Maisie and I meet eyes for a second, and she raises her eyebrows. I just shrug. No, she’s not what you expect from a zombie-raising Vodou priestess.
She leads us into a little sitting room I didn’t see before, with a low table and a few couches and chairs.
“Sit. Please,” she says, waving to the couch.
Plastic crinkles beneath us as we do, and the corner of my mouth tips up in a brief smile. My grandmother, too, covered her couch in a plastic protector.
The smile doesn’t last long, because Maisie’s here to ask Ms. Josephine for her help to keep me alive, and I’m here to ask her to help me die. And everything is weighing so heavily on me.
Eyes burning, I look down at my hands and take a deep breath.
“You don’t like kremas?”
Neither I nor Maisie have touched our drinks yet. We look at each other and dutifully take a sip.
It’s like eggnog, but coconut-ty, and with enough booze to make my eyes burn.
Maisie’s eyes go wide as she takes a drink, then she puts the cup down and pushes it away. “Thank you, it’s delicious. I just shouldn’t drink.” She flashes a look at me. “I have to drive.”
I don’t, thanks to her, and if this is my last day on earth, I’m going to enjoy whatever this kremas is, and the buzz that would come with it.
Maybe. Could I get a buzz as a zombie? I didn’t know. But I was going to give it my best shot. I take another big drink and pull Maisie’s cup in front of me. “It’s delicious, Ms. Josephine.”
Our hostess looks between me gulping down alcohol and Maisie sitting there stiff and subdued, and sits her drink down on the table. “There is something on your minds.”
It wasn’t a question. We’d called and asked to come over, and I felt guilty for her thinking it was just a social visit. We should have come over for drinks and conversation at least once before I asked her to kill me.
Oh well. Now I didn’t have the time.
Maisie clears her throat. “First of all, I want to thank you for what you did for my husband. I never got the chance to do that, and I just... I thank you so much.”
“You are welcome. However, it is for God’s glory, not for mine,” but she smiles and preens a bit, obviously pleased.
“Of course,” Maisie says. “Still, it wouldn’t have been possible without your help. I’m... hoping you can help us again. If you’re willing.”
“Oh?”
“You see, Grady has been getting hungrier, and losing more time when he’s out of it. He’s also been a little more... agitated than before.”
Agitated. Such a nice, mild term for becoming a rabid zombie and almost eating my wife and my former boss. “I’m getting worse,” I interject, head fuzzy from the alcohol. I meet Ms. J’s eyes, because I know she knows precisely what I mean. “I almost hurt my wife.”
“But you didn’t,” Maisie is quick to reply, staring at me.
“This time.” I look back at Ms. J. “I can’t risk it. I won’t.”
“You are eating regularly?” she asks me.
“Yes, but I have to eat more food, more often now. And I get hungrier. And it takes longer to come back from feeding.”
“Sleep?”
I shake my head. “I’m always tired, but I can’t sleep.”
“This is serious, yes. I’m afraid what I warned you of is happening. Your soul is losing its grip.”
“I’m hoping—we’re hoping—that there is something else you can do to help him,” Maisie says. “Or somewhere else you could send us, something else you know of. Some other...magic?” she adds delicately.
Ms. Josephine sits back with folded hands and a deep breath. “I told your husband before. There is nothing else I can do to help him here.” Maisie’s face crumbles, and Ms. J turns to me. “The only thing I can do, is remove the spell binding your soul to your body. But be clear, if I do that, you will die. And if you’re not ready to go...your soul might still be trapped here.”
Without hesitation, I say, “I’m ready.” I glance over at Maisie as her eyes fill with tears and she looks down at her hands. Her feelings are hurt, but she doesn’t understand.
She’s more important to me than life.
Even though Ms. J doesn’t need the explanation, Maisie does. So I offer it, staring at her profile. “If the choice is between going to the afterlife, or staying here and possibly hurting you, then I have to go. And I’m ready to.” I know I am, way down inside where you feel things without conscious thought sometimes.
