beneath the net, her tiny face screamed grotesquely.
HELP ME! HELP ME! HELP ME!
Gary threw the crook of his arm across his face and squeezed his eyes tightly shut. The shrieking went on and on, piercing his eardrums and slicing through his brain, until it abruptly stopped. The house fell eerily still and quiet.
He lay there on the carpet, panting and whispering, “Oh God. Oh God.”
He risked a peek over his elbow. She was no longer lurched over him. The bedroom door stood wide, the room beyond dark and empty. The net curtain hung straight and undisturbed.
He slumped flat on the floor, panting with relief, oblivious to the wooden spindles digging into his head and shoulders.
“Oh Jesus Christ,” he whispered, wiping tears of fright from his eyes.
At the end of the landing, Charley’s door stood ajar.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Steve answered the door, the surprise at seeing Gary standing there fully evident on his face. “Gary,” he said.
“Hello, Steve.”
“It’s a bit early,” Steve said.
“I know, I’m sorry,” Gary replied. “But I need to talk to you.”
Steve glanced up and down the empty road, then back at Gary, his eyes dwelling on his dishevelled appearance and the dark circles beneath his eyes.
“You’d better come in then,” he said and stood aside. “Nola and the boys are still asleep. We’ll head through to the kitchen.”
He guided Gary down a narrow hall lined with family photos. One of them was the one Nola had given him to look at when they came to see him.
The kitchen was small and cluttered with knickknacks. Once the door was closed, Steve seemed to relax some. The room was cold. Dirty pots soaked in the sink. A tea towel lay in a pile on the tiles in front of the cooker. Steve picked it up.
“She sleeps a lot,” he said, wrapping the towel around his hands, “but I think it’s helping her. I read once that the best way to recover from physical injury is to sleep. The body can concentrate on getting better. I’m hoping it can help her mentally as well.”
“I think I’ve heard that too,” Gary agreed. “They sometimes induce comas in badly injured people.”
Steve nodded and put the towel to one side. “I’m sorry about what happened at the funeral,” he said. “I don’t know what got into dad. I’ve never seen him act like that before. And then with Nola...”
Gary dismissed it with a shake of his head. “It’s okay, I understand.”
“Well, still, I’m sorry it happened. Can I get you something to drink?”
“No,” Gary replied. “I need to talk to you about...well…something.”
Steve gestured for Gary to take a seat at the dining table. Two pink pig-shaped condiments sat in the middle, the nostril holes in their snouts to let out the salt and pepper stored in their bellies. On the wall, another pig looked out of its pen, the text beside it read: ‘Bless this Mess’.
“What is it?” Steve asked. “Is it Emma? Have you remembered something?”
“No, nothing like that, but it is about Emma.”
A wariness came into Steve’s eyes that made Gary uncomfortable and unsure how to proceed. Perhaps trying to talk to Steve about this wasn’t such a good idea.
“You look troubled, Gary,” Steve said. “You look...blown.”
“I haven’t been sleeping well,” Gary admitted.
“Yeah,” Steve said, like he knew. “What’s going on?”
“Well, it’s difficult...I don’t really know how to say this without sounding crazy.”
“Spit it out. Whatever it is, just tell me.”
“It’s Emma. I don’t think her...”
Don’t say soul. Don’t say spirit.
“...I don’t think she’s at rest.” Even with the words adjusted, it still came out sounding foolish.
“Not at rest? What are you talking about?”
Gary took a deep breath. “I know this is going to sound crazy, Steve, but Emma, she’s…” There was no other way to say it. “…well, she’s haunting me.”
Steve narrowed his eyes. “Haunting you as in the memory of what happened?”
Gary shook his head. “No, I mean really haunting me.”
Steve was silent.
“I know how it sounds, Steve, but I’ve seen her.”
“You’ve seen her?”
“In my house.”
Steve leaned back and folded his arms, carefully studying Gary’s face. “You’re telling me Emma’s ghost is haunting you?”
Gary winced inside. There it was, the elephant in the room: ghost. It sounded childish and silly, and conjured the episodes of Scooby Doo he’d watched as a child. But how else could it be said? Emma was dead, and he had seen her walking around. She was a spirit, a ghost, no matter how ridiculous it felt for him to say it out loud.
Reluctantly, he nodded.
“When have you seen her?”
“At first it was only a presence. I always keep the door to Charley’s room closed but it started opening of its own accord. You said Emma liked the door open a crack? Our cat felt it too...it spooked him. He doesn’t stay around the house anymore. But last night...last night I saw her in my house, in my bedroom.”
