It's two for the price of one today.
Chapter Sixteen
Thaddeus kicked off his boots and grabbed a beer from the fridge in his small studio apartment. He had been working at the King’s again and every time he was there he was wracked with uncertainty.
Those things he had found, they definitely weren’t right but he really didn’t want to call. He didn’t want to put Shannon and the rest of her family through that interrogation.
He sat down on the small couch directly across from his TV and turned it on. He stopped on an episode of Family Guy and hoped that mind numbing stupidity would be enough to distract him from his problems.
It appeared to be working when his cell phone rang. He groaned and plucked it from the coffee table and answered it without checking the caller ID. If he had he definitely would have let it go to voicemail.
“Hello son,” a deep, rumbling voice said as he put the phone to his ear.
“Hello uncle,” Thaddeus said and he had to supress a groan. “What can I do for you this fine evening?”
“First, you can start by not getting smart with me kid,” the man growled into the phone. “And second you can open your god damned door.”
“What?’ Thaddeus asked in confusion and his uncle hung up the phone.
A loud banging on his front door startled him from his thoughts and Thaddeus stood up and reluctantly opened door to find his uncle Erich standing there with a scowl on his face and a large bag slung over his shoulder.
“I’ve got a witch for you to kill kid. And lucky for you she’s right here in town.”
Thaddeus visibly flinched at his uncle’s words. He had never wanted the life his mother and uncle had. He grew up with the training but he had never expected to use it.
His uncle Erich loved the hunt; he devoted his life to it. Although Thaddeus suspected that he was just a sadistic bastard who loved having an excuse to torture and kill people.
“Are you going to invite me in kid?” Erich asked and shoved his nephew aside and looked around his small apartment. “Nice place.” he dropped his bag on the couch and picked up Thaddeus’s beer from the coffee table and downed the rest of it.
“Who is she?” Thaddeus asked, ignoring the fake pleasantries that Erich was throwing around.
“Don’t know,” he said and got to his feet. “I just know where she is.”
Thaddeus clenched his jaw and squared his shoulders. “I’m not going to do it uncle.”
Erich snared at Thaddeus and stalked over to him menacingly. “You’re gonna do whatever the fuck I tell you to do boy,” he yelled, his mutilated face scrunched up in rage. “I raised you, you owe me.”
“I don’t owe you shit uncle.” Thaddeus growled. “Your obsession killed my mother when I was eleven, that’s why you had to raise me and if you ask me, you didn’t do a very good job of it either.”
“This girl’s mother is the reason Melody is dead not me!” Erich bellowed and backhanded Thaddeus sending him sprawling on the floor.
Thaddeus spat out the blood pooling in his mouth. “You went after her, not the other way around,” he said climbing to his feet.
“The girl is going to die with or without your help boy.”
Thaddeus stepped back, his eyes as big as saucers. “Then it will be without my help. Get out of my house.” He opened his door and waited for his uncle to leave.
He slammed the door behind Erich and collapsed on his couch, tears forming in his eyes.
Chapter Seventeen
“Reggie, baby, I think you need to shower,” Shannon said.
Reggie looked down at her body, Shannon was right she was filthy. Covered head to toe in blood she assumed was hers.
She nodded and looked up at Shannon with a shy smile. “So do you,” Reggie said and tugged on Shannon’s now blood coated shirt.
“But there’s only one shower,” Shannon said, feigning innocence. “Whatever shall we do?”
Reggie snorted and shoved Shannon lightly, causing her to stumble backwards. She took hold of Shannon’s shirt and dragged her towards the gutted bathroom. They were lucky the shower even worked.
Reggie turned on the shower, revelling in the feel of the cool metal on her hands. It had been so long since she had felt anything that she would use any excuse to touch something different.
She put her hand under the icy water and waited for it to warm up when a feminine scream echoed through the house.
Shannon pulled away from where she had been pressed against Reggie and ran through the doorway, getting tangled in the sheet in the process.
