‘I…don’t think I can take it much—’
‘Only I knew the truth. All the agony of my life, and now the agony of yours, spawned from that truth. Your wounds are nothing compared to the pain I’ve endured. You’ve done so well, you still are, but you have some way to go. The truth, my moth, I need you to—’
‘I’ve TOLD you the truth. I’ve told you EVERYTHING,’ screamed Sandie. ‘What else do you WANT?’ Her body shook against the chair, the cable ties burrowing deeper into the fleshy trenches embedded in her wrists. Renata watched the teenager’s rage ebb as her lack of energy caught up with her emotional turbulence. ‘Please, I’m begging you. All this, it has to be some…mistake.’
‘MISTAKE?!’ Renata screamed. ‘The only mistake was using my pain as inspiration for a damned BOOK.’
‘Book? What book? Is this…to do with my Dad?’
Renata stood, rubbing the sides of her head. ‘You know, Miss Rye, moths have a remarkable sense of smell.’ She gazed at the cloudy nests lining the ceiling. ‘The female lures potential mates with a scent that promises sex. I read of an experiment where a male is said to have followed such a scent six miles, only to find he’d followed it right into a scientist’s pheromone trap.’ She turned to Sandie. ‘I remember writing to you, little moth, laying that scent and wondering how far you’d flutter. I lit that flame and you didn’t disappoint.’ She grabbed Sandie’s hair and held her head in place, then wiped off the Vicks. The numbness in the teenager’s nose began to fade. ‘Yes, Miss Rye. It’s about your father. He used me as an experiment, used my pain to inspire his work.’
The smell hit the girl.
‘I’ve been the experiment,’ Renata continued, ‘like the moth in the pheromone trap. Now it comes full circle.’ Sandie retched. Her eyes watered. ‘Now you’re the experiment. Your pain is igniting the pages of my gift to him. As he intended for me, I intend for you. We’re all monsters, you see, but your father and I truly are the same breed.’ The girl’s bloodshot eyes met Renata’s. ‘He made me his muse. Now, child, you are mine.’
She rammed a crumpled sheet of paper into Sandie’s mouth, forcing her to breathe through her nose, then strode to the back of the cellar, kicking a mouldy Henrietta Reid paperback out of the way. She opened the rotting wooden hatch in the wall. ‘Poor little moth, flew too close to the flame. Let’s see what scent awaits you.’
The shape Renata dragged to Sandie could have been a bloodstained sack filled with randomly shaped objects, a leak in the exterior leaving a trail of liquid in its wake. She pulled it by two long, floppy handles. Funny, the girl may have thought incoherently, never seen a sack with those kinds of handles.
Renata dumped the shape at Sandie’s feet like a cat’s doormat offering.
Her eyes focussed. The body took form.
The supposed handles were arms, the objects organs still liquefying, seemingly detached from their internal fastenings and knocking around freely. The corpse had marked its route like a slug, leaving a trail of sludge leading to Sandie. It lay at the girl’s feet, the remains of its face slumped crookedly.
It stared at her.
Had she not been compelled to determine whether the corpse was her father, she could never have brought herself to regard its twisted, traumatized features, pulped by decomposition, but she had to know.
There were no eyelids. The orbs within the exposed skeletal sockets were completely red except for single white globules in the centre of each eye. Its cheeks were shrivelled inwards, clinging to what little was left of the gaping mouth, the outline of its teeth apparent through the tight, thinning skin. There was little hair, but what strands she saw were white, glued to the grey face over heavily wrinkled skin.
It wore a clerical collar. This wasn’t Daddy.
She swung her head away and clenched her eyes shut so tight that it hurt, but it was no use. The monstrosity was burned in her mind. There was a terrible reality to this thing for which none of the dummy corpses from her father’s films could have prepared her. This had been a person. She hadn’t known the person, but it had been someone, as she was now someone. There weren’t many arguments against the probability of Sandie soon becoming the next inanimate sack to leak across this concrete floor.
