The monster’s Twitter page. The asshole in the sombrero who had started all this, or at least brought it to Natalie and Jess’s door. Well, good, she thought. Maybe the police would go find him. Although, God help them if they did …
Somehow, as dawn broke, Jess got Eddie fed and mercifully, finally, to sleep, then clicked him into his car seat. Leaving Benny in the passenger seat, because Benny could no longer move, she forced herself to go back to the condo, started bringing out their very few possessions. That didn’t take many trips. She didn’t try arranging or packing anything, and obviously, the trunk of the car was off-limits, so she mostly just chucked clothes and necessities in the well under Eddie’s feet and on the seat beside him, and laid a coat over Benny like a patchwork blanket. He was in so much pain, now, that he could no longer even open his eyes; he just leaned into the door and whimpered.
When she’d finished in the condo, turned out the lights, drawn the curtains, locked the door—buying them time, though she had no idea for what, or even whether that was what she should be doing—Jess returned to the car once more, stumbled around to Benny’s side, and watched him breathe. She wanted to kiss his forehead but needed to conserve energy, rest her rib cage, because she still had one more job to do. Eventually, she simply laid her hand on his shuddering back and let him weep.
She, on the other hand, appeared to be done weeping, at least for tonight. In truth, she felt remarkably close to the way she remembered feeling on the day Joe had finally given in to the mutant cells rampaging through him and closed his eyes for good. Except with at least one or two cracked ribs.
Soon, she would do what she always did: get to it, climb behind the wheel, flee this town. She would save what she could. She would take care of the children.
Child.
Soon.
“I’ll be right back.” She breathed, counted three, and pressed her fingers into Benny’s clammy, twitching shoulder. “Don’t die.”
Straightening caused something else to rip inside, and she cried out, clutched her ribs—which hurt them still more—then grabbed the roof of the car and held on to that. When she was sure she wouldn’t fall over, she slid the gun from her pocket, checked the chamber, and clicked it back into place. Then she turned, one last time, toward the beach.
To get back down the wooden stairs, Jess had to clutch the splintering banister, lower one foot, edge the other alongside it, and she had to watch her feet to make them move. And so there was a single moment, as she reached the sand and the first flickers of actual sunlight flared in the marine mist like searchlight beams, when she looked up and thought Sophie had gone. That she’d somehow scuttled away like a crab, leaving her severed limbs behind, or else buried herself under the beach. In that instant, Jess almost hoped it was true, that Sophie really had gotten away, despite what her lurking presence might mean for future visitors to this grim little swimming spot. Because Sophie really had been Sophie, once, and not so long ago, either. And the sparkle in her laughter had put even her Roo’s to shame, had flared so brightly that it had warmed not just Natalie’s world but Jess’s, too. Sometimes.
But of course, Sophie wasn’t gone. She was propped, tilting, exactly where Jess had left her, just a little farther out from the pier than she’d remembered. Glancing up, Jess noted the pier’s wooden railing, sagging but unbroken, and realized that Sophie hadn’t, in fact, fallen after the monster in the sombrero had dismembered her; she’d been chucked overboard like garbage, or chum.
And now she was watching as Jess stumbled toward her across the sand, step by agonizing step. Her eyes never once blinked, as far as Jess could see. Instead, they seemed to be looking everywhere at once, almost frantically, as though lapping up every last drop of this night, this world where her child had very briefly lived.
Well, drink up, sweetie, Jess thought savagely, ignoring the pain, making herself stand straighter. Again, the gun rose from her side without any conscious direction, drawn toward Sophie’s skull like a magnet. Jess almost shot her without even stopping. But she couldn’t quite do that. Instead, she went all the way over, right up within arm’s length, then closer, still. Vaguely, and with no particular alarm, she realized that she was putting herself in danger. If one of those seemingly dead hands lashed out, yanked her off-balance, got one of her ankles within range of those teeth …
Leaning over slowly, she drove the muzzle of the gun through the matted mass of Sophie’s hair, pushing it all the way down to the scalp, so hard that she felt the scalp depress.
