“Honey?” Rick stood in the bedroom doorway holding a bowl and a spoon.
I reached out to him and opened and closed my fist as if I were a toddler asking to be picked up. He hesitated, came forward, and set the bowl down. He straightened and looked around the room.
“Sit next to me.” I patted the bed.
He lowered himself gingerly next to me, and I leaned into him. I’d hoped to find solace and comfort, but I felt only loneliness as I clung to him. I righted myself, picked up the spoon, and tried to ignore the tears that fell into my soup.
I ate mechanically, and the warmth of the small meal expanded within me. I peeled off my robe and dried my face with it. My eyelids grew heavier with each spoonful. I completed the Olympic feat of finishing the entire bowl before I gave in to weariness. I lay backward, pulled my knees to my chest, and fell back asleep.
Chapter Seventeen
I woke very early the next morning to the dim light of dawn. The bedsheets smelled like they had just come out of the packaging, and I thought that I really needed to wash them. My head hurt—a lot. I whimpered and curled a hand through my hair. I made a fist and pulled. It was a good hurt, one I could concentrate on. It relieved some of the throbbing pressure inside my skull.
How do we make it stop? the inside voice said.
“Painkillers.”
I rifled around the bedside table but couldn’t find any. I got out of bed and crumpled. My legs felt rubbery, even after I was lying in a heap on the floor. I crawled to the bathroom and pulled myself to my knees. I pulled open the drawers and found nothing. No medicine. No razors. No makeup. Nothing.
Where were the damned painkillers? I’d give a limb for a few pills.
I pulled myself to my feet and leaned against the vanity. I opened the medicine chest and there, thanks to everything good in the world, was a single bottle of aspirin.
I scrunched my face at the bitterness of the pills and drank from the tap in the sink. It washed the pills away but not the bitter taste, so I drank again until the water tasted cool and sweet.
I looked in the mirror and drew my arm across my mouth. I saw my silver eye first, then I took stock of the rest of my face. I still looked like the walking dead. I leaned down to the tap again and stopped when I felt the water slosh in my stomach.
I crawled back to the bed and used the bedcover to pull myself back up and in it. I fell asleep. The next time I awoke, it was to a bright room. I pulled the covers over my head to escape the shards of sunlight that pierced my eyes.
The painkillers didn’t work.
“I know.” The pain raged through my skull. It crashed into me like waves on the beach, allowing a respite just brief enough to catch my breath and brace for the next one. I waited for a longer break, but one didn’t come. I couldn’t take it. I wanted to die. I needed it to stop. I needed help. Nine-one-one. Wasn’t that the number you called to get help?
Again, I stepped out of bed, and again my limbs betrayed me. I crawled out of the bedroom into the hallway. I had to get to the kitchen phone. I dragged myself across what felt like the Gobi Desert, into the kitchen, and laid my head down on the floor. Ah, so cold. I lay there for a few minutes taking in as much of the soothing nature of the cold floor as I could. Then a tsunami of nausea forced me to clamber up to the sink. I found out there was nothing in my stomach but water. Then there was nothing at all. Then there was less than nothing.
When it was over, I slithered down the cabinet and onto the floor. The pain had shrunk to the size of Texas. Breathing hard, I looked for the cord that hung off the ancient phone in my kitchen. It wasn’t there.
Where was the damn kitchen phone? Where was my cell? It was probably in my purse. Where was my purse?
I crawled back toward the living room as waves of agony picked up in strength and broke on my head. A particularly strong one forced me to stop and sit in the middle of the room. I started to sob and realized the movement of my shoulders made it worse. I let the tears flow, but did so with the placidity of the dead.
“Honey, did you fall?” Rick walked into the living room and knelt beside me.
“No,” I said. “My head’s going to explode.”
“What? You’ve got a headache?”
“No. This isn’t a headache. I don’t know what it is, but it’s killing me.”
“Let me get you some medicine.”
