The Body Farm, page 5
“I broke up thirteen of his conquests,” Ruth says. Her voice is a rich alto, filled with pride. “Saved thirteen women.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah,” she says.
You count quickly on your fingers. “So eight of them married him. You stopped thirteen. That’s only twenty-one. What happened to the other two?”
Ruth sighs. “One lady figured his deal out on her own. By the time I found her, she’d already broken up with him. The other one . . .” She trails off.
You dig your fingernails into your palm. “What happened to her?”
“That’s the one he threw through a glass door. She was in the hospital for days. And she still didn’t want to leave him. Kept forgiving him. Even after I found her and told her everything, she kept trying to make it work. She told me to get lost. Told me she could change him. He left her, in the end. Once he had all her money.” There is a silence. Then, softly, Ruth says, “She committed suicide. A few months after he took off.”
The moon is tangled in the branches of a tree like a Christmas ornament. The crescent is so fine it seems that the twigs might scrape it, break it.
“Why do you do this?” you ask.
“Do what?”
“Help people. Save women. Don’t you have a job? How do you manage it?”
Ruth laughs. “I do have a job. I’m a coder, so I can work from anywhere. Thanks for asking.” You can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic or genuine. “And I didn’t always do this. After I left him, I didn’t think about him for years. I had my own shit to be dealing with. Then I heard he was married. And married again. And I heard that he broke a woman’s jaw. And got married again. Four women, five women. I realized what was happening. I went sleuthing and I saw that all the women . . .” Her voice dips into a murmur. “You’re all a little like me. Did you notice that?”
“Yes,” you say.
“It’s like he was looking for me over and over, then hurting me over and over. Dark hair, boho, intellectual, lonely—he’d find another one, swoop in, and take everything. I saw the pictures of these women on my laptop. All different but the same. Dozens of us laid out in a row like sisters or something. I couldn’t sleep at night. The scar on my chest—” She breaks off, breathing hard. “I couldn’t sleep.”
You nod, then remember that she can’t see you.
“I do this because I have to,” Ruth says. “And now I sleep fine.”
“Does he know?” you ask. “Does he know what you’re doing?”
“Oh, no,” she says in a rush. “No, I keep off his radar. I hope he just thinks he’s losing his touch, that his plans keep coming apart, all these crazy women changing their minds on him. If he knew I was involved, he’d kill me.”
She says this matter-of-factly. It’s not hyperbole; it’s the reality of her situation.
A creak from upstairs. You tremble involuntarily, staring at the ceiling.
“He’s waking up,” you whisper.
“Be careful,” Ruth says, and the line goes dead.
The floorboard gives an inhuman shriek. You hear Ulf padding down the hall, calling your name.
You must speak the words of the Spell for Disappearing exactly. Any mispronunciation can be catastrophic, even fatal. While performing the rite, witches have been known to lose a hand, an eye, an entire limb, or their lives, because of a simple slip of the tongue.
For a week—the most difficult week of your life—you pretend to have the flu. You use the oldest trick in the book, holding the thermometer near a light bulb to fake a fever for Ulf’s benefit. Your nausea, at least, is real enough. Morning sickness, however, seems to be a misnomer. The afternoons are the hardest, and you take to skipping lunch, since you won’t be able to retain it anyway.
“Poor child,” Ulf says. “Never have I seen someone so ill.”
He won’t leave your side for a moment. He hovers around you like a wolf circling an injured caribou. You can’t call Ruth; he’s always listening. You can’t even text her, since Ulf has a habit of playfully grabbing your phone to “see what interests you so.” In every interaction with him, you exercise rigid control over your body, imitating the same behaviors you used to do naturally: stroking his cheek, smoothing his hair. It is an eerie, mutual performance, a pas de deux, both of you miming love, both of you lying. He kisses your brow, thinking all the while about your bank account, or so you assume. You blink up at him, feigning fondness, wishing he would be run over by a bus or killed by a falling tree branch, something swift and accidental and not your fault. You are not friends or lovers but enemies locked in a bizarre pantomime. His goal is to hurt you; your goal is to escape him. Your hope is to survive him.
