“Where is he?”
“Gone.”
Shane reached for his water glass but it was empty. “For good?”
“Yes.”
He seemed satisfied with the answer but she couldn’t be sure. Shane had never been a mystery to her and was thus always easy to read but something had changed and he sat across from her like a stranger at a dinner party. The wariness and distrust were to be expected but beyond that lingered a sudden and deep unfamiliarity between them. Tilda had put it there and she knew that she would have to build the bridge back to it.
The word ‘purgatory’ flickered through her mind. The Catholic in her was never really dead and like those things that slithered in the dark, it resurrected itself to haunt the present.
“For what it’s worth, I still love you. That didn’t change.” Tilda lowered her hand to the table. “Never will.”
“Good,” he said.
With her hand horizontal, the throbbing returned so she folded it back into its sling.
He caught her wincing. “What is it?”
“My hand. Starting to hurt.”
“Did they give you something for the pain?”
“It’s in my bag.”
Shane stood and went to the stool where her bag lay. He came round to her end and placed two pills on her plate, pushed her glass of water closer. “Take these.”
Her good hand shot out, like it had a mind of its own, and gripped his before it left the table. She held on and squeezed but could not think of a single thing to say.
Shane tugged his hand away but held his eyes where they were.
“You look pale,” he said. “Eat something.”
THE SEIZURE CAME OUT OF NOWHERE, snapping Tilda from a dead sleep. Every muscle jerked and coiled so hard it left her breathless and panting like a dog. When the second wave hit, the constriction of her muscles was so violent that she feared her molars would crack.
They had ended the night so peacefully. More peacefully than she had had any right to hope for. It had been awkward; cautious and hesitant as she and Shane orbited around the other as they brushed their teeth and got ready for bed. As polite as strangers. Lying in the dark he asked if she wanted another painkiller and they spoke a little about Molly and then said goodnight.
Tilda lay there in the darkened bedroom, looking up at the squared patch of light thrown from the street onto the ceiling. Feeling the warmth of his body under the sheets, Tilda wanted to curl into him and rest her cheek between his shoulder blades. To wrap her arm around him and beg him to understand. Her good hand slid forward to touch Shane’s back and he didn’t shrink away. She settled for that. It was more than enough for now.
The jarring spasm destroyed all that. It felt as if she’d been stabbed with a live electrical cable, the voltage frying through her and working her muscles like a dead frog in science class prodded into a post-mortem flinch.
Her belly rumbled up in a sloshy gurgle. At first it felt like hunger, suddenly and powerfully ravenous but it flopped on a dime into a nauseous churn that sent her running for the bathroom. It came up fast and she threw up violently, eyes clamped shut and watering. When she opened them she saw blood in the toilet bowl and more of it splattered across her hands, the tile floor. Another retch and something solid came up and knocked against her teeth as it chucked out. A lung or her spleen, she didn’t want to know.
The tile was mercifully cool against her skin as she slipped to the floor. By now a pulsing headache scrambled her thoughts and something like fire snaked through her veins in what she imagined to be a junkie’s death.
Her gauze-wrapped hand lay flat on the tile before her face. Why this was happening? A bad reaction to the medication they gave her at the hospital? No. All they had administered were painkillers. Another guess flitted around the periphery of her mind but she dismissed it as panic, the headache frying her brain cells.
Prone on the bathroom floor, she stayed as still as possible and waited it out. Counting to three, she clutched the rim of the vanity and pushed up to her feet to wash the mess from her hands and rinse the goddawful taste in her mouth.
Don’t look in the mirror
Who can avoid a mirror? The blind and the insane maybe. The rest of us too weak and too vain to avert our needy gaze. Lot’s wife looking wistfully back at Sodom.
Tilda’s eyes watered again at the figure in the bathroom mirror. As pale as snow, her flesh startlingly so against the dark blood on her mouth and chin. Her eyes didn’t look right. They too were pale and cloudy, as if the colour of the iris had bleached out. And when her jaw fell open, there was something terribly wrong with her teeth.
