by Carrie Lange
Tar told Dan that Rale fed off Anne’s despair, and in a way that was true. Rale absorbed the dark energy that her spirit created within her body. In the same way Dan could smell the cookies, or smack the car window glass, Rale could interact with the dark emanations of her spirit, which were so like his own.
What Tar did not tell Dan, however, was that it was not Anne who Rale haunted.
It was Tar.
Chapter 33
Dear Dan,
I thought I had saved you after you tried to kill yourself. I thought my love had saved you.
But I let you slip right through my fingers. I remember our last kiss. I can still feel your arms around me. I close my eyes and see your face and feel your body next to mine. I had you...you were right there in my arms...and then I let go.
I cannot find words to express how heavy the weight of guilt is for me. It smothers me, it makes it difficult to move, sometimes even to breathe. It does not make me stronger, it crushes and cripples me.
My God, when will this pain ever end?
Was it my fault, Dan? Could I have done anything to save you? I’m sure I could have, and that’s why I can’t escape this guilt. If I had just stayed home from work. If I had just told you to wait for me. If I had just turned the car around. God, I wish I had turned the car around...
I wish I had looked in your duffel bag and seen that gun. I wish I had called you when I got home from work. I wish I had told you to quit your job and stay with me. I wish I had told you to never go back to Tennessee. I wish, I wish, I wish until I want to fucking scream!
But there’s no one I can scream at. My family doesn’t call me. My friends don’t call me. My grief is my companion now. Despair is my only comfort and solace. I talk to it, sleep with it, wrap it all around me in a dark lover’s embrace. It has a face and a voice now. It keeps you close to me and reminds me that I let you slip away.
It’s a despair that I don’t think I will survive, but I don’t want it to ever leave me. Will it leave me one day, just like you did?
Am I going crazy? Does despair have a soul? Can it walk, and talk, and visit me in my dreams? Am I hallucinating? Has this grief damaged my brain...or my spirit?
I don’t ever want this grief to leave me, because that would mean you were slipping away from me again.
My grief is a testament to my love for you.
I commit myself, and all that I am, to it, until death parts us.
~ Anne
Chapter 34
Sean left quietly for work the next morning so he wouldn’t wake Anne, but she had slept little that night.
Thoughts of the gun distracted her, so close she could almost feel it under the mattress, a pea for the princess to toss and turn over. If only she could just look at it one more time, maybe even hold it. And then what?
On the other side of the plywood that covered the windows, bullet holes punctured the glass. Sean had boarded them up long ago, and no sunlight could find its way inside his apartment.
The air conditioner hummed.
Outside, it was bright yellow. The kind of hot, humid, Indiana summer day that makes clothing stick to skin and sweat trickle down backs.
When Anne was out in it, it was difficult to breathe. The air was so thick she had to work at getting it in and out of her lungs. The musty smell of damp heat, the taste of it so heavy it filled her mouth, wrapped around her like an old wool blanket.
In the cool darkness, pinpoints of green and red light flickered and shimmered from the myriad of electronics scattered around the room. When Anne squinted, the lights grew larger, fuzzier. She could almost believe they were Christmas lights. She was a million miles away.
Leaning over the side of the bed, she looked for the gun. Her hand reached out, but like a child’s hand in the dark, jerked back protectively. She rolled back over and exhaled through clenched teeth. “Why can’t I stop thinking about it?”
Rale lay on the bed beside her. “Because you know you can kill yourself with it.”
Kill myself… “But what about Alexandra? How could I leave her?”
“She’s very young, Anne. She’d recover quickly.”
“But she wouldn’t have a mother.”
“What kind of mother are you now? Sometimes, it’s better to not have a thing, than to have a bad thing. You would be doing her a favor. She would be better off without you.”
Yes. Anne thought. Alexandra does deserve better, but I just can’t do it or deal with it anymore.
Anne sighed. “I just wish the three of us could be together again. Like it used to be.”
Rale was silent.
She turned her head toward him.
His eyes smoldered with secret knowledge. “The three of you can be together again, Anne.”
It took a moment, as when you cut yourself with a sharp blade. You don’t feel the pain at first, but you know it’s coming.
Anne knew the meaning of his words, but the impact did not hit her at first. It caressed the surface of her skin. She felt the pressure, but not the pain. Then slowly, heavily, it drifted down into her body, working its way through all the pores of her skin. It ran like quick-silver through her veins - an icy coolness that found her heart at last.
She froze. Held her breath. Dare not move lest she show him that she understood.
Like a small furry animal trapped before sharp teeth, she felt hidden in her paralysis.
“I know you understand,” he whispered gently, as if soothing a frightened animal.
Anne could fall into the pools of his eyes, the depth would cover her. She could lose herself. “It would be nice.”
“What would be nice?”
She blinked and turned away from him, her face suddenly hot. “Just shut up, Rale.”
Rale remained silent, and she went in the living room and started watching TV. But her thoughts kept returning to the gun, to the words Rale had spoken, and to the possibilities that both offered.
“Rale?”
“I’m here.” His eyes peered out at her from the shadows at the other end of the couch.
