by Tim Waggoner
“It’s a hell of a mess down here, babe,” he said. His voice was deeper now, more masculine.
Sela smiled and touched his cheek. “It’s always a mess of one kind or another down here.”
He smiled back. “True. Let’s take care of these two so I can start mopping up.”
Jayce saw that Ronnie also held a stun gun. He raised it now and the two of them stepped into the demonstration room.
Chapter Eleven
Jayce wakes abruptly, fully aware, as if he’s a machine and someone has pushed his ON button. One instant he’s not conscious, the next he’s almost hyper-conscious. Sometime during the night he kicked off his covers and since he sleeps in a T-shirt and underwear, he feels chilled. It’s mid-July, but his mother likes to keep the air at sixty degrees during the summertime, which means he’s always cold. He’ll be heading to college next month, and one of the things – the many things – he’s looking forward to about living on campus is that he’ll be able to control the temperature in his dorm room. No longer will he have to bake in winter and freeze in summer.
Faint light filters between the slight gap in his curtains, and he knows it’s nearly dawn. He guesses it’s around five a.m., and the dim early morning light has transformed his room into a hazy collection of shadowy forms – dresser, bookcase, study desk with typewriter, stereo and speakers, laundry hamper with a mound of clean clothes on the floor next to it that he hasn’t gotten around to putting away yet. But these ordinary objects are only indistinct shapes at the moment, and he supposes they could be anything, really. Anything at all.
There’s an odd combination of smells in the air – sour-sweet mixed with the faint scent of strawberries, and the stale odor of coffee breath and cigarettes. He recognizes the strawberries as the shampoo his mother uses, and before she can speak, he turns his head and sees her shadowy form sitting at his bedside. She’s moved the chair from his desk, he realizes, and seeing her there surprises him and makes him acutely aware that he doesn’t have any pants on. She’s his mother, but he’s eighteen – long past the point of being unselfconscious about nudity, even partial nudity – and he sits up quickly, reaches down to grab the covers bunched at the foot of the bed, and draws them up to his waist.
“You don’t have to hide from me, Jayce. You can’t even if you want to, so there’s no point in trying.”
Her voice is flat and toneless. The early morning light doesn’t penetrate far enough into his room to reveal her features. She’s a smear of shadow, an outline filled with darkness. Something is wrong, seriously wrong, but he can’t bring himself to ask her what it is. He’s too afraid to speak.
“You never knew your father, but I’m not sorry about that. It was a mistake for me to be with him.” A dry rasp of a chuckle. “Mistake. That’s an understatement, huh?”
Jayce wonders if she’s drunk. She enjoyed an occasional glass of wine at night, but lately she’s been drinking more than that. One glass became two, then three, then the entire bottle. But he doesn’t smell any alcohol on her, and that scares him even more. He would understand if she’s drunk. But if she’s acting like this while she’s sober, that’s really fucked up.
“I was different back when I met your father. I liked danger back then. Or at least what I thought was danger. Couldn’t get enough of it. Booze, drugs, sex – the kinkier, the better – vandalism, shoplifting, minor arson a couple times.… Penny-ante shit, but I thought I was one hardcore bitch.” She pauses, sighs. “But I didn’t know dick.”
He’s heard his mother cuss before – usually when she’s really upset – but nothing like this. It’s like she’s become a different person. Or maybe she’s stopped concealing a part of herself that she usually keeps hidden from him.
“I’d always been able to see things…things that no one else could see. Strange, dark things. I didn’t talk to anyone about what I saw. Even as a child, I knew people would think I was crazy if I said anything. Mostly I did my best to ignore the weird stuff. But when I was in my twenties and running wild, I started seeing more things, more often. And I met people who could see the same things. And then I discovered a whole new dark playground to run around in.”
He’s starting to worry that his mother’s mind has snapped. The things she’s saying don’t make any sense. And yet, there’s something strangely familiar about her words.
