What the Dead Can Do, page 22
Hi, you’ve reached Nicole. Leave a message.
“Hon, why aren’t you picking up? I’m starting to worry. The last text I sent … I’m sorry. Please call me or text me back when you get this.” He should’ve left it at that, but his anger found an opening before his finger found the disconnect button. “This isn’t the week to go AWOL, Nicole. It’s not something sober people do—I know that. At least let me know you’re alive. This is a really shitty thing to do to us right now.”
The hole he’d dug was deeper—maybe it needed to be. He was furious and incensed enough to throw his phone, but he pulled it back before his hand could release it. He couldn’t afford any extraneous sounds. He needed to think; he needed the quiet of two kids sleeping.
In the past, he’d accepted that sometimes Nicole was going to be unreachable and elsewhere for the night. Her excuses ran the gamut from “totally wiped, accidentally fell asleep at a friend’s” to “just didn’t feel like coming home.” Her absences were infrequent, too few over a decade for Matthew to ever label her an alcoholic aloud. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to, maybe he was holding her performance up against cinema’s more tragic portrayal of drunks—it was moot.
Nicole’s dismay at his suggestion the stranger was someone she knew had been a believable performance three nights ago. But where was she now? And who with?
When he’d suggested the man who’d come to Ethan’s school was someone she’d slept with, it’d felt justifiable—it still did. She’d never come to him to admit having slept with another man or woman, but there’d been plenty of times in the past that he suspected she was cheating on him. Her disinterest in doing anything intimate with him peaked in the weeks after her absences. A few glances at her cell phone over the years, made while she was passed out or sleeping, hadn’t ever provided concrete proof. His own forced indifference, something he internally referred to as a live-and-let-live approach, had been as toxic to their relationship as it had been to her disease. And what could he do about it now?
He thought about calling the police again. This time to report her missing. Of course, when she came home hungover or still drunk the next day, they’d just bring ACS back into it.
He considered reaching out to Lucinda, but it seemed likely that she would call the police, and ACS would still be back in the fold.
Leaving the kids alone with Pepper? No. Where would he go looking anyway?
There was nothing to do but wait.
In the morning, there would be a birthday party to attend for one of Ethan’s classmates. Unless he was mistaken, Nicole and Em were supposed to be having a mom-daughter day while the boys were at the event. It was still possible both of those plans would come to fruition, but as the minutes ticked by with no return text or call from Nicole, it seemed unlikely.
Matthew decided to ask Emily to go to the party. She was plenty old enough to stay home alone and had done so that year as expertly as any twelve-year-old could, but it was risky to leave her home alone because if Nicole did return home, hungover from a relapse … well, that was too much for him to ask Emily to bear alone.
Not going to the birthday celebration was an option, too, but if Nicole was going to stumble in late or not come home at all, something about his attendance at the party felt like just the right amount of spite.
“I took the kids to the party, hon. Don’t worry about it; get some rest.”
It would be the ideal knife to twist into what he hoped would be her guilt-ridden guts.
He enjoyed the thought of punishing Nicole for a moment more before it felt ugly and unproductive, then turned on the TV, fumbling with the remote as he lowered the volume as quickly as he could to zero. Closed captioning would have to do. There could be no Ethan-led investigations; he needed his peace.
He flipped from the rom-com filling the screen to the news and then from the news to re-runs of Seinfeld. He couldn’t count on Nicole, but he’d always been able to count on syndicated comedies to distract him from his anxiety and concern.
Had he slept well the two nights prior, sleep might have eluded him, but as it was, his lids went heavy, no matter how hard he tried to focus on reading the jokes at the bottom of the screen. He struggled to open them even when he caught Pepper heading up the stairs to take his place as sentry outside of Em and Ethan’s bedroom door.
21
AIDAN
The thick growl of a garbage truck barreling around a corner didn’t wake Aidan, but it had registered. The gusto of its approach passed itself off as a nightmare until the echo of its diesel engine threatened to unearth his bones from his skin. Even then, it took the snap and snarl of its compaction, seemingly happening right on top of him, to drag him from sleep completely.
Two sanitation workers ran to and from black bag mountains on either side of the street. The sun had only begun introducing itself to the avenue and the men bounced between facades tinted in the variation of orange that colored dumps into a temporary nirvana. Not a bright day yet, but that morning had all the tells. His eyes burned. It was too risky to close them, but the sting demanded it. When he opened them again as easily as if they were his own he was relieved.
The ache in his head was a positive sign. His sensory nerves relayed little when his possessor had control. Pain was a good thing. He’d always known that to be true. A deep breath reduced the pulsation of his brain long enough for an attempt at standing, but the smell of himself punctuated the hurt, and he half-expected to pass out again. How was it possible to be so close to busting wide-open, while feeling like all internal organs had abandoned him overnight?
He stayed seated with his hands to his ears until the sounds of the sanitation crew wouldn’t interfere with a whisper. Then, with his back pressed into the wall, he put his palms to the bricks on his left and right side to help shimmy his body into a posture resembling upright. Free from the heat of the urine he’d been sitting in, he settled into his precarious lean. Breathing was painful. Seeing was painful. Hearing was painful. Again, all welcome news.
