by Mav Skye
Hold it together, Chloe. Hold it together. Get Shayla. Find Chev.
Get Shayla. Find Chev.
These words she chanted over and over, it was the only thing that kept her moving forward.
Chloe trembled as she knocked on the door, hoping that Shayla had given her the right address for her friend.
Get Shayla. Find Chev.
A man opened it, presumably Shayla’s boyfriend’s father. The expression on his face was pure exasperation. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, a blue-haired Shayla popped out behind him and fell into Chloe’s arms. She was still crying, mascara streaming down her cheeks. The teen talked so fast Chloe couldn’t understand what she said.
Surprised by the affection, Chloe squeezed her back and petted her blue hair. She meant to whisper that everything would be okay, but instead all she could say was. “Chev. We need to find Chev.”
The teen agreed.
Chloe mouthed “Thank you,” to the speechless man and hustled Shayla back to the Crown Victoria.
Two words now thundered in her mind as she zipped down the street toward their home. She saw clowns with hatchets, but she ignored them.
Find Chev.
Find Chev.
Find…
Shayla kept talking, streaming like a Netflix video with a bad internet connection, but it fell on deaf ears.
Donny’s unit was parked in the driveway behind Wes’ truck. Chloe’s mind raced as to what this could mean as she pulled in behind it.
Tanya rolled her Prius rental to a stop in front of the house. Chloe didn’t even bother to switch off the ignition before jumping out of the car.
The front door of her house opened.
“Mom!” Chev, distraught, but still in one piece came bounding out of the house, not unlike his furry friend.
Chloe squeezed the boy as he wrapped his arms about her. A clown with bunny ears and a hatchet danced behind the boy, and she squeezed her eyes against the vision. It wasn’t real.
She felt Shayla’s arms wrap around her and Chev, then Tanya, who was a crying mess. This was what was real. The family in her arms were here, and they were safe.
“You guys are squishing me!” Chev squirmed, trying to get out of the tangled mess of women’s arms.
Chloe and Tanya made eye contact and began to laugh.
Shayla was the first to break away, and then they all stepped back to give Chev some space.
Chev said, “Mom! Mom, guess what? Trooper Hanks gave me a ride home! He said I could play with the lights while he and Dad talked and it was fun.”
Chev wrapped his arms around Chloe’s waist again, and she thought it was the best hug she ever had. As they walked up the drive, Chev talked and talked about how his friend had been walking him home the long way, because they were going to skip rocks at the river. When Trooper Hanks showed up, he got shy and ran away.
Chloe said, “You were with your friend? I don’t understand.”
Shayla said, “Chev, he is not your friend. He tried to kill me!”
Chloe tried to comprehend what was going on, and was glad for the distraction. The clown with a hatchet had disappeared—for now.
Wes and Donny stepped out on the porch talking quietly as they approached. When Chloe reached the porch, they quieted. Wes was frowning, and Donny had a tight grimace of worry on his brow.
Chloe looked from one face to the other. “What’s wrong?”
The men glanced at each other. Finally, Donny said, “Chev, did you tell your Mom what your friend’s name is?”
Chev shook his head, and Chloe said, “Is that what that look is about? I kept meaning to have his friend over for dinner, but it’s been so busy and I…” She stopped talking when Wes shook his head.
The vein in Donny’s forehead pulsed.
Tanya and Shayla stood by each other, silent.
Chloe felt goose pimples light her skin from her head to her feet. She tried to keep her hands steady as she gently placed them on her son’s shoulders. “Sweetheart?”
“Why is everyone looking at me like that?” Chev looked from the men to Tanya and Shayla, and then back to Chloe with a confused look on his face.
“Never mind that, Sweetheart,” Chloe looked him in the eye, and asked the question she should have asked weeks ago. “What is your friend’s name?”
Chev let his head loll to the side and scratched his nose before answering. “Mr. Jingles. He’s a clown.”
“Chloe. Wake up, Chloe.” Elogi’s voice came to her out of the ebb and flow of dim lights rivering through the darkness. She latched onto the gentle vibration, letting it guide her up, up, up…
When Chloe opened her eyes, she didn’t see her Aunt Tanya. She saw Mama Nola.
