by Wood, Rick
Dead ahead of him is where he saw her.
He recognised her instantly. Her face had been etched onto his cranium at eleven years old. He could never forget her. Now there she was, returned to torment, floating on a rock dead ahead of him.
Her long, black, greasy hair dripped in front of her face, barely showing her cracked, faded lips and her yellow, piercing eyes, her shoulders hunched over her fatal body. She wore a long dress that must have once been white, but had since faded to brown, patched with red remnants he was sure must be blood. Thicker patches of red were surrounded by blots of darker red scattered in splotches.
She was bare-foot. She was still.
“Who are you?” Eddie screamed out. This wasn’t the salvation his suicide had aimed for.
She didn’t reply. She simply took a step forward, remaining hunched, her head pointing downwards, her demented facial features slightly visible through her soggy black mane.
It’s okay, I’m safe on this rock. It’s surrounded by lava, she can’t get to me, Eddie told himself.
He was wrong.
Once she reached the end of the rock, she placed her bare left foot on top of the lava and allowed her right to follow. Eddie could hear the tssss of the burning lava inflicting itself upon the soles of her feet, yet she didn’t flinch in the slightest. He could see fire flicking up around her ankles, spewing ash upon them. Still she didn’t react. Still she walked over the lava toward him.
He collapsed backwards onto his hands, looking around frantically. Noticing a vacant rock behind him, he considered for a moment whether he could jump to it. Almost as if the lava was reacting to his optimistic thoughts, it splashed up and ashes landed on his arm, taking with it any hope of survival. The ashes alone caused Eddie such intense pain that he incessantly shrieked out for mercy.
He looked back around. The girl had made it to the next rock over.
He scampered around. He looked desperately for some form of restitution; something, somewhere, that could help him escape.
All those familiar feelings he had so well repressed as a child returned. The sense of hopelessness, the loss, the despair.
She took her last step off the lava and onto Eddie’s rock.
Eddie scrunched up into a ball on the floor, entombing his face in his arms, clenching his eyes shut, declining to concede her perilous proximity. He wasn’t sure what he hoped to achieve by this, but he didn’t care. He braced himself for whatever came next.
Her presence became cold beside him, her heavy breathing travelling with a repulsive stench through his hair. He could tell she had crouched down in front of him.
His head filled with a thousand migraines, her hands pressurizing against the side of his temples with excruciating force. He opened his eyes for a moment to see her open her mouth and dive at him. Before he could even take in the stale, yellow teeth or the saliva filled with blood, he was knocked onto his back.
The stone of the ground sprang up to wrap around his chest, capturing him and fixing him to the floor. He struggled against it but was unable to move to put up any kind of a fight.
“Eddie…” came the distant voice of a young girl. Eddie recognized it instantly. The pit of his stomach grew nauseous.
It can’t be…
Before he could object any further, the soft hand of a young girl traced down his face. His head was bound to the ground but his eyes were not; he strained them to see to the side of him and there, before him, was the face of his younger sister, the age at which she died, a face bursting with endless emotion.
“Cassy…” he sobbed, every feeling he had been repressing since he was a child coming to the forefront of his being. The love he held for his sister, the feeling of protection he’d had over her, the loss and longing he had endured, the empty pit in his stomach that he could never replace with the alcohol and empty sex he tried to fill it with…
“Eddie…” she cried over him. “Please, please save me…”
“Cassy?”
“Eddie… they are hurting me…”
As she climbed over him, her tears pounding his face, he glimpsed her body. She was wearing nothing, yet you could see no skin. Dried blood, old scars, faded marks older than he could place. Every piece of her body was bruised or marked; her eyes were blackened, her hair a matted mess of grease and dried scar tissue.
Before he could react, before he could tell her how much he loved her and how much he missed her, she was gone, and the demon with heads of man, ravenous bull, and aggressive ram was before him. He remembered that beast’s name. He remembered it clearly.
Balam.
It roared in his direction, hurling with its roar a ball of blood and saliva.
“I have your sister’s soul!” it snarled with terror. “Come take it from me! Take it and claim your place!”
The female beast appeared in front of Eddie’s eyes and sank itself into his body. Piece by piece, it placed its hands inside his, its chest inside his, its head inside his.
Every piece of him became consumed by the feeling of dreaded loss and empty soullessness. The thing he had feared when he saw it as a child was now the thing inside of him.
He felt himself lose control in a manic seizure. His body uncontrollably convulsed, and he foamed from his mouth. When the seizure stopped, he looked up.
She was gone.
That’s when he woke up.
11
22 July 1995
Eddie’s hospital room became consumed with chaos as doctors and nurses flooding around him. His eyes barely opened and he was highly unaware, but he could still pick up on the shock in the room. The medical staff were so frantic, so unprepared for the unexpected eventuality that he might need help.
Once Eddie had woken up fully, the pandemonium was over. He was alone, with Jenny next to him, sitting on a chair, his hand in hers, looking sincerely distraught.
“Eddie? Can you hear me?”
Eddie turned his head to the side. His neck ached, as if he hadn’t used it for a long time.
