Dehydrating and starving to death promised a more blissful end by comparison. As Emma lowered to the floor, she grasped Zyanya’s hand, holding it until her arm tired and had to let go. An avalanche of tears launched her into a crying fit. Her wails and uncontrollable blubbering bounced off the walls, the only reply to the devastating pain in this prison of darkness.
Summer 1988
Hexx was on his porch step, something in his hand.
“What’s up?” Buzzing with adrenaline, Mark sat beside his friend.
“This.” He passed the paper and folded his arms across his knees. “My gran was holding it when I went to shut off her light.”
It was a detailed pencil sketch. The artist possessed quite the knack for shading. Every feature of the face was familiar. The dark eyes. The arched brows. The nose with the slight bump. The full pair of lips. The androgynous jawline. In the dimness, Mark almost thought it was a photo—of himself. The only aspect not characteristic of him was the hair. Either in a ponytail or a braid, disappeared down the back.
“Is this your idea of a prank?” Mark asked.
“Nope.” Flipping the drawing over, Hexx pointed to the writing.
~Jonathan, Durley’s Help, 1862~
Mark braced himself, like he’d seen a ghost. Funny thing…he had. On more than on one occasion. But it was the first time he kinda felt like one himself. Something flipped in him, a need to lash out. “First that dirty Indian motherfucker creep’n on my sister, and now this? Fuck.”
Hexx’s eyes went steely. “What did you say?”
“That scumbag at the lake. He probably put some kind of curse on her. She’s like practically on her deathbed. Now you conjure up some fake drawing of me? Is this funny to you? This like some local thing—haha—get the kid in the fucking spook house?” Upon closer inspection, the man at the lake resembled the image in the sketch.
“Shit. Check out the paper. Is it like anything you’ve seen nowadays?” His sneer hadn’t softened. Hexx clenched his jaw, balling his fists, but he didn’t utter another word.
Even in the dimness, Mark spotted the fibered surface and touched the texture of the paper. There was no denying Hexx was right. Plus, the graphite had aged, appearing smudged or shiny in areas. So much for thinking someone had rendered a new drawing on an archaic surface. Mark’s gut signaled this was the real deal.
“Where did it come from?” Mark asked.
“I don’t know. A garage sale, I think. Does it really matter?”
Mark rubbed his eyes, which burned with tears of frustration. “Look…I’m…I can’t deal with this right now,” he said before getting up and stomping away.
—
Mark longed for a sense of shelter from the outside world, an I’m home sentiment.
Too bad he couldn’t pitch a tent somewhere, like in someone else’s backyard. The oddball neighbor didn’t seem so threatening suddenly. All the lights were off next-door, at least from where Mark stood in his driveway. Things looked peaceful. Must be why the ghosts attempted to cross the property line.
One foot in front of the other. Repeat.
The minute his body crossed the threshold of his back door, Mark’s blood pressure skyrocketed. His eyelid twitched.
He hashed out what to do regarding the old drawing. What did Hexx’s grandmother know about it? There had to be a link to Mark, to his house. He felt it in his bones—ha, bones. Were there any library records on Mark’s house? If so, how helpful would those be?
Mark had a strong itch to talk to his father about this, but like everything else, when he played it out in his head, he was a lunatic; Hey, Dad, there’s an old drawing of a guy who looks exactly like me, followed by, And, there’s this ghost girl. She calls me by his name. That’s not even touching the whole subject of the sexual tension scorching his bed with a ninety foot pole. Yeah, lunatic city.
The staircase to his room eclipsed all light. He didn’t recall it being so dark when he’d left. However, he climbed the steps at a regular pace, if not slower. It was like being in the tractor beam in the game Galaga, except an enemy spaceship hadn’t captured him. This was an encasement of protection, ushering him back to his room.
That sense of not being alone came over him. Yet his skin prickled in the way it does when someone strokes your hair. The closer he stepped to the landing, the stronger the crinkling static throughout his body became. He ran a hand down his neck to calm himself.
