by M. R. Carey
“In the night time.”
Molly clapped her hands. That sounded good to her.
But the expedition took a long time to get underway, because Beth had forgotten how to drive. She had never driven a Kia, and the dashboard configuration felt strange to her. More seriously, her muscle memories refused to kick in. She knew intellectually what she ought to be doing, but she had to decide on each movement in advance and then send the instructions to her body—whose repertoire she was still relearning—to be executed. The car did a crazy disco dance down the street for the first few hundred yards before she got any kind of a feel for it. After that it got easier, but she took it slowly.
Molly was asleep long before they reached their destination. The vibrations of the car’s suspension and the steady rumble of its engine did the job. Beth wished she hadn’t said a word about planting flowers. She had been laying the groundwork for further explanations later, when they got to where they were going—as it turned out, unnecessarily.
She pulled up on Mayflower Street, bringing the car right up onto the verge. She wondered whether it was worth worrying about tire tracks. Probably not. It was going to rain again. The verge would be a mud wallow come morning: there wouldn’t be any tracks.
There was nobody in sight, which wasn’t surprising at this hour but was still both welcome and reassuring. Beth took off the windbreaker and put it over Molly like a blanket. She leaned in to kiss her, but then thought better of it. It would be stupid to disturb her when she was sound asleep.
The urban farm was locked up and silent, but Marc’s key—which had remained on his key ring all this time, forgotten by everyone including him—unlocked the side entrance where the garden plots were. Beth propped it open and went back to the car.
Tumbling Marc out of the trunk was easier than getting him in, but not by much. His corpse was stiffer now, and it took more effort to unfold his limbs. Once his torso was mostly upright, though, she leaned on his shoulders and let his weight do the rest of the work, pushing him backward over the trunk’s rim until he fell down onto the asphalt.
The car, losing all that ballast at once, rocked and creaked dangerously, but Molly didn’t stir and her gentle snore didn’t change timbre. Beth locked the car, tugging on the door handle to make sure. It felt wrong to leave the little girl out here on the street, but nobody could get into the car without making a racket that would be heard from a mile off in the still, unpeopled night. If that happened, Beth would come running.
She had given herself the smallest distance she possibly could, but it still took ten minutes or so to haul the body across the grass, in through the gate and down the narrow lane to the garden plots. She thought about borrowing a wheelbarrow, but realized it wouldn’t help. She would never be able to keep it steady as it rolled, or get Marc’s body up into it in the first place. It would be a wasted effort even to try.
So she kept on hauling. Toting the barge. Lifting the bale. Hating her ex-husband’s mortal remains right then almost as much as she’d hated him in life.
She experienced a moment of panic when the gate to Marc’s garden plot turned out to be padlocked. But the key was right there on the ring. She opened it up, left the padlock hanging on the hasp and dragged the body inside.
The digging was hard, but it wasn’t at all unpleasant. Beth was wired, almost high on adrenaline and nervous energy: it was a relief to be able to burn some of it off. She went out a few times to check on Molly, finding her still fast asleep. This was an insane situation, but it was going okay. For now.
When the hole was deep enough—about four feet—she prepped the body, stripping off first the plastic and then every shred of clothing, cutting it away where she needed to with an X-Acto knife she’d brought along with her precisely for this task. The watch and the wedding ring last of all. She rolled Marc stark naked into the pit and anointed him generously with dolomite lime. Marc had always kept a few bags on hand to sweeten the soil in early spring.
She shoveled the earth in on top of him, and walked all over it for a minute or so to compact it down.
Would his being naked speed up the process? Probably not. Agricultural lime was slower than quicklime, and less caustic. It might not even dissolve Marc’s bones. But it was a comfort to Beth to think of the man who had hurt her so much, so often, with such commitment, rotting away inexorably into his component parts. She didn’t want any manmade fibers to get in the way of that elegant, organic process. It would spoil her pleasure when she thought about him on future nights, out here, under the ground, sailing away from her without moving.
