by Platt, Sean
She froze on the stool.
It took the next ten seconds before both of her feet could find the floor.
What if he didn’t really leave?
What if he’s watching me right now and—
No.
Liz shook her head, returning the stool to the kitchen, telling herself yet again that she was being absurd. She needed to get Dr. Philipe and all those Not Necessarily Relevant Right Now thoughts about dissociative identity disorder out of her head instead. She needed to stop ruminating on repeat. She needed to find a way to both feel and act in control.
But first, just a couple of pills.
It was hard to remember when she last took them. She’d taken four painkillers in total and hadn’t wanted to mix her meds. She didn’t want to take anything now, but it was so much harder to think without them.
She went to the bedroom, grabbed the bottle from the nightstand, and took one, then downed it with water.
She couldn’t afford to waste any time. Locked or not, Andy was supposedly gone, and this was her chance to investigate the shed.
It was locked, just as Liz expected.
She knocked softly, then harder, and got more of the same nothing.
She pressed her ear to the wood, then left it there for a long minute. Her heart kept pounding.
Liz was about to leave, but something stirred inside.
She hesitantly called out, “Hello?”
More sounds of movement, but still no response.
She looked around the shed, circling it three times, hoping to find a small hole or a missing piece of wood wide enough to peek through. But the boards were all lacquered and tight.
But Liz wasn’t about to give up, and she found what she needed the fourth time around. Almost at the bottom, an aperture about the size of an earbud.
It wasn’t close to enough. No matter her angle or effort at squinting, she saw only shadows. After considerable effort, she eased herself to one knee while keeping the other one straight, and managed to get a closer look.
Something moved on the other side of the hole.
She yelped and fell back, bracing for another explosion of pain in her knee. Fortunately, she’d kept it straight, so she felt only a twinge.
Liz waited a moment until her heartbeat settled. Silence on the other side. She wondered if she’d imagined the movement and noise.
She swallowed her nerves and moved carefully forward, keeping her right leg as straight as she could, using her nose instead of her eyes.
The putrescence hit her like a physical force. The closest Liz had ever come to smelling something dead, and rotting was the scent of spoiled meat. This was worse, yet somehow fresher. Her brain kept wanting to label the fragrance as freshly harvested death.
Liz got up and went back to the cabin, even more desperate to figure out a way inside the shed before Junior returned. She searched the entire cabin for a way to cut, demolish, or pick the lock. But she found herself neck-deep in a chicken-and-egg situation. The place probably had plenty of tools to get her past the lock and inside the shed, but they were all temporarily off-limits, on account of those very tools being locked inside the shed.
After an hour of effort, her instincts were screaming too loudly to ignore. Andy would be back any minute, and she needed to be back on the couch, resting her knee.
Her gut was on point. She wasn’t horizontal on the couch for more than five minutes before the door swung open, and Junior walked inside. For a moment, she hoped it would be Anderson, and that maybe this part of the nightmare could finally end. But it was her son, returning them to their usual loop.
He looked at her with his straightedge smile.
She waited for him to speak, but he didn’t. Nor did he blink. Liz gave him long enough to read the Gettysburg Address, but still, he stayed silent.
“Did you find anything?” Liz finally asked.
“Everybody is gone.”
“Same as yesterday? There wasn’t anything different?”
“There was a car parked outside. The keys were inside the car, but the car wasn’t working. Its door was wide open, too.”
Liz wanted to scream. Junior had always been strange, but he’d never acted like a fucking robot. She heard Anderson (his ghost?) in her head: Oh, I see … you can call him a robot because that’s so much better than calling him an alien.
“Did you see anything strange?”
He shrugged. “Everything is strange.”
“Did you see any people at all?”
Liz knew what she’d hear before he said it.
“Everybody is gone.”
“Did you see anything at all?”
“I saw something scary,” he said.
“Oh?” Liz was both surprised and unsettled. “What did you see?”
“Monsters. A lot of them. Most of them were really mad.”
“That sounds terrible … What did they look like?”
“Like the darkness. If the darkness could move. And if the darkness had feelings.”
“Mad feelings?” Liz asked.
“A lot of them.”
“How many monsters are there?”
He made a comically flabbergasted face. Then he whispered, “Soooo many monsters.”
Liz looked at him, speechless.
He stared back at her, his smile stretching from straight line to clownish, unnaturally wide and wrong on his face.
Then the smile collapsed like the changing of a channel. “You don’t believe me.”
“I believe you,” Liz said.
He kept looking at her.
So she added, “I’m just trying to understand.”
“Everybody is gone. And the darkness has feelings. Soooo many monsters.”
“Thanks for the recap …” Sarcasm was better than screaming. “Can you tell me what you think happened?”
He shrugged. “I don’t think anything.”
“What did the trees tell you?”
He brightened. “That all the people went away.”
Cold chills everywhere. “Where did they go to?”
Another shrug.
“You don’t know?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Do the trees?”
