And I should have just told Karl to come and get me, I knew, but even after everything that I had repeated to myself, the fact still remained that I didn't want to tell him about my father. The resentment that I felt towards him for goading me into feeling sorry for him was so great that – at times – I wondered if he was lying about the cancer altogether and had simply told me as much out of the hope that Karl and I would finally forgive him completely. And maybe it was the paranoia that I could never shake entirely, but maybe, I told myself, it was closer to the truth than anything else could ever hope to be. He had tricked me time and time again into believing his lies, pretending as though he had had business trips and work obligations greater than the needs of his family, and promising to come back home before marrying Melinda behind my back, and lying about Jack dying in order to force me to come home, and I had lost all of my patience with him this time around. I would wait it out, purely and simply, as far away from him as could be allowed – and if I had to solve one last riddle in order to do so, then it was well worth it. I would rather have my mind twist itself into knots than allow him to control what went on inside it again.
“Come on, Mea, let's go upstairs,” I told her, placing her back on the floor and trailing behind her as she skidded over the smooth surface. We surpassed the rectory and Father Taggart's office before reaching the staircase. As Mea struggled to pull herself up the first step, her tiny legs kicking wildly behind her, I bent down to help her. Just as I placed my hands around her middle to lift her up, though, something moved on the landing above me. I halted and looked up.
“Hello?”
My voice rang slightly against the wood, but the only thing that returned was silence. With my hands still poised on Mea's form, I shifted my eyes over the dark floor above us and tried to make out any figures above.
“Jack?” I called cautiously, wondering if he had forgotten something and come back to his room to collect it. “Father – Father Taggart?”
There was no response, but as I stood slowly and lifted Mea in my arms to bring close to my chest, a slight movement in the form of a shadow crossed the far wall as though someone was waiting just outside of Jack's room. I stumbled back and, glancing behind my shoulder all the way, hurried back to the main room. As I stood in the doorway next to the font, however, I wasn't sure if I was frightened that someone really had been lingering in the small hallway upstairs, or if I was truly frightened that no one had been there at all.
Mea was whimpering in my arms, and I realized that my heart was hammering inside my chest and thudding against her. Gently putting her down again, I ran a hand through my hair and swallowed in an attempt to calm myself, but the idea that the person in the graveyard had returned was far too unwelcoming, and the one that a hallucination had made its way back to me was even worse.
“Call Karl,” I told myself firmly, realizing what the latter would mean. “Call Karl, and he'll sort it out.”
It occurred to me that I had no other option. I could cite that the change in atmosphere was to blame rather than anything that Jack had put me up to, and he would be able to talk sense into me. Shutting my eyes, I tried to regain some of the composure that I had left somewhere back in the apartment in Connecticut by thinking of the mundane, useless life that I led. I wasn't special, life was meaningless, and nothing mattered.
Resolved in what I had to do, I turned back around to march up to Jack's room and get the phone that I had left on the table. No sooner had I faced the entrance way that I had just come through, however, than I was met with the most gruesome, horrific sight that I had ever seen – real or imagined.
There was a figure standing in front of me, its form towering over my height in a thin, skeletal-like appearance that was draped in dark clothing, and its face was so distorted that it couldn't have been human. The eyes were non-existent and sunken as though eaten out by maggots, and its mouth had been replaced by a gaping hole with yellowed, broken teeth. The skin had a texture somewhere between leather and amphibian flesh, and the bones protruding from where the jawline and cheekbones ought to have been were so sharp that they seemed to have snapped and come sticking out of the tissue.
“Jesus Christ –”
The sheer sight of it was so disturbing that I thought that I was going to be sick, and just as I dropped Mea's leash and my stomach heaved, my mind went into overdrive as it simultaneously tried to convince me that the sight was real and just a hallucination. Before I could settle on the latter, however, the thing reached forward and snatched my arm in its pinching grip, and I stumbled as I tried to back away from it and collided sharply with the pew.
As I fell to the floor, the figure descended upon me. Aiming a kick at it, I caught it in the midsection and managed to pull my arm away, but no sooner had I scrambled back to my feet and dove towards the door, I felt its grip on my wrist again, and this time it brought my arm behind my back and twisted it at a severe angle that made my legs buckle beneath me. As my form began to crumple, it shoved me forward as though preparing to push me over the threshold, but before we reached it my waist hit the stone font situated to its side and my head was shoved downwards towards the holy water.
