The Heavens Rise (25 page)

Water was pouring in through the fresh gunshot in the passenger-side window. The SUV was tipping nose forward. Her father was scrambling out of the pitching, sinking vehicle. But her mother had rolled onto her back in Nikki’s lap. And even though her eyes were wide, she still looked lifeless and hollowed out; she didn’t react as the water rose over her face. That’s when Nikki realized that her mother was shuddering, teeth knocking together, arms jerking and splashing in the water.

You did this to her. You had a connection with her, some kind of impossible connection, and then the gunshot scared you and it all went wrong. And now . . . And now . . .

The SUV tipped forward, the windshield suddenly flat with the bayou’s surface. More water gushed through the gunshot window, but before it rose to cover Millie Delongpre’s face, Nikki saw the woman’s eyes collapse until her pupils were great yawning black holes, spreading outward to devour her forehead. And her mouth; her mouth opened as if she were about to scream, but the teeth inside folded in on themselves and blackened, and before the bayou filled the interior of the car, Nikki realized that whatever she’d just done to her mother, it was turning her body into something formless and primordial, something in which flesh and bone were being reduced to the same fluid consistency.

And then the water claimed them both, and suddenly Nikki Delongpre was kicking and struggling, the pain in her wrists causing her to scream, causing her to swallow water which set fire to lungs that just seconds earlier had been blessed by oxygen so pure it seemed to come from heaven.

Something was grabbing her. And it had tendrils. Snakes?
More
snakes? She kicked at them and batted them away, before she realized that whatever it was, it was changing shape in the water around her. It was grasping at her. And she could hear the sound of metal being rent all around her. Whatever was clawing at her, it was clawing at the car too, with greater success. And it was getting bigger.

She was yanked upward, suitcases knocking into her, pulled up through the darkness by some tremendous force. At first, she thought it was just air pressure forcing her out of the car as it sank nose-first toward the bottom of the bayou. But she was rising too quickly, and when she exploded through the punched-out rear window of the SUV, lungs aflame, she kept rising up into the air, until her legs were dangling. And that’s when she felt a massive pressure against her chest.

The creature that stood perched on the sinking, upended tail of the Lexus, water sluicing down its scaled body, was at least seven feet tall, and it had her mother’s eyes. They were shaped like inverted teardrops, the largest features on a conical head, but they were Millie’s and they were huge and they were blinking madly with newfound life. The rest of its face and humanoid body were covered in giant versions of the smoke-colored scales of a water moccasin. The monster’s mouth was a long, lipless leer, and on its back, three thick, scaled tentacles danced through the air behind it, meeting in a knotted amalgam of muscle and tendon against its upper back, a grotesque knapsack that made its lithe, slender body look like that of a butterfly. The tentacles flexed and coiled, a constant roil of serpentine energy, assuming a graceful pose one minute, a predatory stance the next.

It was a living nightmare. Her mother’s living nightmare, and whatever Nikki had done to her, it had turned her mother into this thing that now held her in two claws, high above the rippling water. The creature’s mouth opened, revealing row upon row of jagged teeth shaped like snake fangs. Then there was a loud pop and the creature’s right eye exploded, shedding ocher-colored gelatin across Nikki’s chest. Then
another, then another, as her father, standing on the nearby bank, emptied the pistol from the glove compartment into the creature’s head before it could speak its first words. By the third shot, the creature released Nikki from its claws, and the water closed over her once again, just as she glimpsed the monster her mother had become tumble sideways off the tail of the Lexus with deadweight.

I
’m not lying when I say I only remember scraps of what came afterwards. My father carrying me deep into the cypresses. The floor of the abandoned boathouse we took refuge in. The sound of my father stealing the tiny skiff. I remember helping him haul the monster into the back of the boat and then breaking down into something between sobs and screams when I realized what I was doing.

