Before Her Eyes

by Jack Jordan

  The train crept away. Her fresh start was escaping down the tracks.

  ‘I hope …’

  ‘Yes?’ Marcus said as he guided her down the platform towards the exit.

  ‘I hope you’re right.’

  FIFTY-THREE

  The suitcase fell on its back with a bang. Naomi left it there. She couldn’t return it to the back of the wardrobe to grow a new sheath of dust. The thought of it waiting by the door for another escape gave her comfort; the feeling that she still had a sliver of control.

  She listened to the small noises of the house: the click of the pipes, the water dripping from the kitchen sink, the board on the window breathing against the nails. She was back there again, banished behind the walls.

  There were things she couldn’t ignore any more. Before her attempt to escape, all she had focused on was the day the police realised that they were wrong, that she was innocent as she proclaimed, but being home again, she had to face the fact that it had been blind hope, a primal survival technique. There would be a trial. She would be ushered up onto the stand and torn apart. A jury would watch her, take in every crack in her voice, every nervous twitch. Her family would watch from the wings, and the townspeople would crowd outside waiting to condemn her; a modern witch hunt. She wondered if Dane would be in the dock with her, or whether he would still be running.

  Dane had managed what she couldn’t. He had escaped. She imagined what his new life would look like. Would he go to another small town, like she had planned, or would he lose himself in the bustle of a city? Did he see a new woman in his future, or would he continue to think of her and come back for her when it all died down? Even with everything that had happened between them, she still loved him, and feared that she always would.

  She walked through to the kitchen and sat down at the table.

  ‘You’re safe,’ she whispered. ‘Marcus will keep you safe.’

  ‘Will he?’

  She jolted, the question like a cattle prod jabbing into her spine. Josie’s broken breaths crackled from where the knife had split her throat in two.

  Naomi opened her mouth to speak, but stopped the second she felt the cold metal of a blade rest against her cheek.

  ‘Do you enjoy breaking people’s hearts?’ The blade lowered to Naomi’s neck.

  The police would turn up soon. They would come to the door to check on her. Would they get there in time? Or would they arrive only to photograph the blood on the walls?

  ‘What happened between Dane and me, it’s over.’ Naomi swallowed, felt her throat move against the blade. ‘I don’t want him, I just want—’

  ‘You’ve wanted to break us up from the beginning.’

  ‘I wanted to move on, Josie, but he kept coming back, he wouldn’t let me.’

  The knife pressed deeper.

  ‘Don’t lie to me. He was the only person who’d ever want you. You knew you didn’t stand a chance of meeting someone else, so you took him back. You took him away from me.’

  ‘If I’d wanted him, I would have run off with him, wouldn’t I? We would’ve fled together. But we didn’t. He went without me.’

  Josie laughed. The sound rumbled in her throat as if it were full of blood.

  ‘That’s what you think? That he ran away?’

  Naomi’s gut plummeted.

  ‘Where is he, Josie?’

  The butt of the knife thundered against Naomi’s skull. Her head bounced off the tabletop and blood snaked along her scalp. Josie grabbed her hair and pulled her back in the chair. She took Naomi’s wrists and yanked them behind her back. Rope pinched at her wrists, twisting around them until her skin burned, but all she could focus on was her pulse drumming against the top of her skull. Everything was spinning.

  The chair turned violently on its hind legs and screeched against the floor. Naomi lolled in her seat.

  ‘What are you going to do to me?’ she whispered.

  Josie knelt down at her feet, tugging at her legs, and tied rope around her ankles.

  Something wet and sour slipped from between Naomi’s lips and dripped down to her lap in thick strings.

  Josie gripped the back of the chair and dragged it from the room. The back legs bumped against the ridges between the floorboards and jolted over the threshold of the doorway, a bright trail of blood left in their wake. The chair crashed back onto all four legs.

