“What did you mean, earlier, when I asked you about his—the clothes. You said, ‘She wanted to know that, too.’ Was there someone else in the woods?”
“Yes. No. Sort of.”
“Well, that’s clear. Is there someone or not? I mean, should I be worried about some crazy running around in the woods?”
“No.” I felt myself drifting again.
“Okay. So where did your clothes go? Stolen by the wood ghost?”
I shut my eyes to the tears, but they leaked out. Who did he remind you of? Is that how she really saw me?
It’s how you wanted me to see you, she said from beside me. I tried to turn without twisting my neck too much. “But you loved me anyway.”
“Aud?”
She’ll think you’re crazy.
“Aren’t I?”
Julia smiled, blew me a kiss, mouthed, I’m glad you’re safe, and disappeared.
“Aud? Do you think there’s someone there?”
“Not anymore.” My eyes leaked again.
“But—”
“I’m tired.”
“Jesus,” she said in an after-all-I’ve-done-for-you tone, but when I didn’t respond she changed tack. “You should eat before you go back to sleep. Unless you think you’ll get sick again?”
I tried to say, I never get sick, but what came out of my mouth didn’t make sense even to me.
She thumped about in the kitchen while I lay there, eyes still closed. Then she was carrying a tray with two bowls of soup and some bread. “You’ll have to sit up. Here. There’s no point hassling with a napkin, I’m going to have to wash the sheets anyhow—I was more worried about getting your cuts clean than the rest of you, so there’s probably still a bunch of mud and leaves in the bed. You should see a doctor.” I said nothing. “Well, it’s your body. Here. Just say something if you think you’re going to throw up, okay?”
Campbell’s split pea soup. I only managed a few spoonfuls, then I slept.
The trailer lights were off, and firelight danced on the wall opposite the window. A stink. Burning plastic. I sat up with an effort, swang my legs slowly over the side of the bed, and panted against the pain. The wrapping on my knee was a big ball of bandage and tape. I tried to pick at the tape, but I was too weak and my right wrist and knuckles hurt. I flexed them. Hitting bone with bone. Stupid.
The door opened and Tammy and more of that stink wafted in with the breeze. She looked different: taller, denser, more substantial. “Don’t like my bandaging?”
“Too tight.”
“Here, lie back, I’ll do it.”
No, I thought, I was the one who was supposed to cope, the one people asked for help. But my eyes were stinging and I found myself lying down while she loosened the bandage.
“Jesus. It’s black.”
I managed to lift my head: puffy, puce mottled with blue-black. I flexed it, very slightly, and hissed.
“Jesus, don’t do that.”
I panted again for a minute, then did it again, just to be sure. “S’okay.” The kneecap wasn’t detached.
“I still think you should get it looked at, not that you ever listen to me.” She stood up. “More painkillers will help. It’s been a few hours.” She brought me Vicodin and ibuprofen, which I swallowed obediently. “So. How did you do it—your leg?”
“I don’t know.”
“While running around with the clothes-stealing ghost?”
“Don’t. Please.”
“Jesus, just asking.”
She went into the bathroom for a while, then fussed with something in the kitchen. The fire outside still burned, and I watched the changing light on the ceiling while the Vicodin eased molecule by molecule into my bloodstream.
“Look,” Tammy said awkwardly, suddenly by my side again. “You know what you said to me a few days ago, about New York? About how I could talk about it if I wanted? Well, you could. If you wanted. I mean, you listened to me.”
“This is different.”
“So?”
She said it just the way Dornan had said, That’s how it works.
“What?” she said.
“I used to think I knew how the world works.” I gestured vaguely between us. I could feel the Vicodin rising like a tide.
“Does that mean you’re going to talk about it?”
Her face seemed a long way off. “Was it the tape you were burning?”
She flushed and nodded. “Did you—I watched it again, to be sure. It made me feel … I hate him.”
