27 Everleigh Let Me In—Dermot Kennedy
Everleigh
Let Me In—Dermot Kennedy
London ticks closer like a doomsday clock.
Shadows beckoning with barbed wire arms.
For a place I’ve called home my entire life, the capital city holds nothing but emptiness and gut-punching sadness.
I haven’t missed it. Rather than flashy cars that inflate the frailest egos, I long for cobbled roads and sagging cottages.
Farm fields, thatched roofs, and tacky pub carpet that stinks of spilled beer.
Real conversations. Ordinary, authentic people.
All of Hawkthorpe’s wonderful imperfections.
Home.
My gritty eyes sear as a passing car horn reacts to my drifting. Almost five hours on the road after successfully skipping town have sapped my energy. Thank God I’m still outside the city, but the rolling grass fields will soon morph into rampant industrialisation.
The driver swerves, then cuts ahead in a reckless overtake. This time, I bear down on the horn. I’m hardly driving fast. These bigger roads are a lot more challenging to navigate in Leo’s bulky Land Rover.
“Asshole,” I mutter under my breath.
There aren’t any other vehicles on this stretch of road. We were diverted from the motorway through a small outskirts town, crippled by London house prices without the benefit of being within the capital proper. It’s quiet before the evening rush, though, still a few hours away from now.
Hairs raise on my skin and my anxiety grows when the suburb disappears in the rearview mirror, replaced by glowing signs directing me ever closer to my fate. The weight of Sterling’s phone in my bra keeps me focused on the mission.
Christopher won’t kill me. He said so himself. There’s plenty more he could do that would have me praying for a quick death, but I’ll do whatever it takes to extract the truth from him. With a full confession and the wedding ring back in Hawkthorpe, he can’t possibly buy his way out of this.
It has to work.
I can’t go home until he’s behind bars.
With that determination pulsing through me, I’m deep in plotting mode when the aggravating car in front abruptly brakes. I slam on the pedal, feeling the Rover shake and sputter, preventing me from sailing straight into their rear end.
The driver swerves, banking right to sail into the opposite lane. I fight to suck in air as the car suddenly jerks, veering towards me at an angle. My yelp fills the interior when metal collides and sends my tyres hurtling out of control.
“Argh!” I scream in horror.
Another impact hits in quick bullet fire. Each time the assaulting car swerves, it smashes into the side of the Rover, causing my grip on the road to falter. No amount of acceleration can shake the incoming attack off as realisation dawns.
The driver.
Just how long has he been following me?
With another ram, the steering wheel spins out of my control. Leo’s beloved Land Rover veers off the road, skidding across grass verges to topple down a slope. The brake pedal doesn’t respond to me, no matter how frantically I smash down on it.
“No!”
The world disintegrates into terrifying snapshots. Squealing tyres, sailing blindly along the road until an old tree rises in my path. Engine groaning in protest. My own heartbeat, roaring in my eardrums. And the tree growing closer, closer, and closer still.
Then . . . impact.
Smash.
Metal twists, crushing against solid wood. Glass shatters. Steel warps. Smoke fills the cab where the airbag explodes in my face, causing my skin to crisp and sear. Whiplash deafens my scream as boiling copper floods my mouth, joining the bite of stray glass shredding flesh.
The seat belt snaps over my torso, bruising in its protective force. I cough and splutter as the airbag’s fine mist dissipates. Hot liquid pours over my eyes, blurring the scene of destruction all around me.
God, the pain in my head is blinding. It smacked hard against the steel door-frame. Seismic pounding reverberates around my skull, forming a deep throb that seems to slash into my brain tissue. I slump in the seat, slick beneath a curtain of blood.
“H-H-Help,” the whine drips off my tongue. “H-H . . .”
A metallic screech of the car doors being ripped open cuts through my skull. I flinch into the seat. I’m too weak to struggle against the hands that wrench the belt from over my body.
Light flashes. Jagged. Pain-soaked lightning bolts. Swaying vision adds to the agony ripping my head apart with razor splinters. I can hardly move my lips enough to form a moan when something wraps around me, a snake’s coil entrapping its wounded prey.
But I know that voice.
Crisp, cold . . . lifeless.
“You left me no choice, Everleigh. I had to do this to you.”
“N-No,” I whimper.
“It’s okay, darling. I’m going to take you home and care for you. You’ve been away for far, far too long.”
Internally, I beg for my muscles to respond. Even a twitch. Something to fight back with. Instead, I’m a floppy rag doll scooped up by the jaws of death without protest. Not even a cry for help.
