by M. R. Carey
Fran smiled in spite of herself. “That would be a great plan if you were real.”
Don’t say that, Fran. You know that hurts my feelings.
“Sorry, Jinx. I’m glad you came.”
I came because I knew this would happen. Picota is dangerous. Even finding out about him is dangerous.
“So am I,” Fran said with reckless bravado. It was so far from the truth it was actually funny. She was the opposite of dangerous. A skinny little kid who wasn’t even right in the head.
She took a few deep breaths, feeling around inside herself for the tightness and nausea. It was still there but it felt like she had it a bit more under control now. She went back inside, leaving the door ajar so Jinx could pad into the room behind her.
Zac looked up from the papers, anxiety written in billboard letters across his face. “Should we stop for today?” he asked. “We can do this any time, you know?”
“Nope, we’re doing it now,” Fran said. “You come across anything else worthwhile?”
He looked a little shame-faced. “I made a big find. I think. But then I got distracted by the shadow stuff again. Can I show you that first?”
“Okay, go ahead.” Fran said. She was determined not to flinch from any of this. The truth was going to set her free, she reminded herself. But only if she didn’t run and hide when she saw it.
Zac held up a page of transcript. “This is the first time Picota talks about the shadows. You can see why the news reports went with the big headline and steered clear of the details. It’s all ate up with the dumbass.”
He put on a goofy voice to go with the goofy street slang, inviting Fran to laugh, but she couldn’t quite take up the invitation. He turned his sheaf of papers so she could read it too. It was part of the transcript for session three, and was dated exactly a week after her abduction.
PICOTA: I already told you. Her shadow. Her shadow was wrong. That’s how you know them.
DH: How you know who, Bruno? The skadegamutc?
RTS: Wait a moment, can we stick with the shadows? Bruno, you’ve used that word three times now. Wrong. Her shadow was wrong. Another time you said it was funny. Can you try to explain what you mean?
PICOTA: I did try.
RTS: Tell us again.
PICOTA: I don’t want to. God gives it to us so we know them when they come. If you can’t see it, you’re not one of the right people. Righteous. Right and righteous people.
RTS: Okay, but Dr. Hemington and me, we’re not evil, are we? There’s nothing wrong with our shadows.
PICOTA: No.
RTS: So you can trust us, can’t you?
“How long does this go on for?” Fran asked. “Do you want to just give me the highlights?”
“Here.” Zac pointed at the bottom of the page.
PICOTA: It wasn’t really her shadow, but that’s the best way to say it. It’s like if you were walking in the sun and your shadow got up off the ground and turned into you, and you turned into your shadow.
DH: So her shadow moved? By itself?
PICOTA: No, it didn’t move. It’s hard to say it right. Like, she carried her shadow along with her, all the time. Could be there was more than two, though. I didn’t count.
RTS: You could see two little girls at the same time.
PICOTA: The same girl, but there wasn’t just the one of her. They were swapping. Switching over. The real girl and the shadow girl.
RTS: Okay, but how could you tell when they swapped over? I mean, if they were both Fran Watts …
PICOTA: They got fuzzy. The one who wasn’t really there got all fuzzy.
Fran let out a sigh. She didn’t mean to: it just got out of her. The tightness came back all at once, clenching her chest like a fist. Bruno Picota’s mind was weirdly in sync with her own. He was describing her hallucinations. Or at least, one specific hallucination. What she saw when she looked at Liz Kendall, Bruno Picota had seen when he looked at her. And it was the reason he had attacked her.
Because she was a demon. A skadegamutc.
“Hey,” Zac said. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Fran lied. Wondering if you could catch madness the way you catch a cold. If Bruno Picota had managed to infect her somehow, in those hours they spent together at the Perry Friendly, with … something. His sickness. His twisted vision. “You said there was something else,” she reminded Zac. “Something big.”