“Once you were born, I decided to change my ways. I gave up my life in the shadows, got a job working the cash register at a car parts place, and decided I was going to be the best mother to you that I could. I wanted to raise you right, so you wouldn’t make the same mistakes I did. And I prayed that you wouldn’t see the dark things of the world like I could. And as the years went by and you started to grow up, you seemed like a normal little boy, and I was so relieved. I wanted to keep you safe, wanted to make sure you weren’t exposed to anything bad – anything dangerous or traumatic that might trigger your ability, if you had it. I guess I went a little overboard in that department. Maybe a lot. But all I wanted to do was protect you. And I thought I’d succeeded. But now I know I was wrong. You saw things, but you were able to make yourself forget them. Shit, that’s a skill I wished I’d developed. If I had.…” She shakes her head, dismissing that line of thought. “Do you remember going with me to the doctor yesterday?”
The sudden shift in topic catches him by surprise.
“Huh?”
“My plantar fasciitis was acting up, and the doctor wanted to give me a steroid shot. Because it was in my right foot, you drove me.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
And he does. Kind of. The details are fuzzy, though. He knows he took her, but he can’t summon up any specific memories of the trip. No sights or sounds, nothing that either of them might have said. He can’t recall any of the businesses or landmarks they drove past.
His mother is silent for several moments before she speaks again. More light has filtered into his room now, and he’s able to see her face. She looks sad, deeply so, as if her soul is filled with sorrow. Her eyes glisten as if she might cry, but she gives him a small smile.
“After we got to the doctor’s and were sitting in the waiting room, do you remember what was crawling in the corner of the ceiling?”
He has a flash of memory then, an image of something dark with far too many legs and eyes that glimmered with emerald light. Then it’s gone, as quickly as it came, and he begins to forget it almost as fast. Before the memory, such as it is, can leave him entirely, his mother’s left hand lashes out and strikes him hard across the face.
“Do you remember?” she says, her voice little more than a hiss.
“Yes.” He reaches up to rub his stinging cheek. He’s afraid, yes, but he’s angry too.
Her hand moves back to her lap again, and she nods slowly, as if he just confirmed something important. “It was nasty-looking, wasn’t it? Of course, I’ve seen worse in my time.” She pauses, then adds in a whisper so soft he can barely hear, “Lots worse.”
She doesn’t speak for a while after that, and while the two of them sit there in silence, full dawn arrives. Enough light now comes through the gap in Jayce’s curtains to reveal that his mother’s left hand – the one that struck him so hard across the face – is empty. But her right hand, which hangs at her side past the seat of the chair, is not. She holds a large kitchen knife, gripping it so tight that her knuckles are white and her hand trembles.
The memory of the thing in the corner of the doctor’s ceiling is mostly gone once again, but the emotions that accompanied it linger. Confusion and fear, primarily, but the fear he experienced while gazing upon the thing that only he and his mother could see is nothing compared to the terror of seeing that knife in his mother’s hand.
“Mom? Are you going to hurt me?” His voice is small, higher-pitched than usual. A little boy’s voice. No, a baby’s. Jayce feels ashamed, but that’s nothing next to his fear.
His mother speaks as if she hasn’t heard him.
“I’d hoped you wouldn’t be like me. Wouldn’t be like him. But you are, aren’t you? And you’re only going to get worse.” She gazes at the strip of sunlight between the curtains as she says this, and then she turns to look at him and frowns. “Did you say something?”
His mouth feels dry as sunbaked earth. He has to swallow a couple times before he can make his voice work again.
“I asked if you’re going to hurt me.”
Valerie’s face breaks into a wide, amused grin, and the sight of it causes him to relax a little. Maybe this is just some kind of weird joke, he thinks. Or maybe his mother was sleepwalking or something and is finally starting to wake up.
“I’m not going to hurt you, sweetheart.” Her grin remains firmly in place as she gets to her feet and raises the knife above her head. “I’m going to kill you.”
