A Better Life, page 8
She’d seen something then, too, all the way back when this whole insane plan had begun.
Those things were real. All of them.
There was something wrong with Emily. Something that had nothing to do with being kidnapped, held in an old house, or even abandoned by her family.
Then find out what it is, once and for all.
Jess moved closer to the bed. “Can I sit?” she asked quietly.
Emily’s eyes never left her comic. Jess noticed she was now reading a Spiderman story. “Of course. I’d like that a lot. It’s a little lonely up here.”
Jess eased herself down onto the bed only inches from Emily. “You’ll be going home soon, sweetheart. I…” Jess hesitated, “I promise.”
The surety with which the girl spoke gave Jess chills... “No, I won’t.”
“Why do you keep saying that, darling?”
“Because it’s true. I’ll be in this room until I’m not.”
What did that mean?
Jess quickly gave the dimly lit bedroom another search with her eyes. Nothing.
You saw it, the voice repeated inside.
It’s now or never. Ask her.
“Emily?”
“Yes,” the girl replied sweetly.
“Can I ask you something, please?”
“Sure,” Emily said, non-committedly. Whereas before Jess had marveled at the girl’s quiet self-confidence, even admired it, now she almost feared it. Watching Emily sat on the bed with her mind fixated on the story, Jess thought of devils and deceivers, monsters wearing the suits of humans.
Deep shame ran through her, making her stomach lurch.
Yet the fear, the sense of the uncanny, held firm.
It took all the strength she had left inside her to ask the question. She formed it carefully, unwilling and unable to dance around the matter any longer.
“Emily…” she said, ever so quietly. “Was something in here with you, just now?”
Without speaking, Emily slowly closed the comic book, being careful not to damage the pages, and laid it on the bed by her side. Finally, she looked up and met Jess’ eyes.
When a smile slowly spread across the little girl’s face, Jess felt like screaming.
“Yes,” Emily said.
“What…what was it, Emily? What was in the room?”
“Do you really want to know?”
Did she?
“I do, Emily. I really want to know.”
“Well if you really want to know, come closer…” Emily urged, speaking just above a whisper.
“I’ll tell you my secret…”
Run, Jess. Run and never look back.
No! She’s a child! Whatever this is that she’s experiencing, she’s still a child!
Jess leaned closer…
16
Curt’s return to the world of the conscious was ushered in by unbelievable pain; a fanfare on re-entry that was purest torment. He groaned, spat a thick clot of sand and blood from between his lips and pulled his face from the desert earth as though peeling away a scab.
Where was he?
What the hell had happened?
It took a few seconds before the memories could push through the landscape of aches, pains, cuts and breakages that his body had become.
When they hit, they hit hard.
Pete!
The son of a bitch had left him to burn.
And, Curt recalled, he had plans for the girl, too.
I need to move. Need to get back to the house.
He’s going to kill the girl.
Pete hadn’t said it, not explicitly, but he’d implied it. And Curt had seen it in his eyes…that deep desperation that could drive a man to acts there was no coming back from. His workmate had all but left him for dead…tried to murder him to cover his own ass. There was no telling how far Pete would go to clean up this mess.
And it wasn’t just the little girl who was in terrible danger. Jess was back at the house, too.
And his sister.
Terror bludgeoned Curt’s senses.
How long had he been out?
Ten minutes?
Twenty?
An hour?
They could all be dead by now.
If Pete’s laid a hand on any of them…
With herculean effort, Curt twisted his hips and rolled over. He lay on his back for a second, staring up at the night sky as he caught his breath. Above, the stars, cold and unconcerned, shimmered in the cosmos. The moon hung high.
Haven’t been out long, he realized, studying the moon’s position in the heavens.
Still too long, though. Still too long. Get up.
Taking a deep breath, Curt pulled himself up into a seated position using only the muscles in his stomach. He looked down upon himself, startled at the mess he was in. His shirt was soaked with blood from a hundred cuts and abrasions, his stomach, visible through a huge gash in the shirt, looked as though a wild animal had gone at it. The skin was split open in several places, scraped away to the wet meat below in others, blood flowed freely from the wounds, soaking into his groin. Below it his jeans were sliced to ribbons, revealing more wide and ragged wounds where sharp metal had cut through flesh. He wriggled his toes, breathing a sigh of relief when they all did their jobs correctly, bar one. In his left shoe, a toe - one of the smaller ones – screamed in protest as he wriggled. One down, nine intact. He could work with that.
Curt raised his left arm. At some point during his life-or-death scramble from the burning wreckage, he must have caught his fingers on something. Two of the nails on his left hand were torn off at the root. He studied the glistening, wet flesh beneath, wincing in pain as the night air kissed the tender open wounds where dirt and sand clung and burned. His index finger on the same hand was bent back at a terrible angle, too. It had swollen to almost twice its normal size and had turned a sickly black color. The fingernail, still intact, tickled the top of his hand as the mangled digit rested where it had no right to rest.
Could be worse, buddy.
