My mother’s condition is not as consistent as some might think. The intensity of her insanity waxes and wanes with no predictable schedule or trigger. Of course, it doesn’t help that she’s off her meds. When it’s good, people might not guess there’s anything wrong with her. Those are the days when the guilt of my anger and frustration toward her eat away at me. When it’s bad, I might walk out of my room to find a dead-man-turned-toy on the floor.
To be fair, she has never played with corpses before, at least, not that I’ve seen. Before the world fell apart, she’d always been on the edge and often several steps beyond it. But my dad’s desertion, then later the attacks, intensified everything. Whatever rational part of her that had been holding her back from diving into the darkness simply dissolved.
I think about burying the body, but a cold part of my mind tells me that this is still the best deterrent I could have. Any sane person who looks through the glass doors would run far, far away. We now play a permanent game of I-am-crazier-and-scarier-than-you. And in that game, my mother is our secret weapon.
I walk cautiously toward the bathrooms where the shower is running. My mother hums a haunting melody, one that I think she made up. She used to sing it to us when she was in her half-lucid state. A wordless tune that is both sad and nostalgic. It may have had words to it at one point because every time I hear it, it evokes a sunset over the ocean, an ancient castle, and a beautiful princess who throws herself off the castle walls into the pounding surf below.
I stand outside the bathroom door, listening to her hum in the shower. I associate this song with her coming back from a particularly crazy phase. Usually, she hummed it to us as she patched up whatever bruises or slashes she had caused during her crazy phase.
She was always gentle and genuinely sorry during these times. I think it might have been an apology of a sort. Never enough, obviously, but it may have been her way of reaching back to the light, of letting us know that she was surfacing out of the darkness and into the gray zone.
She hummed it incessantly after Paige’s “accident.” We never did find out exactly what happened. Only my mother and Paige were in the house at the time, and only they will ever know the real story. My mother cried for months after, blaming herself. I blamed her too. How could I not?
“Mom?” I call out through the closed bathroom door.
“Penryn!” she calls out through the shower splashes.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. Are you? Have you seen Paige? I can’t find her anywhere.”
“We’ll find her, okay? How did you find me?”
“Oh, I just did.” My mother doesn’t usually lie, but she did have a habit of being vaguely evasive.
“How did you find me, Mom?”
The shower runs freely for a moment before she answers. “A demon told me.” Her voice is full of reluctance, full of shame. The world being what it is these days, I might even consider believing her, except that no one but her sees or hears her personal demons.
“That was nice of him,” I say. The demons usually took the blame for the crazy, bad things my mother did. They rarely got credit for anything good.
“I had to promise I’d do something for him.” An honest answer. And a warning.
My mother is stronger than she looks, and when given the upper hand of surprise, she can do serious harm. She’s been contemplating defense all her life—how to sneak up on an attacker, how to hide from The Thing That Watches, how to banish the monster back to hell before it steals the souls of her children.
I consider the possibilities as I lean against the bathroom door. Whatever it is she’s promised her demon is guaranteed to be unpleasant. And quite possibly painful. The only question is who the pain will be inflicted upon.
“I’m just going to collect some stuff and hole up in the corner office,” I say. “I might be in there a day or two, but don’t worry, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I don’t want you coming into the office. But don’t leave the building okay? There’s water and food in the kitchen.” I think about telling her to be careful, but of course, that’s ridiculous. For decades, she has been careful about people and monsters trying to kill her. Since the attacks, she’s finally found them.
“Penryn?”
“Yeah?”
“Make sure you wear the stars.” She’s referring to the yellow asterisks she’s sewn on our clothes. How I can not wear them is beyond me. It’s on everything we own.
“Okay, Mom.”
Despite her star comment, she sounds lucid. Maybe that’s not the healthiest thing after desecrating a corpse.
~
I’m not as helpless as the average teen.
When Paige was two years old, my father and I came home to find her broken and crippled. My mother stood over her in deep shock. We never did find out exactly what happened or how long she stood frozen over Paige. My mother cried and pulled almost all her hair out without saying a word for weeks.