Siren Promised Read online

  Then she felt sick again, ice in her belly causing a nauseating ache, and she was pulled right back into her body, being dry-fucked.

  Her gut ruptured and the burger and fries she ate for dinner burst from her mouth and sprayed the top of Cypher’s car while he grunted behind her, whispering a sick monologue, calling her a dirty little bitch and a worthless cunt and telling her that this time he was going to bust so big that she’d have to have another kid scraped, and it was all too much for Angie, and she held back another heave in her belly and throat and put the pipe to her lips again and put the lighter to it and there it was again, that feeling that the world was okay, and the one hand she had pressed against the roof of the car slid in her puke and she slipped forward, and off of Cypher.

  She was barely inside of her own body. Her pulse defined everything; two hundred beats per minute, burning up every inch of her. She was beginning to convulse when Cypher grabbed her hips, struggling to get back inside her. She tried to reach the pipe, but she had dropped it somehow, and things weren’t going right, and now all she held was the lighter.

  She was staring at the little plastic lighter and trying hard to breathe when Cypher spit on her asshole and forced himself in.

  “No,” she cried, and the pain focused her but her body remained immobile. Cypher had done this before, but was never so brutal.

  “Shut up, bitch,” Cypher said. “You need this.” He gripped her right arm and twisted it up behind her back.

  Move! Do something! Make it stop hurting!

  She couldn’t, no matter how many times the voice in her head demanded it; her body just wouldn’t respond. Was it paralysis as self-defense? He would beat her to unconsciousness if she denied him.

  Where was Stacy? Where was Angie, the Angie she woke up inside of this morning, full of promise?

  She could feel so much. The white fire at the base of her spine. The deep ache as her right shoulder strained to pop from the socket. The warm blood and spit running down the inside of her thighs. Her heart straining against its own fibers, threatening to give at any moment. Her teeth grinding. Her mind shutting down.

  Letting go.

  Getting out, out of this, out of everything. Going, maybe, to the sun.

  She thought of the sun, but she felt winter on her face, cold to the point of numbing her skin. The feeling was coming from her left, along the tree line.

  Angie turned her head toward the blackness of the swamp.

  Her daughter, Kaya, was there, standing at the edge of the woods, shimmering. Waving at her.

  Watching her.

  Angie could see through Kaya, see the branches of the trees swaying behind her, but she was still there, waving to her mom, glowing soft in her overalls and pig-tails. She was holding her arms out as if to embrace Angie through the distance and woods between them.

  Angie felt her lips moving again, heard a voice coming from her mouth that was not her own. It couldn’t be. She didn’t own the words.

  You don’t have to be alone. She is with us. Go to her.

  Angie tasted earth and loam on her tongue. The heaviness of it in her mouth and throat brought her back into her body, her pain soaring as Cypher slammed steady into her and split her open again and again.

  Join her. She needs you. She’s so cold.

  Okay. I can hold her and warm her up and kiss her and then we can let go and we won’t need anymore. We won’t need anything. Anybody.

  I’m coming, Kaya.

  “Stop,” she shouted to Cypher.

  He twisted her arm tighter.

  Angie reached back with her left hand and tried to push Cypher out of her and off of her. He twisted her arm even tighter and pushed deeper and harder. Her left shoulder smashed into the front right window of his car. Her right shoulder, twisted too far, popped out of its socket, with the sound of glass crunching in a paper bag. Her left hand gripped his butane lighter tight.

  She reached back, pushed the lighter as far as she could between her legs, and ignited it.

  She heard Cypher screaming, and it felt right to her. She clenched herself tight around him and held him there, the fire searing and blackening his balls, burning through the skin.

  He punched his left fist down, hard, at the base of her back, and then slipped out of her. He fell to the dirt and curled up, cradling his groin in his hands as smoke whisped through his fingers.

  Angie slid off of the car, her breath fogging his window as she collapsed. She hit the ground hard and her right shoulder popped back into its socket. She leaned on her left hand to stand up.

  Then she was walking, and moving toward the morass past the woods, where her daughter was waiting for her.

  She followed the little girl into the woods.

  I’m coming.

  She could hear Cypher yelling. She guessed most people at the party could hear him by now, his voice hoarse and guttural, screaming over and over. She had to push further into the woods, into some kind of quiet. Away from what had just happened.

  The woods always felt quiet to her. Quiet like a prayer. Quiet like death. Perfect, space without sound, aside from the wind.

  The shape of her daughter was fifty yards ahead, and moving into the inky black woods.

  If I lose sight of her, what will I do? Where will I go?

  Kaya began to move faster, and further away. Angie followed her for hundreds of yards, far beyond the thin plastic strips reading DO NOT CROSS.

  Even with her platform shoes elevating her, the silty black swamp water occasionally reached Angie’s ankles. Sawgrass sliced her skin, paper-thin cuts in her calves that seeped blood.

  She followed the shape of her daughter into a gully, grabbing onto the cracked, exposed roots of fever-trees as she stepped down. The roots felt strange in her hands, fleshy and warm.

  Angie followed the dim light of her distant daughter to the end of the gully where it gave way to standing water. She ignored the mosquitoes that swarmed her.

