We Are All Completely Fine (10 page)

He kept poring over the pictures, looking for clues. It was evident that the crosshatching behind each portrait was not just decoration. Greta’s portrait, in which she clutched those lines as if they were cables, proved that. The lines curved, and by fiddling in Photoshop he could imagine them meeting up at the center of her body, the same point in space where all the portraits were gazing.

“Holy shit,” Harrison said. “It’s a spider web.”

Greta put away her phone and looked over his shoulder at the screen. “And we’re all in it.”

“Us, and that girl,” he said. She could have been any age from seven to fourteen. “You don’t have any idea who she is?”

She didn’t answer. He started to turn, and she said, “Who’s in the center of the web?”

“Barbara, I guess. I don’t know.”

Greta straightened. “You need the actual bones.”

“Yeah,” he said absently.

“You could go dig them up.”

He turned in his chair. “What? No.”

“She didn’t get cremated,” Greta said. “That’s on purpose. She
wanted
us to dig them up.”

“We are not going to go grave-robbing.”

“It’s not robbing if Barbara wanted you to have them. She died to find out what was in there. You can’t just pussy out of this.”

He squinted at her and gave her a slight smile. “You keep saying ‘you.’ Not ‘we.’ Are you in the group or not?”

She walked to the window and pushed aside the curtain. “Jesus, Harrison.”

“So what’s the deal?” he said. “You’ve been gone for weeks. You haven’t even called me. And now you’re in my house.”

“This is not what I planned for today,” she said. “All this . . . photo stuff.”

“What was on the agenda?”

“I came to thank you. For keeping my secrets.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “You didn’t tell them, did you?”

She was talking about the fire. “It’s your story,” he said. “Your choice about what to say or not say.”

She let the curtain fall back. “But you figured out what really happened.”

“They didn’t fuck up the ritual,” he said “Not completely. It worked in the end. The Hidden One got into you. How could it not? You were designed for it.”

“The prettiest little bottle on the shelf,” she said.

“There’s another secret I’ve kept,” he said. “This one from you.”

“Oh?”

“I can read you. Those designs on your skin—they’re not just pictures. It’s a kind of language.” He could see that she didn’t believe him. “When I was a kid, I got . . . infected with something from the other side. It did something to my head.”

“So now you can read their language.”

“Kinda.”

“And what do my scars tell you?”

“Warning. Danger. Keep out.”

She nodded as if she suspected this all along.

“You’re irresistible to the Hidden Ones,” he said. “But once you have one inside you, you’re a lockbox. A prison cell. And the warnings tell everybody else to stay away.”

“You should listen to them,” she said. She flicked a hand toward the laptop. “Look at the web. I’m tearing it apart. If I stay I’ll kill you.”

“That’s not what those mean,” Harrison said.

She shook her head. “Oh, Harrison.
You’re
the optimist.”

“Listen to me—”

“Martin was right,” she said. “The Sisters had come back for me. I knew you’d figured that out.”

“Aunty Siddra’s group couldn’t be the only one living outside the farm,” he said. “Did you know they were following you then? Following us?”

“No!” she said. “I mean, they’d tried to reach me before. In New York. I moved and I thought I’d lost them. Then—I never intended for anyone to get hurt. Not even Martin. But they’re so protective . . .”

“I’m surprised they haven’t come after me,” he said.

She looked up sharply.

“What did you do?” Harrison said. “Why didn’t they come after me, Greta?”

“I made a deal,” she said.

He got up from the chair. “You’re not supposed to make deals with the devil.”

“But that’s what I was raised to do. It’s all I ever wanted to do—clinch that deal.” She turned back to the window and moved the curtain aside. “Growing up, I prayed every day to be worthy of a Hidden One. Regular men were abusers or liars or . . . useless. But these creatures were divine beings. Cousins to angels.”

She pressed her forehead to the window. “But then, when it finally entered me, I realized it wasn’t divine at all. It was nothing but rage and
need
.” Her voice resonated strangely against the glass. “It
hated
me. It hated Aunty Siddra. All of us. And I thought, everything I’ve suffered, the years of pain, all that was to make a home for
this
? To put this sick thing inside me, just so it could walk around in our world?

