One Bloody Thing After Another (9 page)

Jackie dials another number. She hears her mother's voice.

“You won't be alone, Jackie. I'll be everywhere. In every building. In every tree.”

“Hey officer!” Jackie yells. “Eat it!”

They burst against his face. They burst on his shoulder and his arms. The water burns him like acid.

“Did you see the look on his face?” Ann says. “I love you.”

They find him again. Ann loves Jackie.

“Eat it again, please!” Jackie yells.

He yells back. “I'm so surprised and happy in my life now!”

just

“Where are the trees!” Mrs. Hubert shrieks at Jackie from her window. But her voice trails off. She's looking up. “Jesus,” she says. Jackie looks up, too. Still no meteor. Inside the car, Ann has the seat reclined all the way back. She has her shirt pulled up. Small perfect breasts.

“Hurry,” she says. “Climb inside. We have time for one more kiss.”

That's enough. No use worrying about the trees now. And whatever horror is outside the door can wait.

God. Look at her.

been

It hurts, when Jackie wakes up. She reaches out for Ann's hand, and Ann squeezes. That hurts, too. Jackie's hand is still bruised. She's in a hospital room. The drapes are closed, and the only light is coming from a lamp.

“How long was I unconscious?” she asks Ann. But it isn't Ann, it's a nurse. “Where's Ann? Where's my father?” Jackie's head is a confused jumble of glass and blue lights and Ann. The nurse looks tired.

“The car broke your leg, and fractured your skull,” she says. “You have a concussion, and you're probably going to need to walk with a cane.” She just spits it out, the way Jackie's mother did when she said she was going to die.

“I'm going to die, Jackie.”

The car broke Jackie's leg. She remembers her mother standing on the sidewalk looking stunned. It wasn't her mother. Jackie is confused. It was the old lady from the department store. The stranger. The nurse checks a chart. She tells Jackie, “The car broke your leg, dear, and it fractured your skull. You have a concussion, and you're probably going to need a cane to walk.” She already said that.

“Can I have some more painkillers?” Jackie says. She's not sure where the pain is coming from. It feels like it is everywhere. The nurse gives her a small paper cup, like the ones for ketchup in fast food restaurants.

Later, a doctor comes in and smiles.

“Good evening,” he says. “Would you prefer if we spoke privately?”

There's nobody else here. Where is Jackie's dad?

“No,” she says.

“Good. Well, I'm afraid I have bad news,” the doctor tells her. His voice is so relaxing. He's calm and quiet. “You have a very small fracture right here on your skull.” He points. “You have a concussion. The impact broke your leg. You're probably going to need a cane to walk. At least for a while.” Jackie loves this hospital. She loves the way these pills are making her feel. Do they have someone else ready to visit her? Maybe an orderly could come in. Jackie needs to know! Did the car break her leg? Is it possible that she might need a cane to walk? Has she somehow injured her head?

“My father,” Jackie asks.

The doctor looks from Jackie to her dad, who is standing beside the bed. Who has been there the whole time.

a

Martha Richards sits on the edge of the bed, with the photograph of her daughter in her hands. They haven't come in a long time, Charles and his dog. The first day without them was the hardest. She waited all afternoon for them to come. She was too nervous to eat. She even forgot her afternoon pill.

Her daughter Elizabeth was so beautiful. But the fair ride had malfunctioned, lifting her daughter just slightly too high. A head's length too high. The policeman had told her only what she needed to know. Her daughter was dead. A freak accident.

She shouldn't have let Elizabeth go. She shouldn't have let her go out that day. It was just so nice to have the house to herself for an afternoon. Martha Richards understands that there was no way she could have known. Counselors have told her that. Her husband told her. But Elizabeth is gone. And if she hadn't let her go to the fair that day, her daughter would still be here.

Now, decades later, there was Charlie, showing up every day. And Elizabeth was trying to let Martha know that there was another world after this one. They would be together again some day. That had to be it. It was her daughter. It had to be. Elizabeth.

Every day, when Charlie came knocking, Martha had wanted to cry and to fall to her knees, because she was scared. She was afraid that he was lying. She was afraid that this was some kind of trick. That he knew, somehow, what had happened, and he was tormenting her.

And worse, what if it wasn't a trick? What if her daughter really was there, in the hallway every day, and Martha admitted that she believed him, and then the message was delivered? What if that was all, and Charlie stopped seeing her spirit? Her daughter would go away, having delivered her message, and Martha would be alone again.

