He shook his head, led her to the couch. She followed, but left some distance between them, sitting on the edge, ready to run. She stopped wondering why it mattered, only that it did. Her world, her mind, her secrets. “No,” he said. “Just little comments she’s made over the past few months, nothing specific. Enough so I understood. And I haven’t read any of it myself, not intentionally.” She stiffened, and he added quickly, “I mean, last year I was making the bed after doing laundry. I was going to flip the mattress over, saw the book. Looked through, then realized what it was. I assumed it wasn’t something you wanted me seeing, though I can’t say I understand why, so I put it back. Decided we didn’t need to turn the mattress over after all.” He shrugged, his own face red with the admission.
Flipped through, she thought, like fingers through the underwear drawer, sniffing through her garbage. No.
“Look, it’s nothing. Writing is a private thing. I respect that. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been tempted to peek now and then but I swear I didn’t!” He was about to say something else, caught himself, fell silent.
She didn’t know what to say.
He wasn’t laughing. Sometime last year, he’d said. She suddenly wanted to ask if he liked what he read, but then his true face in yellow would press forward from the mask, choking off her oxygen. It would be so close, tell her it was funny and isn’t that cute and why didn’t she cut her fingers so they wouldn’t stain the paper any more than they had; here let me help…
She fell against him with loud, gasping sobs, lost in spinning thoughts which made no sense, no sense, until she was so far into it there was no turning back.
VI
Corey held his wife, his body shaking in time with her crying. His own tears were falling now, but he would not let her see them. Was she crying because he’d admitted seeing her poems, or that he knew she shared them with Abby? Maybe the simple fact that he made contact with her book, her secret, as unintentional as it was.
What secret, though? It wasn’t a big deal. He’d never say that out loud; obviously, it was a big deal to her. He wanted to tell Sam how much he’d enjoyed what he’d read before he’d tucked the book away, dark as some of her lines might be, but she’d been traumatized enough for one night. No sense rubbing salt in the wound.
What troubled him most was how upset she was. Flashbacks to how things had been two years ago, when she’d lost the baby near the end of her first trimester. Statements from the doctors, how this was common and would not affect future pregnancies, did nothing to quell the sudden outpouring of grief. Such intense sorrow was normal, according to the therapist she’d seen a few times. Sam had fallen into a sad, lonely place which Corey could never fully visit as a father, painful as those days had also for him, too. Her reaction had been partly physical, hormones slowly getting back into a normal rhythm, but none of that mattered to her, not then. Only patience, infinite patience sometimes, and a few sessions alone with the therapist to pull her out. The spiral notebooks she’d kept hidden—he would check occasionally to see if it was still there, noticing how sometimes the cover was a different color—were obviously good therapy. More than her visits to that faceless women every Tuesday for the first few months after losing the baby. Before Sam had decided to stop going to see the woman out of the blue.
Out of the yellow.
What the hell did that mean? One of her cryptic lines of poetry, no doubt.
Samantha fell quiet in his arms. At least Abby hadn’t woken. Bad enough her father was an emotional wreck. To find out both her parents were loose in the gears would be too much for a girl her age to bear.
A half hour had passed since Sam’s oddly-timed confession, if an actual confession it was. She hadn’t spoken, and her body weighed heavier against his chest. An occasional, deep sniffle. Why had she mentioned this now?
He also knew…, she’d begun to say, but never finished the statement. Talking about Hank Cowles, of course. The crazy old man liked playing sick games like Spy on the Union Family.
Did he know about her poetry? Corey looked around the room, careful to do so only with his eyes. Did Cowles come in here at some point? Corey tried to remember if they’d locked up before heading to church yesterday. Probably not.
Too much going on. Too much of a change all at once. Best not add paranoia to his own growing symptoms.
Corey’s arm was falling asleep. He squeezed his wife’s shoulder. “You OK?”
She nodded.
“Want to go to bed?”
Another nod.
