"Do you want me to walk you to the taxi?" the parsley head said.
Nice special effects, Dan thought, and searched once more for his lines, but couldn't remember them. What did great actors do when they couldn't remember what to say next? Stop the take? Yell cut? Or did they just make something up? Improvise? He decided to go with what felt most natural. He didn't curse like a pirate (or like Bruce Willis), he didn't kill everyone even though he felt like it at this moment, he didn't scream, he didn't yell, he didn't say anything cool. He simply nodded and said:
"That would be nice."
Chapter Twenty-Six
Her hands were shaking. Ida was sitting on her bed in her room and trying hard to stop them from trembling, but had no luck so far. Ever since she had seen the woman step in front of the car, both of her hands had acted out of control. She had seen everything. The bus they had been in on their way home from school had pulled aside to let them get off.
She had been thinking about fish, the fish she was going to prepare for dinner. Fish and parsley sauce, only she knew Marie-Therese didn't like it much, so she was wondering if there was some other way to prepare the fish, another sauce she could make. She had thought about cookbooks as she had watched the woman storm out of their neighbors' house and run past her without even noticing the three of them. The woman was crying, Ida noticed. Her face was swollen and eyes red, like Ida's were when she now and then had been awake all night and cried because she was worried about her parents. Cookbooks, there were five of them in Marie-Therese's kitchen, only one had recipes for fish. Now she wondered why she had thought so much about cookbooks and not about warning the lady that she was walking out in the street without looking. Why didn't she stop her?
Ida tried to sit on her hands to make them stop shaking, but nothing helped. Why didn't she just scream, "No, stop, you'll get yourself killed!"
Because she wouldn't have listened to you, you fool. No one ever does. She would have gone anyway, stepped right in front of that car and splattered all over the street.
Ida looked down at her pants, her white pants she had put on this morning, her favorites because they made her look tall and slim like the other girls in her class and not small and fat like the girl she saw in the mirror. Ida wasn't fat, she knew that, but she always felt fat; she constantly felt like she needed to be thinner.
The pants had stripes of red across them. Blood, she thought, and touched it with her trembling finger.
When the woman was hit by the car, Ida had been standing next to her. She could still hear the sound from when the car came around the bus. It sounded like it was speeding up. Could that be? No, that had to be something she imagined. She had hardly seen it coming; she just heard it. She was looking ahead at the time, staring at the house in front of her, the house she now called home, and she was thinking about fish. Fish and cookbooks. Of all things to think about.
It all went down so fast that she really didn't remember the order of events. But she remembered hearing a strange noise next to her after the lady had passed them on the sidewalk and into the street. What was she thinking when the car hit her? Was she thinking at all? Was her head filled with recipes of fish as well?
Ida shook her head and touched the blood again. The horror of what she had witnessed. The terror of knowing what she had done at the moment she heard the sound. That horrible, alarming sound that immediately told her that there was danger and she had to react.
But you did it, didn't you? You chose him over her. You protected Sebastian and not Edwina.
Edwina had been the most natural choice for her to want to protect. She was right behind her. Sebastian was walking a few steps behind and was far from being in danger. But she had done it. At the sound of the strange alarming noise, she had turned around, reached out her arm and pushed Edwina aside to get to Sebastian. Then Ida had thrown her body around him and held him tight till the sounds had all gone away. When she opened her eyes, she realized that the car had almost touched Edwina, standing on the sidewalk, staring at the scene. Her clothes were all splattered; she even had blood on her face, while all Ida had was a little on the side of her pants. Ida had been surprised by her own reaction, and then condemned it. She couldn't believe herself. The kid was only six years old, for crying out loud. Ida was the oldest; she was expected to protect them both, and Sebastian hadn't been close to being in danger. Edwina had been the one to save. Yet Ida had chosen Sebastian.
Why? A simple reflex, she explained to herself.
But, oh, you know very well why, don't you? Because she scares the crap out of you. You'd rather see her dead than Sebastian, wouldn't you? Maybe you would even enjoy it if she had been splattered across that car, right?
Ida looked at her trembling hands once again and laid her head on her pillow. The noises coming from Edwina's room were unbearable. That man, the one Marie-Therese had brought with her inside the house had been in there for hours and hours, yelling all these strange things, chanting, singing, and then yelling again. Something about the demon leaving her body. She could hear Edwina in there too, screaming her ear-piercing screams at him, grunting, roaring, even, at one point, she barked like a dog for several minutes.
Ida wanted so badly to go to bed, but her hands wouldn't let her get her bloody clothes off. And with the screaming and yelling coming from the next room, they weren't going to relax anytime soon.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
She felt a tickling sensation in her stomach. Emma gasped, and then put her hand on it. Yes, it felt just like…like there was something in there. Like a small fish tapping its tail against the wall of her stomach.
