by Abe Moss
“Your mother would have been upset if I left you home alone.”
She wanted to word everything she said just right so the entity couldn’t talk in circles. She got enough of that from everyone else. “You brought me even when you didn’t need to. Toward the end of… it… you made excuses to bring me with you.”
The entity said nothing. She wondered if it hesitated perhaps because her father would hesitate. Or maybe it didn’t know. Or maybe she needed to ask an actual question.
“You could have found better times to go. You could have made excuses for yourself and gone without me. Why didn’t you?”
“Addie, I don’t want to hurt you.”
She shuddered. Real or pretend, it was almost too much.
“I already know the answer. I just want to hear it from you.”
Was it possible, she wondered, that it could read her mind?
“Danny gave me a better price when I brought you.”
There it was. She was breathing hard. She could hear her heart drumming.
“I’m so sorry, baby. I hope you know that.”
“How could you do that to me?”
“I was sick. I did a lot of things I… wish I could take back.”
His voice had that same quality that it did before, where it sounded like it came out of thin air around her rather than from a distance where the figure stood. The longer they talked, the louder it became. It was almost echoing directly in her ears now, she felt. She paced idly through the grass.
“You can’t take anything back. No one can.” She took a few steps closer to it, still saw nothing but shadow. “You can’t even try anymore…”
The entity said nothing.
“You’re dead because your drugs mattered more to you than I did.”
After a moment of heavy silence, the entity said something truly remarkable. For the first time so far during their conversation, it was a statement made outside the realm of anything she could have known for sure. Either the entity guessed its response, or there was something more to its likeness of her father than she assumed.
“I’m dead because I’m a coward,” it said. “It wasn’t the heroin that killed me. It was simply the weapon I used.”
“What are you saying?”
“It pains me more than you can ever know, that you tried to do what I did.”
“You did it on purpose?”
“Never do it again, Addie. You have so much.”
She grew distant listening to his voice, peripheral thoughts pulling her out of the moment. She heard Lyle’s words. It’s not your fault. Could it be true for her father? Was it any less true for him than it would be for her or anyone else? She’d loved her father—her idea of him, at least—and lately she was reminded of reasons to hate him, and now she felt torn between the two.
Sometimes good people do bad things.
“I’m sorry for hurting you. I know I can’t take it back.”
She hardly heard him.
“I wish you had better than me. So much better…”
Something in the grass crawled over her feet, light and scraping, and she didn’t notice at all. Her eyes were lost in the dry tangles before her, looking beyond them into nothing.
How bad must a thing be, to make the person bad with it?
She returned her attention to her father. He was tall and rigid and black and featureless as ever, like a darker void in the darkness of the night. He was quiet now.
“How do you know about me?” she asked. “How can you possibly know I tried it, too?”
There didn’t come an answer. He stood motionless, and at some point or another, the sound of his voice had changed, something low and constant, a humming or a buzzing, like dead air on a radio, and she had to wonder if the sound had always been there underneath everything else.
“Are you there?”
She took a step toward him. The buzzing swelled and faded, swelled and faded, faded, faded. She watched him closely and he didn’t move an inch. Even as the trees above him bent and bobbed in a high breeze, the breeze did nothing to him.
“Can you hear me?”
She continued toward him, feeling brave and curious, though her bravery fizzled little by little the closer she brought herself. Her curiousness was spiked with dread. The buzzing wobbled and thinned and swelled all the while. His figure remained unchanged. When she was only ten feet away she stopped. The buzzing was all she heard then. She peered up into the sky, expected to see a haze of insects above her head. It must have come from the entity. Still there were no details in its form, nothing but black inside its silhouette. She took four more steps, until she was standing near face to face with it. Then the air escaped her.
“What…”
Something… inside the black. She bent toward the silhouette to get a better look, the tip of her nose dangerously close. She pulled back, afraid it might suddenly move. From head to toe, it was all the same. Not just black, not just a figure in the dark, not just an entity in the grass. Through her father’s form a great many lights twinkled faintly, spattered from one edge of his contour to the other.
BZZZZZ. BZZZZZZZZZZZZ. BZZZZ. BZZZZZZ.
The buzzing was deafening.
Am I seeing this? she wondered. Is this real?
They were stars, of course. A skylight with a human frame. Her father’s voice had come from somewhere in that night sky, though it was gone now. Only the buzzing remained.
She glanced up at the figure’s head, also filled with humming stars.
“What… are you?”
“ADDIE!!!”
Addie shrieked and fell back on her butt. She put her hands behind her, started getting to her feet, and someone wrapped their arms around her middle, dragged her back before she could start to stand. She screamed.
“No! No! Let me go!”
They dragged her through the grass, feet kicking, and the dark figure by the woods shrank away, forgotten.
“What are you doing, let me go!”
Far enough into the field, they gave in to her pleas and released her. She rolled across her side onto her hands and knees. She looked up, gasping.
