It could kill a man if you aimed it at the right place.
“I always have a choice,” I said. “As do you.”
He snorted. “You don’t understand a thing, do you? Ignorant human fool. But that’s to be expected, I guess. You never were the sharpest tool in the shed. Declan, what I’m telling you isn’t an option. I will make you bring them back here. I will make you do it again. I can even get a little bit of influence with the mother, her brain is soft, her soul is easy to penetrate. She’s new, you see. She doesn’t know better. Dumb foreigner.”
He sighed, looking down at the ground, as if in regret. I realized that the pounding on the door had stopped and for once I actually wished my mother was on the other side of it. I would have asked for her incoherent help. “Yes, I will try again. And it will work. And I’ll ensure the gates will never close and they’ll never make it out of here alive. They escaped once, but they won’t do it again.”
“They escaped because you’re a fucking douchecanoe,” I told him, edging slightly toward the sword.
His eyes narrowed into snake-slits. “They escaped because they were lucky and foolish and because young Michael showed them the way. This house should have never trapped in his soul like that. It shouldn’t have worked that way.”
“And what way does it work?” I asked, stepping even closer to the wall.
He sighed in annoyance. “I told you. The walls are thinner here. This isn’t a place that even exists in the human world, it’s a floating elevator between time and space and here and now. This is the closest gateway to hell that I know. And once they can all cross over to this side, no one will ever forget my name.”
“Michael O’Shea,” I said.
“That is not my name,” he said, his voice growing guttural and severe, as if grated down with sandpaper. “You will die never knowing my name. But Perry…I’ll make sure she knows.”
I stared at him, at the haze of hatred in his eyes. I wanted to call his bluff but I knew that would be a lie. He already hurt her through me. I couldn’t stand to think what he was going to do next.
“You could just leave her out of this,” I said. “Last night, there was no reason for that, no reason at all.”
He smiled, his teeth sharp. “Of course there is a reason, Declan. The reason is to hurt. To make others hurt. To have them wallow in pain. What greater hate is there in the world than to have someone suffer at the hands of someone they trusted? I loved seeing her agony, her fight for breath, that betrayal in her eyes as she thought it was you. I got off on it.” He paused. “And I will again. More so. I’ll keep her alive for just long enough, just to bring her here, then when the gates are fully open and my job here is done, I’ll make sure she dies thinking that I’m you. At the very least, your face will be the last thing she sees.”
The amount of anger flowing through me was probably enough to blast a hole into the walls with only my fist. But that was what he wanted. He wanted double the pain. He wanted to see it on my face before he saw it on hers.
“Oh,” he said, “and by the way, you’ll be fully conscious and unable to do a thing, while I fuck her with a knife and slice her from cunt to chin. You’ll have to watch it all, watch you do it all. Maybe then you won’t feel so fucking smug.” He took a step toward me. “Then, finally, I’ll kill you. But not until then. You’re useless to me dead, unfortunately.”
And that was just as I thought.
Before he could make another move, I leaped to the wall and grabbed the sword off of the molding. My body remembered all my old stances and I had the sword aimed at him, ready to strike.
He laughed, his head rolling back, his hand at his stomach as if to keep it all in. “Oh, Declan, you really are stupid aren’t you? All this time you spent in your life seeing ghosts and filming them and you really think that you stabbing me with a sword is going to do anything at all?”
I shook my head slowly from side to side. “No,” I said. Then I smiled. “This sword is not for you.”
I watched him blink at me in confusion for a moment. Then I turned the sword around and aimed it at the hollow of my throat. It was a place I knew could do damage. It was a place that I knew would kill me. Even for all my strength, the blade in my throat would do the trick.
Before he could do anything but widen his eyes in horrific realization, I brought the tip of the sword toward me, fast and swift.
It was almost an out of body experience as it pierced my throat. Perhaps I died sooner than I thought. It hurt but not that much – just a short but intense jab of pain through my throat. Then the pain subsided and I only felt the pressure of the blade and the sensation that I was drowning.