Crawling into bed, Mark pushed aside his laundry body double and drew the bedding over him. Despite the room being empty, a soothing sleepiness sheeted over him, caressing his face and tucking him in.
This inexplicable connection with the ghost was keeping him safe again. From what, he wasn’t the least bit aware. Part of him liked it that way. The less he knew, the better.
His arm wrapped around the heap of clothing on the mattress when he woke the next morning. For a moment the fabric morphed into fleshy feminine curves. A touch of warmth radiated from it. When he snuggled closer, the clothes crumbled underneath him like a sandcastle. What lingered was the scent of what must’ve been roses.
—
Mark peeked into Tausha’s room. Her bed was vacant, so he crept down the hall to the master bedroom. Mom’s legs hung over the arm of a recliner. Stuffed with papers, a textbook, the cover bearing a copper-skinned woman with long black hair, lay in her lap. Other books were scattered at her feet.
Mark smelled tobacco smoke, up close and personal like someone had blown a ring into his face. The pipe, ash spilling out, rested on the windowsill behind his mother. Heat billowed up. Was she smoking it? Parents and their hypocrisy. Do what I say, not what I do… When you have your own house and pay your bills, you can do whatever you want… I’m the parent, you’re the child. Remember that… Amused and resentful all at once, he asked himself what the punishment was for catching yourself lighting up your treasured artifact.
That’s when Mark noticed. His mother’s feet rested on the top of the shotgun lockbox, just as casually as if it were an ottoman. Had Mom seen or heard things to put her on edge?
Her eyes snapped open. “Oh, hi, honey,” she said in a raspy voice.
“How is she?” Mark asked, chewing on a fingernail.
“Hard to say. Better, I think.”
“Do you need anything?”
“No, sweetheart.” The book and papers tumbled to the floor as Mom stood. She glanced down, remembering them after the fact, hurdling over the lockbox. “Now that you’re up, I’m going to get some sleep.” Once she’d climbed onto the mattress, she rested her head on the pillow next to her daughter who had doll tucked under one little arm.
The inanimate eyes on the plastic face gazed in Mark’s direction. Although the angle was coincidental, he shuddered.
He turned away, drawing the curtains closed. As the fabric swooshed, it released a clove-like odor. If Mom had smoked the pipe, it must’ve been to relieve stress. He decided he was able to cut her some slack. It was her damn antique in the first place.
—
A stream of light rayed from the vault.
“Hey, Dad,” Mark said, announcing his presence.
His father tended to the skull, making notes on a legal pad. “Hey.”
“I know you’re busy, but I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Shoot. I’m listening.” He scratched his head, still tinkering with the skeleton.
Mark strained to find the right words, not the ones he’d rehearsed. “This is serious.”
His father spun himself around and sat cross-legged. “What’s up?”
“There’ve been a lot of things happening to me here.”
“Still having nightmares?” He palmed his knees, elbows winged out.
That wasn’t even the half of it, but his titillating romps with the ghost girl weren’t what worried him. Some invisible creature almost killed him, and a shelving unit nearly crushed him. His sister had almost been buried alive. This blasted skeleton. And now, the
cryptic sketch at Hexx’s. He needed to explain all of it. It was all diagrammed in his head, but he hadn’t managed to connect the dots. Maybe Dad had the clarity, the wisdom of life experience. All Mark had to do was get it out. “Yeah, but it’s more than that. You see, last night—”
Mark was going to begin with the doppelganger drawing and work backwards, but a patter of footsteps into the basement interrupted him.
Flushed, eyes crazed, Mom burst into the vault.
“What is it? Is Tausha okay?” Dad asked.
Trying to catch her breath, she shook her head.
Dad sprung to his feet, abandoning his reference books and notepad, leaving all the lights on.
They all clamored upstairs to the master bedroom.
Her head lifting from the pillow, Tausha gagged. Liquid trickled from her mouth.
“Oh, my God.” A hand on her daughter’s cheek, Mom wiped the girl’s mouth with the edge of the sheet.
