by David Nickle
“That joy buzzer your dead husband’s ‘associate’ has is a better deal all the way around. Easy to buy and use, and less costly. In fact, you might want to take the money you save on that and buy yourself a wig. If you’re goin’ somewhere after this—don’t take the direct route. Zigzag a bit. Throws ’em off the scent, if they’re on it. Now let me see. Is there anythin’ else I can think of?”
As she thought, Roy got another couple of Budweisers out of the fridge, popped them both and handed one to Penny.
“Oh yeah,” she said. “Get yourself an exorcist. But not the kind uses snakes and potions. Those ones are liars.”
THE PLAINS
i
Ann checked her Gmail at a public library in Atlanta. She didn’t sign in to chat. There was an email from Jeanie, though.
Hey Ann
Call me, would you? Everyone’s really worried about you.
Lesley checked and your bro’s fine. He’s checked out of the Hollingsworth place. He apparently consented. Michael’s friend Ian is taking him back to his place where the wedding was. He stayed there before, so it should be okay. I remember they had a room for him and everything.
They finished arrangements for getting Michael’s remains back. There’s going to be a memorial, but they want you to be there. You should be there. Lesley got in touch with Ian and he said to tell you to please come home. Or at least answer your cell phone. He said to say you aren’t in any trouble. He’s sorted everything out with the airline.
I know it can be really hard, and I know what you told me about Michael. I can’t imagine what you must be going through. But you have to know people love you and want to help you.
Love
Jeanie
Ann pressed the “reply” button, and thought about what to write. She finally typed:
Hi Jeanie,
Tell Lesley to get Philip out of there! These guys are sick! They’re going to hurt him. I can’t call you, because they might hurt you too. In fact—you should get away from your place for a while and don’t tell anyone where you are.
There’s a man with short hair and a blue jacket and a little girl whose friend Mister Sleepy is just as bad as the Insect. He might show up at your door. He might not tell her to stop.
Run!
She didn’t send it.
Jeanie didn’t know about the Insect. She didn’t know about Mister Sleepy. How would that email read to her? Ann didn’t want to seem crazy; didn’t want to set off any alarm bells that weren’t already ringing. What the hell had she been thinking?
She had been following Penny’s advice along the road. Roy’s friend Pete ran a used-car lot out of an old filling station up the highway, and he had a surprisingly extensive stock of vehicles. After some hemming and hawing, she settled on an old Chevrolet campervan. Roy agreed, it would be easier to find camp grounds that took cash than it would motels. He and Pete had a quiet word out of earshot of Ann, and they figured $2,000 would be a fair price, given the vehicle’s age and the smell in the upholstery and level of rust and so forth. Ann thought it was a steal, but kept her mouth shut on the matter.
Ann hadn’t bought a gun, and she hadn’t bought a Taser either. She did manage to find a wig shop in Mobile, and got a red wig and a pair of big disguisey sunglasses too, and in the outlet store up the road, a pale blue jean jacket that was unlike anything else she owned. She did buy a mobile phone with a disposable number on it, and did max out her card on a cash advance—another $5,500 was what she could arrange. She bought a bus ticket to New Orleans and put it in the pocket of that jean jacket. Then she headed northeast in her fancy new van, her credit card broken in two at the bottom of her purse.
Was all that enough? If she’d done all this straight out of Miami, would Mister Sleepy and his master have been able to find her in the Rosedale Arms? Had they really tracked her by the license plate of her rented Toyota and a Gchat in the business centre? Or had they used something else?
Were they still on her trail even now?
Ann closed the email without sending it, then changed her password—something that she should have done a long time ago. She logged back in, just to make sure when she noticed the sender of a new message in her inbox.
mailto:[email protected]
She didn’t have much time left, and it was a long note. So she opened the email, and despite the risk, summoned a library page to find out how to use the printer in this town. When it was finished, she deleted the email, signed out, and cleared the cache—just like Penny’d shown her.
She hurried back to her van with the printout, to read it through. Because that was the one piece of advice from Penny she hadn’t yet been able to follow.
She had not yet sought out an exorcist.
ii
Blessings, Ann
Oh I don’t know where to start. I love love love love you. I hope after everything that has happened you are okay. I know you know that I was sick for a while. I had a bit of a stroke. I don’t want to bore you with details, but it was very hard for me to move or to talk for a little while. I’m better now but not all better. I can go on the computer and I can do my stuff. I had some very good helpers to keep me going. There’s an in-home care division from the Hollingsworth Centre and they really helped a lot.
That’s me. Now you. First I am so sorry. I heard about the accident in the airplane on the news. I am sorry. Michael was a good man. I could feel it when I checked him, my way. He really loved you and I know you loved him too. I am praying for you.
I know from reading your emails you sent me from Tobago, that you were having a hard time with the Insect. I wish I could have helped you. But they didn’t tell me about all the calls and messages that came in when I was sick until later.
