by Debi Matlack
“See you around closing.”
When Scott parked along the street that evening, I felt like I was approaching a gallows with a noose already around my neck.
The evening chores were already done, sweeping, counting the till, deposit made. There was nothing left to do but lower the blinds and lock up. Two tiny mundane tasks between me and…
“Isn’t Lillian going to think we’re screwing around or something?”
Scott snorted. “She’s married to a police detective; she knows the hours are fucked up.”
I stopped and regarded him. “You do realize she’s jealous?”
He nodded and smiled. “I know. She’s seen her sister go through some shit with her asshole ex-husband. And,” he gave me a wicked grin, “she is married to me. What woman wouldn’t want some of this?” He indicated himself with a sweeping gesture and a self-deprecating smirk.
I shook my head and threw a pillow at him. “You are a male, much like any other male. You are a set of genitalia attached to an ego.”
He deflected the pillow and set it with a group of linens on another table. “And your point is?”
Chuckling, I shrugged. “On top of my head.” Then I sobered, remembering why he’d come. “And I suspect that point is going to get flattened tonight.”
I settled in my chair, Scott sat across from me, trying not to appear too anxious. I stared at the pair of hammers in front of me, still wrapped in their plastic evidence bags. Smooth, dark wood handles, varnished not by a resin coating but by time and use. Decades of sweat, dirt. and oils had rendered the hickory a deep reddish mahogany. The steel heads, nicked and scarred by whatever metals they shaped, whatever abuse they had endured, perhaps slipping out of a sweaty grip, or flung in frustration when something didn’t work as the wielder had hoped, all of this bore witness to their original intended purpose.
And one of them, one of them was also the instrument of my Poppy’s death.
One of these tools had been the implement that left me with a depression fracture at the base of my skull; fragments of shattered bone invaded the cranial cavity, causing my brain, the seat of all I was and all I could do and be, to swell, creating damaging pressure. The force of this trauma transferred itself across the grey matter, pressed into my pineal gland to activate dormant functions and gifted me with the dubious honor of seeing a whole lot of shit that I never wanted to see in the first place.
And still I stared. The very last thing on God’s green earth I wanted to do was touch that hammer, yet some part of me wanted to hold it to me, absorb everything it had to tell me, glean some modicum of understanding from the horror it contained.
Drawing a deep quivering breath, I leaned forward, tugging one of the hammers toward me by the plastic.
There was no way to prepare for this, it was impossible to steel myself against it. Fuck it, get it over with.
I pulled the top open and withdrew the hammer, cradling it in both hands. Without conscious thought, my eyes closed and the ringing of steel on steel echoed through me. Welded surfaces, rivets, punches and dies, all were struck and vibrated like a bell. Battering against material fresh from the forge, falling from anvils, clattering in boxes, I heard and felt each percussion, my body rang with each stroke. But when one decisive hand grasped the glowing wooden handle and lifted it from the table’s surface, my hands began to burn and a hunger seared me, deep and seething. I ceased to be a mere tool.
I became an instrument of harvest. I was the scythe that felled the grain, the knife that slit the bellowing throat. The insistent, resounding vibration invaded every molecule, tuning them all to the same maddening rhythm. Appetite was my one meaning, my reason for existence. I yearned and craved and the prize was in sight.
It was tempered like a well-aged cheese, sweet with the strength of a long ago pressing, redolent with the rich aroma of fear. I was honored to be a small part of the satiation of this need. But, to accompany the long anticipated repast, was another offering. This one was fresh, seasoned with indignation and anger. An appealing bouquet, but that was merely the surface. Beneath, hidden depths swirled with notes of budding potential. So very tasty, but immature. No, this one would be greatly improved by a long, slow simmer, to enrich the flavor. The zest of emotion could be added later, when the reaping came.