“Good night, Sophie,” she choked out, not looking away, never for one second letting herself look away, which was why she almost screamed when Sophie twitched to life, her lips suddenly squirming over themselves like a snakes’ nest poked awake.
“Don’t,” Sophie said.
Jess’s finger froze on the trigger. Not because of the croaking voice, which sounded nothing like the Sophie she had known. This voice was mostly wind. Wind in a seashell.
Nor, God knew, was it the look on Sophie’s face that halted Jess. Was that even an expression? Sophie’s lips kept squirming, and muscles all over her cheeks quivered, as though that face were actually a Sophie mask, and whoever was under there was trying desperately to pull the mask tight, get the face straight.
No. What stopped Jess was the word itself, and the tone in which it was spoken.
A little like a warning. But more like a bid, at an auction, as though this were a contest, or a negotiation.
“Why on earth not?” Jess hissed. If anything, she pushed the gun down harder.
Sophie’s answer was too long coming. And not because she was gathering strength or, obviously, breath, but because she was thinking. Scheming, Jess thought. She was almost positive Sophie was scheming.
Almost.
“Help,” Sophie finally said.
For an answer, Jess dropped to her knees. Ignoring the pain, she glared right into Sophie’s so-familiar brown eyes, which were no longer familiar. All that shine in them was gone, or maybe just scummed over, now, like stagnant water. Despite Sophie’s condition, Jess braced herself, expecting a rattlesnake-lunge, and kept the gun planted in Sophie’s skull.
“Is that a plea or an offer?”
She really was asking, because she really couldn’t tell. Not that it mattered at this point. Less than two hours ago, Jess had murdered her own daughter. And her daughter had still been herself enough to know why, to want it to happen. Or at least to welcome it. Compared to that, pulling the trigger on this thing would be like smacking a wasp.
And yet, Jess hesitated. Worse, she had to resist an urge to sag forward and pull Sophie’s stump against her and hug it.
Then Sophie spoke again. And this time, she said the only word that could have saved her, in a voice that was awfully close to Sophie’s voice, after all. Mangled, shredded, but unmistakably hers. And she said it with no tears, no histrionics, and only a hint of hope. The last hope, Jess knew from experience. The one it was impossible to let go of while any part of you was still you, even when you knew it was too late.
“Willy?” Sophie said.
Before Jess even realized what she was doing—certainly before she’d thought it through, because it was crazy, and also so painful that she was howling behind her clenched teeth—she had pocketed the gun, turned around, grabbed stump-Sophie’s outstretched arms, and hoisted her off the sand like a backpack. She wasn’t the only one howling, she realized; Sophie, too, was whinnying in pain or panic or grief or God knew what, right in her ear. In fact, Sophie’s mouth was practically covering Jess’s ear, filling it with pleas and whinnies and curses, and even as Jess staggered yet again toward the pier and the wooden stairs, she was waiting for those teeth to snap shut, rip her ear clean off, so Sophie could drive Jess into the sand and finally, mercifully, finish her.
But Sophie just cursed and whinnied and went on whinnying. And somehow, right as actual day-heat rose from the sand and brushed over them, Jess reached the bottom of the steps, then
flung Sophie off to thud, spine-first, against the planks and cement.
This time, she allowed herself five long breaths. Every time her lungs inflated, the jagged edge of at least one rib on her right side threatened to slice through her skin or her lung or both. Maybe it had already sliced. But the air stayed in when she sucked at it. And it came back out, the way air generally did, except right now she was noticing. Tasting it.
Instead of attempting to hoist Sophie’s stump onto her back again—instinctively, Jess knew that would be the one insane thing too many for her tortured frame—Jess took one of Sophie’s arms by the wrist. Sophie stopped whinnying long enough to look up, wondering.
“Give me the other arm,” Jess said.
Sophie stared at her. “No,” she said. And then, “Why?”
With a grunt, Jess leaned down and snatched Sophie’s other arm. Then she moved up a single step, yanking Sophie behind her.