Actually, a couple months later, right before I was drifting off to sleep one night, I remembered what set me off. It was the sight of one of my mother’s hideously enlarged hazel eyes rolling up to meet mine in that scaled . . . thing’s face.

Dad told me later that the place where we hid out was a fishing camp that had belonged to a patient of his who had died of pneumonia during recovery; his widow had confided in my father that she couldn’t bring herself to clear the place out and sell it.

But for me, it’s all a jumble. I didn’t think I’d wake up and be told it was a
dream. But part of me hoped the sparkling world I had seen with my altered vision as I had controlled my mother like a puppet would return to embrace me and carry me away. That the monster my mother had become, and the sounds of my father’s deranged sobs, were just the unfortunate side effects of having been returned to a solid, ordinary world I no longer belonged to.

My first clear and simple memory is of wandering through the swamp, summoning that blissful unzipped feeling and using it on the animals in my vicinity. There was no burst of having looked into someone’s soul, but I was able to place a few birds under my control for a dazzling five to ten minutes. And then their heads exploded and they tumbled to the ground, tiny masses of gore. They didn’t change shape or form, aside from this gruesome split-second death I triggered.

I can use my ability without creating monsters. And I can use it for an almost limitless amount of time on strangers in ordinary settings. God knows, I used it plenty to get us out of the city without being detected. But it’s not just a reaction to a sudden shock or trauma that will pervert the connection; it’s any swell of deep emotion within me. I’ve had a few close calls this past year, and they weren’t all the result of being frightened or distracted. In every one, the person I’d hooked bore some physical similarity to someone out of my past; a tense set to their brow that reminded me of Anthem, a full, generous mouth that reminded me of Ben, a perfume that reminded me of my mother. And when these qualities distracted me, when they stirred memories that began with a seed of nostalgia and then flowered into blossoms of grief and loss, that’s when things almost went full nightmare again. There’s only a few seconds in which I can break the connection before my instincts take over and I pull back against that horrible tug on my rib cage. But it’s a tiny window, and if I’m a second off . . .

That’s why total strangers are the most easily controlled. No emotional connection. Their bursts of soul that rush through me are brief, nothing like the overpowering sensations of my mother’s soul flooding through me. And that’s the terrible tragedy I live with every day. It was my love for her, my connection to her, my inability to detach from her as I manipulated her like a doll that caused her own nightmares to consume her physical form.

There’s still so much we don’t know about what I can do. The samples haven’t told us much. He calls it the Elysium parasite and it seems to have stuck with both of us; so much for the nickname I came up with—swamp sperm. And that’s just fine, I guess. My MRI didn’t tell us much either. There’s swelling in some areas where there shouldn’t be and his working theory is that they’re still in there. The parasite. His working theory is that they’ve altered fundamental, nonvisible light waves in me that make up my soul, thereby allowing me to suck on and take in the nonvisible light waves that make up the soul of someone else.

In his view, I am a parasite governed by human will and emotion. Why I can only control one person at a time, he’s not exactly sure. Whether or not the little buggers are still inside me—he’s not sure of that either. Maybe they aren’t. Maybe I pissed them away. But one thing’s for sure: they’re the cause of everything.

As for the other guy who was exposed?

Well, to be honest, after what I did to him at the Plimsoll Club, I don’t think he’ll be waking up anytime soon. I might have been able to force a confession from his lips but as my hatred for him swelled, I realized what was about to happen.

So it’s love and hate, isn’t it? It’s just kind of hitting me now as I write this.

My love . . . my hate . . . their nightmares.

Anyway, maybe if I’d let him transform into some kind of beast before everyone in that ballroom, his father would have been too afraid to run toward him and the poor man would be alive today. Meanwhile, I could have watched from the safety of the elevator lobby, concealed in the velvet cape and Mardi Gras mask I’d stolen from a costume shop so I could blend in with the waitstaff. Maybe if I’d let the process unfold, Marshall’s dad would be alive.

It’s ridiculous, I know. I couldn’t let it happen. But his father . . . I didn’t want that. I didn’t want that at all.

