Dust to Dust

by Karina Halle

  And so that was the plan. A split-second plan but it was the only one I had. I had wanted to die once when I was in college, right after I was institutionalized. I wanted to throw everything away.

  I was glad I didn’t. No matter how hard it got, I was glad I kept going. I would have missed out on so much. It angered me, actually, that I thought I was doing the world a favor. Life, no matter how much it sucks – and believe me, being told you’re crazy because you see ghosts sucks, growing up with a crazy, abusive drunk mom and a deadbeat dad sucks – it’s still a gift. That’s some cheesy Hallmark shit there, but it’s the truth.

  If I had ended it back then, I would have never met Perry. I would have never found my purpose in life. I would have never known pure joy and happiness. I would have never felt fulfilled. I would have never known what real love was. I would have never know the pleasure in having hope for the future. I would have never known any of that.

  And so, killing myself in order to preserve some of that, it didn’t seem like that crazy of an idea. Of course, dying sucks. Dying when you have so much to keep living for has to be the worst joke God has ever played on people.

  But sometimes, you have to do the shitty fucking things in life. Sometimes those things mean death. If this meant I could save Perry and everyone else, well, there wasn’t much to consider. I mean, we’re talking the gates of Hell here. We’re talking about the love of my life.

  That didn’t mean, though, that when I fell to the ground and felt the blood pool around my head, that I didn’t feel sorrow. I felt absolute sorrow. Because I just wanted to back in time. I just wanted to be at Perry’s parents’ house in Portland, editing, happy as a pig in the shit because my woman just agreed to marry me. I wanted to go back to that and hang on to it and yell at myself for not breathing in every single second. I wanted keep living that joy over and over and over again.

  That’s why I had asked her to marry me. I wanted joy, forever. I wanted her forever. I wanted all the wonderful things that life was giving me and I wanted them over and over and over again. I wanted to live.

  I just wanted to live.

  And now, well that just wasn’t in the cards. It wasn’t a choice I could have made.

  For the first time in my life, I did what was best for everyone.

  I stepped into the sword. I stepped into the abyss.

  I would miss Perry more than anything.

  But the fact that this way, she would go on living, that was worth it for me.

  I died with tears in my eyes.

  I died with love in my heart.

  I died knowing that, after everything I had been through, life was still good.

  Life was still good.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Perry

  I don’t know how long I just stood there for, seconds, minutes. I yelled and yelled and yelled inside my head but I got no response – not from Maximus, not from Dex.

  Finally, the bedside lamp flickered and I felt a giant whoosh go through me, like something was powering down and I was being emptied. Tears sprung to my eyes for no reason and it felt like my whole body was losing something. I fell to my knees for a moment, trying to breathe, to make sense of what was happening.

  “Come with me.” I heard a whisper.

  I looked up and saw Little Michael standing by the door. He waved his hand at me, frantically, trying to get me to follow him.

  I managed to get to my feet, feeling off-balance and hollow. He grabbed my hand and led me out into the hallway. I heard growling, snapping sounds coming from behind me but he gave me a firm tug and hurried us along in the opposite direction.

  “Don’t turn around,” he said. “Keep blocking yourself. He doesn’t know you’re here.”

  I was stunned. How did this boy know what I was trying to do? More than that, it was actually working?

  Before I could ask him, he brought me into a room at the end of the hall. It was dark in here save for a light in the bathroom. There was a shadow underneath the door – someone was in there. But the boy paid it no attention. He closed the door to the hallway and pointed at the king-sized bed in the middle of the room.

  “Go hide under it,” he said.

  “I have to find Dex,” I told him. “Your brother.”

  He shook his head, looking saddened. It made my breath hitch.

  “No, you don’t want to find him,” he said. “Go hide under the bed.”

  He tried to push me down until finally I dropped to my knees and slid underneath. Mattress stuffing hung down beneath the wooden plats, brushing against my face. He then crawled in beside me, but further back, until I could only see the glow of his eyes.

