“Indians or whatever you wanna call them used to forbid the eating of totem animals . . . you know, the animal that represented their tribe. Kill a totem animal, and it’s the same as killing and eating the village elder.”
The spiel sounds rehearsed. Cassie pulls every word of Paul’s lesson out of thin air.
“You know a lot,” Rebecca says.
Cassie grins like the very thought of Paul is dreamy and then offers singsong praise. “He taught me everything.”
Rebecca thinks, Of course that’s what this is about. Paul could’ve just as easily talked her into joining the Peace Corps.
This thought makes Rebecca feel apocalyptically sour, and she realizes her passenger is stirring. Jaime wants something else, begins threading violent urges through Rebecca’s head.
“Anyway,” Cassie says, “you can’t eat a sacred totem.” Her fork picks at another slice of innards. “So, it becomes taboo. Like sucking your daddy’s dick or whatever.” She laughs uncontrollably hard at this. “If it’s taboo, someone’s gonna want to do it. Crave it. There’s a penalty for it in those old tribes. Sometimes it’s death. Doesn’t even matter, though, because the thrill of the forbidden is what’s driving you.”
The girl takes another bite and chews with a gory smile.
“Some risk it . . . ’cause if you kill and eat the elder, you’re climbing toward God on the skulls of your betters.” Cassie pulls another cracked plate from a stack and drops it at Rebecca’s station, spoons a glob of human innards onto it.
Rebecca feels nauseous, watching the warm blood pool evenly across the dish like melted butter. “I stopped for lunch on the way,” she says.
Cassie waves a hand through the air. Forget it. “Paul told me never to do this,” she says. “Always spoke about it like it was for other people. But he was wrong. He’s the one who’s leading us back, sure, but why should you and him get to have all the fun?”
“Leading us back where?” Rebecca says. Then realizes she doesn’t need the answer. She knows where Paul’s gone.
“Stop asking the wrong questions,” Cassie says. “You need to eat, same as me. We all gotta eat before it’s too late.”
“Why eat?”
“Ask me again, bitch,” Cassie hisses. “I told you he’s gone and I meant it. Right now, the only responsibility he has is to come back. Everyone should be getting ready for that.”
“The cars at the motel.”
The girl nods and stuffs her mouth.
“Ready for what?”
The girl smacks her tongue. “Eat and find out.”
Rebecca feels that rage rushing back. Jaime’s in there building it like a campfire. She thinks about the way Paul fucked Cassie all over town. And how everybody knew it. Rebecca feels both betrayed and excited by this perversity, wishing she could’ve been at Herbert’s barn to help cut Dalise Cortez out of her skin. And then she thinks she’ll do anything to get these sick thoughts out of her head.
“What did you do to the sheriff’s sister?” she says.
A fond smile spreads across Cassie’s face. She slams her knife down on the table. “Ever skin a body? It’s like tearing the flesh off a grapefruit.”
“You killed her?”
“Paul didn’t have the stomach for that part, so yeah. I had to do the killing. Killed all of them and he loved me for it. Loved me for doing all his heavy lifting. Hear that?”
“Who is everyone?”
“C’mon . . . Jaime. I thought you knew things.”
Rebecca ignores the taunt. “Maybe I want to hear it from you.”
Cassie clicks her tongue. “Sheriff’s kid sister was nothing. Paul had eyes for her and I sorta did too. Killing her was just . . . well it was time to move on. Get serious.”
“And the priest?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Had to get him out of the way for—”
“Of course.” Somehow, Rebecca already knows. She thinks about the priest at St. Cecilia’s. How excited he’d been with the realization Rebecca could see both worlds. Jaime stirs at the thought, and that excitement betrays her as Rebecca fishes one errant truth from their shared mind.
That priest was Paul.
Even though it looked nothing like him, it was. He’d been waiting for Rebecca because he knows who Rebecca is.
Rebecca begins to stand. Cassie looks riled, but it’s Jaime who diffuses her. Don’t bother, Mom, she says. You won’t find him there again. He was only there to help me find my way back.