She expected him to go forward in the transcript but he took it away. Lying underneath it was the manila file sleeve, with stamps and scribble all over it and the courthouse address and a big CONFIDENTIAL in red letters inside a red rectangle.
“What?” Fran said. “What am I looking at?”
“The consulting psychiatrists,” Zac said. “Bottom right.”
He put the tip of his finger against the names, and Fran lowered her gaze to read.
DH was Dana Hemington, who she didn’t know from Eve.
RTS was Ronald Timothy Southern.
Liz had spent two hours putting a gray undercoat on Zac’s bedroom walls. With the bed and desk covered in dustsheets and her son’s posters all rolled up and stacked in the hall, the room now looked like a black and white photo of itself.
She was up on an aluminum ladder, working on the ceiling of Molly’s room when Zac appeared in the doorway. He looked around with bewilderment and dawning alarm.
“Hey, you,” Liz said, heading him off. “How come you’re so late?”
“I was with Fran. We were doing research for a project. Mom, what is this? What are you doing?”
Liz tried to keep the tone light. She was acutely aware that she was lying to Zac, even if they were only lies by omission. She had to hope he’d forgive her when it was all over. “You saw I’d bought the paint,” she reminded him, forcing a smile. “What did you think it was for?”
“But … tonight?” Zac wrinkled his nose as he looked around the room. “Why tonight? You’ve got to be in court tomorrow. This is stupid!”
“I had a lot of nervous energy inside me,” Liz said. That much was true, at least. She came down the ladder, stowed the roller and tray and walked over to him. “I felt like I had to use it on something.”
Zac shook his head. He didn’t seem impressed with this argument. He checked the door frame for paint before leaning against it, hands thrust sullenly into pockets.
“Sorry about the smell,” Liz said.
“I’m not worried about the smell. Where’s Moll? Did you paint over her?”
“She’s upstairs with the Sethis. They’re expecting you too.”
“For dinner?”
“Not just for dinner. They’ve prepped the spare room for the two of you. This way you’ll get a decent night’s sleep. If you stay down here, you’ll be poisoned. And Molly will have an attack.”
“What about you?” he asked her.
“I’ll join you for dinner. But then I’ll sleep down here. With the bedroom door closed and the windows open. I’ll be fine. Go get your things and head on up. I’ll join you in a half hour or so and eat with you. Then I’ll come back down and finish off.”
Zac didn’t move. His mouth was set in a tight line. Liz ruffled his hair, but he looked away, deliberately refusing to meet her gaze.
“Humor me, Zac,” she begged. “Please.” She moved sideways so she could see his face, forcing him to look at her—but it was only one quick glance before he dropped his eyes again.
“I think you should have waited and done this after tomorrow.” The hurt and frustration in his voice dismayed her.
“I wanted to do it now,” she said. “New beginnings. It’s kind of an omen.”
“You can’t make your own omens, Mom. It’s only an omen if it happens by itself.”
“Says you.” Liz smiled again, but Zac’s expression stayed serious.
“I want to stay down here,” he said. “If you insist on doing this, I’ll at least help you finish.”
“Not on a school night,” Liz said, fallin
g back on that catch-all argument. “You need to do your homework, and you need your rest. I’m burning off steam here and it’s doing me good. Really. Go.”
Now, finally, he looked at her. “I don’t understand,” he said. “You’re making us go away and be apart from you when we need to be together. You won’t let me tell everyone what a shit Dad is, you won’t let me be in court and now you’re saying I can’t even be in the house with you.”
“Because …” But she had nowhere to go with that sentence. She couldn’t tell him the truth, and she had already used up the least implausible lies she could scrape together. “I love you,” she said helplessly. “I love you and Molly so much. I want to keep you away from this. Stop it from hurting you.”
She put a hand on his shoulder. It slid off again as he retreated.
“This isn’t how you stop things from hurting, Mom,” he said, really angry now. Liz realized suddenly how much he wanted it to be the other way around, at least some of the time. That he needed to feel that he was being a shield for her, instead of being shielded all the time.
