"I wasn't speaking to you, insect," her voice had changed like the speed of her hands and it was low and dangerous sounding.
"Tal, please stop. We let him go. We can't force a person to be good." Will came down to her level, putting out his hand to touch hers. "God doesn't do that, maybe we shouldn't either."
"You're probably correct," she replied. "But I'm going to warn you Mr. Jackson. If you continue down this road, you'll end up in hell with me, and I will remember you. I'll hurt you badly and you'll scream like a little girl being raped for the first time."
Her words had a slow heavy nightmare quality that was horribly unsettling, at least for Will they were, but not for Jackson. His sister, though so small compared to the man, had her hands hooked into his jacket with such strength that it pulled tight across his throat. Once again, his eyes bugged as his breath was choked out of his lungs. Her eyes, on the other hand held a storm of insane fury, but thankfully the fury died out in a second and she released him, standing in a single fluid motion.
"I'm starving," she proclaimed to the rain. "Mr. Jackson do you know where we can get some good French toast around here? You're welcome to join us of course."
2
Jackson logically declined the offer and they left him still in the mud and the rain.
At breakfast, the brother and sister had a breakthrough in their relationship. They did not eat French toast. It wasn't much of a breakthrough but it was something. Though in truth the meal wasn't exactly breakfast, as it was almost one in the afternoon when they ate.
"Maybe we can find an IHOP, they make good French toast, at least they used to," Talitha suggested as they walked, hand in hand down the muddy alley toward where Will had left the old station wagon. Will tried to smile at the idea, but the wires that would've held that fake smile in place felt oddly broken. In truth it wasn't the idea of eating French toast for the millionth time that did it, it was worry over his wife and the fact that time seemed to be against him. The seconds of each minute were glacial in their slowness. Their flight wasn't for another two and a half hours, and with no bags to check and the airport only fifteen minutes away, they had too much time.
Not only did he have time to fret, there was also time to spare for worry and even anxiety.
She caught his odd look. "You don't want IHOP? I thought you liked it," Talitha said with a slight frown on her wet face.
Will sighed as he climbed into the car. "No I don't, sorry. After French toast for breakfast so many times, I'm kind of sick of it."
"Me too!" she cried, with manic jubilance. "All this time, we've both been eating the same thing because we thought the other person liked it."
"Yeah." The car spluttered into being, kicking out blue smoke. Will turned it toward the factory.
"That's so stupid." Her smile was suddenly gone. "We've been eating crap for so long because neither of had the guts to tell the other..."
Will had to interrupt. Her abrupt mood swings were unsettling, and when she was in her angry phase, she was just as bad as the evil Talitha had ever been. It bothered him nearly as much as how slow time felt to be progressing and he couldn't take it any longer. "Talitha, listen to me. We said nothing because we each didn't want to hurt the other, even in this inconsequential thing. That's love. Maybe stupid love, but love nonetheless."
"I guess so."
Will pulled over, the blackened frame of the factory just visible down the road. "I need you, Tal. And so does Lisa, but not like this. You're out of control and you'll end up getting us all killed. You've been through hell, I know it, but can you pull it together?"
Talitha nodded her head, though she kept her face down, staring as her fingers knotted and unknotted in her lap. "I can't seem to stop myself. I have so many memories and dreams all running together, I sort of don't feel like myself. One second I'm furious, the next I'm sad and then I'm excited."
"Maybe you can start by realizing that you can live now and that you don't have to go to hell when you die. You're a good person and..."
"Shut up!" she screamed. Her fist drove down onto the faded passenger side dashboard, sending an explosion of plastic in the damp air of the car. "As always you don't know what you're talking about. I am going to hell. It's done. My future is set."
He leaned back from her outburst, unsettled not by what she said, or even how she said it, but by the unguarded look of hatred she sent his way.
"Do you think that it's my fault?" he asked in honesty, not trying to dodge blame, or to anger her further, but only trying to understand.