He rolled his tongue over the grit on his teeth. Filthy.
His watch said it was Saturday. He’d had no control of his body since Friday afternoon when he’d felt—whatever it was—sliding his body on like a pair of jeans a mother many times over pulls from a forgotten trunk in the attic. He’d been happy for his new awareness of its entering him when it happened, but not knowing how long ago it had left him here pissed him off.
A simple cross over an otherwise inconsequential door caught his eye. He cursed his intruder for having left his body to rot in an alley outside of a church for God knows how long.
Guess God does know exactly how long, doesn’t he? Fuckers, the both of you.
Aidan tested his balance, taking one hand away from the wall carefully while leaving the other put. So far, so good, so he removed the other. His limbs were quivering, but it felt more like routine low blood sugar than a lack of mental control. Whatever dragged him into the city again hadn’t bothered to feed him.
To be sure the thing wasn’t just playing possum, he opened his eyes as wide as he could and set his stare on the sky. He held it there, doing so through the tears it caused, which added a shimmer to the beautiful orange color leaving the city to fend on its own. His commitment to staring himself blind wasn’t tied to an intention to remember anything, but flashes of what he’d seen while out the evening before and not in control of his body popped in and out of his head.
His first recollection was of the woman from the grocery store sitting across from him, inside what he assumed was the church to his right. So long as he didn’t blink, he thought it might be possible to recall or relive everything that had occurred between the two of them while he’d been out.
The woman looked scared.
Scared for all the wrong reasons, he thought.
He chuckled when he realized he’d been at an AA meeting.
Aidan had experience with the rooms of AA, but only because he once stalked a young prostitute from his hometown who frequented them. The memory of the meeting he’d attended with the fit mom from the grocery store last night made it clear that not much had changed with how the “Friends of Bill” conducted business. Had any of the babble in those meetings stuck, that prostitute might still be alive today. Second chances and all that. He wasn’t above it.
No time to daydream about how I killed that whore.
There was a new woman in his life, the one with the boy who loved lollipops, a petite busybody chasing her higher power that he hadn’t chosen to pursue, at least, not technically.
These memories were of the woman and not the boy, a potential relief. If the thing haunting his insides had plans for the child’s mother, Aidan could get into it. He would welcome the opportunity to kill the bitch in a partnership of sorts with what he’d come to believe might be a demon or the devil itself. He wasn’t sure what that looked like exactly. The sin of a snuffing done at the behest of some beast from hell was hypothetical, an oddity that hadn’t ever crossed his mind until now, but even in the abstract, the idea and its possibilities set fire to his groin.
If you want to kill the woman, count me in.
He hoped it was listening or hearing his thoughts.
But I’m not about killing children. I want no part in that.
Aidan had no evidence his possessor wanted to murder either of them—just a hunch. But as the memory of staring at Nicole during the meeting went on, Aidan wondered if the demon he was dealing with had changed the game plan. Otherwise, what was the point of being at the meeting at all? Whatever it’d been, leaving him here was a waste of his full potential.
“You all right, buddy?” a man’s voice asked.
Aidan continued staring into the nothingness above him. Whoever it was, it was damn inconvenient. He wanted to see more from the past two days and had no intention of breaking from the film of memories that had just started playing.
“Did you hear me, sir? Are you OK?”
I’m standing, aren’t I? In pissed pants, but last I checked, that isn’t a crime.
From his blurry periphery, he took in the stature of the interruption approaching and held up a hand to signal the man to keep his distance.
The day’s light was an assault on his retinas, but there was more to remember, more to see. At some point, his possessor stood with the meeting still in progress—ah, yes! He remembered now. There’d been a moment where he’d resumed partial control and could feel the entity inside of him panicking. It had lifted his body from his seat abruptly and stumbled into the bathroom in the adjacent hall. Using the mirror over the sink, they’d both taken in his reflection, but seeing the lines on his face that shaped his expressions moving under something else’s control had spooked Aidan, and that was that—he’d gone back under.
It was worth noting that it had been possible to fight the force within.
He let the memory proceed and watched as he cracked open the door in time to see Nicole standing midmeeting while some banker-type droned on about the pressures of his seven-figure existence. She hesitated, stared long at the seat that he no longer occupied, then rushed right past the bathroom—and them—on her way up the stairs to the street-level exit.
Come on now. Surely, we didn’t let her get away.
His body struggled to move and pursue its prey. The demon had lost its control, and his limbs were quaking, each like a fish thrashing about a boat’s deck, trying like hell to flop their way to the relative safety of the sea. It managed to shut and lock the bathroom door before Aidan’s body collapsed to the tile floor.
Get up, dumbass. Follow her.
Aidan felt nauseous. He didn’t know if it was happening to his stomach in the alley right then or if the pain was an echo of a sickness his body had endured while trying to stand up to go after the woman. Before he could get a beat on the when of the biological inconvenience, he felt the hand of the concerned stranger land on his present-day shoulder.
“You don’t look so great,” the do-gooder said. “Come into the church with me, and we’ll clean you up and get you some water.”
