I tossed and turned, solving no problems, gaining no insight, but compounding my fears. A few hours passed, leaving me more exhausted than when I’d crawled into my bed. Leaving me at a point of frustration and tears, where life seemed hopeless and problems insurmountable.
Tears never solved anything. That’s what Gran always said.
In my experience, she was right.
I resisted the urge to call Chad just to hear his voice. And pushed away a too vivid memory of the last night we’d spent together. The night he’d cuddled me in his arms, pressed his lips to the top of my head, gently wiped the tears from my cheeks. Asking no questions. Simply offering quiet comfort and a willingness to listen. Should I choose to speak. To tell him what was wrong.
I’d answered his love with my silence.
That thought chased me from my bed.
I wrapped myself in a sheet, grabbed my pillow, and padded through the dark and silent house, seeking the company of an old companion. Highball didn’t stir when I settled down next to his bed and stroked my fingers through his thick, warm fur. And, though he was sleeping, I told him how I felt. As I had since I was a child.
I told him how frustrated and angry and hurt I was. How tired I was and how very lonely. How desperately I missed Chad. And loved my sister. And hated her. How I feared that another dreadful secret might be lurking in her past. And feared that Aunt Lucy and Gran had given her an opportunity to unleash violence in the future. But if I cried, they were silent tears. Unwitnessed and easily denied.
After a while, I leaned back against the kitchen door with one of my legs still touching the cushion where the old dog sprawled. I listened to the sounds of his deep, regular breathing.
At some point, I slept.
I dreamed that I searched alone through a forest and found a place where ancient trees pushed upward from stagnant water. Above me, dark-feathered turkey vultures gathered in the branches. They twisted their ruddy, cadaverous heads as they followed my movements with glittering eyes.
I walked carefully along the mud-slick shore, anxiously searching the water’s surface, indifferent to the sinuous passage of snakes and the twisting larvae of unborn insects. I had hidden it well, I told myself.
Above me, I heard flapping and rustling, so I looked up into the trees. The birds were drawing closer, smiling down at me. I looked away from them, back out into the swamp. And saw what I had most feared. Bobbing just above the water was the roof of a passenger van, its corroded surface draped with duck weed and covered in slime.
I have to move it, I told myself.
My clothes fell away from me and, for a moment, I stood naked in the moonlight. Then I walked slowly into the water.
Above me, the birds screamed their approval.
Soon the brackish water covered my head, filled my mouth and nose and lungs. But that didn’t matter because I knew I was among the dead. A forest of twisted human skeletons greeted me, their skulls and torsos impaled by the tree roots, their ivory hands and bony fingers floating loose and pointing the way.
She was still trapped inside the van. Where I had left her. But she’d shed her blanket and the crushing weight of the rocks I’d placed on her. She’d moved into the front seat, locked her hands around the steering wheel. And all around her, like holiday streamers, pale ribbons of waxen flesh floated gently on the current. Above the dark hole of her mouth, her colorless eyes were wide open, staring forward, trying in vain to find her way home.
When she saw me, she pushed the van door open. Caught my hand with bony fingers and urged me inside.
I followed willingly, took her place behind the wheel, touched my foot to the accelerator.
The car drifted forward into a narrow shaft of greenish light that penetrated the watery tomb. It skimmed along one of my passenger’s rotting cheeks and exposed razor teeth lurking within the rictus of her smile.
The corpse wore my sister’s face.
I panicked.
I pushed the door open, kicked outward, then upward. Away from the horror. Away from the danger. Back into the air.
Suddenly, I was breathing again.
I swam to the shore, lay there naked with my face in the mud. Gasping, crying, knowing that I