“And my house. He took me there. He did. We went in the Porsche. The green one. Lewis burnt it down and then he came here looking for me. Jack showed me those men upstairs in the cage, told me they would protect me.” And they did, they chased Lewis up into the woods, and Selma helped me, made me kill him. “That’s why I was up there, Toby. Because of Jack.” Toby looks confused as I ramble on with my thoughts, trying to piece it all together.
I look back into the main house, peering for the stained glass window Jack stood under with a gun aimed at himself. I can still smell him. I’m right. I know I am. And I know he’s dead because I saw the gravestone but…
Both hands fly to my mouth, a gasp escaping before I’ve controlled it. “He killed himself, didn’t he?” Oh god, I saw him do it. I never took the gun off him, did I? I thought I did, but maybe I didn’t and all this is twisted somehow.
I look at my hand, the other grasping around on the table for some support against the image of him firing that gun into his mouth. I remember him holding me, remember the kiss that came from his lips as we hovered there in that strange light, remember his fingers entwined with mine as we made love.
“How do you know about the cage?” Toby asks.
I snap my gaze to him, back to the present with just the sound of him. He peers, aggression suddenly all over his face regardless of his cool demeanour. I watch the change, see the scowl develop to show Jack shining back at me.
“That’s where he kept them, after they’d…” I swallow the words, barely able to utter them as I remember the vile images Selma forced through me. “After Selma and Lenon.” His eyes narrow, the door quietly shutting under the weight of his hand. I grit my teeth, ready to defend myself against whatever taunt he might try for. Someone has to believe something. If they don’t then maybe I have to admit Lewis isn’t gone either, and I need him gone. I do. “This was real, Toby. It was. I’m not mad and you’re not telling me I am. I’ll show you if I have to.” How, I don’t know, but I’m not delusional. I saw all this, was part of it with them.
“I’d say you’re quite mad, but keep talking, Mrs. Blisedy.”
My hand flusters on the table, unsure how I prove any of it, and something flicks under my finger and bounces to the floor, metal clattering the tiles in the large porch. The sunlight glints off it as it tumbles, making me squint into the corner as I see it stop. It’s Selma’s ring. It lies there naked of anything. She should have that. Why hasn’t she got that? I reach to pick it up, but Toby’s hand gets there before mine.
“What’s this?” he asks, bringing it to his face.
“Selma’s wedding ring. The crow brought it to me.” I frown. That even sounds ridiculous to my own ears. He raises a brow at me in disbelief. I don’t blame him, but this is true. “It did, Toby. I promise. It was stuck around his leg and I helped get it off. Jack snatched it from me. He was so angry with me for having it. He said he’d never found it, and then Selma came for the first time and I started to understand. Sort of.” He keeps staring at me, seemingly interested, eyes like slits. “I wish I could make you see. The ballroom was covered in fog and the curtains billowed.” My hands flap, mimicking curtains. “It was cold when she came. God he was grouchy with me about that ring.”
He smiles slightly, I don’t know what at. I’m rambling, barely coherently, about billowing curtains and ghosts. I stare through him, trying to find something real to help in my quest.
“Hmm.” He abruptly walks away into the house again, leaving me standing there not knowing what to do as he disappears. I don’t know how to explain this, or even if I should. Maybe I should just go, remember this on my own somehow and go see if Lewis really is dead. “You want a drink?” he calls back. Oh god, yes please.
By the time I’m back to the spiral, he’s in front of me with a bottle of something brown and two glasses, one handed in my direction.
“Up you go then,” he says, tipping his drink to his mouth and pointing up the stairs.
“What?”
“Show me the cage.” I gape, unsure what he wants to see that for. I’m not even sure if I want to see it again in all honesty. How’s that going to help anything? “Let’s see what you think you know about my brother, Madeline.” He sips again and runs his tongue over his lips, the wry smile lingering making him so much more than simply Jack’s twin. “You’ve got fifteen minutes to convince me about ghosts and ghouls before I call the loony bin for your ass. Cute as it is.”
