“A few days later, though, he said the strangest thing to me. ‘They put a slug up my nose, Mama. It burned and then I woke up.’ What does that mean?”
“A slug up the nose?” I asked. I’d not heard that before. “That may be a dream, is he afraid of slugs?”
“Not especially.”
“A boy at daycare tormented him with one perhaps?”
“Not that I heard about.”
“I’ve never heard of an extraterrestrial slug being used on anyone,” I said. I vowed I would look into it, and through all my research, and the research of several colleagues, I could find nothing on the topic. I have dismissed it as a childhood dream.
“They took him again after that. I guess it was like with me, where the Tylwyth Teg came first and the Sangaumans came second. To check up on him. We couldn’t help them. We weren’t going to be the key to their interbreeding, so I don’t know why they won’t leave us alone.” She started to cry. The orderly gave me a nasty look, like I’d done something to her. “He’s got a really nice new friend in Rhode Island,” Adrienne said. “His name is Max.”
“That’s good. I’m glad to hear it.”
We chatted a bit more about how he was adjusting, then I left her, hoping not too much time would pass before we met again.
19
Val let the steaming hot water pour over him, almost scalding him, turning his white skin bright pink. He leaned against the shower wall, breathing in the steam, the drumming of the water harmonizing with the hum in his head. He stared at a bar of soap, a thin little bar, taken from a motel somewhere.
If he tried, he could move it with his mind.
Because he was contaminated.
He lifted it, just a little bit above the tray where it rested, then let it splash back down.
He had to pull himself together to see his mother off. Then he would evaluate the next step. Keep his shit together for the rest of the night, then he could lose it. Maybe she’d have some answers for him.
He’d spent so many years telling himself his mother was crazy, that she was a drunk. Which was why she sent him east with Dick and Sally.
It explained how he could kill those people without getting hurt.
He wondered what Kate had seen, what she was talking about. She probably didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
Maria was still in the driveway.
They’d get her into the Daytona, and then Val would have to go. Maria could wait, Caroline could not.
He toweled off, goose bumps rising on his skin after the heat of the shower. Having a list in mind of things to do made him feel better. He pulled on his jeans, aware that he would need to do laundry sometime; these jeans were ready to stand up and walk around on their own. That grown-up thought conflicted with everything going on around him. He found a T-shirt, and his hat, not looking at the sharp knife that lay on his bedroom floor. Instead of kicking it under the bed, he gave it a shove with his mind. Pressure squeezed his head, the hum intensified, and the knife scooted out of sight.
Wild. Maybe it would be okay. He had a feeling, though, that it wouldn’t, it couldn’t, there were too many bodies and too much left unexplained.
Kate stood at the screen door, looking at the pink mass in the dark driveway. The Daytona was parked closer to the body. Kate had moved the car. She had the light on over the stoop and moths crowded around it, thunking into the globe and the screen.
“Hi,” he said.
“You look better.”
“We’ll get her in the car, then I’ll take the truck.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Kate said.
They both looked out into the night. A few bats fluttered around in the sky, supping on the insects drawn to the light.
“We can’t keep doing this.”
Val started to speak, to tell her he’d get it figured out.
“They’ll find us. The cops are smart. Maybe Spence isn’t, but he’ll bring in the state cops, or the FBI and they’ll find us. We haven’t been that careful. No matter where we go, they’ll find us.”
Even in Santa Fe, they couldn’t stay lost forever. And once he ceased to check in with his parole officer (which he needed to do in two days—can’t forget that no matter how crazy shit gets) he’d be fucked.
Val nodded.
“We gotta go. Let’s move her.”
Since they’d run out of dish washing gloves, Val grabbed a blanket off the couch to wrap her in. If the bodies were found they were fucked. If they weren’t, they had a shot. At this point, gloves didn’t really matter one way or another.
Getting her in the car was easy, compared to the frat boy or TJ. She wasn’t a small girl, but she seemed light by comparison. The shovel had crumpled the left side of her face, shattering the bones around her eye, flattening her nose. Val did everything in his power to not think about it.
“Should we take her to the mine? Get it over with?” Kate asked.
Yes, thought Val, but he couldn’t stand the thought of going there, of feeling that strange pressure. “We don’t have time.” Leaving the body in the car was the most dangerous thing they’d done. It meant her scent would be heavier in the car if they brought dogs, though she was less bloody than the ones that had been ripped apart. She was still bound to leak into the car.
He noticed Kate scanning the edge of the light where the driveway melted away to blackness. Looking for something.
Val wondered about burning the car; how he could do it without attracting suspicion.
“Do you want me to drive?” Kate asked, as they walked towards the truck, after the trunk of the Daytona was slammed shut.
“No.” Bless her heart, she didn’t argue. The driving would cleanse him, ease his thoughts. Center him.
At the same place as before, he noticed the hum was gone. Without it filtering, sounds were crisper; the colors of the night were sharper. He pulled over to the side of the road.
