"Relax Lisa, the baby won't feel a thing," Talitha said this as her hands reached out and caressed the volleyball sized tummy, the gun still in her right hand. Jim felt his heart start to hurt for Lisa as her great tears dripped down on the bulge of her belly. Again, he started forward to end the cruel game and again Will restrained him.
Talitha glanced back and her eyes seemed more inhuman than ever. "Look, Will, I'm holding two people. I have two lives in my hands... right in the palm of my hands. Will, honey, tell me where the sword is. Tell me right now or else. I won't ask again. Or...the...huh? The baby, uh...what?"
Jim watched the change happen right in front of him. He'd always considered people with multiple personality disorders to be frauds and he hadn't believed the priest when he had told him of Talitha's disorder. But he was a believer now. There was no faking what he saw, the girl was looking right at him with a nasty hard look that meant trouble and then suddenly, he saw life flood into her eyes. A multitude of emotions swept across this new Talitha's face and she blinked rapidly, staring about her.
Obviously, he was one of the first things she noticed and her startled expression was edged with that look Jim hated so much. He saw it before she was able to hide it away, it was a look reserved for burn victims and drooling retards: a look of disgust. Even with all her vile behavior of the last few hours, that look bothered him more than it should have.
Talitha then took in her brother, who was staring past her, not at Lisa but at the refrigerator and a dawning look of horror crept over his chiseled features. It made both Jim and Talitha look in that direction as well but there was nothing.
Finally, she turned all the way back around and saw Lisa's face streaming with tears. Fear and desperation warred for control of the blonde girl's features, so that she seemed to have developed a number of tics, as different muscles fought to align themselves in an acceptable order.
Talitha stepped back from her sister-in-law, "No!" she cried in desperation and brought her hand to her mouth to cover it. It was then she realized she was holding a gun and she eyed it with dreadful fascination. "No!" She practically screamed this at the gun and held it out away from her at arm's length. She looked back at the two men, her eyes were wild with fright, and tears filled them with a suddenness that wasn't possible.
"This can't be...Oh God, please no! I can't be here!" Talitha's fear seemed even greater than Lisa's and her body began to shake uncontrollably, the gun in her out stretched hand waved and bounced about. She acted like it was a tiger she had by the tail. Something she couldn't let go of, but also a terrible thing she wanted as far away from her as possible. She looked past it at her brother and it seemed that she was holding it out for him to take it, but his face hardened with a marbled look of sadness and self-loathing.
This nearly brought Talitha to hysterics and she continued to hold the shaking gun out to him, she blubbered, "Please, Will...please. I can't be here. Take me away, take me back to the cabin! Please!" The last word, she shrieked but Will only stepped back, his own face a contortion of misery. Talitha deflated at her brother's odd reaction and stared open mouthed at the floor for a long moment before turning to look at a bewildered Lisa.
"I was going to kill you...you and the baby. It was there in my head...an echo...it's so strong. She hates you; she hates your baby...I gotta get out of here." She took a step to the door but then stopped with a dawning of understanding. "No, it's you that has to go! Will! Look at me! Take Lisa and go, now! The other Talitha can come back any second and...and she knows where you live."
Lisa saw that it was her friend who spoke and despite her great fear she smiled at Talitha and said, "I was always afraid of this day happening; the day when she would show up."
"I was afraid too, but now, with the baby...she hates your baby so much. And now I think she'll come after you. She'll hunt you down...but...but maybe there's something I can do." Talitha came to a decision. "Ok, ok...ok. I love you Lisa, you were my best friend. I'm sorry about this. Good bye."
In an odd silence, Will had been watching the two women and an internal struggle was clearly being waged throughout his body. Misery, sorrow, self-loathing, and fear had been revolving about the merry-go-round in his head and each came out in a distorted fashion on his face. Unmistakably something clicked when Talitha had said goodbye and he leapt toward her.
But stopped short as she stuck the gun to her own head.
