Bathwater Blues: A Novel

by Abe Moss

Nuala swept her eyes along the forest as the silhouettes gathered around them, watched them without eyes or faces.

  “They’re the dead, looking for loved ones who are no longer here.”

  “The others before us…”

  Nuala didn’t answer, but said, “The doctor didn’t know what they were at first, when they began showing up. He couldn’t figure out how they got in…”

  The voices, as before, grew louder and more frantic the longer they went without acknowledgment. They never ventured beyond the trees, however.

  “He introduced me to one,” Addie said.

  Nuala nodded. “I know. It was a risk on his part. You see… the doctor will try anything if he thinks it will help.”

  Except he doesn’t know when to quit, Addie thought.

  “I have to take you back now.”

  “Please!” Addie begged one last time.

  “The doctor only has your best interest in mind. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but it’s the truth.”

  “What about them?” Addie said, gesturing with trembling hands to the figures in the woods. “What about the others they’re looking for? What about their best interest?”

  “I know it in my heart,” Nuala said, pressing a closed fist between her naked breasts, “the doctor knows what he’s doing. I’ve never questioned it.”

  “I saw you grieve for Lyle. You’ve grieved for the rest, too, I bet.”

  “Of course I have. Saying goodbye is never easy.”

  “You weren’t just saying goodbye. You said it yourself, you failed him.”

  Nuala reached for Addie and Addie ducked away, tripped over Joanna, and went sprawling on the hard dirt.

  “You’re as delusional as he is!”

  She clambered back to her feet and fled down the road, eyes closed, gasping and holding back tears, knowing it was useless, hopeless, that it would come for her again as it did in the beginning. It always did. Running was an exercise in futility. She knew it then, and believed now she’d known it all along. It dawned on her—the hard, cool earth passing beneath her sore, callused feet—that it was all she’d ever known. And as she looked over her shoulder, fearing exactly what she knew she’d see, she felt a swelling of regret inside her for it.

  Sometimes a person has to adapt.

  What if I can’t?

  She wheezed as a storm of feathers surrounded her, wrapped her tight, pulled her close, lifted her off her feet. She hung in the monster’s arms, weightless and drained.

  “Stop fighting,” it whispered in her ear.

  Again, Addie fainted in Nuala’s embrace.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The sunlight was dimming through the closed drapes. Darker, darker, darker. Bud watched the shadows on the bedroom walls climb from the floor toward the ceiling, and in the corners they deepened until they were nearly black. Footsteps traveled back and forth past the locked door in the hall.

  “Doctor! Nuala!”

  They paused outside the door.

  “Do you need your bedpan?”

  “No. I just… need you…”

  The footsteps wandered away and didn’t return.

  As the sun sank lower, and the shadows climbed higher, his heart beat faster. He gripped the bedsheets, pulled them across himself as tight as he could. It never worked. They could be pulled away like cobwebs. His strength had left him.

  Darker, darker, darker.

  He eyed the lantern on the floor. Once the sunlight faded and night replaced it, the lantern would light as if by magic. And that light would bring something terrible with it. Something from the shadows. A man, beautiful and striking, like a swan with a foul secret in its eyes. But it wasn’t a man. It was something altogether unimaginable. It came for him how a shark will come for blood. And oh, was there blood…

  The sun vanished and took its light with it. The room fell into a cold, quiet gloom.

  And the lantern on the floor sparked to life.

  ✽✽✽

  “Nuala!” he screamed. It was a tradition now, to scream out her name night after night, only for nothing to follow. “Please!”

  Something scraped the floor beneath his bed. It had arrived.

  ✽✽✽

  The bed trembled and rocked and squealed.

  So did he.

  This night, the next, and the one after.

  ✽✽✽

  “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t… don’t…”

  The sheets were lost like pigeons in the air. The man’s large, firm hands flipped him like a hollowed-out log. He wheezed as the man’s weight sat upon him.

  He cried into his pillow, pulled it around his head and over his ears.

  ✽✽✽

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  Nuala lifted his sheet and moved a bedpan under him.

  “Facing our fears can be the best way to overcome them.”

  He shook his head slowly. “No… no. No, no, no…”

  When he’d finished—there wasn’t much, and what little there was caused him a great deal of pain to pass—Nuala took the bedpan. Then she took a warm washrag she brought with her and cleaned him up. He tried not to watch or to look at her when she did. He tried not to see the washrag, knowing there’d be blood. There always was.

  “I think I’m dying.”

  Nuala tsk tsk’d. She gave him a reproachful smile. “Don’t be silly.”

  “You have to make it stop. I can’t do it any longer.”

  “The doctor will keep checking on things and decide that himself.”

  “It isn’t helping. I… I…”

  “Shhhh…”

  She finished cleaning him up and replaced his sheets with clean ones, though even the clean ones were stained.

  “That’s my blood,” he said in a dreamy stupor. “That’s my blood.”

  “Yes, it’s a tricky thing to wash. Doesn’t want to come out…”

  “It’s killing me, Nuala.”

  She gave him a friendly pat on the belly, picked the bedpan up off the floor.

