The End of Terror

[TW: terminal illness, abuse, suicide, murder, one swear word]

“To learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror.”

The quote echoes around my head as I wait for him. I am staring at the ceiling when he arrives, my tired eyes tracing the cracks in the white plaster. I have done little else for days and now when I close my eyes I can see the same web-like pattern on the back of my eyelids. Numerous starchy pillows behind my head and torso prop me up so that I am sitting somewhat upright in the bed. A heavy presence enters the room and I know it is him even before Nora whispers his name in my ear, the sound crackling through my nervous system. I nod mutely and she gently squeezes my shoulder and closes the door, leaving the two of us alone. She has warned him I may not be able to speak for long, that I have started having periods of delirium and sometimes find it hard to distinguish between reality and fiction.

I wrench my eyes from the ceiling and now I see him. He stands by the doorway, uncertainty freezing him in place. His hands are clasped in front of him, shoulders hunched forwards as if he is trying to make himself smaller. A silver watch glints expensively on his wrist, half covered by the dark blue sleeve of his suit jacket. I wonder if he had deliberated over which tie to wear today, asking himself if paisley was too cheerful for such an occasion, if black was too mournful. The navy tie he has chosen is fastened tightly, securing his neck onto his shoulders. He is looking at me and the expression on his face is shock. I recognise it well; I have seen it on so many faces by now.

“Hi Dad.” The hoarse voice grating out of my throat sounds nothing like me, as if the words are spoken by someone else.

He takes a few steps towards me. Nora hasn’t asked him to remove his shoes, there is no need to, the black Oxfords are spotlessly clean.

“Kayla.” His voice cracks and the grief on his face is so powerful that it nearly knocks me off course. “I didn’t know.”

I offer a weak smile, “It’s okay. I’m glad you’re here.”

I gesture to a chair Nora has left next to my bed and he sits, lowering his large frame unsteadily. I take the time to study him, absorbing all the changes time has dealt him. The scruff of his beard is a light grey now, the skin underneath sallow and pinched in at the cheeks. He has no hair left, like me. A sick family resemblance. This is the first time we have seen each other in years, I last saw him as a man, he last saw me as a child. We are equals now but strangers.  

Shifting uncomfortably in the chair he speaks first.

“What have the doctors said?”

“There’s nothing else they can do. It won’t be long now.”

He grimaces and rubs a hand on the top of his head, something he used to do when he was upset. Memories trickle in and begin to dance across the room, like pictures from an old projector. I blink them away; I cannot afford to be overcome, there is something I must say. I swallow, the saliva burning the back of my dehydrated throat.

“Dad, there’s something I need to tell you.” My voices hitches and tears fill my eyes. These days they appear so easily, welling up as if from an eternal spring. “It’s about Avery.”

He is surprised, just for a second.

“It’s my fault she died.” The tears stream down my face and I become a little girl again, crying to her daddy.

“Kayla...” He moves as though he wants to reach out to me but he doesn’t. People find it hard to touch me now, as though by touching my emaciated body they too will succumb, as though my cancer is contagious.

“We had a big fight and I said some awful things to her.” I am sobbing now, the anguish racking my withered frame. It hurts to be crying this hard. “She left and I didn’t go with her. She went to the river on her own. If I had gone with her then she wouldn’t have drowned. Now I’m dying and it’s all I can think about. It’s all I think about.” I put my hands over my face and it feels like holding a damp skull.

“It wasn’t your fault.” His gruff voice is as close to reassuring as I’ve ever heard. “It was an accident. She fell. Even if you had been with her, there was nothing you could have done.”

I try and slow my ragged breathing, reaching for a tissue to dry my tears.

“Do you promise?” I lock my eyes on his, searching for the truth in their icy blue depths.

“I promise.”

The trill of a phone notification pierces the air startling us both. As he reaches into his pocket to silence it, I see a different expression flash across his face. He is contemptuous, irate, a lit fuse on a stick of dynamite. He is the man only Avery and I ever saw. When I was younger this was my signal to flee from him, now I watch as his features return to neutral.

“Will you do something for me?” I ask, voice weaker now. “Will you have some iced tea with me, one last time?” I wave my hand at my bedside table where there is a jug of caramel coloured liquid. Very few people will refuse a wish from someone who is dying.

“Just like back home,” he says, pouring us a glass each.

We sip the sweet tea without speaking, the ice rattling gently in our glasses. As I close my eyes I can picture the three of us sitting on the porch. Dad in his rocking chair, elbows thrust out on the arms, head slightly tipped to one side, staring out at the land in front of the house. Avery and I clutching our glasses on the swing seat, keeping as still as we could, not daring to make it move. The silence back then was always strained, loaded.

As the condensation from the glass soaks into my bedsheets, I feel none of that old trepidation. 

I force my eyelids open to look at him.

“Can we have ice cream, Dad?” I murmur.

“What?”

“You said... for my birthday we could have ice cream.” My words slow and slide into one another, lips clumsy. “I want strawberry and Avery… wants chocolate.” The throbbing in my skull starts to reduce and I start to feel as though my head is drifting through space, gently spinning. My eyes droop closed again.

“Kayla.” I feel him take the glass out of my hands and my breathing becomes slow and steady. His hand clamps onto my shoulder and shakes me a little, trying to get me to respond to him. “Kayla?”

