The Mortal Sleep (Hollow Folk Book 4)

by Gregory Ashe

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s resting. You don’t need to tire her out.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You ought to shower before you see her, but you’d just go out and roll in a puddle I think. All right. Let’s go.”

  Sara was resting. She was obviously sedated, but not quite asleep. Her lids fell to crescents of deep blue iris. Deeper blue than her eyes normally were. Maybe the hospital lights. Maybe the dilated pupils. Maybe the shadow of those half-closed lids.

  Her hand was puffy and cool when I took it, and she shifted under the thin hospital sheets. She had a million things pasted to her chest and arms—leads and wires leading back to machines that beeped and whined. Her fingers fluttered against mine like she was playing an instrument.

  “My chest doesn’t hurt so much,” she said, and her voice was breathy like she was speaking out of a deep cloud.

  “That’s good.”

  More fluttering of her fingers. “I thought you couldn’t stand me anymore. I’ve done everything wrong by you, haven’t I?” And then her face shifted—slow, macro, glacial shifts. She was trying to cry, and she was buried too deep in that cloud to do it. “I always told myself I’d be a good mother. My friends told me that too. I’m sorry I did wrong. I’m sorry I made you run away. I shouldn’t have yelled.”

  I stared at her. My jaw was hanging, and it felt cartoonish. Maybe there were birdies chirping around my head too. “You didn’t even yell at me.” And my brain was telling me that I should say something else, say something about how she’d been the best adult I’d ever met, the only one who hadn’t wanted anything from me, who had only ever wanted good things for me, how she had given me a job and then a home and then a life, and how when I got up at night, when Austin’s skin was too sticky against mine and I couldn’t breathe and I had to walk, had to count steps, had to breathe against the glass and watch my breath evaporate and peel away, how all those nights I hadn’t left, hadn’t walked out the door, hadn’t run, because I knew she was there, and no matter how many bad things got inside me, I knew she was there.

  My mouth refused to say any of that, though. I just kept saying, “You didn’t even yell. You didn’t, Sara. You didn’t even raise your voice. You just—you just talked.”

  And that wasn’t right. That wasn’t what I should have said.

  “I wanted a boy. With Scotty. He would have been big. Scotty was big. Big shoulders.” That glacial crawl passed through her face again, tears trying to work their way free of the dope.

  “You would have been a great mom.” And inside, I was screaming at myself because that wasn’t right either. How hard was it to say, you’re a great mom, you’re my mom, the only real mom I’ve had, how hard?

  Too hard because I just kept babbling, and nothing that mattered, nothing that was really true, the deep-down true, came out.

  And then the door snicked, and a wedge of light grew across my knees, and I looked up at Don Miller—Sara’s brother, Austin’s dad. He nodded at me. His salt-and-pepper hair was still in its meticulous part, and he wore golf shoes and a polo like he might hit the links later, but his whole face shone with worry.

  I nodded at him, slid out of the seat, and tried to slip past him. We bumped shoulders, and his eyes swept toward me with something very close to anger, the way you can feel a static charge about to snap. But then he continued, and I continued, and the rush of cool, antiseptic air in the hall cooled my hot cheeks, my swollen eyes.

  Austin reached me before I had fully processed seeing him. One moment he was there, filling my field of vision, and then his arms were around me, and he was dragging me against him, and the smell of cedar and crushed tobacco and his hair rushed in on my next breath. For a moment, I let my chin settle onto his shoulder, my mouth rest against his neck, the warmth of him like summer. Then I stepped back, wrenching free of his grip a little too fast, a little too hard, my flush a little too hot, my eyes a little too puffy.

  “Are you all right?” His voice was still raspy, but better.

  My fingers touched my swollen nose, but I said, “Sara’s doing ok.”

  “They said it was a heart attack.”

  I nodded.

  “Thank God you were there.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Vie, she could have died. If you hadn’t been there—”

  I closed my eyes. The chemically clean air of the hospital was still cooling the back of my neck, and I visualized it streaming in front of me, a blowing storm of a million white particles. Snow. Or sand. I tried to keep myself there in that storm, inside that calming drift of white, because otherwise I was going to do something stupid.

