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She couldn’t settle. It was late night, dark and deep and cold, but Ellie couldn’t sit yet. There was something wrong, but she didn’t know what. Round and round and round again she went in the house, trying to remember what it was that was bothering her. Joe?
No, he was long gone, banished from Broadchurch, and if the bastard knew what was good for him he wouldn’t dare come back. Could it be Tom and Fred?
She had put them to bed already, hadn’t she?
She stifled a sob in her hand as she struggled to collect her scattered thoughts. God, she couldn’t breathe! She’d had panic attacks before, especially following Joe’s turning himself in, but this was a particularly cruel one, and she couldn’t seem to focus. The sounds of footsteps above her head on the second floor made her jump and whirl towards the staircase.
“Who’s there?” she called, staring wildly into the darkness. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, cold in the evening air. There was no answer—not that she expected one—and there were no more footsteps either; at least until she untensed slightly, and then a loose floorboard creaked beneath a heavier weight than her boys’. Spinning on her heel Ellie grabbed hold of the nearest object she could find, a dinner knife left on the table, and started up the stairs. “I can hear you, you know, and you’ve got five seconds to tell me what you’re doing here!”
“Miller?”
The query from behind her made Ellie jump and spin, almost landing her flat on her back before she caught herself. “Jesus! What are you trying to do, kill me, Hardy?!” He was standing there by the front door, but why hadn’t she heard it open and shut?
“Think you’re doing a better job at that than I would,” he said snidely, the bastard, but why did he look so sad?
She caught herself on the bannister, stock-still and her mind reeling. The breath caught in her lungs like she’d been punched, and she frowned down at him, blinking like a stunned kitten. There was something important she was missing… “There’s someone upstairs,” she hissed.
That look on his face shifted into something more… well, pained. She didn’t understand it. “Miller, we go through this every night now. There’s no one up there, hasn’t been for… well, awhile.”
“But I heard something!” she countered, a mite desperately. Her trembling deepened, and her mind was whirling. “I- I’m not crazy, I’m not! I can’t be…”
“Miller. Give me the knife.” When had he moved? She hadn’t seen him move, but suddenly he was there by the stairwell, holding out a hand. It was hard to make out his expression in the dark, but it was rare he appeared so sad, so pitying. She drew back from him, suddenly terrified.
“No- no! You-… you’re d-dea—” There was blood on his shirt, she could see it now, deep red dried a crusty brown, why hadn’t she seen it before now?
“Say it.” His voice was soft and even, an awful screeching note in the air, and Ellie collapsed onto the stairs, the knife forgotten as she gripped her hair in her hands and hid her face. A low moan tore from her throat as she shook her head. “Say it, Miller.”
Ellie felt a sob escape her throat. “You’re dead,” she whispered. She could smell the coppery tang of blood from here, but how? “You’re dead, you’re—” Her voice broke on another sob. “Oh God, what’s happening to me? Am I—did I go absolutely crazy? Am I locked up in a straitjacket somewhere?”
“No.”
“How would you know, eh?” she demanded furiously. “You’re just a figment of my fucking imagination. Haunted by my own boss, how terrific is that—” She caught herself with a sharp intake of breath, another sob. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know.”
“I loved you,” Ellie sobbed, burying her face in her hands again. “I never said it, and I should have.”
“I know.” Was that all he could bloody say? Being a figment of her imagination, it probably was. She was feeling colder, and her palms were slick with her tears, so why was she smelling blood?
“What’s happening to me?” she asked in a small voice.
He sounded farther away from her now, like he’d moved. “You’re remembering, but you always get stuck right around now.”
“Stuck?” It was harder to think again, her memories in a whirlwind.
“What happened that night? Tell me what you remember.” He was definitely farther away now. By the door?
Her mind stalled for a long moment as he looked up at him. The blood on his clothes had grown, and the shadows were long on the floor. The sight seemed to jar her. “I—there was a break-in,” she said numbly. “Someone with a bloody gun…” She swallowed. “You’d come over here so we could review the latest case, and…” She couldn’t say it, couldn’t barely stand to remember it; the sound of a gunshot, the splatter of blood, his sightless eyes as he’d fallen, dead before he’d hit the ground. “And…” It was gone, that next thought, a wide yawning blank of nothing.
“C’mon, Miller,” Hardy said gently, but there was an urgency there in his tone that set her heart racing. “You’re close, now, what happened next?”
“I…” She swallowed again, dryly, staring at him before it hit her all at once.
How did she know how big that bloodstain on his clothes had gotten?
“You…” She didn’t continue, found she couldn’t. She remembered the second gunshot that had followed.
He didn’t visibly react, but there was something sad and relieved in his eyes. The footsteps sounded again above them, loud and echoing, and Ellie jumped where she sat, preparing to stand and rush upstairs. “Don’t, Miller. That’s one ghost that won’t hurt us.”
There’d been a second gunshot, her world had been pain and the need for air, and then blackness. Until now. For how many nights now? How many times had this played out? She trembled and forced herself to look down at herself, taking in the truth, because those dark splotches on the floor weren’t simply shadows.
Her shirt was dark with her own blood. The bullet hole in her flesh revealed the hint of splintered bone and torn lungs.
She’d bled to death in minutes.