by Ninie Hammon
The rubber ducky tottered in place for a moment before it, too, took a swan dive — well, a duck dive — off the shelf. It hit the floor, bounced a time or two and lay still. Bundy leapt back when it landed in front of him. Now, he was yapping furiously at it.
She hadn’t had her adorable puppy when she’d broken the phone booth. T.J. had given her the puppy for her birthday the night she’d met the beautiful teenager who was doomed to die just the way Bailey had painted her — strangled.
Bailey’d been strangled along with her.
She hadn’t been strangled with this woman, though, hadn’t drowned with her as she had Macy Cosgrove, either. The woman whose portrait she had just painted, with brushes in both hands that she had just dropped, had burned alive.
Bailey’d left without looking at her face. She would have to look at the portrait eventually, of course, but it didn’t have to be right now. Her legs were still trembly, knees felt like bags of water that might just whoosh out from under her at any second.
Flames singeing the strand of hair on the floor …
The stink of her own flesh burning …
She shuddered. It had hurt so bad.
But, of course, it hadn’t really hurt at all because she hadn’t really been burned. Except, of course, she had, too.
Bailey had never let herself consider all the different kinds of real-but-not-real brutal deaths that awaited her out there in the future, the pain and horror she would have to endure. But a dark foreboding chilled her soul now, like a hawk overhead casting its shadow on a mouse in a field below.
She stood, frozen by horror.
Yap, yap-yap.
Bundy was still barking at the ducky and she started to reach down and pick him up, but she had paint on her hands and she didn’t want to slather the dog in paint or he’d smear it on the furniture.
Stepping around the duck on the floor, Bailey headed back toward the kitchen. She’d been there, making herself a sandwich for lunch with winter tomatoes that tasted like cardboard.
And then … BAM. Nothing. The next thing she knew, she was opening her eyes, looking at the studio ceiling.
She often wondered about that part. The part between her real life, getting the mayonnaise jar out of the refrigerator and examining the last two slices of bread in the bag for telltale green spots — and waking up holding dueling paintbrushes. Did she … what? Suddenly hear the theme song from The Twilight Zone? Get all glassy-eyed, turn and walk slowly out of the kitchen and down the hall, her arms out in front of her, looking like a recently killed walking dead that hadn’t decayed too much yet?
Or did she just look normal? Look normal, while inside all her breakers had blown?
With every step toward the kitchen Bailey came more fully back to herself. Moving her legs helped. So did the feel of the rug on the bottoms of her feet. She’d learned that.
Wonderful. She was getting adept at dealing with a psychic curse she hadn’t asked for and didn’t want. But she was improving. Shoot, give her another three or four dozen grizzly deaths and she’d be a pro.
She had no appetite for the not-very-good-in-the-first-place sandwich. Coffee. Black. Strong enough to trot a mouse cross the top.
She’d only taken a couple of steps toward the kitchen when she felt a sudden incredible joy bubble up in her belly that almost burst out her throat as a giggle.
It was so startling that for a moment she had no idea where or wh—
Soon.
Soon would really be soon now.
BETHANY.
It was like every time she thought the child’s name it appeared in flashing LED letters in her brain, leaving bright red shadows behind when the letters blinked off.
Soon, she would see her baby … her baby!
That realization shined a rosy light into every dark shadowed corner of her soul and lit her world with the glow of it. The light made even the horror of painting a future portrait easier to bear.
The portrait.
Reality punched her in the belly.
See-saw. Up-down. Portrait-Bethany.
How in the world did Oscar abide all the commotion and stay put, snug as a bug in a brain?
Who was the girl in the portrait?
And what on earth was all the sparkling and static about? That had never happened before. It was almost like … she had a bad connection.
Then another emotion, as powerful as the bubbling joy, swept through her.
Anger.
Why now?
It wasn’t like Bailey was in charge or anything, not like she got to decide when she painted the monstrosities. The only time she’d ever decided to do one she had led her friends on a fast track into hell.
But … not now.
Whatever it was, whoever this girl was, Bailey didn’t have time, didn’t have the — what was the word the geeks in the computer store used? — the emotional bandwidth right now to deal with the absolute horror of another future painting and the absolute joy of getting her life back.
Not at the same time.
No, not now.
Then a thought that was every bit as horrifying as the still-wet painting that now rested on an easel in her studio stole her breath. You don’t suppose the two could be related — Bethany and the mystery woman who had burned to death?
Bailey detoured around the kitchen door and took the stairs instead, two at a time. She’d left her cellphone charging on the nightstand by her bed.
Chapter Nine
Soon’s he seen Bailey’s number pop up on caller ID, T.J. knew. Oh, they was all kinda reasons she might be calling him. Everything from how-can-I-keep-Bundy-from-eating-my-shoelaces to I-can’t-get-the-lid-off-this-jar-of-pickles.
This wasn’t that, though. He didn’t know how he knew, never questioned things like that anymore. He knew why she was calling and that was the beginning and the end of it.
“When’d it happen?” he asked without preamble.