“He had a lot of tapes. He was a monster, I think.” My thoughts were bumping together like moored boats.
“If he was here, I’d shoot him like a dog.” Her voice was low and dark and vicious.
“I killed him.” It just slid out.
She stilled. Her face went white, then slowly pink again. “You … killed him?”
I nodded.
“You mean you really … You killed him? Like, he’s dead?”
“I think so.” Slippery words, like eels.
“You’re not sure?” She was looking at me, fascinated, the way you’d look at a just-born freak: should you strangle it before it draws its first breath, or raise it for the geek show. “Did he—Did it hurt?”
“Yes.”
She licked her lips. “You killed him for me.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
She stood up, “I just have to—” and left the trailer abruptly. Images sloshed back and forth in my rocking brain: breaking teeth, sirens, the creak of his shoulder joint, blood-slicked hands …
The trailer door banged open. Tammy, nodding. Maybe I’d dozed off again. “So that’s why you asked if I’d ever told him anything about you,” she said. “Because of the police.”
The fire outside set light dancing around her head, like one of those lurid saint’s pictures. “I would have phoned the police from the airport. I would. But they were already there at—”
“The police were at the airport?”
“—Karp’s apartment and why did I care anyway, that’s something else that was different. I don’t—”
“Wait. I’m lost. What was different?”
“—understand why I cared about whether or not he died. I never did before, they try to hurt me and I hurt them first and no second thoughts, like in Norway, they were going to hurt Julia, and I just do it, I don’t feel bad afterwards, I don’t feel like this—”
“What? Stop. Stop. You went to Norway?”
“—do you know how blood sounds when it drips on ice, it’s like. Nothing you. Ever …” And my brain lurched, turned turtle, and sank.
THREE
imago
imago (from imāgo, L. for representation, natural shape)
1. in Jungian psychoanalysis, the subjective image of someone else (usually a parent) which a person has subconsciously formed and which continues to influence her attitudes and behavior
2. in entomology, the adult or perfect form
… metamorphosis is complicated by the fact that the rigid cuticle covering the body is very restrictive …
CHAPTER NINE
Fever is a fairground, full of garish colors and grotesque rides and the sense that the fun will turn to terror any moment. I whirled brightly from one amusement to another. Julia, sitting on my lap, smiling at me while she nodded and talked on the phone. Diving into a glacier lake as a man lifted a rifle to his shoulder. Tammy, feeling my forehead and shouting at me. The sickening creak of Karp’s shoulder joint. Steel at my throat. Julia lying in a pool of blood on an Oslo street. Tammy saying, “Aud? Aud? Can you hear me? You have to take these.” Julia lying in a white-tiled room on a white hospital bed hooked up to white machines. Her mother sitting there, cradling her hand, cradling her with love. My mother sitting by my bed, telling me the story of how trolls always win. A terrible thumping and grinding in my head. Swallowing shiny beetles, purple and green. Back at the glacier again, choking as the lake closed over my head,
except somehow I was in a bed at the same time and some woman was trying to drown me in a glass of water. Crawling: crawling on grass, on leaves, on a hard road, underwater, crawling away. Trying to hide. But bright light followed me everywhere, into every corner, under every bed, hunting, until it pinned me down and I opened my eyes. Daylight.
“Open,” Tammy said, as though I were a baby, and pushed something between my lips. I struggled weakly. Her grip on the back of my neck tightened. “Nice pills. Make you feel better. Come on, open up, just one.” I let her get it between my lips, then spat it onto the bed. She sighed wearily. “Your mother must have had fun when you were sick.”
The only time I remembered my mother being with me when I was ill was when I was seven or eight. I had tonsillitis. She told me the story about trolls; the only story, ever.
She picked up the pill. It was purple and green.
“What are you feeding me?” It sounded querulous.
“Aud?”
“Yes,” I said, cross. “What’s the pill?”