More and more, you catch glimpses behind his facade. His flirtatious winks, once so alluring, now contain a gleam of desperation. His exaggerated gestures, which used to seem intriguingly foreign, now strike you as hammy and implausible. How did you not notice these things before? Were you so flattered by his attentions that you could not perceive the instability of his accent, drifting occasionally into Russian or cockney? What has changed, the quality of his deception or your level of perceptiveness? You prefer to believe that Ulf is slipping—that he fooled you before not because you are a gullible stooge but because he was at the top of his game, a shrewd, practiced con man deploying his entire arsenal of charm. Now, however, he must sense that something is amiss in your reactions, and as a result he has begun to overdo his performance like a comedian onstage who stops getting laughs.
When he enters your bedroom, you close your eyes, pretending to sleep. You shudder away from his touch and blame the fever. You call in sick at work. Your boss is furious, but you don’t care. They can fire you if they want to. What does it matter?
You are thirty-eight years old. You have always wanted children. This is your last chance to be a mother.
The fact of the baby burns like a bonfire in your mind, throwing everything else into shadow. All your life you have been searching for magic, and here, in your belly, a spark, a seedling, a cell dividing and dividing, a new creature spun into being, reworking your hormonal system, taking what it needs from your flesh, a miracle, nothing short of a miracle. You were not trying to get pregnant. You were falling in love, still using condoms, too sex-drunk to consider your ovulation cycle. Without your attention, without your conscious will, life has taken root inside you.
“It’s all butterflies,” your grandmother would say, but you know better.
And so you lie in bed, pretending to be sick, touching your belly, laughing and weeping in silence, making up your mind.
It is unwise to dabble in baneful magic. Jinxes and hexes offer power, but there is a cost. Remember the Rule of Three, which governs all practitioners of magic: any energy or intention that you send out into the world will one day return to you, threefold stronger.
After a week of fake flu, Ulf comes into your bedroom with a long face and sits on the edge of the bed.
“My love, I have terrible news,” he says mournfully.
You feign disorientation, as though you’ve just woken up. “What? What is it?”
“I must leave town. I shall be gone all weekend. An eternity, when I am apart from you!”
“Oh no,” you say. It doesn’t come out right—too flat.
He flicks his gaze at you, a gleam of blue.
“I’ll miss you,” you add quickly.
“My work—it is overwhelming sometimes,” he says. “But the salary—ah! How could I turn it down? And they rely on me so much.”
You know better than to push for details. God knows what he’ll really be doing out there.
As a child, you read about the negative side of magic, turning the pages of your library books with caution, as though even looking at the names of these dangerous spells could infect you with their essence. It frightened you to think that there were witches out there making hex bags, launching psychic attacks, or dabbling in necromancy.
But in your wildest imaginings, you never pictured someone like Ulf. A shapeshifter, a trickster, a sorcerer in his own right. He divined the secret presence of your wealth, something you have successfully hidden for almost two decades. He wove a love spell over you, captivating you, sweetening the air you breathed and electrifying all the colors. He remade you into a kind of living voodoo doll, a replica of the woman he once adored, the woman he really wanted to hurt. You imagine the long string of bodies in Ulf’s wake, rag dolls cast aside, limbs broken, bank accounts empty, black eyes, hospital stays, medical bills, PTSD, panic attacks, scars.
“When do you leave?” you ask.
“The day after tomorrow,” Ulf says, shaking his head in sorrow. “But do not worry! I shall be by your side every moment until then.”
“Gone all weekend,” you repeat. A door is opening inside your mind.
Timing is critical in the Spell for Disappearing. You must be swift and decisive. Perform the rite without hesitation or pause. Any delay at the crucial moment can be lethal.
“Holy shit,” Ruth says.
