Mathieu (28 page)

“Bullshit.” Dwayne came out of the dark with three water bottles. “Stop making this about you.”

“Fuck off, Dwayne.” Marcus reached for the water, twisted off the cap and drank deeply. “I should have known. I should have realized.”

“Realized what? That the crazy person was going to go and do something incredibly crazy?” Eddie asked as he reached for water. “Actually upon reflection you probably should have guessed that would happen. Strike that.”

Carol fixed Eddie with a cold stare. “You’re not helping.”

Eddie shrugged as he drank. “I’m more of a technician. This emotional support shit eludes me.”

Marcus
snorted as he stepped back to look at the spell on the foundation. “Carol, I’m dead serious. We need this tonight. I know I’m asking for a lot, but I’m not willing to give up on him just yet.”

“Marcus,” Dwayne swallowed hard and then continued. “He told me he trusted me to do what needed to be done because I knew…”

“Because you knew what would happen if he fell into that thing’s hands?” Marcus completed the sentence for him.

“Yeah. Basically.”

Marcus nodded. It was just a movement in the dark but Dwayne could feel the emotion behind it. “And?”

“And it just occurred to me that if we did pull off a rescue, he probably wouldn’t be real appreciative. He’ll probably be more… you know… fucked up than he is now.”

Marcus sighed in the dark. “I don’t know, Dwayne. I just don’t know. If he wanted to die so damned bad, why didn’t he just go kill himself?”

“Because suicides don’t go to heaven.” Eddie sloshed the water in his bottle as he spoke. “Atheists don’t go and build a church on top of a mountain. He can walk around pretending not to have a scrap of faith left, but everything he’s done says otherwise.”

Carol’s voice was very quiet when she spoke. “There’s an old saying, ‘It isn’t suicide if someone else holds the knife’. I don’t think I’m comfortable being forced to hold that knife.”

“I know I’m not.” Marcus kicked the side of the house, carefully avoiding the painted symbols there. “So what do we do about it?”

Carol was silent for a long moment before speaking, “Dwayne, go get my sketch pad and pencils. They’re in my suitcase. While you’re doing that, Eddie can take some pictures with his phone. If we send some old friends of mine a picture, we can get their input on how to do this up right.”

Dwayne watched Marcus and at the leader’s nod walked swiftly away to get the requested items.

Carol
tapped Eddie on the shoulder and accepted his help into the hole so she could crouch down and study the spell closer. “You want to alter this,” she said.

“Yeah,” Marcus answered. “I want it so that the Familiar survives the spell. Think you can do that?”

After studying the spell again for a moment, Carol raised one shoulder and half shook her head. “I think so. Maybe. Perhaps.”

“I love a strong, definitive woman.” Eddie pushed up to sit on the edge of the hole. “Look at it this way: either way, we’re fucked. We fail, he’s dead. We succeed, he’s pissed at us and twice as crazy.”

“Thanks for that dose of perspective, Eddie. Really, I mean it.” Marcus sighed and took another drink of water.

Carol shook her head and said, “Aren’t you supposed to be taking pictures, Eddie?”

Eddie flinched and reached into his pocket for his phone. “Right on it, boss.”

C
hapter Thirty - Nine

Hugh sat at the kitchen table, watching his daughter crouch in the corner. A bowl of soup sat on the floor in front of her. She alternated between staring at it hungrily and hiding her head and trembling uncontrollably with choked sobs.

“Amanda, baby. You need to eat something.” Hugh crooned the words, trying not to alarm the girl.

Amanda cringed and flinched at the sound of his voice, tears springing to her eyes. “No, please. Just leave me alone. Let me die. Please,” she begged.

Susan and Jenn walked into the room, loaded down with paint cans. They both froze when they saw Amanda. Amanda froze when she saw them, completely still except for the tears that flowed down her cheeks.

“Hey, Manders.” Susan managed to choke out. “How’s it hanging?” she finished lamely.

Jenn nodded. “Hi.” Her voice rasped with unshed tears.

Amanda stared at them both warily, her gaze sharp and hard.

Jenn put the paint cans down on the table with a thump and then crouched down, crawling slowly forward until she was a few feet away from the woman in the corner. “Do you remember me?”

After a long moment, Amanda nodded. Her eyes were still wide, but she answered, “Yes. Jenn. It’s been years, though.” The blue eyes closed and sobs wracked the slender body. “So very long.”

