by E K Bennett
Oh, but he does.
"It's not your sister she's after," he tells me. "It's the baby."
"You're fucking kidding me!" I shout and punch the wall, the sound cracking the eerie silence of the empty hospital. I break into a run, and surprisingly the kids follow me.
"We want you to destroy her," one girl shouts out. I don't look back.
"How?" I accept the challenge, even though I have no idea how to kill a demon.
"We don't know!" they say.
"Great, thanks," I shout. "What about the Witch?"
"Your body just rejected her," says Lotty's brother. "You don't have to worry."
Yet, part of me is still worrying.
"Why not? What if she goes after the baby, too?" I ask.
"You can only try to take someone's body once. If you fail, you're gone."
"Gone?"
"You disappear."
Simple enough, but is it too simple? I hope not, I really do.
I stop at the door where Miranda is delivering her baby in actuality.
"Good luck," they say. Their eyes are sad. They're just children, yet they know so much more about everything than I do. More than anything I want to tear Lotty to shreds, while at the same time I want to hide somewhere far away. But I owe these kids something for helping me, and they deserve to be avenged.
"Thanks," I say quietly. "I'll need it."
I open the door and almost collapse. Negative energy suffocates me, radiating from the demonic little girl skipping around the room. She barely notices me, doing her satanic dance across the floor. She looks like a shadowy puppet, with her ripped black dress and ebony hair flipping and twirling around her. I can't believe that at one point it was shiny and blonde, with bouncy curls to frame her bright face. Now her hair is like snakes writhing around her little body every time she spins around, licking the air like flames. Her movements are quick and unnatural looking, feet barely touching the ground and arms jerking around like they're on strings.
She glances at me and bares her teeth, spattered with blood almost as black as her eyes. If I thought her image in the mirror was scary before, that was definitely before I'd witnessed it this close. Her dark energy is crippling, and her sadistic smile seems to say "No matter what you do, you will never beat me."
I close the door behind me and, maybe it's because of her evil aura, I don't know, I glare at her angrily.
"Stop dancing, you little fuck," I snarl at her.
She turns her head completely around, making her spine crack and crunch, and spits at me. "Go to hell," she growls, still smiling evilly. Her voice is deep and light at the same time, filled with white noise.
"I'll meet you there," I reply. "You can go chill with the Witch. She left me a message for you, you know after she killed me and took my body. She wants you to rot."
For half a second, Lotty looks caught off guard, but she quickly regains her composure and laughs. She twirls around again and lifts her arms up like a demonic ballerina.
I roll my eyes. Wherever this courage is coming from, I hope it doesn't stop. "So was that your plan, then?" I ask. "Did you know that the White Lady would try to take my body before you did if you led her to believe that's what you were planning to do? She thought you were stupid and weak. She thought she could trick you."
She stops spinning suddenly and her scream rips through the silence of the room. "SHE WAS STUPID!" she shouts while again starting up her little dance routine furiously. "Not I! She thought she was so smart that she could take my life! She thought that I bought into her act! I knew better, I tried to kill Molly on purpose so they would kill me instead! I wanted to avoid that old Witch! I knew she was going to try to kill me, but she was too dense to pick it up!"
I'm taken aback by her outburst but let her go on.
"She hid from me for a hundred years, watching every single move I made, analyzing what I was going to do so she could get her revenge and ruin my plans. The stupid Witch underestimated me, thinking I would try to possess you." She looks at me with distaste then continues her rant.
"She went around like she knew what she was doing, and that she had control over me. I knew from the moment I saw that baby inside your sister that I could take it. I could have whatever I wanted.
"So I came up with a plan. I had to weaken the mother- not through murder. I had to break her family. The stress of a mental sister, the occasional sighting of a little ghost girl, an overworked mother and the constant reminder of her unstable future was all I needed to distract Miranda.
"And then the Witch came along, just like I thought she would, and ruined you. Luckily for me, they wheeled your choking body right past Miranda's window. You know, there were already a few complications with the birth because of the insane amount of stress on the mother's part. Watching you die was all it took to send Miranda into a coma. Any defense that Miranda had to protect her baby is dead and gone, because she can't even wake up."
I gasp. "I'll kill you," I threaten.
Lotty giggles and twirls closer and closer until she's about two inches from my face. Even though I have to look down at her, I've never felt more threatened. "I'm already dead, darling," she says thickly.
On impulse I shove her back and she stumbles, but my arms immediately start to go numb. Just touching her makes me feel like I'm wasting away.
She regains her balance and glares at me harshly while I shake my arms to get the feeling back in them. She smiles that bloody smile and does a twirl on the point of her toe.
The lights overhead flicker then go out, and Lotty pounces on me.
She claws at my throat and I spin abruptly, sending her flying off of me. She doesn't feel solid or gaseous or anything, it's like she's made out of electricity.
