by Graham West
Fear propelled me from my bed, dreading what awaited me on the other side of the door. My blood runs cold even now. I still dream. I still see my daughter standing there, lit only by the glow of the bedside light, her eyes wide, blood dripping from the hand that gripped a shard of glass.
Had this been anywhere else, I would never have recognised my own child. She had the face of a demon, her hair as wild as her eyes.
“Jenny?”
The same beautiful girl who had emerged from the ocean in her bikini, looking like a goddess only a few years earlier, had been transformed into a being from the other side of hell itself.
“Stay away from me,” she hissed.
I hardly recognised the voice that seemed to emanate from her belly. Even her eyes, those beautiful brown eyes, looked as black as night.
She took a step towards me. “Hypocrite!” Her breath was stale—a smell I knew but couldn’t quite recall. “Hypocrite! Hypocrite! Hypocrite!”
Her voice grew louder as I stepped back. “Jenny!”
Shout louder. Scream at her!
“JENNY!”
I lunged forward and grasped her shoulders. The shard of glass dropped from her hands, landing at my feet as her eyes rolled. In that moment, I believed that I’d lost my only child.
Jenny crumpled, slipping from my grasp and falling to her knees. The lids closed on her lifeless eyes as she crashed forward, her head hitting the floor with a sickening thud.
I saw the blood trickling from her mouth as I knelt beside her and frantically searched for the heartbeat I was afraid I’d never find. I whispered her name, stroking her hair as I felt the gentle throbbing signs of life through my fingers. She had a pulse. She was alive.
Had anyone walked into the room that night, they would have sworn they had stumbled upon a tragedy: a sobbing father hovering over the body of his daughter. Her skin was cold to the touch—so cold that I wondered if I was imagining the pulse I had felt in her wrist. Her hand was bleeding from the gash. The glass had cut deep into the flesh of her palm.
“Jenny?”
I called her name once more, willing my daughter to open her eyes. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. If I’ve let you down…I’m sorry!”
It was almost as if I’d uttered the words she had been waiting for. Her eyelids flickered and her bloodied hand moved.
“Jenny?”
Her eyes opened.
“Jenny?”
I saw the faintest of smiles that told me my daughter was back.
Be careful. Don’t rush her!
“It’s okay, darling. Everything is going to be just fine.”
My words carried the conviction that I felt at that moment. I was convinced we would find that elusive peace that lay like an oasis in our barren hostile world of grief. It was a journey we had to make together, supporting each other. We didn’t need the help of anyone else. From now on, it was just the two of us. If only I’d known how wrong a man could be.
Chapter Six
I drove Jenny to the Accident and Emergency early that morning and watched as she sat impassively while the nurse tended to the wound. Jenny needed twelve stitches, but there were no questions, and that suited me fine.
We headed home in silence—a world that I had become accustomed to. At least I had my daughter with me—what more did I want? Conversation? An Aretha Franklin track was playing on the iPod I had plugged in. I turned it up just as the radio tripped in, and Lenny Trent—a presenter with a heavy Northern accent who considered himself to be ‘the voice of the people’—piped up…
Did anyone see that psycho freak on TV last night? What was his name?
Someone in the studio called out.
Ah, yes—that’s it—Orson Pennyworth! Well, waddya think? He hears voices, right? Dead people talk to this guy. Okay—we all know about mediums, but this bloke takes the biscuit! They speak to him in his dreams, and then he goes looking for them! Well, what would you say if some nutter turned up on your doorstep and told you that he’d been talking to your old man?
Jenny leaned forward and turned the radio off.
“I was listening to that.”
My daughter looked at me as if I had just slithered from under a stone. “He’s an ignorant prick. Why would you want to listen to that drivel?”
Jenny turned away, and I decided it was one of those least said situations. It was true, Lenny Trent did seem like a man who liked the sound of his own voice, but he’d touched a nerve. Trent had talked about a man who heard dead people communicating with the living…in their dreams. Was Jenny hearing the voice of her mother? Did she think Elizabeth was talking to her? And, if she was, what was she saying?
