Come As You Are

by Steven Ramirez

  “No, there were other stories. She said the best thing is to do what you’re doing. Don’t wake me. Make sure I’m safe and get me back into bed.”

  “What if I were to wake you in a ‘special way’?”

  “Under no circumstances are you to wake me.”

  “Fine,” I said as the food arrived.

  At my suggestion, Mary Kate signed up for a yoga class. Things were okay for a while, and we forgot about what had happened. Fall was coming. Work continued to pile up, which was the way I preferred it. Lucy lost another tooth. Then one night, I awoke from a horrible dream.

  All I remember was that the moon was very close, incredibly huge through the open windows. Mary Kate was standing at the foot of our bed in her nightgown, screaming silently and reaching for me with outstretched arms. Bloody, gray, animal-like hands emanating from a wet, amorphous, pulsing pestilence were clinging to her slender body and dragging her toward the windows.

  I tried getting out of bed, but I couldn’t move. The only sound was an insect-like drone that reminded me of a trip I once made to Texas. It was the year of the cicadas, and the noise was maddening. Inside the droning, I heard dark, whispering voices.

  I opened my eyes and grabbed my cell phone from the nightstand, the remnants of the dream and the chittering still in my head. It was after three. I turned and found that I was alone.

  Not again.

  I padded downstairs in pajama bottoms and an undershirt, expecting to find Mary Kate in the kitchen or the living room or the laundry room—places she had ended up on past nighttime outings. Panicked, I searched the house, starting with Lucy’s room. Our daughter was asleep, the spin-shade night-light casting images of the cow jumping over the moon. No Mary Kate.

  Next I went into the garage. I had heard stories about people taking the car out in their sleep. Visions of Mary Kate driving the wrong way on the freeway played in my head. When I didn’t find her there, I came back and went out the front door, which was unlocked.

  Mary Kate was standing in the middle of the road in her nightgown, staring motionless at the moon. Don’t wake her.

  A car turned a corner and, from the sound of the screeching tires, I could tell it was going too fast. As I ran toward Mary Kate, the headlight beams splashed onto her through the filmy fabric of her nightgown, exposing her naked body.

  Don’t wake her.

  A car horn blasted as both the car and I approached Mary Kate at the same time. As the car raced past, I grabbed her, and we tumbled onto a neighbor’s lawn. The car sped by, its horn blaring, and hit a garbage can as it rounded another corner. I heard faraway voices laughing and cursing.

  “Oh God, that was close,” I said. I turned Mary Kate over. Incredibly, she was still asleep. Thank God.

  “What’s going on?”

  An elderly woman in a severe hairnet and an old worn pink housecoat marched toward us, clutching a fireplace poker. It was Mrs. Peterman from across the street. No one in the neighborhood liked her, me included. She was mean, hated kids, and always seemed to be spying on the neighbors.

  “Please be quiet,” I said.

  “Get off my lawn!” She poked Mary Kate with the tool.

  “Please!” I said. “Give us a minute!”

  “Nobody’s having filthy sex on my lawn!”

  I turned to Mary Kate and, though it was dark, I could see her eyes flutter. For a second, I thought I saw a red glow around the pupils—probably a reflection. Then it was gone, and she groaned. Her body was suddenly like ice. As I got her into a sitting position, she vomited blood on me.

  “What in—” Mrs. Peterman said.

  Ignoring the old woman, I threw Mary Kate’s limp arms over my neck and helped her to her feet.

  “Call 911,” I said. “My wife is sick!”

  “Get the hell off my lawn!”

  A thin band of blood-red rage tightened around my head like a leather shoestring. I ripped the poker from the old hag’s bony, arthritic hands and threw it into the bushes. As I carried Mary Kate back across the street to our house, Mrs. Peterman let out a string of alliterative, prison-ready invectives she normally reserved for trick-or-treaters.

  I dozed in the uncomfortable waiting-room chair as dawn broke. The continual parade of announcements and random conversations of doctors, nurses, and patients didn’t seem to affect me. I was too tired. Fortunately, I’d been able to drop off a still-sleeping Lucy at my sister’s, so I could stay with Mary Kate while they ran all kinds of tests.

