Just Before I Died

by S. K. Tremayne

  Lyla’s hand is lowered but her mouth opens and closes. Saying nothing.

  Luke grins. ‘Hello, little Lyla. You do know there’s a big overlap between autism and schizophrenia? There’s definitely a genetic link. I checked. Funny, huh? We are so obviously related. Shame we won’t have long to get to know each other. You do know you look like a fish when you do that gaping thing?’

  He sits back, assessing us. Waiting, dragging it out as painfully as possible.

  ‘OK, I think we’re nearly done now.’

  Lyla shouts at him:

  ‘You mustn’t touch my mum. You mustn’t touch my mummy.’

  Luke laughs, again – half bored and half amused. It has a hint of my mother’s laugh. Aristocratic. Leisured.

  ‘What exactly the fuck are you going to do, Sis? Hit me with your stuffie? Cast a magic spell with little dead birds? I’m either going to rape your mum and kill her in front of you, or I could kill you first, and then rape her, or I will rape and kill both of you by cutting you into tiny tiny tiny pieces, and we’ll have a great big fucking party, the house will burn down, with you guys inside – and I’ll nip away, over the mire, with time to come back for Dad.’ His laughter is a kind of barking, now, barking like Lyla.

  I remember him laughing like that, when we drank together, that afternoon. And again the memories return to me. How he did it, how he must have done it. He saw the poem on the table, so I told him the whole legend of Kitty Jay: the grave, after all, where his mother’s ashes were cast to the Dartmoor winds.

  He must have realized that my little poem looked like a suicide note. He must have seen the opportunity this presented.

  So he raped me, and made me drive to Burrator with him ducked down in the rear seat behind me, a knife at my throat, so no one could see. He surely intended to knock me out in the car as we drove in. Drown me, and swim away. Then he’d have time to come back for Lyla. With no suspicion of murder.

  But he was unlucky. I escaped.

  Yet I will not escape this time. Lyla predicted this. The blue light comes near. My own death approaches. And my daughter’s death, as well. Which is so infinitely worse.

  My brother looks at me, then at Lyla. ‘All right, Lyla, enough now. I’m going to tie you up, little sis. Stop you waving your fucking hands like a spaz. Then we’ll have some fun.’

  He gets to his feet. Lyla stands up and backs away. Faster than I’d thought possible, Luke lunges across and grabs Lyla by the arm.

  ‘Mummy!’ she screams.

  I am paralysed. I have this knife. But he’s already got Lyla and he has a bigger knife. If I make a move he could slice her throat open in a second. So I watch, rigid, helpless, as he takes out some short pieces of rope from an inside pocket. Lyla is trembling in his grasp as he pushes her down on to the chair. ‘People use these for sex,’ he says. ‘I’ve seen them used at parties. They’ve very easy, very secure.’ He slips a loop over her wrist, then another.

  She is tied to the chair by her wrists. She struggles for a few seconds, but goes limp. Her eyes gaze at me. Eyes wet with fear, but not quite crying. My brave and precious daughter. I gaze back at her. We both know we are about to die, here in this kitchen, at Huckerby, the place where we used to make peanut butter sandwiches, for our picnics at Brentor, and Dartmeet, and Canonteign Falls. This is where we will be raped and killed.

  ‘Here, let me take a photo. Send it to our daddy. When it’s too late. Your last moment alive.’

  He takes out his phone, takes a picture of himself, a selfie of him standing next to Lyla, who is the very image of terror, tied to a chair.

  What is he doing, storing the photo? Where is he going to send it? He must be very confident we can’t be reached. And of course he’s probably right. The fires surround us. He has completed the circle. We’re almost certainly going to die.

  I have one slender chance. That knife in my back pocket. But if I get it wrong?

  I’ve never used a knife, in aggression, in my life. I have no idea what to do. I’ll probably lunge at him and miss. He’ll probably see my movement first. There is no hope.

  Slowly, slowly, slowly, Luke strokes Lyla’s hair, with the flat of the blade. His gestures are caressing, affectionate, yet he is holding a big steel knife, and lifting strands of black hair with the point. Like an old-fashioned barber with a cut-throat razor, he gently runs the flat of the blade down the side of Lyla’s trembling, silent face, and softly rubs it against her neck.

