Laurie hugged boy Brahms to her chest. She pecked his cheek loyally. It was in the Rules and he watched. She knew he didn't inhabit the doll; that this was just china and cloth. But it was the bridge between them, the umbilicus that bound one soul to another and in this it was precious to her, more than she could ever have imagined.

From her room she heard the insistent ringing of the phone and jumped expectantly to her feet. She was almost disappointed to hear Amanda's voice on the other end.

"Hey, sis! Just ringing to let you know I'm still alive."

"Hi, Amanda. Sorry I've not rung you. Been busy."

"How busy can a doll keep you? It's been a week. I rang two days ago."

"I'm sorry I missed you. It's the time difference...and the fresh mountain air. I'm usually in bed by nine. Time has no meaning here. There's no clocks, no internet, no signal, and I'm not one to watch crap on TV."

"What do you do all day? Entertain the doll?"

"Of course not. I read a lot. I go out walking. Thankfully, I downloaded about twenty books onto my Kindle. If I'm desperate I can always go into the village, I'm sure they have wifi somewhere."

"Listen, I have some bad news..."

Laurie's heart sank. Somehow, she knew what was coming.

"Joel came by the house last week. Morgan said he kept hammering on the door; told him some story about needing to write to you about how sorry he was..."

"Please don't tell me he gave Joel this address?"

"He's ten, Laurie. What could he do? He found your address in my pocket book I'd left out. He couldn't think of any other way to get rid of Joel, and he didn't tell me until yesterday."

"I know...It's ok. This is my fault, you shouldn't be involved in all this shit."

"No, it's not your fault. What are family for if you can't depend on them?"

"Well, I won't be reading anything he sends me. It'll go straight into the trash. Christ on a bike! Am I never to have any fucking peace!"

"Listen, you inform the police or whatever, if he starts pestering you. Block his mail or something."

"It'll be ok. His letters will only hurt if I read them."

"Take care, sis. I'll speak soon."

Laurie put the phone down. "God, I need a drink!"

~

The wine was Rioja Reserve, and tasted of vanilla and oak. One thing about the Heelshires, they knew how to stock a good wine cellar. Laurie took some black olives from the fridge and cut off a heel of ciabatta. Balancing her wine glass and plate in one hand, she switched off the kitchen light and retired to the music room.

As she ate, she savoured the Rioja, then thought, Do NOT drink the whole bottle tonight, Laurie!

She was just finishing off the olives when someone hammered on the front door. Startled, Laurie jumped to her feet and padded into the hallway. The door was solid oak so she had no way of knowing who stood outside. Whoever was out there hammered more urgently making her jump. Had she locked the door? She stared stupidly at the opened bolts and was just about to lunge forwards to turn the brass key when the door crashed open.

"Joel!"

He stood there a moment his eyes adjusting to the lamplight. Laurie saw her ex boyfriend was unshaven, but he wore his usual scruffy garb, jeans, baggy sweatshirt and that filthy old leather jacket he'd stolen from a dead man. God, she loathed that jacket. It made her skin crawl.

Joel wasn't tall but he was stocky, and strong. There was a madness to him; a restrained violence that erupted every so often in terrible ways usually with the drink. His looks, once so handsome, were being eaten away little by little from his alcohol and substance abuse. Even from this distance, Laurie could see the scarlet thread veins on his nose and cheeks.

"Weren't you gonna let me in?" he asked with raised brows. "I was gonna write you a letter but...you know me."

"What are doing here?"

"What kind of a welcome is this?"

"You can't stay!"

"I only just got here? Took me a whole month's fucking pay and I walked from the village!"

At her expression he grinned, and when he did his whole forehead slipped forwards moving his hairline in that way she hated. God, she hadn't realised until now just how truly loathsome he was. What the hell had she ever seen in him?

"Got any beer?"

"No."

"I can always tell when you're lying, babe."

He walked past her and into the kitchen, flicking on the light. At the fridge he grimaced. "I take it back."

"The Heelshire's don't stock beer."

"That means they stock something. Wine?"

