Red Leather (Book 2)

Chapter 19

Chapter 19

 

“Timmy? Timmy!” I hissed, unable to shake the boy into a standing position, feeling my stomach turn at the revolting stench of the dead corpse hanging just a foot above me. Tamara’s blood trickled down her ankles, around her blue toes and onto the carpet. The disgust I felt rivalled that of the dead bunny I had killed all those years ago.

To kill was one thing. But to see and smell and feel a corpse was another.

Tim just wouldn’t stop wailing – his screams grew louder and louder, his chubby little fingers clutching the foot of his dead sister, trying in vain to pull her down. He fought me off as best as he could, but in the end I won.

“Listen to me, kid,” I panted, keeping him in a semi-tight chokehold. My voice became as menacing as I felt, unable to disguise the level of irritation and disgust brewed in me. “I have to get you out of here – do you understand? You’re coming with Daddy and I. We’re taking you to the hospital.”

“No!” I’d never heard the word screamed so loudly in my life, and I would have covered my ears if it weren’t for the fact that my hands were occupied.

I couldn’t carry him against his will. He was just too heavy. The way his eyes were bulging out of their sockets, past the point of grief-stricken and merging into unstable, staring at the dead body of his sister as if he would never survive from the terror, was beyond me.

I couldn’t get the kid to cope. Luckily, Daddy had come to my rescue.

I heard his footsteps before he made it to the room. His voice was tight with panic. “Renee! What’s going on-“ He stopped dead in his tracks.

If the noise he made was anything to go by, Daddy probably wouldn’t move past the terror, too.

“Get him in the car, Daddy,” I gasped, struggling more than ever to keep Tim from launching himself onto his sister. “He’s out of his mind – get his father on the line – anything – please!” My voice rose to a shout, almost being drowned out by Tim’s own howls.

“Tam! Tam-Tam! GET DOWN, Tam-Tam!”

“Shut up!” I screamed.

“Oh, good lord,” Daddy croaked. I turned to find his eyes transfixed upon Tammy’s slowly revolving body. His expression was one of undiluted horror. It took what felt like years for Daddy to do what I’d told him to, and on closer inspection he looked greener than I’d ever seen him. His face, his demeanour, was hard to forget.

I vowed that Daddy would never experience such a thing again.

“Come on,” he kept repeating, over and over again as he dragged Tim out of the gruesome room, sounding a little hysterical himself. “Come on, come on, come on, it’s okay, come on…”

I braced my hands on my knees, gasping for breath as my arms ached. Forcing myself to get it together – dead person or not, I was showing weakness in front of an audience – and surveyed the room, my eyes lingering on the eerily dangling Tamara Lilley.

Of all the ways I thought she could have ended her life, I never expected this. Not with Tammy’s fear of heights.

But I had a job to do – and that job was to retrieve the dress. I swallowed down the bile threatening to climb up my throat and got to work, and slowly, carefully, reached up and pulled it out of her cold, unwilling grasp.

The police couldn’t find it – I had no intention of them finding it. It was merely a prop to push Tammy over the edge. For the life of me, I couldn’t find the box it had come with, and, hoping that she had thrown it in the trash, I decided to leave.