“Would the three of us really be together? If…”
“If what? Say it.”
“Why?” she shouted. “You know what I’m talking about! Why play games with me?”
“I know what you’re talking about,” he answered calmly. “I can say it. Why can’t you?”
Rale paused, waiting for her to respond. But she remained silent, her eyes and mouth tight with fury, her face flushed, nails digging into the palms of her hands.
Rale gave a little sigh. “All right, Anne, I’ll say it, because I know you want me to. You can kill your daughter, and then kill yourself.”
Anne shook her head slowly, stood up suddenly, and whirled around to face him, her hair spinning out behind her in a swinging cascade of fury. “How could I kill my own daughter?” she shouted at him, tears welling in her eyes.
Rale stood and put one hand on her shoulder. With the other, he touched her cheek. “Easily.”
He slid his hand down her face and to the back of her neck, pulling her to his chest and wrapping his arms around her. “You could shoot her in the head, and she wouldn’t even know what happened. She would never grow old. Never die alone. Suffering would be unknown to her. She would only know peace. With you and Dan. Forever.”
Anne’s brow cooled, her muscles relaxed, she uncurled her fists. Rale had said it, not her. His voice - the gentle voice of reason and logic. He would not lie to her.
The dark shadow enveloped her, his touch intoxicating. Breathing in deeply, she let herself be immersed in his embrace.
It made perfect sense. Why would a mother leave her child to the cruel whims and torments of this cursed place? If she could be reunited with Dan, why wouldn’t she take Alexandra with her? Something clicked in her brain, a piece fell into place, and for the first time in her life, she had an epiphany.
The three of them were together. They sat on a blanket in a green field, surrounded by wi
ld flowers. A gentle river flowed past, with a wide sandy bank spreading out beside it. Sunlight sparkled on the surface of the water like tiny diamonds. Alexandra giggled. Anne smiled. Dan looked into her eyes - the first time since their last kiss.
This could be eternity.
The moment vanished quickly, but it was all she needed. It was so simple. Finally. The answer.
Her thoughts raced. She would slip the gun into her purse. It could all be over before Sean even realized his gun was gone.
Wait until Alexandra’s asleep, put a pillow over her head, wouldn’t even see it happen. I must remember to call 9-1-1 first, leave the door unlocked, they would find us together in bed, just like we were asleep. Yes, we’ll just go to sleep together and wake up with Dan. Oh my God, this is almost over. Hurry up, hurry UP!
Anne almost leaped off the couch and over to the bed, got down on hands and knees, and reached for the gun.
Her hand stopped mid-flight.
She shook her head.
Like waking from a nightmare, she was horrified by what she had just experienced, and relieved that it was over. “That’s crazy, Rale. I’m not going to kill my daughter.”
Turning around, she sat on the floor next to the bed. Rale sat beside her and she studied his face. She would have to be careful around him from now on. His words had been so convincing. Had he played a trick on her? Or was he even really there? Was it her own desire, so repulsive and shameful that she hid it behind a dark, shrouded figment of her imagination? “What are you trying to do?”
Rale shrugged and turned away. “I’m not trying to do anything.”
“I know what you’re doing, and it’s not going to work.”
Rale said nothing.
“You’re not going to get me to kill my daughter.”
“I’m not trying to get you to kill her, Anne. You asked me a question. I simply answered it.”
“Well, I’m not going to do it.”
“That’s fine.”
But the thought meandered through her like a lazy river, a sparkling pathway to freedom. The course of her journey, illuminated.
Chapter 35
Fear isn’t so difficult to understand. After all, weren’t we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It’s just a different wolf.
~ Alfred Hitchcock
~~~~~
Anne sat on the floor of Sean’s apartment, thinking about the gun so close to her. Death, so close.
Throughout Anne’s life, she thought Death had been stalking her. It all made sense now. Death had not been stalking her from behind. It had been in front, leading the way. Yes, she tried to kill herself at thirteen. But even before that, Death had whispered in her ear.
She was nine when, randomly searching through her parents medicine cabinet, she found those little amber bottles full of pills. She didn’t know what she was doing...did she? She remembered her mother’s frantic voice. She remembered walking, walking, walking, her parents dragging her around the driveway, when all she wanted to do was sleep.
Her ‘practice round’, she came to think of it. When she was older and wiser, she would not be so childish. But she did not get quite old enough or wise enough. She made the same mistake again, and found herself at Larue Carter.
At sixteen, one of Anne’s childhood friends was hit and killed by a train on a dark, foggy night. As she stood looking down at her in the casket, she imagined that Shelly had not wanted to die.
Shelly wanted to live, yet died. Anne wanted to die, yet lived.
“No one ever said life was fair,” her mother had often said to her.
This moment, staring down at a dead girl in a coffin, was the first of many such moments. Moments where the truth of her mother’s council, became reality.
You were right all along, Mom.
At seventeen, Anne considered her childhood well behind her. Living on her own with Sean while finishing her last year of high school, she worked part time in a nursing home. There, she met death face to face. It teased her, and laughed at her.
