Dead Spell (11 page)

“Please…”

She held up her hand. “Just stop it, all right. We’re done. Don’t call me. Don’t look for me. Nothing. As far as you’re concerned, I’m
dead
.”

She regretted it as soon as she said it.

18
.

It was almost dark by the time Harmony got home and the air felt more like winter than fall. She blew out a puff of hot breath and it dissolved around her.

“Welcome to rock bottom.”

 Looking down the bowels of Pinewood Estates, nothing had changed. Her trailer lights were off and probably the power, too. Lance’s, of course, were on and there were two cars parked out front of his place that she hoped were stop-and-go customers because she needed more than anything to settle in, drink a beer, smoke a joint—anything to take the edge off, if he would
still have her.

She felt her jaw and, deciding that the swelling was down, turned on her phone. Twelve new messages. Assuming they were all from Adam, she deleted them without listening.

“Welcome home,” she said and climbed the rickety stairs.

The heel of her boot sunk through the decking of the half-rotten porch and she gritted her teeth to stifle the scream. She pulled her foot loose and cursed the searing pain in her ankle.

“Let’s see what’s behind door number one.”

She turned the wobbly door knob and pushed. The door didn’t budge, its frame bent by a previous tenant’s domestic dispute that was anything but. The landlord had been promising for months to fix it, but so far had only showed up to complain that they were late on rent.

“Looks like another break-in.” She knew just where to hit the door to knock it in and she tightened her muscles to minimize the pain. “Ready or not…” She checked the door with her hip and the vibrations rode up her bones and into her aching jaw. “Shit.” A thick blanket of kerosene fumes and the smell of sour vomit washed over her.

“Oh my God. Mom?”

No one answered.

“Mom, are you here?” She kicked her way through mounds of trash to get to one of the few working windows and opened it.

“
Uhhh…
” The guttural moan caught her off guard and she jumped.

“Mom.” She grabbed a flashlight off the end table and hit it hard against her palm to keep it lit.

Her mother was balled up under a blanket in the corner behind a pile of worn out boxes that had been moved so many times it took a roll of tape to keep what was left of their shape. Boxes that after four months of living at Pinewood Estates still hadn’t been unpacked.

Harmony climbed over the cardboard fortress and dropped to her knees.

“Mom.” She slapped her cheeks and shook her shoulders. “Mom, come on. Answer me.” Even in the muted light her lips were visibly blue. Harmony pressed two fingers against her neck and found the faint glug-glug of a weak pulse. “Mom, wake up. Come on. Wake up.” She unrolled the thick, urine-soaked blanket from around her and she immediately shivered.

“Oh, God. Not again.”

Harmony plucked the empty syringe from the crook of her mother’s left arm and undid the belt cutting off her circulation and discoloring her arm from the elbow down. She was wearing nothing but a bra and a pair of torn panties and there were handprint bruises up and down her throat, arms, and legs.

Like mother, like daughter.

 “Mom, please answer me.”

She vomited a soap-like foam and started to seize. Harmony turned her on her side and dialed 9-1-1.

“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

“I need an ambulance right away. Pinewood Estates, trailer 16. The last name is Wolcott.” Harmony hung up and buried the dirty needle in an overfull trash can behind her. 
“I can’t believe this shit.”

She th
readed her frail mother through a grease-smeared sweatshirt and pulled a pair of drawstring pajama pants up her legs and over her tiny, bone-protruding hips.

A siren blared and lights swirled in the distance.

“I have to go. I’m sorry.”  She picked up her bag and went around the back of the trailer to watch through the window.

A young paramedic stepped into the trailer and repeatedly flicked the switch. “The light’s not working.”

Bill, a paramedic Harmony knew well from his visits to their house, pushed past and knocked the newbie forward with the big red bag slung over his shoulder.

“Light never works.” He used an empty box like a bulldozer to clear a path to her mother. He set down the back board and rolled her on it. “Charity, it’s Bill. Come on, wake up.” He lifted her lids and shined a pen light in her eyes. “Charity, can you hear me?”