You are sitting in the back booth of a diner, screened from the door by a massive plastic fern. The restaurant is bustling, your voices hidden in the clatter of dishes from the kitchen and the warble of music from the jukebox.
“I told him I was going back to work today,” you say. “I went to my ob-gyn instead. I’m eight weeks pregnant. It must have happened right away. Like the first or second time we had sex.”
“Damn.” Ruth lifts her coffee mug in both hands, brings it to her nose, inhales without drinking, and sets it down again. “I’m assuming he doesn’t know.”
“Of course not. You’re the first person I’ve told.”
The absurdity of this almost makes you laugh. Almost. Under normal circumstances, there is a pattern to this kind of disclosure: first the father of the baby, then family and friends. But your grandmother died over a decade ago, you don’t dare to involve any of your work friends or book club members, and the father of your baby is a psychopath and a sorcerer.
And what is Ruth? As new as an acquaintance, as close as a blood relative, impossible to define.
“What are you going to do?” she asks. Without waiting for an answer, she says quickly, “I’d abort. Seriously. If you keep it, you’ll be chained to him forever. He’ll have rights over the kid. Do you want him involved in the life of your baby? What if he decides that the kid could be a new, fun way to hurt you? He’ll get violent with you, and probably the kid too, it’s just a matter of time. He’ll take all your money and just keep taking. You’ll never be free of him. What kind of life would that be?”
The waitress appears, setting down a plate of bacon and hash browns for Ruth and dry white toast for you. The smell of the meat turns your stomach.
“I’ve thought about all of that,” you say, once the waitress is out of earshot. “I’m keeping the baby.”
Ruth opens her mouth to argue, but you cut her off.
“He’s leaving for a few days,” you say. “He told me this morning.”
She nods. “I was expecting that. There were legal complications with the last divorce, back in Michigan. He has to show up in person to make his case.”
“I won’t be here when he gets back,” you say. “Will you help me?”
Ruth’s bracelets flash in the light as she leans forward, gathering up your hands in hers.
You must divest yourself of all your worldly possessions. A spell of this potency requires a spiritual lightness. If you are weighed down by material objects, your magic will be diminished, and as a result, your disappearance may be painful, partial, or incomplete.
Barefoot, you stand on the front porch. A moving truck fills the street, casting its massive shadow across the lawn. Burly men stream in and out of your house, toting your furniture. They are as busy and indistinguishable as ants: black T-shirts, crew cuts, bulging biceps, unsmiling faces, a pervasive cloud of body odor. Feeling useless, you try to stay out of their way. Occasionally one of them barks a question: “Does this need to be bubble-wrapped?” or “Are you seriously giving this away?”
Yes, you’re giving it away, all of it. Once the truck is loaded, the moving men will drive your belongings to Goodwill, and anything that remains unclaimed will end the day at the dump.
You wipe the sweat from your brow. The morning is coming to a boil, the heat climbing with each tick of the clock. Grunting, the men carry off your wrought iron bed frame, your oak bookshelves, even your books. You scheduled the moving company to come as early in the day as possible, hoping for an unobtrusive getaway, the work finished before dawn, your neighbors none the wiser. You underestimated the time it takes to empty an entire house. Dozens of joggers and dog-walkers have already passed by—wide-eyed witnesses. An elderly couple has even stopped to watch, murmuring to each other and pointing as though they’re at a show.
Your phone buzzes in your pocket, and a jolt of panic runs down your spine. Of course, the text is from Ulf. It’s always from Ulf. He has been away for only twelve hours, but he has sent nearly fifty messages and shows no sign of slowing.
I miss you, my darling. Tomorrow I will be in your arms again.
You send back a string of emojis: hearts, flowers, smiley faces. Hopefully this will appease him.
The sun climbs the sky. The air shimmers with plumes of heat. As though in a dream, you watch your possessions leaving you. A trio of men work together to balance your wide oval dining table. Another emerges from the house with your fridge-sized bureau strapped to his back. The truck is a hungry mouth, consuming your bicycle, your flower-printed couch, and the loom your grandmother left you.