She went back to the car, filthy, sweat-soaked and stinking, unlocked it and slid in beside her daughter.
“All done, baby,” she whispered. “Let’s go home.”
Molly murmured something, but didn’t wake. Her lips were thrust out in a pout of concentration. She was earnestly engaged with some dream or other.
It was safe to dream now. For all of them.
When Beth got back to the house, it was close to 5:00 a.m. There was no point in trying to sleep. She set Molly down in her own bed and lay beside her for a while, listening to the endless symphony of her breathing.
But when the clock showed 5:30 she got up and showered. Blood and mud and other things sloughed off her, leaving behind a heaviness that was both welcome and disturbing. It thrilled her to have such a vivid sense of her brand-new self, the heft and volume of it, but she didn’t like to think of herself as having limitations, and a body was a weight you had to carry as well as a citadel you could defend.
She did what needed to be done in terms of putting the house to rights. Her assorted weaponry went into the back of the closet, along with her own bloodied clothes and Marc’s in a plastic bag. She would burn them later, but at a time that would look natural, along with a whole lot of innocent garden rubbish. The rest of Marc’s things—the wedding ring, the watch, his wallet, two phones (presumably his regular cell and the burner he’d bought to call her) and his key ring—she put in a shoe box on the closet top shelf. She would keep them, for a little while at least. You never knew what might turn out to be useful. Of course they were as incriminating as hell, but Beth wasn’t anticipating an investigation—or at least not one that would lead to a search of the house. Marc had absconded the night before his trial. That was a narrative that would play well, she was pretty sure.
She cleaned the kitchen again in case she’d missed any tell-tale stains. Then she picked up all the dustsheets and dumped them in the garage along with the paint, brushes and ladder. The painting would have to be finished at some point, but for now it had served its purpose and she didn’t intend to waste any of her time on it.
Her precious time. Her second life. Her triumph.
She went up the stairs and ran into Parvesh Sethi coming down in a flat panic. “Is Molly with you?” he demanded, all out of breath.
“Yeah,” Beth said. “Sorry. I was just coming up to tell you. She came down in the night. I only just found her, sound asleep right next to me.”
Parvesh sagged in relief. “Oh thank God! Lizzie, I’m so sorry! We should have locked the door. We just didn’t think. We threw the bolt, like always, and left it at that. We never dreamed Molly would want to go anywhere in the night.”
“It’s fine,” Beth told him. Better give him his name, she decided as an afterthought. “No harm done, Vesh. I’m sorry you got such a nasty shock. Thanks again for looking after her.”
“We’re always here, you know that. What about Zac? Is he coming home for breakfast or going straight into school?”
Yeah, that was about enough of that, Beth decided. This guy lived in her building, not in her pocket. “Thanks for everything,” she repeated, and went back down the stairs.
“Lizzie,” Parvesh called.
She gritted her teeth. For fuck’s sake! Putting on a fake smile, she turned. “Yeah?”
“You want a lift down to the courthouse?”
“I’m good,” Beth s
aid. “Thanks.”
“Because we’d be happy to—”
“I’ve got to get Molly to school. I might as well drive on as come back here.”
“Okay, then.” Parvesh looked doubtful. Something about her manner had surprised him. “We’ll see you down there.”
Of course. Of course they would have offered, and of course Liz being Liz would have accepted, pathetically grateful to have a bunch of random assholes holding her up in case she fell down. “It will be really good to have you there,” Beth said, still with that plastic smile plastered across her face. “Thanks so much, Vesh.”
That seemed to be the right thing to say. He nodded, smiled back at her and let her leave without offering any more help she didn’t need.
Getting Molly up and ready for school was an even bigger production than dressing her in the night had been, but this time Beth could let herself relax and enjoy it.
