Bathwater Blues: A Novel

by Abe Moss

  I don’t blame you. I don’t blame you. But please… please, Bud, wake up!

  They were nearing the rear of the house. Another explosion broke loose, long and violent. The travelling veins of open earth followed them farther still, and suddenly a narrow chasm split the earth beside them, ripped through the ground like breaking a piece of toast. The hot red light blinded. Addie screamed at its heat and staggered to the side, fell into the grass with Bud over her legs. The chasm wormed its way directly for the property, stung its foundation like a virus.

  “Please, god.”

  All at once the property bellowed, low and tired, and its windows filled with the intense red glow.

  I know that light… that nighttime, nightmare light…

  Those red webs creeped up the sides of the house to the roof, covered it like vines, and suddenly the house gave a splintery belch and the windows rained their glass into the field. The roof collapsed, fell inside and fed the rising flames. The walls crunched inward, as though a giant’s fist squeezed it from the outside. It was imploding. Nuala’s body (and countless others’ remains, Addie thought) would implode with it.

  She struggled to stand again. When she was almost up, the trembling ground brought her down. She pushed Bud forward, so that he was sitting, and propped herself up on his shoulders. She grabbed under his arms again and started to pull. Her body ached with the effort.

  What do I do? Please, Bud, wake up. I need you… I need—

  Like a metal rod to the head, it struck her plainly. The stars.

  I’ve seen them. On my own.

  The doctor had shown them an exit—his exit. But perhaps it wasn’t the only one. Perhaps Addie had seen another before… It was all she could think of, and for that it had to be worth a shot, at least.

  “Come on,” she said through gritted teeth, and hauled him with her once more, this time toward the woods.

  The ground never ceased its tremors, and the cracks of glowing pond water spread wider and longer still, branched out again and again, followed them like skeleton’s fingers through the grass. And despite the terror of it, Addie couldn’t help marveling at the sight, panting and wheezing as she was. The night was alive in a way their nights there had never been alive before. She raised her eyes to the sky and saw the moon was full and just as red.

  Please let us go. Let this be another way.

  The woods were farther out than their journey to the property had been. Her arms quivered, getting weak. A black veil of smoke covered the red moon above them, shrouded the sky like a storm cloud. Its sharp odor stung at her nostrils and she sneezed, coughed. Periodically she looked over her shoulder to see the distance they’d covered, and it was never as much as she wished.

  I wish, I wish, I wish upon a…

  Another explosion came, closer than the others, and the red openings jumped nearer, spiraled out beside them like red carpets. She fell on her butt again.

  “Shit!”

  She got up, dragged some more, shuffled her feet like slippers on a rug. The trees crept up on them closer and closer. She fell again. Her arms felt gooey and numb. Her hand—the teeth marks from before open and hot—bled freely. Her shoulder might have done the same, but the aching of her muscles drowned it out. She reached under Bud’s arms and lifted, pulled once, dragged him another foot, shook in place, and dropped him. She crouched and grabbed hold of him again, tried to stand, and her legs buckled under her. She fell to her knees.

  “Bud! Wake the fuck up!”

  She slapped him—slapped him again. Maybe he was dead, she thought. She put her face to his open mouth, hoped she could feel his breath. The open chasms beside them breathed their hot, boiling red fumes and she felt nothing discernible. A knot of frustration in her throat, she stood and faced the tree line ahead, searching for her last hope.

  “Dad!!! Where are you!? I need you!!!”

  She tried to lift Bud again, shuffled her feet the same as before. The boiling pond water oozing from the glowing chasms was turning the dirt to mud and her foot slipped out from under her, squelched through it. She fell onto her side. She turned over, scrambled for his body again, wrapped her arms around him, tried to push them both with her feet against the slippery ground. The cracks widened. Boiling spittle bit her arms and legs. Before long, the chasms would cross and leave them stranded on a small island of land with nowhere to go but in…

  Thanks a lot, Dr. Lull. Thank you for everything. Thank you, Nuala. Thanks for bringing me here. It’s so much better than what I had in mind for myself. Thank you. Thank you.

  Another explosion. Water splashed out from one of the open trenches and rained down just next to them. Addie felt droplets of it on her feet and winced. She took Bud in her arms and heaved him just a couple feet more as best she could.

  I’m sorry, Bud. I’m sorry I brought you here. It’s my fault…

  She grabbed him, considered dragging him some more and, feeling no strength left in her legs, just hugged him instead. His head thumped against hers in the earth’s shaking.

  “It’s not your fault, sweetheart.”

  Her eyes snapped open.

  “You have to stop blaming yourself.”

  “Dad?”

  Slowly, she lifted Bud off from herself and crawled to her hands and knees. She looked behind them and there he was, standing in his black silhouette of starlight. He’d come for her, out of the woods, like none of the others could.

  “If you gave that to yourself, you’d know how good you really are.”

  “Dad, we’re going to die here.”

  She sat herself next to Bud, put a hand on his chest.

  “I’m sorry if I ever did anything to make you question that…”

  “Dad. Please. Help me.”

