sky. That is, if I could take the heat for that long. Then again, the Browns were playing this afternoon. Maybe I could finish the front now and put off doing the back until tomorrow.
Devona reached out with her tongue to lap up the crimson liquid on her chin then and I found the action to be at once both arousing and disturbing. She frowned.
'Funny. It doesn't taste like strawberry. It tastes different. Better.' She smacked her lips thoughtfully. 'Sweet, but it has a kick to it, almost like it contains caffeine. Just a little bit gave me a jolt of energy.' She looked at me then. 'Wait a minute, what were you saying a minute ago about having bad news to tell me?'
'The kids were messing around in the backyard and accidentally broke the head off your Buddha statue.'
'Really? Oh, well. It's not like we can't get it fixed, right? We'll just run on over to the Foundry and…' She trailed off. 'Why did I say that? What's the Foundry?'
'I don't know.' But the truth was I did know. At least, it felt like I did, somewhere deep down inside me. Only I couldn't quite remember. I decided not to worry about it, realized I seemed to be deciding that a lot lately, then decided not to worry about that.
I took another sip of my shake and my mouth was filled with a taste so foul that I turned to spit the muck out on the grass.
'What's wrong?' Devona asked.
'Damned if I know. It suddenly tastes like shit. Literally. Like the kind of swill they serve at Hem-' I frowned, unable to finish the word, though for the life of me I didn't know why I couldn't finish.
An unusually cool breeze blew across the yard then, causing both Devona and I to shiver.
'Something's not right,' she said, a note of fear in her voice.
I knew just how she felt but once more, I decided not to worry about it. No, not decided. I couldn't worry about it.
Devona held her shake in one hand and the empty drink carrier in the other, so I couldn't take hold of her. Instead I stepped forward and put my arm around her waist.
'Tell you what, Mrs. Richter. The kids are busy making more mischief in the backyard and you and I are both hot and sweaty – me from my Herculean efforts to tame this lawn, you from exercising your athletic prowess on the tennis court. Would you like to join me in a cool, soothing shower?'
Devona eyed the half-finished lawn. 'It's not like you to leave a job undone.'
I kissed her gently on the neck. Her sweat coated skin had the tang of salt. I found it to be erotic and I felt my body responding.
'Some sacrifices are worth making.'
I leaned in to kiss her lips this time – trying not to think about how she'd lapped up the crimson liquid a moment ago – but before we could kiss, the sun dimmed as if suddenly blocked by clouds. The sky had been clear only a moment ago.
We both looked up and saw that there were no clouds. Instead, the sun had taken on a shadowy cast, and it now gave off a purple-tinted light, painting the world in strange dark hues. A word popped into my mind then, one I'd never heard before but which at the same time seemed so familiar. Umbriel.
The breeze returned then, even colder than before, and this time it didn't pass but continued blowing.
Devona dropped the drink carrier and her shake and put her arms around me. I slipped my own arms around her shoulders, noticing that the lid had sprung off her shake cup when it hit the ground. Thick red liquid that looked nothing like strawberry was soaking into the grass.
'Matt, I'm scared. What's happening?'
It's breaking down, I thought, though I wasn't sure what that meant.
Yes, Devona said. It's our link. Or maybe it's Papa Chatha's necklace. Hell, maybe it's a combination of the two. Whichever the case, something is preventing the illusion from taking full hold of our minds.
I realized then that Devona wasn't speaking. I'd felt her reply more than heard it, as if she were somehow speaking in my head.
'Illusion?' I said aloud. I had no idea what she was talking about. And yet… I did.
She frowned. 'I don't know.' She'd returned to speaking her words instead of thinking them to me. 'It made sense a second ago, but my thoughts keep slipping away. I can't seem to hold on to them for very long.'
I gripped her tighter as the world continued to darken around us. 'I know what you mean. It almost feels like we're fighting on some level… resisting. But I don't know exactly what we're fighting.'
Devona started to say something, but her reply was cut off by the sound of our children crying out in alarm from the backyard. Without thinking I dropped my shake and Devona and I started running. When we reached the backyard we saw the twins near their sandbox. They lay on the ground, bodies covered with long tendrils of some kind of strange weed growing out of the ground.
Leech vine, I thought. I didn't know what that was, but I instinctively knew it was something very bad.
The vine had burrowed into the children's skin at various place – face, neck, hands, back, belly – and it was pulsing rhythmically as if it was pumping something into them. No, I realized with horror. The plant was pumping something out of them: blood.
Devona and I stood there in shock for several seconds and during that time we watched the twins' suntanned skin begin to pale as the leech vine rapidly drained the life out of them.
Devona and I started forward. I didn't know if I would make things worse by tearing the vines away from the twins' flesh. I only knew I couldn't stand by and watch as my children succumbed to some sort of parasitic plant. But before either Devona or I could reach the twins, Lily held her hand out in a stay back gesture.
'Don't!' she said. Her voice was so much weaker than it had been only a few minutes ago in the front yard and hearing it broke my heart. I started forward again, but Toby repeated his sister's gesture.
'Listen to her!' he said, his voice just as weak as his twin's. 'We know what's happening.' His hand dropped then, as if it were too weak to hold it up any longer, and Lily's did the same.
'None of this is real,' my daughter said, her voice now little more than a whisper. 'We're not real, Toby and I, we're… pretend. This whole place is pretend.'
Toby's head gave the slightest of nods, all that he could manage. His skin, like his sister's, was almost ivory-white now, eyes sunken in, lips blue-tinged.
'You and Mom are fighting. Trying… to break free. That's why all this is happening. Why we're…' He trailed off.
'Dying,' Lily finished for him. 'But it's OK, because we were never really…'
'Alive,' Toby said.
I turned to Devona, and I saw she now possessed overlong incisors jutting down from her upper jaw. I looked at my hands and saw they were gray-tinged, the flesh dry and flaking.
'Pretend,' Lily said. 'Just… pretend.'
Sorrow welled up strong inside me, along with anger. This family, my house, my life wasn't pretend. It couldn't be! I wouldn't let it be!'
A shimmering passed through the air, like ripples in a pond, and when it cleared, the sunshine had returned in full force and my children stood there, free of the leech vine, strong and healthy once more. Devona no longer had fangs, and my hands looked normal again. Everything was as it should be.
I was so relieved that I started toward the twins, wanting nothing more than to wrap my arms around the two of them and never let go. But the expressions on their faces – sadness, disappointment, regret – made me pause.
'Don't, Daddy,' Lily said. 'Don't use us as an excuse to hide.'
'You've always faced the truth, no matter how hard it was,' Toby said. He smiled then. 'That's your job, right? To find out the truth.'
'Find it now,' Lily said. 'For us, if for no other reason.'
I turned to Devona, and I didn't know I was crying until she reached up and gently brushed the tears from my face. She was crying too, but her tears were tinged with red, and while that should've seemed strange to me, I somehow knew it was perfectly normal for her.
'It tears me up to say this, Matt, but they're right. I can feel it. And I know you can too.'
I wanted to tell her that I didn't feel anything, that this was real, and I didn't want to hear another word about it. But instead I nodded. I took her in my arms and held her as tight as I could.