But I had seen the look of terror in my daughter’s eyes. Could that have been the result of a dream about her own mother?
I drove home on autopilot, trying to construct an opening line that I could deliver to my daughter without arousing the demons that lurked within her. I had turned into a father who lived on the edge, fearful of his own child and consumed by the need to regain some kind of control.
When I closed the front door behind us, Jenny kicked off her trainers and headed for the stairs.
“Jenny.”
I had hoped to find an edge in my tone, a hint of authority that she might respect, but my voice cracked, and all that escaped my lips was a sound that resembled an expiring frog. It sounded weak, but my daughter heard a voice, thick with emotion. She stopped and turned. In that moment, our eyes met, and I saw the girl I thought I’d lost forever.
“I want to help, sweetheart.”
A tear trickled down Jenny’s face. “But you can’t help, Dad. That’s the problem.”
I felt a burning sensation in the back of my throat as fresh tears formed in my eyes. “I can’t go on like this, Jen. I’m going crazy!”
Jenny turned and continued, treading the stairs heavily. My heart sank. I was losing her again.
Give her some space.
I thought of my father; his grace, the depths of wisdom on which he could call. He would never have told me that he was going crazy! I had longed to walk in his footsteps but knew that I’d forever be living in his shadow. A feeling of utter hopelessness and failure consumed me. “Sweetheart,” I called after her. “I can never be the man your grandfather was. He would know exactly what to say, and if he was here today, I know you would be with him now.”
Jenny stopped dead. For a moment, she stood without flinching. I waited, knowing the love that existed between my father and his granddaughter. The mere mention of his name would bring tears to her eyes as the memories flooded back.
“This isn’t about words, Dad. It’s gone beyond that.”
My daughter turned, lowering herself onto the stair, and sat facing me. “You can’t talk away the dreams. You can’t stop her!”
In the dim light of the hallway, I saw the look of despair on her face. “You’re talking about your mother?”
Jenny shook her head. “If only.”
“Then who?”
Jenny remained silent for a moment, but when she answered, her voice was on the edge of breaking. “I can’t tell you.”
I sat down beside her. “Jen, however frightening—they are just dreams…”
Jenny shook her head. “No, Dad, they’re not. When I wake, I still feel her, as if…as if she’s inside me! I feel her in the room!”
“Who? Who is it? You have to tell me, babe. You have to.”
The words that escaped my lips were empty, for in my mind, I was standing in front of the fridge door looking at the messages that had appeared: find me.
“It’s my fault, Dad.” Jenny began to sob. “It’s all my fault!”
My daughter stood and continued up the stairs, leaving me sitting alone. I heard the bedroom door close. Dad, I whispered, for God’s sake, help me!
The silence left me feeling cold. What had I come to expect from the dead? A voice? A vision? A message on the fridge door? I found myself almost running through to the ki
tchen, praying that the plastic, multicoloured letters would form a sentence, a revelation. But they remained as I had left them. The alphabet. Every letter in its place.
I watched TV until I passed out, and woke with the dawn chorus, my neck aching and my eyes confronted by a young presenter reading the early morning news. I passed Jenny’s room on the way to the bathroom; her door was open. I stopped and peered in. The bed was unmade, clothes littered the floor. But Jenny had gone.
I called Josie later that day, convinced that Jenny would be sitting in Kelly’s bedroom clearing her head.
“I wouldn’t normally advise you to do this, hun, but maybe you should start your own investigations.”
“Investigations?”
There was a pause, as if Josie was having second thoughts. “Yeah, you know…have a little scout around.”
“You’re talking about her bedroom?”
“Well, that would be the best place to start.”
