by Brian Hodge
“She came back to me, Richard,” Michael said, his fingers running lovingly over her icy skin. “I can’t believe it. God gave her back to me.”
“You don’t know that,” I said, feeling repulsed by the dead girl. I noticed her eyes moved slightly. “We don’t know what the hell this thing is. God doesn’t give people back.”
It was painful staring into the face of Michael O’Connor after he’d lost his little girl. When I looked into his eyes, I was always overwhelmed. They made me feel like I was staring into a window of a blazing house, watching someone burn to death—only the person was just standing there stoically letting the flames devour his blistering flesh.
“It’s Melissa,” he said. “She is from God, Richard. And don’t call her a thing.”
Looking at Michael by the flickering fire, his dead little girl standing before the flames, I could see the astonishing transformation. Gone were his pudgy chipmunk-like cheeks—replaced by sharp, severe cheekbones. The eyes, that at one time had twinkled with a mischievous gleam, were dark and gloomy, an edge of menace in the pupils, as if he had just crawled from the battlefield of a particularly brutal war. His frame was wiry and emaciated, nothing like the rotund form of only two years before. His hair, once full and curly, was shaved down to his scalp. Michael held the look of someone on the verge of shrieking in anguish before folding to the floor in a quivering fetal position.
Melissa died in a drowning accident. Only a year before that, his wife, Lisa, had died from an agonizingly slow bout with cancer. Melissa had always been a very special child, so wise for her years that it was frightening. When I first heard she was dead, I broke down and cried right where I stood.
We had gone to the cabin to escape Michael’s grief, to get him away from all that reminded him of his lost little girl. I don’t think he had left the state of Arkansas in his whole life, so I felt the change of scenery in the Pennsylvania mountains would do him good. Though being here had not erased his grief, he seemed more relaxed than I’d seen him in a long while.
We found her in the snow outside the cabin, standing rigidly in the cold wind. The moonlight made her blue skin shimmer like the stars above. Snowflakes swirled around her. I couldn’t even breathe I was so stunned.
Michael wept instantly, starting with an odd, painful sob before exploding from his lips like a storm. He fell to his knees in the snow, shoulders shaking as he whispered his daughter’s name like a mantra.
We carried her heavy body into the cabin, my mind too numb and unable to grasp the possibility of a dead girl coming back to see her daddy.
“Don’t you realize how strange this is? How impossible?”
As I asked the question, a large piece of ice fell from Melissa’s open mouth to the floor, shattering into tiny slivers.
She spoke, water dripping from her glossy teeth, though her lips never formed the words. “Daddy, I’m sorry I went swimming without your permission,” the child’s voice said, all wet and soggy, almost bubbly, as it boomed from still lips.
My skin prickled. It was too surreal, like demonic possession.
Michael sobbed before he was able to speak. “I know, honey. I know.”
Melissa began to cry. Her eyes slithered slowly to the left until they locked with mine, the sound of ice being dragged against stone as they moved. She had no pupils—just the dead blackness of space. I moved backwards as if struck, her dark gaze piercing into me with quiet violence.
“That’s not Melissa,” I whispered, my breath stopping as her eyes stabbed into me again with frightening rage.
Michael hissed—his fists curling up into tightly clenched balls. “She came back to me. God knew how much I needed her and He gave her back to me.”
I ignored the sound of the ice breaking as she melted free. “Melissa is dead.”
“Don’t you think I know that!” He snapped, grabbed my shoulders and pulled me into him, spraying my face with spittle. “I’ve suffered every fucking day since she died, Richard! Not a day goes by that I don’t hear the sound of her laughter! See her running by in the corner of my eye! I see her every night in my sleep! Not a day goes by that I don’t feel the loss of her!”
“Listen to yourself, Michael. You just said it. Melissa is dead. You’re talking about her in the past tense because you know this. Dead people don’t come back.”
He fell to his knees before the frozen corpse. I watched, repulsed, as Melissa’s eyes crept sluggishly downward.
His voice dropped to a soft whisper. “I prayed every day for her to come back to me…and now she’s here. There is no other way to see this except for an act of God.”
Her blue-pink fingers wiggled back and forth, water dripping from the edge of her nails. Her eyes darted back to me, daring me to speak against her.
“People don’t come back from the dead,” I said. “Whatever the hell this thing is, it’s not Melissa. Any fool can feel that she’s dangerous.”
“Fuck you,” he hissed, wrapping his arms around her icy corpse, his hot tears falling onto glacial arms with a soft hiss. The little girl giggled, her throat undulating softly under her motionless mouth as if there were insects awakening from within her cold flesh.
Michael flinched when she giggled like that, his body tensing.
I think some part of him knew that what he was embracing was just plain wrong, but he was desperate. Hell, if I had been in his place, I would have done the same damn thing.
By the next morning, Melissa had completely thawed out. She moved sluggishly, with a clumsy jerking of her limbs—like she didn’t have the ability to walk on her own and someone above was pulling invisible strings in lurching motions. Michael watched her with the guilty gaze of a heroin addict—a man who knew the absolute wickedness of what he was doing, but was unable to stop.
