Mommy was on the floor, covered in blood, her eyes staring up at the ceiling and not blinking. Daddy was covered in blood too, and Eddie was bent over on top of him, like he was giving him mouth-to-mouth. It was Eddie who made the slurping sound. Sarah was confused, looking from Mommy to Daddy, then to Eddie. Fright caused goosebumps to rise up on her whole body.
She took at tentative step into the room. Eddie’s slurping continued. Sarah approached Mommy, peering down at her. She still didn’t blink.
“Mommy?” she said.
A low growl sounded, causing Sarah to step back. Eddie lifted his face from giving her father mouth-to-mouth.
Sarah screamed.
Eddie didn’t look like Eddie. His nose was all squished up, like a bat’s, and his ears were pointed. His eyes were red, there were horns on his head. His mouth was filled with sharp teeth; blood dripped off his chin.
Daddy’s blood.
Eddie lifted his hand, pointed a bent talon at her. “Run,” he said, his voice just about the scariest thing she’d ever heard.
Sarah spun around, ran back out the front door and down the driveway. Dead Mommy and Daddy flashed in her vision, along with Eddie’s blood-soaked monster face. She didn’t stop screaming; not when she got to the road, not when she went up to the Miller’s door, not when Mrs. Miller yanked her inside, not when Mr. Miller called the police.
After that night, she even screamed in her dreams.
CHAPTER 7
The radio in Aunt Mitzy’s car blared some generic pop song. Jacqueline wasn’t a huge fan of bubblegum music—her dad had instilled a love of jazz and psychedelic rock in her from a very young age, and she refused to let go of that love out of fear that she’d forget him in the good times—but at the moment, she didn’t care.
The previous night at the hotel had gone much better than she ever could’ve expected. She’d been a bit nervous going into it, given that she’d only been around her newly-discovered aunt for a grand total of an hour over two days. But soon after Aunt Mitzy slung her travel bag and oversized purse onto one of the two beds in the room, Jacqueline’s fear swiftly departed. For most of that night, they did nothing but talk. Her aunt said her real name was Meenakshi, and Mitzy was a nickname she’d had since as long as she could remember, which helped her not get picked on as a kid. Their conversation came effortlessly, as if they’d known each other their whole lives. Even the depressing subjects, like Jacqueline talking about the various troubles she’d encountered over her last three years in foster care or Mitzy getting teary when explaining how she couldn’t have children, were oddly comforting. Aunt Mitzy told Jacqueline about her job as a systems analyst for an insurance company based out of Hartford. The details might’ve been bland, but Jacqueline found herself enraptured nonetheless. This was someone new. This was family. She wanted to know everything, no matter how boring.
Despite the easiness of last night’s conversation, Jacqueline found herself on edge as the car careened down the highway. There was one subject that hadn’t been broached, perhaps the most important subject of all.
The pop song ended, and Aunt Mitzy quickly turned the radio off as the deejay started speaking. The road bellowed as it passed beneath the car’s tires.
Jacqueline turned to her aunt, cautious as a beekeeper. Mitzy’s eyes were intent on the road ahead, but it was obvious from the way the corner of her lip twitched that she knew the attention was on her.
“Mitzy, how well did you know my parents?” Jacqueline asked.
The woman glanced over at her as she drove. “Pretty well. When they were kids at least. Your mom was my sister, after all.”
“What was she like? My mom?”
“She was…kind,” said Mitzy, smiling warmly. “She liked panda bears and loved Duran Duran—that was a pop band back when we were kids.”
“Were you close?”
Mitzy squinted, looking like she was struggling to remember. “At one time, yes,” she said. “We shared a room until I left for college. And we shared everything else too; clothes, makeup, tampons, you name it. Oh, and we double-dated all the time.”
“With my dad?’
She nodded.
“What were they like together?”
Her aunt eyed her sidelong. “You sure you want to hear this?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay.” Mitzy took a deep breath. “Your parents met in high school, when they were your age now. They absolutely adored each other. They were inseparable.” She laughed, and her tone became playful. “I had tons of boyfriends when I was younger, but for Dhanya, it was only Joe, Joe, Joe.”
