Page 68 of Inbetweeners
“I slipped to the living room and she was on the floor, covered in blood, trying to crawl away from him like she was a bug he’d stepped on and half-squashed. Her face was… Her head… She was broken. She couldn’t even scream. Her mouth was all twisted and ripped. She was just making these awful keening sounds. My father had a big spanner in his hand and blood was dripping from it. Then I saw him hit her again on the head.”
Emmett held his hand tight.
“I went into the room and shouted at him to stop. He laughed and told me the bitch deserved it and I should go back to bed or I’d get a taste of it too. He went after her again, and I looked around for something to hit him with and saw his gun. I picked it up, pointed it and fired. It jerked in my hand and I fired four more times until he was on the floor and not moving.”
“Oh God,” Emmett whispered.
“Not the worst of it.” Nix’s mouth was dry, swallowing didn’t help. “I dropped at my mother’s side. Half her head had gone but she was still alive. She looked at me with the only eye she had left, and garbled for Tom to help her.”
Nix swallowed hard. “Even at ten years old I knew no one could fix her. Too much was broken; her face was caved in and I could see brain matter. Tom was my dad’s name. She didn’t even know it was me. Even dying, she was sort of begging, saying she loved him. The words were slurred but…”
Nix closed his eyes, the memory so clear in his head, as it always had been and always would be. “I shot her and the noise stopped.”
Emmett wrapped his arms around him.
“Then, in the midst of all that horror, I was thinking of me. I wiped my prints off the gun and put it in my dad’s hand. When I turned, I saw my brother in the doorway. I don’t know how much he saw, but he never spoke to me from that day forward. I was taken into custody. I confessed. I even told them I’d tried to make it look as though my dad had shot her. I didn’t know then about gunpowder residue, that they’d be able to tell he hadn’t used the gun, but I told them the truth anyway.”
“What happened to you?”
“Court, young offender institute, then a children’s home. When I asked to see Orion, I was told he didn’t want to see me. I don’t blame him. I never looked for him. I hope he’s forgotten me. I hope he’s happy.”
“We could find him and go and see. He won’t know who you are.”
Nix pressed his face into Emmett’s shoulder. “What if he’s not happy? I don’t think I could bear it.”
“I could go on my own. Pretend I’m writing a book or something.”
“On your work in Antarctica?”
Emmett huffed. “Why not?”
“I’ll think about it.” Nix pulled back and sighed. “I wonder if the powers-that-be are trying to show us something about each other and ourselves. One boy endures fucking awful parents, wishes them dead but doesn’t do anything about it, and is rewarded with Heaven. The other boy surrenders to his desires to get rid of his father, ends up killing his mother as well, and goes to Hell.”
Emmett snuggled up and Nix could feel his breath hitting his cheek. “You think we’ve not been randomly put together?”
“I don’t think anything is random in this.”
“If Vin comes into your head again tonight, ask him what he wants. Ask him if he knows what’s happening with the grey-haired guy and the woman.”
“You think he’s connected?”
“Maybe. Because a demon is inside you, it made me wonder if there are demons who want to get inside people who’ve just died. Maybe your demon wants to raise an army on the surface.”
“But this all started before we even got here. So how could Vin be involved?”
“Vin could have created the situation, or known about it, maybe manipulated it so that both an angel and a demon were needed to sort it out, then just waited for the chance to come up inside whoever the demons chose. Or you might have been his choice, because when you’re not being an arsehole, you’re kind of likable. Charming, even. And he’d need charm for his plan to work.”
Nix gulped. “So you think Vin wants a legion of demons up here using human bodies? What would have happened if Malcolm Patrick’s wife had seen him walking around looking as if he were alive?”
“Maybe demons can manipulate features sufficiently so no one would recognise the bodies they’re in. Harry was on the streets, estranged from his parents. Jamie’s parents had given up on him. They seem…more suitable targets. Charlie could have been a mistake by Mr Bad. He probably hadn’t intended him to fall. Maybe all this is just a practice run before they take over the bodies of important people. Maybe they can jump from one human to another. Who the hell knows?”
“But that doesn’t make sense. This…necromancer or whatever he is, is trying to persuade the ghosts to go with him. The body would still be there.”
“So, they want the souls. They don’t care about the body because they can make the ghost body return to what looks like life. I don’t know, but I think we have to try and do what Tar said. Follow Mr Bad. See where he’s living. Then confront him. And her.”
“How are we going to find them?”
“Stop concentrating on the person who’s died and look for the grey-haired guy instead.”
