Wildwood Road (27 page)

He gazed warily at the wreckage of the photo albums on the stairs but he did not get up. Instead, he raised the volume on the television just a bit and did his best to focus on the screen. There was a digital clock on the cable box.

Where are you, Michael?
he wondered silently. Teddy Polito thought of himself as a good guy. A good friend. But the truth was, he was not at all certain how long he was going to be willing to wait for Jillian's husband to come home.

J
ILLIAN LAY ON THE FLOOR
of her bedroom staring at the ceiling. She had thought she was far enough from the shattered mirror, but there was a small shard of glass digging into her right shoulder blade. It had punctured her shirt and the flesh beneath, and hot blood was soaking into the fabric and into the carpet under her, warm and sticky on her skin. The sensation was not entirely unpleasant. The pain . . . it meant she was feeling something. That was good.

Every time she heard the hum of an engine out on the street and saw the splash of illumination from headlights reach across the ceiling, she stiffened, clenching her fists so tightly that her fingernails cut little bloody crescents into her palms.

Where are you, Michael?

As though summoned by her anger and desperation, a new splash of headlights touched the ceiling, accompanied by the low snore of a car with a failing muffler. The lights turned into her driveway, illumination splashing the wall above her, a glimmer touching the shards of her mirror that still hung in its frame.

She sprang to her feet, a shard of glass cutting her heel. Jillian reached down and plucked it out, wincing only a little as she went out into the second-floor hall, still only in panties and the clean tank top she'd pulled on after cleaning up the gouges on her chest. But now she felt a trickle of fresh blood down her back as she reached the top of the stairs.

Quite a sight, Jillian. You're quite a sight.

The shattered mirror was testament to that. In her eyes, she'd seen a vacancy, an absence of something she knew ought to be there. It was related to her missing memories, but different, somehow. She felt it. And Michael knew, didn't he? Yes, he certainly did. That much had been obvious for a while now. Her husband had a pretty good idea of what had happened to her, why she didn't seem able to control herself.

At the moment, she didn't feel like controlling herself at all.

The front door opened as she was coming down the stairs, and she sped up her pace. Teddy was rising from his chair even as Michael stepped inside, pocketing his keys. The two men exchanged a look, likely would have exchanged a word as well, but that was when they noticed Jillian.

“Michael,” Teddy began, a warning in his tone. She had spooked the shit out of him. Jillian liked that.

But Michael didn't need Teddy's warning. The moment he looked at her, she saw in his eyes that alarm bells were going off in his mind. And why not? She was a dead giveaway, wasn't she? Crazy-eyed woman with wild hair, practically naked. He should be nervous, motherfucker.

“Talk to me, Michael,” she snarled. “No more running off. Tell me what you fucking know. Right now.”

His brow furrowed. “What do you—”

Jillian slapped him hard enough that the sound echoed off the walls. Michael swore and recoiled, held up one hand to defend himself in case she tried it again.

“The next time has claws. Now talk to me or I kick your balls up into your throat.”

“Jesus, Jillian!” Teddy said, horrified.

He started toward her and she rounded on him. “Not another step, you fat shit, or I'll cut your goddamn throat.”

The astonishment on his features made her want to laugh. A flicker of that amusement went through her as she turned back to Michael . . . too late. He was already in motion. Her husband grabbed her hands and spun around behind her, hugging her tightly like that, pinning her arms to her sides.

She shrieked, an animal rage bubbling up in her, and she thrashed against him. Jillian threw her head back and felt a satisfying impact as her skull hit his. She only wished she had managed to break his nose.

“Let me go! Get your hands off of me!”

“Michael,” Teddy ventured. “Come on, man. Let's dial it down, here, a little. I know she's—”

“Just shut up a second!” Michael snapped.

Teddy had a hurt-little-boy look on his face that made Jillian giggle. Michael held her tightly from behind, and there was no way she was going to break that embrace. He was much stronger than she was. Instead she started to grind her ass against his crotch, feeling the outline of his cock under his clothes.

“Is that how you like it now, honey?” Jillian asked, her voice going throaty. He loved that voice. “If that's the way you want it . . .”

“Enough! Cut that shit right now, Jilly.”

