The Spaces Between Us

by Ethan Johnson

  Bess screamed, then looked up at her mother with a piteous expression. “Don’t let me die, Momma.”

  The countess shushed her and cooed. “Momma’s here. Momma ain’t gonna let you die, sweetie.” She no longer spoke in her trilling high society accent. Circumstances prevented maintaining the focus that went into producing that style of speaking. Now she reverted to her Kentucky roots.

  “Make Agnes pay for this, Momma. If I die, promise me you’ll make her pay for this.”

  The countess nodded. “I promise, baby, Momma’s gonna give that bitch what she deserves, no matter what.”

  Bess nodded back, then screamed. Stanley shuffled into the room. “Is there a problem, ladies?”

  The countess tried to compose herself to correct her accent. “Stanley… dear heart, I’m afraid Bess has had a mishap. Would you be a dear…” Bess cried out in pain again. “Be a dear, and call an ambulance for poor Bess?”

  Stanley looked at the crumpled heap on the floor, and while he didn’t know what was wrong with her exactly, he agreed that an ambulance was in order. “I shall summon them straight away.” He shuffled out of the room.

  Bess cried out again. The countess let go of her daughter’s arm and rose to her feet. She went to the table and picked up the pitcher. It was nearly empty. She poured the last of the water into a decorative glass bottle that she picked up from a flea market that looked sufficiently exotic and antique, and brought it back to Bess. She crouched down and held the bottle to her daughter’s lips. “Drink, baby. You’re dehydrated.”

  Bess shook her head.

  “Yes, you can, sweetie, now be a good girl for Momma and get some water in you.”

  Bess resisted, then choked down water as her mother forced it down her throat.

  “That’s a good girl.”

  Bess heaved, and coughed the water back up. It ran down her chin and into her frock. She coughed again like she had nearly drowned. The countess set the bottle aside. She pressed her hand against Bess’s stomach, and felt something solid there. Something unnatural. She cooed and stroked her ailing daughter, trying to distract her while waiting for the ambulance.

  It arrived fifteen minutes later. Stanley directed the paramedics to the countess’s private office. They crouched down and began their field examination. Despite the protests from both women, Bess’s frock was cut away to her waist.

  The male paramedic squeezed Bess’s shoulder. “Sorry miss, we must expose. We can’t do an accurate assessment if we don’t.”

  The countess nodded and wiped tears as the male and female duo poked and prodded her only daughter. One of the paramedics spoke urgently into a radio handset clipped to his uniform.

  “White female, mid-twenties, obese, suffering from acute abdominal pains.”

  The female paramedic knelt and spoke to Bess. “Hi. My name is Kelly. I’m going to take care of you. David and I are going to get you the hospital. Help me out. Can you tell me what happened?”

  Before Bess could answer, her mother intervened. “I think it’s food poisoning. I only had a little of the shrimp, but she ate more of it, the poor thing, and I felt only minor discomfort, but this… this seems far more serious.”

  Kelly turned to Bess. “Oh, really? Did you eat some bad shrimp?”

  Bess nodded before having another shrieking fit. Kelly nodded to her partner. David spoke urgently into his handset. “Possible food poisoning. May need her stomach pumped. Preparing patient for transport.”

  The radio crackled. “10-4.”

  Soon after, Bess was strapped to a stretcher. The paramedics tried to give her something orally, but she spat it back up almost immediately. Bess was loaded up into the ambulance. David returned to the Manor, and found the countess swaying and clanking toward the front door.

  “Ma’am, would you like to ride with us?”

  “No, thank you. I will follow along shortly. May I inquire as to where you are taking our student?”

  “Mercy Hospital. It’s the closest one, but it’s still going to be a haul. Do you know how we can reach her family?”

  “I shall see to that personally. Get her medical attention at once! Do not delay any longer.”

  David nodded, and turned on his heel. He jogged back to the ambulance and got behind the wheel. The ambulance screeched its siren and activated its lights and roared out of the driveway.

