Thanks to the information Kyan got from the Wake on their mother, they knew how the place was being watched, so Dylan’s father had taken out the supernatural watch bird with a tranquilliser gun and they’d scanned the woods with one of Lawna’s tools – a sonar-like device that cut off other tech or supernaturals.
It was finally safe to approach. But it was quiet as a grave, the trees rustling in a building wind, the soil and lush foliage beneath them damp from a warm rain which darkened the ankles of his jeans.
‘Are you sure about this?’ Bells asked, looking up at him with concern. She wore a waxed jacket with a tan trim at the neck, and had pulled her hair back in a ponytail with a red ribbon.
Even though she’d been his companion into these memories and knew they had to do it, she still stood beside him to witness the horror. She was so much stronger than him in that way.
His throat burned. ‘It’s all right, Bells. I’ll be okay.’
As they approached, Dylan reached for the handle of the door, finding it locked. He took a moment, then shouldered it open. The lock splintered and the door swung to reveal a shadowed interior.
‘Let me,’ their father said, putting a hand on his shoulder. He smiled for them, reassuring.
But Dylan could almost taste his sorrow.
He resisted, but his father pushed through, gun out, and so he and Bells followed.
It didn’t feel like stepping into a memory. Perhaps because in his memories, the place was still furnished.
It felt like stepping into a tomb.
It was quiet. Both dusty and damp, foliage attempting to reclaim the house. Whoever owned it mustn’t have had another tenant since that night. He was partially glad no one lived here now. He wasn’t sure how he’d feel if they did. Swallowing, Dylan moved deeper inside.
It was a simple layout. Stairs across from the door, with an open-plan sitting room on the left, a closed room on the right, and what he assumed was a kitchen in the back.
He felt sobig.Too big, for this place that had haunted him. The room where his mother had been murdered.
Dylan climbed up a few of the stairs, before pausing. It wasn’t so much the creak of the wood that made him feel uneasy, but the essence that breathed off their father. He wasn’t sure what it was: rage, grief. But it was strong enough it felt like a mist, capable of seeping through the building and slipping in between the stones and floorboards.
As if he’d promised himself the only time he’d return here would be to burn the place to the ground.
‘I’m sorry,’ Dylan said, ‘that you had to go through losing her alone.’
His father closed his eyes for a moment. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there to kill him myself. To help her. But if he’s still alive …’ An unholy darkness lit his eyes when he opened them. ‘I’ll make sure he goes through hell before he dies.’
‘Here?’ Bells asked softly from the base of the stairs.
At the top was the nursery room, but there was nothing but ruin there now. It washerethat he’d come.
Here,that he’d seen it.
‘Yeah,’ Dylan said, trying to ignore the dresser she’d been thrown into that was now rotting wood.
No, he realised.You need to look. You have to finallysee.
It didn’t stop the nervous uptick of his heart, though.
‘Let’s do it.’ He sank to sit on one of the upper steps, affording him that view through the bannister’s spindles.
Bells came to sit a step behind him and her fingers met his temples.
Their father stood at the bottom of the stairs in the shadows behind the door, so as not to impede the view.
The memory formed differently this time. Perhaps because they were where it had all begun.
So when their father began guiding them, Dylan’s eyes opened on to the scene.
He was sitting on the steps, watching his mother fight for her life. But instead of feeling so helpless, he grounded himself, allowed the pain and fear to washoverhim, despite each grunt of pain and slam and crack.