Etsi.
Soft tendrils of peppered hair framed Mama Nola’s face. Her kind gray eyes searched Chloe’s. Etsi placed her warm hands on either side of Chloe’s face. “You must dance, Ayita.”
“Mama Nola?”
“No, Nvda Ayita. It is your Elogi.”
Mama Nola’s eyes turned from gray to hazel. Her peppered hair seeped into a deep brown. Her face shape remained the same, and her touch held the same gentleness.
Chloe’s head rested in Tanya’s lap. She held an icepack to Chloe’s temple.
“You need to give her the medicine.” Wes’ voice insisted from across the room.
Tanya said, “No, she’s missed too many doses. It is time.”
Desperation tinted Wes’ voice. “It will never be time.”
Tanya hissed. “It’s too late. She has already remembered too much. Diana told me.”
“She has?” Complete surprise now lilted his voice. “But she would have told me this morning if—”
Chloe said, “I tried to tell you this morning. I told you I knew.”
“I thought you were talking about the Remogene.” He roared in frustration. “I didn’t realize. I mean I didn’t know…”
At the sound of his voice, she turned and looked at him.
Tanya whispered, “Don’t beat yourself up, Wes.”
Chloe said, “It’s going to be okay.”
“This is not okay. Nothing about this is okay.”
Chloe frowned and shifted her attention back to her Aunt. “Where are the kids?”
Tanya said, “Chev’s in the shower. Shayla is resting in her room.”
Chloe tried to get up, but Tanya pressed on her shoulder. “Please, Ayita, rest a moment longer. Everyone is okay. You’ve had quite a shock.” She brushed a tangle of hair away from Chloe’s forehead.
Chloe relaxed, appreciating her Aunt’s comfort. “Mr. Jingles is real.”
Tanya nodded her head. “I know.”
Tanya glanced over at Wes and Chloe followed her gaze.
Wes brought his hand to his forehead. “It’s not that I didn’t believe you, Chloe. I thought you were getting confused with flashbacks. You’ve always had them. I thought the stress of moving here, your new job. Then, with what happened with the clown at the hospital, I thought you had lost it. And then you fired Doctor Morgan.”
Chloe bit her lip, still feeling hurt, betrayed. Understanding his point of view didn’t make her feel any better.
Wes said, “Donny told me everything about the clown with the hatchet and the bunny ears. He told me how he had seen Mr. Jingles himself at the pool that day when a little girl you were babysitting almost drowned.” He shook his head and opened his mouth to continue, but a knock on the door silenced them.
They all stared at the door. Who was it?
Wes marched to the door and stood in front of it in a power stance. He rolled up the flannel sleeves of his shirt.
Flip Flop stood on guard by Tanya and Chloe. A deep growl emerged from his throat.
There was another knock, knock, knock.
Tanya jumped at the briskness of knuckle on wood.
Wes reached for the door handle.
“No, no, don’t!” Chloe sat up, but it was too late.
Wes
had opened the door.
Chloe knew who—or rather what—would be standing there. Its face would be painted half white, half black with a dreadful lightning strike separating the two down the middle. It would have torn, pink bunny ears…and worst of all, it would be holding a hatchet. After all these years, Mr. Jingles had come back to finish what it started.
Wes said, “Oh, hello, Diana, you startled me.”
“Oh my, I didn’t mean to give you a start,” Diana’s voice purred through the door. “I saw Trooper Hanks here earlier and everyone jumping out of cars and hugging each other. Just wanted to make sure everyone was alright.”
Wes stepped back to let Diana in.
She stepped in, and straightened her shawl. When she looked up, she said, “Oh!” and then, “Maybe I should come back lat—”
Tanya said, “Nonsense, come in. I think it would be good to have you here.”
“If you say so.” She made her way to a pillow-filled chair beside the couch and sat. “Are you okay, Chloe?”
