CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I was so livid and defeated when I left Doctor Freedman’s office that I couldn’t remember what happened afterward.
We must have dropped Ada off at school, we must have gone to Walgreens to fil the prescription for me. But I couldn’t recal any of that. My memory was wiped.
I was just suddenly in the passenger side of my mother’s car, my hands smel ing like vinegar salad dressing, the clock on the dashboard indicating at least two hours had passed.
We were leaving downtown going over the Burnside Bridge, the river water below reflecting the dull , colorless sky above.
I was hit with a wave of nausea, fol owed by another wave, a warning, that something extremely terrible was about to happen. A feeling of absolute dread. I looked at my mother like it might be the last time I’d see her. She was driving cautiously, her hands gripping the wheel so hard her bony knuckles protruded. She had her sunglasses on even though it was frighteningly dark for the late afternoon. She’d looked exhausted lately – I knew it was because of me. Tiny lines had a permanent home at the corners of her pinched mouth.
“Mom,” I said careful y. Scared.
She jumped a little, then covered it up with a quick smile.
“What is it, Perry?”
“I don’t feel well .”
And it was suddenly the world’s biggest understatement.
The most revolting, violating feeling flushed my insides. I wasn’t alone in my head. Someone else was inside me with me, waiting, perched just out of the corner of my eyes.
They were in me, watching me, monitoring these very thoughts.
Then my world stretched forward in a horrific display of tunnel vision. I was thrown back, back into oblivion, but only my mind, not my body.
I watched as I raised one hand in the air, waving it slowly in front of my face. I wasn’t doing it. I wasn’t in control. I wasn’t the one in charge.
Mom! I shrieked.
But I was only screaming in my head, not out of my throat. I didn’t have control over that anymore. My throat wasn’t mine.
I was being held hostage in my own body.
And at that realization, something inside churned with anger.
The arm I was holding in front of my face, which was now drawing a curious glance from my mom, suddenly shot across to the wheel, gripped it and swung it violently over to the right, toward the cars in the other lane.
Toward the barrier.
Toward the edge of the bridge.
And the river far below.
My mother screamed as the car careened into the other lane, nearly clipping a BMW. There was a horrid screeching in surround sound and the smel of burning tires and my mother’s screaming and the screaming I was doing in my own head. With every bit of strength I could concentrate on, I pushed hard and felt a pop inside my chest and suddenly all feeling rushed back to me like I was being brushed with pins and needles.
I let go of the wheel and braced myself on the dashboard and my mother got the car under control seconds before we slammed against the barrier. If we had hit, we would have flipped and gone over.
Other cars sped past us, honking, waving their fingers, mouthing swear words, while mom slowly, gingerly applied the gas. She was shaking and her Kung-Fu grip on the wheel was the only thing keeping her from bouncing out of her seat. We crawled down the bridge and at the first opportunity to pul over, she did.
Acting like she was in a dream-like state, she flipped the car into park, turned off the engine and turned in her seat to face me. She lifted up her sunglasses to reveal smudged mascara and blue eyes magnified by tears. Her expression matched that unforgettable look I saw in my father’s face as he hauled me up from the roof. But there was something else. Almost an understanding, like she was recognizing me for the first time and seeing the monster I real y was.
“Perry,” she breathed.
“I said I didn’t feel well ,” I told her glibly.
Then I pitched myself into uncontrol able laughter that lasted most of the car ride back home.
The minute I burst through the front door, I rushed to the downstairs bathroom to puke. I keeled over the toilet and brought up everything until my throat burned raw. It turns out I had salad for lunch. That explained the salad dressing smel earlier.
When I was empty and exhausted I looked at myself in the mirror. My heart dropped in my ribs.
I looked like a different person. No, not different. I looked like I was barely even alive. My cheekbones jutted out of my face, the circles under my eyes had spread. My lips were dry, cracked and bleeding. My eyes themselves were ful y dilated into black holes. My neck was red and teased with scratches that I knew led down into my chest. I wondered how Doctor Freedman could chalk up any of this to a measly broken heart. I looked like I should be locked up and put away, like the asylum ghosts at Riverside Institute.
I couldn’t look at myself anymore; it was making me sick again and I didn’t have any food left to throw up. A piercing pain jabbed at my temples instead. I turned off the light in the bathroom and stepped out into the hal way.
My mom and dad were in the kitchen talking to each other in hushed, frantic voices. Three guesses as to who they were talking about.
I stood in the doorway and they shut up with nary a guilty look on their faces.
My mom waved me in.
