by Rick Hautala
“To be puking that much blood?” Edward said, dabbing gingerly around her mouth. He didn’t want to hurt any part of her swollen face.
“Don’t worry … they said this … might happen … but anyway … I—I’m … real happy … about your news … honey.”
Her eyes rolled back in her head, exposing the whites, which had turned a sour yellow color. Her hospital johnny and the bed sheet were sprinkled with blood, but she looked as though she was comfortable, so Edward decided not to call the nurse.
“I—I’m real happy … for you.”
“For us,” Edward said, his voice trembling with intensity. “I know you’re probably feeling too beat to talk about it right now, but you know—I think this is really it! This is the turning point … for both of us.”
Again, he squeezed her hand, wishing to God he could feel some response, but her hand was as limp as a dishrag in his grip. He couldn’t look away from the tangles of blood dripping from the wire grill inside her mouth.
“I—I think, after all the … you know, after all the misery and shit we’ve been through so far this spring and summer, what with what happened to you and my—” His voice caught in his throat for a moment. “With my mother dying and all, I think this is it. You’ve had the second operation now, and I’ve got a done deal to build at least one house. I think—I hope we’re finally turning the corner.”
Dianne’s head bobbed up and down, but Edward couldn’t tell if it was in response to what he was saying or if she was exhausted from throwing up. The medication obviously was dragging her back under, but undaunted, he continued, “At last, we’re going to make some real money, and you know what I’ve been thinking?”
Dianne’s only response was a faint brightening in her eyes as her head rolled gently to one side. Her hand slipped from his grasp, but he quickly picked it up again.
“I’ve been thinking about this a lot, you see, and well, we both agreed that the house we’re living in now is too small for us and we want to build something new—especially if we’re thinking of having a baby sometime. I think, maybe as soon as this fall, we should tear down the old homestead, my mother’s house, and build that house we wanted right there, using the old foundation. What do you think?”
Dianne made no reply. The glow in her eyes faded as her gaze drifted past him to the flat, blue square of sky outside the hospital window. A thin line of bloody drool ran from the corner of her wired mouth and down her neck. Edward wiped it away with the stained washcloth.
“Hell, that old relic is better than two hundred and fifty years old, and now that my mother’s gone, we should just be rid of it. God, there isn’t a single ninety-degree angle in the whole house! And I—I want to do something special for you.”
He began to say something about how there were too many painful memories bound up inside that old house, but he happened to glance over his shoulder at Brian. Sickened by the sight of blood, he was looking down at the floor. He seemed not to be paying the slightest bit of attention to what his father was saying, but Edward felt a twist of guilt, recalling that he had just mentioned the possibility of him and Dianne having a baby together. He thought guiltily that he should have said something about wanting Brian to live with them, maybe even for the whole school year, and go out to Arizona to stay with his mother during summer vacations, but the opportunity seemed to have passed.
“But—well.” He looked back at Dianne. “No matter what we think about the house, it has a beautiful yard, and—especially if we sell all eight lots—we should have more than enough money to build whatever we want out there. Won’t that be great, honey?”
He watched as her eyelids gently slid shut and her breathing slowed, bubbling softly in her throat. He placed her hand on her chest and patted it; then brushed his hands together and got up from the bed.
“Well, you just rest up for now, honey, and get your strength back,” he whispered. He wondered if she could even hear him; her breathing was a steady, deep hissing that sounded like she was sleeping. “We’ve got a lot to talk and think about, but we’ve got plenty of time, too.” He glanced over at Brian, who apparently hadn’t moved a muscle since entering the room. “I—I’ll come back tomorrow. Maybe you’ll feel more up to talking then.”
He leaned forward and kissed her again, then turned and left the room. All during the drive back home, he felt too emotionally drained to mention to Brian how upset he was that he hadn’t shown Dianne the slightest bit of attention or concern. Even when she had been vomiting blood, he had just stood there, as if he was grossed out by the whole thing … as if he didn’t even care about her.
But Edward consoled himself with the thought that summer wasn’t over yet. In four or five days, once Dianne was home from the hospital, Brian would have plenty of opportunities to get to know her better … and maybe he’d even get to like her.
The entire time Edward was visiting with her, Dianne never saw his face clearly. He appeared to her only as a looming, black silhouette harshly outlined against the blue sky behind him. Whether he was standing beside her or sitting on the bed, holding her hand, it had looked as though he was swaying gently back and forth, from side to side, like a ponderous pendulum suspended from the ceiling. The image reminded her of her own dream about hanging from the bottom of the helicopter. It filled her with a cold, dark dread.
As soon as he left the room, she drifted back deeper into herself, but she didn’t fall asleep. She was hovering somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, between life and death. Her mind played back snippets of their conversation. She tried to focus on what he had said, but after a while, it all blurred together, mixing with other words, other voices that echoed from deep inside her memory.