  The countess closed the front door and rather than gathering up her things to make haste to the hospital as well, she swayed and clanked her way back to her office. Bess’s fake pistol was lying on the floor, unnoticed by the paramedics. She stooped down and picked it up, then dropped it distastefully onto the table that contained the unmodified brick. “Damned incompetence! She cost us dearly.” She heard the front door open and close, followed by heavy footsteps. Henry had returned from his errand. The countess stepped out into the hallway to meet him, amid more clanking. “What news, Henry?”

  Henry’s eyes shined, and he clutched the countess by her shoulders happily. “The appraiser says he’s never seen anything like it. Pure gold is classified as ‘four nines’, which is to say, 99.99 percent pure.”

  The countess tried to contain her excitement. “And this piece?”

  Henry beamed. “Nine nines.”

  The countess gasped and tried to keep her voice low. “What does this mean?”

  Henry grinned. “The appraiser couldn’t give me an exact dollar amount, but he did say that it would be in the mid to high five figures.”

  The countess bobbed up and down. Henry followed her lead.

  “Does this mean…”

  Henry nodded vigorously. “Agnes is going to make us incredibly wealthy.”

  The countess suddenly turned ashen and began to weep. “Oh, Henry.”

  “Yes, Helen! Our dreams have finally been realized!”

  “Henry, there’s been a terrible accident.”

  His mirth instantly became worry. “What is it, Helen? What’s wrong?”

  “Agnes attacked Bess, and nearly killed her. It was truly a miracle that Bess is still alive at all!”

  Henry staggered backward, dazed. “What? Attacked! Where is Agnes now?”

  “She ran away. I tried to stop her, but she threatened me with a pistol. I only learned that it was in fact, a toy after she escaped. Oh, I am so humiliated, Henry, to be fooled by such a fraud!”

  Henry tried to console the countess. “And Bess? Where is she?”

  The countess sniffled. “M-Mercy Hospital. Oh, this is so horrible, Henry! Whatever are we to do?”

  Henry stiffened and stroked the countess’s arms. “First things first. Let us tend to Bess and make sure she is given proper treatment. Modern medicine,” he said with a touch of sarcasm, “thinks itself miraculous, but it falls sadly short of the mark. I will diagnose her myself and administer the appropriate treatment personally.”

  The countess sniffed and nodded appreciatively. “Very well, Henry, we shall depart at once. Let me gather my belongings, and I will meet you forthwith in the foyer.”

  He nodded and made off toward his study. The countess walked slowly and deliberately into her office. She collected a few things from her desk and stuck them into an oversized bag. She put on a thick fur coat and stuck her left arm through the large handles on the bag. She composed herself and poised herself as a worldly woman of vast spiritual and historical knowledge. She walked into Henry’s study and found him readying a bag of herbs, crystals, and brass bells.

  “Henry, I neglected to inquire: where is the ingot? Is it with the appraiser?”

  Henry looked up from his preparations. “Eh? Why, no, in fact, I have it right here. Why do you ask?” He reached down into his coat pocket and held up the golden ingot. A ray of sunlight caught it and in turn, gave the countess a golden pallor.

  “I just wondered. Merely my silly curiosity.”

  Henry toddled toward his desk. “I should put this someplace safe. My locking desk drawer should be sufficient in the immediate term.
Good thinking, Helen!”

  “Indeed,” said the countess, in a monotone.

  She crept up behind Henry, then raised her arm. Something glinted in the light, but sadly, Henry never saw what it was. A steel letter opener was plunged into his back.

  Again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Henry crumpled to the floor, gasping for air. Blood pooled at the corners of his mouth and colored some of the white hairs from his mustache bright red. The countess wiped the handle of the letter opener on his suit and dropped it on his back. It fell to the floor with a high metallic clang.

  “My, my, Henry. I hate to leave things like this between us, but let’s be honest. You always were a useful idiot.” Her Kentucky accent had returned. She stooped down and plucked the ingot from his pocket. Henry gasped and tried to pull himself up to a sitting position. The countess laughed.

  “But look on the bright side. You’re on your way to paradise. Oh wait… so am I!” She laughed coldly, then added, “It’s just as well, Henry. That girl was the only one doing anything arguably spiritual around here. With her gone, there’s not much to look forward to but stroking your damned cats.”

