by J. S. Bailey
“It hurts, doesn’t it?” Jerry said, sensing her thoughts.
She nodded. Wayne would be inconsolable. And to think that they had joked about getting married that very morning! Only it hadn’t been a joke at all. She could see it in the way he wept beside her still form, squeezing her cooling hand as if trying to pull her back from the brink of death.
“Why am I here with you?” she asked.
“As opposed to heaven?”
She nodded again. It was difficult to speak. “Yeah. That.”
“You’re here for the same reason that I am.”
“I never killed anyone.”
“God doesn’t care what you did, only that you did it.”
“But I don’t know what I did!”
“Who knows? Maybe it’s not what you did but what you didn’t do.”
She racked her mind in search of an answer to her dilemma.
She’d been faithful for her entire life. She’d gone to church and said her prayers. She went to confession once a year and didn’t eat meat on Fridays during Lent. She’d even given up microwaveable burritos this past Lent, and that was one of the most painful things she’d ever done. And in the end, it was all for nothing.
But what hadn’t she done? She hadn’t helped Sidney in her time of need. She hadn’t tried to reconcile her relationship with her parents and instead maintained a cold distance from them.
“I guess I really don’t deserve heaven,” she said.
“Nobody deserves it, Jessica. Not me, not you. But that’s the beauty of it all if we do make it there someday. Getting what we don’t deserve.”
Sidney was sobbing. Maria was saying something to her, but Jessica was hardly listening.
“Have you noticed that it’s gone?” Jerry asked.
“What?”
“Think really hard about that for a minute, and you tell me.”
Of course—he was talking about the Presence. “I asked God to take me if it would make the thing leave. Too bad he didn’t take me very far, huh?”
Jerry’s eyes widened. “You did that?”
“Yeah. I tried to make it stop by myself, but it wouldn’t leave. This was the only solution I could think of.” She paused. “Where did it come from?”
“Where? Who knows? I often wondered the same thing, myself—perhaps they’re always out there watching; always looking for an opportunity to be let in. But I can tell you that it was with me from the moment Abigail called to tell me what she’d done. I was weak. And there are forces that love to prey on the weak. They get inside of us. They fester. They make us remember every rotten thing that’s ever happened. And they make us hate. I could blame it for everything I did, but I’m the one who invited it. I’m sorry about your sister and the others. If I could take it all back…”
A sudden whoop of joy went up among those gathered around Jessica’s body. “Praise God!” Sidney shouted.
Jessica could feel a breath of wind entering her lungs, and the next thing she knew, she was staring up into her friends’ astonished faces. “I’m alive?” she asked, full of wonder. “How…”
“Yes,” Wayne said, “you are.” He made no move to untie her wrists and ankles and instead watched her with apparent trepidation.
“It’s me now,” she said, feeling her smile stretch into an immense grin. He was probably afraid that her mind was still inhabited by somebody else. “Now get this tape off of me, okay?”
“Tell me something that only Jessica would know.”
She rolled her eyes. “Your name means wagon maker in some dead language. I hate to cook. I used to have a giant crush on Harrison Ford. Do you want me to go on?”
Wayne still looked skeptical. “What important thing were we talking about before we left for the family reunion this morning?” he asked.
Her cheeks heated up. “That’s easy. Me becoming a housewife in a hypothetical universe.”
Wayne surprised her by leaning in and planting a kiss right on her lips in front of everyone. His lips felt so warm against hers, and she felt as though she were floating off the ground. She smiled. So this is what it’s like. She found that she wouldn’t have minded if the two of them stayed like that forever, even though blood was still drying on his face and she was still bound like a prisoner.
“Don’t you ever die on me again,” Wayne said in a scolding tone when he drew back from her, but his eyes were smiling.
She took another breath, relishing the exquisite sensations of living. “But I’ll have to someday, won’t I?”
“Not if I can help that,” he said.
It took Eric and Sidney a minute to peel off the tape, and it felt like a few layers of skin went with it, but Jessica was too happy to care.
“Now come on. Let’s help your mother to the truck. She’ll need to go to the hospital for those burns.”
“What about your arm?” Jessica asked. Wayne still had it hugged to his chest.
“I’m pretty sure you broke it. Eric, do you think you can drive?”
Jessica’s brother-in-law nodded. He was naked from the waist up, and her mother was wearing what was probably his undershirt. “Yep. Give me your keys.”
“Wait,” Maria said, looking Jessica straight in the eye. Her face was white with fear. “We can’t tell anyone what’s happened. If someone finds out about what I did…” She closed her eyes. “I could face the death penalty.”
“And you could go to prison for kidnapping and assault,” Eric said to Jessica.
“Then what are we going to do?”
“I could say I fell and broke my wrist that way,” Wayne said. “It’s not much of a stretch for me.”
“And I could tell them I tripped and fell into the fire at a camp out,” Maria said. “Could you vouch for me if they ask you? Please?”
They all looked at Jessica. She glanced down at her feet. For the first time in her life, part of her actually cared what happened to her mother. Maria was guilty, no doubt about that. She had murdered a man in cold blood. She should be punished for it.
