Chapter 4.33 – Face the Beast

Jessica had returned to her house for the first time in days.

She couldn’t stay away forever. She’d only taken a handful of clothing on that night she’d fled after facing that vampire, but it wasn’t just squeezing her blossoming body into Morag’s loosest clothing or sleeping on the couch at the GliTS HQ that was pushing her back home. She needed to decorate a nursery for her little one. That blanket she was making for them wouldn’t knit itself. She missed her bed.

She was a grown woman. She was a police officer. She was brave. She could don her big girl pants, go home and face the beast.

God, she hoped he wasn’t waiting inside for her…

Jessica distracted herself with thoughts from her day, how she’d wandered into the little store in Windenburg Square and found it almost empty.

She hoped that the botanist at the flower shop would come back to her, Wyatt. She had the faintest glimmer of hope that he would as he hadn’t laughed in her face or outright called it a hoax. Okay, maybe she had invited ridicule by venturing around in her tinfoil hat, but one, she couldn’t risk anyone knowing she was a cop and things getting back to Beth – she’d be back in the Tower before she knew it, and two, the watcher had shot the whole scene before she realised she’d had it on.

A noise in the bathroom caused Jessica’s heart to jump into her mouth. She froze on the spot, turning slowly towards the bathroom door.

Should she investigate? Should she run? No, she shouldn’t run.

Big girl pants, Jessica.

With her pulse pumping in her ears, Jessica inched towards the bathroom door noticing the light that was triggered by movement.

Taking a deep, but silent, breath, Jessica wrapped her fingers around the door knob, eyes fixated on it. Palms sweating, heartbeat racing.

On the count of three, she barged into the unlocked bathroom to face her fears.

April was feeling quite sleepy, despite her vampirism and it being nearly night-time – her day had caught up with her and she was a little thirsty. She hoped Wyatt would remember to draw her some blood that night.

Once he was done shouting at her.

Wyatt had said that they needed to talk and April, of course, immediately assumed that she was in trouble.

See, she was a little extra bit tired because she and Melinda had spent the day enjoying their new freedom in the sunshine and doing things. And because they knew the house was shrouded in the special magic, and because they wanted to enjoy every second of sunlight that they could, they had been doing the things outside, by the river that ran alongside the house.

April knew that it was wrong and that she must face the music. She wondered if someone had seen them and reported it back to Wyatt. Or maybe Wyatt himself had seen them. Cringe.

“I’m sorry!” she blurted out, before Wyatt had even had chance to speak.

“Huh? Wha? What for?”

April fiddled with her hair. Was he going to make her say it?

Oh shit! He was going to make her say it.

“Melinda and I, today we… we were doing… by the river… oh god, did you see us?”

Wyatt blinked. “Woah, Apes. No, no I didn’t–“

“…Because I know it’s wrong but she’s just so soft and pretty and she kisses really nicely—”

“I don’t want to know…” Wyatt murmured. “Wait, the river?”

April nodded. She wasn’t sure if she could blush but her face had that embarrassed heat regardless. “I’m sorry. I know that’s so very classless of me.”

Wyatt paused for a long, horrible second and then he guffawed. “Don’t be sorry! I get it.”

“…You do?”

“Course I do.” He beamed. “Aw, Apes. If you think that is classless, boy do I have some stories for you!” He cleared his throat, looking at her face which must have been a picture. “But maybe another time, yeah.”

April nodded. So used to being told off for every minor infraction, it still took her a while to be totally sure that Wyatt wasn’t Sandy, he didn’t tell her off and make her feel small. She could talk to Wyatt, she realised and he wouldn’t be mad. She took a deep, meaningless breath. “Wyatt, can I talk to you about something?”

“Sure, anything.”

She knew he was being sincere, but it was still very difficult to tell him what was on her mind. “Wy, I don’t want to love Melinda outside but I’m not sure what else to do?”

“What do you mean? There’s a whole house here for you to, uh, use.”

April squirmed. “Well, I don’t want to mess up Broof’s bed or sofa or… anything. I know he’d be mad.”

Wyatt nodded sagely. “You could use my bed, I don’t care.”

