Or maybe He was just a figment of my imagination. Maybe this whole scenario was just a black hole that had opened up in my mind. Maybe my mother loved me like no other, and the horror of the last few months was just a plot thought up by an alternate personality, maybe she and Brandy visited me daily in my hospital room and my sanity was so far gone that I never noticed they were there.
Maybe.
“It’s been a lot better, really. The door is open. Well, this door, anyway. Tippy gets to go outside and that’s enough for me. I’m just getting the whole walking thing down again, my legs are all funny.” I shrugged my shoulders, felt shamed again because I was acting way too familiar with my Lord.
Why did He have so much interest in me? He couldn’t be real, could He? Would God have really chosen me as His pet project?
“You can’t lie to me, Lucy. I know everything about you.” His smile took on a sinister feel as He emphasized the word everything. I noticed that He had bad teeth, thin and yellowed and sharp.
The air in the room changed. An electrical charge entered my personal space, pulled at the ends of my hair like I was suddenly surrounded by an aura of static cling. Creeps crawled up my back, settled into my scalp. My skin felt like it was betraying me.
I started to hyperventilate when He dropped His eyes to my chest and slowly pulled them back up again. Grinned that old-man, razor-toothed smile. His face changed shape subtly, reminding me of a wolf for a split second, then morphed back to His regular look.
Tippy whined—a sad, sorrowful moan that in any other circumstance would indicate she was in grave pain. I clung to her, hoping my heart beat would keep her calm.
“What’s wrong with you two? Have you been away from other people so long that I frighten you?”
I pulled my dog in even tighter and looked at the comforter.
“I guess it’s humbling for us to be in Your presence.” I was at a complete loss for words.
“How sweet. But I think we’re way past that, aren’t we, Lucy?” Like a whisper God had moved onto the bed with me, His words hot against my neck. “Think of all we’ve done together. Our conversations when you were so weak downstairs. I held you in my arms and carried you through the basement, when you were so lifeless that only my breath kept you alive. And then, well…I don’t have to remind you of anything else, do I, Lucy?”
His lips touched my ear. Tippy bolted off my legs and screamed as she hid under the bed, her whimpering dissonant, a metal-upon-metal accompaniment to my new nightmare.
I wanted to join her on the cold floor. Wanted to holler for Mom to come meet God and help me out of my predicament. But He and I both knew she’d never answer.
God wrapped His arms around me, His body pressed against my back. I shivered as He joined his hands in a fist right between my breasts.
“You know I’m in here, don’t you?” His forehead tapped my skull. I knew very well that He was in my thoughts. My dreams.
My nightmares.
“And you know I’m in here, too, right?” God uncurled His fingers and pressed two against my heart.
I nodded my head. He wrapped His arms even tighter around me. I wanted to push away but knew how rude it would be. What person in their right mind would ever do that to God?
“Can you guess where I’ll be next? Because I think you already know.”
Which I did.
Images flipped through my mind, naughty thoughts like the ones in my dream, only worse. God and me in my bed, in Mom’s bed, outside, all arms and legs and naked backsides. I felt a mixture of terror and bliss, but I couldn’t see His face, only feel it, like teeth sinking into my skin, the fire of infection quickly following it.
“You’ve always been such a good girl, Lucy,” God told me before His tongue slid down my neck.
I became a tree, rigid and unmoving. Thought of the deer, our colors blending together, the wind cooling us both while the sun scorched the land. My fingertips expanded and turned green, my toes burrowed further and further into the soil. My body was round and healthy, reaching forever toward the sky, wanting the sun, yearning for the water that bathed me and kept me strong.
“Tell your mother I said hi. I’ll be back for her. She’s been waiting for me for a very long time.”
I was still outside, arms reaching toward my siblings, my children, our hair alive with the sounds of the forest, the beasts who relied on our bodies for their own home. I could hear His voice but it spun past me, could feel the scrape of His fingernails against my nipples but chose to ignore it.
With a tap against my shoulder, God was gone. He didn’t need to escape through the closet, the front door, even out the window. I turned my cheek and the room was encompassed in an odor so foul I thought maybe He’d left some of the dead to keep me company.
I got off the bed, bent to find Tippy hiding underneath it.
She had crapped herself and not even moved. Poop covered her backside, the floor, the underside of my box springs.
We finished a surreal night with baths. I cleaned my good friend before Mom caught sight or smell of her, kissed her head, tried to get Tippy to respond to me again. The shivering that had caught hold of her while God was in our room didn’t let go for hours.
Not that I felt much better. I stayed under the hot water and dragged the soap over my skin, humiliated. My body felt dirty, my mind deceived. The worst part was knowing that He could see me, naked again, my skin crawling from His touch, nothing able to take that nasty feeling away.
We slept in Brandy’s bed.
* * *
I tried not to let any bad ideas creep into my head. Nothing sinful, but nothing rude, either. God could obviously hear these ideas as clearly as the prayers He vetted every day.
But my thought-diet didn’t last for long.
