Dead Echo

  *

  Sometime later she came back to her senses again, curled up tight by the toilet. She could not keep her legs steady and she almost fell standing. A wave of dizziness almost brought her to the floor again, but she fought it, closing her eyes and straining to regain her balance. She needed a spot on which to fix, something to ground herself. Then her eyes found the toothbrush, no more than six inches from the bottom edge of the cabinet. She didn’t remember dropping it, but there it was. She did remember her bloodied face and hoped against all gods it had been nothing more than a trick of the light, or even worse but somehow comforting just the same, her mind unraveling. It proved neither. The blood had dried to a dark maroon from her nose all the way down to her neck. The specks of gray matter were still there too, dashed incongruently upon her nightshirt. The taste in her mouth threatened to make her sick again. She felt her gorge rising. She had to get rid of it first; whatever would come later would have to wait. She got the drawer open that held the toothpaste, spun the cap off and watched it fall into the sink and down the drain, squeezed out a monster glop onto the toothbrush and went at the job as if her life depended on it. Because for all she knew, it did. She pushed it so far back in her throat she almost retched and she bent over the basin, spitting for all she was worth. Then she flung the toothbrush away and attacked the soap bar, raking the blood off her face like a killer with cops beating down the door. Her pulse was up to a 150 beats a minute by the time she finished and she got scared again, frightened that she would die right here in the new house, without a single neighbor knowing her name, left to rot for days or weeks on end until someone got suspicious enough to find out what had happened to her. Finding her swollen, blackened body curled like a desiccated apple with an unholy stench pressing the walls out into the hallway. She gripped the countertop and tried to steady herself, tried to find reason and calm in the simple act of standing. After an indeterminate time her head cleared a bit and she chanced another look into the mirror that now ran with the water she’d splashed around like a kindergartener in a bathtub. Her eyes were black pits, her hair spider web strands. She seemed to have aged ten years over the course of the last twelve hours. A kindergartener, her mind reminded her, thrusting Terri’s pale face into the reel of her mind. And at that moment she felt sanity leaving, or if not leaving, at least bidding everyone a goodnight. The image of the Taurus .38 revolver lying underneath the driver’s seat outside greeted her like a breath of hot wind and she tried to push it away.

  What the hell was happening to her?

  There had to be some kind of explanation. Maybe she’d bitten her tongue or something, but goddammit, why had she been in the attic? You’re going crazy, the voice said evenly. Even though it’s taken this long and every once in a while all is well, you’re going crazy just the same. You’ll be in the fucking loony bin before the week’s out. She shook her head at her reflection. Now that, she knew, was a lie because the call of the gun could rectify all that right now. And she felt sure she could. She could taste the barrel in her mouth right now.

  And for just a moment it really didn’t seem so bad.

  She shook her head and turned back to the sink, twisting the HOT knob around to clear the shit out. There were red and blue streaks of blood and toothpaste clinging to the porcelain side and she washed them away by fanning the water with her fingertips. But a minute speck of something forced a scream from her mouth and she slammed her fist down hard on the stopper knob so that nothing would go down the drain. Then she jammed her fingers into the warm, sudsy water and felt around until her right forefinger touched what she thought she’d seen. She pinched it with her thumb and freed it from the sink. She stared at the small fingernail until she thought her eyes would burst. Just a tiny little sliver, something she really had had no right seeing in the first place, but there it was all the same.

  A child’s fingernail.

  Terri’s, the ghostly voice whispered as she stared at the bit of protein poised there on the point of her finger. Terri’s, you remember, the voice coaxed, threatened. The memory of the laughter caught her by the throat, tried to strangle her vision away.

  It came back in a rush. The little girl, her little girl, emerging from the darkness of the attic. Her hands, her tiny little hands, reaching out for her momma.

  The hysteria rose in her throat like a solid rock of grief, tried to strangle the life right out of her. She fell back to the shower door almost knocking it loose, her vision wavering sickeningly before her face. And then, with no other warning, the long-seated grief burst like a thunderclap around her and she collapsed to the floor, sobbing incoherently.

  There was no hold on the passage of time that drifted away from her then. She cried, and screamed. Cried some more. Pounded her fists against the stark, white tiles. Cursed everything, every entity she could think to curse. But nothing changed. The lilting laughter from the night before refused to come, the ghostly contingent of little girls hid themselves away within the walls, underneath the floor. But sometime later, it could have been a million years for as much as she knew, her mind began to work of its own volition. And ideas began to wash to the surface of her turgid imagination like beasts swimming up through a cloud of muddy water.

  There was a chance.

  She could just see it, like a glimpse from the corner of her eye.

  But at what price?

  The thought stopped her cold. Up until that moment she’d convinced herself that the next move, her only real move really, would be to call 911. Tell the operator that she was going crazy, that someone, anyone, needed to come before she completely lost her mind. But now…

  She calmed her hands and slid her tongue over surprisingly dry lips. Because was that any kind of solution? Packing herself into a nuthouse somewhere, talking through her delirium (as she knew it would be called, because after all, what else would someone else be forced to call it?) to a shrink, or even a group of shrinks, to be sorted out over coffee and cigarettes during the course of a normal work week. And all the while disregarding her daughter, disregarding the hope of Terri. That wasn’t gonna happen. Her daughter was here, or at least a bit of the essence that had once composed her. Didn’t the blood and fingernail make the idea at least plausible? And here she was thinking of running away. Like some fucking coward. Could she really start down that road now?

  She fought to her knee, pressed up with her hand until she was standing upright. She looked into the mirror and wasn’t too oppressed by what she found there. This could be the end of everything, she knew. But on the flip side of that coin, couldn’t it also be some sort, some ragged tail of a beginning?

  She remembered the crash, saw the flames, smelled the smoke, saw Terri’s shoe lying in the middle of the road, heard the sound of sirens in the distance. Yes, it could indeed be the end. She could tuck and run; she felt sure most would. But what would she potentially be running away from? She considered the notion. Asked herself the blunt question: What would she be willing to do to have her daughter back, or for that matter, even a little piece of her? She stared straight into the mirror, spat into the sink. The answer came, as brutal as its counterpart.

  “Anything,” she whispered into the cold chill of the bathroom. “Anyfuckingthing.” And with that her future was made.