But I didn’t want any of this, now, did I?

I lie awake nights remembering the view into his soul my gift afforded me. We were writhing together in the grass, a few yards from the pool at Elysium, and he was holding me by my neck while he drew a short knife with a sharply curved blade up the length of my sternum. And I wasn’t screaming or crying out for help or even gasping for breath. I was accepting this evisceration with serenity and calm. And I could feel his pride, his sense of triumph, at my silence.

Can you blame me for what I did to him?

Have you ever looked into the soul of someone who craves your evisceration? Can you see why I changed my mind at the last minute and decided to go for more than a confession? “I put a snake in their car” . . .

It’s been a year now. I’m sure they medevaced him out of New Orleans before Katrina. But with each passing day, his chances of waking up again diminish. I’ve read up on what happens to patients in a persistent vegetative state. I hope all of it happens to him.

Yes, I’ve thought about finishing the job on many occasions. My father was so horrified by what I’d done, he made us leave New Orleans before I could try. But how would I do it? I can’t use my ability on a person who isn’t technically conscious. (Trust me. I’ve tried, just to satisfy my curiosity on this front.) And I’m not going to make an innocent person do my dirty work.

And then there’s the whole not knowing. There’s what I heard him say at the table that night, about knowing the difference between a venomous snake and a nonvenomous one.

The water moccasin and the diamond-backed water snake are easily confused, you see. Both grow to lengths of six feet, both have smoke-colored scales and bodies as thick as a person’s wrist. Only the diamond-backed water snake isn’t venomous at all. Was it just a prank? And was he just a boy who didn’t know any better? (Am I just a girl???)

As for the peek I got into his soul? Maybe there are similar visions of violence inside the souls of men who have never lifted a hand to harm anyone in their lives. But he
did
harm us. And so . . . yes, there is a little regret.
Just enough to keep me from driving a knife through his heart with my own two hands.

I like to believe that with each day, with each hour, death has pulled Marshall Ferriot a little closer to the gates of hell; some souls are just heavier than others.

But I wonder if as he lies there, some part of his brain is replaying that image of me, gutted like a catfish, over and over again. And when those thoughts become too much for me to bear, I tell myself that a father for a mother is a fair enough trade. For now.

TANGIPAHOA PARISH

OCTOBER 2013

B
en Broyard threw himself against the door so hard that the journal he’d just finished reading went spinning off the table and clattered to the floor beside him. There was no response from outside.

Then he was standing in mud, his shoulder still aching from the blow.

String lights sparkled in the low, shadowy branches overhead. The trailer was several yards behind him. Once again, time had been excised from his consciousness with a surgeon’s precision. And as he turned in place, he realized there were two trailers parked in the mud a few yards away, not just the one in which he’d been confined. The other was a bright silver Airstream that had the same stage-set newness and shine as the tiny prison in which he’d been forced to read a chronicle of monsters and magic.

He was standing amid a re-creation of Elysium as it appeared more
than two decades ago, in that photo of her newly engaged parents Nikki had described in her journal. (It had to be a re-creation. The land on which the original Elysium had stood was now a wash of untamed swamp.) Everything seemed perfectly arranged except for the small tangles of shredded plastic lying close to the trailers. The closer Ben got, the more he could see that they were pieces of the original lounger Noah and Millie Delongpre had been reclining on as she’d extended her ring hand toward the camera. But just pieces. Something had torn both lounge chairs to pieces.

A snake’s scales. Claws. The eyes of a lost woman.

Just then, approaching footsteps squished in the mud and when he turned, Ben saw a stopped figure hobbling toward him with the support of a cane. There was some vitality underneath the man’s strained movements, and Ben sensed that his contorted walk was not the result of age, but of some recent and serious injury.

Once they were a few feet apart, the pale glow from the string lights above illuminated the man’s face. Ben felt his vision narrow and a weight on his chest that made him gasp.