Beth stared hard at the man. The knife dug into her son's neck. His face. God, her son's sweet face. He was terrified. Her heart was breaking but she couldn't cry. It wouldn't do any good. No sign of humanity would ever touch this man. He didn't feel. He didn't understand. He didn't care.

"You let him be," she said.

He shook his head. Kind of sad, kind of laughing. She hated him. She was afraid of him. For her son, but for herself and Becky and for everything that lived. He was death. Pure, black and so, so cold.

"You shouldn't have messed with shit you don't understand," he said, his voice crackling in the air.

Becky started to cry.

"Get your hands off him!" she shouted.

"Remember. I can touch you here," he said, "Or I can touch you there. You choose."

He dragged her son's head back by his hair then with a flick of his wrist slashed his throat.

Beth and Becky screamed as hot blood splashed over them. When Beth wiped her eyes clear he was gone, her son was gone, but the blood...

The blood was everywhere.

Chapter Sixteen.

The blood dripped from her hair into the basin. She splashed more water onto her face. It wasn't fake blood. It wasn't spirit blood but real blood, thick and stinking and arterial.

No matter how many times she rinsed her face and hair in the sink, every time she looked in the mirror she found new spots. It was in her ears.

The towel she used to wipe her face was a dark pink. She threw it into the washing pile.

Back in the kitchen, she picked up the two tea cups. Both had blood in them, pooled over the melting ice. Her son's blood. She washed them and turned the cups upside-down on the dish strainer.

Becky was nowhere to be seen. She'd bolted soon after the blood had hit her. No matter what Beth said, she wouldn't see reason. She'd even screamed.

Beth tried to think back. She'd screamed herself.

The tablecloth was ruined and the floor tiles, the counter, the sink, all were splashed with blood. She stared at the mess, standing in her kitchen in the candlelight in her bra, the blinds open. Blood on the wall and on the window and in a neat flat arc across most of the room.

That was one solid client she'd almost definitely never see again.

The TV turned on in the front room, and she heard the whir of the old Xbox as it booted up. Lego Star Wars boomed out from the TV. The speakers were blown and the bass sounded terrible.

Nothing she could do about it now. She opened the cupboard under the sink, pushed aside the bottle of own-brand whiskey and took out her cleaning gloves, a bottle of bleach, and a bucket.

If she didn't drink, she'd be in hell for the rest of the evening. But if she didn't get the blood off, it'd stain forever.

So she cleaned, in her underwear and her rubber gloves, while the Xbox played on in the living room. She cleaned while the moon rose and left. Her knees ached and her back sent needles shooting all the way from her kidneys up to her neck and back, down into her shoulders.

Finally, she tossed her cleaning rags into the trash and put all the soiled clothes and towels and the tablecloth into the washing machine.

She walked into the living room. She sat in her armchair, facing away from the TV and the bloody endless games, facing her son.

Then she poured a glass. Right to the brim. Drank it down in two, and filled it up again. Drank it. Filled it.

Miles ignored her. Sulking. A bit young for sulking, but then he'd be a teenager by now.

He had a gaping wound in his neck, but it wasn't a patch on the ribs poking though his Lara Croft T-shirt. She'd put up a fight about that shirt. Her husband had overruled her. Miles got the T-shirt. Now he was dead and she had to look at the stupid thing every single day.

"Miles," she said, softly. He was angry. She didn't want to make a scene. For a dead boy, he could kick up a hell of a fuss if he was in a mood. "Miles. Can we have the TV off now? Mummy's got a headache. Please?"

Miles turned and looked at his mother, then turned back to the TV.

She got the message.

She'd take her drink on the back porch. Then she could smoke in peace without him glaring at her. He didn't like it if she smoked. He didn't like it if she drank.

Fuck it, though, she thought as she sat on the back porch and drank and smoked while the tears poured down her cheeks.

He was dead. She wasn't, and she wanted to get drunk.

Part Two.

The Fool.

Chapter Seventeen.

Friday 14th November.

The phone woke Beth up. She worked her desiccated tongue around her mouth, round her teeth, trying to conjure spit. It was a losing battle. Shaking, she pushed herself to her feet and stumbled down the hall.

The Xbox was off, thank God. Miles wasn't about. Gone off to wherever the dead go. He didn't sleep. He was dead. As dependents go, he was pretty low maintenance. She didn't have to feed him, buy him new clothes, take him to Disneyland.

She laughed bitterly to herself and picked the phone up halfway through the answer message.

"Hello?"

"Mrs. Willis?"

Beth rubbed her eyes with a thumb and forefinger. She didn't need this. Not now.

"Detective. It's early. I'm tired. Mostly, I'm not interested."

"Please, Mrs. Willis. Did you see the..."

"Newspaper? Yes. Yes, I saw the fucking newspaper."

