Daniel’s Eyes By Maureen Bowden

Sean Warwick watched the spider abseiling from the hotel room ceiling and hovering above his stomach. Daniel’s ghost, sitting cross-legged on the bedside table, said, “Don’t kill it.”

“That’s rich coming from you,” Sean said. “You’ve spent twenty years urging me to murder Luke Hawley.”

“So what? That man killed me. He deserves to die. The spider doesn’t.”

Sean and Daniel were identical twins. They were inseparable, although Daniel had died when he was six years old, the victim of a drunken driver doing a Mika Hakkinen down the High Street.

Sean rolled out of bed, leaving the spider alive and well. After a shower and a breakfast of weak coffee and incinerated toast he joined his fellow paramedics in the hotel’s conference hall. During the three-hour lecture, by a fresh-faced Oxford graduate, on innovative life-saving techniques, Daniel spoke in Sean’s head. “I know you only became a paramedic because of me but it doesn’t help. I want revenge.”

“You say that because you’re still a child. If you’d grown up and I’d died you’d want to save other people and spare their families the heartbreak that ours suffered.”

“No, I wouldn’t. I’d be the Masked Avenger and I’d kill drunken drivers.”

Sean’s parents had done their best to protect him from their grief, but late at night he would hear his mother crying while Daniel sat on the edge of his bed. “That man killed me,” he would say. “You have to kill him.”

At the time of Daniel’s death the law was less severe than in later years, and Luke Hawley could only be charged with dangerous driving. He had received a four-year prison sentence and was released on parole after serving two years. He was a local man and the daily newspaper published his picture, with a report that he was back on the streets. Sean’s father said, “I’ve heard that he’s drinking heavily and likely to end up dead in a gutter. Best place for him.”

Sean was eight years old when he came face to face with his brother’s killer, outside the Dagger and Duck public house. The barman opened the door and kicked a skinny, hollow-eyed figure onto the pavement. Hawley staggered to his feet. He stared at Sean with recognition and terror on his face, and then he turned and fled.

Sean said to the barman, “What’s wrong with him?”

“Keep away from him lad. He’s a smack-head.”

Daniel screamed in his head, “That man killed me.”

Sean told his father what the barman had said. “What’s a smack-head?” he asked.

“It means he takes drugs.”

“Why?”

His father shrugged. “Maybe it helps him to forget what he did.”

Throughout the years Sean endured Daniel’s presence. He longed to bring peace to his brother’s angry soul and to free himself from the ghost, but he wasn’t prepared to commit murder. He’d confided in nobody, until he married Sophie. She’d taken the common sense approach. “It isn’t really Daniel you’re talking to. It’s yourself. Your own hurt and anger’s still haunting you.” Maybe she was right but he didn’t know what to do about it.

When their son was born, Sean hoped that being a father would take precedence over his relationship with his dead twin, but when he looked at the infant’s face he saw his brother’s eyes looking back at him.

Sophie said, “Would you like us to call him Daniel?”

Sean nodded. “If you’re okay with that?”

“It’s a lovely name,” she said, “and we can call him Danny for short.”

When Danny was six years old, the age at which Daniel had died, Sophie was pregnant again and suffering with morning sickness. Sean had a rare weekend off work and on Saturday afternoon, to give her chance to rest, he took Danny for a walk. “Shall we take a look at ‘Ices R Nice’, the new ice-cream parlour in the High Street?”

Danny gave him a gap-toothed grin, “Do they have the stuff with mint chocolate chips in it?”

“I expect so. Let’s find out.”

They crossed the road to the ice-cream parlour’s entrance but before they reached it a gaunt figure shuffled along the pavement towards them. Luke Hawley stared at Danny and started to tremble. The little boy turned to Sean and said, in Daniel’s voice, “That man killed me.”

Hawley howled like a cornered animal, clutched his chest, and slumped onto the pavement. Sean ran to his side, and checked his pulse. It was weak and his breathing was shallow. A crowd gathered. A tattooed biker called an ambulance, and a girl with blue hair and black lipstick approached Sean. “I’ll take the little boy into ‘Ices R Nice’ to wait until you’ve done here.”

“Thank you.”

She took Danny’s hand. He said, “Are you a zombie?”

“No, I’m a Goth. My name’s Alice. What’s yours?”

Sean sent a silent prayer that he wouldn’t say, “Daniel. I’m a ghost,” but he said, “Danny,” and allowed her to lead him to mint chocolate chip ice-cream.

Hawley grasped Sean’s arm. “I saw Daniel Warwick. I killed him but I saw him. He was here.”

Sean took off his jacket and placed it under Hawley’s Head. “You didn’t see him,” he said. “Daniel Warwick was my brother. You saw my son. He looks like him.”

Hawley’s eyed filled with tears. “I’m sorry. I wish I’d died instead of him. Every day I wish I was dead.”

Sean tried to keep the anger out of his voice. “If you carry on the way you are you’ll get your wish, but it’s a coward’s way out.”

“So, I’m a coward.”

“Your choice. You took a child’s life. Don’t waste it. If you were really sorry you’d try to make amends by doing something useful with your own life instead of feeling sorry for yourself.”

“Would that make you forgive me?”

“I don’t know but it might help you to forgive yourself.”

The ambulance arrived, and before Sean’s paramedic colleagues took over, the pathetic wreck of a man whispered, “Thank you. I’ll try”

Sean wasn’t sure how or why it happened but he felt his anger drain away and a weight that he’d carried for years lift from his shoulders. He hurried into ‘Ices R Nice’ to find Danny.

The little boy sat chatting to Alice. His chin and cheeks were covered with ice cream. “Will the man get better, Daddy?” He said.

“I don’t know, Dan, but the doctors will do their best to help him.” He took out his handkerchief and began to clean the sticky mess off his son’s face. He looked for some trace of his brother in Danny’s features but he saw only a strong resemblance to Sophie.

He had her eyes.

—

Maureen Bowden is a Liverpudlian living with her musician husband in North Wales. She has had 137 stories and poems accepted by paying markets, she was nominated for the 2015 Pushcart Prize, and in 2019 an anthology of her stories, ‘Whispers of Magic’ was published and is available from Hiraeth books. Here’s a link https://www.hiraethsffh.com/product-page/whispers-of-magic

She loves her family and friends, rock ‘n’ roll, Shakespeare and cats.