A Better Life, page 5
When the fit was over, she quickly folded the handkerchief, concealing the expelled blood in its folds.
“I can see it on your lips, you know?” Lisa said.
Jess frowned.
“The blood. It’s…it’s on your lips.”
“Shit.”
Jess quickly wiped the back of her hand across her lips. Sure enough, her hand came away red.
“Why don’t you go lie down? There are plenty of rooms up there. Pick one and get some rest. I can look after the girl.”
Not yet able to speak, Jess shook her head. She took a moment to catch her breath. “No…no, I’m okay…I need to do this, Lisa. We all have to do our part in this and I have a good bond with her. She trusts me, I think. Things are tough on that little girl, Lisa. No need to mix things up and make them any tougher.”
Lisa leaned forward. “You look tired, Jess. Real tired. Won’t do any of us any good, having you collapse on us with all this shit going on.”
“I’ll be fine, honestly. The coughing fits…they come and go.”
“I know they come and go, but they’ve been ‘coming’ a lot more than ‘going’ since you demanded to take part in this. I thought you were against it. Curt told me as much.”
“I had to be here, Lisa. I had to.”
“Why?” Lisa asked. She lowered her head. “Don’t bother answering that. I already know…your unwavering sense of responsibility, right?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“Let me tell you something, Jess…just because this is for you, doesn’t mean it needed to involve you.”
“I know…it’s not just that, it’s…”
“What?”
“It’s the girl.”
“What about her?”
“I wanted to be here for her when she, you know, went through all this.”
“You don’t even know her.”
“Doesn’t matter. She’s a child. She needs me here. She needs someone who can care for her and soothe her. She needs…”
“You’re not her mother, Jess.”
“I know that!” Jess barked back with more venom than she intended. She took pause, breathed deep. “I’m sorry. I just…I wanted to get to know her. In a strange way, when you lay all the cards on the table, she’s the one who, if this all works out, will be saving my life.”
Lisa sat back in her chair. The wood creaked under her ample frame, threatening to succumb. For the moment, it held firm, if only just.
“Jessica, you have a heart of purest gold and I love you for it. I really do.”
“But?”
“But while your heart is top of the line, your brain could use a little work, girl, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
Jess laughed softly. Lisa joined her, killing the tension in the room instantaneously.
“You might be right, at that,” Jess agreed, raising her coffee to her lips now that the coughing fit was evidently over.
She took a sip. Pain followed the warm coffee down her throat. Placing the mug on the kitchen table, Jess tried to hock up some of the phlegm. It hurt like hell to do so, but she did her best to hide her pain. Lisa had seen enough pain in her life without watching her friend wither and die like grapes untended on the vine.
Pulling out a fresh handkerchief, she spat the offending chunk of pinkish muck into it and folded. Catching her breath, she said. “I know you’ll think that what I’m about to say also has something to do with my brain needing a tune-up, but…I think there’s something strange going on, Lisa.”
Lisa’s soft smile fell away, replaced by a puzzled frown. “Strange? Strange how?”
“It could be nothing. Probably is nothing, but there was something Emily said upstairs. About her parents.”
Lisa was all ears. “What did she say about them, Jess? Talk to me, honey. And don’t worry about me thinking you’re nuts. I already think you’re crazy as a badger in a bag…so spill it.”
Jess still had no idea how to word her disquiet, so she simply blurted her concerns out. “She…Emily…she said that her parents won’t answer the phone when Curt and Pete make the call.”
Lisa huffed, “Now why in the hell wouldn’t they answer?”
Jess spoke quietly. “She said they…well…she said they hate her.”
Lisa smiled. It was an understanding smile, one full of kindness. “Jess, that’s just the fears inside of a scared little girl making themselves known. She probably feels they’ve abandoned her, left her to the big bad wolves. You got to understand, when anything painful or stressful happens to a child of her age - and especially one who’s lived such a sheltered life, locked away from the world most days in that golden palace they call a ‘home’, the child is going to feel betrayed. They may not have the self-awareness or the vocabulary to express it properly. They may not even know they feel that way themselves. But they do, darlin’. They do. For a kid like her…fresh to this world and having seen so little of it…the simplest change to their daily pattern can cut the legs right out from under them. And when those legs get cut out and the kid topples over, who do you think they come crying to? Who do you think they blame?”
“Their parents.”
“That’s right! Their parents. And those cries aren’t fueled by hurting alone, honey. They’re fueled by anger, resentment, and sometimes even hate. Hell, the number of times I’ve had little Billy holler at me like I’m the very Devil himself, popped up from Hell! He’s called me every name under the sun, that boy, leastways the ones he’s allowed to call me. You’d think me the worst damned mother who ever walked God’s blessed lands, Jess. I swear it.”
Jess laughed, though her unease remained.
“Yeah, he’s a little spitfire.”
“You know it, honey. You damn sure know it.”
Jess frowned. “I guess you’re right. It’s probably nothing.”
Lisa spoke quietly and with love. “This isn’t about something…else…is it, sweetheart?”