The snow had never really let up, and continued to blanket the world around us. Its usual serene beauty no longer made me feel safe.
She had no memory of anything after she’d died; she remembered only up to the point where she had drowned. At one point, they sang a childhood lullaby; Melissa perched awkwardly on his lap, a line of pinkish drool falling from her slack mouth. Her voice sounded far off, as if she were talking from a long distance away and was using her body as a receptacle.
It was one of the most frightening things I have ever witnessed, and to this day, when I see that moment in my mind, I’m gripped by a wave of revulsion unlike anything else I’ve ever experienced.
Because it was also the first time I noticed she was decomposing.
Melissa’s skin was turning slightly gray—no longer the pale white color of the snow she seemed born of. Her eyes, at first filled with moisture, had grown hard and black, not unlike the eyes of a doll. They did not focus on anything, only stared into nowhere, and I was certain that if I touched them, they would feel like coal.
“Her skin is rotting,” I said, no longer concerned with treading lightly.
Michael ignored me, picked her up, and took her into the bathroom. A few moments later, I followed and watched from the doorway. I could only shake my head and fight the urge to weep. Michael had a tube of ointment and was rubbing it over her festering wounds; desperately trying to stop what he knew was coming.
Melissa just stared at me, her dark mouth like a third eye. Tear tracks glistened down Michael’s face as he mumbled, his hands frantically massaging the medicine into her sores.
“It hurts, Daddy,” Melissa said, her voice soft and vulnerable—yet more distant than ever.
Michael closed his tear-filled eyes. “I know, honey. I’m trying to make it better.”
“I’m sorry, Michael,” I whispered.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Why is God taking her back? She’s dying.”
Though I tried to hold it back, I gasped—the air fleeing my body as if from a punch.
He was rubbing the ointment onto her bare back, the strap of her dress hanging limply to the side. Her spine was sticking through the rotted flesh,
yet his fingers rubbed lovingly over the knobs of bone.
“She was never alive,” I said, part of me hoping to destroy the abomination before me.
“He’s taking her back,” he said distantly. His fingers stroked her protruding spine obsessively. “He gave her to me to strengthen my faith, but now He’s punishing me for questioning Him.”
“If God gave her to you, He’s a cruel God.”
Michael buried his head into his daughter’s chest. “Leave us alone, please.”
“I love you, Daddy,” Melissa said as I walked away. Her voice was far away and creepy, like a tape player with a low battery.
By the next day, the skin on her cheek had rotted away completely, exposing her cheekbone to the stale cabin air. Maggots could be seen eating the flesh on a wound in her forearm. Melissa could no longer speak, only moan softly in a queer sing-song-like melody.
Michael continued to frantically rub her with ointment.
I cried as I watched them, wanting so badly to do something—anything—to stop the pain my friend was feeling, but I was helpless. We both were. By this time I was too far-gone to help, too numb.
Melissa’s face had begun to sink, the outline of her skull beginning to take shape under her decaying skin. It was as if her bones were coming through, her flesh melting away like ice.
Later that night, the wind pounding the walls of the cabin, Michael spoke to me for the last time. “I’m going with her, Richard. I can’t bear to lose her again. You’ve been very good to me. I’ll always love you for that.”
We embraced. Sometimes I can still feel his warm arms around me, and to this day I wish I had stopped him.
Michael picked up Melissa, who dangled like a rag doll, arms and legs swinging lifelessly as they moved. He did not look back when he opened the door and walked into the brutal wind.
I watched him carry his little girl into the sea of white, his dark clothing stark against the swirling snow, until he disappeared, the whiteness devouring him languidly.
When they found his body several days later, Melissa was not with him. He was leaned against a tree, his arms circled around nothing in a dead embrace.
Not a day has passed that I don’t think about what happened to us at the cabin. Part of me often wonders if we both didn’t suffer from some bizarre hallucination—or if I had somehow bought into Michael’s fantasy of bringing his girl back to life.
I often think of them.
Even outside of sleep, I can still hear Melissa’s laughter with vivid clarity—see Michael weeping over her decomposing body. My dreams have become infected by my experience that winter. I haven’t had a good sleep in at least a year.
I dread the upcoming winter.
It seems I am never truly warm—no matter how many sweaters I put on. Often, I wake up in the middle of the night shivering beside my wife, my teeth chattering together.
I have my own little girl now, and I can’t help but think of the cabin when I look into her beautiful eyes. Knowing what happened to Melissa has tainted the elegance of my child. She seems so fragile now, her life so fleeting, and it’s not hard to imagine myself in Michael’s place.
I hope my friend and his daughter have found some peace—wherever they are.
I know I haven’t.
Feeling Katherine
Looking deep into the whites of her frightened eyes, Simon felt something for the first time in over a decade. It tickled at his brain, skirting across in playful, almost painful, little steps.
As soon as he realized the feeling was love, he knew Katherine had to die.
“Simon, don’t do this,” she said, her voice trembling with each whispery word.
