Pretty Little Dead Girls

by Mercedes M. Yardley

  She pulled her head back to look at him and the dark circles under her eyes ran down her cheeks until the pale oval of her face was lost in despairing shadow.

  “Peter, I love him. I love him and I have missed him terribly while I’ve been away, and I left him to this desert which is a hateful, horrid thing. I should have come home. I should have run from Eddie and Syrina and everybody else long ago, and now it’s too late. I have friends, and a husband, and people that I look forward to seeing at the flower shop. They are in danger, and my father worries about me. I stayed too long, and now I have ruined everything for so many people.”

  His bird, his Star Girl, was splitting apart. He held the flesh of one in his arms but the other was flitting around, unable to be calmed, incapable of landing. Her clawed feet kept catching at his hair as she ricocheted from wall to wall, ceiling to floor.

  “Bryony, we’ll find him.”

  “It’s too late, it’s too late. What have I done?”

  “I said we’ll find him.”

  The desert crackled with laughter.

  Peter’s head ached, his back hurt, his arms were tightening of their own accord around the fragile skeleton running beneath Bryony’s skin, it would soon be powder, it would soon be dust, and everything would end. She’d scatter to the wind and the desert would open its mouth eagerly, catching her on its tongue, and it would be satiated.

  Bryony’s breath had gone shallow. Her eyes were wide and unseeing. Peter abruptly released her.

  “Oh, Bryony, I’m so sorry. It’s this house, this land outside of it. It’s telling me to kill you, to feed you to it, and I’ve never had anything quite like this happen before. I’m not myself, it’s not letting me be myself, and I’m not a tool for it to use. I refuse.” He closed his eyes, took a deep breath. The Bryony birds formed one complete Bryony again, and her gray eyes were focused on Peter’s white face. He tried again, quieting all of the voices and the screaming of the desert.

  “Let’s find your father. Then let’s get out of here.”

  She nodded, once, and was out the door without another word.

  Peter was shaking, he had to admit it. And he was furious. How dare this land of sand and bones call to him like that, bow him down to it? He would not. He would not. Bryony was his kill and his kill alone, and the desert would simply go without. That’s the way that it was. That was the way he would make it be.

  Peter ducked out of the door after her.

  CHAPTER FORTY NINE

  Stop

  Stop was indeed in the town’s tiny hospital, which was little more than a glorified clinic, really. They delivered babies there and bound up broken bones and put Branny Jacob’s eye back in after Tom Kidd had popped it out with the butt of his knife, though. Twice. “The first time you pop out my eye, shame on you,” the nurse said to Branny after he came to, “but the second time that you do it, shame on me

  Stop lay in bed, hooked up to tubes and monitors and wires. His hospital gown was on backward so they could easily reach in and adjust all manner of medical doodads on his chest, and he had an IV slowly dripping a clear, benign looking substance from a bag into a long tube that ended on the back of his hand.

  “Oh, Daddy,” Bryony said, dropping to her knees beside the bed. She kissed her father’s shriveled hands and smoothed his white hair away from his gray face. “I have missed you so much, and talking to you on the phone isn’t enough. I need to see you with my own eyes and feel you with my own fingers, and you need to do the same. We’re alive, Daddy. We’re alive.”

  Stop smiled at her wanly, and then his eyes traveled up to the man who stood in the doorway. His smile quickly became a frown, and Bryony wished she had not seen it: a tired trace of a smile that slipped and fell farther and farther until it was a rainbow of ill feeling.

  “Who is this?” he asked. “Where is Eddie?”

  Peter tried to look strong and helpful, but the old man’s expression didn’t change when his daughter explained.

  “This is Peter. He’s the man who saved my life on the trail. Eddie couldn’t come. Things are going very well for him with his music, and he simply couldn’t . . . he wasn’t able to come, Daddy. But I’m here, and Peter came to make sure of my safety.”

  Stop’s expression darkened as he eyed Peter, and Bryony said brightly, “So how are you feeling now? You certainly gave me a scare. What did the doctor say?”

