“So you won’t check into the clinic?” She sucked in her upper lip.
“Not today. I don’t need to. Trust me, if I suspect I need help, I’ll drive myself to the hospital. Last night was an anomaly. I’m fine. Tasha is safe.”
“Please?” Allison whispered. She held her hands together, as if in supplication.
Eyes bright with fear and anger, Joshua paced behind her. He jammed a lit cigarette into his cheek and burned a new hole in his pockmarked skin. “You’ve gotta try harder. She’s gonna send you to the nuthouse if you don’t convince her otherwise.”
Time for the jugular. “Why do you always try to get rid of me? Am I that awful?”
Her shoulders sagged. “You’re not awful. But I have a duty as both your mother and Tasha’s to help you, even when you don’t want me to.”
“Can I experience a minor setback without you thinking I’ve finally lost it? Will my past forever determine my future?” He pulled the towel from his face and dropped it onto the floor. Water droplets flicked across his room.
She stood motionless, her eyes glued to his.
“I know the easiest answer is to send me away. But it’s not the right answer. Not now.”
Head bowed low, she crossed the room and hugged Liam before sobbing into his shoulder. His desperate maneuver had worked. Though he felt detached, as if watching a scene played out in a movie, he pretended his mother’s tears affected him. He raised a halting hand and patted his mother’s back.
Eventually, her sobs turned to sniffles. She pulled away from her son and attempted to tidy up her face.
“Will you at least agree to increase your dosage?” she asked.
“Absolutely.” The lie came easier the second time around. “I’ve got an appointment with Dr. Jen tomorrow morning. I’ll tell her about the night terrors. We’ll get to the bottom of the issue.”
Small feet slapped against the linoleum floor and interrupted their conversation. Tasha jumped onto her older brother’s bed, expecting him to catch her midair. He did.
“So this is where everybody’s hiding.” She burrowed her head into Liam’s shoulder, damp from Allison’s tears and his sweat. “Teddy and I got worried.”
Allison ran her fingers over her daughter’s ringlets. “Sorry, baby girl. We were having a discussion.”
“About last night?” She reached out a small hand to Allison’s lip.
The eels in Liam’s stomach redoubled their torture efforts. He hated that Tasha had seen him in the throes of a hallucination. And he especially hated she’d seen her father hit him.
Allison choked out an uncomfortable cough. “Yes. We talked about how it’s never okay to hurt somebody. Daddy misunderstood Liam last night and tried to protect me. But he shouldn’t have hit your brother.”
Small lips pursed in consternation, Tasha agreed. “Daddy made a mistake.”
“It’s not going to happen again. We’ve talked it over, and everything’s going to be fine,” Liam said.
Convinced of her brother’s reassurance, Tasha smiled. He grinned back.
Of all the lies he told his family, the ones of hope were the best.
oncerned about Liam sweltering in the un-air-conditioned house, Allison had insisted he open his windows for the entire day. Now, anybody who wanted to peek into his room could. One somebody, in particular, took advantage of his weakened defenses.
Joshua peered out the window and pointed across the street to Mrs. Channer. “That bitch has watched you all morning. She’s waited months for a chance like this.”
Indeed, she had. The replica’s back faced Liam’s room, and she feigned pulling weeds in her small garden bed. She fancied he didn’t know she had invisible eyes on her neck.
Liam licked his lips and paced back and forth. “I’m gonna call Security Forces and get a restraining order on her. Then she’ll have to move off base.”
“Come on, don’t be such a coward. She tried to blow up your family last night! The circumstances call for more aggressive measures.” Joshua cocked his hand like a gun.
The bulging contusion on Liam’s forehead pulsed in pain. “You’re right. But I can’t do it now. We have to wait until dark.”
“Why? Your family’s gone. It’s the perfect time.” Joshua fetched a baseball bat he hid in the closet. “Teach the replica a lesson she won’t forget.”
The aluminum bat bore deep scratches from heavy use during Liam’s healthy, baseball years. He grabbed it and swung it hard onto his right hand; his fingers stung from the impact.
