Behind Jesus, another cross burned and broke and fell down into ashes; I could see it between the flames and where the windows were breaking, broken, coming down and coming apart.
Everything was coming apart.
And I was burning, and breathing.
Still breathing when the sky opened up above and the fire burned itself down to a sizzling bad smell around me. Across me and on top of me. Above me.
Then a shift, though the sky above me looked the same—all heavy and thick, and swirling low. Nick was there, though. His voice worked its way through the haze in my ears and behind my eyes, but he wasn’t making any sense to me. I couldn’t assemble words from the sounds, but I listened anyway, and after a few minutes the letters arranged themselves more clearly.
“I’d tie you up, but you might get the wrong idea.”
“The chains,” I mumbled.
“What?”
We were someplace else—not on the street by the water, and not in the alcove. Slick grass was smashed against my face, and the air was clearer. Winching one elbow underneath myself and trying to prop myself up with it; I only succeeded in turning over.
He was sitting beside me, on the grass, on a hill. We were beside the interstate, before the serpentine S-curves that herald the way to the Olgiati bridge. I had mud in my shoes. I could feel it before I could feel the grass, but then the grass started to itch and that was all I felt.
I sat up, but not easily and not very well. There were drag marks leading up to my position, which explained the overflowing footwear.
He’d hauled me clear past the hotel and up, up as far from the water as we could get without an airlift. It was good of him. I lay back down and let the spitting rain go to work on my skin.
“What did you say? What was that?”
“Chains,” I said.
“If I had some, I’d cheerfully oblige you.”
“Not me. Them. The fire didn’t destroy all the evidence, so the Klan took the bodies and threw them into the river. Weighed them down with chains so they’d sink. I’m so tired,” I finished.
“I know.”
“Thirsty.”
“Can’t help you there. But if you’ll pull yourself together long enough to follow through on your crazy ass plan . . .” He pointed down the hill, over to our left just a few hundred yards. “Voilá. Now who’s your daddy?”
“If you can help me get upright and point me at that-there stadium, then _you are.”
“That’s what I’m talking about.”
It wouldn’t be as easy as that, I knew. BellSouth Park was almost an island. A loud, crazy flapping overhead signaled the passing of a helicopter, which flew directly over us and then swooped down to land in the middle of the outfield.
“Do you still want to do this?”
I leaned forward, not feeling sturdy enough to stand but sturdy enough to flop my head down over my knees. “I don’t know. I don’t know if it matters. They’re coming anyway, on land or under it. They’re working up their strength. She’s making them.”
“The little girl? You think this is her doing?”
I nodded shakily. “Yup. She lived the longest, and hates the most.”
“I don’t get it.”
“You don’t have to. It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t know what she wants; she only wants to feed, or to destroy. It’s the anger of a child. There’s no directing it and no appeasing it. She’s not going to stop until something makes her.”
I held my head up and it was okay—that is, it didn’t seem to be in danger of flopping back onto the ground at any moment, so I took a risk and tried to arrange my feet underneath myself to stand. With some help from Nick, it worked. But I was pretty sure I was going to throw up, so I pushed him aside and lost what little I had in my stomach all over the grass.
“What’s wrong? Jesus, what now? Are you all right?”
He was kneeling and trying to help, even though I didn’t really want any help and I sure as hell don’t like people watching me throw up. I was barely strong enough to stand, much less strong enough to hurl, but I did it anyway, repeatedly, until my chest cramped and I had to stop or implode. Most of the time there was nothing but some liquid and the near-recognizable chunks of granola bar.
“No, I’m not okay, exactly.” I wiped my mouth on my sleeve, which was so dirty it didn’t visibly fix my mouth or soil the shirt. “But I will be. I will be all right. I just need to refuel. I need some protein,” I added, as the image of a huge, dripping cheeseburger flashed inside my brain like a neon light.
“Was it this bad last time, too? When you were in the bathroom and didn’t want to come out?”
“What?”
“At the Read House. A few days ago, when you were—when there was Caroline, for the first time. And you wouldn’t come out of the bathroom. Was it this bad then, too?”