“It’s OK,” he said, not sure what he meant by it. Maybe everything. Everything was OK. Here in the house. Everything in the world might be falling apart, but they were safe here, nestled away in a magical wood.
“I know,” she said, and sniffed. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Artists have a right to privacy. Right?” He turned on the couch until they were facing each other, Sam’s embarrassed gaze struggling to make eye contact. He touched her chin and said, “Listen, it doesn’t bother me, never has. OK?”
Sam stiffened and looked away, eyes down, mulling over what he had said, likely deciding if he’d been making fun of her. She finally nodded, almost smiled. “OK.”
“Then it’s time for bed. Sleep,” he added, “perchance to dream.”
She gave him a sidelong glance to imply he was drifting into dangerous waters. He raised his palm in surrender. She took it into her own and walked with him into the hall. They stopped in Abby’s room on their way.
Sam on the side of Abby’s bed, running a hand across the girl’s head, a light touch. Abby shifting deeper into her blankets. Corey watched all this from the doorway, the pangs of fear growing again. How could he protect them, take this one moment of peace and preserve it forever? He couldn’t. The world wouldn’t let him. It would pour down on them like fire.
“Corey?” He closed his eyes, took a silent breath in. Don’t start! She needed him to be sane tonight. They certainly made an interesting couple, he decided, and smirked. It felt very good to do so. Corey stepped inside and joined his wife at the side of his daughter’s bed.
VII
Hank Cowles stood on a hill as dark as the clouds which roiled overhead. They flashed red, like lightning but sharper, brighter. Over and around him the air seemed to burn. He stretched out his arms, looked out over the world. Down the hillside, trees bent from the force above, bowing in homage amid the small Rockwell village nestled like a sleeping child in the arms of the valley. From that place, drifting across the curling brown grass were terrible screams, the quick, reflexive hushing of parents and those who looked out the windows or up towards the ceiling as the roaring inside the clouds and beyond grew louder and more fierce. The storm rumbled overhead like a massive, angry machine, screaming in its final death throes, an unseen, multi-wheeled tractor-trailer careening off the interstate, an airliner with broken wings spinning and falling in death, demons opening their mouths to feed while screaming in pain and delight. All of it rolling above and past the houses, coiling in on itself then surging outward, burning the clouds. The fire spilled free and rained like melted plastic over Hank and the hill and the houses and the people.
The sound intensified, became a frenzy, as Vanessa watched from her small porch. Knives of glittering steel slammed into the street then through it, kicking jagged chunks of asphalt into the heated air. The blades pulled free of the earth and rose back towards the clouds only to slam down in other places, other roads and lawns and homes. Roofs folded under their weight with sharp, metallic thuds. This time, when the blades lifted, people were impaled on their tines. God angrily eating a dinner of souls, or maybe feeding them to the screaming demons like a parent to a child. Vanessa gripped the posts on either side of the steps and leaned out, laughing and crying, pleading to be killed like the others around her. The wind in this place, this dream, had fingers of its own, jagged nails that ripped at her dress, tearing it, preparing her body for feeding, for its own impaling an
d rising into the unseen, howling mouth. Someone stumbled from a broken door of the house next door, ran drunkenly across the street, pajama pants falling around his ankles. Mister Possey, her neighbor. Vanessa moaned aloud when his legs were severed by twin steel blades which rose a few feet then pushed their points through his belly from behind. Blood and screams and feces and intestines spilled around his gurgled pleas for mercy. Vanessa screamed as well, not wanting to be abandoned. She ran onto the dead grass. Something glinted in front of her; a metal flash slammed into her midsection, heavy weight twisting, flinging her wildly into the air. The pain was hot pepper inside her body, exploding in a thousand small spots of agony. Her head slammed onto the ground before lifting again, pulled upward. A new blade pierced her throat. She could not scream, only wave her arms in dying ecstasy as she rose higher and higher into the burning air.
