His body was torn in several places after their attack. Confused, concentrating to try and keep his shape coherent, he had narrowly avoided being spotted by Norton.
Now he crept out of hiding. The fight had sapped him of energy, and the shroud gaped, so that the illusion of substance was spoiled. His belly was torn open; his left leg all but severed. The stains had multiplied; mucus and dog-shit joining the blood. But the will, the will was all. He had come so close; this was not the time to relinquish his grip and let nature take its course. He existed in mutiny against nature, that was his state; and for the first time in his life (and death) he felt an elation. To be unnaturaclass="underline" to be in defiance of system and sanity, was that so bad? He was shitty, bloody, dead and resurrected in a piece of stained cloth; he was a nonsense. Yet lie was. No-one could deny him being, as long as he had the will to be. The thought was delicious: like finding a new sense in a blind, deaf world.
He saw Maguire in the greenhouse and watched him awhile. The enemy was totally absorbed in his hobby; he was even whistling the National Anthem as he tended his flowering charges. Ronnie moved closer to the glass, and closer, his voice an oh-so-gentle moan in the failing weave.
Maguire didn't hear the sigh of cloth on the window, until Ronnie's face pressed flat to the glass, the features smeared and misshapen. He dropped the Yeddo Spruce. It shattered on the floor, its branches broken.
Maguire tried to yell, but all he could squeeze from his vocal cords was a strangled yelp. He broke for the door, as the face, huge with greed for revenge, broke the glass. Maguire didn't quite comprehend what happened next. The way the head and the body seemed to flow through the broken pane, defying physics, and reassembled in his sanctum, taking on the shape of a human being.
No, it wasn't quite human. It had the look of a stroke-victim, its white mask and its white body sagged down the right side, and it dragged its torn leg after it as it lunged at him.
He opened the door and retreated into the garden. The thing followed, speaking now, arms extended towards him. 'Maguire ...' It said his name in a voice so soft he might have imagined it.
But no, it spoke again.
'Recognise me, Maguire?' it said.
And of course he did, even with its stroke-stricken, billowing features it was clearly Ronnie Glass.
'Glass,' he said.
'Yes,' said the ghost.
'I don't want - ' Maguire began, then faltered. What didn't he want? To speak with this horror, certainly. To know that it existed; that too. To die, most of all. 'I don't want to die.' 'You will,' said the ghost.
Maguire felt the gust of the sheet as it flew in his face, or perhaps it was the wind that caught this insubstantial monster and threw it around him.
Whichever, the embrace stank of ether, and disinfectant, and death. Arms of Linen tightened around him, the gaping face was pressed on to his, as though the thing wanted to kiss him.
Instinctively Maguire reached round his attacker, and his hands found the rent the dogs had made in the shroud. His fingers gripped the open edge of the cloth, and he pulled. He was satisfied to hear the linen tearing along its weave, and the bear-hug fell away from him. The shroud bucked in his hand, the liquefied mouth wide in a silent scream.
Ronnie was feeling an agony he thought he'd left behind him with flesh and bone. But here it was again: pain, pain, pain.
He fluttered away from his mutilator, letting out what cry he could, while Maguire stumbled away up the lawn, his eyes huge. The man was close to madness, surely his mind was as good as broken. But that wasn't enough. He had to kill the bastard; that was his promise to himself and he intended to keep it.
The pain didn't disappear, but he tried to ignore it, putting all his energy into pursuing Maguire up the garden towards the house. But he was so weak now: the wind almost had mastery of him; gusting through his form and catching the frayed entrails of his body. He looked like a war-torn flag, fouled so it was scarcely recognisable, and just about ready to call it a day.
Except, except... Maguire.
Maguire reached the house, and slammed the door. The sheet pressed itself against the window, flapping ludicrously, its Linen hands raking the glass, its almost-lost face demanding vengeance.
'Let me in,' it said, 'I will come in.'
Maguire stumbled backwards across the room into the hall.
'Raquel...'
Where was the woman?
'Raquel... ?
'Raquel...'
She wasn't in the kitchen. From the den, the sound of Tracy's singing. He peered in. The little girl was alone. She was sitting in the middle of the floor, headphones clamped over her ears, singing along to some favourite song.
'Mummy?' he mimed at her.
'Upstairs,' she replied, without taking off the headphones.
Upstairs. As he climbed the stairs he heard the dogs barking down the garden. What was it doing? What was the fucker doing?
'Raquel ... ? His voice was so quiet he could barely hear it himself. It was as though he'd prematurely become a ghost in his own house.
There was no noise on the landing.
He stumbled into the brown-tiled bathroom and snapped on the light. It was flattering, and he had always liked to look at himself in it. The mellow radiance dulled the edge of age. But now it refused to lie. His face was that of an old and haunted man.
He flung open the airing cupboard and fumbled amongst the warm towels. There! a gun, nestling in scented comfort, hidden away for emergencies only. The contact made him salivate. He snatched the gun and checked it. All in working order. This weapon had brought Glass down once, and it could do it again. And again. And again.
He opened the bedroom door.
'Raquel -'
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, with Norton inserted between her legs. Both still dressed, one of Raquel's sumptuous breasts teased from her bra and pressed into Norton's accommodating mouth. She looked round, dumb as ever, not knowing what she'd done.
Without thinking, he fired.
The bullet found her open-mouthed, gormless as ever, and blew a sizeable hole in her neck. Norton pulled himself out, no necrophiliac he, and ran towards the window. Quite what he intended wasn't clear. Flight was impossible.
The next bullet caught Norton in the middle of the back, and passed through his body, puncturing the window.
Only then, with her lover dead, did Raquel topple back across the bed, her breast spattered, her legs splayed wide. Maguire watched her fall. The domestic obscenity didn't disgust him; it was quite tolerable. Tit and blood and mouth and lost love and all; it was quite, quite tolerable. Maybe he was becoming insensitive.
He dropped the gun.
The dogs had stopped barking.
He slipped out of the room on to the landing, closing the door quietly, so as not to disturb the child.
Mustn't disturb the child. As he walked to the top of the stairs he saw his daughter's winsome face staring up at him from the bottom.
'Daddy.'
He stared at her with a puzzled expression.
There was someone at the door. I saw them passing the window.'
He started to walk unsteadily down the stairs, one at a time Slowly does it, he thought. 'I opened the door, but there was nobody there.' Wall. It must be Wall. He would know what to do for the best. 'Was it a tall man?'
'I didn't see him properly, Daddy. Just his face. He was even whiter than you.'
The door! Oh Jesus, the door! If she'd left it open. Too late.
The stranger came into the hall and his face crinkled into a kind of smile, which Maguire thought was about the worst thing he'd ever seen.