by Brad Munson
Lisa had no idea – not then – that she’d meet that woman again in less than twenty-four hours, slathered in blood and facing monsters.
In the gray and weightless place of dreams, none of that was real. All she could recall was simply sitting in the Beamer, clenching her jaw, not talking to her daughter and wishing she was anywhere else on earth than driving through the pouring rain in this putrid little town.
This isn’t my fault, she told herself. Because it never was. Lisa believed that things just happened to her, no matter what she actually did, and certainly no matter what she actually wanted. That was the way life worked for her: Take no credit, the world told her, accept no blame.
Nobody understood that. Her family thought she was easy-going when in fact she was simply powerless … and she accepted that, as so few others could. She’d told her husband as much, more than once – her ex-husband, that is – and he had mistaken it for modesty. He’d even teased her; he’d called her “Queen of the Happy Accident.” But it wasn’t modesty at all. It was the truth, and the last two years had proven it.
None of this is my fault, she told herself as she splashed through another huge puddle. Not the drift away from Ken. Not her failing career in real estate. Not her daughter’s street life or attempted suicide or Patrick’s death or Ken’s disappearance, none of it.
She remembered the mushy feel of the BMW’s steering wheel as she curled her fingers into fists. She could sense a slippage, an uncertainty in the road hissing underneath her.
“Look,” she said to Rose, surprised at the anger in her own voice. “I didn’t make you take that shit into your body. I didn’t force you to break your probation and go to that party and get arrested again. That wasn’t me.”
Rose smiled bitterly. “You’re right, Mom,” she said very quietly. “You’re right. I’m all alone in this. I know that. In fact, I figured that out a long fucking time ago.” And a single muddy tear tracked mascara down her daughter’s cheek.
Lisa remembered that tear as she drifted. It broke her heart, and it made her so mad she wanted to scream.
The dream was beginning to narrow. She remembered them coming to an overcomplicated archway, high on the western ridge of Dos Hermanos: a set of twin pedestals made from river stone supporting a wrought-iron gate. She threaded her way between the pylons and said, “We’re here.”
“No kidding,” Rose muttered.
As she steered through a deep dip in the road, the water thundering around them, Lisa started talking to Rose again. She had no idea why. “You be good to your father,” she said as she drove up a second hill and into a new wave of rain.
“Oh, sure,” Rose snorted.
“Rose! He isn’t a bad guy. You need to give him a chance.” They surged downhill again and splashed into a rushing puddle.
“Why?” Rose said. “You didn’t.”
The BMW roared up the third rise and there it was: the huge dark hulk of his ridiculous house, hunched on the ridgeline like a fat, sleepy snake. “It’s not about me,” Lisa told her.
“Of course it is,” her daughter said.
“It’s not –”
“Don’t!”
“Rose, please –”
“Just stop it!”
A streak of red flew in from the left – a motorcycle or golf-cart or something – and slammed into the road in front of her. Lisa jerked the wheel to the side, flinching away from the collision without thinking. Mud sprayed across the windshield.
Her daughter screamed. She remembered that. Then there was nothing under the front tires, and they were tipping, plunging, roaring down the hillside, sliding to the side as they fell faster and faster. Lisa threw her right arm out in front of Rose as she screamed Stop! and they rammed into a solid block of stone.
Stop, Rose had been screaming. Stop stop stop …
And now …
And now …
* * *
… she was coming back.
The drugs were starting to clear from her system. She could feel the mattress at her back, smell the starch in the overly soft pillow. She could feel warm fingers holding her left hand, while something hard and cool pinched her wrist so hard she couldn’t move it.
Her mouth was very dry; her head was pounding; her eyes were glued shut with grunge, but she was back. She wasn’t dead.
She was here.
She didn’t want to sleep anymore. Maybe never again. She had slept enough for a lifetime, for ten lifetimes.
So Lisa opened her eyes.
* * *
Rose was so beautiful. So perfect. How had she ever though any differently? What the hell had been wrong with her?
