“What do they do?” she asks. “Text you real time updates? It literally just happened.”
“Got two calls on you the moment it did,” he says. “Already a pool down at Martin’s Pub on where in town you’ll fall tomorrow. Put $20 on the library steps myself.”
“Hardy har har. I didn’t pass out. I tripped.”
“Yeah, that’s what it looks like.”
“Okay,” she growls. “Have a good night, Sheriff.”
“Here’s the thing I need . . .” Cortez looks like he knows he ain’t supposed to ask, but isn’t going to let that stop him. He stares at Rebecca like she’s the only one who’s got the answer. “Tell me how you keep going.”
“Coffee.”
“Not what I mean.”
“I can’t—”
“Please,” he says. “I see it in your eyes. You’ve got that same parasite sucking on your soul. People here ask for help and I can’t bring myself to care anymore. About anything. I want blood and that’s not who I am. Last night, I considered eating a bullet . . . I can see that dance with death in your eyes, too.”
“I’m not your priest,” Rebecca says. “Don’t look at me like I can save your soul.”
How can he ask this, given what she’s here to do? What he knows she’s going to do. His drooping eyes make him look like a whipped dog. He’s desperate to shake the pain. And desperate people look anywhere for salvation, even at a devil.
Turns out, “Nothing” is the answer Cortez expects. His head tilts down as he thinks it over. Once he realizes Rebecca’s giving him snake eyes, he starts off without another word.
Rebecca watches him go, but only because she can’t bring herself to move. His question has resurrected that night. The night when all the pain and grief wrecked her life all the way down to the foundation.
She remembers the last few precious seconds of it, hurrying from the laundry room with a basket of Bret’s work clothes fresh from the dryer as her phone beeped and barked from the couch, preparing to deliver the three simple words that would end it all in the blink of an eye.
Your daughter’s dead.
Now Rebecca is thinking about everything. The last two years come clawing at the door like a freezing animal. The immeasurable grief. The quickness with which she set aside her mourning, her mind settling for endless revenge fantasies.
It’s terrifying how fast that happens. You just know it’s over. The things you have are as good as gone. And the relationships you’ve fed are about to starve.
Nothing gets out unscathed.
Rebecca remembers sleeping on her side because she hates the stupid look engrained on Bret’s face. All those frumpy “why can’t you get over it” looks that eventually morphed his features into permanent disgust. Sex suddenly becomes a repulsive thought. The physical act is nothing to her, and when she tries it in order to appease her husband’s “needs” she nearly freaks out because she can no longer stand for him to touch her like that.
Bret thinks she’s gone too far off the deep end. Thinks she needs a shrink. Sure. She goes. Because she can’t focus enough to work. She cooperates but has no intention of getting to the root of it all. Paul’s the root. And he needs to be extracted. Bret begs her to get help. Finds a little clinic in Vermont that’s supposed to be very good.
Bret’s excited.
Rebecca pretends to be.
But therapy there is all salient nods and “picture blue skies.” Forgetting is murder. Treatment means killing the only thing she’s got left. Her pain. The drugs scramble her skull like eggs, ripping thoughts away with alarming precision. Worst part of it is that they don’t work the way they’re supposed to.
She never forgets about Paul.
Probably because she never wants to.
And that’s the thing about Sheriff Cortez. The thing she doesn’t have the heart to say to him or to anyone else whose life has been damaged by premature loss. He’s desperate for a way back. Everyone stands on that precipice. A choice needs to be made, like taking an exit off the highway. Miss it and there’s no backing up. Miss it and your picket fences and fresh-cut grass get broken and dead.
So how do you keep going, Sheriff? Rebecca thinks. You just go. Go until you’re even. Not a split second after that matters worth a damn.
Cortez is nearly to his car when he turns and starts back, shaking his head as he comes. “I’m off for the night,” he says. “Doing a taco run. Want to get dinner with me? They won’t even care you’re dressed like that.”
Rebecca shakes her head. No, not tonight. Not ever. She’s hardly worth the niceties.
“Please,” he says. “You’re the only one I can talk to.”