Reggie followed, leaving the water running and trailed behind Shannon as she sprinted down the stairs. Before she descended she saw Missy peek around her door with a frightened expression on her face. When she caught sight of the blood soaked girl in her hallway her eyes widened and a scream got caught in her throat.
“Stay in your room and lock the door,” Reggie told her softly before hurrying down the stairs.
She found Shannon in the kitchen leaning over her step mother’s still body, blood pooling beneath them.
She gasped audibly and Shannon turned to look at her, her eyes wide and frightened. “Call an ambulance,” she said and pointed to the phone on the counter.
Reggie picked up the unfamiliar device and had it immediately snatched from her hand by Kelly who had snuck down the stairs in confusion. He glared at her before talking urgently into the phone.
“Is she alright?” he asked after he hung up with the emergency operator, his voice quivering.
Shannon looked at him. “I think it’s the baby,” she said and turned back to Fiona. “Go upstairs and wait with your sister, I don’t want her seeing this.”
Kelly vehemently shook his head. “N-n-no,” he stuttered. “I can h-help.”
“You can help by looking after your sister,” Reggie told him, her voice softening as she looked into his wide, frightened eyes. The boy had reason to be scared; his mother was lying prone on the floor of the kitchen with an ever increasing pool of blood. “She’s in her room,” she added as she turned him around.
He walked away in a daze and just as he reached the top of the stairs a pair of paramedics rushed in the front door.
“Over here!” Reggie called and waved them over.
“Are you okay miss?” the young Indian man asked, looking over Reggie’s blood stained night gown.
“I’m fine,” she rushed to assure the man. “It’s her, she’s pregnant.” She pointed at Shannon who was still cradling her step mother.
The harried looking middle aged woman moved Shannon away and began working on Fiona.
Shannon stood in a daze watching the paramedics, unsure of what to do.
Reggie knew that she would have to take charge; Shannon was in no shape to be doing anything. “You need to call your father,” Reggie whispered to her and held out the cell phone she couldn’t work out.
“I-I-I can’t,” she stuttered, her eyes still glued to the paramedics.
“Then just dial,” she said soothingly, “I’ll talk to him.”
“Okay,” she said and absently dialled her father before passing the phone back to Reggie.
When the paramedics began moving Fiona Shannon followed. “Where are you taking her?” Shannon asked the young one.
“St. Josephs.”
“Can I come?” she asked.
“You family?”
“I’m her daughter.”
“Then sure, you can come.”
Reggie stood alone in the kitchen listening to the phone ring, wondering what on earth she was supposed to do now.
“Fiona,” Harrison said distractedly when he answered the phone. “How are you?”
Reggie cleared her throat. “It’s not your wife Mr King,” she told him gently. “I’m a friend of your daughter’s. Something’s happened to your wife.”
“What?” he asked his voice cracking.
Reggie fidgeted uncomfortably. “I’m not sure, but the ambulance has taken her to St. Joseph’s Hospital.”
“Has Shannon gone with them?” he asked and Reggie heard a crash through the phone before Harrison muttered a swear word that made her flinch.
“Yeah,” Reggie assured him.
“What about Missy and Kelly?” he asked and she heard him trip over something.
“Mr King,” she told him softly. “You need to calm down. I am at your house with your children, you just need to get to the hospital and be with your wife.”
“You’re right.”
“Everything will be fine here Mr King, just take care of your wife.”
She hung up the phone and walked up the stairs wondering what on earth she was going to do now. She looked down at herself and decided that first things first, she needed a shower.
She knocked hesitantly on Missy’s door. “Kelly?” she asked softly and waited for him to open up.
He opened the door a crack and scowled at her. “Yeah?”
“Shannon’s gone with your mom to the hospital,” she told him, “your dad is going to meet them there. So for now you’re stuck with me.”
“And?” Kelly asked, the hostility in his voice failing to mask the terror he felt.
“I’m going to shower. Don’t let your sister go down stairs until I’ve cleaned up the blood.”
Kelly shuddered and closed the door gently, unwilling to frighten his sister who was still asking about the blond ghost lady she saw following Shannon down the stairs.
