One corner of her beautiful mouth pulled down. She didn’t believe him.
“It’d be best to tell her now who you are. Makes it easier for all involved in the long run,” Alexandra said.
He did his best to ignore her. “Where may I drop you off?” he asked Mai.
“I’m staying here for the afternoon and eating dinner with my bà nội later.”
“Better be careful with your wild living, Mai.” He leaned against her. “It’ll catch up to you someday.”
She pushed back playfully and rubbed her foot against his. “Right. Before you know it, I’ll be all wrinkled and toothless from my hardcore partying. Better see me while the getting’s good.”
“You’d be gorgeous with no teeth at all. Party away with your grandma.”
Alexandra gagged. “Are you flirting by talking about her grandma and dentures? No wonder you haven’t had a girlfriend since tenth grade. You’re horrible at this.”
“I mean, I know you don’t party with your grandma.” He covered his face in embarrassment. “And I don’t find grandmas sexy or anything. I mean, umm…”
Mai laughed and cut off his sputtering. “I know what you mean, Mr. Smooth. I’m also beginning to understand why most of your compliments are veiled. Now shut up and kiss me goodbye.”
More than happy to submit to her demands, he parted his hands and kissed her.
Though her lips still intoxicated him, his confidence that he knew what to do with them evaporated as Alexandra smacked obscenely in the background, mocking his fumbling attempts at seduction.
he rest of the day bled by, time alternately seeming to linger and then sprint forward. Liam knocked around his room, reliving his kisses with Mai on the dock. Even the reappearance of Alexandra, exiled from his mind since Ohio and his last hospital stay, couldn’t temper his enthusiasm. Mai liked him. Somebody not legally related to him wanted to be with him. Even better, she’d kissed him.
He peeked between the tightly drawn blinds in his room. The summer sunset painted the sky a deep red. Although Mrs. Channer often walked in the evening, tonight she stayed out of sight. Her counter surveillance methods improved by the day. He resituated the blinds to prevent the replica from spying on him and thumbed through the albums on his audio player. While he toyed with the idea of playing a country album to celebrate his afternoon with Mai, in the end he selected “Surfer Rosa.” It’d been his father’s favorite Pixies album. Since Tasha wasn’t asleep yet, and his mother objected to the language in some of the songs, he plugged in his earphones.
After he’d returned from his date with Mai, the cat had spent the entire afternoon with him. As a result, Joshua and Alexandra had left him alone. Once bedtime hit, though, RP abandoned him to his own devices. The cat always slept in Tasha’s room. Liam leaned back in his bed and rubbed his foot over the slight imprint RP had left.
No medicine for more than twenty-four hours, and he’d survived just fine. Liam closed his eyes.
Then the smell hit him.
Freshly baked cookies.
His eyes flashed open, and his breath caught in his throat.
The twins stood next to him.
Fraternal, they still bore a striking resemblance to one another; squinty, solid black eyes, sunken-in cheeks, and thin lips fringed with yellow fangs. The girl, Bridget, wore a white dress with a ragged and mud-stained trim that dwarfed her fragile frame. The boy, Ethan, wore a black suit two sizes too small for him, with sleeves pulling up to his scrawny forearms and pants revealing holey socks. Redheads both, the boy kept his hair chopped in a bowl cut, and the girl twisted hers in a long, ratty braid.
The music from Liam’s headphones stopped. He dug his fingernails into his shorts, dreading what he knew came next.
Bridget held out a plate of blackened cookies. Chunks of scorched chocolate poked through the crust of each homemade confection. “Eat one,” she demanded. Her high-pitched voice sounded like the unholy offspring of a squealing pig and dying baby bird.
Liam shook his head and tried his best to remember the twins weren’t real. “I don’t want any.” He pushed back until his torso jammed against the wall.
“Eat one,” said Ethan. His colorless eyes narrowed into tiny slits of nothingness.
The twins had always been demanding. But they hadn’t seen him in months. He’d show them who was in charge.
“No.”
Their lips spread into matching pencil-thin smiles. Bridget’s fangs grew until they descended well past her jawbone.
