“No,” he said. “But it’s not your mother’s either. She didn’t know what she was doing with her powers. Rhona never gave her the chance, and I can see that now.”
He laughed a little.
“Hindsight is a great thing to have when you haven’t got anything left to focus on. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”
I turned around to see Hans looking at me. He looked so sad for both of us, even though he could only hear my side of the conversation.
“Your mother didn’t mean it,” Grandad told me again. “She’s a lovely girl. Sorry,womannow. I see her here often, alongside Rhona, and I saw you too. I had to stay hidden, of course. Your grandma would have torn you apart if she knew you could see me. And me along with you, most likely. She’s definitely a fiery one, my Rhona.”
“How come you’ve been stuck up here on your own?” I asked him.
“Don’t know quite how,” he said. “Suddenly I was staring down at myself as your mother and grandma came rushing over. Your mother was screaming, and you were crying, and Rhona was bellowing, and I was stuck up here, not knowing quite what to make of it.”
He pointed to the ground.
“I was down there, flat on my back. Glad I wasn’t closer. I’d have looked a right bloody mess, I’m sure.”
I could see his thoughts in my mind. I saw my mum and grandma down at the foot of the tower through his vision, shaking my grandad’s dead body as they tried to wake him. I saw myself screaming in Mum’s arms.
And then I saw my father’s car pull up at the gateway at just gone midnight.
I saw his powerful figure, even in the moonlight. I watched him run from the gate towards the screams to see Grandad’s dead body on the floor.
I sucked in a breath as the images grew stronger. I didn’t want to see them, but I couldn’t push them away.
“Don’t try to hold back from whatever hits you,” Hans told me, breaking into my thoughts from the other side of the tower. “Your soul won’t listen.”
I kept tuned in to the memories.
Grandma had got up and met Thomas – my father – on the path. She’d shoved him out of the way before he could reach the carnage, while Mum was still wailing in shock along with me. I saw Grandma’s hate in her eyes as though I was there next to them. I saw the way she jabbed a finger at his chest while Mum was oblivious to everything going on around her.
Leave now, and I’ll make sure Serena doesn’t know the truth,my grandma had told him.Otherwise, I swear to the Lord Almighty, I’ll make sure she knows she’s a murdering sinner who killed her own father with her witchcraft, and I’ll let her know she deserves to meet the Devil in Hell.
Mum would have listened.
My father had known it.
Mum would have thrown herself off the turrets to make amends.
“You won’t be able to hide the truth for ever, Rhona,”my father had said to her, but she was smug. She knew her own power. Not power over my father – Thomas – but over her daughter. Over her own flesh and blood.
“I won’t NEED to hide the truth for ever,”she said.“Serena deserves to die for what she’s done, using her evil sinning witchcraft to kill her own father, and that’s what she’ll do. She’ll kill herself by her own hand, and so she should. She’s a murderer now.”
“This is YOUR fault, Rhona, not Serena’s. Let me get to her.”
He’d gone to push past her, but she’d gripped his arms in bitter fingers.
“You know I’m right, you sinning demon,”she’d hissed at him. “And then what will happen to her? What will happen to your daughter? Will she grow up knowing her mother killed herself as a murderer because of you, a demon of a sinner?”
He’d paused. Thinking. He’d watched his love crying, with a broken heart.
Why was Grandma such an evil witch to him, and to Mum, and to me?
I realised I’d spoken that question out loud when Grandad answered me.
“She was grieving, too,” he said, as though he was trying to reason with my memories. “She was lost herself, she just didn’t want to be. She was as upset as Serena was, I swear it. And after that she was even worse. She wanted to blame your mother because she couldn’t face blaming herself.”
It all felt like one horrible explosion of grief and carnage. Repressed power and truth. I felt sick.