Liarholic Page 4

  Too much death here.

  I lie back by her grave, turning my face up to feel the blue moonlight. Eyes shut, I hear the voices of the dead below me as they claw up the soil.

  I wanted to keep you. Your mummy loves you.

  I must’ve slept because it’s full dark and cold when I wake, the church empty. Even the dead have gone. I wipe saliva from the side of my mouth and get up off the ground.

  I walk, keeping out of the woods but circling the open fields. I need time to think. The wind is howling, and the moonshine makes the stone of the distant church as colourless as rain.

  I almost don’t see her, on the road up ahead of me. With her button nose and a soft lispy voice and twinkly eyes and soft kitteny hair. She’s as sweet and pale as a graveyard angel.

  I walk down towards her, take a hard drag of my smoke with a tune in my mind. My boot heels spin echoes across the soulless space, and I begin to sing low. The lyrics are pure, about love and sacrifice and good intent. But the tone in my voice makes the words dirty and hard.

  Amy’s dress looks so faded that for a second I’m not sure if she’s dead or alive. But when she turns to face me, I know she’s alive. For the pain is real and raw on her face.

  Amy Earhart with all her skin.

  Her face is delicate, sharp with grief. Her coral-sea eyes look into black, dead space. I’ve got this strange fucking urge to smooth a loose strand of hair behind her ear. I take control of my senses, leave my hand just where it is. Just where it fucking belongs.

  ‘What’re you doing out here, Amy? It’s late.’

  ‘My sister would take me into Devil’s Woods when I was small.’

  She sounds like a sleepwalker who you don’t want to wake.

  ‘There’s a secret in there,’ she says, still asleep, still sleep-talking to her ghost. ‘She used to whisper it to me.’

  Amy starts walking towards the tree line.

  ‘Wait. I’m not letting you go into the woods at night by yourself,’ I tell her.

  She scoffs at me. ‘I always do this alone and I’m still alive, aren’t I? You think I trust you to take me into the woods? You’re mad as a hatter.’

  ‘You think I care what you want? I’m coming with you. Anyhow, I’ve got my own reasons why I want to go.’

  ‘I really don’t have time for this. I need to get back so I can . . . ’ She holds a finger to her faded lips.

  ‘Check the front door?’

  She threads her dim fingers together. ‘No . . . ’

  ‘Oh, Amy, Amy, Amy. You try so hard to lie. You don’t hide it well, baby, and you’re not a very good liar. I’ve seen you checking the door. You do it again and again.’ I let out a short bark of laughter. ‘Then again. Like clockwork. Why’d you do that, Amy?’

  Her pupils go big, like I’ve caught her naked. Her hair tumbles all around her as she shakes her head. Her hair looks black in the night.

  ‘You lost the right to see inside my head a long time ago.’

  ‘Still won’t stop me,’ I say.

  I’ve still got this goddamn urge to hold Amy’s hand as we walk into the edge of the woods. I don’t. She hates me right down to my fucking soul. Hell, I’m not the kind of guy who does all that rainbows and unicorn shit. I search my pockets for my smokes, instead.

  I follow her silently into a small glade haunted by crows, lighting up a smoke. Beyond the glade is a river. I can see it through the trees. Amy runs towards it, and crouches by the side of the water.

  Then I hear it.

  The lullaby.

  Amy hums it softly, and it magics back happy memories of me and her. It wakes me from a coma. It’s like a light when the darkness is running up towards me.

  If you’re the mermaid, Amy, then I’m the damned Dark Prince lost at sea. Been deaf for a long time, your magic voice a pill in my ear.

  I wish I was a worm, or anything that can’t fucking hear her.

  Get it together, Shepherd.

  I can see that in places, behind fallen branches, the water is pooled and clotted with algae. The air is laced with midges. In the middle of the river there is a large rock under the surface. I pick up a stone, feels its weight in my hand and launch it against the rock. The loud bang comes out of left field, like a gunshot.

  ‘My sister said there’s a secret island under there. Don’t wake it.’

  I find another stone. I get set to throw it, then think better of it when Amy cuts daggers at me.

  ‘Elizabeth said you’ll see it once in a lifetime if you’re lucky.’