  “Don’t worry yourself. You’re healing. It’s going to be better very soon, just you wait. The doctor has a lot of hope for you, and so do I.”

  She turned to the door.

  “It’s like you, Nuala.”

  She paused. “Hmmm?”

  “The thing under my bed.”

  Her eyes flickered to the empty space beneath him. She smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

  “It has two forms. Like you.”

  “You need to rest.”

  “It’s the same as you, and it’s killing me.”

  She left into the hall, smiled one last time through the gap of the open door, and then closed him inside.

  He waited for the shadows to rise.

  ✽✽✽

  Crying never helped but he couldn’t stifle it. The sheets were wet beneath him. His thighs were slippery with it. He dared himself to reach down and feel, to see his own blood on his fingers, but the scale-covered creature—in turns it was human and then not, depending on when he chose to look—always swept his hands away. Those orange eyes looked down upon him fervently, without feeling or an ounce of consideration in them. It knew one thing, and that was all it did.

  He was not to interrupt.

  ✽✽✽

  As much as it hurt him to move, he dared himself to get out of bed one night after it was over, after the lantern had put itself out. He pulled the sheet aside. He inched himself toward the edge of the bed. He dangled a foot over the edge, slid himself farther still, and placed it on the cold floor below.

  “Are you awake?”

  The voice was low and strange, not of this world.

  He pulled his foot back into bed, pulled the sheet back over his body. He pulled it up to his chin and lay sleepless for the rest of the night.

  ✽✽✽

  Days went by. A week or two, he thought. It was hard to tell.

  The visits… happened. Night f
ell, the lantern lit, the shadow came out from its hiding place. Bud lay still and felt the now familiar pains and throbs, listened to the familiar breathing and creaking and whispering of claws on skin, and smelled the familiar sweat, the copper, the musk of the creature’s breath and shiny scales.

  His body was paralyzed numb.

  ✽✽✽

  “Bud! Are you in there?”

  It was day. Bud opened his eyes, heavy with sleeplessness.

  “Bud? Are you all right?”

  He lifted his head and watched the door. There were feet there, blocking the light at the bottom. It was obviously Addie’s voice.

  “Bud?”

  He opened his mouth to answer but his voice wouldn’t come.

  “Bud!” she shouted. “Answer me!”

  Too tired to hold his head up any longer, he fell back on his pillow and uttered a rattling sigh. He took deep breaths.

  “Bud?”

  “Go away,” he finally managed to say. His voice escaped like a breeze through a shutting door.

  “Huh?” she asked.

  “Leave me alone, Addie.”

  He closed his eyes again, turned his head. His muscles ached. His arms and legs felt in a constant state of being on the verge of melting into the sheets, weighted with molten steel. He could hardly move.

  “Bud, are you okay?”

  “I don’t want to see you. Not right now.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  He took a deep breath, felt his voice rising up, up, up out of his throat like the little engine that could.

  “I just don’t want to see you.”

  After that, she didn’t say another word. He could hear Nuala’s voice in the hall. Then the feet beneath the door left and didn’t return.

  At least, not until a week or so later.

  ✽✽✽

  The next morning Nuala entered his room. She brought his bedpan like she always did. She also brought him a tuna sandwich and a glass of water on a bed tray which she placed over his middle. She helped him sit up. He winced and lost his breath on the way.

  “Eat up. Your body needs it.”

  He stared at his food but didn’t touch it. He didn’t look at her as she sat beside him watching. He almost didn’t even hear her when she began to speak.

  “I wanted to tell you this because you’re part of the group here, and I thought it was important that you know…” She paused. “Lyle is no longer with us. He took his own life last night.”

  She waited for a response but he gave none. He didn’t react at all. The sandwich on the tray on his lap was all he saw and all he cared to see. Even that didn’t appetize him or interest him much.

  “How does that make you feel, Bud?”

  He struggled to meet her gaze. Lifting his eyes was as hard as lifting one of his limbs. He looked into her eyes for a brief moment and said, “I’m…” Then he looked down again, back to the sandwich. “I’m not hungry…”

  ✽✽✽

  Only his numbness carried him through the rest of the week. The days came and went, the nights happened, and just as he became totally lost in the repetition of it all there came a change—a sudden one.

  The bed shook and he shook violently against it. The man panted above him. Tonight he lay on his back, face to face with the shapeshifting beast. His flaccid penis flounced against his pelvis as the beast thrusted into him, out of him, into him, drawing blood with it. The sheets barely had time to dry each day before they were wet again the following nights.

  When it was over the creature stood next to him. It looked silently down upon him with penetrating, unblinking eyes, a grin cast across its oil-black face. It watched him this way for minutes. He closed his eyes against it, willing it to finally go away. Each time he opened his eyes to check, however, it stood next to him, still watching, still grinning.

  Finally it shrunk down, like falling through a trapdoor, dissolved into the shadows on the floor beneath his bed. The lantern by the door trembled, withered, and winked out.

