Chapter 30 Robin #2
“Don’t do this, please.” Phin slurs, no doubt the drugs are still tugging on his senses, but she doesn't let me turn to see his face. In response she clicks something on the gun and it echoes against my head, causing an audible shudder to escape me.
“It’s al-alright, Phin. Don’t worry. Please.
” I try to soothe him, but I hear his little whimper at understanding it probably won’t be ok this time.
I want to tell him how much I love him, my best friend in this entire fucked up world–my brother, but if I do I’ll accept I'm not coming back into the library.
“Don’t you fucking dare hurt her.” Wren chokes, causing more tears to flood down my face.
She maneuvers the door open and I think about all the ways I could push out of her hold right now, but like she reads my thoughts, the gun is pushed harder against my head and she pulls at my arm.
Once we’re in the hallway, my feet drag, not knowing which way she’s wanting to take me.
I assume we’ll walk to the lobby, maybe she’ll finish the job and drown me in the lake, but instead she pushes me hard onto the wide staircase.
“Walk slowly up the stairs and if you even try to run, I’ll shoot you in the back.”
I gulp, unable to tamp down my anger. “I bet you don’t even know how to fucking use it.”
She kicks me in the back of the thigh and I wince, not wanting to give her any more of my pained cries. “Not the time for your pathetically bad humour. If I aim at your head, I bet I won’t miss from here.” She says as she presses the gun to the back of my head. “Climb.”
I have no other choice but to slowly start to move up the stairs, hands shaking so much I grip the banister.
“You’d have gotten away with it, if you hadn't written that night into your book. We’d all be none the wiser.
My parents were going through a rough patch, you’re too young to remember, but I always saw them arguing and they slept in different rooms. Probably because he liked your slut of a mother.
” She grits, the gun pushing into me as she degrades Mum.
I’m too scared to speak, so I just keep slowly climbing the stairs.
“That night she’d come home from an event hammered, so drunk and piss-wet through from the rain.
She’d kissed me goodnight, thinking I was already asleep, but I remember thinking it was for the best I kept my eyes closed.
She left mud all over my carpet. That’s how I knew you were there.
Your character had the same description, a dripping wet phantom of a woman.
The police obviously assumed she was wet from the rain after her fall, so only someone who was there with her would have known the truth. ”
I’m practically choking on early memories of my own Mum now, trying to suppress the hurt of missing her so much. “Lil, I was only five. I couldn’t have pushed her.”
“Stop fucking lying. How else would you have known? Why would you have written that? How sick do you have to be to include a murder like that?”
I know she’s questioning why I wrote something so similar to her mother's fall, especially when that woman raised me alongside my own.
Only because I know he’s downstairs, much safer than I am right now, I swallow down my fear. “You’ve got it all wrong. Phin helped me with my early ideas. I credited him for helping with the set up. He has this nightmare of a creepy woman trying to find him.”
“Just stop with your lies.” She hisses and I tumble over my own feet when I get to the landing.
Grabbing my arm, she hauls me up and pushes me towards the stained-glass window that overlooks the fountain at the front of the house.
In the panes of clear glass I can see down the drive and into the forest, a flash of yellow contrasting against the watery landscape.
“No amount of lying is going to save you. Just admit what you did and accept your punishment.”
I wait for her to turn me in a direction down either corridor, but she pushes me again towards the large window and I spin around, back flush to it. “What’s my punishment?”
“Death.” She shrugs, before her face twists and she grabs me by the hair to push me harder into the window.
Instinctively I grab a fist full of her curls and pull so hard.
She cries out loudly, over the scuffle of our movements but she doesn’t let go of me.
The only thing that makes me stop is the gun pressed to my cheek, right under my right eye.
I want to keep fighting, want to push and hit and run, but that piece of metal drains every ounce of energy I have left.
My body is bruised and cut, head a pounding mess that has me blinking back the urge to just shut down.
I’m exhausted and completely at her mercy.
We can hear commotion downstairs but it’s muffled. Lil pays no attention to it and leans into my face, our noses brushing as she reaches her free arm around me and unlatches the window lock.
No.
“Lily, please.”
“It’s only fitting that you follow in her footsteps. Eye for an eye. Fall for a fall.”
I try to push off the window but she grabs me by the back of my neck, gun pressed to my face and she’s still so close to me I can see the cold silver in her eyes. They’re so void of anything.
A soft crunch has me looking away briefly, but the hand on my neck is removed to push at the window latch and the two panes separate, letting in cold, wet air.
I shiver as mist-like rain hits my back, my hands gripping into her flesh in an attempt to attach myself to her.
She can’t throw me out of it if I’m clinging to her, right?
I’m shoved hard backwards and my bum hits the edge of the window, my hands flailing but I manage to catch myself on the wall and not tumble right out of it. The gun is pointed at me again, her blonde hair a bird's nest and I’ve never seen a person look more unhinged.