  “Who are we hiding from?” I whispered.

  He held my eyes but did not say anything.

  The door to the bathroom creaked open, flooding the room with pale yellow light. I held my breath and heard the soft smack of footsteps on tile.

  A foot slowly came into view, then another. White, laced with dark veins. I could only see up until mid-calf, but I knew they belonged to a woman. A very dead woman.

  This was a house of nightmares, Dex’s nightmares to be more exact. I knew who this woman was and I knew why Michael was hiding.

  The feet turned toward me. Creepy, crawly bugs began to slither down her leg and fall onto the carpet, as if she were brushing them off. They crawled right toward me and I stiffened as their tiny legs got tangled in the lengths of my hair.

  They were no scarier than the feet that had taken a step toward me.

  She knew I was here, she knew we were under the bed.

  She walked, slowly and with deliberation. Her pale toes flexed.

  Dex’s mother stopped at the foot of the bed, facing my direction.

  I waited. One second stretched on and on.

  She began to drop down to her knees.

  One knee, then another.

  One frail hand. Then the other. Both of her palms were covered in blood and bugs crawled out of her broken nail beds.

  The scraggly black ends of her wavy hair floated down into view.

  I went rigid. Ready run, to fight, to scream. I didn’t want to see her, what would have been my mother-in-law had she still been alive.

  Her white face appeared inches before me and I was hit with a blast of cold, feral fear. Her lips were cracked and bleeding, maggots writhing in them. Her eyes were black, just a Michael’s had been.

  I expected to feel animosity slither off of her, just like the insects. I expected for her face to contort into fathomless anger, all directed at me. Wasn’t that always the case with in-laws?

  I did not expect her dead features to crumble and for inky tears to fall out of her eyes, dripping onto the carpet.

  “He shouldn’t have come here,” she said, her voice metallic and weak, like listening to a lost transmission. “I tried to tell him, to warn him.” She reached out and grabbed my hand, slick with cold blood. It grew translucent, until I could see the bones shining through. “It is too late.”

  I licked my lips, trying to speak, but nothing could come out.

  What was too late?

  She gave a shake of her head. “He shouldn’t be with me. Not now. Too young. My baby is too young for this.”

  Was she talking about Michael? Mrs. Foray was making no sense but at the same time, I didn’t think she was drunk. She was sober, albeit dead.

  “What is this place?” I finally managed to whisper.

  “This is Hell,” she said harshly. “My boys grew up in hell. They died here too.”

  My eyes bugged out. “Died?”

  The light in the bathroom went out. Darkness descended upon us.

  “Mrs. Foray,” I cried out, gingerly reaching forward to touch where her hands and face should have been.

  There was nothing.

  “Michael?” I asked over my shoulder, scooching further back and trying to feel where he was. There was only carpet and empty space.

  I was alone. The world was silent.
/>   Almost.

  A familiar scratching sound came from behind me, like something was brushing up against the wooden slats under the bed. It sounded like long, spindly legs, crawling my way.

  The image of a cat-sized spider flashed through my brain.

  I wasn’t wasting any time. I quickly pulled myself out from under the bed and stood up, trying to find the door out through the darkness.

  Perry! Dex!

  The sound was faint, so faint I thought I was imagining it.

  But it repeated once more. Maximus’s voice, softer than the air and only inside my head. He was out there. But if he was calling for Dex, it meant he wasn’t with him.

  My heart felt like a block of ice. That sense of loss I had experience earlier came back, tugging me down. I was afraid to know what it meant. Way too afraid.

  Where are you?! I yelled. Maximus? I’m upstairs in a bedroom, where are you?

  But there was no reply. And the thing under the bed was starting to growl.

  I stumbled forward, feeling for the door in the dark. I smacked right into it, stifling a cry, and quickly found the knob. I was certain it wouldn’t turn, but it did and I yanked it open.