The girl could hold her breath no longer; she inhaled the puddle of death at her feet. Her stomach convulsed. Renata held her hand against Sandie’s mouth, stopping the crumpled paper from shooting out, then winced as vomit sprayed from between her fingers and bubbled from the teenager’s nostrils.
Renata wiped her hands on her skirt and returned to the typewriter, where she let her fingers hover over the keys. She listened to the weeping, choking, whimpering, and incoherent blabbering. She listened to the agony and the anguish, to the despair and the rage.
She listened, fingers poised. She listened to the suffering that would provide the only fist she would ever need. She’d never thrown a punch, and she never would. All she needed to wreak true revenge was in that chair, and within these pages.
She wrote.
The human-sludge by Sandie’s feet had been her only company all night after Renata finished her tapping and left, but finally the door opened. Sandie’s swollen, red eyes burned as the fluorescent strips blazed the cellar with light.
Renata descended.
Her glare on the girl remained unwavering as she stepped through the putrid puddle that had been her father, taking care not to slip. It parted noisily under her feet. Keeping her distance, she cut the cable tie binding Sandie’s left wrist and set the open diary upon the girl’s lap, then placed the pen on an empty page. ‘Time to write.’
‘Tuh-truh…’
Renata leant down. ‘What are you saying?’
‘Truh-uh…’
‘Speak up, girl.’
‘Truh-truth…’
‘Yes, child,’ said Renata, ‘that’s right, but here.’ She placed the pen in Sandie’s hand. ‘Please, you must write.’
The girl’s fingers went limp. Her head dropped, then flew to the side under the impact of Renata’s open hand. ‘Get a hold of yourself! Write.’ She reset the pen.
‘Truh…tuh…’ It fell.
‘WRITE, damn you.’ Renata set aside the scissors and tightened Sandie’s fingers around the pen, manoeuvring her hand so as to remind the girl of the necessary motions.
‘The tuh-truh…’
She eased Sandie’s hand over the page. ‘Come on, you’re a grown girl. Snap out—’
‘TRUTH.’
The penetration of Renata’s cornea took some moments to register. At first she thought the lights had gone out, until she felt the cocktail of ink and ocular fluid weeping down her cheek. Her hands flew to her face as she screamed into the lights above, the pen sticking from her eye socket like a dart from a bullseye.
She dragged her remaining eye reluctantly into focus, only to find she’d fallen into the blackened viscera of her father’s remains. She looked at Sandie just in time to see the girl freeing herself with the scissors.
Both froze as their eyes met.
They lunged.
Sandie immediately fell as her shattered kneecap crumbled under her weight. She tumbled from the slab into the mire of decomposition, dropping the scissors. Renata wrestled on top of her, grabbing the girl’s throat with a roar and slamming her into the rancid pulp. Thomas Wakefield sprayed across the concrete.
Unreality swamped Sandie’s mind as she gazed at the Cyclopean beast throttling the life from her; the sludge in which she was flailing hadn’t been human, and this monster wasn’t about to murder her. All she had to do was close her eyes and drift as the fluorescent tubes faded and the smell of death died. This hell would become a fading whisper, finally coming to an end. She let go of the monster’s claws and let her eyelids drop.
Her hand fell on the scissors.
Her eyes opened.
Renata reeled back as the steel entered her thigh. Sandie tore from the chaos and stumbled across the cellar, pain screaming through
her knee as she lurched for the stairs. The woman’s howls filled the chamber as she was left thrashing in the pool of decay.
Sandie threw the door open and drove her weight against the bookcase, which slammed to the ground with the girl spread across its back. She gasped as if coming up for air.
There was a crash from the cellar. It wasn’t over.
The girl’s eyes shot around the room, first to the locked oak shutters over the windows, then to the padlocked kitchen door. She limped to the hallway, scissors in hand, and leapt for the front door.
Locked, of course.
She suddenly remembered the overhangs of the house’s exterior. Climbing from an upstairs window would allow her to drop from one of these overhangs, but she had to act fast. The mad bitch would soon catch up. She spat a mouthful of blood and reached for the banister.