“I think this is it … I think—I hope we’re finally turning the corner …”
“This is my land! …”
“She should be coming around soon, but she’s going to be pretty groggy for a while …”
“Hell, that old relic is better than two hundred and fifty years old …”
“This oak tree, which soon will bear my lifeless body like some unrighteous fruit, is on my property! …”
“It took longer than I thought it would …”
“All the misery and pain we’ve been through so far this spring and summer …”
“And I tell ye all this. I curse this man! May the Lord smite him and all the liars who have brought me to this untimely end! …”
“A Hemi-Leforte II midface fracture and a communited displaced left zygoma fracture …”
“My soul is as pure as I know thine is black …”
“It looks a lot worse than it really is, but she’s going to be in quite a bit of pain for quite some time …”
“None of ye shall escape the cleansing fire of the Lord’s judgment! Do ye hear me?”
“Do ye hear me?”
Chapter Eleven
Escapee
After a full five days in the hospital, Dianne was released early Sunday afternoon. The medication she was on was helping cut the edge of her pain, but still, usually about an hour or so before her next dosage was due, the nerves in her face and neck began to feel like they were on fire. After a few days, the swelling had started to go down. The nearly constant bleeding from her nose had finally slowed but not entirely stopped. Thankfully, after that first day, she was no longer vomiting blood.
The day was sunny and warm, with a tumble of purple thunderheads off to the west. Dianne rode a wheelchair down to the front door, said her goodbyes to the nurses, and walked with Edward out the front door. As soon as she was outside, she leaned her head back and took a deep breath, wishing to God she felt well enough to enjoy her first day out of the hospital. But after having been cut off from “real life” for nearly a week, all she felt was weak and disoriented. The sunlight dazzled her as Edward, supporting her with his arm around her waist, walked her down the walkway to his car, which was parked at the curb.
“God, I feel like an escapee, making a pris
on break,” she said, glancing nervously over her shoulder up at the tall hospital building.
“Then let’s make a clean getaway before they catch us and bring us back,” Edward replied, laughing perhaps a bit too heartily as he reached for the car door and opened it for her. “Com’on! Let’s go!”
In spite of their joking, Dianne cringed at the sound of her own voice. It was still distorted by the wires in her mouth. It had been almost two months since her accident, now, and she was beginning to think that she was never going to be able to eat or talk normally again. Just thinking about the possibility of having to go back into the hospital made her shiver. And deeper, darker doubts and fears slithered around inside her like blind worms.
Edward held the car door open for her as she eased onto the front seat. The cushion was warm from sitting in the sun, but she hardly noticed it. Right now, all she wanted to do was get home, take a dose of medicine, and go straight to bed. Before saying goodbye, the attending doctor had told her there were only three things she had to do for the next few weeks—rest, rest, and rest.
“So, Brian didn’t feel like coming in with you to pick me up, huh?” Dianne asked. Moving in slow motion, she pulled the seat belt around her and snapped it shut.
Edward shook his head. “No he—uh, he said he had some things he wanted to do around the house.” He shrugged. “Kids … you know?”
He closed her door and came around to the driver’s side. After tossing her suitcases onto the back seat, he slid in behind the steering wheel and started up the car. But before he pulled away, he looked over at her with genuine concern wrinkling his brow.
“I just hope you’re not too upset … about tonight, I mean.”
Dianne regarded him in silence for a moment, she took a deep breath and shook her head.
“Of course I’m not upset,” she said. “If you think it’s absolutely crucial to meet with your clients tonight, then you have to be there.” She sniffed and winced, tasting the coppery sting of blood on the back of her tongue. “I don’t expect I’ll be much company for you, anyway.”
Edward took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “You’ll always be good company for me, you got that?” He smiled at her, trying to convince himself that the horrible rictus that split her mouth was, in fact, a smile. “But we’ve already sited the foundation, and I’m going to start clearing the land first thing tomorrow morning. Because they’ve been so wishy-washy about a few points, I want to meet with the Cliffords one last time and make sure they’re satisfied with the location and all. It’s just that I feel a little bit guilty, you know, leaving you like this on your first night home.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll be all right,” Dianne said. “Besides, Brian will be there if I need anything.”
Edward nodded, shifted the car into gear, and drove away.
They spoke very little during the drive home. Dianne leaned her head against the headrest and dozed off now and again. She woke up with a start every time Edward took a sharp turn or slowed down for a stoplight. Not wanting to disturb her, he let her sleep and tried his best to drive without too many sudden moves.
They stopped at the LaVerdier’s Drugstore in downtown Summerfield so Edward could run in and fill her prescriptions for pain killers and antibiotics while she waited in the car. Dianne felt horribly self-conscious when a mother and her five-year-old son walked by, and the little boy glanced in and saw her, leaning her forehead against the glass. His face registered such genuine shock and fear, Dianne was stung. The boy wrinkled his nose with disgust and said something which, thankfully, Dianne couldn’t make out. The boy’s mother glanced at her, then jerked the boy’s arm, pulling him roughly along behind her. Tears welled up in Dianne’s eyes as she watched them go, but she wiped them away before Edward came back out of the pharmacy.
When they got home, Brian didn’t even bother to come out of his room to say hello to her. The thumping sound of heavy metal music shook the walls until Edward knocked on the door and told him to turn it down or else use headphones. When he still didn’t come out to see Dianne, she made excuses for him which Edward begrudgingly seconded. Then, while Edward went back out to the car to get her suitcases, she took a dose of her medication and went upstairs. She changed into a comfortable nightie, pulled the curtains, and crawled into bed, grateful—at last—to be home.
