CHAPTER TWENTY–TWO PRESENT DAY
My heartbeat slows. Subsumed under a tidal wave of terror so potent, I can taste its sour tang under my tongue. I lay still on the table for six seconds that stretch out into eternity. In those six seconds, a reel of disjointed thoughts flick through my mind like credits at the end of an old movie.
I should’ve gotten the second cartilage piercing on my seventeenth birthday instead of waiting for my eighteenth.
Who will take care of Baba when I’m gone?
I wish I’d adopted a hamster. Everything would suck so much less if I had a hamster.
And finally: I miss Mama. Monster or not.
The white sheet slides from the corpse as it stands, revealing the pale, puffy, and very naked form of a middle-aged woman.
A long line of stitches runs from her throat to her pubic bone.
The thin lines of a tattoo twist over her hip, unreadable under the peeling flecks of skin.
The flap of her skull curls at the edges, where it’s been surgically carved into a U-shape above her neck.
Where was the rot smell to warn me? The orange eyes? Bluish veins coil over the dead woman’s white eyes. It’s almost as if the thing simply plucked the nearest human-shaped entity in the room to control.
Jesse was right. It hasn’t just gotten stronger; it’s gotten strategic.
The corpse stands between me and the door. Slowly, I slide off the metal bed. Maybe if I injure it and run, I can make it to the stairs before it recovers.
Can you even injure the dead?
Limbs stiff with petrified flesh move toward me.
I spring into action, grabbing a handsaw from Mr. Talbot’s workstation.
Shrieking at the top of my lungs, I swing the saw without aim.
In my frenzied grip, the saw meets it mark, gouging a gash across its chest. The would-be fatal wound doesn’t slow it down.
The corpse grips my arms, knocking the saw loose, and hurls me into the door. I collide against the solid surface. A loud snap rings in my ears.
No.
The clipboard lies in pieces by my legs. The doorstop Jesse used to prevent me from getting locked inside—gone.
I’m trapped in a mortuary with something that wants to kill me. Something I can’t kill.
Horror rises inside me like volcanic lava.
I crawl under the metal slabs, skittering away from the clawed fingers swiping for me.
My chest heaves, my need for air stronger than my aversion to the chemical odors wafting off the body.
If I can evade it long enough for Jesse to come check on me, I might make it out of here.
A hand closes around my ankle.
I shriek as my writhing body slides into the light, dragged forward by a preternatural strength.
I kick the corpse’s chest as soon as I’m close enough, but it grabs my ankles and twists me onto my stomach.
My head wrenches back as it grabs a fistful of my hair.
At the desk, the computer suddenly flickers to life.
The image of my mother as a haughty young woman returns.
“Just because she gave you what you wanted doesn’t mean I will,” I snarl, terror and pain brewing into the most potent spite I’ve ever experienced. “Neither you, my mother, or Teta Bamba get to make my choices for me.”
A black substance beads at the edges of the monitor and runs down the screen. The dead woman kicks me in the stomach. Hard.
Pain explodes in my middle. I cough wetly, struggling to stand and crashing to the ground again. It reaches for me, and I yank two handfuls of its hair. They tear easily in my grasp.
The computer screen warps like plastic left in the heat.
In place of my mother appears the same sad young girl with the half-eaten sandwich.
She watches with mournful eyes as the corpse slams me into the lockers.
A rusted hinge slices my shoulder blade, leaving my blood dripping down the smooth panes.
A young boy replaces the girl on the screen. Child after child, watching me with accusation and despondency.
The corpse hurls me into Mr. Talbot’s tool table, and dozens of forensic instruments shatter with the impact. Scissors and tweezers fall to the ground, their edges colliding with the tile in the sound of windchimes.
A searing agony knifes through my leg. Against my will, I glance down at my thigh and release a strangled cry. A shard of glass the size of my palm sticks out from my upper thigh, broken off from the beaker I’d smashed.
The corpse approaches, and my fury gets the better of me. “Why are you doing this?” I shout. “What do you want from me?”
I yank out the glass with a sob wrenched from my very soul. I wait until the corpse gets close and shove the shard deep into the side of its neck. A dribble of dark liquid seeps from the wound, dripping lazily onto its shoulders.
It doesn’t falter as it dispassionately grabs my hair and drags me across the floor of the mortuary. I manage to swipe a pair of scissors from the ground and hack at the body’s legs and arm, anything I can reach. Its grip doesn’t budge.
