Ember X (25 page)

Asher: Yeah. The town Halloween dance thingy... I saw a flyer posted on the grocery store door. I thought maybe we could go together, like on a date... a real one this time.

I completly forgot tomorrow was Halloween.

Me: I guess. But can I meet u there?

Just in case this goes bad, I’ll have my own ride home. I need to know what the Anamotti is, if he knows anything about detective Crammer, and what he knows about Angels and Grim Reapers.

Asher: Sure… r u sure ur ok?

Me: Yep. I just really need 2 talk to u about something… the thing we talked about the other night. I think I’m ready for the answers. And I have other questions 4 you.

It takes him a second to text back.

Asher: I know you do. I’ll c u at the dance at 7. I’ll b the one dressed as the artist ;)

I start to put my phone away when he texts me again.

Asher: And Ember… last night was amazing. I don’t want to lose you…. I want every night to be like last night

I’m not sure what to think of the message, but I know what my body sure as hell thinks. It’s already getting riled up just thinking about him. Please, oh please, don’t let him be a serial killer. I like him too much. I toss the phone on my bed. It’s the afternoon but I’m exhausted and I start to climb into bed to get some rest.

“Ian!” My mom’s scream echoes through the house.

Sighing, I stumble out of bed and hurry down the hall into her room. Her bed is unmade and her waitress uniform is discarded on the floor. The bathroom door is shut and the knob is covered with blood.

I pad up to the door. “Mom? Are you in there?”

She sobs from the other side. “Go away… I want Ian.”

I jiggle the doorknob and jerk on the door. “Mom, unlock the door. Ian’s not here right now, but I am.”

“No!” she screams. “I don’t want you here. You’re a killer! You’re a killer! You killed your grandma!”

I hammer my fist against the door. “Mom, please just open the door up. You’re scaring the shit out of me.”

Something hits the other side of the door and I hear the sound of glass shattering. I run into my room, grab my phone off the dresser, and call Ian on my way back to her bedroom.

He picks up after three rings. Music blares in the background. “Yo, yo, yo. What up?” He’s drunk and it’s barely past lunch time.

“You need to come home,” I demand. “
Now
. Mom’s having another one of her meltdowns and she only wants to talk to you.”

“
What
?” He suddenly sounds sober.

“She locked herself in…” I trail off as I enter my mom’s room. The bathroom door is open. “Ian, just get here now. And get someone sober to drive you.”

“Okay,” he says, frazzled. “I’ll be there in ten.”

I hang up, toss the phone on the bed, and check inside the bathroom. The white tile is obscured with fragments of glass and the sink and mirror are stained with blood. The shower curtain is torn from the rod and pills scatter the inside of the bathtub.

“Mom.” I step back into the bedroom and glance under the bed. “Ian’s on his way, and he told me to tell you that it was okay to talk to me.” I pad over to the closet door and throw it open. “Mom?”

“I’m not in there.” Her chillingly numb voice floats over my shoulder.

I spin around and press my hand against my heart, tripping backwards. “You scared the shit out of me.”

She’s just outside the doorway with a pair of scissors in her hand. An
X
on her forehead drips blood into her eyes and the entire front of her shirt is drenched in blood. “It’s not okay to be around you at all.” Her eyes are unemotional, as if she’s detached from reality. Blood trickles from her wrists as she raises the scissors above her head. “You’re a killer! The cops think so! And Grandma knew, even though she wasn’t thinking rationally. But you did it anyway.”

I hold my hands in front of me and slowly back up, reaching for my phone on the bed. “Mom, how many of those pills did you take?”

“Enough to numb the pain—he told me I had to.” She walks into the room, then pauses, slanting back as if someone is whispering in her ear. “Yes, I know, but she’s not… Okay, I will try.” Her soulless gaze locks on me. “Ember, my dear child, why did you ever have to be born? Ian was fine and your father and I were so happy his
disorder
did not pass along to him. But then you arrived, and we could see it in your eyes. The way you talked to the air and whispered secrets to the plants while you drained their life away.”