I grab her hand in mine and squeeze, and she nods wordlessly as she swipes at her tears with her other hand.
Ms. Josephine scoots to the edge of her chair and grabs Maisie’s hand in both of hers as she lowers it. “Sister, sister. Please listen to me.” She then cups Maisie’s face as she continues to cry. “It will be okay. Your husband, he’s been blessed. Most people don’t get a second chance. He’s had one.” She pats her cheeks and then looks at me. “Okay, so when do you want to do this?”
“Tomorrow. If possible.”
Ms. Josephine nods, but Maisie looks at me as if I’ve betrayed her.
I beg her with my eyes to understand. It was now, or maybe never. I’d lose my resolve. I wanted to stay with her too badly. I’d risk too much, wait too long. Maybe it would eventually work out okay, but maybe it wouldn’t.
Maybe I’d just disappear into the blackness, and accidentally kill and eat my wife. Or someone else.
I drop my eyes from hers in shame. “Knowing I have to die at some point is like staring into the sun,” I tell her. “I can’t face it for very long without turning away.”
I can’t face dying, or losing her, for very long without wanting to change my mind. But I know I can’t do that.
She pops up out of her chair with a quick, “Excuse me, I need some air,” and leaves the room.
I stand to follow her.
“Wait,” Ms. Josephine says as she stands. “I will speak with her. But first, if you are concerned for her safety before tomorrow, you can consider giving her your ring.”
I glance down at it on my finger. Why hadn’t I thought of that? But, as before I’d died, I’d gotten so used to wearing my ring I’d barely thought about it or noticed it since Maisie had given it back. It seems so plain, so innocuous, that it hardly seems possible that my soul and autonomy are tied to it.
“You must not feel obligated to do this, however.” I glance back up at Ms. Josephine. “It is your soul, and your choice, and must not be taken lightly.” Her face and voice both soften. “Death may still be preferable to ownership, even though it is your wife. However, it may be tolerable to both of you for one night.”
But I remember Ms. Josephine leading me around her yard, commanding my actions, for the express purpose of keeping herself safe. Maisie could do the same. And maybe since it’s Maisie, it won’t feel so unwilling.
I nod, unsure of how to respond.
“Now I will speak to her. You go wait.” She flicks a hand toward the car.
Uncertain, I glance at the doorway she disappeared through. But then I nod, because I don’t think I can help her through her sorrow and uncertainty very well, when I’m positively drowning in my own.
***
Maisie
When I left the room at Ms. Josephine’s house, it was because I felt like I was dying. My breaths were locked in my chest behind a cage of pressure and pain, and I just had to escape the room to get some oxygen.
I find the closest door and opened it, gasping for air to keep from throwing up or breaking into sobs.
Ms. Josephine followed me shortly after with a glass of water. “Ms. Maisie, sit, please.” She grabs my hand and pulls me down to the porch steps, then hands me the water. I don’t want it, but I sip anyway, focusing on the coolness of the glass, the clarity of the water. The way it feels cool in my mouth, when I swallow. Anything to keep the thoughts at bay.
“If you have something you need to tell him, you must do it soon.”
&
nbsp; I turn to look at Ms. Josephine, whose gaze is tender and understanding. She motions to my abdomen. “How far are you?”
How does she know? How did she guess? I stare into the water and try to answer without more tears. “Eight weeks.”
“You haven’t told him.”
I shake my head. It had never been the right time, and this still wasn’t it, but now he’s given me a hard deadline. He wants to die tomorrow.
I feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach.
“You have a chance to share this child with your husband. A chance you will never have again. Do not deprive him, or yourself, of that.”
I can’t even reply around the brick in my throat.
Ms. Josephine lays a warm hand on my back. “I know this is hard. But you must remember that death is not the end of life. It is simply the next stop in the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Grady’s natural cycle was interrupted by his murder, this is true, but I interrupted it again when I brought him back. Releasing his soul to the spirit world, to go on to God, will restore it.