“What are you doing out here on your own?” Nuala asked, hands on her waist. “You could have gotten hurt.”
“I was fine!” Addie stood and brushed the grass and dirt from her legs.
“You have no idea what you’re dealing with. You shouldn’t have come here alone.”
“I was fine, I said! Nothing happened!”
“Not yet. You’re lucky I saw you when I did.”
Addie searched the woods for the figure and saw nothing.
“Now he’s gone…”
“Come back to the yard with me.”
“I’ll come back when I feel like it.”
“Now.”
She rubbed a rash on the side of her arm where the dirt and grass had burned her.
“You hurt me more than anything else…”
Nuala sighed, patience running thin. “You’re coming back to the guesthouse with me whether you like it or not.”
“I was doing fine,” Addie insisted. “I was doing something for me. I didn’t want your help, I didn’t want the doctor’s help. I did it on my own. You ruined it.”
“The doctor and I are the only ones looking out for you right now. It was irresponsible coming out here alone like this.”
“Nothing happened, either way.”
“Yes, I made sure of that.”
“What could have happened? You didn’t save me from anything.”
“The doctor accompanied you the last time for a reason. Not everything here is predictable or controlled. That’s why you need to stay on the property at all times. We’re keeping you safe.”
“I don’t need to be taken care of…”
Addie pushed past Nuala and started back toward the guesthouse on her own. When she got there, finding Joanna still fast asleep, she returned to her own room and lay down on her bed. Her heart continued pounding. Her blood bu
bbled. She watched out the window a couple times, looking for Nuala in the field, or maybe another apparition, but she saw no one. She lay back on her bed.
As she lay there, pushing her anger for Nuala aside, she thought again of what she saw and a sudden calmness washed over her. She breathed easy. She smiled, even.
For the first time since I arrived here, she thought, I saw stars.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Addie slept deeply that night well into the next morning, and when she finally got up and headed into the front room she found Joanna seated on the floor, Meatball in her lap, her eyes brimming with tears.
“Something’s wrong with him,” she said. “I think he’s sick.”
Addie left to get the doctor. Nearing the porch, she was instead greeted by Nuala at the front door.
“Hello, Addie! Did you sleep well last night?”
“I need the doctor,” she said, ignoring the question. “Something’s wrong with Joanna’s dog.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know, I’m not sure. She just said he was sick.”
“I’ll come take a look…”
“No, she asked for the doctor. She wants him, not you.”
“The doctor can’t see her right now, it’ll have to be me.”
Addie reluctantly led Nuala back to the guesthouse. Joanna was still on the floor, but Meatball wasn’t in her lap. He was on the floor a few feet away, lying on his side, whimpering.
“What’s happened?” Nuala asked.
“Where’s the doctor?” Joanna looked desperately at them both as they came in. “I want the doctor.”
“The doctor can’t come. Tell me what’s wrong.”
She gestured to Meatball on the floor. “He can’t do anything. He just whines. I call for him and he doesn’t even try to come. He just lays there. He’s hurting somewhere, but I don’t know where.”
“Have you fed him anything besides the dog food I brought?”
“No, nothing.”
Nuala knelt next to the dog. She lifted each of his legs, poked and prodded around his body, and finally left him alone. She stood.
“He must be sick with something. That’s all I can say for sure. He doesn’t seem hurt anywhere else. Unless he swallowed something he shouldn’t have…”
“There isn’t anything to swallow. I’ve never given him anything, and it’s not like there’s anything here to leave lying around for a dog to eat.”
“I can’t think of anything else.”
“The doctor needs to take a look at him. He’ll know.”
“He isn’t a veterinarian, so it’s unlikely…”
“He should still take a look.”
Nuala nodded empathetically. “All right. I’ll let him know.”
✽✽✽
Meatball’s condition didn’t improve over the couple hours it took for the doctor to arrive. He seemed worse, in fact. The whining stopped. He didn’t open his eyes if he didn’t have to. To Addie, he looked dead. But sometimes when Joanna said his name, if it’d been long enough since the last time she said his name, his eyes would open and his head would turn in place from where it lay on the floor. If she held her hand to his snout, he would lick her once and that was all. Otherwise he was little more than a heap of fur.
But eventually the doctor did come, a notebook and pen in hand. He kneeled on the floor next to the dog, Nuala bent over his shoulder watching, and Joanna kneeled close by and observed helplessly, chewing her fingernails in anticipation. Addie sat at the kitchen table away from them and watched with skepticism.
The doctor did as Nuala had done—inspected the legs, poked and prodded the belly and sides—though with better care. He even pulled the dog’s eyelids apart and inspected the eyes, and Addie had to stifle a laugh at the sight. How could the doctor see a thing with a bag over his head? she wondered. As always, his fingers moved deliberately, passed over the dog’s body with smooth precision, not once hesitating or flinching even when the dog’s breath quickened or let out a sad moan.
“So what’s wrong with him?” Joanna asked impatiently.
