End Times (2 page)

Her mother blew her nose loudly into a hospital tissue, then balled it up and threw it on the floor. “So you’re just abandoning me? Now, when I’m all alone with nobody else in the whole wide world?”

“You just said you can’t bear the sight of me.” Daphne tried not to sound exasperated. “That every time you look at me, all you see is a killer.”

“How dare you talk back to me, missy!” Myra hissed. “If you want to go, then go. But don’t expect me to take you in when you come crawling back.”

“Okay.” It wasn’t the first threat her mother had made. Ever since Jim came along, Daphne’s place in their home had felt precarious, with her mom constantly hinting at throwing her out, and complaining about the expense of having an extra mouth to feed. It had gnawed at Daphne until she’d gotten her first job at the 7-Eleven when she was fourteen, lying about her age on the application to work extra hours. She’d started contributing to household expenses, but at the same time she’d kept a secret bank account: her “just-in-case” money for the inevitable day when Myra’s threats became reality.

Now that day was here. It was time to go.

She knelt by her mother’s chair and wrapped her arms around her tiny frame. “Take care of yourself, Mom,” she said. “You’ll be all right.”

She wanted to say more—that in spite of everything she still loved her, that somewhere she believed Myra still loved her back—but the words wouldn’t come. She hugged her mom tighter, trying to find the old scent of sunshine under the antiseptic smells of the hospital’s industrial-grade cleaner and her mom’s cheap shampoo.

Myra’s arms stayed tight by her sides, her shoulders sharp as glass. Daphne could feel the rage trembling inside her mother’s body, the hatred that Jim had wedged between them with the hungry way he’d eyed her growing body and reached for her in the cramped kitchen. It had always been there, but it was stronger now.

She stood and turned toward the door.

“Don’t you
dare
come back!” her mother shouted. “I never want to see your face again!”

The words echoed down the bustling hallway of the hospital where Myra had spent the last few weeks at Jim’s bedside, wondering how she could afford to keep him on life support. Daphne had stopped by nearly every day, bringing snacks from the 7-Eleven that her mother never touched, checking in with the doctors about Jim’s progress, but it was obvious to everyone but Myra that he would never be more than a vegetable. Finally the money ran out, and her mother decided to pull the plug.

Daphne knew she wouldn’t be back. She had a long journey ahead of her, but by the time she reached Carbon County, Wyoming, her mother’s accusations and threats would be as firmly behind her as Jim’s last breath. All she wanted was to put the last nine years behind her, to pretend that their relationship had ended when she was still a child with a mother who loved her. The moment she stepped onto that Greyhound, it would be over. She’d learn to remember her mom fondly from a distance, to touch her only through postcards and the occasional check when she could find work. Jim’s wandering hands and eyes, her mother’s cold denial of the truth, and the final, fateful night when it had all come crumbling down would disappear in the vast string of states between them.

By the time Uncle Floyd picked her up at the bus station, the trial would be nothing more than a smudgy square in an old issue of the
Detroit Free Press
.

JANIE arched her back as best she could and purred into Doug’s ear. Whoever said you didn’t want it when you were pregnant was full of it. It actually made her want him more: These days, just a whiff of his Abercrombie & Fitch aftershave (which, when she was being completely honest with herself, he maybe usually wore a little too much of) was enough to get her ready to create a whole new Miracle of Life.

“Ungh,” Doug grunted, quickly undoing his belt. He tried to wedge an arm under her back to unhook her bra, but between the frilly pillows, back issues of
Seventeen
magazine, and religious pamphlets from the Carbon County First Church of God strewn all over her bed, there was no room. “Sit up so I can get this.”

“Okay, babe!” Janie agreed. She struggled to get her shoulders off the mattress, but the weight in her belly flattened her right back down again.

“C’mon!” Doug urged, kicking off his boxers. He looked so funny with just his T-shirt on, no bottoms, that she couldn’t help giggling.