She stomped her foot down on his, wishing she was still wearing her heels from work. But even barefoot it was enough to hurt him, enough to cause him to flinch. Then Jillian shot her heel up and back, aiming for his crotch. Michael had to twist away and she took advantage of the moment, getting herself just loose enough to slam an elbow back into his chest. The grunt of pain that issued from his lips was sublimely satisfying. Jillian tried to pull away.

But Michael wasn't letting go completely.

He grabbed for her, tried to get her into a bear hug again. Jillian tried to stomp his foot and ended up tripping him. Then they were both falling. The floor rushed up at her and the impact drove the air from her lungs. With Michael on top of her, she wheezed, struggling to draw air, even as Teddy Polito waddled over to fret like an old woman.

“Jesus, Michael, what the hell are you doing? Get off of her! I know she's got problems,
but . . . Jesus!”

Michael forced her to be still and then straddled her back to keep her that way. She couldn't see his face, but that didn't stop her from wanting to smash it, to shatter his nose, to claw his cheeks, to tear at his eyes.

“Fucking bastard! You fucking bastard, you know what's wrong with me! Tell me!” she screamed, and kept on with a stream of invective and demands.

“Michael, Jesus!” Teddy said again, as if maybe Michael hadn't heard him the first time.

“Teddy, back off! Just give me a second,” he roared.

Jillian snickered as Polito moved away from them. Her head was twisted to one side and she could see him rubbing the back of his chubby neck, his face red with anxiety and confusion.

“And you! Just be still. You want answers, fine! Just
stop
.”

Anger seething, Jillian ceased struggling. Her chest hurt, pressed against the floor, but she could breathe again. “Talk to me, then.”

“You've lost something,” Michael said. “You know that, don't you? That much you understand.”

Jillian said nothing but she felt a kind of embarrassment to go along with the bitterness and resentment these words summoned.

“If you cooperate, I think we can get it back.”

Fuck you,
she wanted to say.
I don't want it back. Who needs it? Who needs you, Prince Charming riding in on your white horse?

But the words did not come. Something
was
wrong with her. Though her bitterness and her frustration with just about everyone and everything did not really bother her, she could see what it was doing to her life. Her job was in jeopardy. Her political aspirations had been completely shot.

There was nothing pleasant in her. Nothing at all. She remembered pleasant. Remembered happy. Remembered laughter. Though it all seemed shallow now, she felt the void that had been left in her. She had lost something, no doubt of that. And she wanted it back.

“Just come for a ride with me,” Michael said, emotion choking his voice.

“Listen to you,” she sneered. “Are you going to cry now? Why should I go anywhere with you? How do I know you're even telling the truth?”

She turned to stare at Teddy. “And what are you doing, fat boy? Why haven't you called the cops yet? Shit, he's beating on me. And you're just going to stand there?”

“Michael?” Teddy said, sounding more lost than ever.

“She's sick, Ted. Really sick. I need to take her to see someone tonight, or she may never get better. You have to trust me on this.”

“It's after ten o'clock, Mikey. Where are you going to take her?”

She heard Michael sigh, and then he bent to whisper in her ear. “You're a miserable bitch. In more ways than one. You know there's something wrong with you. You're falling apart. I just came from seeing a woman who's in the psych ward at Pentucket Hospital and probably will be for the rest of her life. That's the path you're on. No matter what you can or can't feel, what you can remember, I know you don't want that. So those are your choices. Committed to some loony bin or coming with me tonight.”

For nearly a full minute she just focused on the feeling of her body against the floor. At last she took a deep breath and let it come out, a ragged gasp from his weight on her.

“Fine. We'll go for a ride.”

Michael got up off of her without another word. He took a step back but did not try to restrain her. Though he watched her carefully.

“Teddy, if you don't trust me, you can come along,” Michael said. “But all you have to do is look at her and you can see she's a mess. Tonight may be my only chance to help her. So I
am
going. And I am taking her with me. What you want to do about it is your call.”

The three of them stood there just inside the front door, staring at one another for a long time. Teddy looked undecided. He rubbed his hand on the back of his head and neck over and over, as though trying to jog loose some thoughts that had gotten stuck. At length he walked over to the bottom of the stairs and picked up some of the photographs she had defaced.

He held one of them in his hand for a few seconds and then looked at Michael and nodded. “I think I'd like to go home to Colleen and climb into bed and pull the covers over my head. But if I haven't gotten a phone call from you by eight-thirty tomorrow morning, I
will
call the cops.”

