Experiment in Terror 07 Come Alive (24 page)

“That was Rose,” he said getting up, his tall, wide frame seeming to fill the whole room. “She’s swinging by here to pick us up. Apparently Ambrosia was attacked by a zombie a little while ago.”

“What?” Perry and I both asked in unison.

He grabbed his camera, pulling the memory card out from the computer and sticking it back in. “Let’s go.”

***

Rose must have been nearby because as soon as Perry was dressed and able to smudge on only the tiniest bit of makeup, the truck was roaring up Royal Street.

Once we were in and bouncing along the rough roads of the Quarter, she told us that Ambrosia had gone to the nearest supermarket, just off the 10, for Maryse’s groceries. She said she was attacked in the parking lot, the man able to take a bite out of her. She said he looked disheveled, like a homeless person, and white. Passerby restrained the man and police had him in custody. They were blaming it on bath salts.

Ambrosia didn’t have the luxury of a private room, and was the only patient in there who looked to be not half-dead or dying.

Still, even in a blue hospital gown with her neck bandaged up, she looked utterly radiant. Her bed was by the window, and the sunlight filtering in made her dark hair shimmer with strands of copper and gold, her lips soft and shiny. She looked like an angel. I felt terrible for even considering that Ambrosia had been behind any of this, and even worse that I put that idea in Maryse’s head.

“Hey y’all,” she said to us, tilting her head, her light eyes sparkling beneath her dark lashes.

“Hey,” I said, coming toward her. Her skin looked so soft and touchable. She smiled at me, and it reached so far into me it was doing something to my dick.

She smiled at Perry and Maximus as well, offering them the same warmth she was offering me. Only Rose got a colder reception, even though she was leaning over Ambrosia in honest concern.

“How are you feeling, does it hurt?” Rose asked.

Ambrosia shook her head. “No, not really. They gave me some form of morphine, so I’m feeling fine.”

“I hope that doesn’t scar your beautiful neck,” I found myself saying, gesturing to where the bandage was, between her ear and her shoulder.

Perry was staring at me, open-mouthed, and Rose shot me a perplexed look but I didn’t care. Why were they so uptight? She had a beautiful neck, and it would be a shame to have it forever damaged by the undead.

“I hope so too, dawlin’,” Ambrosia said sweetly to me. Her lids fluttered seductively and I felt warmth spreading from my heart outward. It was a feeling I wanted to hold on to, one that erased all worry and pain. I found myself gazing deep into her eyes as she said, “If I’d known you were coming, Dex, I would have made myself pretty for you.”

I smiled. “You’re already so beautiful.”

“Dex!” Perry growled at me, kicking my leg. I barely looked at her, I couldn’t. I could only see Ambrosia.

“Oh, that’s right,” Ambrosia said. “I’m sorry, Perry. I forgot that the two of you are together. You just don’t seem like you’re together. My mistake.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Perry snarled at her. “I’ve dealt with enough women like you to not believe a word you say.”

Everyone jerked in shock at her words, including me. Perry turned to me and said, “And fuck you too, asshole. I should have figured you’d get bored with me so fast.”

Then she spun around and marched out of the hospital room.

My eyes were wide, my heart pounding, pinching. What the fuck just happened?

Rose was staring at me in disgust. She turned to Ambrosia. “I’m going to go check on her. Why don’t you tell the boys what happened.”

She ran out of the room and Ambrosia shrugged. “We’ll, she’s a bit uptight. That’s the problem with dating young girls, Dex. They don’t know how to be in relationships.”

What she was saying was kind of true. Her eyes were steady on mine and I felt myself nodding. But still, part of me was in agony, somewhere deep inside. I shook my head slightly and tried to focus. My hand went to the vial of oil in my pocket and I began rubbing it.

Ambrosia frowned at me but then turned her mega-watt smile to Maximus, who was gazing at her like I knew I had been. Jesus, I needed to get a hold of myself.

Ambrosia told us about what happened, and her surprise that it was a white guy. She heard through the police officer that booked the guy that he was completely deranged and had been reported missing from his family a few days ago. Although a few days ago, he was an upstanding family man with no history of mental illness. The cops were also unable to find any traces of bath salts, but they did find a low amount of Datura. The very extract that the Bokors would control their zombies with.    

Soon after the nurse came in, wanting to give her another round of antibiotics to heal her wound, and Maximus and I were asked to leave.

“That was weird,” he whispered to me as we walked down the hospital halls, looking for Rose and Perry.

“What was? The zombie attack in broad daylight, in a parking lot, by a white upstanding family dude?”

