by Abe Moss
“You’re okay?” she asked. She didn’t believe it.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Catherine agreed and led Beth to the entrance. Over her shoulder, Rosaline and her husband watched. Rosaline had adopted her congenial smile again, the one that said ‘thanks for coming in, come back soon’. She wore it very well.
✽ ✽ ✽
“What happened?”
Catherine took them away from the bar, down the block and around the corner, where she parked in some evening shade. She shut off the engine.
“I fucked up,” Beth said.
“Yes, I can see that…” She couldn’t help but stare at the streaks down Beth’s face, flaking like dried paint. “What is that on your face?”
Beth lowered her vanity mirror and checked herself out.
“It’s not blood, I don’t think. Not mine, at least.”
“What did they do to you?”
Beth looked down at herself, studied her arm where Catherine now noticed a few rings of bruises on her bicep.
“I was an idiot. You were right.” She rested her head back, eyes shut. “It worked like I thought, up until a point. He was outside to help with my car and I was inside to use the bathroom. That all worked like I hoped. Took me a little longer than I would have liked finding the thick green book in the living room. I took it in the bathroom. He was really quick learning my car started up just fine. I was so stupid… I’m sorry Catherine.”
“What did they do to you?”
“Well, I opened the door and he was waiting for me, saw me holding the book. Asked me what the hell I was doing. I just kept apologizing and told him I would be on my way, and he grabbed me by the arm, which I guess is where these bruises came from…”
“And the stuff on your face?”
“I don’t know, Catherine. He kept me there until his wife came home. When Rosaline got there, they took my phone and she read through it, saw the message I’d sent you. I just sat on the couch waiting. She came out of the kitchen with this stuff in her hands and smeared it on my face before I could even register what happened. I got really tired almost immediately, like that stuff you told me about, the stuff you used…”
“I hope that’s all it was.”
“She probably just wanted to make sure I didn’t cause a scene getting me to the bar.”
Catherine started the engine. “We’ll come back later to get your car. You have the keys?”
“Yes.”
Just as Catherine pulled away from the curb, knuckles wrapped against the window, startling her. She mashed the brakes.
“Get in!” she shouted.
She unlocked the doors and Lara hopped in.
“What are you doing here?” Beth asked.
Lara, mouth open to speak, was silenced by the sight of Beth.
“What happened to your face?”
Catherine pulled away from the curb, on her way to take them home.
“Rob showed up at home,” Catherine said, keeping the story simple. “He’s gone for now, hopefully for good. I brought Lara with me to the bar in case anything happened, or if I didn’t return… except when I DID return—”
“You’re going to be proud of me, mom,” Lara said. She was beaming.
“What? Why?”
Lara was out of breath having ran after the car, most likely. “Do you have your phone?”
“No. Rosaline took it from me.”
If Lara could beam any brighter she’d have blinded them all.
“I thought she might. Or I thought she might at least delete everything on both your phones. I forwarded Beth’s message to myself. The picture. Then I deleted that message, to me, from your phone. Hopefully that’s all it took. I left hoping they wouldn’t know a third person was involved.”
Catherine regarded her daughter in the rear view. It was hard to be glad about anything after the day she’d had, and the worry she’d felt for both of them. It would make her sick eventually, the guilt of bringing them into her mess. Probably kill her by the end of it all. However, although she didn’t return Lara’s ecstatic grin, she was impressed.
“I hope no one saw you in my car when we arrived, or ditching the car when I was inside…”
“It doesn’t matter!” Her voice was shrill with excitement. “We have what we need. Now we just need to use it.”
It did matter, Catherine thought. If Rosaline had any reason to suspect that someone else had the information, this wouldn’t be the end of it. But then, the more Catherine thought about it…
“I have to say, as awful as I think she’s treated you, you have to admit your daughter thought ahead.”
Sarcastically from the backseat, “Yeah, thanks.”
“This is good news,” Beth said. “Why do you look like you need to pull over?”
“I don’t think it’s over.”
Careful contemplation from the passengers.
“What do you mean?”
“I think we got let off easy. They took our phones. Is that really enough, do you think?”
“What else could they possibly want?” Lara asked.
Beth, following along with that scheming mind of hers, knew exactly what Catherine meant. She said, “They could want to punish us.”
✽ ✽ ✽
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Beth dried her face with a hand towel in Catherine’s guest bedroom. The paste rinsed easily.
“I’m fine. Don’t even feel tired anymore. And don’t you dare apologize. I’m sick of hearing it.”
They joined Lara in the living room downstairs. Lara had her phone out. She held it up to Catherine as she sat down next to her.
“Think this is it? Looks like a cookbook recipe.”
Catherine took the phone and observed the picture Beth had taken. It was of a single page of the thick green book. The top half of the page described the curse itself, although its title was in a language Catherine didn’t recognize. The ingredients and instructions matched what she’d understood about the powder, though it’d been supplied to her already made by Rosaline. The symbol to be painted on the victim’s face was drawn plainly in the margin. It all looked mostly as Catherine expected. The lower half of the page, however, was divided from the top, another ritual of sorts, its title written in the same mysterious language.