The spirit world is more real than physical reality, and it lasts forever once we get there. This place—” she gestures around her yard, up to the sky, “—is but one stop on the journey. He goes to a better place.” She grabs one of my hands into both of hers. “You will live a long, full life and when you die, he will be in Heaven waiting to reunite with you. And you will be together for eternity. This is a wonderful thing.”
I wish I could see it that way, but all I can see, all I can feel, is the hole that will be left in this world without him in it. All the long years stretching out before me, missing him, mourning him. All the days and events he will miss, and that I will miss having him there. It’s too much. Too heavy, too painful.
“What do I do?” I croak.
“You start by believing that love is stronger than death.” She nods as she squeezes my hands. “Do not think about the whole road ahead of you. Focus only on what you have to do, have to endure, in this moment. Take one step at a time. You will survive.”
She takes the glass from me and sets it aside, then takes both my hands and helps me to stand.
I barely know this woman, but I find myself unwilling to let go of her hands. I need the strength she is trying to give me. I’m greedy for it. I don’t have enough of my own.
Grady’s abandoning me, abandoning our child. I would stay for him, if our positions were reversed. I love him that much. If only he loved me that much. I thought he did.
“Do not blame your husband for making a choice you do not have to make,” Ms. Josephine says, as if she can read my thoughts. She could raise the dead, so maybe she could. “You do not really know what you would pick in his shoes. Now, go to him, and have peace.”
She squeezes my hands and then releases them, and guides me to the car.
Chapter Eighteen
Maisie-1
Grady and I drive home in heavy silence. He can’t say he’s changed his decision, and I can’t say I forgive him for making it.
So we say nothing, and yet the car is still loud with all the unsaid things.
I’m remorseful yet resentful of the precious minutes ticking by with this wall between us.
We should be happy in these moments together, but we’re both quiet, lost in our own thoughts and sorrows.
I wish I could feel something beyond this tightness in my chest, this fear and pain. I wish I could make him understand that I’m lost and broken and don’t know what to do. I need more time.
I’m not enjoying this time with him the way I should be. I’m sad and scared and I feel betrayed and abandoned. But also honored that he would sacrifice his life for me. I know that shows the depth of his love.
And yet, he’s taking away the most important thing in my life from me, and that feels cruel. I know it’s not, but these thoughts and feelings swirl around inside me, hindering and diluting my enjoyment of his presence.
Panic rises in my chest. He dies tomorrow. I can’t believe it.
“Please,” I beg into the silence as I pull into the driveway, “please just wait a little longer. Let’s look for more options. If voodoo is real, then there’s got to be other magic that is real, other magic that can help. We can find it—”
He looks down and shakes his head, “I can’t Maisie,” he says, interrupting me. “I’m so hungry. I just ate this morning, and already all I can think about is fresh meat.”
His eyes flick up to mine, and I inhale with alarm at the red cast to his irises. “I’m getting hungrier more often, losing control for longer. And things will only get worse from here. I can control it right now, but I don’t know for how long. I’m sorry. I’m just not willing to risk it.” He looks at me again, his irises a sorrowful but reassuring brown.
This is who he is now. But who am I supposed to be?
He gets out of the car and goes in. I sit there a minute and then follow him inside, all the way to the bedroom where he sits slumped on the side.
I’m going to tell him.
I’ve hidden the news of the baby, I’ve kept it from him all this time because I was scared.
I’d known something was wrong, hadn’t I? That him coming back was somehow too good to be true. Because it was.
But now I’ll tell him about his son or daughter, this gift, and he’ll stop all this nonsense about dying and leaving me, and we will keep searching for a solution so we can all be a family. Together.
“Grady, I need to tell you something.” I sit on the edge of the bed beside him, cross-legged, and grab his hand in both of mine.
He’s staring at me. In the midst of all the serious conversations we’ve had in the last few days, he seems to know it’s going to get even more serious.