Fifteen minutes.
Chapter 24
Toby
J esus. If my dick wasn’t straining at my pants so hard I’d probably think I was on the same planet she resides on. Jack still here? It’s irrational as hell, but whether it is or not I’m still intrigued. The fact that she’s the image of Selma really isn’t helping me. How my bastard brother ever snagged her is still beyond me, even to this day. He did, though, regardless of the fact that I went for her across that bar first. Drunk.
“Go on then,” I say, pointing again. She frowns at me still, her hands tightening, fidgeting as she looks at the spiral. “Tick tock.”
“Why?” she snaps with a haughty lift of her chin.
My dick strains again at the image of it. Any woman who can stand there wittering on about fucking ghosts, all the time covered in mud with twigs in her hair, and then dare lift her chin at me like I’m the fool deserves the smirk that comes across my face.
I walk closer, licking my damn lips again like I’ve got no control over anything.
“For a start, no one knows about the cage. I dismantled it myself.” It took me two fucking days, but no way was the rest of the world knowing what he’d done. “You do, apparently.” It’s damn well concerning. He might have gone mad after Selma and Lenon, and I don’t fucking blame him after what they did to them, but I wasn’t having anyone vilify his body for it. I’m still not. “And secondly, look at you.” She scans her body, filthy feet turning in on themselves, and yet still she manages to raise that damn chin like she’s got every right to be covered in dirt.
I flatten my infatuated smirk as I think about that, and sip my drink instead, trying to hold onto some amount of superiority in this situation. The fact that I own, run, and mediate the biggest construction company this side of Canada apparently means fuck all in her presence. I’m like a child again as she sneers a little.
Doesn’t stop her looking at my dick, though.
“I want some answers, Madeline.”
She nods after that and starts climbing the stairs, determination setting in, as if she’s looking for answers, too. I’m not surprised with the crap that’s been pouring from her mouth, but she knows things—things she shouldn’t fucking know.
“It’s on the third floor,” she says quietly, her hand holding the bannister gently as she turns.
See? Things like that. No fucker knows that.
I follow, pouring another damn drink. It’s not just everything she’s saying that makes me need another. It’s the memories of what I did. I dragged those three bodies up to the bog with Bob, burying them so that no one would ever find out what Jack had become. Bob had always known they were there and called me two days after the suicide to ask me what to do. How the hell I’d never noticed what he was up to, I don’t know. So much for twin intuition.
And that’s where I found her, right on top of where we buried them. Naked.
She spins on me suddenly, still narrowing her eyes and scanning me constantly like I’m a damn conundrum she can’t fathom. I know the fucking feeling well. Her mouth opens, and I wait for another dramatic outburst about my brother.
“Why are you selling up?”
“Keep climbing, Madeline. Or are you a Maddy?” She chuckles instantly, laughing at me as if I’ve said the funniest thing she’s ever heard.
“You can’t sell up, Toby. They still need it.”
She trails off after that, begins mumbling and muttering to herself about something as she hangs on the bannister, feet lightly tripping aroun
d the stairs. “You look so much like him. It’s eerie really,” she suddenly says, tipping her head back to look at me and stopping. Of course I do. She said it herself—twins. Although I still don’t understand how the fuck she knows that either.
I stare at her over the rim of my glass, half wanting to lay her down and burrow into something I never got the chance at. She looks like she owns the place, and I half smile as I remember Christmases here—Selma standing on the stairs with Lenon on her hip and Jack berating me for staring at his wife too long.
“You want lifting to the top,” I mutter, unsure what the fuck is going on. “Or can you get there without opening that mouth of yours again?” She fucking sounds like her, too. Different, she’s got more American going on than Selma ever had, but it’s there nonetheless.
“I thought I had fifteen minutes,” she says, a hand resting on her hip.
“Ten now with all the time you’ve wasted climbing fucking stairs, Madeline.” She smiles, lighting up this tired old house exactly the same way Selma did, then spins away again giggling to herself and beginning to dance her way up the stairs.