“Tell me about the night nurse,” Rebecca says. “The woman you killed.”
“No,” Cassie says. “I don’t think you need to know about that one.”
“She’s the blood sacrifice,” Rebecca tells her. “Prime the Barrens for rebirth . . . just like the first time. The elder who went out to greet Tanner Red.”
“Planted this knife inside her neck, watched her eyes get all stupid wide. Kinda funny when you see it.”
“Hilarious.”
Cassie grins. “Take a bite now.”
“Really, I’m fine.”
“You think I want to eat this slop? That’s not the point. Eat. Now.”
Rebecca takes up the fork. Her stomach twists. Spears an organ that pops and hisses and spits juices at her. Jaime’s inside wanting to eat it for some reason Rebecca cannot grasp. Jaime forces Rebecca to lick her lips like it’s Italian sausage.
Cassie tries to stop herself from laughing, holds her stomach because the sight of Rebecca struggling is just too much. Then she falls forward and retches on the table, spewing vomit all over the plate of entrails.
Rebecca pushes back and stands.
“Shit,” Cassie says. “Shit! Now I need to start all over.”
It’s clear now. Totem animals were devoured in order to absorb the strength and wisdom of elders once upon a time, and much is the purpose behind this. A primitive way to absorb the strength and energy of gift bringers.
“Where’s your mother?” Rebecca asks.
The girl sits wiping her chin with a full roll of paper towels. Shrugs. Rebecca spots blood spatters on the linoleum down the hall, pooling in front of an opened bathroom door. She knows, but has to know. Walks down there and peers inside. An empty sack of skin hangs over the shower rod like a spent towel. Still wet. Still dripping.
“I thought you knew,” Cassie calls. “We’re eating the bitch.” Another laugh.
Rebecca puts her nose in the fold of her elbow. This place stinks bad enough without adding vomit to its repertoire. “Fertility,” Rebecca says.
“You know it,” Cassie purrs.
“They make clinics for that,” Rebecca says.
“My insides work just fine. This is about asking for His blessing. And if you’re not going to eat . . .”
Rebecca walks back and eyes the bloody mound on the table, thinking about how much she wants to. She maybe even leans in to the food, one last play by Jaime to make it happen.
Cassie gets up, inches toward Rebecca with the blade dancing in her fist. “Funny thing about cutting into people . . . you find out pretty quick that it’s a lot of fun.”
“You don’t have—”
“Paul used to talk about you,” Cassie says. “Only girl he ever loved, and how sometimes you need to do things to the one you love that you don’t care enough to do to anyone else.”
Rebecca takes a few steps back as the worst monster rears inside the girl’s eyes. Complete and total jealousy.
“I never saw him look at me the way he talked about you.”
“I’m not her,” Rebecca says.
“You got guts lying to me. Know what I used to make Paul do?”
Jaime can’t hear this. She’ll do anything not to hear this.
“I used to fuck myself up to my wrist while listening to Paul talk about how he murdered you. Got me wetter than melting snow.”
Rebecca does a slow retreat into the creaking hall. Her hands raise in surrender, even though the madness in the young girl’s eyes will not be pla
cated by a white flag.
Cassie slashes the air between them. Drags her feet forward as the knife whooshes with disappointment. “Consumption of human fertility makes the consumer more fertile. It’s simple fuckin’ math. I need to be ready for—”
“Tanner Red?”
“His blessing,” Cassie says. “His cock. Both? Maybe they’re the same thing.”
Rebecca rounds a corner on retreat and swings into the living room. Her fingers scratch the wall to keep herself oriented.
At her back, the clinking glass begins on cue.
“Only got one question left,” Cassie growls. “If you don’t answer, ima carve out your cunt and eat that first.”
Tapping fingers crawling glass. Rebecca has summoned it like a genie.
It grows louder but Cassie’s too crazy to be concerned. “Tell me how I get there,” she screams.
She doesn’t know the ritual, Jaime thinks. She’s too stupid to know the ritual.