Her mother grunted and Harmony sighed with relief. She was going to be all right. She had to be.

Two police cruisers pulled up to the swarm of neighbors crowded together out front: filthy children with no shoes and drunken parents, toothless, elderly women with filterless cigarettes perpetually fixed between their puckered lips, drug dealers and clients, most of which booed the officers. Harmony used the chatter for cover and headed to Lance’s.

The door opened before she could even knock.

 “What the hell are you doing here?” He tied his hair back in a black rubber band and slipped a pair of sneakers on his bare feet.

“I need your help.”

“Like you needed my help the other night?” He pointed at his blackened, swollen eye.

“I don’t have time for this.” One of the cops was looking around for something she figured was probably her.

“I have to come in.” She shoved past him and closed the door. “Listen, just let me explain.”

He sat on the arm of the sofa, clearly aggravated.

“I wasn’t going to keep the car, Lance. You know that. You fell asleep and I just borrowed it.”

“I fell asleep, right, nothing to do with that pill dust in my drink? Shitty that you’d pull that on me, Harm.”

“Pull what? What are you talking about?” She meant to rinse the cup and forgot.

“And you won’t even fess up. That’s the worst part.”

He stood and crowded her toward the door, closing in on her in a cold, threatening manner.

She felt pressured to go, but couldn’t leave. Not with the cops kicking around. She settled on a viable story and started to cry.

“You want to know why I took your car? Fine. I went to end it with Adam. I was going to tell him that I wanted to be with you. That’s why he attacked you.”

It was a perfect little logical lie.

“And what happened when you tried?”

She had to be careful. Either they hadn’t told them they’d found her at the cemetery or he was giving her enough rope to hang herself. “Then Brea called me and begged me to take her to Oakwood which was where they arrested me. At that point, I was at Adam’s mercy. I needed bail.” She pressed her lips to his, tilting her face so he would feel the tears.

He kissed her back, but she could feel his reluctance.

“I need you to get me out of here before he finds me.”

He withdrew and she knew it was the wrong thing to say.

“I can’t keep doing this. I’m not getting between you two and I’m certainly not getting the crap beat out of me again. You need to leave.”

He opened the door. The crowd had cleared. The ambulance was gone, but she couldn’t go home. Child Protective Services was surely looking for her. She couldn’t go back to Adam’s either and though she’d slept on the streets before, it was far too cold. He was her only option. “Lance, come on. Let me stay tonight, please?”

“No,” he said, “not this time. Fix your own goddamned mess.”

19
.

Harmony walked away from Lance’s trailer feeling like a roadside discard. Her eyes stung and her nose filled up from holding in the tears. This was the most alone she ever felt and, as she opened the door to her cluttered trailer, she calculated her options: live tortured or die.

The place stunk of urine, kerosene, and vomit.

The floor was only clear where the medics had worked on her mother.

“No one should live like this.” She ripped off the bandages that Adam dressed her cuts with and picked the fresh scabs until they bled.

“You’ve been waiting for this, Tom. You want me, take me.” She dug her nails into the edge of the deepest cut, but the barely healed scab wouldn’t budge. “You want to see me hurt myself? Is that it?” She took a dull knife from the cluttered kitchen drawer and tore it through the scab, clenching her teeth to keep from screaming. “I know you’re here. What are you waiting for?” The blood gushed down her forearm and Tom’s presence tightened around her like a blood pressure cuff. “Ah, there you are.”

The heaviness let up and she lost her balance.

“Where’d you go, my friend? What’s wrong, don’t you want to help me.”

 A shadow moved in the darkness—gray on black and barely visible—and something flickered in the only framed picture of her and her mother; the one of them blowing bubbles outside when she was two-years-old.  Someone she’d never noticed appeared in its background. She picked up the frame for a closer look.

A cool breeze blew across the back of her neck and the picture started to change. The faces in the picture went pale and thin and a greenish hue washed over them, growing progressively darker and more gruesome until decay and rot boiled them to bones.