The Follower

by Koethi Zan

  And there it was. Exactly what Cora had dreaded to find. She had been lazy, had not done enough to save James from his mistake. It was all wrong. Between the jutting hipbones was a tiny bulge in the girl’s abdomen: she was pregnant. The Revelation had come to pass. So she was the one after all.

  Cora’s thoughts flashed to Reed’s blue eyes, her own bulging belly that her sweater didn’t quite cover, the imaginary child of her daydreams. She was the one who was supposed to have the child. Not this girl. She pushed it all out of her mind before those memories took over.

  The girl had given up the fight. She lay there, her lungs laboring heavily, staring up at Cora in sheer terror. So she understood the situation.

  Without thinking, Cora hauled her arm back and slapped the girl’s face with all her might. A red mark flamed up on her cheek instantly and the girl’s hand flew to the spot. Her face wrinkled up in pain and then there they were, those inevitable tears. Could she never stop crying?

  Cora ignored the waterworks and leaned in close. Their eyes locked. So this was it. They were bound together now.

  The girl buried her face in her hands, sobbing hysterically. Then she stood up suddenly, positioning herself to retch again. Cora jumped out of the way, but the girl managed to swallow it back.

  She was a mess. Her hair was tangled in the tears and snot on her face. Her eyes were like those of a feral animal, trapped and ready to attack. Cora knew what was coming if she didn’t handle it just right. If she got too frantic, she wouldn’t be rational, and wouldn’t act in her own best interests. She might take risks that were stupid and that would make her dangerous.

  Cora had to calm this girl down, for her own safety. She pulled her to the bed and sat beside her.

  ‘Shh. Try to relax. Breathe.’ It disgusted her to use such soothing tones on someone she hated so much. It nearly killed her, but she knew what she had to do. She gently pulled the long strands of golden hair off the girl’s sticky face, until slowly her sobbing subsided to an intermittent sniffle.

  This girl was usually such a mouthy one, talking at her every chance she got. Trying to ‘make friends’, or win her over or whatever senseless ineffectual ploy the witchy thing was trying to accomplish. But look at her now. Now she didn’t have much to say for herself. Cora couldn’t help but feel a small triumph, even in the midst of this disaster.

  Cora was at a loss though. She’d held the Revelation so dear for so long. Two years ago, James had woken her in the middle of the night and dragged her out under the stars. His eyes ablaze, he’d explained that he’d had a vision of their Divine Child, that he understood how it would all come to pass. He’d gripped her shoulders and gotten down on his knees before her. He said it would be a heavy burden, but he knew she had the strength to bear it. She had been in awe then, impressed that he believed in her. She had thought only of the Divine Family, of the new community they would build there at the farm. She’d imagined how she and James would sit at the head of the table, a heavenly king and queen presiding over a new paradise like the one that once was. Her spirit had soared.

  But now that it had come to pass – now that the Revelation was fulfilled – she didn’t feel the way she was supposed to feel. She felt no joy. Her spirit was not uplifted. Her heart was as unclean as it had ever been.

  She only knew she could not let this girl replace her. She would never be her servant, letting her take her man, her house, and her place at the head of the table.

  The girl leaned toward Cora, apparently mistaking her insincere gestures for true compassion. She rested her smelly head on Cora’s shoulder and wrapped her limp arm around Cora’s neck. She sobbed into Cora’s dress, clutching it in desperation.

  ‘Help me,’ she said in a whisper. ‘Please help me.’

  Cora stiffened.

  She would kill this girl. She would kill her and her little bastard brat.

  Nevertheless, ever so slowly, Cora slipped her arm around the girl and held her close, the tears gathering in her own eyes as she rocked her back and forth, back and forth.

  They stayed like that for a long time.

  CHAPTER 25

  Adam sat stiffly in a plastic chair that barely felt capable of holding his weight. He shifted, feeling the molded seat bend precariously, never taking his eyes off the lock-up. He expected the bars to slide open at any minute. It was noisy in there, the background a near-constant clanging of metal against metal punctuated by intermittent loud buzzes that rang out as soon as he stopped expecting them. Laughter, prodigious weeping, and hollow screams of frustration echoed down the hall. This place seemed more like a madhouse than what it was: the Connecticut Women’s Correctional Facility.