She took a long time to answer, which was answer enough for Will. "No, none of any of this is your fault," Talitha said, now suddenly docile. "Will, you'll never understand, unless you go there yourself. And you...you're the last person that would ever feel that they would have to go. So please, don't ask. It just hurts."
She was correct about his not understanding. "I'm not asking, I'm telling you. The Void is for evil people and you're not evil, at all."
"How can you even say that? Of course I am," she replied with an odd faraway look in her eyes. Talitha fingered the ruined glove compartment, the door hung open reminding Will of a groper's mouth, absently she worked it up and down. It looked to be chewing.
"Tal, you are not ev..." He stopped in mid-sentence. She had said this to him before. He tried to recall the conversation, but it only came to him in bits and pieces and just then he couldn't remember if it had been her or the evil Talitha. "Tal, you had an odd look on your face before. It looked like you hated me, can you tell me why?"
She seemed to feel pain at the question and kept her face down looking at her fingers, which had retreated to the safety of her lap and began meshing themselves nervously together. "No...I can't, I mean I don't. I don't hate you."
"Are you mad that I took you from the Void?" he asked, fearful of the answer. She nodded with a blank look in her eyes. "Because you had value? Because you were worth something?"
She shook her head and replied in a whisper, "No, because I was becoming. Becoming powerful— becoming a demon." The eyes of the brother and sister met and there was fear in both of them. These had been the words of the demon.
"Is Ba'al Fie-ere in there with you? Right now?" Will asked, his eyes straying to the gun Talitha had taken from the man from the alley only a few minutes before. It sat between their two seats.
"I...I don't know. I can't tell. I don't think so. It's just that I'm remembering things that the other Talitha had been doing and saying. It's horrible, it's like I've done these things and I'm only now remembering it."
"Can you stop it?"
Talitha started crying again, hard. "I don't know. We shared the same brain clearly, but our memories were always inaccessible to each other before. Yet now hers are sifting into mine. Pretty soon, I won't know which ones are which. Did I rape you?" She gasped in horror as the memory struck her like a slap.
"No, you tried but I stopped you. Tal, look at me. Look at me." He waited until her eyes were full on him. "What is the square root of, uh one-hundred and sixty-nine?"
Her eyes shifted up for a second, before she answered, "Thirteen. Why?"
Will blew out, exasperated. "Because, that's why. What's the square root of two-thousand and sixty-nine?" Her brows came together and he could tell she was about to ask again why. "I'm trying to occupy your mind, while I try to figure out how to stop these memories from happening."
"Oh." Her eyes went up again and she began calculating, as she did, her lips started to move in time with the math running through her mind.
Will reached out and wiped away the fug that had settled on the windshield. The view was only slightly better, a grey curtain that came steadily down. He drove, and at first he headed toward the factory, thinking about asking Father Vogel what he thought they should do. He seemed like an intelligent man, but Talitha's eyes went wide when she saw the building looming before them.
"Oh, God! What did I do? What did I do to poor Alba?" Her hand went to h
er mouth.
"Tal! Where are you on that square root?"
"I don't know, uh...fort-five, point four something," she moaned out the words.
"Do you want a new calculation to do?"
"Yes...hurry." She began tapping her cheeks rhythmically. Her eyes hollow spheres of fear.
"Two-thousand three hundred and four," he called out, hoping that it would be a good number. Personally, he could only calculate the simplest square roots in his head. Deciding against the factory, where awful memories abounded, he turned to his right down the next street, but didn't catch its name, the condensation was building in the car rapidly. The street was a twin to the next one. The houses were all unremarkably similar.
"Forty-eight. Will, I'm going to become her! I know it..."
"You aren't!" he cut across her. "Twelve thousand three hundred and six." He turned right again at the next main intersection. He had no clue where he was going or really what to do.
"That one's too hard, give me an easier number. I have to become her, it's a certainty."
"Twelve thousand three hundred and six," he repeated, feeling scared that she was correct. She was so rarely wrong.