Mostly, during that ridiculous, hellish ascent—all of eight stairs, maybe ten feet, through pain-fireworks so blinding that at one point Jess really did believe her eyes had just exploded—she thought of breathing, and nothing else. But two steps from the top, right as she decided she might make it after all, she felt herself float, for a single moment, blissfully free of her skin into the air. She gazed down at herself and the half of her daughter’s best friend that she was dragging. And what popped into her head was her own voice, from twenty years ago, reading to Natalie about Christopher Robin dragging Winnie-ther-Pooh, bumpety-bump, down the stairs.
This is just like that, floating-Jess thought. Except up, instead of down. Dragging Sophie-ther-Hellthing.
After that, there were no thoughts of any kind until they reached the car. She was about to open the back when she realized Benny was already in back, drooping sideways away from the door, one hand holding Eddie’s. And that was definitely right, definitely better. Propping open the front passenger door, Jess lodged Sophie’s stump in the seat and started leaning across to buckle her in. She hadn’t even realized that Benny was watching until he spoke.
“Jess. Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Benny,” she said, “I need you to shut up.” She yanked the seat belt as tight as it would go. Sophie started to topple forward, so Jess had to catch her, shove her back.
“You’ll have to … lean the seat,” Sophie mumbled.
“You shut up, too.” But Jess found the lever, tilted the seat back. The seat belt wouldn’t sit right; it rode up high on Sophie’s breasts and crossed the bottom of her chin and the edge of her mouth. Instead of straightening it, Jess gave it a yank, then glanced at Benny. “I love you. Don’t say a goddamn word. Either of you.” Then she staggered around to the driver’s side, letting one finger trail, so softly, over the top of the trunk in which her daughter lay, and half-fell into her own seat.
They were out of the lot, past the end of the boardwalk, picking up speed as the mist melted before them into the wet, orange morning, when Sophie said, “Turn around.”
Jess slammed on the brakes, sending the car skidding sideways onto the shoulder of the street. She started to swing her head toward Sophie, but too fast; the movement brought tears back to her eyes. Or maybe those were already there, had never left. “I said shut up. I said not one word, or I swear I’ll kick you out so fast you’ll—”
“Turn around,” Sophie said, spitting out her seat belt like a gag and turning her own head, which was the only thing she could turn. Her stump-thighs looked bloody on the seat but dry, the blood mostly crust. Tendons twitched at the wound openings, making Jess think of those tubeworms that live on hydrothermal vents. Impossible things, that could not—should not—be moving, or living.
“Why?”
“Jess. Please. Go back right now and get my goddamn legs.”
4
Around 2:00 in the morning, still slumped beside her desk and staring at the phone, Rebecca realized she hadn’t actually asked the 911 dispatcher to call her back. She had just assumed that someone would, that she was part of the team of late-night people she’d never actually met but who watched over the town together, saving others from themselves or each other.
Part of the team. What, in her entire life, would have led her to assume that?
She picked up the Crisis Center phone, then put it down. For at least the fifth time, she raised a hand to her right ear, which still tingled painfully. It had been tingling ever since her conversation with her caller, as though scorched.
No. As though freezing. Frostbitten, almost.
Is it beautiful there?
Had she really said that to a man standing on a precipice, staring over the edge of the end of his life?
Lonely street. That’s what he had sung, or said. And that was all she’d been able to tell the 911 dispatcher about where he was. The woman on the other end had shouted at her, at that point, told her to stop babbling.
But Rebecca had been babbling inside her own head ever since, replaying the entire phone call but jumbled up, her own comments shuffled into her caller’s, shuffled again. As though rearranging the words might change the ending.
She picked up her cell phone, now—this was her own business, not the Crisis Center’s; she’d done all the damage she could for one night under that persona—and started to dial 911 again. Then she stopped again. This wasn’t an emergency. The emergency had already happened. She had, in fact, helped cause it. This was just Rebecca, age twenty, in over her head, needing to know exactly what she’d done.