  “Seriously, Vie, thank you. You saved her life.”

  “She almost got killed because of me.”

  “She—what?”

  “Ginny came to the house.” How to fill in all the gaps? The saw? The blood like tree roots on Emmett’s arms? Sex on the cold bathroom tile, my skin so hot that the cold didn’t matter? The truth about where Emmett had gone, what had been done to him? “We figured out she’s been helping Urho. Only she came with a gun, and she shot Sara, and Sara—I’m the whole reason Sara had a heart attack, so don’t thank me.”

  The turquoise of Austin’s eyes had gone stormy. “We?”

  “I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to get back to Vehpese.”

  “Becca was with me; I don’t know where she went. She was still freaking out about everything that had happened at the hospital. We both were. I was so freaked out I didn’t know what I was saying or doing or thinking.” There really was a storm in those blue-green eyes. Yes. A storm of anger and tears and helplessness about to rain down. But. I met his gaze. Looked into that storm. And I didn’t shrink. Because there wasn’t any truth in them. A storm, yes, but no truth. Because the truth was that he had known exactly what he was doing, what he was saying, what he was thinking. We’re done. You and I are done.

  He wanted to take it back. He wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened. And I could let him. I could pretend. Even though I was shit at pretending, I could at least try.

  “It’d be so much easier.”

  He blinked. The storm clouds drifted. “What? Oh. You mean—it’d be easier if it were true? It is true, Vie. I was really scared. And I was upset. What I said, it just came out. That’s the truth.”

  I shook my head.

  He opened his mouth. He might have tried again. Instead, he set his chin and waited.

  It was like a magnet, the tape player. I reached into my bag blindly; I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to do this again if looked away right now. The player slapped into my palm like it had been drawn there. The cool plastic. The bump of the buttons. The raised triangle for Play. When I pressed down, I felt a click as the spindles engaged, and then Austin’s voice rolled up out of the canvas backpack.

  “—not even really his fault. I know that. None of it is his fault. He can’t control what other people do. I get that.” Then the slight hiss and scratch of a cheap microcassette in a cheap player. “It’s just, sometimes I think it’d be so much easier if he weren’t here.”

  Austin wasn’t pretty. He wasn’t beautiful. He was hot, yes, but his face was too rugged, too masculine, too strong in its features to be beautiful. Only for a moment, pain cracked his face open, and that pain was so enormous that it was transcendent, that it made his face shine, and a loose thread at the back of my brain suddenly tied off, and I knew why people painted saints and martyrs with halos. And then the moment passed, and those cracks sealed over, and the only thing left of that super real moment was in the brightness of his ocean eyes.

  “How’d you get that?”

  “You’re not going to lie about it, then? You’re not going to pretend that’s not you or that you were talking about someone else, or that this is taken out of context?”

  “It is taken out of context. How did you get that?”

  I couldn’t hold on to the tape pla
yer anymore; it weighed a few tons, so I let it fall back into the backpack. The backpack weighed a few tons too. My whole body weighed a few tons. My knees wanted to crack like wishbones and drop me onto the vinyl flooring.

  “Did you break into her office?”

  I reached for the zipper. It slipped between numb fingers.

  “Did you . . . did you hurt her?”

  “You’re worried about Ginny?”

  “Ginny? Who the fuck—I’m worried about Dr. Kilpatrick. How did you get that tape, Vie? Don’t lie to me.”

  “Lie? You want to talk about lying—”

  “Don’t do that.” He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t even move, not really, just a tilt of his body, but the threat was so big that I took a step back, ready for a slap, a cuff, a punch, the vacuum cord, the cigarette tip. “You always twist things around. Don’t do it. Not right now. How did you get that tape? That’s private. That’s just Dr. Kilpatrick and me. Nobody else gets to hear that, Vie. I don’t care if we are dating—”

  “Were. We were dating. You broke up with me.”

