by Simon Wood
In one supreme effort, Ginny threw off both her helpers. The nurse crashed heavily into her medication cart. Tammy’s father cracked his head on the floor. Ginny sat bolt upright in bed, her eyes wide and searching, but unaware of her location. She stopped when she focused on something she did recognize—Tammy. A white knuckled finger accused. “That bitch is trying to kill me.”
Tammy shook her head, continuing to back away.
Her father got to his feet. “Ginny, you don’t know what you’re saying. That’s Tammy.”
“Mrs. Testaverde, you need to calm down,” the wary nurse said.
“BITCH!” Ginny shrieked. “MURDERESS!”
Tammy crashed into the wall, banging her head. “No, mom,” she whispered.
The emergency team burst through the door. They weren’t bothered by the scene and immediately got to work pinning Ginny down.
The nurse said to Tammy’s father, “You’d better get her out of here.”
He did as he was told and grabbed his daughter. He ushered Tammy out of the room, fueled by the trail of obscenities following them. “Don’t worry kiddo. Your mom doesn’t know what she’s saying. She’s ill.”
Tammy ignored her father. She listened to the filth her mother spewed at her. It’s not true, she thought. I’m not a murderess.
But the head’s voice whispered in her mind, “No, not yet, you’re not.”
***
The silence woke Tammy the following morning. Her mother should have been demanding that she get up. If not, the scent of one of her father’s deluxe breakfasts should have been invading her room from the kitchen. But nothing, that wasn’t right.
Screaming filled her head. It wasn’t hers. The scream was of anguish and torment. The screamer was on the edge of death. Tammy clamped her hands over her ears to block out the wailing inside her head. With horror, she realized who it was.
“Mother, oh God, mother!” Tammy exploded from her bed. How could she have left her there alone? How could she have cursed her own mother?
The answer was grinning at her from her nightstand. The shrunken head was staring into her soul, and just underneath the tormenting scream of her dying mother, Tammy heard its laughter—mocking her, teasing her.
With tears in her eyes, she grabbed the shrunken head and held it up to her face. “What have you done to my mom?”
The shrunken head’s rictus grin widened, stretching the binding stitches. “Just what you asked for, Tammy. Remember our deal?”
“Damn you, you son of a bitch!” She threw the head across the room. It smashed into the mirror, reducing it to shards.
As she flew out the door, the voice whispered, “Sorry, Tammy, I’ve already been damned. And now I’m taking your precious mommy to Hell with me…”
***
Tammy sprinted the mile to the hospital. She burst through the door to her mother’s room, and was just in time to hear “Clear!” come from one of the doctors, and to see her mother’s body bounce off the bed. Her father was standing beside the bed, tears streaming down his face.
“Daddy, oh daddy, what’s going on?” Everyone was so engrossed in trying to revive her mother that they hadn’t noticed her.
“No pulse, Doctor Adams,” a pretty blonde nurse said, and then noticed Tammy standing in the doorway, horrorstricken. “Get that child out of here!”
Tammy’s father whirled. “Tammy, oh baby…” He ran to his daughter, and pulled her against his chest. “Oh Tammy, she’s dying, baby, she’s dying…”
His tears mingled with hers as they listened to the doctor yell “Clear!” trying to shock Ginny’s heart back to life. Seven minutes later the doctor pronounced her dead, and covered her pale face with a sheet.
That silky voice she had come to hate whispered in her mind “One down, Tammy, and one to go…”
***
Tammy found herself walking the streets, barefoot. It was night, dark enough for the moon to dare not show its face. She had no idea how she’d ended up on the road, but the head, clutched in her hands, gave her a clue. She didn’t feel as though she was being guided, but she was. The head was leading her somewhere, but she had no conscious notion of where. She hoped that a passing driver or cop would pick her up, but there wasn’t a vehicle to be seen. Tammy crossed the street and entered the hospital where her mother had died that morning.