“You were dreaming,” Steve insisted.
Gary shook his head, worried at Steve’s tone, and that things could turn bad at any moment. “I wasn’t dreaming, Steve. I’ve seen her, and more than once.”
Steve studied him carefully. “What does she look like? Does she speak to you?”
Gary wasn’t sure how much he should tell. Describing her standing in the window, wrapped in the net curtain and shrieking for her father wasn’t likely to help. “She looks much like she did on that day I saw her. She cries...” He paused. “She asks for you, she asks for her daddy.”
Steve clenched both his jaw, and the fists laying on the table top.
“I’m sorry, Steve. I know this is difficult, especially with everything you’ve already been through, but I didn’t know what else to do.”
“What are you on?” Steve asked, barely suppressing anger. “Are you taking something?”
“Steve, I swear...”
“You come here, looking like shit, reeking of whisky, and telling me my daughter is haunting you? What are you trying to do? I don’t know what you are trying to do here.”
“I’m not trying to do anything...”
Steve leaned threateningly over the table, the veins thick in his throat. “Then what are you doing here?”
Gary sat back, distancing himself from the accusing stare. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just can’t stand it, Steve. Whatever’s happening, I can’t deal with it. I can’t bear to live it over and over. First Charley and now Emma, I just can’t take it. I just need someone to help me.”
The stoniness in Steve’s features softened a little. He eased himself back and sat looking at Gary for a while, turning it all over in his mind.
“Nola says she’s seen ghosts in the old country when she was a kiddie. But she’s Irish, and the Irish have a lot of belief in that kind of thing. She says ghosts are the spirits of people who have unfinished business here and can’t cross over.”
Gary remained quiet, giving Steve space to reason it out with himself.
“So, let’s say, for just one second, that I believe what you’re telling me, that Emma’s spirit’s not at rest, that she has ‘unfinished business’. Why would she come to you, a stranger, and not to her own father?”
“I don’t know,” Gary admitted. “All I can think is maybe it’s because I was near to her when she died. Or that I tried to save her? Or maybe it’s because of what happened to Charley. Maybe it’s because of that.”
Steve considered for a moment, then he shook his head. “No,” he said, with a sweep of his hand. “This is bullshit. It’s bullshit and I think you should leave.”
He stood up.
Gary remained in his seat. “She was at the funeral.”
Steve froze.
“When you were speaking, she was standing right next to you.”
Steve took a step back and Gary knew he’d hit on something.
“You felt her presence, didn’t you? I saw you pause and look down. You seemed uncertain. For a moment I thought you could see her too.”
Steve’s eyes grew distant. “I did feel something...like, I don’t know, like for a moment she was right there, holding my hand like she used to.”
Gary leaned forward. “She was right there, Steve. She was standing right next to you, looking up at you.”
Steve covered his mouth while a shuddering rush of emotion swept through him. From behind his hand and through the tears, came a husky whisper, “She was there?”
Gary nodded, the emotion reaching him too. “She was there, Steve. She was almost touching your hand.”
Steve moved the hand from his mouth and looked at it, upset and bewildered. After he’d given it some thought, he said, “You think maybe, she has…unfinished business?”
“Maybe,” Gary replied.
“Maybe she just wants...to say goodbye?” He looked at Gary.
“I guess it could be that simple,” Gary said, although her screaming ‘help me help me’ didn’t seem to quite fit that scenario.
“What can we do? How can we help her?”
“Come to my house,” Gary suggested. “Maybe that would be enough. Maybe you could make contact with her and then all this would stop.”
“This is crazy,” Steve said, still resisting. “I don’t believe in this kind of thing.”
“I don’t believe in it either. I never have...until now. Now, I have to believe it, because I’m living with it.”
Steve went over to the window and looked out of it for a while.
“Nola can’t know about this,” he decided. “It would kill her.” He looked suspiciously toward the door as if she might be up and listening.
“She doesn’t need to know,” Gary agreed.
“Nola’s sister’s coming later. I’ll make some excuse to go out and I’ll come around then.”
Gary stood up. “Thank you, Steve. I don’t know if it will do any good, but at least we can try.” He extended his hand. Steve gripped it, painfully tight, and Gary saw a threat flash in his eyes. A warning that if this was a sick joke, he was going to pay for it.
They arranged a time, and when Gary left, he felt empowered. He had set something in motion. If he could sort this thing out, then maybe he could get back to straightening his life out and having Fiona come home. He felt that he was taking steps to regain control.