He marched out of his room and down the hallway, past his family’s empty rooms. Though it’d required a monumental amount of makeup, his mother had camouflaged her fat lip and made herself presentable so the family could attend church at the base chapel. No doubt they attempted to gain some peace about the previous night’s incident. Liam didn’t bother. Peace was only an elusive idea―the grandest delusion of them all.
Bat raised high over his shoulder, he entered the foyer and stared at the front door. A crafty adversary, Mrs. Channer wouldn’t go down easy.
“You nervous about doing the deed yourself?” a silky female voice asked.
Alexandra. He’d been waiting for her.
“A little. What if she gets away and then retaliates against Tasha?”
“That’s certainly a possibility. You’re not as fast as you once were. I, on the other hand, have kept in shape. Mrs. Channer won’t get away from me. Nobody does,” she said.
“You’ll do it?” He attempted not to get his hopes up. Alexandra was temperamental.
“We’ll educate her together. You’ve acquired some new talents. I’m impressed.”
He squinted. “You mean seeing the past? How does that help us deal with the replica?”
“Always so clueless, Liam. And desperate to limit your potential. You’ve had this window open to the past for a while now; it’s nothing new. Started back in Ohio.”
He frowned and lowered the bat. “What are you talking about?”
“The vision after your father’s death.”
His heart rate rocketed. “That was a hallucination.”
“Was it? Think, Liam. What did you see?”
He didn’t have to think hard. The vision haunted his nightmares on a regular basis. He shook his head and tried to fight off the memories threatening to overwhelm him, but they came anyway.
It’d been 9:11 p.m. His father had been late, which never happened. When the doorbell had rung, he’d already known. Nobody came to visit. The uniformed police officer had clinched it. He hadn’t even waited for the cop to speak.
“Where’d the accident happen?” he’d asked.
Taken aback, the police officer hadn’t spoken for a moment. Fat raindrops had pelted off his peaked cap and spattered on Liam’s face. Then, after removing his cap and placing it under his arm, the cop had recovered. He’d said, “On the corner of Lincoln and Maple. It appears your father lost control of his vehicle and slammed into an oncoming sixteen-wheeler. We believe he died instantaneously. My deepest sympathies.”
Liam had shut the door in the policeman’s face without another word, laced up his shoes, and run out the backdoor. Though the roiling in his gut had told him his father was dead, he’d needed proof. He had wanted to see where it’d happened. The rain had turned hard then, coming down in angry spikes and stinging every inch of his exposed skin. He’d ignored the pain and taken a shortcut through the wooded area that bordered the alleged intersection.
In the darkest part of the woods, his nostrils had flared wide and inhaled air thick with a metallic odor, like raw meat left unrefrigerated. He’d ignored his instincts and continued to run. That’d been his first mistake. He’d then slipped on what he’d initially presumed to be rainwater. But when he’d pushed off the ground to get up, a strobe of lightning had lit up the sky, and he’d seen the liquid wasn’t clear at all, but was rather a viscous crimson, smeared all over the grass. His lizard brain had warned him to freeze, and this tim
e, he’d heeded it. Good thing, too. Because next to a large maple tree had stood a man, so pale he’d seemed to glow in the sparse moonlight, spiking a woman’s head on a stake. The rest of her appendages hanged from branches, situated so they pointed at their own severed head.
He hadn’t dared to breathe. The killer had worked slowly, arranging his victim’s long brown hair, stepping back from time to time to appreciate his handiwork. Blood clots had clung to strings of flesh dangling from her neck.
With the skin on the nape of his own neck crawling, Liam had recognized the killer―he worked at the convenience store Dad often stopped at when they wanted a soda.
He’d tiptoed backward and tried his best not to vomit, hoping with all his might the clerk hadn’t seen him. Naively, he’d thought luck had favored him. The murderer had been so engrossed with his mise-en-place Liam had escaped.
