Siren Promised Read online

  This isn't real. This is just the acid. It won't let me go. I'm probably in the hospital again, hooked to machines, pissing through a tube. Cypher’s standing in the corner, laughing, waiting for me to wake up.

  The sun that had crested the trees just moments before was now beginning its descent. She tracked its light. It shimmered through the rain as it moved.

  The rain fell fast but didn't muddy the ground. It brought with it a clean smell, although the wet soil beneath her now reeked like compost.

  Of death. Decay.

  Angie felt moments of blackness and quiet as the sun traced its arc through the sky. Beneath the blackness there were the whispers.

  Rest now. You are with us. We are with you. In you. We have held you since the first seed. We have called to every drop. They are all here, they are all quiet.

  Water pooled in her palm as the rose swayed under the pelting raindrops.

  Join us beneath everything. It’s so quiet here. So calm.

  Angie was mouthing the words, her lips moving slow, as if in reverent prayer.

  You are open to us now, but we’ve been calling for so long. Your blood answers.

  Angie felt no hunger. The sadness that sat in her chest felt thin and weightless. She had to push her mind harder to find her thoughts. When she felt she was conscious, the whispers that fell from her lips came quicker, more frenzied.

  You wanted this. You belong here. The world was wrong. Wrong to you.

  All you've done is fail.

  The last thought was her own, joining the chorus.

  You have nothing to live for. Fucking worthless.

  The sun fell farther. The rain ceased and dusk light sharpened Angie’s sight.

  There, at the moment before the sun left the day behind, Angie saw the gully.

  She saw everything. Around her, rising from the wet earth, were a collection of branches that weren't branches. Twigs that curled like fingers. Whorls in dead wood, open mouths with their lips curled back in agony, puddled with fresh rainfall.

  Others had fallen in the gully. Others surrounded her, still and windtorn, weathered.

  Nothing lived here. But so many had died.

  You belong here.

  Every wooden face the light revealed was trapped in a scream. The shapes told her the truth. She was dead center in a splinter of hell, and her arm was feeding into the darkness under her.

  Oh my God, I can't be here. This can't be where I die. I can't die. I just can't. This isn't even happening. It’s just a bad trip and maybe I'm dreaming.

  Be with us. There will be no more pain.

  Wake up.

  What the fuck am I doing here? How did I get here? What did Cypher do to me?

  Oh, shit. I followed Kaya.

  Kaya.

  Angie found she could close her eyes now. She closed them hard, shut out the sight of twisted branches and dead leaves that were pressing closer to her prone body. The strange, omnipresent sight she’d possesed was gone.

  In her head she pictured Kaya on the day she was born. She saw Kaya's new gray eyes staring back at her, smelled the wonderful, strong smell of new life.

  Kaya. My angel.

  She will die soon. You can be together and no one will hurt you.

  Angie felt the words on her own lips. She could hear her own voice speaking of her daughter’s death as if it were a blessing.

  No! Kaya’s only thirteen. She doesn’t need to die. She can still be okay, even without me. Even if I’m gone. She’s special. She can figure things out, be happy.

  Angie could see no light beyond her closed eyelids. Night had returned to her.

  Her breath slowed and she found that letting go could be as simple as not trying to breathe. Then the scream came, shrill and high-pitched, like an electric shock.

  She was a mother. She knew her child’s cries like no other’s. She ached at the sound and felt light across her eyes.

  Sunrise again?

  She opened her eyes.

  Kaya was standing ten feet away from her, amidst the deadwood. This time she was thirteen, and wearing a long white t-shirt and nothing else. She stared at her mother, directly into her eyes. The glow from Kaya cast a light across the rose that held Angie to the earth. The rose began to wither. Angie could feel blood rushing back to her extremities.

  She reached out for Kaya. Kaya’s eyes suddenly became wide and filled with trapped-animal fear. Her eye’s remained locked on her mother’s as the girl’s wavering image began to rise above the soil, even as purple bruises began to spread across her neck and her face turned deep red.