“I’m fine, T.J., thanks for asking. And how are you?”
“The paint even dry yet?”
“No.”
“I’ll be over directly.”
“No rush. I was barefoot and I have to take a shower to get the paint out from between my toes.”
“Wait until I take a shower?” T.J. was incredulous. “You musta painted a future where didn’t nobody die, everybody was out in a daisy patch chasing butterflies.”
“No. A young woman burned to death.”
Then T.J. got it. Bailey was distressed over the portrait. Of course she was! She always was. Just like his mama had been. Didn’t nobody in the world ‘cept Bailey know what it felt like to die and yet not die. To feel all the horror of whatever cruel form of death you’d just been subjected to, but then wake up fine — make that “physically uninjured” — afterward.
But her distress was painted on a different canvas today. Wasn’t painted on the bleak terrain of her life tucked away in hiding in the Witness Protection Program, aching to hold the little girl she hadn’t seen in … what was it she’d said? Twenty-three months, twenty-seven days and five hours. Something like that. It was even more now.
However horrible that painting was, the artist was a woman who was looking out into a future where soon really meant soon. Where it wouldn’t be long before she was reunited with her daughter and the little sister who’d been taking care of her. Even terrible as a future painting could be, it was hard to dampen hope like that glowing in your soul.
“I’ll give you time to get your drawers on.”
He and the others hadn’t made some pact sealed in spit that they wouldn’t tell Bailey they’d got together on Friday to discuss the Mafia Monster, which was how he now appeared in T.J.’s mind. Sergei Mikhail-whatever-ov was too hard to pronounce. But there was a tacit agreement among them that wasn’t no need to bother Bailey with that kind of thing. At least not until they had to. “Want me to swing by and pick up a burger on my way?”
“I’m good. There’s a sandwich made out of car
dboard tomatoes downstairs with my name on it. But would you mind …?”
“I’ll call ‘em, see if they can drop by, too.”
Brice’s cruiser was parked in Bailey’s driveway when T.J. pulled up out front. Dobbs pulled into the driveway behind the cruiser before T.J. got all the way to the porch, so he stopped and waited for his friend to catch up. Had to, really. Soon’s Sparky seen Dobbs’s truck he went barreling out to greet him. Dobbs spoiled that dog rotten. Ever since he’d given Bailey the puppy for her birthday, Dobbs had taken to carrying doggie treats in his pocket all the time and whenever T.J. wasn’t standing there with a disapproving look on his face, he’d give one to Sparky without making him earn it.
“Sparky, sit,” Dobbs said. Sparks instantly assumed the bum-on-grass position, and Dobbs popped a treat into his mouth.
“You think I don’t know that little performance was all for my benefit?”
Dobbs just grinned.
Bailey met T.J. at the door with Bundy on the end of a leash.
“Would you take him out? It’s freezing out there.”
T.J. was wearing only a long-sleeved shirt. Just how he did life, no matter how cold it was. Bailey, on the other hand, thought it was cold if the temperature dropped below fifty-five degrees. He sometimes wondered if she slept under the mattress.
Once he was back inside, they dawdled much as they could, finishing coffee or hot cider, talking puppy antics, house training and Black Friday shopping. Bailey said she’d spent all day Saturday cleaning the house, top to bottom, which was quite a task for a place that big. Of course, they all knew what she was doing. She’d have scrubbed all the sidewalks in the whole neighborhood to pass the time between now and “soon.”
Didn’t nobody bring up Bethany/the marshal/Mafia Monster because then they’d feel bad for not telling Bailey they’d found out even more awful stuff about him than they already knew. And didn’t nobody bring up the portrait or they’d have to stop procrastinating and go look at it.
Finally, it was time, though.
“Let’s go have us a look-see.”
They filed like a funeral cortege down the hallway. It didn’t blow by T.J. that Brice was right next to Bailey the whole time. He wanted to be there to steady her when the hammer blow of seeing the dead woman she’d painted hit her.
It was always a shock, but none of them was prepared for the scream.
As soon as Bailey got a good look at the woman in the portrait, she shrieked.
Dobbs jumped back like he’d been shocked. Both Sparky and Bundy yapped. Brice looked like he’d been slapped and T.J.’s black face likely turned a whole shade lighter.
It was a surprised scream, followed by a longer wail, where she grabbed her own upper arms, hugging herself, while she shook her head no.
“Bailey, sugar—”
“Noooo,” she cried, looked beseechingly into their faces like they could do something to change what she was seein’. Pointing to the picture with a trembling finger, she spoke in a tear-clotted voice.
“It’s my little sister — María!”
Then she put her head in her hands and as Brice folded her into his arms, she sobbed.
Chapter Ten
In truth, Brice had almost been expecting something like this.
As soon as T.J. called, that’s where his mind went. It seemed a logical conclusion.
Oh, sure, neither Bailey nor T.J.’s mother had any say over when the compulsion seized them, grabbed them by the throat and forced them to paint a nightmare and live it as they painted. Maybe Bailey would have painted the same portrait this afternoon even if they’d never taken a birthday picture, never captured the murderer in the background.