She peels herself off the floor and we stare each other down, waiting for someone to make the next move. Eventually she jumps on me again and tries to strangle me, but I don't need to breathe so shoving her off of me isn't as hard as if I were alive.
I pull out a chunk of her hair and black blood spills onto the floor. I ignore it and kick her up against the wall. She grabs my wrist and twists it so I bend forward and she kicks my legs out from under me.
Ignoring the roaring pain surging through me, I roll away from her and stand back up. I tackle her and start scratching at her face, trying not to pay too much attention to the pieces of her face getting stuck under my nails.
She grabs a piece of my hair, pulling it out easily. Electricity pulses through my head and I collapse to the cold floor. Blood is everywhere and the stench in the room is worse than a funeral home.
I grab my head and curl into a protective ball, unable to take any more pain and brace myself for the next attack.
But Lotty doesn't do anything. She seems to have stopped long enough for me to look up and see her standing completely still, listening. A ruthless smile creeps up on her warped face.
Then I hear it, too. The faintest sound of a baby crying, piercing the silence once more. Abby's dying.
37. She's Back
Lotty focuses all of her attention on one point in the center of the room, where the hospital bed is knocked crooked out of it's place after our fight. The wailing of the baby is growing louder and I have to blink a couple of times at the bed because I'm not sure if it's real. A patch of light glows dimly on the bed, growing slowly brighter as the crying gets louder.
And it hits me suddenly, like this twisted epiphany that explains why I'm so willing to fight Lotty this fearlessly to save Abby. The cries I'm hearing are those of my niece. This isn't just another one of Lotty's slaughters for strength- my sister's child is her lifeline, and she's willing to rip apart the baby's soul and pretend it's her own. It's too weak to reject her, too pure and innocent. She could take it and grow up to be what Miranda and my mother and father and extended family and everyone else in the world would believe to be Abby when really it's a demon. My sister would love Lotty as her daughter because she wouldn't know otherwise.
So, I
guess it's this reason that I lunge for the glowing ball of screaming light before Lotty can react. The demon's hungry stare shifts to one of rage and she charges at me a second too late.
I'm surprised to find that I can pick up the light and wrap it in my arms before Lotty slams into me and sends my flying into the wall across the room. I crash to the floor but refuse to let go of the baby, which feels warm and soft as opposed to Lotty's electric feel. I glance down at it and see slight features like arms and legs form from the ball. My heart skips a beat and I huddle over the figure in my arms to keep Lotty from getting it. I don't know what to do besides keep Lotty away from Abby before she dies completely.
Lotty claws at my side, and it feels like knives twisting into my ribs. I cry out but don't let Lotty near the baby, trying to stand up so I can run or something. I don't know how to save her.
Lotty snarls and swipes at my arms until I get to my feet and push her back, but the shove doesn't do much. I'm feeling weak, like all I want to do is lay down forever and never get up. Lotty hits me back and I stumble backwards, falling back to the ground.
She wrenches the baby out of my noodle-arms and I yell out, but every movement I make is sluggish and weak. Lotty belts out her infamous laugh and puts her hand on the now-almost-dead-Abby's chest. I scream, then the door slams open.
We both turn our attention to the open door, and my jaw drops.
The White Lady comes flying at Lotty and the baby, knocking her off her feet and sending the bundle of light soaring across the room. Lotty thrashes around while the White Lady claws at her face, ripping apart the monstrosity and leaving her in a pool of blood, maimed and screaming. Then just as quickly she makes a go for the baby and picks her up, looking oddly like a mother.
"She's not dead yet," she whispers in her raspy voice. "I'm just in time."
She raises her arm like she's about to strike the glowing baby, but suddenly a cloud of gray dust overtakes her out of nowhere. I gasp and look away, but from my peripherals i can make out details in the dust. Faces.
It's odd, because when I look at it straight on, it seems like the lady is suffocating on the dust, but from the side she's being attacked by a cloud of angry people.
They punch and scratch and pull at her clothes, while her screams mingle with Lotty's on the other side of the room. I cover my ears and wait for it to stop; it seems like it never will.
But just as quickly as they came, the dust-people are gone, and the White Lady collapses into a heap of black bones. The baby's crying is almost deafening and no longer distant, like she's in the room. I can hear her little heart's slight beating growing fainter and fainter with each second.
I pick up Abby and hold her tight to my chest, not sure what to do next, when Lotty finally stands up.
She's completely blinded, but it doesn't take her long to find out where we are. She follows the sound of the crying baby with her bloody arms outstretched, limping.
I back up against the wall and try to quiet the crying but it does nothing, the tiny baby doesn't understand a thing. Lotty's small laugh is pained and angry, but she keeps closing in on us. I scream for her to get away. Then I hear a group of footsteps. Lotty turns around at the new sound.
The dark room brightens noticeably as the group of murdered children file in. They glare at Lotty and start whispering terrible things at her.
"I didn't think you'd really do it," says her brother, John. "It was just a bet. I never wanted to hurt you, Lotty."