  Stop sighed. “The doctor says it’s a heart attack, brought on by stress, most likely. Says he.”

  Bryony, being the type of daughter she is, read her father very well. “But you think it’s something different. What is it?”

  Stop looked her dead in the eyes. “It’s the desert, honey. It is time, and it is coming for you, and it doesn’t want me around to stop it. I am an old man but I still have power, and the desert is sweeping me away.” His eyes flicked back at Peter. “He shouldn’t be here, sweetheart. Eddie should.”

  “Daddy, I told you that Eddie—”

  Stop wrapped his frail fingers carefully around hers. “Honey. My heart is going to stop now. I can feel it slowing down, and it is my time to go. I am sorry to leave you, but I don’t want you to be sad. It’s hard, sweetie,” he said, as tears coursed down her face, “and I know that it is going to hurt you badly for a while. But know this: I love you, and I am very proud of you, and you have made me happy. I want you to live. I want you to live, my darling girl, and to do so, you need to run. Leave this place, for the desert speaks to me at night and it craves your bones in a monstrous way. The things it tells me at night, the things that it says . . . they are horrible. This is what has damaged my heart. It chips away each time the desert vomits out its plans for you. Now listen to me carefully: You must leave this man. Immediately. Tonight, honey.”

  “But Daddy, he saved me. He has been watching over me and protecting me.”

  Stop’s eyes were losing their sparkle. They were losing their luster. This distressed Bryony more than she could possibly express, but she wanted her father to remember her as a happy girl who was admirably pulled together, not as a weeping child-woman who threw herself onto his bed and begged him not to go, which was what she really wanted to do. He was both her father and her mother, he was the one that always loved her and cared for her, and taught her how to read and write and listen to the desert. He was strength, even in his physical frailty, and with Stop gone, she was going to be lost, she just knew it.

  Daddy, she thought, don’t go. Don’t leave me. I can’t do this without you, and I have been so tired lately, and something is wrong with Eddie, and I am so scared to be here right now. Don’t let the desert win. Don’t let it take you! I want to be your little girl forever, and know you will always love me, and won’t turn away from what I have to do. Please, Daddy.

  But she is a kind girl, our dear Bryony, and she kept these thoughts to herself, never to be heard by anyone else. Instead she chose to say, “I love you, Daddy. Don’t worry about me. I will be very careful.”

  Stop’s gaze floated from Bryony to the man in the doorframe.

  “You can’t have her,” he said with what strength he had left. “You can’t have my little girl. I know what you are, and I say she isn’t meant for you.”

  “Daddy,” Bryony said, but the blipping machine ceased to blip and a distressing flat beeeeeeeep ran. Bryony’s tears flowed again in earnest. The quiet room suddenly became a place of pounding feet and harried nurses, and Bryony couldn’t move, but continued to kneel there and weep over the corpse of her father.

  Peter stepped forward and rested a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Bryony. I really am.”

  She accepted his hand, but her heart shred itself into tinier and tinier pieces. Her father’s last words hadn’t been for her but for this stranger, and his eyes had been seeing him and him alone. This hurt Bryony, and made her jealous, which made her feel unreasonable, and then repentant, and then she thought of her father. She felt something strong and good inside of her turn its face to th
e wall and die.

  “I think that my h-heart is b-breaking,” she said, and thought she had never cried so much, not in such a short amount of time, and it wearied her. Where was Eddie? Where was her husband? Why was she alone with the desert and Stop’s cooling body and this strange man that looked at her with a light in his eyes she now found disconcerting? Why was she alone? Why was she alone?

  “You’re not alone,” Peter said, as though he could hear her. “I am with you. I am always with you. Come, Bryony, let’s go back to the house. Let them take care of your father, and I’ll take care of you. Let me take care of you.”

  She was a zombie, she was undead. She was what she had always been, and that was thinly tethered to this world by a silken cord, and it was starting to unravel. Tonight. Tonight.

  “Tonight is the night,” she whispered. “Tonight is when it all happens.”