  The bruises became the shape of a man’s hands, squeezing tight.

  Kaya reached out one soft, white hand toward her mother, then disappeared. Her dying image was burnt bright into Angie’s retinas.

  Angie cried out, and the sound carried deep into the hollow morass beyond. Her scream was filled with anger. There was no trace of resignation in the sound.

  She felt her heartbeat thumping through her body, every inch of her vital, and aching.

  The flower was gone.

  She wasn't connected to the ground anymore. She rose from the loose soil and stood, swooning until her blood caught up with her head. A sheen of sweat was cooling on her skin as the forest wind slid over her.

  The dead wood in the gully around her began to crack and splinter.

  She felt movement across her left foot. Something was scraping at her, trying to dig through her skin. Angie tore her foot away and began to run. The direction didn't matter. Her breath was hot and ragged and reminded her that she was alive. She ran as hard as she could away from the empty place behind her, felt it reaching for her and feared she might at any moment be pressed to the earth again.

  She ran until she had to stop. The gully was behind her. The swamp trees were receding and she saw orderly rows of cypress in the distance. She’d find her way back to the farm.

  She knew that if she kept moving she'd hit a road.

  She'd find a road, and then, somehow, she'd find her way home, away from Cypher, back to Kaya.

  ~~~

  Hitchhiking hadn't been easy for years. The last few months of random, nationwide crime and spree-killing had made hitching a short step from impossible. Nobody behind the wheel was willing to roll the dice. The odds on encountering inhumanity were way up.

  Angie walked twelve miles out of the woods before a long-haul trucker decided to press his luck. As she stepped up into the diesel-belching rig she expected the standard “ass, grass, or cash” pitch, but the man behind the wheel kept it quiet and courteous.

  No questions, thank God, aside from wanting to know where she was headed.

  She sat down as slow as she could and said, “South Barker, if you're headed that way.”

  “Yup, I'm rolling through there.”

  He said nothing else as they rode through the night. Angie zoned out on the roadway in the headlights, tried to calm herself by listening to the rumble of the engine and the thin flow of air coming in through the driver's window.

  Angie noticed the headlights of oncoming cars had a multi-color luster to them. She felt like her vision was floating a foot behind her head, separate and disembodied.

  She still felt high.

  This trip won't ever end.

  She shivered at the thought.

  The truck driver caught her shiver, switched on the defrost heat.

  Part of her wanted to thank him for the gesture, but speaking felt dangerous. She thought that the voice from the woods might find a way out into the world through her lips.

  You can end here.

  She shivered again. She put her head against her window and felt the cool sink into her forehead, wondered if she had a fever. She couldn't wait until they got closer to the city and away from the tree-lined interstate. Every couple of miles there were fallen trees close to the roadway.

  As they passed a large deadfall she saw something in the flash of the headlights. A body, naked, missing its head, arms and legs spread wide. With a rose tattoo on its chest.

  She turned to face the dash and closed her eyes hard.

  Just don't look, Angie, don't look. It's not real. None of this is real. Except for Kaya. Just find Kaya. Wait this thing out. Get clean, once and for all.

  She brought her knees up to her chest and started shaking. She wanted to stop but couldn't.

  The truck driver let her off at the first gas station he could find. She saw nothing but relief in his eyes as he said, “Goodbye, Miss. Take care.”

  ~~~

  Without money Angie figured she had about zero options. She knew she could score some cash by spending some “quality time” in the men’s restroom at any truck stop along the strip, but that could wait until she’d gotten some sleep.

  Stranded in South Barker. Trapped in a bad acid trip, starved, and dehydrated.

  Morning was approaching. She’d spent a day and a half in the woods. Her body was moving only because she willed it to.

  Angie entered the womens’ restroom at the gas station and rushed for the sink. She turned the cold water knob and then cupped her dirt-brown hands under the tap. She was too thirsty to wash first and started slurping back big handfuls of water. She tasted the soil from her hands in her mouth and felt her gag reflex kick up.

