by Tobias Wade
Mackenzie Maston gingerly runs her hand down the door, hoping Jessica can hear her on the other side.
A sudden knock—but it isn’t coming from the bathroom. Mackenzie sighs and labors to her feet which had gotten numb from her awkward position on the floor. She really must be getting old—maybe she’s the one that needs a wheelchair. Scolding herself for the thought, she crosses the room to open the door.
“Hello Mackenzie.”
“Ender! On thank god you’re all right!”
Mackenzie hurtles forward to hug her husband, but catches herself just before they touch. Something isn’t right. Ender’s face is perfectly impassive. He doesn’t react at all, not even withdrawing his hands from the pockets of his heavy overcoat. He doesn’t have his duffel bag or any of his things. There’s fuzz growing on his bald head that he ordinarily shaves zealously. This doesn’t look like the victorious return home of a valiant soldier.
“Oh my God, your men. Did something happen—”
“Everyone made it home safely,” Ender says, not budging from the dark porch. “I made sure of that.”
“Well, come in then, you old goose! Jessica is going to be so happy to—”
But Mackenzie pulls herself back again just before she touches Ender. He pushes his way past her to step inside, critically examining the place as though inspecting it for the first time.
“Ender your eyes—” Mackenzie is frozen in the doorway. She thought she’d imagined it when he’d first stepped into the light, but now standing in the living room it was unmistakable. Black marble eyes stare dispassionately at her, the faintest hint of a smile at last playing at the corner of his lips. It must have been just a trick of the light though, because a moment later he blinks and his eyes are back to their old self.
“Where’s Jessica?” he asks.
“She’s taking a bath, but Ender…”
His pace hastens as he approaches the door. Mackenzie’s words trail off into a whisper as she watches him lean his head against the wood, almost as though he was listening for something. Now he was sniffing—up and down the length of the door frame, insistent, probing sniffs like a dog on a mark.
“Ender, what in God’s name is going on—”
“She’s in there all right,” he interrupts, “but barely. She’ll be dead within a few minutes.”
“Sweet Jesus, to hear the things you’ve got coming out of your mouth—”
“She’s opened four, maybe five veins, all the way from her wrist to her elbow,” Ender continues as matter-of-factly as though he is reading a newspaper. “The water is so thick with blood I can almost taste it. Very soon her blood pressure will fall so low that—”
Mackenzie might as well have been the one bleeding for how white her face has grown. She rushes to the bathroom door and pounds on it with her fist.
“Jessica, can you hear me? What’s going on in there?”
“— so low that her organs will begin to shut down one by one,” Ender finishes, a harsh edge in his voice to signal his annoyance at being interrupted.
“What are you just standing around for then?” Mackenzie shouts. “Help me get this door open!”
She slams her shoulder into the wood, shaking it in its frame, her bones vibrating with it.
“You’re just going to hurt yourself like that,” Ender says, hands still in his pockets.
Mackenzie barely hears him over the sound of her own blood pounding in her ears. Another running charge, another numbing impact, and then a surging hot throb throughout her body. She’s already recoiling for another blow. Pain, like love, can move mountains.
“Try kicking instead,” Ender suggests. “Dig one heel into the ground for balance, and drive your other heel into the wood just beside the lock.”
“God damn it, Ender. Help me!”
“It’s too late either way. Even if you reach her now, she’ll be gone before you can do anything about it.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you? She’s your daughter!”
“Not really,” Ender replies, his face furrowing in concentration as though an elusive memory is taunting him just beyond his reach. His eyes are unmistakably black again, although Mackenzie thinks she sees an old spark kindle deep within them like the first star on a dark night. Perhaps it’s only her desperate hope conjuring something that was never there. Ender vigorously shakes his head, sitting down in front of the bathroom door to block any further attempts.
“You can’t save her like that,” Ender says, the deep calm in his voice giving Mackenzie pause, “but you can save her. Just as I saved my men from the mine when I thought all hope of return to be lost.”
“What are you talking about?” Mackenzie asks, but Ender only smiles.
“Watch and I’ll show you.”
Ender coughs as though to clear his throat, then harder like something is lodged in his airway. His hands massage his neck as a third wave of coughing increases to a feverish fit. His whole body doubles over and he begins to shake. Mackenzie takes an uncertain half step forward to help, but she stops when Ender sits upright again a moment later. Withdrawing his hands from around his throat, he reveals a prominent swollen lump that hadn’t been there a moment before.
The lump is moving. Horrified but transfixed, Mackenzie stands helplessly as the lump twists and strains against its fleshy prison. The skin continues to swell until it’s the size of a golf ball. It’s straining and wiggling so ferociously that the burst shouldn’t have been much of a surprise, but Mackenzie still screams as a mist of blood sprays from Ender’s neck. A black chitinous thing something like a beetle wiggles free from the fissure, crawling directly from inside Ender’s throat.