“You’ve been gone a week, Amanda.” Jenn leaned forward and moved to put a hand on the girl’s knee.

Amanda
jerked back violently, trying to force her way backwards through the layers of plaster and wood in the wall. Jenn thought inwardly that Mathieu had done the exact same thing in the exact same place the night before.

“I won’t hurt you,” Jenn said quietly. “I’m your friend.”

Eyes still wide with panic, Amanda shook her head. “No. I don’t know that.”

Susan crouched behind Jenn and said quietly, “We came to get you back, honey. You’re home. No one is going to ever hurt you again. I won’t let that happen. I’m going to give you that thing’s ball sack so you can have it as a purse. I’ll bedazzle it and then you and me and Jenn are going to go dance on that thing’s grave.”

Amanda watched them both with wide eyes and pulled her knees up to her chest. “You can’t stop Gaap. It’s too strong.” Her thin frame quaked and shuddered with some remembered violation.

“I won’t let anyone hurt you. I promise.” Jenn reached her hand forward slowly while Amanda watched it approach like a crawling bug.

“You can’t promise that.” Amanda shook her head slowly as her eyes glazed over. “It’ll be back.”

“Baby.” Hugh crawled forward to talk to his daughter. “Honey, I’m here. I’ll take care of you. I promise.”

Amanda’s head lolled in his direction. “I don’t want to listen to your promises anymore. You put me here for that thing to take me. You did this.”

“I didn’t mean this to happen.” Hugh’s voice was choked with emotion.

“Bullshit.” Jenn, Susan and Amanda spoke at the same time. They looked at each other across the few feet between them.

“Do you want a bath?” Jenn asked quietly. “If I run a bath, will you take it?”

Amanda shook her head and sobbed, “I’ll never be clean again. Ever.”

Jenn
could only shake her head, Mathieu’s constant scrubbing of his hands endlessly filling her vision. “You’ll never be dirty to me.”

“Liar. I’m filthy.” Amanda breathed the words. “Look at me.” She extended her scarred and scab covered arm. “LOOK AT ME,” she screamed. “I’m covered in it. I’m soiled, I’m filth.” The girl started sobbing even harder, great gasping sobs that took her breath away.

“No, sweetheart.” Susan crawled forward next to Jenn. “We love you. You’re just you, no matter what. The rest of that,” Susan gestured, “doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Amanda stopped sobbing and repeated the words in a leaden tone. “Doesn’t matter. Everything that thing did to me, and it doesn’t matter.”

Susan paused, sensing she was on thin ice. When she finally spoke her tone was unsure, “What I meant was that it doesn’t change how we see you, and that we’ll always love you for you. What happened didn’t change that. I know what it’s like to be afraid that the person that hurt you is going to find you and do it again, and I know what it’s like to feel like you’re worthless and damaged and no one will ever want to touch you again. But you’re going to come out of this stronger than ever, and realize that what that thing did to you isn’t on your skin but in your head.”

Amanda’s sobs came back, this time softly. “You might not see it, but I do.” She started rubbing her arm progressively harder as she spoke. “All the dirt, all the filth, all the scars, all the pain, all the foulness.” Each word was accompanied by another sharp motion, a rasping sound as her dry hands caught on the scabs and scars. Blood began to seep from half-healed wounds. “Every time someone looks at me, all they’ll ever see is that dirt, that stain, that
filth
on—in--my soul.”

Jenn watched as Amanda’s blood welled up and was smeared into her skin. “That won’t make it go away, you know.” She looked into Amanda’s blue eyes and said firmly, “hurting yourself won’t make it go away. It won’t make it like it never happened. It won’t make it all a bad dream.”

Amanda’s
hand slowed and then stopped. The girl looked down at her bleeding wounds as if she had no clue she’d been doing damage to herself. “It might make me forget for a while.” When she spoke again, it was in a distant sounding voice. “Am I disgusting? Am I revolting? Do I nauseate you?”

“No. Never to me, never to anyone here.” Jenn gestured towards the stairwell. “Never,” she repeated. “And you should never be to you, either. Let me draw you a hot bath. It may seem like nothing, but it is a start.”

“A start?” Amanda echoed the words. “A start to what?”

“To whatever comes next.” Jenn crawled backwards, pulled herself slowly to standing and then reached down to help Susan up. Both of them were sure to make no sudden movements as they walked to the stairs. All three women ignored Hugh.