  Someone touched my arm. I opened my eyes to find a young doctor standing there. He was maybe Indian or Pakistani.

  “Mr. Walker? Your wife is doing fine,” he said.

  “Can she come home?”

  “Yes. A few more minutes.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Nothing serious. She must be suffering from a great deal of stress.”

  “What about the vomiting? There was blood.”

  “Her stomach lining is irritated. So, yes, there was some blood. We’ve given her something for it. She’ll be out in a few minutes.”

  “How long you married?” a voice said next to me after the doctor had gone.

  I turned to find a grizzled man in his seventies with one regular eye and a scarred cloudy blue eye. He smelled sour—like he had bathed in a vat of rancid pickle juice. His right hand was hidden under a newspaper. On his left was a wedding ring. His appearance made me wonder what kind of wife let her husband go out in public like that.

  “Hope your wife’s okay,” he said when I didn’t answer his question.

  “It’s fine. She sleepwalks.”

  The man’s good eye bored into me. Slowly, he raised a liver-spotted hand and pointed a bent finger yellowed from years of smoking unfiltered cigarettes. “You didn’t wake her, didja?”

  “What? No, I— There was a car coming. And there was this neighbor…”

  “Shouldn’ta woke her.” He rubbed the back of his parched, lined neck and shook his head sadly.

  All I wanted was to get Mary Kate and take her home. I hated the old man now and did not want to have this conversation. Then I heard myself ask him why.

  “Because there’s demons—”

  “What? Oh, come on!”

  I tried to get up, but the insistent stranger clutched my arm with surprising strength. He leaned in, his fetid store-brand beer breath bathing me in a fog of old-man dread.

  “Listen,” he said. “They’re waitin’, see? Out there in the etherose.”

  “Ether.”

  “Waitin’ for a chance to get back.”

  “Back where?”

  “To our world.” The old man glanced sideways and lowered his voice. I thought he was going to confess that he liked exposing himself in public toilets. “You look like an ejucated man. Surprised you don’t know this stuff.”

  “Know what?”

  “That when people sleepwalk, their souls are…” His voice became a whisper. “Vunnerable. Like balloons on strings. Most of the time, the strings hold. But sometimes…they break and the soul flies away. And when it does, somethin’ evil takes its place.”

  Though I wanted badly to get away from this freak show, I couldn’t help but be fascinated. I had met all kinds in my work—people with different beliefs, most of which fell in the normal spectrum. But once in a while, you ran across the oddball who had gone off the reservation long ago and went around spouting crap like this. I found that in those situations it was best to shut down the conversation.

  “How do you know this?”

  “’Cause it happened to my wife,” the old man said. “See this eye? First time she went at it with the acetylene torch I kept in the garage.”

  I shuddered at the image of my own eye being cooked while I slept. “Did she have a history of—”

  “Sanest, most kind person alive. Active member of our church. Baked cookies for the kids in our neighborhood. Took in stray dogs and cats…”

  He slid the newspaper off his knee,
revealing his deformed right hand. It was dried up and scarred like a tree branch in the harsh desert. All but the thumb and index finger were missing. I tried hard not to stare at the stumps.

  “That next time she took off three fingers with the bolt cutters ’fore I could wake up. After that, I got the hell out.”

  I felt sick. My head throbbed, and the room was spinning. It was no longer me asking the questions but something deep in my unconscious. “Where is she now?”

  “Pescadero State Hospital.”

  “Do you ever visit her?”

  The old man lowered his eyes. I thought he was going to weep. “Not anymore. The last time was mebbe eight years ago. She tried to dig out my good eye with her thumb. I guess they’ll never let her out.”

  I forced a plastic smile and wobbled to my feet, sore and stiff. I’d have to get to the gym first chance I got. As I turned away, I saw an orderly bringing Mary Kate out in a wheelchair. Her serious expression worried me.

  “Hey,” I said, stroking her fingers.

  Normally that tickled her. This time, she merely looked up. “Something happen?” she said. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I saw a slight smile shimmy across her face.

