Page 55 of The Spiral
Chapter 19
Jack
They’re running out there. I can hear them.
I rub the ring in my pocket and then pull it out, ready to put it on the finger of my wife again. She’s so close to me now. I can smell her here each time the fog looms over us, taste her in every kiss that Madeline delivers. It’s a love that will not be halted by arrogant abusers and their whims. He will die out here, never to be found again. They will kill as they’ve been asked to do, protecting her at all costs, including their own life should that be necessary. They’ll hunt him down for daring to touch her. That’s what I trained them to do. It’s their chance at repentance, their offer of contrition to her.
All those months of me training them. Teaching them. All those times I beat them as they looked into her picture, warning them of storms that followed when they disobeyed me, and this is what it was for. I thought it just my vengeance at the time. Thought it was for self punishment perhaps. But it has been far from that, far from my own wallowing and self-repugnance. It has been so Madeline Cavannagh could get her freedom, so Selma could help them both come home.
My fingers drop the ring on the hall table as I head out into the darkness and murk my wife so easily delivers, knowing that by the time we return I’ll be able to lodge it back where it belongs. She’ll wear it again then, have it wrapped around her skin with nothing more to get in our way.
I smile as I wander deeper into the swirl of obscurity dancing around my legs, watching as it claws at me and ripples through my soul. It’s her again, stirring the ground around us all, showing herself in the only way she can since they sliced the heart out of her and left her for dead.
Not for much longer, though.
“It’s nearly over, baby,” I mutter, walking towards the howls that keep coming in the distance. They have the same tone as they do when the chase is nearing conclusion, the same morbid desperation to kill revving them up to rip flesh from limb and eat their prize. It’s another thing that makes me smile into the night, gazing at the tall trees that shroud this old house with their cover. “You happy now?”
She doesn’t answer, but warmth sweeps around my legs, enthusing me with the thought that she’s nearly here with me. I don’t know what will happen to Madeline. Perhaps she’ll stay in some form, part locked in this spectral mirage we’ve all made happen. Or maybe she’ll disappear, never to return and hinder my view of Selma again. I don’t fucking care in reality. My wife is nearly home. She’s almost with me. And our son will come with time, his endless chatter making me feel like a father again.
The thought has me looking back at the car, wondering what I should do with it. It should be removed so that no one can find out he was here. Perhaps old Bob can organise that when this is done, find a way of drowning it in the bog. It’s deep on the other side of the brook, deep enough to disappear into. Everything disappears in there.
For once I haven’t brought the zapper with me. There’s nothing to punish them for anymore. No reason for me to continue with my retaliation now that she’s coming back. It doesn’t matter anymore. They can go after this, or die out here in the wild. Perhaps they’ll just guard this place from now on, not knowing how to return to reality now I’ve stolen that option from them. They can hunt these grounds, cry their pained howls into the night as we sleep safe in the knowledge that nothing will ever happen to break us apart again. They’re barely human now anyway. That’s been crushed out of them. All they have left are the base instincts to hunt and survive, the latter of which I’ve only just provided.
The thought makes me chuckle to myself as I keep walking, crossing though the first brook to wander towards the headland. That’s where they are. I can hear their continued cries from here, the smaller one shrieking to keep up. Fucking useless dog. He always was the lacking one. It wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t even touch my wife while the other two took their fun. His dick certainly isn’t big enough to fuck anything successfully.
“JACK?”
Madeline’s loud voice rebounds at me from somewhere, a slight frenzy about it. I peer through the gloom, hastening my pace from its relaxed amble. She shouldn’t be in any danger out here now, but knowing her she’ll have fallen feet first into the bog all of her own accord. That image makes me chortle quietly, the memory of her tumbling onto me that first time coming back to remind me where this all started.
“Jack, help me.”
Help her? I smile and then frown in thought. There’s nothing left for me to help her with. My dogs are doing that now. The only thing I need to ensure is that this man doesn’t take her from the ground beneath our feet, that she stays on it so she can be fused into my wife somehow.
I quicken my pace regardless, brushing the scrub away as I turn through the thicket of brambles to get to her voice. Apart from that it’s so quiet out here, no sound other than the occasional call of dogs in pursuit, their disposition so familiar to me regardless of what they’re in pursuit of. Some would say it’s miserable and melancholy out here, this permanent nightfall obliterating what should be spring days, but to me it’s nothing but light and effervescence irrespective of the darkness that surrounds us all.
It’s the return of those I love. A re-birth.
Spring will come tomorrow.
A small field lies between us, the spread of it heightening the distance it’ll take to get my wife back to me. It might happen by the time I’ve trudged these last few metres. She might take over completely when the sound of the chase concludes. I wonder about the sound that will come or the vision that might occur as I open a small gate and close it quietly. Will light explode, some spectral reincarnation making her appear within Madeline’s form? Or will the fog just dissipate, receding into Madeline’s body to form that darker hair I long for.
I snort, amused with my interpretation of ghostly ramblings. Perhaps none of that will happen. Perhaps she’ll just look at me differently and I’ll see nothing but Selma as I gaze at azure eyes and remember our life together.
The tall hedgerow breaks open onto the headland as my feet choose my route through the last of the bog, and then I turn to the sound of dog one yelping enthusiastically. It’s nearly time. He’s almost there like the good damned dog he is. I smile again and follow the noise, hurrying to ensure I’m there this time. I want this vision, want to hold it inside so I can consider my job done for a wife and child I didn’t protect. I need it. This whole fucking thing is as much a penitence for me as it is for them now. I want to see her acknowledge what I’ve done for them, tell me I was right to do it. It’s all I have to give them, all these bloody hands could do to rectify my mistake.
“We need him dead, don’t’ we?” I whisper quietly, searching the area and hoping for a glimpse of her. “Clever Selma. Is that how it works? He dies and then you come back?”
Nothing but fog still, but I can feel her all the same as I turn towards the growing agitation of dogs in full cry, listening and hurrying my pace again. She climbs over me, ready to get to the kill, too, wrapping me in more thoughts of love and pulling me forward into the cacophony of sound that increases with each pace forward. They’re so close to him, so close I can smell their heated scent coming from somewhere up front as I keep powering through the mud to reach them in time.
I round the last of the headland, and the sight of Madeline scrambling over the rocky ground catches me off guard. She notices me, her eyes frantic as she chases onwards, naked legs propelling her faster no matter the distance she’s already run. I look to see what she’s following, and find the feet of the small one half a field in front of her scurrying through the opaque ground below. She forges over to the left bank of tall trees, her fur coat still billowing out behind her as she goes as if pointing out where her husband is. Good, he’s heading back to the bog. He can die in there, his bones swallowed down so that no one finds the evidence.
I swing that way, crossing the undulations of ploughed ground to punish my body with more sweat and vigour. This is all I have to give any of them. This power that I still hold ensures someone will die here. I have to get there and see this, see her transformation. The husband, the dogs, all of them can rot beneath this ground if I get to have my family back again because of it. I need them home now. I need to feel them all beneath my skin and let this guilt go.
“Stop them, Jack,” she shouts, her breath panted as she turns and powers on again to try to get in front of me. “Please.”
I’m not stopping a damn thing, and neither is she.
Fury pushes my limbs faster at the thought, and I crash through the brook again as I duck under the low hanging branches. Stop this? I’m so incensed by the thought that I turn at her instead, remembering the gun in her pocket, and jump the old stone boundaries to cut through the small wood to get to her. She’s not stopping anything. Selma is nearly here now. All these dogs need to do is kill the one thing that threatens her return. Madeline will be locked here then. She’ll know the point of all this, understand like I do.