Chapter Fifty
Alone in the grave, Helen began to hear the destruction from above again. It was Wade’s shouts of pain and the sounds of breaking
boards.
He needed help.
Helen wasn’t ready to leave the slipstream of her past though. She covered her face with her hands, and the memories of Tyler
came flooding back to her along with the understanding that while she now knew that he was somewhere safe and pure and sweet,
she was still here in this broken existence without him. And how many years would she have to go on without him? Forty, fifty,
sixty? A sobering length of time.
She screamed, so loud it was almost inhuman. It wasn’t a scream of pain or anger exactly. It was a scream of everything that
had been bottled up inside of her for two long years. It finally all released, and the animals and the land absorbed her cry
so she wouldn’t have to carry it all by herself anymore. Many miles away, owls on branches turned their heads in commiseration.
Coyotes tilted their heads back and screeched along with her. Leaves broke free and fluttered to the forest floor, and ripples
formed in the pond.
When Helen’s scream finally stopped, everything around her was silent.
Her body felt firmly rooted to this time and place. She inhaled the musky smell of the freshly dug dirt, and that connection
to the earth flooded her with the fortitude she needed to face this. She straightened her spine. She could be brave. It was
time to call off the dark.
She grabbed the Edgar Allan Poe book and tossed it out of the grave. Next, she tossed the dead raven out, then picked up the
gun and hesitated briefly. The grave was so deep that climbing out would be a challenge. She set the gun on the grass above
and placed her palms on either side, dug the front of one shoe into the yielding dirt wall for leverage as she lifted her
opposite leg, and then hoisted as hard as she could. She rolled onto the grass and felt the heat of the nearby fire immediately.
Grabbing the gun, she sat up on her knees. There was destruction all around. Wood panels torn from the side of the house;
the wheelbarrow, buckets, and trash scattered about.
The entire garden was burning, and Wade lay unmoving on the grass. She didn’t think he was dead though. She’d seen death before
and it felt different.
Isaac faced Helen and asked, “What will it be?” He’d ripped their entire property to pieces and beat her husband unconscious,
yet Isaac didn’t have a mark on him. He looked the same as always, ready to sit down to dinner with her.
Only minutes earlier, she’d tentatively confronted Isaac with a trembling in her core, but now the fear was gone. From Tyler,
she’d drawn the strength she needed. When her body had crawled out of the grave, an important part of her soul had crawled
back from the dead too. All that buried courage and hope. It was still there, deep inside her. It had never really abandoned
her after all; she just hadn’t been able to feel it for so long, but now she could. She knew what she needed to do.
Helen stood up, holding the gun at her side. “I want to thank you, Isaac.”
“Thank me?” He smiled in faint amusement. “Go on then. Thank me.”
“You showed such curiosity in my thoughts and feelings. I don’t know if that was real or if you were just enjoying messing
with your brother’s wife, but it doesn’t matter. Because it made me feel a certain way, and it woke me up. So thank you.”
She inhaled fortitude and stood up straighter. “But now I want you to leave.” The heat of the fire prickled on her face.
“Leave? But we were just getting used to each other’s darkness.” His eyes looked sad, and she believed the reaction was genuine.
For a moment, Helen considered the man Isaac might have been if his father hadn’t beaten him, if his mother hadn’t died when
he was a little boy, and if he’d learned to be friends with his brother instead of rivals. Or if he’d simply done what so
many other people in this world managed to do: endure life’s worst challenges instead of letting the devil on their shoulder
win.
She pointed the gun at him. She thought of the masked man, who she now knew she was never going to kill. She was going to
find a way to move past that too.
So instead, she fired at Isaac, emptying every bullet in the gun.
The bullets went straight through him, causing no damage. He stood his ground and stared calmly at her until she was done.
Isaac said, “You knew that wouldn’t work.”
Helen shrugged. “I know. But I wanted to feel it just the same.” She tossed the gun aside.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I told you. Leave.”
“Why don’t I believe you?”