She tried to put up a hand, but it was impossibly heavy. It rose barely an inch, but Rose caught it in her own and squeezed. The teenager was crying and smiling at the same time.
“I am so sorry,” Lisa said, and somehow she knew that Rose understood: she wasn’t just apologizing for the car accident, or the argument, or the stupid decision to come to Dos Hermanos in the first place. She was saying she was sorry for everything, for all of it, from the minute it had started to go bad, and maybe even more.
Lisa’s arms came up and Rose bent down and they hugged, awkwardly and not without pain. Lisa had needles in her arm and a bandage wrapped around one wrist, but they embraced as they hadn’t in years.
“You’re okay,” Lisa said, and they both knew what that meant, too.
“I am. I am. It will be different now.”
“I know. I mean it, I know.”
Then they stopped talking for a while and just cried together.
* * *
Ken was there, too. She had seen him standing behind Rose from the moment she’d opened her eyes, but she still didn’t know quite how to talk to him, or even to look at him. But she was distantly pleased that he had let the moment between the mother and daughter go on for as long as it needed to. He didn’t interrupt – Lisa wasn’t sure he could have if he’d wanted to. And finally, when the two of them disentangled, laughing at the confusion of tubes and twisted sheets, Lisa rubbed the heel of her hands across her cheeks to wipe the tears away and looked at him directly for the first time.
He looked good. Stupidly good. That long Midwestern farm boy face had filled out again; it had lost the tragic shadows of the bad years, and the eyes didn’t have that shiny, puffy look that always seemed to whisper I really need a drink. He was better; she could see that, even when he was looking worried and even a little scared. Look how he was clutching his hat in his hands. Poor thing …
“Hi,” she said to him. “I’m okay, really.”
“I know you are,” he said thickly. “I mean, the doctors said – I talked …” He put his hands over his eyes to hide his own tears, but he couldn’t stop them. “Christ, Lisa. Christ …”
She saw Rose put a hand on her dad’s chest and make small circles – an oddly intimate, comforting gesture, like rubbing a baby’s back. “It’s okay, Daddy,” she said quietly. “She’s alive, and so am I, in spite of my best efforts.”
He snorted and sniffed and wiped his eyes. “In spite of your best efforts,” he repeated, almost laughing. “How old are you again?”
“I’m a hundred and twelve in dog years,” she said, “and you made me that way. Come on. Sit down here.” She pulled a second chair close to the bed and Lisa smiled as they huddled together, as near to her as they could get.
They talked quietly for a few minutes – “a systems check,” Ken called it later. They told her about the wild ride to the Borrego Clinic in a ’57 Chevy ambulance, and reported on Rose’s clean bill of health – “as if I’d let these guys touch me!” she said – and the bizarre storm that continued to rumble and hiss just outside the hospital room’s picture window. She told him what she’d read: that it never rains in Dos Hermanos. And yet here it was. “Is that true?” she said, glancing nervously at the storm that waited just a few feet away. “Never?”
He nodded. “Never. At least not once sinc
e I got here. This whole thing seems to be some bizarre mountain-shadow effect.”
She looked at him flatly, just like the old days. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He almost smiled. “A weird meteorological condition. It can be pouring rain on one side of a mountain, dry and hot on the other. The mountain’s like a barrier that keeps the two cells apart … at least that’s what it looks like.”
“And you know this how?”
Now he really did smile and shrug – a painfully familiar gesture. She nodded in return, almost by reflex. It was true; she had loved that restless curiosity in him, annoying as it was at times … but she’d seen very little of it since Patrick’s death, and maybe even longer. It was nice to see it back again, she thought. Even a little bit.
She looked around the room for the first time. It was a double, but at the moment the other bed was empty; the sliding curtain had been thrown back and they could see the rain splattering against the window on the far side of the room.
“I thought it never rained here,” she said. It sounded almost comically grumpy, even to her own ears.
