Dead Bad Things (36 page)

  Benson fell to the floor face first, his weight causing the floorboards to shudder as he made contact with them. He twitched once, and then lay still. Sarah didn't try to fool herself that she was tougher than him. She had only gained the advantage because he had lost focus, because he had allowed his rage and his madness to control him, while she had remained calm.

  "Let's get this sack of shit secured and then decide what to do." She opened a drawer and took out a handful of belts, then looped them around Benson's arms and legs, trussing him up like a prize pig in a farm show. "Yeah," she whispered. "That's it, you cunt. Who's in charge now? Who's the fucking boss, eh?"

  She was breathing heavily and her arms ached. She was filled with anger. But her training kicked in again and she made sure the knots were tight as she battled to get her emotions under control. She had no idea what she was doing, and what might come next, but she needed to negate this current threat. She couldn't bring herself to kill him – she was a policewoman, and cold-blooded murder went against everything she was employed to protect. No, killing Benson was out of the question – for one thing, it was exactly what that bastard, Emerson, would have done. All she could do was neutralise her attacker, make him less of a danger – bind him so tightly that he was physically unable to get back up and slaughter them both.

  She glanced up and over her shoulder, the sweat running into her eyes and making her blink.

  Usher stood to one side, blinking back at her. "Amazing," he said. "You're…
amazing
. Just like her." He gazed down at her with what Sarah could only identify as pride.

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

"…
amazing
. Just like her."

  I gazed down at her with a strange sense of pride. She really was amazing, incredible: a woman of such power, such grace… her mother would have been so very proud.

  Her mother.

  I helped Sarah bundle the bound man – Benson; her ex-lover – across the room and onto the bed, where she tied him to the metal frame with yet more scarves and belts. She moved quickly, professionally, and I realised that she must be one hell of a copper. Her face was stern, the muscles in her cheeks tight as cellophane across her bones.

  That steely determination; it was just like Ellen's.

  Her mother.

  I could barely believe what I was contemplating, what thoughts were speeding through my head. In that moment, as I'd stood confronting that madman with a meat cleaver I'd grabbed from the kitchen work bench, I had been certain. It had all seemed so clear in my mind.

  But now I wasn't so sure. Now I was losing faith in the gut instinct that had almost crippled me when I had seen her in so much danger.

  I watched as she finished tying up and finally gagging Benson with a strip of tape, and then I went down on the bed beside her. She turned to me, and she looked at me through Ellen's eyes.

  
Her mother's eyes…

  She spoke to me through Ellen's lips.

  
Her mother's lips…

  "We're done here," she said, her damp brown hair falling across her forehead.

  
Her mother's hair…

  
Her mother's forehead…

  How could I ever have doubted this? Now that I had stopped to think about it, the likeness was terrifying.

  This girl, this glorious warrior woman, was Ellen Lang's daughter. I wasn't sure how it had happened, or what had been done to create this situation, but I was certain now that she was Ellen's child.

  The Pilgrim's hands had been all over this – it was part of his plan, the events he had put into motion many years ago, before I'd even been aware of my ability to communicate with the dead. I already knew that he had been responsible for the car crash that had killed my wife and daughter –
oh, Ally, Rebecca,
how sorry I am for these betrayals
– and that he had simply been trying to kick-start whatever power had lain dormant for so long within me.

  That's what this was all about: the Pilgrim and me, or whatever part of me he wanted to own. Was it an organ, like my heart, or something much less simple to define?

  The Pilgrim's plans, his weird and complex plans, I could see now that they were just a part of some bizarre long game, a plot to capture whatever energy allowed me to do what I could do, see what I could see, sense what I could sense.

  I stared at the majestic young woman before me, and the tears fell from my eyes like scales, allowing me to see, to truly see for the first time.

  I felt tired; but I was no longer alone. At last I had someone by my side.

  She looked so much like Ellen; like her mother. But if Sarah had inherited her mother's looks, then what, I wondered, might she have inherited from her father?

  What exactly had she inherited from me?

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

Sarah stood before the mirror in the master bedroom, inspecting the damage Benson had caused to her arms and shoulders. Already she was beginning to bruise, and the injured areas were tender to the touch. She winced, hating Benson all over again.

  She realised now that she should have listened to her instincts regarding the bastard. Her twitch – and that feeling she'd had about something not being quite right between them – had been steering her in the right direction all along. Her heart had seen through the disguise of normality he'd worn, even if her eyes were blind to the horror that he had been hiding.

  "Fucker," she said into the mirror. She watched her mouth form the word and was puzzled for a moment when the sound of her voice seemed slightly out of synch with the motion of her lips. Like a scene from a badly dubbed film, her voice didn't quite match the movements.

  Sarah shrugged off the effect, putting it down to her senses hitting overdrive when Benson had confronted her. Adrenaline was still pounding through her system, and this was probably an after-effect of the violence she'd displayed in the other room.

  Benson was still unconscious – at least he had been when she'd left him in her room. Now she was standing in Emerson and her mother's room, and she felt uncomfortable about being surrounded by the same four walls in which the fucker had systematically raped his wife while he thought about fucking his adopted daughter.

  It was the first time she'd allowed these thoughts free reign, without couching them in metaphor, and the anger felt good as it crawled around her body, snarling like a wild cat.

  Anger was fuel. It could help provide strength.

  Feed me, she thought. Feed me and help me end this.

  But what was it, exactly, that needed to end? The haunting, certainly: she was sick and tired of seeing Emerson's ghost stalking her as she went about her business. He no longer scared her; she just wanted him gone. Usher had said that he could probably help with that side of things, and she had no choice but to trust him.

