by M. R. Carey
In her mind, in her imaginings, Marc was a mass murderer with a single victim. He was the blind, blank wall at the end of every turn in the maze. He had killed her and killed her and killed her, as though killing her was the real point and purpose of him and everything else was pure accident.
In every world Beth had shown her, he was there. Her life partner, and her executioner.
As Liz turned that over in her mind and thought about what it meant for her mental health, she was filled with frustration and fury that seemed to come bubbling up from nowhere.
No.
Not from nowhere.
From the basement levels of her brain. From Beth.
The horror that followed it was all Liz’s own. For a moment she struggled against her own instincts. She wanted to scream out loud: Get out! Get out! Get out! At the same time, she wanted to deny that she was feeling anything at all. To pretend Beth wasn’t there. Speaking to her, now, while she was awake, filled Liz with a terrible, sickening sense of peril. As though she was crossing a line that shouldn’t be crossed.
“Why are you still here?” she demanded at last, her voice high and unsteady.
Is that a trick question?
A shudder went through Liz. She shook her head violently, as if she could dislodge Beth the way a dog gets rid of a flea. She groped for the words to express how wrong this was. “No,” she whispered. “No, no, no.” She wasn’t answering Beth, she was lodging a protest with reality.
Yeah. Good luck with that.
“Leave me alone,” Liz begged.
Jesus, don’t I wish I could!
“I get why I had to invent you. And I—” She swallowed, with an effort. “Message received. I saw what you had to show me. The warning. What might happen. Now please, just … go away. I don’t want you here. I only dreamed you up to deal with that one situation. Now I just … I want to go back to how I was before.”
You can’t. We’re in this together, babe. You don’t trust me, and there’s no reason why you should, but I’m here. Like it or not. The only question is what we do next.
“What we …?”
About Marc. What we do about Marc.
“That’s ridiculous,” Liz protested. “I’m not going to do anything based on a … a stupid nightmare. And there is no us. There’s just me. You’re only a part of me.” She was trying to keep her voice to a whisper, but these words came out loud and hard.
She was suddenly aware of how this must look from the outside. Her sitting alone at the kitchen counter, keeping up one half of an angry confrontation. Falling out with her imaginary friend. She flashed on a memory of reading Alice in Wonderland to Zac when he was seven; of Alice right at the end of the book telling her judge and jury that they were only a pack of cards—and then having them rise up and attack her. She tried one last appeal to reason. “Look, I know you helped me. You’re the reason why I’m still alive. But I can take it from here. By myself. I want to be me again. I can’t cope with being us. Please just go back to whichever bit of my … my subconscious you came from.”
I can’t do that. I don’t even know how. It’s not like there’s a button I push. Anyway, you still need my help.
“I do not need your help!”
Seriously, yeah, you do. I’m strong enough to do what needs to be done. You’re not.
“No. No.” Liz’s mouth twisted in revulsion. “You’re dangerous and out of control. You almost broke that woman’s thumb at Molly’s school. You were prepared to put someone’s eye out over a parking space!”
For a few moments there was no answer. Down the hall, Zac’s alarm clock beeped.
I lost my temper.
Liz gave a hollow, plosive laugh. “Yeah, I think that’s fair to say.”
I spent a lot of time terrified, and in pain. It does things to you. But I’m fine now.
“There’s no point in lying to me. I felt what you were feeling.” Liz looked into the hallway to make sure she was still alone—that Zac hadn’t come out to grab the bathroom or to wake Molly. She felt a primitive terror of being caught out like this, arguing with an evil twin who demonstrably wasn’t there. “You enjoyed that fight. You wanted more.” Because that’s what I made you for, she thought bleakly. To fight for me. And it’s easier to switch you on than to switch you off.