Last night I saw my dead son murdered. She didn't say it. She didn't tell the policeman she'd tucked away half a packet of Pall Malls and a two thirds of a bottle of shit whiskey, either. His business might be murderers, but hers was drinking, and he could mind his own.

She heard him whisper, "Shit," under his breath.

She rubbed her tongue over the roof of her mouth.

"I'm sorry. We...I mean, the police...I mean me. I didn't have anything to do with that."

"You brought them to my door. Don't you understand? He's killing mediums, and you just painted a target on me. Don't give me sorry or I didn't know. Maybe he knows where I live. Maybe he's already got me in his sights. But now he knows what I've been doing, that I've been working for you...he's going to come for me. You planning to stop him?"

"We can put a car outside your door. We can protect you."

"You can't find him. You can't protect me. You can't stop him. You can't do a damn thing." She was angry. She didn't try to hide it. With a hangover, someone murdering mediums, her name in the paper, she couldn't have cared less if he knew it or not.

"We can help you. Please, let me."

"Bullshit, but you know what? We're even. You can't help me, I can't help you."

"There was another one last night. Two. A couple. Mary and Stan Westmoor."

Beth clenched her teeth together to stop herself saying the first thing that came into her head. He knew how to push the buttons, all right.

Mary and Stan. A sweet old couple she'd known well, once upon a time. They'd never hurt anyone. Mary was a clairvoyant. Stan a healer. She'd met them at a retreat in Thetford, a spiritual weekend. They'd shared a ride a time or two, on the way to church, way back when she'd had something to say that might be worth listening to.

"Twenty miles from you, but he's covering the county. Please. I swear I didn't have anything to do with the article. Please. Let us protect you."

She put her head in her hands and realized she was crying. Her life, whatever it was she was living, wasn't even close to being perfect. Now it was screwed beyond redemption, and she was going to die. The man who'd killed the Westmoors wasn't even a man. How could she tell the policeman that?

"I can't help you," she said. "Just leave me alone."

"If you..."

"No," she said. "Listen to me. I can't help anymore. I won't. I don't want you here, either. Don't call me anymore. I can't do this."

"He left something this time."

She nearly asked. He nearly seduced her. She made her hand put the phone in the cradle and walked away.

She couldn't walk away from the killer, but she could hang up on the lying, fat policeman. She knew he was lying, because his guilt hung from every syllable.

Did he mean to use her as bait?

No. That didn't feel right. He wanted her help. He was desperate. He was genuinely sorry, but he was guilty, too.

Coleridge's partner followed her down the hall, pointing at his bare wrist.

"Fuck off about your watch, would you?" she told him.

He went away, and she was alone.

"I can't help," she told herself, sat with her back against the wall in the hallway. She still had her bra and panties on from the day before. She noted with disgust a speck of darkened blood on the strap.

She padded on the cold tiles through the house to the bathroom, ran the shower until the steam covered the mirror and then stepped under the scalding water.

She stayed there until the tank ran cold. Stepped out and stood shivering. Then she went down to the water. The water always helped. The water would set her straight.

Chapter Eighteen.

The tide was turning, but the beach was firm where the sea ran back. Beth pulled off her boots and sank her feet into the freezing sand. The sky overhead was a thick gray, rain waiting. Soon, probably, but her hair was wet anyway. She didn't mind getting wetter.

She checked her cigarettes and hunted in her cardigan pockets for a lighter. Flicking the lighter and taking her first drag of the day was a kind of ritual, like her first drink of the evening. The first cigarette said the day was waiting. The first drink said the day was done.

The sea murmured as the tide went out. She sat through half a cigarette, maybe three minutes, maybe two, until the rain came; a gentle rain, more of a drizzle than a downpour. The rain was setting itself in for the day, too.

Beth thought about her day while she cupped her cigarette in her hands to keep it dry. She had no clients today. She'd just lost her easiest regular. She doubted Becky would come back after yesterdaya"being drenched in hot blood didn't seem like Becky's scene. She had a few clients that probably would've got off on it, but not Becky.

She thought about the man who cut into her son's neck, and what it meant. She thought about the phone call from the police.

Same man?

Without a doubt.

But then that begged the question, didn't it?

It was a simple question that she really didn't have the answer to. How could a man kill someone real, and kill a ghost?

What kind of man could do something like that?

She shook her head, seen only by the sea and the clouds and the sand.

It didn't matter.

What was she going to do about it?

It was obvious. She wasn't afraid of the dead. She lived with her dead son. The Xbox turning itself on in the middle of the night. A little dead boy with his skin ruptured and his bones poking through his Lara Croft T-shirt. The dead men and women whose voices he aped. The rare times when he was lonely and he got in bed next to her for comfort. The dread she'd felt in the early years when she'd felt his dead flesh pressed beside her.