But she had no choice. She couldn’t let him be a part of what she was planning.
“Zac, this is what I need right now,” she said. “If you want to help, the best way you can help is by looking after Molly and …” She tailed off.
“And what?” Zac asked. He looked down at the dustsheets, up at the ladder and the half-painted room, indicating them all with a nod of the head. “Leaving you down here. With this?”
“Yeah,” Liz said. “Yes. Exactly. Just for tonight.”
“Happy to,” he muttered.
He turned and walked away without another word.
“Zac—” Liz called out. The slamming of the door made anything else she might have said irrelevant.
With a heavy heart, she got back to work. She painted for another hour, finishing the undercoat. The job had to be done now she’d started it, even if it was just a smokescreen for something else.
When she finally went upstairs it was to discover that Zac had never arrived at the Sethis. Belatedly she discovered his text, which just said that he would make his own arrangements.
“I’m really sorry,” she told Parvesh. “It looks like Zac might not be coming after all. I really upset him. He doesn’t understand why I chose such an insane time to do home improvements.”
“I don’t either, Lizzie,” Parvesh said, “but I don’t have to. If it’s good for you, it’s good for us.” Pete nodded his agreement, accepting her gift of white Zinfandel as if he didn’t know it was the two-buck chuck from Trader Joe’s.
Liz excused herself and called Zac. He didn’t answer.
Dinner with the Sethis was usually a fairly festive affair. Pete was an amazing cook, and both he and Parvesh told great stories—Parvesh about the branches of his family who still lived in India, Pete about life as a public school teacher in a school so tough it made Julian C. Barry seem like Moominland. They were both on good form tonight, and Liz laughed along at the outrageous anecdotes. Molly laughed too, high and hilarious on the general excitement even though the jokes were flying way over her head.
But the whole time, a part of Liz was lying coiled up and cold like a snake, closed off to these people she loved, insulated from them. She had forgotten how heavy a secret can be. She made her excuses as soon as they were done with the clearing up, thanking the Sethis again for looking after Molly for her.
“It’s the least we can do,” Parvesh said as she walked out to the stairs. “You know, if Zac is sleeping over with a friend, that frees up the sofa. You shouldn’t be on your own with all this crazy shit going down.”
“I think I need to be,” Liz countered. “Most of the crazy shit is here inside my head, Vesh. I need to make sure it’s screwed on straight for tomorrow, you know?”
He gave her a kiss on each cheek. His grave face indicated what he thought of that reasoning, but he didn’t try to argue her out of it. “Well, we’re here if you change your mind,” he said.
Alone in the house with the miasmic smell of silk matt emulsion, she almost did. She called Zac again, and once again got no reply. She wasn’t worried for him. Even in his current unhappy state, he was too sensible a boy to do anything reckless or dangerous. Either he would stay over at a friend’s house or else he would go back to the Sethis before they locked up for the night. Liz didn’t think, given how things had gone between them, that he would come back home.
Still, she was ashamed that she had lied to him and shut him out, however necessary it was. However temporary.
He’ll get over it, said Beth with a sneer in her tone. Liz didn’t answer. She didn’t want to talk to Beth about either of her kids.
She went from room to room, checking windows, closing doors. Her feet crunched on the plastic sheeting, and the sound—all sounds—came back to her with a creepy little susurrus of echoes. The acoustics of the house seemed to have changed far more than could be accounted for by laying down dustsheets and moving a few items of furniture around.
She retreated to the living room. It felt unnaturally bright. The lights were all on in here, as well as in the kitchen and in Zac’s bedroom. If Marc was watching, things had to seem normal—and it wasn’t normal for the house to go dark in the middle of the evening. She curled up on the sofa and tried to watch TV. It was just sounds and images. She couldn’t even tell what kind of show it was. A drama of some kind. Power-dressed men and women in boardrooms and bedrooms, delivering brittle dialogue freighted with subtext Liz was in no condition to guess at.