I was barely aware of what was happening until I felt the liquid on my face, and the breath that I had been about to take was stifled as I sucked in a mouthful of water instead. Choking beneath the surface, I flailed the arm that was not pinning me down and tried to smack at the figure holding me down, but my legs were weak and shaking beneath me and my reach wouldn't extend far or strongly enough, and before I could think to do anything else, a separate stream of thoughts began to flood my mind with the memories of drowning that I had not thought of in so long –
One by one the images came into my head: first of my mother in her white dress, neck snapping against the ice as she jumped from the bridge and her broken body plunging beneath the surface of the river, then of the dead girls floating off of the Bickerby shore on Bardom Island, lifeless and forgotten by anyone who had known them, then of Beringer being crushed beneath me as he tried to grab me back from the cliffs and being thrown into the ocean, my form sinking downwards beneath the black water, desperate but not deserving to get out –
My head snapped back and cracked against my neck as I was released, and I fell into a heap upon the floor. My ears were ringing and pounding all at once, and I could barely hear the sound of Mea's incessant barking over the noise of my own choking as I coughed up mouthful after mouthful of water onto the ground. Digging my nails into the floor to keep myself from collapsing entirely, I shakily turned my head to either side to search out where the demonic figure had gone, but it had vanished.
“Enim – are you alright?”
Father Taggart was hurrying towards me from the other side of the church, his shoes slipping slightly on the wet floor around the font. As he reached me and bent down, his face a mixture of confusion and alarm, I managed to push myself up to a sitting position.
“What on earth happened?” he asked.
I shook my head and continued to catch my breath, though I was uncertain if I could have spoken if I wanted to. The image of the figure wouldn't leave my mind, and I kept glancing around the room for any sign of it.
“I – I don't know.”
“I heard the dog and thought that something must have happened,” he went on, moving forward to help me to my feet. “You were – what happened?”
I shook my head again and allowed him to lead me to the pew to sit down. My legs were shaking so horribly that I could barely keep myself in an upright position, and I had to clench my hands at the back of the bench in order to keep from falling back onto the floor.
“There was – there was –” I began, but my face was twitching and I couldn't get the words out.
“It's alright: take your time,” Father Taggart said, resting a hand on my shoulder to try and calm me.
It took me several moments before I was able to do so. Forcing myself to sit still, I rearranged my expression
and clamped my teeth down on my tongue to keep my jaw from quivering, and after several more breaths I tried again.
“You didn't – did you see anyone, Father?” I asked at last, my voice low and uncertain.
The priest gave a thoughtful frown.
“In here, you mean?” he asked. “No. I heard the dog and ran in.”
He continued to look at me closely.
“Did you see anyone, Enim?”
I shut my eyes and the image of the demon-like being resurfaced at the front of my mind. Willing myself to block out the hollows of its eyes and pointedness of its face, I licked my lips as I prepared to respond, but found that I couldn't voice the words.
“So you didn't see anything?” I asked again.
“No, I'm afraid that I didn't,” he said. “But what happened? You look as though you've been frightened half to death.”
My hair was damp and dripping holy water down my face and onto my pants, and despite feeling ridiculous for asking, I allowed the question to come to my tongue anyhow.
“Do you … do you believe in the devil, Father Taggart?”
He looked at me oddly.
“The devil?” He made an odd movement with his head as though about to both nod and shake it simultaneously, and his voice was rather uncertain when he spoke again. “Well, yes, I would say that I do. But do I believe that he walks amongst us dressed in clothing such as you or I? That, I'm afraid, I cannot answer.”
I nodded, aware that I had neither thought nor expected a different response.
It finally occurred to me that Mea was scratching at my pant leg in an attempt to climb up on my lap, and I reached down in order to pick her up. As she licked the water from my face and hands, Father Taggart continued to watch me with his pale blue eyes.
“It was lucky that she was barking so loudly,” he said after a moment. “I wouldn't have known that anything was wrong.”
I nodded, but my head still felt numb.
“What's her name?” Father Taggart asked, his voice still gentle as he tried to ease me from my thoughts.
“Mea.”
“May-ah?” he repeated, and then gave a frown. “From the Latin, you mean?”
I slowly moved my eyes over to his, aware that he was the first person to make the connection.
“Yes.”
His gaze rested on me steadily.
“That's an interesting name for a dog,” he said. “Or any living creature, really.”
“Yeah,” I said dully. “It is.”
Ch. 10
Still unable to completely grasp what had happened, I went upstairs to Jack's room and changed my clothes for dry ones before giving Mea a handful of treats and a pat on the head. Father Taggart had given me a candle to light my way up the stairs after I had told him that I had trouble seeing in the dark, and I placed it on the edge of the table, glad that no more shadowy figures had followed me into the room. Sitting down beside the window, I cracked it open in the hopes that the cold air would wake me from my stupor and then retrieved a pack of cigarettes from beneath Jack's mattress. In spite of myself, I tapped the box and took one out, lighting it on the flame and reveling in the feeling of warmth that traveled down my throat and into my chest.
It was a hallucination. My fingers shook slightly as I considered it, but I brought the cigarette back to my mouth and took another drag to lessen it. It wasn't so bad, after all – I could recognize it for what it was, and it hadn't crept up on me in the way that it might once have done. If anything, I should have been thankful that it hadn't been worse. Given the reason that Jack had asked me up to Kipling and the fact that I had barely left Karl's apartment in nearly four years, I was handling myself rather well.