No one noticed the girl with the shrunken head in her hands. Tammy passed through them like a dream. Either everyone was too busy with their jobs to care or Tammy wasn’t really there in body, existing only in spirit. She pressed the down button on the elevator.
The doors slid open and the morgue revealed itself at the end of the corridor. Tammy should have felt trepidation as her bare feet slapped against the cold, tile floor towards the room, but it was as if she’d been anesthetized against the effects of fear.
She knew exactly which locker to open. She needed no manifest. Sliding out the drawer, she didn’t have to be told who lay beneath the sheet. Carefully, as if she was making her own bed, she drew back the sheet and folded it back on itself, exposing her mother’s head and shoulders. She was dead, no doubt about it. Her pale skin had a gray tinge to it and she was cold.
Tammy should have been bawling like a baby, but she wasn’t. The head’s anesthetic again, she guessed.
“Your mom needs you to do something,” the head whispered.
“You mean you need something done,” Tammy hissed.
“Oh, no. Not me. See for yourself.”
Her mother’s eyelids rolled back. Her eyes were yellow and bloodshot. Her mouth parted and a stagnant exhale slipped between her lips. But her chest didn’t rise and fall.
“This is your fault, Tammy.”
“No,” Tammy cried. The same energy that had guided her, now rooted her to the spot.
“Oh, don’t give me that, Tammy. You wished this on me. Some daughter you are. I think it’s the least you can do for me.”
“What did I tell you, Tammy?” the head said. “This isn’t for me, it’s for your mom. You did have her killed, after all.”
Tammy wasn’t so dumb. She knew it was the head operating her mother the same way it was operating her. The head toyed with her, all a charade for its amusement.
The circular saw, a more delicate one than the one her father kept in the garage, beckoned. It shone under the florescent lighting. Tammy picked it up and plugged it into the nearest socket. The cord extended far enough to reach her mother.
“Go on,” the head urged.
Tammy hit the power switch and the saw jumped in her grasp. It jumped again when she sliced into her mother’s neck. The spinning blade ate into dead flesh without a hint of trouble. Ginny’s body trembled as the angry saw consumed.
“I can’t do this,” Tammy said, but her hands contradicted.
“You can,” the head encouraged.
Gore spattered bloody freckles on Tammy’s face. She took a second, deeper cut. The blade relished the chance to eat bone. It accomplished its task with ease.
The saw chattered in triumph as Tammy removed it from the successful decapitation. She returned it to the lab bench, not bothering to clean her mother’s gore from the blade.
The head instructed. “Remove the head.”
Tammy did as she was told and moved her mother’s head to one side.
“You know what you have to do next.”
Tammy did. She placed the shrunken head on top of her mother’s corpse. It was not only disproportionately small but its withered and desiccated flesh didn’t match her mother’s nightly moisturized neck.
But the head did its best to make amends for the difference. Strands of flesh lashed out of the shrunken head and dug into Ginny’s bloody stump. The head swelled to normal proportions. Skin oozed like a mudslide, sealing it to Ginny’s corpse. The stitches sealing its lips and eyes snapped, revealing a black tongue and black eyes.
The head turned on its new neck and regarded its predecessor with distain. Blue flame jetted f
rom its mouth, incinerating Ginny’s head on contact. Tammy felt her tears evaporate from the heat coming from her mother’s burning skull. Within a minute, it was reduced to ash. The skull was a husk and unable to support its own structure, collapsed in on itself.
The head’s mouth opened wide, producing a clown-like leer. It inhaled, producing a gale. The wind whipped at Tammy’s hair and hoisted papers into the air. The head was in danger of consuming everything in the morgue, but it was interested in only one thing—the ashes of Ginny’s head. It sucked the carbonized flesh and bone. It closed its mouth when not a scrap remained. The head went translucent, becoming paler than the sheet that covered Ginny. The ashes swirled in a hurricane of activity under the skin and when the ashes settled, color returned to it, revealing Ginny’s face.
The new Ginny sat and shook her head. Ginny’s long, flowing, blonde hair grew instantly and cascaded over her shoulders.
