Forever

by Lewis, Linda Cassidy

  “You don’t need any goddam clothes!”

  “Tom. What’s the matter with you?”

  “I’m sorry, babe. Just don’t go to the house. Please, don’t.”

  Julie forgot watching for her luggage. Something in Tom’s voice had shot a chill through her. “Tell me why you don’t want me to go.”

  Tom hesitated only a second. “I think Patricia’s there waiting for you.”

  “But … she wouldn’t, not after—”

  “When Lindsay left for work, she saw Patricia headed toward the house.”

  “Oh, my God. I don’t want to see her.”

  “No, babe, and I don’t want you to. Stay at the airport. I’ll pick you up.”

  Julie focused on the Hertz sign in her line of vision. “No, don’t. I’ll rent a car. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” She ended the call and turned back to find her luggage. It was for the best that she’d see Tom first. He should be the first to know. Lindsay would have seen her face and prodded her with questions until she’d pried the doctor’s verdict out of her. In the secrecy of her pocket, she spread her fingers across her abdomen and silently rehearsed how she would tell Tom.

  *

  Eddie’s last attack had gone a long way toward releasing Annie. She was bleeding from too many places to count, but she pulled away from the pain. She lay on her side, facing away from him, marveling how light her dying body felt.

  At times—when he shut up—she heard another voice rising and falling, never quite loud enough to make out the words, but the unfamiliar cadence of it comforted her. She was drifting with the rhythm of that voice, when glass shattered against the wall in front of her. Tiny prickles, like a hard sleet in January, rained down on her fully exposed skin, but she didn’t move.

  With an exaggerated sigh to let her know how much trouble she was, Eddie lurched from his chair and stomped across the room. He jammed the toe of his shoe under her left cheek and rocked her head back toward him. The rest of her body remained immobile.

  “Now that I have your attention,” he said as he returned to his seat, “I’ll continue. Your beloved won’t remember the phone call we made to him—not consciously, at least. But I suspect he’ll carry around the effects for a good long while. I’ve outdone—”

  In the sudden silence that followed, Annie slid her eyes in his direction. His face swam in and out of focus, but she saw him clearly enough to know he was staring off into space as if in a trance.

  She closed her eyes, again. Looking at him awakened the monster of pain. Her fingers roamed idly over something lying beside her. It was smooth and cool. She traced its shape. The edge sliced through her fingertips with a zing. There was weight and substance to this cold, sharp thing, and she regretted she couldn’t see it. But it would take too much effort to look, and effort was one thing she had in short supply now. Even after Eddie came out of his trance and his continued raving demanded her attention, a part of her mind considered the value of this object hidden beneath her right hand.

  “Did you know our Tommy built his cabin on the edge of the woods where, all those years ago, the two of you first screwed your brains out?” Eddie asked. “And he found your pathetic memorial to Jacob where you buried it—correction—he found it where I reburied it. I already knew what you’d done, of course, but I had to see it with my own eyes. The rose petals were a delightful touch. Anyway, that’s how I located Tom; your pathetic little stone vow called to me, and I zeroed in.”

  The stone, the stone, the stone echoed in her mind until she realized she could finally hear the other voice clearly. So clearly, in fact, that she opened her eyes to see the girl who was speaking. Annie recognized her instantly.

  Maggie smiled shyly at her and then turned back to her work. She was kneeling on the ground before a shallow hole. A flat rock, about the width of a dinner plate, lay in her lap. When she spoke, her voice was soft and sweet, but tinged with sorrow.

  “It’s gonna be dusk ’fore I tramp my tired body out of these woods to face the devil. Ain’t giving him satisfaction by shaking like a lamb to the slaughtering, though.” Maggie’s face sharpened with her determination. “Not so long past, I would have. He terrified me. Right up to the day he ripped my love from me and left me nothing but hate so fierce, so white-hot, it plumb cauterized my soul.”

  She paused for a moment, looking down at the stone.

  “Today, I slipped away after the washing up, but this here work took me longer than I planned. The light in these woods dies long before the sun sets.”

