In Nightmares We're Alone (19 page)

The doctor wants to see what these things look like when they’re attached. I’ll show him. I’ll show him the goddamn monster I keep waking up as. I’ll take that stupid smile away from him so that he’ll never throw that passive aggressive shit at a patient again and try to make them feel crazy.

I can barely hold the wheel between these ridiculous things I used to call hands. Every time I have to turn it puts pressure on places I don’t want pressure and I have to grunt and squint and try not to shut my eyes so I can still see where I’m going. Every time I have to step on the brake the nails on all five toes feel ready to snap off.

If this keeps up much longer, maybe I should think about just ripping all my nails off and seeing if it helps the pain any. I’m sick of this Hungry Hungry Hippos shit they keep doing.

One of the plants sticking out of my fingers catches the turn signal switch as I’m turning and I jerk my hand back. My eye instinctively goes to it and when I look back up there’s a man standing in the middle of the road.

I step hard on the brake and scream at the fire in my toes. I wrap a hand around the wheel and the saplings sprouting from my four fingers press down on my palm and snap upward, pushing back the nails.

My eyes fill up with tears and I jerk the wheel. The car bumps up on the curb. I overcorrect, still blinded, and a loud bang and the feeling of impact bring everything to a stop.

The airbag doesn’t deploy and my face hits the steering wheel above the lip. That metal taste of blood fills my mouth and I spit onto the windshield. One of the growths from my face comes out with the blood and the other one drops onto my shirt a second later. I go to pick it up and my shirt is like my hand, all blood, with chunks of plant and flesh. Every growth on every finger has ripped back, tearing most of the fingernails off. I pick away what’s left of them, hanging there.

Miracle.

God’s looking out for you.

I laugh that cough-laugh like Dad.

My brain seems to rewind and play through the accident again. The growth snagged on the turn signal. The airbag. The man in the road.

Man in the road…

It finally hits me. Arthur. My client with MS who slurs his words, who’s obsessed with his in-laws. What the hell was Arthur doing in the middle of the street at three o’clock in the morning?

What the hell was he doing, and… did I kill him?

I can’t see him out the window. I open the door and poke my head out.

“Arthur? Arthur, is that you?”

No answer.

I’m about to stand from the car when my left hand brushes the door and electric pain goes through my fingertips. I look. Those growths have broken off too. I’m not sure where I hit that hand or how it happened. I put my left foot down on the road and look at my toenails.

God has a sick sense of humor.

For a second I forget about the man I may have just killed. I turn, frantic, to my rearview mirror. My face, my nails, all my fingers and toes. I search for just one growth still holding on, still sticking in place. I almost pray one has started from my eye just so I can prove it to somebody.

But I’m normal again. I can hear sirens in the distance and soon they’ll come this way, and what will I tell them? I’m a normal human being who just rammed his car into a tree in front of a man’s house driving eighty miles an hour on a sidewalk at night. And a minute ago I was sure they’d say I wasn’t crazy.

It feels too convenient. Fifteen growths coming out of every end of my body and all of a sudden I’m back to normal in an instant as soon as other people are on their way. These growths that are stuck in my body so tight I can barely rip them out when I’m at home with a pair of pliers, they all pop off like party favors when I crash the car. Every last one, without exception.

I don’t think I buy it. The plants don’t
want
to be seen by other people. The plants are
avoiding
other people. In fact… I have to wonder…

“Arthur!” I shout, standing from the car. “Arthur, are you out here!?”

Dammit, Casey. Don’t chase this train of thought.

“Arthur!!”

Really, though… What if…? The thing is in my eye now, maybe even my brain. And I don’t see Arthur anymore. What if he wasn’t here? If the plants don’t want to be seen… If the growths drop off when the police are on their way… Then maybe this thing in my eye… I mean, I have to acknowledge the possibility…

“Arthur!”

What if it’s controlling what I see?
 

“Arthur, answer me!”

Lights are coming on in the houses all around me and everyone must be holding their breath as the sirens get closer. I’d hate to see how I look from their perspective. I’ve crashed a car into a spruce tree at quadruple the speed limit and now I’m screaming a man’s name into the empty night.

A tree. Christ. Fucking figures I hit a tree.