Paul was still sleeping in his hospital bed, tubes going everywhere, his face all purple and bruised. He was grunting and his eyes moving under the lids. He was dreaming. Emma sighed and thought about the baby. How had he known? she wondered. Well, it hardly mattered anymore. The important part was that Paul was alive. The question was whether he could avoid going to jail for killing that woman. Furthermore, the question in Emma's mind, was would they be able to live with what he had done? Could Emma live with him knowing that he had killed a woman and deprived her son of a mother? At first, she had been sure it would be no problem, that her love for him would conquer all, but as the hours passed in the hospital, she had started doubting. She had smelled alcohol on his breath when she had run to him. Had he been drunk? The police had taken a blood sample, they told her. That would determine if he was. Emma didn't need a test to know. She knew her Paul and he liked to go out every now and then and get hammered, then come home and she would yell at him for being away and he would yell back, then Emma would throw something at him, maybe even slap him, and he would finally have enough of it, take her and carry her to the bedroom. That was one of their many routines. But now it had been the one to destroy everything. Emma felt the tickling sensation in her stomach again and couldn't help but chuckle. She held a hand over her mouth and hoped no one heard her. Then she stroked her stomach gently. So this was it, she thought to herself. There really was something in there, something that was alive. She thought for a second about those Alien movies and the way something had lived inside of those people and then…then burst out of them. Emma chuckled again. What a strange comparison.
Paul grunted again; he mumbled something in his sleep. She watched the monitors and realized she had no idea what they all meant. She wouldn't know if something happened to him; well, maybe they would beep like they did in the movies. They probably would.
There was one thought Emma couldn't escape, one that had been haunting her ever since she thought it the first time on her way to the hospital in the ambulance, sitting next to Paul as he lay on the stretcher. It was a silly thought, really, but she just couldn't get it out of her head.
She had gone through the chain of events so many times. She was standing in the kitchen eating out of the can when she heard the sound. She had run to the door, and she had found Paul inside the car. She explained it all to the police. She fel
t the terror still inside of her.
She had gone through every sound, every movement, and every thought so many times in her head, but there was one thing she couldn't find an explanation for, one thing that she just couldn't clarify.
She hadn't heard sound of tires screeching like they do when someone steps on the brakes and tries to stop a car, trying to prevent an accident.
On the contrary, she was certain that she actually heard something quite different. She was certain she heard the sound of a car accelerating.
Of course, Emma hadn't told the police this, but in her own mind a sort of investigation had begun. So many questions in her mind were left unanswered. Would she be able to ask him about these things once he woke? Would he be mad at her for asking? Should she leave it alone and pretend she hadn't thought about it? ‘Cause that would be all she was going to think about after this day. It would linger in the back of her mind, deteriorating her mind and feelings like cancer deteriorates a person's body.
Had he even tried to avoid the woman, or had he been too drunk to notice? Why had he sped up while passing a bus with schoolchildren? Why hadn't he slowed down, knowing that children might be running into the street, not looking where they were going, like children often do?
Why? Why? Why? Were the questions ever going to stop? Would she ever get honest answers or was it going bother her the rest of their lives together? Was it going to be her responsibility to make them stop? Was she, in reality, the only one who could make them disappear?
But that would mean she had to leave him.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It was horrible. Truly terrifying, Marie-Therese thought to herself, while drinking another cup of coffee, her sixth since she had brought the Priest inside her house. It wasn't because she was thirsty or even needed any more caffeine; no, it was simply because she didn't know what else to do, where else to place her hands while Edwina and the Priest were screaming at each other in the room.
They had been at it for six whole hours now, and Marie-Therese had no idea when they were going to be done, or even if they would ever be done. What were they even doing in there? she thought to herself and walked closer to the door, as she had already done many times before that afternoon. She placed her ear on the door and listened to what she believed had to be Edwina's groaning and moaning and the Priest yelling at her, yelling at the demon they both believed she was possessed with.
"The sacred Sign of the Cross commands you, as does also the power of the mysteries of the Christian Faith. The glorious Mother of God, the Virgin Mary, commands you, she who by her humility and from the first moment of her Immaculate Conception crushed your proud head. The faith of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and of the other Apostles commands you. The blood of the Martyrs and the pious intercession of all the Saints command you. Thus, cursed dragon, and you, diabolical legions, we adjure you by the living God, by the true God, by the holy God, by the God 'who so loved the world that He gave up His only Son, that every soul believing in Him might not perish but have life everlasting,' stop deceiving human creatures and pouring out to them the poison of eternal damnation; stop harming the Church and hindering her liberty. Be gone, Satan, inventor and master of all deceit, enemy of man's salvation."
Marie-Therese listened to the words with a small shiver. It reminded her horrifically of her mother, who had always spoken words just like these whenever she thought Marie-Therese was possessed, which happened a lot. It didn't matter if she just had a cold, or even worse if she should mention going to a dance or on a date with a boy. Her mother would snort and yell at her, calling her dirty and filthy and start chanting songs and saying words just like the ones the Priest was uttering inside of that awful room right now.
