“In the car.”
“Then we’ve got to go.”
“I’ll stay and keep him safe.”
But Judy could see Adrian wouldn’t make it. You couldn’t lose that much blood and survive; it just wasn’t possible. Already his breathing had slowed, his chest rising and falling only intermittently, and no longer smooth, but jagged and unexpected, as if every breath was a surprise to him.
“He’s dead, Lisa. Look at him. He’s dead and I’m sorry, but we can’t stay here. We have to go.”
“He’s not dead.” She was panicking, but when she lifted her bloodied hands to move him into a more comfortable position, the blood from his neck had slowed to a trickle, the pressure diminished so much. His chest wasn’t moving. His eyes were grey and lifeless.
“I’m not leaving him.”
“You’ve got to. We’ll fetch help. I promise we won’t leave him here for long. But it’s not safe. I don’t know what Sarah will do, but after the way she’s just reacted, I think anything’s possible.”
“She won’t let you leave.” Phil’s voice from behind Judy made her jump. He looked so solid; not like how she imagined a ghost should look.
“Phil, why are you doing this?” Lisa was pleading.
“I’m just here to observe, to keep an eye on you. I want you to be safe, both of you,” he looked at Judy and something crossed his eyes that she didn’t care for. “But she’s been angry for a long time. She blames us for what happened. She’s angry that you’re still alive, and she’s not. Angry that she had us taken away from her. She’s always been around us. Ever since we were kids.”
Judy thought back to Phil’s journal. He’d mentioned seeing the woman from his dreams, the woman from his childhood. And Lisa had seen her too. How far back had she been haunting them? Edging into their lives, growing angrier as they grew up.
“I used to have nightmares—you remember?”
Lisa nodded, her hand going in front of her mouth. “I remember.”
“I’m not sure they were ever nightmares. I think it was always her, always trying to get into our lives.”
“Go back to sleep...” Judy muttered.
A hint of a smile flashed on Phil’s face. “She used to say that a lot whenever we’d wake or be scared. Her way of acting maternal, I guess.”
“Oh my God, all those years.”
Judy thought of all the doctors Adrian had put Lisa in front of. Surely just his way of denying anything weird was happening to his children. A way of absolving himself of any guilt.
“I’m sorry, Phil,” Judy started. “How do we stop her?”
His frown deepened. “What makes you think you can stop her?”
“She can’t keep tormenting us like this.”
“But you are part of this. You were helping Lisa get rid of her. You were looking into an exorcism with your vicar friend.” He spat these last words out. “She’s got every right to be pissed at you.”
“She wants to hurt me, Phil,” Lisa interjected. “This isn’t about Judy.”
“I’m pretty sure she wants you dead. She’s realised that that’s the best way for her to have her children back around her. All three of us, together.”
Lisa was shaking her head. “No. That’s not going to happen.”
“You must find a way to stop her first.”
“Help us, Phil. You don’t want to see us hurt.” Judy wasn’t sure whether this was exactly true.
“How did you react when I got ill?”
The attention was back on her and Judy squirmed at the question. How could she answer this without riling him? Perhaps truth was the safest option.
“I was glad,” Judy said plainly.
Lisa flinched. “What? What did you say?”
Judy glanced at her sister-in-law and repeated herself. “I was glad.”
The smile had returned to Phil’s face. He was enjoying himself. “Glad? Is this the true Judy now?”
“I was glad because it meant you would finally stop dominating our lives. I was never happy that you would need months of painful treatment, I’m not such a bitch. But the man I lost was not the man I married. You’d changed so much, I barely recognised you.” Speaking the words out loud for the first time, was lifting Judy. Perhaps she wasn’t as damned as she thought.
“We all change. Throughout our lives we change. You changed. Look at you now, different, more confident, more outgoing. You even had a boyfriend. You didn’t grieve for me for very long.”
“I grieved for you plenty. Did you never think that what you were doing to me was wrong? Did it never occur to you that I might want my own life? That I could have my own thoughts and feelings? How many of my dreams did I give up because of you? I left my job when we had Jemma. You told me I never had to work again. I wanted to. You forbade it. My friends, I had so many when we met, but slowly and methodically, so perhaps you’d think I wouldn’t notice, you cut them from my life. I depended on you for everything. And that’s exactly how you wanted it. Me, trapped at home. Your personal slave. Jemma wouldn’t stand a chance. Already, you’d limited her friendship circle. You only let one of her friends into our house. You were on her all the time about her schoolwork. Never giving her any chance to breathe or develop as a person. You were smothering her.
“And she knew what kind of person you’d become. She’d seen the bruises. Not just the ones I hid with the long sleeves, but the ones that took far longer to heal. The ones I’m still dealing with now. I would not let her live a life with you in it.”
Lisa was still staring at her. This was the first time she’d ever said this out loud to anyone.
“No. This isn’t what he was like. Phil was never as you described him. He was a good man.” Lisa was doing her best to defend her brother, but Judy knew that there was a part of her that believed in Judy’s story. The part of her that had experienced the same controlling behaviour from her brother.
“I’m sorry, but you didn’t know him the way I knew him.”
“Lies.”