Her grin never falters as she brings the knife down in a swift, vicious arc. Instinctively, Jayce rolls away from the strike, and the blade strikes his mattress and sinks in all the way to the handle. Jayce sleeps in a small twin bed, the same one he’s had since he was little. There’s not much room on it, and he rolls away from the knife strike so fast that he falls off the mattress and onto the floor. He lands on his back, the impact knocking the breath out of him. He senses more than hears his mother rush around the bed toward him, and although he knows it’s foolish, he can’t help hoping that the shock of trying to murder her only child has snapped Valerie out of whatever spell she’s under. She’ll be filled with horror and remorse, he thinks, and she’ll cast aside the knife, kneel, sweep him up in her arms and, crying, apologize for scaring him so badly. But that doesn’t happen. Instead, she straddles him and raises her knife, using both hands this time. Tears begin sliding down the sides of his face, and he knows that whatever has gone wrong with his mother, there’s nothing he can do to stop it.
Her hands come down, knife a silver blur as it streaks toward his chest. He doesn’t wonder if it will hurt. He’s sure it will, but how long will it hurt? Will it be over in an eye blink, or will he take his time dying? The latter, he fears. Again, his body acts on instinct, and he reaches up and grabs hold of her wrists to stop the knife’s descent.
Her grin gives way to gritted teeth, and she puts every ounce of strength she has into pushing the blade down and into his chest. He grits his teeth as well and squeezes her wrists tight, not only to keep the knife from descending any further, but in the hope that he’ll squeeze hard enough to make her hand spring open. Once that happens, he can take the knife, and when he has it, he can fend off his lunatic mother, get out of the house, and run for help.
As the two of them struggle, Valerie begins to cry at last.
“You have to die, Jayce. It’s the only way to save you. You have to see that!”
Jayce opens his mouth. Maybe he intends to deny his mother’s words, or maybe beg for his life. But what comes out of his mouth instead is a black cloud, and just before it envelops Valerie in darkness, Jayce sees the expression on her face. She isn’t scared or angry. She looks resigned, as if she expected this to happen.
And soon after that, she’s gone.
* * *
Some hours later, Jayce wakes up. He has no idea what he’s doing on the floor. Did he fall out of bed sometime during the night? His back feels a little sore, but if he hit hard enough to hurt himself, why didn’t he wake up?
He gets to his feet, still groggy, and staggers to the bathroom to piss. By the time he reaches the kitchen, he’s more or less awake. And when he sees the time on the wall clock – 11:17 – he’s jolted fully awake. He must’ve slept through his alarm. He has stuff he needs to do to get ready for his classes in the fall, and he doesn’t have time to be sleeping in. A thought occurs to him then. Why didn’t his mother get him up? She doesn’t like the idea of him going away to college, but she wouldn’t do something petty like let him sleep in to show she doesn’t intend to help him with his plans to leave her – would she?
Then, for the first time, he hears his mother’s voice in his mind.
I can’t do anything, she says. I’m gone.
* * *
When Jayce realized his mother wasn’t coming back, he figured she decided to abandon him before he could abandon her. As the years passed, his memories altered, and he came to believe she’d died of a sudden massive heart attack. He was fuzzy on the details, though. And when he heard his mother speak inside him, he put it down to stress and the aftereffects of having been raised by a crazy person. It might not have been the truth, but it was his truth, and that was just as good as the real thing. Better, in fact. So Jayce continued living his life, such as it was, until the day he decided to go in search of his missing daughter.
* * *
Jayce’s first thought on waking was I killed my mother.
You did more than that, Valerie said. You absorbed my spirit and you’ve held it prisoner all these years. You’re more than a son to me, Jayce. You’re also my own personal Hell.
She had been trying to kill him at the time, but that didn’t keep Jayce from feeling guilty and more than a little sickened by what he’d done. Valerie – the actual, honest-to-God woman herself – was still alive, after a fashion, and she dwelled within the body of her only child. The voice that he’d heard in his head for decades – warning, nagging, and mocking him – wasn’t merely an extension of his own personality. It was his mother’s…he supposed ghost was as good a word as any, but it didn’t feel quite right. But terminology didn’t matter right now. He finally had proof of something he’d suspected for a while. He truly was a monster.