  Annie looked up. Maggie was right; the thick canopy blocked most of the light already.

  “I spect he’s been cussing me since he came back and found a dead fire in his empty cabin. Every passing minute, his anger’ll grow like the wild grape vines in these here woods, grasping at any old thing it can to support itself.

  “But I ain’t worried about him searching for me. Oh, no. He’s a snake lying in wait. The later my homecoming, the longer he’ll have to sit there with his eyes all slitty, his bony fingers pulling at his grizzled whiskers and rubbing at his cruel lips, while that wormy mind of his thinks up how to punish me. Every day I feel the sting of his hand or the bite of his switch, so he’ll give me worse this time. No doubt, it’ll be more of those things he does to me in the night—unspeakable things—and I can see him now, eyes glittering with excitement for it.”

  Maggie had glanced away and whispered when she said “unspeakable things.” Annie’s heart ached for her.

  “Don’t matter what he does to me anymore, though. He withered the life in me not yet a month ago in these here woods.”

  Maggie paused again, as though remembering that day, and then returned to her work.

  “I picked this place to work a ways off the trace knowing if he ever finds out what I done here today, he’ll beat me halfway to death in his rage.”

  Maggie dropped her tool and shook her hand.

  “Now I give it a think, if he ever gets that close to sending me over, I pray God won’t stop him short.”

  She examined her palm for a moment, then held it out to Annie. “Look at this.” With a sigh, she wiped it on her skirt. “No mistake, I did my share of work in my father’s house, and my chores in this here wilderness made my hands rough as a man’s. But they ain’t used to this here task. Worked me up some blisters. Now they’ve busted and left my fingers bleeding, but I ain’t paying no mind. A little pain and blood seems a fitting price to me.”

  Maggie traced her ragged fingertips over the surface and then tipped it sideways so Annie could see the letters she’d carved.

  “It ain’t too pretty, but I did the best I could. This is love’s labor.” She pointed to the freshly dug hole beside her. “See how I covered the bottom with wild roses? When I sink this stone and drop more of them petals on top it’ll look right nice.”

  Annie watched her bury the stone. One clear drop, then two, fell on Maggie’s hands and Annie felt her own eyes sting at the sight of tears silently streaming down the girl’s face.

  Maggie laid a hand above her left breast. “I feel a burning in my bosom like could be my heart is ripped out and lying in that hole. Someways it is.” She wiped away the tears with her fingers, leaving trails of blood and dirt across her cheeks.

  Annie watched Maggie tamp the dirt with her bare feet and scrape dead leaves over the black dirt to hide where the ground had been disturbed. Then Maggie closed her eyes, rested one hand over her heart again, and whispered one word.

  “Forever.” Suddenly, Maggie’s face glowed. “Oh! Oh! A breeze for the first time on this stifling day. Can you feel it?” She swayed and her laugh bubbled up. “Swirling ’round me so tender, caressing my face like … oh … oh.” She giggled as the breeze danced a loose curl against her neck. “This is Jacob’s last kiss, drying the tears on my cheeks.”

  Annie’s heart wept as she watched Maggie smiling to herself. Finally, the girl gathered her things. Turning her back on that sacred spot, she whispered one
last vow.

  “Wait for me, my love. I will find you again.”

  Annie’s heart sank when Eddie’s voice rose above Maggie’s, whisking the vision away.

  “… tired of this game now. Let’s wrap things up. I think it’s time our Tommy Boy had a visitation, don’t you? And then we’ll all say au revoir, my dear.”

  Annie opened her eyes and saw Eddie staring off into space again. He seemed to diminish somehow. She closed her eyes and waited.

  After a long pause, Eddie spoke again, but his voice came to Annie as if from a long distance. Engrossed in the effort to end her pain, she ignored him and worked on getting a firmer grasp on the shard of glass in her right hand. Blood seeping from a dozen cuts made the glass slippery. Blood on her fingers, blood on Maggie’s, blood on the glass, blood on the stone. Did that mean something?

  Although Maggie had walked away, snatches of her voice still floated through the cold mist that now surrounded the skin husk Annie would soon escape. Maggie had come to her because something needed done. Annie struggled to concentrate long enough to figure out what.