There was only one way she could deal with it. She had to pretend she didn't believe. Pretend she didn't understand. And every day Charlie would come back with his dog, standing on the left side of the door, always careful to leave space for her invisible daughter. Elizabeth. And Martha could almost feel her there. She could. That was as close to having her daughter back as she'd ever been.

But Charlie and his dog hadn't come for a month now.

better

When Charlie opens his eyes at three a.m. the soundless mouth is right there, inches from his own face, the lips moving, the eyes staring. Charlie shoves himself back against the wall, and reaches out for Mitchie at the foot of the bed, but Mitchie isn't there. Mitchie's gone. Charlie is alone with that headless thing.

You don't get used to a headless monstrosity.

“What do you want?” Charlie says, and the thing moves its lips uselessly.

So Charlie calls Julia, sitting with his chair facing the corner, so he doesn't have to look at that face, opening and closing its mouth like a fish. But Julia is no help, either.

“She needs you, Dad,” Julia says. “She has unfinished business in this world.”

“What is the matter with you?” Charlie asks his daughter. “Any sane person would have told me to go to the doctor. I'm seeing a headless apparition every day. Maybe my medications are conflicting. You should see the list of side effects on this stuff.”

“Headless ghosts?” Julia says. “Is that a side effect?”

“My sole companion is gone,” Charlie says. “My best friend. And now I'm seeing the apparition more often? You don't think those two things are connected? You don't think maybe I've started to lose my grip? Maybe I need even more medication. Maybe I need help.”

“No, she's the one who needs help, Dad. She needs someone to speak for her. She needs revenge.”

“I wish Mitchie were here,” Charlie says. “Mitchie didn't take any shit off this ghost.”

After his phone conversation, Charlie tries to get back to sleep, but he can't. When he closes his eyes, she's there, trickling blood onto the floor. When he opens his eyes and turns on all the lights, she's still there.

Charlie locks himself in the bathroom, setting out a blanket and pillow on the floor, but when he turns back around to sit, there she is, standing in the shower. Bloodied and headless. Just waiting. Is the rest of his life going to be like this? He can't handle that.

“Just leave me alone,” Charlie says. “Find someone else to watch you go and point at that old woman.” But she stays. She stands there bleeding and moving her lips. And so Charlie lifts the heavy lid off the toilet tank, and he lets it fall to the floor. It cracks in two, and the sound is loud and violent in the bathroom. The ghost just stands there, watching.

Charlie goes to the kitchen and takes a long thin knife from the drawer.

“Fine,” he says. “You want revenge? I can help you get revenge. Is that what you want? Can you even hear me?”

The ghost's face is expressionless. The knife feels wrong in Charlie's hand. But everything is wrong. He imagines Mitchie out in the cold night, wandering blind in the woods, looking for Charlie's warm arm to snuggle underneath. There's no way he would have lasted on his own. So helpless and stupid.

“I'll help you get her,” Charlie says to the ghost. Oh god, could the ghost hear the uncertainty in his voice? What does he think he's going to do, wave the knife at her? “I'll help you,” Charlie says, “but you have to help me too, okay? You have to help me find my friend Mitchie.”

The walls here are so far apart. Jackie is a ghost ship in the fog. The loudest sound she makes is when she pushes the elevator button.
Click
.
Even the elevator walls are far apart.

Her father is nervous. She should be in bed.

“This is the only tree I never visited,” Jackie is telling him. He knows about the map now, about the broken-arm tree, the first-kiss tree. He wasn't there when Jackie broke her arm. He was long gone when she had her first kiss. Jackie tells him about Ann and Ms. Garcia. She tells him about Mrs. Hubert and about smashing her car windows because she cut down that tree. He knows about Jackie's magic word.

“Oh, chickadee,” he said. But nothing else.

They find the signs to the oncology wing. They follow the big pink dots on the floor and walls. Jackie's mother's tree is in one of these lobbies. It sounds like someone is whispering, but when she looks around, the sound stops. One of her crutches slides out from under her, but her father is there, and Jackie regains her balance.

The tree is not where she remembers it was. It's been too long. Jackie looks around. This feels like the place. But there's no tree. Her father's arm around her is warm.

The nurse is on the phone.

“Where's my tree?” Jackie demands. The nurse just keeps talking. Jackie lifts her crutch over her head and slams it down on the nurse's station. Everything in the room stops. “Where is my dead-mom tree?” she says. The nurse looks up calmly.

“Hold, please,” she says into the phone. She pushes a button and sets the phone down. She looks at Jackie. Jackie can't keep her balance without the crutch.