Could be your right hand…
There was no chance of raising that for inspection.
The damage wrought to his lower right arm by the crash was severe. Curt dared not study the splintered bone, jagging from the pulped flesh like a rock from the red sea. Instead, he studied the hand on the end of that ruined limb. It looked dead. All coloration and life seemed to have been drained from it when his arm had shattered like a wishbone. He wondered briefly if he’d ever use the hand again.
If he survived at all.
You’re in a bad way, sunshine. A bad goddam way…
Well, what was new?
Despite the pain, despite the fear, despite the world having kicked both he and Jess right in their collective balls for the hundredth time, Curt managed to laugh.
It felt as bitter as the blood on his tongue.
“Get up, Curt. Get. The. Fuck. Up…” he moaned.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, Curt laid his left hand in the desert sand. Immediately, the probing sand began pressing into the frayed, exposed flesh of his palm. It stung like a hundred wasps all angrily coalescing to attack a shared prey.
Handle it.
Jess is out there.
With him.
He pressed his palm down hard. With his left leg pulled toward him, he twisted his hips. There was a brief, terrifying moment when he believed his right leg might be broken…that perhaps he’d misdiagnosed the damage, imagined the movement and the feeling there and would now be fated to remain in the cold dirt like a lame mule till the scavengers arrived to pick his bones clean.
The blood in his veins found its passage and his right leg came to gradual, blessed life.
He was on his feet in under a minute fueled by dread, driven by love.
Then he was on the road back to the house, staggering through the moonlit desert like a card-carrying member of the living dead.
17
Where in the hell are those two?
With a grunt, Lisa pulled herself from her chair, pushing out the table with her gut as she stood. It slid forward, scraping the linoleum beneath the legs.
Ah, what the hell? she mused. It’s not like anyone will bill me for it.
She made for the kettle, grabbed it, took it to the kitchen sink, filled it with fresh water, then she plugged it back into the wall socket, ever-thankful for the generator outback, even if she had been the one to think of it.
Not only that, but she’d been thoughtful enough to bring along all the home comforts, too. Her brother was a good man, but he had plenty enough on his mind, what with Jess’ illness and all. And Jess…she was just about the sweetest darn girl in all the state, but if Curt was carrying a heavy load on his shoulders, then poor Jess was damn near being crushed by hers.
Pete…that worthless fuck…he couldn’t organize a drinking binge in a brewery.
Sighing, Lisa watched the kettle boil. It wasn’t much of a distraction from her deepening anxiety, but it was something.
In truth, she felt a little useless out here. The boys were doing their thing, Jess was upstairs with the girl doing her thing, but Lisa…well, there wasn’t a whole lot else she could do now that it got down to it. But damn it, she could make a cup of coffee for that poor tired sister-in-law of hers. She could do that.
If her role was to be den-mother, then so be it. She’d do her job and do it well.
She cleaned out a mug while the kettle boiled, spooned in some coffee granules and added a little sugar. Not too much, just a small spoonful. No milk.
Just how Jess liked it.
With the kettle finally boiled, Lisa poured in the water, stirred and made for the stairs. She hollered up, slightly unnerved by the sound of her own voice echoing around the rickety old house. “Jess!? I’m coming up with coffee, darlin’. You want I should bring something for the girl, too?”
There was a moment’s silence, then, from behind the door…
“I’ll come down in a few minutes, Lisa, okay? I won’t be long.”
Lisa huffed. “Dammit, girl, it’ll get cold.”
“I’ll be right there!”
Was that aggravation she detected in Jess’ voice?
“You guys okay up there, darlin’.”
“We’re fine,” Jess shouted back. “Just doing some talking.”
“We’re fiiiiine,” the little girl shouted, sealing the deal.
Lisa smiled. “Well, I never,” she said to herself. “Quite a kid, at that.”
She turned around, shaking her head in amusement. It seemed the little girl was made with some true grit. She’d suspected as much, they all had.
It warmed Lisa’s heart, soothed her some, to hear the ring of the young girl’s voice. Boys were fine - her son, Billy, was a little angel fallen from heaven if ever there was a one - but girls…good girls…they had something magic.
She thought of Curt and Jess.
And what could have been.
Her mood quickly plummeted, her spirits sinking.
Damn it all to hell, Lisa, there ain’t no point in fueling the fires of sadness. Things are hard-wrought enough without you wallowing in the past!
Lisa made her way back to the kitchen.
She’d was halfway down the long hall that led from the staircase to the kitchen, when she heard the kitchen’s back-door opening. The blasted thing squealed like a stuck piglet, but damn, it was a welcome sound.
Picking up her pace, she raced down the hall, making for the kitchen, eager to see her brother, keen to hold him and hug him and thank the good Lord that he was okay.
No reason to worry after all, you daft old besom!
She hobbled down the hall, spilling coffee left and right...
…Never you mind, you can make another cup…
…and entered the kitchen, breathless and smiling.
Instead of Curt, Pete stood by the table.