“My holy purpose was a sham. My
great honor
was to keep this thing inside me like a loaded gun. I wasn’t a bride, I was a receptacle. A fucking missile silo.

“I’d been such an obedient girl. Such an idiot. And that moment I did what I had never done before. I said no. I cast it out of me, and I said, Do what you want.”

Greta said nothing for half a minute. Harrison took a step closer. The streetlights made her face glow, and when she opened her mouth it seemed to be her reflection that spoke.

“Aunty Siddra burned first. She went up like kindling. And then the other women inside the bus, the dark-haired women who’d come with her. I walked down the steps to the yard. I was only a dozen feet away when the gas tank blew, but I was unharmed. Metal and glass flew around me, but the Hidden One kept it all from touching my skin.

“I turned to watch them burn. And you know what?” She kept her eyes pointed down, into the street. “I liked it.”

Harrison said nothing.

“But my
mate
wasn’t done yet. There were so many Sisters in the yard, crying or bleeding from the explosion. He started . . .
jumping
, from woman to woman, lighting their clothes on fire. He landed on the roof of the farmhouse and set the shingles on fire, then leaped over to the next camper. Hopping and skipping through all our crappy, makeshift homes. Dancing around me with joy in his molten heart. He didn’t hurt me. He loved me now, because I’d set him free.

“Then I heard the women. It was like waking up. You know how when you’re first coming awake, there’s nothing but silence? But then you wake up a little more and you can hear a radio playing in another room, the sound of voices? Suddenly I could hear the screams. Women were burning all around me, and burning alive inside the house. One of them was my mother.”

Harrison took another step forward, and she put out her hand.

“Then it came to
me
,” she said. “The Hidden One. It wanted more.” She shook her head. “If I hadn’t been raised like I was, if I hadn’t spent most of my life in pain and under the knife, I might have been overwhelmed. But I’d learned detachment, right? Control. So I spoke to it. I said to him, There’s a place I want us to go. But we can’t go like this. Come to me. Hide inside me.” She shook her head. “I don’t think they understand humans. It loved me, and I’d just done this wonderful thing for it, so it believed me. It slipped down my throat. I could feel it churning inside me. Eager.”

“I’m so sorry,” Harrison said.

She seemed not to hear him. “When it was inside me, I sealed myself shut. I didn’t need the final mark on my forehead. I could hold it in through force of will.
I
was the cork.”

She turned from the window. “Oh, it howled. It hasn’t stopped since.”

“We can fix this,” Harrison said.

“There’s nothing to fix,” she said. “Barbara and I understand that. The Sisters aren’t going to stop. I just have to do what I was born to do.” She tilted her head almost apologetically. “I’m their queen. They want me to lead them.”

“That’s the deal?” Harrison asked. “To go
back
to them? Greta, you can’t do that. You don’t have to protect me. Protect the others. We can figure out a way to get them to back off.”

“I have to do this.”

“
No
. There’s no such thing as fucking destiny. We’ve talked about this.”

“They’ve got a new bottle, Harrison. If I won’t serve, they’ve got someone who will.”

And then he got it. “The girl. You know who she is.”

“Her name’s Alia. She’s younger than I was when I went up.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.” She glanced back toward the window. “I’ve got to go now.”

The whole time she’d been telling him her story, she’d been watching for them to arrive. “Are they out there?” he asked.

She started toward the front door. “I’m just so tired, Harrison. And they’re going to stay after me until I give in.”

“You can’t respond to this,” he said. “They’re just using the girl like a hostage. Let me think. Maybe we can . . . I don’t know. Something.”

She stopped. Her smile was wistful. “You know, I kept thinking you were going to solve my problem for me. You’re the monster killer. The hero. But I guess . . . kids’ books, right?” She shrugged and continued toward the door.

He grabbed her by the elbow—and jerked his hand back. It felt as if he’d grabbed a hot steam pipe.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve thought this through. I’ve got one play.”