“I…”
Does she know about me?
“Mom, what are you talking about?” I continue to feel around for my phone. “And Dad didn’t have schizophrenia, everyone just thought he did.”

“I’m not talking about schizophrenia!” she shrieks, her face bright red, and her veins bulging. “I’m talking about a curse passed along to you.”

My fingers brush the edge of the phone. “Mom, just calm down—”

She barrels forward with the scissors pointed out in front of her. I leap on the bed and bolt for the bathroom, but she skitters around the bed and grabs my legs, jerking them out from under me. I fall on my back and she raises her arm up and sinks the scissors into my chest.

“Mom…” A river of blood streams out of my chest and I gasp for air.

She leans over me, watching me expectantly, like she’s waiting for something miraculous to happen. “I’m sorry, my sweet baby, but he made me do it. Death is more powerful than the mind.” She brushes my hair back.

Blood floods my throat and pours out of my mouth as I yank the scissors out of my chest. “Mom…”

She places her hand over my heart. “Go ahead, take it. I know you can. You did it with your grandma.”

Blood continues to stream out the hole in my chest and runs like a river over her hand. I look into her eyes, wondering if it’s really her in there or if tonight her mind finally took the final flight.

Thump, thump, thump, thump
. My heart sings a song as it dies.

“Take it, Ember,” she begs, her eyes wide. “Before it’s too late.”

My eyes close as my heart sings the last lyric, my veins hollow out, and my lungs shrivel. I start to let myself drift to sleep—or death—when I sense someone else’s presence in the room and I force my eyelids open.

The Grim Reaper lurks behind my mother, concealed under his hood, his dark eyes on me. He whispers something in her ear and then steps back.

“It’s time,” she tells me with her hand extended toward me. “Please, Emmy. It’s time. The grains of sand have expired and my hourglass is empty.”

“Take it, Ember,” the Grim Reaper tempts with an unnerving grin. “Take her life.”

I feel the thunder of her heart attack with the silence of mine. Her blood mixes in my veins and fills my lungs back up. I gasp for air and watch in horror as her skin wrinkles to a lady twice her age.

“Mommy.” I throw her hand off my chest and she collapses to the floor. I hover above her, checking her wrist for a pulse. She looks so old and frail… so… lifeless.

The Reaper watches me from the corner of the room, leaning against the wall, seeming pleased.

I throw a shoe at him. “I hate you! You ruined my fucking life!”

“What the hell?” someone says from behind me.

I glance back and Ian is standing right behind me. His eyes are opened wide and are filled with helplessness as he stares at our mother, lying dead on the floor.

The Grim Reaper’s laugh echoes through my head as he sinks away through the bedroom wall.

“Call a damn ambulance!” I yell at Ian and start CPR on my mom, pushing on her chest, pleading for her heart to beat.

He blinks dazedly and quickly takes his phone out of his pocket. Tears pool in my eyes as I pump my mom’s chest and breathe for her. I keep going, refusing to stop until the paramedics arrive and take over. But even when they roll her away on the stretcher, she still isn’t breathing on her own. And she is still so aged.

They wheel her out into the ambulance and speed off to the hospital with their lights flashing. Ian and I hop in his car and he hands me his jacket. I slip it on and cover up the blood on my shirt. But I can’t hide the blood on my hands.

That will be there forever.

Ian and I return home later that night after my mom was stabilized and heavily sedated. She had taken a high dosage of her medication, plus there were traces of street drugs and alcohol in her system. By the time the doctors got her breathing again, the sudden aging had subsided. But there were a few extra wrinkles around her eyes and a little more grey in her hair

She is under observation and we can’t see her until a full mental analysis is completed. We hardly speak to each other and Ian heads straight up to his studio. He doesn’t know what really happened, which is good because he can’t handle what he does know: that my mom overdosed and that she cut up her forehead and wrists.