“That,” he said slowly, “and also Perry.”

“What about her?”

He swung his arms. “I don’t know. It’s like she totally overreacted over nothing.”

Was it nothing? And wasn’t this what he wanted?

“Let me deal with her,” I told him.

The reception we got at the truck was Antarctic chilly. Rose was being curt with me, and Perry wouldn’t even look my way. To make matters worse, Maximus was insistent that we stop at a crab shack he remembered, an authentic old thing on stilts. The view was terribly romantic as we took a seat on the patio overlooking the rippling bayou, the breeze warm and humid, the fishing boats zipping past in the distance. We ate out of perforated red plastic dishes, our crab and crayfish wrapped in greasy newspaper, drinking beer and sweet tea out of Mason jars. It was such a quintessential Louisiana moment for me, and yet I couldn’t enjoy a single second of it. I fought hard to keep my mind off of Ambrosia and onto Perry, which was something I didn’t want to do. Thinking about Ambrosia was easy, inviting almost, while thinking about Perry made me ache inside. It made my world spin, my hurt spasm, my lungs seize up, my guts freefall. Looking at her, thinking about her, just tore me apart. She was a dream that was seconds from becoming a nightmare, a present that was about to be taken back.

I dealt with it the only way I knew how—I drank myself into a bit of a stupor, hoping to numb the pain, the questions, the answers. When we were dropped off at the B&B, I felt like roaming the streets of the quarter, looking for my next drink, my next way out. I didn’t want to go into our room, I didn’t want to deal with her, with anything. But I had to.

I wasn’t in the room for more than five seconds before Perry slammed it, locked it, and put her hands on my chest and shoved me backward.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she yelled, her eyes up in flames, her voice raw with anger.

I let her push me. I didn’t fight back. I looked at the floor and gathered my strength to know what I had to do. If Perry and I could never be, if being with her would possibly one day hurt her, kill her,  I couldn’t do this to the both of us. I couldn’t keep loving her, being with her, not like this.

I was dying inside and she had no idea. I couldn’t let her see. Our world had changed on us and so damn fast.

I ignored her violence toward me and sat down on the bed, kicking off my shoes. She came right around in my face.

“Why are you ignoring me? What did I do?”

“Just chill out,” I told her, giving her a dirty look. “You made a fool of yourself earlier.”

She gasped. Her face flinched like I’d just slapped her. I wanted to cry.

“You asshole! You…oh, how dare you! You were flirting with her right in front of my face. How do you think that makes me feel?”

I shrugged, all forced casualness. “I don’t know. You flip out and get insecure over everything. How am I supposed to know what’s going to set you off?”

She shoved me again, and I reached up and grabbed her wrists, holding them between my fingers.

“Stop hitting me, you’re acting like you’re crazy,” I told her.

And now she was crumbling. “What happened to you, Dex? Yesterday we were fine, everything was fine. What happened? What changed?”

“You changed,” I said, turning it around. “You need to get over your issues.”

Another invisible blow. She nearly keeled over. I knew where I was hurting her because I was hurting there too.

“Issues?”

“Kiddo, we both have them in spades.”

“Don’t call me that.” Her voice went all steel, cold and sharp.

“What? Kiddo? Perry, I have a whole arsenal of names here I could call you, but I don’t think you’d like those either.”

Her eyes blazed as she leaned forward, getting in my face. “I’m not some kid, I’m your girlfriend, and I’m trying to talk to you.”

“You are just a kid!” I yelled back, surprised at how caught up I was getting. I just wanted to push her away, just a bit, just to give me the space and time and distance to think things through. But now I felt like everything was coming out, all the things I kept to myself. There was no stopping it.

I pushed off the bed and began fumbling in my pockets for the cigarettes. I brought them out, the bag shaking in my hands, until Perry came over and struck them out of my grasp. They scattered on the floor.

“You think I’m just a kid?” she screeched.

“You’re twenty-three.”

“So what?” she spat out. “I was twenty-two when we met. You knew that about me. What changed?”

“You’re not ready for this with me.”

“Ready for what? For you flirting blatantly with women right in front of me? For you turning off like a light switch, ignoring me, pulling out of this relationship before it even got started?”

The madness was taking over, the rush of rage saturating my veins. I whirled around and screamed at her, “You won’t even tell me you love me! Don’t you dare say I’m turning off like a light switch, because I have been the only one who’s been on since this thing began. You’re the one who has been holding back. You’re the one who lets me bleed out in front of you!”

