Liarholic Page 5

  She looks torn apart, barely put together. Her mind, heart and soul, all gone, lost in the shadows. And there I am, standing in the darkest corner in her mind. She’s mine now. She knows this.

  She can run, all she likes. Nothing’s gonna stop me from chasing her.

  ‘Okay,’ I tell her.

  But I don’t mean forever.

  I’ll come for her again. Again. Again. Again.

  I’m not her knight in shining armour. I’m the thorn in her fucking side.

  Amy turns and I let her run away. I don’t want to let her go. I want her to keep looking at me so bad. Want to eat her up and get my soul back.

  She is heroine.

  Take a hit and the lies seem to just die, the truth spills out of my veins like blood.

  When I kissed Amy, when I tasted her, my dry, cracking bones were cured by her touch. The earth moved, and it’s still fucking moving.

  Feels like I just unlocked something buried long ago, deep inside my stinking, rotten heart.

  6

  YOU

  I HID FROM THE DEVIL.

  But for all my hiding, the Devil still found me. And I just let him hold my hand and take me down with him.

  I run out of Devil’s Woods, panting so hard I think my lungs are going to cave in. The rain falls, teardrops on earth. Dark and black like loss.

  Fireworks crack and hiss across the sky, heralding midnight and the new year. They light me up in pink, purple and blue flashes. The smell of them sour in the cold, damp air. I tense with each screaming whizz and brace for the gunshots of dynamite, the shocks of light.

  When I reach Swan Lake, I notice the light is on in my room, the curtains half-closed.

  I count the sixteen panes, eight on each door. Little yellow rectangles, with neat edges. No extra bits of light show through. No one has touched the curtains while I’ve been away. I repeat this over and over again as I push myself forward. My room is safe, nobody is in there.

  Shepherd isn’t waiting for me behind closed doors.

  I look back, just once, while turning the key to open the front door, making sure he isn’t there.

  My feet smack on the tiles in the foyer, my breathing bounces off the high ceiling. I wonder sometimes if this gothic estate is haunted. Many souls must have died here. It was built when people perished of TB if they weren’t sent to the seaside to rest. The windows all along one side face the Black Cliffs. Most of the building is abandoned, used to store broken equipment and old chairs. Empty and hollow.

  The door locks behind me. I feel around the edges of the door. Checking it’s flush against the doorframe. I’m careful not to miss any bump which might indicate the door isn’t properly shut. I check it six times, counting each time. One, two, three, four, five, six. I turn the doorknob, six times.

  Right on cue, Rebecca opens the door to the main living room.

  ‘Amy. It’s very late, honey. You okay?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ I say, giving her my best smile. ‘I’ll go to bed now.’

  ‘Amy, the door is fine, okay?’

  She nods and regards me for a moment. Her head tilts to the side, looking at the sad, pathetic girl that I’ve become.

  ‘Just one more time, please.’

  She sighs, then goes back into the living room. I know the staff think I’m away with the fairies. Now I can no longer testify my case because I just lost my marbles in the woods.

  I go back to the checking, starting again from scratch. I’m alright as long as I don’t get stuck, like a faulty clock. Sometimes I do.

  So, the doorframe, the doorknob . . . do it properly, Amy. Don’t mess it up. Get this done before he comes back.

  At last I finish checking the front door. Then up the stairs. Check to the top of the staircase. Listen to the stillness in the estate, the television on in the living room downstairs. More fireworks, going off a long way away.

  I unlock my door, look behind me at the staircase again.

  He isn’t here.

  Go.

  Then I take one step inside, shut the door, lock it. Listen at the door. Nothing at all from the other side. Look through the peephole. Nobody there. Just the stairs, the landing, the light overhead.

  I run my fingers around the doorframe, turn the door handle six times one way, six times the other way. One, two, three, four, five, six. The lock holds the door shut. I turn the lock six times.

  It’s not over.

  It’s not enough.

  Never is.