  Finally he saw a flash of tan sleeve with her maimed hand jutting out from the end. He’d read about it in the newspaper accounts of her trial. Something to do with machinery her victim had set in motion when groveling for his life. The poor sod had gotten that small revenge on her. According to the forensic expert’s testimony, he’d almost certainly managed to witness the damage before he bled out.

  At last, she sat down before him on the other side of the bars and pulled a cigarette out of her pocket with her twisted hand.

  Joy Marcione. In the wasted, worn-out flesh.

  Her hair burst from her head in uneven patches, each spiky protuberance dyed a different color of the rainbow. Her bugged-out eyes were ringed with red, and the left one was black and blue.

  ‘Got these,’ she said, lifting the pack of cigarettes he’d sent her. ‘Thanks for that. Now gotta light?’ Her twisted smile curled up over the side of her scarred cheek as she leaned back in the chair, propping one foot up under her. He knew he wasn’t supposed to reach through the white-painted bars between them, but as he glanced around he saw that this rule was widely disregarded. One seat over, a heavily tattooed gangbanger with bulging arms put his lighter through the bars to the woman across from him. Adam followed suit.

  Once they were settled in, he took out his notebook and wrote her name and the date in careful block letters at the top of the page. He looked up at her, holding back his smile. She hardly seemed the girl Laura Martin had described in her letter, the intimidating, tough girl who showed no mercy. He had to remind himself that she’d pulled down a life sentence for a notoriously gruesome homicide. Looks were obviously deceiving.

  In all her police interviews, she’d insisted she knew nothing. But after reading Laura’s letter, he knew that couldn’t be the case. They’d all been so close. She had to know more.

  ‘Thanks for agreeing to talk to me,’ he began. ‘As I mentioned in my letter – well, letters – I’ve been investigating the Stillwater murders and it’s of vital importance that I track down Laura Martin.’ He shifted in his chair, watching to see if her face changed when she heard the name.

  She laughed.

  ‘Well, yeah, I guess you are. Obviously. Laura Martin. How I miss that bitch.’ She blew out the smoke over her shoulder behind her, her useless pinky twitching as she flicked the cigarette ash onto the linoleum tiles. ‘If you find her, please tell her I said hi. And that I wish she’d visit me some time. Of course –’ she laughed gruffly as she blew out more smoke, this time forgetting to aim it away from him – ‘I guess if you find her, Mr. Cop-man, it will mean she might be joining me in here and I can say hi myself.’

  Adam suddenly pictured himself sitting there, waiting for Abigail to take the seat across from him through the bars. He imagined how his mother would have felt if that’s how her story ended, in jail, her moral path diverted by a one-in-a-million tragedy. He pushed the notion away. Why was he thinking like that?

  ‘Are you being facetious?’ he asked, staring at her long nails painted pitch black.

  ‘Facetious. Now isn’t that a fancy word?’ She smiled, rubbing her upper teeth with her tongue, then licking her lips slowly. ‘Dude, I’m totally giving you a hard time. How could I like someone who killed my best friends?’ She leaned forward. ‘I fucking hate her.’

&nbs
p; ‘You think she killed your friends?’

  ‘I know she did.’

  ‘How?’

  She smiled.

  ‘Now for that I’m going to have to hear what’s on offer. I’m not a snitch. I’ve kept my mouth shut this long. What makes you think I’d tell you now?’

  Adam shifted in his seat. He was in no position to offer anything, but she didn’t have to know that. And besides, all that would change if he solved the crime.

  ‘If you tell me what happened now and agree to testify in court, I’ll talk to the D.A. and the parole board. I can’t promise anything, but I think I can get them to give you another hearing. I understand it didn’t go so well last time.’

  She blew a ring of smoke in the air.

  ‘Yeah, they don’t exactly like me there.’

  She appeared to be weighing her options.

  ‘Listen, I’ll tell you what you want to know, Mr. Cop-man, but I won’t testify in court without a written deal on the table.’