“Come sit down, pumpkin,” she said, and poured a glass of water for me. I wondered how she could stil cal me such an endearing term after I tried to kil her.
The tea kettle on the stove boiled over and the piercing whistle made me wince in pain, exaggerating the pain in my head.
“Sorry,” she said, and quickly took it off the burner.
“Perry, I heard what happened,” my father said. He looked down at the cuffs on his red and white striped shirt and started smoothing them out. “I can’t stress the importance of these pil s that the doctor gave you.”
My mother smiled forceful y and plunked a pair of yel ow and pink pil s beside the glass of water. I eyed them wryly.
“I’m not taking these,” I said. Before anyone could protest, I rushed on, “Doctor Freedman said I could make my own choices. I’m twenty-three. You can’t force me to be medicated.”
“Not yet,” my father said.
I raised my head sharply at that.
“That’s OK, Perry,” my mother cut in. “You’re right. You don’t have to take them. It’s just...you need them. You’re not well . The doctor said so himself, and I think you know it yourself. In the car…I…”
Feeling a bout of shame, I looked down at my hands.
The scratches seeped clear fluid. It didn’t even faze me anymore. I was becoming someone else and there was nothing anyone could do about it. The pil s would be futile except make it easier to give up. If I wanted to go, I wanted to go in my right mind with every fighting ounce I had left.
“If you don’t care about us enough to take them, think about your sister. Or think about yourself. Your self-hate can’t run that deep.”
My chin jutted out defiantly and I met her eyes. “I don’t hate myself. I hate what I’ve become.”
“Become?” my mother said with a hint of irony in her voice. “Pumpkin, you’ve always been like this.”
Then she shrugged with false carelessness and gave me a cup of rooibos tea.
“Anyway, your choice. Here, have some tea. I put extra honey in it. You look like you could use something sweet.”
My throat did burn after the vomiting and I was feeling a bit on the dizzy side. I took the hot cup in my hands and slowly sipped it. It tasted surprisingly sweet – she went overboard with the honey.
My dad sat down on the bar stool beside me and placed his hairy hand on my arm.
“You’re not alone in this, OK, sweetie?” he said. The tenderness in his voice, so rarely heard, made me want to cry. But I nodded and swal owed hot gulps of red tea to keep the emotions away. I was tired of losing it and afraid to let go.
And I real y was tired, too. Like suddenly, irrevocably tired.
My head swayed and I pushed the cup of tea away from me.
“Whoa,” I said with a bit of effort.
I looked up at my parents. The room began to spin around them but they remained motionless, watching me very, very closely. My eyes glazed and unfocused.
“I...”
“Perry, you should go to bed,” my mother said quickly.
She hurried over to me and tugged at my arm, trying to get me out of the bar stool. I awkwardly got to my feet and she immediately started leading me toward the stairs.
My feet felt like lead. What was going on?
“Mom?” I questioned, but it came out in a slur.
Suddenly my dad was beside me with a stranglehold on my other arm. “Come on Perry, up to bed.”
It’s 3p.m., I tried to say, but my mouth wouldn’t move. It came out in a mumble.
They led me to my room and I fel onto the bed just as my feet lost all feeling.
“This is for your own good,” my mother said as she swiped the covers out from under and tucked me in.
“What, what’s happening? Why do I...” feel weird. But I couldn’t finish it. The room continued to spin. My dad came into the room with the tea I had been drinking and placed it on the table.
I looked at it with my heavy eyes and was hit with two thoughts.
One was that I was reminded of being in Red Fox when Sarah had drugged the tea I was drinking with peyote.
The other was that I had been drugged, in general. >
That’s why my parents didn’t press the pil s. They had been in the tea and I had drank all of it. They knew I’d be stubborn and protest. They tricked me. I couldn’t even trust my own parents anymore.
“You,” I started to say but my mouth flapped shut. And my eyes closed. Somewhere far away I heard my mother whisper, “Sorry.”
Another voice penetrated while the world dropped beneath me. It was Creepy Clown Lady saying, “Don’t let her trick you. She tricked me.”
I dreamed and dreamed and dreamed. I dreamed I was floating above my room, my back flat against the ceiling, watching myself sleep as long spider legs trickled out from underneath my bed. I dreamed I was in a forest again, naked and bleeding and surrounded by fireflies. I dreamed I was back on the roof and lost my footing. As I fel , several demon creatures flew out of the sky to catch me. But instead of catching me, they stung me with the hot blades on the tips of their wings, then they each took an arm and a leg and pul ed me until my body tore apart down the middle like a serrated zipper.