Handling myself, I repeated inwardly, shaking my head at the word choice. It sounded like something my father would say – a business term that he would use when sorting out both a transaction for the company and an unpleasant situation with his family. But it hardly mattered, I realized, so long as I was able to do so without actually needing to inform him of what went on or go to him for help. I had long ago proven that I didn't need him, and if I wanted to use the little that he had taught me in order to get past whatever was inflicting me, then that was what I would do, with or without him there.
What mattered was the state of the hallucination itself. I had been tricked by my own mind before into doing unspeakable things, after all: thinking that Beringer was trying to throw me off the cliffs and that Ilona had tried to drown me in the hotel bathtub, and my reaction to both had been similar. I had killed Beringer and attempted to kill Ilona, and both weighed on me as heavily as the next. But this time the result was both the same and eerily different, for I had nearly succeeded in killing myself, and if my mind was strong enough to allow me to keep my head under water while my body protested so violently to get away, then I knew that things had taken a sharp turn for the worse.
A large piece of ash drooped from the end of the cigarette and crumpled, falling upon my leg before I could locate the astray to tap it off. As it singed the fabric and burned against my skin, I flicked it away and stuck the cigarette back to my mouth to take a few more drags before putting it out.
“I know, I know,” I said to Mea as she began to whimper at the smoke filling the room. “I shouldn't be smoking.”
I twisted the cigarette against the pane of glass and discarded it in the waste basket with a hollow feeling, then shut the window with a snap. It was bad enough that I had ever taken up the habit in the first place, and it was more so now that I had seen what it had done to Albertson, but it pulled apart the thoughts that tangled themselves in my head and allowed me to think again, and just as Jack had commented that he would be thankful to make it to sixty, I knew I would be lucky to make it halfway to that.
Considering as much, I went to my bag and pulled my phone out, switching it on to call Karl. The bars in the upper corner were depleted again, though, and even standing on the table did nothing to give me a better signal. Sighing, I left Mea curled up in the corner where she had settled down for a nap and made my way outside, holding the phone out in front of me as I walked towards the center of town.
The phone, it seemed, was incapable of receiving a signal from the distant tower, and after a while I gave up and slid it back into my pocket. Looking around, I spotted the bookstore down the street and contemplated meeting up with Jack, but then changed my mind and entered the bakery instead. There were a few people having an early lunch, and Mrs. Coffey was just laying out a fresh batch of muffins.
“Back again, are you?” she said upon spotting me. “So you liked my food after all.”
I gave an apologetic smile for my lack of enthusiasm over the sandwich she had given me that weekend and pushed my hands into my pockets.
“What can I get for you? The blueberries just came out, but the chokecherry tarts are still fresh from this morning.”
She indicated to the food behind the glass, and to be polite I asked her to wrap a few pastries for me, thinking that I could simply give them to Jack so that he wouldn't have to eat another jam sandwich for dinner.
“Anything else?” she asked before ringing me up.
I shook my head and took out my wallet to pay, but when she handed me back the change I asked, “Would it be alright if I used your phone? I can't seem to get a signal.”
“You'd be lucky to ever get one around here,” she replied, taking the phone from the hook and handing it to me. “Land-lines will do you better while you're in this town.”
“Right. Thank you.”
I took a seat at the far end of the counter and dialed Karl's number. It rang a few times before going to the machine, and I realized that he was at work. Not wanting to worry him and give him a reason to insist upon me returning home before I had planned to, I resigned that I would call him later that night.
“Thanks,” I said again, handing the phone back to Mrs. Coffey.
“No one there?”
“No, he's at work.”<
br />
She nodded and replaced the phone on the wall before turning back to me.
“You know, I heard about you and Jack getting escorted from the Perennas' on Saturday.” She eyed me with disapproval. “Isadora came down here complaining that I let you two take the food up – told me she'd only pay me half for the trouble you caused.”
I looked down at my boat shoes.
“Right. I – I'm sorry about that, Mrs. Coffey,” I said. “We didn't – I mean, we shouldn't of gotten you involved.”
As she continued to click her tongue at me, I licked my lips and continued.
“I could pay you the rest – you know, what you were supposed to get for the catering. How much was it?”
She pursed her lips momentarily as though considering it, but then shook her head.
“No, that's alright,” she said, her voice a bit softer. “I don't really hold you two to blame. She probably would've had some sort of complaint for me anyhow.”
She pulled a sheet of paper towel from the roll and handed it to me.
“Here. Go wipe down that table for me, and don't get any crumbs on the floor.”
I obliged and swept the remains of someone's lunch from the wooden surface and into the trash before returning to the counter to collect the box of pastries.
“You know, this was a nice place before she showed up,” Mrs. Coffey said, seemingly intent on continuing the conversation regardless of my lack of interest. “A friendly place. People were happy with the way things are, and didn't go around trying to change things.”
When I Am Laid in Earth (Damnatio Memoriae Book 3) Page 13