by Anna Roberts
“If anyone has a reason to be pissed it’s me,” he said. “You were looking mighty cozy with Charlie back there...”
...except there was photographic evidence of the latter. And who was to say Gloria hadn’t dumped the baby on a relative and run off to make up for lost time? Especially if she’d been so young...
“...I didn’t think you even liked him.”
“He’s my brother, dumbass.”
Gabe nearly rear-ended a mini-van. “Uhh...what?”
“Charlie,” she said, and it was out now. No takey-backsies. “I think he’s my brother.”
He slowed. “You think? Isn’t he a little...um...”
“White?” she said. “Yeah. But so was my dad. Who may very well also be his dad.”
He sighed again and slowed. The turn signal light made a steady clunking noise in the uneasy quiet.
“Holy shit, Blue,” he said. “How did you figure that out?”
She swallowed and realized just how flaky it all sounded out loud. Alligator boots, black satin and vague accents. “It’s...uh...it’s kind of...” She took a deep breath. “It’s kind of ooga-booga, I guess.”
He pulled up outside the house. “Great,” he said. “You know most people would take a cheek swab, right?”
“Yeah,” she said, embarrassed. “I know that. But I don’t think I’m like most people.”
Gabe unclipped his seatbelt. “No,” he said. “Guess not.”
He didn’t get out of the car yet. She could almost hear the gears shifting in his head. He was trying so hard to understand, but she knew what he was going through; that slow, drip-fed sureness that you were finally going crazy, followed by the moment where you only wished you were crazy.
“So we can’t take her out of the house,” he said. “And now we have to leave her in there?”
“Yep.”
She opened the car door. The background buzz of the insects was like the faint hiss that rang in your ears in the quietest, blackest depths of night. Blue felt guilt settle over her shoulders like a damp blanket.
“Stay there,” she said.
“Are you kidding me? Like I’m going to let you walk into that hell house alone.”
“You have to,” she said. “Yael will eat you for breakfast.”
Gabe slid out of the seat. “Let him fucking try.”
“Gabe! Listen to me. You didn’t see what he did to Charlie. He jumped into him so hard and fast that it slammed him up against a wall –”
“ – right. So what’s he gonna do for an encore? Climb up my ass and wear me like a sock puppet?”
“Yes,” said Blue, and something in her voice made him still and sober. “That’s exactly what he’s gonna do. He...likes men.”
He blinked. “Men?”
“Yeah.”
“As in...he’s your average batshit crazy poltergeist who just happens to be gay?”
“No. Not like that. I think he prefers male hosts. I have this theory...”
“...yay,” said Gabe, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Yael’s only managed to get inside my head once, and it wasn’t for long. He could never hop in and out of me the way he did Candi and Dorothy and Charlie, and Gloria always said that I had too much iron in my blood for him to possess me fully.”
Gabe opened one eye. “What?” he said, in a strained, desperate little voice.
“Short version,” she said. “Yael and young women don’t mix. Maybe it’s the estrogen or something, but he couldn’t get into Ruby either. He could get into her head and show her visions, but he couldn’t pull her on like a prom dress and walk around in her skin like he did with the others.”
“That’s just fascinating,” he said. “Let’s go, shall we?”
He got two feet towards the porch and stepped back as if stung. “Ow!”
The hair on the back of Blue’s neck was crawling and her fingertips itched. Perhaps it was because she knew where the jars were buried, but she felt her spine shiver and her hair tug at the roots when she stepped over them, as if the whole house was on high alert and Yael’s recent escape attempt had electrified all the magical fences around it.
“What is it?” she said, but she wasn’t completely listening. Somewhere in some dark corner of her DNA she knew how this worked, but it was still out of her mental reach. The why was much clearer; the house, as an extension of Gloria, was trying to keep Gabe out. For his own good.
He stepped forward again, his boot landing square on a patch of dirt she remembered stomping down before the last full moon. He winced again and stepped back. “What the fuck, Blue? Did you do this?”