“Very Jack like, Toby. Grouchy.” I watch her go, bemused as she begins humming and bouncing slightly, arms out as if she’s balancing on eggshells. “Are you positive you’re not him? Because anything’s possible in this house, they’ve shown me that.” I’m so close to showing her how different I am from my brother. I’m barely restraining the need to grab at her and do things I have no business doing. “Strange things happen here, Toby.” She’s damn right.
I watch as she turns onto the third level, tiptoeing across the floor and heading straight for the door the cage used to be in. She doesn’t even look anywhere else, like she knows exactly where she’s going. She’s right in some respects. This old mansion has been odd since the day I found him here, brains blown all over the damn wall. It wasn’t when they moved in. It was just old, ready to fill with furniture and dreams, but then after Selma and Lenon died he let it rot around him, and after I found him dead a year later, it seemed cold constantly.
“What do you want to know?”
The question catches me off guard. I don’t know what I want to know. I just know that this woman is the closest I’ve got to seeing my brother for a long time. I miss him, miss his dry sense of humour and his ability to push me harder than I thought possible. I felt like a part of me died that night along with him. Twins are like that, bound by something that other siblings don’t have access to.
“What did you see in here?” I ask, nodding at the door.
“Three men in a cage,” she replies whimsically, walking closer to it and running her fingers over the chopped up handle. “They moved like dogs.” Dogs? “I did that.” My eyes narrow. “With an axe.” The thought of her with anything close to an axe has me snorting in derision.
“Madeline, that’s been like that since I found him. I don’t know what you think has happened here, but–” She swings back to me, her finger pointing as she walks up to me and pokes me in the chest, hard.
“No, Toby. I did that a few hours ago.” She pokes again. “I did it before he took me to that room up there.” She waves her hand along the corridor towards the room I found all Selma’s belongings in. “And then I found a picture of Selma in this drawer, realised how much I look like her,” she says, walking to the old bureau and running her fingers over it. She smiles at something, eyes directed at the staircase. “And then we went to Lenon’s treehouse and she came again, showed me what they needed me for.”
There’s no way she should know shit like this. It’s weird.
I watch as she turns back to the doorway, pushing on it and walking in. She stops immediately, eyes scanning for whatever she can’t see, and then wanders straight for the marks on the wall where I detached the bolts.
“Here,” she says, fingers running over the holes. “And the keys were here,” she continues, wandering those fingers back to the old hook. “Jack stood behind me.” She looks back towards the small table. “There was a picture of Selma in a sliver frame, taken on the terrace outside.” All true. I can’t even find a reason to tell her she’s wrong. “I can still smell them.” My stomach rolls with the thought. I can, too, but if she thinks they were alive then I’m damn glad she didn’t see what I found after Bob called me.
I find myself leaning against the wall, some part of me falling into a damn trance as she carries on around the room, reciting everything in exact order. The lines of the cage floor. The shackles that were hanging. The curtains that were heavy against the back wall, ones I eventually pulled down to let some fucking light and fresh air into the cesspool of filth and blood that was here.
She turns abruptly, scanning the walls in the corner. “The gun.” What? She flusters her hands around the woodwork, skimming the wallpaper lightly. “The bullet must be here somewhere. That’ll prove this is true.” I didn’t find any guns, apart from the one in Jack’s hand, and that’s still under this suit to this day. “I shot at Lewis here. Well, not at him. I only wanted to scare him off really.” She glances back at me. “And they were in the way so I couldn’t see straight anyway.”
“Who?”
“The men. They were in front of me after I let them out, protecting me,” she mumbles, still searching. My brow creeps up, wondering what fucking planet she’s on. I can’t damn well deny any of this truth, though. No matter how much I want to. “Oh, for god’s sake. It must be here.” She inches down the wall, peering, and still not finding what’s she’s after. Her head swings back again, looking at me. “I was right where you are, Toby.” She storms over. “Do you have a gun? Of course you do. All Americans have a gun. Give it to me.”
