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I wheel around to find Kyle standing behind me. He’s lost his trademark sneer. He watches me with eyes full of knowing.
‘Liar!’ I scream at him. ‘That’s just a dirtylie!’
Pushing past him to the hall, I race up the stairs. My breath comes in ragged bursts. When my vision falls to pieces I realize I’m crying – crying and shouting for people I should know are long dead. I reach Kyle’s room, and when I see what’s inside I nearly sink to my knees, because it’sempty, someone has emptied it, has removed all my brother’s things.
How can that be? How cananyof this be?
Outside, the sky flickers and crashes. Devil-spawned shapes come alive in the shadows.
Staggering on, I reach my parents’ room, and that’s when Iknoweverything’s lost. There are no sheets on the bed. The cupboard doors hang crooked, revealing an empty interior. On the dressing table, all Mama’s trinkets have disappeared, although that’s to be expected because, because—
‘Because we buried her,’ Kyle whispers, behind me. ‘We buried her long ago.’
I moan, putting my hands to my ears, because I know that’s not true. Mama’s tree stands in the Memory Wood, I’ll admit, but no bones lie between its roots. Her tree is an oak, glorious with foliage in summer, laden with acorns in autumn, a bounty for squirrels, deer and wild boar. Its upper branches are strung with my memories and hopes: letters I’ve written, drawings I’ve made, wind chimes and paper lanterns and charms. When the rains come, as they so often do, my shrine is washed away. Yet I always renew it, and with it I renew Mama.
Butthisstorm – the one raging outside, and likewise in my head – could wash her away for good. That thought alone is a calamity, one from which I cannot recover.
All things end. All things.
And now, at last, this has to end too.
Abandoning my parents’ room, I clatter back down the stairs. Kyle guards the front door, his eyes like spears. This time, it’s easy to ignore him. The whirlwind in my headrages ever more fiercely, but now that I’ve made my decision, I’ve found sanctuary within the tumult.
My calmness lasts until Bryony swings out of the living room. ‘Dead,’ she hisses, flashing those needle teeth. ‘Dead because of you.’
I veer away, slamming against the bannister. Pain races through my shoulder, but it’s nothing to the agonies I’ve caused. When I turn back to the doorway, Bryony fractures into a million black splinters that melt into liquid as they fall.
I back into the kitchen, and for a moment it’s not my own kitchen but the one inside the Memory Wood. Ivy spreads across the ceiling, then recedes. Glass falls from the window, then reappears. The pantry calls me in, calls me down, to a damp cellar choking with fumes.
This is real, Elijah. All of it. You’re real, so am I. So is my mum. So is my family. This place is real, too. It’s not where I want to be, and I hope I’m not going to die here. I hope, more than anything, that you’re going to help me survive this – but it’s real, I promise you. It’s about as real as a thing can get.
Maybe for her. Not for me.
My lips buzz with electricity, an echo of Gretel’s mouth on mine.
Shekissedme. I didn’t imagine it. Our mouths were close together, but she put hers on mine.
All things end. All things.
And there’s only one way this can.
The back door is unlocked. I charge through it to the garden. Slipping and sliding, I cross the muddy grass. Above, the sky is a fury of thunder, lightning and driving rain. By the time I reach the woodshed I’m shivering, so cold and disoriented I can barely recall my plan. Earlier, I’d reached the eye of the storm. Now, I’m back in the cyclone.
Finally, I spy it, the tool I need to end this nightmare. Icross the shed to the stump block, where Papa’s axe is buried. Licking my lips, I taste Gretel, Bryony’s blood, a host of things forgotten and foul.
Wrapping two hands around the shaft, I wrench the axe free of its block.
All things end. All things.
I step out of the woodshed and into the vortex.
II
Crashing through the cottage, I wonder if I’m moving forwards or backwards, through time or place or both. I hear Mama’s voice, that passage from Ephesians, verse ten of chapter six:Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armour of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.
Far from standing against the devil’s schemes, for too long I’ve accommodated them.
Cold wind rails through the cottage. In the living room, our only picture thumps against the plaster: an Arthur Sarnoff print of a beagle playing pool. Nothing else adorns these walls, no mirrors of any kind. How anyone could bear their own reflection, I cannot begin to imagine. For as long as I can remember, I’ve carefully avoided my own.