  I check all the windows, close the curtains, and go round the room in the same order. First the front window. All the locks secure. I run my fingers around the window-frame. Then I can close the curtains against the darkness outside. I check the edges of the curtains in case I can see part of the window. Then I move over to the balcony and the double doors.

  I check the lock, feel all the way around the edge, turn the handle six times. The lock holds true, the handle rattles loosely. Then I close the heavy-lined curtains against the blackness.

  Then the bathroom. The window is high up and frosted. It doesn’t open, but regardless, I stand on the toilet lid and check the edges. Through to my bedroom. Big windows in here which look out onto the back garden. The curtains are closed already.

  The room is in darkness. I pluck up my courage and open the curtains, checking the wide sash windows. I check each one, turning and re-turning the keys six times.

  Then I close the curtains, pulling them right across on each side so that there isn’t a fragment of dark window showing. Then I turn on the nightlight. For a moment I sit on the edge of the bed. I breathe deep so I don’t die from the rising panic.

  The bedside clock reads 12.27 AM. I want to go and watch television. But the dark whispers eat away inside my jumbled mind.

  I’ve checked everything. There’s no need to worry. The room is safe, I’m safe.

  Shepherd Lawson is just my imagination running wild. He’s not back in Greystone. He’s not the new owner of Swan Lake. He’s not living upstairs, the room above mine. I didn’t sleep with him in the woods.

  I stop breathing.

  I’m afraid I will drop and break. Because I’m guilty of every sin. Because my heart is pounding like the tick of a bomb. My body is trembling like an earthquake. And my soul is burning on fire.

  Something sad, but beautiful, swarms inside me.

  Bad whispers in my head.

  Those fingers that dragged over my skin . . . so hot they felt like they left abrasions.

  His hard, muscled body felt like Holy Water and my body worshiped his like a born again believer.

  I know it’s wrong. But the very thought of his hands reaching up my dress, again, and touching me, again, makes me blush in all the wrong places.

  Will he reach inside and uncover my secret?

  My tongue feels severed. I get up from my bed and drink a glass of water. Then I go to the door. I start my checks all over again.

  This can’t continue. It’s been three years.

  It has to stop. Make it stop.

  This time, I go through the whole process of checking the door twelve times, and only then, can I move on to the front window.

  I wipe my eyes, wet and mute. I don’t want to cry. But without my tears, my heart would die.

  THE PANIC ATTACK HITS me just before five in the morning.

  I didn’t get sleep. It was punishment. A kind of torture. Because while the world slept, I was up alone, my mind buzzing with every painful random thought of what was. And then it just went blank. And it was during this moment I became aware of the silence, and realised how alone I am.

  I lost control.

  Shepherd.

  Devil’s Woods.

  His body pressed against mine.

  The electricity scorching through my veins.

  What is wrong with me?

  How could I sleep with the man who left a thousand stinging thorns in my heart?

  I can’t lose control again, I tell myself. I was upset ab
out Elizabeth, and the dark secrets of my family. Shepherd took the pain away for a fleeting moment. That is all it was. It won’t happen again. It was a mistake.

  The room feels violated just as I do, even though it happened outside in the woods. I can sense his shadow everywhere.

  It’s his smell. Smells hold memories. I need to do something. Something to cure this never-ending ache in the pit of my chest.

  I get up and start checking.

  The first set of checks don’t kill the whispering creatures slithering inside my head. I realise it’s because I’m still contaminated by him.

  I go into the shower and scrub my body. I want to peel away all of my skin and find a different me underneath. My skin is red raw by the time I’m finished.

  I brush my teeth until my gums bleed, gargle with mouthwash, dress in a pair of clean white jogging pants and a sweatshirt.

  After that, I check the room again. It’s no good. Half an hour later, when I’m still standing on the toilet seat, checking the bathroom window which doesn’t even open anyway, I realise I still feel wrong. It’s the tears, running down my cheeks, contaminating my hot skin.

  I strip off again. Back into the shower. For a full thirty minutes I lean against the tiled wall, the water flowing over my skin. It stings from the last time I scrubbed it. I try to make myself believe that it means I’m clean.