Helen picked up the Poe book and flung it into the burning garden. When it hit the flames, it fed the fire. She threw the
dead raven in next and felt the heat magnify.
Isaac’s eyes followed her actions, watching the flames spread violently. He looked at Helen, and for the first time, he seemed
uncertain.
She crossed the yard to him, and he took a step back as she reached him. That step backward bolstered her feeling of dominion. She gripped the front of his shirt, and his face went dark with the realization that he wasn’t in control any longer.
“You really want me to go,” he said.
“I want you to go,” she repeated.
Still gripping Isaac’s shirt, Helen turned toward the fire and started forward, forcing him back with each step.
Just as Tyler had moments earlier, Isaac began to flicker. His body no longer appeared as a solid man, but unlike the beauty
of an apparition that Tyler had been, all Helen saw was a ghost that needed to go. She wasn’t going to let him use her pain
any longer to slip into their world to carry out his dark plans.
“But I wasn’t done,” Isaac said.
“You aren’t supposed to be here.”
They were on the fiery edge of the garden now. Helen briefly wondered what it would feel like to burn alive herself, but the
thought was so ephemeral that later she wouldn’t even remember that it had flashed in her mind.
“Come with me then,” Isaac said, and there was a part of his words that still sounded enticing. But it was only a very small
part now, so small that if anyone had been able to ask her if she still felt that way, she would have said no and it wouldn’t
have been an intentional lie.
“Goodbye, Isaac,” Helen said, and she pushed him backward into the flames.
Isaac’s expression was one of disappointment and anger as she released him, until the very last moment, when he smiled at
her. That smile wormed its way into the darker parts of her soul as she watched him fall. Just before the flames could engulf
him, he disappeared altogether. Gone like dust.
And then the fire abruptly extinguished, leaving behind charred, blackened crops.
Suddenly, Wade sat up, awakening with a dazed groan. “Is he gone?”
Helen went to him and knelt beside him. “Yes. He’s not coming back.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
“What?”
“Trust me,” she said. “Everything’s okay.”
Though Wade had never put much stock into the things Helen said, his shoulders relaxed as if he accepted the words as true.
He lowered his head and took several deep, labored breaths as she ran a comforting hand across his back. They sat that way
for a long time.
Finally, Wade looked up and said, “Isaac really is gone.” It was a statement, but she heard the question lurking beneath it.
“Isaac really is gone,” she repeated firmly. “He disappeared with the fire. It’s over.”
Wade studied her with a circumspect expression, as if he’d always known there was an underground world inside her. But still,
he didn’t ask. Instead, he nodded, his relief palpable as he accepted her simple explanation.
Then he rubbed his face and glanced around, taking in the mess. “Your garden.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Don’t worry.
We’ll replant it.”
As she stared at the smoldering remains, Helen realized she’d gotten her wish to burn all the damn Brussels sprouts. “No,
Wade,” she said. “We won’t.” Then she wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” Wade said. “I love you.”
They sat with their arms around each other for several long moments until Helen asked, “But do you like me?”
“What?”
She let go of him and sat back so she could see his face. “Do you like me?”
“I just said I loved you, didn’t I?”
“I know. And I believe you do, in your own way. But do you like me?”
Wade scoffed. “What’s the difference, Helen? Isn’t loving your wife more important than liking her?”
“In some ways, yes. In other ways, no.”
“Stop with the riddles.”
“Oh, Wade.” Helen sighed. “You don’t even like the way I talk.”
“What? You’re picking a fight now? After everything?” Wade gestured helplessly at the mess around them.
“No, that’s the thing. I’m not picking a fight. I’m just pointing out how different we are. We’ve been through a lot together.
I don’t think any of this has been easy on either of us. But we’ve also led very separate, lonely lives out here. We don’t
know each other that well, not really. And we don’t like each other nearly as much as we should.”
“That’s a ridiculous thing to say.”
“Do you though?” Helen pressed. “Do you like me?”
After a long beat, Wade turned to her and said, “Lots of husbands don’t like their wives all that much.”
“But Wade,” she said. “They should.”