A faint buzzing brought me out of my disturbing slumber.
My side vibrated. I groaned and felt around beneath the covers. I was stil in the clothes I had worn earlier, my Chucks on my feet. My phone was vibrating inside my jacket pocket. I fished it out with fat, clumsy fingers and pul ed it out in front of me, raising my head a few inches to look at the screen, which made my shoulders and neck ache.
My room was dark as the moonless night outside, with the only light coming from the hal way, which spil ed under my door in a neat little line. The clock on the phone read 10:42 p.m. and I had just missed a cal from Maximus.
I closed my eyes, leaned back against the pil ow and clutched my phone on top of my chest. Maximus was probably cal ing to check up on me. It didn’t make me feel any better. With the way everyone around me was acting, I couldn’t imagine him being any different. I knew he cared about me – he did, right? – and he was no stranger to the supernatural. But…I didn’t want to trust him anymore.
Maybe that was foolish of me. Maybe the dark forces inside were making me doubt him. But I couldn’t help it. I felt powerless to move and it hurt to think. I needed help and there was no one to help me. My parents certainly couldn’t help me. They wouldn’t help me. And I couldn’t even help myself.
Or could I? Maybe there was someone who I could reach out to, someone who might understand.
I scrol ed through my phone for Rebecca’s phone number, but of course I had lost that when I destroyed my old phone. I didn’t even have her email address anymore, since I had gotten a new one. I thought it was something like BeccaWineBabe@gmail or something like that.
I brought up the internet browser and went to my email account. It took a lot of control to keep my fingers from shaking as I pressed the screen and I hit a bunch of buttons accidently. I had entered her email in the “To” bar but it was auto-corrected to Becomeawino, which I would have thought funny in a lighter time. I tried to type it out again, not real y sure what I’d even say to her in the message other than “Help I’m losing myself” but paused when my bed lurched.
It was only a little bit of movement, like a garbage truck had trundled down the street or the house settled on its haunches. But I felt it.
I lowered the phone and kept absolutely stil , waiting for another shake.
A low, menacing growl fil ed the room.
It sounded more guttural than a dog. Something deeper, raspier and slick with liquid.
It was coming from underneath my bed.
I held my breath, frozen under the sheets, and tried to figure out what to do. This wasn’t in my head. This was here. There was something in my room, underneath my bed.
This was happening.
I eyed the window, wondering if it was quicker to go out that way or through the door. The window was closer, but it was closed and I’d lose precious seconds trying to jimmy it open. The door was farther, but easier to open.
The growling continued, growing louder, punctuated by random snaps and snarls.
I didn’t want to even think of what was under there.
Three seconds, I thought to myself. I’m going in three seconds. If I don’t, I’ll be eaten alive. Three seconds.
One...
Two...
The bed suddenly shook again, nearly jolting me out of it as whatever was underneath began to emerge with a drooling roar.
Three!
I jumped out of bed and felt a swipe of pain at the back of my leg as whatever it was reached out for me but I kept going, reached the door and flung it open. I couldn’t find my breath to scream so I just ran, straight for Ada’s room.
I heard the smacking, slobbering snarls at my back as I pushed open her door and jumped into her room. I lost my footing in the dark and fel to the carpet in a heap, while Ada cried out, “What the hel ?” in her half-asleep voice. I picked myself up and quickly ran back to her door and slammed it shut behind me.
Heart in my throat, nerves on fire, I turned and limped back to her.
With a flash of light, the door opened at my back.
In the il umination from the hal way I saw Ada very clearly.
She was sitting up in bed, sheets brought to her chin with shaking hands. There was a look of utter horror on her face as she saw the thing behind me, the thing that was under the bed, the thing that opened her door.
There was no time to react. No time to look.
I was grabbed by what felt like hot claws. They wrapped around my calves and pul ed me out from under me so that I fel flat on the ground, my arms extended, trying desperately to grab onto something to save me. They dragged me backward down the hal , back to my bedroom.
I could only scream.
Ada came running out after me.
The world slowed down in slow motion; Ada running down the hal , wearing only a skinny white tank top and pink short shorts. Her hair flew behind her graceful y. Her skinny bare feet hit the carpet and bounced off as she ran faster, made her strides longer. Her hands were reaching out for me. Her mouth and eyes were screaming my name.
She almost made it to me when I was engulfed into the darkness of my bedroom. The door began to shut by itself on her. And I was being dragged underneath my bed.
Dragged to hel .