I had never really imagined what being around God would entail. My visions of Him were of a giant Santa Claus with viciously strict rules, who welcomed you with open arms if you survived the gauntlet of wicked choices He threw your way. He would look at a list and know my personal habits, whether naughty or nice, give me a lecture or two on honoring thy mother, maybe a pat on the back if He felt I’d done well on any of the morality tests He’d given me.
Being a good girl, I’d always felt safe. Like God wouldn’t bat an eye at letting me into Heaven if I died the next day. That no matter what Mom said, He’d know my true heart.
But somehow God had gotten word that I was a slut. And He was cool with that, even wanted to take advantage of my bad-girl status.
Maybe He was just like all men. I’d heard the girls talk about them, their boyfriends and their sexual expectations, the male teachers who were always trying to get a glimpse of their boobs, men they babysat for and the ways they came onto them during the drive home.
When Mrs. Ray, my Sunday School teacher, explained God she described Him as love. I had always figured this as the love I felt for Tippy—a loyal, heart-filling devotion that could be seen as nothing but goodness, nothing but light.
I had never even considered that God’s love was sexual. That ‘giving myself to God,’ as people had often told me to do, meant losing my virginity to Him.
But the possibilities existed. How many men, religious leaders even, had proclaimed that God told them to have sex with certain women? We had discussed them in school. They were always hot topics whenever one crept into the news. But maybe instead of pariahs, these men were truly living God’s word.
Maybe David Koresh had been onto something. Because God, to me, was just as crazy as people made Koresh sound.
Tippy and I couldn’t discuss it. How could you bad-mouth God? If He was the ultimate power, how could we even think about His actions as deplorable? And we both knew He would hear us.
I tried to wipe my thought-slate clean.
What I really wanted to do was find Mom in her room, curl up with her in her bed, and have her hold me while I explained my God-fears to her.
She would never understand.
&nb
sp; He was in my head, yes. In my heart, for certain.
And Tippy and I both knew where He would be next.
When I started to cry, Sissy jumped off the bed and joined me on the floor. She didn’t even try to tell me where she had been, just nudged me and pushed herself under my arm, forced her way into my heart.
Chapter 28
Joan
I woke to a shotgun blast of terror. Threw back the covers, dropped to the floor.
Someone with a heavy footfall stepped into my bedroom.
I contemplated hiding under the mattresses, the only place I could squeeze quickly and quietly. The bedskirt offered some protection, would make him bend over and raise it before he saw me. Just enough of a pause that I could scoot to the other side, make a run for the door.
My mind flashed to Brandy, the nightlight in her room that would expose her sleeping body. Had he already gotten to her?
I couldn’t hear him move, but I had to take action. My daughter’s life was at stake. I pulled up the fabric, ready to slide under the bed.
But he was already there. Waiting, a smile on his face.
“Alex!” I couldn’t help but scream. Only after I alerted my husband did I remember he was dead, not part of my current nightmare.
That the Brandy I invoked was grown now, out of the house.
My legs moved of their own accord.
The man with red hair roared with joy. “Joan? Joanie? Don’t you want to play?”
As I reached the bedroom door, he popped in front of me, blocking my exit.
My body started to convulse. For over a decade this man had lain dormant under my skin, a giant snake ready to strike. I always knew he’d be back. Knew I could never escape him.
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
The beast moved forward and I backed up quickly, whimpering as I walked, already ashamed. Ashamed of my weakness. Of what he had done to me in the past. Of the horror that lingered in the air between us.
My legs brushed against the comforter. I didn’t want to be by the bed. The mere thought of it sent another wave of terror through my system. I hedged to the right, toward the window.
Stupidly thinking I might be able to get out.
“Oh, Joanie, you’re so funny. Still trying to get away.”
He reached his clawed hand out and spun me around. We stood so close to the window that I could almost touch it, except for the new barbed wire coating the woodwork, thwarting any chance of escape.
The razor-wire glistened, the Venus Flytrap of prison yard metal. Beckoned. Yearned for my blood.
I could hear it laughing at my plight, but in my mind I still weighed the options. If I jumped into the window, it wouldn’t faze him. He would work the wire like a puppet, let his creation slice me until I was but bone and dangling strips of flesh.
And then he would start in. He would love it; the excruciating pain, the panic as it crescendoed past terror and into the electrifying white light of realization that death would be such a relief, so welcome—if only he would permit it.
Which he wouldn’t.
My eyes shut. Tight. I had survived this once before. If I followed his direction, if I didn’t fight and just forced myself to relax, I could endure it again.
“You probably could, Joanie, but this time you’re not going to get knocked up. I don’t have much reason to keep you alive.”
His jaw opened around the back of my neck. The pain was immediate and severe. I found myself screaming, the wound secondary to the red hot alarm screeching through my brain, that he had read my thoughts—he had known what I was thinking—I could actually feel his hands inside my head, rummaging around my brain, plucking away at my gray matter, tossing things aside, pushing new things in.
Before he threw me on the bed, he waved his arm as if a ringmaster during a big presentation, and exposed our audience.