“You gotta help me up.” She giggled harder. Bella, her Pomeranian, jumped up on the bed and, thinking it was playtime, joined in with a series of high-pitched yips.

“Not now!” Doug snapped, sweeping Bella off the bed and into a pile of clean laundry that Janie kept meaning to fold and put away.

“Aw, don’t be mean!” Janie said as Bella started to whine. The dog was tiny, and her bed was way up high—her dad had put it up on risers to make room for the plastic bins underneath stuffed with her clothes, shoes, and accessories. It made her room look bigger when it was clean, but to be honest that wasn’t all that often. Between the usual mess on the floor and the ripped-out magazine pages of her favorite bands and actresses taped to the wall, her room looked busy, cozy, and fun—three words that Janie would also use to describe herself.

“Just help me up and undo my bra and then take off my pants and panties and we can totally do it. I really want to,” she added, trying for a sexy pout.

But Doug had already lost interest. “Forget it,” he sighed, rummaging on the floor for his boxers and jeans. “It’s too much work with that gut of yours.”

“This
gut
of mine?” Janie turned on her side and gingerly pushed herself up to sitting. “This just happens to be our son. I will not have you disrespecting him before he’s even out of the womb!”

Doug looked like he was gearing up for an argument—she could almost see the words tumbling around under his close-cropped brown hair. He was a meaty guy, with big shoulders and arms and, between her and God, kind of a big head, too, and he tended to wear his thoughts on his face. She could see in the way his thick brown eyebrows settled back into his forehead that he’d decided to skip the fight . . . which was good, because she didn’t think she could handle yet another one that day. If they were going to be parents together, they needed to stop getting into it so much!

“Okay, sorry, babe,” he said instead, lying down next to her and marveling at her boobs. “Man, those are big.”

“I know, right?” She’d always been busty, but now she was filling a DD cup.

“So your cousin’s gonna come stay here, huh?”

“Yup! Cousin Daphne. I haven’t seen her since we were little kids, but we used to have the best time playing together. I was always the princess and she was my lady-in-waiting, and we’d put on, like, these nasty old lace curtains my mom had and parade around, and then she’d talk Dad into driving us into town to get ice cream. I think he always had a soft spot for her, which I guess is why we’re taking her in now that her stepdad’s dead and her mom’s, like, practically a vegetable over it. Poor thing, the Lord hasn’t always shone his blessings down on her like He has with me. He took her father when she was still just a kid, and now this. But we’ll put her right again, or at least we’ll do our best. That’s what family’s for, right?”

“I guess.” Doug shrugged. “Where’s she even gonna sleep in this dump?”

“Can you please not call it that?” Janie knew her home wasn’t as nice as Doug’s house in town, with its fluffy wall-to-wall carpeting and shelves of ceramic frogs that his mom dusted, like, every other minute, but it wasn’t a
dump.
“The couch in the living room folds out, and she can keep her stuff here in my room.”

“Sounds cramped.”

Janie rolled her eyes. “Pastor Ted says that if we can make room in our hearts, we can make room in our homes. So that’s what we’re doing—darn it, Bella, stop that barking already!”

The little dog had begun yipping, really stirring up a racket. “Bella, just c’mere, it’s gonna be fine.”

She reached over to take her into her arms, but midway down she froze. A pair of beady black eyes stared back at her as the biggest snake she’d ever seen taunted her with a forked and darting tongue.

The serpent was enormous: as wide as Bella and who knew how long, the thick muscle of its body flexing under a sheen of scales that glistened in an ominous black-and-red pattern, like the spades on a playing card. It flicked its tongue at her almost seductively from inside a head as red and lustrous as fresh blood.

She opened her mouth, but even the scream wouldn’t come right away—not until the viper brought itself up tall and hissed, flexing the scales on its neck. Then she let loose a shriek so loud that even the ceramic Jesus on her bedside lamp looked like he wanted to take cover.

“What the—?” Doug jerked back on the bed.

“Doug, get it!” she shrieked. “Kill it, quick; it’s going to eat Bella!”