Her lips snapped shut, her face going white. She stepped away from me, facing the wall, her head down. I was breathing hard, wishing I hadn’t gotten so deep, wishing that I could take her in my arms and make all of this go away. But that wouldn’t stop the hurt that would follow. The future that would crumble. We had no other choice.

“I need time,” she whispered, her words breaking.

I swallowed painfully, trying to keep my own tears at bay. I took in a deep breath, shaking out my arms, hoping my feelings would go out with it.

I put on a fake smile and said, “Well, guess what, baby, now you have all the time in the world.”

Her whole body shook from my words, as if they were metal knives I’d driven into her body. I realized I was holding my breath, my lungs screaming for air.

She slowly turned her head to look at me. She looked beyond devastated. Beyond hurt. Beyond everything I never dreamed of doing to her. I was so close to losing her and I was so close to keeping her.

“Fine,” she said hoarsely. “I understand. I’m going to go get another room for myself here.”

“Good idea,” I said. The words just came. I regretted each of them.

She walked toward the door, trying to keep her head up, trying to keep from collapsing. She was trying to be strong, to be proud, to know what was going on and to know what she was going to do next.

She paused near the door, and I swore if she decided to stay, I’d tell her everything. I’d burden her with my burden if only not to do this to each other, to not make each other bleed.

You’ve fucked up again
, Perry told herself, her thoughts coming through loud and clear.
You have the only person you ever wanted and you fucked it up again because you can never let yourself be happy. Dex will never take you back after this, and you’ll never know what it’s like to love him while he loves you.

Her self-loathing for herself hurt me down to the bones. She stared at me for a few moments, maybe hoping she could voice what she was thinking, maybe hoping that I would say something too. Two stubborn people clinging on to what they believed was right. She felt she never deserved me. I felt she didn’t deserve to suffer.

I’m doing this because I love you
, I thought, hoping to God that maybe she could hear me.

But she just walked out the door and closed it behind her. I collapsed to the ground, a ruin in her wake.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I woke up again in the middle of night, feeling like Perry was shaking me awake, whispering my name in my ear. But when I came to and sat up slowly, I realized I was alone. Perry had gotten her stuff and moved down to a room on the first floor. I didn’t have her anymore. I had nobody.

I glanced at the radio alarm clock in the room. It was 3AM. I wasn’t surprised at all. The room was pitch black; even the light from the street wasn’t reaching through the curtains that hung there on the French doors like dead weight. All the furniture in the room sat there, hunched over like big black beasts, waiting for me to move, to say something.

The door to the bathroom slowly creaked open. I heard the shower curtain inside being moved along the bar, the metal rungs squeaking.

I sat up straighter and looked at the clock again. 3:01. Time was passing. I pinched the inside of my forearm to see if it hurt, to see if it was a dream or not. It did hurt. My heart hurt even more. The memories of the fight between Perry and I came flooding back. I did the thing I never thought I’d do—I hurt her on purpose. It didn’t matter that it was for her greater good or my greater good because there just couldn’t be any good in it. The pain was there, just below the threshold, threatening to bring me under. I pushed her away and I would continue to push her away until I knew she could be saved, until I knew she’d get the future she deserved, not the one that I couldn’t give her.

It was because I was so lost in my misery, in my chest-stabbing despair, that I knew I wasn’t dreaming. And I was so wrapped up in my own pain, my own horror, that the current one before me didn’t seem to matter that much.

That was until the bathroom door swung open fully and a giant motherfucking black python came slithering out of it, heading straight for my bed.

Fuck. That was a new one.

I held my breath, wondering if I should scream, wondering how much I was seeing was real and how much was magic. How much was my mind and how much was the beyond. The gigantic inky black snake disappeared under the bed and I tensed up, waiting, knowing it wouldn’t just go to sleep under there.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Li Grand Zombi,” a French-accented voice said from the bathroom. I looked up to see my mother climbing out of the mirror and balancing on the sink, before stepping awkwardly to the ground. She moved with unpredictable jerkiness, as if she wasn’t used to the body she was in. She was no longer in the mirror. She was free.

I wished I was wearing Depends.

The bed beneath me moved ever so slightly. I got into a crouch, ready to spring off it and run if I needed to.

“Li Grand Zombi,” my mother said again, stepping forward. In the blackness I could only make out the paleness of her taut face, the darkness of her hair and eyes. I couldn’t even be sure that she had eyes. “The Great Serpent.”

“What do you want from me?” I asked, but my words came out in a shaking whisper, the air from my breath freezing into a cloud.

