Free The Writer by Amy Cross Page A

road ahead as I blink away the tears. “Please, just pick up!”
    By the time I park in the driveway at home, tears are in full flow down my face and I can barely even open the car door with my trembling hands. Stumbling toward the back door, I somehow manage to drop my phone, smashing it against the path and causing the battery to come flying out. It takes a moment for me to gather everything together, and I’m still trying to put the damn thing back into one piece as I unlock the door and head into the dark kitchen. Dropping everything onto the table, I fumble with the battery itself, which stubbornly refuses to go back into its slot.
    “Why are you crying, Mummy?”
    Stopping suddenly, I feel my blood starting to run cold as I look over at the corridor. Hannah is standing in a patch of moonlight, staring at me with dark, ringed eyes.
    “Why are you crying?” she asks again.
    I open my mouth to reply, but no words come out.
    “Are you upset?” she continues. “Is it my fault? Do you want me and Daddy to leave?”
    “I… No,” I reply, stepping toward her, “of course I -”
    “Don’t!” she shouts, taking a step back.
    “What’s wrong?” I ask, hurrying toward her.
    “Stay back!” she shrieks.
    I stop in my tracks, stunned by the way she’s staring at me. She’s only a few meters away, but I can feel a kind of icy coldness radiating from her body. There seems to be something slightly off with her appearance, too, as if she’s glowing slightly and almost flickering in the blue-gray moonlight.
    “Why did you ask that man about my injuries?” she asks.
    “What man?”
    “The man you had dinner with.”
    “I… I’m sorry, it was stupid, I just -”
    “Why didn’t you come and see me after the accident?” she continues. “I was still in my body, you know. Even though it was dead, I was still in there for a few hours, and… I waited for you, for you to come and tell me you loved me or to hold my hand, but you didn’t come. Don’t you love me?”
    “Hannah, I love you more than anything in the world,” I tell her, with tears still flowing down my face. I take a step toward her. “There’s -”
    “Don’t!” she shouts again. “Please, don’t come any closer!”
    “Why not?” I ask. “Hannah, I just want to help you…”
    “I broke my arm,” she continues, holding her left arm out to one side. “In the crash, I mean. Were you scared of seeing? Did the man tell you? It really hurt.”
    Before I can reply, her left arm suddenly snaps between the shoulder and the elbow, bending down at an unnatural right angle as a piece of jagged bone splits the flesh. Blood begins to dribble down to her hand and then drips onto the carpet.
    “Is that what you didn’t want to see?” she asks, staring at me with an icy expression.
    “Hannah -”
    “And then I hit my face,” she continues. “Mummy, it really hurt. Do you want to see what that was like too?”
    She pauses, and slowly I become aware of a cracking sound coming from the left side of her face. Seconds later, her cheekbone seems to collapse in on itself, followed by the same thing happening to the left side of her forehead, which causes her eye socket to break; in turn, her left eye is partially forced out of the socket, ripping its upper edge on a shard of broken bone and causing a torrent of blood to wash down her face.
    “See, Mommy?” she continues impassively, as if she’s demonstrating her injuries. “This is what I looked like at the end.”
    I take a step back, shocked by what I’m seeing.
    “It hurt so much,” she adds, with tears in her remaining eye, “and you weren’t there.”
    Finally the entire left side of her face seems to crunch inward, clearly replicating the injuries she sustained in the crash.
    “Hannah, please,” I whisper, “there’s no -”
    “Do you want to see mine?” David asks suddenly.
    Turning, I see that he’s standing in the doorway that leads to the front room, and staring at me with