Michael nodded. “Fair enough.”

Jillian fought the urge to grab for Teddy's throat. That was half the reason she was going along with Michael. Whatever had been taken from her with those memories, she couldn't control her urges very well anymore. Hell, she could barely control herself. And it was getting worse.

The void in her was hungry for something to fill it, and that hunger was driving her mad.

If Michael could help her, it would be lunacy to hurt him now. But Jillian did not know how long she would be rational enough to remember that.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was going on ten-thirty when Michael turned onto Old Route 12, and the world felt all too real to him. It seemed perverse in a way, but after everything he had been through it unnerved him that the night suddenly felt so . . .
ordinary
. In the passenger seat, dressed in the jeans and sweatshirt she had pulled from her closet, Jillian sat staring out her window in utter silence. Her arms were crossed petulantly and there was a sour twist to her mouth. He was pretty sure that some of that was just for show, that she was being torn up inside and trying to hide the turmoil. But he wasn't positive. Whoever his wife had become, he didn't know her anymore, except in those moments when he could look in her eyes and see the pain there, see how lost she was.

All along he had thought of Scooter as
the lost girl
. Jillian fit the bill just as well.

The steering wheel was solid in his hands. The weight of the car around him and its momentum were all as they should be. The window was down a few inches and he could smell the smoke from someone's fireplace as they rolled down Old Route 12. All familiar. Solid and reliable. What alarmed him was that it was so different from that night after the masquerade. They had both been drinking then, and Jilly had been passed out in the backseat. Though he hadn't put it into words yet, he figured he had been susceptible to . . . what? Outside influence? That was one way to put it.

But he hadn't been drinking today. He was tired, sure. But he was wired on the adrenaline of grief and hope and desperation. They were all he had to live on, lately.

His skin prickled with awareness of Jillian's nearness to him. The chill wind felt good, but normally she would have complained about it. Not tonight. She had every other thing in the world to bitch about, whoever she was now. The tires thrummed on the pavement. The headlights of oncoming cars flashed in his eyes and he raised a hand to shield them.

When the lights had passed and he lowered his hand, Scooter was there. She stood on the roadside just as she had that night, in the same peasant blouse and the same blue jeans. The illumination from his headlights splashed over her and he could see that she really was a specter tonight, the trees visible through her gossamer form. And he wondered what that meant. The lost girl watched the car pass by with an expression that might have been hope or sorrow, he was not at all sure.

Michael took a quick breath, full of emotion, and let it out.

Jillian turned toward him, dark suspicion in her eyes along with a flare of the anger that had become so much a part of her. “What the fuck was that?”

The words echoed.

“You saw her?”

“Yes, I saw her, goddammit. Don't play with me. That was the girl you told me about, but you just drove right by her.”

Michael brought his focus back to the curving road. “I don't think I was supposed to pick her up this time.”

Seconds ticked by with the hum of the engine the only company. Then Jillian whispered something.

“What?”

“I said I could see right through her!” she shrieked, pounding her hand on the dashboard and shooting him an accusatory stare that startled him so much he jerked the wheel, swerving into the oncoming lane, which, thankfully, was empty.

“So could I,” he said quietly, maneuvering back onto his side of the road.
So much for the ordinary world.

Part of him wanted to turn around. After all this time it seemed ridiculous, but the urge was strong. The only thing in the world he wanted was to go back to the way things had been before the masquerade, to have Jillian back. The lost girl had haunted him, and he hoped to help her if he could, but even his promise to her had lost much of its power. Where Jillian was concerned, everything else was secondary. Even his fear.

So he went on.

When he turned off of Old Route 12, following the path he had taken that night, Jillian slid down in her seat. Her arms were still crossed but there was something about it now that made him think not of anger or petulance but that she was hugging herself. She turned slightly sideways. Hiding.

Michael nearly missed the next turn. His head felt muzzy now and his hands moved too slowly on the steering wheel. He blinked several times, his eyes growing heavy. Sleepy. And as he followed the lead of his own headlights as they picked out the path before him, he glanced into the trees on the roadside and saw one of the hollow women there, watching him. The creature was stooped, cloaked in its shapeless coat, but its too-long face gleamed in the diminishing glow of the headlights as the car went by.

His head began to bob drunkenly, his eyes to close.