  Here at the gully’s end, the wind felt sharper across her face. Branches and debris, like corpses, were hung in the gnarled trees which rose from the water. The trees were old and sparse and reached to the sky like the withered hands of old men.

  Angie back tracked along the gully until she came to a dead end. Static interference ran across her eyes. Angie’s skin had gone past numb, her body a heavy sack around her. Her legs gave out beneath her. Her knees went liquid and she hit the ground with a muffled thump.

  Angie cried out, “Kaya.”

  The glowing little girl was nowhere to be seen.

  Angie was deep in the woods, bleeding and alone in the dark.

  Her daughter had left her. Angie felt like she deserved it.

  How many times have you left her, sweetie?

  The truth of the thought, and the sick impact of the night, hit her full force. Tears fell from Angie’s face and dripped across her right forearm, which was trapped under her head as she rolled onto her side.

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  Angie felt a sudden pain, like tiny needles across her chest and her arm, like the thorns of her rose tattoo had become substance and were pressing through the surface. The trees above were whispering again.

  You are with us now. You can end here. Don’t hurt anymore.

  She mouthed the words softly, without thinking them, her voice devoid of tone. She felt the cold inside her belly spreading across her whole body, interrupted only by the fire in her chest and arms.

  Then she felt fear, for a moment, a great and cold blackness that rushed through her and forced reality into her mind, panic-fast.

  Where was Stacy tonight? Why did I even agree to go? How did I get here? I’m hallucinating. I’ve been raped. I’m dying. I followed my daughter into the woods. I’m muttering suicidal bullshit. I can’t control any of this. Something is doing this to me. Somebody is fucking with my head.

  The little girl couldn’t have been Kaya, she was too young. Someone or something had tricked her into being where she was right now, ready
to die.

  Or maybe you want this, sweetie? It feels right, doesn’t it? Dying like this.

  No, I have to find Kaya. Get back to Kaya. Make things right.

  Yet she was here, with the brambles, broken sticks and dead wood in a clearing where nothing grew. She had come to a place where things ended, and she was sinking into the earth.

  Her arms and chest felt like they were on fire. She lifted her head to see the damage.

  Her arm was burning, held tight to the soil beneath it. The ground was wet with her tears. Something thin and dark was wrapping itself around the inside of her right arm, shifting like worms beneath the surface, and the muscle all around it was constricted.

  In the thin blue light of the moon she watched as the dark ink became thick and spread under the skin of her arms, coming down from her shoulder and branching. She felt them stretching out beneath her skin, growing from their source. The tendrils wove beneath the skin of her hand.

  She looked closer. Ink. It looks like ink. Dark black and green like the tattoo on my chest.

  The fire beneath her skin soared. She closed her eyes and clenched her jaw to stifle the pain. She heard her skin tearing.

  She was blooming.

  Roots grew through the skin of her arm, wet with her blood. As the roots pushed into the earth and she sank deeper into the soil, she felt herself connecting to something. Something cold and ancient that wanted her to be still and never move again. Through her new roots, whispers entered her blood, heavy like opium.

  Don’t be afraid. You can end now. All of you end like this. All of you.

  The thorns of the rose pushed through her thin skin and rivulets of blood trickled warm into the ground.

  She watched as the ink slithered and coalesced on the back of her hand, creating a perfectly crafted rose bud. She watched the bud swell beneath her skin and then it was pushed out the ends of her fingers and burst into the open, splattering her face with tiny red droplets. All the tendrils emerged into the open and began to rise into the air.

  The bud opened in the moonlight, red velvet flower petals dripping with life.

  Angie smelled roses, sweet as summer, exhaled, and fell into darkness.

  Chapter 2: Family Time

  Colleen wants me to be part of the family now, Curtis Loew thought, choosing another black and white photo to work on. Why else would she entrust her photo albums to me?

  Well...okay, she doesn't really know I have them. But I'm sure she'd be fine with it.

  Having these photo albums, being in charge of repairing and restoring them—it's like I'm the head of the family.

  Curtis brushed the long hair out of his eyes and turned the photo over. “I had a cousin Josh Tosent in 1957,” he said, delighted, as he retraced the faded name and date on the back of it. Then he turned it over again and looked at the picture of the tall bald man leaning against the Chevy with the giant fins. “I wonder if he's still alive. I'd like a visit with him.”

  Maybe I'll find him online. Curtis reached over and turned on his computer.

  Yes, he was sure Colleen already considered him part of the Smith family. He could even imagine taking care of her in her old age, which would probably not be long in coming. She'd be ill-tempered. She would stink and he'd have to clean her, change her diapers and so on. He wouldn't mind because she was family and that was a bond worth working for. He could put up with a lot, if he knew he had a place in her life.

  He thought of Kaya Smith, playing in the street yesterday, in her leotards. He could clearly see the shapes of her breasts and nipples through the fabric. He was certain her grandmother would not talk to her about sex. It looked like he'd have to be the one to do it. Of course it was better if a female family member talked with her, but Colleen...? Poor woman. Well, now that he was family, he'd just have to take up the slack.