She looked at him and her emotions were too many and too great to read in the short time before she said to her brother, "Love you." It was a quiet whisper and it barely registered on Jim's ears, before she pulled the trigger.
The noise of the gun in the kitchen was deafening. A fine red spray coated the refrigerator and the big man now saw that new alphabet magnets had been stuck there forming the words I LOVE DADDY. Now they were more than magnets, they were stencils in blood.
Chapter 8
The Suicide of Love
From the second Will had entered the kitchen, the vision of Talitha shooting herself began to replay itself in an endless loop.
He saw only the tip of the gun next to her head and then the fantail of blood spraying out. There was just a hint of a white wall behind her, it was his wall. His kitchen wall.
As Talitha, the evil one, spoke, he knew the vision was going to become a reality at any moment and he held the giant back with an outstretched arm. Here was his chance to get Talitha out of his life for good. He could now live like a normal person, without the weekly torture and the sleepless nights leading up to it. All he had to do was...nothing. It wouldn't be his fault and he knew...or he thought he knew, it would be for the best.
Not just for him, but for Lisa and the baby as well. His little girl would need a real father, not the empty shell that he felt himself to be. It would be good for Talitha also.
She had been killing.
It didn't come as a surprise that the bad Talitha was finding a way to secretly kill people, but the good one...that had been too much to take and he felt as if his world had been slipped out from beneath him when he heard it. Will had thought he was going through his living hell for her sake, so she could get better, but it turned out that she wasn't. He was wasting his time and his life, and he understood the only way to fix things was to do nothing.
As Talitha spoke to his crying wife, threatening her beautiful baby, he said to himself, "All I have to do is nothing." And when the real Talitha, the one he loved, came back and begged Will miserably to take her out of there, he thought, "All I have to do is nothing."
However, he wasn't a strong person. If he had been strong, he would've shot her at the church. No, he had been forever weak and his weakness was undermining what had to be done, which was of course, nothing. Unfortunately, his desire to be strong and stand his ground was a losing battle and he wanted to rush her and grab the gun from her hands and save her once again.
Talitha turned to him and told him she loved him and he believed her, and he saw now she was still the strong one. She knew what was right. She would kill herself and save the world a great deal of pain.
"Love you." Was all she said before he proved himself to be weak once again. In his vision, he had watched the blood shooting out of her head, but in real life he cringed and turned away. After the explosion struck his ears with a painful sharpness, he kept his eyes shut hard for a long time, terribly afraid of what he would see when he opened them.
A loud sniffle from his wife finally forced his eyes to open just a crack and the scene was frightful. Talitha lay across the floor at Lisa's feet with her once tan face staring up blankly at the ceiling. A pool of blood, like a red halo had formed about her head; it expanded outwards by degrees. There was more blood covering the refrigerator as well as the cute multi-colored magnets he had picked up for the baby...
Her hands shook as she removed each letter and dropped them in a glass bowl, which had one time held clear water. Now, the water was a dull reddish grey. Each letter had left an outline of itself
in blood, so that the words, I LOVE DADDY, were stenciled on the white of the appliance. With the blood dripping down from the edges of the letters, the words looked like they belonged on the cover of a cheap horror novel...
The vision of Lisa cleaning up the mess smacked him in the face with its reality and he gasped. Tears, unchecked by care or consciousness ran down his face and he found himself reliving the gunshot.
"Will?" Lisa said with a voice that broke. She was a miserable looking thing and the green of her eyes stood out clearly from the red of the blood on her face. She had been standing just behind Talitha when the gun went off and somehow blood had sprayed her face so now she added gory red freckles to her natural ones.
He was supposed to go to her and comfort her...that's what people did in these situations. Will walked around the body and blood of his sister, feeling distinctly like a robot in a man suit. His emotions, so great only a moment ago, had left him completely and he felt hollow and the sound of the gun filled that void, it seemed to echo up and down the inside of his body.