But he wasn’t.
Far from it.
Steve arrived at quarter past eight and the night had already fully spread its dark wings. He glanced around the hall, taking in the three-legged table, the gashed door panel, and the broken pictures leaning against the wall.
“Did Emma do that?” Steve asked.
“No, I did,” Gary replied.
Steve nodded as if that was normal, or maybe he just understood.
“Is Nola okay?” Gary asked.
“Maggie’s with her. They’re nagging. Maggie’s been really supportive...a God-send. I told them I was going for a drive, so I haven’t got too long.”
“Okay,” Gary said. “We’d better get on then.”
Steve looked wary. “What do you want me to do?”
“Things seem to happen upstairs mostly, in and around Charley’s bedroom. Maybe if you just go in there and speak to her?”
Steve peered nervously into the darkness at the top of the stairs, his eyes wide and restless.
Gary flicked on the light. “It’s okay. It’s only Emma. It’s just your little girl.” But as he said it, he remembered her swathed in net and screaming, ‘Help me!’
Steve nodded and took a couple of deep breaths. “You’re right. Okay, where is it?”
“Up the stairs at the end of the landing, the door with the little nameplate on it. I’m going to wait down here if that’s okay with you?”
Steve’s eyes shone with fear for a moment, and then he checked himself. “Yeah, yeah...like you say, it’s only Emma.”
“It’ll be okay.”
Steve nodded and started up the stairs, while Gary went through to the lounge.
He told himself he hadn’t wanted to go up there with Steve because his presence might adversely affect things. She was asking for her father, so best it was only him. But that was a lie. He was simply afraid to go up there. Afraid of how Emma might appear, assuming she did at all. His shredded nerves just couldn’t take it.
The floorboards creaked above him. Gary glanced from the ceiling to the bottle of Scotch in the cabinet. He could use a stiff drink right about now, but he’d held off the whisky after Steve’s comment about the alcohol on his breath this morning. He’d held off all day. If all this thing with Emma got sorted, maybe he could hold off tomorrow, and if he could hold off tomorrow maybe he could hold off for good. It was a wistful thought, as tangible as highland mist, but it offered him some comfort.
He stood at the patio window and gazed out across the darkened garden, remembering Charley’s birthday party, the marquees and the guests. Her face when they gave Mister Whiskers to her, and how she had kissed him and thanked him. Fiona’s smug look and crooked grin from across the room.
God, he missed them both so much.
Everything had crumbled so quickly after that. Michelle’s miscarriage, falling out with Ed, and then Charley’s disappearance. Eventually, everything came around to that.
Gary flinched as a powerfully loud crash rushed overhead, as if something heavy had been dragged violently across the floor. The whole house seemed to shudder.
Daddy
The whisper touched his ear, like a gentle breath.
“You want your daddy?” he asked.
Daddy
Help
Please help
The outside light seemed to change, like a shadow had passed over the house, and then he couldn’t see her in the glass any more. The moths were gone. He shivered, yet felt strangely serene.
He hooked a finger over the knot in his tie and dragged it loose.
She was haunting him.
But why?
She wanted her daddy. Okay, he could understand that. But why was he involved in this? Just because he was there when she died? If she wanted her father why the fuck couldn’t she just go to him?
He thought about calling Trixie, but after last time he doubted if she would help him, wasn’t even sure if she could.
You’re on your own with this.
But he didn’t want to be involved at all. What did she want him to do? Go tell her heartbroken parents that their dead daughter was haunting him?
No way. If she needed her father, she’d have to find another way.
He was done with it.
Emma lay dead before him, her throat bruised and her eyes full of blood. Dead and dying moths lay around her head and writhed, tangled in her golden locks. Not far away, a crow watched him with its beady eye, its claw curled around a branch like an old man’s fist.
He found that spot on her breast bone where he could flex her ribcage and pump her heart.
He leaned on the heel of his palm.
Oneandtwoandthreeandfour...
After the compressions, he turned his face to listen for signs of life.
There were none.
He pushed back on her forehead, raising her chin to open her airway, but as he leaned down to cover her mouth with his, her eyes snapped wide. She grabbed his collar and dragged his face down to hers, her grip far stronger than any little girl could possibly be. The inside of her mouth was black, and her breath stank of death.
“It’s in the shape of a zigzag!” she screamed.
Gary woke gasping and grasping at his throat where she’d held him. The room was frigid, his breath rolling out in wispy vapour clouds. The air felt cold enough to crack.
The sound of a child sobbing filtered through the night.