But Brice didn’t believe that.
Bailey’s reaction to the portrait was closer to a total meltdown than Brice had ever seen, and he had been through some of the most horrifying times in the woman’s life. This was different from all the other times, though. She’d been “somebody else” when she’d painted the other portraits, not a young mother on her way to reclaiming a life that’d been stolen from her in an instant. The “before” Witness Protection Program Bailey and the “after” were different people.
And Brice was certain that during all the lonely months when Bailey’s present was empty and miserable, she’d clung to memories of “before” — that magical time when her life had been what it was supposed to be.
Now the present had invaded that past. Had assaulted that magical time. It was an affront, an outrage, like finding a roach in a bassinet. That brutal attack on the world in a bubble called “before” had multiplied the impact of the horror.
After they’d gotten Bailey seated, gotten her calmed down, she stared at the portrait, her eyes devouring every detail. Unlike the first portrait she’d painted, it wasn’t someone’s whole body as Macy Cosgrove’s had been. This one was just a face, in profile. The face filled the right side of the canvas, with smeared colors on the other side.
And it was out of focus. Details weren’t crisp, just suggested. It was all … blurry.
The agonized face was recognizable, though the features were contorted by fear and pain.
“She’s … you know, older than I remember.” Bailey burped out a bleat of laughter. “Of course, she would be. I haven’t seen her since … you know in almost …”
She took in a deep shuddery breath.
There was a lot about this whole thing that they needed to unpack, but Brice was aware that the others were doing the same thing he was — holding the situation and Bailey like a fragile piece of blown glass. Careful not to shatter it.
“Last night, I was thinking … I was holding the minion blanket …” She saw their blank looks but didn’t explain. “And, of course, I was thinking that soon—” She stopped and a trembling smile tried to capture her face but couldn’t make it through the minefields on the beach. “There’s that word. It’s been redeemed now, though. Actually means something.”
She pressed her lips together. Closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were clearer.
“I was thinking that soon I’d be rocking my baby again. Only, she isn’t a baby. Bethany’s three. Three and a half. And she’s frozen in my memory as a toddler.” Bailey gestured toward the portrait. “Like María was frozen as a college student. She’s a young woman now.”
She paused, then added in a whisper, “A young mother now.”
Bailey rose unsteadily to her feet. T.J. reached out to hold her back, but Brice shook his head and T.J. let it go.
She approached the portrait and examined it. She’d examined all the portraits like this that she’d painted, but never with the expression on her face she had now.
“What happened to her?” T.J. asked. Brice shot him a look and he added, “Unless you ain’t ready to talk about—”
“It was different this time and not just because it was María.” Bailey paused. “But maybe that is why.”
She seemed to be considering, for the first time, that María’s presence was a possible explanation for … what?
“The whole experience was …”
Brice watched her struggle to tack words onto images and sensations that mere words had never been designed to describe.
“There was … static and I couldn’t hear. I was looking at everything through … like an old black-and-white television set in the 1950s where the picture is all whited out and you can’t see it.”
“That’s called snow, sweetheart,” T.J. said. “We was still getting that kind of reception here in the mountains when the government was landing a man on the moon.”
“It was like I didn’t have a good connection.” She paused. “No, it was more like the connection was too good. Too intense. It made sparks, like a welding torch. I don’t know how to—”
“Feedback,” Dobbs said and everyone turned to look at him.
“You know that awful squawking sound — from every high school graduation ceremony in the history of mankind. It’s caused
by feedback. And it happens because …” He paused. “This is a whole lot harder than describing a coal mine using sugar cubes.”
“You got this,” T.J. said, trying to be encouraging, though clearly he had no idea where his friend was going.
“The speaker on the stage is broadcasting the sound coming from the microphone. But if you get the microphone so close to the speaker that it picks up the sound the speaker’s broadcasting, and transmits that sound back into the speaker … it’s called closing the loop. Or feedback.”
“What’s microphones and speakers got to do with—?”
“Bailey is ‘connected’ to her little sister the same way the two of us are connected.” Dobbs smiled at T.J. “Can’t explain or define it, but it’s undeniable—”
“Yeah, they’s a connection.”
“These paintings transmit some kind of connection between Bailey and the person she paints,” Dobbs continued, in what Bailey called his “made for radio” voice. “But if Bailey is already connected to that person—”
“Maybe it’s creating something like feedback,” Brice finished for him.
“That’s the most convoluted thing I ever heard,” T.J. said. “Scares the bejeebers out of me that I understand what you mean.”
“It’s hard to describe what was happening to her because … besides the sparkling and static, it was like she was …” She looked at T.J. “The world was spinning around her. Maybe she was knocked unconscious, was just coming to and was still woozy. Maybe she was drunk.”
“Just tell us what you saw, even if the images don’t make sense,” Brice said.
Bailey stared at the painting. No, stared through it, trying to see what all the interference had obscured.
“She was so scared. So scared. She …” Bailey swallowed before she continued. “She was in a fire and could see the flames coming.”