She sat on the bed, studied me a moment, then pulled a pill bottle from her jeans pocket. “You’ve been out of your mind with fever. I found these with your other first aid stuff.” She handed them to me. “They seem to work. Your fever’s down, anyway.”
I squinted at the bottle. Augmentin: antibiotics. “I should have thought of that.”
She snatched the bottle back. “Gee thanks, Tammy, for probably saving my life. Hey, Aud, no problem: I get such a kick out of nursing crazy people with a death wish who threaten to kill me every five minutes.”
“To kill you?”
“Well, hey Tammy, sorry for any inconvenience, sorry for scaring the shit out of you.” She turned away and wiped at her cheeks with the heel of her hand. “Ungrateful asshole.”
I was too tired for this. “Tammy.” She wouldn’t turn around. “I’m sorry.” I looked out of the window. Early afternoon. But what day? “I really said I’d kill you?”
She turned round. “A hundred times. You never shut up.”
“What did I say?”
“A lot of things. To do with the girl, mostly.”
“Julia’s not a girl.”
“Not Julia, the kid. The girl.”
At my blank look, she slid off the bed, and retrieved a folder from the table. She wore a thick cable-knit sweater, blue: mine. I realized it was cold in the trailer. She held out the folder. Bloody glove print on the cover.
“Luz. Her. It was in the car.”
I touched it with a fingertip but didn’t take it. Nine years old and being trained like a dog. “I’ll have to do something about her.”
Tammy dropped the folder back on the table. “Like what?”
I hadn’t meant to speak aloud. “I don’t know.” Nine years old. No one to love her. “What else did I say?”
“Bunch of stuff about glaciers and hospitals. Didn’t make much sense. You cried a lot. And sort of snarled like you were fighting someone. And at me when I said I was calling 911. ‘White!’ you shouted. ‘White!’ And you got out of bed and started to crawl to the door. I had to practically swear on the Bible I wouldn’t call a doctor before I could get you back to bed. But by then the antibiotics had started to work, anyhow. And then you started snarling again, only this time it was different. It—Is that what you’re like when—Was what you said before true? Did you kill him?”
“I don’t know.” I would have to do something about that, too.
When I woke, it was late afternoon.
“How are you feeling?”
“Better.” The fever was more or less gone. My neck and knee hurt, I was thirsty. The folder was still on the table. Nine years old. I sat up. It was still cold. “Give me the phone.”
“Who are you calling?”
I just looked at her. She gave me the phone.
My head ached, and I couldn’t remember Eddie’s number at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, so I had to scroll through the names menu. When it rang, the man who answered was not Eddie. After a moment’s confusion, I discovered Eddie had been promoted to late-shift manager of the weekend edition. I was put through.
“Aud!” His voice was textured and rich, like nineteenth-century brocade. “Delightful to hear from you, as always. Where have you been?”
I’ve been up to London to visit the queen. “Renovating an old cabin in the woods. I need a favor.”
“But of course. Though you and your latest client’s expense account still owe me a dinner at the Horseradish Grill.”
“I’ll buy you two, just as soon as I’m back in town. But if you could get on the wires for me and find out if a man called George Karp was hurt or killed in New York, SoHo, three or four days ago, I’d be grateful.”
“And I suppose you need this information yesterday?” I could hear him clicking on the keyboard as we spoke.
“Even the day before.”
“Well. I seem to recall that last time I looked someone up for you, he turned up dead a month or so later, in a public bathroom.”
“Nothing to do with me.”
“On this particular occasion, I believe you. Ah ha. Here we go. George Karp, white male, assaulted by unknown assailants inside his own home, a fashionable loft in—How much detail do you want?”
“The extent of his injuries, whether or not he’s dead.”