  We are in you.

  She held it back and began to clean her hands, careful to avoid her reflection in the mirror. She could picture her eyes, deep in the sockets, tired, pathetic, pupils blown wide. Pale blue irises surrounded by burst capillaries.

  She knew of one place nearby where she might be able to get some cash.

  The Courtyard. Rusky owes big time. But there’s no fucking way I'm going there until the sun comes up.

  She closed herself into the far
bathroom stall and sat on the toilet. She put her arms on the handicap bar and lay her head down.

  Her sleep was shallow and visited by voices that begged her not to wake up.

  Chapter 4: Contraction & Expansion

  Colleen had called Curtis at 8:45 p.m. to ask him to come fix her leaky sink. When he arrived with his toolbox in hand, Kaya answered the door. She looked him in the eye briefly and gave him a shy smile—the first she had ever given him—then headed out the door as he entered.

  Suddenly he was unaccountably irritated. He felt he should be elated at this break-through with Kaya. Instead he was uncomfortable being in the Smith house and wanted to leave, but Colleen appeared in her bathrobe and ushered him into the kitchen.

  He spent an hour lying on his back under sink, trying to fix the leaking drain. He tried tightening the joints of the p-trap but that didn't help. His bad back was killing him as he shifted around trying to get a better grip on the pipe. The leak got worse the more he tightened the joints. The foul water dripped on his face and ran down his neck into his shirt.

  Curtis had smelled mildew before, but Colleen’s mildew was the worst. It also smelled like there were dead, rotting rodents under the damp, splitting boards beneath him.

  Goddamn this woman—why couldn't she take care of this sort of thing before it got to be such a terrible problem?

  Colleen stood in front of the sink, her bathrobe tied loosely so he could look up inside if he wanted. He didn't want to. He wanted her to leave. She was blocking his light.

  “Turn off the water,” he growled at her.

  Damn—he'd have to take the p-trap out and replace it. The problem with old plumbing like this was that when you disturbed one area by disconnecting a joint, it often caused leaks elsewhere. Once you started with a job like this, you never knew when it was going to end.

  The wrench slipped off the pipe joint and he tore his knuckles open against the rusted housing for the garbage disposal. He cried out in pain.

  The flow of water from the leak increased.

  “I said turn off the water, damn it!”

  When the water didn't cease, Curtis struggled to extricate himself from the tight confines of the cabinet. Colleen grabbed him by the legs and pulled. When he finally pulled his head out, Colleen fell on top of him, pressed her mouth against his and inserted her tongue between his lips. Her tongue was dry, like a cat’s, and tasted like soured milk.

  Curtis threw her off him, scrambled to his feet.

  Colleen lay partially under the kitchen table, looking up at him without emotion.

  My family is so distant.

  “What's wrong with you?” he shouted at her. “Don't you have any pride at all? Look at the way you live, the way you act. There’s a young girl living here, depending on you. Don't you want to be a good example to her?”

  “So what—you've come into our lives to make things better?” she replied, flatly. “You think you're a good role-model? You don't even work. You think you can buy your way into our hearts with presents and good deeds, and I've seen the way you look at Kaya. I know what you're after.”

  Curtis wanted to haul her up off the floor and beat her to a pulp.

  “You want her, not me.” Colleen smiled miserably. “That's fine. You take her and do whatever you want, as long as you keep it quiet and keep coming around here and helping out—maybe some money every now and then....”

  Rage welled up in Curtis until his vision blurred. He struggled to remain aware of his surroundings. He heard his voice, but couldn't make out what it was saying. At times it was raised to shouting pitch, at others it seemed so quiet and calculating, he was frightened to know what was being said. His animal brain was talking and his rational mind could not keep up.

  His anger told him he was telling Colleen exactly what he thought of her and what she should do about it.

  Her usually bland, expressionless features flashed with emotion: contempt, surprise, fear.