“It’s not. Why would I lie?”
“You want to justify your own behaviour. Your boyfriend.”
Richard was dead. She glared at Phil, trying to reduce the shaking she felt, trying not to let the red mist descend. “You killed Richard, didn’t you? I sensed a presence in his shop, I thought it was Sarah, but it wasn’t. It was you, watching me. You couldn’t let me be happy, could you? Not for a moment.”
Phil took a step towards her and Judy instinctively took another one back, keeping the distance. “He was an idiot. He was married. Didn’t that bother you?”
“I didn’t know. If I’d have known, do you think I’d have been seeing him?”
“It didn’t take long before you invited him into our bed. Less than a month. That’s some hard-core whoring right there.”
The words hit her like a slap and she reeled. The mood had darkened. This wouldn’t end well. Sarah was close, she could feel that, but Phil was right in front of her getting angrier by the second. “I’m not a whore.”
“You slept with him. You didn’t even ask whether he was married.”
“You murdered him.”
“Dicky heart. He had it coming. Justice for cheating on his wife.”
Judy glanced at Lisa who was looking confused. Had she never seen this side of her brother before? Lisa stepped beside Judy, the pair of them backing slowly out of the room. Lisa’s fingers brushed against Judy’s, then a gentle tug and Judy knew that she was prepared to run.
“No one deserved to die. Not even you,” Judy said.
“I didn’t understand you all that well when I was alive. I always sought to see the best in people, but you would always undermine me. Always putting putting me down in front of our friends.”
“Your friends, Phil. I had none. You wouldn’t let me have any.”
“All those times. And even now, trying to make me look bad in front of my sister.” Phil eyes widened as if he’d just come to a big conclusion. “You ca
n’t ever leave. We won’t let you.”
But even as he said those words, Judy had turned and was running for the door, Lisa a split second behind. She recognised the tone in his words, the certainty that came with his arrogance. He meant every word of it. If they were ever going to get out, it would have to be now.
45
The vibrations Judy had felt earlier were back in force, the storm was building up to hit and they would get caught inside the house when it did. There was no way they’d survive against two angry spirits. That look in Phil’s eyes told her she was more in danger now than she’d ever been when he’d been alive. She should have been more careful not to rile him.
But hadn’t it been worth it, to see Lisa’s view of him change before her eyes?
She followed Lisa down the stairs but in her rush, her foot caught on the top step and she tripped, her momentum too fast to stop herself from falling. She thudded down the stairs, her back hitting step after step. Lisa grabbed her, and stopped her as she came to rest at the turn in the stairs.
“Where is he?” Judy asked, as she let Lisa help her down the stairs. There were aches in her body, but fear and adrenaline were keeping her too high to feel much of the pain.
The front door wouldn’t open.
“There’s a door out the back.”
Judy groaned. The fall had twisted a muscle in her back. She didn’t know how severe an injury it was, but there was a sharp pain at the base of her spine that flashed in anger when she moved. She couldn’t allow herself to be trapped in here. The ghosts were out for blood and she was a sitting target.
Why is Sarah targeting Lisa? Judy thought. The ghost of Sarah was angry, she understood that, and it wasn’t hard to see why she would have wanted vengeance on Adrian. But her own daughter?
They crashed into the lounge and Lisa paused.
“What’s wrong?” Judy asked.
“I was in this house once before. Phil and I broke in when we were young. It was like this even then.”
Judy sensed there was more. Lisa’s hand was trembling, her skin was cool.
“Something happened?”
Lisa nodded. “Come on, the back door is in the kitchen.” Lisa led the way, speaking as she went. “I got trapped in here on my own. Phil had managed to get out. But then I heard someone moving around upstairs. I got scared and hid under there.” She pointed at the kitchen table, the chairs knocked aside. “I didn’t know what else to do. Damn.”
The kitchen door was locked and there was no sign of a key. Judy pushed her aside, and tried putting pressure against it, testing the door against its jamb, seeing how weak it was but the movement caused her back to flare again. “How did you get out?”
Lisa stepped back and slammed the sole of her foot into the door where the lock was, but the door was too solid to break open like that. They would have to try the windows. Most had been boarded up, but there were still cracks of light breaking through. And with any luck, the boards would have been untouched in the years since they’d been put up. They would be the weak points.
Judy led the way back into the lounge. It was troubling her how Sarah and Phil were not down here. What was their agenda? They’d trapped them in here. What next?
“Help me with this,” she said to Lisa and headed for the back window, behind the dining room table.
“What are we going to do?”
“It’s our way out.”
Quickly, they moved the furniture to one side, tossing the chairs aside. Then Judy picked up a chair by its back and wielded it like a weapon. “Stand back, cover your eyes.” Closing her own eyes, she swung the chair in a wide arc, smashing it into the window. The glass shattered, heavy pieces tumbled to the floor, a fine rain of smaller fragments blew back into the room. Judy opened her eyes. They were just a few boards away from freedom.
A cry behind her made her spin around.
Lisa was stretched out against the wall, her arms out by her sides. “I can’t move.”
Sarah stood in the centre of the room. The ghost had a devilish glint in her eyes, her mouth slightly open revealing a line of decaying teeth and blackened gums. A line of saliva coursed its way along deep lines in her pallid skin.