All she can do is shake like a bobble toy. It’s just easier than articulating. He opens his mouth to press the issue and she rolls her eyes—here it comes—then hopes Cortez has missed the gesture. She doesn’t want to hurt him.
“I’ve got work to do,” she says. Holds the book and waves it around, and then as if remembering the world had practiced civility before moving on, she flashes an empty smile and says, “Thank you for thinking of me.” People like the sheriff are good, and what little good remains in this place should be nurtured.
“Thinking of you is all I do,” he says. But that comes out wrong. Maybe. Rebecca recoils, feels her expression fall because forget poker faces when all you’re looking to do is put one sick bastard out of his misery.
The sheriff stammers, sensing he’s blown his shot at evening company. He still coasts back up to Rebecca, who stands and watches, feeling nothing but pity for this man.
“What I meant is . . . I’m rooting for you to make sense of this. For—”
“I know,” Rebecca says. “Trust me, Sheriff. I want my gun back.”
A smile at the corners of his mouth. He shuffles closer, glances around like a nervous schoolyard boy. She wonders how old he is and doesn’t think he’s even forty. “What have you got there?” His fingers brush the book.
Oh no, she thinks. I wouldn’t know where to begin. “Too early to tell.”
“Maybe I can—”
“No, no,” she says. “I work alone. If it points to anything, I’ll let you know. Okay?”
Cortez nods slowly. He realizes it’s as good a deal as he’s going to get. “Hey, tell you what . . . i’ll bring you back a couple of tacos and you can brief me on what you’ve got. How’s that sound?”
Christ, it sounds awful, but this guy could put her on the hook if he wants. And so far he’s done exactly the opposite. “Sure,” she says.
“Great, it’ll take some time, I’ve got an errand to run and some rounds to make.”
“I’ll watch for you in the window.”
Cortez laughs, points toward her room and offers to walk her up. They go in silence, him trailing a few steps behind and mostly glancing at the ground. They pause beneath the warm glow of the yellow wall sconce. Now he looks her over like something’s wrong.
“Yeah,” she says. “I know. I’ve got mud all over me.”
“Ain’t that.” He gets closer and for a second she thinks he’s going to try and force a kiss. Braces herself and balls her fingers into a fist. “You got two different color eyes,” he says.
“What?” She doesn’t think anyone’s ever studied her face this hard, not even Bret, and suddenly she’s compelled to turn her head this way and that, up and down, letting him study all the angles. “Gotta be a trick of the light.”
“It’s not,” he says. “Yesterday your eyes were brown. Today that one’s green.” He points to her right one.
“I-I don’t understand what’s happening to me.” She unlocks her room and starts in.
“Check yourself out you don’t believe me,” Cortez says. “You got a mirror in there?”
“I’ve got two.” She disappears into the darkness, leaving the sheriff to watch the door slam on his face.
20
REBECCA SITS CROSS-LEGGED ON THE bed, her clothes in a muddy ball at her feet. Bret is
busy feeding another string of texts through the phone. She barely acknowledges them. The book rests in her lap.
She flips toward the earliest pages while around her the mirrors make predictable hell. These are raucous knocks—they’ve never been this loud or this agitated, going well beyond fingernail taps on glass. These are the sounds of rounded fists falling and falling and falling.
Because they want to get in.
But human beings are nothing if not adaptable. People teach themselves to live with all kinds of setbacks: limp legs, ringing ears, or lumps beneath their arms. Anything to avoid going to the doctor. Inconvenience is a sliding scale that tips surprisingly far when it needs to. And Rebecca has decided she’ll go the rest of her life without ever seeing her reflection again.
“Is that the best you can do?” she taunts, elbowing the wall. Her headache is especially sharp tonight. It makes her irritable. Those hands don’t care. They continue to pound as if on instinct.
“Where’s my fucking Advil?” Rebecca says. This pain has laid eggs inside her brain. She feels as though she’s dealing with a hundred hatchlings at once. Mini migraines crawl into every crevice of her skull, wreaking havoc on her thoughts and keeping her temples pulsing. Her eyes, watery.
