Page 98 of Dark Ugly Places

Martha had plucked the thought from the far recesses of her head.

“So, what, then? I just stick it out until …” She no longer has the words.

“Until we are ready. I left something for you in the upstairs bathroom. Call me when you’re done with it.”

Bambi shivers, a terrible sense of dread in her core, the kind she got before Jason became violent. But something tells her to trust Martha.

As Martha turns to leave, Bambi grabs her hand. “Wait.”

Martha turns and catches her eyes, her expression curious.

“I’m scared,” she whispers, her voice thin and childlike.

Martha smiles, that same assured look coming over her. “I know. You’d be crazy not to be.”

42

Nicola

I need to get out. I need to get back to Emmy. The darkness has me in its grasp, cold fingers wrapping around my arms and legs, holding me down, keeping me trapped in the endless night. I long to escape, to hold my daughter, to feel her heartbeat and know she’s okay.

Instead, I feel nothing except the occasional impulse that I know is Martha’s. Her wild thoughts intrude, interrupting the stream of memories that appear as if to torture me—daggers stabbing, stabbing from the past.

Pack the bags.

Buy a fresh bottle.

Make sure there are none left in the house.

Make sure there are none. None what, Martha? But she won’t say. Something is happening. I can feel just enough to know she’s arriving at her purpose. I feel the change in her, swift and palpable like a change in the weather.

Clouds are brewing in the sky, and a dark haze forms overhead. Daylight turns to dusk. The gray early evening takes on a heaviness I remember but have tried to forget. The heaviness of that day.

In the black beyond, I inch toward the doorway of the memory, light from my father’s basement cutting into the dark with a single sharp beam. Through to the light and down the basement stairs, creaking, creaking. I pause at every step, my body trembling, my child-sized fingers holding the rail. The entire room thuds, as though my heartbeat is outside my body. A few steps more, and my father’s frame comes into view, sitting slumped in a chair, his head tilted to one side.

I stop, the sound of something drip drip dripping catches me off guard.

There’s a sulfur smell in the air.

A few more steps, and I reach the landing, something black and hand-sized at my feet. My father’s pistol. Peering closer, I go to touch it, then yank back my hand. Blood is splattered everywhere. Tiny fragments of flesh cover the floor. A great pool of dark blood is growing beside him.

My ears prick as the house creaks overhead, as though everything is shifting, groaning from the release of him.

I can’t resist moving toward him and getting close. What’s left of his face is turned away from me.

“He’s gone,” I whisper. “He’s really gone.”

The voice appears inside me. Her voice, so confident. So assured.

Yes, Nicola. Your father is with us now. Just like you asked. You don’t have to be afraid anymore.

A light flashes, and the memory dissipates, fog drifting away from the shore.

Now, the lilies on my father’s casket are gaping mouths upturned to the sky. My mother jerks my arm trying to keep me from staring, but I can’t help it. I keep imagining what his face must look like inside. Would he still be recognizable? There was so much blood.

My mother leads Janice and me toward the casket. Our little reflections are curved and distorted in its shiny brown lid. Janice leaps forward and flings herself into the hard shell of the casket like it’s my father’s chest. “Goodbye, Daddy,” she says. My mother clutches my hand and snivels. The faint smell of mildew from the carpet mixes with the pungent scent of my mother’s perfume, and my stomach rolls. I wrench from my mother’s grasp, eager to remove the feeling of her hand upon mine. “How long do we have to stay?”

My mother’s eyes are dead. “Until it’s time to leave.” She looks me over, a flicker of bitterness. “Tuck in your shirt. You look like a ragamuffin.”