  ‘I’ve got some things to show you,’ Josie said, circling the chair. ‘Wake up!’ A slap stung Naomi’s cheek. Josie leaned in and rested a hand on her knee. ‘Are you going to concentrate?’

  Naomi nodded, and felt something light being placed on her lap, a postcard or a photo. Then another, and another, and another, and objects she couldn’t work out, until the pile slipped off her lap and scattered across the floorboards.

  ‘Do you know what they are?’

  Naomi shook her head and clenched her teeth against the nausea rising from her gut.

  ‘It’s all yours. Photos of you and him together, your underwear, your hairbrush, your perfume. Dane kept it all under our bed, the place where he fucked me, but he was thinking of you. You were always there, lurking beneath us. We never stood a chance. I was such an idiot falling for him and his lies. He told me he was over you, that he felt sorry for you. Like a fool, I believed him. Well, I’m not as weak as you both think.’

  ‘Did you …’ Naomi couldn’t say it, couldn’t bring herself to hear the answer. ‘Did you hurt Max? My Max?’

  ‘I would have. You deserve to know how it feels to have everything taken away from you. But obviously I’m not the only one who sees right through you. How many other guys have you been screwing? How many other hearts have you broken?’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  Josie grabbed Naomi’s throat. Long fingernails broke the skin.

  ‘I’m going to make sure you feel the same pain you’ve caused me,’ she spat. Her face was so close to Naomi’s that the words warmed her skin. ‘When I’m done, you’ll be begging me to kill you.’

  Numbness snaked through Naomi and dulled the throbbing of the wound on her head. Her limbs felt heavy and her neck weak, as the paralysis dragged her under and everything went silent.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Naomi awoke to a deep demonic voice. Something was drumming against her head.

  Bang-bang, bang-bang, bang-bang.

  It took her a moment to realise it was the beat of her own heart. She remembered being hit by something, hard and fast.

  ‘What did Dane see in you?’ the voice asked. ‘You’re so weak.’ The crackling sound was difficult to distinguish. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.

  She went to wipe away the blood trailing down the back of her neck. Her wrist snagged against rope.

  ‘He always felt sorry for you,’ the voice said.

  And then she remembered.

  She tried to find the voice in the room, but her senses were bleeding together.

  ‘He would still talk about you to anyone who would listen. Talk about you right in front of me. All he did was push me away, and all I could do was watch as you stole my life.’

  Naomi jolted backwards and slammed down on the floor. Her head cracked against the floorboards. Pain gushed through her like a wave.

  ‘IT WAS MY LIFE!’

  ‘I’m sorry …’ she murmured as the room spun.

  ‘It’s too late for that.’

  Josie ran the blade of the knife around the edge of Naomi’s face. The tip just scratched the surface.

  ‘I let it go on for so long,’ she whispered. ‘I hoped that one day you would leave us in peace. But you didn’t, and Dane continued to say your name as he dreamed, and call me Naomi by mistake. He looked at me as though I would never be enough for him, enough to fill the hole you left.’

  She lifted the blade away and smeared the blood on Naomi’s cheek. Tears stung Naomi’s eyes.

  ‘I cried when we had sex. Even after he had turned off the lights, I could still see his eye
s were closed as he thrust into me and thought of you. I was nothing to him, a bag of flesh to make up for the real thing he craved. And when he was done, he would roll off me and turn his back to shut me out as he tried to hang onto the thought of you lying beside him instead of me.’

  ‘Josie, I—’

  ‘DON’T!’ she boomed, and thrust a finger into Naomi’s face. Her fingernail swiped the tip of her nose. ‘For once I’m going to be heard. I’m not going to stand in your shadow any longer.’

  The floorboards creaked as she paced back and forth. Naomi had to clench her teeth to keep from being sick.

  ‘Just when I thought I couldn’t hate you any more, he would enter me again and yet somehow be so far away. He would be inside me, but he wasn’t there at all, hiding behind his eyes in a world that I could never reach. It was like a stranger was pressing down on me, dripping with sweat, breathing against my face.