  Trust. As far as she could recall, she had not trusted anyone in her entire life. This man, this stranger, was the first. But was he really a stranger? And if so, why did she feel such a bond between them, that she already knew him?

  Why was there such a strong connection?

  Sarah had so many questions and so little time in which to find acceptable answers. She suspected that even the answers she did find, if she could spare the energy to look for them, would provide only more questions. Things were happening here which were beyond her ability to understand: strange things, perhaps even mystic things. Evidence of the supernatural was all around her, like a thick layer of dust, and everything was tainted by its presence.

  Her life was dirty; it was filthy with phantoms.

  She smiled, aware that behind the smile there lay a form of madness she didn't want to let out into the world. For years she had been strong, not allowing anything from her past to impact upon her present, but now that she thought about things she realised that she had been wrong all along. The past never dies; it clings to you, never letting go. It touches all that you do and everyone you meet, causing subtle ripples in the present that move towards a possible future.

  We are our past, she thought. We are formed from the things we have gone through, and if we took them away we would vanish. Like ghosts.

  Ghosts. Why did it always come back to the dead?

  She thought again of Thomas Usher, and the way that his world was filled with ghosts. How could he live that way, how did he survive without losing his mind? Affection for the man flooded her, bringing tears to her eyes. Now that she had properly made his acquaintance, she could not imagine her life without him. In the short space of time since they had encountered each other at the hospital, by their mutual friend DI Tebbit's bed, Usher had become an anchor in her existence. Without him to hold her in place, to tether her to the earth, she might just float away into the darkness that surrounded her and never return.

  Sarah dabbed at a brutal welt on her upper arm with the wet cotton ball she held between finger and thumb, gritting her teeth as the disinfectant stung like a bite. The mirror rippled as she turned slightly to the side, its reflective surface shimmering like the waters of a pond disturbed by a slight breeze.

  Sarah stood still, wondering if she'd taken a blow to the head and was suffering some kind of mild hallucination. The mirror continued to ripple; concentric circles moved out from its centre, widening as they reached the mirror's edge. Her reflection moved in the same way, subtly altering. It was like something from a funhouse, and the image chilled her as if a childhood dream had suddenly broken through into reality.

  
We are our past…

  "What?" She reached out and touched the surface of the mirror. It was solid. The ripples were no longer evident. But behind and around her, the room looked somehow different. It was as if the rippling motion had affected the physical space in which she stood, but when she spun around to examine her surroundings everything looked the same.

  She turned again to the mirror, and saw the subtle differences: pictures hung askew on the walls, the bed was lopsided, the wardrobe door was open but its leading edge was curved, the window was frosted over, the carpet moved as if it were a swarm of insects, the walls were slanted inwards near the ceiling, the wallpaper was crawling with flies…

  Again, when she turned around to face the room, everything looked normal. The bed, the walls, the carpet, the wardrobe: all was as it should be.

  "
Thomas
." Her voice was quiet, nothing like the strong yell she had gone for. She paused, swallowed to clear her throat, and just as she was about to scream for him again she heard a noise across the hall. In her room, something shifted heavily across the floor.

  Her room.

  The room where Benson was lying flat out on the bed, his hands and legs tied with scarves and belts and whatever else she had managed to find at short notice.

  It sounded like someone was moving furniture about, dragging it across the floor. Then abruptly, she heard the bed springs squeaking, as if a child were bouncing up and down on the mattress.

  "Shit!" She ran for the door and pulled it open, moving across the landing. Benson must be trying to escape. She had enough faith in the knots she'd tied to believe that he could never free himself, but if he managed to roll off the bed somehow and get to the door, he could cause them more trouble than they needed to deal with right now.

  Sarah grabbed the handle and opened her bedroom door. The room was silent. Nothing stirred. The previous commotion had ceased instantly, as if a switch had been pulled. The curtains were still closed, so it was dark in there, but she could make out Benson's body on the bed. He wasn't moving.

  "If you're awake tell me now, because if I come in there and find you faking it I'll fucking hurt you. I mean it."

  No response. Benson was motionless on the bed.

  Slowly, carefully, Sarah stepped into the room. She wished that she'd taken the meat cleaver from Thomas, or the knife Benson had been wielding, but the baton would suffice – she had at least been aware enough to bring it with her. She gripped its handle tightly, trusting the weapon to do its job and protect her.

  The floorboards creaked under her weight. It sounded like stifled laughter. Had those boards ever made that sound before, or was this all part of some weird joke?

  "Talk to me, Benson, or so help me I'll fucking kill you."

  Nothing. Not a sound from the bed.

  The boards stopped creaking.

  "Right, you cunt." She strode more purposefully now, taking long steps across the room and holding the baton like a sword. When she stood by the bed she could see that Benson wasn't faking it: he was out cold. But there was something odd about his appearance, a detail that seemed wrong somehow. She tried to focus but couldn't quite pinpoint what was wrong about the way he looked. He was still bound to the bed, and his breathing was shallow. His hands were behind his back and his legs were pulled up and attached to his wrists, preventing any range of movement other than to gain an inch or so of breathing space.

  He had turned onto his side, but that was the only change since she'd left him there.

  Or was it?

  No, there was something else; something fundamental that she really should be able to spot.

  Then she had it: Benson was bald. He'd never been bald in all the time she'd known him, but now his head was completely shorn of hair. Laughter boiled up inside her, threatening to spill out. But this was too weird, too scary, to be funny. In fact, it wasn't fucking funny at all.