“That feels… icky.”

“It’s only icky if I’m in it.”

“Wyatt!” April laughed.

Wyatt grinned. “I could move out?”

“No!” April replied loudly.

“You could move out?”

It took April a second to realise that he was teasing her. “No, I like living with you, I really do.”

“Good. I like living with you too.”

April smiled brightly. “Besides, I can’t even work a washing machine, I’d be so useless by myself. I need to grow up a bit more, I think, before I move out.”

“So you are basically saying that you need your own space.”

“Yes, I guess? But there’s no more space here. Unless you can magic some up?”

“Yeah… I’m not sure how Hoggy would feel if I started extending his grandma’s old house. I’m not sure if the spells shrouding this place would even allow it. But I hear you, Apes, I do.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Hey, look, the reason I wanted to talk to you was, I was over at the flower shop today, grabbing some kit and I had a thought… how would you feel about moving back there?”

“To Grandma’s apartment?”

Wyatt made a funny face. “Sure, but it’d be our apartment now. Mel can come too, if she likes. You two could have your own room, lots of privacy, lots of space, freedom to make a mess – uh, you know what I mean. Mel could take up pot painting again if she wants; there’s a whole studio going to waste over there.”

“And I can work in the flower shop!” April gushed. “As Amy Algae, of course, in my wig. Hello,” she said in a voice that she hoped wasn’t somewhere between pirate and gangster, “I’m Amy Algae – would you like to buy some peonies?”

Wyatt tried to hide his smile, but April saw it anyway. “You want to work in the shop?”

She nodded slowly, confused by his reaction. “Is that strange?”

Wyatt only laughed. “You’re too cute, Apes. If you wanna play shopkeeper, I won’t stop you. We’ll get you a better wig though, or maybe we can whip you up an illusion potion…”

“An illusion potion?” April gasped. “What’s that?”

“It changes your appearance. It’s pretty tricky to make, but I can help you to do it. You can go anywhere from changing your hair and eye colour to completely restructuring your face and body.”

“Oh wow!” April let out an impressed little sigh. “If we had that I couldn’t just work in the shop, Mel and I could go outside, properly! I could take her to the fun beach!”

“Yeah, I suppose, uh, you could. If it’d work on your undead self. And in conjunction with the sunlight elixir. There are a lot of variables, Apes. We’d have to practice a bit, start off with small doses—”

“We can mix it up together in the big cauldron!” April squealed and clapped her hands. “I forgot there was a big cauldron at Grandma’s! We can make all sorts of potions together in the big pot! I can learn them all! It’ll be like the old days!”

“…It was three months ago.”

“Like the old days,” April repeated softly, her brain a rose-tinted fuzz of potion mishaps, psychedelic tea and joviality, conveniently forgetting all the miserable stuff that had happened in that apartment.

“I’m excited,” she said after a short pause. “Let’s do it, Wy. Let’s go and live back at Grandma’s.”

Jessica’s big girl pants were very almost soiled when the woman in the bathroom had screamed right back at her.

“Mum!” Jessica panted, clutching at her chest. “Mum what the heck? Why are you in my bathroom? Why are you naked?”

“I was going to take a bath.”

Jessica didn’t ask why her mother had come over to take a bath when she had a perfectly good tub at her house. She looked at the window which wasn’t quite closed. “Did you… did you break in?”

Eileen stared through her daughter and softly whispered, “They’re noisy tonight.”

Jessica didn’t have to guess what this meant. She had spent many nights over the years dealing with her mother and her ‘noises’. She sighed. “You’re freezing. How long have you been here, Mum?” she asked softly, wrapping her mother in her own dressing gown. Guilt was starting to eat at her; she had been so busy that she hadn’t checked in on her mum as much as usual in the last few days. This was the first time that Eileen had broken in, though. At the least the first time she knew about. Although it would explain why her bath oils went down so fast.

“Have you taken your medication today?”

Eileen nodded. “It doesn’t help.” She was trembling, despite the thick fluffiness of the robe. “Eileen, they’re not real.”