Though he’d managed to avoid being caught by the killer, his second, and biggest, mistake had been believing he could hide from the memory. Even as he’d stumbled home, the murdered woman’s hands had clung to him. And, somehow, the appendages had multiplied by the dozens. They’d gripped the back of his shirt, his shoelaces, his hair. He’d batted at the hands but couldn’t detach them, and they had cleaved to him well after he’d slammed shut the back door. All thoughts of visiting the place where his father had taken his final breath had vanished. Instead, he’d spent all of his mental energy unsuccessfully fending off bloody limbs and praying the killer didn’t find him.
When the sun had risen the next day, he’d made a decision. The appendages attacking him wouldn’t stop until he brought the murderer to justice. The task had seemed simple enough. The convenience store wasn’t far. He’d tried to ignore the multiple hands squeezed tightly around his neck as he’d walked there, winding his father’s hunting knife between his fingers to calm his jittery nerves.
By the time he’d arrived at the store, black, patchy spots darkened his vision, and he’d fought to keep conscious. But the instant his feet had crossed the threshold, the hands had disappeared. He’d needed no other sign to know he did the right thing.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t found the killer. Some grandma had worked her shift instead, and his tale had terrified her. She’d pressed the panic button and sounded the silent alarm. The cops had arrived in minutes.
“You know I’m right.” Alexandra snapped him back to the present. “What you saw happened.”
Isaac’s laptop sat atop the living room coffee table. Liam strode over to it and flipped it open, not caring if Isaac checked the search engine’s memory. The pursuit of truth overrode his stepfather’s delicate sensibilities. He typed in “Cuyahoga County, severed limbs, murder.”
A familiar face filled the monitor. Headline after headline reported a string of grisly murders echoing what Liam had seen. The police had caught the killer, one Dale Praden, the previous month. They estimated his killing spree went back five years.
“What’d I tell you? That was no hallucination, Liam. The land doesn’t forget. You saw its memory. If the police hadn’t stopped you, you could’ve prevented all these other murders.”
Alexandra’s words wrapped around his face and caressed him like a lover’s touch. He wasn’t crazy. He was special.
“How am I able to see these imprints?” he asked.
“You, dear Liam, experienced a potent cocktail of events permanently rewiring your brain. The emotional trauma of your father’s sudden death, plus your already unique mental predisposition, plus the chemicals from your meds―well, they all combined at the perfect juncture to alter the synapses and plasticity of your brain. You’re now able to reach past the invisible lines that limit everybody else’s minds. You’ve only just begun to see the manifestation of your new skills.”
He twirled the bat. “So what else can I do?
“You can move objects with your mind.”
The twirling stopped. “What?”
“It’s true. Pick an object. Any object. Then move it.”
He concentrated on the opaque purple vase on the dining room table. It’d been one of the last gifts his father had given his mother. Now it held a bouquet of yellow tulips Isaac brought home Friday.
“Lift it,” commanded Alexandra.
He breathed in and flicked up his pointer finger. The vase convulsed into the air and hovered a few inches above the table.
Alexandra whistled appreciatively. “Not bad. Time for a bigger task. Move the dining room table.”
He ground his teeth, channeled his inner poltergeist, and waved his hand. The heavy oak table lurched upward and spun in the air. It collided with the vase with a loud crack. Purple glass shards scattered across the room and water splashed onto the Turkish rug below. The table crashed to the floor, crushing the fallen yellow tulips.
“Let’s practice some finesse. Shred the magazine on the coffee table.”
Isaac’s latest copy of “The Economist” floated in the air. With the powers of his mind, Liam shredded the magazine into hundreds of small pieces until only glossy slivers of paper remained. They fell in a mound on the coffee table.
“So, tell me,” Alexandra said, “are you still worried Mrs. Channer will get the better of you?”
The bat clanked to the floor with a metallic thud, and he bared his teeth in a smug smile. “Let’s show her what happens when she threatens Tasha.”
“There’s the Liam I love.”
Alexandra opened the front door. He followed. Her footsteps pounded away from him, smacking against the driveway’s blacktop.
