by Ike Hamill
“He is Dad, but he’s not,” Wendell said. “There’s something wrong.”
Lily screwed up her face, trying to process what her brother was saying.
“What’s he doing now?” Eric asked.
“Moving furniture around,” Wendell said. “It looks like he’s making a church.”
“A what?” Nicky asked.
They heard a pounding from downstairs.
# # #
Lily led the way. When she reached the top of the stairs and understood where the pounding was coming from, she raced down. Eric was hot on her heels and saw Jessie turning the lock on the front door. Lily got there just in time to throw her body against the door, keeping him from opening it.
“What are you doing?” Jessie asked.
“What are you doing? What’s out there?”
“It’s probably Mom. She’s supposed to come.”
“Probably?” Lily asked.
Her eyes went wide when something pounded on the other side of the door again. Eric took a step closer.
“Why would Mom beat on the door like this? Why would she come to this door anyway? Mom would come in through the kitchen door. She hated taking her shoes off on the front porch, remember?”
“You’re being crazy,” Jessie said.
When Jessie moved to push his sister out of the way, Eric stepped between them. Jessie was strong—almost a match for Eric—but with Lily guarding the door while Eric held off Jessie, it was a stalemate.
Reynold appeared from the kitchen.
“What’s going on? Jessie, let go of your cousin,” Reynold said. Jessie obeyed, getting in one final shove before raising his hands and taking a step back.
The pounding came again.
“Open the door, Lily,” Reynold said.
Lily blinked and stood there, with her back to the door. Nicky and Wendell were on the steps. Jessie folded his arms.
“Dad,” Lily said. Her voice sounded small. “I don’t want to.”
“Don’t be silly. Just open the door and find out who it is.”
She didn’t comply, but she did move to the side, allowing Jessie to move past her. Eric stood aside as well. There was no sense in trying to stand up to his uncle’s command.
Jessie flipped on the outside light.
Lily, from her position, was the first to see what was out there on the porch. Her hands went up to cover her face and she swayed on her feet—nearly knocked over by what she saw there. Wendell, on the stairs, must have sensed that something terrible was about to happen. He ran down the stairs, leapt past Eric, and slammed into the door, nearly dislodging the knob from Jessie’s grip.
Jessie was too strong. He pulled against his brother’s weight and Eric saw his aunt for the first time in a year. They hadn’t been able to have an open casket because of her injuries. Deep, jagged wounds were torn up her cheeks. The rifts were bloated and the skin white along the edges. Inside the cuts, the muscle and flesh was black and wet. Her simple black dress was streaked with dirt. Her long fingers were white at the tips.
Eric’s eyes were drawn down to her belly, where the dress bulged—nearly splitting at the seams.
Lily’s swaying grew and then she started to fall. Her father caught her before she hit the floor.
The door creaked as it swung open.
Zinnia stepped in.
She had never worn shoes in the house. Now her bare feet were tracking in dark mud onto the carpet.
Reynold set his daughter down in the armchair and went to his wife, taking her into a careful hug. He avoided pressing against the mound of her belly and kissed her gently on cheek, avoiding the worst of the wounds.
When she turned her gaze to Eric, he took a step back. One of her eyes was milky white and streaked with red. The other was dilated and empty of intelligence. Still, she smiled when she looked down and saw Wendell cowering in the corner behind the door.
“You made it,” she whispered. Her voice was slurred. The consonants were muddy. “Knew you would.”
Wendell squeezed his eyes shut.
Jessie kicked his shin.
“Come on in, Mom. You must be exhausted. Let’s get you to the kitchen,” Jessie said. He reached out and nearly put his hand on her shoulder and then pulled back. The skin there was ripped. Through the tear, Eric could see split muscle and an edge of bone beneath the cartilage. After hesitating for a moment, Jessie put his hand lower on her arm and guided her forward. Eric backed up until he was pressed against the banister. As Jessie, Reynold, and Zinnia passed him, Eric glanced over his shoulder to Nicky and mouthed a single word.