  It is unbearable. I cannot look. I have to look.

  ‘Pretty girl, for a spastic,’ he says. ‘Pretty face. Mmmm? Shame I’m gonna chop it all to pieces.’

  Again he strokes her white neck with the flat of the blade. At any minute he could twist it, use the edge, draw it swiftly across. And my brave, shivering daughter will die. Here. In that chair, in front of me. A big red gash, the eyelashes fluttering.

  The blood spins in my head. I wonder if I am going to faint. The blade strokes my daughter’s neck, the blade strokes again, and again. Luke is whistling, quietly. Torturing me. Toying with her throat and my mind.

  Now his mood seems to change. As if he is bored. He pulls the knife away, and winks at me. Then he walks around the table towards me. A few feet away. I try to not to shudder.

  ‘OK, I’m going to do you first, Kat. More fun for Dad. Do you from behind, and film it, before I kill you. Stand up, turn around, drop your jeans and knickers. Bend over the table, put your head flat on the table. I’m sure you’ve done it before, with my dad, good solid table like this.’

  Does this give me a chance? I don’t think so: because, when I turn around as he commands he will see the knife. In my back pocket.

  I push back my chair. I don’t know what to do. Luke has his phone out again, filming me, for Adam. He still has the big knife in his other hand. But he is focused on the screen, making a little movie of the rape and murder of Adam’s wife, live, on camera. And then he will do the same with his daughter. I picture Adam watching this. Tears of horror.

  Unbearable.

  Even as I work this out: his plan, I see him look at his phone, check the hour maybe, and then send a message. It must be that photo. He is grinning. He is confident he has time to do what he likes.

  I cannot let this happen, and I think my only way to escape, and save Lyla, is to do this job slowly. Teasingly. Coquettishly. Make him come close. Giving me a chance to get the knife out, and use it. As I laboriously undo the top button of my jeans, I sense Lyla, watching. Her eyes, her tears.

  Pretending to fumble, I undo the second button even more slowly. Taking a long, intricate minute.

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ Luke says. ‘Haven’t got all day. House will burn down before you get your kit off! Here – I’ll do it.’ He pockets the phone and marches over. Knife brandished.

  We are face to face. My brother and I. My stepson and I.

  His eyes meet mine.

  ‘OK,’ I say. ‘OK.’ And I reach around the back of my jeans, as if I am about to thrust them down, but instead I take a solid grasp of the knife handle, and as he reaches over to pull down my jeans, I do it: I whip my knife around – and I stick it hard hard hard into his chest.

  I feel an awful crunch, a kind of recoil. I have hit bone, cut through real meat. I have a sense of butchery: I have actually stabbed a man. He has a knife, stuck in him, right in the bottom of his chest. It takes an effort for me to pull out the blade. Now blood coils joyously from the wound, and Luke staggers back, blood burbling between his fingers, which are pressed over the knife-wound.

  I should do it again. Stick him, stick him again and again, finish him off while I have this tiny chance. But I can’t. He’s reeling, stumbling away from us, dropping his blade, which clatters on flagstones; but he is not dead. I haven’t done enough, I haven’t killed him, it’s too low, I’ve missed the heart.

  Yet I have bought us seconds. Luke is gasping, staring down at his wound: at the lurid rills of streaming blood. He staggers away, across the k
itchen, towards the hall.

  Rushing to the chair, I slash the knife over the ropes that tie Lyla to the chair. The cords fall to the kitchen floor. Lyla stands.

  ‘Mummy – quick—’

  Lyla is free, but Luke is pushing himself away from the wall. He’s only wounded and he knows it. He lurches across the floor, where he grabs his big knife, and roars at me.

  ‘Fucking whore!’

  ‘Lyla, run!’

  Grabbing her hand, I drag us towards the only exit route. Luke is between us and the hallway, so we sprint for the kitchen door. I sense he is standing, and pursuing; I yank the door open, desperate, but as I do, I drop the blood-slicked kitchen knife.

  We have nothing now, nothing to defend us, there is no time, no time, there is no time.

  We run outside into hell.