Amanda slowly got to her feet and followed the two women upstairs, leaving her father behind to put the untouched bowl of soup into the sink.

C
hapter Forty

Marcus and Carol surveyed the room in the basement. Carol had traced the revised spell on all four walls, the ceiling and the floor—in pencil.

“It is best,” she said, “that we leave that third circle up. We didn’t use it before, but it’s a good circle. Dwayne built it so we know that it’s not corrupted and we still might need it.”

Marcus rubbed his eyes and scratched the stubble growing in on his chin. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“Good.” Carol gestured towards the north wall. “That one is the one we’ll have to do first. Then south. Then east and west. Up and down, too.”

“Will this hold that bastard?” Marcus gestured in the general direction of the north cardinal.

“It should.” Carol paused and then continued, “It did before. I don’t see any reason it won’t work now.”

“What about freeing Mathieu?” Marcus walked over to the north wall and traced the figures of the spell with his fingers. “Will this sever the binding?”

Carol hesitated. “It should.”

“You don’t sound very confident about that.” Marcus turned and looked over his shoulder at the older woman.

“I’ve never physically encountered anything like this before.” Carol raised one shoulder and grimaced. “I’m good on theory. In practice, I’m not quite as experienced as you might expect.”

“Great.” Marcus shook his head and sighed. “I’m sorry, Carol. There’s no excuse but I’m so tired…”

“
I know.” Carol shrugged. “I’m tired too. Maybe a few hours of sleep…”

“No.” Marcus was firm. “I caused this mess, I’m going to get him out of it.”

“A few hours of rest would only make us stronger. We were tired when we summoned Gaap the first time.” Carol gestured towards the middle of the room. “We’re even more tired now. Tired people make stupid mistakes.”

“How many years do our few hours of sleep equal in that place?” Marcus asked. “How many beatings? How many humiliations and degradations? How many rapes? How many cruelties that we can’t even conceive will be done while we sleep?”

“How many more would be done if we all die in the process?” Carol’s voice was dry. “I’m sure that Mathieu would tell you the same thing. We need to rest before we try this.”

Eddie walked into the room, gallon paint cans in each hand. “The girls are back.” He put the cans down with an exhausted sigh. “They’ve managed to coax Amanda upstairs for a bath, but that girl is in a world of hurt.”

Marcus nodded. “I figured.” He paused and asked Eddie, “Do you want to rest before we do the heavy lifting here?”

“I don’t want to, but I’m going to need to.” Marcus hadn’t noticed that Eddie was swaying on his feet. “Dwayne is already face down on the couch upstairs and the girls don’t look much better.”

“Why would they be tired? They didn’t have to dig out the side of the house in the middle of the night,” Marcus grumbled.

“Shopping. Finding an all-night home improvement store and fighting insomniac suburban hausfraus to get that perfect shade of sunshine yellow can be as exhausting as fighting zombies.” Eddie paused. “Or at least that’s what Susan tells me.”

“Yeah. When you put it that way…” Marcus’ shoulders slumped. “You’re all right. We need to sleep first before we do any workings.”

Eddie
looked uncomfortable for a moment, “About that. I’m going out on a limb here but I think someone is going to need to sit up with Manders. If she’s anything like Mathieu, she won’t be sleeping.”

Marcus sighed. “Probably not ever again.” He made a tired gesture. “Her father’s here. He can stay up with her. I don’t care what he does as long as he stays out of my sight.”

Carol nodded in agreement. “He’s responsible for this; he can deal with the fallout. He’s a big boy.”

“I wouldn’t know about that. But he’s going to have to be the adult.”

“Sucks to be him,” Eddie smiled grimly.

“Sucks even more to be his kid,” Marcus answered. “Why don’t we just get the paint down here and get some sleep. We’ll need all of our focus to build this thing.”

While Eddie and Marcus clomped up the stairs, Carol lingered in the room. She traced a finger over the penciled-in sigils on the north cardinal, silently mouthing each sound as she did so. She tapped a particularly worrying symbol with her index fingernail, starting a little as the small noise echoed and grew louder.

She looked around the empty room guiltily and then sighed, “It’ll work. It has to.” She walked to the door, looked over her shoulder at the symbol and then left the room.

C
hapter Forty - One

Jenn didn’t think sleep would come as easily as it did. There was something reassuring about laying in the dark, listening to Marcus’ heart beat under her ear, feeling his hand toy with her hair in his sleep.