“Run.”
Eric heard her sprint down the stairs and out through the door. He hoped that she wouldn’t even stop to gather her things. With any luck, she would run straight to her car, get in, and drive all the way across the country, only stopping when she reached the Pacific. He wished that she would find a new life out there and somehow manage to forget all this.
For him, and the rest of the family, he knew that they couldn’t run away. He had tried that before. It never worked.
# # #
For the first time in forever, they were all back in their regular spots at the table. Jessie was even sitting on his hands so he could swing his legs beneath the table like he used to do when he was a kid. Lily was still in shock—she barely appeared conscious. Wendell kept his eyes closed most of the time. To open them meant that they might land on Zinnia, and that was a nightmare.
Eric couldn’t stop looking at her. One side of her mouth hung open. Maybe the muscles charged with keeping it shut had been severed.
Reynold stood up.
“Why don’t you keep any beer in the fridge? You’re old enough, Lily, and you must enjoy a beer now and then, Eric? Right?” Reynold asked. With a sigh, he picked up the kettle and shook it. Water sloshed inside. “And why does the water taste funny?”
Eric’s voice barely made any noise. He had to try twice before he was heard.
“Filter,” he said.
His aunt’s eye turned towards him and he shrank down.
“Yeah,” Jessie said. “We put a filter on the water. Actually, I think it tastes pretty good. Maybe you just have to get used to it.”
“Missing something,” Reynold said, filling up the kettle. He lit the burner and put the kettle on the stove.
“Mom?” Lily asked. If he closed his eyes, Eric thought her voice would sound like it did when she was a girl. “Are you… pregnant?”
Zinnia nodded and gave a lopsided smile. “Rose’s.”
Eric didn’t understand at first, thinking she had said, “Roses.” Then, when he figured it out, his hands and feet went cold. The weight of the information was cutting off his circulation.
“That’s awesome,” Jessie said.
“What?” Lily asked.
“Technically,” Reynold said, “Eric is going to have an older brother or sister, but younger at the same time. Isn’t that interesting?”
“What?” Lily asked again. Her mouth hung open and she was swaying again.
Reynold came back to the table and put a hand on Lily’s shoulder to steady her.
“Half-brother or half-sister, I suppose is more accurate. Eric, that’s what your mother traded. Instead of trading for a gun, Lueck told her to come back when she was pregnant and he would trade her for whatever she wanted. She was smart. She not only got the house that you were born in, but she also guaranteed Zinnia’s success.”
He tilted a smile at his wife.
“Not that she wouldn’t have been successful without his help, but a guarantee is nothing to sneeze at.”
Eric shook his head. He refused to believe that his mom would have traded a baby. If that was true, then it meant that she would have traded him. That was too much.
“No,” he said. “My mom still had a debt.”
“True,” Reynold said. “I guess she overextended on her demands.”
“That doesn’t matter, Dad,” Jessie said. “We took c
are of the Trader. He’s dead and gone now.”
Reynold smiled at Jessie. Then, like he was tattling a secret, he pointed at Zinnia’s pregnant belly.
Jessie nodded and said, “Oh!”
Zinnia put a hand on top of her belly and rubbed it protectively.
“No,” Eric said. “How can that baby be my half-brother and Lueck?”
His uncle only shrugged. Zinnia was looking directly at Eric again. The black circle of her good eye was like a big open pit that he could fall into. He was desperate to look away, but he couldn’t seem to control himself. When she finally turned, he felt like he could breathe again.
“Mom’s having a baby?” Wendell whispered.
“No,” Lily said. “That’s not our mom and that’s not a baby in there. This is all evil and wrong. I won’t let you do it.”
When she tried to get up, Jessie reached towards his sister saying, “Lily, it’s okay. This is Mom and Dad. I traded for them. This is what we got for the fingers.”
“No, Jessie,” she said, pulling away from him. “This isn’t what we wanted. That’s just what he wants you to believe.”