You said it, Dad.

I fish my cell phone out of my pocket and find Arthur in my contacts list. It rings through all the way to voicemail and I hang up and call again.

“Goddamnit, Arthur. Goddamnit. You answer me.”

Finally I hear the line connect and it’s a minute before a woman’s voice answers, “Hello?”

I pause for a minute, still dazed from the wreck and not sure what’s happening anymore.

“Hi,” I say. “Is this Arthur Harris’ phone?”

“Yes it is. Who is this, please?”

“This is, uh… my name is Casey Holt. I’m his, uh…” I remember the last time I spoke to him and I have to laugh. “I mean, up until recently, I
was
his medium.”

“His medium…” says the female voice on the other end.

“Yeah, uh… I thought I just saw him on the street and I… I’m sorry, I’m all over the place. This is his wife?”

“Arthur’s dead,” she says bluntly.

A silence falls between us like a three-ton pine tree. I feel I’ve been slugged in the gut.

“I… I just… I mean, I could’ve sworn I just…” I make myself stop. “I’m sorry for your loss.” I almost hang up, but I have to ask, “How did it happen?”

Whoever I’m talking to, I can almost hear her roll her eyes.

“Next time you’ve got your crystal ball out,” she says, “why don’t you ask him yourself?”

She hangs up in my ear.

I can see blue and red lights in the distance, coming around the corner. I lean against my crushed-in car and stare at nothing as I try to make myself breathe.

I wish I hadn’t called. I wish I’d let myself wonder. I don’t know if I’m losing my mind or not, but the growths, the sycamore, my eye, Arthur, my job, Elaine… It’s like I can see enough to know it’s connected but I can’t make sense of the connections. And I think that must be how insanity feels.

Crazy or not, I wish every answer I found in life didn’t take the form of three new questions and a punchline. It makes you wish you could forget everything.

I look at my watch. 11:15. Forty-five minutes and the bistro where I’m meeting Elaine is a ten-minute walk. I could go early, but I don’t like doing that. On the off chance she drops in twenty minutes early I don’t want to be there. Makes me look desperate. My policy is I always show up late, but never by more than a minute.

The theater down the street is showing a double feature of
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
and
Little Shop of Horrors
. The park may be full of trees, but sitting on this bench is still a better way to kill time than that.

And speaking of killing time, here’s a thought experiment. Or even an actual experiment if you’re brazen.

Suppose you call a medium. You find a number somewhere for someone who says he or she can talk to the dead and you call. When they pick up, you ask, “Can you really talk to the dead? I mean really, honestly, no bullshit, can you do it?”

This person says, “I can communicate with them, yes.”

You say, “No, but I mean seriously. I’ve been a professional medium for years and I’m a con artist. I do cold readings. I lead people. I fish for what they want me to say and I throw out Barnum statements and in fifteen minutes they’re in awe of me. But no spirit has ever said a word to me, and now there are growths coming out of my body and I’m terrified the real dead are cursing me.”

What do you think they’ll say?

I’ll tell you what they’ll say, because I did it six times. They’ll say, “This really sounds like something you should see a doctor about.” Mediums don’t like clients who use phrases like ‘cold readings’ and ‘Barnum statements.’ And mediums definitely don’t like clients with experience being mediums.

The truth is, no living being can actually communicate with the dead. No living being except, possibly, me.

How fucked is that?

A nearby high school is letting out for lunch and all the students are passing by. There are couples having picnics, walking dogs, jogging. As long as there are people, I don’t feel I’m in immediate danger. Based on last night, whether it’s real as rain or reiki, I don’t think what’s happening to me will happen as long as there are strangers to bear witness. If a plant slips out of my skin, as long as there are people nearby, I can run to someone and ask if they’re seeing what I see and my hunch is the plant will pluck itself from my flesh before anything can be seen. Either that or the infection in my eye will make me think ghosts are chasing me and I’ll run out in traffic and die. I haven’t worked out the details of my insanity yet.

“Hey, I thought that was you!” says a voice over my left shoulder.

