There was a total stillness to the room…
… Until his head jerked as Andrea wrenched the poker free again.
Now blood spurted from the deep wound like a miniature red fountain when the pressure was released. It started to flood over his head, spilling down onto his forehead, masking one eye, trickling into the pit below it.
Andrea struck again, same place, same force (I remembered reading somewhere that on occasions women can produce supernormal strength to protect their child; one woman had lifted a car on her own when her toddler was trapped beneath it), and a faint sigh filtered through from another dimension.
Once more, the poker was pulled free, and still Moker’s body stayed upright, and once more the poker was brought down with a force that drove its blunted end down through his forehead.
This time, Moker toppled over sideways and the poker remained in Andrea’s hand, wrenched free from the smashed egg of his skull. She threw it down so hard it bounced on the carpet.
Even as the dead man sprawled beside Prim, one of his dirty sneakered feet trapping her ankles, Andrea was down on the floor reaching for her daughter with both hands. But she swooned suddenly, one of her hands flattening against the floor to steady herself; full-consciousness was not quite ready for her yet. She closed her eyes, opened them again, took a deep breath through her mouth, frowned at the taste of blood. She leaned over Prim again and lifted her by the shoulders, then held her tight against her own body. Prim’s face buried itself into Andrea’s neck.
I moved closer to them both, an arm passing around Andrea’s shoulders, a hand stroking my little girl’s back. (Yes, I still thought of Primrose as my little girl. Seven years couldn’t be wiped away like chalk from a slate.)
“Her inhaler, Andrea!” I yelled. “Fetch her inhaler, quick as you can!”
Andrea’s nose was a pulpy mess, blood pouring from it, running copiously over her lips, spilling down her chin, onto her black exercise vest and cardigan, a huge amount of it, which suggested her nose was broken. When she opened her mouth to call Prim’s name I saw that three front teeth were chipped and her gums were bloody. Prim failed to respond and Andrea held her away so that she could examine her face.
Small spittles of blood sprayed on Prim’s cheeks as Andrea gasped, then hugged her tight again. A sudden tortuous intake of breath told us both that Primrose was still alive and, without further ado, Andrea lifted her from the floor and rushed from the lounge with her daughter in her arms, fragments of picture glass crackling under her bare feet. She ignored the pain they must have caused, but she wobbled when she reached the lounge door. She took another breath and began climbing the hall stairs.
I followed and within seconds we were in Prim’s small bedroom, so bright and innocently cheerful in daylight, but now menaced by shadows for which the feeble night-light was no match. Andrea quickly remedied that by flicking on the main light switch with her elbow. She hurriedly set Prim on the narrow bed with its cheerful flowery quilt and held her there in a sitting position while a free hand snatched the blue puffer from the bedside cabinet. Maybe it was the lifting and being carried that revived Primrose—or perhaps some inner sense told her she was safe in her mother’s arms—but her eyelids fluttered open and her lips moved between strained gasps for air as she tried to form words. By the time Andrea held the puffer up to her face, her eyes were wider—and looking directly at me.
“Daddy?” I heard her whisper.
Andrea appeared not to have noticed. She held the inhaler in front of Prim’s mouth, index finger on the depressor at the top.
“Open, Baby, open your mouth,” she implored, a tremor in her voice.
Prim’s eyes went to her mother’s and she did as she was told.
Fine droplets of mist sprayed into her mouth and she gulped in air.
“Again, darling, again,” her mother urged.
The procedure was repeated several times and gradually Prim’s shoulders ceased their shudders and the rise and fall of her chest began to take on a steady rhythm. Andrea’s tension seemed to ebb away, even though she must still have been very frightened by all that had happened. I think she was putting on a brave face for our daughter’s sake.
As Prim’s breathing calmed, she looked once again over her mother’s shoulder. Disappointment showed in her eyes.
I stared back at her with what I hoped was a loving smile, just in case she might see me again.
She didn’t. Her sweet pale face scrunched up in puzzlement. “I saw Daddy, Mummy,” she said when her breathing allowed.
Andrea held her close, but not close enough to restrict her breathing. “Hush, Prim,” she said softly, soothingly. “Everything’s all right now. The bad man has gone away. He can’t hurt you anymore.” Her voice sounded as if she had a serious head cold.
“But, Mummy—”
“I’m sure Daddy was watching over us. I think he was there protecting us.”
Was she merely saying this to comfort Prim, or did Andrea believe her own words? There was no way of knowing, but maybe it was the latter. I like to think so.
It gave me comfort.
As I left them there on the bed, clutching each other, Andrea gently rocking Prim to and fro and making soothing nasal sounds, holding a dozen or so blood-soaked tissues to her nose, a fierce emotion was edging my love for them—yes, my love for them both—aside. The emotion was bitterness. And… anger.
I had lost so much on the night of my death and now I’d discovered I’d lost even more: I’d lost something that I’d never truly possessed anyway. The final reality was harsh, overwhelming.
And it was Guinane who had caused everything bad that had happened to me. By coveting my wife and stealing my daughter. By betraying me as a friend and business partner. By murdering me. And by murdering me he had caused the monster to visit my home, to threaten and terrorize the two people who had meant more to me than life itself.
Guinane was to blame for everything.
I entered the lounge. It was quiet and perfectly still, but resembled a battleground after the battle. The floor was littered with broken or bent debris, with fragments of glass, with scattered CDs, with overturned furniture. Even the television screen was filled with a great white, burned-out blemish.
Amongst it all lay the battered corpse of Alec Moker. His body was without aura.
The room was bright with light and the ghosts had returned.
They were pallid. Almost insignificant. Still weakened. My father was among them, perhaps more visible than the rest because there was contact between us. He smiled at me as those around him waned.
I wondered if they had found the strength—as feeble as it was—to come back because their adversary was dead but they needed to witness the outcome for themselves. None was dancing on his body I noticed.
I stopped on the other side of Moker’s corpse and my father smiled at me. The warmth I felt from him, the unbounded love, was akin to my feelings for Primrose.
As he joined his companions in their fading, I looked down at the crumpled bulk that had been Moker.
Fluid from his damaged head was spreading over the beige carpet, sinking into the flattened pile so that it would never be completely beige again. There was no movement at all from him, no death spasms, no voiding of liquids other than the blood itself. Maybe he smelled of death and excrement, I couldn’t tell. There was no twitching of fingers, no sudden lurches of feet. Oh yeah, the wicked witch was dead all right.
Yet with death, there came something else. The final and irrevocable act of all those who had lived in this world: the soul’s departure from its host.