"Joel, you can't stay here. Mr and Mrs Heelshire are due back any day now."

"So, you have the house to yourself? You and the boy?"

She stared down at her hands.

"Where is he, in bed?"

"No."

"You gonna introduce me?"

Setting her jaw, she turned and led Joel to the music room. She walked over and stood next to boy Brahms, her hand on the back of the armchair. "Joel, Brahms. Brahms, Joel."

"Are you kiddin' me?" Joel let out a guffaw similar to the one she had upon being introduced to the doll. And now she found herself feeling exactly the same kind of disdain for his reaction as Mrs Heelshire must have felt at hers.

"I only found out the day I got here. The Heelshire's lost their son to a fire. They substituted the doll to help them cope psychologically."

"Psycho's the right fuckin' word!"

"You'd never understand--"

"Look, you know how sorry I am. About what happened with us? I wasn't myself."

"Yes, you were," Laurie said in a low, bitter voice. She picked up the doll, cradling it close. "You were exactly yourself."

"I understand why you left," he wheedled. "I do. But I have two tickets for a flight back to the States tomorrow night. You're comin' with me."

Laurie shook her head resolutely. "I'm staying here with the Heelshires."

Joel picked up her glass of wine and drank it down. "You're not leavin' me, Laurie. I won't allow that."

"It's over, Joel. If you don't leave, I'm calling the police."

She watched the play of muscles in Joel's jaw as he clenched his teeth. He stalked out to the hallway and she heard him pushing the hall table around, then the sound of ripping and tearing. Still holding boy Brahms she ran out after him. The main telephone cable lay in tatters on the parquet floor.

"What have you done!"

"Get the fuck over here. And put that damn thing down!"

Laurie clutched the doll desperately then backpedalled. Joel lunged after her and grabbed her hair. She stifled a scream as he smacked her first to the left of her face then the right. She tried to burrow her face down into the doll's hair in a bid to protect it but Joel cut her a blow across the bridge of her nose. Something warm trickled down her face and she realised her nose was bleeding.

Joel's pupils were dilated to black in the dimly lit room. A shark's eyes; reptilian and flat. How did he manage to bring drugs through customs, she silently marvelled. She wondered inanely if he was high enough to kill her. He took another swipe, and she crumpled to her knees. With constrained savagery, Joel wrapped her hair around his fist then dragged her back into the music room. Laurie squeaked in pain, clutching at his arm with one hand, but refusing to loosen her grip on the doll. She managed to gain her feet when he let go of her, the pair of them standing at bay now, snarling at each other like two hostile cats.

Then he was on her again and this time he snatched at the doll, and Laurie clutched it like a lifeline, crying out as the fabric of the tiny shirt ripped and fell apart. "Give him to me, you bastard!"

Joel lifted the doll up and waved it at her. "What's so special about this? Are you telling me you identify this creepy fucker with the kid you lost?"

"Give it back..."

"Or what?"

Laurie closed her eyes and tried to think. She knew she should placate him, avoid antagonism, calm him down. But the injustice ate at her guts, and she hated her own weakness. With even more self-loathing, she silently voiced the worst reason of all for not standing up to him. I'm scared... She could still feel the agony of the single kick that had changed everything that long ago night. The white guano streamers of cocaine that had flowed from his nostrils. His relentless fury and her cringing, abject fear. The blood and betrayal as the life they'd created ran from her body.

"Be nice to me, Laurie. Huh?"

Someone else had said something like that to her an age ago in this very room ...Be good to him, and he'll care for you...

Breathing heavily, she glared at him, her heart in her face. Then he cursed beneath his breath and swung the doll into the air.

Joel, no! NO!"

She watched in horror as the tiny porcelain face exploded on the hardwood floor, the glass eyeballs bouncing around before rolling across to bump against the skirting board.

"BRAAAHMS!"

