They had to.
They must.
There were monsters in her dreams. There were monsters everywhere. There were monsters in her house.
The world was full of growls and sharp teeth.
Doris swore she’d have no part of that.
She would be stealthy. She would be clever. She would be love and patience. She would absorb pain like a sponge. She would hold it for both of them. In her dreams, she had so many arms, and each of them held a different piece of herself.
But there was too much pain, and soon the reservoirs would begin to leak.
Thea appeared at her door in the morning, dressed and ready for the day. Doris had been allowed to sleep.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Time for breakfast, sissy,” Thea said before disappearing down the hallway.
“Hey, wait!” Doris called to her, hoping she would come scrambling back in a fit of smiles. She wanted to say she was sorry. She wanted to hold her and check her over for bruises, kiss her boo-boos and tell her that Ma couldn’t do this forever. Just a small moment to explain to her what was happening and why they had to stay farther away. It was for their safety. It was for the best.
But only for now.
Doris sat tangled in her bed for minutes. Then minutes more. Part of her imagined Thea hiding just around the corner, hands clapped over her mouth. But more time passed, and then more, and she knew Thea wasn’t there. She wouldn’t have been able to keep quiet that long.
Still, dragging herself from bed, she peeked down the hall.
It was just as she thought.
Shutting her door, she climbed back under her covers, wondering how long her mother would let her be. The sounds of breakfast kicked around in the kitchen—the toaster popped, a dish rattled, and little Thea mumbled something low and soft. Then it was quiet once again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Doris was on a boat. An honest-to-goodness boat. Blood and yellow bile soaked the bottom. Thea hovered over her. There were other eyes, too, but they kept just out of sight. Doris could feel them on her, though. She could feel them.
“They picked us up,” Thea said.
“Help?”
“Just people like us. He had a boat.”
Doris couldn’t focus, couldn’t see. “I was dead.”
“Don’t say shit like that. You’re alive. You’re on a boat.”
Thea repeated it as if it might make it truer. As if she didn’t believe it herself. The motor sputtered. Gas smog lingered over her head. “How did you find me?”
“Floating.”
There were people on all sides of her. A man driving, a woman clutching a kid to her chest, Thea, and an old man with gray hair and yellow eyes. He stared at her, muttering in a Slavic-sounding language, maybe Russian.
Thea caught the exchange. “He was here when they picked us up. No one knows what he is saying. Another straggler.”
A survivor. So far. The man tossed his hands around, miming the inflection of his words, shoulders sagged and relaxed. One of many disasters in his lifetime. He saw right through the fear—her fear and Thea’s fear and everyone else’s fear—and talked and talked. Another day. Another problem.
All of them looked at her, and she wished they’d stop. “Where are we going?”
“We’re just going.”
“I want to see.”
“You need to rest.”
“Thea.”
There wasn’t any anger in her voice, but she wasn’t stoic either. Thea removed the hand that held Doris back and instead helped roll her upright, even though her own limbs were on fire. It was the least she could do.
It was a small pontoon boat, already at capacity with five adults and a child. Doris’s blood was everywhere. The boy watched it spill from her torso as Thea jostled her to the fiberglass edge of the boat.
Water lapped up the sides as they puttered along. As far as she could see, they were the only ones on the water. It seemed more like a weekend lake trip gone sour than an end-of-times flood. Doris looked for a dock, for a sheriff’s patrol boat, for other beleaguered boaters spinning about aimlessly in the din but saw no one. The tops of streetlights were totally submerged by this point. There was nothing but water above and water below, daylight sandwiched between two ominous entities. They would suffocate soon if one of them didn’t let up.
Releasing the edge, she slid along the side and back into a sitting position. Thea hovered next to her, blocking the stares with her body while she sat figuring out what to do next. Her face was a waxy calm, and for a moment, it made Doris feel a little better. It felt good to know something for certain. She could jump right into Thea’s head and hear the tumbling thoughts spin like a broken washing machine. Heroin stop the bleeding who are these people blood we need food fuck fuck shit heroin heroin I am sorry.
Doris had the urge to stroke her cheek but resisted. Too late for apologies, far too late for love now. She felt a dark pull at her back—the ring of all her senses telling her that they weren’t going to escape this. Keeping things familiar, even if familiar was cruel and distant, was the smallest measure of comfort she could think to provide for them both. It was easier, anyway.
The entire boat of people trembled; the boat vibrated with it. The man at the helm had yet to glance back at her. His gaze remained vigilantly toward the horizon. Occasionally he would cup his hand over one of the gauges and grunt. The Russian rambled on and on with the immutable structure of a prayer. They stayed that way for a while.
The woman held her son and cried. The boy did not. He stared, soaking in his surroundings. Of any of them, he was the only one to hold Doris’s gaze. He made her uncomfortable.
Haphazard tarps were strung atop the boat’s canopy frame, tied with zip ties. It was all that was keeping the rain away.
