“My baby girl!”
That bloodied rictus grin persisted. David thought he could even hear the clatter of her teeth—clack-clack-clack-clack! The light behind those hideous mad eyes was nearly luminous. She flailed in her mother’s arms, and a too-white sneaker came off one slender foot and lay by itself now in the sun.
“Drive the car, man,” Gany said. She whipped her head around to glare at him.
Yet before he could snap out of it and plant the accelerator on the floor, he heard the Caddy’s back door pop open. A second later, he saw Ellie running across the highway toward the woman and the sick girl.
“Holy shit,” Gany said.
David hopped out of the car and chased after his daughter. In the road, the mother struggled with the girl, shrieking and calling for help. The girl twisted loose and staggered like a zombie a step or two in no particular direction, her one bare foot slapping on the blacktop. Her jaw chattered like some electric machine.
“Ellie!” David cried after her.
Ellie did not stop running, did not turn to look at him. She approached the girl, who cocked her head at a terrible angle, and only then did Ellie slow down to a deliberate walk. Blood sluiced from the girl’s nose. Her eyes blazed like twin moons.
“Ellie!”
Ellie reached out and grabbed one of the girl’s wrists.
A second after that, David reached her. He wrapped an arm around her waist and, with his other hand, tried to break Ellie’s hold on the girl’s wrist. Yet, at that same moment, he was overcome by such a powerful jolt that his vision briefly flickered to darkness. A moment later, he felt all his terror drain from him, leaving behind a vast, windy cavern of peacefulness, and he felt— (calm perfect calm you can even sleep now if you want it’s so calm it’s so perfect it’s living up here in the cool grass and streams and the mountains and flying like a bird yes that’s right you’re flying you’re flying like a bird that’s how calm it is how calm how calm how calm you’re flying flying) Ellie shoved him away. He staggered backward, the panic and fear flooding back into his body like boiling water, causing sweat to burst from his pores and his heart to hammer. So overwhelmed by the abrupt shift in emotion, he found he could do nothing but stand there, helpless, terrified.
He realized at one point that Ellie and the girl were no longer standing, but that the girl was laid out supine on the blacktop with her head in Ellie’s lap. Ellie had a hand on either side of the girl’s head, and she was leaning forward so far that their foreheads nearly touched.
The girl had stopped chattering her teeth. Those eyes—those horrible, impossible eyes—had closed. Now her face was nothing but a smooth canvas of peace, as if she had fallen— (you can even sleep now if you want) —asleep.
“What is she doing?” It was Gany, speaking in a low voice very close to him, although it took him several seconds to realize this. Not that he could answer her—he no longer possessed the strength to speak.
The only other noise was the sound of the girl’s mother sobbing as she stood a few paces behind Ellie, her hands over her mouth. When her daughter’s body appeared to go slack, the woman issued a high-pitched whine and sank to her knees.
Gently, Ellie rested the girl’s head on the pavement. She stood, and there was blood smeared on her shirt and along one pale white arm. She turned and, without hesitation, approached the mother who remained kneeling in the middle of the street. Ellie’s shadow fell over the woman’s face. She reached out and touched a hand to the left side of the woman’s face, as if to caress her. And indeed, the action looked very much like a caress—an act of comfort, of kindness.
The woman ceased crying. Her chest hitching, her breath coming in rapid gasps, she looked up at Ellie. David watched as the woman’s eyes softened, as her respiration slowed . . . as a semblance of . . . peace . . . settled over her face.
But not just her face.
Her entire body.
When Ellie was finished, she rejoined David and Gany at the side of the road. She took both their hands and led them back to the car.
“What did you do?” Gany asked her. “What the hell just happened?” She glanced over her shoulder at the girl, who remained prostrate in the middle of the street. The girl’s mother had crawled over to her and was cradling her now, weeping against her lifeless body. The crowd of onlookers stared.
51
They had driven less than three minutes from the scene with no one capable of speaking a word until Ellie said, “Pull over. I’m gonna be sick.”