“Jenny…?” he mustered. “Where did the doctors go?”
“What doctors, Eddie? You woke up last night, the doctors were in here then, they’ve all gone now. You’re okay.”
“Jesus…” Eddie attempted to sit up, but Jenny pushed him back down, shaking her head.
“Be careful, you’re still weak.”
“Was I asleep all night?”
“All night?” Jenny’s eyebrows narrowed and her confusion became apparent. “Eddie, you’ve been under for three months. The doctors thought you were braindead.”
Braindead? They thought I was braindead?
He remained silent, staring at the ceiling above him, unconsciously organising the tiles above him into various columns and rows. He decided to close his eyes.
“What happened?” he meekly uttered.
“You don’t remember?” Jenny stared at him. Her mouth dropped for a moment, then her expression shielded with sorrowful dread. Her eyes filled with tears.
“What?”
“Don’t you ever do that again, you hear me?” She jabbed her finger at him. “You are my best friend. I’ve known you all my life, I can’t imagine…”
She leant back, biting her finger-nails, turning her head away from Eddie and toward the open door. The light in the corridor went out, then came back on as a nurse walked past.
Eddie closed his eyes and tried to remember. He saw glimpses. He remembered the woman… which must have been a dream. The whole scene of spewing lava and lashing fire, it must have been his unconscious.
“How long have I been out?” Eddie asked.
“A few months,” Jenny answered, keeping her head turned away from him. She was slumped down in her chair, pressing her lips together in an attempt at not letting her emotions get the better of her.
A few months? Had he been dreaming about that vile woman for months? About Balam? About his sister?
A realistic projection of the unconscious, he decided. Just familiar f
eelings from his experience as a child. An experience he would never want to relive.
“Is my mum here?”
“Well no she wouldn’t be, would she? She doesn’t give a shit. But I’m here.” Jenny was angry and not afraid to convey it. She spoke with agitation and impatience, whilst doing her best to retain her dignified expression of solidity. But she couldn’t. It broke. And tears fell like rain.
That’s when Eddie remembered. The bridge. The policeman. The water. He had jumped. He had tried to kill himself. He had done his best to withdraw himself from this world and somehow he had been saved; despite being against the odds, despite being braindead, despite being attached to life support, he was saved.
If I was braindead, why didn’t they turn off the life support? he considered. Then he realised. Only his blood relatives could do that, and none of them cared enough to attend.
But Jenny had. Jenny had cared enough. She was there.
Eddie leant out a hand. It took him by surprise how weak that arm felt as he slumped it toward her, but he opened his palm and gestured for her hand nonetheless.
Tearing apart her folded arms, Jenny leant her hand out to reciprocate the gesture. She finally looked to Eddie. Tears filled her eyes, but through her blurred, watery vision, she could see his.
“I’m sorry,” he told her.
“You bloody well better be,” she threw at him through a mouth convulsing in the way it does when you attempt to restrain uncontrollable tears. “You may not have many people who give a shit, but I am here, and I do give a shit. And I give it enough for all of them. So don’t ever do that to me again, you hear? Don’t ever do that to me again!”
He rubbed her hand gently with his thumb, back and forth.
“I won’t.”
12
31 January 1999
“Adeline, if you can hear me – hold on. Hold on sweet girl, I’m coming.”
The creature of filth bellows with laughter. Objects launch themselves careening across the room. Eddie instinctively flinches out of the way, scarcely evading a hardback book from clattering him over the head. The curtains raise and retract against a closed window smothered in condensation.
“You delusional sack of shit,” declares the dirty words from an innocent girl’s mouth. “She should have taken you. She should have taken…”
His eyes widen. This is new. He had faced many demons before, yes, but none that knew anything about him and where he came from. He assumes the creature is bluffing. There is no way.
“Yes, that’s right,” it speaks in a low, croaky voice, smirking at him. “That’s right… Edward… Eddie… Edward King.”
“How –” he stutters. “How do you know my name?”
The belts loosely holding the captive girl’s hands to the bed-post soar from the demon’s wrists and smack into Eddie’s neck, firmly strapping around his oesophagus, tightening and tightening. He clutches at the belts choking him, clawing at them with his fingers. It is no good. He is wheezing and gasping desperately for air that doesn’t come.
Adeline’s body rises off of the bed. Through his suffocation he acknowledges a feeling of astonishment; he has not seen this before. He has heard vile words of foreign languages spew out of a homeschool child’s mouth; he has seen objects move of their own accord – he has even seen purple vomit float in the air.
But never has he seen a body levitate five feet off the ground.
“How…” he croaks, but can speak no further. The belts closes around his throat, squeezing tightly on his gullet. He becomes faint. He becomes weak.
The demon ascends Adeline’s head until it is vertically in front of Eddie, holding her body in the air, looking him directly in the eyes, mocking him with its cackles.
“Eddie…” it whispers, this time in Adeline’s faint, pleading voice.
Eddie reaches his hand into his back pocket and tightly grasps his crucifix in his hand. He withdraws it and lurches himself toward the monster, the crucifix held tightly out in front of him. The demon recoils with a yelp that comes out in multiple voices. This is enough for it to lose its grip over the belt suffocating his throat, allowing Eddie to rip it away and throw it to the side.