Tammy threw up.
The new Ginny hopped off the locker drawer, wrapping the sheet around her to hide her modesty. She offered a hand to Tammy. “Let’s get you home,” the creature said in a voice that wasn’t the head’s but Ginny’s. “Coming?”
***
Tammy couldn’t stand it. It was like living in a room filled with dead rats. The stench of deception was everywhere and the stink came from her mother. Tammy sat down to one of Ginny’s perfect meals—again.
“Cheer up, kiddo,” Tammy’s father said. “You’ve had a long face since your mom left the hospital. Anybody would think you aren’t happy to have her home.”
Tammy huffed and played with her silverware.
“Thanks, muffin,” John Testaverde said as Ginny set a wholesome meal of tri-tip, mashed potatoes and asparagus in front of him.
“Gravy’s coming.”
Ginny went to get the gravy, but John stopped her. “You’re the best,” he said.
“I know.”
Ginny pressed her head against her husband’s. Her fresh good looks evaporated in a second. Her flesh dried, losing substance, and withered against her skull. Cataracts washed away her clear blue eyes with a milky gray and her eyes sank back into their sockets. Her gold locks dwindled to muddy strands plastered onto her scalp. Inhuman stitching held the abomination onto her neck, although the join wasn’t perfect and teardrops of blood trickled from failing grafts. Tammy’s shrunken head showed itself again, but full size, on the shoulders of her mother’s corpse.
Tammy buried her stare in the spotless tablecloth. Couldn’t her father see it? He should have been able to smell it. Ginny reeked of ancient coffins. Her stench consumed the dining room.
Nobody but Tammy could see what her mother had become. The hospital had no record of Ginny’s death. They said she’d been admitted for observation but went home fit and well the following day. Tammy’s father was no different. All he remembered was that Ginny had been under the weather. Truth had been swept away like so much dirt to be hidden under the carpet.
“I’ll get yours now, Tammy.”
Tammy kept her gaze rooted on the tablecloth’s weave.
“What do you say, Tammy?” her father demanded.
Against her will, muscles forced her head up. Her mother’s face smiled back, the shrunken head hiding under the surface like a disease. The only trace of its presence was the blood that dotted Ginny’s throat, which was fading by the second.
“Tammy?” Her father frowned. “We’re waiting.”
“Thanks, mom. I would love my dinner.”
***
Having prodded and poked at the meal she wouldn’t eat, Tammy sought distraction by staring out of her bedroom window. She longed for the world outside but how long would a lone twelve-year-old last? Probably longer than if she stayed, she thought.
She shivered, sensing something was skewed. Darkness shifted in the night. It had shape and it didn’t. It was there and it wasn’t. Every time she thought she saw it, it popped up somewhere different. She fixated on the delusion but it moved between blinks. She forced her eyes to remain open and was rewarded.
An old man whose age was indeterminable slithered towards her home. He could be either sixty-five or five hundred and sixty-five. It was impossible to tell, for he was only there for a moment. Looking up, he realized Tammy could see him. He grimaced and became a shimmering haze before he disappeared again. It was as if he was a sheet of paper and she kept seeing him edge on.
Tammy spotted him again, opening the gate to her house, before disappearing again. Her desperate hands pressed the glass, pleading for the man to reappear. He wasn’t about to let her see him again and she knew it. Then the horror struck her. He was coming into the house. She leapt up from her window seat and crashed into her mother standing directly behind her.
“You saw him, didn’t you?”
Tammy shook her head.
Ginny cocked her head to one side. “C’mon, don’t lie.”
“What does…h…he want?” Tammy stammered.
“His eternal love…me.”
“What about dad?”
“What about him?”
Tammy’s mouth was open and ready to scream for her father, but her mother clamped a hand over it.
“It wouldn’t be a good idea to warn him. It’ll only make things more…” Ginny paused, searching for the right word, then she sneered. “More painful.”
Downstairs, a window broke.
“Shall we watch?” Ginny asked.