I turn and look up. Rory. She’s got a school bag over her shoulder. Jesus. Young girls are sexy, but you try not to think about it in this much detail. I knew she was still a student, but I don’t want to see her out here with high school friends and carrying textbooks and doing homework. Hell, I’ll role play as the abusive teacher, but this… this is too real.

I must make a face because the smile on hers goes away. “I’m sorry. Should I not talk to you? I was just going to say hi.”

“No,” I say. “No, it’s fine. It’s something else. Hi.”

“Okay,” she says. “I wasn’t sure if maybe you didn’t want me talking to you after the whole—”

“It’s fine!” I jump in, suddenly very aware of the friend standing next to her. Her friend is a tall, full-figured girl about the same age, dressed in torn jeans and a black tank that’s cut a bit lower than I realized a girl could get away with at school.

“Hello,” I say, putting a hand out. “Casey.”

She shakes my hand. “Heather.”

She’s got quite a body and the face is no beast either. A baser part of me is tempted, even in spite of the awkward circumstances under which we’re meeting. It helps that she’s not wearing a backpack, I guess, for some reason. She’s also got something of a bad girl look that tells me she might know her way around better than most girls her age.

“You go to school together?” I ask, sort of off-handedly, hoping she’s a few years older. Not that it matters. I’m giving this stuff up. I just want to know how horrible that seed inside me is.

“Yeah,” says Rory. “She’s a year younger though.”

Younger. Christ. I take my eyes off her chest.

“Like five months!” says Heather defensively. I’m not sure what she’s trying to prove.

“Still a grade lower,” says Rory.

“Fuck you.”

Kids. Everything is “fuck you.”

“Casey’s the guy who talks to dead people,” Rory tells Heather, and I wonder how much else she’s told. “My mom goes to him.”

I grin awkwardly and nod at Heather.

“Right, I know,” says Heather. “She told my mom. She’s seeing him now too.”

“Oh,” Rory laughs. “Weird.”

Heather…

There is bubbling in my stomach. I’m pretty sure I already know the answer but I have to be sure.

“Your mother is…?” I ask.

“Elaine Giddings?”

I swallow hard to stop myself from throwing up. I can feel the blood leaving my face.

“Are you okay?” asks Rory again.

“Yeah. I’m… I’m just not feeling very well.”

“Sit down.” She puts an arm around me and helps me sit back on the bench.

Elaine’s daughter. And thirty seconds ago here I was staring at her chest and fantasizing about…

Ugh. What’s wrong with me?

I’m fucked. Rory is friends with Elaine’s daughter. Two days ago I called Rory’s mother and confessed to being a fraud. As soon as this comes up in conversation, as soon as Mom says something about finding a new medium and Rory asks what happened to Casey, I’m outed. Casey Hart cannot speak to the dead. Word travels first to Rory and then to Heather and then to Elaine.

Or worse… So much fucking worse…

I start dating Elaine, Elaine mentions this to Heather, Heather mentions it to Rory, and Rory lets slip the
big
secret. What does Elaine do if she hears I fuck high schoolers? Most women aren’t crazy about being Eskimo sisters with their daughters’ friends. Not for more than a night or two anyway, and that’s if the guy in question is an eighteen-year-old high school hunk. And even then, that’s just women as fucked up as I am.

I can practically hear a fuse burning. People always say “small world” with cheer in their voices, but sometimes that’s what makes it shit.

What if Heather already knows? Do girls tell each other these things? Younger guys always think girls would rather die than share sex stories, but the older I get the more the differences I thought were present in the sexes seem to fall away and I realize everybody acts largely in the same way. If it was me who was eighteen and fucking some good-looking friend of my father’s in her mid-twenties, you can bet every single student in my school would have known it.

Shit, I’ve sent Rory dick pics. Seventy percent odds say Elaine’s daughter knows I’m uncircumcised.

“Food poisoning, I think,” I tell Rory before Heather can ask me if this has something to do with her mother.

“Poor baby,” says Rory, running her nails up the back of my neck and scratching my scalp.

“Stop it!” I say, grabbing her wrist and pulling her hand away.

“Jesus,” she says and backs away. “You don’t have to be a dick.”

She tells Heather to come on and the two of them walk away. I think of trying to stop them and make an apology but I don’t know what good it would do. The sooner this encounter is over, the better.