He was blocking our way.
His shirt was torn and stained.
His face was sheened with sweat and dirt.
His body was slanted to the right because he was favouring the leg that Donovan hadn’t cut.
The bloodied hatchet knife was in his fist.
I put out my arm and stopped Bethany from going any further.
Sam dropped his backpack onto the floor next to him. The main compartment was unzipped and I could see loose banknotes stuffed inside. He must have had cash hidden up here. Maybe in the main bathroom. He knew I didn’t like to go in there.
‘What is this?’ Bethany asked. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Stay behind me.’ I moved her backwards and stared at Sam. ‘The police are on their way.’
‘We have to get out of here!’ Bethany shouted now, trying to get past me.
I pushed her back even more firmly, taking a step forwards.
She stopped then and started yelling at Sam. ‘Why do you have a knife?’
He blinked and looked at her with a strange kind of disconnection. There was something almost mechanical about his movements. A vacant darkness in the hollows of his eyes.
Blue flashes from the smoke alarm spattered his face but most of him was in shadow. Too much of Sam had been in shadow, I realized now.
A slick of molten lava ran down the middle of my breastbone. It spliced me in two. Gone was my fear, replaced with a scorching hot rage.
‘What did you do to me?’ I shouted at him over the clamour of the alarm.
Sam’s face seemed to change. A slight smug cast to it. Amid the flickers of light in the darkness, it felt as if we were truly seeing one another for the first time.
‘I think you’ve begun to work that out,’ he yelled back.
‘You killed Oliver.’
‘You remember that now?’
‘Some of it. I remember we met at your support group.’
‘What else do you remember?’
‘Enough.’ I reached behind me to the small of my back and tugged the hammer out from beneath my waistband. I held it low by my side, clenching the wooden handle in my palm and Donovan’s phone in my other hand. ‘Enough to know that you held me prisoner, messed with my brain, scrambled my memories, attacked me, abused me.’
He flinched.
‘Fuck your house,’ I shouted, lashing out with the hammer at my side, punching a hole in the stud wall and ripping a chunk of plasterboard away with the claw of the hammer as I wrenched it back free. ‘Fuck everything you made me do here.’ Another blow. The other side this time. The hammer blew a chunk of timber out of the polished handrail running atop the spindles overlooking the stairwell. ‘And fuck you, most of all.’
I took another step as Bethany yelped and yanked me backwards from behind.
Sam lurched towards me, swinging his bad leg from his hip, the knife at his side.
I whipped the hammer upwards incredibly fast as I rocked back on my heels, a wild backhand swing, bringing the weighted head up and clipping his chin in one lightning-quick movement, snapping his head back, freezing him mid-stride.
But by then Bethany and I were falling, tumbling, hitting the deck in a tangle of limbs.
Sam lowered his head slowly. A thread of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
He loomed over us with the knife.
Which was when Bethany screamed, shatteringly loudly.
It stopped him.
He seemed unsure what to do.
I aimed the torchlight in his eyes, dazzling him.
For a horrifying second, I thought he was going to leap on us with the knife, but then he shielded his eyes with his hand and tottered backwards, grabbing for the backpack, making for the top of the stairs and then hobbling down them.
I scrambled to my feet and leaned out over the handrail, watching him zipping the backpack closed and limping towards the front door, conscious of the glow of flames from the kitchen area to my right.
He moved outside and stepped over Donovan’s body.
Then I saw Donovan’s hand reach out suddenly and grab for his ankle, holding on to his bad leg.
But Sam barely paused before lashing out at Donovan’s head with his other foot, and Donovan immediately released him, groaning, rolling slackly onto his back.
Sam glanced up at me one final time, his expression tight and savage and somehow accusing, then he stumbled away into the night.