She finds the bottle of Advil on the desk, opened and knocked aside. Empty. Can’t even remember how many she’s taken today. Recalls her doctor cautioning against liver damage and the way she laughed in his face.
“Screw it,” she says. She’ll push on. The weathered page between her fingers feels culled from another world. Old and faded sketches show undocumented history. She flips further back and realizes the text is all symbols.
Somehow she understands it.
You know why, she thinks.
“I do?” she says.
She does.
Rebecca picks up her phone, sighs as she sees herself in low light. It’s not the same as looking at oneself in the mirror. The knocks don’t come through here. She looks slightly out of focus and no matter which way she turns her head, just looks damn old. Every angle, an unflattering one.
She stares straight into the screen and clicks the button. Has to zoom in close in order to see it, but Cortez was right. One of her eyes is the color of jade. But it’s even worse than that. The entire shape of that eye is different and now that she’s scrutinizing, she realizes it’s altered the structure of her face.
This is a stranger’s face. Parts of it still belong to her, but continued scrutiny makes her headache grow.
She throws the phone down and slips into sweat pants and a loose top, walks down to the office—glad to leave the sound of knocking mirrors behind.
“The hell do you want?” the manager says as she steps inside. He looks up from a Hungry Man and has brownie crumbs plastered to his chin. She doesn’t have a chance to respond before he picks himself up out of his recliner. “Last time. Hear me?”
They foot it back up to Paul’s room, except he’s all the more pissed off about it this time, giving her a look that asks, “How many times are you going to make me do this?”
At least the mirrors in here are shattered.
She tried that once herself. On the night she fled the hospital. Wrapped her fist inside the thick padding of a bloody straightjacket and sent knuckles sailing straight on. Her fist smashed glass, but her forearm kept going. Straight into water darker than night and thicker than oil.
It’s the kind of thing that conveniently happens to people in loony bins. That way, doctors can talk about you in hushed tones as they scribble notes and shake their heads because you’re an A-number-1 tragedy.
The shit-smeared symbols decorating this room feel more familiar now that she’s read the book. Paul used the old-world alphabet in those pages to spell words in here.
Spell them in shit.
She sits on the floor and opens the book. Pages through. Looks for runes that match Paul’s fecal penmanship.
“There we go,” she says.
The first one might say INVITATION. The second could read HARVEST. The third’s probably REBIRTH. There’s a certain rationale to that based on the history she’s read. But the fourth scrawl, above the busted television, remains completely illegible.
“You’re in here somewhere,” Rebecca says, flipping the pages. Close enough to feel the truth in her fingertips. One page shows a gnarled hand reaching out from a darkened forest. Fingers about to close around the throat of a virginal girl. It would be a basic illustration if not for the incredible detail in the child’s face, pained eyes, and hypocritically pursed lips.
This illustration is THE VEIL.
Then there’s the ash on the bathroom floor. Paul has burnt the truth to prevent anyone else from following him on ahead for Tanner Red.
Her fingers stroke the jagged tears in the back of the book and she smiles as a piece of the puzzle clicks into place.
“Where’d you go, Paul?”
Rebecca rushes back to her room. Even in the chilly night, she’s getting too hot beneath the collar. Strips her clothes off as soon as she’s in.
The shades are drawn tight and Rebecca stretches on the bed, listening to the mirror knocks. Suddenly, there’s competing bustle in the parking lot. She peeks out behind the slat and watches as the spaces fill up with cars. Bodies shuffle to their rooms.
It’s three in the morning. Every vacancy is filled within the hour.
Rebecca eyes the Wild Turkey on the desk. Her underarms are slick from moisture. It’s a steady 68 in here. Sweat beads at her hairline. She wipes it with her underwear.
Bourbon’s poison but she’s going to take it. Blacking out is maybe the only way to sleep without seeing that face. Without suffering someone else’s memories. Last thing she wants to do is call Bret in the morning and navigate an entire conversation of why haven’t you called me back when all she needs to know is was there ever a time when we stole a classic Volkswagen Beetle and went joyriding up to York Beach?