Corey Union watched Vanessa’s body slide along the blade, defying gravity before it split in half. Her upper torso, soaked in blood, fell to earth, only to be caught by another of the monstrous blades. He pulled his wife and daughter closer as they cowered at the edge of the forest that now burned out of control behind them. They’d been running through the dense growth of laurel and sumac, tripping, falling, watching the sky and treetops burn, trying to pray for mercy as they ran. The clouds twisted into grotesque shapes, laughing clowns, before the trees exploded and popped like gunfire around him. Flames licked at their backs while the neighborhood they faced was a broken plate from some dark god’s hurried meal. A thick metal blade, glinting blue and red, slid soundlessly into the ground six feet away. Up it rose, down again a few feet closer. Corey looked up to see the smiling clown face of the world’s end squinting its red eyes down at them, laughing, playing with its food. He pulled Samantha close with one arm, Abby with the other.
Sam wanted to break free of her husband’s grip but he held on, as if offering his family to the insatiable demons. Take them, he might be thinking; spare me. No, Corey could not be thinking this. The ground shook. She fell with him to the ground then resisted when he tried to pull her up again. Her view of the ruined neighborhood was cut off by a blade, digging into the ground inches from her knees. It went in deeper than before, deeper and deeper with no end emerging from the cloud-choked sky above them. Though Abby cried against her father, resigned to dying, Samantha would not accept this. This was only a dream, a bad one, but still she had to run. She leaned forward then rolled, colliding with the hot metal of the blade. Its smooth surface slid deeper into the ground against her, like a claw looking for grubs in the earth. It burned. Corey grabbed her foot, but she kicked him away.
Why was she running? Corey wanted to pull her back so that if his family had to die, at least they could die together. Why did they have to? He couldn’t stop what was happening, but had to try, had to save them. Sam had regained her balance and ran into the burning woods, soot-coated head glancing back only once before the gleaming blade which had been digging into the earth tore upward below her, burying its point between her legs. Her body twitched and convulsed with the red and yellow flames of the world her backdrop. The blade broke through her skull. Corey curled away from the fire and his wife’s desecrated body. Abby was no longer with him. He raised his head and shouted but no human voice could compete with the ripping and tearing of the planet. Far, far up with a magnified vision, which could only mean this was a dream, had to be a dream, remains of their neighbor had nearly reached the edge of the cloud. A dozen more blades, like scissors held in the fingers of angels, emerged to snip the two halves of her body into smaller and smaller pieces.
Corey jerked upright in his bed screaming and shouting words he didn’t understand, if they were truly words at all.
Vanessa’s eyes opened in the quiet dark of her room, thrusting her hips into the air, her body wracked in spasms of a dream-infused orgasm, all the while feeling light fingers across her legs, caressing her skin, gripping hungrily. She opened her eyes, realized she’d kicked the sheets off the bed, gasped suddenly at another gentle caress on her thigh, the naked form of Samantha on top of her, moving, kissing. The woman did not speak nor acknowledge her presence with any words, only a hurried touching, tasting, relentless motion growing in hunger and urgency. A part of Vanessa tried to pull away, shake herself from this continuing dream, but this was the weaker part of her in this moment. She reached out for the other with trembling hands, pulled Samantha against her, harder, guiding her, losing herself in the sensations of her body, spinning the world in a pleasurable rotation that she did not want to wake from. The feel of another wanting her, taking her, loving her.
Across town, Hank Cowles opened his eyes with a start, found himself alone in his small bedroom, heart pounding out the fear and excitement of the magnificent destruction. His face curled into a wide smile, looking like a grimace, or a wince of pain. He glanced sideway into the hallway where Nurse Charles sat in the center of the floor, eyes glinting in the hallway light, looking back at him. One of her three small heads panted happily in a dog smile, the other snarled, the other licked something from its stained chops. Hank blinked. There now was only the one head, emotionless, small tail quietly tapping against the floor. He leaned back against the mattress, let the muscles of his face relax while his heart continued to hammer. Was he afraid? He shouldn’t be; he couldn’t be. This was the bell, the tolling of the coming hour. This was what he was created for.
The dog watched dispassionately from the hall.
