Chapter Eighteen: Go

I opened my eyes to gloom. Outside I could hear the rain pattering on the window. I turned my head and a fierce ache set up inside it. I brought my hand up to it, making sure that my brain was still in my skull. It appeared to be.

I opened my eyes a little wider and realised that I was in bed. Whatever else I'd been expecting, that seemed to be the most remarkable. I tried to think why being in bed would be something I didn't expect. My brain was fuzzy but finally, little remembrances came to mind: Bright sun. A glass of wine? No, a bottle of wine. A pole, or a stick for walking. Why did I need a stick for walking? My head was the thing that hurt, not my ankle. Bread. Eating bread. Mike. I was eating bread with Mike. I was outside. Red eyes, black hair. There was a man with red eyes and black hair. Wolf, there was a big wolf. Jackson Green? What was he doing in my head? He had the head of a wolf. OK, perhaps there'd been way too much wine. There was something else. I tried to recall it but it receded as if I was being prevented from looking at it. I kept on trying to look at the memory. The more I looked, the more my head hurt. Now I was aware that other bits of me hurt, too. My chest, my back, my knees and there was a throb in my ankle. Things went numb and the images in my head played like a TV on mute. I had no engagement with them. I recognised self-preservation mode, my head was doing that a lot lately. There was some unspeakable horror that I was deliberately being kept from seeing. That was fine by me. There was enough in my head that I needed brain bleach for, without adding to the trauma.

I lifted my hand to my face to scratch an itch and as I did so, a tiny glint of my gold signet ring caught my attention. Gold. Gold eyes. Gold eyes and blond hair. Gold eyes spinning right toward me. The memory swept through my head like a tsunami and I relived the last moments of Daniel's life. I screamed in utter horror at the barbarity of it.

"It's OK Stephanie I'm here!" There was a smooth familiar voice and a hand touched my shoulder.

"What?" I turned my head and out from the gloom came Daniel's face. "Noooo!" I screamed and scrabbled frantically to get away from the ghost. It tried to hold me still.

"It's me! Stephanie it's me! I'm OK!"

"No, you're dead! Get away from me!" My backwards scrabbling tipped me off the bed and onto the floor. But the ghost was there, trying to lift me. I pushed and fought it with everything I had; kicking and punching and screaming. Daniel was dead and my mind was playing the most macabre trick on me. "Go away!" I yelled. I lashed out at it but my hand didn't connect with anything, it sailed right through thin air. "Begone foul demon!" I shouted but that just sounded lame.

"Stephanie, it's me, I'm fine!"

"You're dead!"

"Yeah, well… not now." I smacked myself on the side of the head to wake myself up. Cold hands gripped my wrists. "Don't hurt yourself!"

"Get off me!" I pulled away from the icy grip of the… manifestation, whatever the hell this thing was. "Go away!" I inhaled a lungful of air to scream and as I did so I collapsed into a coughing spasm, pain searing through my chest. I fell forward onto my knees. My chest hurt. It was apt to do that when you'd had someone's head thrown at it. So what was the head doing on this ghost? Shouldn't it be a headless ghost now?

The spasm subsided and I leaned up against the side of my bed. In front of me, sat cross-legged on the floor was this thing. This ghost that thought it was Daniel.

"Go away!" I yelled, setting off the coughing again.

"I want to make sure you're OK."

"You're dead."

"No, I'm fine, what you saw…"

"He pulled your head off!"

"It's back on now." The apparition pulled at his head.

"Please, go!"

"Stephanie, please, I'm fine. It's me, really me." Was this some sick joke?

"You're not real!"

He was suddenly in my face and the hit of his cologne was an unnecessary cruelty. "I am real!" He asserted. "You just felt me hold your wrists."

He did it again as if for effect.

"You're cold! Dead people are cold. Go the fuck away, please!" Tears blossomed.

"Please let me explain." This thing was messing with my head. Explain? I didn't want explanations about this, it was too much. I shook my head. "Please Stephanie?"

I shook my head again. "Please go." I whispered and shut my eyes against the sight of him.

"It's all over." The ghost said after a pause. "We got them and unravelled the whole thing."

I shook my head. "I don't want to know, please go away!"

"But it's over! We took them out! We can be together now!"

What the hell? My eyes snapped open. Anger at least was functioning properly. "You're damn right it's over! I don't want anything to do with Daniel, his life or whatever the hell thing you are. That part of my life is over! All it's brought me is fear and misery! Get out of my house!"

"Stephanie, I want to be with you."

"I don't want to be with you, you're a ghost!"

"I'm not a ghost! I'm Daniel."

"Then read my lips. Go, the fuck, away! I don't want you anymore. I'm with Mike now. I've had enough of the crap you've brought into my life!"

"I'm sorry for that, but I had to protect you."

"Yeah?" My anger was incandescent now and the sarcasm was in full flow. "Well here's a newsflash for you buddy, you failed and I'm talking to a ghost, so enough already!"

"You're not talking to a ghost. It's me."

"I saw your head ripped off; tell me how it can be you?"

"I can't…"

I cut him off. "Back to this shit again. Goodbye Daniel or whoever the hell you are. The door's downstairs. Use it." I scrambled to my feet and limped past him to go to the bathroom.

"Stephanie…"

"You don't exist."

"I do exist!"

"You're a figment of my imagination." I switched the bathroom light on and he was right there in front of me. "Aagh!" I screamed as his sudden appearance made me jump.

"I am not a figment of your imagination." His eyes blazed fiercely in that strange gold. "I only want the chance to love you."

"Well you should've thought about that before you dragged my life through the outer limits of hell! They killed my cat!" I screeched like a banshee.

"I'm so sorry about that, but it's all over now, it's resolved. We can be together!"

I glared at him, incredulous. "What? You think after that, that I want any part of your life? Not only are you a ghost, but you're a sadly deluded one. What part of 'go the fuck away' don't you understand? And what the hell happened to your eyes?"

"These are my eyes."

"Your eyes are brown."

"They're not." he said quietly. "I covered them up. They're gold."

I thought back to what Heather had said. "So what happened to the brown contacts?"

"There seemed little point putting them back in when you'd seen them. I thought I might give my real eyes a go."

"Speaking of go…"

"Please let me stay. I love you."

"Oh no you don't! Don't give me that emotional bullshit, you're a ghost and besides, I don't love you."

"Do you love Mike?"

"May be yes, may be no, perhaps in time, I don't know. But that's none of your business. What is your business is that you're in my house without my permission. Go."

"Please"

"Go." I said it again; quietly, calmly and with great restraint.

"I love you."

"I don't love you. I don't love the danger that comes with you. I don't want any of it. I'm staying this side of the line. Please Daniel, if that's who you are, then believe me when I say it's over."

"I'll explain everything to you."

"I don't want to hear it. Go."

Something seemed to get through to whatever this thing was. It walked out of the bathroom, down the stairs and I heard the front door close behind it.

There had been enough awfulness in my life and he was the source of it. It was time to rebuild; but first, I needed a bath. I set the water going and sat down on the toilet seat, noticing for the first time my neatly strapped ankle. How had that got there?

I shook the thought of him from my head and poured bath bubbles into the water.