He nodded vigorously.
“But, they told you to stop asking?”
He kept nodding.
“Got it.” She sighed.
And dammit, her knee was on fire.
“Why aren’t you scared? If all the people went away?”
“Because I’m not a pussy.” He stood to finish barking at her, his voice now both angry and deep. “So don’t you worry. I saw a flyer for a guns and ammo shop up the way.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m going to get more weapons and ammo,” he said, already on his way to the door.
“Wait!”
He turned back, his cheeks somehow looking flusher and fuller. “What is it, Mommy?”
She tried not to show her emotions. Not the relief that her baby boy appeared to be back, nor fear of the monster that seemed to be hiding inside him.
“Can you tell me anything about your father … the last time you saw him?”
“What do you mean, Mommy?”
“Did he seem any … different? Like he might want to leave?”
“Dad always acts like he wants to leave,” he said with no emotion.
“That’s not true.”
“You’re a liar! A goddamned fucking liar! You need to shut up before I make you shut up!”
She stared at him, starting to cry.
“What’s wrong, Mommy?”
She wondered if this was really DID, or something else. She wasn’t sure what it could be, but the shift in his moods or his alters, if the doctor was correct, felt too sudden.
But if not DID, what is wrong with him?
She wiped her tears. “I was just wondering … do you think Daddy might be dead? Is that possible?”
“Would that be so bad? Dad is
n’t nice to you, and he isn’t nice to me. So shouldn’t he be gone along with all the rest of them?”
“You didn’t … do anything to him … did you … Andy?”
“Of course not, Mommy!” Then a horrible rattling laugh.
But for the first time, Liz didn’t believe him. Her heart raced as panic swelled inside her. Something was wrong. Something was very fucking wrong. And, she was slowly starting to realize that her son might be a danger to them both.
She knew exactly what she needed to do.
But first, she needed to take her pills before she screamed.
Twelve
Two months ago …
The days had been killing her, and that made Liz start thinking about killing herself.
Not seriously, but more than at any time since she was a kid. She thought about how easy it would be, and how nice it might feel to never worry about anything ever again. Of course, she didn’t actually want to do it, but it felt like a comfort to consider. But the guilt afterward was always worse than the imagining, so she promised herself that she’d stop. Now she actively had to remind herself not to think about which of the three ways she considered most often would be the least painful to endure.
Liz woke up determined to stay in front of her day for once. Life got in the way immediately.
The Keurig was busted, and even though Anderson had been awake for a while, he’d only brewed enough coffee in the French press for himself. She was already feeling feisty enough to yell at him for his lack of consideration but was less willing to suffer the consequences.
Junior had been in one of his weirder moods. Liz was more than used to all the stargazing, but he was making new, weird clicking sounds that were unsettling, and unrelenting. All last night, then into the morning. She’d tolerated it for around four hours before bed, then woke to a morning without any coffee. Not even fully alert yet, and Junior was already giving her a headache.
A half-hour after her first cup of coffee was gone, Liz finally asked Junior to “please stop making that sound for a little while,” and sent him into a torrent. She soothed him as best she could, on edge the entire time, picturing Anderson storming into the bedroom and yelling at her for coddling their boy and “keeping him a pussy.”
Anderson came into the bathroom while Liz was in there like he had every right. And she wasn’t pouring a bath. She was trying to eliminate — actually wiping — when he barged in to imply, before outright stating, that whatever was happening with Junior was directly her fault.
It wasn’t a fight, but only because Liz was sitting on the porcelain throne and not in a position to feel her strength of voice. Anderson left for work after muttering something uncharitable. She couldn’t hear what it was, but knew the tune and assumed his grumbling was about her or Junior. Probably the both of them.
Anderson hadn’t been gone for five minutes before Junior started clicking again, escalating in sound and volume.
She had to get out of the house.
“I need to get groceries,” she’d told him.
“You went to Provisions the day before yesterday.”
“I forgot to get chicken thighs,” she lied. “I’ll be back soon.”
Shopping was usually a salve. Anderson liked to get on her about how much she was spending, and how little she contributed to their expenses and savings and retirement now that she was back to being a full-time mom. But even with all the bullshit, shopping for the family was still a place where Liz made most of the rules.
She loved inhaling the sense of order around her. Rows upon rows of multi-colored precision. She knew to stay in the perimeter while shopping and little was added to her cart from the store’s interior, especially when shopping alone, but she still liked to wander the aisles.
But today, shopping wasn’t an escape. For some reason, every cart in the place seemed to have declared war on her, along with the assholes pushing them.
It started in the parking lot, where some inconsiderate shopper had left their cart in an empty parking space. Liz only discovered their laziness after pulling into the space and having to slam on the brakes no more than three feet from hitting the thing.
Carts were all over the place inside, abandoned by their owners as they grazed the store and leaving her to feel like she was tripping all over the place. Provisions had wide aisles and plenty of space compared to most grocery stores, and it wasn’t crowded, but Liz felt claustrophobic. She hated traffic and sometimes people; this was like traffic indoors.