Despite Lisa’ reluctance to voice her concerns, it was clear what her sister-in-law was referring to.
She was referring to Petra.
She thinks this is about her.
Isn’t everything, though, when it comes right down to it, Jess?
The thought of her was enough to conjure bitter tears.
Painful as Lisa’s allusions were, they rang true.
But Jess wasn’t ready to fully admit such things.
Not yet.
Not to herself and not to the others, whether true or not.
“No. No, Lisa. It’s nothing. I’m just a little jittery, I think. It’ll pass. I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for, darlin’. Not one single thing. This’ll all be over soon enough and you and Curt will be far gone from here. Once you guys get the cash, you can both start a new life together, someplace over the border, away from all this shit.”
“A fresh start...”
“It surely will be, at that.”
“Thanks, Lisa.”
“Sometimes when you’re running, Jess, it ain’t got nothin’ to do with being afraid.”
Jess fought back the tears, unwilling to let her friend see just how close she may have come to nailing the root cause of her concerns. “You know,” she said, amused even in her grief, “For a crazy old bird from the desert, you’re quite the accomplished psychiatrist.”
Lisa’s laughter was full-throated and warm. When the big, kind woman laughed with such abandon, her breasts jiggled like two bowls of Jell-O. “I ain’t just a pretty face and a tight body, sister!” she exclaimed. “Now, where the hell have my brother and that dipshit, rat-bastard I call an ‘ex-husband’ gotten to?”
9
Alone in the bedroom, Emily was lost in the comic’s world, enthralled by the hero’s selflessness, mesmerized by their kindness and nobility. She scanned the pages with eyes on fire, drinking up the intricately drawn artwork, bathing in the story being spun.
She wished she could be a superhero, taking on the evils of the world, protecting the innocent from the darkness that permeated their lives. That would be a wonderful life. A better life. If she had the powers of Wonder Woman, or Thor, she’d fight to make the world a better place. A safe place. She’d be the best superhero of them all and do good for the whole world.
But to do good, you have to be good, she thought, sadly.
She wanted to be good. As good as a girl could be. She always had.
But she was still only a little girl, an eight-year-old kid with an eight-year old’s temperament and understanding of heroism.
There had been sacrifices in Emily’s life, some of which still burned at her burgeoning sense of worth. Her grandmother, for instance. And her Uncle Harvey. Those had been bad times. Terrible times.
She’d done what she had to do, though.
Not all good people could be saved, it was true, but not all evil went unpunished, either. There was some justice in the world, at least.
Uncle Harvey...what had happened to him…that had been justice. She was young, but old enough to understand that the affections of an older person could be twisted into something darker.
Her uncle’s fate, Emily found easy to live with.
Her grandmother, though.
That had been an accident. A terrible one.
Emily’s heart lurched as the memories flooded her. She felt a sickness swirl in her tummy.
In her mind, she saw the tall dark impossible figure that had taken her grandmother. A cruel and twisted mockery of the kind old lady’s beloved and cherished Jesus.
Granny had loved the man. Every room of her home had a framed picture of him, long hair and beard flowing, blue-eyes shining with eternal kindness, a slight smile, knowing and wise, etched on his face. He hung on crosses in Granny’s bedroom, held a lamb in a painting in the kitchen. In every image, he looked so compassionate.
He hadn’t looked like that when he came for her Granny.
He hadn’t looked like that at all.
Sometimes, Emily could still hear Granny’s screams, echoing in the corridors of her mind.
Though the screams hadn’t been the worst part.
The worst part had been the terror on her grandmother’s face; the horrible expression of fear etched there as the black and corrupt version of her hero loomed over her, his once warm and loving eyes now burning with hatred and lust, his smile no longer that of a comforting companion, but a hungry, leering grin.
Stop! She demanded of herself. You were only a baby. How were you to know what would happen? You were innocent.
So was Granny.
Emily closed her eyes. She tried to remember her Granny as she’d been before it came for her. Instead, she saw nothing. Only distant screams filled the darkness behind her eyes.
The room’s silence fed the memory. Emily cursed it.
She wished she could hear them moving downstairs, or hear what they were saying. In a house so large, filled with long corridors and countless bedrooms, dining rooms and secret places, sound traveled, but not so far that she could hear it. Just to listen to them speak…to dull the sounds from her past, that haunted her so…
Sadly, unlike Superman, super-hearing wasn’t within her power.
Emily’s powers lay elsewhere.
And there was nothing super about them.
She opened her eyes and focused on the comic, savoring the magic, inked there by unseen hands. As she stared determinedly at the colorful adventure, she grew steadily more aware of the subtle shifts in light; shadows stretching their dark limbs across the walls and the ceiling, as the moon glided slowly through the skies outside her room.
Night approached.
It was her favorite time.
It was the perfect time for using what power she did possess, though often it seemed her power was using her.
Fear was always at its most potent when experienced in the night-time.
She stared down at the comic’s artwork.
On the page, Swamp Thing was locked in a life-or-death battle with a black, slimy monster of some kind. Mud covered his muscular, monstrous frame. In the background, a woman screamed from her hiding spot behind a tree, of a sort Emily could not name.