Blood, so dark it was almost ink, stained wet through the cotton of her T-shirt. Her breast, where Gil’s teeth had sunk into her. It had never healed and was bleeding fresh. Lifting the shirt revealed purpled flesh over the whole breast, spidery traces fingering out across her sternum. Infected. Spreading fast.
Her knees buckled, the floor hard as it came up fast to smack her. She coiled up, tugging her knees under her chin.
Didn’t she have to die first? Isn’t that what Gil had said? You die and then on the third night you come back. Or was that just some stupid movie she had seen? The pain inside her skull suddenly receded, pushed back by the sensation of her nose burning. The smell of blood. A warm body lying asleep and helpless in the next room.
And now she was crawling on hands and knees like an animal through the bathroom door and over the hardwood towards the bed. She couldn’t stop, her limbs ignoring her mind, obeying only the hot scent in her nose. She tried to scream, to warn Shane to run, to get Molly and get out but her throat constricted, disobeying her will along with the rest of her. Trapped inside this prison of her body as it scuttled across the bedroom floor, her mind wept but even her tear ducts wouldn’t obey.
This can’t be happening, she thought as her hand gripped the coverlet of the conjugal bed. Shane lay still under the sheets, turned away towards the wall. She could feel the heat coming off him. She could hear the beating of his heart, pumping blood to his sleeping limbs. Her fingers touched his shoulder and he stirred, rolling over towards her. A fold in the pillow had left a crease in his cheek and his mouth was open. He looked peaceful and oblivious to the threat that loomed over him.
Seeing his face snapped Tilda like a fist hard across the mouth. She saw herself hovering over him, a moment away from whatever evil inside her demanded she do. Even in this moment of lucidity it was still driving her forward, pushing for her to take him.
Turning away was like fighting a gale force wind, she had to lean into it. Gaining the hallway, she stumbled and crawled the rest of the way to the stairs. The awful thing inside reared its head again, sniffing the air and pushing her for what lay behind the door across the hall. Her daughter’s room.
Tilda pushed back, throwing herself down the stairs where she banged and tumbled and splayed across the landing. Stymied, the push in her veins backed off and she made it as far as the kitchen. She had to get out of the house, away from her family. But to where?
Reeling into the kitchen, she sensed something shuffle in the darkness. She wasn’t alone. Something darker than the shadows shifted and hissed. She could smell it now, the sharp tang of charred flesh mixed with the stench of something long dead.
The thing in the corner opened its eyes and before she could make out its silhouette in the dark, she knew it was the rector of the coven. It had survived the flames and come for her. Even now, it raised its burned arms wide to receive her like a wayward daughter.
She had no strength left to fight and Tilda’s stomach turned. It was so unfair; Gil was gone but this obscene wraith endured. The repugnant hatred the thing stirred gave a little strength to her hand. If there was any justice in this world, she could at least take the thing with her when she died.
It hissed as it slithered in and Tilda spat in its wretched face.
IN the summer months, Shane woke with the sun every morning. Had done so s
ince he was a boy, stirring from sleep the moment the first rays touched the window no matter how heavily draped. He used an alarm clock only in the winter when the sun rose late but by May, he had no use for it.
This morning was no different than any other. What was out of place was the potent smell of smoke drifting in through the bedroom window.
The panic was instant. Fire. He reached out to wake Tilda but she wasn’t there. Springing up, he rushed to the bathroom but it was as empty as the bed. Where was she? He ran into the hallway in his boxer-briefs and banged open his daughter’s door. Molly was no morning person, grouchy and slow to waken, and Shane didn’t have time to be gentle. He shook her twice and then simply dragged her out of bed and down the stairs.
Rushing past the window, he saw the smoke. The fire, thank God, was outside. The backyard.
He hollered Tilda’s name over and over but no response came, the hallway and kitchen both empty. Dropping Molly into a chair, he threw open the back door and raised a hand against the roiling wave of heat that greeted him.