She sobbed and he clutched her too his chest and knew there were important emotions that he should've been feeling but wasn't, and he worried that he was somehow broken.
Movement caught his eye and he saw the giant man that had come from the church with them, kneel at Talitha's side. He reached out gently and Will wanted to tell him not to touch the body, but he couldn't remember the man's name. Talitha had called...White Jim? That didn't seem right.
Will hadn't spoken a single word to the giant in the three hours that he knew him and he suddenly realized how rude he had been. Now he wanted to say something to the man, who simply was staring down at Talitha, but absolutely nothing came to mind. His brain worked furiously, attempting to find anything to say, but it came up empty.
"Will?" Talitha had spoken, seemingly without moving her lips and he jumped at the sound.
"Will?" Now he realized it had been Lisa and he looked at her and again he was speechless. "Will? Hey look at me...what are we going to do?"
"Uh...uh..." That was the best he could do.
"Should we call an ambulance?" she asked looking down at the body. "Or do we let her die?" Lisa stepped back from the little pool of blood that was creeping aggressively toward her feet.
Will stepped back with her and said, "She's already dead...I think I could've stopped her...I know I could..."
Lisa interrupted, "I don't think she's dead."
The giant knelt down and felt Talitha's neck for a moment. "She has a pulse...it's very light."
"What? Not dead?" Will felt the floor spin beneath his feet. Not dead? That wasn't possible—not with all that blood and a hole through her head.
"What do we do? Do we let her die naturally? I...I can't kill her," Lisa was frantic while Will couldn't decide what he was feeling—he only knew that his feelings weren't right. This was his sister lying there. Why wasn't he crying? Why wasn't he in hysterics? Was it because he was a man? Was it because he was broken? Had his weekly torture sessions damaged something inside him?
"Of course we can't kill her," the giant intoned solemnly. "Do either of you know anything about first aid?"
Lisa eyed the man as if seeing him for the first time. "You don't understand! She knows where we live! Who are you? Will, who is this man? Is he with Talitha?"
Will touched his head as if he would feel that broken part of himself. "No, he came up with Father Alba, and..."
"Father Alba! What's...what's going on? Is it back?" Her green eyes were magical emerald fires in her face and they seemed to burn their way out of the blood drying there. The giant stared into her eyes and his own narrowed in wonder at them.
"There's a man, he may be possessed by the demon," Will explained.
The giant rumbled, "He is possessed! And we have to do something about this girl before she dies."
Will bent down to his sister and felt her head as he spoke, "Ok, he's possessed, but it's not the same as before, Honey. He looks like a man...I mean he is a man, totally, there's no smoke about him and Father Alba says he's demanding the sword." Will found where the bullet had entered Talitha's head and was a little shocked to find that it had merely grazed the back of her head. "Lisa, please give some of those drying towels next to you."
He wiped away large clots of blood and could now feel the wound better. His stomach did a barrel roll as he moved what he assumed to be a small part of her skull. The crease the bullet had made was about a half inch deep and ran nearly three inches across the back of her head. The blood seemed to be clotting with amazing swiftness but she had lost so much already that it wouldn't take much more for her to die.
"She might live...if we do something," he said and honestly didn't know what to think.
"Stop talking like that!" the giant said with some anger. "I don't get you two. There are more lives at risk here than just hers."
"Our lives are at risk as well, Mr..."
"Jim Anderson," he spoke with a touch of bashfulness.
"Well, Mr. Anderson, I have known Talitha for a long time and she's always been dangerous but now...she knows where we live! And the other one...the good Talitha, you heard her...I'll never be safe."
"She's been killing as well," Will mentioned sadly. "I don't know how many, but she hinted that it was a lot."
"So you see, Mr. Anderson, there are lives at stake one way or the other." Lisa looked to be falling apart as she said this and her tears, which had slowed down were now coming with more regularity.
"We don't kill her!" Jim said adamantly.
