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“Joseph!” She squeals.
I laugh and kiss her again as I get up and grab my clothes.
The water pressure at the Beachfront Inn is shoddy at best. I wait a few minutes for the trickle of water to warm up before stepping inside. I’m out of soap, so I resign myself to washing my body with the chalky complimentary hotel soap. I try to relax, but then I feel Beatrix’s talon-like claws digging into the back of my neck.
“Joseph,” she whispers, her breath acrid against my cheek. I whip around and bang my head on the shower head, which I'm sure will leave a knot. Of course, no one is there. I tell myself to relax and wait for the throbbing in my head to subside as I squirt a handful of shampoo into my palm.
“Don’t ignore me,” Beatrix hisses. The hotel shower is barely big enough for two people, even if one of them is dead. We’re so close our chests are touching. I tell myself it’s not real and try to deny the certainty of Beatrix’s onyx eyes watching me squirm.
“You’re not real. Get out!” I demand.
Beatrix scoffs, “Now, Joseph, we both know you know better than that. I am more than just a thing that goes bump in the night. I’m not your scary story. I’m your penance. Your comeuppance. You will pay for the sins of your father and his father before him. You Idylewylde men are always so selfish, thinking that you know everything. But you don’t. I am the ineffable and unknowable. I will be here long after you’re gone. You can never get rid of me.”
Beatrix wrenches my head back. I hear a pop in my neck as I scream.
Eleanor pounds on the door. “Joseph!! Are you okay?”
I can’t stop screaming. Beatrix clamps her rotten hand over my mouth. I bite down and taste her sulfuric flesh. I throw the elbow of my good arm back, and it connects with the wall.
“Joseph!” Eleanor screams.
Finally, I wrestle my way out of the shower, tangling my legs in the plastic curtain as Beatrix latches onto my waist. I ram my knee into her stomach, and she grunts as I grab a towel.
Finally, I open the door. Eleanor looks alarmed.
“Are you okay? You were screaming bloody murder.”
“Beatrix,” I pant, “She’s here. She, I-” I struggle to catch my breath, “She attacked me in the fucking shower.”
“Joseph, that’s impossible! She can’t just take off and haunt wherever she wants, can she?”
“Eleanor, you have to believe me,” I beg. The past few nights have been terrible. I’ve barely been sleeping and can feel my grip on reality loosening by the day.
“It’s not that I don’t believe you; it’s just, how would she even get here?” Eleanor asks, sitting on the edge of the shower. She’s dressed for the day now, wearing a burgundy sweater dress that accentuates the ever-growing globe of her belly and black wool-lined tights. Her shiny red hair is pinned in a neat bun on the top of her head.
I shrug and towel off my hair. Eleanor’s eyebrows shoot up to her hairline.
“What?”
Eleanor wordlessly points in front of her. A distinct handprint in the mirror, written in the steam, in Beatrix’s unmistakable script, reads: YOU’LL NEVER GET RID OF ME.
“I’m going to go ahead and guess that you didn’t write that,” Eleanor mumbles.
“Mhmm.”
“You know, now that I think about it, it’s really good that we’re getting breakfast with Dante today,” Eleanor says.
Eleanor and I join Dante downstairs for breakfast in the lobby. He’s spreading a tiny packet of cream cheese onto a bagel when he takes in my haggard expression.
“Joseph, what happened to you?” He asks.
“What do you think!? Beatrix happened!”
“Just now?”
“This morning! There was writing on the mirror and everything. Here, I took a photo!” Eleanor digs her phone out of the pocket of her dress, ever the documentarian.
Dante whistles, “Well shit, it looks like we’ve got a live one.”