A bonfire raged in the dewy grass of the yard. Dangerously close to the garage, the air rife with floating cinders that rose up and winked out. He couldn’t tell what was burning, there was just a dark mass silhouetted inside the bright light of the flames.
The grass under his feet was still wet with dew where the sunlight had yet to reach it. It felt odd, the heat on his chest and the chill on his feet.
Molly appeared in the doorway, squinting against the glow of the fire. “Dad, what happened?”
“Call nine-one-one!”
“Where’s mom?”
“I don’t know! Get the phone and go out the front!”
Molly darted back inside for the cordless but, disobeying her father, returned to the backdoor. She watched him dart for the garden hose as she called for help. Later, she wouldn’t remember anything she had said to the dispatcher on the line.
Shane barked at Molly to search the house while he unspooled the garden hose and opened the spigot. The bonfire was localized but the flames were already roasting the drooping boughs of the willow tree and licking dangerously close to the garage. The thin spray from the hose would be useless against the fire itself so Shane directed the water around it, dousing the garage and the willow and the lawn to prevent it from spreading.
When Molly appeared at his side, she held a small fire extinguisher in her hands, the one kept under the sink. Swapping it out, he gave her the hose and told her to soak the ground around the flames. Yanking the safety pin from the nozzle, he blasted the blaze with a dust cloud of potassium bicarbonate. The flames hissed and roiled and he kept the pressure on, holding his breath against the white cloud and didn’t let up until the canister ran dry.
He waved the dust away until he could peer through the haze to see what had incinerated in his yard. Charred and blackened, the limbs materialized in the dissipating fog. An arm, carbonized to charcoal, lifted straight up to the sky. The fingers curled into a claw. He blinked at it stupidly, unable to process what his eyes were seeing.
“What is it?” Molly pressed up behind him to see.
Shane dropped the canister and pushed her away, railroading the girl back into the house before she could see anything. He prayed she hadn’t seen anything.
The cloud of bicarbonate and greasy smoke shrouded the yard in a ghostly wash. Shane waved it away as he returned to the mess, a few flames yet licking up around the dark mass. Staring down at the charred remains, Shane felt his brain shut down at the identity of who this was. It can’t be her, he thought. It just can’t. While his mind rejected the idea, his body seemed to grasp the truth as his knees threatened to buckle under him.
It was then that he noticed the garage door was ajar. He pushed it open, the interior folded in deep shadow. Squinting into its inkiness, something shifted there, coiled up against the far wall.
“Tilda?”
It was her. Folded up into a ball on the floor, her face hidden under the tangled fall of hair. He rushed to her but she flinched at his touch as if he’d hurt her. Her arms were dark with ash and soot and she kept her face hidden.
“Tilda, what happened? Are you hurt?” He ran his hands over her but found no sign of injury beyond some bruising and a few scrapes. He swept her hair aside and straightened her chin. “Tilda, look at me.”
Her eyes wheeled crazily in their sockets before coming back to earth. The bandaged dressing on her hand was filthy and loose, the gauze trailing out across the concrete floor. When her eyes clicked into recognition at who was holding her, Tilda curled into him and buried her face into Shane’s chest.
“You’re okay,” he said over and over as he pulled her to her feet. “Let’s get you out of here.”
She leaned into him, unsteady on her feet but balked when he eased her towards the door. The sunlight blasting through the door was almost white against the darkness of the garage and she didn’t want to go. “No,” she said.
“It’s okay,” he cooed. “I promise. Just walk with me.”
She didn’t want to go but she had no strength left to anchor herself and Shane strong-armed her to the door. The sunlight touched her skin.
Nothing happened. She didn’t burst into flames, didn’t shriek and burn under its rays. It simply warmed her bare arms and face after the cool damp of the garage. Her hand wrapped around his waist and she leaned into him.
The garden hose at their feet was old and leaked from a split washer. Cold tap water sprayed out in a thin line that misted over the remains of the bonfire. Tilda gazed down at the darkened mass of cinders and charred limbs. Shane told her not to look as they limped back towards the house.
