Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
FENRIR
PRESENT
It’s twenty past two in the morning when Hayami stirs.
Sitting up, I focus on the screen as she slides one leg out of bed, followed by the other, and then pulls herself to stand.
My heart thumps erratically.
It’s just like last night—her body not holding itself properly, like she’s a puppet being manoeuvred, her head hanging to one side like she has a crick in her neck.
I brace my arms on the side of the chair, readying myself to run, but it’s as if the image on the screen is holding me down.
Slowly, she makes her way to the foot of the bed and looks up at the camera. That same lopsided angle of her head makes it appear as if she isn’t awake, yet her eyes glow wildly. Her arms rise, her fingers like tentacles as they reach for her face.
I don’t breathe as her fingers crawl inside her mouth and pull her lips apart, spreading that inane grin I saw last night, her white teeth appearing razor-sharp.
Telling myself it’s just a trick of the light, my tired eyes fooling me into seeing things that aren’t there, I lean in to get a closer look and then wish I hadn’t.
Blood oozes from her open lips, pooling in the cavern of her mouth and dribbling down her chin.
The sight of the blood untethers me.
Taking the stairs two at a time, I sprint to her room, my pulse racing. My heart’s ready to explode through my chest. I fling open the door and—
She’s in bed, fast asleep, the rhythmic rise and fall of the covers stilling the painful throb behind my ribcage.
What the fuck?
Not convinced I’m seeing things correctly, I enter the room, stopping in the spot where, seconds ago, she’d been standing, staring at the camera like a woman possessed and pulling the sides of her mouth into that hideous grin, blood flowing down her chin.
Yet the scene before me depicts none of this. The carpet is clean, with no patches of fresh blood, and Hayami is sound asleep, as if nothing has happened.
Taking a step towards her bed, I bend down and examine her face, looking for traces of blood. There’s nothing.
Her eyes spring open.
“Shit!” she gasps, sitting bolt upright.
I realise how weird this must have looked—Hayami opening her eyes to see me leering over her like some creep.
“Sorry,” I say quickly, backing away. Straightening, I clear my throat.
“I thought I saw something on the camera, so I came to check it out, but it’s nothing,” I lie.
But am I lying? There’s nothing here, nothing to see.
But I saw something, right? Is the lack of sleep already starting to play tricks on me?
Or is it this house, the tales that have been told about sinister goings-on?
Fuck knows.
Hayami gathers her legs up to her chest and glances around the room. “What did you see?”
“I’m not sure.” My second lie. “Just a flicker of something. It could’ve been dust floating over the lens. But I wanted to check. Sorry to have disturbed you.”
“It’s okay. I’d rather you check these things.” She scans the room again and then looks up at the camera.
“You can go back to sleep.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “I was having an awful dream.”
“What about?” My question is too quick, and I’m not sure whether she picks up on it. If she does, she doesn’t show it.
“I don’t know. I just know it was awful.” She lowers her legs, revealing her underwear, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “Pass me my robe, will you?” She nods to the hook on the back of the door.
I fetch her robe and hand it to her as she swings her legs out of the bed.
I note the fluidity with which her body moves compared to the stiff way she’d moved not five minutes ago on the camera.
Did that really happen? What had I seen?
Fuck, was I hallucinating? That’s never happened before, but what else would explain what I thought I just saw?
Swallowing, I avert my gaze as Hayami stands and threads her arms through her robe. When I look back, she’s tightening the belt and pushing her feet into her slippers.
“Fancy a drink?” she asks.
“It’s almost three in the morning,” I tell her.
“Didn’t stop us last night,” she replies, and I have to tell myself not to stare as the image of her from the video monitor creeps back into my brain.
It wasn’t her.
It looked like her.
I watched her climb out of bed.
It can’t have been her.
“Are you okay?” She folds her arms. “You look… concerned.”
“I’m fine. Let’s get that drink.”
We make our way down the stairs. I’m glad she’s up. I’m not sure I’m ready to go sit back in that room and watch the monitor that’s just tricked me, or to trust my eyes, which could be making me see things that haven’t happened.
