A Better Life, page 16
He’d watched his mother die slowly, wasting away to nothing, and had never recovered from it. Now, it was his turn.
Jess knew there was nothing she could do to help.
It was already too late.
Somehow, in his pain and mortal terror, he reached for her. His hand shook uncontrollably, his fingers curled like those of a wizened crone’s. Jess’ reeled as she watched his fingernails slide from their proper place, black and cracked, brittle as autumn leaves. Beneath them the rotting skin oozed thick, white pus. It dripped from his fetid fingertips like ink from a quill.
“Curt…” she moaned, paralyzed by shock and repulsion.
The skin on his forearms cracked and peeled before her eyes like sugar paper. Black blood oozed from a thousand wounds, sliding from his congealing musculature, ridden by tiny squirming forms.
She met his eyes.
He worded something more, even as his eyes seemed to bulge further from their sockets. Though his lips were now shriveled and liquifying, Jess knew what he wanted to say. She knew. She saw it in his hideously bulbous eyes.
“I love you too,” she moaned in despair.
Then Curt’s eyes slowly slid from their sockets, pushed out from within. They swung on blackened stocks upon his sunken, dead cheeks, as a sickening swell of bloated maggots pushed their way out through the sockets, escaping from his decaying cranium into the light of the world.
Jess screamed.
Curt collapsed in a heap.
The maggots feasted.
Soon there was only a putrefying soup, peppered with bone, and a million maggots writhing in exquisite, ravenous delight.
41
Her senses swamped by horror and heartbreak, Jess watched the maggots feed. She wanted to meet the girl’s eyes, but found she couldn’t even glance in the child’s direction.
Better to witness the rapid corrosion of her beloved than meet the child’s gaze.
She could sense her though, standing there, perched on the stairs and watching the scene unfold.
Curt…
He was gone.
They said that when a person faced death, all their whole life would flash before their eyes, a stop-motion grindhouse epic documenting all the pain, all the love, all the struggles and all the joy.
Jess had watched Curt’s eyes. She’d seen nothing there besides torment and pain. He’d left this world via a shrieking plunge into the abyss.
“Bring him back,” she demanded, her eyes still fixed upon the bubbling muck splashed out on the stairs before her.
Stupid. Ridiculous. There was no coming back.
Yet she demanded it all the same.
“Emily…” she spoke through gritted teeth and quivering lips. “Bring him back.”
She sounded small, weak, ashamed. Even frightened. “I can’t!” she said.
Of course she couldn’t.
Jess squeezed her eyes shut and, within, Curt danced in the throbbing half-light of her mind’s eye. Smiling, laughing…
Then rotting.
Her eyes snapped open, flitting from the rotten soup to the staircase. She couldn’t bear to meet the girl’s eyes, though she stared at her small feet. It was all she could manage.
“I didn’t want to do it,” Emily said, sniffing. “I liked him. But he was going to kill me.”
Jess’s words sounded flat and terrible in her own head. “That’s the second time you’ve said as much, Emily. The second time.”
“He wanted me dead.”
“He was afraid of you. He was right to be.”
“I wouldn’t have hurt him.”
Finally, Jess and the girl connected, eye to eye.
“He was good.”
“I know he was.”
“He was my husband,” Jess sobbed, the full weight of her loss seeping into her pores like rot into a scabrous wound. “He was the father of my child. And you…you killed him.”
“You saw!” the girl implored.
“I did. It’s true. I saw.”
“He blamed me for his sister!”
“Shouldn’t he have?”
“No! I did what I had to. She was bad, Jessica. She was bad, deep down where no one knew it. She wasn’t like him, or like you.”
“Who gave you the power to judge over who is and isn’t worthy of this life, Emily? Can you tell me that?” Jess held the child’s eyes, firm, demanding an answer.
Emily, chin pressed to her chest, shook her head. Her bottom lip protruded a little, quivering. She looked close to not only crying but to bubbling, just like any other sad and scared little girl would do.