“Maybe it’s not what you wanted,” Jessie said. “You already left once. You clearly didn’t give a shit about how that would make Mom and Dad feel. Now you’re just proving that you never cared for them at all.”
Lily rose to her feet. “How can you say that? I was devastated when…”
Her father cut her off.
“Kids—stop! We don’t have to argue about any of this anymore. We’re all back together and that’s all that matters. Now let’s go help your mom welcome our new member to the family. Let’s go.”
Reynold stood and grabbed Lily’s arm. The pain was obvious on her face immediately.
“Uncle Reynold, let go of her,” Eric said.
Before the sentence was even out of his mouth, his aunt’s hand clamped around Eric’s arm, just above the elbow. Her fingers were a cold vice, clamped down, squeezing his muscle against his bones. That wasn’t the worst part—a strange paralysis was infused into him through her grip. He felt helpless to fight against her will.
When he turned to beg her to let go, his gaze fell into the empty hole of her dilated pupil. She looked sad and weary. Aunt Zinnia didn’t want to be there either. She was just as much a puppet as Eric. Together, they were hopeless to fight the forces that controlled them.
“Come on, Wen,” Jessie said, herding his brother around the table. The six of them went together in pairs. Lily and Reynold led the way followed by Jessie and Wendell. Eric and his aunt brought up the rear. They moved through the laundry room and Eric thought about all the hours that he and his uncle had spent in there working side by side. In that room, his uncle had taught him about electrical work and plumbing. Those memories felt like they had happened to a different person. The future didn’t care about such mundane accomplishments. They were climbing aboard a train that was going to take them far away from sanity.
LILY
WHEN SHE SAW THE candles and the makeshift benches, Lily nearly managed to pull her arm free from her father’s grip. He wasn’t just squeezing her arm though, his fingers had sapped her ability to fight. She wanted to run but her brain wouldn’t obey.
Her father led her to the front row and guided her to a seat on the bench on the left. Underneath her, the shelf shifted a bit on top of the stack of books. Out of the corner of her eye, Lily saw Jessie and Wendell sit on the bench on the right.
“Behind Lily,” Reynold pointed, and Lily understood that her cousin was on the bench behind her.
Her father extended a hand and her mother took it. Together, the two of them stepped up on the raised platform.
“I couldn’t find a suitable altar,” he said.
Her mother just looked up into his eyes. In the candlelight, the gashes on her face were vertical black stripes. Zinnia’s bare feet had left muddy footprints up the aisle. Crouching down, Reynold supported his wife under her shoulder as she lowered herself to the floor. Lily remembered picking out the dress that she wore. It was a dress for formal parties and funerals.
Her mother settled onto the floor, letting Reynold guide her legs out. On his knees next to her, he produced a blade. Lily sucked in a shocked breath, imagining that her father was about to cut the baby out of her mother. Instead, he put the blade under the hem of the black dress and began to saw upwards. Before the sharp knife reached her belly, Reynold put it aside and grabbed the flaps of the dress. He jerked his hands apart, rending the layers of fabric.
“Mom?” Wendell asked.
“I’m sure she’s fine, Wen,” Jessie said.
Lily wanted to scream—there was nothing fine about any of it. The harder she fought to object, the less control that she had over her own body. She was in a nightmare, unable to scream or run. That idea was almost comforting. As long as she pretended that it was all just a bad dream, it wasn’t as horrifying. Any moment she would wake up and the terror would be nothing more than a fading memory.
With a little more knife work, Reynold removed plastic panties stained black on the inside. He tossed those aside. Lily was glad that she couldn’t see too much from her angle. She couldn’t look away as her father guided her mother’s knees apart to prepare for the birth.
“Come on, kids, why the long faces?” her father asked. “This should be a celebration. Let’s have some ideas for names. Jessie, what do you think? If it’s a boy, what should we call him?”