“I can’t…it’s…”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s an invasion of privacy and all that shit! Listen, Robert, if my kid was wandering around the house leaving weird messages on the fridge and waking up with broken glass in her hand, I wouldn’t be worrying about space and privacy. I’d wanna get the thing sorted, okay?” Josie sounded exasperated by my wariness. “Look on her phone. You might just get some clues, hun. If she’s been spending days stuck in that bedroom, it’s quite possible she’s been up to something.”
I paused only briefly outside Jenny’s door, afraid, even in her absence, of what I might find on the other side. The hinges seemed to squeak as I pushed on the handle; I closed my eyes, wondering if the weight I felt in my stomach was tension or guilt.
I glanced through the window, checking that Jenny wasn’t walking down the road. The whole place, the house, the world outside, seemed eerily silent.
I shuddered, surveying the bookshelf. Narnia. Bridget Jones. A couple of chick-lit paperbacks, but no diary; no schoolbooks. I turned anxiously, expecting to find my daughter watching me with cold, stony eyes, before cautiously pulling open the top drawer of her bedside cabinet. Great—underwear! I’m actually trawling through my daughter’s knickers and bras!
The second drawer was full of CDs, and I was about to close it when I caught sight of a box. I remembered Elizabeth arriving home with the set of six CDs her last Christmas: a presentation set of virtually everything Elvis had recorded. Jenny had just discovered the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, and my wife had swooped on the special offer in a closing-down sale and proudly presented it to our daughter who, thinking it had been my idea, threw her arms around my neck.
I was no detective, but I knew the CDs were loose amongst the others in her collection. Elvis Live! Elvis Love Songs. Elvis Rocks. They were all there. All the music would have now been on her iPod; the discs and the player were clearly redundant. I pulled out the box, glancing once more out of the window. No one. Not a soul. The place was like a ghost town. My hands shook with nervous anticipation as I pulled open the lid.
Inside, and quite obviously intended for no one’s eyes but her own, was a lined notebook. It was pink, about the size of the exercise books she’d used at school. I touched it, half expecting to be struck down for my transgressions. I was grossly uncomfortable with my intrusive behaviour no matter how necessary or well intentioned it might have been. In my quest for an answer, I’d secretly hoped to find nothing more than a few innocent sketches and teenage ramblings, but I was to be disappointed.
On the first page, a sketch of what appeared to be a couple of young boys hanging side by side from a crude wooden gallows. I’d almost forgotten Jenny’s artistic prowess; her A* grade in art was achieved with little effort or even, I suspect, interest.
I stared at the pencil drawing. She’d captured the likeness perfectly. Darren Pascoe and Kevin Taylor’s bodies hung lifelessly from their nooses, staring back at me from the page. I shuddered. My daughter had never even mentioned their names, and I’d considered this as a sign that she had somehow accepted that the death of her mother and sister had been an accident.
Now, I realised that Jenny had found comfort in a sketch depicting Pascoe and Taylor’s execution, knowing that in reality, they would never have to pay for what they’d done. I turned the page to find my daughter’s erratic, sloping scrawl—untidy enough to have merited a note from the teacher in my day. Although she had omitted an address in the top left-hand corner, the page had been set out in the form of a letter.
Dear Mum. It began. I shuddered. It were almost as if the temperature had dropped ten degrees in those few seconds. I read on.
I guess there’s nothing I can tell you, is there? You see everything now though I don’t think dad really believes this. He is not like Granddad who taught me about God and the eternal soul. Why do you think this is, mum? Why has he lost his ability to believe in anything he cannot see? This is surely the curse of the materialistic, not my own father.
I felt a jolt, like a knife through my gut.
Forgive me, Mum, but sometimes I wish I was with you, wherever you are. I miss Hanna like crazy. Sometimes I swear I can hear her laughing. Maybe I can…I’m always listening, Mum—always—so if you can come through, I won’t be afraid… Look after Hanna, won’t you? Love, Jen. xxxx
I flipped the page with a physical ache in my stomach.
