Chapter 34 #2
It was then Alice understood. Her undead twin had been doing all the housework, all the order packing, all the tasks that she hated, and in exchange, she wanted every man Alice had ever truly loved. Tom, of course. Not Grant, but Jas. And, worst of all, Luca.
Not just them. I want everything , the voice hissed .
Your life, your friends, your pretty face.
For years, I’ve waited to live again, ever since the day I hung myself.
I never wanted to die; I only wanted to live on my own terms, not my father’s.
Then I met Gigi, so lonely and hurting. That was enough of an opening for me.
I tried to push through so many times—when Gigi died, when Bette was pregnant with Judy, when Judy was a little girl and scared, so scared of everyone around her.
Each time I grew a little stronger, but I hadn’t captured enough heartbeat, enough breath, enough life.
When Judy was pregnant with twins, I knew I was close.
I chose one of the babies—the one I thought would be smarter and feistier, the one with the fire inside—but then she died and I was left with you, my lesser twin, my weak nightmare sister.
The demon’s voice paused, as if she was choosing her words with excruciating exactness.
I watched you with so much resentment, so much bitterness, because I could have been you, I could have been a better you.
Then I found another opening, when you were so sick your parents thought you might die.
I took your father, because you loved him and I loved him even more.
I wasn’t quite strong enough, but I could feel the blood growing inside me, building and building.
I only had to wait for you to fall in love with Jas, for your heart to be broken open, for you to fight with feelings beyond your control. And it worked because here I am.
Alice swore she could hear her laughing, high-pitched and painfully sharp as if nothing was funny at all.
For generations, I swallowed your family’s worst pain, all your worst memories, and then you just carried on, ignorant of all the trauma I had been forced to witness and carry. Don’t you see? I deserve to live now, and you deserve to toil and decay .
Alice felt her body rising, rushing up past all of the images she had just seen.
The men. Gigi, Bette, Judy. Just as suddenly, she skidded to a stop, and the hand covering her eyes released.
Alice could feel the tongue leaving her ear, lingering over her lobe, the base of her neck.
She turned to face the demon, reaching out with her right hand as if to caress her twin’s face, now beautiful and flawless again, as if they were real sisters who had shared clothes, who had held hands and run through a crowd of schoolyard bullies.
The creature closed her eyes and released a quiet, contented sigh, the tip of her narrow tongue slack between her lips, as if she was anticipating the touch, the affection.
Alice held her fingers lightly under her twin’s chin and wondered, for a moment, if love was still possible, but then she blinked, took her hand away, and turned over.
Luna was facing her, her eyes wide open in cold, brittle fear.
She pawed at Alice, her fingers catching on fabric, hair, skin.
Luna didn’t have to say anything. Alice knew that she, too, had seen everything the demon had shown her.
All the pain. All the hauntings. Every last horror.
Alice knew she had almost nothing left, that her strength had been sucked away, that she and her daughter now carried all her family’s memories, all the stories of pain and terror.
They could lose this way, be relegated to the shadows where there was nothing but work and old traumas, dust and basement walls damp to the touch.
She held Luna’s hands as tightly as she could, felt her daughter’s pulse under her grip.
No, there was something left, one more burst of energy. There had to be.
“You’re going to run,” she whispered in Luna’s ear. “We’re both going to stand up, and you are going to run and never look back.”
With a sharp inhale, Alice stood up and, with all of her strength, she pulled Luna up and pushed her toward the side gate and hissed, “Go!” Luna stumbled on the grass before she found her balance and began to run.
Alice looked around wildly for Pinky. She took a step toward the house, squinting in the dark.
Just then, she was tackled from behind and she fell face first onto the lawn.
She was being kicked over and over again, a foot stomping on her back.
She rolled over to try to catch her breath.
Then sharp nails dug into her ankles, and Alice felt herself being dragged.
Her sweatshirt was riding up and blades of grass were burning the bare skin on her back.
She lifted her head and could see her twin walking backward, dragging her body.
She was headed straight for the pile of rocks, for the spot in the garden where nothing could grow, where Alice had thought she had exorcised all their demons.
She started to cry, not a raging, fighting cry, but a cry that was wordless and pathetic, like a scared infant in the middle of the night.
This is it , she thought. She will take over my life, and no one will ever know the difference. She has won.
But then she felt two hands grab on to her wrists, pulling her in the opposite direction until she was stretched taut, her body the rope in a violent tug-of-war.
Alice tilted her head back against the damp grass and dirt.
There, pulling her toward the house, was Luna.
She had come back; she was putting herself in danger.
Her hair hung around her face, damp with sweat, and her eyes were wide open, wild with fear and effort.
Alice swore she heard her say Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom , her voice ringing in Alice’s head as if she was thinking it so hard the word had propelled itself from her brain into her mother’s.
And then her twin’s voice slid into her head, drowning out Luna. No, I am your mother. Not her.
Her spine. It was going to crack in two. Alice whimpered, tears running into her open mouth.
“Fuck off, you crazy, demonic piece of shit. She will always be my mother.” It was Luna’s real voice, echoing through the night, crystal clear.
She’s a drunk and a whore who can’t remember anything about your life. She’s always taken you for granted. And I deserve everything that she has taken for granted .