Dad scooped Tausha up and bounded out the front door.
Not one of them wasted a breath asking why she was bone dry, yet coughed up water and gasped for air. Mark didn’t have time to analyze: Tausha’s sudden fit had interrupted his supernatural confessions and the effort to get help. He had to find a way to talk to Dad, to convince him to do something—exorcise the demon or evil spirit, or whatever it was.
Mom cradled her daughter in the backseat while Dad reversed the Pacer into the road, and then took so many sharp turns that Mark’s neck was on the verge of whiplash.
Carrying Tausha inside the emergency room and describing what they could to the staff was all a whirlwind for Mark. Whether his sister was going to live or die was an even more brutal concept while in the waiting area. Almost being sealed up alive was child’s play compared to this. Witnessing the gurney, the attending nurses, and the slamming of the doors close behind them felt like witnessing her death sentence. It was bad enough denying his own mortality, but staring down his sister’s was unbearable. All the veins and muscles in Mark’s head and neck conspired to send him a throbbing headache.
Mark teared up at the idea that she might never hold his hand again, tease him about how he bit his tongue when in deep concentration, or unite in his protest of obligatory holiday pictures. Holidays without Tausha wouldn’t be holidays. They’d be an unspeakable void of sorrow. It felt like all of Mark’s organs were shutting down.
He refused to look at his parents. Their tension and grief broadcasted as strongly as a distress signal of an orbiting spaceship. Just a peek at their wilty bodies and droopy faces was a sure way to send him into a puddle on the floor.
The doctor came out. His expression was tired, but neutral, not the about to give you fatal news sort.
Dad nudged Mom from his shoulder and she blinked to about half-alive. Their hands remained clasped on his thigh, which started to bounce.
“She’s stable for now, but we’re going to keep her for observation. Just to be safe.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Dad asked.
“I assumed she had an accident. The water didn’t smell chlorinated. Was she in the tub?”
“She hasn’t been in any water since the lake the other day.” Mom’s posture stiffened.
“Are you sure about that? Her condition is a result of contact a couple of hours ago, no more.”
Had his sister run her own bath, Mom would’ve heard the tap, the splashing. And Tausha wouldn’t have dried herself off and tucked herself back into bed. The same was true of her going down to the fountain. If she managed to sneak past Mom, a little girl doesn’t almost drown and go back to sleep. That just wasn’t logical. Mark closed his eyes tightly against the bright fluorescents of the waiting room, reminding himself that logic no longer mattered.
His parents didn’t go over any of this with the physician. Even in their fatigue, they were alert enough not to incriminate themselves with neglect, reckless endangerment, and whatever other boxes a social worker checked off a list.
Mark teetered on the precipitous ledge of having a dead sister, and then shipping off to a foster home. He gnawed his fingernail to the quick.
“Well, we’ll keep you posted. You all go home. Get some rest.” The doctor cast a scrutinizing glance to the parents before strolling away, probably to call a child abuse hotline.
Dad drove at a crawl. The streetlamps, the traffic signs, the houses, all passed in slow motion. This might’ve irritated Mark, if he’d wanted to arrive sooner. His impulse was to take his father’s foot completely off the pedal, or to swerve them in the opposite direction.
As they rolled into the driveway, Mark thought: What next?
—
Mark’s mattress jiggled.
He sat up to see Salem settling at the foot of the bed.
His first thought: fuck, Tausha went to the emergency room.
While hugging his pillow, he rolled over. The sheet indented beside him. Instead of filling with anxiety, Mark wished his supernatural companion were there with him.
He touched the warm imprint. Was she—?
There were so many questions for her.
Why hadn’t they had a full conversation? What was her name? He blamed himself for being such a bumbling idiot, for not thinking straight. His lack of social finesse, mixed with the new experience of sexual arousal, crippled him every chance it got. But the angel on his shoulder wasn’t so quick to vilify him. The ghost’s reality and his were different. Their anchors tethered them to alternative times. Not to mention they’d been interrupted at every turn. That much wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t Jonathan.