“I wanted us to be safe. To be happy… That’s all I wanted.”
Jess laughed. It sounded cold and harsh and so unlike herself that she wondered momentarily if someone had entered the room without her knowledge.
No one there.
Just the girl. And her. And what was left of her husband, congealing on the staircase.
“What do you think this is, Emily?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You and I…what do you think we are?”
Emily’s sadness dripped from her voice like tears. “We’re together. You said you’d never let anyone hurt me. You said that.”
Jess took a deep, ragged breath. “I did. I said that.” Jess paused, taking in the child, lost and afraid, deadly, yet as frightened as any child in dismay.
“And I meant it, Emily. I still mean it. God help me, I still mean it.”
Emily’s eyes filled with light. She lifted her small head and parted her hair, staring at Jess with a child’s hope, perfect and heartbreaking. Slowly, the girl moved down the stairs, avoiding Curt’s remains. She knelt by Jess’ side, laying her small hand in Jess’ own. She felt then girl’s warmth surge through her.
“I love you,” Emily whispered. “You’re the only person in the world I’ve ever really loved. Mom and Dad…they were never my parents. They looked after me, but they were never mine. I was glad when you took me. I was glad when they didn’t answer the phone, and I’m glad I’m with you now.”
“He was a good man,” Jess repeated, though to herself or Emily, she didn’t know.
Who the hell was she trying to convince?
Jess thought back over all that had happened.
The kidnapping of a child, bringing her to the old house, subjecting her to a man like Pete.
They should have known what he was.
Curt, knife in his hand, set to sink the blade into the flesh of a small child.
It was true. He would have killed Emily.
Another second and he would have killed an eight-year-old child.
And Lisa? The girl seemed genuinely distraught over the situation, but she’d hinted at something deep and dark and terrible in the big woman’s past that had scraped her soul raw.
Was the girl lying?
No. There was no lie in the child. Jess was as sure of that as she was of the sun rising each day. Whatever atrocity resided in Lisa’s heart, it had been severe and it had been terribly real.
“I need to tell you something, Emily.”
“Please.”
Jess clutched Emily’s hand tight in her own, amazed by the swell of love she still felt for the girl despite all that had transpired.
“Five years ago, I…” Jess swallowed hard, determined to get through it, to share her story with Emily, to help her understand. She took a deep breath and began again.
“Five years ago, I gave birth to my daughter…my little Petra. Only…it wasn’t really my daughter that I gave birth to. For Petra, there was no birth. Not really. The precious little life who’d been growing inside me for nine months was already gone. She never survived the procedure. What I gave birth to was no more than an empty shell, Emily. A beautiful, perfect, tiny shell that housed nothing inside. She died during the moment of her birth, Emily, and I died right there with her, right there on the operating table. When I met you…when we took you…I felt myself drawn to you. Your kindness, your heart, your spirit. I thought to myself that if my little girl had lived…if she’d made it into the world and had the chance to grow and learn and find her feet…I’d want her to have been just like you.
“That’s how I felt, Emily. I didn’t really spend any time around children, even on the occasions when I had the chance…birthday parties, family events, those sorts of things. I never showed. I couldn’t bear to see another’s child in their arms. Smiling, playing, giggling, holding onto their mommy with a love my poor sweet baby girl would never know.”
Jess paused. “Do you already know all this, Emily?”
Emily squeezed her hand, “Does it matter? Tell me.”
Jess nodded. “After she was…born…my life went to pieces. I went to pieces. I began drinking, like the way Pete did.”
“Drinking is bad.”
“Yes, in some ways it is, when it’s done too often. It’s a drug, Emily. Do you know what drugs are?”
“Not really. I see stuff in movies, so I know they’re bad, too.”
“Anyway, the alcohol wasn’t nearly a strong enough drug to smother the pain I was feeling.”
“What happened?”
“I did something I swore I’d never do. Something I’d always found disgusting, pathetic, and weak…I began smoking something called Heroin.”
