He relaxed his grasp on the poisoned weeds which grew sickly in the leached ground by the brook. He let the water help him and drifted down again to the bars, where the insane father mouthed and yammered at him. He brought his dead face close to the fence and widened his eyes. The screaming stopped.
For the first time he used the eyes consciously, purposely, for something other than a crust of bread.
When the man was gone he dragged himself out of the brook and, faltering, crawled towards the woods.
When Alicia saw her father returning she put the heel of her hand in her mouth and bit down until her teeth met. It was not his clothes, wet and torn, nor even his ruined eye. It was something else, something which—‘ Father! ’
He did not answer, but strode up to her. At the last possible instant before being walked down like a wheat stalk, she numbly stepped aside. He stamped past her and through the library doors, leaving them open. ‘Father!’
No answer. She ran to the library. He was across the room, at the cabinets which she had never seen open. One was open now. From it he took a long-barrelled target revolver and a small box of cartridges. This he opened, spilling the cartridges across his desk. Methodically he began to load.
Alicia ran to him. ‘What is it? What is it? You’re hurt, let me help you, what are you…’
His one good eye was fixed and glassy. He breathed slowly, too deeply, the air rushing in for too long, being held for too long, whistling out and out. He snapped the cylinder into place, clicked off the safety, looked at her, and raised the gun.
She was never to forget that look. Terrible things happened then and later, but time softened the focus, elided the details. But that look was to be with her for ever.
He fixed the one eye on her, caught and held her with it; she squirmed on it like an impaled insect. She knew with a horrifying certainty that he did not see her at all, but looked at some unknowable horror of his own. Still looking through her, he put the muzzle of the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.