Alex, tied to the chair, squirming and fighting his restraints. He was yelling, but no sound passed his lips. I had never seen him so angry. His face was contorted with rage, every vein in his body taut and on the verge of bursting.
My skin ripped as the intruder pulled at my nightgown. I stood in front of my husband, exposed from head to toe, this other man telling him the nasty things he was going to do to me.
But for just a second, everything went still. Motionless. I managed to push out my hand and could almost touch Alex, my husband, the only man I had ever loved. My fingers were within an inch of his leg, the dark hair that covered his entire body.
This time the shotgun blast wasn’t terror.
This time it hit my husband straight in the nose, his blood and brain matter spattering all over my face, my hair, even landing in my mouth as I bent forward, screaming, the redhead entering me from behind, hollering like a bunch of drunken frat boys that have successfully completed some campus prank.
“Joanie! Boy, I’ve missed you!”
Claws raked down my back.
Ripped down my front.
My dead husband watching. Again.
“Mom? Are you okay?”
You pushed open the door, entered my room. My first thought was that I couldn’t believe your audacity, as my bedroom is strictly off limits. But at the same time I was so relieved I could barely speak.
“I heard you screaming.”
I was back in bed, the blankets tucked under my chin. “I was having a bad dream.”
One that never ended. You turned on the light, and all I saw was him, the intruder, the redheaded disaster that destroyed my life and put you in my arms. A daily reminder of the night Alex was taken away. Of what my life could have been.
“Get the fuck away from me! Go! Get out of here!” I hated looking at you. Just the sight of your hair, that horrid color, sent my blood pressure zooming. “I want you to leave!”
But you didn’t move.
Had you developed your father’s power? Were you going to laugh at me, taunt me, come at me with your claws?
“What’s on your wall, Mom?” Your mouth dropped open.
I saw it for the first time. A blood splatter, fresh and seeping down the white paint.
You looked at me, puppy-dog eyes filled with fear, and again at the wall.
Oh, Alex. My God, how I loved you.
I couldn’t stop the tears. Figured you would devour them raw from my cheeks, cackling like your father, feasting on the agony that lived just under my skin.
But instead you crawled under the covers with me, put your arms around my shoulders, and kissed the top of my head. As if I were the child.
“I’ve been having some bad dreams myself lately,” you told me.
What an odd thought. Could demons feel fear? How did they suffer?
Then I remembered God. Fetching you just before you started rotting. He had to have seen something worthwhile in you, something that I couldn’t.
We clung to each other, our eyes glued to the nastiness on the wall. I didn’t dare tell you about it, didn’t allow you that power over me, to know that your father had siphoned my soul straight from my body.
Oh, Alex. My heart lurched at the thought of him. I wish his death had been as quick the first time.
“Do you want me to help clean it?” you asked. If it had been Brandy, she would have demanded to know how a dream could have physically damaged the walls. You accepted it without pause.
We got the oil soap and two buckets, lit up the house so nothing could jump out of the corners at us.
“You might want to change nightgowns, Mom. That one has a big rip up the backside. I can see your underwear.”
Chapter 29
Lucy
We worked together for hours, side by side, barely speaking.
I never knew beheading chickens could be so bloody. Or why Mom would possibly want to do it inside the house, let alone in her bedroom. The corpses on the floor outside her door were piling up fast, and I had tripped over the newest batch when coming to see if she was okay after her screaming woke me up. Their story was sm
eared across the wall by her window, had somehow travelled the length of her ceiling, even dotted the area around her dresser.
I hoped we wouldn’t be eating them anytime soon. The unsanitary way we stored them unrefrigerated in our hallway didn’t seem quite right to me.
But nothing in our house did.
We had to change Mom’s sheets, all of her bedding, even get out the steam cleaner to try to remove the stains from the beige carpet.
Was this part of her craziness? No sane person would take up butchering her house chickens, late at night, right beside her own bed. But it wasn’t my place to ask questions. I knew I could never sleep after having seen the goo coating her walls, so I didn’t mind helping Mom get her room back in order.
Tippy ditched us both, preferring to stay in the kitchen while we washed walls. I felt a strange closeness to Mom that I couldn’t explain, except that she seemed oddly vulnerable, in need of my companionship.
“Tell me about God,” she requested after I had dumped our dirty cleaner down the kitchen sink and brought the buckets back full of fresh water.
Her shoulders were hunched, and for just a second Mom looked old, withered, wearing a shroud of patheticalness that I had never seen on her before.
I had nothing good to say.
“When I was downstairs He talked about how well He knew you.” And Brandy. But I didn’t want to mention her name.
“Really? He’s heard my prayers?”
“I assume. He said that years ago you spent a lot of time together. Before I was born.”
She stood stiff as a board and closed her eyes, hand paused on the wall, the kitchen towel sopped with hot water that practically poured out of the cloth while she lingered, immobile.
“Yes. He helped me through a very difficult time. How wonderful that He remembers me.”
My lips stayed sealed. I watched Mom as she regained her composure, worked through whatever caused her to stop cleaning.
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