She truly believes she’s seeking revenge.
“Any last words?” She asks, placing her finger on the trigger and gesturing for me to get out of the window. Will I die if I carefully jump out of it? Or is she going to push me hard enough I’ll spike myself on the birdcage of the fountain?
I pathetically can’t think of one thing to say, no parting words, but as I open my mouth, a thick Scottish accent booms from behind Lily and I’m shocked with the feeling of relief and pure confusion.
“I canny understand why money turns you rich ones into little psychos.” Maggie says, before a glint of fat metal smacks against the side of her head, knocking her to the floor.
As the gun flies from her hands, it hits the wall and goes off, the noise ear-shattering and I flinch backwards, nearly toppling right out of the open space.
“Baby Jesus, close that fucking window!” She bellows, swinging the shovel in her hand down onto Lily’s face. Her entire body shudders and collapses, her crumbled body looking like some twisted gothic painting, with her pale skin and golden hair filthy.
“You could have killed me!” I shout, taking in the stocky woman wearing a giant yellow raincoat, bucket hat, and knee-high wellies. She’s trudged mud up the stairs and all over the carpet, which is now puddled with the water dripping from her.
“Like what she was just about to do? Funny way of saying thank you, little lady.” She shakes her head at me, finger pointing down.
“I knew something was up with this one when I saw her kiss that new gardener. Slimy fucker. I really started to worry when I couldn’t get in touch with the boys, or the hotel. It flooded right into my kitchen.”
I could kiss this woman right now if she wasn’t scowling at me. “We need to call the police.” I say, but she waves her hand at me.
“Already done. Rang them and said if they didn’t come down here and check if you were all alright, I’d do it myself.
” She gestures to her wellies. “Had to wade through the water but I got here. Knew something was up when I had to climb over the bastard gates.” She huffs, walking over to grab the gun between her thumb and index finger.
Frantic shouting and noise rises from downstairs and I move around Lily in a daze, throwing myself down the stairs more confident than a woman with trauma to the body should. The dizziness just seems like a permanent fixture now that fizzes down to my fingertips.
“Roo!? Fucking answer me, where are you?” Wren shouts, his mop of black hair coming into view at the bottom of the stairs. I never want to see the fear in his expression again, he looks like he’s on the verge of having a panic attack.
“I’m here,” I cry, being lifted from the bottom step into his arms, my legs wrapping around his waist.
“I thought–I thought she’d,” He struggles to breathe, pushing his face into the crook of my neck and his body shakes. “I thought she hurt you.”
I stroke his curls and press my face into them, tears starting to soak my face and his head. “Maggie hit her with a shovel.”
He laughs but it twists into a choked sob. “What a legend.”
Stomping down the stairs behind me, her wellies cause utter chaos on the cream carpets but she wields the shovel at us and gestures to the library doors.
“Someone peel Mr Redfern from the floor, we’re walking to the gates.
The police will be on their way and they won’t get through those.
I’ll get our Mabel to bring my metal cutters. ”
Moving to look at one another, we both frown before we dumbfoundedly stare at her. She doesn’t like that. “Fucking c’mon, get moving. Get those wankers tied to the radiator and someone grab blondie.”
Wren gasps. “Maggie! You have such a filthy mouth.”
She rolls her eyes. “Nothing my mother wouldn’t say.”
“I knew you were all raised differently up there.” He jokes, to which she shoves the metal tip of the shovel into his side.
“I’m a Yorkshire lass now. Get moving, I’m missing Emerdale.”
I want to argue that there’s this thing called freeview, but I think I’d be next being whacked with the shovel. He doesn’t put me down but carries me with ease, shaggy blonde hair tumbling into our side once we hit the front steps and the rain falls on us.
“Oh thank god, you're both alright.” Phin gasps, not taking me from Wren, but instead wraps his arms around both of us. He’s completely disheveled, face bruised and pupils dilated–but I think the fresh air is sobering him a little.
“She put something in my drink when I stayed in her room, but I heard everything she was saying to him.” Phin bites on his bottom lip, holding back tears.
“She really thinks you pushed Mum, when that was all just a part of my nightmare I let you use. What if I pushed her?” He whispers, my arms grabbing for him and pressing his face into my chest.
“Shut up now, Phin. Get that out of your head. We were five, you couldn’t have done anything.” I say firmly. We were children; we did nothing. His mother was mentally unwell and fell.
The three of us cling to one another as he starts to shake and cry, Wren rubbing his hand down his back whilst the other grips around my waist tightly. Gravel crunches as a small red fiat pulls up to the gates, behind it flashing blue lights glow in the grey fog and sirens echo through the trees.
“Ah thank fuck, that’s our Mabel with the cutters.” Maggie sings, pushing past us and starts the march down the driveway.
All three of us gape at her tiny figure, shovel still in her grip like a mighty sword.
“That woman swears like a sailor.” Phin marvels and we just nod.
That she bloody does.