Chapter 33
tom didn’t know exactly when the fatigue started, only that he had felt increasingly tired for the last three days, as he and Judy took turns watching over Alice, who had been tossing and turning in her bed, hot with fever and a dry hacking cough.
At first, he only worried about his daughter, who mumbled in her sleep about ghosts and headless demons.
In the night, when he tried to sleep in the armchair beside her bed, she would not stop talking, could not seem to break out of her feverish dreams. It was easy for him to blame his exhaustion on the sleepless nights and long days rushing from crime scenes to law courts to darkroom, his heavy camera bag slung over one shoulder.
But this morning, as he lay in bed staring at the popcorn ceiling, he felt a weight on his chest, as if he was being squeezed in a vise with slow, inexorably increasing pressure. He tried to sit up but fell back down into the pillows just as Judy came hurrying into the room.
“I feel terrible,” he whispered, before he began coughing violently. “I must have caught what Alice has.”
After Judy went to use the bathroom, Tom propped himself up on three pillows and tried to push himself to standing.
He couldn’t remember a time when it had been so quiet in the house.
Judy was moving through her morning routine as silently as possible, and Alice must still be asleep, must still be impossible to wake.
He felt guilty. He was supposed to take care of Alice and here he was, barely able to sit up in a bed damp with his cold sweat.
Now they both had to go to the hospital, and Judy had to manage them on her own.
The wide window was open and the spring breeze blew across his face like a kiss. Tom tried to breathe deeply, but it hurt. Shh, it’s okay , he thought. As long as you can take even a short breath, it’s okay.
He lost consciousness then, a slip into total darkness. Outside, the mail carrier walked from house to house. An ancient golden retriever, its face gone white, wandered through the yard, snout sniffing the grass. The first tulip opened in Mrs. Aquila’s garden across the street.
When Tom woke again, it was because he’d heard an unfamiliar noise, a rustling maybe, the way a snake might disturb the long grass as it winds through a field.
He blinked at the morning light, sure that he had only been asleep for a few minutes.
Then a wrenching cough rose through his chest and burst into the air.
When he finally caught his breath and the room was no longer echoing, he heard a familiar small voice.
“Daddy,” it said. “Can I help you?”
He felt small arms wrap around his belly, and he reached down and stroked the head now resting on his chest. “Alice, you’re a good girl.”
But the hair under his hand wasn’t the smooth hair of his daughter, the hair that he had learned to braid, learned to brush straight every night.
It was rough, matted in clumps, and he swore he felt a spider crawling across her scalp.
Tom opened his eyes, and the child on his chest raised her head to look at him.
She was so like his daughter, but it was as if Alice had drowned and then come back to life, to half-life. Her skin was purple and mottled, and the tip of her nose was raw and flat, as if it had been worn down or broken off. And the smell. Like open wounds that had never closed, even after years.
“Get away from me,” he rasped. He didn’t have the breath to shout, but he would have if he could.
He pushed at the girl, but she dug her long sharp nails into the sides of his torso.
He opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out, and he pushed harder until she slid off the bed and landed on the carpet.
“Daddy. It’s me.” Her voice. No child had a voice that sounded so used, so exhausted.
“I don’t know you. Get the fuck out of my house.”
It was then that Tom reached for the edge of the bed to pull himself forward. He had to reach the hallway and find Judy, even if he had to crawl there. He had to warn her; he had to keep his family safe.
The dirty little child slapped at his hands so sharply he let go and fell, face down, on the mattress.
“You don’t need Alice,” she hissed in his ear. “I am your true daughter. Come be with me, Daddy.”
She opened her mouth then, and a long tongue emerged and slowly, methodically licked his cheek, as if she was determined to taste every centimetre, every drop of sebum and oil. He couldn’t scream. He couldn’t even move. He had never been so tired and scared at the same time.
It only took a few minutes. As he lost consciousness, he thought of the first time he had kissed Judy, the first time he had held Alice in his arms at the hospital, the first time one of his photos had been printed in the newspaper.
He had always loved the light at sunrise. He could live forever in that light.
His last thought before he died was that his family would never know what lived in this house, a thing so small and so angry.
What kind of husband and father was he if he was too weak to warn them, much less protect them?
He had never imagined dying a failure. As he choked on his last shallow breath, he could sense the child-sized creature watching him from the doorway with a mixture of triumph and grief on her face.
If he had had any energy left, he would have cried at the humiliation.