“This is what a prayer looks like.” Ender’s voice wheezes as some of the air escapes through the hole in his throat. “It saved my life, and it’s going to save Jessica too. Once consumed, this blessing can work any miracle you put your mind to. Go on now. Touch it. Don’t be shy.”
“If you’re suggesting I make my daughter eat that disgusting—”
“Not Jessica. She’s already gone.”
Ender barely ducks in time before Mackenzie’s foot slams into the door above his head. An explosion of wooden splinters cascades upon him, and he scrambles out of the way before a second blow finally breaks through enough for her to reach the deadbolt inside.
“Mackenzie don’t!” he shouts. “You don’t want to see her like—”
Blood. So much blood. Filling the tub, splashed upon the walls, dribbling down the shriveled arm which hangs over the side above a pool on the bathroom floor. The sound which rips itself from deep inside Mackenzie—so longing, so tormented, so filled with self-loathing—the dead could not have heard such a sound without weeping. The blood continues draining from the girl as her mother lifts her from the water to cradle her, and soon they are both so soaked in the thick dark liquid that it’s impossible to tell which suffered the mortal wound. Agony rises and falls to the beat of Mackenzie’s hysterical sobbing.
The clammy wet of her dead daughter’s naked skin presses along the length of Mackenzie’s body, but more monstrous still is Ender’s living hand which squeezes his wife’s shoulder.
“Enough of this foolishness,” comes the deadly calm voice, as deep and dark as though its haunting echoes rose from the bottom of the ocean. “Take the gift I have brought for you and rejoice. You alone have the power to call her back now.”
“You knew. How did you know she did this? How is any of this real?” trembles the reply.
“I have looked The Beast in his sacred eye and understand the beauty that only terror can bring,” Ender whispers from behind Mackenzie, his mouth nuzzling her ear. “I do not close myself off to fear as I used to. I can smell it now—on her as she bled, and on you now. It’s almost… erotic.”
Mackenzie yelps as Ender playfully bites her earlobe, pulling away to glare daggers at the stranger within her husband’s body. She can’t meet his black eyes for long. Her own gaze drops to the writhing chr
ysalis he holds out in his hands.
“What do I have to do?”
“You swallow it willingly, and then you kneel to pray. You pray with all your heart that Jessica will return to you. You pray just as you have done for her every night since her accident, but this time there will be one difference.”
“What’s that?” Mackenzie asks, wide eyes desperate for the faintest shred of hope.
“This time someone will be listening.”
Ender’s arms wrap around Mackenzie now, his hands open in front of her. She watches the shining black thing slide from his fingers and scrambles to catch it. This isn’t real. The only reality is the one where Jessica is singing to the stereo, stomping around her room like a herd of elephants. Reality is where her daughter is growing everyday, marveling at the world she discovers and learning more than Mackenzie will ever know.
Whatever this is—the lonely nights, the hospitals, the black eyes and the blood—she is going to wake up from everything. She’s going to hug her daughter and they’re going to cry and laugh so hard that she believed any of this for a second. Stuffing the chrysalis into her mouth, Mackenzie swallows hard. It sticks in her throat for a second as though trying to climb back up, but she forces it down, barely noticing the tickling feeling which descends her throat to plant itself deep within her body. She closes her eyes, waiting for this delusion to dissipate. She doesn’t even resist when Ender kisses her hard upon the mouth, or when his strong hands lift her away from the sticky floor to pin her against the wall. There’s a trickle of blood from the wound in Ender’s throat, but the loose skin is already stitching itself together like congealing dough.
She’s going to wake up soon. But first, she has to pray.
“Who should I be praying to?” she asks, forcing Ender away.
But Ender isn’t listening. His mouth is working its way down her neck, tracing the route of the thing she swallowed.
God wasn’t the one listening, that’s all she knew. But she had prayed to God every night and this is where she’d been led, so this one goes out to whoever or whatever was listening now.
Please save my daughter. Whatever happens to me, bring her back.
And for the first time in her life, a voice seemed to answer:
Death will be a stranger to her, but I shall be her friend.
Love like hers, it could move mountains. But a voice like that could turn them to sand where they stood.
Jessica gives a spluttering gasp and Mackenzie’s heart stops. She doesn’t feel it start again.
“Mom? Dad? Where am I? What’s going on?”
6
Jessica’s chair is pulled up to the dinner table. The girl folds her hands demurely in her lap. She self-consciously rubs the scars on her right arm—already dried and hard. Old battle wounds, even though it had only been a few hours ago when she took her own life. Seeing her mother weeping over her on the floor and her father home from his last deployment—feeling death shed from her as lightly as sleep—she should be relieved, but she isn’t. It’s just numbness now. The most fundamental choice universal to all living things, that between life and death, was stolen from her. She had never felt so powerless in her life. She doesn’t even have the strength to look up from her plate and meet her parents’ black eyes.
“You must still be in shock,” coos Mackenzie.
Jessica nods, but not because she agrees. It’s simply easier than opening her mouth to respond.
“Did you see anything while you were—” Ender begins.