“Mother baked these cookies for you. Don’t be rude. Take a bite,” Ethan said. He picked up a cookie and dropped burnt crumbs onto Liam’s bedspread.
“I told you no.” Liam blinked ten times.
Go away, go away, go away.
The twins remained.
Ethan brought up his right fist and pounded it into his left hand. “Nobody disrespects Mother.”
Bridget shrieked, a shrill, penetrating sound that pierced his eardrums, and she leapt onto his bed. Her filthy braid swatted his face as she pinned down his arms and jammed her knee under his neck.
“You’ll do as we say.” She lunged at his chin with her fangs, sunk them in, and tore down.
Pain rocketed through his body, and he moaned in agony. “Stop. Please, stop.”
Whether or not the twins existed became immaterial. They existed in his reality, and his reality hurt like a son of a bitch.
Ethan leaned over him and tapped him on the nose. “Take your medicine like a good boy.”
His willpower was no match for Bridget’s. Fangs still embedded in his chin, she yanked backward to open his jaw. Ethan jammed a cookie in his gaping mouth before she jerked it closed again.
“Chew,” Ethan said.
As unrelenting as a pit bull, Bridget continued to bite his chin. She tore at his skin until shreds of it dangled from his bone. Tears rolled down his face, and he complied.
The cookie tasted brittle and the chocolate stale. Any bursts of moisture came from wriggling maggots, squirming throughout his mouth.
Bridget finally lessened her death grip on his chin. “Swallow,” she said. Her knee lifted enough so Liam could work his gullet.
Though his mouth was dry and his throat burned, he gulped down as much as he could.
The twins backed off and stood in the corner, supervising him.
Bridget stretched her hand toward the plate. “Finish them.” Maggots clung to her fingernails and slid off to the floor.
Left with no choice but to comply, he pulled the plate closer. They’d torture him worse if he didn’t. The twins stood guard and inspected his every move until he cleaned the plate.
“There now, the cookies didn’t taste so bad, did they?” said Bridget. She patted his cheeks and kissed his forehead. Her lips moved to his earphone, and she pried it loose with her serpentine tongue. She whispered, “We’ll be back. Do yourself a favor and cooperate next time.”
Liam pulled the cover over his head and counted to ten. When he inched down the blanket, he exhaled in relief. The twins had left.
For the time being, at least.
He tore off his headphones and ran to the bathroom. He vomited until he dry heaved, emptying his stomach of all contents, real and otherwise.
Allison knocked on the bathroom door. “Liam, are you all right? May I help you?”
Exhausted by the attack, he clung to the toilet.
“I’ve got a stomach bug. I’ll be okay.” He didn’t want his mother to see him like this.
For several minutes, Allison’s shadow under the door didn’t move. Eventually, though, she left him in peace.
He stood, washed his face, and examined his reflection in the mirror. His chin, and the skin attached to it, looked intact. But looks deceived. The constant ache pulsing from his chin proved Bridget had ravaged it. She must’ve covered his bone with a false flesh veneer.
Chin nestled into the small of his neck, Liam shuffled back to his room. With an outstretched pointer finger,
he poked open his door and prayed he didn’t find the twins there with another plate.
Empty darkness greeted him.
He padded in, collapsed onto his bed, and shoved aside his audio player. The twins were an isolated incident. With them gone, he was safe. Sleep overtook him.
iam awoke to the scent of burning flesh. Wisps of steam rose from his chest, and he realized that flesh was his own. He kicked away his navy blanket and gingerly peeled off his shirt. Blisters covered his body. He rubbed one of the boils and groaned.
His room had become an oven. A sooty darkness, thick and pervasive, encased him as he baked like a roast chicken. He rolled to the side in an attempt to ease the agony of his burns. It didn’t help. It also exposed his bare skin to the space beside his bed.
Three icy fingertips stroked the small of his back. Liam stiffened. Ragged fingernails sliced through bubbling blisters as they trailed toward his skull. Dread prickled up his spine along with the fingertips, his already frayed nerves set further aflame by their touch.
“I’ve missed you,” Three Fingers said, his voice raspy and deep.
