Make Me Shine #3
Susan and I grew more distant, and it got to be, so the kids didn’t even try to engage me. I was slipping, consumed by the darkness, with a hunger for more.
But things were about to change.
Shortly after I finished my final piece on Clive Durrell—printing the usual two copies—we sat down for dinner. Another awkward one, the clatter of cutlery impossibly loud against the silence, the kids were now well attuned to it, their faces wearing angst before their years.
“I got it!”
She looked at me, offering a gentle shake of her head.
“The job at the university; I got it!” I lifted my phone to her confused stare.
“Oh, thank God,” she said before breaking into a sob. It looked, at one point, as though she might pass out with relief.
The air immediately felt less charged.
“What are you doing?” Susan said, cosying up to me in bed later that evening, her face renewed with hope, that smile I hadn’t seen for so long. “We need to celebrate.”
“I just have to—”
“No,” she said. “You don’t have to.” Her face changed then, the look in her eyes severe and the tautness returning. “Prove you’re finished with all of this, James.”
I laughed, not realising what she was asking. “What do you want me to do? I’ve spent three days on—”
“Tear it up. And delete the e-mail.” She pushed herself to her elbows, the vein in her forehead beginning its bulge. “We’re done with this!”
“Love, I just—”
I didn’t know how to react as she snapped the manuscript from my grasp and began ripping it into pieces, tossing it around the room like confetti.
I let out a snigger, but internally, I wanted to lash out and scream at her.
The laptop was next, her eyes darting across the screen until she found the delete button.
“No, love, I—”
“There!”
And it was gone. From deleted items, too.
Into oblivion. All that was left was the copy in my file downstairs, and I knew that if it ever saw daylight, my marriage would end.
She even made me write an e-mail to Claire there and then, telling her I was done, that she wouldn’t be getting anything else from me.
We made love that night. For the last time.
I couldn’t tell you what time it was when I woke up to the sound of scratching.
Momentarily, I thought it might be rats in the walls, but the smell fell across me like a noxious dose of smelling salts—burnt meat and incense.
Waiting for my eyes to adjust, I just stared at the ceiling, the sound of my breathing becoming gradually faster.
I slowly leaned over the edge of the bed, fingers clinging to the duvet, knowing what was making the noise but praying I was wrong. But there it was—a hand—the bony fingers pinched around my Parker and scribbling across my notepad.
Blood pounding in my ears, the grip on the duvet tightening further, I watched with inevitability the almost skinless and charred limb slowly and jaggedly continue scratching my name across the bottom of the paper.
I tried to call Susan’s name as the hand started to circle my name, but any immunity to fear I’d thought I’d developed deserted me, and once again, I felt like a child in the darkness, unable to summon a voice.
“They said you’d make me shine,” the crackly voice said from under the bed.
I opened my mouth to reply but still couldn’t find anything.
Between the manuscript fragments, the bony fingers clamped down onto the wooden floor, a loud groan emerging as the top of the head came into view, a sinewy mess of twisted flesh and skull. “I came all the way back from Hell. Wrote my name on your pad, just like they said.”
Beside me, I could hear Susan’s quiet whistling as she continued her peaceful sleep.
“I’ll fix it,” I finally managed to say. “I’ll write it again tomorrow. Even better, you’ll see.”
“Too late.” The body crackled and popped as it continued to make its way out, the almost meatless and blackened bones scraping against the timber.
And then the head spun around. “I came all the way back for my copy.” Something dark and shiny poked out between the exposed teeth, falling to the floor with a squelch and scuttling back under the bed.
“I’ll make another,” I say, voice croaking as I stare into the two blackened eyeholes of Clive Durrell.
“My legacy litters your floor.”
“Please come back tomorrow; I’ll have it for you. Please!”
I felt the iciness of his grip. “Begging did none of them any good.” Impossible pressure around my throat; I tried to call out once more but knew then I was as good as dead.
“Not to worry, James Farland. You will get to write my story.” He began to laugh, bones crackling as he squeezed harder on my neck until the tidal wave of darkness appeared on the horizon.
Feeling those fingers clawing within, I offered my sleeping wife one last glance before he dragged my soul under the bed.
“We'll both shine down here.”
***
Next time you’re standing within the ghostly mists of a cemetery, look out for my gravestone—James Farland—last name on that list.
Not a monster, just a writer.
The End