“Let her go, Sarah. You don’t want to do this. That’s your daughter you’re hurting.”
A gasp from Lisa, then Judy’s belief was tested to the limit as she watched Lisa lift from the ground. Flat against the wall, with nothing to support her underneath, an unseen force held her there.
“I can’t breathe,” Lisa choked, coughing. Judy ran across the room, aiming to pull Lisa down from the wall, but something knocked her aside. A blinding light hit her eyes, and she screamed in agony as her head smashed against the opposite wall. When she could bring herself to look up, she saw Sarah staring at her.
She’s too powerful. If she can throw you across a room without so much as breaking a sweat, what chance do you have? What can you hope to achieve?
Even escape was not the long-term answer. Sarah was haunting them, not this place. And she was madder than ever.
Judy picked up one of the fallen chairs and swung it at Sarah, aiming to knock her head from her shoulders, but the chair passed straight through her. It seemed that Sarah was only a real physical manifestation when she chose to be.
She can’t be harmed. What kind of defence is there against an entity that can’t be harmed?
She wished she had Seth by her side. He’d know what to do.
“Sarah, you’ve got to let her go. You’ll kill her.”
“Then she won’t have to leave.” Sarah’s voice was flat and emotionless. If there had been anger there, it had been replaced with acceptance that this was the only way it would end.
“You don’t want to kill her.”
“Don’t presume to know what I want.” Sarah threw a look as sharp as the broken glass on the floor, and for a second time a terrific force hit Judy in the stomach. She flew back across the room, landing on the floor of the kitchen. The door in front of her, separating her from Sarah and Lisa, slammed closed.
Judy was trapped.
She scrambled to her feet and hurled herself at the door, wincing at the pain in her back, the adrenaline keeping her going for now. She grabbed the handle and pulled down, but the door refused to open.
Judy slammed her fist against the wood. “Let me in, you’re not thinking straight. This isn’t the way you want to be with your daughter.”
A tickle of wind against her neck and Judy spun around to see Phil standing there. A curious look in his eyes. “She wants Lisa to join us. I guess inevitably, it would come to this.”
Judy no longer felt afraid of her husband. There didn’t seem any point. He was either going to kill her or he wasn’t. She’d run out of places to run to, what followed next was inevitable.
But she owed it to Lisa to at least try.
“Lisa will die unless you help me get out of here. She can’t hold on for much longer, and despite what you say, I can’t believe for one minute you want your sister to die in this way, surrounded by all this decay, her head full of fear. What does that say about you that you’d be prepared to let that happen?”
“Don’t put this on me. This was never my fault. This was Dad’s doing. It was him who had the affair, left our mother to die.”
“Yes, you’re right, it was Adrian’s fault. I’m not suggesting for one minute that he didn’t deserve what happened to him. But we’re not talking about what your dad deserved, we’re talking about what you’re letting happen to your sister. She doesn’t deserve to be punished for what your dad did.”
For a moment, Judy thought they had reached an impasse, and that Phil would never help, preferring to let his sister die than do anything to impede his mother.
“She is strong, but she’s not thinking straight. She’s had too long to brood on what happened to her.”
“So, help me.”
“You were going to get rid of me.”
A breath caught in her thro
at. “What do you mean?”
“You had your vicar friend round to the house. You wanted him to perform an exorcism.” He smirked. “I’m not a demon. I’m pretty sure I’m not the intended target for one of those.”
“I didn’t know what you were. I just wanted to keep Jemma safe.”
“Don’t you think I want the same?”
Judy doubted it. Phil had shown no such concern for her when he was alive. She wanted to say that but bit her tongue. “I’m sure you do.”
“I’ve been keeping you safe for days.”
“Was that you in Jemma’s bedroom?”
He shook his head. “That was Sarah. She’s angry and confused and lashing out.”
“Phil, your sister is dying. You don’t want her to die and join you in the darkness. I’ve seen what the other side is like. I know some of your pain.”
“How can you?”
“I can see things. I guess I’ve always been able to see things, but over the last few months, I’ve been able to sense more, so much more. And it scares the crap out of me. That’s why I had Malc come around to the house and try to remove you. That’s why I want nothing to happen to your sister, because I know that where she’s heading for isn’t the bliss Sarah thinks it will be. Help me, please, I’m begging you.”
For an agonising few seconds, all Phil did was stare at her, daring her to challenge his authority again. But finally, the kitchen door creaked open.
“Go quickly,” he said. “They’re in the crib.”
Judy nodded. Her mind flashed back to when they’d first entered the bedroom and she’d looked inside the crib. She thought she understood, and without another word, she flung open the kitchen door.
Lisa was still against the wall, her hands to her throat. Sarah was no longer around. Perhaps the pain of watching her daughter transition to the other side was too much for her to bear and she’d retreated into the dark places until it was over.
The stairs cracked alarmingly as Judy thundered up the staircase, twisting herself around the turn in the stairs and keeping her momentum going.
It won’t take long for Sarah to work out what I’m doing. I’ve got to be fast.
The Dark Corners Box Set Page 70