This Molly’s rituals were both like and unlike the original Molly’s. She still insisted on using the dolphin-shaped sponge to wash her face, pretending that this was a symbiotic deal and she and the dolphin were washing each other. And she still brought Maisie the Mouse into the bathroom with her to sit and watch, as though washing her face and brushing her teeth were an enthralling spectator sport. But she preferred cold cereal to scrambled eggs and waffles. She sat on a high stool at the breakfast bar instead of on one of the ladderbacks at the kitchen table. And she couldn’t sing along to Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA because she didn’t know the words. It was weird for Beth to watch her and listen to her. It felt as though her own Molly was a light flickering behind this little girl’s face. She was there, all right. So precious. So perfect. But mixed with something else.
On the drive into school, Molly kept up a constant stream of chatter from the passenger seat. Stuff from books and comics and TV cartoons and Disney movies all whipped together into a surreal froth. Once again, Beth had that sense of simultaneous recognition and dislocation. Her own Molly had the same weird imagination but tended to deliver it in smaller, more concentrated doses. Talking to her had been like getting teasing glimpses of another world through a door that was barely ajar. With this Molly it was more like you were standing out on main street and the other world was parading past you with drums and trumpets. Beth played along as best she could, suddenly aware on this day of her triumph of everything she had lost and could never get back.
At the school she gave her little girl a kiss on the cheek and a hug. “Bye, Moll,” she said. “Have a good day.” Was that their farewell ritual? It seemed close enough to do the trick. Molly trotted away up the steps, almost skipping into school.
It was a relief to Beth, as she drove into town, to be able to drop the performance and be herself. There was going to be a lot of bluffing and a lot of winging it in the days to come. It would be a strain, but she had two big advantages. First off, she was already supposed to be under stress because of the trial and all the bullshit that came along with it. If she seemed to be acting strangely, people would most likely put it down to that.
And secondly, the truth of what had happened was so far out there that nobody would believe it on a dare. People might tell each other that Liz had changed in this way or that way, but they wouldn’t see it as sinister, and they wouldn’t try to work out when or why or how. All she had to do was wait them out.
Sooner rather than later, her own habits and behaviors would become the new normal.
That night Fran had the worst nightmare she’d had in years.
She was back in the Perry Friendly (of course!), in its current rotting state except that it was much, much bigger—an endless maze of lightless rooms that had had their furniture ripped out and their doors nailed shut. She was running through the maze, looking for a way out, and there was something big moving right behind her.
In her last really bad nightmare, Bruno Picota had been a spider. This time he was more like some kind of walrus. He had swollen up to many times his bulk, and he didn’t seem to be able to walk. He was dragging himself along with his hands, which were huge even compared to the rest of him, two massive shovel-blades with claws at the end of them.
Picota was gaining on her, even though he was down on his belly. Fran had to find and fumble with each door in the smothering dark, and once she had gotten it open there was no way of closing it again. So each room she ran through narrowed the gap between the two of them. It was only a matter of time before he got close enough to grab hold of her. And Jinx wasn’t anywhere to be seen. She was on her own.
The terror of that thought made her turn at last, to face him. And she remembered as she turned that she had a weapon! In her pocket she was carrying the bag of sour worm candies that Zac Kendall had brought up to her room. Ouroborus, the snake that eats its tail.
She pulled out the bag and flung it down on the ground. Sour worms exploded out of it, assembling themselves quickly into tail-eating rings. The rings interlaced to make a chain-link fence, which reared itself up quickly between her and Picota.
Just in time. The walrus-monster flung itself against the barrier, stretching it with his hideous weight. Fran backed away until the wall was right at her back, and Picota came right on after her, the fence stretching and deforming and finally
breaking
breaking into pieces
and every piece was crying out as though it was alive.
Fran realized too late that the fence was somehow Jinx. She had killed Jinx by trying to use her as a barricade against Picota.
She struggled up out of the dream as though it was a tar pit, pitching her sheet and duvet onto the floor in the process. She lay there for a few minutes, coming down slowly, panic-sweat cooling on her skin and panic-thoughts curdling in her brain.