Emily stared at the monster the hero wrestled with, all tentacles and teeth, hunger and claws. She understood the artist had sought to create something fearsome for the Swamp Thing to battle, but the monster in the comic wasn’t frightening at all. Not to her.
Though fear, she knew all too well, was subjective.
The terror on the brightly colored page couldn’t hold a candle to the thing that had taken Granny. Or the nightmare that had put a stop to Uncle Harvey’s evil…
And besides, why be jealous or afraid of a superhero’s abilities or a villain’s strengths? It was all make-believe. It was fun to imagine such things existing, but there was no pure magic in the real world, not of the sort dreamt of by fanciful artists and writers of cartoons.
None of that was real.
The things living inside a person’s heart, though…the unique terrors that lurked, deep down inside the souls, of every man, woman and child…those were real.
Very real.
For a time, anyway.
Until those fears ate the person alive.
As Emily understood it, fear was like a disease. It fed and fed and fed until there was nothing left to feed on, then it died in the embrace of its host.
The host and its fear became one.
Forever
Suddenly bored with the comic, Emily turned to watch the moon grinning from the night sky. She enjoyed the feel of its radiance on her skin. It calmed her somehow.
The woman calmed her, too.
Jess.
She would be returning soon, Emily was sure. The sandwiches had been nice and all, but she much preferred the company of Jess to any sandwich, however tasty.
She knew that Jess would have come back quicker if she could, but Emily understood that she was very busy. When close to the kind lady, she could sense the fear housed within. It clung to Jess’ skin like a sweat, inspired not by the searing desert heat but by a nagging sense of anxiety, brought on by what she and her friends had done; bringing Emily here to this old, run-down place where no one could find them.
And alongside fear, Jess felt remorse.
Emily could sense that, too.
She could sense a whole lot of things.
She liked Jess, despite the woman’s mistakes. She liked her a lot.
She’ll be back soon, she comforted herself.
All Emily had to do was wait.
She allowed herself to relax, put down the comic still held loosely in her hands and laid back on the bed. As she let herself drift and let her body sink into the comfortable bedsheets, she allowed the ghost of her grandmother to fade away like morning mist under the sun, and, rather than dwell on what couldn’t be changed, Emily turned her inner eye towards the terrors she could taste on the souls of the women downstairs. With terrible fascination she explored their dread.
It hurt to do so.
She had no trust for the big woman and tasting her fear was easily manageable, but Jess…
Jess was nice. Really nice.
Emily hoped it was enough to save her.
10
Curt glanced at Pete as he cracked another bottle open. His third in the short time since they’d left behind the phone-booth, and with it their control of the situation.
Pete was staring straight ahead, eyes growing blearier by the minute. Shadows flitted across his stubbled features as he held the bottle aloft and guzzled down the contents in one go.
“You said you’d stop drinking about five beers back…”
Pete afforded Curt a wolfish grin. “What are you, my fucking mother?”
“We need you thinking straight.”
Curt winced as the bottle clunked to the van’s floor. It rolled under the passenger seat to join the rest of the discarded beer-bottles.
Pete was openly sneering now. “And just why the fuck would I want to stay straight, Curt? Tell me. I’m all ears. Seems to me from where I’m sitting, being ‘clear-headed’ has gotten us absolutely fucking nowhere! I think the time for good behavior has passed, amigo, don’t you?”
“It’s not over yet, Pete. We need to keep it together.”
“Not over!? Curt…they didn’t answer the fucking phone! They’ve gone to the law and are hatching a plan right this fucking minute!”
“If they went to the law, they’d have advised them to answer the phone, Pete. They wouldn’t risk the girl’s life on a gamble like that.”
“How the fuck would you know what they would and wouldn’t do? You workin’ for the feds, now?”
“Fuck you.”
“Yeah, fuck me.”
Curt was shaken, there was no denying it, but Pete’s faulty logic only rattled him further. The feds would have had the parents answer. They’d have stalled for time. Tried to pinpoint the location of the girl. The phone would not have wrung out.
Which means…
It had played over and over in his mind; a broken vinyl on a record-player, spinning onwards and onwards, pumping fear instead of music directly to his heart.
They didn’t care.
Crazy as it sounded, and it did sound off-the-wall fucking insane, Emily’s parents didn’t care enough to take the call.
Pete cracked another bottle-top with his cigarette lighter. Curt watched as it spun through the air in front of him and hit the van’s front window. Pete wore a lop-sided grin. The booze, regardless of his familiarity with its effects, was beginning to take hold.
“We should turn the van around, Curt,” Pete said flatly.
Curt glanced again at Pete. “What the hell are you talking about, ‘turn the van around?’ Why?”
“You know why…”
“No, Pete, I don’t. So how about you fucking fill me in!? We going to go back there and call again? What the hell for!?”
Pete spoke quietly and with a steady, considered tone. “All I’m saying is, we should reconsider our options.” He waved his hand between Curt and himself. “You and me, I mean. The two of us.”