But Maria was her mother. The woman who had birthed her. The only mother she would ever have. If convicted of murder and executed for it, Jessica would have no mother. There would be no chance of getting to know the woman or growing close to her.
She and Maria locked gazes. “I’ll do that,” she said. “I promise.”
Maria gave her a weary smile of gratitude. “Thank you.”
“Well,” Wayne said, the look of barely-concealed pain returning to his eyes, “I suppose we should try to put out this last fire before the whole forest goes up in flames. Sidney, can you do the honors?”
“Sure.” Sidney started kicking logs away from each other.
Jessica scooped up handfuls of loose dirt and tossed them on the flames to suffocate them.
“How did the fires start, anyway?” Wayne asked. “You could have only been five minutes ahead of us at the most, but when we got here they looked like they’d been burning for an hour or more.”
“God only knows,” Jessica said, deciding it was better to keep that part to herself. “God only knows.”
Jerry watched them leave.
Jessica threw one final look over her shoulder at him and gave a pitying smile. Then she was talking to Wayne, and they were gone.
She had not forgiven him. He didn’t blame her.
His mind was clear at last. For the first time in thirty years, no voices preyed on his conscience. If what Jessica said was true, that awful Presence would be gone for good—but that didn’t mean that others of its kind wouldn’t replace it. They could probably return at any moment and torment him just as they had before.
He sat on the ground by the remains of the larger fire and watched lazy plumes of smoke rise from the dying embers.
If only Jessica would come back. It was too bad that she had been resuscitated. For a minute he had hoped that she would be able to keep him company during his bleak existence. But now he was alone. Again.
He could
n’t just keep meddling in Jessica’s life. He would have to keep his distance from her so he wouldn’t cause additional trouble if another Presence came to afflict him. Jessica and her loved ones didn’t need any more trouble. He had given them enough already.
He thought about Abigail. For once, he felt no bitterness toward her, only emptiness.
God, please take me, he prayed. Do whatever you need to do with me. Just don’t leave me here all alone anymore.
A sudden calm came over him. Nothing moved him onward to bliss or the inferno; he simply remained where he was, sitting unseen on the ground in a Northern Kentucky forest.
But now he had an understanding of what he needed to do.
ST. ELIZABETH Healthcare in Fort Thomas saw a glut of emergency room patients that evening. When Jessica, Sidney, and Eric led Wayne and Maria inside, Rachel and Aunt Sharon were already sitting in the waiting room and simultaneously leapt up from their respective chairs in surprise.
“We lied to the cops—”
“Are you okay—”
“What happened—”
“Dad and Uncle Esteban both have broken noses, but they’re both going to be all right—”
“The camp out didn’t turn out so well,” Jessica said as loudly as she could. “Mom tripped over a lawn chair and fell right into the bonfire, and Wayne tripped over that same chair and hurt his arm and face trying to help her up.”
And when they told that same story to the on-duty staff, nobody batted an eye.
ON SUNDAY morning after everyone had been patched up and sent home, they gathered in the Reyes house once again, only this time Jessica had no desire to hide in the closet. She sat on the floor next to Wayne, whose left arm was set in a blue cast that already bore six or seven get-well messages. Uncle Esteban and Aunt Sharon shared the couch with Rachel and Eric, Sidney occupied the recliner she had briefly slept in the night before, and Jessica’s parents sat in two chairs from the kitchen.
Stephen Roman-Dell’s right eye was purple and swollen most of the way shut. In addition to his broken nose, he had sustained a split lip and received three stitches that reminded Jessica of something you’d see on Frankenstein’s monster. Maria’s burns hadn’t been deemed serious enough to be life threatening, so all she had to do was apply ointment a couple times a day. She had gotten off very lucky.
Though it hadn’t entirely been her fault, Jessica couldn’t stop apologizing. “I’m so sorry I let all this happen,” she said. “I had no clue that something could take control of me like that. I’m not even sure how it happened.”
“Don’t work yourself up over it,” her father said, wincing as the movement of speaking stretched the wound on his lip. “At least nobody died.”
This statement was followed by what was possibly the most awkward silence Jessica had ever endured. Uncle Esteban coughed a few times but said nothing. Sidney started cracking her knuckles.
“All these years,” Maria murmured to no one in particular, “and I never knew his son was right under my nose.”
“Let’s not talk about that right now,” Wayne said, his face turning red. “Or ever.”
Stephen shifted in his seat. “I second that.”
“So,” Jessica said to her parents, “are you still going home today, or are you going to stick around for a while and recuperate?” It was still uncomfortable talking to them like this, especially knowing what they had been involved in. But it would do no harm to practice.
“I already called our employer and told them we’re having a family emergency,” her mother said. “I said we both need to be off so we can be with our children.”
A lump formed in Jessica’s throat. Their children. “Would you really do that? Be with your children, that is?”
A single tear shined in the corner of her mother’s eye. “We want to be able to know our girls better. And our sons-in-law.”
“But Wayne and I aren’t—”
Wayne butted in suddenly. “Jessica, will you marry me?”
It took her about a tenth of a second to make up her mind, because it felt so right. “Sure,” she said. “But don’t you have to have a ring in order to propose?”