"One-hundred and eleven...I think. Right around there," she replied desperately as if the right answer could help her in any way. "Will pull over. See that pizza place? It's the same one that Jim got our dinner from last night. I'm hungry. I want that; it was a good memory."
The place was a hole in the wall. Still, when it came to pizza those were usually the best. Almost as a rule, a fancy pizza joint was a poor pizza joint.
Sliding into the booth closest to the door that had jingled merrily above them, Talitha looked around wide-eyed at the other people in the restaurant.
"Why does their hair look like that?" she asked timidly, running her hands through her own straggling locks.
Will glanced back. For the most part the customers and staff in the restaurant were young and resembled his stereotypical vision of people of Italian decent. The women had great masses of hair and in his opinion too much makeup.
"It's the style I guess, don't worry about it," he replied, but she was quite worried.
"And their clothes?" she whispered.
Their stone washed jeans were worn high up, above the waist and they were pegged or rolled up at the ankles. In eight years, Talitha hadn't been in public save for her weekly trips to a rural podunk church, and popular clothing styles had changed dramatically in that time. Compared to the other women in the place, with her ill-fitting black dress, she looked like an Amish girl who had lost her bonnet.
Before he could answer her concerning clothing, a waitress came over, eyeing their raggedy appearance with distaste, probably sensing little opportunity for a tip. She had a magnificent head of dark brown hair—teased almost to the point of being a mane and Talitha gazed at with wonder.
"Kinda wet out, huh? Didja come in on an awk?" the waitress asked in a friendly manner, expecting at least a smile. However, her Boston accent was terribly thick, with the word ark coming out sounding like awk and Talitha only opened her eyes wider and looked at her brother, bewildered.
He was used to the dreadful sounding accent and replied easily, "Nope just a station wagon, which is pretty close in size to an ark. Can we get a couple of Cokes and two large pies, please? One a supreme and the other just pepperoni."
Just then Talitha made the mistake of glancing back up at the waitress, who asked her, "Uh cupla lah-ges? Aw ya expectin any maw?" Again, Talitha was forced to look to her brother for interpretation and he thought she was coming across as a retarded Amish girl now.
"No just the two of us. We aren't expecting any more people," he answered for the two of them. Talitha's mouth came open slightly and she nodded gently in understanding.
When the waitress was safely out of ear shot, Talitha smiled, her troubles momentarily put aside. "Wow, that's a thick accent. I think while we're in Boston, I'm just going to pretend I'm deaf."
"Yeah," he agreed absently, checking his watch for the hundredth time that day. Two hours until their flight. Another hour and fifteen minutes in the air and then a twenty-two minute car ride. He had a total of two-hundred and seventeen minutes to help his sister come to grips with her memory and mental issues.
"Tal, we have to fix this thing going on in your head," he started. "Yesterday you told me how you could control aspects of your body, can't you just lock away these memories."
Talitha looked about to speak, but her brows came down and she paused for a moment first. "You know something strange? The other Talitha, she actually liked Jim Anderson too. She thought they had some sort of connection."
"She did? That's a little strange," Will agreed. "You wouldn't have thought so, she treated him pretty poorly. But you're getting off subject. Can't you control memory just as you control your sense of smell?"
"Only when I'm concentrating on something else. Also, I don't know what memories to try to reject until they come to me. You see in order for me to block a memory, I have to know what to block first. I'll give you an example, look around this restaurant." She turned her head scanning objects and people.
Will did as well, not seeing her point. It looked like just a hole in the wall pizza joint, one of many that he had been in. Arranged in a long rectangle there were maybe fifteen booths running down the wall to the right and due to the bar there were half that many on the left. There were Italian themed pictures on the walls; the leaning tower of Pisa, the Roman Coliseum. As well, there were pictures of famous people of Italian heritage; actors and sports figures for the most part.
Joe DiMaggio's relatively ugly face sat large in a frame centered on their booth. He gave it a glance, wondering what in the world Marilyn Monroe saw in the gap-toothed ball player.