“Michael!” Jillian shouted.

It was shrill enough to send knives into his brain, not enough to dispel the disorientation entirely, but enough to make him stamp on the brake and throw the car into park. His face was so warm. His head heavy. With long, steady breaths he relaxed, slipping down again, down into a soft and welcoming darkness.

“For fuck's sake!” Jillian snarled.

He forced his eyes open and turned, groggily, toward her, and she slapped him hard across the face. The sting of it cleared his head. Michael's eyes went wide and he shook himself.

“Oh, you suck,” he muttered, not knowing if he was talking to himself for falling under their sway, or to those twisted women for their hideousness.

The one he had passed was still there, he saw. And up ahead, barely visible in the trees on the side of the road, he thought he could make out two others watching, waiting to see what would become of him. He hit his high beams and their distorted faces, those masks of inhumanity, gleamed.

“I'm afraid,” Jillian said, and winced as though the confession hurt her. He supposed it did. “What are they?”

“You don't know?” he asked, almost afraid of the answer.

She shook her head. “They're lost. That's all I know. They're . . . victims. And they're hungry. Something terrible was done to them, a long time ago, and no one cared enough to help them.”

“And now they're passing it along?” Michael asked. When Jillian nodded he cursed under his breath. “Misery loves company.”

Michael threw the car into drive and hit the accelerator. As they tore up the road away from the hollow women, he waved his middle finger at one of them.

He wasn't stopping.

Jillian laughed softly in the passenger's seat. “Nice.”

Awake now . . . wide awake . . . Michael drove on. He had this entire area of the valley mapped out in his head after searching for so long for that house that he no longer needed an atlas. He had never been able to find Wildwood Road again, but he knew where it was
supposed
to be. That curve in a narrow back road where it cut away up toward the peak of the hill. It had been hidden from him before. But Susan Barnes had said that Jillian would be able to find it, and he prayed that was true.

“I . . .” Jillian began, and there was something new in her voice. Something it took him a moment to recognize.

Intimacy.

For the first time in too long she sounded, just with that single syllable, as though she was talking to her husband instead of just some man she couldn't stand the sight of.

“What?” Michael asked. “What is it, Jilly?”

Her expression soured, disdain coming back into her eyes. But he thought perhaps this time it was directed inward as well as outward. “I remembered something.”

A spark of hope ignited. “You . . . something from before? From when you were little?”

“Sort of.” She dropped her gaze and shook her head slightly. “I don't know why, but I was thinking about our honeymoon. About Vienna . . . that night after the opera, waltzing in the square in front of the cathedral. I can remember being happy, but not why. And . . . thinking back, I remember how . . . magical it was.”

Jillian sniffed and chuckled cynically. “I was fucking Princess Barbie.” Then she softened, just slightly. “But I remember being so grateful to my father for teaching me how to waltz. And when that memory came . . . so did another, just a flash of me and my dad dancing in the living room at our house. I was so small that I stood on his feet and he taught me like that, moving me around the room.”

Michael slowed the car. His eyes scanned the treeline in search of more of those stooped figures, but he saw none. The hill was on his left now, and soon enough, he knew, he would reach the curve where Wildwood Road should be. But he wanted to focus on this before they got there.

“How can that be?” he asked. “You didn't remember anything from back then.”

“I don't know. It just . . . it felt like when I remembered Vienna, and thinking about the connection between then and my father, it just came back.” Jillian raised her head and there was a faraway look in her eyes. “There's more. I was a flower girl in my cousin 'Stina's wedding when I was seven or eight. The church . . . it was like a smaller version of the cathedral in Vienna.”

Michael let the car roll forward, barely accelerating. What the hell was going on? Was it their proximity to Wildwood Road? To the hollow women? He assumed it must be. Maybe what they'd stolen wasn't completely in their control. Maybe there were stray memories drifting, like the trail of bread crumbs Hansel and Gretel left behind.

Or . . . and this was a far more intriguing prospect . . .

“Maybe you can steal them back,” he whispered.

Jillian flinched as if stung. Her breathing quickened and her eyes searched the dark interior of the car. Then she nodded. “Maybe.”

“Maybe one of them, out there, had those memories, and you took them back as you went
by? Or . . . hell, I don't know, maybe they're just floating around.”