“How did you even find it?” she asked Beth. “The titles are…”
“Do you know what this language is?”
Beth took a look. “I have no idea. Latin, maybe? But it’s on the same page, and it references the curse above it, or that same phrase at least. I think it’s safe to assume it’s the reversal.”
“I don’t think it’s safe to assume anything at this point.”
For all they knew, beneath the curse were instructions on how to kill the victim after being put into the cursed state. It listed no outcome.
“Lucky this book isn’t entirely in that language,” Beth said.
It was lucky, if you wanted to call it that. Only the titles and certain phrases in the text were in the other language. Otherwise the book had been printed in English. And when Catherine finally got around to reading the instructions themselves, she was immeasurably relieved at its simplicity.
“Oh thank god…”
“What?”
“Looks like it uses the same powder for the most part, which is fine because I didn’t use it all. I mean… I hope I still have enough…” She handed the phone to Beth to look it over for herself. “The only addition being…”
“An object of emotional importance to the cursed…” Beth read aloud. “I assume that’s what you don’t have yet.”
“I can get that, though. Even today, I think. Easily.”
Beth returned the phone to Lara. “You know where he lives, you mean.”
“I know where he lives.”
“Are we breaking in again?” Lara asked, pocketing her phone.
“No,” Catherine said, smiling not because she was happy or amused, b
ut because she felt what must have been the first real glimmer of hope since she’d started any of this. “I have his keys.”
✽ ✽ ✽
Beth believed it was best she return home for the rest of the day, which Catherine agreed. Her husband would wonder what they’d done together all day. She also needed to come up with an explanation as to how she lost her phone. Those lies she would tell her husband were another brick in the wall of guilt Catherine was so busily constructing. Before she left, Beth exchanged numbers with Lara should they need her for anything.
“That’s my landline, so if I’m home I’ll pick up.” She turned to Catherine. “See, sometimes living a little in the past is useful.”
First Catherine took Lara to get something for dinner. They settled on a local burger joint called Randall’s. It was quiet and practically empty. There was one other couple eating when they arrived, and by the time they sat down with their own food the couple was leaving.
“How do you feel?” Catherine asked, watching her daughter scarf down her burger. Catherine only ordered small fries.
“I feel okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Catherine had a hard time making sense of the last week. Not even the last week, but the last couple days. It troubled her, the direction her daughter’s life had taken. Except that was a lousy way to describe it. ‘A direction it had taken’, as though it were a sudden change, out of nowhere. She seemed fine now, in the moment, away from that situation, back with her mother. But that was exactly it. Catherine never would have guessed what Lara’s life was actually like. It was as if unless you kept your children under your eye at all times, it was inevitable they’d become a stranger to you. How could they not? The moment you let them go, the world had its way with them, didn’t it? And when you saw them again, it wouldn’t be the real them you saw. They played the part for you. Firstly because they want you to be comforted by their supposed stability, and secondly because they might not like the truth any better than you.
“You aren’t, though,” Catherine said. “I know you aren’t, because things don’t change that fast.”
“Mom…”
“Just know…” She paused, waited for her daughter to look at her. She wouldn’t. “I’m here for anything you need. Anything. You don’t have to turn to anyone else if you don’t want to. I just want you to be…” She trailed off. To say she wanted her daughter to be happy felt like a farce. It was true, of course, but the last few years were not proof by any means. “I’m not the greatest mom, but I want to be better. We’re both going through a lot of changes right now and I think—”
“Mom.” Lara set her burger down, or the couple bites she had left of it. “You don’t need to reassure me. You don’t need to explain anything.”
“I’m just… I’m having a hard time knowing where to go from here. I want things to be good, and I just—I don’t know how to fix what went wrong.”
“There’s no fixing what went wrong. Joy died. We can’t change that.”
“I know that.”
Lara appeared agitated now. Once again, every interaction Catherine attempted felt like a mistake or a misstep—a misstep she mentally scrambled to repair but to no avail.
“Tell me what you want from me,” Catherine said. “What can I do?”
“I already told you. Just be here. You really don’t owe me anything more than that, especially not after what I tried to do to you.”
“I owe you so much more than that.”
“No, you don’t. You feel bad because of things I said, things I said because I wanted to blame someone else. Neither of us can help how things went, so it’s best to just… forget it. No need to keep picking at it. We can start from here.”
“I know you’ve been in a bad place and I don’t want you going back to that…”
“I don’t intend to. And either way, it’s up to me now, isn’t it? Stop pretending like you can intervene and rescue me or something. Rob is out of the picture and that’s a good enough start. Let me handle my life.”
Lara stared at her tray, Catherine stared at her.
“Okay,” Catherine said.