"Ok?" he asked after a minute.
"Everything in this place has memory associated with it. See this tablecloth." She held up an edge of the red and white checkered spread. "Remind you of anything?"
"Yeah, Papa Gino's." Papa Gino's was an east coast pizza chain they used to frequent as kids.
"That's what I thought as well. But remember that guy?" She flashed her white smile.
He remembered. Every one of the chain's restaurants had tablecloths of checkered red and white and once when the Jern's were eating at their local Papa Gino's, a man came in wearing pants of the exact same pattern. Every head in the entire place turned in unison and stared. It was terribly comical as the man paused in the doorway not seeing the tablecloths but only seeing fifty pairs of eyes following his every move. It was only when he was shown to his table by a hostess, barely suppressing a laugh, did he notice. The poor man turned on his heel and walked out with fast strides and when he had scampered to the parking lot the entire restaurant burst into laughter.
Even now Will had to smile at the memory. "That was funny. The guy probably went home and burned those pants. I know I would've."
"I agree, but my point is, how could I suppress that memory without experiencing it first? I'm going to have to feel everything that she felt and it isn't going to be like a stranger's memory either. It's going to be me doing those things...I saw what I did to Father Alba. I tore out his eyes, I dug..."
"Tal! Focus on me. Ok?" She had quickly turned white under her tan at the memory of what happened to Father Alba. Will grabbed her hands and squeezed hard. "Let's just deal with the man with the Papa Gino pants, ok? We'll start small, can you suppress that memory?"
"Here go," the waitress seemed to just suddenly appear next to them. She plunked down their cokes with an unreadable look and left as quickly as she could.
"Papa Gino's pants man," he reminded his sister. "Concentrate." He tried to sound smooth and confident in her, but he was in truth nervous.
"I don't think I can," she sounded scared herself. "The memory is so entwined with others. Even this little conversation would have to be hidden away behind a wall in my mind. Remember Foghorn Alley? You would take Lisa and me to picnic there?"
>
What that had to do with her memory he didn't know, but all the same, he did recall those times. The wind at the southern point of Governors Island was always nice in the summer, making it feel ten degrees cooler. For fun, he had taken the three of them there for picnics a number of times and they had enjoyed the breeze, relaxing, watching the ships plying the wide mouth of the harbor.
"Yeah, I remember. And I remember the old blanket we used as well. It was red and white checkered, but the pattern wasn't the exact same."
"True, but you may recall we told Lisa the story about the Papa Gino's pants guy. In detail. All in all, I think I've told that story a half dozen times and I've heard you tell it as well. You see how impossible this can be? In order to suppress that one memory of that poor guy, I would have to cover up or contain a dozen others and perhaps more. Do you know what song was playing in the restaurant at the time he came in?"
"No. Do you?"
She shook her head. "I don't, but my subconscious does. You see? Even if I were to suppress all the horrible things Tal... I mean Ba'al Fie-ere has done, I would still have to deal with my subconscious mind. That part of me, with its trove of insidious memories would pervert me just as if the memories were all fresh in my mind, only it would be slow and torturous."
"What about destroying the memories outright?"
With a moan, she buried her head in her hands. "I can't. I mean, I don't think I can. Physically, I can control my body to a great extent, but the mind is different. It's far too complex. Aristotle is oft quoted as saying, The whole is more than the sum of its parts. He was referring to synergism, the concept that certain agents when combined become far greater. When things are acting with synergism one plus one is greater than two."
"I know the term."
"With regards to the brain, it's so complex that it's like one plus one would equal a million. It can't be done," she sighed as a way of finishing her sentence.
Will was about to speak, when lunch arrived. Their big haired waitress had brought along another girl, whose hair was equally as grand in size and they placed down the pies, ogling the brother and sister with less than secretive glances. Will felt self-conscious about his bruised and swollen face and too late did he recall that smiling only made him look worse.
The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set Page 79