She loved her patients, and cared for them the best a seventeen year old girl could. Bud was her pet, Elizabeth her child, Jim her problem child, Teresa her friend.
Bud could walk. He walked up and down the hallway, pushing his wheelchair in front of him. He never talked or smiled, but he nodded his head in agreement to everything you said. If he liked you, he followed you.
He followed Anne everywhere.
One day, when Anne came to work and saw his wheelchair folded up in the hallway, she knew Bud was gone forever.
Elizabeth had suffered a stroke. She couldn’t walk or talk. She wore diapers and when she ate, she wore a bib. Anne stretched her arms and legs every morning before getting her out of bed, but her body curled up anyway.
She sat in a long recliner that had wheels on it so that Anne could move her to other parts of the home. Anne fed her pureed food with a turkey baster. One day, Elizabeth choked and gagged and spit mushed carrots on Anne. Anne finally lost patience with her and left to wash her face.
When she returned fifteen minutes later, Elizabeth was dead.
“I think I killed her,” she said to the nurse on duty.
“You didn’t,” the nurse assured her. “Elizabeth has been dying for a long time.”
But Anne wasn’t so sure.
Death whispered in her ear. You did kill her, Anne. How does it feel?
Jim had suffered a stroke as well, and he had been curling up for a long time before Anne first met him. He lay in a bed, and Anne rolled him from one side to the other throughout her shift, massaging his tight, withered limbs. His eyes were always closed, his mouth always open. She talked to him. He grunted at her. Sometimes, when he was angry, he growled at her.
Near the end, his brother and sister came to the home. Anne was glad that Jim would die with his loved ones around him. One day, Anne asked them to leave his room for only a few minutes while she bathed him.
Jim grunted at her as she talked to him, but he didn’t growl. His raspy, labored breathing stopped suddenly. His eyes, wide open, full of fear, looked at her. She had never seen his eyes.
“Jim?” She touched his cheek. He relaxed. He breathed. “Don’t scare me like that, Jim.” He grunted and closed his eyes. He stopped breathing again. Slowly this time, gently.
“Jim, stay with me,” she said close to his ear, his head cradled in her hands. And after that, she knew what a dying breath was.
Teresa had bone cancer. She suffered in constant pain. She called Anne “honey” and Anne brushed her hair. One time, when Anne helped her out of bed, Teresa’s feet slid out from under her. Neither of them was strong enough and they both fell on the floor. Teresa patted Anne’s cheek with her tissue-papered hand and said, “It’s okay, honey.”
Teresa told Anne about her children and grandchildren, but Anne never met them. Teresa looked out the window a lot.
One day, when Anne came to work, she saw a gurney outside Teresa’s room with a black body bag lying on top.
Teresa died alone.
“How can you take this year after year?” she asked, tears falling from her eyes.
“You get used to, honey,” her co-worker answered.
Used to it?
At seventeen, she thought perhaps her childhood wasn’t completely behind her after all.
At twenty-two, she was a woman. She had joined the Army, gone to basic training and advanced training, and was now in the Indiana National Guard, working her way through college.
On October 31, 1994 American Eagle Flight 4184 crashed in a lonely field in Roselawn, Indiana killing all on board.
“Why are we going?” she asked a fellow soldier.
“I think it’s because we’re medics,” he answered.
All the pieces were picked up and examined. Photographed, x-rayed, catalogued, and put in numbered bags. The ba
gs were stored in two refrigerated semi-trailers.
Over three thousand pieces of sixty-eight people.
They searched for a piece of each victim. Other people identified them in the gymnasium of the local high school, and Anne found them.
She waited on a trailer outside the gym doors, and someone brought her a little slip of paper.
“2,784 – right hand, red nail polish,” it read.
Find me, Anne, it whispered to her. Find me.
She shivered in her haz mat suit, a paper thin barrier to the destruction around her. She walked down the corridor, hemmed in on either side by them.
She tightened her respirator until it bit into her face, but the smell seeped in anyway.
The smell of death. Sour. Musty. Heavy with putrescence. The reaper’s scythe cut with the sharp scent of rotting flesh.
They were everywhere. The bags piled on long tables, and piled on the floor under the long tables.
As she turned her body to fit between the bulging tables, she brushed a bag with her hip. A small cascade fell toward her. Reaching out, she tried to catch them, but a fetid layer of wetness covered everything. The bags slipped out of her grasp and continued falling toward her with determination. They slid over her hands and arms and landed with a moist –thud-thud-thud.
“I’m sorry,” she said to the pile at her feet, her arms still stretched out before her, now a gesture of helplessness. These were the 1600’s. She picked them up as gently as she could, returning them to the pile on the table.
Further down the corridor she saw what she was looking for. A paper taped to the wall read “2700”. She sorted through the bags, one by one. Some of the bags were small and light. But most were of an unsettling heaviness, the weight of them a testament to their existence.
Here I am, the bags cried out to her.
She found what might have been 2,784, but the smudging ink was hard to decipher. Opening the bag, she felt inside, knowing the latex on her hand would not shield her. There it was, the firm yet yielding sensation. Flesh.