Chapter 6
Chapter
Six
My reprieve from night terrors didn’t last.
That night, I woke on a half-choked scream, delirious on fumes and wielding a paintbrush like a switchblade in my pitch-dark room.
My hand swept across the wall both in broad, sweeping strokes and short, jagged strikes, the paintbrush moving with a confident precision I’d never possessed. Up, across, down, over. Disgorging some twisted vision from deep inside me. Willing it into being. Giving it life.
I tried to speak, but my mouth wouldn’t open.
I tried to stop. Couldn’t.
I was a prisoner in my own skin, trapped behind my eyes, watching my traitorous hand paint something so fucked up I couldn’t fully see it, didn’t want to see it, was desperate not to—
Shhh.
My inner voice was louder than it had ever been—not in my head but in all of me, weaving through every nerve and muscle. It swelled and pushed like a living thing, guiding my body with the casual ease of someone who’d been doing it for years.
Maybe it had been.
“What are you?” I tried to ask, my voice strangled in my own throat. It heard me, though. It answered, anyway.
Almost done. Along with the murmur, satisfaction bled through me like warmth through thin cloth. It’s more than time.
My hand dipped into the paint can at my feet—when had I opened that? How long had I been standing here?—and came up again, dripping black. The brush moved with aching tenderness across the wall, adding shadows to whatever I…it…was creating.
Making it more real. Making it something I couldn’t ignore anymore.
I tried to scream. Nothing came out.
Terror crashed through me in waves, but underneath it, I felt a different sensation: Focus. Concentration. An artist’s absorption in his work.
The scent of embers and chocolate wove around me, heat and want. It smelled almost like...
Longing?
My hand jerked away from the wall, moved to my face.
I felt the brush stroke across my cheek—a slide of thick paint marking me.
The liquid dripped down my jaw, my throat, sinuous fingers slowly exploring unfamiliar territory.
And I sensed the moment the pressure of those fingers shifted, hardened… held.
Mine.
The word ripped through me like a violation, the pressure expanding so abruptly it felt like my skull would explode, my bones shatter, my blood spray out against this wall of filth and horror—
Then everything went black.
The next morning, I awoke in utter darkness, the smell of craft paint nearly choking me. But I didn’t look at what I’d done to my bedroom walls.
I never looked right away.
Instead, I locked my bedroom door, crept downstairs with my blanket, and made coffee with shaking hands.
The next few days passed in a blur. Work, couch, library.
Couch, library, work. I avoided my bedroom, but my housemate, Steve, was out of town, so there was no one to judge me for being unwilling to face four walls of hideous epithets in the light of day.
And there were no more dreams, no more murmurs, no more whispers in the dark.
Of course, the silence was worse. At least when the thing inside me talked, I knew where I stood.
Finally, on Monday, I found myself thinking more about those walls as I wiped down the plexiglass shield protecting the food we served at Kershman’s Deli from the gross people who ordered it.
I’d deal with the walls tonight, probably, after work. I was ready, I thought. I was chill, again, easy. I could handle it.
Working in the deli had certainly helped dull the edge, anyway.
For one thing, customers at Kershman’s Deli only had a limited number of items they could request: sandwiches, salads, or salads on sandwiches.
For another, they usually didn’t give you much attitude, because their eyes weren’t on you, they were on the various items you were putting on their sandwich.
You didn’t touch their food ever, thanks to the plastic gloves, and you didn’t touch them either, thanks to the thick barrier between your hands and theirs.
Which was why I generally liked my job at Kershman’s Deli. At least until 1 p.m. rolled around every weekday, Monday through Friday, and Claire Bickwell from the pharmacy down the street showed up in line—this time behind some guy I’d never seen before.
I didn’t know Claire Bickwell, not really.
She had bouncy blonde hair, a cupid’s bow pink smile, and she was small boned and slender.
Delicate. She looked to be about thirty or so, but her energy skewed younger.
She tried to chat whenever she came in, like everyone was her friend. And so, of course, I should be too.
I didn’t like her. If she wasn’t alone, she was almost always with the same guy, but that guy was an absolute jerk. He smelled like someone else almost from the beginning, I finally realized. Not like her.
There was no way I would have told her that, though. I mean, who said things like that? Who could scent betrayal the way some people picked out floral notes in wine?
