6. Claire
I dragged myself back to the bed using what little energy I did have and crawled under the covers. I’m just about asleep, floating on the fringe of consciousness, when there’s a light knock on the door. I don’t have the energy to tell them to come in or to go away, but thankfully it doesn’t matter because the door opens regardless. There’s a moment of quiet, and then Elaine comes around to the center of the room, holding a small tray in her hands. “Rhea said you needed something to help you sleep.” Her voice is gentle, soothing.
When I first met her, Elaine looked at me like I made her want to crawl out of her skin. But then she shifted to acting like I was a part of the family, like we’ve known one another for all my life. It’s weird, and while it may have sent alarm bells going off if I had the chance to really think about it, I can’t focus on it. I’m not sure I can trust her. My instincts are clearly terrible, seeing as how I allowed myself to get into the car with Jovich despite my better interest.
But if Elaine is going to kill me, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Anything would be preferable to the tortured coldness I’m stuck in, the damp and dirty feeling of what I’ve done, the guilt like a collar notched too tight around my neck.
My head spins and every time I close my eyes, I can feel the hands on me… so many hands, dark and decaying demon hands, tearing at my skin and trying to drag me to Hell. If Elaine is going to kill me, it could be chocked up to a mercy killing. At least I won’t be tortured by the prospect of hope anymore.
Elaine moves closer, and I, unable to focus my gaze on her, find myself staring at a spot on her skirt. She drops to her knees at the side of the bed and then her hands are under me, guiding me into a sitting position so that she can place the pill she brought me on my tongue. It starts to dissolve immediately, leaving a bitter taste there before she lifts the water bottle to my lips and tilts it for me.
Swallowing takes too much effort, but I manage to get the water down. Elaine tips the bottle toward me as if offering more, but that was all I can manage. I shake my head just a little, almost prepared to fall back on the pillows again when she lifts a hand to my forehead. Her skin is cool, a comforting relief against the burning of my flesh. My face is hot, but at the same time, I’m so cold that I’m shivering, my entire body trembling so hard that it all aches. I didn’t even notice until her gentle touch on my skin makes me realize as much.
“You’re burning up.” Elaine says, her pale lips drawing into a frown. Concern etches her pretty face as she appraises me. “Lie back.”
I dont need to be told twice. The suggestion is welcome, and I gladly fall back against the mattress, letting my eyes flutter closed. She hovers above me for a moment, moving just a little, and I’m not sure what she’s doing until I feel the comforter being tucked around me. I can feel the weight of it, but not the warmth. “I am so sorry Claire.” She says it gently, but sincerely. “You’re safe now.”
Safe?
I’m not sure I even know the meaning of the word anymore. I’m not sure I ever will again. “Let me check your bandage.” She says, peeling back the hem of my shirt. Her fingers brush against the gauze, sending a wave of discomfort through me, and then I feel the gentle pull as she lifts it gingerly.
A strange sound rolls off of her tongue, and then she replaces it, drops the blanket back in place and pats my arm gently. “You get some sleep Claire. Its the best thing you can do right now.”
I’m not sure I even have a choice; It isnt like I can do anything else. I’m vaguely aware of her walking to the door, and then I let my eyelids close, and the current of sleep takes me.
But it’s not a peaceful sleep. Those same charred hands still claw at me, only this time I dont startle myself awake. Maybe it really is death. I deserve nothing less after what I’ve done. And if it is hell, at least it isnt a stagnant nightmare, the repeated loop of being pulled into the abyss.
It goes on for what feels like an eternity, but then all at once that stops and I’m lying still on a bed staring at the ceiling. It’s quiet... until it isnt. It’s quiet until the screams encompass me, agonizing sounds that come from somewhere I cant see, from people I dont know. And yet, those screams set a crack in my stomach that shatters, sending shards of glass through me and opening up a chasm so deep I fear it will swallow the world.
Instead, it only swallows me, taking me away to another place… a memory.
The whisper in my ear holds me hostage just as much as the fingers on my mouth. “Shh.”
It’s the sound you make to soothe fears, to calm an infant’s wail, to allay someone’s frustration. But it is none of that which leads him to make me quiet. It’s a threat of compliance, a warning not to fight. I’ve never been much of a fighter… not then, not now. So, I allow myself to be hushed and empty my mind, trying not to let myself drown in the memory… or the recurrence of my earliest nightmare.
But it doesnt matter—whether this is life or death, whether this is a memory or a happening. None of it matters anymore, because finally obsoletion takes hold.
***
I’ve been scared of the dark for as long as I can remember. Even before Eric Giante started to sneak into my bed, I always felt that bad things happened when the lights went out. In the cover of quiet and night, monsters can find their prey. And even if the monsters were kept at bay, I had the nightmares to contend with.
The nightmares haunted me long before I decided to stain my soul, before I understood the cruelty mankind was capable of. My first memory is a nightmare… being stuffed into a closet, watching through the slats as figures move around in the relative dark of a bedroom. I don’t know who the figures are, or who the screams belong to, but I guess maybe they’re mine, since I usually wake up screaming. The first time it happened, I lived with the Oterra’s, who weren’t bad, but were woefully unprepared to deal with a child like me. Mrs. Oterra held me for a while, trying to rock me back to sleep even though I had to have been about five years old. Mr. Oterra made me a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of chocolate milk, like that would fix whatever was wrong with me. I dont think I was ever able to tell them what the nightmare was about. They did their best to soothe me, bought me a cool ballerina nightlight and a new stuffed animal to take to bed to ‘protect me’. But none of that kept the nightmares from coming back, night after night. None of that kept me from waking up, screaming, gasping for air, my pillow wet with tears.
I still know, all these years later, that is the reason that they never adopted me. After three years of sleepless nights for a child who wasn’t their own, they’d had enough, and so it was on to the next family.
Those nightmares stopped for a while, but they came back with a vengeance, and they stuck around for the better part of my teenage years. When I met Rhea and convinced myself that I had healed from my past, they stopped for the most part. Every so often, a bad dream would break through, but overall, I had put them behind me.
But the things that swirl through my head as I lay on the bathroom floor, pressing my face against the tile to try and cool off, are a fusion of every unpleasant thought Ive ever had.
This must be hell. I’m a murderer, and now my soul is damned. I’ll live forever in a loop of despair, fear, desperation, pain… so much pain.
The devil knows my name. He has seen what Ive done, and now I am his prisoner. I have no one to blame but myself. I hear him calling to me from the darkest corners of wherever I am, and I cant run from him. Im too weak to sit up, let alone stand. Theres nowhere to hide.
So, I simply lay there, waiting for him to come.
His footsteps get closer, but I never see him. Instead, I feel his presence and the weight of the darkness threatening to pull me under, further into the depths of my purgatory. I’m so emotionally and physically worn out that I dont have anything left in me besides the pain. As everything else fades, the agony only grows, multiplying until I only feel relief when he finally appears.
His face is cast in shadows… or maybe he is made of shadows. I try to get a look at him, but he is darkness incarnate. As he lifts me into his arms, my head falls to the side, and I lose track of which way is up and which is down.