For the record, Bret had said there wasn’t.
The bottleneck goes to her lips. During her first swallow, Rebecca thinks about how much she wants to die.
She curls on the floor with the bottle in her fist, blinks and finds the red face standing in the darkness in the far-off distance.
Blink.
The young girl wears tight blue jeans. A tighter halter-top with cat whiskers stretched across her breasts. Blond hair in a ponytail.
Rebecca remembers buying that outfit.
Another swig, then another. And one more for good measure. Anything to forget.
Blink.
The girl’s closer. The tapping glass gets more agitated as she nears.
Blink.
Rebecca takes a swig so deep it’s half the bottle.
Blink.
Her thoughts blur.
Red-stained eyelids lift to reveal jade eyes beneath. Neon green emanates like a snapped glow stick, igniting the contours of this mangled face. Rebecca remembers how bright these eyes once beamed. She remembers rocking them to sleep and wondering what the future meant. Remembers the pride they had when it came time to glue a macaroni mane on top of a lion drawing. Green eyes brighter than summer grass, now muted and cool—the world after a thunderstorm.
“Hi, Mom,” Jaime says.
Rebecca tries to get the bottle to her lips, but it’s too late. Still, she tries. She’s willing to take down the rest in a single gulp if that’s what it’s going to take to exorcise this perversity from her skull.
Though Jaime would rather she not.
The headache returns and Rebecca can barely see from behind waterlogged eyes. Her neck stretches like elastic and her spine does little chiropractic cracks to accommodate the growth. What little breath she can get through her nose comes with heavy sniffles. She opens her mouth to scream and four fingertips appear beneath her upper lip. A wiggling thumb scrapes the inside of her cheek as it snaps to freedom, flexing in the cool air.
A whole wrist slides from Rebecca’s mouth.
The mirrors are riled. An army of inquisitive hands knocks beyond them now.
Rebecca doubles over. The hand pushes from her mouth and reaches to the floor, trying to force Rebecca’s body back upright. The pain’s a snakebite twisting her throat and stomach around as the invading presence mounts its escape. She feels her innards sloshing and the tightening in her body is as bad as giving birth—if you had to push a baby through your throat.
The hand is free all the way up to its forearm, waving through the air and eager to grip something in order to pull the rest of the body free. Another hand scales the inside of her ribcage, climbing it like a ladder.
Rebecca thinks she’s going to die.
She flails. The Wild Turkey spills. She reaches for something. Anything she can get her hands on. Any way to end her suffering. If she’s not already in hell then she’s certainly en route.
Whatever’s happening terrifies her. She wishes she hadn’t chased Cortez off. Jesus, even in this unexplainable moment she cannot believe how scared she is of being alone. She wobbles close to the full mirror and thinks if this is the way she has to go, then she’s ready to yank that fucking sheet away and make this stop.
No, Jaime screams inside her head. Do not do this.
And then . . . Jaime says nothing more.
The arm recedes back into Rebecca’s mouth, as if a simple breath is enough to suck it all the way back down to wherever the hell it lives. There’s relief. She’s slicked with more sweat than a sauna and at last she can breathe again.
Rebecca’s spasms have brought her a little too close to the glass. Her knees pop as she stands, hands on thighs as she finds her breath. Takes a seat on the bed and rubs her temples, feeling like her eyeballs need to be pushed back inside her skull before she can even begin to collect her—
The mirror bends like rubber. A projectile stretches out with the bed comforter dangling off it like a spearhead. Beneath the fabric, the outline is pointed fingers. They move like a missile straight for her. Rebecca crab-walks up against the headboard, palm pressed against her mouth to stifle the horrible scream that rubs her lungs raw.
The arm extends as far as it can go. The glass creaks like bending wood as the wiggling fingers reach in desperation, unable to get all the way to her throat. Whatever’s beneath the sheet begins to regress back toward the frame. Rebecca watches it fall away, restoring first the rippling glass and then the comforter that blots it.
Rites of Extinction Page 7