I wiped my teeth with my tongue and was disgusted by the taste of bile. I spit a big loogie onto the grass beside the damp pile of vomit. “No. Bad, but not like this. Different. Or not really different, but not as bad. Shit, Nick. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Nobody does.”
He got all solemn on me, working his way around to face me, and to take my arms again. I noticed how much he was touching me today and I wasn’t sure what to make of it, except that I didn’t mind it and I was too worn down to object even if I did.
I took a step and slipped on the grass, landing ass-down but not hard enough to do anything but jolt me into tears.
It was one of those crying fits where you swear you aren’t crying, but you’re sniffling and your eyes are streaming anyway so you’re not fooling anybody. I covered my face and gulped for air.
Nick, like just about any guy faced with a crying woman, had no earthly idea what to do. But bless his heart, he did the best thing he could’ve done: he sat down next to me and waited it out.
“I never told you half of it,” I coughed, wishing I had something to blow my nose on, but since there was nothing handy and certainly nothing dry, I took a deep snort and swallowed back as much as I could. This gave me hiccups, which only made me sound more ridiculous.
“Half of what? Of what happened at the hotel?”
“That too. But (hiccup) that’s not where it started. That’s not where it (hiccup) got weird. It got weird in Florida, a few years ago. It’s been (hiccup) getting weirder ever since. And now I can’t tell if I’m dying or if I’m invincible, but (hiccup) it’s all very confusing.”
Nick took it in stride. He reached down to the ground beside his hip and pulled a dandelion, then began picking it apart. “You can tell me about it if you want.”
I snorted again and choked on a phlegm-filled hiccup, before blurting out, “Off the record?”
“I think this is about as far off the record as we’re ever likely to get.”
“I can’t trust you.”
He didn’t answer, and I couldn’t see him through my hurricane hairdo and all the crying. God, the crying just wouldn’t stop. Now that it had started I couldn’t kick it down or force it back—it just came pouring out and it wasn’t like a leak in the roof where you throw pans on the floor to catch it. There was nothing to catch it, and nothing to catch me.
“I wish you’d try to trust me,” he finally said. “What do you think I’m going to do? Go running to the studio and start editing a package together?”
“I don’t know. You would’ve done it to Christ.”
“You’re not Christ. And if you’d asked me not to, I wouldn’t have done it to him, either. It was a good story, but not one with a lot of proof. The station usually won’t run shit like that anyway; they’re too afraid of getting sued.”
“Good point,” I burbled.
“And by this good point, I swear. Are we friends, or what? Because you seem to know a whole lot of people, but you don’t really seem to be very good friends with any of them.”
I don’t know why I answered like I did, why the words just came falling out of my mouth—faster than I could stop them, even though they didn’t appear relevant to his accusation. “I killed somebody. Back in Florida, back in the swamp. That crazy cultist you’ve heard about, I killed him. I cut off his head and threw it into the swamp. If I hadn’t, he was going to kill me and the other person there. Fuck it, it was Malachi. It was my crazy-ass brother.”
“Wait—the cultist was your brother?”
“No.” I shook my head and resolved not to do it again. I saw black and white static when I did that. No more. “No, the crazy cult guy was going to kill us both. So I killed him first. Malachi helped.”
“Wow.”
“Uh-huh. But when I killed him . . . something happened.”
“When you killed Malachi?”
“No. Didn’t kill him. He’s fine. He’s . . . shit, well. He’s on his way back to Florida by now. It’s a long story.”
“I bet.”
“But when I killed the other guy, something . . . happened. I don’t know what.” I’d lost the hiccups, and was grateful for that small mercy. The crying hadn’t turned itself off yet, though, so I still sounded like a blubbering lunatic and I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t even slow it down.
“It was like . . . like he cursed me. Sort of. And now whenever I get hurt, it doesn’t last. It heals right up. It closes up and it’s completely freaky. So I sort of feel invincible (hiccup), right?” No, the hiccups were only delayed, not gone completely. “But then all this psychic shit—it’s gotten so much harder. It’s like it’s killing me, every time. Every time it’s bad, and it’s a real interaction—like with Caroline, or down there—it just takes so much out of me. I’m better at it, but it’s killing me.”
“Killing you, yeah. You said that part. Stop saying it. I don’t like hearing it.”