Wes began pacing again. Flip Flop trotted over to Diana and to her surprise licked her face in one smooth movement from top to bottom. “Oh!” she said for the third time and wiped at her face. “I guess he likes me, eh?”
Chloe couldn’t help but smile.
Tanya laughed out loud.
Flip Flop stretched out by Diana’s feet and nudged his nose affectionately against her sandals. She scratched behind his ear, and he sneezed suddenly, making everyone laugh again.
Chloe sat up. “I’m okay, Diana. I think Aunt Tanya was just about to tell me something.”
“I have a question I’d like to have answered first—if you don’t mind.”
Chloe looked up at her Aunt.
Tanya said, “What happened that day, Chloe?”
Chloe reached for her earlobe, hesitating. The mere thought of touching that memory, of the rehashed vision of Mama Nola lying on her bedroom floor, makeup melting off her face, the bunny ears covered in brain and blood, realizing her mother had been the clown that had stalked Chloe her entire life felt akin to sticking needles in her heart. Panic fluttered like butterfly wings in her stomach. A black river surged through her mind, and she felt herself retreating into it.
Uktena, whispered Mama Nola.
A warm tongue splashed across Chloe’s cheek, startling her back to the present.
Flip Flop had moved away from Diana and now sat directly in front of Chloe with his head cocked to the side, floppy ears raised. Chloe focused on the feel of his soft fur and stroked his muzzle, then scratched behind his ears.
Diana whispered, “‘Never lie to the dog.’”
“Excuse me?” asked Tanya.
Diana said, “It’s a line from Koontz’s Dark Rivers of the Heart.”
Wes asked, “Is that the one with the chef and the clowns?”
Diana laughed. “No, you’re thinking of Life Expectancy.”
Tanya said, “I didn’t know you read books.”
Wes resumed pacing. “Chef’s gotta read, too.”
“Dark Rivers of the Heart,” Tanya shook her head. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“No,” Diana said, “but Chloe has.”
Chloe recalled their conversation about the book from the hospital. She hadn’t realized that there was a dog in the story. Again, it was another similarity. As if agreeing with Diana, Flip Flop lifted his amber eyes and met Chloe’s.
Never lie to the dog.
When Chloe spoke, it wasn’t to her Aunt or Diana; it was to her constant furry companion.
The whole story of that day fell from her lips. Chloe didn’t spare any details, and when finished, she was surprised at how unburdened she felt. The truth hurt, but it also healed. It was with this knowledge that Chloe brought her face from Flip Flop’s to her Aunt’s.
Tanya sat beside her on the couch, looking uncomfortable and saddened with what she had just learned. It struck Chloe that perhaps keeping her niece from her past was also a way of protecting herself from the truth of what her sister had become.
Chloe said, “Now, I need you to answer one of my questions. The one I asked you that day, but you never answered for me.”
Diana cocked her head and raised her eyebrows, but she didn’t say a word, leaving that for Tanya.
Tanya said, “What is it you would like to know?”
Chloe said, “Why did you and Mama Nola stop speaking to each other?”
Tanya let out her breath. “She had a restraining order against me.”
Chloe touched her mouth. “What? Why?”
Tanya took Chloe’s hands. “When you were first born, Ionia and I lived together. She worked the swing shift at a chocolate factory here in town. Kiss of Chocolate it was called. The factory closed down in the early eighties.”
Chloe said, “Mama Nola worked at a chocolate factory?”
Tanya said, “Yes. We had a small inheritance given to us from our parents. Ionia gave me her portion to pay for my college tuition. What she made from the factory paid for our rent and groceries. It wasn’t until after the factory closed that…Well, I need to start at the beginning.”
Chloe nodded and waited while her Elogi collected her thoughts. She said, “I have a question.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Who is my father?”
Tanya glanced over at Diana, her hand trembling when she brought it to her heart. “I don’t know if you want to know that.”
Chloe took her Aunt’s hand and squeezed it. “I do.”