  The hallway was dim except for orange light that flickered in from one of the open doors. Heart in my throat, I walked forward down the hall. I peered in the first door that had been Michael’s room. It was blackened inside, shaped like a cave. Fire danced in the distance. The dimensions of the house were gone.

  Feeling eyes staring at me from the long, cold tunnel, I kept walking.

  The next door was open a crack. A trail of blood led out from it, the red barely legible in the spotty light. I pushed the door open and peered inside. It was another kid’s room, Dex’s I assumed.

  In the faint glow of his nightlight, I could make out a wide stain of blood in the middle of the room. Immediately I knew it was from Dex. I just knew.

  I whirled around the room, searching under the bed, in the closet. There was nothing and like the other rooms, no way out through the window.

  I wanted to tell myself not to panic, not to think the worst, not to lose it but I couldn’t. The only thing I could do was follow the trail of blood out of the room.

  I followed it down the stairs, my footsteps quickening, past the living room where the Christmas lights were all off and the music was gone. The room was empty though and I grabbed one of the black candles that were still burning on the mantel. I continued to follow the blood, past the painting that was back to being Renoir again. I followed it past the kitchen, which was still set for three, past numerous close doors and all the way to a narrow door at the end of the hall that was shut with a look of finality.

  Trying the knob and finding resistance, I felt horror take over me. This was panic. This was desperation and it had its claws in me. I put down the candle and threw myself against the door again and again, crying out from the pain, crying out Dex’s name. The blood had gone under the door and I knew it was him, I knew it was him.

  I let out another yelp and did my best kick-down of the door as I could, conjuring up what little martial arts skills I had left. I had a brief flashback of being in my uncle’s lighthouse in Oregon, the night I first met Dex. It was so long ago. Why couldn’t I have held onto that moment for longer? Why does life move along so fast and lead us to places like this one?

  The door gave way with a splintered groan and I burst through it, nearly falling down a row of narrow cement stairs. They disappeared into the blackness. I picked up the candle and let it light the way. Surprisingly it burned bright and I was able to walk down, down, down. It felt like I was going stories and stories beneath the earth, the air growing colder, thicker.

  Finally my feet hit the solid ground and I found myself in a large room. Bare walls, their bottom halves scorched black, no windows, no furniture, nothing except a trail of blood leading to the center of the room.

  The blood led to Dex, lying lifeless on the floor, a sword sticking straight out of his throat.

  I gasped, my chest squeezing into oblivion, and dropped the candle but it did not go out. It burned so I could continue to see him.

  I ran over to him, my limbs, my lungs, my heart shaking from the horror of what I was seeing.

  It couldn’t be.

  But it was.

  It was.

  I dropped to the cold earth, my hands hovering above him, unsure of what to do, what to touch, how to help. I didn’t think I could speak but I screamed “Dex!” It ripped out of me, echoing off the walls.

  Dex was lying there, eyes open to the ceiling but there was no life in them and there was no ceiling, just black sky that bared down on us. My hands found courage and my fingers felt along his chest, demanding a heartbeat.

  He was still. His heart was silent.

  I couldn’t breathe. There was no air in the room, I had no lungs left. I was just a fist inside me, tightening and tightening. Even the tears were held back in my eyes, frozen in shock, unable to fall.

  This couldn’t be.

  And it was.

  I shook my head, my vision going dark and then light again. “Dex,” I cried out pitifully. I touched his soft hair, his face, his beautiful brows and the way they curved over his eyes, the shiny glint of his ring. His dark brown eyes that I willed to blink, willed to look at me, but they didn’t. They were empty and he was dead beneath them.

  I closed my own, trying to concentrate, to turn back time and make this all go away. But when I opened them again, I saw the same thing, my eyes focusing on the blood that had pooled out of his throat.