“I already tried that. It didn’t work. I need to go to the hospital, but I can’t find the phone.”
“The phone? Why do you need the phone?” He helped me to my feet. My legs went all rubbery again, and I grabbed onto Rick’s forearms.
“I need to call . . .” Who did I need to call? “I need to get to the hospital. Something’s really wrong.”
My stomach clenched. I groaned and bent over to throw up. Rick launched himself backward, but I weighed less than he did. Momentum carried me across the room. My feet dragged along the carpet, and my back slammed into the living room wall. My head whiplashed, hit the wall, and knocked a picture frame down. It fell to my right and the glass broke. A second before, I would have said the pain couldn’t get worse. I was wrong. Blissful darkness crashed around me.
Chapter Eighteen
I didn’t open my eyes, but I could feel my body was in the same position as it was before I passed out. My back was against the wall, and my legs stuck out in front of me. The back of my head ached. I wondered how much time had passed.
The headache was a small throb deep inside. If I stayed very still, maybe it would stay quiet. As if the pain knew I’d regained consciousness and was thinking coherently, each beat of my heart made it grow. I kept my eyes closed and prayed until I knew it would do no good.
I reached back and touched the back of my head gingerly. I stopped prodding when the sharp pain of my finger’s pressure linked to the pain in the center of my head and pulled themselves toward each other. They made copies of themselves and ran around. I let out a sob. Labor hadn’t been this painful.
Labor? I was never in labor. Rick and I didn’t have any children.
Another part of me yelled at myself. “Yes, you do have children!”
“Shhh,” I said to myself and thought through the Rick-and-I-don’t-have-children-but-I-have-children conundrum.
“She’s awake,” a man’s voice said.
I jerked with the sound of his voice. So did the aches in my head. I inched myself away from the wall and felt something whisper across my face. I sputtered and wiped at my face to get the spider web off it. Not a good move. Nausea joined the pain for another party.
I took a slow breath and opened my eyes. The room wasn’t bright, but the light still hurt. The pain rushed forth to meet the light. I closed my eyes again.
“How are you feeling?” Rick asked. His voice was devoid of comforting tones.
“Like shit,” I said. “Can we please go to the hospital now?”
“What’s the game plan?” Rick said.
“What are you talking about?” I asked at the same time the first voice I’d heard spoke.
“We shouldn’t discuss it now.”
I squinted and allowed my eyes to adjust to the light, and I relaxed the muscles in my face to alleviate as much pain as I could. I looked at the two men sitting on the living room couch. Rick had his arm resting over the back of the couch, and a balding man had his feet on the coffee table. They both drank beer.
The two men and everything in the room looked transparent. I blinked and could see them solid and superimposed over their transparent selves. I closed my eyes and rubbed them, then opened them again. They looked the same. Colors danced around them and within them. Colors within colors. Lemon yellow, ice blue, crimson.
Baldy’s form shifted and flattened out. I looked at Rick. His form didn’t move. I looked back at Baldy. His form shifted again. I lowered my gaze to my hands. The sight of his shifting form didn’t help the nausea. As I looked away, I saw what looked like a fishing net draped over Baldy’s knees.
&n
bsp; I pushed my hands into my face and put pressure on my eyes. I was missing something. I knew I should have known what was going on, but I couldn’t figure it out. Rick. Baldy. Colors. Shapes. The net.
“Talking about it won’t be a problem. When I’m done with her this time, she won’t remember anything. Her entire life will be a blank slate,” Rick said.
“Yes, that worked so well the last time,” Baldy said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “She is more trouble than she’s worth. I’m surprised you haven’t finished her yet.”
“I’ve had to play fucking nursemaid!” Rick said, “I didn’t sign on for this.”
“Why not just start in on her?”
“Because you said she’d get better. She won’t last long in the shape she’s in, and I deserve to have much more fun since I’ve had to put up with all this shit.”
“She should have gotten better.”
“You’re the doctor?” I asked Baldy. Maybe that’s why he looked so familiar.