  “What was that, dear?” Peter asked in his most comforting voice. He had been practicing it under his breath, and it came out in a rather satisfactory manner. He was quite pleased with himself. He helped Bryony to her feet and put his arm around her, guiding her toward the door. Toward the desert, and away from her father.

  She isn’t meant for you, her father said. His final words, and they were so full of his stalwartness and protectiveness and the fire he always stoked in his warm, warm heart. She isn’t meant for you, said to the man that now had his arms around her. This was wrong, he shouldn’t be here. It should be Eddie or Syrina or Rikki-Tikki or even Chad the Fish Guy, but not this man, this man who pulled her out of the arms of a killer on the trail, but had been covered in blood himself. Bryony had woken up to Peter’s ethereal smiling face splashed with crimson. Her blood, sure, although more than once she wondered if it was truly all hers, or if some of it had belonged to her would-be murderer. There was so much and they had never found the other man after Peter chased him off...but how could she think such a thing when Peter had been so kind as to help her then, as he was helping her now?

  Oh, how Bryony’s head spun.

  Her thoughts were tumbling like chips of plastic in a kaleidoscope, and she told herself it was merely shock, and the loss of . . . the death of . . . losing her father, her father.

  “Daddy,” she said aloud, and began to cry again, so hard she could scarcely walk, she clung to Peter’s sleeve with her girlish fingers, being guided as though she were blind. Finally he picked her up and carried her out to the car.

  Somebody was walking down the street right then, and stood on the sidewalk and watched silently. It was Teddy Baker, Bryony’s first kiss, and he stood very still as he watched the stranger situate Bryony in the car and safely belt her in. He nodded politely to Teddy, and Teddy nodded politely back, and the man got into the driver’s seat and drove away.

  Teddy tucked his hands into his pockets and watched until the car disappeared on the flat, dusty road.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Teddy Baker

  This is what Teddy Baker thought:

  He thought, “I recognize the look in that man’s eyes. It shone from my own eyes long ago. He is going to kill Bryony, and she seems too weak to notice. That is not like her. Something is wrong.”

  He thought, “Why is she with him and not with her husband?”

  He thought, “Am I willing to risk my life to save hers again? It really is her fate to die, it has always been so, and who am I to deny it?”

  His heart, which had been stretched by his wife, and even more by his baby girl, was big enough to encompass the Star Girl. Besides, he still recalled their one and only kiss, and how it felt, and the sweet sound of her breathing as she leaned toward him, and his certainty that she would not be breathing in the morning if he got his way. That kiss, her breathing, and her guileless gray eyes had made his heart chant the same mantra it was chanting now.

  Something is wrong. Something is wrong. Something is wrong.

  And human nature seldom changes. The type of person you are as a child still manifests itself in the way you conduct yourself as an adult, and Teddy Baker was certainly no different. When he was young and faced with the decision of What To Do With Bryony, he decided to save her. Let her live, let her be free. It was only right then, and it was only right now, and somewhere deep inside of Teddy, his younger self rose and stretched and looked out at the world with unexpectedly fierce eyes, and nodded his head resolutely.

  CHAPTER FIFTY ONE

  Sorrow

  “I’m sorry, but I have to be alone for a while,” Bryony said to Peter. He nodded and stepped outside, quietly closing the screen door behind him. Bryony wandered around her childhood home, touching the walls and running her hands over the counters, shiny from years of use. She picked up the phone, called Eddie, and let it ring and ring and ring.

  “Hey, it’s Eddie. Leave a message, will ya?”

  There was a beep, and Bryony didn’t know what to say for a long time. She wanted to be positive; she wanted to make sure he didn’t worry. He had so much to concentrate on, after all. But at the same time, she wanted him to realize how hurt she was. She wanted him to be on his knees saying: “Baby, I’m so sorry, please forgive me. How could I ever have been so misguided?” They would then fling themselves at each other and there would be tears and warm kisses and they’d rub the tips of their noses cozily together.