“What are you doing?” Kate asked. Her voice was wary. Tension radiated off her, though she tried to seem calm and relaxed. She didn’t trust him, and that made him sad, though he didn’t hold it against her. He could stroke her hair while he held the wheel, though that didn’t seem like it would win him any points.
“I want to try something.”
“Are you being intentionally vague?”
“No.” He cranked the truck’s wheel, spinning its new tires in the dirt, sending it back towards his mother’s trailer. He might not have time for this, but he had to know.
“I think the hum is geographical.”
“What?”
“It always stops in the same spot. Right now I don’t feel it at all.”
He drove, and it came in like before. At first, even though he watched for it, strained for it, he wondered if maybe one of the belts in the truck was starting to let go, then realized it was his hum, back again.
“It’s back!” Discovering something, anything about it gave him a sense of elation and power. It couldn’t be in his head if it had borders.
He made a clumsy K turn in the middle of the road, and headed away from home towards where Mom was dying. Did he want her to be dead when he got there? Was he stalling in hopes of putting off conversation?
The hum melted away like an early frost as he passed the same spot, easily discernible by a bluff of stratified red rock that had been partially blasted away to make way for the road.
“It’s not in my head.”
“I saw a monster. This can’t all be in your head. It had claws, huge claws! It can’t be a coincidence.”
A monster? Claws? And telekinesis? “But I actually can move things with my mind?”
Kate looked uncomfortable that he’d posed it as a question to her. She fidgeted in the vinyl seat her eyebrows rising.
“I guess it makes sense,” he said. “Didn’t the military used to keep pet psychics? Competing with the Russians in the Cold War, who were much more excited about their pet psychics.”
“I don’t know,”
said Kate.
He wasn’t sure if it was true, or if it was what pop culture wanted him to think. He seemed to remember a MacGyver episode about a Russian psychic but it may have been debunked mid-episode as a hoax.
They got to the hospice much faster than Val expected.
“I’ll stay in the car,” said Kate. “Get some sleep. Think about some stuff.”
Val didn’t like the tone of that last bit, but it made sense and he nodded. Then he kissed her cheek, and she stiffened under him. He gave her a sad smile, not meeting her eyes.
The same girl worked the desk. The lights in the lobby were low and soothing, the reception area was empty.
With no pleasantries, he signed in and went to his mother’s room. The girl watched him go. She didn’t say anything, and he interpreted that to mean his mom was in rough shape.
He didn’t want to wake her if she were asleep and tried to keep his footsteps quiet. The dark voice in the back of his mind hoped she was asleep, maybe unconscious, then he could sit dutifully by her side, maybe switch the TV over to something interesting, and maybe they’d kick him out when it got to be too late, he could regretfully sigh and politely say he’d see them tomorrow.
Caroline was awake.
Whatever the previous night had sapped from the son it added to the mother.
Caroline looked worlds better propped up on some pillows and sitting up. Her face brightened when she saw him.
I thought she was dying. I thought this was it. He felt a little duped.
“Valentine!”
“Hey,” he said, wondering if it were appropriate to tell her she looked better. Would that draw attention to how crappy she’d looked the day before? He settled for “How are you feeling?”
“Better,” she said, not sounding addled like she had the day before. She took him in with her eyes. “You’re so tall,” she said, and he nodded, even though he hadn’t grown in about ten years.
He sat on the chair next to her bed. He wondered if it were appropriate to ask why she was feeling better. Angelina hadn’t made it sound very likely when she’d called.
After “How are you feeling?” the questions dried up in him.
“What did you do last night?” She asked. “Is it nice to be home?”
Two days, he thought. You don’t want to know what I’ve done.
He could ask her about the aliens, he guessed. But she looked so normal. Like a mom, not drunk, and not ranting.
“It’s weird. Stuff’s changed, but a lot hasn’t.”
“Did you see that girl last night?”
Maybe it was better when she was delirious.
“Her name is Kate. I did see her. She’s doing well.”
“You were such good friends with her brother.”
He dove into the topic on his mind. “Tell me about the aliens, Mom.” Anything to get her off the topic of the Fultons. If she’d wanted him to have a nice life, with nice friends, she should have left him with Dick and Sally.
“The what?” she asked, her face growing dark, and he panicked for a moment before he realized she was stalling.
“Aliens.”
“You’re ready to listen, finally?” she asked, her tone laced with strychnine, her brow furrowing.
He opened his mouth for a gentle rebuttal, but she bowled him over. “You would never listen before. You never believed me. Now you’re just humoring me.”
“I’m not humoring you. Tell me your story.”
“Have you read the book?” She was proud of being in that thing.
“I always thought it was crap before.”
“What did you see?” she asked, looking curious and afraid beneath the blonde wig. He shouldn’t have brought it up. He didn’t want to upset her.
“I asked you first.”
He didn’t like the proud smile she gave, stinking of “that’s my boy.” “Judd wrote a book all about it. I was on the Jerry Springer show.”
Val shook his head. She was an embarrassment.