  ‘Have you seen it?’ I say.

  ‘Never.’ She sighs and looks up at the starless sky. ‘Just another lie told in the woods.’

  I clear my throat and start to feel the dead of the woods rustling in the undergrowth and winding up the tree trunks.

  Violet, my mum, she lived in a cottage close by. I feel its heavy weight on my shoulders.

  My home.

  I don’t mention my mother to Amy. Instead, I walk us farther up towards Angel’s Stone. Where my mother’s cottage is said to be.

  On the way, we discover a camp, in a thickly wooded area of the woods. At the centre is a caravan, bricks wedged behind its wheels. All around is equipment. A chipped Formica table stacked with pots and dishes and covered with plastic sheeting. A gas burner on a wooden workbench.

  I can see shelves of junk from the inside of the caravan. Something catches my eye. Shines bright like a star amongst all the dirt and soot. It’s a yellow yo-yo, between a lead soldier and the handle of a skipping rope. It looks out of place, and I suddenly feel like somebody just walked over my grave.

  The caravan door is propped open, and Bishop Clark appears through it.

  ‘Man cave, is it?’ I call out to him.

  ‘Every man needs a cave to get away from the wife,’ he laughs.

  When he glances at Amy, he frowns.

  She stands on one faint leg, dangling a little scuffed shoe, slap-slapping it up against her sole of her foot.

  She’s nervous to be seen with me, so I tell Bishop, ‘We better be off, Bishop.’

  ‘Right, sure. Maybe you can take a look at my car this weekend, if you’re free, that is?’

  ‘Yeah, will do.’

  I feel his eyes pinned to the back of my head as I lead Amy away.

  I know Amy’s angry I followed her into the woods. I bet she could kick herself, real bloody hard for being seen with me.

  I decide it’s not the right time to visit my mother’s cottage. I’m not ready.

  Fifteen minutes later, I stop in a dense part of the woods.

  Just say it, Shepherd. Just fucking say it.

  ‘I didn’t know when it happened. Your sister going into a coma. I didn’t hear about it until a year later.’

  Amy looks so small, like a little girl, like I could sweep her in my big arms like a feather. She looks like she’s gonna fall over. Her face is red blotches over blanched white and her eyes look like cracked green glass.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I never wanted your sympathy.’

  ‘Fuck sympathy. I can make you feel bliss, Amy. You don’t think I feel those green eyes fucking me, every time you look my way? What can I do to make you feel fucking amazing? Tell me and maybe I’ll give it to you.’

  She scowls across at me. ‘I’m not your friend anymore. Just so you know.’ She spins round to face me with poisonous eyes. ‘I mean it. I’m not talking to you about my sister. Never. Don’t you get it? I hate you.’

  I can’t ignore the fact that she’s straight-up sexy-as-hell in all that white goodness, and I start to second guess why I’m pussy-footing around this.

  I take her in. She’s beautiful like demolition. Just the thought of tasting her lips, draws my knuckles white.

  I never hated her. I hated her love. Now . . . I fucking love her hate.

  ‘Hate and lust are the same intensity of feelings in my books. And you didn’t answer my question. What can I do?’ I pin her with my smouldering gaze.
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br />   ‘I think you’re a lot more unstable than what they say,’ she says.

  ‘You know what I think, Amy? I think you finger yourself dreaming about coming over my face, is that right?’

  Her little bow lips pop into an O-shape. ‘I don’t want to be a part of your sick games. Nothing will ever happen between us. Not now. Not ever.’

  When I get close to Amy, too close — when I smell her, I savour the hit. Take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by fifty, and you’re still fucking miles off the pace.

  I look at the light on her hair, the moon watching us below. I’m close enough to see the pale hairs rise on her ear, the curve of her turning cheek, her freckled clavicle.

  I grip her chin between my thumb and forefinger and tug her face closer to mine.

  The woods is pin-drop silent. I’ve always preferred silence, it’s easier that way to block out the dark in my head, detach from the world. But the sound of her incomprehensible response to the slightest touch of my body drowns out everything else. The sound of her submission is the only thing I want to hear. I could easily give up my life for it. Spend every waking hour making her come, just so I could hear those sounds for eternity.

