Nighttime rituals followed, routine made special by being undertaken with Brian.
They brushed teeth in his opulent bathroom, and she stroked the shiny finish of his sink when he wasn’t looking, allowing herself a giddy half-second to appreciate his fancy home.
But as they settled in, bodies entwined in their lover’s hold, Helen’s system kicked into an agitated gear. She felt it all around them.
Felt it in the shadows on the walls, in every little whimper and whine the mansion uttered.
Though Brian snoozed like a man who’d exerted himself sexually, she lay piqued and restless. Flat on the bed in a sarcophagus pose with folded arms, she bore witness to a nighttime theatre surrounding her with its shifty, furtive performance of movement and sound.
This went on for awhile, though she refused to glance at the hell-red numbers on Brian’s digital clock.
“It’s okay. You’re allowed to sleep. Nothing bad will happen if you sleep for a few hours.” She’d almost convinced herself with the pep talk when the deck doors slid open on their own volition.
She bolted upright. But nothing would budge. Her arms were dead logs. Legs tubes of wet sand. She was trapped in paralysis, as rigid as a corpse. To the soundtrack of her choppy breathing, she tracked an undulating rope the hue and consistency of skim milk as it floated through the air.
It reared back and shot straight toward her.
Helen was smart enough not to scream and grant the phantom access to her mouth, but her precaution didn’t matter. The mist burrowed in to her ears and nostrils while she lay in the dark, trapped in her useless body.
“Sacrificium.” It repeated the word in her head until syllables ran together.
Twenty
Brian woke from a dead man’s sleep, guided back to consciousness by a triangle of late morning sunlight that spilled through the patio doors and glazed his hardwood flooring in buttery tones.
For once, he had someone to spend such a graceful morning with. He reached for Helen, but his hand brushed against an empty spot. Confused, he sat up in bed.
“Helen?” Brian swung his legs over the side of the mattress and tugged on discarded boxer shorts. A wrinkle of tan latex hanging over the edge of the waste bin reminded him of their passionate sex. Surely she hadn’t pulled the dreaded morning-after disappearing act.
A check of the bathroom came up empty, and he was about to call her when he noticed the patio door ajar and went out on the deck. Helen sat poolside in her bra and underwear, messy hair flowing down her back, head hung as she stirred the water into froth with slow kicks.
Brian gathered a blanket off the bed and went to her, goose flesh flaring on his skin. The climate was brass monkeys for Los Angeles, and she must’ve had some heavy things on her mind to not be distracted by the cold.
“You must be freezing.” He draped her in the comforter.
She didn’t so much as twitch, didn’t speak a word. The cool feel of her skin leeched into him, bringing a deep sense of doubt. After the bathroom and storage locker incidents, he couldn’t assume he was talking to Helen and not her imposter. What a hideous feeling.
But when she turned to him, he connected with a texture in her eyes. The precise nature of the humanity inside Helen, an ineffable quality that the clone lacked, pulsed like a flame.
Human life had a sheen, a depth, but also a limit. Vacancy lurked in the clone’s stare, a retreating endpoint fading into an infinite horizon. Real Helen bore the sentient glimmer inherent in the look of a thinking, feeling, mortal person. He sure was learning a thing or two about metaphysical matters from their ordeal.
“The cold keeps me awake.”
As soon as she spoke the words in a resigned monotone, he noticed the dark rings under her eyes. He sat beside her, concrete nipping the backs of his legs in icy-hot pricks. Brian dipped a foot into the water in a halfhearted attempt at camaraderie.
“Why do you want to stay awake?”
“It came to me.” Her voice quaked.
“What did?” His heart plummeted. Why did he ask? He knew.
“The curse, the cloud of smoke. And it, and it, it… God, it was the worst thing ever.” Her face contorted in a grimace. She shook her head like she wanted to purge whatever she was remembering and flopped into his side.
He pulled her swaddled form close, taunted by the futility of his hug. He could alleviate her physical chill, but not the cold inside.
“Oh, Helen. What did it do to you? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” A thousand half-formed scenarios, each more depraved than the next, played a sinister compilation reel in his brain.
“Don’t apologize. Don’t you dare. It possessed me. Spoke in my head, ordering me to do things. It tried to move my body around, puppet me, but thankfully it couldn’t pull that off. Not yet.”
They were alone in his castle, so alone. Spiritually alone. The fortress walls at their backs closed in, as did the rocky hills beyond his property, shrinking his world to a goddamn fiasco. “What did it order you to do?”
She buried her face in his chest and let out a keening wail. “It’s too awful, too awful.”
“It’s okay, Helen.” Brian was rocking her now, though it was he who felt as helpless as an abandoned baby. “We’ll figure it out and fix it together. We’ve come this far.”
She broke away, her face pale and thin-lipped. The fear in her eyes flayed him raw.
“No. I don’t think we will. I don’t think we can.”
“What are you talking about?”
She stared into the pool like answers would erupt from water. Or perhaps she couldn’t face him.
“Helen, tell me. No secrets. I can handle it.”
Her chin quivered. “It ordered me to kill you. And with so much detail, directions. It told me to get a belt from your closet and kneel on your back while I
