Black Iris

by Leah Raeder

  The lie flowed smoothly from my lips.

  “I was with some kids who had drugs. Needles. They wanted me to try.”

  Dad blinked, dewy-eyed.

  “But my friend stopped me. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  He took me in his arms again, his .45 in my bag on his lap. For a while we just held each other.

  “Please don’t go,” I whispered. “Don’t leave us here with her.”

  “You know I don’t want to.”

  “So why are you packing?”

  “Your mother and I—” He sighed. “We haven’t been in love for a long time. That’s no surprise to you. But we stayed together for you and your brother. And you’re almost grown-up now, sweetie. You’re ready for college, for leaving home. It’s time for both of us to set out on our own.”

  He trembled in my arms, crying. I stared over his shoulder at the wall.

  My eyes were dry now.

  He thought he could just walk away. So easy for a grown man. He wasn’t bound to her by blood. He wasn’t dependent. I’d be in college soon but Donnie was stuck here two more years. And this man thought he could leave my brother in the hands of a lunatic.

  Over my dead body.

  ———

  Zoeller made me stop at Jewel. It was surreal watching him push a cart down the aisles as I followed with a gun in my book bag. Like a serial killer couple going grocery shopping. In the pop section he filled the basket with bottles of strawberry Fanta.

  “Do I even want to know?” I said.

  He smiled.

  I drove out to the boonies again, past the place where I’d run off the road, then farther, farther, till he told me to turn onto a dirt lane through a field of snow-cowled grass. A weatherworn farmhouse lay at the end. There was no visible sun but a watery blue mist of light. Z left me in the car and returned with a rusting wheelbarrow. I watched as he loaded it with pop bottles.

  “Are you going to waterboard me with Fanta?” I said.

  “Little help?”

  It took both of us to push it up a frozen footpath to a deadwood fence. Zoeller dumped the wheelbarrow unceremoniously on the ground.

  “Get your gun,” he said.

  When I returned he’d placed the bottles on fence posts. My heart chilled.

  “Don’t be a pussy.”

  He had his own pistol, the black Smith & Wesson he’d once pulled on me. Smaller than mine, .40 cal. He checked the mag, slapped it back in, racked it.

  We could kill each other right here, I realized.

  Zoeller spun and, seemingly without aiming, fired twice. Two bottles exploded, one after the other, in brilliant red bursts like liquid poinsettias. Droplets hit my sleeve, fizzing. The air turned sweet.

  “Bang bang, we’re dead,” he said.

  I stared at him, afraid to blink.

  “Who’d you talk to at home?”

  “My dad.”

  “What did he say?”

  A noose of muscle tightened around my throat. “Nothing. He was packing his stuff. He’s leaving us.”

  “Why?”

  “My mom.” The tightness coiled around my whole body. It felt good to be holding a gun while saying this. “She’s fucking crazy.”

  “Actually crazy or just a bitch?”

  “Bipolar. And an alcoholic. And a cunt. And I fucking hate her.”

  Zoeller looked at the fence. “She’s the one on the left.”

  In a smooth series of motions I flicked the safety, racked, raised, aimed, fired. My body jolted. The bottle burst with a deeply satisfying pop.

  “Not bad,” he said.

  I didn’t drop my arms. I swiveled to the next bottle, correcting the recoil. “This is Dad.”

  Bang.

  “Luke.”

  The sensations came so close together they were one. The kick through my body and the red bloom. The power was intoxicating: press a tiny lever and destroy a piece of the universe.

  I did them all. Quinn, Nolan, Gordon. Mr. Radzen. Dr. Patel. Mr. Klein. Dead center. No misses.

  Z grinned. “You do know how to use that thing.”

  Two left. I took aim but glanced at Zoeller.

  “This is Brandt,” I said.

  Bang.

  His eyes were bright and insane. “And then there was one.”

  I smiled. He thought he knew me. He thought he was always a step ahead.

  I sighted on the last bottle.

  Then I put the hot barrel beneath my chin.

  “No.” Zoeller lurched toward me, eyes wide. “No, Laney.”

  I curled my finger around the trigger and he froze. I could see his white sclera. I’d never seen him frightened. I was only half-serious but his fear made it feel suddenly real.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “This is all I want. It’s all I can think about.”

  “It’s defeat. You’re too strong for this.”

  “No I’m not.” I laughed, the muzzle digging into the soft meat beneath my jaw. “I’m weak, like you said.”

  “You’re better than me. I’m broken, Laney. I’m a sociopath.”

  “If you’re a sociopath, you can’t feel compassion. You don’t care whether I live or die.”

  “I do. I need you. I’ve never met anyone like you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Spare me the suicide hotline bullshit. I’ve heard it all before. You know what the definition of insanity is? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Well, I’m sick of this. Things are going to change.”

  “Don’t leave me,” he said.

  The parallel of my words to Dad startled me. That gleam in his eyes wasn’t madness. It was tears.

  Was this really happening?

  Look at every terrible thing he’s done to me.

  Look at every good thing he didn’t have to do, but did.