She usually liked to take her time, seeing shopping as an escape. But with her anxiety rising and nine items in her cart, it was already time to go.
But things got even worse in the check-out line.
Just as Liz was swinging her mostly empty cart into the last spot in the 10 Items or Less line, a well-coifed asshole with long but styled hair and a tailored blue blazer stepped directly in front of her, shaking his purchase in her face.
“You don’t mind; it’s just one item.” Then he turned his back to Liz and dropped his box of condoms onto the conveyer belt.
Liz wanted to yell and slap him but was too tired and beaten and cowardly.
A mom came up behind her in line. The woman was too close, her kid was too loud, and her cart was far too full. Thirty items at least, which in this moment — even though she was behind rather than in front of Liz — made the woman her enemy.
Her spawn was around seven or so, missing a few teeth, and pushing the worst sounds Liz had ever heard in her life through the little demon’s plaque-infested gum-holes.
“Is that a new song?” his mother asked.
Instead of answering, the kid got approximately 487 times louder.
Liz tried to smile but surely looked like Cruella de Vil. “Can you please ask your son to keep it down?”
“Why don’t you keep it down?”
“I’m …”
“He’s making music. He’s going to be a musician one day. What are you doing with your life?”
“I’m …”
“Ma’am?” The cashier was looking at Liz.
Blue Jacket was on the way out of Provisions, presumably to get laid.
The woman behind her snapped, “She’s talking to you, lady. Why don’t you move up so we can all get on with our day?”
Liz ran from the store, digging crescents into her palms to keep herself from screaming, abandoning her cart like all the other assholes as she ran out to the parking lot and raced home, accidentally running one red light, then safely, but intentionally, flying through a second — it had just turned, and no one was ever at that intersection, anyway — on her way.
Feeling inches from a panic attack, she needed to get home.
Liz threw the car into park and marched to her front door. She took a breath on the porch, collecting herself before going inside, not wanting to field any questions from Junior.
Straight to the bathroom, but Liz couldn’t find her meds.
They weren’t in the cabinet, any of the drawers, or her nightstand.
She couldn’t be out.
Liz tried to remember the last time she’d taken her meds, but couldn’t.
A panic attack was coming … a few bad breaths away.
She sat on the floor, inhaling and exhaling, cycling through an alarming number of paranoid thoughts, starting with thinking that Anderson might have flushed them down the toilet to spite her, to feeling certain that someone had broken into their house while she and Junior were at the park, then gone through all of her things and stolen only her pills.
The lunacy struck Liz like blunt force trauma to the head.
This was the crazy she had seen in her mother. The crazy she had grown up her entire life hoping and praying and hoping some more that she’d never, ever get.
“Is everything okay, Mommy?” Junior asked when he found her staring into the mirror.
“Everything is fine.” She saw his reflection, felt a horrible urge to slap him, and knew she needed a walk. She smiled
. “I just need some fresh air.”
“Okay, Mommy.”
She was glad that he didn’t ask to go with her and felt guilty for her gratitude. But at least she was outside, and at least the air felt clean, and at least she could finally breathe.
She passed several perfectly manicured lawns and rounded one corner before seeing one of her neighbors, Paola, heading back the other way.
“Hey, Mrs. Coombs.” Paola waved.
She stopped walking, surprising herself. “I’ve told you a hundred times to call me Liz.”
Paola smiled and stopped in front of her. “I know … it’s just weird. I’ve always called you Mrs. Coombs. It’s how we were introduced.”
“It’s been a while.”
“Yeah …” Her smile was strained.
“Is everything okay?”
Paola nodded. “Yep. I’m just out for a walk.”
“How’s your mom?”
“She’s fine.” She shrugged. “She likes to pretend that she doesn’t miss my dad.”
Ryan. Nice guy. Shame what happened.
“You sure you’re okay? You look … upset.”
Paola gave her a strained smile. “I’ve been having nightmares is all.”
“Nightmares?” Liz wasn’t sure what she expected Paola to say, but not that. “About what?”
She shrugged again. “I don’t really know … or can’t remember. But there’s a feeling I keep having for the last couple of months. It’s extra bad when I wake up … so I think it’s because of the nightmares.”
“What does your mom say?”
“I haven’t told her.”
“You need to tell your mother, Paola.”
Another shrug. “I don’t want to worry her.”
“Your mother would want to know.” Liz gave Paola her very best smile. “Believe me.”
Paola’s was uncertain in return. “Okay, Mrs. Liz.”
“I guess that’s better.” Liz laughed, surprised to feel slightly lighter. “See you around.”
“Later.”
Liz walked home, feeling watched, but not sure by whom or what. Neighbors from their windows?
She tried not to fall for it, telling herself that the paranoia was back, now that she was no longer talking to Paola, or anyone else. It always attacked her when she was alone.