"John?" Lotty gasps.
"I wasn't a spoiled brat," says Sylvia. "You may have been poor, but you're the biggest brat I've had the displeasure of meeting."
Lotty backs up, outnumbered, into one of the kids. They've encircled her, and now they're closing in. I hold the baby tighter and watch in awe as they completely dismember Lotty with their bare hands. Each limb rips off her body with an earsplitting crack, like a shattering glass or a tree falling, and each time, Abby's light dims. The crying becomes distant and soft as her soul returns to her body.
The kids spit on the gruesome pile of bones, skin, and blood, watching it disintegrate into ash on the tiled floor. By this time, the ball of light is completely gone, and the internal glow of the children seems brighter.
The group turns to me as a whole. "Thank you, Lydia," says Sylvia.
"For what?" I reply. "You're the ones who killed her."
One of the girls, older than the rest, smiles at Sylvia.
"We're free," she says. The group seems to all sigh at once, relaxing for the first time in a hundred years.
John reaches out and takes my hand in his little one. "Let's go find your body. They haven't packed it up for the morgue yet, you still seem to have a pulse."
I walk with them, surrounded by their soft warmth the whole way. I don't know where they'll go after this, if there's a heaven or hell outside of this strange Murderland. I can noticeably feel the weight off my shoulders from where Lotty rode piggy-back style for the past three and a half months. The kids seem to be the same way.
Going through the mirror this time is easy, like climbing through a window. I don't say anything before I go, just silently thank every single child with a smile for saving my niece and sister.
Back in the real world, the hospital is busy and I'm greeted by the comforting sounds of talking and machines beeping. My body is in a hospital bed one room over from where I died, and I stand over it for a while taking everything in.
My mom is holding my pale hand and crying silently. It hurts to watch, so I turn to the side of the room with more chairs, where Josh is sitting with his head in his hands. Sam is sitting next to him, leaning against his shoulders. She's not crying now, but it's clear by her puffy eyes and extremely smudged makeup that she's had her fair share of tears. Her mom is standing over her shoulder, rubbing her back in circles comfortingly.
I remember the day she told me about her fascination with ghosts. She said she's always wanted to see a ghost, but she never got the chance. I wonder if that's changed after all this.
I'd imagine my dad is checking up on Miranda, because he's not here. I bite my lip, a terrible habit even after death, and stand over my hardly-breathing body. It's incredibly weird to watch myself sleeping. It doesn't even seem like me.
Closing my eyes, I place my hand over my chest.
The strangest feeling goes through me, and I'm pulled back into my body. It's amazing how much I've missed breathing. I sigh and open my eyes. "I'm back," I whisper.
38. Epilogue
-Four Months Later-
This is something I wanted to do alone- something I needed to do alone. But one look at all the stuff on my bed is all it took to push me over the edge and into another freak-out. So I called Sam and Josh, told them to come over now, and calmly added the date, time, and details of today’s panic attack in my Panic Log, or, as my therapist calls it, the PL. I imagine my face is still red and my eyes glassy from sobbing and screaming uncontrollably into my pillow, but there’s no way I’m checking in the mirror anyway.
It would be pointless; I’m totally colorblind now.
Even now, shadows are strangers, and mirrors hold more than our reflections. I know Lotty isn’t watching me anymore, but I still keep a sheet over my mirror while I sleep. I can’t do my hair or brush my teeth without feeling like there’s someone staring at me from the other side of the mirror, their own personal window. Sometimes I feel like whatever’s on the other side will crawl out and put their cold hands over my heart again. Needless to say, getting ready in the morning isn’t as easy as it used to be. I have two separate therapists: one knows everything, and I haven’t told the other one. I probably won’t; as far as she knows, I’m just messed up.
The doorbell rings and I run to get it. As soon as I open the door, Sam hugs me (she does that a lot now) and yells, “You ready to burn this bitch?”
After about a month of awkward “Poor Lydia who almost died and now has freaky panic attacks, woe is her, blah, blah” silences and
careful looks, we made a pact to literally act like nothing’s wrong. I know that it’s usually a bad idea to avoid the problem, but when your friends treat you like you have glass bones and could break at any moment, it really sucks the fun out of a party.
Sam runs to my bedroom to get the stuff and I hang back with Josh, holding his hand.
“Hey,” he says and kisses me on the cheek.
“Hi,” I reply and kiss him back. “You ready to burn some shit?”
“I was born ready,” he answers enthusiastically, following me to the back yard.
It turns out the voices were wrong. Josh didn’t hang out with me out of pity, he didn’t think I was crazy, and he wasn’t just humoring me by holding my hand and being really sweet. He just liked my smile. Sam told me that Josh wanted to ask me out a long time ago, but things got weird and he didn’t want to make things more complicated. But the day after I got home from the hospital in March, he took me on a more normal date. My mom said I absolutely could not go, so, naturally, I snuck out and we went to the Waffle House. It was brilliant.