“They’re not,” Jessica replied automatically, then she paused. “Mum, are they here now?”

Eileen looked startled by this question, but she looked around and shook her head. “There aren’t any here.”

Jessica nodded. She agreed. She chewed her lip as she wondered what to say. She had spent her whole life gently navigating her mother’s illness, but what if she wasn’t actually ill? What if all this time, Eileen, like her daughter, could really talk to ghosts?

“Where did you see them last?” Jessica asked.

“At home,” Eileen replied. She looked around, over her shoulder as if expecting someone. “There aren’t any here. Just us.” She tugged at her sleeve, her voice small. “Just us.”

“Yes, it’s just us.” Jessica agreed, thankful that there weren’t any ghosts in her bathroom. She rocked on her heels, wondering how best to approach her next question. “Mum, you can’t just break in. Why didn’t you call me?”

Eileen shrugged.

Jessica nodded at this non-answer.

Eileen sighed. “I wanted to talk to you in person, you see.”

“I see,” Jessica mumbled, even though she didn’t. She watched her mother for a while as the older woman calmed herself. Jessica really didn’t want to upset her again but she just had to know.

“Mum,” she broached softly. “I know they talk to you, but do you ever talk back?”

“Why are you asking these questions, Jessie? Are you planning to retrain as a shrink?”

“No, just curious, I guess.”

“The yes, I do, sometimes,” Eileen admitted quietly. “But usually I ignore them until they go away.”

Jessica wasn’t sure that was any proof, although there were time she’d ignored ghosts until they’d gone away, they usually hung around until they wanted to leave. Or in Paul’s case, indefinitely. Every time she set foot in the woods, he turned up and hung around like a lingering fart until they left.

Hmm.

“Are they always the same people? In the same places?”

The older woman looked confused. It was true that Jessica didn’t usually ask questions about the noises; she had long just accepted that they were just a thing that were there and didn’t think too hard about it. Had she been curious? Not really, not until now. Eileen scratched her chin.

“The same people,” she replied, “but different places.”

Jessica let out a breath she hadn’t realised that she had been holding. It was tinged with a little sadness. When Jessica saw ghosts it was always different people in different places. She didn’t fully understand the ins and outs of ghosts yet, but she knew from the ghost in Ralf’s house, from Rose, from Paul that ghosts haunted in the locations where they died. They didn’t travel, couldn’t travel.

Whatever her mother was seeing and hearing, then, was not a ghost.

This was confirmed when Eileen starting looking frantically over Jessica’s shoulder, twitching and looking like she was listening to something. “They’re here! They… they like your tiles?”

Jessica looked around; she listened very hard but there was nothing. There were no ghosts in her tiny, kitten-covered bathroom. Eileen was, as everyone had always assumed, simply hearing things that were not there.

After a few moments of feeling utterly defeated, Jessica placed her hands on her hips and turned to address the space her mother was looking at. “Bugger off!” she demanded, like she had when she was a little girl. “Leave my mum alone!”

Eileen paused for a moment and then she laughed. The trance was broken and Jessica once more saw the woman behind the haunted mask.

“Did it work?” Jessica asked.

Eileen smiled. “It always works.”

Jessica wasn’t sure how true that was.

Eileen turned her attention away from the space she had been fixated on and glanced down fondly at Jessica’s bump. “How are you and my granddaughter doing?”

“Oh! We’re doing okay. I’m very tired,” Jessica replied, stifling a yawn. “And it could be grandson, I don’t know that yet.”

“It’s definitely a girl,” Eileen insisted. “The shape of your bump is very telling and… never mind.”

“Never mind what?”

Eileen stifled a smile. “Girls make you a little loopy and you are… well look at what you’re wearing, sweetheart!”

Jessica only nodded, losing control over the yawn she was holding. It was very late and it had been such a long day. “I’m going to head to bed Mum, enjoy your bath.”

“Can I stay here?” Eileen asked. Jessica didn’t need to ask why, she could see the haunted look in her mother’s eyes, she imagined it mirrored in her own. They both were being stalked by their demons that night, and both needed the company.

“I’d like that,” Jessica replied.

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