Cleaving Souls

by Chauncey Rogers

As she stepped backwards, her elbow caught on the blanket covering the television screen, and it fell to the floor. The old television screen stared into the room with its great gray eye.

  Kat felt it happen, and looked.

  There she was, in the television screen, like a reflection on the glass. The bathroom door was just opening, Alex standing there, panicked by her screaming. She was waiting for him with that awful knife, with its awful blade, plunging it into his chest with all her strength and screaming—screaming and laughing as he stumbled backwards with six inches of steel buried in his chest. And then her reflection was laughing so hard that it fell to the floor, where she sat in pure ecstasy, hugging her sides and laughing and laughing and laughing.

  “No!” Kat screamed. “No! No!”

  She grabbed the television set with both hands, the knife still clutched in her grip as well, and yanked the old set from the table. It fell heavily onto its face, the screen cracked, and the vacuum tube imploded with a loud bang, covering the floor in splinters and shards of shattered glass.

  Then the bathroom door finally opened.

  13

  Alex stood there, a towel hastily thrown around his waist, and stared in shocked confusion. Glass covered the floor. Kat stood in her thin night shirt and shorts, blood on her shins. She shook beside the bedroom door, behind which Geegee ran and yelped and growled. The old TV lay face down on the floor, destroyed. Knives were scattered all over the kitchen. And thick droplets of blood—some smeared, some whole—lay across the floor.

  Kat’s head shook for a moment, and then her knees gave out and she sank down, crying. She sat on the edge of the broken television, staying out of the broken glass, and let the knife fall to the floor so that she could cover her face with her hands.

  “Kat?” Alex whispered. He wanted to sound comforting, but he was confused and afraid himself. She didn’t acknowledge him through her tears.

  He took a moment to throw on his basketball shorts and a shirt, then stepped into his shoes by the door so that he could safely cross the glass. He moved towards his wife. He had intended to go all the way, to move to her side and hold her, but something stopped him halfway. Fear. Fear of the noises behind the door, and of the bloodied knife on the floor. Fear of what she had done to his dog, and of what she might do to him.

  “Kat?” he said again, this time his voice more firm. “Kat, what happened? Is that Geegee’s blood?”

  Kat nodded.

  “What did you do to Geegee?” There was so much blood on the floor, and behind Kat he could hear Geegee crying, then barking and growling again, then crying. “What did you do?”

  “...attacked me,” Kat said, the words mostly muffled by tears and hands.

  “What?”

  Kat finally pulled her hands away, and her face was red and blotchy, her eyes wild and her hair half covering them. “She attacked me,” she said, then almost shrieking, “She attacked me, okay? She attacked me, and when I tried to stop her, I cut her face!”

  “No,” Alex breathed, unable to believe that Geegee would do such a thing. Her barks and growls turned once more to cries and whimpers of pain. The sound yanked powerfully at Alex’s emotions. “Move,” he said, “I need to help Geegee.”

  Kat shook her head. “No,” she said, then yelled, “No! You stay away from me. Stay away!”

  Alex could take it no longer. The stress of his wife’s behavior finally spilled out. “What is wrong with you?!” he yelled. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Yes,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself. Then she curled up and whispered, “Yes, Alex, I think I have,” and she started to sob again.

  “Kat, I....” Alex paused. His anger had vanished. Seeing her looking so vulnerable, so frightened, had reset him emotionally, and he realized that he just wanted to help. “I don’t—”

  “I’ve been seeing things,” Kat said. “Seeing...visions. Of me, hurting—”

  A loud snapping sound from the bedroom suddenly cut her off, and the bathroom light behind Alex flickered off, then came back on again.

  “Geegee?!”

  The bedroom was silent.

  “Move,” Alex said, stepping forwards and crunching on the glass. “I have to see—”

  “Don’t come near me,” Kat cried, curling herself tightly into a ball. “Please, stay away.”

  “I have to get to Geegee.”

  “No! It’s all—” She rocked to the side, leaning against the table the TV had rested upon. “I don’t know what’s happening to me!”