  I could’ve ended my life today. Killed Luke North and fired at the police, suicide by cop. Or blown a forty-five-millimeter hole through my skull just now. I could be a cloud of cooling molecules drifting apart, losing information density, the thing known as Delaney June Keating gone back to the oblivion she was once conjured from. I was still here because of Brandt.

  Maybe it wasn’t so crazy. Maybe the only person who could understand a villain was another villain.

  I lowered the gun.

  Z tackled me, smashing me to the ground. I lost hold of the grip. He’s going to kill me, I thought. Never lower your guard around a psycho. Didn’t Mom teach you anything?

  But he simply held me down. And after a minute, I realized he was doing just that.

  Holding me.

  ———

  Dad gave Mom an ultimatum that night:

  Meds or divorce.

  Divorce meant a custody battle. Her mental health history would be put on trial.

  She’s going back on meds, I texted Zoeller. But it won’t last. She hates it. Says it makes her feel dead inside.

  I know the feeling, he replied.

  I wondered what they’d made him take. Had his parents put him through therapy and prescriptions, too? Chemical fire and sword?

  So do I, I said.

  What’s your diagnosis?

  Borderline personality disorder.

  He didn’t respond immediately. Then: Antisocial personality disorder.

  Nice to meet you, I wrote, and imagined his sardonic smile. We should have a talk show.

  You’re too emotional and I don’t have a heart. We make a great pair.

  I thought about that for a while. Emotion doesn’t make me weak.

  Don’t be defensive, he said. You are better than you think. A-one, a-two, a-three.

  Vonnegut.

  Goddammit, Brandt. Goddamn you for making it h
arder and harder to hate you.

  Where are you going to college? he said.

  Corgan. You?

  Same. You’ll never get rid of me now.

  I stared at his text. Impossible to tell his tone.

  Maybe I don’t want to get rid of you, I typed, but mercifully backspaced before I hit SEND. What are you thinking, dumbass? He’s still the enemy.

  As I was falling asleep, he texted again.

  What meds are they giving her?

  Lithium.

  Pause. She doesn’t have to take it.

  Dad will leave if she doesn’t.

  She doesn’t have to take lithium.

  My turn to hesitate. What do you mean?

  You know exactly what I mean.

  SEPTEMBER, LAST YEAR

  She was here. I could smell her. She’d come in from the garden but I couldn’t find her anywhere in the house. I ran through rooms calling for her, aware of strange tension in the walls. The house was holding a secret. Shadows pulled away from my footsteps. Halls tilted upward or sloped down or ended in walls that weren’t supposed to be there. It was diverting me from something. I searched the first floor, the second. Warm and sunny and open. A game was running on Donnie’s computer, showing a pause screen. A cup of coffee, still steaming, sat on the kitchen counter beside Dad’s tablet. I called for them but no answer. They’d just been here. Where was everyone?

  When I found myself on the second floor again I realized the house was trying to keep me out of the basement.

  I came into the kitchen, my eye fixed on the basement door.

  It was stuck shut. I banged on it, yelled, left the kitchen and made for the foyer to go around to the cellar, but the front door was stuck, too.

  Back in the kitchen the basement was open, a rectangle of pure black.

  Mom? I said.

  The scent of roses led downstairs.

  I went slowly. It wasn’t just dark; the blackness below seemed to eat anything that entered it, and I had a sense that what went inside didn’t come back.

  I put my foot on the first step. The second. Every other, I called her name.

  Caitlin. Caitlin, where are you?

  The cold below was bone-cracking, deep as midwinter. I felt along the wall for the light switch, groping uselessly until I was stricken by the thought that another hand would close over mine.

  Flashlights somewhere. Dad’s tools.

  The floor buckled in a way I didn’t remember and I stumbled. I found the workbench, shook a flashlight till it pissed out a weak beam.

  The concrete was cracked. In places where smashed stone revealed open earth I spied roots, thick and black and gnarled. Something was growing beneath the house. Roots running wild, destroying the foundation. Dad was a construction contractor. This was the kind of thing he knew. Why had he let this happen?

  As I stared at a root, it slithered back toward the depths of the basement, the lightless room with the furnace.

  My feet started toward it involuntarily.

  I fought my body. Please, no. Please please please.

  Whatever was growing in there was big. The furnace roared but did nothing to alleviate the chill. The closer I got, the colder it felt.

  Please don’t go inside. Please don’t look.

  I stepped into the doorway.

  Roots raced to the corner, scaling the wall in a fat braid. The fibers were a waxy black but here and there were odd bits of debris, glints of pearl, shiny strips of red velvet.

  Delaney.

  I ran the light up the trunk. The voice came from the corner.

  Little one.

  Oh my god.

  Not pearls and velvet.

  Come here, darling.

  The white bits were teeth. The red ones were meat.

  Come here and let me hold you.

  Skin and hair. Her hair, all around me.

  I screamed and turned to run and the doorway was filled with writhing blackness. I backed away, beginning to cry. Something moved in the shadows. Part of a hand, the first three fingers. The rest melted into that dark mass.