“They’ve been to see me.” He swallowed past a knot in his throat. Should he show her his trick?
“Tell me.”
Against his better judgment, he said “look.” He just did a tissue on the night stand. Her eyes went wide and she started to cough. A frog in her throat. Frog…or something worse? Val thought of chest-bursters, and then of the thick feeling he’d had in his sinuses when he woke up that morning. Fear pressed against his sternum.
He let his hand hover over the call button.
“Do I need to call someone?”
“No.”
His hand dropped.
“Fine.”
She composed herself, regarding him like a cat watches a mouse. She seemed fine again. What had Angelina meant when she called, saying this looked like the end? Maybe he could even take her home, if she continued to feel this good…though the thought of sharing the trailer with her wasn’t one he liked.
So he let fly with the million dollar question, not expecting an answer. Any one of the answers she’d given over the years could be the right one, though he suspected none of them were. Who had contaminated him?
“Who’s my father?” he asked.
When she laughed it came out as a hollow, croaking sound.
“I knew you’d ask,” she said, her tone condescending, as though he asked a frivolous question.
“Funny, I’m still curious after all this time. You’d think prison would have made me forget about that.” He glared down at his hands.
“You were in prison?”
When Val looked up she looked cloudy and far away, like she had yesterday. No, she couldn’t lose it, not right now, not when she might give him a real answer.
“When were you in prison?” she asked, her voice sounding like it came through a tunnel.
“For a drunk and disorderly,” he said, the words coming in a torrent. Like you.
“Poor boy,” she said; the role of mother seeping back in.
He should have humored her, shouldn’t have talked about aliens. Not here. Shit. He rubbed at his eyes.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
He smiled a panicked shark’s grin at her. See, look how nice my teeth are. Everything is great.
“Knock knock,” Angelina called, like the other day, so much like the other day Val wondered if this were some kind of hellish time loop. She wore her own jack-o-lantern smile, he noticed. It must come with proximity to the dying. “Hi, Caroline, how are we today?” The word we made Val grit his teeth.
“Good, Sally,” Caroline said. “Did you know Val spent a night in jail?”
The nurse made a tsk-ing sound and he wanted her to choke on it.
“Mister Slade, may I speak with you outside?”
“Yes,” he said, wondering how she could backslide so fast, if she’d been as lucid as she seemed, or if maybe he’d seen what he wanted to see. “Call me Val.”
“Your mother has taken a turn for the worse,” Angelina said, looking up at him with a doleful expression. “I’m pleased you made it in time.”
In time? Whoa, what?
“She was better. A few minutes ago. She was clear and talking, and she remembered stuff.”
Angelina nodded, and checked the chart by the door. “We’d given her a shot. The shots clear her up for a few minutes. She had a bad night last night.”
Didn’t we all, Val thought, then regretted the selfishness of the thought. “So give her another shot. I need to talk to her.”
Angelina shook her head. Somehow she made even that wordless gesture seem condescending. “It would kill her. That’s powerful medication.” She fired off some clinical terms at him, but he didn’t understand.
“None of that means anything to me,” he said. “Is this, like, it?”
Pursing her lips, Angelina gave a little half shrug. “In any other patient, I’d say yes.”
“But?”
“Her condition has been so strange, so up and down, I won’t say for sure.”
Val let out a pent-up breath.
“I think she was waiting to see you again before she died.”
She didn’t even like me, Val thought.
“Should I stay?” he asked. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to alone, anyway. Kate was in the car, he could bring her in, but being alone was for the best. He wouldn’t want to be held captive while her mother died. He chastised himself for every insensitive thought. He wished he could shut his brain off.
“I would,” Angelina said. Of course she would, she’d elected to spend her life around the dying. “We can make exceptions to visiting hours in these kinds of situations.”
“Okay,” he said.
When he went back in the room Caroline was asleep or unconscious. Her breath was steady and her machines made a rhythmic beeping that replaced the hum in his head. He picked up the remote control and carried over another chair to prop his feet up on, careful not to make a sound. Predator was playing on one of the movie channels (she got HBO, Showtime, and Cinemax, and still she watched the shopping channel?) and he settled in to watch.
The beeping stopped right around the time when former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura’s character got mangled by the Predator. He registered something was different in the room, but it took another second and muting the film to register what it was. The light over her bed went out, the light bulb winking to darkness, and as he stood, almost knocking over the padded hospital chair, the TV remote clattered to the floor.
Just like that? He thought, panic seeping around the edges.
He mashed on the call button, while repeating “Mom, it’s me, wake up,” over and over again in a low voice. Hers not being the first dead body he’d seen that day, he knew she was gone but his mind had gone all flighty, touching on thoughts before lifting off again to perch somewhere else.
At least he hadn’t killed her.
He couldn’t even hold his tongue for the little time they’d had together. Angelina came in and took his hand in her own chubby one.
“Aren’t you going to do something?” he asked.
She turned to him with tears glistening in her eyes, and squeezed his hand. “No, dear.”
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