Page 66 of The Spiral
Chapter 24
Toby
Jesus. If my dick wasn’t straining at my pants so hard I’d probably think I was on the same planet she resides on. Jack still here? It’s irrational as hell, but whether it is or not I’m still intrigued. The fact that she’s the image of Selma really isn’t helping me. How my bastard brother ever snagged her is still beyond me, even to this day. He did, though, regardless of the fact that I went for her across that bar first. Drunk.
“Go on then,” I say, pointing again. She frowns at me still, her hands tightening, fidgeting as she looks at the spiral. “Tick tock.”
“Why?” she snaps with a haughty lift of her chin.
My dick strains again at the image of it. Any woman who can stand there wittering on about fucking ghosts, all the time covered in mud with twigs in her hair, and then dare lift her chin at me like I’m the fool deserves the smirk that comes across my face.
I walk closer, licking my damn lips again like I’ve got no control over anything.
“For a start, no one knows about the cage. I dismantled it myself.” It took me two fucking days, but no way was the rest of the world knowing what he’d done. “You do, apparently.” It’s damn well concerning. He might have gone mad after Selma and Lenon, and I don’t fucking blame him after what they did to them, but I wasn’t having anyone vilify his body for it. I’m still not. “And secondly, look at you.” She scans her body, filthy feet turning in on themselves, and yet still she manages to raise that damn chin like she’s got every right to be covered in dirt.
I flatten my infatuated smirk as I think about that, and sip my drink instead, trying to hold onto some amount of superiority in this situation. The fact that I own, run, and mediate the biggest construction company this side of Canada apparently means fuck all in her presence. I’m like a child again as she sneers a little.
Doesn’t stop her looking at my dick, though.
“I want some answers, Madeline.”
She nods after that and starts climbing the stairs, determination setting in, as if she’s looking for answers, too. I’m not surprised with the crap that’s been pouring from her mouth, but she knows things—things she shouldn’t fucking know.
“It’s on the third floor,” she says quietly, her hand holding the bannister gently as she turns.
See? Things like that. No fucker knows that.
I follow, pouring another damn drink. It’s not just everything she’s saying that makes me need another. It’s the memories of what I did. I dragged those three bodies up to the bog with Bob, burying them so that no one would ever find out what Jack had become. Bob had always known they were there and called me two days after the suicide to ask me what to do. How the hell I’d never noticed what he was up to, I don’t know. So much for twin intuition.
And that’s where I found her, right on top of where we buried them. Naked.
She spins on me suddenly, still narrowing her eyes and scanning me constantly like I’m a damn conundrum she can’t fathom. I know the fucking feeling well. Her mouth opens, and I wait for another dramatic outburst about my brother.
“Why are you selling up?”
“Keep climbing, Madeline. Or are you a Maddy?” She chuckles instantly, laughing at me as if I’ve said the funniest thing she’s ever heard.
“You can’t sell up, Toby. They still need it.”
She trails off after that, begins mumbling and muttering to herself about something as she hangs on the bannister, feet lightly tripping around the stairs. “You look so much like him. It’s eerie really,” she suddenly says, tipping her head back to look at me and stopping. Of course I do. She said it herself—twins. Although I still don’t understand how the fuck she knows that either.
I stare at her over the rim of my glass, half wanting to lay her down and burrow into something I never got the chance at. She looks like she owns the place, and I half smile as I remember Christmases here—Selma standing on the stairs with Lenon on her hip and Jack berating me for staring at his wife too long.
“You want lifting to the top,” I mutter, unsure what the fuck is going on. “Or can you get there without opening that mouth of yours again?” She fucking sounds like her, too. Different, she’s got more American going on than Selma ever had, but it’s there nonetheless.
“I thought I had fifteen minutes,” she says, a hand resting on her hip.
“Ten now with all the time you’ve wasted climbing fucking stairs, Madeline.” She smiles, lighting up this tired old house exactly the same way Selma did, then spins away again giggling to herself and beginning to dance her way up the stairs.
“Very Jack like, Toby. Grouchy.” I watch her go, bemused as she begins humming and bouncing slightly, arms out as if she’s balancing on eggshells. “Are you positive you’re not him? Because anything’s possible in this house, they’ve shown me that.” I’m so close to showing her how different I am from my brother. I’m barely restraining the need to grab at her and do things I have no business doing. “Strange things happen here, Toby.” She’s damn right.
I watch as she turns onto the third level, tiptoeing across the floor and heading straight for the door the cage used to be in. She doesn’t even look anywhere else, like she knows exactly where she’s going. She’s right in some respects. This old mansion has been odd since the day I found him here, brains blown all over the damn wall. It wasn’t when they moved in. It was just old, ready to fill with furniture and dreams, but then after Selma and Lenon died he let it rot around him, and after I found him dead a year later, it seemed cold constantly.
“What do you want to know?”
The question catches me off guard. I don’t know what I want to know. I just know that this woman is the closest I’ve got to seeing my brother for a long time. I miss him, miss his dry sense of humour and his ability to push me harder than I thought possible. I felt like a part of me died that night along with him. Twins are like that, bound by something that other siblings don’t have access to.
“What did you see in here?” I ask, nodding at the door.