He scoffed at me and rolled his eyes, then turned to Rick. “I don’t know why she’s not healing. After you called, I limited what I was taking from her. I thought maybe the net was faulty, so I just released it. She should be getting better, even now.”
“You promised her to me.”
“I promised you could have her if she survived. You have her.”
“That wasn’t the deal!” Rick said.
“That was the deal,” Baldy answered. “I don’t lose.”
Those last three words slammed into me one after the other: I. Don’t. Lose.
Memories washed through my mind. Carol. The boy with the curse. Taking the curse from him. The bed. The restraints. The akasha.
My face contorted when I looked at my midsection and found the glistening, eel-like curse. I wasn’t in the spirit realm. I was in the physical realm, but I could still see the curse; I could see the alternate realm while in the physical one.
It all started making sense. Rick was the other man in the hospital. He’d done something to me then, something that made me forget everything for a few minutes. He could mess with my memories. Make me think we had been married. But his alterations were failing. I still carried the memories he’d fed me, but I’d recovered my true memories. The net Mr. Bradley had draped over his knee was like the one he’d used on Carol—he’d come prepared.
Are you there? I thought to my inside voice.
Yes.
Do you remember who you are?
Yes. My memories returned with yours.
Good.
“I could make you forget she ever existed,” Rick said to Mr. Bradley.
Mr. Bradley laughed. “You know it won’t work.” He put the beer bottle to his lips and upended it. He took his feet off the coffee table, leaned forward, and placed the bottle where his feet used to be. “I better get this on her before something else happens. Then she’s all yours. Go ahead and make it last all night if you can, but she better be dead by tomorrow morning.”
“I doubt she’ll even last through the evening,” Rick said.
Mr. Bradley stood and shook out the net. It caught the light and shimmered. He raised it and looked at me.
“No,” I said. Fear crashed into me and on the heels of that, anger, wiping the panic from existence. Even the pain subsided a bit. The akasha could have killed me. And when it didn’t, the prick had given me to that creature. I threw a look at Rick. And then I looked down at the curse and back up at Mr. Bradley. Miriam had been right all along.
“I’ll take everything from you,” he said.
Mr. Bradley walked toward me and raised the net, holding it to the side as if he were a bullfighter and I were the bull. I reached into myself and grabbed the curse by the back of its neck. It didn’t fight me. Its oily tail slid away from my ribs, and I threw it at Mr. Bradley. Well, I didn’t have the strength to throw, so I nudged it and it did the rest.
“You’ll never take anything again.” My rage joined with the curse, and they both breached his shield.
The curse curled around Mr. Bradley’s ribs, and I could have sworn it grinned at me. Mr. Bradley’s eyes flew wide as a golden light erupted from his rib cage and blinded me for a moment. I turned away, closed my eyes, and waited for the pain to spike. It didn’t. It dulled to an ache behind my right eye and faded away. I opened my eyes again, looking back at Mr. Bradley. The blackness that I had seen surf his aura before roiled outward toward me. Tendrils extended and caressed me, bringing arctic cold. I shivered and scooted backward, trying to get outside of its reach, until I felt my back against the wall. The thing moved with me, and I scrunched my face, turning away, closing my eyes, and gritting my teeth, readying myself for the cold. I stayed that way for a long moment until I realized I’d felt nothing. No cold. I opened one eye and soon stared in wonder. The darkness seemed to strain forward and then stop inches from me, like a dog who has reached the end of its lead. And then it moved away, as if it were being reluctantly reeled back into Mr. Bradley. It sank and disappeared into him as it had done the few other times I’d seen it. Mr. Bradley had fallen to his knees, his shoulders hunched, and his head hung low. I watched the curse curl itself tighter to his rib cage and settle itself in its new and final home. Mr. Bradley raised his head, and I would have recoiled at the look he gave me had my back not been against the wall. “What did you do to me?”