Your phone buzzes again, and again you feel a thrill of fear.
Send me a selfie, Ulf writes. Send it now, right now. I must see your face. I drown without you.
You do not want to give him this, peeling off a layer of yourself and projecting it through the ether. You want him to have nothing of yours, not even your image. But you have no choice.
Careful framing is required, making sure that nothing suspicious is visible behind you, no glimpse of the truck or the men, just the big tree out front. In the photo, your smile is false, but you cannot summon a true one. You apply a filter that bleaches out the dark circles under your eyes and the taut lines of anxiety around your mouth.
That is beauty, Ulf texts back. You breathe again.
The process of disappearing will be arduous both physically and mentally. Remember that resilience is as much a matter of mind as it is bodily strength. You must be brave, even when the ritual becomes painful, even if the discomfort seems unbearable.
At the bus stop, you hover in the shadows. It is evening, the clouds underlined in fading gold. You do not want to be seen here; you wear a baseball cap and sunglasses and stay away from the bright lights of the depot. You don’t think there’s a security camera, but you aren’t taking chances. Earlier today, you cut your hair in the mirror, chopping off your long dark curls without hesitation. You look even more like Ruth now, identical pixie cuts revealing shell-like ears.
At your feet lies a duffel containing the remainder of your worldly possessions: a change of clothes, the turquoise bracelet your grandmother used to wear, and the crystal ball you purchased in your childhood, which turned up at the back of a cabinet as you prepared for the moving men. You have winnowed yourself down to the bare essentials. It is remarkable how little one actually needs.
Your phone rings in your pocket—a clunky flip phone with an old-fashioned electronic chime. No GPS function. Paid for in cash. Only one person has this number. You threw away your smartphone this morning.
“Are you okay?” Ruth asks.
“The bus should be here any minute.” You check your ticket again. “We depart at seven thirty-five.”
“Good.”
“I’m so scared,” you murmur.
“I know. But he won’t find you. He’ll never know what happened.”
“His plane lands at eight. What if the bus is late? What if—”
“You’ll be okay. We thought of everything.”
“You promise?” you ask, hearing the childish note in your own voice.
To your surprise, Ruth laughs, the first genuine, full-throated laugh you have ever heard from her.
“This is exciting,” she says. “I’ve helped so many women, you know? Getting an alarm system installed for them, driving them across town to move in with friends—I thought I’d seen it all. I even went with one to buy a gun.” Her breath crackles eagerly down the line. “It’s always the same pattern. I stick around until they’re safe. And then Jeff disappears. Once he has the money, or when he realizes he’s never going to get that money—poof. Gone in a puff of smoke.”
“Right,” you say slowly, considering this.
“I’ve spent so much time tracking that dude down,” she says. “The women stay, and he goes. He runs, and I chase him. But this time—” Ruth gives another belly laugh, a deep burble of untamed mirth. “The tables are gonna turn. God, I’d give anything to see his face when he gets back. You’re about to vanish into thin air.”
You hang up, promising to call her from the road.
Fidgeting, you run through the checklist in your mind. Tomorrow the library will receive your letter of resignation. The change-of-name forms are loaded in your backpack. Your house is on the market. Ruth went with you to meet with the realtor, explaining the uniqueness of your circumstances. She accompanied you to the bank and helped you move your money into an untraceable account, safe even from Ulf’s baneful powers of divination. You withdrew a healthy roll of cash, which will sustain you for the present, keeping you off the grid.
This is what the money is for. This is what it was for all along.
Eight weeks pregnant. You stroke your stomach, grateful that your baby is not yet developed enough to share any part of your anxiety. Near the end of a pregnancy, a fetus in the womb can absorb and echo some of its mother’s emotions; her blood is its blood too, after all. But a two-month-old embryo is less than an inch long, with only the most nascent glimmer of a brain. It does not have bones or sensory organs, much less the neural architecture necessary to experience pain or fear.
