I look to where Madeline was. Still she crashes onwards, and I watch her hurtle silently through the wooded space as if she’s run it a thousand times before, intent on stopping what’s already happened. She has. She’s had me chase her through it. Walked it with me side by side, holding hands. We’ve even made love just over there on the far bank of headland, watched the moon rise above our bodies as we did.
She’s known this space around us for longer than I have.
Selma.
Chapter 20
Madeline
I can’t feel the cold that surrounds us as I keep pushing through the mud beneath my feet. I know it’s here. It’s been with me all the time, making me run faster and faster to get to them before they kill him. I’m not even sure why I don’t want him to die. I should. I should want my revenge for him burning my home down like I did the morning after it happened. And I should want him dead for all those years of bruises, if nothing else to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else, certainly not me again, but it’s just not in me to kill. It’s not who Maddy is inside me. And I want her back again so much. I want to feel her happiness, enjoy it. I want those moments with Jack, like Selma has. I want to find them with someone.
Jack seems to have disappeared again. I check left and right, crashing through the next obstacle that this fog obscures but still not finding a trace of him anywhere. He must know this ground so well. I guess he might already be where they are because the noise they were making has petered out to near silence. I could focus on something when I heard Lewis’ sickening shouting, find a path through all this to get to him, but there’s nothing but calm and mist left.
My knee buckles as I slam into a boulder, left arm trying to push me over the damn thing as I carry on and peer into the gloom. There’s nothing there, no sound to cling on to or run towards. I can’t even feel Selma like I did earlier. She guided me, all the time trying to talk me out of this. I was arguing with myself as I ran, part of me wanting to let all this play out as she wanted and the other part desperate to reach Lewis before it ended. The gun I’m holding shot as I watched one of them baying into the night, animalistic as he kept charging after the others, and then it shot again. I’m not even sure who pulled the trigger, or who it was really aimed at, but those men were repulsive to watch, hideous, like they’d been turned into something they shouldn’t be somehow.
Tears come at that thought, unsure whether they’re mine or Selma’s as I keep wondering about right and wrong, but my feet don’t slow. They tear on through the brush, as if they don’t belong to me, as if they’re being forged forward by her energy inside. I, we, need to get there whatever the outcome. Some part of me is elated at the thought of death—any death—the other nauseated.
Freedom seems to come at a cost here.
Eventually I slow down, trying to listen closer in the hope of a sound to lead me in, but it’s futile, regardless of my pace. There’s nothing left for me to follow. Not even the sound of the men chasing him now. They were triumphant for a few moments with bays and cries of jubilation. I heard that, felt it in my guts as a gruesome image washed across me. There was so much blood, all of it slashed and gashed across Lewis’ body as he lay in the bog. I shook it off, not allowing it to invade my mind, and kept racing to this spot I’m now in, but I know it’s real. I can feel that now I’ve stopped trying to reach him.
It doesn’t matter that flowers should grow beneath my feet in this tranquil glade. Or that we’re not far from the treehouse Jack brought me to, the place filled with love and memories of Lenon. Those images I saw—the ones that came as the howling noise subsided around me, leaving me alone in this barren clearing of gloom—I’m going to find them soon. I’m going to find Lewis dead. Mauled.
The bog squelches as I edge around some rocky land, leaning on trees to hold me firm against the ground that wants to swallow me down. Anxiety comes racing though my skin, forcing the stability I seemed to hold while running to disappear and wrap me in fear. It’s so dark, so cold and dark and full of images that creep into parts of me I haven’t wanted to listen to. Jack is all I’ve seen lately. Jack and feelings of love and pleasure, irrespective of whether they’re my thoughts or not.
Maybe I thought they were mine. Maybe I thought I could make this my new home, live with him and blend into her somehow, make us all one, but then Lewis came and showed me my real life beyond these grounds. I’m not her, am I? And this feeling crawling through me, the one that warns of something I’m not in control of, it makes me snatch glances nervously, hoping for something to lift me away from what’s happened.