He was grinning around the half-chewed sandwich that hung from his mouth. Lisa stopped in her tracks, searching the room for her brother.
“Happy to see me?” Pete asked, spitting pieces of bread from his lips. He had that look in his eyes. The same look he used to have when he’d properly tied one on – like the world was one big joke and he was the only smug son of a bitch in on it.
Why did drunk’s always look so damned pleased with themselves?
Pete stepped around the table, wearing that stupid look like he was wearing a bowtie to church.
“Where’s Curt?” she asked, impatiently.
Pete moved in close. “Well…about that…”
“Well…?”
Pete headbutted her square in the nose, shattering the bone beneath like it was little more than porcelain.
18
“Tell me your secret.”
Emily opened her lips to speak, but said nothing.
“I want to understand. I want to help you, Emily.”
Was that true, though?
Terror still lingered at what Jess had experienced from the other side of the door. The girl continued to give off an air of knowing calm that was deeply unsettling.
Still, the answer was yes, she did want to know. She’d go crazy, otherwise. She needed to understand. If what she’d seen and heard had been real, then everything she’d been raised to understand was wrong, or at the very least, woefully naïve. If the supernatural – for she’d already decided that the uncanny was at work here – was real, then miracles could be real, too.
And Jess could sure use a miracle.
“I think I believe you.” Emily said, finally responding. “But people always say that. They always say, ‘I want to help’, but they never do. Not really. Even Mommy and Daddy used to say it, but really, they just wanted me to change. To be something I’m not. To be a normal girl.”
Jess studied the girl’s face, searching for a lie. There was none to be found.
“But you’re not a normal girl, are you, Emily?”
Emily shook her head slowly. “No. I’m…different. Different from you, different from my mom and dad, different from everybody.”
“Talk to me, Emily. Tell me what makes you so special.”
“I don’t quite know how to describe it. I can…” Emily paused, the words sticking in her throat.
“Go on…please.”
“I can…see things inside people. Bad things…”
“Bad things?”
"Mostly, yes.”
“Like a psychic?”
“I can see the inside of anyone I get close to. All the stuff they try to hide from everyone else. All the stuff that makes them ashamed or makes them afraid at night. I can see it all, even the things they can’t see themselves…”
Jess let the words sink in, trying her best to process what the girl was telling her. She’d always thought of psychics as nothing more than charlatans, looking to make an easy buck from the gullible and the grieving.
In the last twenty minutes, that had all changed.
Seeing a small girl wreathed in a living shadow would do that to a person.
Which brought her to the real question. One which she feared to even ask.
“Emily, what was in the room with you, sweetheart, can you tell me?”
“In the room?”
“Emily…I heard it. I…I saw something just…fade away. I promise you, you can trust me.”
“You don’t want to know…”
Jess’ skin crawled. “Why not?”
“You’d only get upset with me.”
“I wouldn’t, I promise.”
Emily frowned. “That’s what everyone says, too! You shouldn’t make promises you don’t know that you can keep!” she said sternly.
“I’m sorry, you’re right, but I feel like I’m losing my mind. I need to know.”
Emily seemed to think it over for a second, then she spoke.
“It was Pete’s”
“Pete’s?” Jess asked, confused. “Pete’s what? What do you mean?”
“You know how I said I can see inside of people?”
“Yes.”
The girl flushed red, looking embarrassed.
“What is it?”
“It sounds silly, saying it out loud.”
“It’s okay. I won’t make fun of you. That’s the last thing I’d do. I’m practically scared out of my mind, Emily. Please, just tell me.”
Emily took a deep breath.
“Well…I can do other things, too, besides see inside of people.”
“I’m listening.”
“I can see where they’re going…”
“Where they’re going?”
“Yes…I can see where they’re going when…”
“When…?” Jess urged. She was finding it hard to take in air.
Emily took a deep breath. Her startling green eyes seemed to darken as she struggled to word what she wanted to say.
“Do you believe that you have a soul, Jess?”
Jess, caught off-guard, said, “I…I don’t know. I hope so. I mean, what’s the point of all this if we just die and it’s all over?”
“So, you believe?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“I don’t mean like in a bible, or any of those silly books they teach little children, but an…energy...like electricity, that lives inside us and changes form when we die?”
Jess thought about it. “I guess I do. Everything has to go back to the source, right?”
“Then do you believe there’s a place, or places, where our minds, or our souls, go when we leave here? Do you believe in that?”
Jess had no time to answer. The girl was determined to say her piece. “My Mommy does. Daddy, too. They never used to believe. They used to say that there was only life and then a whole lot of nothing. That we all turned to dust and ash and that it was okay, because we lived on through the ones we loved. They said there’s nothing beyond what we see and taste and hear and feel, but there is. They know it, now. They’ve seen...they’ve seen where people go. At least a glimpse of it.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Do you believe in a Hell, Jessica?” Emily asked bluntly.
“Hell? No. I mean…I don’t think so, I…”
“Then you’re wrong.”