“Sounds romantic,” said Jacqueline.
“It was. Sort of. They were more like Romeo and Juliet, those two.” Her eyes narrowed. She looked angry.
“Romeo and Juliet? Isn’t that a good thing?”
“No, not like the love they had, but the other stuff. The family stuff. Your mom’s parents—our parents—wanted us to marry nice Indian boys. You know, arranged marriage and all that. And Joe’s parents were…let’s just say they weren’t necessarily good people. Uppity. Spiteful. More than a little racist. They didn’t like Dhanya at all.”
“Really?”
“Yup,” Mitzy said with a nod. “It’s because of both their parents that Dhanya and Joe skipped town as soon as they graduated high school. They never came back.”
Jacqueline felt a pang in her chest. She’d always thought it odd that she didn’t have any grandparents. Now she knew why. “Where are my grandparents now?” she asked.
Mitzy frowned. “I don’t know what happened to Brent and Loretta Talbot. But my parents moved back to India after I shut them out. That was, gosh, ten years ago now.”
“They still alive?”
“Nope. They died in a boating accident a few years back. Flipped it in a river and never came back up.”
The tone of Mitzy’s voice was off-putting; she talked about the loss of her parents like it wasn’t a big deal. Jacqueline felt a bit queasy. “Don’t you miss them?” she asked.
Mitzy’s callous veneer broke, and her lips drooped. “I do, sometimes. But you have to understand that it wasn’t easy growing up with them. They were the first generation of their family in this country. Still clung to tradition. Not exactly helpful when raising a couple American girls.”
“So you didn’t hate them?”
“Of course not. Just…had difficulties. They weren’t exactly loving.”
She paused there, seeming wistful. Jacqueline didn’t push her.
“As for your dad,” Mitzy said after a few moments, “he was such a sweet kid. Kind. Sensitive. A bit fragile. So different from his parents. He was an only child, and he had all the pressure of that family on his back. I felt bad for him.”
Jacqueline cocked her head. “Did you like him?”
Mitzy nodded tentatively. “I did. A lot. But he was my sister’s.”
“Did you get between them?”
She shook her head vehemently. “Absolutely not. I loved Dhanya. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt her.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, I was twenty-one when they left. And I never saw my sister again.” Her eyes started watering. “Five years later, she was dead. I was the only one from my family to go to her funeral. I should’ve been more proactive. I should’ve tried to see her. Maybe…no, forget it. Your dad was at the funeral, but he was distant. Acted robotic. I think he was on massive anti-depressants or something.” She smiled sadly. “I met you there. You were so little.”
Jacqueline swallowed hard, nodding.
“I’m glad I got to meet you again,” her aunt said, and this time she cried openly.
Mitzy dried her eyes and kept her attention on the now-cluttered freeway. A comfortable silence spread between them. The sadness Mitzy had displayed when talking about her sister hung on her like a dusty old coat, which was actually kind of heartening. It seemed Jacqueline wasn’t the only one to carry her guilt around with her like
luggage. She suddenly didn’t feel so alone.
Finally, they exited the freeway. A large sign on the main drag announced, “Mercy Hills Welcomes You!” Aunt Mitzy took turn after turn, past strip malls and long stretches of cookie-cutter suburbia, until she finally swerved right onto Chestnut Street. Houses passed them by on either side, some two stories, some one, all old yet well maintained and refreshingly not uniform. To Jacqueline, everything seemed weirdly familiar, especially the large two-story Colonial with yellow siding, red shutters, and attached two-car garage whose driveway Mitzy pulled into.
“Do I know this place?” Jacqueline whispered.
“I don’t think so,” said Mitzy. “Should you?”
Jacqueline shrugged. “I don’t know.” She shivered, like there was an unwanted ghost creeping along her spine.
“Maybe you just remember the area. Your parents grew up here, you know.”
“Really?”
“Yup. Dhanya and I lived across town, your father a few blocks from here. This whole neighborhood was filled with Talbots. But not anymore.”