Aidan’s lips mouthed leave me alone, but no sounds accompanied the demand. Water and dry pants for the trip home sounded good, but he had to see the ending to the story playing against the flicker of his eyelids, which were fighting valiantly against the sun to remain open.
At least the man’s grip on his shoulder was strong. Aidan welcomed the help in keeping his body erect. He managed to buy himself some time just by mumbling utter nonsense at him.
Aidan recalled that in the bathroom, his body finally rose from the floor. They were leaving, good for them! He doubted his invader had done so in time to catch up with Nicole but found himself rooting for his possessor with the same blind lunacy of a die-hard fan who’s certain a Hail Mary will succeed. He was to the stairs now. His body lurched to climb the first step. The woman’s fragrance was in the air—or his brain was only adding that delicious detail. His legs navigated each next step with caution, and it was hard to say if the adrenaline he felt at that moment was any more real than the perfume scent that his body was chasing. He was halfway up the stairs.
“I don’t have all day,” the stranger interrupted. “Do you want some help or—”
The speed with which his knife went from the sheath on his waist into the do-gooder’s throat surprised Aidan. He’d barely been able to move his mouth seconds ago, but his body had effortlessly drawn the blade and punctured the stranger’s aorta in a flash. The thing was back.
Blood gurgled from the gash in the man’s neck as he gasped for air. The sounds gave Aidan no immediate pleasure. The weight of the victim’s hand grew tenfold on his shoulder as it tried to keep the do-gooder from dropping to the ground. His other hand was wrapped around his throat, trying in vain to keep his life inside where it belonged.
It was a spectacle, but the kill had been out of character.
God dammit! What the hell have you done?
This kind of very public kill might give the impression Aidan wanted to get caught. What this thing inside of him had done was rookie, a true disappointment.
As his consciousness dimmed, he felt the warm splatter of the churchman’s blood as it decorated his arms. One last flash of the memory hit him: his body made it to the street, then turned into the alley, but the woman from the grocery store was long gone. A few steps later, it collapsed, sending his head into the corner of the dumpster before settling on the ground.
Whatever you are, you’re stronger now.
Aidan had no idea if the entity within had heard him, but he shared until he couldn’t.
Whatever you are, clean us up before we kill again. There’s bound to be some pants in a donation bin that fit. If we’re going to do this, let’s at least try to be professional about it.
22
NICOLE
Blackout blinds don’t amount to much if you haven’t shut your eyes in the first place. Though it bordered on abstract, thanks to Nicole’s blurry vision, the fit of the automated covering over the window in room 1335 was the best she’d ever seen. But no man-made sun-blocker is ever perfect, and the morning outside had already found the only breach it needed to help her count the bottles at her bedside. There were many, but many was still too few.
This Radisson was on the same block as the church she’d fled twelve hours ago. She’d checked in with what she thought was enough booze to guarantee a different kind of blackout. Corner liquor stores were a real thing, and what did Manhattan have if not corners? The darkness she was seeking was one far more effective than any space-age polymer could ever deliver. She’d given it a real run, too, but the welcome embrace of a Nicole-made void built on booze had yet to squeeze the life out of her completely.
Other people in meetings shared all the time about their romanticized hopes for a big night out after putting together a significant day count. Sobriety, it seemed, gave every former addict and alcoholic the clarity they needed to outline a kind of forbidden grand plan that would put their lesser angels to the test. The Radisson north of the Financial District hardly fit the bill.
Some of those same people hadn’t been bluffing. Relapse was common. Those who returned to the rooms to start their day counts over often reported, with a clearer clarity than ever before, that the liquor or the drugs or both—done full-orgy—had failed miserably at creating the bliss they’d once known. Of course, some of those diehards had died, too. Death was never the objective, but everyone understood that death was on the table when concocting these plans.
You can put the drinking aside, attend the meetings, work the steps, and confide in a sponsor about most of your shit, but if you don’t identify the root cause of your disease—beyond the convenient excuse of your genealogy—then start to address it in earnest, the idea that a good, long, no-holds-barred drunk might actually deliver salvation it never had before doesn’t just become hard to shake, it steels itself. It is an idea that will kill you … eventually.
John, a rehab therapist, had said basically that. It was a message Nicole had largely ignored.
Nicole had left the six-week program knowing in her heart she’d drink again. There’d been simply too much at stake to believe otherwise. But until her reason for wanting to live permanently sauced crystalized in the church basement, those stakes had been vague. It was a legitimate epiphany, and any good drunk runs like hell from those.
The root cause of the mess she’d become was Matthew.
She was capable of being a mother to one kid or two—or ten if she someday wanted. What had left her unhinged was having to parent her children with a partner she resented. She’d tackled and resolved so many resentments recently, but not with him. Not directly.
It wouldn’t have mattered who she told or how she’d told them. It wouldn’t have helped to workbook through the reasons or turn her guilt over to God as she understood him. To admit aloud to a sponsor, a friend, or anyone else that she was unhappy meant possibly starting a new life, one without Matthew. That was a future too optimistic and fanciful to be deserved.