I had no thoughts except for two wishes. That my death would be painless. And I wouldn’t stay in hel . I closed my eyes and wasted my last breaths on an unending cry.
But the door didn’t stay closed.
Ada had shoved her shoulder in at the last minute and she squeezed past with a shriek and flung herself on her knees, wrapping her hands around my elbows and pul ing at me, pul ing at me while something underneath pul ed back. I real y was going to be torn in two. My arms made a popping noise in their sockets and I could feel the shoes and socks on my feet disintegrating in a hot pool of liquid that frothed up my calves.
“Hang on!” she yel ed, and gave me a tug with all her might. I found strength in my legs and kicked wildly until it let go. Ada fel backward from the sudden surrender and I flew out from under the bed, landing just short of her.
“Ada!” I wailed. She went on her knees and hauled me up so I was total y out of the bed and beside her.
The light in the room came on and we turned to the door in terror. My parents were standing there in their pajamas, puzzled and frightened.
“We heard screaming, what’s going on?” my mother asked in a shril voice.
Ada and I looked back at the bed. With the light on it looked as it normal y did. There was nothing underneath it except a few dust bunnies.
But my legs. My legs were a different story. We saw them at the same time they did.
My mom screeched, “What happened to your legs!”
My Converses were gone. So were my socks. The jeans I was wearing earlier had been torn off at the knees, leaving messy, wet jagged edges of cloth. My legs were completely covered in a thin sheen of vibrant red blood.
“Oh,” my dad said in a small , shocked voice. He made the sign of the cross across his face.
My mother swal owed hard, staring so hard at my legs that I thought she was trying to read them.
She was trying to read them.
Ada leaned over and nudged my shoulder down with her hand. I turned my body awkwardly and looked down at the back of my calves.
In dark, scabbing writing were the words “your fault”
running down the fleshiest part of my right calf.
My mom continued to stare. She didn’t come any closer.
“I’l get some bandages,” my father whispered to her. He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it.
I wondered why no one was comforting me?
Final y my mom said, “Perry...” but couldn’t finish it. I knew from the tone what she’d say.
I looked at Ada for help. She bailed on me during the Creepy Clown Lady sighting. I had never gotten the chance to reprimand her on that. I begged her with my eyes to tel her the truth. She dipped her chin and her eyes flew over to my mother’s.
“Mom,” she said, shaking. The fear and adrenaline were ripe in her voice. “It’s not Perry’s fault. She didn’t do that.”
“Wel , who did then?” she asked. She shook her head to herself and mouthed a few words I couldn’t hear. Who was going nuts now? My mom was talking to herself in front of us.
I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t know, anyway. I let Ada speak.
“Mom. I was asleep and Perry came running into my room. The door opened...something...”
She broke off and looked down at the carpet, eyes fixing on nothing, and took a deep breath. “Something grabbed her from behind. It grabbed her legs. And it dragged her in here. It was trying to take her under the bed.”
We both eyed our mother expectantly. Her brows were raised up on her face and seemed to be frozen in shock.
Then she smiled. It wasn’t pleasant.
“I can’t listen to this,” she said. She turned around and walked down the hal . I heard her pass my dad in the hal way and hiss to him, “Oh, Ada’s going along with it now.
It real y does run in the family.”
What runs in the family? Ghosts? Crazy? Ada and I looked at each other questioningly just as my dad came in.
He sighed and knelt his pudgy frame on the floor beside us.
He laid out the first aid kit and a small bowl of water and washed my legs with a wet towel, then anointed the words with ointment, which might have stung normal y but I didn’t feel a thing. With the blood washed off the writing was chil ingly visible. Your Fault.
My fault? What had I done? I eyed Ada and my father.
From the way their brows were creased uneasily, they were probably wondering the same question.
And I started wondering if I had written the words myself.
I had a Swiss army knife in the drawer beside my bed. I had sewing needles and pins about. How would this be any different from the cutting I did back in high school? I guess I at least remember intentional y hurting myself back then.
“That was a lot of blood,” I said weakly.
He nodded and his lips became drained of color as he squeezed them into a hard, stern line. “These were deep cuts.”
“Stitches deep?” I asked.
He paused and gave me a funny look, like I was foolish to care about something like stitches at this point. Perhaps he was right.
“No, you’l be all right.”
He finished wrapping my leg with gauze and a tensor bandage, then fingered the edges of my jeans.
“What happened here?”
I looked him square in the eye. “A monster ate them.”
His eyes flitted to Ada then back to mine. “That’s not funny, Perry.”