“Is that why you moved here? Because it’s where you grew up?”
The elegant woman fidgeted in her seat, looking uncomfortable, as if she didn’t know how to answer. Which seemed silly to Jacqueline.
“Well, yes, I guess,” she finally said, her eyes focused on the double garage doors in front of her, “My sister’s been gone a long time. And my life hasn’t exactly been easy. I guess I just wanted to be close to her again in some way.”
Jacqueline tilted her head. “You really loved her.”
“I still do,” Mitzy replied, the tears once more flowing down her cheeks.
“I loved my dad,” said Jacqueline. They turned to each other, and their arms intertwined, hugging until the tears stopped, until Mitzy straightened out her pencil skirt and ripped the keys from the ignition.
“How about we go put you in your new room?” she said, dabbing her wet cheeks.
“Okay.”
The front door to the house opened into a tiny foyer and then a spacious living room, its walls painted a pleasant shade of green. Jacqueline stepped inside, bag slung over her shoulder, and took it all in. Abstract paintings hung from the walls, brightening the space. Another strange shiver came over her. She was hit by a phantom memory, one she could only glimpse through vague shadows in the back of her mind. She’d been scared here once, she was sure of it. Frightened almost to death.
Mitzy touched Jacqueline’s hand, making her flinch.
“Sorry, honey,” the woman said. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Just in awe,” she lied.
Mitzy grinned. “That’s good. Do you want to head upstairs? Get yourself situated?”
Jacqueline nodded.
Up the stairs they went. “Enjoy,” her aunt said, showing her into her new room before quickly retreating back downstairs. Yet again Jacqueline had her breath stolen away. The room she would now call her own was covered with a thick blue carpet, and she immediately kicked off her sandals, squeezed the plush fibers with her toes. Bright, flowery wallpaper surrounded her. There were two dressers, a full mirror, a huge bed, and a closet with two sliding doors. The whole room breathed life and joy.
Jacqueline tossed her travel bag on the bed and started tearing through it, and when her fingers found the hard wood of two picture frames, she lifted them out of the bag and held them out before her.
Joe and Dhanya Talbot smiled from behind their glass prisons. Her mother’s hair, black like Jacqueline’s and Mitzy’s, draped over her deeply tanned shoulder, her dark cheeks glistening as she grinned. Her father, with his slightly hooked nose and thick cheekbones, seemed to wink. Papa Gelick would never let her hang the pictures in her room. Jacqueline winced, and in that moment decided she’d try to never think of the Gelicks again.
Aunt Mitzy reentered the room, a towel in her hands. She leaned over Jacqueline’s shoulder. “They really were beautiful,” she said.
“They were.”
“I never saw your father and mother as adults. Only what they showed on the news.” She glanced sidelong at Jacqueline. “Do you remember your mother at all?”
“Barely…but I don’t know if they’re really memories or just made up.”
“Well, at least now you have something to remember her by, right?”
“Uh-huh.” She furrowed her brow and looked over at her aunt. “I didn’t see any of your pictures downstairs. None on the walls or anything. Do you have them some other place?”
“I’ve never been a fan of photographs. They just seem to bring bad memories.”
“Do you not want me to hang these up?”
Mitzy covered her heart with her hands and pursed her lips. “Oh, that’s not what I meant, Jackie. Of course you can. You can do anything you want. This is your room, your home.”
Jacqueline sniffled. “Thanks.”
“Let me go get a couple nails.”
Aunt Mitzy spun on her heels and exited once more. Jacqueline set the pictures on one of the dressers and went back to her travel bag, rummaging through it until she found her compact. When she opened it, Mal was there, his gray eyes squinting.
“Is everything all right?” he asked cautiously.
She carried him to the window and held him close to her cheek as she gazed at the bright and sunny world around her, one that was all of a sudden filled with possibility.
“Yeah,” she said. “We’re home.”
CHAPTER 8
Jacqueline’s first night in Aunt Mitzy’s house was filled with terror. She tossed and turned in bed, sweating as she dreamed. This wasn’t exactly a new experience for her: ever since she’d started on her endless parade of foster homes, nightmares had been common, like the dream she’d had of her parents the night Papa Gelick attacked her, where they were trapped in the mirror while she begged them not to go away.