  The form of her father took a step toward them. Those glittery stars were clearer than ever. That loud buzzing returned, like millions of bees around them, so loud that she couldn’t hear the popping and splashing of the boiling pond water anymore.

  “I hope someday you’ll know how sorry I am—how much I wish I could take it all back.”

  “Dad, we’re running out of time…”

  The silhouette hung its head. Through the buzzing and the wind and the pounding of her heart, she heard another sound, amplified like through a speaker, the same way his voice seemed to surround her no matter the distance.

  “Dad, are you listening?”

  He’s trapped in his own hell, she thought. Waiting for something that hasn’t come. Not yet. He’s suffering like the rest of us.

  —he deserves it—

  The ground rumbled. The cracks beside them opened wider.

  I’ve needed you for so long before now and you’ve never been there.

  She wiped her hair from her eyes, plastered to her cheeks with sweat. The stars in her father’s form were bright and twinkling, like a mirage. Through his own sobs, his voice broke through.

  “I’m here now.”

  Addie placed both her hands on Bud’s chest.

  “Take him first.”

  “Addie, sweetheart—”

  “I’ll never forgive myself if he doesn’t make it. Please. Help him.”

  Her father stepped toward them, towered over them. The blazing red glow of the chasms didn’t show on him, was swallowed up as though by a starving void…

  A starving void…

  He’s missing something. Just like me.

  Just like me…

  He leaned over Bud’s still body, crouched down next to him. Addie moved out of their way. She watched them carefully. Her father took hold of Bud by the shoulders, lifted him just barely off the ground.

  Don’t tell me he’s dead. He’s not dead. Don’t tell me…

  Her father said nothing. He held Bud in his hands, seemed to gaze at him for a long moment, taking something in. Then, very slowly, his hands wrapped themselves around his shoulders, over his back, until he pulled him closer in an embrace. Bud pressed against her father’s chest and… faded into it
, through it, and her father squeezed him tighter and tighter, sinking lower on top of him until Bud was vanished from the waist up. He took Bud by the legs and scooped him into himself, lowered his dark form down on top of what was left, down to the ground.

  Tell me he’s safe. Tell me he’s escaped. Tell me I can do the same.

  Her father straightened, and nothing was left beneath him.

  “Where is he? What’s happened?”

  He got to his feet. He looked upon Addie, who peered up with feverish, frightened eyes.

  “Now you, Addie. It’s your turn.”

  In the distance, the guesthouse and the doctor’s house were piles of flaming wood and ash, two bonfires in the dark horizon. The molten web of pond water covered the ground everywhere else, the earth turned to bubbling scales. Addie joined her father in standing. They faced each other, quiet and unmoving, for several seconds. She wished he had eyes she could look to, to find emotion in. But there were only stars.

  “Where will it take me?”

  “Home.”

  “I don’t know what that is anymore.”

  She looked down at her bruised, black feet. Her hand was a mess of mud and smeared blood.

  “My death isn’t on your hands, Addie. I owe you so much more than this.”

  He offered his hand. She looked at it dreamily.

  “Let me take you from this place.”

  Addie took his hand. She met his face, or what should have been his face, and felt a part of her still missing, a part she’d come to this place without—and knew she would be returning just as empty-handed.

  We all do our best, don’t we? she thought.

  “I hope someday you’ll forgive me.”

  She squeezed his abyss in her palm, wished to feel his warmth there. But that was gone, and always would be. The stars inside him brightened. They shimmered like coins at the bottom of a well.

  Mistakes at the bottom of the well…

  Wishes, wishes.

  She reached inside him, felt the cool starry night on the other side.

  “So do I.”

  She climbed through.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Crickets chirped. The night passed its hand over her aching body, a cool summer breeze. She lifted her head off the grass.

  “Dad?”

  Her voice sounded alien to her. Dead-tired.

  She pushed herself up, blew dirt from the corners of her mouth. She blinked her eyes. Seeing nothing through the curtain of her greasy hair, she brushed it aside, and immediately her heart sank at what she saw.

  A bone-white tombstone rose from the dirt, blindingly bright in the moonlight.

  Jonathan O’Dell

  She touched it. Her mind somersaulted, barely gathering where she was or what time of day it was.

  Time of night, not day.

  The stone was cold and hard.

  Her fingers, covered in blood, scratched down the cold surface over the grave’s lettering. She repositioned herself, sitting, and saw her feet covered in mud. Her hand, still wounded, touched the wound on her shoulder, felt the individual marks the teeth had left.

  She looked around herself, around the grave. Her wits found their way back to her in a heartbeat, and her eyes searched the nearby graves with frantic energy.

  “Bud?” she said. “Bud?”

  She climbed to her feet. Feeling lightheaded, she crouched slightly, leaned against her father’s tombstone. Searching the grass, the trees nearby, she saw no sign of anyone else. Bud’s body lay nowhere in sight.

  “Bud?”

  She spent the next five minutes wandering the immediate cemetery surrounding her father’s grave in search of him, and still saw no one.

  It was real. These wounds are real.

  “Bud!” she called.

  He wasn’t there.

