I fight drowsiness, knowing what waits on the other side of sleep. I don’t need to revisit my Alice nightmare in midafternoon.
As a teenager, Alison’s mom, Alicia, painted the Wonderland characters on every wall of her home, insisting that they were real and talked to her in dreams. Years later, Alicia took a flying leap out of her second-story hospital room window to test her “wings,” just a few hours after giving birth to my mom. She landed in a rosebush and broke her neck.
Some say she committed suicide—postpartum depression and grief over losing her husband months earlier in a factory accident. Others say she should’ve been locked away long before she had a child.
After her mom’s death, Alison was left to be raised by a long line of foster parents. Dad thinks the instability contributed to her illness. I know it’s something more, something hereditary, because of my recurrent nightmare and the bugs and plants. And then there’s the presence I feel inside. The one that vibrates and shadows me when I’m scared or hesitant, prodding me to push my limits.
I’ve researched schizophrenia. They say one of the symptoms is hearing voices, not a winglike thumping in the skull. Then again, if I were to count the whispers of flowers and bugs, I hear plenty of voices. By any of those measurements, I’m sick.
My throat swells on a lump and I swallow it down.
The CD changes songs, and I concentrate on the melody, trying to forget everything else. Dust slaps against the car as Jeb shifts gears. I glance sideways at his profile. There’s Italian somewhere in his bloodline, and he has a really great complexion—olive-toned and clear, soft to the touch.
He tilts his head my way. I turn to the rearview mirror and watch the car freshener swing. Today’s the first day I’ve had it hanging in place.
On eBay, there’s a store that sells customized fresheners for ten bucks apiece. Just e-mail a photo, and they print it onto a scented card, then snail-mail the finished product to you. A couple of weeks ago, I used some birthday money and bought two of them, one for me and one for Dad—which he has yet to hang in his truck. He has it tucked in his wallet; I wonder if it will always stay hidden in there, too painful for him to see every day.
“It turned out good,” Jeb says, referring to the air freshener.
“Yeah,” I mumble. “It’s Alison’s shot, so it was bound to.”
Jeb nods, his unspoken understanding more comforting than other people’s well-intentioned words.
I stare at the photo. It’s an image of a huge black-winged moth from one of Alison’s old albums. The shot is amazing, the way the wings are splayed on a flower between a slant of sun and shade, teetering between two worlds. Alison used to capture things most people wouldn’t notice—moments in time when opposites collide, then merge seamlessly together. Makes me wonder how successful she might’ve been if she hadn’t lost her mind.
I tap the air freshener, following its sway.
The bug has always seemed familiar—eerily fascinating yet at the same time calming.
It occurs to me I don’t know its history—what species it is, where it lives. If I found out, I would know where Alison might’ve been when she shot the picture and could feel closer to her somehow, but I can’t ask. She’s sensitive about her albums.
I reach behind the bucket seat, dig my iPhone out of my backpack, and open a search for glowing moth.
After twenty-some pages of tattoos, logos, Lunesta ads, and costume designs, a moth sketch catches my eye. Not a perfect match to Alison’s, but the body’s a bright blue and the wings shimmer black, so it’s close enough.
Clicking on the image turns the screen blank. I’m about to restart the browser when a strobe of bright red stops me. The screen throbs as if I’m looking at a heartbeat. The air seems to pulse around me in synchrony.
A Web page flickers to life. White font and colorful graphics stand out vividly against the black background. The first thing that hits me is the title: Netherlings—denizens of the nether-realm.
Next follows a definition: A dark and twisted race of supernatural beings indigenous to an ancient world hidden deep within the heart of the earth. Most use their magic for mischief and revenge, though a rare few have a penchant for kindness and courage.
I scroll past images every bit as violent and beautiful as Jeb’s paintings: luminous, rainbow-skinned creatures with bulbous eyes and sparkly, silken wings who carry knives and swords; hideous, naked hobgoblins in chains who crawl on all fours and have corkscrew tails and cloven feet like pigs; silvery pixielike beings trapped in cages and crying oily black tears.