“No,” she said. “It’s Gloria.”
“You think she’s alive in there?”
“Yeah,” said Blue, although she didn’t know for how much longer. She could almost see Gloria’s power shimmering in the air like a heat haze; the old lady was operating at her highest setting, probably to combat Yael getting an extra jolt of juice from devouring Ruby’s familiar. Blue was pretty sure Gloria couldn’t keep this up for long.
“How come you get walk straight in?” asked Gabe. “Because you’re a woman?”
“No,” said Blue, turning back towards the house. “Because I’m a witch.” And with that she almost ran across the front yard, because she knew that he would try to persuade her not to go. And that part of her wanted him to succeed.
She had no idea what was indoors. When she opened the kitchen door she almost expected to find a pile of dead burglars lying there, blood running from their ears and noses, but there was nothing. Just the steady silence of a sleeping house.
Blue switched on the light, illuminating a scene almost comically mundane. The signs were there if you knew them – the corn dollies, the huge container of salt, the bulging black binder stuffed between the faded spines of recipe books – but to the casual observer it was nothing more than an old lady’s kitchen, remarkable only for being a little better scrubbed than the norm.
But she was no longer a casual observer. She was in this. She was part of it, whether she liked it or not. The heatlike shimmer was stronger in here, so fierce towards the ceiling that the numbers on the clock appeared blurred. Blue stood staring up at the light, waiting for it to flicker. Her spine felt as though it was going to shake apart, her toes tingling so hard in her shoes that she pictured her feet leaving the floor without ash, effort or Noxzema.
The air was thick and almost oily to breathe, and with each breath it got harder. Her lungs and head seemed to be filling with something other than air and she thought frantically of dead space and all the ways Gabe had explained how you could drown and die. She turned back towards the door, but the pressure in her head was unbearable now; she could feel her pulse roar and her eardrums bow outwards. Her knees turned to water and she knew she’d fucked up for good this time; why had she told him she’d be right back? Talk about famous last words.
She felt her knees hit the linoleum and then everything went dark.
*
Gloria poured out the rum. It was the good stuff she saved for special occasions, which was how Blue knew that this wasn’t what was really happening. Also Gloria was no longer a wolf. She was sitting at the kitchen table with an ashtray in front of her, a cigarette between her fingers and her dentures in her mouth.
“Sit down,” she said.
“Is this real?”
Gloria shrugged. “Depends. You really want to get into sophomore philosophy right now?”
Blue sat down. “No,” she said. “Good point.”
“Have a drink,” said Gloria. “And listen.”
“Okay. I’m listening.”
Gloria stubbed out her cigarette. Her hands were small and bony, the skin fragile as paper, the nicotine stain between her first two fingers like the blush of yew heartwood. Blue couldn’t stop staring at them; she’d taken it for granted that Gloria would ever have hands again.
“I’m done,” said Gloria. “I’m hanging on by my fingernails here. H
e’s bigger, and stronger. He swallowed that meek little Clementine, burped like a champ and asked for more. My old skin and bones and wolf body are the only things holding that sonofabitch in.”
“And then what?” asked Blue.
“Then he breaks loose. Along with all hell. He’s strong, Stormy Blue. He’ll absorb my energy when I’m no longer using it, and when that happens he’ll be able to jump into any body he wants. Maybe even yours.”
“But what does he want?”
Gloria looked at her as though she’d asked the dumbest question in the world. “What anybody wants,” she said. “To touch. To taste and smell. To drink and dance and fuck. Being pure spirit is all very well until you find out what you’re missing out on; cheeseburgers and drinking rum in a hot tub. Long walks on the beach and feeling the sand between your toes. He wants to live. Really live.”
Blue thought of Yael casually plucking that tooth out of Charlie’s head, like he had no idea it couldn’t be replaced. She shivered, realizing Yael probably had no idea of the limits of the human body; he’d be like a heavy-handed child with a toy too delicate for him.
