Peter disposes of Harper’s body

Peter Radley’s disposal of Stuart Harper’s body turns an attempted act of concealment into the moment Peter abandons seventeen years of blood abstention. Faced with the body, an approaching car, and the limits of his weakened strength, he chooses to separate himself from Helen and Clara, drinks blood, and flies the body out over the sea. The practical problem of hiding evidence becomes an irreversible personal reversal: Peter does what he had promised Helen he would not even contemplate.

The failed attempt to move the body

Helen has instructed Peter to carry Stuart Harper’s body back to the car. Peter tries to follow that plan, crouching to lift the large, powerfully built boy, but cannot raise him. His own weakness makes clear that this is not a task he can manage in the ordinary way; even dragging the body proves too difficult and slow. Clara, wrapped in a blanket by Helen, is limp in her mother’s arms, while Peter insists to himself that he must manage alone.

He considers the practical traces the group might leave behind. Rain is forecast, and he hopes it may cover the tracks, but he worries about DNA evidence and recognizes that this is a problem they would not have faced in the 1980s. He thinks Will would know how to get around it, while resenting Helen’s attitude toward Will. The thought briefly shifts the scene from the immediate burden of the body to the family’s strained history, but it offers no solution: Peter grips the ankles and drags on, still making little progress.

The approaching car and Peter’s decision

A pause to catch his breath brings Peter’s attention to the blood on his hands. He remembers that he had vowed to Helen never to consider what he is now contemplating. Headlights appear through the hedgerow; the car is moving slowly, and its approach makes the danger of remaining with the body immediate. Helen calls out that someone is coming, ushers Clara into the car, and tells Peter to leave the body.

Peter refuses. He asks Helen to take Clara home and says he will deal with the situation himself, repeating his assurance that he can manage it. Helen objects, but Peter orders her to go. She does not stop to argue further: she gets into the car and drives away. The separation leaves Peter alone with the body and the approaching lights. His decision is both an attempt to protect Helen and Clara from what is about to happen and the point at which he takes responsibility for handling Harper’s remains without their help.

The return of blood and strength

Watching the lights draw nearer, Peter licks the blood from his hands. He has not tasted blood for seventeen years. The act breaks the abstention he had maintained and brings an immediate physical change: strength returns, aches and pains recede, and his teeth and bones shift as he transforms. The change is presented not as a gradual recovery but as a decisive restoration of his vampire nature, releasing the body from the weakness that had made even dragging the body impossible.

Peter then takes blood from Harper’s throat and lifts the body with little effort. The contrast is stark: minutes earlier, the body was too heavy to move; after drinking, Peter can carry it into the air. He tries to keep his attention on what must be done rather than on the pleasure of the blood and the flight, but the physical rush overwhelms that effort. His action solves the practical obstacle while destroying the boundary he had promised Helen he would keep.

Disposal over the sea

Peter flies away from the approaching car, steering himself by thought alone. Miles out at sea, with no boats visible below, he releases Harper’s body and watches it fall toward the water. He licks his hands again, now deliberately savoring the blood. The disposal is completed far from the fields and the approaching headlights, but the scene does not show what happens to the body after it reaches the sea.

The ending makes Peter’s reversal unmistakable. His attention has moved from tracks, DNA, and the need to conceal a killing to the exhilaration of blood and flight. He had tried to treat the body as a logistical burden; once he drinks, the task becomes inseparable from the return of strength and sensation. His final enjoyment sits against the vow he made to Helen, giving the disposal its larger significance: Peter has not merely found a way to move Harper’s body, but has crossed back into the vampire life he had refused for seventeen years.