Jinx was beside her on the pillow, her sharp snout nuzzling intangibly into Fran’s hair.
I’m fine, she whispered. I’m fine, Fran. Nothing bad happened to me. It was just a dream.
“I know that, Lady J,” Fran whispered. “But it still felt really bad.”
Jinx murmured soothing words to her, trying to make her settle again, but there wasn’t much chance of that. Fran got up and slid her feet into her slippers.
You should try to sleep. It’s school in the morning.
“I will in a little while, Jinx.”
She went downstairs, moving as softly as she could—especially as she passed her dad’s room. When she eased the living room door open and stepped into the room, Zac sat up at once. It was as though her dream had woken him too.
That outrageous thought earned a snuffling snort of derision from Jinx. He doesn’t share your dreams. I do!
“I couldn’t sleep,” Zac whispered. His bare chest, reflecting the diffuse glow from the upstairs landing, was the lightest thing in the dark room.
“Neither could I. Are you worried about your mom?”
“I’m feeling like an idiot about my mom. I shouldn’t have left her on her own. Especially tonight. I just lost it.”
“You’re allowed to do that from time to time, Zachary. She’ll understand.”
He shrugged, and she dropped the subject. In Fran’s experience, if you were feeling bad about something you’d done, being told it wasn’t so terrible just made you impatient. You had to get to that place by yourself, if you got there at all.
She thought about bringing over one of the dining room chairs to sit on, but sat right down on the sofa instead. Inches away from him. “I had a nightmare,” she said.
“About Picota?”
“All my nightmares are about Picota.”
She wondered whether he would put his arms around her. If he did, she wouldn’t pull away. She would lean into it, and it would feel like fate.
Lady Jinx made the pretend-vomiting sound that kids make when they’re grossed out. And somehow that did make it gross, because Jinx was like a child in all kinds of ways and if you made out in front of a child then obviously you were a pervert and an asshole. Fran stood u
p abruptly, and sat on the arm of the sofa, a few feet outside of Zac’s reach.
“Anyway,” she said, “I had an idea. And I’d like to run it by you, because you’re in it. Kind of.”
“Go on,” Zac said.
But going on was hard. There was no way of taking a run-up at this. Either she would say it or she wouldn’t. She glanced over at Jinx, who was sitting back on her haunches with her ears pricked up—still alert in case Fran got too close to Zac again and had to be reminded that he had boy-cooties.
“I want to go and visit him,” she said.
Jinx gave a loud yelp.
“Visit Picota? Holy shit!”
You can’t! Fran, you can’t! He’s too dangerous!
“I know it sounds kind of crazy.”
Zac sat bolt upright. “Fran, are you sure?”
“I’m sure I don’t want to. But it feels like that’s the reason why I have to.” Jinx was yelping No! No! No! but Fran pressed on. “We’ve been finding out all this stuff, and it hasn’t made the fear go away. It’s just …” She shrugged. “Narrowed it down. Cut away some of the trimmings. I’m not afraid of the Perry Friendly, or knives with that jagged-tooth thing on them, or the dark, or the skadegamutc. I’m just scared of him. So if I want to fix it there’s only one place I can go.”
Jinx had jumped up onto the back of the sofa to glare into Fran’s face. I can’t protect you if you just run headfirst into danger! she yapped.
We’ll talk later, Fran promised Jinx. She was waiting for Zac’s answer, but Zac didn’t say anything. His hand found hers in the dark, and held it.
It was nice. There were no cooties at all, to speak of. Jinx might have had a different opinion, but the bombshell Fran had just dropped had made her forget all about the terminal disgustingness of boys.
“So anyway,” Fran said, “I was wondering if you’d come with me.”
“To Grove City?”
“Yeah. I know it’s a long—”
“Of course I will. They probably won’t let me inside, but I’ll go up there with you on the bus and wait outside until you’re done. I’ll book the tickets, if you want. I’ve got a student advantage card and I think it will work for both of us.”