“That doesn't sound right. Would they be that sloppy?”

Michael wondered. “I don't know. Scooter got away.” An idea was forming in his head. “Listen,” he said. “One of them . . . something happened when it touched me. It must have fed on some of the memories they stole from you, but I fought it, I wanted you back so much. The memories it stole . . . I got them.”

Jillian stared sidelong at him. “What . . . what were they?”

He told her about her Communion, and the seventh-grade dance, and the bus trip to Chicago. About snowball fights with Hannah and her mother's brownies and her father singing silly songs to her to get her up for school in the morning.

“Try,” he said as she gazed at him, empty and confused and yearning. “Try to take them back.”

Jillian shook her head, but she reached for him anyway and touched his face. Michael felt nothing. Her fingers were solid. She was not one of them. . . . Whatever those hollow women had once been, they were no longer truly flesh and blood. Moloch, after all, had been a god . . . or what had passed for one in those ancient days.

“Moloch,” he whispered, hands too tight on the wheel.

“Child-eater,” Jillian rasped, turning to gaze out the window, looking away from him.

“What? How do you—” He did not continue the question. When they had stolen her past from her, she had obviously gotten some knowledge from them, just as he had. Yet he had seen it, had lived the memory of one of the Virgins of Carthage, or whatever they were.

“Moloch didn't eat children.”

Her reply was a whisper, as though she were wishing on the first star of evening, staring out that window. “Yes. He did. The child inside.”

They drove on. The curve was just ahead. Michael took it slowly, peering into the woods on the uphill side of the street, but the forest was as dense as ever there. When he had rounded the curve he picked up speed and drove well past the place where he had pulled over before, where the women—the childhood-eaters—had caught up to him in the woods. The memory of his feet slipping on wet leaves was still fresh in his mind . . . that was one recollection he would have been happy to do without.

“Why did you drive by it?” Jillian asked as he did a U-turn and started back.

“It wasn't there.” He frowned and glanced at her. “You could see it?”

“The sign says Wildwood Road. How could you miss it?”

And this time as he approached the curve, Michael saw it for himself. He vaguely recalled there being no sign there before, but now there was a fresh green one whose white letters gleamed in his headlights. He put on his turn signal and slowed down, then took the right and started up Wildwood Road, as if it had always been there. As if it had never been hidden.

“Why do you think she had you bring her back?” Jillian asked in that same low whisper. “She was free. She'd escaped them. Why not just go and find . . . find herself?”

Michael drove slowly, letting the question echo in the darkened interior of the car a moment. “I don't know. I've been thinking about the whole thing, and I figure there have to be others there, not just her.”

There must be a little Jilly Lopresti there right now,
he thought, but those were words he would never speak.

“They're in the house,” he said. “I heard them laughing. Singing. I think . . . Somehow she got free of their control for a little while and she's been doing it, a little bit here and there, ever since. Trying to get help but never able to really escape.”

“That still doesn't explain why she had you take her back.”

“No,” he agreed. “It doesn't.”

All but one of the homes they passed was completely dark inside, though it wasn't quite late enough for everyone to be in bed. And that one house that had a light on in an upstairs room . . . well, it might have been on a timer. The wind did not seem to blow as strongly up here. The bare autumn branches of the trees scratched the night sky but they looked frozen and helpless, and he thought that was best.

Throughout the impossible, terrible events of recent days he had felt anger and fear in equal measure, but his fear had mostly been for the lost girl, Scooter, and for Jillian. Now, as they began to crest the hill and the roof of that house came into sight, he felt a shiver that was far more personal. He remembered the revulsion he'd felt at their touch, the marionette clacking of his teeth as they forced words into his mouth.

Michael could not help imagining the same thing happening to him that had happened to Jillian, to Susan Barnes. He cherished his memories. They were the entire foundation of who he was. So many things he loved would be lost forever if his past was stolen from him. Images flashed through his mind of his first kiss, of building tree forts in the woods and body-surfing at Nauset Beach down the Cape with his parents, of discovering the way a pencil felt in his hands, finding that he could draw pictures that would make his friends' eyes go wide. He didn't want to lose any of that, not even the silly things, like when he discovered that downtown was just part of his own town, when all along he'd thought it was Boston, or wanting to name his dog Charlie Brown, even though he was black. Christmas mornings. Hell, Christmas Eves.