  ‘Whenever I looked in the mirror, I tried to find parts of me that I could change so he would love me like he did you. I used to watch you, did you know that? I watched you live your pitiful life and tried to learn from you. I copied the way you walked. I listened to how you spoke to people, trying to reach the same pitch, dip and rise in the same places you did. I held myself like you and presented these traits to him in the hope that he would see you in me and fall for the both of us, wrapped up in one body, so he would only need me. I tried to make room for you in me, so I could have all of his love, his attention, really have him. But whatever I did, no matter how hard I tried, I just seemed to push him further away.’

  ‘Josie …’

  She heard the knife swiping through the air as Josie paced back and forth, gesticulated, spat out her words.

  ‘That was when I realised. I hadn’t lost him; I’d never had him to begin with. He was still wrapped up in you. I loathed you for that and wanted you to feel every speck of pain I felt. I wanted to hurt you so badly when I came to your door that night, but your damn dog was there, barking at me. And then I watched as Dane knocked on your door and took you to work, held the car door for you, looking at you in a way he never looked at me. I threw the brick and I missed you. Every single time I wanted to get back at you, you managed to slip away. But then the murder happened and you stumbled across the body. It always has to be about you, doesn’t it? Women can’t even be murdered without you turning up to bask in the limelight.’

  The knife clattered against the floor. Josie bent down and picked it up again.

  ‘But it was perfect. Someone was killing women, and you had pretty much made yourself the next victim. All I had to do was take your life like you did mine, and the police would think it was the same person who killed those women.’

  ‘But the woods … Dane’s watch …’

  Josie snatched Naomi’s jaw, took a rattling breath.

  ‘I don’t know what to believe any more,’ she whispered. ‘When I was in hospital, I tried to work out whether I would have known his touch if it had been him who attacked me. Would I have recognised the sound of his breaths, the scent of him? All I saw was you beneath me, covered in blood. I fell to the ground and watched you run under the light of the moon, saw the man follow you. I couldn’t work out if it was Dane; all I saw was a silhouette against the night. And then you both left me there, bleeding into the earth, choking on the mud.’

  Her voice grew quiet as she remembered the night that had altered both of their lives. ‘I was losing so much blood. My body felt so weak I could barely pack the mud into the wound. You think you’re in pain from a knock to the head? Try shoving mud and stones into your own throat and packing it shut. Imagine lying on the ground as every drop of heat leaves your body and the night gets quieter, waiting for you to die. I couldn’t feel anything but the cold claiming me and the lump of earth in my throat. I didn’t think Dane could leave me there like that, but then I had made him choose, hadn’t I? It was you or me.’

  ‘Why? Why did you tell the police it was me?’

  ‘It’s always about you, isn’t it?’ She snatched Naomi’s hair and yanked her head back, pressing the blade to her neck. ‘LISTEN TO YOURSELF!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Naomi whispered.

  ‘You …’ Josie let go of her hair. ‘You started it all. You’re the one who kept him from me. You were the one he chose. I can’t let you get away with what you did to us. Prison is too good for you.’

  ‘It was Dane who hurt you, not me. I didn’t do anything to you.’

  ‘You fucked him, right here in this house!’ Saliva sprayed against Naomi’s face. ‘You gave him hope. You gave him a reason to push me even further away, until I was living with a man who looked through me, not at me, who existed in silence as though I wasn’t there at all. Just when he had started to give up the idea of getting you back, you reeled him in again. I’d almost had him. It’s like you knew.’

  ‘I didn’t, I swear,’ Naomi stuttered through dry lips. ‘It was a moment of weakness. I had just found Amber’s body. I was a mess. I wanted to feel safe.’

  ‘So you took the only thing I had.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘That’s not enough.’ Josie sniffed back tears and took a deep breath. ‘You’ll be treated as a martyr for a little while, but I’ll be ready for that. I’ll be there for when he needs me, and soon he will realise what he has, who he has, right in front of him. He’ll forgive me for what I did to him; he’ll understand I was angry.’