“It travels between both worlds, from the Kalunga to here, through the layers, through the Veil, just like me,” she continued. Her voice had grown lower and lower with each word she spoke until it was something entirely inhuman. “Together, we will bring you back.”

From the corner of my eye I could see the shiny black head of the python appear over the edge of the mattress, its long forked tongue slithering in and out.

I dared to look the woman in the eye as she came closer still. I dared to eke out the words, “You are not my mother. I don’t know who you are.”

She smiled, black teeth. “I was your mother. Then she died. But I am a part of you.”

The mattress began to sink under the python’s weight as it undulated across the bed. Now if I were to make a run for it, I’d have to jump over its body.

“How long did you have possession of her?” I asked the creature that wasn’t my mother.

She shook her head. “I was always there. I am in you.” She took another jagged step until she was at the foot of the bed. I could have sworn the shape of her head was expanding, that protrusions were rising out of her temples, a growing monster in the dark. Every single cell in my body told me to look away, to get away while I could. This wasn’t my mother. This wasn’t any one thing. This was evil incarnate and it had come for me. She extended an arm out to me and instead of pale, wrinkled skin, I could see short, dense fur. Her fingernails were now talons. “Come with us. Come to where you belong.”

This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening. This all had to be in my head, in my sick fucking head full of my sick fucking problems. I wasn’t on medication. I didn’t have that wall between reality and the world beyond. Nothing was being kept out anymore.

I shut my eyes, closing them so tight I saw red stars and dots behind them, and though about what Maryse had told me.
The energies shared and exchanged can cause ripples, holes in the fabric of the Veil, and where there are holes, bad things can get out.

   There were two bad things in the room with me, two bad things that had gotten out. Me and Perry together had produced so much pleasure and love and comfort and bliss, and all the while our radiance was letting the bad things in. The universe had to balance things, didn’t it? How dare it just let two long-suffering people be happy for once.

I kept my eyes shut and chanted to myself, “You aren’t real, you’re in my head, you’re not real, you’re in my head,” but the truth was I didn’t know if I believed that anymore. For all I knew, everything could be real from here on out.

Even so, it was like my chanting, my concentration, had caused the energy in the room to shift. It felt like the room had grown still. It felt like the weight on the mattress had lifted. I couldn’t hear the snake’s tongue or breathing. I couldn’t hear the rustle of my mother’s nightgown. I heard only my heart, threatening to explode, my lungs wheezing from exertion.

I sucked in my breath for strength and prepared to open my eyes, hoping I’d see an empty room as it was before. I willed for the nightmare to be over, to be alone, to be safe, to see nothing at all.

I opened my eyes.

She was
right there
.

My mother’s demon face, inches from mine. She had no eyes, just cavernous black holes, and skin that scaled like a lizard’s. Her mouth was stuck open, a tiny red snake coming out of it in place of her tongue. Though her face was frozen in vile horror, she was laughing and screaming just inches away from me, sounds from another time and another place, sounds that reached through my ears and pierced my very human soul. There was nothing else inside me except fear and terror like I’d never known before.

The snake in her mouth came out for me, slowly, two yellow slits for eyes. It said, “I always wanted a grandson.”

And that’s when I finally screamed. I screamed bloody murder and tried to gather the strength to run out of the room.

In seconds, the door busted open and the light went on. It was a wild-eyed Maximus, staring at me in panic.

“What happened?” he asked, just in time to see the end of Li Grand Zombi’s tail slither into the bathroom like a tapered black slug. The demonic entity of my mother had already disappeared with the light.

“Holy fuck!” he exclaimed, once he spotted the snake. He didn’t run away though, he marched in, peering at the snake as the black tail completely disappeared around the bathroom door. He looked at me, motioning for me to stay put and asked, “Are you okay?’

“Do I look okay?” I asked, my body rapidly growing cold and starting to shake. “Go after it, but be careful.”

He looked around for something sturdy and picked up an old lady-type vase, as if he was going to knock out the python by throwing ceramics on its head. This wasn’t a caper film.

Armed with it, he went inside the bathroom and flicked on the lights. I heard him say, “Huh,” and heard the opening and closing of cabinets and the toilet seat before he came back out.

“There’s nothing in there,” he said, putting the vase back down on the end table.

“But you did see the snake.”

“I wish I hadn’t.” He suppressed a shiver. “What was it doing? What happened? I thought I heard voices in here, and just as I was about to fall back asleep, I heard you scream like…Jesus, Dex…”

I bit my lip while I debated sharing just how crazy I was. I decided to ask Maximus to hand me my cigarettes, then climbed back into bed and lit one. I explained what happened with the snake and my mother, what she said, what she looked like, and then went back to the first times I’d seen her in the mirror back in BC.