Liam bunched his twisted sheets between his fingers and, with a mighty effort to avoid hyperventilating, forced his lungs to slowly contract and expand. He mentally counted to ten and rolled over.
Three Fingers hadn’t changed. He wore a devil mask the color of faded brick. Small horns lined the center of the skull and a grouping of larger horns fringed his ears. Hideous as it was, Liam suspected the mask hid an even more frightening face underneath. A heavy, black cape hung from Three Fingers’ shoulders and swept over the linoleum floor, collecting dust at its hems. One of his arms ended in a rusted hook. The other exposed a hand missing two of its fingers and marred by extensive burns. Liam’s blood coated its remaining three digits.
“What do you want?”
“I haven’t set off a bomb in a while.” The mask muffled Three Fingers’ voice. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed the thrill of an explosion. And this housewell, it’s begging to be incinerated.”
He pointed to the corner of Liam’s room where a menacing contraption rested. It consisted of a complex set of red, green, and black wires encircling a package of C4. Above the crudely made bomb sat a clock with neon green LED letters glowing 1:59. It ticked down to 1:58.
Liam gasped. “You’re setting it off in two minutes?”
“Just long enough to clear your house. But you have to act now.” Three Fingers’ rusty hook traced Liam’s eye socket.
Paralyzed with fear, Liam wasted several precious seconds before he swatted away the hook and tumbled off his bed. His boiling skin crackled as he hit the floor.
“Down to a minute and a half. Do you want your family to die?”
He rocked back and forth. “You’re not real. You can’t blow up my house.”
“Is that a risk you’re willing to take?” Three Fingers crouched down next to him, and a foul stench of rotten eggs emanated from his cape.
Liam grasped at the smoky tendrils of his sanity dissipating at a rapid rate. “You’re nothing but a visualization of my greatest fears. I’m not going to lose my mom and sister like I lost my dad.”
“You sound like Dr. Jen’s puppet. Think for yourself, man.” Three Fingers tapped his mask with his hook.
“I am! You’re not here. You. Aren’t. Here.”
Chased away with rationalization, Three Fingers fluttered in and out of Liam’s vision.
“Before I leave, let’s talk about this bomb, shall we?” Reasoning be damned, Three Fingers popped back into solid form by the window. “Alas, my days of crafting explosives are long gone. Look at my hands! There’s no way they could make such an intricate device. But… there are plenty of folks still capable of creating them.”
He pulled up the shades. A bright light from the Channer’s porch poured into Liam’s room. “Colonel Channer, for instance. He’s deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq how many times? He could make an IED in his sleep. Probably taught his wife how to make them also.”
Liam flinched as he bit down on his raw lower lip. “They can’t get in here. I’ve built alarms.”
“You mean those pathetic alarms I bypassed? They’re no match for the Channers. They came and scoffed at your pitiful defenses.” Three Fingers scratched his hook down the glass window. “They’ve planned on killing you since they first saw you. You should have the decency to at least make it a challenge for them.”
Sweat poured down Liam’s back and stung his pulsating blisters. The timer read thirty-four seconds. His heart raced. He ran to the corner and lifted the bomb, looking for a way to defuse it.
Three Fingers laughed. “Touch one wrong wire and―BOOM! Are you ready to die tonight?”
Hundreds of hours of pent-up fear, loathing, and denial bubbled over. Liam screamed.
Footsteps pounded down the hallway, and his door flung open. Isaac stood tall in the doorframe, his eyes darting around the room. They found Liam huddled on the ground, gibbering about a three-fingered man who didn’t exist.
Allison raced in behind her husband and pushed by him to reach Liam. She knelt down next to her son and took his hands in hers.
“It’s going to blow, Mom! Take cover!” Liam dragged his mother to the ground and threw his body over hers.
Skin slapped against the floor, and she yelled in pain.
“Get off her!” Isaac yelled. He ran toward his stepson and yanked him away from Allison. Blood poured out of her mouth.
Liam pawed at Isaac, frantic to pull his mother to the ground and away from the blast.
Tasha ran into the room, Teddy clutched closely to her side.