I am nine years old again and he is in my bedroom, checking I am asleep. We are both in darkness now.

He makes a noise that is between a sigh and a sob, I picture him rubbing his head in distress. He fidgets restlessly, then I hear the rhythmic thud of his shoes as he stands and paces the room. There is a space opening up for him, the room yawning wide to receive what he wants to say, what he has to say.

The chair creaks as he sits down again.

“It was my fault, Kayla,” he whispers, “I’m the one who killed Avery.”

My eyes snap open.

“I know.”

He recoils from me like he has been struck, a reversed image from my childhood. I have never seen this expression on him. Some detached part of my brain diligently studies every feature of his face, his mouth gaping in horror as he gasps for breath, the terror etched into the whites of his eyes.

“How?” he croaks, pale faced.

“Your shoes, Dad. Your shoes were dirty.”

The memories flood back in, an unstoppable tidal wave.

I am nine years old again, waiting in my room for Avery to come home. The covers are pulled up to my chin but I will not sleep, I cannot until I know she has returned. I listen to the hammering of the rain outside, it has been dark for hours, the house silent as it awaits its other inhabitants.

The front door opens and is closed very quietly. I roll out of bed, unable to see my way but knowing it by memory, and creep onto the landing and down the stairs. Clinging to the newel post I peer down the long dark hallway to the back of the house.

There is someone in the laundry room. A sliver of light from the slightly open door cuts through the blackness. I follow its path along the hallway right to the front door, where sitting on the matt are a pair of shoes. I am too young to know them as anything other than “Dad’s smart shoes”, always kept immaculately clean, the leather polished to perfection. Except now they are caked in thick mud. The beam of light widens and I scurry back to my room, dive under the covers and fight to slow my breath. A few minutes later Dad enters my room and stands there for what feels like a very long time.

Avery never comes home.

The next morning Dad’s shoes are spotless again.

“You told the police you drove around looking for her that night.” I sit up a little more, fuelled by my recollection. “But I saw your shoes covered with mud. You were at the river with her, weren’t you?”

“I..I…” He is actually stammering, unable to formulate his reply.

“Did you push her, Dad? Did you push her in the water?”

“No.” He shakes his head.

“Did you hold her head under?”

“No!” He is hurting now, I am hurting him. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean for it to happen!” He shouts.

I say nothing. The room yawns.

His eyes grow unfocused and he speaks in stilting sentences. “I got a phone call from the school to say she’d been suspended again. She ran off. I went looking for her down at the river. We argued.” He frowns. “She was so difficult, always in trouble for something. It was starting to affect my work and my reputation in town.”

“Your reputation,” I repeat in a whisper. He doesn’t hear me.

“We were shouting and she started pushing me. I pushed her away but she slipped and fell in the water. The river was so high because of the storm. I could have pulled her out but I didn’t.” He pauses, remembering. “I thought about how much easier it would be if she wasn’t here anymore, no more phone calls from school or the police, no more stealing and lying. I only hesitated for a moment but the current dragged her downstream. She hit her head going through the rapids. When I waded in to get her, she was gone.” His voice breaks on the last word.

“You thought I didn’t know.” The calmness in my voice surprises even myself. He looks at me with tears swimming in his eyes.

“I knew. I’ve known all along. But I was too scared of you to tell anyone and no-one in that shithole of a town would have believed me anyway.”

The police had quickly ruled it a tragic accident; Avery had fallen in and drowned. By the time they found her body the storm had erased any evidence from the riverbank. I knew they would never suspect Dad; he was too well respected in town. No-one but Avery and I knew what he was really like.

“You killed your own daughter because you were worried about your fucking reputation?” I snarl. Fire rises within me and my words spit out like hot embers. “You’re a monster. You were always a monster. Why do you think Avery got in all that trouble? Because she had you as a Dad. Why do you think I left as soon as I could? Why do you think I never came back? Did you think I’d forget the man you’d been just because you started treating me nicely after Avery died? I never forgot.”

“Stop it!” He howls and it is his turn to cry now, shoulders jerking like a toddler throwing a tantrum, snot running down onto his upper lip. He is disgusting.

“Look at me, Dad. Look at me,” I order and he lifts his head.

“I have been afraid of you my whole life but I’m not afraid anymore. I needed you to come here so I could look you in the eyes and tell you I know what you did. You killed my sister.”

The fire hisses out as I am hit by a sudden wave of fatigue. Deflated I lie back against the pillows as he weeps. I do not feel one ounce of pity for him.

 When I speak next my voice is hollow. 

“Why couldn’t you love her as much as I did?”

There is so much he doesn’t know.

The fear that pervaded my childhood, the reason I jump when a door slams or panic when I spill something. The pretence of love, a kiss on the cheek, a shared drink of iced tea. The desperation to leave that house and that town far behind and never return. The years of watching over my shoulder for him. The inability to trust anyone. The nightmares that reached their tendrils into my dreams. The terror that ceased once I knew I was dying. The plot to get him to visit me, to get him to confess. The phone hidden under my pillow, recording. The medication I’ve not been taking for weeks and kept stashed in a drawer. The same medication I crushed and mixed into our tea.

His snivels grow quieter and I know he is feeling the same light-headedness as I am. My chest feels heavy, weighed down. The cracks on the ceiling are moving, as though the room is a globe and it is rotating.

Neither of us have long left now.

This wasn’t my deathbed confession, it was his.