“It’s getting worse,” he remarked, and motioned for me to give him a cigarette too.

“Bunch of moochers,” I muttered, but still lit one for him.

“So now do you see, even just a little, how the tears between the worlds could become worse when you and Perry are together? Just standing beside each other your energies attract amazing things, mainly malevolent things. Now…well, since you guys started screwing each other on a daily basis, that energy has multiplied. Your chemistry dissolves through walls and windows. You make a gatekeeper job much harder.”

I ignored the screaming pain my chest. That urge to find Perry in her room and make the sweet love to her that I was so damn addicted to. It figured we would make and break worlds by our coupling, because damn, when I was deep in thrusts of our souls and hearts and bodies, it felt like something so much more.

It was going to fucking ruin me to never have that again.

“You’re doing good, Dex,” Maximus said, reading my face. “Maybe a little harsher than I’d be, but I guess Perry is the type of woman to try and fight for you anyway.”

“Please,” I croaked, the cigarette shaking in my hand. “I can’t hear this anymore.”

Maximus changed the subject. “So tell me about your mother. Why do you think it wasn’t her? What was she?”

I shook my head sharply, not ready to go down that road at this time of night. “Something else I’d rather not talk about. Tell
me
something. Tell me about Rose.”

His features froze, his skin turning pale so that every scattering of freckles stood out. Ah ha. Now here was the thing that Maximus didn’t want to talk about. I didn’t care though. If I had to deal with Perry and my dead mother, he was going to talk about Rose. There was a story there and I had to hear all of it. I was going to go Barbara Walters on his ginger ass whether he liked it or not.

I stared at him, prodding him with my eyes. He stared right back then sighed. He pulled up a chair to the side of the bed and sat down on it. It was only then that I realized he slept in a plaid pajama set, like a lumberjack Hugh Hefner. Figured.

“Rose…” He began, then puffed hard on the cigarette. “Rose was my next chance. After I screwed things up with you, I had to make good.”

“Why? What happens otherwise, does someone come after you? Jacob PD?”

“In a way. We aren’t really governed by anyone in particular, it’s just kind of instinctual.”

“So no one Jacobs the Jacobs?” I smirked.

“No. Not really. There is a network through the Veil; you’ll get images, see people you’re supposed to help. If you don’t help them, the images become more vivid. You start to hear voices and you get this gut instinct that just tells you what to do. When I…when I decided I couldn’t guide you in any way, I expected to get backlash from it. Maybe I’d get sick or something until I found you again. But I didn’t…later I met another Jacob who explained the exception. I asked how he knew that—he just smiled and said he knew and that’s all. So obviously I wasn’t as in tune with my purpose as I thought, or…I don’t know. Maybe I was forsaken.”

We were getting off the topic of Rose, but I had to ask, “So where were you born, really?”

“I wasn’t born.”

“Okay, jackass. So when did you remember coming into existence? You must have had parents…”

He shook his head. “No parents. I just woke up one day in Louisiana, in a small apartment in Baton Rouge, in almost the same body I have right now. I knew who I was, what my purpose was, and I took it from there. It sounds crazy, and now that I know your world, it
is
crazy. But that’s the only way I can explain it. Whoever I was before, I don’t know. How long has this body been around? I don’t know that either. But I do know I will die one day and this body will die with me. That’s the one thing that hasn’t changed.”

This was just too fucking weird. Fucked up sprinkles on a slice of psycho shit cake. “Back to Rose…”

He cringed. “I tried to ignore Rose for as long as I could. After I left you, I went around the USA exploring for a bit. It was amazing, to just be living and not have any duties. I started to think that if I was forsaken or forgotten, that it would be okay. I’d be happy with that. I could live a free life like everyone else. But then the images started coming. I’d see Rose in my dreams, and hoooo-boy, I’d see her whole life flash before my eyes. Her as a young girl working on a farm, dancing with boys at high school parties, serving people at a bar. Then I started seeing the images in broad daylight, over and over again, and the Veil started ripping open and I knew that if I just walked through it, I’d be right there with her. That I had to show her the gifts she had, the gifts I could sense were starting to manifest. She had been seeing demons in the dark, things out of the corners of her eyes. Sometimes she’d be staring at a spot right before her, and I could see that demon as it made its way through the Veil and right to her feet. She knew something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t really see it. If only she knew what she could do to drive the demon back into the Veil. But she didn’t. I had to teach her that.”