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

pawing of the cross ceased. ‘The woman or the girl, one or the other. Push her, my love, and look upon your beloved daughter again.’ Renata’s mangled eye gleamed in the candlelight. ‘Choose.’

The bell awoke, shaking the room as it bellowed into the night. Renata peered through the wire mesh above as a streak of lightning lit the stirring mechanism, century-old gears grinding into life to mark the terrible hour. She looked back to find Rye flying towards her, hands outstretched, his roar vying to be heard over the bell.

His fist slammed into her face. They tumbled to the ground and rolled through a pile of rubble, limbs lashing. Her nails slashed across his cheek. He wrestled on top of her and battered her against the stone floor as more lightning crashed, illuminating her deranged grin like a carved pumpkin. Milk bottle chews sprayed from Rye’s blazer pocket like confetti as black wept from the crater of Renata’s eye socket. She cackled along wildly with the iron cacophony.

The bell ceased.

‘Tell her I love her.’

Renata and Rye both froze at the sudden, softly spoken words, before turning round to the source of the voice. Their eyes fell upon Eleanor just as she stepped out of the narrow window into the storm.

Rye leapt to his feet and scrambled to the opening. Hands anchored on either side of the lancet window, he leaned out into the gale and stared down. Through the swirling rain he saw the blanket below dancing upon the lifeless shape of Eleanor. He turned to the crouched figure in the darkness, blood trickling from his slashed cheek. ‘You’re…a monster.’

‘Yes,’ she hissed, ‘your monster; and you, my Victor. Like him, you wanted the work to end all works, except you wanted to see the breakdown of a human being, all so you could take notes while you watched me like a specimen in a petri dish. You drove me to hell, you killed my MOTHER, all for a BOOK.’ She paused, massaging the sides of her head as she caught her breath. ‘Well, this is your result. Here I am, my love.’ Her lips peeled into a sneer. ‘Tell me you see.’

The candles began to die. Even in the fading glow she saw his spark extinguish as he dropped to the floor, head in hands. Renata stepped from the shadows. ‘Your wife was of faith, was she not?’ She picked at the toggles of her duffle coat. ‘Know that her final moments were filled with the knowledge of eternal damnation. That, and never seeing the girl again.’

‘What do you want from me?’

‘Midnight, my love,’ she said, slipping her fingers back into the leather gloves. She tore out a loose strand of hair, then locked eyes with him. ‘Always midnight. Once I’ve left, remove your wife from the grass below. Lay her to rest in this tower. Then, tomorrow, come to the house. Enter when you hear the midnight bell. No earlier, no later. Do this and I swear you’ll look into your daughter’s eyes again.’

Renata disappeared down the stone staircase as the final candle died, dropping Rye into darkness.

34

Knives.

Everywhere, knives.

Knives all through her life, carving every last scrap of humanity from her until all that was left was this: an accursed wraith, desolate and obsessed.

Vengeful.

The culmination of her efforts, the climax of her revenge, is finally within reach. Renata Wakefield will descend to the basement one last time, where this endgame will draw to a close. But before her final descent, before her return to the stage on which their concluding scene will play out, she’ll stand before the painting. How she’d love to set light to that canvas and watch the waves turn to fire, but she resists. The book is all that matters.

She gazes up at the flood, listening to the silence the storm has left in its wake. Content in the knowledge retribution is ready to be served, she feels the stillness and serenity of the house around her, its walls finally at peace. Harmony is restored.

She sees now that everything comes back to the ocean of darkness above, and to the town of an even deeper dark below. It comes back to the vanquished mist and the storm now spent, to the fallacy of fact and the fickleness of fiction. It comes back to love, hate, light, and shade; to violence and insanity, the alpha and the omega; to the dusk and the dawn, to the truth – and to you.

It all comes back to you.

Even as I write these final pages, I feel you. I imagine the whisperings of the wind are yours as you lurk in the shadows, awaiting the midnight bell.

Everything comes back to you.

My dearest Quentin, I can write no more. Thank you for giving me reason to exist, but that reason has now run its course. This account of our time together, these thirty-four chapters penned by my own ruined hands, finally draw to a close, and so I address you directly, for you deserve nothing less than the truth.

As you can see, I’ve taken your advice, my love. I’ve written a horror. Committed to these very pages, written in a cellar to the screams of your child, are terrors beyond anything you could have conceived, for they concern that which you love most: your precious wife and daughter. You pulled me back from the brink, made me believe love had finally found me, only to snatch it away. You forced upon me memories that should have stayed buried, parts of myself that belonged only in the past.

You got your tale, and here it is. This story, our story, is horror born in truth. Just like you always wanted.

This book, finally in your hands, documents the details of your deceit and, more importantly, my reply. It chronicles the seeds of my aberration through childhood, my