3-2-1.
And then the bomb exploded in the form of Isaac’s fist ramming into Liam’s face, sending him into a carefree slumber.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 31st
soggy kitchen towel, filled with the remnants of ice cubes, dampened Liam’s pillow. His mother had held it against the angry knot protruding from his temple until he’d asked her to leave. As soon as she’d shut his door, he’d dropped the towel on his bed. A few pieces of ice wouldn’t heal what ailed him.
Liam leaned into the sticky, hot breeze blowing through his window screen. Sweat dripped between his shoulder blades and stained his red shirt. The clock hadn’t hit 10:00 a.m. yet and already the thermometer threatened to slip above ninety. He’d been right about at least one sensation the night before. The air conditioner was broken. Since maintenance wouldn’t fix their unit on a Sunday, the family would have to suffer through at least one full day of humid misery.
Life wasn’t completely terrible, though. His blisters had disappeared. So had Three Fingers.
Through his closed door, he heard his mother and stepfather’s muffled voices. They fought about him. He hadn’t planned on costing his mother two marriages, but then he hadn’t planned on much of the past ten years.
“As usual, it’s all your fault, dumbass. If you hadn’t assaulted me with Isaac’s cologne, I would’ve protected you. Three Fingers is scared of me. He wouldn’t have dared to break into the house with me next to you,” Joshua said.
Despite the heat, he wore his tattered black leather jacket and jeans. He lay slumped in the papasan and tapped a cigarette against a Marlboro pack, irritation apparent in every move.
A furry paw jutted under the door, followed by a low guttural growl.
“I don’t think RP agrees with you,” said Liam. If he’d been in a better mood, he’d have a difficult time hiding his smile. But he had nothing to smile about today.
His mother wanted to check him into a psychiatric facility.
“Isaac won’t let them take you. He insists you go voluntarily to the hospital, because an involuntary admission will have a ‘profound, negative effect’ on your probation.” Joshua rolled his eyes in mock exaggeration.
A melting ice cube slid out of the towel. Liam grabbed it and chomped down, mulling over the strange turn of recent events. Isaac indeed campaigned to have him stay
in the house, albeit strictly supervised, until he decided to admit himself. So far, his stepfather’s ideals trumped his mistrust. You had to give the man credit. He stood by his beliefs, convenient or not. Allison, however, no longer concerned herself with concepts as nebulous as ideals. She focused on stark facts and reality.
Even from the back of the house, the reverberations from the front door slamming shut jolted his bed.
His mother rapped on his door.
“May I come in?” she asked.
He picked up the kitchen towel and held it to his head. “It’s your home.”
Still wrapped in her pink, terrycloth robe, Allison stepped into his room. Her face held the tell-tale signs of ugly crying. Splotchy complexion, blood-shot eyes, and damp cheeks. Her lower lip bore a nasty gash on the right side and swelled to double its normal size.
“I’m sorry about your lip,” he said. “I thought I was protecting you. Apparently, I’m a crappy guard.”
She waved off his apology and eyed the wet spot on his pillow. “How are you?”
You mean, other than being terrified you’re going to institutionalize me?
“I’m fine. The bump on my forehead will go down in a day or two. You’re worse off than me.”
Allison looked down at her hands and played with her fingertips. “I’m sorry about what Isaac did to you. Scared for my safety, he didn’t think before reacting. But I need you to know I’m not okay with him hitting you. Violence in my home is never acceptable.”
Jaw taut and eyes slit into small creases, she looked up at him and pointed to her fat lip. “This can’t occur again, either. What if it’d been Tasha and not me? You need to check into a hospital.”
“I know. It won’t happen again. I promise.” He brought a hand up to his chin and covered his mouth with his fingers.
“A promise isn’t enough.” She shook her head. “This is beyond your control. I know you don’t want to have these hallucinations. If you could stop them, you would. You need professional help.”
“Don’t blow a night terror out of proportion. I’m not having any other regression symptoms. Give me another chance, Mom.” A swarm of electric eels roiled in his stomach, zapping his intestines with each breath he took. His mother had to believe him.
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