“And he’d steal someone else’s body to do that?” she said.
“Damn straight. Let me tell you about living,” said Gloria. “There’s no bigger why in the world. It doesn’t have words, it doesn’t have reason, it’s just pure will. Remember when you first got your period? And they told you all that shit about how every month your womb made a snuggy-bug lining for a baby to bed down in, all cozy?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that was bullshit,” said Gloria. “It wasn’t a down comforter. It was a proving ground. It was razor wire and landmines to keep away anything that even thought about implanting, because the human fetus is a scary, scary little monster. No other mammal species has a placenta that plumbs directly into the arteries the way ours does. No other mammal has unborn young whose will to live is so big and so mean that it doesn’t care if it kills the mother, so long as it gets born. They suck you dry, leech out your bones, rot your teeth and turn your brain into pudding. And that’s where Yael is at. The cells have all divided, he’s had my bones and my blood and he doesn’t care what happens to me, so long as he gets to live.”
Blue picked up the rum in front of her and downed it in one gulp. It burned. The air no longer shimmered, but crackled, like tiny lightning bolts breaking apart the fabric of reality, or whatever reality this was. It was like the fizzes of interference that had come through when she was flying.
“Is that him?” she said, as a black space flashed above the table between them.
“Yeah. He’s trying to break through.”
“Gloria, what the hell are we going to do?”
Gloria lit another cigarette. “You’re gonna get out of here,” she said. “Along with what’s left of my boys. When I’m gone he’ll break out, and he’ll come looking for them. Looking for a new body, and there’ll be no getting him out.”
Blue shuddered, thinking of what Yael had done to Charlie. That couldn’t happen to Gabe, and especially not Axl. Jesus, Axl. He was just a boy, and Yael clearly prized youth. “So what?” she said. “We run away?”
“I don’t see you have much choice.”
“But what happens with Yael? There must be some way to destroy him.”
Gloria arched a barely-there eyebrow. “Girlie, do I have to get into basic physics with you? He’s energy. I can cut him adrift – that’s all. Miles from anyone. Set the fucker off at a safe distance, like a nuke at Los Alamos.”
There was a bang, so loud that Blue nearly jumped out of her skin. With the next crackle came the smell of gunpowder, that terminal smell that had lingered in her nose longer than blood or brain or any of the other messes her mother had left behind. She heard Yael laughing.
“He’s nuts,” said Gloria. “Has been for a very long time. It wasn’t my fault –”
- bullshit, you old bitch. You were trying to bottle lightning from the start. What the fuck did you think would happen?
Crackle. Splash. More laughing.
Did she tell you what she did, Baby Blue? Did she tell you what she made me do?
“I didn’t make you do shit you hadn’t thought of yourself,” said Gloria. “And more than once, I’ll bet. It’s not my fucking fault you got a bad bargain.”
There was a rip in the air above the table now, deep black bleeding through.
“You would say that,” said Yael, his voice coming through the gap. “But every time some monster shoots up a high school or blows up a plane they all ask the same question; what did his Mommy do to him to make him go so bad?”
Gloria ground out her cigarette with a couple of hard taps. The rip closed, as if someone had pulled it smartly shut with a zipper, but her jaw was set hard and she clenched her fist to hide the tremor in her hand.
“Yael,” she said. “I gave him a woman’s name. From the Bible.”
“The wife of Heber,” said Blue, and although she didn’t remember chapter and verse she remembered the old painting, dark and glowy like a Caravaggio, but the blood gleamed not with devotion but with a deep, bitter vengeance. This one, her mother had always pointed out, was different. This one was painted by a woman.
“That cold,” said Gloria. “That single-minded. He’d hammer a nail through your skull if he thought it would do him some good.”
The air shimmered and sparked. Blue had a sense that time was getting shorter. “Why does he want Charlie?” she said. “And don’t you dare tell me it’s because Charlie is your darling.”