He stood up with a groan.
“No,” I said forceful y. “It’s not funny, is it?”
He peered down at me with a strange sense of wonder.
It was almost like he was trying to decide just how serious I was. Maybe if there was even something worth believing.
But if he was thinking that, he didn’t say it. He walked to the door and before closing it behind him, said, “Ada, look after your sister.”
“I’m trying,” she said in a breath of a voice. It was directed at me.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, twisting around to face her, unsure of what to do with my legs.
“It’s not your fault,” she said.
“That’s not what my leg says. what my I thought she’d laugh at that but instead she let out a whimper and wiped her nose. “Perry, I’m scared. I’m super, real y scared.”
I scooted closer to her so our shoulders were touching. “I am too.”
“Did you see that thing?”
“No.” I shuddered. “But I’ve seen other things. And they aren’t pretty.”
We fel into silence for a while, both of our eyes trained on the bed.
After a deep breath, Ada said, “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything about the woman in the hal way. About Creepy Clown Lady.”
I was no longer angry about it. I understood completely.
Someone had to be the sane one here and it sure wasn’t going to be me. Especial y not after this, if there even was an after.
“You know,” she lowered her voice. “I heard her say something to me. In the hal . I heard it in my head.” She sounded incredulous. It was amazing how used I had gotten to seeing Pippa, I sometimes forgot how supernatural she real y was.
“What did she say?”
“She said we had to stop them.”
“We had to stop them? Who is we? Who are them?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. I kind of felt like I knew her.”
My mouth twitched. Somewhere in the back of my head the wheels wanted click on that, to turn and turn until something made sense. But I was too tired. I yawned and shivered simultaneously. >
“Let’s go to bed,” she said, and careful y hauled me up to my feet. I stripped off my chewed jeans, put on pajama pants and turned my back to her to take off my shirt.
“Uh, Perry?”
I paused with the shirt half over my head. “What?”
“Your back.”
I tried to turn and see but couldn’t. I half lowered the shirt as I felt Ada walk over and touch my mid-back. I winced at her touch. The spot was raw.
“His fault,” she mused.
“More writing?”
“More writing,” she said. “It’s not nasty, though. You’re not, like, real y bleeding.”
Wel there went that whole theory that I did it to myself.
Now it was his fault.
I fished out a t-shirt and put that on and we went to her room. We left the small lamp on and she put the radio on room. We left the small lamp on and she put the radio on very low volume, just to calm our nerves. I cuddled up next to her in bed, like the way she used to do when I was twelve and she was five and I’d read her my Goosebumps stories and scare her half to death.
Despite the horror that permeated the air around us, the edginess that something could happen at any time, I wasn’t scared. I was beyond scared. I was...wretched. Like a blanket of sadness had rested somewhere in my mind and smothered me with every reflective, heart-rending fiber.
I felt like this was it. There was no more. And I wasn’t strong enough to fight it.
“Ada,” I began slowly, softly, “I love you. You’re the best sister a girl could have and I’m sorry it’s taken me twenty- three years to say that.”
“Why are you tel ing me this?” she asked, alarmed.
“Because...”
“Don’t be an idiot; real y, Perry.”
“Something’s happening to me. Something’s changing.”
“I’l save you from it. We’l be fine.”
“But it’s coming from inside me. Don’t you understand? I don’t think I have much time as me left. I think this might be the last night.”
Her mouth dropped open. “How can you just say that!”
“Ada,” I said, trying to find the words to make her understand the pain that was running through my heart. The heaviness of it all . “You know when you’re at that point when you’re crying too much and everything is too much and your body just...shuts down? I’m shutting down.”
“No,” she said determinedly, her eyes flickering. “No, you’re not shutting down. You’re not giving up, Perry. We’re going to fix you. Tomorrow, I’l find a way, I’l fix you.”
I tried to smile at her, to thank her for her perseverance, in her belief that everything was going to be OK. But I couldn’t. Because the smile was wiped away by fear.
Complete and absolute fear.
I wasn’t alone. The thing was back.
Back inside me. Inside my mind. Inside my soul.
It was happening again.
“Go!” I yel ed at Ada, panicking. She jumped and her eyes widened in shock. She wasn’t reacting fast enough.
“Get out of here! Get out of here, Ada, go get Mom and Dad! Go! Get out of here! Now! Go now!”
Before I could see if she listened, my mind was booted to the back seat. I was robbed of all control, relieved as host of my body. The last thing I felt were my hands curling up into hot little bal s.
Everything went black.