Within seconds she was asleep, and for the first time in more than a week, she slept a deep, dreamless sleep … that is, until the telephone rang.
“The beast is back,” Brian whispered.
Late afternoon was quickly fading into evening. He was sitting on his bed, his back propped against the wall as he listened to music through headphones. He was desperately trying to lose himself in the music, but he couldn’t stop staring at the cassette tape case in his hands.
The band was called Necrophobia. Pictured on the cover of the aptly titled Caged Fury was a distorted face in close-up. The rotting skin was hanging in gray shreds from the skull which was riddled with gaping holes. Maggots and worms were crawling out of the holes, and thin rays of green laser light were shooting out. A thick glob of blood, glowing slickly black and red, dripped like a tear from one eye; but it was the eyes and mouth that held Brian’s attention. The lips were skinned back, exposing a grimace of rotting teeth and black gums; the eyes were wide open, exposing glistening orbs veined with red. The mouth and both eyes were wired open with strands of metal tied off in knots like barbed wire that pierced through the upper and lower lips and eyelids.
A few days ago while at the Maine Mall, when his father had gone down to the bookstore to get Dianne some books, Brian had drifted down to Tape World. The cover art on the album had immediately grabbed his attention, and he had bought it even though he had never heard of the band before. The music was loud and aggressive, particularly the song titled “Let’s Kill Her.” Brian played the tape several times a day and couldn’t stop thinking about how much the cover art reminded him of his stepmother.
But now, thinking about her sleeping in the room right next to his, he was filled with a hot current of rage. As the song wailed on in a deafening crash of guitars and drums, he cocked his arm back and threw the case as hard as he could against the bedroom wall. With his headphones on, he didn’t hear the sound of the impact, but he smiled with satisfaction to see the plastic case explode into dozens of pieces. Ripping off the headphones, he slammed them onto the bed and, clenching his fists tightly, shook them at the ceiling and said in a low, vibrating growl, “Yeah! The beast is back all right!”
Edward was surprised to see a light on upstairs in the bedroom window when he pulled into the driveway a little after eleven o’clock that night. He had been hoping Dianne would be sleeping peacefully, so any elation he might have felt about starting work in the morning instantly evaporated. Twisting with guilt and thinking that she might have been awake for hours, wracked with pain, he hurriedly parked the car, pulled down the garage door, and ran inside. Taking the steps two at a time, he went upstairs to find her sitting up in bed. She was propped against the headboard with two pillows, leaning forward and hugging her legs. Her body was hunched up either with tension or pain. Her face was pinched with anger.
“Hey, I thought you’d be—”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she shouted. Through the metal wire, her voice fairly hissed with anger as her fingers wove together, twisting like a knot of earthworms.
Edward stopped in the doorway and leaned on the doorjamb, trying to catch his breath. After glancing down the hallway at Brian’s closed door, he turned to her, shrugged, and said, “Tell you what?”
“About your fucking brother!”
“My … brother?”
That was the most he could manage before the walls seemed to come crashing down on top of him. His ears throbbed with the sound of her voice, and his whole body went cold. The air in the room seemed suddenly stale.
“Yes! Your brother!” Dianne snarled.
She punched the bed, the
n swung her legs to the floor. She looked as if she was about to stand up, but then discovered that she didn’t have the strength, so she slumped back down onto the pillows.
“You got a call—another call from Reed Park Hospital in Massachusetts tonight. From a Dr. Timothy Samuels. Does the name ring a bell?”
Edward considered saying it didn’t but knew that lying wasn’t going to work, so he nodded slightly.
“Dr. Samuels said he wanted to let you know—he wanted to ‘bring you up to date,’ he said—that they still hadn’t located your brother.” Her voice twisted up high until it broke. She slouched back and sucked in a deep breath that hissed through the wires in her mouth. Clenching her fists, she pressed them against her forehead as if trying to stop her head from exploding.
“Still hadn’t found him! Where is he? What’s he talking about? Tell me, what the hell is going on?”
“I—uh, well, you see …”
Edward rolled his eyes ceilingward, fighting back the wave of dizziness that gripped him.
“Don’t even try to bullshit me, all right?” Dianne yelled. “That phone call scared the living shit out of me! That doctor, whoever the hell he is, acted like this was something I should have known about!”
Edward took a deep, steadying breath, held it, then let it out slowly before walking over and sitting down on the edge of the bed. He placed his head in his hands and shook his head as a deep tremor ran through his arms and legs. He started to reach for her, but she shied away from him as if he had a contagious disease. A hard lump formed in his throat and wouldn’t go down no matter how hard he tried to swallow.
“I mean, I—I can’t believe the things I’m thinking right now,” Dianne said in a low, measured voice.
Beneath her bandages, her face was flushed bright red. Her panting breath whistled between her teeth. Edward knew it wasn’t good for her to be this upset, but flashing through his mind was the panicked thought: How much can I tell her? How much do I dare to tell her?
