Dark Avenging Angel (9 page)

He pointed toward a large cardboard box in the corner of the office.

“That’s been sitting there since I came over. It’s full of Stuart’s personal stuff and he doesn’t seem inclined to come and get it. I can’t get an answer on his phone either. It was ringing, but now there’s a message saying the line’s been disconnected. Cut off, I suppose. He surely can’t have run out of money yet, so I’m wondering if he’s moved. Would you mind going over there? If he still lives there, you could just hand him the box and make a swift getaway.” He grinned.

I hesitated. I really didn’t want to see Stuart again, but I couldn’t deny my curiosity.

I almost drove past his house. The once neat borders overflowed with unmown grass and weeds. In just a few short weeks, nature had enjoyed free rein in the once immaculate garden.

I checked the house number, parked and made my way up the moss-encrusted gravel path, toting the heavy box. I set it down and rang the bell. It echoed but no one answered, so I rang again.

I had started to look for somewhere to leave his belongings when he eventually opened the front door.

Stuart looked a world away from the smart-suited highflyer I’d grown to hate. His hair hung lank and greasy over a grubby blue collar. Food stains spattered his shirt, and his trousers looked as if he had sat in a mud puddle. He was barefoot, with dirty feet and overgrown toenails. He seemed to have problems focusing his bloodshot eyes, and even at my distance, I could smell the alcohol.

“Carly? What do you want? Come to gloat?” The slurring snarl mingled with the acrid stench of body odor and stale whiskey fumes.

“I was asked to bring this.” I pointed to the box, lying at my feet. Right now, I was glad it provided a barrier between us.

“You’d better bring it in.” He opened the door wider.

Should I refuse? I had no desire to cross his threshold. Yet, for some unaccountable reason, I felt almost sorry for him. For maybe five seconds.

Then a voice took over in my head,
You have to go in. You wanted this. Now is the time to see it through.

Stuart cowered, stumbled backward and tripped. He fell on his back and screamed in pain. “God no! Get her away from me. Get her away!” His filthy hands covered his eyes.

“You can see her?”

He nodded and whimpered like a small child.

Now I had no choice. I couldn’t leave him lying there. Helpless.

I tried to help him up, the awful stench of him making me retch. I very nearly brought up the contents of my stomach there and then. It would only have added to the already vomit-streaked floor.

He threw me off.

I stared in horror. From the corner of each eye, rivulets of blood trickled down his cheeks.

His face had turned white. “Get away from me! You brought her here.
You.
”

“Brought who, Stuart? Who do you see?”

He pointed at the door behind me and pushed back with his heels, trying to escape.

I turned. Framed in the doorway, stood my angel. I turned back to him. “You can see her?”

“Of course I fucking can! You brought her. The time before when you came here. It must have been. You brought her and left her here. She’s been here. Waiting. All this time, tormenting me. Now she’s ruined me.
You’ve
ruined me. You fucking freak!”

I stared at him, but could find no pity for this cowering wreck of a man.

“No, Stuart. You brought all of this on yourself. This is for what you did to me.
Everything
you did to me. And to everyone else you have wronged. She has come to make sure justice is done.”

“Justice? No, not her.
Never
her. Not that spawn of hell.”

For one instant, doubt crept in. I swept it away. The ramblings of a madman. That’s all it was. I felt nothing but contempt for him.

I looked back at my angel.

“Please finish it,” I said.

She raised her arm and my ears rang with his screams. The veins bulged in his arms, spreading tentacles of red and purple. The swelling spread like a time-lapse film of green shoots in spring. Skin peeled from his arms. His eyes became great pools of red as more blood vessels burst.

He screamed. Inhuman, animal sounds of agony and torment. His feet blackened and flayed. White bone gleamed under the peeling flesh.

The stench of charred flesh sickened me. I covered my nose and mouth, but I had to watch.

He could not die. She denied him that mercy.

My heart stayed hardened until his fleshless leg bones rattled. Only his face, with its bloody, running eyes, remained intact, so he could see and hear—and smell his own burned, rotten flesh.

“Enough now,” I said. “Please let him go.”

My angel opened her cloak. The screaming souls of the others greeted him and claimed him as their own. Then I realized what reached for him weren’t the same poor wretches that I’d seen crying out in agony before. These were their hellish predators, come to claim new prey. Jaws snapped and claws raked as they grabbed at the hysterical, half-dead wretch that had once been Stuart Campbell.

The now-forever-damned Stuart Campbell.