Getting scared?
“No.”
Then relax. Pace yourself. Have a drink.
Just the suggestion caused her stomach to make an acidic rush into her throat. “I’m fine, thanks,” she lied.
This is not what fine looks like. If you panic, you’ll screw everything up and we’ll die.
“I’m not going to panic.”
Check where all the weapons are. Make sure you can find them in the dark without groping for them. Seconds are going to count.
“I checked.”
You checked with the lights on. Try it in the dark.
Liz ignored the suggestion, but Beth kept on at her, reminding her how high the stakes were as if she didn’t already know, as if this wasn’t her life she was fighting for. Finally she gave in. With her eyes closed she went from room to room. Touching the gel pistol secreted behind the living room door, the flashlight baton on the kitchen counter, the baseball bat leaning against the bedroom wall. She was wearing the holstered taser on her belt.
“Satisfied?” she muttered sourly.
With the weapons. Not with you.
“Well, I’m what you’ve got.”
Liz decided she might have that drink after all. Returning to the kitchen, she poured a brandy from the bottle she kept for cooking, but just the aroma of it mixed with the paint smell made her queasy all over again. She poured it away. She eyed the kettle instead.
No coffee. If your nerves get jumpy you’re bound to screw this up.
“My nerves are …” Liz left the sentence hanging. “Fine” was an obvious lie, and “jumpy already” would be a confession. “If you’re worried about my nerves, you’ll just back off and let me handle this on my own.”
There was no answer. The silence stretched.
“Beth?” Liz called softly.
Still nothing. And the intrusive presence, the sense of someone floating behind her shoulder like a bad angel, was suddenly gone.
“Beth?”
Liz hadn’t expected to be taken seriously, still less to be obeyed. She called her other self’s name a few more times before finally giving up. Of course this wasn’t Beth respecting her wishes, she thought grimly. It was Beth rubbing her nose in it, giving her what she had asked for just to prove that it wasn’t what she really wanted. Or needed.
“Great,” she muttered. “Then I’ll do it on my own.”
She went back into the lounge and sat down to wait.
She didn’t try to watch TV anymore: there was no distraction to be found, and no point in kidding herself.
At 10:00 p.m., or a little after, she turned out the lights in both the lounge and the kitchen. She turned on the one in her bedroom for half an hour, then shut that off too.
At 11:00, she made a quick foray to Zac’s room and turned out the bedside lamp. She hurried back to her own room as though to a sanctuary, feeling dangerously exposed in the dark.
It wasn’t pitch-dark, though. The luminous numbers on her alarm clock were a red blotch on the blackness, and a diffuse and indirect glow from the street lights out front filtered through the partly open curtains. Over the space of ten or fifteen minutes, Liz’s eyes adjusted to it. She could see the shape of the bed, the outline of the door, the squat bulk of the chest of drawers. Glancing to the left she located the slanted line of the baseball bat where it leaned against the wall, close enough for her to reach when she needed it.
She sat down on the edge of the bed, facing the open door. Probably wouldn’t be long, she told herself. Marc wasn’t famous for his impulse control. If he was coming at all, he’d come before midnight.
But an hour passed, and then another. Liz listened to the street sounds, reading sinister narratives into passing footsteps, stray gusts of wind, random creaks of the settling house.
One by one they quieted. She felt herself to be completely alone, even though Molly and the Sethis were sleeping just one floor up and there was a city of a million people right outside her door. She missed Beth, though she was ashamed to admit it to herself. Missed her other self’s aggressive confidence and ready rage. She could do with both right now.
She fell into a doze at last. Into a hazy dream that consisted mostly of other people’s voices; snatches of conversation that she vaguely felt must have been addressed to her but which she’d failed to catch. She chased them through the dark, down blind corridors made of nothing more tangible than smoke and shadows.
At the end of one of those alleyways, she met herself.
“So you’re lost,” the other Liz said with cold contempt. “Again.”