I’m not lying. The words came in a spiky froth of static, Beth’s emotions twanging and jangling along Liz’s nerves. What I went through to get here, what I suffered … You don’t just bounce back from that. How did you feel after he smacked you, or twisted your arm? After he spat in your face? Did you just dust yourself off and get back to whatever it was you were doing? Whistle a happy tune?
Liz swallowed hard. “No.”
No. It piled up inside you like … like rocks in your stomach. You thought one more day of it would break you, but you lived with it for years. And those rocks you swallowed are still inside you. Maybe someday you’ll be able to spit them out again, but shit, it’s not going to be any time soon, is it?
Unwillingly and almost imperceptibly, Liz shook her head.
Is it?
“No.”
No. So you don’t get to judge me. And I don’t feel like I need to apologize to you. Make a penance. Promise to be all kind and friendly next time. I am not kind, and I am nobody’s friend. I ditched all that bullshit on the way here, because otherwise I wouldn’t have made it and you’d be under the ground with all those other losers I met along the way.
Liz wanted to protest. To say that Beth was just a voice she’d given to an orphaned part of her own personality. That she would have found some way to survive Marc’s attack even without dreaming up an ass-kicking variant edition of herself. But she thought of all the evidence stacked against her and she gave it up. All she said was “I want you to leave.”
If I leave, Marc will kill you. He’s coming for you, and it’s going to be soon. The only reason he hasn’t come already is that he’s figured out he needs you.
“Needs me?”
I know the way his mind works, and so do you. He’s not subtle. He was about halfway into his terror campaign, with the car tires and the dead pigeon and all that shit. He was scratching his big itch, which is us, and then the penny dropped that he’s about to go to trial. He got derailed. That was him trying to call you last night. I’m sure of it. And I know why, too. But when he’s done, he’s still going to drag us back onto the killing floor. He can’t help himself.
“I’ll take my chances,” Liz muttered.
Listen to you, all big and brave. You were shitting yourself when you found that dead bird. You know what you’re like with him. We both do. You would have given up and died without me. Next time …
“We don’t know there’ll be a next time.”
No? Then call that number.
“What?”
The unrecognized number, from last night. Call back, and see who it is.
Liz didn’t answer. She was afraid to. She was in danger of believing this paranoid nonsense, and she mustn’t. She couldn’t let Beth drag her onto her own territory of violence and madness.
Either way, you get your answer. If it’s not him, I’ll leave. How about that?
“Deal,” Liz muttered. She grabbed her phone, went to its history and returned the last call on the list. It rang and rang and nobody answered. Finally she hung up and put the phone down.
“Just a cold caller,” Liz said, surer of her ground now. “This is what they do.”
Wait for it.
“They want you to ring back because it’s a premium line and you end up paying twenty bucks for—”
Her phone rang, cutting her off. She could see from the display that it was the same number she’d just dialed. She snatched it up and stabbed the ANSWER button. “Hello?”
“Hey, Lizzie. How’s it going over there?” Marc sounded relaxed and cheerful, as though the last time they’d spoken had just been a few minutes before. As though he’d never attacked her. As though everything was f
ine between them and always had been. “Sorry, Jamie’s still asleep. I had to go out onto the landing.”
Liz fought the impulse to throw the phone across the room and back away from it. But everything that had been true at the courthouse was true now: making him aware of her fear would be a very bad move. He had too many ways of putting it to use.
“Marc,” she said. She heard the tremor in her own voice. She hated that Beth was hearing it too. “You realize you’re breaking the law just by talking to me?”
“Yes, sweetheart, I realize that. But I’m not stupid. I’m using a disposable, not my regular phone. If anyone bothers to check, they won’t catch me out.”
“What do you want?” Liz demanded. Just as she had asked Beth, a few moments before. Something like claustrophobia rose inside her: a sense that she was trapped between their two agendas, with no volition of her own.
“You had company last night,” Marc said.
“No.” The lie slipped out before Liz could catch it. I’m not afraid of him, she told herself. I’m not. But her heart was tapping her ribs in a quick tattoo.
