Not Flesh Nor Feathers

by Cherie Priest

Page 8

 

  Warm wetness was seeping through my shirt and getting sticky. The sweater was black, though. Blood might not show too badly. I crossed my arms across my breasts and put my face down into my hands.

  “Get a doctor,” Nick repeated, but I shook my head and protested.

  “No. No doctors. I’m all right, it’s just a scratch. Some scratches. Gimme a pack of Band-Aids and some peroxide. I’ll be fine. ”

  “This is all my fault. ”

  I couldn’t argue with him there. “It sure is. I’m okay though. Rattled, but okay. ”

  “Was it bad in there? You look terrible. ”

  “It was bad, yeah. But it’s not a big deal. It’s not something to get all excited over. It was just . . . ”

  “What?” He asked it eagerly, but not too eagerly. He was trying to hold back until he was sure I was all right, but his curiosity was eating him alive. “What was it? Did you see her? Did she say anything? I heard you talking, but I didn’t catch anything else. And then stuff started breaking. We heard that. ”

  “Can you give me a minute?” I asked, bracing myself against the wall and pushing myself to a standing position. Nick tried to help, but I didn’t let him. I didn’t want him to touch me. I didn’t want anyone to touch me, including the nervous-looking maid or her boss—if that’s who he was.

  “Give the lady some room,” Nick ordered, even though the other two spectators had already done so.

  “Is there a restroom I could use? Could you let me just—let me wash my hands and see the damage for myself. ”

  “Down the hall on the left,” the maid indicated.

  “Thanks,” I nodded, and with one hand holding onto the vintage papered walls, I drew myself towards the ladies’ room. “Give me a minute. I’ll only be a minute. ”

  4

  After Avery

  “And how about a first-aid kit?” Nick demanded, but it wasn’t aimed at me. He projected the suggestion the other way down the hall, and I suppose someone would either see about getting one or say they didn’t have one.

  I stumbled into the bathroom and it was empty, thank heaven. With a twist of my wrist I summoned steaming hot water from the tap and let it run while I pumped pearly white soap into my palm and lathered it up.

  The mirror told me that Nick had been understating when he used the words “mess” and “terrible” to describe my appearance. I looked like hell.

  I held my head over the basin and shook it, sending pixie dust flakes of broken glass down the drain. They fell off my collar, and out of my hair. They sprang from my shirt when I pulled it away from my skin and flicked the fabric with my fingers. Fine lines of drying crimson crisscrossed my forehead and my left cheek. My hands stung when I held them under the faucet because they too were lacerated. But even as I ran the floral-smelling suds over my knuckles, even though it hurt in a sharp, medicinal way to feel the soap, the small cuts healed themselves.

  It’s been this way ever since the swamp—ever since I killed Avery. He was my grandfather, plus a couple of greats, and he was more wicked and old than any living human ought to be.

  But that’s the thing, I think. He wasn’t human anymore. And whatever he was, he passed it on to me. He called it a curse.

  For a long time, I didn’t believe him. I almost forgot about it.

  Then, after a while, I noticed that I’d stopped getting sick. Ever. And the little nicks, bumps, and bruises that came with being alive began to vanish as soon as I’d acquired them. Some curse, I thought. My health insurance premiums would plummet.

  But there was more to it than that, of course. There always is.

  I’ve always had a tendency to “see things,” as it was euphemistically described when I was a kid. You write it off to imagination when you’re young. You let people call it something else because you don’t want to stand out too much. But it is what it is, and it does not care what you want.

  After Avery it was different. After Avery, I saw the dead in all their states—I saw the ones who hung on hard and kept their forms, and the weaker ones too. I saw the ghosts that sensitive people perceive as chilly spots in stairways. I felt their chill and I spied them, too—huddled in their corners, looking at me with accusatory stares and sometimes holding out their hands.

  When they know you can see them, they want your attention.

  I shuddered. I hate mirrors. I picked more pieces of them out of my hair, and with my fingernail I dug a shard out of my thumb.

  “How’s it going in there?” Nick knocked on the bathroom door. He pushed it open an inch to call inside. “Everything all right? I’ve got a first-aid kit. They had one in the manager’s office downstairs. ”

  “I’m fine, Nick. ”

  “A few Band-Aids never hurt anybody. That I know of,” he added, still not closing the door, but not sidling around it either.

  “I’ll get them in a minute. Hang on, will you?”

  “Do you need any help?”

  “No. ”

  “Do you have the recorder?”

