And then everything shuts down. I’m in a dark room on my own, not able to see what’s happening around me. I know I’m speaking, and I hear someone replying to me. Is it her? My twin sister. My missing half.
I feel her here with me.
She’s come at last.
CHAPTER 37
THE GRAVEDIGGER
At night, he dreams of the moor. He conjures her death in his mind, a clean killing, so quick and so satisfying. But every morning he wakes up and remembers she is still alive and the deed is yet to be done. He hasn’t completed his task.
Rage drives him forward. His hatred for her that is so much a part of him, he doesn’t know who he would be without it.
Growing up, he made it his priority to torment her. Moving her things around, poisoning her food, insulting and disobeying her at every opportunity. There are few things more delicious than messing with someone’s head in that way. The look of confusion on her stupid face. The slow realisation that he was behind it all. He always made sure she could never prove it. But he knew he got to her.
The moment he knew for sure was that day on the moor. He must have been about twelve years old, forced to go on a walk with her. Standing close to the cliff face, he peered down over the steep drop, enjoying the thrill of the risk of falling, plummeting over the side. As he turned, he saw his stepmother close behind him, arms outstretched as though she was going to push him over the edge. To rid herself of her troubles and release herself from her tormentor once and for all.
The look on her face as he turned is something he’ll never forget. Fear, shock, guilt. Emotions he finds fascinating but has never experienced himself. And he knew from that moment that he owned her. Up there on the moor was where she showed her true self to him, her hatred and despair, her brutality.
When he was a teenager, he used to watch her without her knowing. Eyes through the banister at the top of the stairs, peering through bright windows from the cold darkness outside. Observing her movements and her most vulnerable moments. He liked to see her naked, rubbing lotion along her inner thighs. He always imagined what it would be like to see the life fade from her eyes.
And he was so close to finding out.
But he will have his chance.
A new plan is coming together, like pieces slotting into place, connecting in a way he never thought possible, yet somehow with even more satisfaction than he could have ever imagined. Nothing will stop him getting back what has been stolen from him. Nothing.
“Daddy?”
A small voice breaks through the silence of the dark bedroom.
“Yes?” he says as small hands pull at his duvet.
“I’m scared.”
“What are you scared of?” he asks.
“Monsters,” the child whispers.
“There are no monsters here,” the gravedigger replies, pulling the tiny body under the covers and wrapping his arms tightly around his child.
Soon he will have his satisfaction. Very soon.
CHAPTER 38
FAYE
“Hi, Mummy.”
I wake to a pair of dark eyes staring down at me in the bed.
“Are we feeling better?” he asks.
“Nathan,” I croak.
“Disappointed?” he asks.
I take in my surroundings. I’m in a hospital room, but I don’t seem to be hooked up to any machines. There’s a bruise on my arm where someone must have injected me with something but at least I haven’t woken up with an IV in my arm.