Laurie's wail was so heartbroken and awful it even shocked Joel into temporary silence. Then somehow the room was shaking, the panels of oak shivering as something large and powerful lumbered behind the walls. The wall lights tinkled briefly and then a large mirror screwed to the panelling began to judder. Joel followed this progression with a deepening scowl. Laurie wondered just how powerful an angry spirit could be. Part of her feared but part of her exulted. She was enraged enough to kill Joel herself if she only had the courage, that's how much she hated him in this moment. I'll die before I let him touch me again, she silently vowed. Death is better than a life with him...

Joel was over by the mirror, peering into its depths. He gave the glass a tap. "There's something going on..."

The mirror exploded outwards in a nova of glittering glass. The blast knocked Joel flying, and he skittered across the floor towards Laurie.

Where the mirror had been only a jagged edged void remained as they both realised there was a passage behind the panelling. Laurie squinted; could just make out a pale oblong that began to move.

"Laurie?"

The voice spoke in the plaintive, childlike tones of Brahms's voice. Laurie watched transfixed as something large and long-limbed oozed through the broken mirror frame. It was a fully grown male, tall and athletic, dressed in a grubby white singlet, ill fitting pants and an old grey cardigan. His hair thick and lustrous and tousled as goat fur, fell in dark curls over his brow and to the nape of the neck. But what held Laurie in shocked stasis was the replica of boy Brahms's beautiful porcelain face. The mask had clumsy eye holes cut into it, and through these openings, Laurie saw the real adult Brahms's eyes glittering in the lamplight as he locked his gaze with hers.

She watched him tilt his head quizzically as though waiting for her next instruction. But Laurie was speechless. All she could do was gawp.

Then Joel was scrambling to rise, and Brahms pounced. He was on Joel before the other could gain his feet and he thrashed him with hammer blows from his fists, silently and emotionless as a machine.

Laurie saw gouts of blood spurt from Joel's nose and mouth. She watched numbly as a tooth shot from his mouth, skittering across the floor like a bloody almond. He was unconscious or dead now, his head flapping this way and that with each blow. Finally, she came to her senses.

"Brahms...stop!"

But he shrugged her off, and carried on. Joel grunted then fell silent. "Brahms! BRAHMS!"

As quickly as he'd started, Brahms stopped. He still straddled Joel but turned his pale masked face to peer over at her. Laurie saw that he was barefoot, and his feet and ankles were covered in tortuous keloid scarring. She watched him rise slowly, as fluid as a mime artist. He towered over her and she backed away involuntarily.

"Laurie?"

That voice again. That child's voice. Fake, deceptive, cheating. Disappointment and rage rose within her. She felt gutted. There was no spirit child, no gentle soul to save...just this adult male spying on her, watching her every move, her most private moments. The duplicity of it all felt like the worst betrayal. Oh, the humiliation!

"You never died," she breathed accusingly. "You deceived me. You lied to me."

She watched him shake his head then tilt it to one side as though uncomprehending. "Laurie..."

"Don't" she yelled. "You're a fully grown man not a child. Look at you! Stop using that voice!" Her breath came in halting starts and she began to cry. It was a combination of shock and terror and her own out of kilter emotions. Slowly, she sank to her hands and knees as the tears ran down her face and dripped from her chin.

Though it all she realised that the real Brahms was a damaged soul anyway, just in another form from that which she'd been brought to believe. She wondered if the Heelshire's had locked their son away deliberately, if they had created a monster of him. And the sheer horror of that concept devastated her. She wondered if he would turn on her now and snuff out her light as he'd done to Emily. I don't care, she thought wretchedly. I wish he'd kill me now and have done with it...

When he drew her into his arms, Laurie found she couldn't resist. Brahms sat on the floor with his long legs splayed and tucked her between them so that her back was buttressed against him. Then he gently rocked her, stroking her hair. All her grief came tumbling out. Grief for her dead baby, for the mistakes she'd made in life, for the pain Joel had caused her. For Joel's death. For the loss of innocence. She cried with great racking sobs, shaking in his arms, for nearly fifteen minutes.

When at last she had exhausted herself, Brahms scooped her up as though she weighed no more than a bird and carried her to her room. He lay her in bed, tucked her in, then turned out the light and closed the door gently after him.