“If you need anything,” I call out as he trudges up the stairs. “Please come get me.”

“Sure,” he mutters, slipping off his shoes at the top of the stairs. “I’m just gonna go paint for a while.”

I doubt he’s going to paint. He’ll probably lock himself up in his room and smoke himself into a stupor. As soon as he is upstairs, I collapse on the sofa with my feet kicked up over the back. “All I want to do is sleep forever. Please just let me sleep forever.”

I stare at the window as a raven flies just outside, back and forth, back and forth, then it lands on the windowsill. It spans it small wings and shakes off a few feathers.

“Go away.” I throw a couch pillow at the window.

Tucking its wings in, it spins in a circle and I toss another pillow at it. Parting its beak, it caws. I begrudgingly drag myself off the couch and place my hand on the glass. “Why won’t you just go away?”

Granting me my wish, it flaps away in the direction of Cameron’s house. It’s late, so most of the houses are dark, but the light in Cameron’s attic is on. I’m possessed by a rage that doesn’t belong to me, blazing uncontrollably like a wildfire. As if my feet no longer belong to me, I march out the front door and across the street. I’m still wearing the pajamas I wore at the police station and blood still stains my shirt and hands, but that’s okay. I’m not going there to impress him.

His Jeep is parked out front and the tires are covered with chunks of mud. I cup my hands around my eyes as I peek through the back window, wondering if I’ll find rope and a roll of duct tape, like the kind I saw on Mackenzie in her death omen.

“Find anything interesting?” Cameron’s amused voice is startling close.

Slowly, I turn to face him. He’s standing closer than I expect and my foot slips off the edge of the curb with the shift of my weight.

“Easy there.” He catches my arm and balances me onto the curb. He’s wearing faded jeans, no shirt, and his skin almost glows beneath the dim trail of moonlight. There is also dust in his blonde hair and on his hands, which is strange.

I wrench my arm free and his dusty handprints mark my skin. “Why did you do it?”

He knows exactly what I’m talking about—it’s clear in his stoic expression. “But I didn’t do it.”

“Yes, you did.” I dust the dirt off my arm. “You were the only one who knew the exact location of my car.”

“Am I?” He shakes his head and dust falls from his hair. “Because I was under the impression that you didn’t get yourself out of that car the night you crashed.”

“Who gave you that impression?” I ask. “And why is there dirt in your hair? Have you been digging graves up again, looking for your—” I make air quotes, “‘family jewel’?”

“Actually, I ended up finding that in the strangest place.” His eyes travel up my body and linger on the hole in my shirt. “And I think I should be the one asking you the questions. Starting with why you look like you just committed murder.”

“Tell me, Cameron.” I struggle to maintain my composure, but end up jabbing my finger against his chest. “What happened to Mackenzie last night after I left?”

He reaches above my head and sets his hand on the roof of the Jeep. “Why? Are you jealous?”

“Jealous that I wasn’t the one who got killed?” I back up against Jeep and cross my arms.

“You know, it seems like I’m the only one you have this spitfire attitude toward.” He leans in and his eyes darken. “Everyone else I’ve seen you with, you’re nicer than can be. And you were like that with me at first, but now… what happened?”

“You blew me off at the lake,” I admit, leaning away from him as much as I can, but I’m pretty much already pinned up against the Jeep door. “And then told the police where my car was, after Mackenzie disappeared.”

“I didn’t tell the police where your car was,” he says and his hand finds my hip. “What was one of the first things I ever told you about me? That I don’t lie.”

“I think that’s the liars’ motto.”

He lowers his head in frustration and his hair tickles my nose. “Ember, Ember, Ember, what am I going to do with you?” He raises his head back up and the sorrow in his eyes is restored. “Is this because I was flirting with Mackenzie, because the only reason I did that was to make you jealous—like how I felt when I showed up at your house and some guy was sleeping in your bed.”