“Maeve. Maeve!” Something struck me and the hammer fell from my nerveless hands, to be kicked away, spinning into the wall. The hunger still plucked at me relentlessly, demanding my attention to return to it, but it faded with the broken contact. My vision returned to the here and now and I was pinned immobile to the wall by my upper arms. Scott’s face was inches from mine, conflicting fear and concern radiated from him, his hands gripped tight around my biceps. He also was now distilled to a single purpose. He was the fierce guardian, of himself, and of me.
“Maeve?”
As my normal outside awareness returned, I recognized how distressed he was. I nodded and he stepped back, releasing the pressure on my arms, though he still watched me with a wary, almost suspicious expression. I didn’t get the chance to ask him what the hell was wrong with him; I took a step forward and sagged as my knees refused to hold me.
“Whoa!” He caught me by the elbows and pivoted to deposit me back in my chair. Helpless to do anything but collapse, I sank back into the cushions, suddenly aware I panted and sweat poured from me like I’d run a marathon. The lamplight held a halo around the shade and my head felt like it was contracting, imploding down to a pinpoint centered on the scar on the back of my skull.
“You okay?”
I managed to make some kind of reassuring sound and he backed away, his eyes searching until he located the errant tool lying half-hidden under the edge of a rack laden with magazines.
“I think it’s safe to say that this is the murder weapon.” Staring in distaste at the hammer, he reached for it, changed his mind and picked up the empty evidence bag, reversing it over his hand to use it like a glove to pick it up without actually touching it. He looked like he was disposing of a nasty dog turd. I snorted and shook my head.
“What’s so funny?” He pulled the bag down over his hand, sealed the zipper edge and placed it carefully alongside the other one.
“The visions. It’s not contagious. I had to get smashed in the head by that thing to get it.”
He sat in the other chair and met my gaze grimly. “Then I came as close as I ever want to catching your disease.”
I stared at him, comprehension slowly dawning. A chill flowed through me, as the sweat on my skin rimed into frost and every single hair stood on end. Sudden panic squeezed me in a stone fist. “Did I…?” I couldn’t say it, the horror of what I’d almost done muzzling me.
He nodded and I felt my throat constrict and a sour surge of acid struggle upward. I choked and hurled myself from the chair, staggering toward the wastebasket at the front counter. My body tried to turn itself inside out, violently rejecting the notion that I’d tried to harm him while in my altered state. All I could do was sob and puke and try to breathe somewhere in between. When I lifted my head from the cylinder, I stared at Scott in dismay.
“I’m so sorry, so sorry, oh my God, I can’t... I …I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He reached out and smoothed my hair back off my face, then handed me a bandana from his pocket. I wiped my face and mouth, started to offer it back then subsided. “I’ll wash this first…”
“It’s okay.” His voice gained a little strength. “But you,” he took one finger to lift my chin until I was looking at him, “you are never touching that thing again. Ever.”
Too weak to offer any resistance, I nodded. “It’s a deal.” We sat there on the floor for a long time, until my pocket vibrated with a phone call.
I managed to convey to Barrett that I wasn’t dead or in danger of dying before he got there. I lied.
I convinced Scott I was okay by myself. I didn’t want Barrett to get there and find him. I wasn’t at all worried about him being
jealous, but I knew it would upset him that I hadn’t waited until he got home to deal with the hammer. Maybe this way I could downplay what happened. Scott would probably rat me out later, men gossip worse than old women, but right now, all I wanted was a dark hole to hide in. A migraine the likes of which I’d never before experienced approached with the booming potential of a torrential thunderstorm, and it smelled like diesel exhaust and road kill.
Maybe the head injury made it impossible for my brain to accept large quantities of new information without expanding exponentially within my damaged, unyielding skull. The trauma of reliving my attack, but through the perspective of my killer, was the most disturbing experience I’d ever endured. What bothered me most though, was that some tiny, elemental part of me could sympathize with him. I knew what it was to want something with every single cell in my body. I felt that way after my parents died.