Gloria covered her fist with her other hand. Her bony old knuckles were stark white. “My grandson.”
“And West Lafayette?”
“His father’s name was Blanchard,” she said. “Not Lafayette.” Her eyes watered and the air between them started to tear once again. “And God fucking help me for doing that to my own flesh and blood.”
“He was your son?”
She nodded. Yael began to laugh again.
“Was he my father?”
“That I don’t know,” said Gloria. Yael thrashed against the air, sending out gleeful sparks.
Liar liar, pants on fire.
“Quiet, you bogey,” said Gloria, but there was a tremble in her voice. “You take my book,” she said, nodding to the black plastic folder. “And you get the hell out of here. Don’t wait for the moon. Find Luke Grayson. He’ll help you.”
“But he’s disappeared. I can’t get him on the phone – I’ve tried.”
Gloria gave her a dirty look. “Girlie, a witch don’t need a fucking phone. You said it, you know it, now be it.”
The air tore like a painted backdrop and the black came pouring through. Blue screamed for Gloria but Gloria was gone. Everything was gone. She was miles out at sea, alone in a boat. It was absolute night. She couldn’t even see the glow of light from a distant shore as she turned round and around frantically, looking for help.
Scary, isn’t it?
“Yael, I do not have time for your shit right now,” she said, in a feeble attempt to boss him the way Gloria used to. “Now knock it off.”
Don’t you want to know about your old man? Sure you do. You’ve been wanting that your whole life.
“I don’t care,” said Blue, and she meant it right at that moment. She was trying too hard to tune out the slap of the waves against the side of the boat, the smell of salt and the terror of distance. All lies. Lies, lies, lies. In reality she was on the kitchen floor where she’d fallen. She pictured the pattern of the linoleum, the towel hanging on the handle of the stove, the cupboard door just inches from her fingers. It flashed in front of her eyes for just a second.
Kitchen bitch, kitchen witch. Is that all you ever wanted for yourself?
“I never wanted to be a witch,” she said, and this time the flash was brighter, stronger. It was a little like tuning an old-fashioned radio – back and forth – until the split second fragments of words and music coalesced into something you cou
ld listen to. The kitchen cupboard hung before her in the air and she leaned out towards it, trying to ignore the dark waves beneath her. Not real. You couldn’t drown in water that didn’t exist.
What did you want? To be a skivvy for the rest of your days? Scrubbing the shit out of other people’s toilets?
Yael laughed and started to sing, one of those old numbers he loved so much. High Hopes.
Blue reached. She fell and for an instant her body braced for the shock of cold water, but in the same second the cupboard door opened and a bottle of Windex tumbled out, annoying and mundane and with the elastic band she’d tied around it to keep the various cleaning products with the cloths she used to apply them. She grabbed it like an anchor and the splash never came; she was once again face down on the kitchen floor.
Yael’s song turned to a yell of frustration. Blue scrambled to her feet, hanging on to the edge of the sink. The air tasted sticky and dirty brown, but Gabe was just outside the house and Yael was out of her head.
That’s what you think. I’ll never be out of your head. I was in you before you even knew you were human. You’re mine, Baby Blue.
“You can go fuck yourself,” she said, or at least that’s what she meant to say. The words sounded like gibberish, a strange series of squeaks and yelps. She reached for the book but her fingers wouldn’t grasp and her head felt floaty. She tried again and again to grab the book but there was something terribly wrong with her hand, like it had been disconnected from her brain.
...see? Look you made me do to you. All it takes is a bubble or a clot in the wrong place and you don’t even remember your name any more.
She tasted something on her upper lip but she couldn’t think of the word for it. Red. She tasted red, but that wasn’t right, but then it didn’t matter any more. Knowing the proper word for red went way down her list of priorities; all she knew is that if she didn’t get out of the house right now she would die.