  There’s nothing left, I tell myself. He is gone. There’s no trace of him left. He’s not here. He is not back in my life. The woods was just a cruel nightmare.

  Still not clean, I retrieve my nailbrush and the antibacterial soap and start scrubbing again. This time, the water is running pink down the drain. It reminds me of pink lemonade.

  I sit on the edge of the bath, wrapped in another clean towel. I’m almost too wrecked to start again. But I must — or die.

  When at last I’ve finished the whole thing, again, still wrapped in the towel, I put on a clean white top and a pair of faded yellow leggings from the airing cupboard. This is a bad one. I’m stuck. The urge to start again, do it properly, just once more, to be certain, to be absolutely sure that I’m safe, is overwhelming.

  I’m cold. Trembling like an autumn leaf. And the feel of the clothes on my skin is scratchy and irritating, not tranquilizing.

  I do the only thing I can do. Go back to the door and start again.

  By half-past seven, I’m so ruined I physically can’t do any more. I hold off the panic a while longer by making myself a hot drink in the kitchen downstairs — I made sure Shepherd wasn’t in there. I go back up to my room, sit shivering on the couch, cradle my mug of tea.

  I find myself watching a video online on my laptop with dry eyes, my skin all over my body tight and sore.

  When the shivering subsides, the tiredness overtakes me. I curl into the corner of the sofa like a cat, listening out for any noises above my room. The shaking is worse now, my skin like gooseflesh from my scalp to my feet.

  Did I really have sex with Shepherd?

  All I can see is him. His whole weight on top of me, pinning me down like a butterfly trapped. The smell of him. The feel of him. It was like being woken from a coma. And after years and years of living a ghost life I finally felt . . . spirited away.

  I felt alive.

  It faded when I left him in the woods. Just like I faded when he left me behind in the small town of Greystone.

  I hate these feelings growing inside me. Hate myself for feeling this way. I hate that I’m attracted to an arrogant manipulative sadist. I hate what that says about me.

  The sun is shining when I escape the trembling and the tears. I thought I would burst. I feel shattered, like broken glass. I look at my bedroom door. I’m too afraid to sleep. The nightmares are waiting for me on the other side.

  I force myself to stand up and stretch. The urge to go and start checking the room is overpowering, but I feel like I’m buried under sand. I can barely move.

  The garden under my bedroom window is bare and grey, the grass the only splash of colour. Brown decaying leaves litter the corners of the garden wall. The howling wind blows the top branches, roars away in the stillness, my eyes back to feeling dry and sore as if they’ll never be able to cry again. It looks so cold outside. I yawn.

  I lie down on my bed, watch the branches sway, dance, the grey clouds behind them an ominous warning, repeating a mantra in my head a thousand times.

  Stay away from Shepherd Lawson. Keep your heart locked, forever.

  7

  YOU

  I’M HAPPY WHEN the other girls return. Their noise and drama distract me.

  Annabeth’s bed is sunken in the middle from the weight of designer-shop bags. She’s showing us the Christmas presents her parents bought her. Lilac is sifting through the bags with the tips of her fingers, looking superior because her family know better than to buy her clothes. She has an eating disorder like some of the other girls, here.

  Scarlett is pretending to be disinterested in the bags, but really she’s as shocked as me by how much stuff Annabeth has. She’s always on the lookout for what the other girls get, especially clothes or make-up. She’d like to be one of their gang, but they don’t want her, so she’s stuck with me.

  I put up with Scarlett as she pops sugar-free pink bubbles and reads about celebrities and the latest sex scandals. She’s not as dumb as she makes out, though. She is intelligent, but she stuffs her head with what nail polish doesn’t chip, what spray tan will make her legs look slimmest. Scarlett self-harms, suffers from clinical depression.

  What’s best about Scarlett, is she doesn’t pry into my private life. She always listens, never judges. That’s what she’s like. Angel perfume and waxed legs and hugs and not too many questions. It’s why we get on. We let each other be.

