Back in the leather chair with the view of the ocean, I picked up the knife leaning against the plate that held the cheese danish. A dozen Blanche corruptions now stood between me and Craig and my typing corruption. Blanche had anticipated me coming back. As they moved to restrain me, I sawed at my neck with the knife, crying out in pain, until I severed an artery. Blood hissed from the gash and shot across the room in a fine mist, spraying the corruptions, including my own, and making them disappear, freeing Craig to remove himself from the whorl by unceremoniously submerging back into his pool of scrill.
The graft failed, and I was once again on the bridge, between two towns blanketed in blue snow, above a raging river. I heard Zelda/Craig’s cascade of scrill slapping against the concrete deck as it advanced across the bridge.
But it was too late for the poor souls around me. Blanche/Lonnie, Blanche/Warren, and the opera singers tumbled around me, regurgitated into the void. I hadn’t been able to save them.
I stepped over and around them and found Em’s lifeless body as the scrill rained down on us in clumps, hot and steaming, the pungent smell of menthol and strawberries clearing my sinuses. I kneeled beside Em and held her in my arms and wiped the blue grit from her face, and I kissed her on the forehead. I hoped that she had survived somehow in the lunch lady again. In truth, that hope was the only thing keeping from turning and jumping off the bridge. But I mourned this Em. This Em was dead.
As my face clenched and tears sprang loose, Em sat up, wide-eyed and screaming. All at once, I was startled, confused, gleeful, and concerned. I tried to comfort her. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” I said, but she wouldn’t look at me. She just kept screaming, like I wasn’t there. It was the same way she’d screamed when Warren had first infected her with Ghost Heart. I fumbled around in my pockets and found the otalith potion Rhonaya had given me to stave off the Dirge. I sprayed Em with the medicine, and in moments she calmed and focused her eyes on me. I smiled, so happy to see her in her own body, but she began to cry.
“What’s wrong?” I said, hugging her. “We’re safe. It’s over. Blanche is dead.”
“The nightmares,” she said between sobs, and I felt that weight inside, that dreadful pressure that comes when a loved one is hurting. I’d been lying to myself. I would never be able to keep her nightmares away, not all of them.
Chapter 39
ZELDA/CRAIG DESCENDED INTO THE scrill pool, and Em and I walked back into Rio Dell and searched for our people, calling out their names: “Kaliah! Lou!”
I didn’t know why or how Em had been returned to her body, but I liked to believe Zelda had convinced Craig to do it somehow.
Rain washed some of the scrill off of the would-be grafters, but many faces were still obscured by it, making our search more difficult. Most people, free from Blanche’s cackle, were either rushing into buildings to get out of the rain or to their cars to get home. There were shouts and honking as people drove down the sidewalk around the gridlock. I wondered what they thought, how much they remembered, if they feared they were going insane. What were the ramifications for the cackle races after this? Was the secret out of the bag, or would Lodges come together to contain this disaster? Did mobiaks have their own version of FEMA?
I found everyone together, Kaliah, Lou, Hugo, Suzanne, Bruce, and Pam, all covered in scrill, a block up from where the foodies had been gathered. The street was mostly clear. They had heard me calling them. Their eyes and smiles were white chasms in the blue. Em ran to Suzanne, and they embraced.
Kaliah’s smile was so bright and beautiful. We hugged.
Hugo broke up the moment by asking what had happened since the golf cart crash. I told him and everyone about Naomi’s metaphor spell, which made Bruce and Pam nod and smile with pride. I told of the secret beyond the cheese danish, and of Zelda’s sacrifice. They had all seen the rekulak, along with everyone else gathered here.
Em mourned Zelda, and Suzanne comforted her.
After I finished answering a few more questions, Lou and I went back to the bridge and carried the bodies of the mimes and magicians and opera singers out of the rain to a half-empty carport, and we laid them down in a line, then found blankets to cover them with.
Our group spent that night in Rio Dell, in an empty apartment above where Blanche had held her Christmas party. For Christmas Eve dinner, we ate the leftover snacks—chips and dip and finger sandwiches and canned oysters and sardines on crackers. We drank the leftover liquor as well. Lou even found some eggnog for Em. At some point, the rain stopped rapping on the roof. I didn’t feel right about celebrating, but I couldn’t help doing a little of it. Despite the lives lost on the bridge and among those outside the county who had been infected, and the lives lost in the other stomachs, I was happy to be alive, happy I had people to love, people that loved me.
On Christmas morning, the clouds were not as thick, not as dark. No rain fell. The river had gone down. Coast Guard and Army helicopters flew overhead, searching for survivors and delivering food, I presumed. Most of the people in the two towns had left, taking their cars with them. The people that remained moseyed up and down Main Street in heavy coats exchanging stories about the day before and the giant centipede beast that had risen from the river. I overheard a few comments about never swimming again, and more than a