  He shook his head like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You stole that. And you listened to it. Jesus, Vie, don’t you get how wrong that is? That’s like eavesdropping. No. It’s worse. It’s . . . Christ, I don’t know. I can’t even think right now.”

  A violation, my brain said. That’s what it was. A violation. Of his privacy. Of his trust. I had wanted so badly not to read his mind, not to take away what everybody had a right to. And I’d done it. Not intentionally. Not knowingly. And I had to bite my lip because I was lying again, to myself this time. I had known that the tape was private. I had listened anyway.

  I had to start with I’m sorry. I had to start with that and hope that somehow I could rig up the steps and scaffolds and bridges that would get me close enough to him that I could tell him, for real, how very sorry I was. That I could tell him it would never happen again. That I could tell him—

  Like a Polaroid, the image of Kaden at Austin’s hospital bed flashed back at me. Kaden’s voice growing rough like fur stroked the wrong way, saying, I never really thought about guys like that before, but if it makes you get this freak show out of your life, yeah, I’ll think about it, ok?

  I’m sorry. That’s all I had to say.

  I’ll think about it, ok?

  I’m sorry. Just open your mouth, I told myself. Two words. Just to start, but two words.

  I never really thought about guys like that.

  Two simple words. Those ocean-green eyes were waiting, but they wouldn’t wait forever.

  But if it makes you get this freak show out of your life.

  “Private?” I said. And part of me knew, right then, that I had lost him. “Eavesdropping? Kind of like that conversation I overheard between you and Kaden. Is that right?”

  He started to turn.

  I grabbed his arm and yanked him back toward me. “Were you even going to tell me? Were you going to break up with me? Or was I just going to have to find out—” Like I did with Gage, I almost said, when he started cheating with that trashy piece of theater ass. “—from someone else?” I hefted the bag, letting the tape player rattle against the rest of the junk inside. “Were you going to have Dr. Kilpatrick break the bad news to me?”

  “I can’t believe I was so wrong about you.”

  “Yeah, I must have been a big disappointment. So you went to Kaden. You told him all your dirty little fantasies. You told him how you liked to watch him change in the locker room. You told him how you’d eye his pecker through those thin white Calvin Klein's, thinking about how you could get your mouth on it, and—”

  Austin had his fist pulled back before I realized it, but he didn’t throw the punch. He held himself like a man pulled in two different directions, and when his fist didn’t land, I kept talking.

  “You can hit me. Why not? It’ll make you feel better. Everybody else does it, so go ahead. Hit me. And then, once Kaden’s finished thinking about it, you can go tell Dr. Kilpatrick how happy you are, and you can tell her how I threatened you, how absolutely fucking nuts I am, how scared you are that I’m going to hurt you and your new boyfriend, and she can send that tape over to Ginny, and Ginny’ll make sure I get locked up where I can’t mess up your life anymore. Go ahead. Hit me.”

  He was still wavering.

  I shook him hard enough that I heard his teeth click. “Hit me, you pussy faggot.”

  He shook out his hand, broke my hold, and stepped back. He ran his hand under his collar, and he cleared his throat twice. “I never wanted Ginny to have that tape. I never told Dr. Kilpatrick to send it to her. I was talking to my therapist, Vie. I was talking through some shit that was hard for me. And yeah, you know what? Sometimes you are hard. But that’s life. Everybody’s hard sometimes. That doesn’t mean I don’t love you. If you’d listened to the rest of that damn tape—” He shook his head. “And Kaden? I told him I needed to hang out with him less. I told him how I felt about him because I was tired of lying, and I told him so that he’d understand why I couldn’t hang out with him. He came back at me with what you heard. That was him, Vie. Not me. You can believe me or not.” He shook out his hands again, as though he’d been holding something burning and had just registered the pain. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

  I watched him go a few yards. His words were a bumblebee swarm. If you’d listened to the rest of that damn tape. That was him, Vie. Not me. It was like I’d swallowed nettles, the prickling rash that ran in a line down my chest and buried itself in my gut.

  “You’re a fucking terrible liar,” I shouted after him. “You’re fucking nothing, do you understand? I don’t need you. I’m better off without you.”