  ‘It's going to happen, Amylocks.’

  ‘Don't call me that.’

  ‘Amylocks,’ I whisper, my breath fanning across her mouth. She licks her lips and I groan. She struggles against my grip, but it doesn’t give her satisfactory results. I’m not bruising her. But I’m not letting her go either.

  ‘Don't.’

  ‘Don't what?’ I say.

  ‘Kiss me,’ she says, breathless.

  I smirk. Her eyes widen. Cheeks blush. She swallows air. ‘Don't kiss me. Shepherd, I mean it. Don't kiss me.’

  I’m looking at her in a predatory way.

  The whole universe could cease to exist in the now and I wouldn’t fucking notice — her fuckable lips got all my attention.

  ‘I’m unstable, remember?’

  ‘I hate you,’ she grits out.

  ‘Yeah? Well, your wet pussy loves me,’ I rasp huskily.

  Like a spider on a fly, I grab her wrist and jerk it down to her side. Then she’s trapped. No games. No subterfuge. I go straight for the jugular.

  It’s so easy.

  Here’s my mouth on hers. One touch to unlock her and now I’m kissing her.

  I wrap my large hands around her tight tiny body. The same hands that are only used for violence, destruction. It’s been a long time, way too long, since they’ve wrapped around something soft, something meaningful, something good and sweet.

  I groan against her lips, slide my tongue inside. Her mouth tastes like lemon drops, and it explodes over my tongue. With just a small taste, I know it’ll take a hundred days of fucking her before I get enough.

  It’s so easy.

  My hand presses strongly into the small of her back. If her legs give way, I’ve got her. I swirl my tongue a little firmer around hers, until she pulls away just a little.

  It’s so damn easy.

  A groan and a word and I’m walking her up against the large bark of a willow tree. I bring my hands to rest on either side of her head, caging her. I’m not just breathing hard. I’m panting against her neck.

  I push my hand up her dress with my eyes half-closed and unseeing. I move against her. Amy’s up against the tree, my lips are on her neck, I’m opening buttons, calling her ‘Baby, ah baby’, with my voice hard and low.

  Kissing Amy is the only truth in my whole fake fucking life.

  It’s so fucking easy.

  Lustiny dragged us here in this single, electric moment.

  The second I got back to town, last week, Amy’s been like a broken musical box. A princess trapped in a casket.

  One, two, three, four, five . . . the lyrics to the hell inside her OCD head.

  Not alive, not dead. In chains.

  But she’s the girl on fire when I kiss her. Just needs a little winding, a little fixing. Just one touch, and she’s playing my tune.

  I know it’s wrong, so fucking wrong, but I’m a tidal wave. Have been since I got back and took one glance at her pretty little features. Five fucking years I’ve waited to do this. The chemistry between us is off the charts, always has been, and I can’t control these urges any longer.

  I spring my belt buckle open with my hand.

  The smell of her isn’t lemons or sunshine. It isn’t anything, not even skin.

  How she smells is wet.

  Her seahorse pendant dangles between her sweet petite tits, and I push her against the tree bark. I don’t bother to take off her dress.

  I roll protection on, fast, then I take her there. Against the tree. Tear at that dress constricting her. Clutching, clawing, my mouth on hers, ravaging. Trying to consume all of her. The haunting ghosts in her eyes. The flesh of her throat and breasts, her her her. Devour her. To take her into me and keep her there.

  I bring her back from the half-life — the gasping, pleasurable sounds of her breathing is proof of that. Pull her soul raw, and carry my white hot seed inside of her until I think it's going to consume me. To make it happen, I tear at my world, pollute and bring havoc to my soul.

  Her body shakes like a volcano is erupting beneath us. I can feel the tremors destroy every inch of her soul.

  Want her to remember this forever, so that every fuck will always be this one.

  When it's done, I'm cock-deep between her thighs, and fat, hot tears tumble out the corners of her eyes faster than I can catch them. Her eyes aren't full of ghosts anymore and I'm finally the monster they always said I was.

  ‘Sorry, baby,’ I say.

