He sighed and knelt his pudgy frame on the floor beside us.
He laid out the first aid kit and a smal 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 al 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 smal lamp on and she put the radio on room. We left the smal 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 al . “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 al 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.