“Nah,” he said, grinning, “I can get you one of those later.”
“See?” Maria said. “Wayne will be our son-in-law soon enough.”
ONE SUNDAY afternoon in November, Jessica and Wayne returned to the Iron Springs United Methodist Church to go “metal detecting” again. They brought a shovel and a bucket. In the bottom of the bucket, Jessica had carefully concealed a bouquet of yellow and red chrysanthemums.
“Nice out here, isn’t it?” Jessica said to dispel the silence. Wayne hadn’t said much on the ride over, and he wasn’t saying much now. His arm was still in a cast.
He nodded. “Yeah. Pretty.”
They trudged through the woods and soon located Jerry’s resting place. Jessica pulled the flowers out of the bucket and handed the bouquet over to Wayne. “Here. You do it.”
Wayne took the bouquet from her and scanned the ground. Another rainfall had packed the dirt down since they had been here last, but it was still easy to tell that the ground had recently been dug up. “I forget exactly where he was.”
Jessica squeezed his hand. His fingers were ice cold. “Does it really matter?”
He sighed. “I suppose not.” He limped forward two paces and laid the bouquet down on the damp earth. He made the sign of the cross and bowed his head. “I always wondered,” he said. “Mom never told me who my father was. Whenever I asked her, she’d fly into a rage, so I knew better than to pursue the issue. She never did hesitate to tell me how I came into the world, though. Maybe talking about it helped ease her guilt.” He straightened and turned to face her. His eyes were red. “Even though Jerry was just as messed up as she was, I still hate the thought of him being out here. Nobody deserves to be buried in pieces like this.”
“It’s okay,” she said. The method of one’s burial was meaningless in the grand scheme of it all. The soul—not the flesh—was what counted the most. “At least you know where he is now.”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
They walked back to the truck. If anyone saw them and asked why they were leaving so soon, they could come up with some kind of excuse. But the parking lot was still empty. Jessica would not have to tell a lie again today.
Stephen had given Jessica the address to the Catholic church in Alexandria. They drove there next in silence.
Jessica picked the other chrysanthemum bouquet off of the floor mat as soon as Wayne killed the engine. Stephen said that the graveyard here was on the other side of the church. An asphalt path led around the side of the massive stone building into a well-kept cemetery. A few other people were strolling around looking at headstones. Since All Saints and All Souls Days had been little more than a week before, many of the other graves sported bouquets of both real and artificial flowers. The sight of the vibrant shades of red, pink, and yellow made Jessica smile. They were signs of hope in a bleak landscape.
“It’s in the fourth row back,” her father had said to her on the phone that morning. “Third from the left.”
Again, his directions were accurate. “Look,” Jessica said, angling off the path. “I see it.”
They stopped in front of a white headstone that bore an engraving of an angel cradling a young child in its arms. Jessica wiped away a tear. “Sarah Elizabeth Roman-Dell,” said the inscription. “March 28, 1980-June 28, 1986.”
She lay down the bouquet and burst into tears.
It was cold in the Rodriguezes’ basement, but Jessica had dressed appropriately this time, so the chill in the air did little to affect her.
Wayne sat in a chair beside her and kept glancing around him like he thought a be-sheeted specter would come swooping down at him at any moment. It was his first ghost hunt. Jessica had instructed him to ask questions, albeit friendly ones that wouldn’t upset a wounded spirit. A voice recorder sat on his shaking knee.
“Hi
,” he said. “My name is Wayne, and this funny-looking woman sitting with me is Jessica. We want to help you, but if you want us to leave you alone, please let us know, and we’ll get out of here and never come back. Deal?”
Jessica smiled. She liked his methods.
She twirled her wedding band around her finger while she listened to him talk to the alleged spirits present in the room. So much had happened since that fateful October. Tragically, Rachel suffered a miscarriage twelve weeks into her pregnancy. After several months of mourning, she and Eric conceived again. They recently found out they were having a baby girl. They planned on naming her Sarah. She was due to be born any day.
And as for Jerry, well, he never really left. Sometimes Jessica saw him when she least expected—standing in line with her at the grocery store, lurking in the kitchen while she figured out how to make dinner without catching the house on fire, and lounging on the end of the couch while she and Wayne watched television in the evenings. He never said anything to her anymore. He’d only give her a wistful smile and nod. He had even showed up at the wedding standing in the front row next to their small wedding party.
That time, he’d smiled and winked.
Nobody else seemed to notice him but Wayne. That was okay.
Sidney still lived with them in the little house on Sunset Street. She was planning on renting an apartment to give the newlyweds some space but hadn’t yet made up her mind about which complex to move to.
Jessica had noticed that Sidney’s First Communion Bible was often out of its shelf and had a bookmark stuffed between its pages. Every time Jessica saw it, the bookmark was closer to the end than it had been before. Neither of them mentioned it to the other. That was okay, too.
The mysterious pain that plagued Jessica eventually faded away. Though she never bothered to get a diagnosis, she knew it had to be from excessive tension. Her body and soul had gone through far too much that week. She prayed she would never have to go through it again.