“There there, dear wife. You’re safe now. Let me give you something for the pain.”
A laser point pierces the side of my neck. My limbs grow limp against the muscled wall lifting me from the wreckage. Intense pain blurs into tides of bliss as the world becomes soft, warm, heavy.
And his croon tricks me into a lull.
“Welcome home, Mrs. Banks.”
Something hard and rigid digs into my back. No matter how hard I cling to the drowsiness, the incessant poking refuses to relent. Not until my mind stirs and awareness returns to each limb.
The mattress beneath me is lumpy and uncomfortable. Groaning, I crack my eyes open to peer up at a low-lit white ceiling. Light dapples across the plain plaster, chasing away the night-time gloom.
It’s clean. Too clean.
Not warped, rough cottage stone.
Inhaling sharply, it takes a moment to compute the rich, stomach-rolling stench that enters my nostrils. My eyes are streaming from the odour. Like ripened fruit left to rot in the sun, it seeps into my skin and curdles.
Where am I?
When I try to move, a shooting pain stabs into the side of my head. With it comes the memory of being run off the road and driving head first into a tree. The airbags. Smashing my skull on the door. Dropping in and out until hands seized me.
But not just any hands.
Terror joins my agony to form a bitter concoction. I didn’t need to see Christopher to recognise his voice—the demon dressed like an angel, rescuing me from danger he inflicted. Then a needle prick and nothing.
Flexing my fingers, then toes, I battle off the pins and needles to regain control. My extremities are leaden, like I’ve been buried alive beneath the rubble of a collapsed building. Sedative hangovers are the worst.
Finding the strength to move takes several minutes, all the while pleading for my surroundings to change. If I pray hard enough, I’ll wake up under a blanket on the sofa beside the hearth. Watching the guys laugh, argue, and play poker. All smiling. Safe. Content.
But this gloomy, silent room isn’t home. Nor the cheap mattress with its bedsprings stabbing into my spine. Or the smell of decay seeming to cling to me like a second skin until I can’t let my injured body rest for a second longer.
When I shuffle upright, the room sways.
And an unmoving mass next to me becomes clear.
It’s hard to scream through a throat so parched and abused, it can’t quite form the sound. All that comes out is a dry rasp. The sort of noise desiccated bones would make, grinding together in a heap six feet under.
But my companion isn’t desiccated yet.
Fire spikes through my aching torso as I crash-land on the floor, desperate to scrabble far away from the bed and its deathly occupant. A naked corpse lays discarded on the sheets, tossed down with little care for how the limbs landed.
Still I scream. On and on and on.
Wordless . . . but horrified of the man who put her there.
When weakness returns to steal my rasping voice, I let myself slump against the nearby wall. The bedroom is empty all but for the bed. A gravesite for the unknown. One lamp illuminates the darkness created by boarded-over windows, blocking any exit from this strange place.
On my left, there’s a door. It might as well have bars on it. I know a prison when I see one. I have to summon Sterling’s calm voice in my head to gather the energy to crawl towards it.
One, two, three, four.
Just keep breathing.
The brass door handle doesn’t budge. It’s locked from the outside. Curling my knees up to my chest, I dare to peek at the bed again, fighting the reflex to hurl. The body can’t have been there for long. It reeks to high heaven, but there’s little decomposition at this stage.
“Search ongoing for missing London exec,” I whisper shakily, the headline emblazoned on my memory.
The search is over.
He fucking killed her.
Tears aggravate the burned skin of my face, scorched by inflating airbags. If I had anything but air inside me, I’d spew it across the floor to discard this nauseous cloud. But all I can do is recite Sterling’s command.
One, two, three, four.
A quick once-over reveals my clothing intact, albeit bloodstained and shredded in places. When I probe my head, I find a large egg, crusted from a laceration in the swell. More blood is dried to my face and neck where glass shattered on my skin.
Air enters my lungs in a relieved whoosh when I find the phone intact, still nestled inside my bra. If it wasn’t wedged in there, I can’t guarantee Christopher wouldn’t have found it.
The lack of service in this hovel stops me from contacting the outside world, but I force myself to snap a few photographs of the body, then commence a recording. Nausea roils in my gut as I stash the phone back out of sight.
One, two, three, four.
Breathe. Get out alive.
That only leaves the remains, unmoved and waiting for my acknowledgement. There’s a reason Christopher placed me in this room with his latest victim. The message is unmistakable. Look what I’m capable of. Like I needed a reminder of his sickness.