Claudia sighed or moaned or sobbed, or maybe did all three simultaneously. “Oh, Jesus Christ,” she said in her choked wheeze. “I’m so sorry.”
Jeanette closed Ree’s eyelids. That was better. She let her finger graze a small portion of the patch of scar tissue on Ree’s forehead. Who did that to you, Ree? I hope whoever did that hates himself, and punishes himself. Or that he’s dead, and it almost certainly was a he. Ninety-nine percent. The girl’s eyelids were paler than the rest of her sandy skin.
Jeanette bent low to Ree’s ear. “I’ve never told anyone what I told you. Not even Dr. Norcross. Thanks for listening. Now sleep well, honey. Please sleep well.”
10
The fragment of burning web rose into the air, twisting orange and black, blooming. It didn’t flare. Blooming was the only word for the way it opened, the fire becoming so much bigger than the fuel.
Garth Flickinger, holding the lit match that he’d used to test the trimming of web, reared back against the coffee table. His medical implements skidded across it and a few clattered to the floor. Frank, watching from near the door, lowered himself to a crouch and moved quickly toward Nana, to shield her.
The flame formed a swirling circle.
Frank pressed his body over his daughter.
In Flickinger’s hand, the burning match had reached his fingertips, but he continued to hold it. Frank smelled the burning skin. In the glare of the fiery circle that hovered in mid-air above the living room, the doctor’s elfin features appeared to separate, as if they wished—understandably—to flee.
Because fire did not burn this way. Fire did not float. Fire did not make circles.
The last experiment on the web was delivering a conclusive answer to the question of “Why?” and the answer was: because what was happening was not of this world, and could not be treated by the medicine of this world. This realization was on Flickinger’s face for anyone to read. Frank guessed it was in his own face, as well.
The fire collapsed into a rippling brown mass that jittered into a hundred pieces. Moths spilled into the air.
Moths rose to the light fixture; they fluttered to the lampshade, to the corners of the ceiling, through the entryway to the kitchen; moths went dancing to the print of Christ walking on water on the wall and settled on the edges of the frame; a moth tumbled through the air and landed on the ground close to where Frank was draped across Nana. Flickinger was scrambling in the opposite direction on his hands and knees, toward the front hall, yelling the whole way (screaming, actually), his poise shattered.
Frank didn’t move. He kept his eyes on one single moth. It was the color of nothing you’d notice.
The moth crept forward across the floor. Frank was afraid, terrified really, of the little creature that weighed roughly as much as a fingernail and was a living shade of mute. What would it do to him?
Anything. It could do anything it wanted—as long as it didn’t hurt Nana.
“Don’t touch her,” Frank whispered. Embracing his daughter like this, he could feel her pulse and her breath. The world had a way of spinning from Frank’s grasp, of making him wrong or foolish when all he wanted was to be right and good, but he wasn’t a coward. He was ready to die for his little girl. “If you have to have someone, you can have me.”
Two spots of ink on the brown chevron of the moth’s body, its eyes, saw into Frank’s eyes, and from there into his head. He felt it flying around in his skull for God knew how long, touching down on his brain, dragging its pointed feet along the canals like a boy on a rock in the middle of a stream, drawing a stick through the water.
And Frank huddled closer to his child. “Please take me instead.”
The moth darted away.
11
Claudia, she of the Dynamite Body-a, left. Officer Lampley had offered to give Jeanette a moment alone. Now she had the actual Ree to talk to. Or what was left of her. She felt she should have told Ree these things while Ree was still alive.
“What happened—I’m not sure if it was morning or afternoon or early evening, but we’d been on the nod for days. Didn’t go out. Ordered in. At one point, Damian burned me with a cigarette. I’m lying in bed and we’re both looking at my bare arm and I ask, ‘What are you doing?’ The pain was in another room from my mind. I didn’t even move my arm. Damian says, ‘Making sure that you’re real.’ I still have the scar, size of a penny from his pressing so hard. ‘Satisfied?’ I asked. ‘You believe I’m real?’ And he says, ‘Yeah, but I hate you more for being real. If you’d let me get my knee fixed, none of this would have happened. You are one vicious bitch. And I’m finally onto you!’?”
Ree said That’s pretty scary.
“Yes. It was. Because Damian said all that with an expression like this is great news, and he’s delighted to get it and pass it on. It’s like he was the host of some late night radio talk show, playing to his crowd of insomniac nutbags. We’re in the bedroom and the curtains are drawn and nothing’s been washed in days. The power’s off because we didn’t pay the bill. Later, I don’t know how long, I find myself sitting on the floor in Bobby’s room. His bed’s still there, but the other furniture, the rocker and the bureau, they’re gone. Damian sold them to a guy for a little cash. Maybe I was finally coming down, maybe it was because of the cigarette burn, but I felt so sad, and so awful, and so—like I was turned around and in this foreign place and there’s no way home.”
Ree said I know the feeling.
“The screwdriver, now—the clutchhead screwdriver. The guy who bought the rocker must have used it to take the base off and then forgot to take it with him. That’s all I can figure. I know it wasn’t our screwdriver. We didn’t have any tools by then. Damian had sold them off long before the furniture. But this screwdriver is lying on the floor of Bobby’s room and I pick it up. I go to the living room and Damian’s sitting in the folding chair that’s the last seat in the house. He goes, ‘You here to finish the job? Well go ahead. But you better hurry up, because if you don’t get to killing me in the next few seconds here, I think I’ll choke you until your stupid fucking head pops off.’ Says it in that same late night host voice. And he holds up a little bottle with the last couple of pills we have, and then, he gives it a shake, like for a special punchline, ta-da! He goes, ‘Right here’s a good spot, plenty of meat,’ and he pulls my hand that’s holding the screwdriver over to his upper thigh, and puts the point against his jeans, and says, ‘Well? Now or never, Jeanie-baby, now or never.’?”
Ree said I guess he wanted it.
“And he got it. I drove that bastard all the way down to the handle. Damian doesn’t shout, he just gives a big exhale, and goes, ‘Look what you did to me,’ and he’s bleeding all over the chair and the floor. But he doesn’t make a move to help himself. He says, ‘Fine. Watch me die. Enjoy it.’?”