  My heart launched itself in my chest and suddenly I was gasping for air, trying to breathe, trying to live and why, why it was all so pointless. I didn’t want to live, I couldn’t live without him. I couldn’t, I couldn’t.

  I cried out, a long ragged sob that bordered on a scream. I slammed my fists into the ground, then curled my fingers around Dex’s shirt and held onto him like I could bring him back to life that way. I held so tight, so damn tight, as the waves of sorrow plowed through me, twisting my heart and soul into knots that could never be undone.

  The pain was real, physical, tearing me apart, splitting me down the middle until everything inside me was falling out.

  I put my head on his chest, wishing so hard to hear his heartbeat. I wished for him to sit up and look at me one last time. I wanted to hear him call me Kiddo, I wanted to feel his hands on my skin, his lips on my face.

  For everything that had happened, everything, I did not go into the day thinking he would die. I did not even know it was a possibility. We had gone through so fucking much together, cheated death a million times, dying wasn’t a possibility.

  But then there was my dream last night, seeing him in a grave, in the cold hard earth and I screamed again, my mouth open and sobbing, cursing myself for not paying attention. Why didn’t I see this coming? Why did I let Dex come here? Why did I let him out of my sight?

  There was no way I could handle this, process this. I screamed, over and over again, sobs that were wrenched out of me, snapping my sanity like torn arteries. He was bleeding, I was bleeding too, from my heart, my poor, poor heart. How was it even still in my chest?

  I bawled onto him for what seemed like hours, days. I cried and cried and kept going over everything in my head, everything I could have done differently. Why didn’t I know, why didn’t know just how fucking easily he could be taken from me.

  And each time I had to lift my head and look at him, because it just couldn’t be true.

  How could this be my life and the end of his?

  Maybe this wasn’t even him.

  My pulse quickened with what I knew was false hope. I sat up and leaned over him.

  “Dex,” I whispered, gently pressing my fingers into his cheek. I lowered my lips to his and spoke against them. They were cold. “Dex, can you hear me? Are you in there somewhere?”

  I listened to nothing. I pulled back, tears falling on his chest. I couldn’t look at hi
m like this. He couldn’t die like this.

  Wincing, I reached for the sword, wrapping my fingers around the cold steel. It was small, as if for a child. Somehow it was in his throat. It didn’t make any sense, none of this made any sense.

  With one fluid motion, I pulled it out, gasping at what I had done. The wound was deep and open and quickly filled with more blood. It rose and spilled over the sides, following the path of the blood before, over his neck and onto the ground.

  Another sob escaped my throat. I had half-expected him to wake up, if not just from the pain. But he didn’t stir.

  He never would.

  I reached over and ran my fingers down over his eyes until they were closed.

  Now, at least, he looked at peace.

  I prayed he was at peace.

  Because one of us should at least be and it wasn’t me.

  I felt like a heavy boot was pressing down on my chest and it would never lift again. I would never be whole again.

  I collapsed against him, the tears still coming, my breath still weak and ragged, as if it were dying with him.

  No. No, no, no, no, no.

  This wasn’t the end.

  I would never let it be the end.

  With what strength I had left, I put my arms underneath his and pulled him up onto me, cradling him in my lap. I let his blood flow over me. I wanted to drown in it, to let it sink into every pour.

  I was supposed to marry this man. I was supposed to be the mother of his children. I was supposed to live with him for as long as we could go, a bumpy journey, but one we would do hand in hand.

  Till death do us part.

  I sobbed and squeezed him to me tight.

  Why did it have to part us so soon?

  ***

  “Perry?”

  I woke up slowly, my body protesting consciousness. For one brilliant, beautiful moment I thought I was in Seattle, in our bedroom. I thought my life hadn’t changed at all.

  But when I opened my eyes and only saw flickering candle light, I knew. When I felt the sticky, congealed blood in my hands, I knew. When I moved slightly and felt the deadweight of Dex’s body on top of mine, I knew. My life had changed forever. There was no going back.