He became aware of two things simultaneously then: his head was pounding and his eyes were closed. The lids were stuck together, and it took an effort to open them. When he did, he saw that he sat in the backseat of a moving vehicle. There were two people in the front seat – Ronnie and Sela – the latter behind the wheel. The windshield wipers weren’t moving, and Jayce realized it had stopped raining. He was naked, his hands bound in front of him with plastic zip ties. He looked to his right and saw Nicola and Ohio Pig also occupied the backseat. Nicola was naked, but the Pig was fully clothed. Both of them were asleep or unconscious, Nicola slumped against the Pig’s shoulder. Groggy as he was, Jayce knew Nicola wouldn’t want to be sleeping on the motherfucker, so he turned, got hold of her left wrist as best he could, and pulled until she slumped over against him. The action took more effort than he’d expected. His muscles were sore and he felt kitten-weak.
Nicola remained unconscious, but the movement of her body attracted Sela’s attention. The woman glanced in the rearview mirror.
“Looks like you’re the first one awake. Congratulations,” she said.
“Too bad we don’t have a prize for you,” Ronnie said, and both he and Sela laughed.
Jayce turned to look out the window and saw they were riding higher off the road than he’d expected. They were in a van, he realized. He remembered Nicola telling him that she’d been abducted by a black van when she was a girl – along with another girl named Gretchen – and she had no memory of what had happened after that. This probably wasn’t the same van. Both Sela and Ronnie were too young to have been driving the vehicle that Nicola had seen as a child. But he believed it was a similar van, with a similar purpose.
He continued looking out the window, trying to determine where they were. It looked like they were still in the Cannery, but he didn’t know the area well enough to guess their exact location. He opened his mouth to speak, but his tongue felt like a lifeless lump of meat, and his throat was raw, as if someone had reached inside him and scoured it with sandpaper. The best he could do was make a raspy coughing sound.
“Try to take it slow,” Sela said. “After we stunned you, we injected you with a delightful cocktail of sedatives. It’ll take a while for the drugs to wear off comp
letely.”
“Which is the point,” Ronnie said, and the couple laughed again.
They drove in silence for several minutes after that. Jayce was glad Ronnie was present to ameliorate the effect of Sela’s sex aura. He might have been a prisoner, but at least he didn’t have to ride with a full erection bobbing up and down every time they hit a bump in the road.
“I’m sure you want to know why we captured you and where we’re going,” Sela said. “You’ll find out soon enough. But one thing I can tell you. You’ll find your daughter there.”
After what she and her husband had done, Jayce had no reason to trust the woman. And even if she was telling the truth, there was no guarantee he’d find Emory unharmed – or even alive. And given the transformations Shadow could work on people, she might no longer be human. Hell, he wasn’t anymore. So he had no reason to hope for a good outcome, and every reason to expect a bad one. Still, he couldn’t help feeling a tiny kernel of hope deep inside. One way or another, it looked like he was finally going to find out what had happened to his Emmy.
He relaxed against the seat, and although his body urged him to close his eyes and get more rest, he fought to stay awake. He would keep watch, for Nicola, if no other reason. And if a chance came to fuck up either Ronnie or Sela, he’d take it.
* * *
Jayce supposed he should’ve been surprised when Sela pulled the van into the alley behind Crimson Splendor, but he wasn’t. He didn’t think anything about the Cannery and the people who dwelled there could surprise him anymore. Sela parked behind a metal door with the word Deliveries painted on it. Jayce had no idea what time it was, but the sky was still full dark, with no hint of a coming dawn.
Very symbolic, Valerie said.
“Thanks,” he whispered. His voice was better, but not much.
Nicola was awake, more or less, and she and Jayce held hands as best they could. Ohio Pig was still out of it, and Jayce wondered if Sela and Ronnie had given him a stronger dose of sedative, considering that he’d shot up the Funhouse and killed a couple of their customers. It was what he would’ve done.