"Then tell me, Jim, what are we going to do?" asked Will angrily from across the body of his sister. "If you want her to live, then we need to take her to a hospital, where they will easily discover her identity and arrest her! How's that going to help those kids? Tell me! How many people will she kill in the hospital when she escapes? People die around this girl all the time." Will stared down at Talitha; she seemed so peaceful and so much like her old self that his heart broke.
"I guess I don't know what we do then," the big man admitted.
"What children are you talking about?" Lisa asked holding onto her round belly.
"The possessed person, he may have kidnapped five children...you know, the ones missing in Boston? He may have them somewhere," Will explained.
The three of them stood in silence and Will could see Lisa and Jim struggling with the same thoughts he had been having. Will's heart felt like a stone, "If she lives or dies, we're damned either way. I say we leave it in God's hands. We bandage her up as best we can and if she lives, she lives."
Jim had a look of disgust on his face, "You don't sound much like a brother to me."
"I guess I'm not. I've wanted to kill her for years. I used to think it was for her own good, but that was partially a lie." The weekly visits were so terrible he had known deep down he wouldn't be able to keep it up much longer.
However, he knew the alternative for Talitha would be a living nightmare. In the asylum, when Talitha had to dream her own dreams, it had been horrible. She'd spend day after day, fighting to stay awake, fearing to close her eyes for even a second. Eventually she'd sleep, and her screams would be deafening and soul wrenching and she'd be a raging animal afterwards, hateful and vicious.
His own dreams, terrible on Saturdays, were only slightly better the rest of the week and insomnia was becoming a constant companion. He could feel his life turning ragged at the edges and he would catch himself daydreaming of running away. Not just from Talitha, but Lisa as well. He feared he'd eventually suffer some sort of mental breakdown and didn't want her anywhere near him when he did.
Will looked at Lisa hugging her little belly and felt a tremendous guilt as he always did at the thought of running out on her. That guilt also extended to his sister and he said to Jim, "No, I'm not such a good brother, but what Talitha is doing to herself and to us...it may be for the best if she dies."
Lisa agreed, "I think you're right, Will. Let's put it in God's
hands. Mr. Anderson, can you please pick her up and put her over here on the couch?" Lisa hurried to lay a blanket down on the couch. For Jim, the weight of the girl must have been nothing. She looked terribly small and vulnerable in the man's huge arms and when he'd placed her down he did so with a striking gentleness.
"Paper towels too please and there's an ace bandage in my gym bag," Will called to his wife as she rushed to their little first aid kit. He was just getting a better feel for the wound when she returned. "I thought she was really going to kill herself this time," he said.
"She was," Lisa said in a small voice. "This is my fault...I couldn't let her do it. She looked at me and it was her, Talitha. The girl who was my best friend...my only best friend. At the last moment I grabbed her arm."
Will put on a fake smile. "Maybe it was meant to be then." The smile felt plastic it was so artificial. Lisa had likely prolonged Talitha's agonies on earth and after her speech about hell, Will didn't think Talitha's agonies would ever end.
He dressed the wound as best as he could and then wrapped it with the ace bandage. It had stopped bleeding quicker than he had thought possible. Even for Talitha, it had seemed quick. She had an amazing ability to recover from injuries. During one of their many fights, his wedding ring had opened up her cheek. It had furrowed quite a gouge that had bled copiously, but the following morning it was as if she had never been touched.
After he worked on Talitha, he told his wife about the bizarre day he had, including the full story of the possessed man.
"And nobody knows why he wants it?" she asked.
Will shook his head. "No, unless this Talitha knows."
"Whatever a demon wants with the sword, it can't be good. I'm willing to bet it will end up costing the lives of more than just five children. I don't think you should give it up, Will." Her face was sad but resolute and he nodded in agreement. She turned to Jim, "I think you're going to have to tell Father Alba, we aren't going to give up the sword."
The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set Page 44