Nudging her computer awake, she Googled the non-emergency front desk number for the East Dunham police station. But of course, dialing that got her only the automated answering service, which instructed her to call 911 in case of emergency, or to please try again during normal business hours. She snapped her phone shut and stared into its little window until it went dark.
Next, she clicked on her chat window, typed still there?? and waited. But Joel didn’t answer. That surprised her. The fact that one of his girls was facing an emergency—even if the emergency wasn’t hers, and even if she wasn’t technically one of his girls, anymore—should have been enough to keep him right where he was. In fact, she was surprised not to find her screen filled with her name. With his typings of her name.
Only then, as her chin sank into her hand, did Rebecca realize how tired she was, how little she’d been sleeping, lately. Joel had taught her a little too well, in that regard. She wondered where he was: down by Halfmoon Lake, maybe, sitting on one of the overturned rowboats in the muck and reeds, or possibly puttering on one of his projects in his shed out back. Or maybe he was right where she’d left him, chatting with and challenging random Smackdown opponents online and listening to one of his crazy Internet radio stations on headphones, while his current girls and his wife slept. The only thing she couldn’t actually imagine him doing was sleeping. He just couldn’t seem to do that, as far as Rebecca had seen, until there really was no one in his world left to check on or play with.
No. Wherever he was, he was awake.
Pushing herself upright, Rebecca opened her phone, and just as she hit Speed Dial 1 and Send, she caught sight of the clock in the corner of her computer screen.
3:22? How had that happened?
Twitching in her chair, Rebecca fumbled with the phone, hit End, prayed she’d cut off before Joel’s phone had rung or even logged her call. She didn’t want him to see that she’d needed him. Not at 3:22. Partly, that was pride, and partly, she knew that the sight of her name, when he saw it, would worry him out of his mind.
Abruptly, she glanced over her shoulder, staring around the empty Crisis Center, out the giant windows onto campus. The black gums had swallowed their shadows, now, and stood still and dimensionless in the inevitable, unearthly, small-hour light Rebecca always dreaded most. If she was awake for this light, she always knew that meant that she would not sleep at all. This, she thought, was the real midnight: dead center between night and morning, part of neither; the moon gone, the sun abs
ent, the light so flat that the world went flat, as though all air and movement and blood had been siphoned out of it, leaving everything just leaning where it had been left, like rakes in a garage, props in a prop room for a play that had long since ended. Or never started.
4:03?
With a cry that came out startlingly loud—and therefore felt reassuring—Rebecca smacked herself in the face, then did that again. She shook her head and dragged the Crisis Center logbook to her. Fishing a pen out of the desk drawer, she let herself pause only long enough to bite the inside of her cheek as she considered. In the Calls Taken column, she wrote, “Unidentified, singing man in obvious confusion and distress, from a rooftop somewhere in the vicinity.” She noted the time in the appropriate box and took one more very brief breath as her pen hovered over the Actions Taken section before writing, “Discussed roofs. Convinced him to jump.” Then she crossed that out and wrote, “Called 911.” Then she slammed the logbook shut, powered down her computer, locked up the Center, and fled Mooney Hall.
Just as she hit open air, the Clocktower bells erupted, and Rebecca stopped in the center of Campus Walk, threw back her head, closed her eyes, and let the peals rain down on her. She stayed in that position even after the ringing was over, letting the echoes reverberate in her ears, clearing them, drumming out the whistling she’d been hearing all night, through the hours she had somehow brooded away. Even after she opened her eyes, the echoes continued misting down, seemed to settle like dew on her face and the leaves and the just-mown grass.
It was already morning. Almost. Morning really was coming.
And that was that why she had always loved the 4:15 Clocktower bells so much. A lot of UNH-D students hated them, especially the ones who lived on campus, and a few started petitions every year to have them silenced. And no one Rebecca knew had ever offered a satisfactory explanation of how or why or even when the tradition had started, or whose idea it was to unleash a cannonade over the empty streets of East Dunham, New Hampshire, exactly once a night, exactly at 4:15 a.m.
Good Girls Page 4