“I don’t know,” her brother said. He didn’t sound sure of himself anymore. Lily wished that she could turn and see his face. It was too much to hope for, but maybe if Jessie tried, he might put a stop to this. He was the one who had invited their dead parents into the house. He had traded for them. Maybe Jessie could send them back to where they came from.
“Oh, come on,” their father said. “You must have some ideas.”
Meanwhile, their mother hunched forward, like she was trying to do a sit up. Wet liquid gushed from between her legs and Reynold moved away from the spreading black puddle.
“I guess if it’s a girl, we could name her after Grandma?” Jessie asked.
Lily thought she could hear fear in his voice. The reality of what they were witnessing was eroding his confidence.
“That’s a good idea, but I have a pretty strong feeling it’s going to be a boy,” their father said. “Come on, what’s a good boy’s name?”
Lily guessed what he was going to say a moment before the name came from his mouth. When he was younger, maybe in kindergarten, Jessie had wanted to get a puppy from the pet store. He had even picked one out. Jessie had just learned a word from the tag on the back of his jeans. He wanted to name the dog…
“Levi?” Jessie asked.
“There you go,” their father said. “That’s a fine name—strong. We’ll call him Levi. What do you think, darling?”
Instead of answering, their mother hunched again. Her lips were stretched in a grimace and a wet noise slapped out of her. Lily saw another ripple in the puddle beneath her mother’s hips. She managed to close one eye against the horror. It wasn’t much, but it was something. She tried to force her other eye closed as well.
“Come on, honey, just a little more effort to bring Levi into the world.”
“No, Mom!” Wendell yelled. “Please.”
Her mother’s head turned. One of her eyes was dead—unmoving and filled with smoke. The other one, with its wide pupil, cast around the room like a searchlight. When it landed on Lily, she felt ice move through her veins. Her mother’s eye moved on, searching for Wendell. Lily was able to breathe again.
“Just a little more,” Reynold said. “Bring him to us, darling.”
Her mother’s head lifted again, curling up with her shoulders.
Zinnia’s lips parted and she spoke a single word.
“No.”
NICKY
NICKY LEAPT DOWN THE stairs and plunged into the black rectangle framed by the doorway. Out in the night
, free from the house, she stumbled down the front stairs and spilled onto the lawn. With a quick roll, she was back on her feet and sprinting down the street. Her adrenaline pushed her lungs until they were about to burst. Nicky was crying and wheezing as she jogged down the street.
In her head, she could almost hear Eric urging her on.
“Don’t slow down. Don’t stop,” he would say. “Get in your car and drive until you’re out of gas. Then, fill up and drive again. Go until there are no more roads to take you farther.”
She had every intention of doing just that. The only problem was that she couldn’t even picture where she had left her car. Nicky reached the head of the River Walk and stopped beneath the street light. She pulled the little notepad from her back pocket. In the past couple of days, it had become her second memory. The words written there were more reliable than her own brain.
Flipping through, back to front, she couldn’t find any mention of where she had parked. Her eyes settled on a phone number.
“Frank Libby—Home,” was written above the number.
For a moment, she had no idea what to do with that information.
“Dottie’s,” she said.
Turning right, she ran towards the place where she worked. Seeing the dark sign, she drew to a stop. The nose of her car was visible beyond the corner of the building. The phone had just been an excuse—instinct had brought her to Dottie’s.
“Eric wants me to go,” she whispered as she looked at her car. Her eyes drifted back to the door to Dottie’s. The keys for the store were in her pocket and there was a phone inside. The two options were clear—run, or try to help.
“He wants me to go,” she whispered as her focus returned to the car.
“No,” she whispered. Her eyes went wide. “He wants me to go.”
She dug in her pocket for her keyring and went to the door. After cranking the bolt, she pushed her way in. The bell over the door tinkled and ran a chill down her spine. Of course it was dark inside. How many times had she walked down the dark aisle to get to the light switches behind the counter? This time, it felt like there might be something lurking in the dark.