I sensed the past all around me, with every synapse and nerve ending. Taste and smell told me about each molecule of dust, food aroma, the fiber content of every inch of fabric and carpet, every substance ever used to build, treat or clean the space. All of it smelled like variations on a ripe, open grave. I ascended the stairs one step at a time, clutching the wastebasket as if my life depended on it. More than a few times I was forced to stop and retch various meals from decades past into the receptacle. My motive to get upstairs was long forgotten, I just kept swimming upstream, hoping a grizzly bear would come along, scoop me out of the river and quickly crush my skull with its jaws to end my suffering. My clothes were ground glass and razor wire and I kept touching my face, convinced blood and melted bone flowed from my orbits since the light rope illuminating the staircase emitted burning laser beams in all directions. I swear I could hear the walls breathing, whispering the names of everyone who had lived and done business within, conversations, arguments, requests, demands from people decades dead. I was a shade myself, slipping between the world I knew and the one beyond. A fleeting caress on my cheek, a shriek in my ear, it was all the same. Yet I kept moving, one step at a time, crawling through mud and broken glass, all liberally doused with gasoline and lit on fire.
The building shook, sound waves visibly crashing around me, colliding with me and each other before shattering into razored shards of metal, pinning me to the wall like an insect in a collector’s album. My store was obviously under attack by giants. That was impossible, but it was the only explanation my addled brain could muster. Ghosts had been mere fiction a year ago, so, in theory, it could happen. I tried to lift my head to see what was going on but I couldn’t tell if I’d moved or not. The shaking drew closer and a voice boomed my name. Shit, a giant had found me. It plucked me from the floor by the scruff and carried me, dangling, off to its caves to be eaten, I supposed. Maybe my head would detonate and the resultant shrapnel would do some damage to my abductor first. I doubted it, though. I was already melted and abraded into a squishy pulp, the worst an explosion could do would be to make a mess.
I was dropped negligently in a stony corner and the giant, or cave troll, or whatever-it-was went into the next cave to fling around some boulders and set off land mines. I sincerely hoped it would find a large blunt instrument to end me.
“FOUND IT,” echoed through my skull like a planet exploding. My upper arm stung, so maybe it decided to save my soft parts for dessert. The room began to whirl and I fought to hold onto… the bed, I think. The spinning decreased and the room began to manifest out of the sinister shadows and blinding beams of light. As I came back to myself, the searing laser light became a soft glow from the bathroom door. Able to open my eyes fully, I saw a shadow sitting at the edge of the bed.
“Hi.” Barrett.
“Hi.” My voice squeaked and died.
“Can you sit up?”
I tried and failed, but made it the second time. My head still hurt but now it was just an ugly headache. Leaning back against the headboard, I accepted the glass of water, feeling a twinge in my arm. A spot of blood marked my sleeve and I frowned in uncertainty.
“Imitrex injection. I remembered you had some in the bathroom. Maybe you should carry one on you?”
“Okay.” Just because my brain had resolidified didn’t mean I was yet capable of rational thought. At that moment I was little better than an automaton programmed with simple responses to standard cues. Bits of the evening’s events began to seep back into my memory. The hunger surged back to life, almost overwhelming me again for a second. A calculating, mindful, intent appetite, the hunt and the stalking almost as fulfilling as the feast to follow. It sickened me and I felt a resurgence of horror. The sound I made must have been more than a little unsettling because Barrett bent toward me suddenly, his eyes searching. I blinked, finally focused on him and gave my head a tiny shake. “It’s okay, just remembering something.”
“Does that something have to do with the worst migraine I’ve ever seen?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me about it?”
I still needed time, to process what I knew, to let my brain settle into shape around it and come up with a really good excuse why I didn’t include him or my brother. “Not yet.”
He nodded. “Is Anna opening the store?”
“She is now.” If I remembered and was capable of texting her. If not, the doors would open when I unlocked them.
“Good idea.”