  Alex glanced at the door, then down at Kat, and then to the knife upon the floor. He took a quick step forwards and kicked the knife behind him, so that it slid beneath the couch. Then he grabbed the door handle and pushed the door open.

  A brilliant, blazing light of yellow and red flame sprouted from the corner of the bed, consuming the nightstand, the window curtains, and the front half of Geegee’s still body. Alex took a half-stop backwards, bumping up against the smashed television set in his surprise. Smoke was already building along the ceiling, and the crackle of flames sounded loudly in their ears through the open doorway.

  “Geegee! Geegee!”

  His yelling came as a reaction. Obviously, nothing could be done for the dog, who was now only fuel for the rapidly expanding fire.

  After costly seconds of just staring in shock and shouting his dog’s name, Alex finally thought to respond to the flames. He ran over the broken glass and into the kitchen, throwing open drawers and searching for a bucket to fill—anything that might hold substantial amounts of water. As he tossed items aside, he called to Kat, “Kat, look for a fire extinguisher.”

  “I can’t. The glass.”

  She was barefoot still. He finally seized upon an empty plastic bucket and put it under the faucet, then ran to the door, grabbed Kat’s shoes, and threw them to her. He went back to the bucket, but it wasn’t even a quarter of the way filled yet. Wanting to tear out his hair at his helplessness, he ran into the bathroom and flipped over the garbage can, then stuck the emptied can under the bathtub faucet and began filling it before running back to the kitchen. Kat had stuffed on her shoes now and was standing in the doorway to the bedroom, staring at the burning bed.

  “Call nine-one-one,” Alex said.

  “I can’t,” she cried, “Our phones are on fire. I think Geegee bit the chords or—”

  “Well do something,” Alex said as he picked up the bucket from the kitchen sink. Crunching over the glass once more, he took Kat’s place in the doorway and then threw the water from the bucket onto the mattress. He ran back into the kitchen, praying that the trashcan might do more to slow the fire’s spread. Once he’d gotten the bucket beneath the sink once more, he dashed to the bathroom and grabbed the garbage can, which by then held enough water to be hefty. He carried it through the front room to the bedroom, rocked it back, and then splashed the water forward.

  The room ignited in a sudden blaze of even brighter light, and a whoosh of air sucked past Alex as the water hit the electrical fire and made a powerful electrical plume of flame leap across the room. Alex very nearly fell over backwards, stumbling back into the TV and table and banging his elbow against the wall. When he came out of his daze, black smoke was churning out through the top of the doorway, and what had once been the bedroom had become a blazing furnace.

  He looked over his shoulder. Kat was in the kitchen, still crying and still searching for a fire extinguisher. A glance back into the bedroom confirmed that it was too late for a fire extinguisher to make a difference.

  “Kat,” he yelled over the crackle and roar of the flames, “it’s time to go.”

  14

  Kat stepped down off the porch with Alex right behind. It seemed strange to her, to abandon the cabin like this when the flames were only in one of the rooms. But the smoke had been getting thicker, and as they moved away from the porch, Kat could see that the fire had been spreading more quickly than she had realized, and the sudden coolness outside of
the cabin revealed just how hot it had been within.

  She backed away from the house, watching through the open doorway as the flame’s flickering anger began its walk across the front room. It felt unreal to her. Strange. She’d been crying, and still would be, but it was as if the smoke and heat had choked her tear ducts until they had closed. Now she just coughed from the smoke and gasped from her crying with painful, unsteady, and noisy breaths.

  Kat was still in her pajamas, once again exposed to anything that might be watching her from the woods. She wrapped her arms around herself as her shoulders shook, and said, “Shouldn’t we call someone?”

  “No phones,” Alex said.

  “Well, are there any neighbors around here? Someone— Someone with a phone?”

  Alex slowly shook his head, but said nothing. He just stared ahead, watching the fire consume the cabin. Kat thought about what she’d seen driving in the area, and she could remember nothing—no houses, no buildings of any kind. She couldn’t even remember which way they came in from.

