My eyes meet the cold green eyes of the girl who’s my Achilles’ heel.
She looks torn apart, barely put together. Her mind, heart and soul, all gone, lost in the shadows. And there I am, standing in the darkest corner in her mind. She’s mine now. She knows this.
She can run, all she likes. Nothing’s gonna stop me from chasing her.
‘Okay,’ I tell her.
But I don’t mean forever.
I’ll come for her again. Again. Again. Again.
I’m not her knight in shining armour. I’m the thorn in her fucking side.
Amy turns and I let her run away. I don’t want to let her go. I want her to keep looking at me so bad. Want to eat her up and get my soul back.
She is heroine.
Take a hit and the lies seem to just die, the truth spills out of my veins like blood.
When I kissed Amy, when I tasted her, my dry, cracking bones were cured by her touch. The earth moved, and it’s still fucking moving.
Feels like I just unlocked something buried long ago, deep inside my stinking, rotten heart.
6
YOU
I HID FROM THE DEVIL.
But for all my hiding, the Devil still found me. And I just let him hold my hand and take me down with him.
I run out of Devil’s Woods, panting so hard I think my lungs are going to cave in. The rain falls, teardrops on earth. Dark and black like loss.
Fireworks crack and hiss across the sky, heralding midnight and the new year. They light me up in pink, purple and blue flashes. The smell of them sour in the cold, damp air. I tense with each screaming whizz and brace for the gunshots of dynamite, the shocks of light.
When I reach Swan Lake, I notice the light is on in my room, the curtains half-closed.
I count the sixteen panes, eight on each door. Little yellow rectangles, with neat edges. No extra bits of light show through. No one has touched the curtains while I’ve been away. I repeat this over and over again as I push myself forward. My room is safe, nobody is in there.
Shepherd isn’t waiting for me behind closed doors.
I look back, just once, while turning the key to open the front door, making sure he isn’t there.
My feet smack on the tiles in the foyer, my breathing bounces off the high ceiling. I wonder sometimes if this gothic estate is haunted. Many souls must have died here. It was built when people perished of TB if they weren’t sent to the seaside to rest. The windows all along one side face the Black Cliffs. Most of the building is abandoned, used to store broken equipment and old chairs. Empty and hollow.
The door locks behind me. I feel around the edges of the door. Checking it’s flush against the doorframe. I’m careful not to miss any bump which might indicate the door isn’t properly shut. I check it six times, counting each time. One, two, three, four, five, six. I turn the doorknob, six times.
Right on cue, Rebecca opens the door to the main living room.
‘Amy. It’s very late, honey. You okay?’
‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ I say, giving her my best smile. ‘I’ll go to bed now.’
‘Amy, the door is fine, okay?’
She nods and regards me for a moment. Her head tilts to the side, looking at the sad, pathetic girl that I’ve become.
‘Just one more time, please.’
She sighs, then goes back into the living room. I know the staff think I’m away with the fairies. Now I can no longer testify my case because I just lost my marbles in the woods.
I go back to the checking, starting again from scratch. I’m alright as long as I don’t get stuck, like a faulty clock. Sometimes I do.
So, the doorframe, the doorknob . . . do it properly, Amy. Don’t mess it up. Get this done before he comes back.
At last I finish checking the front door. Then up the stairs. Check to the top of the staircase. Listen to the stillness in the estate, the television on in the living room downstairs. More fireworks, going off a long way away.
I unlock my door, look behind me at the staircase again.
He isn’t here.
Go.
Then I take one step inside, shut the door, lock it. Listen at the door. Nothing at all from the other side. Look through the peephole. Nobody there. Just the stairs, the landing, the light overhead.
I run my fingers around the doorframe, turn the door handle six times one way, six times the other way. One, two, three, four, five, six. The lock holds the door shut. I turn the lock six times.
It’s not over.
It’s not enough.
Never is.
I check all the windows, close the curtains, and go round the room in the same order. First the front window. All the locks secure. I run my fingers around the window-frame. Then I can close the curtains against the darkness outside. I check the edges of the curtains in case I can see part of the window. Then I move over to the balcony and the double doors.
I check the lock, feel all the way around the edge, turn the handle six times. The lock holds true, the handle rattles loosely. Then I close the heavy-lined curtains against the blackness.
Then the bathroom. The window is high up and frosted. It doesn’t open, but regardless, I stand on the toilet lid and check the edges. Through to my bedroom. Big windows in here which look out onto the back garden. The curtains are closed already.
The room is in darkness. I pluck up my courage and open the curtains, checking the wide sash windows. I check each one, turning and re-turning the keys six times.
Then