  And shame. Deep shame. He could see the ache of it spreading from her heart to her face, flame-red.

  Then he was outside, crossing the street and entering his house. He couldn’t locate the half pint of bourbon he'd bought for the holidays last year. He found his bed and lay there sweating for over an hour, listening to his heart rate and waiting for it to slow down.

  It wouldn’t. He threw on an old corduroy jacket and headed out the front door. He needed a drink.

  ~~~

  “Hey, you all right, pal?”

  Curtis had been staring at the varnished surface of the bar, trying to breathe steadily and stop shaking. He couldn’t ditch the feeling that he should be ashamed of how he treated Colleen. Until the bartender said something, he almost forgot where he was. He responded, quickly.

  “I’m not your pal.” The anger wouldn’t let go of him.

  The bartender smiled. “Yeah, I know, pal, but that’s what I always call people I’ve never seen around here before. So, pal, what can I get you?”

  Curtis ordered a whisky on the rocks. He asked to buy the bottle, but the bartender said it was a little late in the evening to be acting like a cowboy. Curtis felt embarrassed, paid for his drink, and sat down at a circular table at the far corner of the bar.

  He thought of Colleen’s offer and imagined undressing Kaya. She would be distant, unreachable. That would help, but still, he knew, he would have trouble with his conscience.

  He heard Colleen’s voice in his head. “Do whatever you want,” she slurred drunkenly.

  The fantasy was shattered. She shouldn’t have given permission. I didn’t want her permission.

  He picked up the glass with his shaking left hand and began to drink. As his heart began to slow and his throat and chest warmed up, he bent his head and wept into his arms. The bartender and his scattered clientele paid him no mind. Curtis was surrounded and alone. His memories kept him company and slow sips of whisky kept him from screaming aloud.

  He thought about how perfect things had been when he’d first met the Smiths.

  Ever since he’d moved into the neighborhood, Curtis had spent a lot of time sitting at the window of his upstairs bedroom watching the occupants of the house across the street. He had decided that whoever was living in that house would become his family. He knew he could have chosen his family from any in the neighborhood, but that wouldn’t be fair—no one else got to choose their family.

  He'd gotten information about them online and so knew they were the Smiths, Colleen and her thirteen-year-old granddaughter, Kaya. He watched them coming and going in their car, checking the mailbox and so forth, but had not introduced himself.

  He didn’t want to give them the impression he was up to something. He didn’t want to frighten the young girl before he had a chance to win her heart.

  They were not particularly interesting. But they were the easiest family for him to watch, and because he had focused on them, he really had no interest in the other neighbors, though he could see their houses and activities with a little extra effort.

  One could only have a single family, after all.

  There were long periods when he could not see them, so Curtis moved his computer and desk nearer the window so he could work online while he watched and he'd gotten a better chair—one that would swivel and lean back—so he’d be more comfortable.

  It reminded him of his lonely habit of sitting in the upstairs window at the Russell foster home and watching the neighborhood there. He had spent his teenage years in that cold but efficient home, watching the neighborhood kids—children with families and friends—play in the streets.

  The difference was that when he was a kid, he could sit in the open window and look out at the neighborhood without worrying that folks might think he was up to no good. The kids called him names and occasionally threw things at him, but no one questioned his right to sit and watch all he wanted.

  When he became an adult, he had learned the painful lesson that folks did not like adults watching them. He had learned to do his watching from behind window glass with a bit of curtain or blind to help hide his presence.

  He slowly learned about his new family, the Smiths. Most of the time Colleen looked totally out of it, her hair a mess, makeup blurred and clothes unkempt. At first he figured this must have resulted from the difficulties of raising an adolescent girl.

  Though he had not immediately reacted to Kaya, he had slowly become fascinated with the thirteen-year-old. There was a loneliness and sadness about her that he could identify with. She was very pretty in a lean sort of way, and though Curtis wasn’t sure if this was possible, she was getting prettier every day. Perhaps he was just getting used to looking at her.