  The countess sauntered out of the study, kicking a chubby calico cat out of the way. She closed the door delicately and turned to find Stanley approaching from the kitchen. She held up a shushing finger, then waved him off. She tightened her throat and got into character.

  “Master Steele does not wish to be disturbed. Do not interrupt his study under any circumstances. He is engaged in intensive meditation and any distractions will be disastrous.”

  Stanley nodded and turned around. “Yes, my lady.”

  “There’s a good man.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  The countess left the Manor and clip-clopped her way to her car. She got in, sat down, and started the engine. As she waited for her car to warm up, she caught sight of herself in her rear-view mirror. She made a tch sound and dabbed specks of blood from her forehead. Shortly thereafter, her car made its way at a leisurely pace toward Mercy Hospital.

  CHAPTER 46: MAROONED

  Marc ran his fingers through his hair and groaned. Dubai? If he wasn’t already vexed at the thought of how to get back home to his apartment from somewhere in the Chicago metropolitan area, he might as well have been on the moon, now. He’d seen pictures of it, usually some obnoxiously opulent hotel or indoor ski resort.

  Inanna, on the other hand, seemed unfazed. To be fair, it wasn’t too long ago that Marc found her impaled on a spear. All things considered, present-day Dubai had to be preferable to the ancient plains of Nineveh. Marc switched off the television. He didn’t speak the language that he was seeing and hearing, so there was no point in leaving it on. He didn’t feel like channel surfing either. Inanna took that as an invitation to creep up behind him and wrap her arms around his waist. She cooed something into his back.

  He patted her arms, then pulled them apart. He had to find a way home. Fight or flight was starting to kick in. Inanna was welcome to join him on his return voyage, but he couldn’t stay here. He searched around with Inanna in tow. She cooed and cajoled, trying to break his concentration. He kept looking for his ticket out. He found a cordless phone docked on a charger and breathed a sigh of relief. Score.

  He pressed the green TALK button and listened for a dial tone. Nothing. He checked the cords. All plugged in. He checked the phone battery. Charged. Maybe there was a glitch. He pressed the TALK button again, and once more, the line was dead. He looked at the handset. Maybe the volume was turned down. He pressed a series of buttons to check. The handset was set to full volume. Maybe the base station that wasn’t plugged in. This seemed to be a remote handset.

  Marc searched for the base unit. Inanna kept cooing to him, ostensibly trying to change the subject to one that involved horizontal positions on—or off—the bed. Maybe later, he thought. Maybe back at his apartment once he found a way out of Dubai.

  He found nothing in the front room besides the remote handset. Nothing in the dining room. He went down the long hallway, searching room by room, with Inanna close behind. Another remote handset in the bathroom, with the same results. The base station was all Marc cared to find, now. The kitchen was further down the hall. He pushed the door open, and found four servants cleaning up after breakfast, speaking the strange language shared by Tobias and Inanna.

  Marc tried to search the kitchen, but the servants made the hunt more difficult, as they wiped and polished various surfaces and made it clear through body language that he was not a welcome intrusion into their daily routine. He did manage to spot another remote handset tucked behind a blender. He moved on to the guest bedroom.

  Inanna pranced over to the bed and dove onto the mattress. She writhed around and did her best to reel him in. Marc was more interested in any flat surface that could house the base unit. Inanna rolled over onto her hands and knees and gestured suggestively. It wasn’t enough to deter him from his objective. She dropped onto her stomach and pouted.

  That left the office and master bedroom. Inanna remained in the guest bedroom while he tried the ornate doorknob on the office door. It was locked.

  He decided to search what and where he could. He pushed open the door to Tobias’s room and looked around at the sheer scale of it. Three apartment units in his building back home would have fit inside of this space comfortably. Due to the cavernous size and scale of the room, there was lots of underutilized real estate. A massive woven rug went on for tens of feet, just to break up the bare spots. Everything about the room seemed to be oriented toward making a statement. And that statement was, “I’m so loaded, I can waste money on giant oil paintings just to cut down on the echo from my highly polished marble floors and walls.” He was no expert, but he assumed the cost just of this room alone had to have run in the hundreds of millions of dollars. He, on the other hand, thought he was hot stuff when he bought a designer shower curtain on clearance.