Pain throbbed in his hand and radiated up his arm. The skin, however, looked normal. Did he need ice, or was this some kind of psychosomatic shit?

She unlatched the door and opened it. Two women stood in the hallway. One of them tall, almost six feet, with thick dark hair like a Cherokee. The other was shorter, and wore a kind of scarf sweater that covered her head. Her lips were a shade of bright pink.

“Get the fuck away from her,” Harrison said to the women.

The one with the covered head raised her arm. She held a small black pistol that seemed enormous. He felt as if he was hurtling into that black barrel.

The woman’s pink lips parted as if in satisfaction.

He tried to settle himself. He’d had firearms
pointed at him before. But maybe this was one of the things you never got used to.

The tall woman took Greta by the arm and led her out. The small one kept her gun on Harrison.

Greta looked over her shoulder. “Goodbye, Harrison Squared.”

We were a team of professional insomniacs. Once you
know
there are monsters under the bed, closing your eyes becomes a foolhardy act. So, we paced. We stared into the dark. We listened for the creak of the opening door.

Dr. Sayer was no exception. Sleep had always been hard to come by for her, but the situation had only gotten worse since Barbara had died. In those thin hours after midnight, Jan was certain she’d made a terrible mistake. If she hadn’t formed the group, if she hadn’t prodded and poked them into
sharing
and
reflecting
and
processing
, perhaps their sadness would have gone dormant. Perhaps Barbara would still be alive.

If her patients had started talking like this she would have known what to say. So, on those sleep-starved nights, she said those words to herself, and sometimes believed them. Then she would head down to the basement. The relief didn’t last long, though. Sometimes it vanished before she made it to the bottom of the stairs. Then she would walk back up, lock the door behind her, and make another circuit of her house.

Harrison had been right; this was no hero’s journey they were on. Campbell didn’t understand the other stories in the world. The group knew the truth:

A monster crosses over into the everyday world. The mortals struggle and show great courage, but it’s no use. The monster kills first the guilty, then the innocent, until finally only one remains. The Last Boy, the Last Girl. There is a final battle. The Last One suffers great wounds, but in the final moment vanquishes the monster. Only later does he or she recognize that this is the monster’s final trick; the scars run deep, and the awareness of the truth grows like an infection. The Last One knows that the monster isn’t dead, only sent to the other side. There it waits until it can slip into the mundane world again. Perhaps next time it will be a knife-wielding madman, or a fanged beast, or some nameless tentacled thing. It’s the monster with a thousand faces. The details matter only to the next victims.

As for the Last Ones, the survivors of each spin of the wheel, the best they could hope for was to learn how to live with their knowledge. On most days, she believed she could help others do that.

Deep into the night, however, the doubts slid their claws into her brain, pried her open like an orange. She feared that she was keeping secrets from herself. What if she was hurting these people? What if she longed for destruction? What if she’d become, at last, her mother’s daughter?

And so it was almost a relief when the phone rang.

“Dr. Sayer,” Harrison said. “I need your help.”

Harrison was surprised to find Dr. Sayer waiting for him on her front porch. She was wearing black jeans and a thin black fleece over a flash of red T-shirt. Her hair was pulled back tight. It was weird to see her in street clothes. He felt like a third-grader spying his teacher at the grocery store.

She climbed into the car and he said, “You don’t have to do this. You could just make the call, then stay here.”

“It’ll work better if I talk to him.”

He had to admit that if
he
asked Martin, the kid would say no. “Okay,” he said. “He never liked me
or
Greta. But he listens to you.”

“Martin was
afraid
of Greta,” Jan said. “He always liked her. He’s made great strides. What did you do to your hand?”

“Nothing.” He’d wrapped his hand with a beige chamois cloth he kept in the glove box. His skin still throbbed. “What’s Stan’s address?”

She read it off to him, and he typed it into the GPS. While he drove, she called ahead to Stan’s house. He picked up immediately, and Harrison could hear his voice booming over Jan’s cell phone.