“I doesn’t,” Ken said. “I mean, until today.”
“I think we brought it with us,” Rose said.
A far-too-young face with a tangle of far-too-blond hair leaned into the open door frame. He was wearing a white coat and a stethoscope like an actual doctor, but Lisa knew that wasn’t possible. Doctors didn’t look like this except on TV.
“Hey,” he said. “How are we feeling?”
Maybe he is a doctor, she thought. He looks tired. He gave her a surprisingly open and unguarded smile and he crossed the room, looking more like a frat boy than an ER physician as he took Lisa’s free hand in his own.
“I’m Geoff Chamberlain,” he said. “We’ve met before, but you were unconscious at the time.”
“And how many women have you swept off your feet with that line?” Lisa asked. She was feeling better – better than she had in a long time, she admitted to herself.
The doctor grinned. “Maybe I do need some fresh material,” he said. “Anyway: I don’t want you to worry. We did every test we could think of, and you passed ‘em all. Looks like you’ve got a mild concussion, a dandy little contusion right above your hairline, and a badly strained right wrist.” He looked up from his notes. “Let me guess: the Mommy Sweep?” He threw his right arm out to the side and kept it there, as if holding back an invisible attacker.
“Guilty,” she said, smiling at him. Okay, she had to admit it: he was cute.
“It defies all the laws of physics, you know,” he said. “But I don’t blame you one bit.” He glanced at Rose who was standing to one side, arms folded, looking him up and down very skeptically. “I mean, look who you were trying to protect.”
Ken gave him a killing look. “She’s sixteen,” he said.
Dr. Chamberlain held up a hand as he went back to his notes. “Just being understanding,” he said, grinning again. “Part of the bedside manner.” He looked back at Lisa, a little more seriously this time. “But look: head injuries can be tricky, Ms. Mackie …”
She started to correct him, to say “Corman,” … but she let it go.
“… and since we’ve got the space – like we usually do – I’d like to keep you here overnight for observation. Insurance will cover it; we already checked.”
Lisa frowned. “Really, Doctor, I’d like to get out of here.”
“I’m sure you would,” Chamberlain said gently. “So would I. In fact, I’m off duty in about half an hour, and under normal circumstances, I’d be happy to take you all out for a drin—.” He looked at the pretty sixteen-year-old again, then at her glowering father. “For dinner. At Denny’s. The one with the kid’s menus.” Then, back to Lisa: “But let’s not take any chances, okay? You got a pretty mean bump, and there’s no reason not to get a good night’s sleep right here. We’ll release you in the morning, and then none of us have to worry.”
Lisa looked at Ken and Rose. They both nodded severely. “Okay,” she relented. “One night.”
There was a knock at the door and they all looked up to see an impressive-looking man in a crisp khaki uniform, his hair cropped so tightly you can see his scalp shining through, standing in the doorframe with his peaked hat in his hand. “Ma’am?” he said in a pleasant bass voice. “I’m Sheriff Donald Peck. I was wondering if I could speak to you for a moment …?”
“Just for a second, Sheriff, okay?” Dr. Chamberlain said. “She needs the rest.”
Peck shot the doctor a hard look – a look that Lisa read as Who the hell do you think YOU are, boy? – but it was hidden by a smile in an instant. “Of course,” the sheriff said. “Just a minute or two.”
He stood at the end of the bed and asked her a series of quiet questions about the crash. How fast had she been going? How bad was the rain? What made her turn like that? Lisa described what had happened; Ken and Rose filled in with their own observations, and Peck took it all in without comment or a change in his serious, thoughtful expression. He didn’t take notes; he obviously didn’t need to.
He was particularly interested in the red ATV and the person driving it. “So,” he said, talking to them all now, “no look at the face. Just a black helmet, black leather jacket … nothing else? No second person riding behind? No large bundles or boxes attached?”
They looked at each other and agreed: nothing like that, and only one person.
“I wish like hell I could give you more,” Ken said.