Whispering, like icy slivers, floated through the darkness.
Something fluttered against his face, and he screamed, sure it was one of the moths that had been tangled in Emma’s hair.
But that had only been a dream.
He wondered if he was still dreaming, but this felt solidly real. He dragged the quilt close to his face, controlling his breathing so he could listen.
Small sobs broke through the whispering.
Emma?
He’d left the curtains open, the streetlight casting slanted shadows across the walls and ceiling. Moths touched and bumped against the net curtains.
The room looked like a charcoal drawing, all black lines and deep pits of darkness. The door was open, just an inch, just a crack. He scanned the wardrobe, the dressing table, back to the window...
Oh my God! There was something in the window!
His fists clenched around the quilt, his knuckles white, his eyes pinned wide in the darkness.
She was twisted in the net curtain, around and around like an insect entombed in a spider’s web. He could just make out her shape, her small, pale hands folded across her chest.
A passing car illuminated her pale, doll face, her coldly glinting eyes staring at him through the layers of net. The curtain was wrapped tightly around her waxen features like a death-shroud. Her mouth stretched wide against it in a silent scream.
I’m cold, she whispered. So cold.
Gary broke free of the paralysing terror and clawed across the bed, tumbling off the mattress onto the floor.
Help me! she shrieked after him. Help me, Daddy! Help me! Help me!
He scrambled away from that thing, that wraith.
Daddy! Help me! HELP ME!
He crawled to the open door and threw it open so savagely that it bounced back. He wriggled onto the landing, rolling onto his side and kicking himself away with his bare heels, only stopping when his shoulder pressed up against the banister and he could go no further.
He turned, fearfully, to see if she was still on the windowsill, but she wasn’t, she was rushing toward him like some tiny demon, the white veil rippling across her face and billowing out behind her.
She hunched over him, her arms rigid at her sides, her hands curled into claws. Beneath the net, her tiny face screamed grotesquely.
HELP ME! HELP ME! HELP ME!
Gary threw the crook of his arm across his face and squeezed his eyes tightly shut. The shrieking went on and on, piercing his eardrums and slicing through his brain, until it abruptly stopped. The house fell eerily still and quiet.
He lay there on the carpet, panting and whispering, “Oh God. Oh God.”
He risked a peek over his elbow. She was no longer lurched over him. The bedroom door stood wide, the room beyond dark and empty. The net curtain hung straight and undisturbed.
He slumped flat on the floor, panting with relief, oblivious to the wooden spindles digging into his head and shoulders.
“Oh Jesus Christ,” he whispered, wiping tears of fright from his eyes.
At the end of the landing, Charley’s door stood ajar.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Steve answered the door, the surprise at seeing Gary standing there fully evident on his face. “Gary,” he said.
“Hello, Steve.”
“It’s a bit early,” Steve said.
“I know, I’m sorry,” Gary replied. “But I need to talk to you.”
Steve glanced up and down the empty road, then back at Gary, his eyes dwelling on his dishevelled appearance and the dark circles beneath his eyes.
“You’d better come in then,” he said and stood aside. “Nola and the boys are still asleep. We’ll head through to the kitchen.”
He guided Gary down a narrow hall lined with family photos. One of them was the one Nola had given him to look at when they came to see him.
The kitchen was small and cluttered with knickknacks. Once the door was closed, Steve seemed to relax some. The room was cold. Dirty pots soaked in the sink. A tea towel lay in a pile on the tiles in front of the cooker. Steve picked it up.
“She sleeps a lot,” he said, wrapping the towel around his hands, “but I think it’s helping her. I read once that the best way to recover from physical injury is to sleep. The body can concentrate on getting better. I’m hoping it can help her mentally as well.”
“I think I’ve heard that too,” Gary agreed. “They sometimes induce comas in badly injured people.”
Steve nodded and put the towel to one side. “I’m sorry about what happened at the funeral,” he said. “I don’t know what got into dad. I’ve never seen him act like that before. And then with Nola...”
Gary dismissed it with a shake of his head. “It’s okay, I understand.”
“Well, still, I’m sorry it happened. Can I get you something to drink?”
“No,” Gary replied. “I need to talk to you about...well…something.”
Steve gestured for Gary to take a seat at the dining table. Two pink pig-shaped condiments sat in the middle, the nostril holes in their snouts to let out the salt and pepper stored in their bellies. On the wall, another pig looked out of its pen, the text beside it read: ‘Bless this Mess’.
“What is it?” Steve asked. “Is it Emma? Have you remembered something?”
