Ada continued to cal my name, not doing anything until my father appeared beside her. I don’t know what he said, I was concentrating too hard on not fal ing to the brick driveway below. I don’t know if it would kil me but it would break my bones in a mil ion pieces. He took one look at me then disappeared, cal ing for my mother.
I heard a slippery laugh from above.
I looked above the window, where Ada was watching me in ful panic.
The thing was there, perched inches above her on the higher slab of roof. She cried out at me for my safety, blissful y unaware of the creature.
Because that’s what it was.
Lovecraft couldn’t have thought it up himself.
It had the body of an overgrown baby but with longer limbs. Pearly claws for fingers and toes.
Bat wings that were marked with veins and crawling with lice.
Its head was slightly too round to be a human’s. It had no ears. No nose. Just solid red eyes that, up close, bulged out of its head like a rat and an impossibly wide mouth fil ed with double rows of shark-like teeth. A familiar smile, now in its original form.
I watched it, afraid to take my eyes away, as my lower body swung beneath me. I was getting tired. It wanted a staring contest and I didn’t know if I could win.
Just when my arms began to slip an inch, my dad appeared back at the window with a rope. He threw it toward me and told me to grab on.
Meanwhile, I could hear my mom scurrying on the ground below, hauling something metal on the bricks, most likely, hopeful y, a ladder.
“Grab the rope, it’s easier,” he yel ed. I looked up at him and I’l never forget it. The amount of pain and excruciating worry on his face was something I never wanted to see again. There he was in his pajamas, hair messed, face red and sweating, trying to save his daughter from imminent harm. Trying to save her from herself. I kept focused on that – on him – not the thing above, and with my last bit of strength I grabbed the rope.
The rough fibers cut into my scraped hands but I gritted my teeth and let him and Ada haul me up until my feet were at the gutter, and I was able to push off and fling myself on the window ledge.
Two pairs of arms reached out, grabbed me around my waist and shoulders, and I was final y inside. I col apsed to the ground, panting hard, aching al over and bleeding from my hands and feet, covered in extra abrasions from the shingles.
I made it.
I was alive.
But I was far from safe.
~~~
“Perry, are you listening to me?” my mother asked as she brought the car off the freeway and down a one-way street downtown.
I wasn’t. I wasn’t even aware of where I was.
Oh, right. Heading to the head doctor. Going to see if there was something wrong with the old noggin.
Things were moving slower now. Slower now that I was conscious and taking in the dead winter trees on the side of the street and the glum faces of pedestrians as they faced another grey day. Things were slow. And then they would speed up. Like the morning. I went through on autopilot but had no idea what I did or said.
I kept starting at one place and ending up in another. I was missing parts of my life. Something had happened on the roof last night, but I didn’t know what. My parents were afraid I had crawled up there, wanting to jump. I couldn’t tel them yes or no. I wasn’t suicidal. But I had no answers. Just the truth. And they couldn’t handle the truth.
“Earth to Perry,” my sister chimed in my ear. I tilted my head ever so slightly in her direction and eyed her in my peripheral vision.
She had decided to come along for my appointment, and then we were to drop her off at school. I didn’t think mom would go for it, but Ada pleaded her case of moral support and she relented. I think my mom was relieved, actual y. She didn’t want to be alone with me. Especial y after the whole…wel , after the whole yesterday.
Secretly, I was comforted that I had Ada with me. It made the return to Dr. Freedman and the nasty case of déjà vu more bearable. I felt like I was losing everything. I needed someone in my corner, and at the moment, she was al I had.
I used to have Dex for that. Then again, I used to have a lot of things.
Thinking about him for that brief instance made me sad.
Heart-fluttering like a broken leaf, that kind of sad. I swal owed it and forgot about it. It was better to be angry, if I had to stil be anything.
“What’s wrong?” she asked in a quieter voice. She glimpsed the sadness briefly.
I shook my head and cleared my throat. “Just nervous.”
My mom shot me a quick look. “The doctor wil help you, Perry. Just like he did before.”
Maybe that’s what I’m afraid of, I thought. I knew what he was going to say, what he was going to think and do. It hadn’t been that long. He’d make me talk, pretend to listen, and write me a prescription. I’d continue to look like a raving loon until the pil s squared that away.
I was going to become Dex. He had been on medication, he probably stil was. It was meds meant to keep the ghosts away, and for the most part, they did a good job. I had said before, in a fit of anger, that it was cheating. That it wasn’t fair that I had to deal with them and he didn’t. Now I had that same opportunity to make them al go away.
But how could I do that? I knew now what was behind the curtain. I saw the shadows, the ghosts, the lost ones, the demons. How could I wil ingly go on blindly, knowing they stil lurked and stil wanted me. Somehow it was worse to be in the dark about it. That’s when they’d real y sneak up on you.
Minutes later we had parked and were making our way into a nondescript medical building. The memories – the injustice – came flooding back. The shiny floors that made your boots squeak. The drab yel owing wal s. The ugly faux wood paneling in the elevators.
We got off on the third floor and turned left down the carpeted hal . A few people emerged from one office, chattering to each other. Feeling self-conscious, I pul ed down my sleeves so that you couldn’t see the ugly bruises, scratches and abrasions that had cloaked my body in the last 24 hours.
With my mom leading the way in her tweed pencil skirt, we squeezed past the pack of people who didn’t give us much of a berth. I kept my eyes focused on the floor, not wanting to acknowledge the strangers. Ada stumbled slightly in front of me, apparently elbowed by a blur of shiny maroon.
She rubbed her arm and then I heard a barely audible gasp escape from her lips.
I raised my head. She was stumbling sideways, watching someone over my shoulder.
I stopped and turned around to see. At the very end of the group of people who were now halfway down the hal , was the back of a lavender-haired woman in a stiff maroon bal gown, gliding above the carpet.
Not part of the group. Not even alive.
I looked back at Ada, who had also stopped along with my mom.
“What is it?” my mother asked her anxiously.
Ada kept her expression in ful bewilderment and watched Creepy Clown Lady float away, then she looked at me with wide eyes.
Knowing eyes.