“Could you wake Martin?” she asked Stan. Then: “Oh. Good.” And then: “I don’t know why, exactly.” She looked at Harrison. “Harrison said we need Martin’s skill set.”

She told Stan a little bit of what Harrison had told her. She said to Harrison, “Martin wants to know if you have the frames.”

“Tell him it’s all set. Just get ready.”

After she’d hung up, Jan said, “You do have a plan, right?”

“It’s a
kind of
plan,” he said. After the Sisters took Greta, he followed them downstairs, hanging back to avoid being seen—and shot. By the time he reached the street, they were pulling away in an ancient silver Pontiac, a wide, rattling thing. He ran back to the garage and to his car, but by the time he pulled around front the streets were empty. He swore at himself, then drove to Greta’s apartment, not because he thought they’d be there, but because he couldn’t think of anyplace else to check. Finally he called Jan.

Stan’s house was a two-story Victorian guarded by a chain-link fence. The house seemed to have vomited its contents into the front yard. Furniture and objects loomed mysteriously out of the dark.

“Whoa,” Harrison said.

“I really should do home visits,” Jan said.

The front door opened, and Stan appeared in his chair, with Martin behind him. Martin pushed him down the ramp into the yard. And Stan, that crazy bastard, had a shotgun across his lap.

Harrison hopped out of the car and went to the gate. “No no no no no.”

“What?” Stan asked.

“We just need Martin,” Harrison said. “And no . . . that.”

“You’re going after crazy cult members,” Stan said. “Trust me, you need artillery.”

“We are
not
shooting anyone,” Jan said.

“What are you going to do?” Stan asked.
“Talk?”

Harrison noticed that Stan was wearing a pair of split-hook prostheses. “Wait, when did you get those?”

“I’ve got loads of ’em,” Stan said. “Hooks, rubber hands, you name it. I only use them for special occasions. Like pulling triggers.”

“Jesus,” Harrison said. “Martin, get in the car. I’ll get Stan back into the house.”

“No,” Martin said. “Stan comes with.”

“Absolutely not.”

“We discussed it,” Martin said. “Stan’s part of the group too. And I need him if we’re going to do this. It’s all for one—”

“Or all for nothing,” Stan said.

Harrison thought about the images etched into Barbara’s bones. All of them, connected. “Okay. Fine. But no fucking shotgun.”

“You’re going to regret it,” Stan said, but allowed Martin to take the weapon from him. He waved to a spot in the yard and said, “Hide it in that oven there.”

They managed to lift Stan into the backseat, and Jan helped buckle him in. Martin expertly collapsed Stan’s chair and levered it into the trunk.

“You have the frames?” Martin asked. “I’ll start loading the software.”

“About the glasses . . .” Harrison began.

“You said you had a pair.”

“We don’t have time to go break into Radio Shack.”

“They’re not sold in—”

“It’s going to be okay, Martin. Come on.”

“How can I track them if you don’t have frames!”

“Please, just get in.”

Martin got into the front seat, and Harrison punched the accelerator. The streets were mostly empty of cars this time of night, though not necessarily empty of cops. He just had to hope they didn’t get stopped.

“I
like
this car,” Stan said from the back.

In ten minutes they swung into Harrison’s neighborhood. His block was lined by boutique shops at ground level and upscale condos above. Harrison slammed on the brakes. Stan laughed throatily.

“There’s the entrance to my building,” Harrison said. “This spot is where they took off from, an hour and five minutes ago, give or take. What’s your range, Martin?”

“I don’t have a range,” Martin said. “I need the frames!”

“No,” Harrison said. “You don’t.”

“You have no idea how this works,” Martin said.

Harrison opened the driver’s side door. “Get out,” he said to Martin. The kid looked at him. “Come on!”

Martin reluctantly climbed out of the car. Harrison took him by the shoulders and stood him in front of the headlights.

“You said Greta left trails wherever she went. Wakes, you called them.”

“Yes.”

“You know that those wakes can’t be seen by the naked eye.”