“As good as, according to this. ‘Deep coma.’ Somebody really did a number on him. Cervical vertebrae fractured in two places, spinal cord disrupted. Left eye ruptured—associated orbital fractures. Both shoulders dislocated, some muscles torn out. Ruptured spleen, both kidneys severely damaged. Ribs splintered, which probably caused the pneumothorax and liver laceration. Jaw broken, and teeth. Legs more or less untouched, strangely enough. Cranial fracture—that’s what did the damage, they think, although it’s possible that the injury to the larynx, and one to the spinal cord, led to oxygen deprivation before the head trauma. Police are looking for two assailants, white male and white female. From the descriptions you’d think they were brother and sister. Description one is from a group of young men and women passing the loft just after the incident: male, six-two, blond hair, possibly something wrong with his eyes. Description two is from a woman who was apparently accompanying Karp home from a restaurant, who says the attacker was female—still tall, though, another six-footer, and blond hair again, very pale blue …” His voice trailed off. “Aud, is there something you’re not telling me?”
“Always,” I said lightly. It was an effort. “Any other details?”
Click click click. “Ah. Now this is interesting. Tabloid stuff, though. Want to hear it?”
“Yes.”
“After the news hit the real papers—apparently this Karp is some kind of minor celebrity in the retail universe—a woman talked to the Daily Post, said Karp abused her so much he drove her insane and she ended up in a psychiatric facility. She says, and I quote, ‘He’s a perv and a wacko.’ ” The colloquialisms sounded alien in his smooth diction. “Though, of course, she herself is certifiably insane, so it’s a case of the pot calling the kettle black.” He clicked away. “Lurid tale of kink and coercion follows. According to the tabloid, her statement is corroborated by videotapes found in Karp’s apartment. Although they were all erased somehow, the labeling is apparently suggestive. The tabloid hints that the police now believe this to be some kind of revenge attack.” More tapping. “Officially, the police will say only that they’re pursuing leads.”
“No mention of anything missing?”
“Not that I can see, although a few items of obvious value were left untouched.” A few more clicks. “No. Nothing. Anything else I can do for you?”
A sudden picture of Eddie in his cubicle, smiling down the phone, relaxed and calm, made my eyes smart. “Just keep being yourself.”
There was a startled pause. “Is everything all right with you?”
“Fine. And thank you. I’ll buy you that dinner very soon.”
I folded the phone and d
ropped it on the bed. Tammy put it on the table with the folder.
“He’s still alive, isn’t he?”
“In a coma. A deep coma. He’s not going to recover.”
“He would hate that,” she said, “lying there totally helpless,” and her whole face curved in a predatory smile: the old Tammy coming out to play.
I pushed away the blanket and swang my legs off the couch bed. Instead of lead, my bones felt filled with polystyrene.
“Now what are you doing?” she said.
“There’s still Luz to take care of.”
She stood in front of me. “You’re joking, right?”
I stood on the second try, and shivered. It was definitely cold in the trailer, and I was still naked.
“Jesus, you’re not, are you?” I ignored her and concentrated on moving. Styrofoam was not reliable construction material. “What are you going to do? You can’t even drive with that knee.”
Seven feet from the foldout bed, I couldn’t seem to move anymore. I leaned dizzily against the kitchen counter.
“You’ve still got some fever,” Tammy said from behind me. “You haven’t really eaten for a couple of days. You’ve lost blood.”
I tried to straighten up and the pain in my knee bloomed like a fireball. I didn’t dare let go of the counter. If someone knows you need them, it gives them a weapon to hurt you over and over again. But the counter began to tilt and slide. “Help me.”
I thought for a moment she was going to fold her arms and say, Pretty please, but her response was a neutral “Back to bed?”
“Bathroom first.”
She took my arm and some of my weight. “You really are a stubborn asshole,” but the hard look had faded, and while I was balancing carefully on the toilet she went and got me one of the oversize T-shirts she slept in. It wasn’t easy to get it over the bandages on my head and neck.
By the time I got back to bed my knee felt as though someone had poured molten tin in the joint.
“You shouldn’t have gotten up,” Tammy said as she lifted my leg onto the bed for me.
“No.”
“Probably needs more ice.”
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