Darkside_ A Novel - Belinda Bauer [129]
Jonas looked confused. 'What do you mean?'
Her tears were coming thick and fast now - as she knew in her heart the truth of what she was about to say.
'Jonas ... There's somebody inside you who wants me dead.'
'What?'
'It's OK. I understand. You have to protect the boy. He needs you to be strong, Jonas. Now more than ever.'
'Lucy, honey, I don't know what you're talking about. Please come downstairs ...'
He held out his hand to her - the way he had at the altar. She had given him her hand then and he had slid the ring on to her finger and vowed to love her for ever.
'You killed the wrong people, Jonas.'
She had lost it.
'I didn't kill anyone, Lu. I swear to you. Sweetheart, please just come downstairs with me, so we can talk properly. It's freezing up here. Please, Lu? Please?'
Lucy stared at his outstretched hand and then looked up into his eyes with an expression of such helpless agony on her face that he flinched.
'Jonas,' she choked, 'you're still wearing the gloves.'
Jonas looked down at his hand. It shone, stretched and strange in the white light of the lantern, and he held it up so he could see it better.
He was wearing a near-translucent surgical glove.
Why?
Why?
He frowned stupidly at his own fingers, all smooth and pale and plastic. He raised his other hand and saw it was the same. He felt disorientated. Why would he be wearing these gloves? It made no sense.
'I love you with all my heart, but you can't protect me any more. It has to stop.' Lucy's voice was a dull whisper. It had lost all hope.
Jonas said nothing - still consumed by the sight of his own shining fingers.
'This is the job you were meant to do, Jonas,' Lucy said, and - with hands that did not shake - slid the knife into her own throat.
'NO! NO! NO!'
Jonas reached her in two seconds and caught her before she fell. The knife was lodged in her jugular, blood beat from her neck in time to her heart, while she made a very small mewling sound, like a kitten in a box.
Jonas made all the noise. He screamed her name and screamed for help and tried to stop the blood with his hands, then dragged her towards the hatch. He had to get her to hospital. He barely touched the ladder, dropping on to the landing in a heap with his wife in his arms, then down the stairs, slipping halfway, banging his head, and falling to the hallway, holding on to Lucy in a tangled mess of blood and arms and legs.
He raised his face from the cold flagstones, sat up and pulled her on to his lap, repeating her name like a talisman against bad things. If only he kept saying Lucy then she would not die. Would not.
Her copper hair was darkened by thick blood, and her face was spattered and smeared. Her eyes were still open and found his.
'LucyLucyLucyLucy ...'
She looked away from him then and into a future where he could not follow.
'Don't go,' he begged her. 'Please don't go.'
But he could do nothing but hold her and watch the light in her eyes go out.
Here on the cold floor behind the front door - where Lucy Holly had already tried to end her life once - she finally succeeded.
Jonas laid her head gently on his knees and pulled the knife from her neck. Then he plunged it into his belly.
'GET OUT!' he screamed. 'GET OUT!'
Jonas repeatedly sought the killer inside him, but his job was done and he was nowhere to be found.
*
The walls were thick and stone, but Mrs Paddon was woken by Jonas's shout of 'NO! NO! NO!'
She was eighty-nine, but she had been through the war, so she got out of bed and pulled on her coat and boots.
She heard Jonas screaming 'GET OUT!' as she approached the front door, but nobody burst past her, so she went inside.
She found Lucy dead and Jonas still alive, so she fetched towels to staunch the blood.
She saw the knife lying nearby, so she didn't touch it in case it was evidence.
She called the police and the ambulance and told them two people had been attacked in their home and stabbed.