Thea crouched next to her, head resting against a bent knee. Rain splattered against the platform at the rear of the boat. Doris could crawl over to it and be at eye level with the water.
Her sister didn’t budge as Doris dropped to her hands, nor did anyone else acknowledge her elbow-crawl across the floor. With every move, she expected Thea to pop awake and start ranting. She waited for someone to grab her from behind and pull her back, but no one did. The Russian kept chanting, the man kept driving, and the boy kept watching her. His stare felt like eels all over her.
She dragged herself toward the edge, collapsing in the rain just far enough for her hand to reach over and touch the surface of the flood. It was warm or she was freezing or both, but it felt good.
Scooting closer, she hung both arms in as far as her elbows, ever cautious of the motor whirring just below her. The rush of water tickled her fingertips as the boat sped through it. She was tired, but instead of sleeping, she stared at the muck and tried to guess where exactly in the city they were, which direction they headed, where they might end up. Hopefully north toward the mountains. They needed to get to land, and she had a feeling that this storm wasn’t going to stop any time soon. The way it hammered down on them, she had a hard time imagining it ever stopping.
Something touched her. She yanked her hands out of the water and pulled her nose to the edge of the platform. There was nothing there. She turned toward the other people aboard and saw nothing but eyes. They all stared at her without blinking or speaking, just dilated black eyes. She blinked, and everything was as she remembered.
The boat slogged on. Thea’s chin touched her chest as she slept. Doris wanted to wake her now and ask what she had seen. Had she ever seen the monsters? The one that strangled them both, the one that lingered in windows, baring vicious teeth? Are these things in the water what those old monsters had become?
But then she saw her—really saw her sister for the first time in years. The way she curled into her own body. The way she cradled herself. The way she covered her face so that
nobody could know what she was thinking, but Doris knew. Her terror oozed all over the floor as red as the blood that covered it. She was hunkering down, shielding herself from the hopelessness that would consume her if she allowed it.
She was a little girl that had grown up all alone, and Doris was the person that had failed her.
A tingling in her fingers turned her attention back to the muck swirling around her wrists, lapping up her skin like brown cuffs. It was impossible to see anything.
Aside from the boy’s stares, the rest of the passengers ignored her. Every time she faced them, nobody else so much as glanced her way, but every time she faced the water, she felt their eyes crawling up her neck. She waited for it—the thing, whatever it was—to reach for her again. She wouldn’t flinch a second time.
It’d been minutes. More. Less. She didn’t know, but nothing was there. It had fled or was afraid or was nothing at all—a dishrag, a shoe. Just debris. She was crazy and exhausted and imagining things.
Thea whispered gibberish in her sleep, and Doris’s stomach dropped at the thought of her waking up. The boat had gone quiet. The Russian leaned against the rail, catatonic at this point. The man at the helm cursed under his breath, propelling the woman into a panicked series of what and why and what’s happening. Something about fuel. Something something we’re out of gas.
Thea jerked, head shooting up from her knees like the pull of a cannon. Her gaze settled immediately onto Doris as if watching her in her sleep, but Doris nodded her away. What’s wrong? Go see.
Thea would go see, because she was insatiably curious and always needed something to do. Because Doris was there at the back of the boat, watching. Because having something to do would make it easier for Thea to pretend everything was okay. Doris placed herself right smack in between her sister and danger, as best she could. She’d been doing it her entire life, or trying to do it and failing miserably at it. How many times did she throw herself into the fire just to blot it out for Thea’s feet? She didn’t know. How many times did she think she was sacrificing herself for Thea, but in reality was crumbling under the weight of her own baggage? She didn’t know that either.
Doris stared at the water. I know you’re there. She swatted at it as if to clear it away like smoke, but it only made visibility worse. Her body agonized over every movement, the trauma of the past few hours—or was it days now?—finally setting in.
The presence of her sister cloaked her, shadowed her sight. Blinking it away didn’t work. And for a moment, the water didn’t seem so dark and murky. The sky vomited all over her, the boat reeked of fumes as the engine sputtered out, and a shriek from the other passengers cut through all of it like a bullhorn. Steps toward her. Step step step came Thea.
“They’re out of gas,” she said. And then the floor beneath her popped, smoke billowing from the seams of the hatch. Thea leapt back, smoke curtaining between the sisters. And down in the water, shooting up a mass of outstretched gray limbs, was exactly what Doris had been looking for.
It was there—that monster, her monster, screaming toward her with new outstretched limbs. It broke the surface—one gleaming tentacle, so fragile and wispy at the ends. No one had seen it. Thea was caught in a whirl with the others as the boat rebelled.
They froze in place—she and her monster, deep in consideration.
Then it snatched her, wringing her by the neck and pulling her down into its deep.
Doris heard her name and a splash, but it all seemed so distant now. She couldn’t see, but she felt the spastic rush of movement that meant her sister was in the water. Everything bubbled, the water a simmering pot on the verge of boiling over.