I calm my heartbeat, my fear, my hope. “I’m pregnant.”
He searches my face for a moment before I see his eyes light up and his lips start to bow. He turns toward me and pushes his hands into my hair, touches his forehead to mine.
“Really? You’re pregnant?”
I nod, throat closing for a second, overwhelmed by the moment. “I wanted to tell you sooner, but—” I toss a hand in the air. “Everything.”
He’s nodding, because it’s been a rollercoaster for both of us, and he knows it. He looks down and puts a hand to my still-flat belly. A peculiar thickness to his voice, he asks, “How far along?”
“About eight weeks.”
A tiny grin on his pale face, he meets my eyes. “So, the shower.”
“Yes.” I smile and blush, because that’s what I’d narrowed it down to, too. And it had been... memorable. His grin grows.
Wistfulness in his voice, he says, “I can’t believe I’m going to be a dad.”
My smile vanishes. “Not if you’re not here.” It comes out harsher than I intended, and he pulls away like I’ve slapped him. He pops up off the bed and stands at the window, hands on his hips. He puts the back of his hand to his mouth and turns back to me. “It doesn’t change anything. It can’t.” His eyes are shiny.
I should feel guilty that I’m trying to manipulate him. I should feel sorry that I’ve given him the gift of a child, only for him to lose it tomorrow.
But all I feel is angry.
“It changes nothing?” The words rip out of me as I get off the bed on the other side, staring at him. “I’ve just told you we’re going to have a child together, and it doesn’t change your mind?” My entire body throbs with anger. “You’re still giving up?”
He turns to face me more fully. “If anything, it’s even more reason for me to go. Can’t you see? What if I hurt you while you’re pregnant? What if I hurt the baby after it’s born? As a child? You can’t trust me.” There’s horror in his eyes, and he reaches out a hand in a plea for me to understand, but I can’t.
This was supposed to stop him. To make him try harder, search harder, for an answer. This was supposed to make him wait a little longer, at the very least. To give us a little bit more of a chance to figure thing
s out.
Instead, I gave him another reason to die.
Blindly, I turn away from him and jerk on my jeans. Then I slip on shoes and find my purse, my keys. I don’t know where I’m going to go—there’s no one I can turn to for comfort, no one who knows or understands what I’m going through—but I can’t stay here.
He catches me before I can open the back door, and puts a hand on my upper arm. “Maisie—”
I shrug out of his grip and open the door, but he slaps a palm on it to hold it shut. I glare at it through unshed tears. I won’t turn to look at him.
I know we’re fighting each other because there is no enemy to fight, only fear and uncertainty and pain. But I can’t stop, can’t control my emotions.
“Maisie, come on, don’t leave.”
His hand lowers and he puts his arms around me, but I refuse to look at him or move or respond. If I do, I’ll shatter.
He holds me in the loose but unbreakable circle of his arms. “Please.” His voice lowers to a murmur as he presses his head against mine. “This is our last night together. Please stay with me.”
“Then stay with me!” I yell, finally breaking, a raw sob following. The anger disguising my hurt dissolves, and I sag in his arms as my legs give out.
“I can’t.” He murmurs against my hair. “You know I can’t. I wish I could. My God, how I wish I could. But I can’t. This was temporary, and it always has been.”
And I had known that, hadn’t I? When he first told me he was undead. I’d just been in denial.
“But I’m so thankful for the extra time I had with you.” His voice cracks. “Please don’t throw away what we have left because you’re angry at me.”
He’s right. I have less than twenty-four hours left with the love of my life, and I need to savor it.
And yet I am angry at him. I’m awash with painful rage.
“You’re choosing a permanent solution to something that might happen.” And that feels like betrayal. Maybe he would turn into a raging zombie and attack me. But maybe he wouldn’t, right?
He’s going by the assumption that he will, and I’m going by the assumption that he won’t, and there’s no way to know who’s right. So why give up too soon?
A Cursed All Hallows' Eve Page 29