  In desperation, she turned and looked up the driveway, as if hoping that the flashing lights of a firetruck might appear. But there was no firetruck, and there were no flashing lights.

  Instead, Suzzane was there, taking careful steps towards them with her bare feet.

  “Suzzane,” Kat cried out. She hurried to her and, much to her own surprise, found herself hugging the strange woman and crying into her shoulder. She needed somebody, and Alex was...distant. Unsafe.

  Suzzane lay a hand on the back of Kat’s head and patted it tenderly. “Are you alright?”

  Kat didn’t know how to answer that question yet, but she felt safer now. Behind her, she heard Alex speak in a hard voice.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I was taking my morning walk,” Suzzane said. “And you’re lucky that I was—I almost didn’t today. Here, young man. Take my phone. Call the fire department.”

  She reached into one of her back pockets and pulled out a cell phone, then handed it to Alex, all the while with Kat still holding onto her, coughing lightly, and trying to steady her breathing.

  “Come now,” Suzzane said, patting Kat on the back. “You’re okay. You’re alright.” She grabbed Kat by the shoulders and gently pushed her back, lifting her face up so that she could look into it. When their eyes met, Suzzane gave her a thoughtful look, screwing up her lips into an odd, elongated frown.

  “That aura,” she said, still holding her by the shoulders, “I thought I told you to do something about it. It is getting much worse.”

  “I... I don’t know....”

  Suzzane sighed. “Of course not,” she mumbled. “Let me have another look. We’ll see what we can do.”

  Behind Kat, Alex had dialed in to emergency responders and was trying to remember the cabin’s address. After a few seconds, he gave up and began describing directions. Meanwhile, Suzzane fixed Kat with her blind-eyed stare, and once more her seeing brown eye rolled back into her head while the milky blue one combed over her. It looked into her face, down her neck and across her chest, then looked behind her, bugging slightly at Alex and the burning building before returning to Kat’s face.

  When she’d finished, Suzzane released her hold on Kat’s shoulders and chewed her gums thoughtfully for a moment, then said, “Well, I’m afraid I was mistaken, Katherine—shoulda taken a closer look before. You don’t have a dark aura over your shoulder. The dark aura is in your shoulder. I think it’s why I thought you were having twins.”

  “I’m not—”

  “No, dearie, you’re not having twins. Just the one little boy. It’s the dark energy that confused me.” She poked a bony finger into the tender flesh beside Kat’s left armpit. “It’s coming from right there, see? Got all muddled with yours and your son’s.”

  Behind Kat, Alex was pacing back and forth and running a hand through his hair, the phone pressed to his ear.

  “It’s an odd thing, though,” Suzzane continued. “I told you that your aura and your husband’s are perfectly matched, didn’t I?”

  Kat nodded.

  “Well, this taint in your shoulder is spreading and altering your own aura. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  “What does that mean?” Kat whispered.

  “It means we’d better do something about it quick, or it could permanently change you.” Then she looked back up at the cabin, and Kat could see the fire’s reflection in her eyes. “Tell me, Katherine, who else was here with you?”

  “Nobody,” Kat said, then added, “Just Geegee, but she—”

  Suzzane grabbed her arm and cut her off. “No, not poor Geegee. There is somebody else. A man.”

  Kat felt a shiver run up her back. The feelings of being watched, the tapping on the window—maybe they weren’t just delusions.

  “What do you mean?” Kat said.

  “I mean that there is the aura of a dark man in that house—one I haven’t seen before. And it is perfectly matched to the aura in your shoulder.”

  Kat gave her a confused look, but Suzzane only nodded towards the burning cabin. Kat followed the nod, turning around to see the house. Flames filled the windows now and had erupted from places in the roof. The door was still open, just as they’d left it. But in the doorway, for a brief moment, Kat saw what Suzzane was talking about.

  There was a man.

  He stood on the threshold, made of twisting smoke and flicking fire, staring out at her.