The kitchen feels normal as I pad to the cupboard and pull out the bottle of whisky. Hayami takes up the chair she sat in last night as I pour two glasses and push one over to her.
She sips it carefully, her face squeezing slightly as I imagine the burn hitting the back of her throat.
“You’re getting a taste for it,” I tell her, downing my own and then pouring another.
“It’s definitely an acquired taste, but I can see why so many people drink it. It’s like you can feel it moving into your system and burning away whatever was there that was hard to swallow.”
I glug my second glass, hoping to burn away the image of her standing in that room, pulling at the sides of her mouth as if she were trying to split her face in half.
I should take it steady. Shouldn’t really be drinking on the job, but that god-awful image is seared into my head, and I need it gone.
Last night felt different. She was sleepwalking, or what appeared to be sleepwalking. There were no sharp teeth, no blood in her mouth. And this evening, to have raced up the stairs and then found her sound asleep makes me question my sanity.
“What’s it burning away for you?” I ask, hoping she isn’t paying attention as I pour myself a third measure.
Hayami sneers. “Where to start.” She tips the glass to the side as if trying to make the liquid dance. “The life I have, if you can call it a life. The life I’d like to have if my surname weren’t Devall. What about you?” She angles the glass towards me as if it’s a microphone.
I heave a sigh, unable to let the words fall from my mouth.
“Whisky doesn’t seem to work for me.”
“No?” Hayami regards me before she says, “Is it something to do with how you got your scars?”
I flinch.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t be asking,” she adds quickly, putting her glass down on the table.
“I’m surprised you haven’t asked before. It’s normally everyone’s first question.”
“Willa said it was a fire.”
“It was.”
“But there’s more?”
“Isn’t there always?” I gulp my drink, gearing myself up to speak of the night I try my hardest to forget, yet it clings to me night and day, robs me of sleep, of sanity.
Of all sense of peace. If nothing else, it stops me thinking about what I’ve just seen, or what I thought I just saw, in Hayami’s room.
“I was seventeen when it happened.”
Hayami’s eyes widen, and her shoulders brace. Everyone always assumes it happened whilst I was in the army, part of the job. But no. This was before then, when I was only a teenager.
“Seventeen?”
I nod slowly, that night coming back to me in all its horrific glory.
The night the darkness touched me, and now crawls across my skin, never letting me forget, never giving me a moment of solace.
The night that changed everything. Heat from the whisky permeates my insides, melting the bindings I keep these memories bound with.
“My mum worked as a cleaner at the hospital, and my dad was a delivery driver. Things were tight, but we got by. But one night, my dad came home late, pale, frantic. I was still up, but my mum and sister had gone to bed. He woke Mum up, told her to pack some things because we needed to leave, then told me to do the same. I kept asking him what was going on, but he wouldn’t say, just told me to hurry up. ”
I tighten my grip on the glass, knuckles whitening as the blood leaves them.
“I was scared. I’d never seen Dad like that. Mum threw on some clothes and started shoving things into a suitcase as Dad stalked the house, pulling open drawers, stuffing money into a bag and a gun into his waistband.”
I remember it all so clearly; how can I not when it’s burned into my flesh? I take a drink as I gather my thoughts, the whisky loosening my tongue.
“I froze, didn’t know what to do until we heard the smashing of glass coming from the front door.
Dad shouted at me to go to my sister’s room, to lock the door, to hide.
His face was unrecognisable. I ran to Lilith’s room.
My sister woke up, and I told her we had to hide.
She was sleepy and didn’t know what was going on.
I had no concept of time, no idea how long we hid in her cramped closet. ”
I take another swig of whisky as I hear the gunshots.
“The bangs of the gun… it was like I felt them, right here.” I prod at my gut, the whisky sloshing against the emptiness that resides there. “We stayed in the closet, me telling Lilith that everything would be okay and that we just had to stay quiet until Dad came to get us.”
I lower my gaze to the glass. The amber liquid looks so similar to the flames, as if I’ve captured that night in the tumbler.
“But he never did. I didn’t know what was happening until I smelled something burning.”