“You think I’m giving you my fucking gun? In your state of mind?” She frowns.
“Okay then, hold it yourself and point it over there.” My eyes roll at the suggestion, making me sip another damn drink and huff. She quirks her head at me, somehow steamrolling me into doing what she says. “Scared, Toby? Not so much like Jack then, hey?”
Perhaps it’s intrigue, or perhaps it’s just the suggestion that he was braver than I am, but I’m pushing of the wall, putting my drink down, and getting the fucking thing out before I’ve over thought it. She gasps, reaching for it. I snatch it back to my side.
“Not likely, Madeline.”
“That’s Jack’s.” Fuck.
“How the hell do you know that?”
She shakes her head and smiles, disregarding whatever thought she’s had. “It’s the one I used, Toby. He opened the panel and let me have it.” How the hell does she know about that? “Hold it up.” She trails off again as I slowly raise it at her, and walks to the wall, inspecting it until eventually she turns and points at a small indent in the shadow of the door frame, a triumphant smile gracing her face. “See. Bullet.” And then she’s off out of the room, determination in every step. “Not mad, Toby.” I follow again, noting the small hole she pointed out and peering into it to find exactly that. Damn, she’s right. “Come help me find the other one,” she calls.
“What other one?” I pick up my drink and slowly exit the room, wondering what else she’s about to tell me.
“Well, he was trying to shoot himself and I stopped him.” That is mad. He’s dead.
“Gravestone?”
“Yes, but not then. I mean, he is dead, you’re right, but he wasn’t a few hours ago. Well, not to me anyway.” I turn onto the second floor and find her skimming her hands over the steps, searching again. “We wrangled the gun. Fought. I stopped him, but the gun shot around here somewhere and he was desperate to find the bullet.” She moves again, glancing around. “Now I think about it, he said he didn’t want to let another woman down. Muttered it beneath his breath.”
Stupidity, or intrigue, has me searching with her, because that is just what he would have said. He was so angry at himself for allowing their deaths. He blamed himself for it all, no matter how many times I tried to tell him there was nothing he could have d
one. Weeks and weeks passed and all he did was drink himself into a stupor, barely existing but for these old walls around him. He revered them, said they were all that was left of Selma and Lenon. And then he seemed to change, became someone I barely knew at all. It happened overnight. I eventually knew why two days after I found him dead. He’d found the fuckers, made them pay.
I smile at the thought, part disgusted by what he became and yet still in awe of him because of it. My brother, never one to let something go until he’d got the better of it, beaten it.
“Why can’t I find it, Toby?” she says, scrabbling around on her hands and knees. I watch her and slow my searching until I can’t be bothered and just watch her move. “I’ve got to find it. Prove this somehow.” I’m not that sure she needs to anymore. Not for my benefit anyway. For some reason, and maybe because of those earlier words, I believe her. Or at least I believe she believes it.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does,” she snaps, her face flying to mine as I look down at her and sit on a step. “It does to me. I need to know why. Why did they make me kill him?”
“Who?”
“My husband.” Her fingers fly to her mouth the moment she says it, her body halting its erratic movements. “Madeline Blisedy.” She chuckles a little and looks back at the stained glass window, musing the patterns of light that come in. “How much did you say you wanted for the house?”
“What?” She laughs. She laughs out loud and all but falls onto the step behind her until she’s almost hysterical.
“Oh god. I’m free, Toby.” Where the fuck is this going now?
She clambers up and runs down the last of the stairs, swinging to the right and heading for the back of the house as fast as she can. I shake my head at her absurdity and check my watch, wondering what the hell I’m going to do with her when the buyers start arriving. I’m not even sure I want to do anything with her other than listen to her as she keeps talking about Jack. It’s comforting, warming. Enough so that I pull Selma’s ring out of my pocket and wonder what it’s trying to tell me, let alone why it was just lying there on the hall table.
The Spiral Page 25