From the safety of the porch, he peered across the street. In her arrogance, Mrs. Channer remained outside. She stood and placed a gloved hand on the small of her back. With the other hand she wiped her leathery brow and sent a halfhearted wave at Liam.
He didn’t wave back.
“Showtime, Liam!” yelled Alexandra.
A pathetic yelp escaped the replica’s lips, and she fell to her knees. Like an unseen force strangled her, she pulled at her neck and gasped for breath.
Atta girl, Alexandra.
He concentrated on the orange-handled trowel lying next to Mrs. Channer. It spiraled in the air and darted, pointy end first, into the space between her shoulder blades. Unable to scream with Alexandra’s hands crushing her windpipe, Mrs. Channer arched her back and pawed at the tool. He turned the trowel and bumped it upward so its flat edge floated parallel with her head and slammed it against her skull. A sickening crunch floated across the street as her body went rigid, and she fell face first onto her yellowed lawn.
“One last lesson.” He aimed the trowel’s metal tip at the replica’s right elbow and rammed it down, again and again, until her bone had to be pulverized. Blood pooled by her arm and seeped into the dry grass.
He regarded Mrs. Channer’s prostrate form and exhaled.
A warm gush of air rushed against his face. “Not too bad for your first telekinetic attack,” said Alexandra. Done with her mission, she had returned as silent as a brown recluse awaiting its prey.
“Thanks. How long before she replicates?”
“No telling. She’s especially efficient, so a few hours at the most. You’ll need to take some extra precautions tonight for Tasha.”
Liam scrunched his toes. “What kind of precautions?”
“Get her out of this house. None of the alarms you’ve set so far have kept the Channers at bay. There is one place, though, where Tasha will be safe.”
“Where?”
“The beach. The Channers can’t go in the water. It messes up their circuitry. All Tasha and you have to do is spend the night with your feet in the water, and you’ll be fine.”
Liam rubbed his forehead and winced when he touched the knot on his temple. “What about my mother? And Isaac?”
“For all I care, have them join you as well.”
“I won’t be able to convince my mother to go to the beach.” At least not without her calling the cops to drag him to a psychiatric ward.
“That’s a shame, but it doesn’t change what you need to do for your sister. Nobody understands the danger facing Tasha better than you. Give her a fighting chance. Bring her to the water. Your mother and Isaac can fend for themselves.”
He dug his hands into his pockets and glared at Mrs. Channer. Her foot jerked, and a labored moan escaped her lips.
“Let’s go inside. Replication can be ugly,” Alexandra said.
With one last malevolent look at Mrs. Channer, he went indoors. The dining room table still lay on its side. He waved his hand at it, and the table jerked upright before settling on four sturdy legs. Next, he concentrated on each tiny purple shard, weaving them back together until the vase looked new. Nobody would ever know it’d been broken. The crushed tulips remained on the wet Turkish rug. Isaac or his mother could clean them.
He plopped down on the couch. “How many times will we have to silence the Channers?”
“As many times as it takes. Eventually, they’ll tire of creating new models and leave your family alone. Then, and only then, we can stop this silly charade.”
The cellphone in his pocket buzzed. He retrieved it and saw a new text from Mai.
“Thinking about you this morning. Had fun yesterday,” it read.
Before he could text back, “Same here,” a familiar low rumble radiated from the hallway. A second later, RP jumped onto the coffee table, sending the decimated magazine pages cascading to the floor. The cat sniffed the air, trying to detect where the evasive Alexandra hid.
Forgotten, his cellphone slipped between two couch cushions.
Alexandra grunted as the cat pounced onto Liam’s lap and settled there, alert eyes still roaming the living room.
“Since when did that fur ball decide he liked you?” she asked.
He shrugged. “We help each other out.”
“Don’t forget what I told you. Bring Tasha to the water tonight. Don’t let the replica hurt her.”
The hot air dissipated, and took with it Alexandra. Task completed, RP wrapped his gray and black tail around his body and purred.
Bleed Through Page 13