Alice was sobbing now, the cries coming from her body in relentless waves, one after the other. The demon was right. She was a terrible mother, a failure, a woman who was selfish and avoidant and deserved nothing but a shadow life to make up for everything she had done wrong.
Or perhaps it’s better for me to kill her. Yes, I will kill her and then, sweetheart, we can start fresh.
Alice heard Luna cry out, and she knew this was the first time Luna had thought that she might lose her, that Alice might die.
She wanted to shout Save yourself! but Luna lost her grip and stumbled backward on the lawn, and the twin pulled even harder, quickly dragging Alice toward the pile of stones.
She tried to claw at the grass, but she was left with fistfuls of wet dirt. It was useless. This was it.
You can die right here, sister, where everything else before you has died.
How would she kill her? Alice thought of the blade-sharp nails, the long snaky tongue, the skinny fingers that once seemed frail but were stronger than ever. There were so many possibilities for her death, but the one thing she knew was that it wouldn’t be painless. She had so little time left.
“Luna,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Run. Go.”
Instead of watching her daughter flee through the gate, she heard her shouting, screaming as loud as she could.
“What will you do when you kill her? You can’t live without my mother.
Your entire existence depends on being her shadow, on feeding off the little bits of her life you can grab for yourself.
When she dies, you die. You are nothing without us. ”
Alice felt her feet fall to the ground. As quickly as she could, she stood up, ready again to fight, ready to put herself in between this demon who wanted her entire life and her daughter, her brave, strong, fierce-as-hell daughter.
The twin stood, her back against the trunk of the cherry tree, slumped over, her long dry hair covering her face.
Her skinny hands rested on her knees, the long twisted nails hanging over the hem of the grimy maternity dress.
Alice heard a guttural noise that made her think of rust and dull blades and an old man coughing to death.
Was her twin crying ? Then the demon began clawing at her own face, her sharp talons digging into her eyes, as if she was looking for the source of her tears, as if she was trying to kill the sadness and disappointment.
Luna was suddenly beside her, her hand on Alice’s sleeve. “Now,” Luna whispered. “She’s distracted. We have to leave now!”
Alice knew her daughter was right, but they had to find Pinky. But maybe she was a lost cause and Luna was right. Now was the time to escape.
It only took a few seconds of hesitation for everything to change.
Just as Alice was ready to run toward the gate, Luca stepped out from behind the tree and crept forward on the twin’s left, turning silently until he was facing her, the garden machete held low in both of his hands.
When did he get here? Why hadn’t he stayed with Judy?
Alice saw him. Luna saw him. They both shouted, “No!” But the air seemed to swallow their voices whole.
As the creature looked up, Luca pulled back with the machete and swung.
He was swinging blindly in the dark, as fast and as hard as he could, and he shouted wordlessly with the effort.
The swings sliced through only air, missing her entirely.
The twin looked at him with curiosity, her head tilted.
Alice charged. Four or five steps , Alice thought, that’s all it will take to reach him .
The demon reached out with her bony hands and picked Luca up, hoisting all sixty-five pounds of him above her head.
The machete slipped from his grasp and landed in the soft dirt of the garden; he screamed, the same wordless wail that Alice remembered deep within her gut from his babyhood ten years earlier.
Her twin threw him down, his skinny arms and legs flailing as he fell to the ground.
The impact of his head on the pile of rocks was like shattering glass, and Alice was sure she could hear his bird bones cracking into a thousand pieces.
She cried out in frustration, fear, rage.
Finally Alice reached him and kneeled down, her hands touching his hair, blood dripping from a gash in his temple.
As she cradled him in her arms, she could feel he wasn’t breathing, could feel a stillness in his usually vibrating little boy body, and she wanted to stop time; she needed time to figure out how to fix this, how to defeat death.
The demon smiled before bending over and using one of her claws to pull his ear clean off.
She held it high, skewered on one of her long, long nails.
Luna lunged forward and picked up the fallen machete.
She held it high before swinging it sideways with all her strength against the demon’s neck, slicing its head clean off its brittle body.
Only once the head had rolled to a stop beside Alice—still holding Luca’s body close as blood soaked into her clothes—did Luna let go of the machete, her face tight and focused.
Alice, almost blind with grief and fear, slowly gathered her son’s body in her arms before stumbling toward the side gate.
When she looked behind her, Luna was trying to pull Pinky up to standing from where she was crouched in the grass, her eyes slowly blinking awake.
Alice had to leave with both her babies, right this second.
She had to hold them, the living and the dead, and be the perfect, protective, selfless mother she had never been, that she had always wished she could be.
Alice watched as Luna turned toward the motionless twin, her daughter’s mouth in a tight line.
“No,” she whispered. “Leave her. We have to go.”
But Luna walked right up to the demon’s body and said, “You are real. You were always real.” With the tip of her shoe, she poked at the torso, then looked to the right where the head had rolled to a stop. But there was only the pile of bloody burial rocks. Luna blinked. Body, but no head.
“Luna!” Alice shouted, her voice cracking in the air.
And they—Luna, Pinky, and Alice with Luca in her arms—ran for the gate together, slamming it behind them for the last time.