  Mom, please, I said. I’m sorry.

  Roots curled around my feet. Pulled me toward the corner.

  What do you want? I cried.

  Closer and closer to a whorl of teeth, a glistening bloody hole. God, no. Wake the fuck up. Now.

  What do you want? I screamed.

  Set me free, it said in my mother’s voice. Let me go let me go let me go.

  ———

  I sat up in bed, gasping. Unfamiliar room. Walls too far away, my bed an island in a frozen sea of moonlight.

  Blythe’s apartment. Safe. Awake.

  Alone.

  I collapsed onto the pillow. My camisole stuck to my sweaty skin like cellophane. Just a nightmare. Over now. I inhaled deeply, flooding my body with cold air, and something familiar tickled my nose. A cloying, coppery sweetness.

  Blood and roses.

  I turned my head.

  The hall beyond my room was dark, but a milky haze of moonlight lay on the hardwood, broken by the thing in the doorway. By the shadow I’d know anywhere.

  This isn’t real, I told myself. You’re still asleep.

  I closed my eyes and breathed. Chills scurried up my bare arms like things with too many legs. Wake up now, Laney. Wake up.

  I opened my eyes. The shadow stood beside the bed.

  “Blythe,” I screamed, rolling away. “Blythe. Help. Please.”

  I kept screaming as I ripped the sheets off and crashed to the floor. My palms slapped icy wood. I scrambled blindly, one leg caught in the sheet, snared. I hadn’t even realized the room light was on and Blythe was calling my name until she grabbed me.

  “Christ,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  In seconds it all became ridiculous. Me tangled in a sheet, shrieking like a child, her with an aluminum bat in one hand and a glare that said she wanted to use it.

  I slumped against the wall. “She was here.”

  “You were having a nightmare.”

  “How do I know I’m awake now?”

  Blythe’s voice softened. “It’s okay, Laney. I’m here. It’s over.”

  This had happened before. I rarely remembered calling for her, but one night I woke panicking and found her asleep on the floor beside my bed, a mane of wild gold hair and splayed lion limbs, guarding my dreams. I watched her until I drowsed off again. We didn’t talk about it. We were still technically not on speaking terms since I’d moved in, because of the kiss, and all that weirdness.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have disturbed you.”

  “I’m already disturbed.”

  Blythe dropped the bat and popped the window above us. Cold air shrilled in. She wore only a T-shirt and underwear and I looked away when she looked at me. She sat at my side, snatching my American Spirits from the nightstand. We lit up off one match.

  “Tell me your dream.”

  It was too personal, too grotesque. But I never held anything back from her, so I told.

  She didn’t speak till I’d finished. Then all she said was “That’s bloody fucked.”

  I missed that about her. Armin would analyze and interpret and prescribe. Blythe merely absorbed, accepted. She knew I was crazy. She was crazy, too. All writers are.

  Around us the calligraphy of our smoke stroked the air, scrawling ghost secrets.

  “What was your mum like?”

  How to explain someone so beautiful, intelligent, and cruel? Mom was right about us inheriting separate sides of her nature. Donnie got sweetness and sunshine, I got venom and darkness. In her they were one. Sugar-tongued snake.

  “Like Lady Lazarus,” I said. “ ‘Out of the ash I rise with my red hair.’ ”

  “ ‘And I eat men like air.’ �
�

  Goose bumps.

  Without prompting Blythe dragged the blanket from the bed onto our legs. We looked at each other. Streetlight fell over her shoulder in a chiffon scarf, illuminating one side of her face.

  “I miss you,” I whispered. “I miss this.”

  “What is this?” she said just as softly.

  I didn’t answer. I drew figure eights with my cigarette cherry.

  “Why don’t you ever talk about your mom?” I asked.

  “Nothing to say.”

  “She hurt you.”

  Blythe sniffed. “I hurt her. Told her what an ignorant cunt she is.” She tipped her head against the windowsill, blowing smoke into the lemon light. “Lovely world where your own mum calls you a filthy slut who’ll burn in hell.”

  “Wow.”

  “I’d fuck anything with a pulse, according to her. Maybe a few things without a pulse, too.”

  “Did you love any of them?”

  “Just one.”

  I swallowed. I wished I could swallow the words as well, but I had to know. “Was it Armin?”

  She glanced at me. “No.”

  A shiver racked me again, but it was relief.

  “How long were you with him?”

  “A year.”

  It seemed an eternity. I hadn’t even known them that long and they’d had an entire year together. Sleeping with each other, sharing everything.

  And she hadn’t loved him. But he’d loved her.

  “Why did it end?”

  “I tore his heart out.” She flicked her cig out the window, exhaling smoke through her nostrils in blue tusks. “Let’s not talk about this. It makes me sick.”

  “How come?”

  “Because I’m a fucking arsehole, okay? I hurt him. I hurt him so badly he’s never gotten over it.”

  “I hurt someone, too. In the worst possible way. I’m a bad person, Blythe.”