  He just kept walking, those big shoulders held even, that preppy hair shining under the fluorescents until he turned the corner.

  And then I did what I’d been holding back for what felt like a lifetime.

  I ran.

  SOMEONE CALLED MY NAME in the parking lot. As I ran across the asphalt, the April chill settling into my lungs, I scanned for the cobalt blue of the Charger. The last thing I could handle, the very last thing, was for Austin to be nice to me. If he somehow forgave me. If he somehow tried to be kind. If he even looked at me with those blue-green eyes, I thought I’d die. Nobody could hurt this much for long without dying.

  The clouds were growing thicker overhead, and mist rolled over the high plains, beading the buffalo grass so that each stalk shone with hundreds of translucent jewels when headlights swept across the prairie. My long strides carried me onto the shoulder of the road, where the heavy heads of grass licked my arms and left broad, wet streaks on my jacket. I was exhausted. I was bruised. I was broken. And every stride was shorter than the last because my body needed to shut down. But I kept running.

  The roar of the Ducati dragged me out of my fog, and I raised my eyes from the broken asphalt in time to see Emmett skid to a stop on the bike a few yards ahead. He lifted the visor on his helmet and stared at me. The clouds had swallowed the night; the only light was a strip from his headlight shining iridescent waves on the blacktop. Some of that light reflected back and gave a hint of Emmett’s features, and of course I would have known that bike anywhere, but I couldn’t read his face. Did he know? I wasn’t even sure what the question meant; did he know what?

  “Planning on running back to town?”

  I shrugged.

  “And you were going to go back to Sara’s house and just hope that guy who can tear down a building didn’t show up again. Right?”

  “Emmett, will you give me a ride?”

  The slight reflex widening of his eyes was the only clue to his surprise, but he only said, “Hop on.”

  I climbed behind him. I wrapped my arms around his chest. I could still smell our sex on him, and leather now, and the rain.

  For one moment, he ran a gloved hand up my arm, gripping at different spots as though testing that
I were real. Or solid. Or there.

  “It’s stupid driving a bike on a night like this,” he said, his hand resting on the visor, ready to snap it down. “But Lawayne has the cars lojacked. I’m going to have to go slow, but I’ll get you there.”

  Where, I wanted to ask. But I was too tired. I just rocked into him, and his shoulder cradled my head. My eyes narrowed to slits against the pellets of rain as we slipped into the night.

  It seems impossible, but I must have slept. Or maybe my brain just shut down everything but the essentials. The bike hummed between my legs, and the rough warmth of Emmett’s leather jacket rustled against my chest, and water ran cold fingers down my cheeks. But I don’t remember the drive. Just the end, when the bike coughed and slewed a few inches to the left, and Emmett swore. I jerked awake and saw that he had barely caught us from falling, and now he eased down the kickstand and killed the engine.

  He had brought us to a strip of grungy motel rooms bracketed on one end by a flashing red vacancy sign and on the other end by a larger neon display: ROOMS - ROOMS - ROOMS - HOUR - DAY - WEEK.

  “Em, I need a ride back to town. I don’t have time to stop at a motel that needs a few gallons of gasoline and a match.”

  “I know, tweaker.”

  He swung himself off the bike, and I caught his arm. “Please? Please take me back to town.”

  “What’s gotten into you? First you ask me for a ride. Now you say please. It’s like you’re one of those pod people.”

  Something broke loose inside me, something the size of a continent. I kept seeing Austin. I kept hearing him. If you’d listened to the rest of that damn tape.

  Emmett’s cool, rain-slick hand pressed against a fevered triangle of my cheek, and I smelled the engine grease on his fingers. “Hey. Hey, tweaker, hey. What is it? What’s wrong? Is Sara ok? I figured if you were leaving the hospital, she was ok, but did something happen?”

  “Yeah. I mean no. She’s fine.” In the bloody flutter of the neon lights, the ruined half of Emmett’s face seemed more real than the rest of him. I fixed on that part of him, on the looping, twisting symmetry of the mutilated chakras, and it helped. A little.