Page 45 of The Spiral

“Your skin, your curves. Look at you. Still so beautiful.” I reach for the coat near me, desperate to see the auburn fur mingle further into her hair and prove all this is real.

“See, that. What does that mean? Do I look like her? Is that it? Who is she?” she says, lips quivering as I take a step closer and offer the coat to her. “Why do I need that?” I frown at her questions and walk away again, shaking my head and opening the door my dead wife slammed. Dead. She’s dead. A ghost. And Lenon is, too. Dead. Both dead. “Jack, where?”

I scowl at the hall as I walk out into it, glaring at the hacked up door as it comes into sight. Dead. All dead. And their innocent mutilated bodies come into my mind as I keep going. Bloody, open wounds seeping out onto carpet. Eyes lifeless and rigid rather than holding the vibrancy Madeline’s now show me. Bile sticks in my throat at the thoughts, making me grab onto the wall for support as I edge along the hall and bypass the room of dogs.

“What’s in that room, Jack? You haven’t answered me,” she says, her feet scuttling behind me as she catches up. “Jack, please. I need to understand this. I need clarity of some sort. Why do I feel this thing inside me?” I shake my head again, lifting my heavy feet and taking the stairs downwards the moment they come into view. “Jack, Christ, come on. Look at me. Why am I wearing this? Tell me, please.”

“NOT UNTIL I’M FUCKING READY,” I bellow, infuriated with the questions when I have no answers to give.

She gasps behind me, something crashing to the ground at the same moment. I don’t care. I don’t care about anything but getting away from this damn spiral and the dogs in that room. Nothing makes sense. It’s all confused, and I can’t see anything clearly anymore. The only thing I can see is their mutilated bodies.

Where’s my Selma gone?

“Selma?” She doesn’t answer as I turn onto the ground floor, eyes searching the corridor for a glimpse of her. I need her here now. I need her voice and some direction, not these unending questions that have no meaning unless she’s here. “Please, Selma.”

“Jack?”

“Selma? Where are you?”

“Jack?”

Was that Madeline or Selma?

I turn back to look for Madeline and find nothing but the spiral looking down at me, so I spin again and head for the door. Perhaps she’s outside in that darkness and fog she likes so much.

The sun blinds me as I head out into it, confusing me as I search the tree line for something to clarify all this. Madeline’s right. We both need clarification. I need it. I need Selma here to mingle with Madeline again. The two of them as one. I need that.

“Selma. Come here, now.” Nothing happens other than a light breeze blowing the top of the old redwoods.“Fuck you,” I snarl out, as I walk out down the steps and onto the gravel. “You started this, you bitch. Get here and finish it.” Silence.

I snarl at the lack of an answer, wanting nothing more than her hissing, or the low hum of fog as it creeps the ground to get to me. My fingers roll her ring in my pocket as I think. It was so easy to pick it up after I’d been inside Madeline, like she’s a part of its platinum somehow. Maybe I should put it on her finger, wake the bitch back up like that. “Stop playing with me, baby. You know how dirty I can get when you piss me off.”

“Jack? Is this her?” I swing my head back to the door and find Madeline hovering there, a piece of paper in her hand as she gazes at me. My eyes narrow at the sight, immediately recognizing the old newspaper clipping. “This is her, isn’t it?” Fury rises inside me as I remember looking at that crumpled piece of paper. Weeks went past while I did nothing but decay in this house, holding onto that scrap of an obituary. “She looks like me.”

“Where did you get that?” I snap, my feet turning back to her. Her eyes widen as I storm over and snatch it from her hand.

“It was in the table. I knocked into it and it fell out. I’m sorry, but if you would just answer my questions maybe we could…”

I can’t answer. I’m not ready to answer.

I’m walking away before she has chance to say another word, crunching the ground beneath me to get me to the woods. I’ll go and see the treehouse. She talked about that earlier. A walk in the woods, she said. I can sit there for a while, see if this bitch dares to turn up again and give me some answers to use.

“Jack? Jack?”

I hurry on faster. Away. I need to get away from all this, as does she. She’s right. None of this is real. It’s a fucking ghost story, one I’m accepting out of desperation. She needs to go and leave me with my dogs. Let me be alone with them so I can keep funnelling these beleaguered thoughts onto something concrete. Serve vengeance.

“Go home, Madeline,” I call back, as I get to the field and start trudging through to the dirt paths. If she wasn’t here I’d get those damn dogs out, beat them. I’d walk for hours just to alleviate the ache in my chest. “Why are you doing this?” I mutter, pushing a branch out of the way and ducking towards the brook. “Why. Why not leave me to rot?” The mud begins to clog my boots, rendering the ground beneath me the wrong damn direction. I don’t even know where I’m heading anymore. I’m just going away from Madeline, leaving her so she can make the right choice. Fuck, I should give her Selma’s fucking Porsche. She drove it well enough. Then she could go rebuild her new life, not have me holding her here in my madness.

“Jack.”

I stumble as her voice sounds, twisting myself back to find her in the sunlight and damn near tripping over a log. She’s not there. It’s devoid of Selma. No halos or bright blinding lights. No fog. Not even the darkness I’d prefer rather than the nothingness she leaves me with. It’s just a dull, mundane spring day. Empty.

“Jack?”

My eyes snap in the direction of the sound, watching as Madeline lifts the heels from her feet and heads towards me.

“I told you to go home, Madeline.” She wrangles her way through the undergrowth, finally finding decent footing to bring her within two feet of me. “Take the Porsche and go.” Her eyes widen, but quickly soften again.

“I can’t,” she whispers, glancing around fretfully and tugging at the fur wrapped around her. “I’ve got no home to go to. You know that.”

I stare at her, unable to answer her questions and seemingly unable to make her leave either. I don’t even want her to leave, especially not while she’s wearing Selma’s clothes. The vision makes me smile again as I glance over her frame, finally landing my eyes on her mud covered feet.

“Grubby,” I murmur.

“Mildly,” she replies.

My fingers fiddle with the ring in my pocket again, wondering what the hell to do for the best. She should go. I’m right in that thought. But this ring in my pocket, the air that continues around us, and Selma’s whispered words make it so difficult to enforce.

“Can you walk like that?” I ask, drawing my eyes back up to hers. She nods, using no other words to tell me if I’m doing the right thing or not. Just a nod. An acceptance. “Then we’ll walk until I can find the answers you want. Maybe if you talk to me it’ll help me find them for you.”