Cassie slashes at Rebecca. Her head slips back against the glass and dips into dark water. It’s like being lowered into the sink at the salon for a shampoo only she feels the fleet of clawed hands rushing up out of dark space, eager to tear her skull open and savage her memories.
Cassie stomps her foot in tantrum. “Tell me how I—”
Cassie never finishes asking.
The glass bends outward, but never breaks. It’s not even glass anymore. Rebecca sprints away from it as a mass of liquid rushes the room, flooding the Pennington house with thick waves of oily disease.
Cassie screams, lifts an arm to her face as a poisoned tidal wave sweeps her aside. The young girl is caught in a whirling current. Her flailing arms fight it, but it’s impossible to stay afloat.
Rebecca crashes through the nearest satin window with a lowered shoulder. Does a header into the tall grass and scrambles upright. Retreats with her back to the night, watching the busted glass with disbelief as Cassie’s screams turn to sporadic glugs. Inhuman hands, scaly and spindly, break the surface, slow drips of glossy tar falling off otherworldly flesh. These hands take Cassie’s head and stuff it beneath the muck as the liquid continues rising up past the window, somehow never spilling through the broken glass.
Tar-dipped arms reach through the jagged space, fingers curling around the flaked siding. Fingernails clack on rotted wood with threatening patience.
Rebecca leaves, knowing the mirrors are never going to stop looking for what’s inside her.
24
ONE MORE STOP.
One night, a few weeks ago, Marci Rooker was on her way home from an overnight shift at St. Gabriel’s hospital when she got off I-95 to take the road affectionately known to locals as “the Fork Connector.” This road bridges the town of Bright Fork with the outside world.
The Fork Connector is a lonely stretch of tarmac that runs twenty miles without a gas station, houses, or any real signs of civilization. Its most local comparison is the 34-mile Kancamagus Highway that connects two New Hampshire towns, Lincoln and Conway.
The Fork Connector, much like the Kancamagus Highway, warns motorists of its lacking fuel options as a way to mitigate potential bad luck. And depending on the time of night, it’s not uncommon to go the entire drive without seeing another vehicle.
A sick mind might see it as the perfect place to stage a murder. No one’s going to interrupt your business here. And if you’re a victim, there’s no place to run.
Marci Rooker had no place to run when she stopped that night, playing the role of Good Samaritan for two psychos posing as stranded motorists.
It’s not hard to find the spot where she died. It’s one little patch of anonymous land right off the pavement. It stands today as a roadside memorial.
Rebecca goosesteps wilted flowers, curled Polaroids, and an old teddy bear. There’s a few splotches of darkened dirt that must be the girl’s lifeblood. She bends and touches her fingers to it, feels a swell of rage.
The other vehicle sat right here on the edge of this gulley. Rebecca’s boots hover halfway in empty air, because the earth falls abruptly away, spilling down into a barren countryside.
Cassie admitted to crouching by the tire, paring knife in her fist. As soon as Marci Rooker came to assist, Cassie sprung and stuck the knife through her throat, twisting the blade like a can opener and carving a hole the size of a Titleist.
“Monsters,” Rebecca mumbles and wonders if she’s including her daughter in that judgment.
If so, the voice inside her doesn’t like it.
“What the hell’s that?”
A string of torches light the evening in the far-off distance. You’d have to descend the gulley and cross the desolate field for a mile or more in order to reach them. Jaime wants to go down there, but there’s something about the way those fires burn, black smoke and the scorch smell that wafts through her nostrils, even at this distance, that makes Rebecca resist.
Jaime flexes and Rebecca feels her body start to move. Involuntarily. A restless leg spasm. Rebecca knows it’s anything but that. Before she can do anything, her daughter surges again and moves Rebecca forward, starting down the incline toward that distant torchlight.
“Don’t,” Rebecca says, sounding vulnerable and terrified. It’s the tone of someone who’s anything but in control. Whatever’s out there, she just doesn’t want to know. Feels instinctively that it would be the end of the line.