A shriek of sound comes from above me, making me duck and scramble through the undergrowth, looking upwards sharply. The crow’s there, the one who gave me her ring. He flaps and claws across the branches, opening his wings and batting them against the branches, feathers falling from them as he jumps and thrashes.
Maddy.
Tears flare up in my eyes as her voice permeates the dense void of emptiness, her fog slithering over the course of my skin. It forces trembles and quivers to come with her, a warmth beginning to creep around my bare feet as I watch it swirl and swell. I don’t know what she wants with me anymore, though. I don’t understand what this is all for.
“What do you want, Selma?” I mumble, sidestepping another black pool of muddy ground beneath me, still hoping to find Lewis. “I don’t understand.”
The crow squawks again and flies low across my head, his wing glancing my hair and turning me to look towards his path. He lands on a piece of stone in the middle of the fog, continuing to caw and hop around on it, as if trying to show me something. I stare at him, holding onto the tree and gauging his route as the fog clears slightly. That’s the bog. I know that much. I can tell by the way even the slightest deviation from these trees has me sinking, oily murk blackening my toes further.
Oh god, where’s Jack? I can’t go in there without him. He makes this normal somehow, gives me something to brace against when she comes.
“Jack?” Nothing comes back. “JACK?” I call out, louder and with a sense of urgency I hope he can hear.
I need his hand to hold onto, his skin to scrape at so I can feel something real in this. He’s a part of all this with me. I want his stoic gaze, his smile when he sees her in me. It’s the only way I can face it, be part of it. And I’m scared, I am. I’m alone out here with her and I can feel the nerves making me want to back track, find a route away from what she’s about to show me.
The crow screeches again, the kafuffle of his inky wings making me gaze at him as he flaps and fidgets around the mist below his talons. My own toes curl against the root of the tree, heels digging in to the soil as I try to do what my body’s screaming at me to do. I should run, back away and get to a car, or the road, anything so that I don’t have to see Lewis’ mutilated frame. I’ve seen it already, felt it in me as she pushed her visions through my mind.
Maddy.
My hands grab my shaking head, covering my ears as her voice comes again to haunt her way through whatever resolve I’m trying to achieve. No, I don’t need to see this. I’ll go, find my way back to the house. Maybe the old man will have my car fixed now and I can leave.
My feet scrunch deep into the sludge, pushing away from her suggestion as I turn and try to move back the way I came. I’m free now, aren’t I? Free to make my own choices. Lewis is dead. These men have made that happen. They took away my threat, gave me a chance to live my life again for whatever purpose I see fit. I still don’t know why, or why Jack had them in that cage other than what he told me, but it’s not a part of him I want to know. I’ll go and get on with that life I was after before all this happened.
Live free of worry.
A stun of freezing air comes at me suddenly, blasting a ray of light in my face and nearly knocking me off my feet. I stumble back, dazed and confused, as the ground flitters past my hands, wetness glancing off my fingertips before I reach for a large trunk to cling onto again.
“Jack? Where are you?”
“Over here.”
I scramble to my feet, not daring to let go of the only support I have against her until he gets to me, and peer into the dankness to the right of me. I can’t see anything other than the path clear of fog towards the crow. It’s still as murky and blurred as it’s always been.
“I can’t move, Jack. She won’t let me come to you.” He chuckles, a cheery tone coming from him as I stare towards is the sound of his voice.
“Yes, you can. You can go wherever you want now, baby.” Figures appear in the gloom, three of them, all lurched over slightly as they creep through the opaque smear. “Good dogs,” Jack says from somewhere. “Good dogs.”
I gasp, unsure what they’re coming towards me for. Nerves pool again as I watch them getting closer, my own fear driving me into the tree I’m holding onto as I wonder if I can climb it. They’re killers, these three. I know I haven’t seen it with my own eyes, but I know they’ve done it. I saw it in my mind, watched it happen. They killed Selma and Lenon, and now they’ve killed Lewis. It’s madness. All of it.
