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“This is all my fault. ”
I couldn’t argue with him there. “It sure is. I’m okay though. Rattled, but okay. ”
“Was it bad in there? You look terrible. ”
“It was bad, yeah. But it’s not a big deal. It’s not something to get all excited over. It was just . . . ”
“What?” He asked it eagerly, but not too eagerly. He was trying to hold back until he was sure I was all right, but his curiosity was eating him alive. “What was it? Did you see her? Did she say anything? I heard you talking, but I didn’t catch anything else. And then stuff started breaking. We heard that. ”
“Can you give me a minute?” I asked, bracing myself against the wall and pushing myself to a standing position. Nick tried to help, but I didn’t let him. I didn’t want him to touch me. I didn’t want anyone to touch me, including the nervous-looking maid or her boss—if that’s who he was.
“Give the lady some room,” Nick ordered, even though the other two spectators had already done so.
“Is there a restroom I could use? Could you let me just—let me wash my hands and see the damage for myself. ”
“Down the hall on the left,” the maid indicated.
“Thanks,” I nodded, and with one hand holding onto the vintage papered walls, I drew myself towards the ladies’ room. “Give me a minute. I’ll only be a minute. ”
4
After Avery
“And how about a first-aid kit?” Nick demanded, but it wasn’t aimed at me. He projected the suggestion the other way down the hall, and I suppose someone would either see about getting one or say they didn’t have one.
I stumbled into the bathroom and it was empty, thank heaven. With a twist of my wrist I summoned steaming hot water from the tap and let it run while I pumped pearly white soap into my palm and lathered it up.
The mirror told me that Nick had been understating when he used the words “mess” and “terrible” to describe my appearance. I looked like hell.
I held my head over the basin and shook it, sending pixie dust flakes of broken glass down the drain. They fell off my collar, and out of my hair. They sprang from my shirt when I pulled it away from my skin and flicked the fabric with my fingers. Fine lines of drying crimson crisscrossed my forehead and my left cheek. My hands stung when I held them under the faucet because they too were lacerated. But even as I ran the floral-smelling suds over my knuckles, even though it hurt in a sharp, medicinal way to feel the soap, the small cuts healed themselves.
It’s been this way ever since the swamp—ever since I killed Avery. He was my grandfather, plus a couple of greats, and he was more wicked and old than any living human ought to be.
But that’s the thing, I think. He wasn’t human anymore. And whatever he was, he passed it on to me. He called it a curse.
For a long time, I didn’t believe him. I almost forgot about it.
Then, after a while, I noticed that I’d stopped getting sick. Ever. And the little nicks, bumps, and bruises that came with being alive began to vanish as soon as I’d acquired them. Some curse, I thought. My health insurance premiums would plummet.
But there was more to it than that, of course. There always is.
I’ve always had a tendency to “see things,” as it was euphemistically described when I was a kid. You write it off to imagination when you’re young. You let people call it something else because you don’t want to stand out too much. But it is what it is, and it does not care what you want.
After Avery it was different. After Avery, I saw the dead in all their states—I saw the ones who hung on hard and kept their forms, and the weaker ones too. I saw the ghosts that sensitive people perceive as chilly spots in stairways. I felt their chill and I spied them, too—huddled in their corners, looking at me with accusatory stares and sometimes holding out their hands.
When they know you can see them, they want your attention.
I shuddered. I hate mirrors. I picked more pieces of them out of my hair, and with my fingernail I dug a shard out of my thumb.
“How’s it going in there?” Nick knocked on the bathroom door. He pushed it open an inch to call inside. “Everything all right? I’ve got a first-aid kit. They had one in the manager’s office downstairs. ”
“I’m fine, Nick. ”
“A few Band-Aids never hurt anybody. That I know of,” he added, still not closing the door, but not sidling around it either.
“I’ll get them in a minute. Hang on, will you?”
“Do you need any help?”