  Kat’s head drained of blood. She felt light, weak, and airy. Her knees buckled, and she fell over backwards, losing consciousness before she hit the ground.

  15

  Alex hands felt slick with sweat as they gripped the steering wheel. Every now and again he stole his eyes away from the road and looked at Kat, who lay on the seat beside him. He’d leaned it back almost all the way, since she didn’t seem to want to support her own head too much. A bit of blood had matted the back of her hair, but he wasn’t too worried about that. He had other, more pressing concerns.

  She’d fainted dead away. He hadn’t seen—he’d been trying to give the fire department directions to the cabin—but he’d heard her hit the ground. Or, more accurately, he’d heard her hit the rock. There hadn’t really been too much he could do about it. He’d pulled the car back from the burning building and placed her in the seat, then waited for the firetruck and paramedics to arrive. They’d looked her over, determined that she was in no immediate risk, and told him to drive her to a hospital so that they could check on her concussion—not check on if she had one, but check and see how bad it was. At least there was no need to pay an ambulance fee. He was pretty sure their insurance would’ve left them out to dry on that one.

  So he drove while Kat rested. She’d awoken, confused and disoriented, before the EMTs had even arrived, and had basically been resting ever since. She would go a few minutes, then readjust her position, turning in the seat and trying to get comfortable. When he’d asked her if they should stop and pick up some other clothes, she’d seemed confused. When he’d tried talking about other subjects after that, she’d been unable to follow.

  Now she twisted onto her side, her eyes still closed, and mumbled, “The fire man. The fire man.”

  He glanced down at her again. Apparently she could remember some things.

  “Geegee. Geegee, no! It’s the fire man!”

  Alex’s sweaty grip tightened on the wheel. His dog.... He’d always wanted one, and now....

  Well, at least she could remember things from before she hit her head, as well. Maybe, he dared to hope, somehow this knock to the head would reset things a bit. Get the craziness out of her before it destroyed them.

  In spite of the humid air and summer sun on his skin, he felt cold.

  She’d had a knife. She’d used it on their dog—and no matter what she said, it seemed so unlike Geegee to have attacked her. As troubling as it was, Alex had an easier time picturing Kat attacking Geegee, with how she’d been acting lately
.

  What if she’d used it on him?

  He took a hand off the wheel and wiped at his eyes. Geegee was gone. Cut by his wife, then electrocuted and burned. His wife... she was going, too, it seemed, but in a different way, and for reasons he couldn’t understand.

  And what about the baby?

  It all made his head spin. Never mind worrying about the nightmare they were likely to go through settling the matter of exactly why the cabin burned down and who was to blame for it.

  Kat raised one of her hands over the cup holders and set it on Alex’s thigh. He glanced down at her. Her dark-rimmed eyes were closed, and her lips were almost smiling.

  He wiped at his eyes again, trying to keep his emotions regarding Geegee wrapped up tight, and kept driving.

  16

  “Sedation?”

  “Yes. We try to avoid doing it normally, but with how disoriented your wife is, I think it’s most important that we get a good look at what’s happened. If there’s a clot or a dangerous amount of swelling, we need to know. Any movement she makes during the scan will reduce the accuracy of the results.”

  Dr. Wiser handed the clipboard to Alex, who stared at it.

  “You don’t have to sign,” Dr. Wiser continued, “but I do recommend that we sedate her.”

  Alex pursed his lips. “This won’t affect the baby?”

  “We do normally try to avoid using sedatives during pregnancy, just to be safe, but your baby should be fine. A little sedative is a lot safer than brain trauma. We need to know if she’s alright.”

  Alex looked over at Kat. She sat in a chair against the wall, her elbow propped up on the armrest, her hand cupped over her eyes. She’d been quiet and cooperative, but still had difficulty following what was going on around her. If the CAT scan lasted only five minutes, she’d almost for sure forget what was going on and move during it. Dr. Wiser was right.

  Alex picked up the pen and scrawled his name over the signature line, then handed the clipboard back to Dr. Wiser.