Maddy
The fog starts moving as I watch them come at me, the ebb of it churning over the ground they come through, and then pain explodes in my head. It’s excruciating, enough that I grab at the side of my scalp trying to get it out of me. My knees crumple beneath me, shins knocking heavily against the ground as I tumble over and feel the mud sluice my lips. I try to gasp in breaths, but the pain intensifies with every pull. Visons erupt through the sensation—the three men, their faces blending together. Teeth and snarls, sinister laughter, the echo of screams in my mind. They’re raping her, hitting her. Oh god, they’re hurting her so much. The three of them holding her down, one of them smothering her mouth as she tries to screech Jack’s name.
It replays over and over, to the point where I scream with her at the feel of it happening. She’s so much like me. Her eyes, her face as it contorts in fear, the same way mine must have done every time Lewis held me down. And Lenon’s body comes next, the sight of him asleep in his bed, soft eyes fluttering against the comforter he’s wrapped in.
My head shakes again, knowing what’s coming. I don’t want to see it. I can’t. I scrabble at the ground beneath me, trying to crawl away from the image she’s making me see, but one of them comes into view in my mind, the tall one, followed by the other two dragging Selma with them. I prise my eyes open in hope, heaving my body to move away from them towards the clearing in the fog, but I’m knocked off my knees the moment a shot sounds.
My throat lurches, the blood splattering in my mind making bile race through me. I roll to my side, gasping in breaths as I watch Lenon’s body convulse under the bullet, his tiny chest broken open. A sadness sweeps through me that’s so profound the tears of fear that were coming halt me in my tracks, knees coming up to my chest for comfort against the pain. A child. Lenon, their son. My son. I can feel him inside me, feel his body moving as he grew. I can see him running, laughing. See Jack with him out here in the sunlight as they played.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, unable to stop the words as I cradle my knees in and rock back and forth, tears spilling from me.
Kill them for me, Maddy. Let me kill them.
I do nothing more than keep reliving the visions in my mind, locked in them as I stare at his bedding and watch the blood drip down the white sheets to the floor. That’s all I’ve got as I lie here, my body curling in on itself, lips smothered in mud. It’s sickening, vile. I feel brutalised and exposed, my skin harbouring her pain as she keeps feeding me with more and more nauseating images, one after another. And the noise—oh god the noise keeps coming. Screams and wails, begging, the sound of her head hitting the floor, the throb of it in my own head more vibrant than any pain I’ve ever felt.
Kill them.
I’m barely breathing as I feel her make me move. She slides inside me, her fingers pushing me up from my position and making me rip the coat away from my skin. I’m not in control of my own movement anymore. I’m still hugging my knees, crying into the mud, unable to do a thing. It’s all her. Her fingers tear at the fur on me, her thoughts propelling me to the pocket, my hands pulling the gun back out into the open.
“Selma, please,” I slur, watching as my hand grips the metal regardless of my hatred of the thought. I only used it try to scare them off, to stop them. “I don’t want...”
My head whips up, eyes targeting the three of them as they close in on the ground she’s pushing me towards. They look humble as they move, reverent even, all of them with their eyes lowered as they stalk the lying mist slowly. “Please don’t make me do this.”
A shrill laughter follows, wicked and full of malicious intent as it echoes the gloom we’re all in. I can’t stop it resonating somewhere inside me, filling me with her cruelty and pain. She’s so much stronger than me here, her power still flowing from her and flooding me with those images over and over again.
My guts coil, unable to stop the next wave of nausea as a flash of the tall one I’m watching comes crashing through my mind, his teeth biting into my neck as he pushes inside me and laughs.
“Get up, baby.” Jack.
