Switchback. Ch4 pt2

He waited behind the door for three of those minutes, one of which the drunk spent pissing, the other two he spent regurgitating the bar’s produce.

          Eventually the man finished his business and returned to his car, all the time singing about some guy called Jeremiah being a bullfrog and a good friend of his. A few seconds later Peter heard the door slam shut and watched as the car drove past the gate in jerky spasms.

          He waited until the engine noise faded enough for him to hear the barking dog again before he flicked open the door with his foot and ran out. He concealed himself in the shadow of the same gatepost the man had used and caught the stench of ammonia and vomited beer. He needed to move but had to be sure there were no late night dog-walkers or any more drunks who may have left the bar on foot. If anyone should see him with his dead daughter in his arms they’d put him away for sure, and probably in the padded room next to Mrs Evans. Once he was sure the streets were clear, he went through the gate, turned left, and dashed to a car he’d stolen a couple of hours earlier. Then, after placing Elizabeth’s corpse on the back seat, he climbed in and made for home.

Peter pulled up at the side of the house to see his wife Helen on the kitchen doorstep with black mascara lines running over her cheeks.

          He climbed from the car as she moved off the step.

          ‘It’s after twelve,’ she said. ‘We’re too late.’

          ‘We can’t be too late,’ he shot back, not meaning to sound aggressive, but his nerve endings wallowed in an Olympic-sized swimming pool of adrenaline.

          ‘Look at your watch,’ she told him. ‘Didn’t she tell you we weren’t to go ahead with this after midnight? Didn’t she say there’d consequences beyond our control if we did?’

          ‘It’s only just midnight,’ he said. ‘We can make it, we still have time.’

          ‘But−’

          ‘We have to try, Helen. We’re not leaving it here. We’ve come this far and we’re going to see it through, whatever the outcome.’

          ‘But we have no idea what will come back to us if we go through with this.’

          Peter lifted the body of their little girl from the back seat of the car and turned to his wife. ‘Whatever comes back to us,’ he said, and removed part of the sheet from his daughter’s face. ‘It has to better than this.’ Peter still couldn’t bring himself to look upon her, but what he saw in Helen’s eyes said enough. ‘And besides,’ he continued. ‘I can’t exactly run the risk of taking her back.’

          Helen followed Peter into the house and closed and locked the kitchen door. She trailed him to Elizabeth’s room where there were two floor-to-ceiling mirrors stood facing one another, or, as Mrs Evans had called them, “The Twins”.

          She managed the bedroom door first and blocked his path.

          ‘Pray, Peter Ferris,’ she told him. ‘Pray for all our sake’s that we’re not too late.’

          Peter said nothing in reply, simply because there was nothing to say. He entered Elizabeth’s room to find the air inside felt heavier than he recalled, a peculiar sensation of static seemed to cause a low humming all around that made the hairs all over his body to be pricked upright, and although the room wasn’t large, something about it felt cavernous. Helen walked in behind him and stood mid-way between the two mirrors.

          Peter turned to face her and bent to place a kiss on her forehead. ‘It’ll work,’ he said in a soft voice. ‘It has to.’

          This time Helen didn’t reply, she just turned to face the western twin and blinked many times. ‘I’m ready,’ she said.

          Peter turned to face the eastern twin and finally gathered the courage to look upon his daughter’s face, because he knew it was going to work, because he knew he was going to see Elizabeth’s smiling face once more. He moved aside that portion of the sheet to see her once pink and freckled flesh now a pale shade of grey and purple, and her slim, bright-pink lips, close to black and swollen. He kissed her forehead as he had her mom’s. ‘God bless you, Lizzie,’ he said, then dropped the sheet to the floor.

          Peter bent at the waist to give his daughter the momentum required to bring her out the other side and into her mother’s arms, and as he did this another tear rolled over his cheek. He watched it drop to the floor as though all motion had slowed until it hit the polished pine beneath his feet where he felt sure he heard the splash it made. Without another thought he straightened his posture, and, with a swift snap upright, he tossed his daughter’s body into the mirror.

          ‘Now, Helen.’ he shouted.

          As Elizabeth’s body exited the opposite mirror, the naked bulb above Helen’s head exploded and left the room bathed in a blue half-light emanating from within the two mirrors. She reached out to catch her daughter but wasn’t ready for the sudden weight which knocked her backward. Peter on the other hand was ready and steadied Helen and helped her to regain balance. Then both parents studied their daughter’s face to see she still looked pale, and the bluish hue from the mirrors added an even more macabre slant to her features.

          ‘She’s not breathing,’ Helen said.

          Peter placed his left hand on his daughter’s chest. ‘But she does have a heartbeat,’ he said.

          ‘What? Are you sure?’

          He nodded. ‘She’s alive, Helen. She’s come back to us.’

          Helen turned to Elizabeth’s bed and laid her there just as a sharp intake of breath rocked the child’s body rigid. Her arms pushed taut along her sides, her fists clenched and her legs became inflexible which forced her back into an arch. And then, with pupils large and as black as the darkest of nights, her eyes opened.

          Peter knelt beside the bed and caught his watch in the blue light, it said three minutes past twelve. ‘You see, it wasn’t too late, the old woman was wrong. Just trying to scare us, trying make out this was all some evil sinister act.’

          Deep down Peter knew that’s exactly what all this was. It wasn’t God’s way; it was the Devil’s way. He felt it and knew Helen felt it too, but also knew that neither of them had the courage to admit it to the other.