  Hobajob’s Wood

  Tuesday morning

  All of Huckerby farmyard is choked with smoke, beyond our little space, everything else is burning: fences, brambles, witchbeams. Where do we go? Our only hope is to flee along the lane, dense with smoke, the green lane that runs towards Hobajob’s. It looks as if the fires aren’t too thick down there, not yet. The wooded ground is always boggy, the streams are delaying the flames. For now.

  In the other direction, I can hear howling. The dogs? But they are trapped behind the biggest fence and the biggest fire of all, beyond Lyla’s den. They can’t get through. We can’t reach them.

  We have to go the other way. To Hobajob’s.

  It is the worst of risks, but staying here would mean dying at Luke’s hands. But where is he?

  Surely somewhere close. We must run down that lane.

  ‘Hobajob’s!’ I shout. ‘Lyla – we must get to Hobajob’s—’

  Before I have finished explaining my girl is sprinting ahead of me. Running to save her life, even as I run after her, to save us both. But the fog and the smoke are drifting across the lane: if Lyla gets ten metres ahead of me I will lose her in the cold, pungent murk.

  ‘Wait – Lyla!’

  She turns. ‘Can’t wait, he’s right behind!’

  I whirl around but I cannot see anything. Huckerby is now entirely shrouded in smoke. But there he is: a figure emerging from the smoke.

  The man on the moor. He was always there. Lyla was horribly right.

  ‘Mummy, run!’

  We are nearly at Hobajob’s now. Smoke filters through the ancient, grasping trees as we leap the first wall. I have never seen swaling like this, wildfires engulfing the whole moor, threatening these gnarled and moss-hung oakwoods that have been here for ten thousand years. Perhaps the fires will burn everything down, this time. Perhaps we cannot escape this way, either.

  I can see the shape of Luke quite distinctly. He’s guessed our escape route. He’s climbing the green-mossed wall, into the wood.

  Lyla screams, again, ‘We have to hide!’

  But there is nowhere to hide. And I can hear Luke panting as he scrambles over boulders: coming nearer. So I run further into the wood, towards the clearing. Maybe the smoke will help us. It is a cloud settling on the earth. I cannot see three yards in front of my hand.

  And I cannot see Lyla.

  I swivel in the murk. I realize, with horror, that I’ve lost her. Luke is out there, somewhere, in the fog, and Lyla is just ahead, and I can’t see either of them. ‘Lyla!’

  No. Don’t let it happen this way. No.

  ‘Lyla!’

  My screams will tell Luke where I am, but I do not care. Let him take me. Let him rape and kill me. Let Lyla have a chance. Just give her one single chance.

  ‘Lyla, where are you? We have to go right through the wood – please, Lyla!’

  Too late.

  ‘Mummmmy!’

  I have reached the clearing, where Luke killed the hares. I remember their empty eye sockets, filled with blood. Gazing beyond us, at something evil.

  Luke is in the middle of the clearing. And he has got hold of Lyla. He stands so tall and imposing, towering over my daughter. He has a hard fistful of her black hair, lifting her up on to tiptoes. She is kicking and wriggling.

  I approach, but there is nothing I can do. I have no weapon; I dropped the knife at the door.

  ‘Hello, Katarina,’ he says. And he yanks harder on Lyla’s hair, making her scream. ‘This is how you kill witches – chop chop chop—’

  All around us, the wood awaits. The scream of my daughter echoes, and dies. I can hear the faraway crackle of burning gorse. And yet here, deep in Hobajob’s, the world is quiet, politely observing the horror that is about to be enacted, even as grey snakes of smoke drift languidly between the stumps, and nettles. I see that distant branches are now beginning to burn.

  Hobajob’s is succumbing to the flames.

  Luke hauls Lyla even higher, almost off the ground, making her weep with the pain. He is going to do what I imagined. Slice her throat wide open, like that sheep at Vitifer.

  The blade is firm in his hand. He smiles at me, forcing me to watch.

  ‘Mummy is here, baby. Look at Mummy, Lyla. Look at her standing there. Watching you die.’

  He is going to slice the blade across her throat. The blood will spray into the fire. Making sure he has my attention, he lifts the blade ceremonially to her pale neck, as she wriggles, helpless.

  I feel my own life draining away: I want him to kill me first. Kill me in Hobajob’s, let Lyla go. But he won’t let her go. The blade is ready, he is getting ready to kill my girl. Make a bloody new smile. He wants it to be dramatic. He is doing it slowly to make it worse.