Tanya said, “As I said, your mother worked the swing shift at the Chocolate Factory. We didn’t have money for a car. I would ask her to take the bus home. The factory wasn’t more than a mile away, but I worried about her being alone so late at night. But your mother,” Tanya shook her head. “She was stubborn. She loved to walk at night, especially when the moon was full. A bit of a romantic, if you know what I mean.”
Chloe treasured her Aunt’s every word, holding close all the hidden knowledge of her mother.
Tanya continued, “One night after Ionia got off her shift, she decided to take a shortcut through an alley. I don’t know why she changed her normal route home that night. When she first started working there, I lost sleep, and my grades dropped because I worried so much about your mother walking home at night. We had lost so much already, and I couldn’t bear to lose your mother. So, to appease my fears, she stayed on Main street, walked by the police station, then took the roads only with streetlights. It took longer that way. There were shorter ways to get home, but she did it for me, so I would know she was safe.”
Tanya sniffed.
Diana whipped a tissue out of a nearby Kleenex box and handed it to Tanya. She accepted with a thank you and dabbed at her eyes. “Months later, I asked Ionia why she had taken the alley that night. She told me it had been a full moon. The moonbeams haloed the building tops and trees, lighting everything up like a fairytale. She had paused at the alleyway. She said it smelled of jasmine. How roses climbed the archways and daisies blossomed as if they were heralding the path to the underworld.
“I told you Ionia was a romantic. She couldn’t resist taking the alley. “A serial rapist, now known as The Werewolf Rapist, was waiting in that alley that night. They—the Police—think he’d seen Ionia before, knew her schedule. Now, how he knew she’d take the alley instead of Main street through town that night is anyone’s guess. But he was waiting for Ionia, no doubt about it. He beat her, raped her, and left her for dead.”
Tanya paused, wiped tears from her cheeks. “She wasn’t found until morning. Ionia had lain there all night, alone, naked and broken under the full moon.”
Chloe touched her heart. She had thought she had wanted to know who her father was. As a child, she had fantasized he was a handsome European who had swept in like a storm, sweeping her mother off her feet in a secret midnight rendezvous of passion. Or perhaps he had been a lonely widower who had struck up a friendship with her mother that turned from friendly han
dshakes to candlelit dinners, long picnics on lazy Sunday afternoons leading to untamed desire in the dark, but this…?
Knowing that she had been granted life into this world by acts of brutality and the darkest of predatory hunger, knowing that this beast dehumanized and impregnated her mother, knowing her Etsi had been left broken and despairing in a deserted alley on a night she had called a fairytale…? It broke Chloe’s heart to a depth she was unaware existed.
Diana had once said that the past was there to prepare for the future, but what good was there in knowing her father was a rapist and that her mother endured more pain than any person should ever have to endure?
Her Aunt and Wes were right; perhaps the past did belong in the past.
Wes paused in his pacing, a look of concern and sadness softening his features.
Diana said, “I’ve read about the Werewolf Rapist. Only attacked on a full moon. Women claimed he had the fur, teeth, and claws of a wolf. It was speculated that he was a true werewolf, changing from man to beast on a full moon, his fur disappearing at the first morning light like mist.”
Chloe asked, “Did they catch him?”
Diana shook her head. “Not as far as I know.”
Chloe turned back to Tanya. “Were you the one that found her?”
“I had stayed at a friend’s house that night to study for the Bar Exams. I had no idea.” Tanya said, “It was the City Police that found Ionia that morning. I didn’t know what had happened until I came home early from the University, and she wasn’t there. I could tell that she’d never come home from work. Dirty dishes were still in the sink; she couldn’t stand dirty dishes. I called the police to report her missing, and that was when they told me she was at the hospital.
“A few weeks after that, your mother started feeling sick, tired all the time. I had a bad feeling about it. I took her to a doctor, a Doctor Morgan. He told us Ionia was pregnant.” Tanya reached for Chloe’s hand.
Chloe asked, “Doctor Morgan as in my therapist?”
She nodded. “He quit OB after a few years and went into experimental therapy, moved to California. He brought you into this world, Chloe, and he’s known you your whole life. He even came up to Washington to do your wellness checkups.”