He shut his eyes, willing her to appear. Then he angled the mirror shard this way and that, hoping touching it or finding the right frequency was the trick.
Searching the bed, empty but for his dog, he realized it wasn’t happening.
Nothing was ever easy, was it?
He edged his way to Salem and rested his head on her back.
February 1862
Emma’s body sagged against one of the corners of the room. Dampness clung to her skirt and the skin beneath it. The stench of her urine soured the inside of her mouth. Her fingertips burned from serving as eyes along the masonry. Ignoring their soreness, she groped the outside of her pockets to affirm the dissection pins were still there. If the door had been like the ones upstairs, she surely would’ve been able to pick the lock.
However, this impenetrable door made her wonder what her father had intended for this room. Did he premeditate imprisonment, or concealing his experiments? He’d copied the door that protected everyone’s savings at the town bank. Was that merely an ingenious ruse to make it look like he guarded his own wealth?
The pins in her pocket rolled with her fingers, digging into her thigh as she pressed harder. Why had she collected them? How foolish to think they’d be purposeful. About all they were good for would be gouging her veins, if it came to that.
Emma cursed the fact that none of her father’s Mason jars were in here. While fumbling about the room, she’d brainstormed their potential purposes—to attack the door, to catch and drink her piss, or to defend herself against anyone who’d come for her. All that searching and conniving had seemed so long ago. What was left of her brainwaves flitted in and out like a fits of insanity. How soon before those flitted away for good?
Her throat was akin to desert sand. All the saliva had dried up, so she didn’t even bother to swallow. Her heartbeat had slowed to a murmur, much like her breath. All bodily functions had begun waning like a flame consuming the last bit of wax.
At the awareness of the rasping on the other side of the room, Emma conjured all the sensations of touching the mutilated woman. The tracks of Emma’s former tears itched her cheeks, but she was too weak to rub them away. Hunger pangs attacked her gut, yet it spasmed as if needing to heave.
Was the cold finger between her lips real or a dream—or a hallucination to suggest the unthinkable? She tasted its saltiness. The flesh barely warm. Her teeth sunk into the tissue, no
t yet breaking the skin. The anticipation of blood filling her mouth seemed almost as ordinary as a gulp of water. Emma’s hand lifted to yank the finger away, hurling it as far as possible. Yet all she discovered was empty air. She repeatedly stuck out her tongue as if to cleanse her palette, the action not curing her from the waking nightmare as she’d hoped.
An old newspaper clipping of the Donner party horror entered her consciousness. Although the tragedy happened before her time, she’d asked her father about it—asked him why he’d kept a record of it. All of that was fuzzy now, but the instinct to eat human flesh surfaced like the puss of a festering blister. Cannibalism now took up residence in her mind, and refused to go away. Would she become that desperate?
The Donners had cooked the meat. Could Emma consume Zyanya’s raw tissue? How sanitary would that be? With what little energy Emma possessed, she clenched her eyes. Her dry tear ducts burned with the desire to cry. Her body mocked and taunted her with each passing moment. Where was the relief? How would it come? The answer to that question chilled her.
As the ache of starvation ate Emma from the inside, she resolved to remain slumped right where she was, in the filth of her own fluids. She’d wait for death to rescue her. It seemed to be coming for her, without any employment of the pins. Should she play God and end Zyanya’s agony? What was the right thing to do?
A passing wonderment regarding the teaching position she’d applied to in Colorado faded as quickly as it came. What was the use in worrying about that now? That notion was replaced by a flashback of Jonathan’s warm lips on hers, one of the pleasures of this life she’d be leaving behind. That image seared into her mind as she lost consciousness.
Summer 1988
“Can you come over?” Mark asked when Hexx answered the phone.
Static crackled on the line.
“Seriously.” The cold shoulder vibe traveled all the way into Mark’s room. He must’ve done or said something wrong. “Look, I didn’t mean to be an asshole.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t peg you for a racist asshole.”
Fountain Dead Page 16
