"GO AWAY! YOU AREN'T REAL! YOU AREN'T!"
There was a heavy leather belt in his hand, absent-mindedly twisted around his wrist.
"You think you can make up for it, after all this time? You think that finding out what you did makes it all better?"
"IT WASN'T ME - IT WAS YOU, DADDY - IT WAS YOU THAT DID IT!"
He was upon me now, and his hand twisted into my hair, forcing my head back. And still he kept talking.
"Telling lies AGAIN. How many times do I have to TELL you? How many times do I need to BEAT it out of you?"
An edge of sickness started to bleed into my terror, as his free hand started to tear at the fastenings on my clothes, pausing only to slap me hard on the face.
"And we KNOW what happens to bad girls. Don't we."
He was so much stronger than me. Impossibly so. I could do nothing more than pluck at his wrists to try and loosen his grip. I scratched him as hard as I could and left no mark. All I could see in the darkness were his eyes, black holes surrounded by white rings. Please let me black out, I pleaded. And then he stopped, suddenly. His eyes widened like soup plates and he let go of me. He staggered back, briefly, and then I had to sidestep fast as he fell forward onto his face, making no attempt to catch himself. The sound as he hit the concrete was replaced by silence. The moonlight was shining on him, and it shone out at me from a gem in the pommel of a long, jewelled dagger, embedded just off-centre in my father's back.
I looked up from the body. Dominic stared back at me.
"Do you see now? Do you see that he isn't your real father?"
"You - killed him - you - saved me - "
Dominic drew me aside and put an arm around my shoulder.
"I'm afraid it's not as simple as that. I've killed him here, but out there - " he gestured somewhere above and behind me - "he's still alive. He's still affecting you, poisoning your life with the things he did, the things you made yourself forget. But all the things you forget, end up here."
I cried then, and hugged him, hanging on to him like the only solid thing in the world.
"I can't come back with you, Dora. You know that. I'm only alive in here - you must go back and finish what you've started. Only then will you be at peace."
Suddenly we were back in the summer field where I'd started, but the house was dark this time.
"I have to go now - but just lie back down here and go to sleep. I promise you will wake up back in your bed."
As I watched him walk off towards the house, a great wave of tiredness overtook me, and I lay down in the cool, dry, grass and closed my eyes.