Page 19 of The Spiral

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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.

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