“There was a tree here,” Jackie says. The nurse looks annoyed at first, but then she looks worried. She reaches out to touch Jackie's arm across the counter.

“Are you supposed to be wandering around?” she says. “What's your name, honey?” She looks at Jackie's father, and Jackie can see the disapproval. He should never have let his daughter wander like this.

“I am a patient,” Jackie tells her, “and there was a tree here in this lobby. Right there.” Jackie points to the empty spot beside the bench. She feels weird. The crutch seems to be sliding to the side, slipping out from under her.

The nurse shrugs her shoulders. “We got rid of those when we redecorated,” she says. “Years ago.”

“What do you mean, got rid of them?” But now the nurse is picking up the phone. Jackie is chewing the inside of her cheek, trying to stay calm. Anger doesn't solve anything. Jackie's father puts his hand on her shoulder from behind.

“I'm going to call someone to help you back to your room,” the nurse says. And Jackie lurches forward and wraps her arms around the old computer monitor on the nurse's station. She can't stand properly. She wants to rip this screen off her desk and smash it on the floor. But she can't lift it.

All her arm hair is standing up. Her mouth tastes like blood. But she can't do it. Then her father is there, putting his arms around the computer monitor too, and they are lifting it together.

He is lifting it up with her, even though Jackie knows that he is worried. She knows that they will have to buy a new monitor. She knows that when this is over, she is going to have to talk to somebody, too. She is crazy. She is too violent. Anger never solves anything. She hasn't let go of her mother's death. She hallucinates ghosts! She is crazy. How could her father not be worried? But right now he is helping Jackie, and they are lifting this monitor up over their heads. They lift it up over their heads, and Jackie's muscles ache like gold. The sun is shining.

“Are you insane?” the nurse says. But even crazy people can be heroes.

Smash!

Charlie takes the elevator down with the ghost standing beside him. She makes the whole elevator cold. Even when she's not looking at him, when she's staring forward at the elevator doors, her black lips move silently, like she's given up on communicating and has simply gone mad in death.

The knife is cold in his hand. Charlie just keeps seeing Mitchie. Mitchie stuck in the corner. Mitchie trotting out of the woods, smiling. Mitchie flopping over on his side. The ghost will help him find Mitchie. This is something he has to do.

He knocks on the door of room
135
, but nobody answers. Inside, Martha Richards is probably sleeping. It's the middle of the night. Charlie knocks again. The ghost waits patiently.

After the third knock, it occurs to Charlie that he can just go in. He's here to wave a kitchen knife in her face. He doesn't need to politely wait for an answer. He can just go right in.

So he pushes the door open, and a cold gust of air comes out to meet him. A different kind of cold than the ghost makes. This was a natural cold, and Charlie can see glass all over the carpet by the window. It's been smashed in. The curtains are lifting slightly in the cold wind. Mrs. Richards is on the floor, already dead. Her face is pale in the light from the window. There are shapes crowded around her. Maybe people, maybe not. There's black hair everywhere. They look like animals.

Charlie turns the light on, and a creature comes at him. It looks like a girl, but her face is all wrong. The eyes are young, but the mouth has too many teeth. They're moving around in her mouth, sliding and grinding against one another. They grind against one another and crack and split, leaving shards and jagged edges, and the girl's mouth is still opening wider. Charlie drops the knife. This is not right. The teeth sink into his shoulder. The pain is warm.

“So this is how it happens,” Charlie says. Then there is a warm mouth on his neck. There's a woman above him, much bigger than the girl. She pushes the girl aside with her face, like an animal might, and she leans down, mouth open, to take a chunk out of Charlie's throat. The cold is inside him now.

Charlie looks up, and the ghost is standing there, holding its own head to watch while the creatures go about their business, pulling him apart.

The two younger creatures go back to eating Mrs. Richards. But most of Charlie ends up inside the mother. He can feel parts of his body coming away, but it doesn't hurt anymore. The mother tears strips off of him, pulling along the grain where the flesh can separate. The headless ghost's face is still expressionless, but Charlie is closer to death than life, and he can hear her voice now.

“Tell her I'm okay,” the ghost says, pointing to where the two younger creatures are fighting over Mrs. Richards' body. “Tell her I'm okay. Tell her I'm okay.”

The ghost can hear Charlie now, too. She listens to him moan and cry, and then, finally, when she thinks he is beyond making any more sounds, she hears his voice from inside the largest creature. The mother. From inside the bloody thing, she hears Charlie say, “Jesus, Mitchie. There you are. Do you know how worried I was?”

daughter.