  “Yes. Thanks for caring. ”

  “I just meant—”

  I left the sink running but walked over to the door and kicked it closed.

  I went back to the sink and ran my hands under the faucet stream some more. What the hell had happened in there, anyway? The first thing I always tell people who are nervous about a haunting is, “There’s nothing they can do to hurt you. ” Truth was, I’d never heard of an ordinary ghost harming anyone, or even trying.

  Poltergeists were something different, but no one knew what. And I was confident that Caroline was not one, though she certainly behaved as badly.

  I pulled my sweater open and it stung. Drying blood wanted to hold everything closed. It wanted to keep me covered and sealed. But I lifted my long-sleeved black shirt and winced. The injury was writhing, the ends of the neatly-sliced puncture wound reaching out for one another. It almost made me ill to watch.

  “What is wrong with me?” I asked no one in particular.

  I took a handful of paper towels and ran them under the steaming water. The heat didn’t bother me; I liked the way it made my fingers tingle. It distracted me from the tickle at my belly.

  I wrung them out and flipped them open to wipe, and wipe, and wipe. I threw them away. They sat at the top of the pile of trash in the aluminum bin, pink and red on brown paper. I took another few sheets and used them to cram the others down, out of sight and out of mind.

  Under my shirt, the transformation was wrapping up. It still hurt like hell, but it wasn’t so open feeling and raw. When I flapped my shirt to breeze the damp skin, I didn’t feel the air whistling into the wound.

  I did feel light-headed, though. No wonder, with all the blood. Other people’s doesn’t make me squeamish, but seeing so much of my own displaced fluid made me want to close my eyes, so I did.

  Nick knocked the door open again, this time ignoring propriety and strolling inside the bathroom.

  I dropped my shirt back down and turned to snarl at him. “Out. ”

  “No. Not until—”

  “This isn’t up for negotiation. Out. ”

  “Let me see. ”

  “Not on your life. ” I closed my arms around my chest, even though my sweater was sticky and wet. But I’d rinsed the worst of it out, and a sideways glance into the mirror told me that I looked all right, so far as all right went.

  He held his ground and made a grab for my shoulders, but I stepped back out of his way. “Shit, woman. They opened the room back up a minute ago and it looks like the shower scene from Psycho in there. I know you’re hurt, just let me take a look. ”

  “It’s not that bad, and some of it isn’t mine,” I lied. What did he know about paranormal phenomena, anyway?

  “Bullshit. Let me see. ”

  “Touch me, and lose an arm. ”

  He threw his hands in the air and said, “
Fine. Have it your way then. But I’m only trying to help. ”

  I heard another knocking on the door, from someone identifying himself as a manager.

  “I’m fine,” I assured him. “Please go away. ”

  “Now, that guy,” Nick pointed a thumb at the door. “He’s worried because he doesn’t want you to sue the hotel for getting hurt here. But me? My motives are pure. ”

  “I have no doubt. But that doesn’t mean I want you in here while I clean up. ”

  “I brought a first-aid kit. It’s got . . . stuff in it. Some, uh,” he opened the metal case and fiddled through it. “Some Band-Aids and gauze and stuff. Hey, look, antibacterial goop. Use some of this. And take some of these,” he handed me big patchy bandages that would have covered half my face.

  “Thank you,” I mumbled, figuring it might be easier to let his concern run its course and then see him off, since fighting with him wasn’t getting me anywhere.

  “Ooh, look—spray stuff. ” He popped the green cap and accidentally hit the nozzle, sending alcohol-smelling mist over his shoulder. The cap rolled around on the floor, but he picked it up and put it back in place. “Use this, too. ”

  “Hey. ” I reached down and scooted the metal kit towards myself across the counter. “I’ve got it under control. Look—do I look okay? Mostly? Not gushing bodily fluids or anything. ”

  “You look pale. I mean, pale for you. Blanched, I think that’s the word. ”

  “Like I’ve seen a ghost? Ha-ha. ”

  “No, like you’ve donated blood and you could use a cookie and a glass of orange juice. ”

  Actually, that didn’t sound too far off. The simmering stings of my injuries had worried their way down to an idle throb, but I needed to refuel. I wasn’t sure what I wanted, but I wanted something. And I was thirsty.

  “How about this, Nick. Let’s do this: give me five more minutes in here, then I’ll come out and you can take me out to supper. I’ll fill you in, and if you pick someplace quiet, we can play with the recording a little. ”