Dropping to his knees and drawing rapid intakes of breath, he forces himself to regain his senses.
It’s funny, really, he tells himself. Five years ago I’d have laughed at someone who had a crucifix. Now it just saved my life.
After spending more time than he would like gathering himself, he looks up. It’s gone quiet. No slain, battered body stands in front of him. He darts his eyes around the room. Then he sees her, in the top right corner of the room above him. Its limbs dislocated from their sockets, pressing against the ceiling and the wall to hold the tormentor in place.
“You are to let the girl go, now,” he demands, rising to his feet. “In the name of God, you are to let Adeline go.”
“In the name of who?” the creature grins.
Objects circle around the room with more vigour and aggression. Paper slaps against his heels and rotates around his feet in a mini tornado. Broken furniture drags across the floor. Shards of glass nip against his bare skin. The wind the demon conjures batters Eddie’s ears, to the point he has to shout to be heard.
“In the name of God, foul creature!” He takes a few steps toward the corner of the room the creature resides in. “I am giving you a chance now to leave. Leave, and no harm will come to you!”
“No harm will come to… me?”
A large claw mark slits across the girl’s chest, splashing blood in a curved line across the floor below. For a moment, Eddie can hear Adeline scream from within the body somewhere. The creature just smiles.
“I assure you, Eddie” – it pronounces his name with such emphasis it makes him shiver – “it does not do to dwell on the damned… Adeline is gone. And I can do more to harm her than you can do to harm me.”
He holds out the crucifix with a strong grasp.
“You think that will hurt me again you thick cunt?” the demon spits at him. “You used it once to take me by surprise. You’ve used that trick only once.”
“Tell me your name,” Eddie snarls back.
A mixture of thick red-and-green vomit spews out of the demon’s mouth like a canister of toxicity unleashed over the last remaining, unspoilt remnants of earth, boiling and bubbling through the carpet.
“What is your name!? You have taken this girl, you can at least tell us your name! If only to amuse you, you foul beast.”
“My name,” it chuckles, “is Balam.”
He stumbles back. His knees become weak. It can’t be.
13
2 August 1995
Eddie awoke with a jolt. As he acknowledged the dirt of the grass pressing against his face and the warm rays of the sun above him, he noticed a strange sensation upon his foot. Realising where he was, he leant up and peered across his body.
It was a dog, licking his foot like there was no tomorrow.
“Oy!” came their neighbour, Roger, as he walked past, a middle-aged father with oversized glasses and a bald spot. The dog promptly chased after its owner.
“Hi Roger!” called out Eddie.
“Morning,” he replied with a grin, quite used to the sight of Eddie waking up on his lawn.
Eddie peered around for his crutches. How on earth he’d managed to sleep walk to the middle of the front garden with the pan he was in, he did not know. He noticed one crutch laid on the floor a few paces back and one propped up against the front door. As he dragged himself along the grass to retrieve his crutches, the door opened and Jenny appeared behind him with a cup of coffee.
Eddie used the crutch to help himself onto his feet and limped toward her, grunting at her as a thank you for the warm, tasty, caffeinated beverage.
“Have a good night last night, Eddie?” she asked sarcastically. The tone of her voice told Eddie that she was unlikely to have had as good a night as he.
“Not sure, don’t remember,”
he replied with honesty. “Why?”
“You can barely walk around your sofa bed without banging your toe on a beer bottle.” She stood with her hands on her hips, clearly agitated about her lack of sleep. “We spoke about you moving out and that was delayed and all that after your accident, but if you’re going to be a prick about it, you can be gone.”
Eddie limped his way past Jenny and into the house. As he passed the sofa bed, he almost choked at the sight of bottles, cans and open crisp packets stuck around the place.
“I’m sorry, Jenny,” he blandly told her, with barely any meaning. “I’ll deal with it. I promise. By the time you get home from work…” He trailed off as he stumbled his way into the kitchen and sat at the table. He placed his coffee down and nursed it in front of him, putting his hood up and burying his face. Jenny stood behind him with her arms folded, shaking her head, stumped as to what to say to him.
Lacy broke the uncomfortable silence with her chirpy entrance to the room, jokingly lifting his hood up and switching on the kettle. She was wearing tiny pyjama shorts, and Jenny was incensed even further when she spotted Eddie staring at her dainty backside.
“So how’s your head today?” asked Lacy, filling her cup of coffee and leaning against the sink, turning her inquisitive gaze toward him. She was a lot more relaxed than Jenny, but Jenny was his oldest friend, and Eddie knew he was letting her down with every day he stayed there, messing up the life they were trying to build as a couple.
“Bad,” he answered. “Hey, can anyone drive me to therapy today?”
Jenny scoffed, loading Eddie’s dishes from the previous night into the sink.
“I can,” Lacy interjected before Jenny could start one of her lectures. “I’m going that way into town, I can drop you off. But you’d need to get the bus back.”
“Sure, thanks. Say, do you got any change for the bus?”