  I barely breathe. Hobajob stirs.

  From the back of the burning wood, from the back of my head, I hear a dark, angry noise, getting nearer, very quickly. The noise is so loud and shocking that it makes Luke pause. He turns, for a second.

  The dogs.

  Felix and Randal.

  They have somehow made it through. Somehow they have beaten the fire and are galloping across the wood: coming to save their girl, their guide, their own princess. Their fur is burning as they come belting through the smoke, like big dark black-eyed devil dogs: snarling, angry, vengeful, roaring: they head straight for Luke.

  In a second, they are on him; they hit him hard, both dogs at once. He yells in terrified pain; I see their teeth sinking into his bones and now he screams for help, and drops my daughter.

  Lyla is free, she falls from his hands.

  ‘Lyla, baby, RUN!’

  She runs, away from the clearing, back into the guarding woods, where the streams resist the fires. But now I cannot tear my gaze away from the dogs – and the man. The drooling lurchers have released Luke, and now they simply stand there: growling, guarding, barking: looking for Lyla, then looking back at Luke.

  Waiting for orders. They are waiting for Lyla’s order to finish him off.

  There is blood on his hands, blood on Luke’s face, blood oozing from his stomach. He rises to his feet, and fixes his eyes on me. He still has the knife. And this time he is coming for me. This time I am his prey. He has blood on his fingers. Blood streams from his scalp, his legs. He is wounded and bitten and stabbed, but he is still alive, still crazy. And coming for me, as a consolation prize.

  There’s nowhere to go. I am backed against the gnarled trees; I stumble on twining roots as I yield, and fall backwards, flailing. Luke takes his chance. I sense his shadow high above me. I see his hands raised aloft, the blade clasped between two palms, as if this is a special Dartmoor ritual. A sacrifice. I close my eyes, waiting for the blade to be rammed down into my heart. And I don’t care if he kills me, as long as Lyla escapes. This is my real suicide: this is when I willingly give my life. For my daughter.

  Have me. Let her go. I am ready to die.

  But then a scream.

  ‘Felix! Randal!’

  It’s Lyla: screaming through the cold and the smoke, screaming louder than I thought possible. ‘KILL HIM!’

  Their obedience is instant. The two dogs leap upon Luke and t
his time they bite him savagely, going for the throat. Tearing flesh. Mauling him, ripping at his face. He’s dropped the knife, he’s on the ground, at the edge of the clearing: and the dogs are finishing him off this time: they are ripping at his neck, shaking him like helpless prey. But he is fighting back, dragging them away, dragging them all into the fiercely burning bushes.

  The sight and the sound is repulsive. A human screaming, dogs killing, all dying. Through the smoke I can see Luke is fighting, but he is wounded and they are big, strong, ferocious dogs. But it doesn’t matter: they will all die in those flames.

  Lyla shouts, ‘Felix, Randal!’

  The smoke is too thick to see. But the noise is fading, the screaming and howling turns to moaning, then whimpering, then nothing.

  And after that there is stillness. The fire burns on. Respectfully.

  Lyla stands in the safety of the clearing and she looks at the impenetrable smoke, and she does not move. Nor do I. We are both mute. And then I hear another voice.

  ‘Lyla!’

  It is Adam, his face blackened with ash.

  ‘Jesus. Lyla, Sweetheart.’

  Lyla runs across the clearing, and leaps into his arms.

  ‘Daddy!’

  Adam hugs her, so very tight.

  She is sobbing, in his arms.

  ‘Daddy – Daddy Daddy Daddy it was him, Daddy, it was him, I’m so sorry—’

  He kisses Lyla again, and again, and once more, then turns to me. Here is the husband I doubted. The husband who came back to save us. Through the fires.

  ‘Daddy. Felix and Randal?’

  Adam puts Lyla down, we step a little nearer to the smoking underbrush. The flames have eaten everything, the fires have halfway dispersed. The body of Luke is a mess of red and black, of blood and soot, half hidden by a fallen branch.

  Lyla ignores the ruins of the man who tried to kill us. Because two dogs are limping, slowly, out of the ashes and smoke. Their fur is burned a terrible black, their bodies shake with pain. Both of them collapse on to the burned wet earth.