  First he’d have to get Kaya to trust him.

  Curtis was frustrated with his progress with Kaya. She was not responsive to him. She didn't consider him family yet. He had asked her to call him Uncle Curtis. He had given her gifts: electronic games, a cell phone, even jewelry. It was cheap jewelry that he'd bought at a convenience store, but he was fairly certain it was silver. She'd given him a simple thank you with no evidence of emotion behind it. All in good time, he told himself, trying to relax and let nature take its course. All in good time.

  A couple of weeks ago, he took Kaya and Colleen out for pizza, but once again Kaya showed no real gratitude. The only time she showed any emotion was when their order came and she discovered there were onions on it.

  “You said no onions!” she said, her eyes wide and unbelieving. Fearful, she backed away from the table, looking about helplessly. It would seem the whole world was against her and she didn't know which way to turn.

  Curtis felt he had somehow betrayed her, but this passed quickly.

  “It'll be fine,” Colleen said, drunkenly.

  “I'll take it back and get another,” Curtis said.

  “I won't eat here,” Kaya said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I'm going to sit at the window.”

  Curtis recognized the threat immediately. No one sat out in the open in a public place ever since the spree killings had begun—too many snipers. Children Kaya's age were especially warned about this.

  What fascinated Curtis was that her display not only made her more attractive to him, but also stimulated his desire to protect her. Had she learned to do this or did it come naturally? Living with Colleen, Kaya’s world was terribly unstable, perhaps even dangerous. But the outburst was obviously not for her grandmother—Colleen had long since stopped caring about Kaya's emotional reactions. Would she have done this with anyone, or had it been especially for Curtis' benefit? If the latter were true, perhaps she did have feelings for him. Perhaps she did see him as a member of the family after all; the strong male figure who would protect and provide for her. Perhaps she was testing this bond.

  I suppose this is what it’s like, dealing with your children, Curtis thought.

  “We'll just leave,” he said with a smile. “Go get in the car. I’ll pay up and be right out.”

  Kaya was immediately calmed.

  Curtis waited for the exit to close behind the two Smiths and then ordered another pizza—without onions—to be delivered to Colleen’s house. Then he drove them home and waited in his car until they retreated indoors. He hoped the pizza would arrive before Colleen could fix her standard dinner: Egg sandwiches. Their house always stank of them.

  His computer ready, Curtis connected to the internet. He used a search engine to look for Josh Tosent with no results. Since he was missing cousin Josh so much, he decided he'd just have to invent something about him. But as he steered his browser to the genealogy site he'd been using to help him build a family tree for the Smiths, he decided that perhaps he shouldn't invent anything for cousin Josh just yet. If little was known of his family in general, that branch of the tree might be just the one on which to graft the small twig he had built to contain his own name.

  He searched information about the Tosent family in general and found several pedigrees that had been posted, including one which mentioned Josh Tosent as the son of one Harold Pulwart Tosent, adopted son of Randall Henson Smith, Colleen’s grandfather. Apparently little was known of Harold’s origins. There was no information about where the name Tosent—presumably his father’s name—had come from. Harold Pulwart Tosent had had two children, cousin Josh Folger Tocent and Elloise James Tocent. There was no further information about Elloise, but that she had headed to California in the ‘60s and was never heard from again. There was speculation that she had died in an automobile accident at the age of twenty-two.

  This was just the kind of set-up Curtis had hoped for. He found he could download the pedigree. Now he could alter it, adding the name he had come up with for his father, Gerald Troy Loew, as being the husband to Elloise James Tosent. He did this and then uploaded it to appear on his web site. He’d post a interest-piquing no
te—something like, “Newly discovered Tocent-Loew connection to Smith family”—on the message board forum he’d found belonging to the Smiths to whom Colleen and Kaya were related, and provide a link to his site.

  Now he’s my Uncle Josh, Curtis thought. Satisfied that he had legitimized his membership in the Smith family, Curtis disconnected from the internet and shut down his computer, then went to bed.

  He dreamed of Kaya. A naked angel, she hovered over him.

  There were eyes all around them.

  Curtis felt guilty as hell.

  Chapter 3: Sunrise, Sunset

  One drop.

  Then another.

  Then the clouds broke wide and the rain began.

  Angie could feel it happening. She knew the rain was pouring down, and felt it soaking through the soil and into her body. She heard the steady percussion of each drop hitting the ground by her head. She could see the rain falling all around her, but not with her eyes. It was as though her optic nerves had rooted themselves to the ground and she had an impossible view of the gully, one which was all-encompassing and not limited by line of sight.

  She could feel the rain dropping into her wide-open eyes and covering her vision as if with a veil of tears, but didn’t blink because her lids were obstructed from closing.

  She didn't move at all.

  She couldn't.

  Angie felt the drops run into her gaping mouth, a tiny river of coppery water sliding down her throat. Stranger was the sensation that the water was entering through her arm, where the rose had taken root. The hand beneath the rose looked stiff, its fingers splayed wide, claw-like. The fingertips looked slimmer, bonier, like her flesh was being sucked out and down into the earth through the same roots that fed her.