  “It’s nothing. I’ll bring the car up, so we can go home.”

  I turned back, expecting to see the old man, but he was gone except for the newspaper. As we left the hospital, I saw a nurse leading the weird old geezer down a corridor, asking him about his smoking.

  I had arranged to take off a few days, which wasn’t easy considering we were getting to the end of the quarter. While Mary Kate rested in bed, I took care of Lucy, helping her with her homework, fixing her meals, and seeing to it that she bathed and brushed her teeth.

  “Is Mommy okay?” she said one night at dinner.

  “Yes, honey. She’s just tired.”

  Lucy put down her fork, leaned toward me seriously, and whispered, “Last night I dreamed she was in my room.”

  “Maybe she went in to check on you. That’s what mommies do.”

  “It looked like Mommy, but it wasn’t.”

  Lucy picked up her Tigger cup with both hands and took a swallow of milk. I was about to ask her to explain when I heard a faint groan coming from upstairs.

  “Wait here, honey,” I said and ran up the stairs.

  As I approached our bedroom, I heard what sounded like a cow lowing. My heart racing, I pushed the door open and peered inside.

  The room was dark, despite the fact that I’d left a light on. There was a strong odor of sweat mixed with copper, and the air was humid. Mary Kate was standing at the window, naked. Staring motionless at the moon.

  “Honey?” I said.

  She turned jerkily as if standing on a giant gear that was being cranked. I smiled, expecting her to say something funny or amorous. She smiled strangely. There was something about her face, her manner. She was different—I couldn’t say how. At that moment, fifth grade at St. Monica Catholic School came rushing back to me, and I heard clearly the voice of Mrs. McKittrick reading to us from the book of Revelation. She was explaining that the mark of the beast was invisible, unseen by man but felt nevertheless.

  “Mary Kate?”

  My wife opened her arms to me languorously and muttered something. Other voices called to me, and I fell into a swoon. She embraced me, making incoherent guttural noises that seemed to come from deep within her being. I felt her hot hands playing up and down my spine. Her fingers were like eels doing unfamiliar things, and I was afraid.

  She grabbed my face in her strong hands and kissed me with an animal-like passion. My bones felt as if they would break, the cartilage being torn apart. When I pulled back, her eyes were solid black pools. In them, I saw…demons! Dozens of them, circling in the blackness.

  I yelped involuntarily and shoved her away. As I stumbled toward the bed, she fainted.

  “Mike, I don’t know what to do. I’m going out of my mind.”

  I sank into the blood-red leather chair in Dr. Michael Dean’s office. It was peaceful there. I wanted to close my eyes and sleep for a week.

  “And this is since the incident in the street?”

  “Yes. She’s not herself; that’s all I can say.”

  “Has she been eating?”

  “Not that I’ve seen. I make her food, but she won’t come near it.”

  “Are you sure it’s edible?”

  “Dammit, I’m serious, Mike! Grilled cheese sandwiches and soup. Fruit. Coffee. Milk. Juice. She won’t touch any of it. Even ice cream.”

  “Okay, calm down.” Mike was in his fifties and had been my doctor for twenty years. I came to him with this, because I didn’t feel comfortable going to Mary Kate’s physician, Dr. Murtha, whom I’d never met. “Can you get her to come in for an exam?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “What about Lucy?”

  “She’s staying with my sister.”

  “I’ll have the receptionist open up something for you tomorrow.”

  Driving home, I turned on the local news. A transient in Echo Park had been viciously hacked to pieces. Legs, arms, torso, and entrails hung from the trees like Christmas ornaments. The police were still searching for the head.

  I hadn’t wanted to leave Mary Kate alone. I’d given her Ambien, hoping she would sleep through the afternoon. When I went up to see her, she was snoring deeply. The sound reminded me of our honeymoon. That was the first time I’d ever heard her snore. I had always found it to be kind of sweet.

  I decided to fix spaghetti. That had always been Mary Kate’s favorite. I hoped the smell would encourage an appetite. As I chopped garlic, my cell phone rang. It was Lucy.