Before I could answer, the door burst open, banged the opposite wall, and ricocheted back and into a man that had jumped through it. Drew crouched close to the floor, dressed in brown camouflage pants and a beige T-shirt. He looked different than he did in the hospital. More alive. Excited. At home.
“Hands!” he said and pointed his handgun at Mr. Bradley. “Let me see your hands!”
I put my hands slowly into the air and stopped when they reached my ears. I couldn’t get them any higher. Drew held the gun steady even though he’d only had his hand back for a brief time. I tried to say his name when more men came in behind him, their weapons drawn. Past them, on the walkway that led to the house, stood a woman with jet-black hair and delicate features. My eyes met hers and I smiled weakly.
“Miriam, it’s about damn time.” It was only a whisper and then I passed out. Again.
Chapter Nineteen
I woke in another white room. The smell of antiseptic was strong, and I heard people outside the room and down the hall. A window to my right looked out onto a large parking lot. This time, I wasn’t restrained, thank the gods. I saw a needle in the back of my hand and followed the tube up to the IV bag that hung next to the bed. I told myself it was only fluids, and I mostly believed it. I waited for a moment, thinking that I might panic. But no. Just some nervousness.
“Oh, you’re awake,” a too-cheery voice said, and I started, the bed clinking in response to my sudden movement. The voice’s owner was short and plump. Her blond hair was cut into a bob that bounced around her cheeks when she walked. She was dressed in scrubs decorated with swirls of color.
The psychic world colored the physical one. I’d only gotten a hint of it when I was under Rick’s loving care. I preferred not seeing in double, and it was going to take some getting used to. I wondered if I had a foot in both worlds, and couldn’t think of how I could find out for sure.
The nurse helped me sit up and handed me the bed controller. She rolled the table closer to me and told me to sip, not gulp, the tepid water. I did as I was told. I would have done almost anything she said if it meant I’d feel better.
“Mom?” Ethan’s head peeked into the room.
I started again. “Ethan! How did you get here?”
He rushed through the door and slowed. He must have realized that he might hurt me if he hugged me as badly as he wanted to.
“Ethan, honey, what’s wrong?” I said.
“Don’t ever do that again.” His voice was a whisper, and he gave in to the urge to hug me. He shook with the effort to keep the hug gentle.
My arms felt weak and were hard to raise, but I hugged h
im back anyway. “Do what?”
“Appear and then disappear. For days.”
I remembered the scene in Sean’s kitchen. When I thought I wouldn’t live through the ordeal, I was so glad I got to see the boys one last time. I didn’t consider how it would affect them. “Oh, gods. I’m so sorry!”
Ethan pulled away from me, and I touched his cheek before I lowered my hand back to my lap with a sigh.
“You need to shave,” I said and smiled. I always told him that. He rolled his eyes.
“She’s back to normal,” he called out, and Sean stepped into the room.
“As expected,” Sean said. He leaned over and kissed my forehead. I tried to pull him into a hug. His brow furrowed as if he didn’t know what I was trying to do. Then he seemed to figure it out, leaned down, and gave me a quick hug.
“How did you get here?” I asked them.
“We flew in three days ago,” Sean answered. They sat on opposite sides of the bed, their feet on the floor. Ethan held my hand. The amber of happiness surrounded each of them and was accented by champagne-colored relief and just a touch of fear.
“We used your credit card. I hope that was okay,” Sean said.
“Of course,” I said. “I am sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I just thought about you and there you were.” I barely succeeded in keeping the tears behind my eyes.
“What happened?” Ethan asked.
“I got on the wrong side of a very bad man.”
“Mom,” Sean snorted, “we’re not twelve anymore. You don’t need to protect us.”
“I’ll always protect you.”
Miriam walked into the room, took one of the chairs that faced me, and said, “The boys, sorry, young men, helped a lot. We wouldn’t have found you if it weren’t for them.”
I looked at my sons, eyebrows raised, and then back at Miriam. “Wait a minute,” I said. “You couldn’t track me?”
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