I still have a hard time moving. But I can type, and I can pray. If you call me, I might be a bit hard to understand. But in the meantime, I can remind you of what we learned.
Remember when we first met? It was in the hospital—after another crash. I remember you there, so small, in that playroom. It was Christmas, and my nephew had told me I had to go, and of course I did.
I had a rest just now. This is a lot of typing.
You were so frightened there. They didn’t know what to do with you. You wouldn’t go away with your Nan—you wouldn’t even go back to your room. You were afraid that things would start to happen. That you wouldn’t be able to control it. That the Insect would come out and tear the hospital to pieces. Do some harm.
You told me everything. You were such a brave girl. And you told me, “Get rid of this thing. Make it go away. Ryan says you can. So do it please.”
I told you of course I would. I would spend all the time with you I needed to make sure the thing inside you went away.
I think now you understand that I couldn’t really do that. That was a white lie I told you, because I couldn’t tell you then what we later learned: that you can’t make something go away that’s part of you. You can control it. You can make it behave. You just have to learn how to talk to it.
Eventually we used your Dungeons & Dragons game.
But that day we did a simpler thing. We just did a little chant: “Shut up. I know you’re there. But shut up right now.”
You said it again and again, first with me, and then on your own. I left you for a little while alone in the room, chanting this over and over.
I spoke with your Nan after that alone. She was very skeptical about my methods. A lot of people are. Particularly people who believe in the traditional religions. But I explained to her about the importance of this, and the counsellors at the hospital agreed, and so you were able to go home. Your old home first, then, after a while, over to Barrie to live with your Nan.
She was a dear. I hope you remember her that way, still. You only had a few years with her before she passed on. But she loved you and Philip dearly. We became good friends. I like to think we still tal
k.
So here is what I want you to do. Every time you see the Insect start to assert itself, I want you to say, “Shut up! I know you are there!” And I want you to think of your Nan. Nothing happened when you were with her. The Insect kept its peace. Nothing happened for many years after you lived with her. When you moved in with me for those years, we kept it under control. But it all started with this:
Shut up.
I know you’re there.
But shut up for now.
My dear Ann, I hope that helps you for now. But should you want more help, please call me. I promise, this time I’ll answer myself.
Love love love
Eva
Ann folded the sheets and slid them into the glove box of the van. It was late in the afternoon outside the library in the parking lot. Minivans and SUVs were pulled up by the sidewalk, letting kids off. On the steps outside, an elderly man with a ponytail and a thick beard sat on a bench, thumbing through a thick volume. Ann pulled the disposable cell phone from her handbag. It was an old-style flip phone.
She opened it, and from memory, dialled Eva’s number.
iii
“Hello?”
“Hello Eva. Don’t say my name if there’s someone else in the room right now.”
“Mm. All . . . all right.”
“So there is.” Ann sighed. “All right. Eva, I got your email. I’ve made a copy and printed it. You do the same when we’re done.”
A pause. “Yes.”
“Good. Now. There are some things we need to talk about very quickly. I need you to listen to me.”
“Yes.”
“First. Ian Rickhardt is not to be trusted. He is a—”she wanted to say prick, but knew better than to use that kind of language with Eva “—a wicked man. So was . . . so was Michael. They—” Ann paused. She tried to form the words to describe what had happened, exactly, in a way that Eva could understand.
“They’re perverts,” she said finally. “They both knew full well about the Insect. They . . . they exploited it sexually. Does that make sense?”
There was a silence on the other line.
“Ian has taken Philip. They’ve taken him from his home care. Apparently he consented to it. But I’m worried he doesn’t understand. I think he’s in trouble.”
“All right.” She sounded less certain. But then she added, “Just a moment.”
The phone muffled—a longish silence as these things went—and she was back.
“All right. I’ve sent David away. He was here just now, helping clean up. I’ve asked him if he could take out the garbage, and he hopped to it.”
“Who is David?”
“He’s with the home,” said Eva. She was still speaking slowly, hesitantly, stumbling a bit over consonants. “He’s been helping me ou’. Out.”
“Okay.” Ann thought about that. Hadn’t a David told her he was Eva’s nephew? She wasn’t sure, and didn’t want to get into it with Eva now. “Well. Don’t talk to him about any of this.”
“Of course not. Now tell me, Ann. Did the Insect cause that plane crash?”
“It didn’t quite crash. But Michael caused it. He raped the Insect, Eva. Ian did too.”
“Goodness,” said Eva. “Goodness.”
“He wasn’t a good man. Neither of them were.”
“Ann,” said Eva, somewhat more deliberately, “how precisely did he rape it?”
Ann felt her throat rise. Outside, a woman crossing the parking lot glanced at her, and looked away quickly. Ann might’ve done that herself, seeing a woman like Ann in the cab of a burned-out campervan, crying. “I—I don’t know, precisely. But it told me. It told me it was happening.”
“How did it tell you?”