Still, Claire had asked a question about her boyfriend, I thought.
The last time she was here. A question that had unexpectedly come along with the order of an avocado turkey sandwich and green tea.
A question I’d responded to, possibly quick and harsh, probably quick and harsh.
But still true. I tried hard to be truthful.
The truth was always simpler, cleaner. More powerful.
Now Claire was back and ordering something different. With a new guy who smelled like her.
“What would you like on your turkey avocado?” Polite and cheerful, I remained ever the helpful counter girl. Claire made meaningful eyes at me, then at the guy in front of her. She didn’t introduce us. I didn’t care.
After a second, she gave up. “Everything but peppers and onions, like always. No salt, but please add the vinaigrette. And thank you,” she said, emphasizing the words as I busied myself with her preparations. I looked up again, then passed along the sandwich to the cashier.
“No problem.”
“No, I mean, thank you.” Again with the eyes. I looked at the guy who wasn’t her old boyfriend but could be her new boyfriend, then back at her. Had I told her something about the previous guy? Aired my olfactory suspicions out loud?
I grimaced. If I had, I wouldn’t necessarily remember. I said what I knew to be true when people asked me. It’d been a problem of mine since way back. That didn’t make me some kind of hero.
“Anything else?” I asked, not trying to soften the edge in my voice, and she blinked, a blush climbing up her cheeks.
Claire was only a little older than me, but unlike me, she hadn’t been working her way through college one class at a time.
She’d graduated on schedule and was a pharmacist, working shit hours at a fancy Oak Park pharmacy in pursuit of earning an eventual fortune by dispensing pills to supplicants at her plexiglass shield.
She’d always seemed nice, and I’d never wanted to talk to her.
“Yes,” she said, surprising me. She had a card out—a business card, cheap white stock with blue and black printed letters. She flashed the back of it to show me the cell number she’d written there, then handed it over the counter.
“I can’t handle not speaking up when I see an issue, and I see one,” she said. “You’re too pale, Delia. It’s Delia, right? Too tired. I can help you get better sleep. Call me.”
I stared at her, and she stared back, with all the imperiousness of a woman who wore a white coat most of the day.
“No,” I said.
But this was Claire Bickwell, her shiny nameplate pin said so, and I could see her story in her eyes.
Small upper-middle-class family, loving parents, teachers who were too easily impressed.
Shitty taste in boyfriends, even the new one, who seemed vaguely uncomfortable as he glanced between us, a frown marring his too soft lips.
Oh, honey. I fought the snicker. If you think Claire makes you uncomfortable now…
“Yes,” Claire countered over my counter, and she flicked the card toward me, a neat little frisbee spin. I couldn’t help myself—I ducked. Not really even ducked, just got out of the way of the spinning little card, harmless and stupid, but still a threat, still a—
I stopped. Claire’s eyes were wide now, and so was Skye’s, the teenage cashier beside me. “What?” I snapped. “I don’t want your card.”
“I can cash you out,” Skye squeaked.
“Thank you,” Claire Bickwell said with her lips pursed into their little bow, unruffled, unworried.
She swung her perfect blonde hair and faced forward, the fluorescent lights catching the little gold cross on its delicate chain at her throat, and I turned to the next person.
Nevertheless, I felt uneasy until she and her newest arm candy had paid for their subs and left the building.
They wouldn’t eat at the little metal tables in front of the shop.
That would be way too down-market for Claire.
She’d probably invited her new guy over specifically on her lunch break from the pharmacy so she could give me the meaningful eyeball.
Now that she’d done so, she’d go back to her perfect, plastic life with her perfect, plastic boyfriend, crisply pressed in khakis and a light blue button-down the color of his eyes.
Probably sold insurance and owned a Prius he couldn’t afford.
They’d be insanely happy together. I didn’t care.
The shuffle and thrum of customers continued, soothing and easy. After the lunch rush was done, the mid-shift cleaning began, and I lost myself in the bright aluminum and sparkling plexiglass and lumbering rumble of the six refrigerated units.
Then something moved close to me—too close. But it was a quiet, gentle intrusion, apologetic and uncertain. Skye, with her white-white, freckle-covered skin, her natural red hair, and her large, sea-glass green eyes. Those eyes were as big as saucers now, and she held something in her hand.