by Val Crowe
If I could have made noise, I would have sighed.
She did it for me.
I felt so in sync with her, the two of us utterly connected. And that too, was very pleasant, and the knowledge seemed to manifest in further physical sensations. My body was washed in warmth and goodness.
And then suddenly, she giggled.
What? I said. Why was she laughing at this moment of all moments?
But then she dragged my hand down my body. As she trailed it over my chin, I felt us seem to merge. Our hand went over our chest. It skimmed our stomach and then went lower…
“I didn’t do this,” she whispered, hovering our fingers next to our crotch, but not touching it. “Did you?”
It does that on its own. And I was laughing then as well, but in my own way, because I had no ability to use my body.
She flopped us back on the bed. “It feels… good.”
Well, yeah.
“It feels like a sunrise. Bright, bright colors, but struggling for something. It feels…” She shut our eyes. “It’s desire. I haven’t felt it—physical desire—in so long…”
And we were swimming together in warm darkness, bundled together in the warmth of my flesh and I never wanted to let her go. I wanted us to stay this way. This was perfect.
Our eyes opened.
There was the ceiling of the Airstream above us, but our vision was blurry. And then I realized tears were streaming down our face.
Well. We were lying on our back, so they were mostly going into our ears.
Hey, I said to Mads. You okay?
“I didn’t make that happen either,” she murmured, a hitch in our voice.
It’s okay, I said. This is… this is kind of intense.
“I could…” She made our hand snake back down our body, inside the pants we were wearing, and she seized us there, squeezing us, the root of us, and pleasure shot through us both like a rocket, like fireworks.
Inside, I groaned.
She sucked in breath sharply. “I could… we could…”
Yes, I urged her.
But she let go.
And suddenly, she shot out of me, her essence leaving my body, and I felt cold and empty and alone. I gasped, clutching my chest, because it was like a physical pain.
She appeared in the air over me, transparent. “It’s confusing, Deacon,” she said.
“Wait,” I choked out, trying to get control of my limbs again. “Wait, Mads, it’s okay.”
“No, I don’t know what to do with that,” she said.
And she was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I lay on the bed in the wake of her departure, struggling to breathe. I felt as if I’d just fought my way through a hail storm. I was cold, sweating a little, and everything ached slightly.
I called out for Mads a few times, but I knew she wasn’t going to answer me.
So, I crawled under the covers and shivered a little, burrowing down and wiping away tears that kept coming unbidden. I wasn’t… the experience wasn’t making me cry. It wasn’t like that. It was more that my body was reacting to the way she’d ripped herself out of me, and it wasn’t a good reaction. My nose was running too.
Eventually, the shivers stopped and my body seemed to be back to normal.
I felt exhausted, though.
But I couldn’t sleep. I stared up at the ceiling of the camper and tried to make sense of how I felt. I had been in the most intimate situation of my entire life, and it had been amazing and also frightening. Now that Mads was gone, I realized that I missed the way it had felt for us to be together like that. It had been better. Apart was worse.
Of course, I wasn’t sure it was so good for my body, which hadn’t seem to handle it all so well. Maybe if Mads hadn’t pulled out of me so roughly… But then I thought of what Dominique had said about Negus wearing down the woman he’d possessed until she started to fall apart.
Maybe it wasn’t strictly good for me to be possessed.
But hell, I really wanted her to do it again.
Not because I wanted to convince her to actually jerk me off. It wasn’t about that.
Actually, maybe it was.
But, it wasn’t about the physical sensation of it. I could obviously masturbate whenever I wanted.
If Mads was inside me, if she was feeling it too, then…
I wanted us connected while it happened. I wanted us to have that together, that bond.
I rolled over, burrowing into the pillow. I wished I’d told her I loved her before she ran off. Had I said that to her? She said it me once, and I…
Fuck, I screwed up everything with Mads.
She’d probably be gone for a stupidly long time this time. I’d freaked her out. Maybe just the erection had freaked her out. Like, what was wrong with me? I let her possess me, and the minute we were close, it turned to sex? I was a fucking cliche.
She probably hated me.
I rolled back onto my back. “Mads?” I whispered. “Come back. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
And she was there.
She popped into existence next to me, hunched up on the bed, wrapping her arms around her knees. “Hey,” she breathed.
I sat up. “Hey.”
She licked her lips, gazing at me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have run off like that.”
“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to do that so that we could…” I felt embarrassed. Heat was rushing to my face. “It wasn’t supposed to be about, you know—”
“I want to try it again,” she said.
I sucked in breath, surprised. “Now?”
“Yes.” She moved, letting go of her knees and tucking them beneath her body. “I want to finish it. I want that with you. I want it more than anything I can even imagine.”
“Really?” My voice was weirdly scratchy.
“Yes, of course. I have for a long time now. Whenever I saw you with Charlotte, it nearly killed me. You know that I—”
“Don’t bring her up,” I growled. “Not right now, not before. I don’t want to think about how awful that was.”
“Okay,” she said.