“Aw, I don’t know.” Doug’s face had gone pale under his stubble. “That thing’s seriously big.”

Bella whimpered from the corner. Fear had puffed the poor, sweet dog up to twice her size, so her brown eyes and button nose were nearly invisible under her trembling fur.

“Doug, please!” Janie started to cry. “He’s going to eat Bella and bite me and maybe hurt our baby! You have to do something—now!”

The snake swayed back and forth, beady eyes darting from Janie to Bella and back again, as if trying to decide which of them to attack first. It filled Janie with a cold dread that ran deeper than fear, as if the devil himself had sent a dark and bloodthirsty messenger to her room. Its head was at least two feet off the floor, and there was who-all-knew how much of it still coiled under the pile of laundry.

Doug steeled himself the way he did before a big motocross race, shaking his head and throwing back his shoulders.

“Fine.” He grabbed one of his Nike high-tops and shoved a foot inside, not bothering to tie the laces. He quivered with adrenaline, his burly arms puckered with goose bumps even as sweat ran down his forehead. Janie shrank back on the bed, and a snarl started deep and low in Doug’s chest. It burst from his throat with a loud roar as he leapt onto the snake, bringing a heavy sneaker down behind its head and crushing its neck onto the floor.

The snake hissed hideously, lashing its tail from side to side like a fresh-caught fish flopping on the pier at Hatchet Lake. Pink maternity tops and balled-up socks and long-forgotten homework assignments scattered.

“Die, damn it, die!” Doug screamed, stomping on the snake again and again. Its tail flailed, jerking back and forth in a spray of glittering scales. As Doug brought his foot down one last time, the jerking stopped and the snake stiffened. For a second, it looked like it was levitating off the ground, all of its coiled muscular energy propelling itself into one final moment of life. And then it lay still.

“Gross-ass snake,” Doug spat, shaking his foot. The viper lay half-flattened, glistening muscle and guts spilling from its neck.

“My goodness, what happened in here?” Janie’s parents looked blurry in the doorway, and she realized there were still tears in her eyes. Now that the shock was over, she could let them fall freely.

“Oh, Mom, it was awful!” she sobbed. Bella leapt onto her lap and began licking her tears, and Janie held the dog tight, weeping into her soft fur. “This snake just popped out of nowhere, and Bella started barking, and I was so scared it was going to get the baby!”

“Whatever, it was no biggie.” Doug had fully regained his composure. “I took care of it.”

Janie’s dad, Floyd Peyton, knelt to examine the carcass. His eyes weren’t so good after forty years sorting nuts and washers at the hardware store, but he’d never gone to get a prescription—too much money—and only wore cheap reading glasses from the local pharmacy.

“My Lord.” He leaned in for an even closer look. “Don’t go placing money on it, but this looks to me like a Djinn viper. I thought they were extinct around here—the last one I ever heard of was when my father was a boy.”

“A what viper?” Doug asked.

“Djinn. D-J-I-N-N. It’s related to the western rattlesnake, which I’ve sure seen plenty of in my time. But never this.”

He reached down and ran a finger over the snake’s lifeless tail. “See these black markings—almost like spades. That’s how it got its name. ‘Djinn’ means ‘devil.’”

Even in the warm trailer, Janie felt her skin go cold.

“What does it mean?” she asked. “Is it a sign?”

“Whatever, no,” Doug laughed. “Stop being so superstitious. It’s just a big-ass stupid snake.”

Doug was no help in situations like these. The Good Lord Jesus Christ himself could probably show up on his doorstep requesting an invitation for dinner, bloody palms and all, and Doug would call him a dirty hippie and turn him away. He was a believer in his own way, of course, but he didn’t always see the meaning in things like Janie did.

She turned to her parents instead. “Mom, what do you think?”

“I think it can mean whatever you want it to mean.” Karen Peyton’s voice was warm and comforting. “But maybe we should all pray a little extra hard tonight and try our best to shun temptation when it comes knockin’ on our door.”