  She spent a little while longer at her father’s grave, rested another few minutes on it. She stared up at the sky, unobscured by the trees which grew scattered across the rest of the cemetery. Had it always been these stars she saw through him, she wondered? Had her means of escape always been so close?

  Thinking back on the last several weeks (had months gone by?) started a throb in the back of her skull. She sat up. She looked once more at her father’s headstone. She kissed her palm and placed it to his name before getting up and leaving.

  Feeling very tired, she wandered through the cemetery until she reached the iron fence with the missing beam. She stepped through. On the other side she peered down the deserted road. She thought she might see her car parked somewhere—as though she’d only fallen asleep that last night she visited her father’s grave and everything after had been a dream. But her car wasn’t there. It was at her mother’s. Or would it still be? She couldn’t know.

  Not knowing where Bud ended up, or where to look next, she decided without much consideration that her next destination would be home.

  She started walking.

  ✽✽✽

  Her car was just as she’d parked it that night. She looked inside the driver window as she crossed the street to the house. Nothing looked different about it. Her CDs were still scattered on the floor of the passenger seat. The cup holders were stuffed with trash. Then she straightened and looked beyond to the house itself. The front door was wide open. The light was on in the kitchen. She moved around the car and up the curb and started across the lawn. The front door grew larger as she approached and her blood pumped faster the larger it got.

  I already know what I’m walking into.

  She stopped on the porch and looked in.

  Very softly she said, “Hello?”

  She went inside. She went into the kitchen. One of the cupboards was open, her mother’s liquor exposed. A broken TV remote sat on the counter. As she turned to leave the kitchen she stepped on something peculiar. She picked it off the ground, pinched between two fingers, and what she held before her eyes was a single black feather.

  “Hello?”

  She continued down the hall, carrying the feather with her. Her mother’s bedroom light was on. She ignored it for a moment and peeked inside her own room first, found it dark and empty. In her mother’s room she found the bottle of vodka sitting on the bed with the bottle of sleeping pills. Then she looked to the bathroom door.

  I already know what’s in there. I don’t need…

  She stood in the doorway and saw. Her mother was still in the tub. The water was still pink. The shock was gone this go around. Instead she felt a dreadful, miserable melancholy.

  All that, and I’m still left with this…

  Part of her hoped if she made it back, the past would be behind her. The world would have moved on and she could take her place in whatever was left for her. But no. It hadn’t moved on. How it was possible, she didn’t know, but her world had only paused during her absence, and now she was back to experience the brunt of what she’d hoped to skip. It could never be so easy…

  “What do I do now?” she asked aloud. Her mother didn’t answer, which was just as well because the question wasn’t meant for her.

  I wish it would just suck her in, devour her into a place that isn’t here. Take her away so I never have to look at her again. I wish I could forget this, all of this. I wished it the night I was here, and I wish it now…

  A tinny gong sounded in her head.

  This is the night you were here. The very same. Nothing has changed.

  Well… not nothing.

  She looked over her shoulder, at the bed behind her with its empty bottle and scattered pills, at the carpet beneath it still wet with spilled vodka.

  Have I? Have I really?

  She stepped into the bathroom and stood over her dead mother. Somewhere in the pink bathwater was a razorblade, still sharp enough to cut dozens of wrists. It had only cut two, however. She looked her mother over very carefully. Her skin was ghostly white, which made the hair over her shoulders appear that much darker.

  “I almost gave you what you wanted, did
n’t I?” Again, her mother didn’t answer. Why did she keep waiting for it? “You wish I’d have—”

  All at once she felt very silly, almost embarrassed. It was only her, of course. Only her voice, and only her ears to hear it.

  This is not about me… is it?

  It never was.

  She looked upon her mother now with something besides resentment and, confusing and foreign as it was, it filled her like a breath of fresh air.

  This wasn’t for me. You probably thought very little of me at all in doing it. You did this for you.

  The years of cruelty, the mind games, the little slights which built the foundation of what their relationship had become. It wasn’t all about her. Her mother wasn’t just mean, or manipulative, or hurtful. She was also hurting. She was grieving. She was feeling sorry for herself—something Addie knew all too well. Her mother, full of faults like anyone else, fell victim to those faults just the same. Was she a good mother? No, absolutely not. She wasn’t even a decent one, though she may have had her moments. She never would have been, either, Addie thought, and that wasn’t all her fault. Some might say she never should have had children, but she did… and… and…

  She did her best, no matter how good enough it wasn’t.

  Addie towered over her mother, wet and cold and gone.

  “Someday I’ll forgive you, too.”

  She placed the feather on the bathroom counter and left into the bedroom. She moved along the bed toward the nightstand. The phone was off the hook on the floor. She picked it up. She pressed the switch hook on the phone, turned to look over her shoulder at the bathroom one last time, and then dialed three numbers.

  Epilogue

  Through all the aftermath of her mother’s death—the legal side of things and everything else—she absorbed herself in finding him again, hoping there would be a shred of evidence he was alive and safe somewhere where she could reach him. She searched online, on social media, but had a difficult time finding much when she couldn’t even remember his last name. It worried her, too, that in all her searching he hadn’t found her first. Surely, she thought, if he were alive he would be doing the same—looking.