The corpse slams my head against the table again. The thin skin at my temple breaks. Blood trickles down the side of my face. The scissors clatter to the ground, freed from my limp grip.
By the time the corpse pulls its arm back for the third time, I’m deadweight. Floating somewhere above it all. I barely register when it suddenly drops me or when its dismembered arm flops to the ground.
Jesse drops beside me. His mouth is moving, and I think he might be shouting, but my ears buzz too loudly to decipher his words. A face as lovely as his should never look so upset. I try to find my mouth to tell him as much, but it floats out of my reach.
From what seems like a great distance, I hear Jesse call, “I’m bringing her inside. You have to stay in a different room!”
Arms gently lift me from the ground. My head lolls to the side, and I absently note that I’m bleeding onto Jesse’s jacket. “Sorry,” I slur. Keeping my eyes open is getting harder. I think I tell Jesse I’ll buy him detergent for the stain. He makes a noise like I’ve just run a knife through him.
“Don’t worry about my goddamn jacket,” Jesse growls. “Open your eyes, Mansour. You have to stay awake, okay?”
I’m getting tired of finding myself in situations where I need to stay awake. Why can’t sleep be the answer for once? A nice, long sleep. Full of happy dreams and pillows that never get hot.
“I shouldn’t have left you down here,” Jesse continues. It takes me a second to identify the undercurrent in his strained voice: guilt. “If I thought there was the slightest chance—it animated a corpse—“
“Not your fault,” I mumble. Jesse takes the stairs two at a time. The motion jostles the wounds on my temple and thigh. My whole body feels like a giant, throbbing bruise. The corpse hurled me around the mortuary, and my fading adrenaline is bringing the pain home to roost.
“It’s not even that bad, Mina,” Jesse says lightly. “Just a little bleeding here and there. Barely worth a second look.”
Jesse lays me down in a cradle of blankets and pillows. His bed. When he moves to leave, a spurt of terror gives me the strength to grab his hand.
“I just need supplies to fix you up. I’ll be right back,” he promises. A quick squeeze. “Stay awake, little cheerleader.”
“Dancer,” I groan. Jesse grins briefly, and I let him go. He won’t be long. He always comes back.
Time moves sluggishly. I imagine Mama leaning over me, a familiar pucker of concern in her forehead. Anytime I was sick, Mama would become inconsolable. She’d hover over me like a dragonfly, flitting around my bedside until I was all better.
Jesse returns between one blink and the next. “Good. You’re awake,” he says. He sets a white kit next to my leg and bites his bottom lip. I’m unduly fascinated by the action. “I’m gonna need to cut off your pant leg.”
“Okeydokey,” I say, yawning. Wasn’t I sad a minute ago? What was I sad about? I’m too tired to remember.
The scissors neatly slice the denim, exposing the weeping wound on my thigh. Jesse sucks a breath in sympathy. He removes a syringe from the kit. “Some local anesthetic. I have to suture this.”
I start to drift. Jesse flicks my knee. “No sleeping. Come on, tell me about your new and improved graduation speech. Tryouts are coming up.” He maneuvers me onto my back, brushing aside the curls crusted to the blood on my temple.
“Or maybe you want to talk about prom. Did you end up finding a dress with your friends?”
The cloth he wipes against my forehead comes away red.
I stare at the ceiling. My thoughts drift, flakes in a snow globe the world won’t quit shaking.
“Don’t make fun of me, please,” I whisper.
My nose tingles, the telltale warning of tears.
“I know I’m not going to make it to graduation.
I probably won’t even survive until prom.
” The dance is this weekend. Four days away. A lifetime in curse years.
Jesse’s incensed face fills my vision, looming above me. “You’re gonna read your speech to that panel in two days because you will be at graduation. Where’s your prom queen spirit?”
“Homecoming queen.”
“For now. I doubt this bruise will be gone by the weekend, but you’ll still get your crown, even after ten rounds with the dearly departed.” Jesse dabs at my temple, cleaning it for the gauze. He’s so meticulous, so careful.
Wasting more of his effort on another lost cause.
After he finishes, he ties off a trash bag and pauses. “I’ll be back. Don’t go to sleep.”
I grunt. Whether or not I go to sleep is beyond either of our control at this point.
Jesse disappears outside. My head settles deeper into his pillow, and I breathe in the scent of his shampoo and fresh detergent. Closing one eye at a time doesn’t count as going to sleep, right? They’re just so heavy.
Voices filter from the hall. “You can’t come inside. It’ll possess you the minute you’re alone with her.”