“That’s why I need—”

“Listen to me!” Harrison said. It was difficult not to shake the kid. “Those trails are not made out of photons. Hardware can’t see them. Software can’t see them. Only
you
can see them, Martin. You want to know why?”

“This is bullshit,” Martin said.

“You’ve got the sight,” Harrison said. “The third eye. The sixth sense.”

“I don’t see dead people,” Martin said.

“No, you see worse. I’ve met people like you before. You have a talent. You don’t need a gadget to make it work.”

“Is this where you tell me to put away the targeting computer?” Martin asked.

“No, I’m not—yes. Yes, this is where I tell you to put the fucking computer away. Use the force, Luke.”

Jan had gotten out of the car. “What’s going on?”

Harrison turned Martin to face the road. “They drove off in this direction. You see the intersection? Just tell me—did they turn left, right, or go straight?”

“I don’t see anything.”

“Concentrate,” Harrison said. He gripped the kid’s shoulders as if he were prepping him to go into the ring. “Picture the wake.”

“I’m concentrating.” Martin stared down the street.

“Left?” Harrison said. “Right?”

Martin wheeled and pushed Harrison’s arms off him. “I
told
you, I need the frames!”

“Martin,” Jan said softly. “Can we try something?”

Harrison put up his hands and stepped back.

“Just guess,” Jan said to Martin.

“What?”

“Don’t try to see the wake. Just look down the road and say the first thing you think of.”

Martin took a breath. He squared his shoulders, stared at the intersection, and said, “Straight.”

“Good,” Jan said.

“Or maybe right.”

“No take-backs. Ready? Into the car.”

Harrison eased them up to the intersection. “Keep going?” he asked.

Martin shook his head. “I can’t see a thing.”

Jan was leaning between the front seats. “Doesn’t matter. Keep going.”

Harrison scowled at Jan, but he wasn’t sure she saw his expression. He went straight, then slowed at the next cross street. Martin sighed, so Harrison kept going.

The light at Madison was red. Martin rubbed at his face. When the light turned green, Harrison accelerated, and Martin said, “Oh.”

“What is it?” Jan asked.

“Nothing. Just . . . maybe we should have gone right.”

“Harrison?” Jan said.

He wheeled the car around in the middle of the street. An oncoming car blared its horn and Stan raised a hook—flipping the metal bird.

At the light Harrison swung left onto Madison in the direction Martin had maybe kinda sorta thought they should go. Maybe, Harrison thought, we should just turn off the GPS and get a Ouija board.

“You’re doing great,” Jan said.

“Damn straight he is,” Stan said.

Martin grew more confident in his answers. He led them crosstown, then south. The Sisters, if Martin’s tracking was accurate, had stayed off the interstate and major throughways, but neither were they dodging or weaving. They probably never thought they could be followed.

Martin led them into one of the rattier sections of town: weather-beaten apartment buildings, check-cashing stores, ’60s-era brick ranches defended by sagging chain-link fences. The cars at the curb were either gleaming refurbs or rusting heaps, a binary distribution.

Martin pointed at a space between buildings. “Turn right there.”

“That’s an alley,” Harrison said. “But okay.”

He nosed the car into the alley. He drove slowly for a hundred yards, and then Martin yelled, “Stop!”

The kid’s eyes were wide. He was staring at the back of a three-story apartment building that looked like it had been abandoned years ago. “Can’t you see it?” he said. “Up there.”

Graffiti swirled like kudzu up the brick walls. The windows were covered with plywood except for the top floor, where lights flickered from an open window.

Harrison edged the car forward. Behind the building, three cars were crammed into a tiny gravel lot. One of them was the silver Pontiac the Sisters had driven away in.

“It’s coming out,” Martin said. His voice sounded far away. “The bottle’s open.”

The bottle’s open.

Harrison swore. They might already be too late. “Okay,” he said. “Everybody stay in the car.”

“I’m coming with,” Jan said.

“You’re not leaving me out of it!” Stan said.

“Nobody fucking move!” Harrison said, not quite yelling. “I’ll be right back.”