Simon could tell she had read his mind, and once again he was struck with a profound fear. He had killed dozens of women, but none had touched him in the way Katherine had. It was as if she had her delicate fingers probing right into his black psyche. In the past, he hadn’t felt even an inkling of guilt when he brought his knife to a woman’s flesh—sometimes he even smiled at them, watching his reflection in their eyes as they exhaled their last breath.
“I told you to stop talking to me,” Simon said, hating the guttural sound of his own voice. “Your manipulations are so fucking transparent.”
“I know you feel something, Simon. I can see it in your eyes.”
He studied her soft, doll-like face, inhaling deeply as if he could somehow devour her soul through the air. Katherine sat handcuffed to her chair, her expressive eyes pleading. Part of him wanted to run his fingers through her blonde hair, but he knew it was dangerous. Doing that had only made him more attached to her, something he instinctively knew was dangerous.
He wanted to tell her she was right, but instead he said, “I told you not to call me by my first name. If you do it again, I will kill you. Don’t push me, Katherine.”
He had kept her alive longer than any other victim. Most of them stayed here in his basement for only a few days at most. Katherine had been his captive for two months now.
She had listened to him attentively as he told her of his constant struggle to control his violent compulsions. It had come to the point where she had practically become his therapist, nodding sadly as he told tale after tale of his victim’s struggles. He had watched the tears run down her face when he talked about the brutal beatings he had received as a child. As soon as he realized she had begun to understand and empathize with him, it terrified him to the very core of his rotting soul.
Katherine had also told him stories of her own life, each one drenched with pain and sadness. He found himself nodding at her, feeling as if they were made to be together. Every time a thought of this kind came to him—the belief he could somehow have a normal life with her—it left him feeling wrathful. Every night he struggled with the puzzle of why this provoked anger in him, and the mystery eluded him, hiding itself deep in his troubled mind.
He knew he was deeply in love with her, though; that was a fact of which he was certain.
“Just let me touch you, Si—,” she stopped, realizing by the predatory way he cocked his bald head to the side that she may have pushed him too far. “Take these handcuffs off of my hands.”
He shook his head. “I can’t do that. And I noticed you almost said my name. You are standing at the edge of one very precarious fucking cliff, my dear. Don’t make me launch you off.”
Katherine nodded and looked down, mocking as if she was staring over the edge of his proverbial cliff. “Damn, there are a lot of bodies down there.”
Simon smiled, despite the fact she was ridiculing him. Katherine had a way of doing this that somehow didn’t make him angry, and it was one of the reasons he found himself so helplessly in love with her. “There you go again. You are either certifiably insane or courageous as hell.”
Katherine grinned, breaking his heart with her dazzling smile. “My father used to say it was a little bit of both.” She paused momentarily, watching him almost affectionately. “You just know I’m going to bring this up again.”
He ran his fingers over his smooth scalp and tried not to smile. “I’m not letting you go. We both know that I can’t.”
She sighed. “I know you won’t kill me and we both know that you can’t keep me locked down in this basement forever. You’re just going to have to learn to trust me.”
“I can’t do that.” He found himself touching her hair, reveling in its softness, imagining that she enjoyed the way it felt. “There is no way you will be able to keep quiet about your little stay here. It’s impossible.”
She leaned to the side, letting his fingers drag through her hair. Although part of him wanted to think that she really had feelings for him, he knew she was merely trying to manipulate him.
“Simon,” Katherine said.
He pulled back as if burned—clenching the knife tightly in his shaking fist as he stared down at her, a slow, dark smile forming under his long nose. “I warned you.”
She snapped at him ferociously, her eyes wild.
“Simon, I know you have feelings for me, Goddammit! Stop trying to hold yourself back!”
He sighed, his haunted eyes disappearing into the shadows of his face. “You have no idea how deeply I care for you. Every night I dream that you might actually have feelings for me, Katherine. And every night I wake up to the cold reality that I keep you locked up in this basement.”
“If you have real feelings for me, you will let me go.”
“Can you honestly say you would have even acknowledged my existence if I hadn’t taken you? If I had asked for a date in the real world, you would have laughed in my face.”
“How do you know this? I do have feelings for you, Simon, despite the fact that I am being held captive in your basement. And you have no idea what I would have done had you asked me for a date instead of taking me like this.”
“You are a liar. I’m a monster and we both know this. I am not worthy of love and I am incapable of redemption. You say these things because you know I want to hear them.”
“To know anyone completely is to know they are worthy of some kind of love. Redemption is always possible.”
Simon laughed, each breath escaping his lips in furious hisses. “That is so fucking trite. Do you really think I can be manipulated this easily?” He leaned down, until he could see fear deep in her beautiful blue eyes. “I have skinned alive women who looked just like you, Katherine.” He ran the backs of his fingers over the delicate skin of her cheek. “I have bit into the flesh of these women, enjoying the way their body would explode in pain, loving the way they screamed as I tore away their skin with my teeth. I have set women afire, admiring the way they can still shriek when their head is burning in flames—their skin blistering.” He leaned closer, letting his teeth drag across the bridge of her nose—he stopped when his eyes were only inches from hers. “You have the fucking audacity to tell me I am worthy of love? That I am capable of redemption? And expect me to fucking believe it?”