The horrors that visited her that first night at Mitzy’s were far, far worse. She saw monsters around every corner, beasts hiding in plain sight, barely concealing their sharp claws and sharper teeth. They changed shape, as if each of her haunts were actually hundreds of separate beings trying to live in one body. They lurked in shadows, became shadows, forming a sticky haze that wrapped around her like a wet cloak.
She saw men that weren’t men and animals that weren’t animals, hovering in the corners of her vision, hands dangling piano wire and holding daggers made from bone. They chased her through the winding dreamscape, forced her to hide in the creepy alleyways of her imagination. In the dream she dared not close her eyes, because then the demons would get her, tearing flesh from bone, slurping entrails, plucking out her eyeballs and eating them like grapes.
A dark, ominous specter rose above the dreamscape like a giant black obelisk, the same tall, rectangular mirror she’d seen before in her dreams, only altered and sagging, dripping with black slime. Her parents were within it again, pleading soundlessly for release, clawing at its surface, while monsters surged toward them. In the dream, Jacqueline shrieked, reached for them, but they were beyond her reach. Her fingers brushed the mirror’s rippling liquid sheen, and she was sucked into the void, where she tumbled in the darkness, alone.
All that kept her sane was Mal’s sweet voice, calling out to her from somewhere at the edge of eternity.
Something brushed her forearm, pulling her from the nightmare. In her mind, she saw Papa Gelick above her as he’d been on that final night, his greedy hands grabbing at her, squeezing and invasive. She kicked, shoved herself backward, almost fell off the bed. She violently yanked the covers over her head and screeched.
“Whoa!” she heard Aunt Mitzy say. “Jackie, it’s me! It’s only a dream.”
Jacqueline cautiously lowered the covers, and when she saw Mitzy gazing at her, she broke down. Her tears drenched the blankets. Mitzy enclosed her in a consoling hug.
“Shush, honey,” her aunt said, her voice like sugary sweets in a land of bland granola. “You’
re here, you’re safe. They can’t hurt you anymore.”
Jacqueline hoped that was true.
Breakfast consisted of a banana and Cocoa Krispies, her favorite cereal, soaked in almond milk. Aunt Mitzy held up the box of cereal as if presenting it at auction. “I got these for you,” she said. “You like?”
Jacqueline nodded, slurped another spoonful into her mouth. “Uh-huh. How’d you know?”
“Just a guess. Whatever else you like for food, just ask. I’ll get it.”
“Thanks. Papa Gelick wouldn’t let us have sweet stuff in the morning.” Just saying his name brought a queasy feeling to Jacqueline’s gut.
Mitzy twitched her nose. “Let’s not mention him again, okay? By now he’s probably in custody, never to be heard from again. So from now on, let’s just call him ‘that asshole.’ I think that’s good enough for him.” A wide, roguish smile stretched across her full lips.
“Okay,” Jacqueline said, grinning.
After breakfast, Jacqueline joined Mitzy on her daily errands, which included a trip to the pharmacy, a retail outlet for some new clothes, and the grocery store. When they talked, Jacqueline opened up some more. They discussed her favorite foods, the kind of music she liked, that sort of thing. But when Mitzy asked about boys, Jacqueline kept mum. She had to remember that she’d only known her aunt for a couple days. She didn’t want Mitzy to know about Billy or Tyler. She didn’t want her aunt to judge her.
When they arrived back at the house, Jacqueline hurried upstairs with two heavy bags. She went into her bedroom, shut the door, dumped the bags’ contents on the bed, and stripped. It’d been so long since she’d bought anything new for herself that it felt like Christmas morning.
One of the new outfits immediately drew her attention—a black, v-necked, short-sleeved shirt, a red and black knee-length skirt that looked like a bunch of neckties stitched together, and a pair of silver tights. When she finished dressing herself, she grabbed her new ankle-high boots and tucked her feet inside. She stood in front of the large mirror atop her dresser and stared.
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