  “Goddam bitch! Can’t get anything right.” Glass and wood splintered around her as, piece-by-piece, Eddie destroyed her home. She managed to raise her eyelids enough to capture the sight of the usually suave Eddie now flushed with fury, spittle flying with every syllable he screamed. “Julie … alive … Lindsay … gone …”

  Other words he sputtered were lost as his speech deteriorated into a dissonance of roars and wails. She could only guess that some failure in his plan had set off this rage. Soon he would turn on her, and if all else were failing, he’d be determined to carry out his plan for her down to the last detail.

  Annie drifted away.

  She was driving her red Camaro down a two-lane highway, while someone—oh, it’s Kate—sat beside her, saying … saying … The mist thickened and bore her deeper into blackness, but when she floated back, she knew what Kate had said. Now, a second voice wound through the mist; Maggie saying the same, “Let him go.”

  Maggie had shown her the beginning and Kate the ending. Annie was so relieved to have solved the riddle, it took her a while to realize that Eddie’s tirade had wound down. Now he was talking again … to Tom? And laughing? No. It couldn’t be. She was still hallucinating. As proof, she opened her eyes to see Kate lying beside her on the floor, smiling at her.

  “It’s time, Sissy,” whispered Kate. “Come with me.”

  Annie smiled. She closed her fist around the weapon and gave thanks for brittle glass that broke into such wicked points. By touch, she’d finally identified this freedom-giving device. It was part of a fake Venetian-glass vase Gary had given her on their first anniversary, the only thing she’d kept from their marriage. As Eddie would say, “Isn’t that just perfect?”

  She had one moment of regret that she wouldn’t be here to witness his ultimate frenzy when he discovered he’d been cheated of another death. Then she tightened her grip and pressed the crystalline shard into the soft hollow beneath her jaw. She took a breath as deep as her crushed ribs would allow.

  “I release him,” she whispered.

  Eddie silenced immediately and whirled toward her. “What?” he screamed. “What did you say?”

  In a voice stronger than she thought possible, she cried out, “I release Jacob. I release Tom. Forever.” And then, by sheer will, she thrust her head forward. The blue and purple glass slashed her throat like a scalpel.

  Annie lived long enough to hear Eddie’s shriek end with a roar. “No. No. nooooooooo.”

  27

  June 26, part three

  When Tom woke just minutes before Julie had phoned from the airport, his headache was gone and so was Max. He called to the dog, both inside and outside the cabin but got no response. The dog often took himself off for the day when they visited the lake, but the torn door screen worried Tom. It was more than a little disconcerting to realize that he had no recollection of that happening. But he hadn’t spent much time thinking about it; he’d had to shower and straighten up the place some before Julie arrived. The mess in the kitchen sink was another thing he couldn’t explain.

  Now, he sat in the quiet cabin, waiting. He glanced toward the mantel clock to check the time, but on some afternoon, or some dark night, it had stopped at ten past two. Feeling accused of a dereliction of duty by its idleness, he crossed the room, and while he wound the clockworks, he studied the framed photograph sitting on the mantel. It captured a moment years ago when he’d sported a beard and Julie’s hair had hung down her back, but the third person in the picture had changed the most. Lindsay had been only seven that summer, all legs and braids and funny faces. The perfect family stood together, forever smiling in the sunlight.

  Suddenly the sense of what he’d almost lost lay so heavy on him he struggled to breathe. Everything that mattered to him. That’s what he’d almost thrown away. Almost? He had a thread of hope, now, but Julie hadn’t made the final call yet.

  He closed the clock and swept his gaze across the other objects on the mantel. A baseball trophy from Spring 1980, a builders association citation, a lumpy, child-made clay statue proclaiming him Best Daddy in the World. Souvenirs of his life. As he started to turn away, the center stone under the mantel caught his eye. The place of honor, he’d called it when he set it in place two months ago. The vaguely oval, plate-sized tablet of slate had been roughly engraved by hand. Although Julie hadn’t come right out and said so, he’d feared her initial reaction to seeing it was because she thought it looked tacky. But if so, she’d recovered quickly and said she was touched. He smiled, recalling that she’d demonstrated her appreciation well that night in their bed.