  ‘What did you do to him? Where is he?’

  ‘He won’t tell …’ she whispered. ‘He won’t tell them that it was me. He’ll understand why I had to do it.’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ Naomi said.

  ‘You made me like this. This is all because of you.’

  The knife pressed against Naomi’s neck.

  The doorbell rang through the room. The shrill sound drilled into her ears and made her feel sick again.

  The knife rose from her neck. Josie shoved something into Naomi’s mouth until it scratched the back of her throat. She gagged, her eyes watering.

  ‘Make one sound and I’ll kill whoever is on the other side of the door.’

  Josie pulled a zip from the bottom of her jacket to the neck and walked towards the door.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, I’m George, Naomi’s next-door neighbour.’

  George.

  ‘I’m Naomi’s sister. Nice to meet you.’

  Listen to her voice, George. Look for the scar on her neck. See the truth.

  ‘You too. Is Naomi around?’

  ‘She’s asleep.’

  If George left, Naomi would die. The gag was too big to spit out. She rocked on the chair legs until she crashed back onto the floor with a loud bang.

  ‘What was that?’ George asked.

  A beat rested between them; Naomi could hear the buzzing tension, like static crackling in the air.

  ‘I’d like to see Naomi.’

  ‘I told you, she’s asleep.’

  Naomi screamed as loudly as she could behind the gag. Her head filled with blood.

  There was a scuffle at the door. Two bodies clashed with shouts and shoves. Josie cried out as something boomed against the wall and the door slammed shut.

  ‘What the hell is going on here?’ George asked, standing above her. The floorboards quivered beneath her with approaching footsteps, and a faint groan slipped from someone’s lips.

  And then everything fell silent.

  Naomi moved her vacant eyes, and listened to the faint gargling sound coming from somewhere in the room. She managed to manoeuvre the gag from her mouth, regurgitating a thick sports sock damp with saliva.

  ‘What did you do?’ she asked.

  Something heavy fell to the ground. Air darted into Naomi’s face.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I just made this a lot more interesting.’

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Marcus sat at his desk scrolling through the CCTV footage. His eyes burned from staring at the scre
en and scanning so many faces, none of them Dane’s. Not only had Dane escaped the town, he had done so undetected.

  Lisa turned off the light in her office and locked the door behind her.

  ‘My phone’s dead, and it’s staying that way until morning. I need a good night’s sleep.’

  He nodded without looking up from the screen.

  ‘How does it feel being wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not wrong.’

  ‘Our prime suspect has fled.’

  ‘Your prime suspect, not mine.’ He looked up and their eyes met.

  ‘Don’t stop looking until you’ve found him. I don’t care how long it takes. You made this mess, you’ll fix it. Understood?’

  It took all of his strength to nod.

  ‘Be in my office at eight a.m. We need to talk about your future here.’ She turned and left before he could even blink.

  He sighed and rubbed his eyes.

  The hours were ticking away like minutes; he didn’t have long to find the real culprit. If he was taken off the case, lost his job before he could make it right, Naomi would go to prison, that he was sure of. He had lost faith in the justice system under Lisa’s command.

  He opened the drawer in his desk and removed some files, bulging with details of the people in Naomi’s life, exposed in healthcare records, previous convictions. He looked down at the list of names and sighed. Stale breath ruffled the page. Each name written in black ink had been crossed out in red after finding nothing that could link them to the abuse Naomi had received, the indentations in the page getting deeper and deeper as the list went on, his frustration etched onto the paper. He had read the files before, but here he was again, scouring through the strangers’ lives as though the truth would bleed from the words.

  The person who had killed Cassie and Amber, who had attacked Josie in the woods, was responsible for the disappearance of Hayley Miller. He knew it. He just had to prove it.

  Dane’s watch had been found at the scene, Josie’s blood splashed onto the face.