I blink, positive there must be smoke in the room, as my eyes start to sting. The periphery of my vision blurs, turning Hayami’s frozen figure into a hazy silhouette against the dimly lit kitchen.
“I ran from the closet, dragging Lilith with me. She was crying, and I could hear shouts from outside.”
Their voices ring in my ears and echo off the wall cabinets. It wasn’t until after that I found out it was the neighbours who’d gathered outside the building. They’d probably seen the smoke and called the fire brigade.
My throat begins to close as Hayami shifts in her seat.
“It was when I opened Lilith’s bedroom door that I realised our apartment was on fire, and she and I were going to burn to death if I didn’t get us out.”
The weight of that responsibility still strangles my lungs, worse than the smoke did, and the words get caught up in the blaze.
Hayami remains silent, because what the fuck is there to say?
“I tried to get her out.” I try to continue, but my chest squeezes as I feel the weight of Lilith’s small body in my arms, her trembling, sobbing cries getting swallowed up by the greedy inferno.
“I had to break down her door and use it as a shield to get us through the apartment. But we were trapped.” I let go of my glass, my palms drenched in sweat, the memory of the heat unbearable.
Hayami looks cold and pale, her lips almost blue.
“Then I remembered the Juliet balcony in the living room, the one my mum always fretted about when Lilith was a toddler.” My mouth curls at the memory as it attempts to douse the flames, but they’re too strong, too fierce for me to fight.
“I felt like I was on autopilot, like I wasn’t consciously acting, just doing whatever needed to be done as I smashed the glass and told Lilith she needed to be brave, that we were going to fly just like birds, and that when we landed, we’d be safe.”
The kitchen contorts, Hayami lost amongst the neighbours who were standing below, waving their arms and telling me to jump. And it was easy. No hesitation. No thought about the consequences, because when the flames are eating at your flesh, lifting the skin from your bones, there’s no alternative.
“I jumped with Lilith in my arms. We landed on two neighbours who were standing below and said they’d catch us. We fell to the ground, and, for a second, I felt relief that I’d got us out.”
I pause, my mouth dry, a bitter, charred taste clinging to the roof of my mouth. I reclaim my glass and down the remaining liquid, numbing the pain from the burns and fuelling myself for the rest of this sorry tale.
“You saved her,” Hayami says, her expression soft, as if she’s trying to convince me I’m the hero I’ve portrayed myself to be.
“I thought so.” My voice trembles, betraying my hard exterior.
She thinks this is the happy ending.
I swallow, my teeth grinding against the inevitable. “When the firefighters arrived along with the ambulances, Lilith was awake, crying, with a broken ankle and a few scratches, but that was all. I thought I’d saved her.”
My head hangs low, the glass now so heavy in my hand, I want to drop it.
“It wasn’t until I was in the hospital, when I was still being treated for my burns, that a policeman came to tell me that my parents were dead, that they’d been shot, their bodies burned in the blaze.
” For the first time since I began, I meet Hayami’s eyes.
Her teary gaze peers back at me, and I wish I hadn’t looked at her.
“All I could think about was how my dad was going to teach me to drive, how my mum was helping me get through my A levels, and how young Lilith was to have our parents taken from her.”
I try to fight the heartache with my anger, but I’m bowled over by the grief. The loving family I thought would always be with me until I was old were gone. They were taken from me.
Suddenly, I want to be alone, but Hayami is waiting. She must know by now that this isn’t a happy ending. I can tell by how wide her eyes are and the hollows in her cheeks that she’s bracing herself for the worst. I bite the bullet and get it over with.
“It was later, much later, when I was high on pain meds and wrapped in gauze like a fucking mummy, that a doctor told me that Lilith had passed away the third night after the fire.” My breath catches as I remember how I argued with her, saying it wasn’t possible because Lilith had been alive when I got her out, alive when they took her to the hospital, alive when I’d been stretchered off to the severe burns unit.
She’d explained that it was common in fires for death to occur later on, as it was the smoke inhalation that killed and not necessarily the burns.
I look up, making sure Hayami sees my face, sees the man I am, before telling her, “I didn’t save her, Hayami. She died anyway. I’m not the hero you think I am.”