She didn’t wait for an answer and dragged Tammy over to the banister overlooking the living room. The old man was there. He shimmered like a heat haze. Tammy’s dad raced to confront the intruder.
“Who the hell are you?” her father demanded. He spotted his wife and daughter upstairs. “You two stay put.”
“Wouldn’t dream of interfering,” Ginny oozed.
John Testaverde didn’t know what to make of that. Tammy had an idea, but her dad didn’t have time to ponder further. The old man pounced. He streaked across the room in a blaze of white light. Tammy’s father was driven to the ground, the old man straddling him. Her father threw a fist. The old man blocked it, swallowing his hand in his and crushing it. Tammy’s father yelped. The old man silenced the cries with a vicious backhand that whipped her father’s head to breaking point.
Tammy screamed. Ginny clamped a hand over her mouth.
“Shut it. My love is trying to work.”
The old man raised his hand high and held it flat like a knife. He shimmered for an instant and his hand glowed white. The air crackled with its energy. His hand slashed through the air and cleaved Tammy’s father’s chest open.
“No!” Tammy screamed.
“Hush now, baby. It’s nearly done.”
Tammy sobbed. Ginny released her and she slumped to the floor.
The old man shimmered. There seemed to be no end to it. He flickered like a flame, his body melting, dissolving into light. When he became molten, he flowed into Tammy’s father’s mortal wound. When the old man was inside John Testaverde, his essence sealed the wound.
Ginny stroked Tammy’s hair. “You won’t mind so much once you get used to the idea.”
But Tammy didn’t get used to the idea. Two weeks had passed since her father had become a vehicle for another being. Her imposter parents, the shape shifting lovers, didn’t have to pretend anymore. Not to anyone inside the Testaverde household anyway. Everyone could be themselves. Her mom went from the perfect mother to what she really was—a mummified head rooted to a decapitated corpse. Her new dad flickered between her gutted father and the old man. When they were together, they merged as one in a ball of molten light. Tammy cried and tortured herself with what she should have done. Teachers noticed how gaunt she had become. They asked if everything was okay at home. “Perfect,” she answered.
That was the problem. Anybody watching from the outside witnessed the perfect family. Ginny was the doting mother and Tammy’s father strove to make something of himself. He was manager of the local Kragen’s, now. It w
as everything Tammy had wished for, but nothing she’d bargained for.
Tammy stared at her home cooked dinner and hers alone. She didn’t want to witness her false parents drawing sustenance from living things. They only had to touch a defenseless animal and its will to live disappeared, leaving a shriveled husk. One by one, the kittens stopped mewing. She wished her parents would eat elsewhere.
“Why don’t you do that to me?” Tammy asked. “You don’t need me.”
“Don’t sell yourself cheap. We owe everything to you. We wouldn’t be together if it hadn’t been for your wish.” Ginny clasped her lover’s hand. Their hands glowed on contact. “This is our way of thanking you.”
“You should be turning cartwheels,” her father said.
“I’m not, so what’s that tell you?”
Ginny grinned. “Spoken like a true teenager.”
This was making her puke. “Can I be excused?”
“If you’re finished,” Ginny said.
Tammy didn’t wait to listen to the rest of the speech. She slid the chair back, screeching on the hardwood.
“Tammy,” her father moaned. “Mind the floor.”
“Where are you going?” Ginny asked in that ever-optimistic tone.
“Out.” She opened the door and was met by the rumble of thunder.
“Don’t you want to take a coat?”
Tammy slammed the door.
She didn’t care that she was soaked through. It wasn’t important. Her cave was. It was the only sanctuary she knew. The tainted world ended at its entrance. She ducked inside.
The cave had changed complexion since the head had taken over. The mementos and keepsakes had been exchanged for new ones. Not as childish as they once were, but nevertheless just as important to Tammy as any Barbie or boy band poster. The church candles were long since melted to the quick. A simple flashlight was all that was needed. Pretty things were for the innocent. Innocence was a street Tammy would never find again.