His cries drifted into the distance as my angel’s cloak settled over the scene of eternal carnage.

And so I was avenged the first time.

Chapter Ten

I started my new job a month later. New employer, new home and new town. Coombsford.

Already, just two weeks in, I enjoyed my new role. I had even started to make friends. I loved my flat overlooking the river and enjoyed the walk along the riverside to work. Twenty minutes there and back. Peaceful. I would watch the antics of the squabbling ducks and the majestic pair of swans gliding downstream.

It seemed a world away from the horror I’d witnessed at Stuart’s house that day. I had already put Baileyborough behind me.

I’d left his box of personal effects in the kitchen, taking care not to touch anything with my bare hands so that no fingerprints would be found. I even overcame my revulsion and cleaned his filthy floor, just in case any footprints emerged under close inspection, although I could see none. I bagged up the cleaning cloths so I could dump them later. I even washed the soles of my shoes, so none of his muck would spread out of the house. I was as thorough as any professional murderer.

Of course, there was no body. My angel had taken care of that. No body. No crime. He was just another missing person.

In due course, the police interviewed me and I told them, truthfully, when I’d last seen him. Of course, I didn’t tell them in what state I’d last seen him. They asked me if he seemed agitated in any way. I said he did. I told them about the whiskey fumes. I amazed myself at the cool way I conducted myself. They thanked me for my help and I heard no more.

I never knew who reported him missing. He didn’t seem to have much in the way of family. Just an ex-wife. Someone told me her name. Felicity. But everyone called her Fizz.

Some weeks later, I arrived at my parents’ home to find a tense atmosphere and a chill. All my childhood nightmares flooded back. I wanted to get back in my car and drive the two hundred miles back to Coombsford, but I’d promised Mum I’d stay for the weekend. She hadn’t seen me in months. So I gritted my teeth and hauled my suitcase out of the trunk.

My father barely acknowledged me. As for Mum, her red nose and swollen eyes told me she’d been crying.

“What’s going on?” I said as I set my suitcase on the floor.

Mum stood up and limped toward me. She winced at each step.

I put out my hand to steady her. “What’s happened?”

Mum opened her mouth to answer, but my father interrupted, “What the hell have you done to yourself? You look like something out of Auschwitz!”

“Never mind me. What’s happened here?”

“Your mother, the stupid, useless bint, didn’t renew the road tax and now
I’ve
got to pay a fine.”

The old, familiar anger coil tensed. “Why didn’t
you
deal with it? After all,
you’re
the one driving the car in the first place. They send the papers to
you
not
her
.”

Bang!
My father’s chair toppled over.

“Now you’ve done it.” Mum hobbled out of the room.

“Did
you
do that to her?”

“Don’t you use that tone with me. I’m your father.”

“Unfortunately.”

He took another step closer.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel scared. This time, I wouldn’t back down.

Mum paused by the door, leaning on it for support.

My father looked at me as if he didn’t believe what he had just heard. “What did you say?”

I took a deep breath. “I said unfortunately. I wish to God Mum had had an affair and I wasn’t your biological offspring.”

He drew his hand back, made a fist.

I ducked and skipped out of the way.

He couldn’t stop the impetus and fell over a chair, cracking his head on the sharp edge of the bookcase. When he turned, blood streamed down the left side of his face. He seemed unaware of it.

Mum cried out and limped over to him. He shoved her away and she fell.

I rushed over to her as my father picked up the poker. I caught sight of his wild eyes, full of rage. He’d use that poker on Mum or me any second.

My angel spoke inside my head,
Now.

Mum sobbed into the carpet.

I wrenched the poker out of my father’s hands, with strength my angel gave me. I threw it over to the far side of the room and watched my father clutch his chest with one hand.

He stared behind me with the same look of terror I’d seen in Stuart’s eyes. Blood drained from his face. His free hand trembled as he pointed behind me. “You’ve brought
her
. Get her away from me. Get her away!”

My angel stood in the doorway.

Mum looked wildly around. “What is it? What can you see?”

But only my father and I were allowed to see my angel.

I turned back to my whimpering father. “Who do you see there?”

His lips moved, his voice a whisper—I had to lean closer to hear “Death. Death angel…” His voice trailed away.

“And she’s come for you,” I said. “I’ve waited a long time for this. A lifetime.”

I did nothing as his lips turned blue. I ignored his feeble cries. Then, as he tottered, I stepped aside so he could come crashing down. He smashed his skull on the fireplace. Blood pooled on the hearth. His breath stopped, then exhaled one last, rattling time.