The sisters sank.
The sky seemed so bright in comparison to the black water. It rolled over their heads, tangled their hair. Neither could see the other.
It became darker and darker. Nowhere to go but down, an effortless fall. Doris let it consume her, let the drowning wrap her up. The pain snuffed out nerve by nerve. Glancing up, she imagined her sister tearing at water, fighting everything about it, hating it, hating her. And Doris was sad, but there was nothing she could do to make her sister okay. She knew that now. There wasn’t anything she wanted to do anymore.
Nothing but sleep.
But the car flipped.
The car flipped.
She flipped, and here she was. Here in the hospital. Water everywhere, filling it up.
James was there. He turned his key in the lock of the front door. She was waiting, back pressed against her couch. She asked him what he had done as tentacles sprouted from her body. They lunged for him. She lunged. Then there was black and red. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she was in the hospital again, floating on a cot. James slept in a chair by the door, head dangling at an unnatural angle. She was glad he was over there and not next to her. She loved the swish of water, the density of it. The solitude was a comfort. He would have to swim to her side and pat her hand and brush the sweaty slap of bangs out of her eyes. He was never a strong swimmer. He drifted in his chair, the current dragging them apart.
Her mother had been there, perhaps still was. Her mothball perfume hung cloyingly about the room.
A doctor informed her of her condition. It was a nurse who explained to her what had happened.
“Why were you driving so fast?” she asked, so genuine in her execution that Doris set aside the accusation. “Where were you going? Did you really think you could help her? You’re stupider than we thought.”
The nurse smiled. “Are you in pain? Do you need anything?”
No.
But the nurse didn’t wait for her to answer, just checked her IV drip and smiled her way back under the water as if melting.
The car flipped.
It had been a Friday. She’d gotten an alert that their checking account was low. It was strange; James was meticulous with his money. He’d pulled a penny out of the trashcan once after she’d accidentally swept it up. But wasn’t that always how it was when a wife stumbled upon things that she shouldn’t?
She’d pulled up to the house one day. Thea had been out front with James. At the crackle of her tires on the driveway, he’d taken two giant leaps back from her and Thea had just smiled and smiled.
Doris had asked her what she wanted, and Thea had said, “To see you, sister.”
James had stared at the mailbox.
“I’m not giving you money.”
“I didn’t think you would.”
James had returned to the house, looking back as Thea left shortly after.
Doris had known then exactly what had happened and spent the next few weeks trying to talk herself out of the idea.
He’d given her money. He promised he wouldn’t, promised he hadn’t. But he had, and Thea was closer to the grave than ever.
“What did she say to you? Did she ask for money? Do you think she’d stay in rehab this time? What do you think? What the fuck do you think, James?”
She’d lobbed sticky questions at him over the course of weeks, trying to draw it out of him. Kept bulleting Thea’s name into the back of his guilty head. Each time, he’d deflected back at her with his “I don’t know”s and “Can’t we talk about something else”s.
And then their bank account had been low when it shouldn’t have been.
James had been at the hardware store getting hinges for the cabinet door she’d accidentally bent when she finally put the whole of the story together. He’d withdrawn cash. A lot of it. Too much for her to not notice. Then she’d gone back and back and there’d been so many more.
Months of withdrawals. Maybe years, but she couldn’t bring herself to go back that far.
Doris had waited for him to return home.
Memories of it floated back in flashes.
“How many times?”
“How much?”
“Howmuchhowmuchwhereisallourmoney?”
Then she was driving—she was going to find Thea and end this shit once and for all—but the black street rose over her head, and then she was here.
The low glow of all the machines keeping her alive washed her in a sickly white, or maybe that was just what her skin looked like now. Pushing the bedside button, she raised the back of her bed more, more, more, until it stopped. She hadn’t sat upright in days—too drugged, too exhausted, dreaming in between invasive procedures and needles.
There was no ceiling to this hospital, just black storm raging where a ceiling should be.
“Stop, Doris. You’ll hurt yourself.” James’s face hovered over her.
“You had an accident,” his face said. The lips that she had loved, the mouth she had kissed—it lingered out of reach.
“You had an accident. You have to try and calm down.”
“Don’t fucking tell me to calm down. Where is my sister?”
His lips pulled in just so slightly, his jaw squared below clenched teeth, but his eyes never left hers.
That damn nurse slid in through the door, fumbling like a manic idiot at the closed curtain. Metal rings clanged together as she swung it open. “Everything okay in here?”
Doris couldn’t bear to even look at her.
The nurse faced her shoulders toward James.
“She’s just tired.”
“Are you listening to me? Tell her what you fucking did, tell her what you did—”
There were hands on her—calm down, it’s okay, oh please hysterical lady, keep your voice down. Doris wanted to fight them, but she didn’t have the strength. Instead she watched as her husband backed through the commotion, fading away.
A Flood of Posies Page 20