Jaime laughs, recognizing her power here. This whole time, she’s been doing it wrong. Been trying to guide her mother’s thoughts when, really, it’s Mom’s body that’s easier to control. If only there was a fucking manual for this sort of thing.
“You used me,” Rebecca says. “That’s what Cassie knew.”
Jaime laughs again, thinks, I had no choice. Thinks, You’re not going to listen to that crazy thing, are you, Mom? Because she was crazy . . . something I very much am not.
And with that, the body starts toward the fires once more. Rebecca grabs the nearest branch in order to anchor herself, but Jaime fights that, too. She denies all resistance, forcing the fingers to open and close indecisively around the jutting limb.
Rebecca stares at the erratic motion of those dancing torches. The way they rise and fall, zigzagging to the rhythm of old music tucked away even further inside the distant night.
Jaime tries one last time to get the body moving, realizes Rebecca still has too much control.
“Stop doing this to me,” Rebecca screams, her voice teetering on madness.
Her daughter thinks, I’ll turn you inside out if I have to. I’m getting out in time.
Rebecca starts back for the road, but her muscles lock while gleeful and familiar laughter fills her head. Jaime was stuck with that laugh from an early age—always a mischievous baby, always hiding Mom’s things and laughing uncontrollably as Rebecca would go around the house trying to find whatever was stolen. That cruel streak, revived in full.
You can’t ever prepare for a day when your child turns against you. Rebecca feels nothing but misery. All the mourning, the life she traded, the relationships she torched and the people she slaughtered . . . everything in service of making this right. Vengeance built on a lie.
Everything. For nothing.
Rebecca’s head is heavy. Two trains of thought barreling down very different tracks.
Jaime refuses to get back on her feet. Everything below Rebecca’s torso feels like long-hardened cement. Rebecca sinks her claws into the earth and makes fists in the dirt in order to pull her body toward the road while tantrums fire off inside her skull like cannons.
You weren’t supposed to figure it out, Jaime says. You’re not supposed to stop me from seeing him. You won’t! You can’t!
Rebecca’s fingernails crack and break on the asphalt, blood drops seeping through those jagged splits as she continues to pull. Inching across concrete like a wounded animal. If she can just reach her car, she’ll leave Bright Fork behind . . .
No! You won’t do that!
Rebe
cca thinks she’ll turn herself in and keep this terrible monster imprisoned inside her skull forever.
Oh, you’re going to let me out. Right now.
Rebecca’s close. Her blood-slicked hands reach up, stretching every last inch in order to clasp the handle. Jaime relents, sensing if she pushes the body too far against Mom’s will, then the bones will snap like a twig. She returns just enough control for Rebecca to get to her knees and hurl herself into the driver’s seat.
Twists the ignition and stares out at the fires one last time.
It’s not too late, Jaime thinks.
“Yes,” Rebecca says. “It is.”
This is what I want, Mom.
Jaime sounds like a little girl again, the way she used to ask for presents on Christmas.
“God, Jaime.” Rebecca’s tears come on hard. “You’re a monster.” Her lungs are heavy and from the inside of her head, her daughter continues her battle for control, steering her off, not toward home, but back to Bright Fork.
25
EVERY SPOT IN THE MOTEL IS filled. Rebecca has to park in the space that reads “Office Only.”
Jaime may have receded into the background, but she isn’t prepared to let her mother leave here without retrieving that book.
In and out, Mom . . . just like that.
Rebecca treks up the stairs to her room and uses her key to twist the knob, pushes in. It gets caught on the chain.
Graceless bodies fumble through the dark. A bed sheet rises like a ghost. “Who’s there? Is it time?”
Rebecca checks the plastic key to make sure the number corresponds. “You’re in my room.”
“Take it up with the front desk.” Pudgy fingers curl around the door’s edge to hold it in place. The face stays beneath the dark, save for a pudgy chin with fly hair scruff.
“Where are my things?” Rebecca says.
“Take it up with the front desk.”
Rebecca throws her shoulder into the door. The squatter makes a surprised sound and pushes back, startled by her ferocity. All she needs is to break that goddamn chain and then she’s going to break his fucking nose.
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