“I know what that is. That’s a really bad drug, isn’t it? All the gangsters have shoot-outs over it.”
“It’s a very bad drug, yes. I smoked it for a while. And it helped, for a while. But soon even that wasn’t enough to wash away the misery. Curt tried to make me stop and to make me look for other ways to fix my broken heart, but there was no stopping it. I moved onto injecting it.”
“Why did you do that, if you knew it was bad?”
“I’d wake up in hell every morning, lost in thoughts of my poor dead baby, robbed of her very first breath, and I’d cry. I’d cry, and I’d sink someplace deep down inside of my soul that I never knew existed. The pain I felt, Emily…it was unbearable. I knew that I wasn’t strong enough to take it.”
“The bad drug made it go away?”
Jess smiled bitterly, taken aback by the girl’s simplistic appraisal of the hell she’d suffered. “I’d see my daughter’s cold, still body everywhere I went, even behind my eyelids when I tried to shut her memory out. She was always there, always still, always dead. Until I took the drug, and then…”
“Then?”
“Everything would fade away. She would fade away. The world became pure light, my body sang, my pain would disappear. I felt peace.”
“It doesn’t sound so bad.”
“It was, and it wasn’t. It released me from my pain, but it killed my soul, too, Emily.” She faced the girl. “And really, it killed my body, as well. All it took was one time, sharing the wrong needle. Have you heard of HIV and AIDS?”
Emily nodded.
“There’s a bad kind, and a very bad kind…I have the very bad kind. And it stops me from having any more children, Emily. God help me, it stops me from taking the risk. If my baby was born with the disease…”
“I’m sorry,” Emily replied.
“Don’t you know all this?”
“I see fear. I see sin. I don’t see everything.”
“Perhaps that’s a blessing.”
“But what you did wasn’t sinful. You’re not a bad person.”
“I’m dying, Emily. Without the proper treatment, I’m finished. Curt and I…” She paused, choking on the sound of his name. “Curt and I…we tried everything. We worked hard, and we did everything we could.”
“Why couldn’t you get help? Couldn’t you have gone to a doctor or a hospital?”
“Those things cost money, Emily. A lot of money. We just couldn’t afford the help I need. All I had…have…to look forward to, is a slow and painful death. I’m so scared, Emily. So scared.”
“That’s why you took me.”
It wasn’t a question. Emily had tears in her eyes. Jess, despite the things the girl had done, wanted to hold her, comfort her, tell her everything would be okay.
But that was a lie.
The girl was alone, and in huge part it was Jess’ fault. By bringing her out here, she’d forced the girl to face uncomfortable things, heart-breaking things, about her own family and how they felt about their child.
And now, what was Jess to do?
Leave the girl alone out here in this accursed house, with no way to reach the outside world, alone and afraid, with little food and even less water?
No…she couldn’t do that.
The girl had done terrible things, violent things…things Jess could scarcely comprehend. She had power the likes of which could reshape the world, and she’d used those powers in horrible, despicable ways, but she’d been scared. Scared out of her mind. She’d watched Pete, a stranger, almost kill both herself and Lisa, and in her mind Lisa had been a significant threat. She’d been panicked, terrified, ashamed and alone by the time Curt had went at her with the knife.
Emily had been frantic. She must have been beside herself with fear. Were her actions understandable? Were they perhaps even justifiable?
They were hard questions, with no real answers.
One thing, Jess understood, was certain.
You can’t walk away from this. You can’t leave her out here in this god-forsaken desert, all alone. Curt’s gone. Lisa’s gone. They’re all gone. It’s all on you and you know it. This whole thing.
All on you.
“We can get the money.”
“What?” she asked the girl, her reverie broken.
“For you. For your illness. We can get the money. There are ways we can get it, and then you can get help and we can be together.”
“It’s too late for me, Emily. I don’t deserve the help anymore. Not after all…this. Maybe I never did.”
“That’s not true.”
“It’s true.”
“I need you, Jess.” Emily was openly weeping. Her small hands clenched and unclenched the fabric of Jess’ shirt as her anxious eyes implored. “I have no one.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Jess?”