  He nodded. ‘Good enough.’

  She sat up straight and looked him in the eye.

  ‘The thing is I saw her, right after. She was so naïve. She thought I’d help her in spite of everything. She didn’t have anywhere else to go, I guess.’ She stubbed out her cigarette but left it on the shelf to cool for later.

  Adam’s heart raced. She really did know something. Finally, he might have real evidence that would be admissible in court. She wasn’t the most reliable witness, but combined with what else he’d gathered, he could cinch this case. Still, he didn’t feel as happy as he’d expected at the idea of locking up some poor abducted girl who’d been hauled around the country by a madman. It wasn’t the victory he’d been imagining all these years.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me exactly what happened?’

  ‘Well, you see, I got lucky. I was supposed to be at the apartment that day with Reed and Johnny. We were meeting there right after school. But what do you figure, I got detention – I, uh, set Misty Runyon’s hair on fire during third period. Aw, come on,’ she said, seeing his look. ‘Not very much, just the ends. Turns out it was the best juvenile act I ever committed in my life. So, anyway, I sent Lila over there to let them know, to tell them to wait for me, and then we’d go down to the dam to meet Stokes.’

  ‘Lila McIntyre, you mean?’

  ‘There but for the grace of God. Boy, do I feel guilty about that one. Pure victim of circumstance. Wrong place, wrong time. She didn’t even know Laura.’ She took another drag on her cigarette, not seeming sorry at all.

  ‘And Stokes?’

  Joy froze.

  ‘Did I say Stokes? I don’t think I said that.’

  ‘First name?’

  ‘Um, no. I think you misunderstood.’ She glared at Adam pointedly, but he wrote the name down and underlined it three times. That name didn’t appear in any of the case files. He’d find him one way or another.

  ‘So anyway, right after detention, I headed straight for the apartment like I’d planned. If only you could have seen my face when I opened that door.’ She tried to laugh, but nothing came out except a coughing fit. She waved the smoke away from her face.

  ‘You could barely even see any skin, there was so much blood everywhere. Just lumps of stuff – like tissue and guts and, and innards – strewn all over the room. The blood had soaked into the carpet, under all that trash – we hadn’t kept the place so neat, you know? There was a big pile of Mars bar wrappers and a couple of rats were … Well, I’ll spare you,’ she said, looking at Adam’s puckered face.

  ‘I always thought of myself as ready for anything, but to be honest, I kinda freaked, you know? Like, I mean, the smell.’ She wrinkled up her nose. ‘But then I thought, damn, this is my apartment and I, um, at the time, had a little bit of a juvie record. I didn’t want to get roped into that shit. And those guys, I mean, they were goners. They didn’t, like, need an ambulance or anything. So I ran home and stayed put.’

  ‘And what about Laura?’

  ‘Like I said, she came by the house after, asking for my help. She could barely talk she was so freaked out – but I mean, come on, she had blood all over her. It was a fucking mess.’

  ‘How did she think you could help her?’

  ‘She said she was running away from her father. She wanted me to hide her or give her some money or something. She didn’t exactly have a plan.’

  Adam nodded, encouraging her to go on.

  ‘We were both completely wigging out. I mean, for real. Those were the first dead bodies I’d ever seen. And you know, I knew them. They were my friends. Who knows, everything might have turned out differently for me if I hadn’t been so, you know, traumatized.’ She winked. ‘I tried that at the parole hearing. Got nowhere.’

  ‘Did you help her?’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Why didn’t you call the cops?’

  ‘Listen, with my record, the cops would have assumed I was involved, especially if they found that blood all over my house. That was kind of a brilliant move on her part, now that I think about it.’

  ‘So what happened then? She just left?’

  ‘Yeah. I never saw her again. She was lucky because it happened right before spring break. By the time we got back to school, the cops had some other theory. A drug deal gone bad or something. I was just relieved no one was pointing the finger at me.’

  ‘Why do you think she did it?’

  Joy shrugged.

  ‘Couldn’t say. Although to be honest, the girl was totally obsessed with Reed. Always following us around, throwing herself at him like a damn fool. She totally stalked him.’