We gazed at each other, and I couldn’t catch my breath again.
“I think,” she said softly, “you should take off your clothes first, because I couldn’t do anything as intricate as buttons. I just couldn’t make your fingers work.”
“Yeah, okay,” I rasped. I swallowed. I unbuttoned my shirt and tugged it off.
Her lips parted. Her gaze traveled over my skin.
“You too,” I nodded at her. “Before, I mean, so that I can see…”
She tucked her chin against her chest, looking embarrassed. “It’s not… I don’t have a body.”
“I know, but it’ll make it more… normal.” My pulse was racing.
She seemed to accept this. She pulled her shirt over her head, and underneath, she was wearing a black bra that cupped her breasts and left the top half of them on display, round and full and—
My phone rang.
It made me jump. I snatched it up, still startled, and I looked at the screen.
It was Wren Bentley.
I gaped at it.
“You should answer it,” Mads whispered.
I looked up at her, my lips moving, no sound coming out.
“Maybe we didn’t get Cheyenne to be released after all,” said Mads. “I wasn’t sure if the energy was all dissipated before.”
“You said you didn’t feel her.”
“Well, I didn’t, but maybe that was just a momentary thing or something. Or maybe she was too weak for me to feel her?”
“Damn it,” I said, and I answered the phone.
Mads was still talking. “We can do this later,” she breathed.
Yeah, give her lots of time to chicken out. “Hello?” I said into the receiver.
“Deacon?” Wren was whispering. She was out of breath.
“Are you okay?” I straightened, groping for my shirt on the bed.
&nb
sp; “It’s Philip. He’s not himself.”
Shit. “Okay, where are you?”
“I’m in the garage. He won’t leave the house, so I think I’m safe, but I thought you fixed this. I thought you said—”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m on my way out there. Stay out of sight. Do not go back into the house.” I picked up the shirt, threw aside the covers, and got up.
“Hurry,” Wren said.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I said.
* * *
When I arrived at the house, it was all lit up. Every light blazed eerie yellow light out to reflect on the brown grass surrounding the place. It was as if the house was glowing with something alive within it, and whatever lived there wasn’t something I wanted to tangle with.
Of course, well, I kind of had to.
I stopped into the garage to check on Wren. She was wrapped up in a bunch of blankets and huddled in the back seat of the car. She had some kind of pillow that she was sitting on. She told me that the worst part of being this pregnant was that everything hurt. Sitting was painful. Standing was painful. Lying down was painful. But she wasn’t hurt or anything, and Philip hadn’t tried anything.
“He wouldn’t come to bed,” she said. “He was down in the basement. I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was looking for the gun.”
“Geez,” I said.
“That’s when I got out of there and called you. He came out on the porch and yelled for me a few times, but I didn’t answer. He seemed to get bored and go back inside.”
“Wow,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “I’m so sorry. I could have sworn that this was all resolved. I don’t know what happened. Maybe I got Cheyenne to move on, but the other spirits stayed behind? I was so sure it was centered on her, but…” I shook my head. “I really apologize.” I needed to do better at this. I couldn’t tell people that their home was safe if it wasn’t. These people were expecting a baby for Christ’s sake.
“So… what are you going to do?” said Wren.
“I’m going to fix this,” I said. I didn’t know how, though, and I hoped she wouldn’t ask. “Sit tight. I’ll be back to check on you in a little while.”
She nodded.
I left the garage and went into the house.
Inside, the house seemed to be whispering to me, but I couldn’t make out what it was saying. Everything felt alive, as if the walls were undulating just a little bit, as though the house was breathing.
I yelled for Philip. No answer.
I yelled for Tex. Also no answer.
I made a circle around the bottom floor. I called down into the basement.
Above me, a noise.
I craned my head up at the ceiling, and then I dashed around to the steps and climbed them two at a time.
When I got to the top, all the doors were closed except the one to the nursery.
I squared my shoulders and headed into the room.
Cheyenne was standing there, her face a mass of gore and splintered bone. She looked me over like an angry goddess and then she crossed the room to the place where she had written on the wall before. Again, she wrote, but this time she wrote, Murderer has my son.
I squinted at the message. I shook my head. “No, Cheyenne, no. Tex is in jail. I showed you, remember?” I took my phone out of my pocket to find the news articles again.
She slapped her hand against the wall next to the message she’d written, leaving a smear of blood.
I fumbled to unlock my phone. “Kadan… your mother took him. And now he’s with her half of the time and with Wade the rest of the time. He was never with Tex. I promise you, your son is safe.” I pulled up a picture I’d taken that night of Kadan and Wade at the pizza place. I shoved it at Cheyenne.
She turned her head and looked at it.
But then she charged me, roaring.
She hit me full in the face, an icy blast of dark smoke.
I sputtered, shaking off the cold.
The door to the closet in the room opened and Philip came out of it. He staggered around as if he couldn’t manage to keep his balance.
“Hi, Philip,” I said. “Why don’t you just calm down, okay?”