The doctor straightened. Nuala handed him his notebook and pen. He scribbled a message on the page and handed it back. Nuala spoke his message aloud.
“He says the dog is certainly sick and in much pain.”
“Obviously…” Joanna said, though not with her usual cutting sarcasm. She was panicked.
The doctor took the notebook back, scratched something more, and handed it back. Nuala read carefully.
“There’s nothing we can do for him. We can only wait it out.”
“What?” Joanna crawled toward the dog, reached for him, and stopped, afraid she might hurt him by touching or moving him. “We can’t leave him like this.”
The doctor got to his feet.
“We can’t help him, Joanna,” Nuala said.
“What if this was one of us? You’d do something. You’d help us.”
“Meatball is a dog. He needs special care.”
“Bullshit!”
“There’s nothing we can do but wait it out. He might get better. It’s all we can hope for.”
The doctor stood facing Joanna for an awkward moment, the bag on his head revealing nothing in the sense of understanding or consolation. Then, after enough silence, both he and Nuala departed the guesthouse and left Joanna hunched on the floor over her dog, wetting his fur with her sobs. Addie kneeled next to her.
“It’s hard to believe they can’t help him the same as us, no matter the difference. They could try, at least.”
Addie nodded, though she thought she knew the reason behind it. This was another test. A test for Joanna. Where it would lead and what would come of it, she couldn’t guess, but it seemed like just the thing they’d do. Perhaps it was meant to recreate the loss she’d felt before, only this time she’d get to be there when it happened…
Or maybe the outcome was as dubious to the doctor as it was to them, and he waited for it with morbid curiosity.
✽✽✽
“Do you think this was all a plan?” Joanna asked Addie later in the day, still seated on the kitchen floor with Meatball, whom she’d propped up on the blanket from her very own bed.
“That what was a plan?”
“Him. That he’d get sick and I’d have to do it all over again.”
“I don’t know,” Addie said. She picked at the hem of her shirt uncomfortably. “It’s possible, I suppose. I wouldn’t put anything past them.”
And it was true at this point, she thought. She wouldn’t put anything past them. Had they done anything outright terrible so far? No, maybe not. It was hard to say. But given everything else, there was no telling where this ‘treatment’ of theirs was ever meant to lead. It was strange enough, she thought, that the doctor would wait around for people to throw themselves off rooftops to intervene and offer them his unusual practices. It was even stranger still that he held them against their will and forced his treatments upon them like lab experiments. Because that’s what all these treatments really were, weren’t they? Experiments?
“It makes me wonder,” Joanna began, “what Lyle might have seen in that mirror.”
He believes he’s helping us, but he’s not.
Joanna looked up, and her eyes were a mix of grave wonder and careful accusation. “It makes me wonder what they might be doing to Bud in that bedroom up there all this time.”
Addie shook her head in what she knew was pathetic denial. She didn’t want to believe it, because there was so little she could do about it if it were true.
“We don’t know anything for sure. This could just be… random.”
Joanna looked upon her tiny dog, his labored breathing now a constant white noise.
“I’d like that to be true, but somehow I just know it isn’t.”
✽✽✽
“I can’t watch it anymore. I can’t.”
Joanna paced around the house all afternoon. It was clear Meatball’s worsening condi
tion was getting the best of her. Addie wished she could help somehow.
“Joanna, sit down.”
“He’s dying!”
He’s already dead, Addie wanted to say.
“I’m going to lose him all over again, only this time I have to see it.”
Addie chewed the inside of her cheek trying to think of something, anything, to calm Joanna down or at the very least take her mind off the sick dog. It would be impossible, she knew. Just as Meatball had been her every thought once he’d come into their company, now his illness was the same but on a much more aggressive level. When nothing came to her, she stood and left for the front door.
“Where are you going? Don’t leave me here with him…”
“I’m going to talk to the doctor. Stay here.”
Once more she headed to the main house, and from across the yard she saw Nuala already out on the front porch steps. Nuala waved, but she wasn’t smiling.
“Is this about Joanna’s dog again?” she asked as Addie approached.
“Something needs to be done. She’s going crazy.”
“There’s nothing that can be done. We can only wait.”
“What are we waiting for? That dog is sicker than sick. He won’t even move. He barely opens his eyes. He’s dying.”
Addie expected some kind of reassurance against this, but Nuala only shrugged. She looked over her shoulder at the front door.
“Was this the plan all along?” Addie asked.
“Hmmm?”
“Did the doctor give her that dog so she’d have to face this all over again?”
“I can’t speak for the doctor’s plan. Only he knows.”
“You know everything when it suits you.”
“I’m sorry if that’s not good enough.”
“I think the doctor planned this, and I think you’ve been through this enough to know it, too. This isn’t helping anything, it’s cruel. You might as well have left her where you found her.”
Just then the door opened. The doctor stepped out. He removed his hand from inside his coat having placed something there. He came to the top step and cocked his head toward Addie and Nuala at the bottom.