Ann drew a breath. She swallowed, and steadied herself.
“I can’t stay on this phone very long,” she said. “You’ve got to trust me. There are a group of men, who do this to the Insect. To poltergeists. I’ve met them. They have some sick relationship with them. They . . . they call people like me a ‘vessel’ for their . . . for their real brides. Michael was one of them. And Ian Rickhardt’s one of them. And I think he’s kidnapped Philip.”
“Do you want to call the police?”
Ann wiped her eyes. The tears were gone as fast as they’d come. Something else came up in its place. A hard certainty. Eva wasn’t alone in the room, wherever she was. This wasn’t her; there was more than a stroke at work here.
“Eva,” she said, “you’re not really alone, are you?”
“I’m alone,” said Eva. “But I’m also listening to you. And this . . .
this doesn’t make sense. You’ve had an accident in Tobago, and another one on the airplane back. With tragic consequences. But it’s only that you’ve slipped—you’ve let go. So what you need to do, is get it back under control. And you’re on the phone right now, and I think we might just be able to do that.”
“All right,” said Ann.
“Good. Now, Ann, I want you to visualize the safe place.”
Ann shut her eyes. There was nothing but darkness.
“Do you have it there?”
“Yes,” said Ann. “I’m in the tower, and there’s sunlight streaming in the windows, and there are unicorns dancing outside.”
“Unicorns?”
Ann opened her eyes. The sun had gone behind a cloud, and the wind was whipping up.
“I’m sorry, Eva. I can’t.”
“You don’t want to, you mean.”
There is no can’t, only won’t, thought Ann crazily.
“It’s past that,” said Ann. “The Insect has escaped. I tried to get it back in. And I couldn’t.”
“Ann,” said Eva sharply, “the Insect hasn’t done anything. It can’t escape, if you don’t let it. Now let’s take a breath—fill ourselves up with energy. Breathe deep—”
“It’s killed, Eva. The Insect has killed.”
On the bench by the library, the man shut his book, and peered up at the sky. The quality of light was changing; Ann could feel a prickling on her arms.
“Ann, you need to take control of this thing. You need to put it down.”
The Insect had killed. That was true; it had killed Michael, while he tried to rape it. It had taken Hirsch, the lawyer, to the very edge of death and held him there.
And when Ann was facing a kidnapper all her own, it had lifted her high in the air, free from harm—and it had saved her.
It would take more than a placebo to keep the Insect anywhere it didn’t want to be. More to the point, it would take more than that to keep it anywhere Ann didn’t want it to be.
Outside the car, a woman with a stroller shouted to her husband, and pointed to the west. Thick drops of rain splattered on the car windshield.
“Eva,” said Ann, “I want you to be careful. Don’t trust David. Don’t trust Ian. If you can, call up your nephew Ryan and get him to take you away from home.”
“Ann?”
Ann swallowed, and smiled as the western clouds fattened into deep, greenish-black things.
“Just go,” she said. “Go stay with Ryan.”
Ann clicked the phone off, and cracked its back and pulled its battery out. She dropped the battery out the window, turned the ignition, and pulled out of the parking lot and onto the long and twisted road ahead of her.
She had to take it. Philip needed her.
Whatever anyone else said, she knew it to be true.
THE CANDY ROBOT
i
And then she was three.
They had a party for her. It was her third birthday party really, one that was just for her. The first birthday was marked with a brunch in their living room where other parents with little children came around and ate bagels and smoked salmon and talked over their children’s heads, and Ann just jumped and grinned in her playpen while Philip caroused in the dining room with
a pair of twin girls who were only a year older than he.
The girls weren’t there at her second birthday. Neither was her dad. He was off talking to investors in Boston, and Ann and Philip and their mom were stuck in Long Island, with their grandparents. Mom’s mom and dad. It was a nice house, and there was some cake, and Gran even lit a couple of candles and put it in the top. But it was quiet, and rainy, and nobody came, and their mom seemed distracted the whole time.
This birthday was better. It was a real party.
Ann was a nice kid. She had friends. There was a play group at the local park that her mom took her to; they met every day at eleven, moms and dads carrying silver thermos-mugs of coffee and diaper bags as the kids clambered over swings and seesaws. Ann had formed meaningful friendships with a little girl named Robyn, a trio of boys whose names she could never get straight—Nick, Stevie and something-or-other—and another little girl, with long braided dark hair and the biggest smile Ann had ever seen. Ann couldn’t pronounce her name, but she always won at hide and seek. There was also a puppy, whose name was Buster, who was sometimes there with Robyn’s mom. He was brown and liked to cuddle.
Ann’s mom thought she should invite all of them to a big party at their house. There would be cake and games. Kids would all bring presents, and they would go away with “loot bags.” Ann loved the idea of loot bags for her friends. She wanted to know what loot Buster would get, and had a bit of a tantrum when her dad said he didn’t think Buster should have a seat at the table.