✽ ✽ ✽
The day was bleeding out into dusk when they reached the apartment complex. Catherine parked her car next to his, which sat just as she’d left it a couple weeks ago. She held his keys tight in her fist, the keys to his apartment which Catherine had never dared enter, in fear that someone living there would see her and ask about his whereabouts, thus connecting her to his disappearance.
It was a Sunday night. There wasn’t much activity to be seen around the complex. Catherine and Lara got out together and made their way toward the building.
“Do you know which door?”
“Apartment number eight. It says on the parking pass hanging in his car.”
Through the front door of the building—which lacked any security buffer to get inside—they were immediately greeted by a stairwell. Each landing offered them two doors to choose from. They climbed the stairs until they came to door number eight.
“Here we are…” Catherine muttered.
First she knocked and rang the bell. When no one answered, she picked through the few keys on his keyring until she found the winner. Once the door was unlocked they stepped inside very quickly and shut it behind them. Lara found the light switch next to the door and flipped it. The living space—it was a one bedroom—was small and relatively clean. Keeping a place clean was rather easy when it was empty as this one. There was a small television in the corner, propped on what looked like an old end table. There was no couch. Instead there was a single folding chair. Did he have close friends, Catherine wondered? A girlfriend? Was there anyone in his life waiting for him to come back?
Quickly, Catherine ignored the rest of the living room—it was so bare and sad, there wasn’t much else to see anyway—and hurried into the bedroom. She flipped the light on. There was a single twin bed in the corner, a dresser against the wall at the end of the bed. A desk was pushed into the opposite corner with a desktop computer beneath it, a small monitor on top. Catherine went to the closet and pulled open the doors, revealing what was unmistakably a single man’s wardrobe.
“Thank god,” she said.
“What?” Lara wandered in behind her, taking everything in.
“He lives alone. I was worried there might be someone else, or someone who might be arriving after us.”
“This place is empty,” Lara said. She went to his desk, pulled open drawers. “Barely any clutter, even in the places you’d expect anyone to have some. No mail or bills or anything in here…”
Catherine pulled through the shirts hanging in the closet. There were several of what she assumed were band shirts, bands she’d never heard of before. Black shirts with busy imagery splashed onto them like graffiti.
“You heard of any of these?” she asked.
Lara stood next to her. “Yeah, a couple. He’s really into music.”
Catherine stepped away from the closet, hands on her hips. “I don’t see any stereo or CDs.” A pang of disappointment. “I don’t see much of anything.”
“Me neither.”
“How am I supposed to find something of emotional importance in this place? He doesn’t have anything…” She thought. “Maybe he’s worse than I gave him credit for. Maybe he’s some kind of… sociopath, or something.”
“Having an empty apartment doesn’t make someone crazy.”
“I don’t see anything here that says someone lives here. There’s no personality. No attempt to make it his home.”
“Maybe he didn’t spend much time here.”
Catherine shook her head. “He spent plenty of time here. If he wasn’t at work, I think he was here.”
Catherine sat on the bed, defeated.
“I know when I was depressed,” Lara said, “I spent most of my free time asleep. I came home from work and went straight to bed. And I stayed there pretty much until
it was time to go to work again.”
“When was this?”
“After Joy.”
Catherine chewed the inside of her lip. “I never knew… I wish you’d have come to me.”
“Well it’s beside the point. All I’m saying is, maybe he’s the same. This apartment kind of makes me think so.”
Catherine scoffed. “What does he have to be depressed about? He’s not the one who—”
“He’s the one who killed someone’s little girl. I doubt it’s been easy to live with that.”
A noise, an electronic bleep, grabbed Catherine’s attention. Lara had booted up the computer. When it started, they were shown a login screen.
“It’s password protected,” she said.
“Can you get past that?”
Lara regarded her mother with dead eyes. “No.”
Feeling letdown, on the brink of desperation, Catherine opened up each drawer of his dresser and dug through the contents. Socks and underwear, a drawer of pants and pajamas. It was only the bottom drawer that didn’t contain clothing, and what it did contain was possibly just the thing Catherine was hoping for.
“Looks like he does keep a clutter drawer,” Catherine said.
The drawer was filled with torn-open envelopes and what appeared to be unfolded letters. They knelt in front of the drawer and sifted through its contents. They each removed letters, skimmed them, stacked them, skimmed some more.
After only a handful each, Lara said, “I think these are all from his mother.”
✽ ✽ ✽
Catherine didn’t want to stay in the apartment any longer than necessary, should someone show up looking for him. So Lara bundled all the letters from the drawer together and put them in a trash bag found under the kitchen sink and they left for home.
“I want to look through these some more tonight,” Catherine said. “I’m sure there are a dozen of them we could use…”
When they were home, they both changed into more comfortable clothes and joined each other in the living room, where they poured the letters out of the trash bag onto the coffee table. They each read through them, one after the other, and shared letters they thought particularly meaningful.
“I get the feeling he didn’t write back much,” Lara said, adding another letter to the pile of ones they’d already read. “Most of these are her just… asking if he’s okay…”
