“I love you, too,” Jess murmured. Dead flat. “Hurry up.”
But Natalie heard it, this time. The weeping underneath the flatness. Buried so far down in there, where it burned forever, never went out, like a pilot light. The frozen heat that had driven her mother forever forward through her days. All these endless, lonely years.
Natalie was bending forward, had already given her mother a farewell kiss on her cheek and slid her mouth down toward her neck, before she felt her mother’s hands in her sweater pocket and realized, all at once, what was really happening. What Jess had seen and why she had really called her back from Benny. She glanced up then, and what she mostly felt was wonder. How had my mother known? How had she understood so much about what was happening, here? So much more, with so much more profound comprehension, than even I had? She had her cheekbone against her mother’s shoulder, was gazing straight up into Jess’ face as her mother pulled the gun from Natalie’s pocket.
How had Jess known? Because she’d seen the look in Natalie’s eyes, that night she’d come back to the trailer. Had maybe seen Sophie’s eyes through the window tonight. She’d heard Mother jabbering. Had seen the Whistler holding her grandchild. And had understood—completely—what Finishing actually meant.
And what Natalie’s Finishing would mean for Eddie. Who had become the only thing that mattered, the moment he was born.
Natalie felt one last, utterly primal urge to lunge forward, protect herself. She squashed it easily. Lay against her mother’s cheek, shuddering. Sobbing. And grateful. So grateful. “Mom,” she whispered, while her mother did, finally, just once, touch her hair.
“I know, baby,” Jess said, the tears exploding out of her at last. “I know.”
Then she raised the gun up under her daughter’s chin, kissed her forehead, and pulled the trigger.
29
They faced each other, then. Silently. Mist floating around them. Jess and the Whistler. Seagulls shrieking, spinning out to sea.
Carrying my daughter with them, Jess thought, resisting the urge even to wipe Natalie’s brains off her face. Spiriting her away. If she so much as opened her mouth, she knew, she would simply shudder to pieces. So she stayed still. Gun still raised, though not aimed anywhere.
Finally, after a long time, she started to order the Whistler to put Eddie down but was surprised to find he’d already done that. Laid the bundle at his feet. Not gently, but not cruelly. The way one would a grocery bag. Because this wasn’t about Eddie, Jess realized. Never had been. Because they didn’t think that way, whatever they were.
Which was why I had to—
Jamming her teeth together so hard she felt the front ones crack, Jess somehow stopped that thought dead. Held still. Held on. Watched the Whistler watch her.
At least it really wasn’t about Eddie, she realized. He’d probably leave him right there, when he was finished with her. Someone would find him. Surely, by morning, someone would. All he had to do was hold tight.
And he damn well had the genes for that.
And still, the Whistler just stood there, staring at her.
“Well?” she hissed, through jaws she didn’t dare loosen. “Go ahead.”
Only then did she realize that the Whistler wasn’t, in fact, staring at her. He was staring at Natalie’s body. And with a shudder, Jess realized she could actually see his feelings—if that’s what they were, if that’s what they called them—emptying out of him. Into his shadow, seemingly. Into the damp, drifting air.
After a long, long silent while, he shrugged. “What for?” he said. And then, with a sort of wriggle and hop, he was behind her, vanishing up the beach into the dark.
Jess had no idea how long she just knelt there, cradling her daughter’s body. Singing to it, without even realizing it. Crying, though less than she wanted to. If she cried the way she really wanted to—if anyone ever did that—there’d be no more living. And there were still others, now, who needed her to live.
And so, straightening a hank of Natalie’s bloody, beautiful hair around her ear, Jess laid her in the sand, ignored her own screaming ribs, and stood. Staggering, some, but continuing anyway, she shuffled forward to put Sophie out of her misery and collect what was left of her family.
BOOKS BY GLEN HIRSHBERG
The Book of Bunk
The Snowman’s Children
American Morons
The Two Sams
Motherless Child*
The Janus Tree
*A Tor Book
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GLEN HIRSHBERG received his B.A. from Columbia University, where he won the Bennett Cerf Prize for Best Fiction, and his M.A. and M.F.A. from the University of Montana. His first novel, The Snowman’s Children, was a Literary Guild Featured Selection. A story collection, The Two Sams, won two International Horror Guild Awards and was named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly. Hirshberg has won the Shirley Jackson Award and has been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and the Bram Stoker Award.
Glen Hirshberg teaches English and creative writing at a high school in the Los Angeles area, where he lives with his wife and children. He is also one of the founders, along with Dennis Etchison, of the Rolling Darkness Revue, an annual event (now in its tenth year) celebrating the dark delights of horror fiction.
Visit him on the Web at www.glenhirshberg.com.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
MOTHERLESS CHILD
Copyright © 2012, 2014 by Glen Hirshberg
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Base and Co.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Hirshberg, Glen, 1966–
Motherless child / Glen Hirshberg. — First edition.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 978-0-7653-3745-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-3441-5 (e-book)
1. Single mothers—Fiction. 2. North Carolina—Fiction. 3. Vampires—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3608.I77M68 2014
813'.6—dc23
2013029672
e-ISBN 9781466834415
First Edition: May 2014
Motherless Child Page 20