“No, nothing like that, but it is about Emma.”
A wariness came into Steve’s eyes that made Gary uncomfortable and unsure how to proceed. Perhaps trying to talk to Steve about this wasn’t such a good idea.
“You look troubled, Gary,” Steve said. “You look...blown.”
“I haven’t been sleeping well,” Gary admitted.
“Yeah,” Steve said, like he knew. “What’s going on?”
“Well, it’s difficult...I don’t really know how to say this without sounding crazy.”
“Spit it out. Whatever it is, just tell me.”
“It’s Emma. I don’t think her...”
Don’t say soul. Don’t say spirit.
“...I don’t think she’s at rest.” Even with the words adjusted, it still came out sounding foolish.
“Not at rest? What are you talking about?”
Gary took a deep breath. “I know this is going to sound crazy, Steve, but Emma, she’s…” There was no other way to say it. “…well, she’s haunting me.”
Steve narrowed his eyes. “Haunting you as in the memory of what happened?”
Gary shook his head. “No, I mean really haunting me.”
Steve was silent.
“I know how it sounds, Steve, but I’ve seen her.”
“You’ve seen her?”
“In my house.”
Steve leaned back and folded his arms, carefully studying Gary’s face. “You’re telling me Emma’s ghost is haunting you?”
Gary winced inside. There it was, the elephant in the room: ghost. It sounded childish and silly, and conjured the episodes of Scooby Doo he’d watched as a child. But how else could it be said? Emma was dead, and he had seen her walking around. She was a spirit, a ghost, no matter how ridiculous it felt for him to say it out loud.
Reluctantly, he nodded.
“When have you seen her?”
“At first it was only a presence. I always keep the door to Charley’s room closed but it started opening of its own accord. You said Emma liked the door open a crack? Our cat felt it too...it spooked him. He doesn’t stay around the house anymore. But last night...last night I saw her in my house, in my bedroom.”
“You were dreaming,” Steve insisted.
Gary shook his head, worried at Steve’s tone, and that things could turn bad at any moment. “I wasn’t dreaming, Steve. I’ve seen her, and more than once.”
Steve studied him carefully. “What does she look like? Does she speak to you?”
Gary wasn’t sure how much he should tell. Describing her standing in the window, wrapped in the net curtain and shrieking for her father wasn’t likely to help. “She looks much like she did on that day I saw her. She cries...” He paused. “She asks for you, she asks for her daddy.”
Steve clenched both his jaw, and the fists laying on the table top.
“I’m sorry, Steve. I know this is difficult, especially with everything you’ve already been through, but I didn’t know what else to do.”
“What are you on?” Steve asked, barely suppressing anger. “Are you taking something?”
“Steve, I swear...”
“You come here, looking like shit, reeking of whisky, and telling me my daughter is haunting you? What are you trying to do? I don’t know what you are trying to do here.”
“I’m not trying to do anything...”
Steve leaned threateningly over the table, the veins thick in his throat. “Then what are you doing here?”
Gary sat back, distancing himself from the accusing stare. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just can’t stand it, Steve. Whatever’s happening, I can’t deal with it. I can’t bear to live it over and over. First Charley and now Emma, I just can’t take it. I just need someone to help me.”
The stoniness in Steve’s features softened a little. He eased himself back and sat looking at Gary for a while, turning it all over in his mind.
“Nola says she’s seen ghosts in the old country when she was a kiddie. But she’s Irish, and the Irish have a lot of belief in that kind of thing. She says ghosts are the spirits of people who have unfinished business here and can’t cross over.”
Gary remained quiet, giving Steve space to reason it out with himself.
“So, let’s say, for just one second, that I believe what you’re telling me, that Emma’s spirit’s not at rest, that she has ‘unfinished business’. Why would she come to you, a stranger, and not to her own father?”
“I don’t know,” Gary admitted. “All I can think is maybe it’s because I was near to her when she died. Or that I tried to save her? Or maybe it’s because of what happened to Charley. Maybe it’s because of that.”
Steve considered for a moment, then he shook his head. “No,” he said, with a sweep of his hand. “This is bullshit. It’s bullshit and I think you should leave.”
He stood up.
Gary remained in his seat. “She was at the funeral.”
Steve froze.
“When you were speaking, she was standing right next to you.”
Steve took a step back and Gary knew he’d hit on something.
“You felt her presence, didn’t you? I saw you pause and look down. You seemed uncertain. For a moment I thought you could see her too.”
Steve’s eyes grew distant. “I did feel something...like, I don’t know, like for a moment she was right there, holding my hand like she used to.”