“Don’t ask her something like that,” Mackenzie cuts him off sharply. “Let’s not talk about it at all. How is your dinner, honey? Did we make it right?”
Jessica isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. She makes a show of shuffling the pile of fried carrots around her plate, stealing a glance at the otherwise empty table. Do they even remember what it’s like to be human? Is there anything left of her parents behind those black unblinking eyes?
“Carrots aren’t going to help her walk again,” Ender says bluntly, leaning back in his chair with the satisfied air of a professor who is waiting for the class to appreciate the brilliance of his conjecture.
“I told you not to talk about it—”
“Why not?” Ender snaps. “She’s not an idiot. You’re not an idiot, are you, Jessica?”
“No sir,” Jessica replies, matching his military tone.
“Of course not. You know that you died. You know your mother and I went to great lengths to bring you back. And you must know that same power will allow you to walk again, if that’s what you choose.”
Jessica finally meets the marble gaze. If only she could lie and convince herself it was still her father. All the lines in his face were the same. The crease at the edge of his smile, worn deep from the years when his face would crinkle every time he saw her. It would be so easy to believe they really want what’s best for her, if only she could shut off the part of her mind that couldn’t stop screaming. So why does she still flinch when her mother reaches across the table to squeeze her hand?
“You saw something on the other side, didn’t you?” Ender asks, his eyebrows arching in accusation. “You saw something that makes you not want to trust us.”
Jessica closes her eyes.
She couldn’t breathe. She was being submerged in a pool of water. She kept fighting to get back to the surface, but she was so weak, and hands were pushing her down… down… so deep she’ll never make it back up. But she isn’t supposed to make it back, is she? The thing wants her to go down, and she can’t fight it forever. But there’s something singing down there, calling for her, begging for her, so how bad could it be? And so down she goes…
An involuntary gasp for air, and Jessica opens her eyes again. She looks back at her hands. Some of the dried blood hasn’t come off yet. She picks at it as though it was the most important thing in the world.
“It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to tell us,” Ender says. Then to Mackenzie: “Just give it to her already. She’ll understand once she takes it.”
“It has to be your choice,” Mackenzie whispers patiently. Her hand caresses Jessica’s, gently prying open her fingers to drop something like a hard, black seed into her daughter’s hand. “Just one quick swallow and it’s all done, and you’ll have your old life back. Even better than before—we’ll be a family again.”
“Are we not a family now?” Jessica asks. She draws the seed up to her face to inspect it. She can feel it throbbing, already matching her own pulse as she holds it.
The pregnant silence speaks louder than any answer. “Of course we—” Mackenzie begins at last.
“No,” Ender interrupts. “You’re different than us now. We’ve left you behind, but not for long. As soon as you take the seed—”
Jessica’s hand is shaking as she places the seed back on the dinner table. Mackenzie sighs, pushing her chair back to stand and head for the kitchen. “Would you like anything to help wash it down?” she calls over her shoulder.
“Where did you go D—” Jessica almost says ‘Dad’, but the word chokes in her throat, “—sir. What happened to you?”
Ender only smiles, and only with his mouth, leaving the black eyes unaffected. Jessica thinks that it looks more like a snarl.
“It has to be my choice though, right?” she prods. “It isn’t a choice if I don’t understand what I’m choosing. That’s like being offered two bags without being told what’s inside—not a choice at all.”
“Azgangi.”
“What?”
“Milk?” Mackenzie calls. “Or some soda maybe. That’ll take the taste right out.”
“Azgangi is a temple built to worship The Beast, although it’s nothing but a ruin now,” Ender says. “I think the energy in the seed was the only thing still holding it together all these years. It’s not the only one though. Jakuzi in Nepal, Marapoza in Iceland, Vikonda in Turkey—he was worshiped all over the world once. Back when humans were not afraid of being afraid—before we w
ere tamed and domesticated like cattle. All havens beside Marapoza have been destroyed, nestled as it is safely underwater.”
“Oh, how silly of me,” Mackenzie mumbles to herself. “Fried carrots. Why did I think she’d like fried carrots?”
“Inside the temple—you found this Beast? And he gave you the seed?” Jessica presses.
“Do you find God inside a church?” Ender asks. “Yes, and no. The temples are like a window to see him more clearly. And if we join hands and pray together in the temple, then perhaps it can become a door as well.”
“And did Ender know these things?” Jessica leans forward on the table now, searching her father’s face for any sign of familiarity. “Or do you know this because you’re someone else now?”
Ender—or the Demon, it’s impossible to distinguish—crinkles his face as though he’d just tasted rot. “We’re wasting time. I cannot make you understand as you are now. Take the seed.”
He rolls the black object toward his daughter once more. Mackenzie reappears around the corner wearing a kitchen apron. “Be patient, dear. She’s always been a thinker, our Jessica.”
“She wasn’t thinking when she fell off that stupid roof.”
“Ender!”
“I was thinking very clearly, thank you,” Jessica mutters.