“Yes?”
“I want you to be my Mommy from now on. And I’ll be a good girl. I won’t hurt anyone. I’ll be the best daughter you could hope for. I promise.”
Hope poured from the child’s words.
Terrible, desperate, beautiful hope.
Jess closed her eyes tight, and there in the dark, waiting as she always waited, was the memory of her poor dead Petra.
Jess, her heart hollowed out, her eyes afire with disbelief, stares down at the tiny dead thing in her arms. Her daughter, her only child, lost to her, cradled in her arms as though sleeping. She tenderly caresses her cheek. She’s already growing cold to the touch. Jess opens her mouth and begins to scream. She screams until her throat tears and her heart reverberates, and a blackness, deeper and darker than any night she’s ever known, envelops her soul. She screams until something snaps in her mind. She can hear it ringing in her ears.
The sharp pinprick of the needle puncturing her skin, as the doctor injects her with a sedative, comes as a welcome release. She fades, and as she does, she hopes and prays that she’ll never wake back up.
Jess opened her arms. “Come here.”
Emily, releasing Jess’ shirt from her tight grip, opened her arms in return, and fell into Jess’ warm embrace.
To Jess, it felt like belonging.
“I love you, Jessica,” the girl whispered in her ear. Jess felt Emily’s breath tickle her. She could smell the girl’s hair, a pleasant blend of strawberry and sweat. For just a second, she allowed herself to believe…to believe that the girl in her arms was her long-dead daughter.
“I love you too, Emily. And I’m so sorry.”
Jess plunged the knife into little Emily’s stomach, and as the girl’s warm blood began to flow down her hand, seeping between her shivering fingers, she howled her despair, just as she had when she’d held her stillborn child, and felt the world spin out of orbit, into dark, empty space.
42
Jess, drenched in sweat from exertion, laid the girl’s body on the bed. Comics, paperbacks and soft plushies surrounded the child as her little form sank into the bedsheets. She looked peaceful. The slightest of smiles rested on her face.
Jess held her cooling hand in her own, squeezing it gently, missing the warmth, second by second, as it drained from the girl’s body.
The night was silent now. All the madness, all the confusion, the fear, the violence…it all seemed a million miles away. A distant fever dream, a storm that passed out of perception and on into memory.
She held the knife in her hand. Emily’s blood stained the blade, but Jess had no problem with that. Soon, she’d run the serrated blade across her own neck, and her blood would mix with Emily’s. Together, they’d lay there in the room, side by side, and sleep, while the sun rose on a brand-new day.
She wasn’t afraid anymore. Not of dying, not of pain, not of heart-break. Soon, she’d be free of all of it. One quick motion, left to right, across her throat, and then she could lay back beside the beautiful little girl’s body, and kiss the lips of forever.
She’d never hurt anyone before. Certainly, she’d never stabbed anyone. She shuddered as she relived the moment. The way Emily’s skin pressed down under the blades pressure, then the tip sinking in, deeper and deeper, till Emily’s final pained breath had fully expelled, one long sigh, too old and tired and wise to pass from such delicate lips. It had broken Jess’ heart to do it, but killing the girl had been a mercy. She knew that. The girl’s powers were too dangerous, too diabolical to be allowed to develop and evolve further. The child would have been hunted as a monster. The family she’d desired, always out of reach. Alone in an uncaring, suspicious world. And the girl’s intent to help Jess get well? Jess knew that Emily’s plan to get the money would have led to more bloodshed. Probably that of the girl’s parents.
There’d been enough death.
And death, she knew, was far from the worst of it.
What happened to those who fell victim to Emily’s power after death, that was what truly horrified. Jess believed the girl implicitly when she’d talked of the dead finding their souls trapped in that other place. The bad place. She’d seen a tiny glimpse of it herself. Emily was sending souls to an early damnation. One which time, fate and a lifetime’s redemption may have spared the victims from suffering.