Pain bellowed as Sandie heaved herself up the stairs, her severed finger’s crusty dressing falling off as she clutched the handrail. She moaned as her bloody stump knocked into the wooden knob marking the summit, then gazed down the corridor in disbelief.
It was like stepping into a different house. While downstairs had been cleaned to perfection, the walls of this upper level were caked in grime, the carpet was blackened with filth, and mildew crawled from the mouldy skirting boards. She locked eyes on the cobweb-curtained window at the end of the corridor, snapping out of her disorientation.
She dragged herself down the musty hallway, too scared to scream, too panicked to cry. Her eyes fell on cartoon animals adorning the door by the window. She ignored them, desperately retaining her focus on the task at hand. Upon inspection, she found the grimy window’s lock sealed with discoloured paint. A wail finally escaped her as she battered the lock.
Nothing.
Sandie dropped the scissors and lunged for a dusty side chair. She heaved it behind her before going to launch it through the glass.
It didn’t move.
She looked over her shoulder to find Renata’s hand grasping one leg of the chair, the other the scissors. Ink trailed from her eye socket over a broad grin.
Sandie thrust the chair back, sending Renata reeling as its leg speared her stomach. She seized this moment to hobble down the corridor stretching endlessly before her. Finally, her foot met with the top step of the staircase. She would descend, run, find a weapon, fight—
Her heel opened between the blades of the scissors.
The step creaked.
Her Achilles tendon snapped like overstrained elastic, the ground giving way beneath her. As she fell, she may have been dimly aware of the blood trailing behind from her heel, a little like the sack in the cellar. It left a trail, too, she may have thought. I’m going to become that thing. I’m going to die here.
She landed in a twisted jumble at the foot of the staircase, unable to move. She gazed as Renata floated from above, an angel of death. The angel grabbed her feet and dragged her through the house. As the ceiling of the living room turned into the ceiling of her cell, unconsciousness crept over her.
Death? Please, let it be death, she may have thought. Take me, God.
But God wasn’t listening. Worse was to come.
Sandie Rye would have known this.
31
Renata stood at the foot of the stairs, patiently waiting for a knock at the front door.
Rye had been right: she’d known he wouldn’t comply with her demands to stop Detective O’Connell in his investigation. Why had she wanted to see him if not for that? The teeth were a nice touch – she was getting good at this bunny boiling business – but the truth was that she had craved him. Not the same craving she’d felt previously, from before the love turned to hate, but a new kind. Hers was the craving a sniper felt for their target to enter their crosshairs. He’d become her life’s purpose, so it didn’t surprise her that she desired to see his suffering first-hand – those tears of anguish. Soon, she would witness the climax of his suffering, the very moment his world crumbled forever. Soon, she would witness the end, but first she had to make sure nothing would get in the way of her plan’s completion.
First, O’Connell.
‘I don’t know how this happened or what I’m—’ Renata had stammered into the telephone earlier, before thrusting the receiver to arm’s length as she’d been interrupted by a fit of coughing from the earpiece.
‘Sorry,’ Hector said, spluttering down the telephone. ‘Throat feels like it’s lined with nettles. It’s the weather. Seems like this storm’s been brewing for decades.’
Truer words had never been spoken.
‘I’ve been lying to you, Detective.’
A pause.
‘After all you’ve done to find my mother’s murderer, all I’ve given in return is lies. I’m so sorry.’
‘Miss Wakefield, take a deep breath. What lies? What are you trying to tell me?’
‘You were right, I am…was…romantically involved with Quentin Rye.’ She switched hands. ‘He broke it off when his daughter went missing. Told me he needed to focus on the search and trying to rebuild his family.’
‘I see,’ Hector said, the sound of his toothpick being chewed coming through the line. ‘And why did you feel you had to lie to me?’
‘I was scared. He’s capable of…things. Quentin Rye is not what he seems, he’s not—’
‘Now, Miss Wakefield,’ the detective cut in, ‘if it ended badly between you two then I understand your anger, but if you’re implying Quentin may have had something to do with his daughter’s disappearance, I’d ask you to reconsider. Everyone knows the man is doing all he can to—’
‘They have her.’
