Page 90 of Crazy Spooky Love
“I quite like it. I’ll never know what happens at the end of the series now.”
It seems such an insignificant lament in the big scheme of things.
“I think it’s time to go, at last,” Isaac says. It has to be Isaac who releases them; it’s only right and fair after he’s carried the weight ofinjustice and loss through life and death for so many long, lonely years.
“Looks like the game’s up, old boy,” Douglas says, gesturing toward the bear hanging from my fingertips. “Only you could think to hide a murder weapon in such a goddamn childish place.”
Lloyd is shaking with fury. “You can’t have her,” he spits. “Not after all these years. Not now, like this.”
Douglas frowns, obviously as confused as I am by Lloyd’s outburst, and I can’t stop myself from asking the question that’s had me baffled throughout.
“Why didn’t you just confess after you died, Lloyd? I mean, you got away with murder. You didn’t need to hang around here all of these years, yet still you stayed.”
His eyes widen, and his cold laugh chills me. “Because if I stayed here, he had to stay too,” his eyes flicker toward Douglas for a second. “She can’t choose him if he’s not there, can she?”
“Your mother?” I say, trying hard to understand.
“Of course not my mother, you stupid, naïve little girl,” he growls, as if he’s fast losing patience with me. “My wife.”
“Maud?” Douglas sounds genuinely shocked, and Lloyd rounds on him, enraged.
“Don’t you even speak her name!” he yells. “You never fucking got it, did you? She wasmyfriend, but it was always you she wanted. She barely noticed me, because just like all the rest of them, she was always so goddamn starry-eyed over you.”
“You killed me to stop me from going near Maud, a woman I barely knew and had never shown so much as a flicker of interest in?”
Douglas looks utterly bereft at having lost his life over something so insignificant to him.
“Everything was always about you, wasn’t it, Douglas?” Lloyd rants, exasperated and almost reveling in his big reveal. “Except this wasn’t. It was about me, and about Maud. Without you in the picture she finally sawme.With you gone she finally lovedme,and ifyou think I’m going to let you waltz back into her life looking just how you always did and steal her away from me now, you’re…”
Lloyd shakes his head, his fists balled tight at his sides. He looks every inch the old, unhinged man that he is; it must tear his unbeating heart out to look at Douglas now, forever young, strong, and handsome and to know that he made him that way. Lloyd killed Douglas to keep him away from the girl he loved, and now, in death, he created a rival he doesn’t stand a chance of beating. I could almost feel sorry for him, except for the fact that it’s Machiavellian and cunning and monstrous.
“You didn’t confess because you wanted to keep me trapped in this house?” Douglas almost laughs at the utter depraved absurdness. “Do you know how crazy that makes you sound?”
Lloyd seethes and boils and writhes, because there is nothing he can do anymore. He’s had a good run, but Douglas was right a couple of minutes ago. After more than a hundred years, the game is finallyup.
I hear a deathly rattle coming from Lloyd as realization dawns, and I brace myself because I sense what’s about to happen just a scant couple of seconds before it does.
He stares at me and gapes as if he has something more to say and then, suddenly, violently, he shatters into a million razor-sharp shards. It happens like that sometimes. Urgent and angry, as if he’d boiled in his own temper and vitriol and detonated from the inside. It’s not a nice thing to see, and I look away and close my eyes until it’s over.
When I open my eyes again, Douglas has moved closer tome.
“Are you okay?” His eyes search my face, concerned for me rather than himself. It’s easy to see why everyone found him so easy to love.
I nod, and a lone tear rolls down my cheek, because he’s going now too, only this time it isn’t ugly or violent or hideous. A shimmer of color glows warm and welcoming around him, as if he’s walking away into sunshine to take his place on the cricket pitch.Just before I lose sight of him altogether, he presses his fingers against the back of his hand and smiles that dashing smile that must have melted the heart of every girl in town, Maud included.
I press my fingers to the back of my hand too, and I know it’s fanciful, but I think I can feel his kiss there as he disappears.
I close my eyes for a second and swallow down the scald of tears in my throat, then I open them again and turn to Isaac. “That just leaves me then,” he says with a small, sad smile, and I gaze at him with a heavy heart.
“It does,” I say. I wish I could take his hands in mine and say farewell properly. “Safe onward travels, Isaac.”
“Thank you so much, Melody, for everything,” he murmurs indistinctly. Or perhaps he said it clearly, but he’s fading so fast I can barely hear him. I just manage to catch his last word before he vanishes completely.
“Priscilla.”
I gaze at the empty space he’s left behind, and I hope hard that he finally finds peace at last with Priscilla and their son, Charles Frederick.
It’s a good couple ofhours before the police leave. They walked into the scene to find Donovan Scarborough snoring and covered in blood, Leo still being tended to by the fluttering hands of the creepy twins, and Fletch scribbling furiously in his notebook and snapping videos on his phone. His favorite shot was of Donovan Scarborough throwing a punch at the police officer who tried to rouse him and subsequently being thrown in the back of a police car and driven off with sirens blaring.