“I saw the car, Lizzie. It had a flashing light and everything. You called the police.”
“Beebee just came by to see how we’re doing.”
“Beebee? You’re on first name terms? That’s nice. I’ve got an assault charge hanging over my head and I’m not allowed to see my kids, and you’re having the cop who arrested me over for drinks.”
“We didn’t drink.”
“No? Well, either she came to see you about the case or it was a social occasion. Which is it, Lizzie? Try to keep your story straight.”
Part of Liz was amazed at Marc’s perfect narcissism. He had threatened her and attacked her, and almost certainly stalked her since, but somehow in his mind her calling the police was a betrayal. Before she could think of what to say to this, he pressed on.
“Lizzie, this is a stupid situation and it’s no good for anyone. You’ve got to cut me a break. If you withdraw your testimony, this is never going to get to court. The state won’t prosecute if they can’t call you as a witness. I promise I’ll keep my temper in future.”
He was silent for a moment or two, waiting for her to answer. When she didn’t, he went on as though he’d always meant to. “Lizzie, you don’t want me to go to jail. What would that do to the kids? What would it do to us as a family?”
Liz swallowed hard. “We’re not a family, Marc,” she said, teeth clenched to keep her voice from shaking. “It’s been a long time since we’ve been that. And you trying to throttle me didn’t make things any better.”
Marc breathed out loud and long, a sigh of exasperation imperfectly suppressed. “I didn’t try to throttle you. I just lost it for a moment because you were breaking my balls about bringing the kids back late. Look, if I wanted to hurt you I could have done it any time I wanted, okay? Any time. Last night, even.”
I just lost it for a moment. It was almost exactly what Beth had said. Liz suddenly felt surrounded in a way that brought her close to panic.
“Last night?” she echoed. “What do you mean?”
Marc went on talking right over her. “But I don’t want that. I’m not some psycho: I’m just a guy who sometimes gets a little bit of a rage on. Name me a man who doesn’t.”
“You said last night,” Liz repeated. “What happened last night?”
“Nothing. You can escalate, I can escalate. I don’t want to threaten you, Lizzie. I’m trying to tell you that I care about you, and I want all this to stop. I want us to go back to the way we were. That’s what’s best for the kids, best for everyone. But it’s up to you. There’s nothing I can do unless you drop your complaint against me and refuse to testify. That’s step one. And then we’ll just work it out one step at a time, okay?”
It was hard even now for Liz to find the strength of will to defy Marc to his face, but with Beth hovering around and almost certainly still listening in she forced herself not to flinch. “I’m not doing that,” she told him.
“You need to think this through,” Marc said, as though she hadn’t spoken. He was still speaking in the same tone of sorely tried, long-suffering patience. “Zac and Moll need both of us. Whatever might be going on between you and me, it’s not fair to make them suffer for it. And they will suffer, Lizzie. You’ll lose my child support, just for starters.”
“You barely ever pay the child support. You’re four months behind.”
“Shit, why would you throw that at me? I always make it up in the end. But you know what, it doesn’t even matter. It’s not about money, it’s about family.”
“Marc, I don’t—”
“I’m not asking you to lie, Lizzie. Only to drop the complaint. They could still drag you up into the witness box, but they won’t. They’ll see which way the land lies, and they’ll back off. We’ll be fine.”
Liz groped for words that wouldn’t come. She knew that the we in “we’ll be fine” meant him and him alone. But she struggled in the cast-iron grip of his certainties. Her whole married life had been a series of surrenders, each one prepping and coaching her for the next. She was classically conditioned, like a dog.
May I? Beth asked. Please?
It took Liz a second to realize what her other self was asking for. Then her lungs took in a breath without her willing it. Her throat flexed, and her tongue licked her lips.