  J S FOREVER MY LOVE

  Those were the words someone had scratched into the surface. And those were also Julie’s initials. She’d been Julie Strickland when they met. Tom thought it remarkable that he’d found such a memorial less than one hundred yards from where he’d built their cabin.

  “Julie Strickland, be my love forever,” he prayed as he traced the letters. Although he’d run his fingers harmlessly over them a dozen times before, this time the edge of one of the letters sliced into the pad of his index finger. “Goddammit,” he muttered and then applied the ancient first-aid method of finger sucking.

  In the bathroom, he examined the cut closer. It was small but ragged, the kind that would ooze blood all day. In case his spit hadn’t properly disinfected it, he doused it with peroxide. As he peeled the paper cover from a Band-Aid, there was a change in the air. A disturbance in the Force. He felt a chill along his back, as if a life-sized ice sculpture stood within his eighteen inches of personal space.

  He was no longer alone.

  But it wasn’t Jacob who’d joined him. The surrounding mood was not one of rage. It felt a little angry but mostly sad. Unloved. And lonely.

  It’s Maggie.

  Tom was standing at the basin, in front of the mirror, still looking down at his hand, but his gut told him that if he lifted his gaze to the mirror, he’d see her standing behind him. He felt very strongly that he did not want to do that. It wasn’t that he feared he’d see the moldering corpse of Maggie. On the contrary, he feared he’d see her living beauty. See the green eyes so like Annie’s. Feared he’d take one giant step backwards and lose himself again.

  He felt something like a finger tap on his right shoulder. An involuntary half-laugh half-scream lurched from his throat, but he kept his eyes downcast. Stillness. Waiting. She was trying to tell him something. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he did. He didn’t hear her in the same sense that he’d heard Jacob. It was just a knowing. But the thing was, he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to know what she had to say or what she wanted from him or that she even existed. He was done with the whole damned thing.

  “Like I told your boyfriend, leave me the hell alone!” His voice came out forceful and surprisingly even, but he hadn’t dared look her in the face. He sensed her leave—or more like b
eing ripped away.

  An icy blast hit the nape of his neck, and his face slammed against the mirror. Something—he didn’t want to visualize what—held his head fast. His left eye and cheek pressed hard against the glass; the tip of his nose was shoved to the side. The shock of the impact had forced his right eye open, and in the instant before he clenched it shut again, he caught a glimpse of the wall behind him. No pale face surrounded by auburn hair. No anything.

  This wasn’t Maggie. Whoever—whatever—held him was evil. It demanded his attention, and he gave it. Absolutely. In the next instant, he felt the pressure on his neck ease but only a little. He raised his face from the glass only enough to tilt his head downward a little. He kept his forehead against the mirror, his eyes closed.

  A scene shoved into his mind. He saw the woods. This wasn’t exactly a vision, more like a daydream, but definitely one coaxed by the spirit-thing behind him. Through his daydream eyes he looked down and saw a hole. Like the proverbial light bulb, he saw a flash of light and knew this was where he’d found the engraved fireplace stone. Inanely, as all the pieces slid together in his mind, he thought he felt the thing that held him smile.

  It flooded his mind with thoughts. Maggie had carved the inscription. The J S stood for Jacob Stout. The stone was her memorial to their love, carved by her hand. As if to confirm that, he saw a close-up of the words, saw the freshly cut sharp edges of the letters, saw the smears of blood and knew they came from Maggie’s hand. And his heart told him that by sealing that pledge of love in her blood, she’d doomed their souls to eternal seeking.

  And now I’ve left my blood on it!

  His hands had grown cold and slimy with sweat, but they remained nailed where they’d first slapped the mirror on either side of his head.

  “Do you want me to put the stone back?” he asked cautiously. Was that a laugh? “I can do that. I can chip away the mortar and—”

  An icy sigh whispered past his ear … or maybe it was a drawn out word—nooooo.