For Rye Gavin Gardiner (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📖

walls of the pit and screamed into the merciless sky as razors tore through her brain, and with it the memory of that night.

She felt.

She remembered.

The pain subsided.

She fell back, her mud-coated gown ripping as she landed. The creature’s legs snapped like twigs under her weight. She stared into the black. It was no longer a dream, nor a fantasy engineered by some psychopath to push her over the edge. It was as real as the smell of death in this abyss, the grave of the brother she’d butchered.

It flooded back, the memories of that ruinous night unfolding like time-lapsed flowers in bloom: the blood splattered yellow raincoat; collapsing next to Noah’s body under the car’s tail lights; looking up at her weeping father; then, finally, the white walls of the institution, where her lips had formed those same words over and over, year after year.

Horror Highway, Horror Highway, Horror Highway…

And now he’d won. He’d compelled her into unbarring the gates of her psyche, then let the truth do its work. He’d get the inspiration for his story, and be loved for it.

The doors were unlocked, the floodgates opened. In this pit of death, huddled with the monstrous remains of her baby brother, the truth finally found her.

20

A stinging chill hit Renata as she stepped into the house, out of the storm still tearing across the dawn sky. Onto her tattered gown she wiped the blood and scum from her ruined hands, then smeared her hair back. Not a strand out of place. She went to the lounge.

The atmosphere was heavy. Tension pulled the room tight, a narrowing vacuum. Thomas still sat in his armchair, embers glowing faintly in the lifeless grate before him. Had that abhorrent collage of smells subsided, or were her senses just numbed? The brown paste had completed its journey down her father’s leg, and was now sunk into the carpet by his feet – but that was irrelevant; inconsequential, just like every other detail. She could do without smell, without sight, or touch, or taste, or any of it. All that mattered were the memories, now so clear, so true.

She went to him.

A quilt lay over the old man’s lap. His hollowed cheeks puffed clouds to the sound of teeth chattering in time with his tapping finger. She pulled Noah’s spade from under her dripping coat.

‘Come to finish your dirty work?’ he said.

Renata stared at him, her hand tightening around the handle. He cocked his head then pulled off the quilt. The pulverised dog lay draped over his lap. He ran a shivering hand over its tangled coat, cranial matter gathering between his fingers as they jittered through Samson’s caved-in skull.

‘You going to put down your own father, like a dog?’ The steel trembled in her hand. ‘That your plan, whore? We both know you have it in you.’

Her glare tore into his unseeing eyes. She raised the spade. He swept the smashed hound from his lap then clenched the arms of the chair, his ragged nails digging into frayed fabric.

‘DO IT.’

The spade remained poised above her once again. A burst of lightning flashed across her pale blue gown. Her body tightened, face trembling with manic intensity. The pattering of rain punctuated the silence. The scene froze.

She laid it on his lap.

His eyebrows twitched. Bony hands groped the object. Blank eyes swam in their sockets like fish in their bowls. He ran his fingers over the handle, then the head, then its inscription. His tremors quickened.

‘Beast,’ he breathed. ‘In the girl the beast lives.’

She knelt at his feet. ‘You knew where he was,’ she said.

‘He was taken from us,’ spat Thomas, ‘by you.’

‘You did much to protect me, Father,’ Renata said, rubbing her wrist. ‘What I did…you kept it quiet, sent me away. But it was too little too late. By then you’d already made me what I am.’ She took his hand. ‘The truth is, you were only ever protecting yourself. You turned your only daughter into a monster, and in doing so, you killed your son.’

He wrenched her close. ‘My only mistake,’ he said, ‘was holding back on your beatings. My Noah was more than you could ever have been. More than your heathen mother, too.’ Her grip on his hand tightened. ‘Yes,’ he sneered, ‘he was so much more than that battered, bruised harlot.’ His hollow eyes penetrated her flesh. His leathered lips smiled. ‘She got what she deserved. I told you, this family is forsaken. The fire that claimed her is coming for you, too. For the Wakefields, flames are reserved. Forsaken is our blood…as were the years your mother suffered at my hands once you were gone. Believe me, child, when I say the wench lived her final years precisely as you knew her…’ He yanked her into his rotting breath. ‘…bruised and battered.’

Her eyes narrowed.

‘Tell me you see, child.’

She pounced.

Renata’s torn hands clamped around the old man’s throat, constricting with the strength of a boa’s death grip. The skin of his neck was loose, seemingly disconnected from the withered muscles beneath. His hands flew to her wrists, tightening so feebly she could barely discern whether they clawed in protest or merely held on through the inevitable.

The man wheezed his last, agonised words.

‘And the…great drah-drah…’

His ragged fingernail began tapping and scraping an elaborate sequence against her wrist as her fingers interlocked around the yellowed clerical collar. He choked his final sermon in agonal fits as she crushed his neck.

‘…drah-dragon was…thrown down…that ancient serpent, who is…is…’ His blind eyes rolled back in their sockets. ‘…called the Devil and…and Satan…’

She shook his limp body by the throat, his head flopping idly. ‘You did this!’ she yelled. ‘You brought this on us!’

‘…the…the deceiver of…the…world…’

Blood coughed onto her cheek. The vice of her grip tightened.

‘…and he…Say-Say-Satan…’