Philip seemed to notice me. He raised his hand, and that was when I noticed that he had a gun.
I put up both of my hands. “Philip, come on.”
He leveled the barrel of the gun at me and pulled the trigger.
The sound of the gunshot shattered the air.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I yelled.
The bullet punctured my stomach and blood blossomed over my shirt. It hurt like fuck.
I panted, hands clutching the wound, and Mads was there, behind Phil’s head, shaking her head at me. “Not a real gun, Deacon, not a real gun!”
I lost my balance and sat down hard with a grunt, still holding onto my stomach.
“Deacon, baby, listen to me,” said Mads. “He doesn’t really have a gun.”
It was the use of the word ‘baby,’ that snapped me out of it, I think. She’d never said anything like that to me, and I was reeling from that and then processing the rest of what she’d said and—
It’s a trick, I thought. I looked down, and there was no blood and no bullet wound. The ghosts here were tricking me. They were getting really strong.
Philip pulled the trigger again, but I stepped through the bullet, mind over mattering it away, and I grabbed Philip by the throat. “We need to get you out of this house.”
Philip dropped the gun. It went off when it hit the ground, but I ignored it as best as I could. I mean, the gunshot made me flinch, not going to lie. And maybe I loosened my grip on him for a second.
Whatever the case, he hauled off and punched me in the face.
And I staggered backwards from that, the real pain radiating out through my jaw and my skull.
Philip ran, darting around me, out the door and down the stairs.
“Motherfucker,” I muttered, rubbing my jaw.
I stood there for a few minutes, just dizzy from all of it, and then I went after him.
But I couldn’t find him.
He wasn’t anywhere upstairs or downstairs. I figured he must be down in that basement. I hesitated, looking down into its dark depths. I honestly wasn’t real excited at the thought of going down there.
“Philip!” I yelled.
Nothing.
“Tex!”
Nothing.
I sighed and then I stepped onto the first step.
“Deacon?”
I whirled.
It was Wren.
“I told you not to come back into the house,” I said, glaring at her.
“I heard gunshots,” she asid. “Where did the gun come from?”
“Look, it’s not a real gun,” I said. “He’s got like a… a ghost gun. I need to go and get him, though.” I turned back to the basement.
“Well, here’s the thing,” she said. “I’m starting to feel as though maybe I might be having, like, contractions?”
My eyes widened. “You’re in labor?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never been in labor before. I mean, I thought it would hurt more, so maybe it’s just those Braxton Hicks things, but I called my midwife, and she said I should maybe go into the hospital, just to get it checked out, and I told her I couldn’t, and she said—”
I snatched Wren by the arm and tugged her out of the house. “Okay, okay,” I said. “We’re taking you to the hospital, then. Come on, let’s go.”
“But Phil,” she said, her voice breaking.
“Come on,” I said, pulling her along with me.
* * *
It was a struggle to get Wren into the car. She didn’t want to go without Philip, and so I told her I would go and look for him. She needed to stay out of the house, though.
I was panicked.
I left Wren in my truck, and I worried that her water was going to break or something, because that happened, didn’t it? And
I almost went out and told her we were taking her car, but I figured that was a total dick move, so I didn’t.
I stalked into the house and yelled, “Your wife is having the baby, Philip. Get your ass up here.”
Philip dove at me from the shadows of the den.
We went back on the floor and he was over top of me.
I tried to scoot out from beneath him.
He wrapped his hands around my throat. “I’m not leaving this house, you understand? I can’t leave. Not until I find the gun.”
I couldn’t speak. He was strangling me. I gurgled at him, and I tried to pry his hands away from my neck.
“All I care about is the gun. I don’t care about anything else,” he said. “Where is it?”
I was going to pass the hell out, wasn’t it? Fuck all of this. This was absolutely insane.
“Where’s the gun?” He screamed into my face.
I kicked him. I brought up my leg between his legs and kicked him in the nuts. Not a totally sportsmanlike move, admittedly, but I didn’t have a lot of choice, all things considered.
He let out of a whining noise of pain and let go of me. He crawled away into the shadows.
I sat up, gasping.
Then I managed to get to my feet and I left the house. I went back to the truck and told Wren that I couldn’t get Phil out of the house. I drove her to the hospital instead.
She didn’t want me to stay with her. They were going to do invasive examinations, apparently, and that wasn’t anything that I needed to be around for.
So, I left the hospital.
I drove around in my truck until dawn, just trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
As the sun started to split the sky, Mads materialized in the seat next to me.
“Jesus, Deacon, can you turn down the Metallica?” she said, wrinkling up her nose.
I turned it down. “Where the hell have you been?”
“I’ve been back in the Sanford House, trying to communicate with Cheyenne,” she said.
“Oh,” I said. “You find anything out? Why didn’t she move on?”
“I don’t think we understood what she wanted in the first place,” said Mads. “She never cared about justice or about the money or anything like that. All along, she’s been worried about Kadan. I think she’s holding on because of him.”
