“But you didn’t hurt me. You didn’t even try.”
“Not this time, but it’s tried to possess me before, and the first thing it did to announce itself after I drank the potion was speak in my head. It repeated the word it spoke that day, too, ‘sacrifice’ in Latin. So it hasn’t forgotten its mission. Things are intensifying, speeding up. And I have a hunch that whatever those masked guys were saying in the storage locker, all of that shit about Sister Folly and chaos born, has helped it make gains.”
“You have your spell book—”
Helen jumped to her feet. He followed suit, though the distancing autonomy of her motion didn’t miss him.
“Spells make it worse, which I already knew. Or they make it better at first, but then it gets worse later. Some kind of boomerang effect. I’m screwing up, over and over,” she said.
He held her arms, pinning her in place. “Wait. You can’t be sure of what you’re saying.”
Robust winds made whirling dervishes of her hair. Unspoken sadness passed between them. “Let me go, Brian.”
Brian released his grip, keeping his hands in the air. Her point emerged into focus, a finality whose sharp edges sliced. Boundaries weren’t fuzzy. She’d thought this over and made a decision. Didn’t make it hurt any less.
Still, he said, “Come on now. Let’s take today to think about our options and make a plan.”
She brushed past him, up the ladder to the deck and into the house. Brian walked a few steps behind her, details unfolding in harsh clarity. Her fast hands, snatching clothes from her suitcase. A mole on her leg as she hurried into jeans. All of the wasted opportunities, the things he still had not told her. The things he didn’t know about her. Their special ease with each other had been cancelled by evil.
With a tug so big it ripped a seam, Helen pulled a T-shirt over her head. Traces of her vanished from his life, bit by bit in a disappearing act of eccentricities. Spell book shoved in a messenger bag. Then her phone. Laminated buttons adorning the front of her bag slipped from view when she slid it around her back.
Though they’d spent only a single night together, already the lack of her opened a familiar abyss. He looked into that howling chasm, stared into the hole in his heart.
“I’m not leaving because I don’t care. I’m leaving because I do. I’m not a safe person, Brian.”
“You are safe.” He reached for her in one final, desperate effort. “You’re safe here, with me.”
“Stop.” Her voice cracked, those soulful brown eyes he could gaze into every morning for the rest of his life moistening. “You know what I mean.”
“The finale show is tomorrow. I need you by my side. In case something happens.”
“Something happening is what I’m worried about.” Hopping on one foot, she wrestled with hiking sandals, the crunch of Velcro gunfire in his ears.
Brian’s wound opened, a festering boil erupting on the surface. One by one and in their own unique way, they all eventually did this. His beloved mum, hustling his thirteen-year-old self on a train to London.
Grandmother, withdrawing her warmth for reasons he’d never figured out.
Kris.
Even Janet, leaving him and Tilly alone.
The thoughts were selfish, unfair, and indicative of problems with women. But self-awareness didn’t heal the sore.
Even the word that sprang up from his poisoned bog was lonely and sick, a child shaking in an orphanage. Abandoned.
His heart tore in two. Aftershocks reverberated through the depths of him. He turned his back on Helen before he cried. “Fine. Leave. Run away instead of facing this thing with the strength I know you have. You’re weaker than I thought.”
Her hand, soft like she bathed in coconut oil, caressed the arm he folded over a chest crushed by pain. “Someday you’ll understand.”
Streams rolled down his cheeks. Someday would never come. Yeah, he was cursed alright. This time an actual entity orchestrated the maleficence, but the hex had been around for years. About time the monster came to collect.
“Don’t pander to me. Just leave.”
“Brian, stop. You think I’m not going through hell? What we had was special, and I’ve never felt anything like it before. It’s killing me to do this, because I lo—”
“Don’t say it.” His voice wobbled wetly, but he didn’t care. Some stupid societal mandate to uphold the lie of hard, unfeeling masculinity was the least of his concerns. Something beautiful inside of him, something precious he’d thought he’d lost years ago, had been nurtured back to good health only to be stomped and murdered.
“I mean it. I’ve never said it to anyone, and you need to hear it. I love—”
“I said be quiet,” he shouted at her, yelled at her, making him a bona fide heel. A real git. Shame for lashing out assailed him in a fresh assault of stabs. He bit down on his tongue and shirked off her touch.
The feel of her skin went away, leaving a sucking emptiness and the ghost of her contact. Numbness washed over him, a hateful and familiar sedative. He looked outside without seeing anything but formless shapes and drab scenery.
His bedroom door opened and closed. The snick of the tab engaging brought closure to her unceremonious exit from his life.
Robotic and numb in lieu of going to pieces, Brian dried his tears and put on clothes. He ought to do something, undertake a pursuit in service of his career. His ambition had kept him alive through the years, cushioned his landing from devastations such as the one moments ago.
The taste of heartbreak salty in his mouth, he went downstairs, the belly of his cavernous home swallowing him.
Tilly sat at the kitchen island, hunched over a