She could have fought back, as she had during the court hearing, but she let it happen—let the reins slacken, the angle between her mind and her body twist and widen by a tiny fraction. She felt something come in through the gap, like a stiff, cold breeze. But this time she was in control and she only let that breeze blow where she wanted it to.
She felt Beth inflate her lungs. Speak through her lips. Play her, as though she was some weird musical instrument—one with a drone, like a bagpipe. “You heard me, Marc. I’m not dropping the complaint. I’m not letting you off the hook. You tried to kill me and you’re going to jail for it.”
There was a silence that was somehow live in the way a bared electric cable is live. “That’s not fair,” Marc said at last, in a tight voice. “I admit—look, I already said this, I said it. I lose my shit sometimes. You know that, and you go all out to set me off. That’s always been the way you work. Rile me up and then blame me when I get a little bit out of control. Lizzie, this was both of our faults.”
Liz felt the weight of those words—wondered for a short but measurable moment if they might be true. Beth didn’t. “Is that how you square it with yourself?” she asked. “Really? You tell yourself your hair trigger is everybody else’s responsibility. It isn’t, sweetness. It’s just yours.”
Another silence, longer than the first. As if Marc was walking around that sweetness to see what it looked like from different angles.
“It doesn’t do any good to cast blame,” he said at last.
“Says the asshole who just tried to deal me some.” Beth gave a languid chuckle. “But you’re wrong, Marc. This is exactly about making sure the blame lands where it belongs. That’s what courts are for, right? To determine fault? Well here’s a crazy idea. Suppose we just let them do that?”
“Lizzie,” Marc said. “Listen to me. Just … listen!” His voice was thickening with every syllable, the anger building behind it like water behind a dam. Liz quailed from it despite herself.
Beth basked in it.
“Oh baby, I spent so long listening to you. I was sure you could get a full sentence out sooner or later. But you just kept breaking my heart.”
Marc spluttered for a few seconds before he got any kind of traction on his mouth. “What the fuck has gotten into you? I’m trying to salvage something from this situation …”
“Yeah. Your own ass.”
“Lizzie—”
“Remember when I dug out part of your face with a broken bottle? Come back soon, Marc. I bought in a six-pack.”
Over the stream of obscenities that followed, Liz heard Zac’s door op
en behind her and then his footsteps padding softly down the hall. She moved her mind and body back together seamlessly, shutting Beth out. There was no struggle, no aftermath. Beth surrendered at once, dissipated into air, and Liz was in the pilot seat again.
“We’ll talk later,” she said to Marc, in a gap between curse words.
“I’ve said all I’ve got to say,” Marc spat out. “If you want to walk again, you better tell that dyke cop you decided second thoughts are best. Otherwise you’ll see me soon. I mean it.”
The phone went dead, and she set it down.
“Hey, Mom,” Zac said, his voice a little hoarse with sleep. “How long have you been up?”
Liz took a few seconds to pull her scattered thoughts, her scattered self, back together. Then she stood, arranged her face into what she hoped was a smile and turned to face him. “Not long,” she said. “The coffee’s fresh. You want me to pour you a cup?”
Zac shook his head and yawned prodigiously. “I’ll stick to juice, thanks.”
“Pour some for Moll too. I’ll go get her.”
She fled back up the hall and into her bedroom, where Molly was still an asymmetrical bump under the sheets, her tousled hair the only part of her that was visible. She closed the door and slumped against it, eyes closed, while her heartbeat went from a tickertape-stutter to something closer to normal.
She had to get on top of this. She had to keep moving, to keep out the fear. The normal and the everyday would be her salvation.
“Wake up, baby girl,” she said with hardly any shake in her voice at all. She rounded the bed and reached down to draw back the covers. “Okay, sleepy head, time to—”
A stab of pain from the underside of her foot made her break off with a gasp of surprise. She looked down. She was standing on sodden carpet, scattered with what looked like melting ice cubes. But they weren’t ice: they were glass. And the largest piece, a slender curve like a new moon, was embedded in her foot.