Reggie turned away from the scared little boy and walked into the Shannon’s bathroom and dropped the blood caked gown to her feet. Reggie turned on the water and stepped under the cold stream, not waiting for the water to warm up.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She wasn’t supposed to be showering alone while listening to any noises in the hallway to make sure that Kelly did as she told him. It was supposed to be the two of them and they were supposed to be washing away the pain and hurt of the past together and watch it disappear down the rusted drain pipe just lie the blood from her hair.
Their first night together was supposed to be magical and they didn’t even get to kiss. Heck, they weren’t even in the same building. It wasn’t meant to be like this.
Reggie stepped from the tub and quickly dried her body before pulling on the only clothes that Shannon had that were likely to fit her, a long cotton skirt that was shearer than her night gown and a bright green hooded sweat shirt that could have fit two of her inside of it. And she also pulled on a pair of bright blue sneakers that fit her. It turned out that Shannon has exceptionally big feet for such a tiny woman.
Reggie sighed and went down stairs. She was lucky that nothing had been unpacked in the weeks the Kings had lived in this house or else Reggie would never have been able to find the cleaning supplies. As luck had it they were all stacked in a large box labelled “crap” that was sitting wide open in an unused corner of the kitchen.
Reggie made quick work of the blood and she walked back upstairs to Missy’s room. She knocked again and this time it was Missy who answered.
“What’s your name sweet heart?” she asked gently hoping that she looked different enough that she would look nothing like the bedraggled girl covered in blood that was trailing around after her sister.
“Missy,” she responded warily. “Where’s my mom?”
Reggie flinched. “She had to go to the hospital.”
“To have the baby?” she asked hopefully.
Reggie shook her head. “Would you like anything to eat?”
“No,” Missy said and then jumped. She turned to scowl at her brother. “But I want Kelly to leave me alone!” She screamed and lunged at her brother who skipped out of the way.
The sterile white interior of the ambulance was terrifying. Much worse than a hospital, although it could have been because it was her mother that was lying unconscious on the gurney being poked and prodded by a man who looked to be about her age.
“How far along is she?” the boy asked her as he continued to poke and prod Fiona.
It took Shannon a moment to realise he was talking to her. “About thirty-two weeks,” she said. “Are they going to be okay?”
The boy briefly flicked to her before he focused his attention on his patient. “I can’t be sure,” was all he said and Shannon realised that he wouldn’t be allowed to confirm or deny anything, short of death.
Shannon closed her eyes tight and prayed to whoever was listening to save the life of her mother and brother. She wasn’t sure she could handle losing a second mother and she knew for certain that her father would never be able to survive the loss.
She floated in a daze and before she knew it Shannon was sitting in a hospital waiting room surrounded by stacks of National Geographics that were older then she was and magazines that were still calling Brad and Jen the Hollywood golden couple.
“Shannon!” The panicked voice of her father filled the sterile, subdued waiting room. “What happened?”
Shannon wrung her hands and told her father what happened before looking into his eyes. She could already see him shutting down.
The two of them sat in silence, simply waiting on news of Fiona and the baby.
It wasn’t long before a doctor stopped in front of them. “Mr King?” he asked and when he got confirmation he continued. “Your wife is going to be fine.”
The cold, disinterested look in Harrison’s eyes disappeared and all that was left was pure relief, but Shannon could tell that the doctor wasn’t finished. He still had his I’m-sorry-for-your-loss face on.
“What about the baby?” she asked, looking him directly in the eye.
The doctor cleared his throat, “I’m terribly sorry, but we couldn’t save your child. There was a problem with the umbilical cord; it appeared to be severely knotted, restricting the blood flow. I’m very sorry.”
“Can I see my wife?” Harrison asked and the doctor nodded.
“She is asleep but she could wake anytime now.”
Shannon stayed seated and buried her face in her hands. She could hardly believe that this day had ended so horribly. She had brought Reggie back, given her a second chance at life and her brother had died.
When the terrible thought crossed her mind Shannon’s stomach rebelled and she rushed into the nearest bathroom.