Now You See Her - Michael Ledwidge [89]
He burst into laughter again, snorting as he fought to contain himself.
“Now, come on. What are you waiting for? Dunk for those apples,” he said as he slammed me under again.
Chapter 114
PETER WAS WRENCHING MY HEAD out of the water for maybe the fourth or fifth time when I had the hallucination. I must have been deprived of oxygen because all of a sudden, I thought I saw Emma in the doorway behind Peter.
She looked like an angel. There was something over her head. Wings?
No, I realized. It was the glass-and-metal table from my bedroom. She had it reared back like a baseball bat.
At the last second, Peter turned.
But it was too late.
An elongated, rattling explosion of shattering glass rang off the tile walls as Emma crashed it onto his skull like a sledgehammer.
Peter’s eyes rolled back into his head as he went over and down, spurting blood. Burned and feeling dizzy, my palms getting cut by broken glass, I wriggled over his legs on my hands and knees out of the bathroom. I made it as far as the living room when Emma knelt down beside me and cut my taped wrists free with kitchen shears.
“Run,” I said hoarsely. I gained my feet. “Door. Go. Police. Run!”
“Leaving so soon? Without giving Daddy a kiss?” Peter said behind us.
I turned slowly and froze. I had trouble registering what I was seeing.
The glass table had injured Peter. Grievously. His left ear was hanging off, flopping against his jaw, dangling by a string of skin. More skin had been shorn from the side of his head, from his temple to his jawline, the exposed pink tissue like bloody bubble gum.
Peter reached up and grabbed his damaged ear between his thumb and forefinger. He grunted and, with a quick hard tug, tore it free. It made a small, wet, ripping sound, as if he were removing a Band-Aid. He frowned as he looked down at the detached ear. He shook his head before he laid it carefully on the picture shelf on the wall by his shoulder.
“Someone,” he said, nodding to himself with conviction, “is going to have to pay for that.”
Then he smiled, his blue eyes flashing like neon, like a gas burner cranked up all the way.
“Bitches, bitches, bitches!” he said in his Southie accent. “All the same. Can’t live with ya. Can’t kill ya.”
The razor-sharp kitchen scissors were on the floor at his feet. He stooped and picked them up.
“No, wait. Spoke too soon,” he said, snip-snapping them open and closed like a barber about to get to work. “Actually, I can.”
Chapter 115
EMMA AND I stood in the living room like statues, kids caught in a game of freeze tag.
“Daddy doesn’t like bad little girls,” Peter said, grabbing Emma by her wrist with his free hand. He pivoted on his heel as he leaned back and swung her like a rag doll. There was a shattering sound as she crashed face forward into our glass bookcase. It teetered and fell over on top of her, raining down books as she hit the carpet.
That’s when I saw it. Peter’s gun was where he’d left it, on the couch next to the tape. It was my only chance. I spun, my feet sending fallen books flying, as I dove for the couch.
The gun bounced with a double thud off the carpet. I grabbed it, my finger curling around the trigger as I swung around. But I wasn’t in time.
Peter slammed into me, knocking the gun out of my hand as he pile-drived the back of my skull into the hardwood.
I felt as if my head had been split open, as if I’d been hit with a hatchet. I forgot the pain as Peter wrapped his hands around my neck.
I made an involuntary gurgling sound as he started squeezing. More books went flying as I kicked and flailed my arms. My vision dimmed as my oxygen was cut off.
Peter interlaced his fingers around the back of my neck and dug his thumbs into my windpipe, as if he were trying