Peck smiled tightly. “Not a problem,” he said. “I have a couple of ideas already. It’s not that big a town, after all.” He put on his hat and shook hands all around. “I’ll be getting back to you soon as I can,” he said. “In the meantime, if you need any help …”
Thunder rumbled outside. It made the picture window’s glass buzz like an angry bee.
“Sheriff, what’s going on?” Ken asked. “I mean, this is a normal hit and run, isn’t it? What’s with all the attention? I mean … questioning by the police chief, no less. What’s up?”
Peck smiled again, thinner than ever. “Don’t read too much into it, Dr. Mackie. Things are just a little tense around here right now, and you’re kind of a big shot at VeriSil. You know that, right?”
Ken grimaced at that. Lisa hid a smile. “Well …”
“And you know about the missing girls …?”
Ken nodded. “Sure, I’ve heard.”
“Another one today. So anything out of the ordinary, we’re looking at pretty hard. And believe it or not, speeding ATVs running people off the road … that’s out of the ordinary.”
Ken nodded. “Got it,” he said, and Lisa thought Missing girls? Another one today? What the hell is going on in this awful place?
“I’ll be going now, then. Plenty of other things to do, with the storm and all.” He looked closely at Ken as he shook his hand. “Your daughter staying at the house with you up on West Ridge?”
Ken glanced at his daughter, who made an unhappy face … but he nodded. “Yes, she’ll be with me. And her mom will be here at the clinic overnight.”
“Good. Good all around.” He made his good-byes, gave the doctor one last don’t you screw with me, asshole look, and stepped out. As he left, a severe-looking middle-aged nurse whose expression read, I don’t like you, no matter who you are came in with a cup of pills for Lisa. She swallowed them without objection.
“Lovely fellow,” Ken said. “Can’t imagine how I’ve avoided him for a whole year.”
“Cream of the Gestapo,” the doctor muttered. He checked his watch. “Oops, look at that – I have to get out of here.”
“Big date?”
He shrugged. “Worse. Birthday party. Mine.”
“Congratulations,” Lisa said.
“Please. It’s my thirtieth, and I begged my roomies to leave it alone. No such luck.” He leaned forward as if telling a secret. “I hear there’s going to be a girl jumping out of a cake and everything.
”
“Unsanitary, maybe,” Lisa said, enjoying the flirtation in spite of herself, “but fun.”
He frowned. “We’ll see. Anyway … I’ll check with you in the morning, Ms. Mackie.”
“Lisa,” she said.
“Lisa.” He shook hands with Ken. “Are you okay with this?” he asked.
Ken nodded. “Thanks. I appreciate everything.”
“All part of the service.” He put his hand out to Rose, who accepted it with grown-up, serious grace. He smiled at her. “If that back really starts to bother you, let me know, okay?”
Rose gaped. “How …”
He just grinned. “See you tomorrow,” he said. And over his shoulder as he left, “And let the lady get some sleep soon, okay?”
They stayed with Lisa for another twenty minutes, but there was less and less that needed to be said, and the new round of medications were starting to affect her. Finally Ken put a hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “I think I’ll take her to dinner,” he told Lisa, “then go up to the house.”
“Stop at the mall for something to wear, too,” Lisa said sleepily. Rose started to groan, but she waved it away. “Oh, come on, now. All your clothes were in the car; I’m sure they’re ruined.”
Ken nodded. “Will do. And if you need anything …”
“I have a phone right here,” she said, nodding at her bedside table. “I’m sure it will be fine.”
“Yes, but if you need any–”
“Kenny,” she said, and a hint of the old edginess crept back into her voice. “I’ve been taking care of myself for quite a while now. Don’t get carried away.”
He looked away. “Got it,” he said. Then, with a false heartiness; “Okay, Rosie, let’s go.”
Five minutes later, she was alone. Ten minutes later, she was drifting into sleep. She neither saw nor heard the stony fingers scrabbling at the window, trying to get inside.
That was for later.
Three