Corey had to force himself to close his mouth, grit his teeth to stop screaming. He was breathing fast and sweating, but alive. A dream. Only a dream.
Wondering how he’d explain to Sam what he’d seen, why he’d been screaming, Corey slowly realized he might not have to. She hadn’t woken. No light touch on his back or shout of surprise.
He turned his head, still praying that what he’d seen was only a dream. Just a bad dream.
Her side of the bed was empty. He reached out, felt warm sheets, indentation in the pillow where her head had rested. His thrashing must have driven her out of bed and into the living room.
If so, why hadn’t she come back in when he started screaming?
Eventually, his breathing slowed to a point where he could step out from under the sheet and not risk collapsing. He didn’t want to faint, fall back through the veil of sleep into that hell again.
His robe had fallen to the floor. Corey wrapped it around his body and tied the sash tight. The feel of the robe tight against him had comfort, an artificial hug. The light in the master bath was off. She wasn’t there. He stepped into the hallway and almost screamed again out of surprise.
Abby was standing in the center of the hall, Teddy hanging limply from her right hand, its stuffed feet barely glancing off the floor. Her other hand was raised to her mouth with thumb inserted. She hadn’t sucked her thumb in over a year. Corey raised his hand and tried to smile. “Sorry, Sweetie,” he breathed. “You startled me.”
“Someone was yelling.”
It was your father, he thought, losing a little more of his mind.
“It was just me. I got up for a drink and stubbed my toe.”
Lie to the children, lie to the world.
Another line from Sam’s poetry? The thought served to wake him completely.
Abby stepped forward, stared at his bare feet poking from under the robe. The thumb remained in her mouth, even as she said, “Did it hurt?”
“A little. Come on, let’s get you back to bed.”
He led her into the bedroom, hoping to see Sam lying on her bed. She was not. Abby scooted under the sheets. “I’m afraid to go back to sleep.”
He sat down, caressed the top of her head and used a finger to move a lock of hair from her eyes. “Why’s that?”
“I don’t want any more bad dreams.”
“You had a bad dream?”
She nodded, eyes already half closed.
“Well, remember the rule for bad dreams? If you tell me about it, it’ll never,
ever come back. Right?”
She nodded, the hand still planted in front of her face. He should probably tell her not to suck her thumb but had no energy for it. In a muffled voice, she told him a few details of the dream.
Corey managed to keep his composure, let her recite for him the same dream, more or less, that he’d just awoken from. Either her version was tamer, no impaled mother or friendly neighbor snipped into pieces, or these details were too much for her to retain. Even so, she seemed calm as she spoke.
Not until she was asleep and he stood outside the bedroom leaning against the wall did Corey allow himself to consider that they’d had the same dream.
The same vision.
The same dream!
The world did not work like that; no room for psychic connections or shared… shared anything. He closed his eyes, tried to close his mind. There was no room in his brain to consider this. He needed Samantha. Needed to lay with her, curl against her body even if he did not sleep another minute. He’d feel her with him, feel safe.
Samantha was not in the kitchen, or the living room. After a confused ten minutes looking in every corner of the house, including the basement and a quick desperate visit to the attic, Corey gave up and went outside.
Bare feet cool on the night grass—living grass, living and green and not burned—he circled the house, hoping he hadn’t left anything lying around from the weekend which might pierce the bottom of his foot.
Sam was not out here. Both cars were still in the driveway. She was just gone.
VIII
Vanessa
Vanessa found Corey pacing in a small circle on the back porch, lost. He lifted a hand to his ear, as if listening for something, then lowered it to the railing. She took in a breath, trying to push away the lingering quivers of pleasure in her own body and focused on Corey, who was standing a few feet away, his back to her. She concentrated on him alone, not Samantha, or the vivid dream, the nightmare. She’d sort it all out later. She softly spoke his name. Corey turned around so quickly he almost fell back against the railing. Vanessa had put on her robe but left it hanging open, exposing herself to him, letting him see.
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