The line went quiet.
‘Him and the ex-wife, they have her. Or at least, they know where she is. I saw things during my time at that house. There’s more to him than you know.’ She made her voice tremble. ‘I’m so sorry I lied to you. I need to tell you everything. We need to save Sandie.’
‘What did you see at the house, Miss Wakefield?’
‘My father…I have to go. He needs me.’
‘Tell me everything you know,’ Hector demanded. ‘This is a missing girl we’re talking about.’
‘I should never have told you to leave us alone. We need you now more than ever.’ She fought back imaginary tears. ‘Please come to the house. Detective, I’m so scared what Quentin might be doing to her. I’m begging you…come to the house. God, don’t let it be too late.’
The call had ended as she’d ripped the telephone cord from the wall.
And now, standing at the foot of the stairs upon the very floorboards where a five-and-a-half-year-old’s beating had set her down this lifelong path of pain, she waited.
Finally, there was a knock.
‘Detective,’ Renata said, opening the front door. ‘Thank you for coming so promptly.’ She adjusted her dark lenses, smiling. ‘Please, come in.’
Her cane tapped across the wooden flooring as she led him to the living room. ‘Can I get you some tea?’ she asked, spraying air freshener around them.
‘No,’ said Hector. ‘Why are you limping? What happened to your—’ He erupted into a frenzy of coughing. ‘Excuse me,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Like I said, the weather. Wreaks havoc on my throat. That cleaning gunk of yours doesn’t help, either.’
Blind old fool.
‘Let me fetch you some water.’
Renata stepped into the kitchen before returning with a glass for the detective. He drained the water then sat back in Thomas’s chair, placing his pocket watch on the arm. The toothpick remained poking out of his waistcoat breast pocket. ‘Miss Wakefield,’ he said, lowering his voice as she perched on the couch opposite him, ‘you’ve not been honest with me. Not before, and maybe not now.’
She felt her toes tighten in her shoes.
The man leant forward. The bags under his eyes had darkened. ‘I’ve known you since you were a girl. I don’t believe you’re capable of any criminality, but you lied to me about your relations with Quentin Rye
, and I believe you might have lied to me about them having her.’
She held her breath.
‘Miss Wakefield, this is a girl’s life on the line. You must tell me everything you know. Sandie was last seen with you, and I’m even beginning to believe I was wrong to discount you as—’
There was a scream.
The detective’s eyes darted to the bookcase, then to the wrinkled carpet by its side. He thrust his hands against the arms of the chair and threw himself to his feet.
Except he didn’t.
He remained cemented to the chair, eyes widening as he spotted the ground sediment of the Dexlatine in his empty tumbler on the table. He fought his freezing muscles, but it was no use. The paralysis had him. ‘What…what is…’ he forced. Renata rose. She pulled the bloodstained scissors from her apron. ‘Not…possible.’
‘I’M DOWN HERE, PLEASE.’
Renata’s glare shot to the source of the screaming. Hector watched her limp to the bookcase, one hand clamped against her wounded thigh, the other clutching the crimson-edged blades. She pushed the bookcase aside then hobbled into the darkness. There was a shriek, then nothing.
The woman reappeared. Hector stared in horror as she wiped fresh blood from the scissors. ‘Sandie, you…’ he attempted, wrestling the words from his mouth, ‘…you have Sandie.’
The pattering rain filled a moment’s silence.
Renata removed the wide cataract glasses and locked the inky crater of her eye upon him. She glared at him with vengeful purpose, a glare that told him everything he needed to know. ‘Yes, I have her, but only because you were too blind to see the real monster from the beginning.’
His face tightened under the influence of the Dexlatine. ‘What…monster?’
‘HIM,’ Renata bellowed. ‘You were charmed by the great Quentin C. Rye, just as I was. But it’s not my job to keep people safe, to put beasts like him to justice. You didn’t look, you didn’t SEE.’ She rubbed her temples. ‘And that’s the problem. If you people saw more, then my mother might still be alive.’
For Rye Page 25