You Let Me In - Camilla Bruce Page 0,46

months was enough to break us apart. I was still worried I’d find him changed, though—I knew that I had changed a bit while I was gone. I had gained weight for once, despite the measly hospital food. I had hips for real, and sizable breasts. My skin color was better too, and I was far less prone to headaches and fatigues. The nurse who did my blood work at the hospital even mentioned it to me, how my vitamin B deficiency seemed to be suddenly gone, and the iron levels were rising. It was the upside of being without him, I suppose.

Physical Cassie had flourished, while the emotional Cassie ached.

When Pepper-Man was nowhere to be found in the brown house, I set out into the woods to look for him and hoping to see Mara. I walked and I walked, but the path never forked, and the in-between place never came. The veil itself appeared to be gone. I will never forget the horror of that moment, when I thought that my child—my only true home—was lost to me. At first, I convinced myself I had done something wrong, taken a wrong turn, and so went back to the edge of the woods to start fresh. I walked the path, waiting for the bend that signaled that the fork was straight ahead, but it never came. Then I screamed and thrashed, and walked around in circles, calling for my loved ones all night. Finally I went home, teary-eyed and weary, voice hoarse. My palms were grimy from hitting tree trunks and pulling moss from the ground, my knees were scabbed from kneeling on the rocky embankment by the brook. My heart felt so empty, as if all feelings had fled.

I felt so fragile in that moment; made of rice paper, so very crisp and thin, just a spark would be enough to set me ablaze and erase everything within. Paper lungs and paper kidneys, paper heart and paper brain. Wind could sweep me off my feet, water could dissolve me. I think I wanted to be gone in that moment, sitting there in my empty house, on the cozy blue couch, staring out in the air. No Pepper-Man was there, no Mara …

Just me.

I brushed my teeth automatically and pulled on a clean nightgown. I looked into my bag of toiletries, stuffed to the brim with prescription drugs. I was long overdue with the big and blue ones, soon to be overdue with the white and bitter. I took them all out and threw them in the bin.

The last thing I did before I went to bed was to pause by the basement door, where I tore the hateful yellow police tape away.

The brown house was mine again, but the bed was empty. Empty and cold, like me.

When I finally slept, exhausted from my wild search, it was a light and dreamless slumber. No woods, no roots, no Pepper-Man in it. Not even a glimpse of my daughter’s chestnut tresses.

The next day started out in the same way: I was all alone. I had barely pulled clothes on and put up my hair when I set out again, searching the woods. When the path still refused to reveal itself, I tried all the tricks I could think of: I walked widdershins around an ancient oak, built circles of stones with incantations; I burned bundles of oak and thorn, and drank teas from wild herbs and flowers. Nothing helped. Faerie was still closed to me. I cried and I wished. I cut myself and let the water in the brook lick the blood from my skin. I pleaded with Pepper-Man to please let me in. I called for Mara, screamed for her.

Still I got no answer.

When I came home again, dawn was nearly there, coloring the sky in a bleak, white light. I went to the bathroom and into the shower, stood there for a while to let the warm water soften my aching limbs. I cried again, for all that I had lost. Tears and snot ran off my face and into the drain while I slowly began to wash myself. It was then that I saw it, through the transparent plastic curtain, a swirl in the mist from the water and the heat. It was not exactly a man, but a shape; a hand, maybe, moving in the fog. Something that could be the outline of a face, eyes in there too, a pair of dark hollows.

I took