  ‘And he wasn’t interested?’

  ‘No way. I mean, he liked the attention, sure. But he would never go for a girl like her. Never. He was something special and she was just a nobody. I guess she finally figured that out and snapped.’ She paused. ‘Such a fucking waste.’

  At that, a buzzer went off and the inmates stood to go. Joy picked up the end of her other cigarette and shoved it in her pocket.

  ‘See ya, Mr. Cop-man. Good luck finding my old friend.’ She leaned down close to the bars. ‘I suggest you look in hell.’

  CHAPTER 26

  Julie could no longer smell the vomit and if she had, she wouldn’t have cared. All she thought about was the abomination growing in her belly. She paced the room, wearing down the layer of dirt on the dingy tiles with her bare feet as she crossed and re-crossed the floor, muttering to herself. She held a hand over her stomach, not protectively, but to convince herself it was really happening.

  She’d folded up the Pooh blanket and shoved it under the pillow. Poor Pooh shouldn’t have to hear this.

  ‘Okay, okay, Julie, it’s time to face facts. You are finally in hell. You thought it was bad before but what did you do to deserve this?’

  Maybe she could have handled the rest, adapted, made do. Maybe she could have learned to live with their grotesque routine, become some kind of mindless zombie going slowly insane upstairs in this decrepit house. But this. This was too much.

  She couldn’t even think of it as a real baby. She could only picture it as him. A monster, a scary fetus-beast with claw hands and his laughing, apelike face. Oh, yes, the devil was inside her.

  What made it worse was that Julie had always wanted children, but it wasn’t supposed to be like this. She should have been thinking about vitamins and pre-natal yoga, reading What to Expect. It wasn’t supposed to be this excrescence, nothing more than a tumor spreading poison within her.

  ‘Wait a minute, Julie. Just wait. Can you use this situation to your advantage? What if this is what he wanted from you all along?’ She shuddered with disgust. ‘What if you’re some sort of vessel for his tainted seed and now you’ve succeeded in your mission?’ The thought made her want to throw up. She ran her hands up and down her face, rubbing her skin hard.

  ‘Julie, stay tough. You have to think about this.’

  She needed her parents here to talk her throu
gh it. She wanted someone to help her decide: a friend, a therapist, a guidance counselor. But no, she had to take this one on her own.

  ‘So okay, think. What if you pretend to go along with it? Tell him you feel different now that the pregnancy has changed everything and the power of his words, of his – what does he call them, damn it – his “ecstatic lunar prophecies” hit you all at once, full-force, and you are honored to be carrying the heir to his heavenly kingdom. Is that the play here?’

  But what if she was wrong? What if this was part of some ritual sacrifice?

  Or maybe this is why there was blood between the tiles. What if, in this room, pregnancy was a death sentence?

  Should she threaten or plead? Fight or accept? Her mind was spinning too much to know which tack to take.

  ‘Okay then, play it out. Say everything fails. Say the child is born. It isn’t going to live in this room, is it? They wouldn’t let you keep it, would they?’ She choked up. No, they would most certainly take it.

  She hated to imagine what would happen to a baby raised by those two. After all, this child was half her. No matter what, they’d surely torture it in their own sick manner. Whatever good spirit was left from her DNA would be twisted out and turned into something evil. And then a part of her would be out there in the world, a little satellite self, committing atrocities alongside them.

  ‘No, no, they must never take the child. I can’t let them take it.’ His line could not be allowed to continue.

  She knew in her heart there was only one conclusion. She hadn’t wanted to allow herself to think it, but the time had come. She sat down on the bed, chilled to the bone by the realization. If she couldn’t get out in time, there was only one Plan B. She’d have to kill it.

  The concept couldn’t be abstract either. She had to plan the logistics. It had to happen the instant it was born, so there’d be no time for feelings, no time to second-guess. She’d snap its neck or smother it with a pillow. She’d seen newborns before. They were so fragile that she was afraid to hold them. It couldn’t be hard to do but she would have to practice the act in her mind every day so that when the time came, she could do it without thinking.