The Black Lung Captain - Chris Wooding [68]
“I’m so lonely, Uncle,” came her voice again. “I’m so lonely and it’ll never end.”
“You rot-hearted bastard!” Crake shrieked into the dark. “I loved her!”
“It’s so hard to think in here, Uncle. What did you do to me?”
Crake choked back a sob.
“You should’ve let me die,” she said.
“I loved you! I love you!” he protested.
“How could you?” came the whisper, from right by his ear. He swung around in alarm.
She was there, reaching toward him, sodden, red, open wounds pulsing with blood. But the look in her eyes was pleading.
“How could you?”
He screamed, and the light from his lantern went out.
Hysterical, weeping breathlessly, he fumbled for his matches again, but in his haste to light them he dropped them on the floor. He went down on his knees, searching. At any moment he expected to feel the dreadful touch of the bloodied apparition. But then his fingers found the matchbox, and he managed to steady his trembling hands long enough to strike one. He touched the tiny flame to the wick of his lantern, and light returned to the freezing room.
There was no sign of Bess. But there, lying next to him like an accusation, was the letter knife.
He put the lantern on the floor. Sobs racked him, each one like a punch in the chest. He stayed on his knees. He wasn’t sure he had the strength to stand anymore.
“I thought I could control it,” he gasped between sobs. “You weren’t supposed to be there.”
“Shhh,” came the disembodied voice. “You know what you have to do.”
“I couldn’t let you die.”
“Shhh.”
His fingers closed around the hilt of the knife. A sense of peace filled him at its touch. Yes, it would be so simple, wouldn’t it? An end to the constant, grinding agony of memory.
“You’ve suffered enough, Uncle. It’s time to rest.”
Time to rest. He liked that. She’d given him her blessing, hadn’t she? And he was so very tired.
He put the blade to his neck, angling it under the curve of his jaw. One swift cut in the right place, and he could sleep. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept well.
“Now, push!” hissed the voice from the darkness. “Push! Push!”
He felt a trickle of blood running down his throat and realized he’d already broken the skin. He was already that far along; why not go a little further?
He took a breath, steadied his hand for the final thrust.
“Goodbye, Uncle,” said the voice.
And Crake stopped. Goodbye, indeed. With that one quick cut, he’d be leaving her. He’d be at rest. But Bess wouldn’t.
And who’d save her then?
He took the blade from his throat. It fell from his hands, ringing as it hit the stone floor.
Rest. Peace. He didn’t deserve it.
He got to his feet. From the dark, there was only silence.
The daemon that made him stab his niece had left him alive for a reason. It wanted him to suffer for his arrogance in meddling with forces he didn’t fully understand. To spend day after day in torment. In trying to avoid his sentence, Crake had unwittingly made it worse. By refusing to let her die, he’d condemned them both to an eternity of misery. He’d only served two years, but it had almost broken him.
Yet now that there was a chance of release, he couldn’t take it. Not while Bess was still alive. Bess needed him, and she was his responsibility.
He’d spent three months as a drunken vagrant before he pulled himself together and found the Ketty Jay. Life on board had brought a window of clarity, but once the whole Retribution Falls affair was done, he’d begun sliding back again. Blocking out the pain instead of tackling it. He’d always meant to do something about Bess, but somehow it had never happened. He was too afraid of the possibility of failure. Too scared to leave the relative comfort of the crew to strike out on his own. He knew, one way or another, that this was a task for him alone, and that frightened him.
But now that it came to it, now that he had the chance to give up his burden of grief, he found that he couldn’t. He’d never atone for what he’d done, but he couldn’t turn his back