Marie-Therese bit her nails in anxiety, worrying that this wasn't going to help the girl, worrying that this would only make things worse for the girl. But they had tried everything, hadn't they? In her file, it said they had at first thought she suffered from epilepsy and started giving her medicine for her strong convulsions, but it hadn't helped her. She hadn't had many since she arrived at Marie-Therese's house, but the one time she did, it had scared Marie-Therese more than she was ever ready to admit. It had begun at the dinner table when Edwina's entire body suddenly jerked. Her back was bowed. Her butt (don't use that word, Mommy would say, it's unholy) rose from her chair, came down, then rose again. At first, Marie-Therese thought she was at it again, touching herself…at that…place. But her arms had been on the table when it happened. Her eyes rolled back in her head and her hands shaking, throwing the knife and fork around. Her face took on an almost greenish color, while a strong light seemed to emerge from her rolled back eyes. Marie-Therese gasped and pulled away. She told Sebastian to go to his room, then asked Ida to help her grab Edwina and hold on to her, bending her forward to make sure she didn't swallow her tongue, something she, as a nurse, knew wasn't really possible, but she did know that it could end up blocking her respiratory tract. Marie-Therese never was a very good nurse and she never paid much attention at nursing school, but she did know what a person choking looked like; this wasn't it. It wasn't an epileptic seizure either. No, this was something else, something beyond science, beyond what belonged to this world.
She believed that then and she still believed that. Even if parts of her now regretted having asked the Priest to come. She wasn't so sure about his methods, but since nothing else had helped the poor girl—you don't really think of her as poor, do you—this might as well work.
Edwina had also been treated for psychosis at the local mental institution, but none of their medicine had worked on her either. In her file, it stated that she had once told them she often saw faces at night, faces of hairy beasts that came to torture her; she told them she heard voices telling her she was impure and told her to do bad things to people. According to the file, that was the last time anyone ever heard Edwina speak. Ever since her stay at the institution where they gave up on her, she had stopped speaking.
Now she let out a bone-piercing scream and Marie-Therese stumbled backwards into the kitchen, where she leaned on the table, panting. What was all this? she thought to herself. Then she looked up at the sky.
Why? Why have you done this to me, God? Is it my mother? Did my mother send this monster into my life?
Chapter Twenty-Nine
"Your dad's fever is back," an extra in a white coat and glasses placed on the tip of his nose, said to Dan. A little too cliché, Dan thought to himself, Indian or Pakistani, of course, and with too heavy an accent.
"We can't seem to get it down. The medicine we used last time doesn't seem to be working. It might be the shock from…" the doctor paused and Dan wondered if he had forgotten his line. Dan had forgotten what he was supposed to say. Everything felt like a blur to him; it was too unreal to be anything but fiction.
"Well, from losing your mother," the doctor continued.
Dan nodded heavily, wondering when someone was going to jump out from behind a door and yell, "Surprise—you've been on hidden camera!" or whatever they yelled on those horrible shows that his grandmother used to watch. The doctor put his hand on Dan's shoulder and sighed. Dan thought he wasn't that good of an actor; it wasn't believable.
"I'm so sorry for your loss, son, and know that we’re doing everything we can to help your father get better."
Then he left and Dan was alone in the waiting room with the very white walls and old magazines on the table. A couple came in and sat together, holding each other's hands; the woman was crying. Dan stared at them for a long time as he slowly slipped further into his imagination, into the world he had created in his mind that this was nothing but a bad movie, and those people sitting over there were actors, obviously overacting. He wasn't losing it, he convinced himself. As long as he kept focusing on his lines, then everything would be alright; once this movie was over, he would go home, home to his family who were all waiting for him at the dinner table, and he would be annoyed with them because of who t
hey were and even more because of who they weren't. Like an ordinary teenager, he would grumble and tell them how ridiculous they were. Everything would go back to his normal life; he would be a normal teenager, once he found his way back to reality.
Because, in real life, moms and sisters didn't die and fathers didn't become seriously ill.
"You can see him now," a nurse peeked in the door and said.
Dan lifted his head and locked eyes with her for a second. She was beautiful, just the right girl for a hero in a movie. As they walked down the hallway, him a few steps behind her, he kept wondering if they were going to end up together at the end. Would the hero run away with her while the hospital was burning in the background? As he wondered, he thought he heard shooting in the distance, and helicopters, and…and, was that a tank? It was; he was certain. He hurried up and caught up with the pretty nurse; there was no time to waste now, he thought to himself. They were under attack.
"He’s right in here," the nurse said, and opened the door carefully. Dan heard footsteps; someone was running past them in the hallway. He nodded decisively, like a real hero should.
"You can't touch him and you have to wear a mask, since we don't know what triggered his fever. We do know it's not contagious, but his immune system seems to have crashed completely, and the least bit of germs or bacteria might make things worse," she said, and handed him a white mask.