I wormed my way down until I was lying on my side. Now that the headache was of manageable proportions, all I wanted to do was sleep. Barrett’s warm body settled behind me, a gentle hand stroked my hair. Now I had something else on my mind besides sleep. As I pressed back into him, I had irrefutable proof Barrett was more than just concerned for my well-being. One of his hands drew a soft path down my body, the other arm curled under to hold me, shield me, while he planted a quiet kiss on my temple. As the headache dissipated somewhat, my breaths came quicker and I turned in his arms to face him. Before long we had struggled out of our clothes and were locked together. Barrett rolled to his back, taking me with him and we sat against the headboard, wrapped round each other, rocking frantically. My head still hurt, but our coupling allowed me to push it aside, replace the pain with something else, something primitive and pleasurable. I pressed myself onto him, our motions small but profound. Sweat poured from me and I sat deeper, the tolling at my core forcing a tremor from me, an echo of the ringing hammer in my vision, my body clutching at his in primal rhythm. Finally the trembling took over, flared into full-fledged spasms that sent electricity screaming from nerve to nerve and tore a coughing sob from me. There was no conscious control of my body, much as it had been just an hour before on the stairs, but this was infinitely better. This hunger I could control and satiate without doing harm to myself or anyone else. I shuddered slowly into a ball, curled against his chest, our bodies still embedded together. He made to move from beneath me.
“Wait.”
He chuckled a breathless “okay,” then gasped as my primordial instincts reasserted themselves. So much loss surrounding me, pursuing me, all I wanted was to be alive, feel my heart pound and blood surge in defiance of death. I moved against Barrett, lifted my face to his, felt his grip on my body and brought us both back to life.
Chapter 22
Maybe it was because we hadn’t lived together before, or because we hadn’t been together more than a few months, maybe there were little things I hadn’t noticed about Barrett until recently. Maybe it was my own heightened sense of awareness, of impending threat.
Barrett went to work in the mornings and came straight back in the evenings. That wasn’t so different. Since we’d started seeing each other, he’d often come to my apartment after he’d finished work and we’d do something together, even if it was just television and sandwiches. That too had not changed much.
What was different was subtle at the beginning. He slept less, rising when I did, even on the days he didn’t have to work. If I stirred, he stirred. If I woke up in the night to go to the bathroom, I would co
me back to him lying on his side facing the door, watching until I lay back down. There was a sense of surveillance, always monitoring all the activity around him, never relaxed. And now he’d started to walk the perimeter of the building every morning. He was headed to the back hallway and door when I noticed his jacket caught on something at his waist. As I reached to straighten his hem, my hand brushed an unfamiliar object and I snatched my hands back. His jacket hung on the butt of a matte-black pistol. I could make out XDM on the side of the holster. When he carried, he didn’t screw around. I hadn’t seen him wearing his sidearm since the night I’d been attacked.
“Barrett, what the hell?”
“The weapon gives me the tactical advantage. He may be armed now too.”
“With what, another hammer? If he wanted to shoot me, he’s had more than ample opportunity. Besides, there’s kids all over the place out there. The school’s only a few blocks away.”
“Think of it as a fire extinguisher, you have one in your kitchen, I have one on my hip. And I’m careful.”
“I know you are, but they aren’t. Kids are stupid sometimes.”
He took a deep breath and met my gaze. “I have had the best training the world can offer. If there is a risk I will move to eliminate it. I will not let him get to you again and with this, I will win any engagement. You are safer with this on my hip. Do you understand?”
Taken aback by his borderline belligerence, I returned fire, so to speak. “What I do understand is that you’re gotten extremely protective—”
“You’d prefer that I do nothing to protect you?”
“I’d prefer if you went back to being yourself, not G.I.-fucking Joe. We have an alarm system with a panic button. Every single window and door is covered, even the ones up here, in case we’re attacked by Spiderman.” His face set in grim lines and I tried to calm myself. “We’re all strung pretty tight. But it’s gotten to the point that I’m afraid to take a deep breath around you for fear of setting you off.”