  A bank of four stairs led up to another level. This featured cutaways to that led to the master bath. He didn’t want to know what that room contained. He’d seen enough opulence for one morning. Another door led to a massive walk-in closet that strangely featured rows upon rows of women’s shoes. He picked up one of them and checked the label embossed into the insole: Kay Ryan. He wasn’t an expert on this subject either but did recall hearing women obsess over this designer at work once or twice.

  He set the shoe down and ran his fingers through rows and rows of designer gowns. Tobias didn’t seem the type for this. But these hadn’t belonged to Inanna either, had they? Or was Tobias preparing for her arrival? Marc stepped out of the walk-in closet and made it way toward Tobias’s bed. Up another set of stairs—six this time—he found a bed that defied classification. A California King would have seemed tiny by comparison. Two rows of pillows lined the back of the platform, which was framed out in polished wood and supported by what seemed to be an onyx pedestal. The edges of the bed jutted out in all directions, leaving about 8 feet of central support. He pushed down on the mattress and gasped at the unearthly softness. He’d probably be swallowed whole by the sheer luxury of it all if he dared to lie down.

  He found what he was looking for on the nightstand: another remote handset. The base station was most likely in the office room. To justify the invasion, he checked the handset, and didn’t hear a dial tone. He set the handset back into its cradle and made the trek back to the bedroom door. Stone statues lined one of the walls, in various poses. One seemed to be standing guard. Another seemed to be speaking into a phone, or walkie-talkie, or something. Or it was some Greek orator reciting a play, he couldn’t tell as art really wasn’t his strong suit.

  He returned to the guest bedroom, defeated. He’d have to wait for Tobias to return, and perhaps allow him to plug in the phone and arrange some sort of ride home. Inanna laid on her side of the bed, facing away. Marc crawled into bed and put his hand on her shoulder. Inanna brushed it off.


  “Great,” he muttered.

  CHAPTER 47: ABLAZE

  Agnes and Gracie found themselves standing where Marc’s coffee table used to be. Agnes looked down at the impressions in the carpeting and was immediately thankful the table had been moved, or else they would have crashed through it together. Gracie, on the other hand, wasn’t inclined toward gratitude.

  “What the hell, Agnes? What did you do that for?”

  Agnes gestured to her to observe where they were. Gracie’s eyes bulged.

  “How…? What? Who? Huh?” She bent down and felt the scratchy fibers of Marc’s sofa.

  Agnes wasn’t sure if bringing Gracie was the best decision under the circumstances, but she felt as though she had no choice in the moment. She spied Marc’s cell phone on the faux granite apron that separated the kitchen from the living room. She dropped it into her knit bag. Gracie stepped over Marc’s discarded coat and banged on his bedroom door.

  “Put some clothes on, Marc! Me and Agnes don’t want to see whatever you’re doing in there with your girlfriend.”

  Agnes looked up, and terror gripped her as Gracie turned the doorknob. “Gracie, no!”

  “Ow! Dammit, that hurts!” Gracie shook her hand like she had touched a hot stove.

  Agnes rushed to her side. “Run some cold water over that. Sorry, we don’t have much time.”

  Gracie sullenly ran her hand under the kitchen faucet. “Much time for what? You’re really weird, you know that?”

  Agnes scooped up Marc’s coat and shook it out. She heard keys jingle in one of the pockets. She pulled them out and tossed the wad into her knit bag. His wallet followed shortly thereafter. She held up his coat and considered saving it from the fire. As she held it, Gracie looked over her shoulder with a look of shocked surprise. “Hey, uh, Weirdness… what’s going on?”

  “Hm?”

  “Look!” Gracie pointed, and Agnes spun around in time to see the flames breach the bedroom door. Time was up.

  “We’ve got to go, Gracie.”