These words will change your life.
After we both escaped that awful house, I went to college, got a job as a counsellor, moved on. But not May. I loved her to death. I always will. But she wasn’t cut out for it.
She made bad decisions, especially when it came to men. It wasn’t her fault—we both know that, even if you choose to lie to yourself—but that didn’t make it any easier. Whenever things went wrong, and they always did, she would call me. And I would always come running. No matter where I was, or what I was doing, I would go. Sometimes at great cost to my own life.
I’m not telling you this because I want pity. I know I made those choices. And I’ve learned now that not everybody can be saved, no matter how much love you pour into them, how much pain you endure trying to separate them from twisted parts of themselves that they never asked for. That they never deserved.
I’m telling you this so that you understand what came next.
I had just started on the morning shift when she called.
‘May?’ I asked.
‘Sammy, I don’t know what to do.’
Her voice was timid. Unsure. Like she only half-meant what she was saying.
‘What’s wrong?’
“Max isn’t well.”
‘Have you taken him to see a doctor?’
‘No, it’s not like that. He’s just acting weird. I thought maybe you could talk to him, you know, cos of what you do for your job.’
‘May, I’m a grief counsellor. If you’re worried about his mental health, you should encourage him to speak to someone.’
‘He won’t. And I’m…’ she paused, then continued in a whisper, ‘I’m scared of what might happen.’
The sudden terror in her voice made my chest tight. It was as if she’d been only just holding it back the whole chat, like a cracked dam, but now it had fully burst.
‘Scared? What do you mean scared? Scared of Max?’
My heart pounded. I knew Max. He wasn’t a nice man—arrogant, slimy, a cheater. He’d tried to hit on me only a few months after he’d made things official with May. But I’d never got the vibe that he was violent. He seemed more like a gaslighter, an emotional manipulator.
The line was silent. I could only hear her breathing. ‘May?’
‘Please come.’
I wanted to argue. But we both know May was never the kind to stand up to a man. To an abuser. And who could blame her, when abuse was all she ever knew? To her, that’s what men were. And that was simply what women were expected to endure.
I would never have convinced her to leave. Not without real help. And besides, their house was deep in the Scottish highlands, so she would need a car. I could have phoned the police, but if I knew May—and I did—she would just cover for Max. It would have taken a lot for her to even imply that he was doing something wrong, even to me, let alone the police.
‘I’ll leave after my shift,’ I said.
‘Thank you Sammy. I love you.’
She ended the call.
***
I thought I was going to die on that journey.
I’d made the drive to May’s before, but never that sudden. Usually I’d leave London early, try to give myself plenty of daylight. There was none of that now. I drove at a crawl along a single-lane road in the pitch black, too afraid to go any faster in case I ran the car into a ditch. There was nothing for miles except farmland, and I didn’t like my chances at finding a cow who’d studied mechanics.
The whole journey, dark thoughts hounded me, hurting my head. Was I the reason May was always so helpless? I’d gone running to her repeatedly over the years. Every time something went wrong with another cruel bastard she’d invested in. I would stay with her, we would drink wine and talk and cry about the past, about that awful fucking house, and then I would leave. And she would be OK.
For a short time.
And then, inevitably, she would find another bastard.
Was I even helping her? Or was my constant babying preventing her from growing on her own?
My eyelids were beginning to droop when the radio cut out. One moment, some sweet, slow song was playing, then the next it was buried under a scream of snowy static. That’s when the chanting began.
“fa-liv-fa-liv-fa-liv”
Only a murmur at first, barely audible, but slowly it got louder. It was a disturbing sound. Aggressive. I flicked my eyes to the stereo to jab frantically at the OFF button. When I looked back to the road, there was a woman standing there.
I slammed the brakes and my head whipped forward. Pain bloomed at the back of my neck.
The woman was hunched, pale and very, very old. She held something large in her right hand that dripped a thick, black liquid onto the road. The night seemed to gather around her. I remember just staring at her, a horrible and inexplicable sensation twisting my stomach to knots.
She threw her eyes towards the sky and screamed. The sound sent shockwaves through the area; I swear I felt the car shake. I instinctively reached for the handbrake, ready to reverse the whole way home if I had to; if it meant getting away from her.
Suddenly, the driver’s side window shook with a heavy force. I turned to look and she was there, staring at me with ice-white eyes through something dark and thick on the glass. She lifted her arm and I screamed. A severed dog’s head hung from her fist, black and mangled and unnaturally big. I didn’t get a chance to see much else, because she quickly drew back her fist and then slammed the gruesome thing into the window.
The radio came back to life, then, and that same chanting from before exploded into the car. Fah-liv fah-liv fah-liv. The woman joined in too, but she roared it instead, punctuating each syllable by driving the head yet again into the window.
I hit the accelerator and the car lurched away. But somehow her body followed at the exact same speed. And still she slammed the head into the window; still she screamed those awful sounds at me. FAH-LIV FAH-LIV FAH-LIV FAH-LIV. My heart bashed so hard against my chest that I thought it might break out.
And then, as if she’d suddenly decided she was bored with the whole thing, she was gone. I glanced into the driver’s mirror, but there was no sight of her on the road. All that remained was the thick blood sliding down my right-hand window.
It’s funny how we rationalise clearly exceptional events. I think it is a defence mechanism employed by the brain; a way to stave off the definite insanity that would come with accepting that there are things out there more powerful than us. That humans aren’t the apex predator.
By the time I reached May’s house, I had calmed down a bit. I’d decided that the woman was nothing more than some seriously damaged person who’d probably escaped a care home nearby. Never mind that she apparently teleported from the road to my window. Never mind that she managed to keep up with a rapidly accelerating car. I made up some bullshit explanation so I could file everything away in my mental ‘nope’ folder and move on with my life.
It worked for a short time.
I stepped out of the car and hurried across the snow-covered lawn to May’s front door. I was still a little on edge, and even the trees of the north wood—my favourite part of the old farmhouse’s land—seemed to be creeping towards me in the dark. I jabbed at the bell.
A few minutes later, the door swung open and light spilled out. May stood there. Despite everything, we grinned at each other and fell into a hug. All anxiety melted away. My sister was a burden at times, yes, but she was my burden. And I loved her more than anything.
‘It’s so good to see you,’ I said.
‘Get in here.’
I took a step forward, then stopped. ‘Fuck, I left my phone in the car.’
May peered into the dark behind me, and for just the briefest of moments, a shadow came over her. Then her gaze fell back to me and she waved a hand. ‘Just leave it for now. You know we don’t have WiFi. And you’re definitely not getting phone service out here.’