  Now all was not well, and this very real not-wellness made it hard for Bryony to say what she wanted to say. “How dare you? How could you leave me? Don’t you know I need you more than I have ever needed anyone? Don’t you know I have never been so weak, never been so fragile, and you aren’t here? How could you send another man to look after me, when I wear the ring that binds me to you, when I love you, when you swore you’d treasure me until the time came?”

  Eddie’s phone clicked off. She had waited too long. Still she held the receiver to her ear, and thought, and finally whispered to the dead air what she should have said to his answering machine.

  “I love you, Eddie. We lost a baby when I was attacked, and I didn’t know how to tell you. I wanted to name her after your mother, or even possibly after mine, but it’s too late. It’s always too late. I almost wish I had died that day, that I wasn’t tortured by being forced to go on without her, and now without you.

  “Goodbye, my love.”

  The phone slid gently into the cradle with the sound of something that knows where it belongs. It belongs in the cradle as Bryony belongs with Eddie, and as their child had belonged to both of them. It didn’t seem fair, and with an uncharacteristic surge of anger, she knocked the phone out of its cradle until it lay on the floor, showing its belly in shock and confusion and a terrible vulnerability, making a lonely beeping call that said, “I am loose, I am unbound. I am not where I am supposed to be. Help me, please help me. Put me back because I am quite incapable of doing it by myself.”

  It was a heart wrenching sound, and yet Bryony couldn’t make herself slide the receiver into its cradle, for she feared the final, smug click. Much easier for her to back away, and then finally turn and run for another part of the house, somewhere safer and kinder and much more sensitive to her thoughts and feelings. Somewhere that would try its best to remind her of her childhood instead of how things had gone terribly wrong, and how she had been abandoned by her child and father and husband.

  So who was left? Who was left?

  Peter was left. And yet . . . and yet that thought wasn’t comforting, not in the least, and merely thinking of his name gave her the sad feeling she felt when she watched the stars fall. Bryony fled to her room, and crawled under the covers, and cried like a woman who had tried so hard, and given so much, and had her love and life taken away piece by piece by piece.

  CHAPTER FIFTY TWO

  Rescue

  There was a tapping on Bryony’s bedroom window. She awoke slowly, groggy and disoriented. The thoughts of her father, Eddie, and her sweet unborn baby slammed into her, and she wearily realized this was life. It wasn’t going to get much better. S
he had been programmed to flee for the promise and hope of a better world, when perhaps the best thing to do would be turn over and close her eyes so she wouldn’t see the face of death when it overtook her.

  Then more tapping.

  Bryony slipped out of bed, opened the window, and peered out onto the street. There stood Teddy Baker, half hidden behind the rough dry brush in the yard.

  Why, it was her girlhood fantasy come true. How very bizarre.

  “Teddy, what are you doing here?”

  Teddy smiled at her. “Nobody calls me Teddy anymore. I’ve gone by Ted for the last ten years.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

  “No, don’t apologize, Bryony. I like it. It reminds me . . . of a time long ago, and I realize now that is a good thing to remember.” The smile dropped off of his face. “I need to tell you something, and it is extremely important. I know you’re in a state because of your father. Are you alert enough to understand what I’m saying?”

  Ah, dear Teddy. So concerned and trying terribly to do the right thing.

  “Yes,” Bryony said. “Please go on.”

  “Well,” he said, and it looked as though perhaps he was blushing, although one could never be sure under the moon, but it is popular opinion that yes, indeed, he was blushing rather madly as he said this. “I have come to rescue you.”

  There was silence for a long while.

  “Do I . . . particularly need saving at the moment? I mean, more than usual?”

  Teddy sighed. “You do. My wife and I discussed it. The second she saw you at your wedding, she turned to me and said: ‘That young woman is going to die.’ And I said: ‘Yes. It won’t be long now, I think.’ And she said: ‘If you ever get the chance, you have to save her. Promise me.’ I’d promise her anything. So when I saw you with that guy—”

  “Peter.”

  “What?”

  “His name is Peter.”