  “Hi, honey.”

  “Daddy, I miss you.” She had that tremolo in her voice, and I knew she was worried.

  “Is Aunt Charlotte treating you okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just a few more days, sweetie. Till Mommy gets better.”

  “What’s wrong with Mommy?”

  “I don’t know, but the doctor will make her better.”

  I promised to read her a story over the phone later and hung up. As I continued with dinner, I saw that the kitchen trash was full, so I tied up the bag and carried it out to the garage.

  There were two large gray garbage cans. I flipped the first one open. Full. I opened the second one and was about to drop in the kitchen bag when I noticed something at the bottom of the can. It was multicolored and unfamiliar.

  I reached in and picked it up. It was a scarf that reeked of sweat and urine. I dropped it back in and found my hand smeared with…blood?

  “What are you doing?”

  My heart racing, I pivoted and found Mary Kate standing in the doorway and watching me intently. Her arms were at her sides. There were bags under her eyes, and her face was lined from sleep. Her throat bulged involuntarily. It was like a ball python who had swallowed a rat that was still alive.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Taking out the trash.”

  “What’s that smell?”

  “Spaghetti. I was hoping you would be hungry after your nap.”

  “Smells like meat.”

  Her voice was flat and lifeless. As I walked back in, I hid my bloody hand and went directly to the sink to wash. I felt she was watching me the whole time—no, studying me.

  “Why don’t you have a seat while I cook?” I said. “I don’t think you can have wine after that medication. I’ll pour you some sparkling water.”

  Her eyes never left me as I got a glass and filled it. I handed it to her, and she drank.

  “Feeling better?” I said.

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she took in the room as if it was all new to her. “Where’s Lucy?”

  “She’s staying with Charlotte, remember?”

  “Such a pretty little girl,” Mary Kate said. Only it wasn’t Mary Kate’s voice. It sounded like a lush I had seen once on a street in New York, dressed in Goodwill clothes and shoes, carrying a bent umbrella and dragging one foot t
hat was purple and swollen from diabetes.

  “Yes, she is,” I said.

  It didn’t take long to get dinner on the table. “I made you a doctor’s appointment for tomorrow,” I said, setting out two plates of food.

  “Why?”

  “It’s a follow-up. No big deal.”

  She toyed with her spaghetti, arranging it in bright red swirls on the gleaming white plate. “What did you think of my work?” she said in that same lush’s voice.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He didn’t struggle. Much.” She sounded disappointed. “Maybe it was because he was old.”

  My body turned cold. My mouth tasted of metal. I put down my fork and stared at what looked like my wife. She was gazing at something across the room. In profile, I saw her tongue flicking in and out rhythmically to some internal harpy’s song. It was black and pointed.

  “Does she sleepwalk?”

  I almost didn’t hear the question over the thudding of my heart. “What? Who?”

  “Lucy. I have some friends who would dearly love to meet her.”

  “I, I don’t—”

  It happened so fast, I didn’t see her leave the chair. In a flash, I was on the floor, and she was slicing at my hands and arms with one of the good knives.

  “We want the girl!”

  I remember the blackness of her eyes, the breath that smelled of bile and the tearing noises as she cut me. A searing pain shot through my temples, and I saw bright green flashes of light. At first, I thought I’d been shot in the head. A distant voice called out something.

  Then she was gone.

  Someone was jabbing me. I blinked and found Mrs. Peterman in her pink housecoat leaning over me with her poker.

  “You’re bleeding,” she said. “I called 911 this time.”

  I tried to get up, but I was still too shaken. “Is Mary Kate here?”

  “Is that your wife? I saw her running into the night. I think she’s crazy—should be locked up.”

  Eventually, I struggled into a sitting position. “Thanks for coming, Mrs. Peterman.”

  “You were screaming like a banshee,” she said. “Whole neighborhood’s gone to shit.” She handed me a glass of tap water.

  By the time the paramedics and the police arrived, I was sitting on the curb. The bloody knife Mary Kate had used to attack me lay on the grass behind me. The old woman had neglected to remain. I saw her peering out her front window through the curtains.