When the carbonized hand that reached for the sky finally crumbled in on itself, there was no left in the yard to witness it.
THE MYSTERY GUITAR HUNG FROM A PEG on the garage wall, untouched and gathering dust. It was the only ornament on the naked soundproofed walls, the old gig posters and handbills long since torn down leaving only clean patches of white against an outline of faded paint. The archival history of Tilda Parish was gone and the only trace left were these ghostly after-images of where they had hung.
Tilda sat at the bench underneath the slung guitar, her good hand on a keyboard before her. A cable trailed out from the instrument to a speaker monitor behind her. She’d found the keyboard at Orbiter Music, walking in on a whim four days ago looking to purchase an instrument. Assuming she was looking for a guitar, Travis reminded her that her old Rickenbacker was still hanging from the wall on a commission ticket but was surprised when Tilda had said she wasn’t interested.
“I’m done with guitars,” she’d said. Her left hand was still cradled in a sling and she saw his eyes dart to it but she was tired of explaining its appearance. “I’m looking for a keyboard.”
They didn’t have a lot but he led her through the shop to the few keyboards they did have. She found a Yamaha that looked badly used up but sounded fine when she tested it out. “I’ll take it,” she said.
“It’s good to see you back, Tilda. You falling off the wagon?”
“No. Not really,” she said. “Just exorcising a few last ghosts.”
The ‘few last ghosts’ was a complete understatement. The melodies and riffs were drifting up all the time and she couldn’t stop them coming. Like a musical form of Tourette’s, the stuff just blurted out on its own at the most inconvenient or embarrassing times. Exorcism was a practical solution; get it out, craft out the song so she could put it aside and get some peace. A musical trepanation. Drill a hole into the skull to let out the demons and get some relief.
Like most plans, it flopped. At first anyway.
She couldn’t play guitar anymore. Her burn-ravaged hand was useless, unable to curl around a fretboard much less form chords. A keyboard was the compromise. She could work the keys with her good hand and, if needed, could bonk a few keys with the thumb of her wounded hand. It sounded like hell at first but bullheaded practice is the only way for
ward. After a while, the botched key strikes improved to the point where she could lay down the basics of a song. Sing quietly overtop the racket she made with the synth.
Trepanation proved to be effective. One song after another was hammered out, relieving the tension in her head. Exorcised into strings of notes and lyrics scrawled on scrap paper, the demons were let out and she could breathe again. She had hoped the relief would help her sleep but there were still nightmares to contend with. They didn’t disrupt her sleep every night but when they came, the nightmares were raw and terrifying.
Post traumatic stress. Understandable, considering what she had gone through. Songwriting had always been a form of meditation for Tilda, one that calmed her mind and allowed her to center herself. Without it, the stark dreams of the coven, their faces hissing from the darkness in the underground nest, would have driven her insane.
The tyrant of the coven had survived the fire and come for her that awful night. Seeing the hatred in its eyes, she was sure was going to die but the thing was weakened and her own hatred gave her strength. Burned by the flames into a horror of charred flesh, the wraith was slow and clumsy and she kept its teeth at bay as they tumbled outside. It gibbered and clawed at her. She had scooped a brick from the garden and broke its teeth with it. Dawn was already chasing the night back and when the sun came up, she knew that it would die, not her. Crumpled into a wreckage of limbs in the grass, the rector had tried to crawl away into a shadow but Tilda dragged it back and when the sun came, it burned.
It had been three weeks and still nothing would grow in the patch of earth where it had burned. Tilda had swept away the ash, turned the earth with a spade and laid down fresh soil and grass seed. Nothing grew there now, not even weeds, leaving a bald swath in the yard.
She had fled the sunlight when she felt it singe the back of her neck and shoulders. She hadn’t needed to. The infection or curse or whatever it was was gone. Whether it had run its course like any other infection or it was linked somehow with the death of the coven leader, she didn’t know. All that mattered was that it was gone.
Old Flames, Burned Hands Page 28