Dear, dear Mum,
Dad went ballistic when I suggested that we tried to contact you! I know that Granddad was sceptical about mediums—I seemed to remember that it said something about them in the Bible…like STAY AWAY! But he would have understood. Dad doesn’t! I don’t think he even believes in an afterlife anymore but if you would give him a sign—anything—then he might just change his mind. I love you, Mum…wherever you are…Jen. xxx
I closed the book, my hands trembling, and sat for a moment. Jenny had two parents. One dead. One, alive. Yet she had chosen to unburden her soul to the one who was lying six feet under a slab of stone. I had never considered myself to be a bad parent—sure, I’d made mistakes and I could have listened harder when she was a kid with an aptitude for incessant chatter—but I never considered myself second to the deceased.
I must have sat, sinking further into the mire of self-pity for nearly half an hour before finally picking up Jenny’s macabre journal. I flipped another page.
Dear Mum,
Last night, I had a dream. It WAS a dream, I know that. But it was so real. I saw this girl—or was it a young woman? She was in this really gloomy room. It was awful—like a prison… She was sitting at on old wooden table, looking out of a tiny window, and there was a book in front of her. The page was blank, and beside the book was a pen and an inkwell. She turned towards me as I stepped into the room. She had huge eyes like that Scream painting that they use for Halloween masks. She looked like a zombie and was shaking violently too. Her whole body was trembling like someone had plugged her in.
I wanted to run but my feet wouldn’t move. She stared at me for ages, and I tried to scream. I wanted to scream, but all that left my mouth was a rush of air. Then she spoke to me. ‘So, you have come at last, my child!’ Her voice was low and rasping, like someone was choking her. Then she turned away, looking out of the window and began to cry. I can hear her crying…even when I’m awake! What does she want, Mum? What have I done…?Jen xxxx
***
I pulled up in the only empty space in the car park at the back of the local library. Jenny’s notepad lay on the seat beside me, filled with everything I needed to know, but without the luxury of time, I was unable to study.
There was a faint scent of wood and leather that I found strangely comforting as I walked into the library. The middle-aged woman behind the desk, who looked as if she had been born to the job, glanced up at me over her thick-rimmed spectacles and flashed me an officious smile.
“Photocopier?” I asked.
“Over there.” She pointed at the machine underneath the sign that said ‘photocopier’ in large blue letters.
“Just bring your copies over here when you’re done.”
I thanked her and pulled Jenny’s notebook from my pocket. I wasn’t that good with copiers, but that afternoon, the place was empty apart from a couple of young girls sitting in the corner, bent over a desk full of books. I had the space, if not the time, to press the wrong buttons without an impatient queue behind me.
The instructions on the lid were mercifully simple—as if written for fools like me. I folded back Jenny’s pad and laid the first page face down. The copier was wonderfully quick, and in no time at all, I had presented the librarian with twenty sheets of A4, paid up and was back behind the wheel.
When I arrived home, there was still no sign of Jenny. I replaced the notepad in the box and slid it back underneath her personal things, praying she had not inherited her mother’s powers of observation. Then, creeping out of my own home, unable to rid myself of the feeling that I had just burgled a stranger’s property, I climbed back behind the wheel of my car and set off for Alshaw Park.
Chapter Seven
The dark thunderous rain clouds had gathered overhead, threatening to break at any moment. The first spots hit my windscreen as I pulled up under the cover of a large oak tree in the leaf-strewn car park. This was the place where men brought their mistresses in the late evening. It was the place where the middle-class wannabes parked up four-wheel drives as their golden retrievers looked longingly out of the window, anticipating the freedom of the open parkland.
Today, with a storm forecast, I found myself sharing the gravel-covered, potholed parking area with a rusting Jeep and a souped-up Toyota. I had the space and the time. No screaming kids, no barking dogs. I killed the engine and, with a mixture of anticipation and dread, began to read my daughter’s private ramblings.