  For an hour after that he remained still in bed, tears in the corners of his eyes. His backside burned hellishly. He contracted his muscles there, wished the pain away, but the contraction only made it worse, ignited the pain threefold. So he lay as still as possible. He hoped sleep would take him soon, though it likely wouldn’t at all.

  Then there were footsteps in the hall, swift and noisy. He turned his head toward the door and watched. He listened. Couldn’t hear anything. That went on for a few minutes. Then the footsteps returned, stopped at his door. Keys jangled outside. His heart pounded. It wasn’t Nuala at his door. Somehow he knew. The door flung open and someone rushed inside. Overcome with fear he turned away, shut his eyes, shut the visitor out.

  “Bud!” The footsteps rushed to his bedside. “Bud, please, get up. We have to leave.”

  It was Addie’s voice. He opened his eyes. He parted his lips and found his mouth was dry as stone.

  “We’re leaving. You have to come with—”

  “Help me…” He turned toward her, weak as ever. He could barely make out her shape in the dark.

  “Bud,” she said. “Tell me what to do.”

  He opened his mouth but couldn’t speak.

  “Okay. I’m going to move you…”

  She fumbled with his body, tried to find a way to get him out of bed, and he wished very badly that he could do anything to help. He tried to throw his arm around her himself, and just about managed it when there came a sound from the other side of his bed.

  “What?” Addie asked.

  It was back.

  Addie screamed. In another instant the beast pounced on top of Bud. He wheezed. Then it pounced again and Addie twirled away into the dark, gasping and tripping over her own feet. Bud scooted himself to the edge of his bed. He peered over the edge and couldn’t see the floor below. He knew if he tried to get up he’d spill into a pile…

  Something fell to the floor, whisked across the hardwood next to Bud’s overhanging arm.

  “Fuck off!” Addie shrieked.

  They fell to the ground together. The creature retreated near the bed and Addie retreated toward the bedroom door. Once she was outside, the creature gave chase and she shut the door within seconds of its scratching claws reaching her. Instead it clawed at the wood, hissing up a storm.

  Bud stretched his arm to the ground, hand open like a claw, and his fingertips played desperately across the wood in search of whatever had fallen. When he eventually felt it—the long, narrow object—he closed his fist around it and pulled himself back into bed, rolled onto his side with it clutched under his arm.

  The creature soon tired of its watchdogging and returned, slipped noiselessly beneath the bed and retired.

  Addie was gone. Her attempt to rescue him had not been successful, but somehow he didn’t feel so let down by it. With the knife tucked against his naked body, he felt something stream through him both frightening and exhilarating. A smile touched his lips in the dark and he had to resist putting them to the gift he’d been given.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The room faded in and out. There was an orange glow about it from the fire in the corner. Shadows flickered. A half-thought floated dreamily by as her mind tried to decide between sleep and wakefulness, a distant wondering. Was this the doctor’s house? The guesthouse? A different place altogether? Someone else stirred next to her, restless. In the shifting shadows across the room a figure busied themselves.

  Another half-thought tried reaching the surface, another wondering. There was something cold against her arms. She didn’t fidget inside them. She was too dazed for that. But she felt them—cold circles around each wrist. She nearly realized what they were when that peculiar sleep overcame her again. She wasn’t tired, but still it came. The orange firelight and the pacing figure across the room zoomed off into a far corner, and only the darkness of a dreamless sleep was left in their wake.

  ✽✽✽

  Someone screamed. They holle
red, cried for help. They screamed her name.

  “Addie! It’s happening! They’re killing us! Addie, wake up!”

  The voice was taken farther and farther away and Addie barely heard it. She heard almost nothing at all in her restful stupor, and slowly they too drifted into another corner. Addie’s mind lurched once. She swam up toward the surface of waking, but the current pulled her back under. The calling, the screaming, the words dissolved into terrified utterings, into desperate shrieking, and then into silence.

  ✽✽✽

  Someone hoisted her under the arms into an upright sitting position.

  “Sit up,” they said. “I’m going to carry you.”

  Addie blinked her eyes. She opened them. The room was still dark, the fire still burning. Someone hunched over her, hands cradling her armpits. They attempted to lift her.

  “No…” Addie protested. Her voice was low and cracked.

  There was no longer another body stirring beside her. She was alone on the floor. The figure gripped her underarms a little tighter and hoisted her up off the ground. Her feet dangled, toes grazed the floor as they swung. Then she was hoisted higher still and her stomach rested over the person’s shoulder. She blinked her eyes some more, cracked them apart.

  “No…”

  Her hands struggled, went to push off whatever lugged her, but they were behind her back, restrained by the cold steel circles. She’d worn them before.

  “Nuala?”

  “It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s all going to be okay.”

  Addie turned her hanging head, hair in her eyes, blood rushing to her face. Nuala carried her toward the open door across the doctor’s foyer, the door to the basement, the door with an orange glow of its own.

  “Where’s Joanna?”

  Near the door Nuala ducked them through, and then they were on the stairs, one step at a time. Addie’s body jostled from side to side on every one, and after only three or four the smothering heat came rising up to them, swathed them like a hot Tennessee summer, and on its vapors it carried an unmistakable scent.