I peer into the sound, looking for him, and see his face coming through the fog behind these three. He looks so handsome, his face a picture of refined splendour in the middle of this carnage. There’s nothing but his eyes for a moment, piercing me as he continues towards me. He seems to float through the space, his stride longer than theirs as his hands caress the swirling mist around him. They scamper at his feet, one of them banking right over to the stone the crow’s on, the others following suit.
“Jack, I...”
He smiles, his hand reaching for me as he finally arrives at my side. I stare up at him, flicking my thoughts between his hand and the inevitably of what will happen if I do stand. I’ll kill then; I know I will. I’ll lift this gun and hold it out in front of me, pulling the trigger three times, regardless of whether or not I want to. These men will die because of me.
“I’m not her.”
“Yes, you are. Let her come home,” he replies, the softness in his voice mimicking the same love he has when he’s inside of me.
He grasps onto my fingers, and a warm strength surges through me instantly lighting up all of this darkness. It’s filled with honour and loyalty, love ebbing between us and causing all of Selma’s venom to disintegrate. We hover here, me looking up at him as he continues smiling, him peering into recesses that don’t belong to me.
“You know what to do, Madeline.”
Tears come at the thought. Not because I’m scared of doing it, but because I’ll lose me when I do. I’ll be someone else, someone I never wanted to be. I don’t maim and kill. I don’t bruise or harm. I love. I love and I hope. That’s what I am to me. I’m full of care and dreams, weaknesses too. And if I do this for them, if I let them have their way, I’ll become a monster, no better than Lewis, or the animals I’ve just witnessed in my mind, the same ones standing here waiting for their end now.
Please, Maddy.
My knees push me without consent, his fingers pulling me into him the moment he’s able. His lips come so quickly I barely notice the distance that’s passed before I’m deep in his mind again, reliving images of them together. Their lives, their heat, and their smiles in this home she made for them, Lenon running around their ankles as he sings. And the sunshine pours down on them in here, darkness and fog obliterated as I watch them laughing and holding hands, his tongue reminding me of the way he loved her. So warm. So free of torment and pain. It’s too much to stop, too much for me to deny or resist.
I back away before I lose the courage, knowing I have to do this, and lift my hand to point it towards the crow that still caws and scratches the stone he’s on. I want them free. I do. And if that means I have to change, I will.
I would rather that than see them in a moment’s more pain because of their loss of each other.
The men cower, their bodies alert to the threat I’m aiming at them, but they know it’s coming as they linger in the fog behind the crow. We all do. It’s unavoidable now, something she’s always wanted from me. Perhaps that’s what this has all been for—these men killing my threat, me removing Jack and Selma’s from them, too. I don’t really know, but this feels right now that I’ve bathed in that sun with them again. Perhaps then we can all carry on, finding our way together.
Two shots come quicker than I expect from myself. No hesitation. No thought of harming or maiming involved. Just death.
The first one drops instantly, the second holding his arms out ready for the impact before I’ve shot, and the third, the tall one, he bows into the mist as he kneels and looks straight at me waiting for his turn. It’s poetic in some ways, making me stare at the falling bodies as they disappear into the fog beneath them and hover over the trigger some more. She’s here in me. I can feel her finger holding mine, guiding me, as if this is the one thing she needs to be free.
“What happens now?” I whisper out, allowing her to take the last shot from me.
Because this is it, isn’t it? It’ll be over when I’ve done this. What will come after, I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll die too in some way, be lost in them and unable to find a way home of my own. I’m here, naked and at their whims, held hostage in a ghost story that has no end. I look across at Jack, hoping beyond all hope that maybe I can keep a part of him just for me, that maybe if she lets me I can be part of them so I won’t lose what they’ve given me. Such beauty and care, their world filled with a happiness I’ve only just begun to comprehend.
He smiles again and moves a step backwards, slowly receding into the fog as if he’s never been here at all. My left arm reaches for him, but my head’s whipped back to my target, Selma owning the last shred of me left as the trigger pulls.
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