I looked down at him, at the now-sightless eyes staring upwards.

A few feet away, Mum had stopped sobbing. “Is it over?” She wiped her eyes.

“Yes, Mum. After thirty years, you’re finally free.”

But my angel hadn’t finished with him yet. What she did to Stuart should have told me it wouldn’t be enough for her.

I helped Mum to her feet and she limped off to call for an ambulance. I stayed with my angel. She said nothing to me. We had no need of words now.

She pointed at the corpse on the floor and then opened her hand, stretching her palm toward it.

A shimmering began just above the corpse’s head and I watched in fascination as a ghostly yet still-humanlike form of my father left his body and floated towards her. His cry became a lonely, desperate wail as he struggled against the force dragging him to her.

My angel made a curious gesture, and only on the fourth repeat did I realize she was performing an inverted sign of the cross. Seven times she did this and each time my father’s wails grew louder. Smoke and flames curled around his ghostly form. Wails became screams.

The expression on my angel’s face never changed. Then, for the first time, her black eyes flashed red fire. Her lips curled. She was enjoying this. Far more than what she had inflicted on Stuart. Maybe that’s why she had held off on his punishment for so long. She wanted to savor it.

For all he’d done to Mum and me, my father deserved to die, but I hadn’t the stomach for any more. “Enough. Please. Let him go,” I said.

But she took no notice.

My angel looked at me as the flames continued to lick the spirit she held in some force field of her making.
Full payment is required. The list is long.

She opened her cloak and released the others.

They attacked with their claws, talons and razor-sharp teeth, their hideous, twisted bodies and scaly, barbed tails. They tore and clawed at his spirit in human form, ripping it apart.

My father’s agonized screams deafened me. His fingers, hands, feet, legs were wrenched off, just as he had ripped apart my dolls all those years earlier. This was a feast and he was the main course. The predators ate too fast, spitting out gore. It splattered his spirit face and he screamed louder. His head was the last to go. They twisted it off what remained of his torso, and a serpent with massive crocodile jaws swallowed it whole.

His cries became fainter, but somewhere, inside that demon beast, what was left of my father still suffered.

My angel swept her cloak over the hideous scene. Then she spoke.
Now you are avenged.

Her words galvanized me. I had been in some sort of trance. Hating what I saw. Unable to tear myself away from the spiritual carnage that had just played out in front of me. I felt numb, but I nodded. “Yes, I am avenged.”

As Mum pushed the door open, my angel faded away.

“The ambulance will be here soon.”

I heard the siren coming closer. “You were quite a while. Did you see her?”

My mother looked puzzled. “They wanted details and I needed a glass of water. It’s a lot to come to terms with. See who?”

“No one. Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

I looked back down at the corpse.

Mum limped over and took my hand. “We’re both free now, dear.”

“Yes, Mum. You’ll finally be able to live again.”

“He doesn’t look very happy, does he? And that blood will take some getting off. The rug’s ruined, of course. I’ll put that in the bin when they’ve taken him away.”

Her matter-of-factness was strangely shocking. How she must hate him too.

The doorbell rang and Mum let go of my hand to let the paramedics in. Their shocked faces made me look back at the body.

My father’s face had become contorted. His mouth was open, as if locked in a scream of abject terror. His eyes had become wide. The man looked as if he had died of fright. Only I knew how true that was—and that a part of him would never die but would remain forever locked in torment.

The paramedics worked quickly and quietly. They checked the vital signs but could find no sign of life. They kept exchanging questioning glances.

I had to explain what happened in the minutes leading up to his collapse. I told them the truth, leaving nothing out, except my angel.

Mum sat on the settee, clutched her arms tightly and rocked back and forth.

One of the paramedics took some notes. Maybe they thought they might be needed—in case the autopsy revealed any need for an inquest. I don’t think they were convinced that neither Mum nor I had done away with him. It was his face. Not the face of a man who had merely had a massive heart attack.

They took him away.

I wondered why my angel hadn’t simply taken him bodily, as she had Stuart. Maybe because Mum was there and would have asked too many questions.

I went into the kitchen and filled a bucket with hot water and some cleaning fluid. While my mother filled sack after sack with his clothes and other personal items, I crammed the ruined rug into a black-plastic bag and scrubbed the floor. Just as I had at Stuart’s house.

Three hours later, we had removed every trace of my father from the house.

Now we were both avenged.