  I'm not sorry I did it. I'm sorry I didn't do it sooner. That I didn't do it when we were teenagers. Didn't do it in the children’s home, when she smelled of the sweet taint of puberty and innocence. Should have fucked her then, fed her to the monsters that haunt her, exorcised whatever hold she has on me now.

  Only when I get close, so close I can smell her, do I see the life in her eyes. It's brutal. Her body might be fresh and young, but her eyes are full of old ghosts — mine, hers, every ghost, every betrayal. Like a shine job on the soul. She can see me, the way no one else ever has. She can see into me. And it's like some part of me has gone missing and she has it. Whatever part of me she has, though, she’s mine now.

  Holding her dress up to cover her naked tits, she hesitates. Doesn’t make eye contact.

  ‘This — this was a mistake,’ she says, voice rattling. ‘I-I think we should stay away from each other. It’s all wrong. So wrong. This can’t — no it won’t happen again.’

  She turns to run away from me, but I catch her from behind and pin her arms to her side. My chest to her back, I snarl into her ear, ‘I’m not done with you. Nobody's ever gonna touch you again when I'm done fucking you.’

  With a twist of her shoulder, she slips out of my grasp and spins round to slap me hard across the face.

  It nearly triggers me. Again.

  Amy is breathless and panting. I take in her passion-glazed eyes, her red, swollen lips and pink cheeks. She’s so fucking beautiful and I am in deep shit.

  ‘You’re a monster,’ she hisses, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

  Amy sees. Eyes wide open.

  Truth is, I am a monster.

  This is the world I live in. Relying on people’s mistakes to manipulate them and use them. It’s all I’ve ever known.

  ‘You were begging me to fuck you, Amy. So what does that make you if I’m the monster? My heroine?’

  I watch her tidy up her little brain hair with angry jarring movements. Her cheeks are like pink bubblegum. When she looks at me, I see soul-crushing hurt in her eyes.

  ‘Maybe for a moment I wanted the pain gone,’ she whispers.

  Bitterness. I hate that feeling of bitterness that wormed its way into my heart and festered away like so many maggots, consuming the dead flesh, leaving the tiny bit of good raw and painful. I tried to fight it, but not
hing ever worked.

  One girl and . . . boom.

  ‘Is that why you came back? To make sure no other man touches me?’ she says. ‘Is that why you sacked my therapist? Because he was a man?’

  I laugh, a short bark. I know I’ve got a depraved look on my face. ‘You're in a mood, aren't you?’

  Amy’s cold, as cold as ice, except for her eyes. Looking into her eyes makes me hard the way nothing else can. I'm someone she looked up to. Ain't that a trip? I was a guy she admired when she was a kid, and now I'm trying to take her apart from the inside out.

  That's the part of what turns me on about it. Maybe that's why she has ghosts in her eyes — that's what she sees every time she looks at me. Her hero trying to undo her. Or maybe she's just showing me myself. I'm all dark now. Everything I do brings darkness.

  I left prison a different person. What about her? Has she changed from the sweet-like-chocolate girl I fell in love with? Did I do that to her?

  I look away, try to forget what her eyes look like. Her and her ghosts.

  ‘Are you happy? Seeing me like this? Did you get what you wanted? Or would you prefer to record this on your phone so the whole town knows and you can publicly humiliate me again? Spray it on the walls.’

  If that's her new resistance, that kind of provoking shit, that’s good all by itself, makes me run hot.

  Her face crumbles like a paper flower.

  She’s made from Angels. I’m made from the Devil.

  ‘What’s the real reason you came back? To teach me to hate you, again? Could you not stand knowing I wanted nothing to do with you?’

  Anger rolls off me like a poisonous cloud. ‘I told you, I'm not done with you,’ I growl. Something else new grabs at my guts and that’s one new thing too many. ‘You think I'm trying to teach you how to hate me?’

  ‘Am I supposed to learn anything else watching you destroy my life again?’

  Something cuts deep in my chest, throws me into a smog pit, gives me pause.

  ‘Please, find some other place to live. Just stay away from me,’ she says. ‘I have enough going on in my life right now and I don’t need you to complicate it some more.’

  I feel Amy’s pain from the darkest place I’ve ever gone.

  My eyes meet the cold green eyes of the girl who’s my Achilles’ heel.