  Also in the room is Daisy, but you could forget she’s here. She’s sitting in the corner, and she’s made herself small. She never speaks, just sits there nibbling her fingertips. I daren’t ask how her Christmas was, but she should never have gone home. She didn’t want to leave, she told us in therapy group, but her uncle insisted and she can’t say no to him.

  Daisy is twenty-five years old and fell pregnant with Max when she was sixteen. Max’s father died from a drug overdose. Max was only six. Sadly, it was Max who discovered his dad’s body.

  Daisy is like a girl a toddler would draw. Fuzzy red hair, sticks for limbs. She’s an inch smaller than my five-foot-three body. I hope Daisy isn’t using cocaine, again. Max is only nine. I want to take him by the hand and save him. Save my friend Daisy, too.

  Unable to stop herself, Scarlett reaches forward and lifts a lace red vest from one of Annabeth’s bags. Her fingers run over the silk and she admires it.

  Lilac is a blue-blood anorexic, a pedigree. Mummy and Grandmummy taught her all they know. They’re proud of her, though they wouldn’t say so directly, of course. They visit every fortnight, three wasted women in designer clothes, sculpted from the same source, with dark hair cut pixie-short to show their cheekbones. Her mother was an actress, and Lilac used to model for catalogues before she got too skinny. Their Christmas present to her was a silver-plated handheld mirror. They understand that, though, and that’s what makes the gift special.

  Like my father’s camera . . .

  My own family are only with me when I can’t control it, like in nightmares, or in the Black Magic box.

  How I love my broken, damaged sister.

  I look at Daisy, quiet in the room. Dark circles under her blue eyes and a sunken face, she is too thin. I worry she’s becoming anorexic. She told me she pulls hair from her legs and arms. It feels like a release, she said, the plop of the hair coming out. To me, it sounds like pain she’s inflicting on herself. Just like the pain I feel from my obsessive checks. Pain we’re punishing ourselves with.

  Lilac’s face is as red as a summer rose when she squeals, ‘Oh my fucking god, bitches. Have you seen the new owner of Swan Lake?’

  I nod, trying hard not to look like a Cabbag
e patch doll from the memory of him.

  I quickly direct my attention towards Cheshire, the resident ginger cat, who’s sleeping on the windowsill. I go over to him and stroke his fur. About two years ago, Cheshire wandered into Swan Lake and he’s never left.

  ‘He’s so fucking sexy but like in a gothic, vampire kinda way, don’t you agree?’ Lilac says, in a little whisper of awe. ‘Mr Sexpire, upstairs. Instead of biting you on the neck to morph you into a vampire, he fucks you with his big cock and turns you into a filthy sex addict.’ She makes a dreamy ‘mmmm’ noise. ‘I really hope he’s not assigned as my new therapist. The whole doctor-patient issue might ruin the buzz — or would it make it hotter? You know, forbidden lust between me and the sexy doc. So controversial.’

  They all giggle loudly together, while I just sit and smile nervously.

  I never call him things like that. Never speak about him at all. I never whisper a word to my friends. I keep them in the dark, make sure they never hear about my past with Shepherd. A time before my life was turned upside down, like a snow-globe shaken to chaos.

  For a moment I can only remember the feeling of being kissed. How delicious he tasted, like spun sugar. How strong and safe he felt.

  Then I remember the context of it all and I feel sick.

  8

  YOU

  CONTROVERSIAL ARRIVES the next morning, while I’m lying on my bed studying the ceiling for new stains. It doesn’t knock, it just opens the door and walks in. My bedroom is small, cell-like, and the man fills it with the smell of worn leather and pipe-tobacco.

  It’s Shepherd. And apparently, my new therapist.

  He isn’t nice. He’s a sadist.

  Just don’t look under the bed . . .

  He’s wearing his leather jacket with old-school jeans, and his stubble is pure. His face is wind-beaten, he probably treats his skin like he treats his clothes, and the smoking can’t help. He still looks incredible. Darkly gorgeous.

  Shepherd pulls out the old wicker chair from under my desk, and sits on it, his bottom filling the seat, his large veiny hands in his lap.