Gary leaned forward. “She was right there, Steve. She was standing right next to you, looking up at you.”
Steve covered his mouth while a shuddering rush of emotion swept through him. From behind his hand and through the tears, came a husky whisper, “She was there?”
Gary nodded, the emotion reaching him too. “She was there, Steve. She was almost touching your hand.”
Steve moved the hand from his mouth and looked at it, upset and bewildered. After he’d given it some thought, he said, “You think maybe, she has…unfinished business?”
“Maybe,” Gary replied.
“Maybe she just wants...to say goodbye?” He looked at Gary.
“I guess it could be that simple,” Gary said, although her screaming ‘help me help me’ didn’t seem to quite fit that scenario.
“What can we do? How can we help her?”
“Come to my house,” Gary suggested. “Maybe that would be enough. Maybe you could make contact with her and then all this would stop.”
“This is crazy,” Steve said, still resisting. “I don’t believe in this kind of thing.”
“I don’t believe in it either. I never have...until now. Now, I have to believe it, because I’m living with it.”
Steve went over to the window and looked out of it for a while.
“Nola can’t know about this,” he decided. “It would kill her.” He looked suspiciously toward the door as if she might be up and listening.
“She doesn’t need to know,” Gary agreed.
“Nola’s sister’s coming later. I’ll make some excuse to go out and I’ll come around then.”
Gary stood up. “Thank you, Steve. I don’t know if it will do any good, but at least we can try.” He extended his hand. Steve gripped it, painfully tight, and Gary saw a threat flash in his eyes. A warning that if this was a sick joke, he was going to pay for it.
They arranged a time, and when Gary left, he felt empowered. He had set something in motion. If he could sort this thing out, then maybe he could get back to straightening his life out and having Fiona come home. He felt that he was taking steps to regain control.
But he wasn’t.
Far from it.
Steve arrived at quarter past eight and the night had already fully spread its dark wings. He glanced around the hall, taking in the three-legged table, the gashed door panel, and the broken pictures leaning against the wall.
“Did Emma do that?” Steve asked.
“No, I did,” Gary replied.
Steve nodded as if that was normal, or maybe he just understood.
“Is Nola okay?” Gary asked.
“Maggie’s with her. They’re nagging. Maggie’s been really supportive...a God-send. I told them I was going for a drive, so I haven’t got too long.”
“Okay,” Gary said. “We’d better get on then.”
Steve looked wary. “What do you want me to do?”
“Things seem to happen upstairs mostly, in and around Charley’s bedroom. Maybe if you just go in there and speak to her?”
Steve peered nervously into the darkness at the top of the stairs, his eyes wide and restless.
Gary flicked on the light. “It’s okay. It’s only Emma. It’s just your little girl.” But as he said it, he remembered her swathed in net and screaming, ‘Help me!’
Steve nodded and took a couple of deep breaths. “You’re right. Okay, where is it?”
“Up the stairs at the end of the landing, the door with the little nameplate on it. I’m going to wait down here if that’s okay with you?”
Steve’s eyes shone with fear for a moment, and then he checked himself. “Yeah, yeah...like you say, it’s only Emma.”
“It’ll be okay.”
Steve nodded and started up the stairs, while Gary went through to the lounge.
He told himself he hadn’t wanted to go up there with Steve because his presence might adversely affect things. She was asking for her father, so best it was only him. But that was a lie. He was simply afraid to go up there. Afraid of how Emma might appear, assuming she did at all. His shredded nerves just couldn’t take it.
The floorboards creaked above him. Gary glanced from the ceiling to the bottle of Scotch in the cabinet. He could use a stiff drink right about now, but he’d held off the whisky after Steve’s comment about the alcohol on his breath this morning. He’d held off all day. If all this thing with Emma got sorted, maybe he could hold off tomorrow, and if he could hold off tomorrow maybe he could hold off for good. It was a wistful thought, as tangible as highland mist, but it offered him some comfort.
He stood at the patio window and gazed out across the darkened garden, remembering Charley’s birthday party, the marquees and the guests. Her face when they gave Mister Whiskers to her, and how she had kissed him and thanked him. Fiona’s smug look and crooked grin from across the room.
God, he missed them both so much.
Everything had crumbled so quickly after that. Michelle’s miscarriage, falling out with Ed, and then Charley’s disappearance. Eventually, everything came around to that.
Gary flinched as a powerfully loud crash rushed overhead, as if something heavy had been dragged violently across the floor. The whole house seemed to shudder.
