Exit Light (20 page)

Son turned, weeping, his hand swollen to the size of a cartoon glove. Mother and Father turned, too, each of them laughing. The mermaid lay at their feet, tail painting calligraphy in the sand as it writhed.

“Ben, stop!”

She knew that boy. She knew that man too. Even as she watched, his body rippled, shoulders hunching and mouth yawning wide as it filled with teeth.

The man with a dog’s head growled and snapped. The woman beside him stopped laughing and made a face of exaggerated surprise. She put a hand to the
o
of her mouth.

The boy between them wept.

“What have you done?” Ben’s fists rose as he took another step toward the others.

“Ben, no!” Tovah reached but he’d gone too far. Her fingertips brushed the soft faded blue fabric of his shirt and closed on empty air.

The boy covered his face with his hands. The woman with him, not his mother, put her hand on the back of his neck. She pushed him forward.

“Look what you’ve done,” she said. “You’ve made something ugly.”

The boy didn’t squirm or fight to get away, though his slim shoulders shook with sobs. The dog-headed man snapped its jaws until thick curds of yellowish foam flew.

Ben, heedless of Tovah’s cry, went to his knees in front of the creature the boy had pulled from the ocean. “No,” he said, a single word weighted with too much meaning.

Tovah reached him, her hand on his shoulder. “Ben. Don’t.”

She could smell the dog, smell the pitiful thing masquerading as something bright and magic. Smell the sea. Ben’s shoulder under her hand was solid. Real.

The boy took his hands away from his face. Tears streaked paths of silver down pale cheeks. His eyes, bluer than blue, glimmered. The woman’s hand tightened on his neck. She pushed him forward, just a little.

The woman smiled. She shoved the boy forward another step. One more and he’d trip over the mermaid.

“See what you’ve done?” she repeated conversationally.

The boy looked at the mermaid, which lay gasping, its gills flapping open and shut. Its webbed fingers had dug into the sand, and sand covered the dampness of its tail.

“Make it go away,” prompted the woman. “Go ahead.”

The boy shook. His eyes went wide, mouth pinched tight with grief and horror. The dogman behind him snapped its jaws again, but he didn’t flinch.

“Can you make her go away?” he asked Tovah in a small and quavering voice. “Can you make her stop? Can you stop me?”

Tovah didn’t know what to say. Her fingers curled on Ben’s shoulder, urging him to get to his feet. Her desire to help this boy was tempered by knowing she didn’t know what to give him, or how.

She wasn’t a guide.

“Ben,” she said, but Ben didn’t move.

The woman laughed. Her head tipped back, throat working with mirth. Long nails tipped her fingers, and they dug into the boy’s skin, bringing blood.

“Can you stop me?” the boy asked again, louder, more desperate. His entire body shook. “Please.”

“She won’t help you,” said the woman. “Nobody will. Not now. Not ever.”

The sand and the sky and the sea turned black.

“Please,” said the boy.

Pushing against his will was like butting against brick. Unyielding. Tovah cast out her desire to take the boy from the woman’s touch, but nothing happened. She tried again, pushing harder than she’d ever pushed against anyone.

“Ben, help me.”

Ben did nothing.

The boy’s eyes went dark as around them the Ephemeros cracked and crumbled. Lightning lit the sky overhead, and…things…crawled from the clouds. Tovah pushed, hard, for blue sky and green grass. Nothing.

“You don’t have to do this,” she told the boy.

“It’s the only thing that will make them stop,” he cried and clapped his hands over his ears. “Make them stop hurting me!”

The woman growled and the dogman laughed; Ben cried out as the mermaid began to dissolve. Tovah fell forward and caught herself with her hands before her face could hit the ground.

Her stump throbbed, but though she felt the loss of her leg again she didn’t let it stop her from pushing up on her hands. She looked up at the boy, the woman, the dog with a man’s body.

She pushed.

She pushed again.

“She won’t help you,” said the woman, her voice like the buzzing of a hive. “Not now. Not ever.”

This time, when Tovah pushed, she felt the truth. This was the three. The boy. The woman. The dogman. They were the same, each separate but at their hearts, the same. Three wills collected as one, and she understood then why she, Ben and Spider had been able to shape this away before by working together.

“Ben, help me!”

Two against three was better odds than one against three. She reached for Ben with her hand and her will, pulling him toward her. He moved slowly, like he was caught in tar, but she managed to get him to look at her.

The world rocked. Despair so vast, so formless, so infinite there was nothing else, wrapped itself around her. Ben wept, his eyes closed. Tovah’s eyes burned with tears.

There was no point in going on. No purpose to her life, nothing good to hope for or to cherish. Nothing but emptiness and grief, and sorrow and fear.

The boy bled beneath the woman’s hands and the dogman blew fetid breath. Three as one. One as three.

Ben opened his eyes. Tovah saw her reflection there, one last thing before she gave up to the emptiness. She saw herself in Ben’s eyes.

“Ben,” she said.

They reached for each other at the same time. Their fingers linked. His hands, warm and callused, enfolded hers.

“Tovah,” Ben said.

“See? See?” the woman cried. “They don’t care about you!”

The boy sobbed and screamed as the world crumbled around them.

“Don’t do this!” Tovah looked at the boy. She ignored the woman and the dog, who were distractions. She shook her head, staring into his deep, dark eyes. “Don’t. Only you can stop this.”

Ben’s will bolstered hers. Together, they shaped a haven, a small patch of green grass beneath them. The boy stopped shaking. He stopped crying. He went still and silent.

“Don’t let her make you think you have to do this,” Tovah said.

The boy said nothing. The woman spoke but nothing came from her mouth. The dog barked, soundless.

“She is—”

“No!” The boy’s cry silenced Tovah.

“Tovah, you have to go. Get out of here.” Ben’s fingers tightened.

“I can’t leave you here,” Tovah said.

“Go,” Ben gasped. “Before you don’t have a choice!”

“But what about you?”

In front of them the boy had gone straight and still, flanked by the woman and the dogman. They made a triangle.

“He doesn’t know,” Ben said, “that they’re him. He doesn’t know.”

“I’m not going to leave you.”

Ben shook his head. “You have to. Before this tears you apart. Wake up, Tovah!”

“Promise me you will too,” she begged. “Promise you won’t let this—”

Ben kissed her. It wasn’t like the first time, when his mouth had been tender and full of joy. This kiss was hard, full of longing, tinged with despair that didn’t come from what the boy was doing. This kiss was almost brutal, but she gave in to it.

He pushed her away.

The boy cried out.

Tovah woke to darkness, acid burning her throat. She lurched from her bed. For one endless moment she hovered before realizing only one foot had hit the floor. She pitched forward, hands held out, and landed on the floor with a solid thud. Her stump rammed the floor. Pain, exquisite and also endless, shot through her.

She couldn’t even scream, breathless with agony. Sickness again filled her throat as she writhed on the ground. She was afraid even to touch the stump, certain she’d broken open the scars and afraid to feel for blood.

She rocked herself, touching her mouth at the memory of Ben’s kiss. The remnants of despair surrounded her and slowly fell away. She hadn’t felt like that in a long time. She never wanted to feel like that again.

The boy was the one shaking up the Ephemeros. The boy who was also the woman, and the dogman, but who didn’t know he was hurting the world to save himself from himself.

Moaning, Tovah rolled onto her rear and ran her hands over her stump. Her stomach settled slowly as the despair and fear subsided. She had figured out who was causing all the turmoil, but not why. Not how to stop it.

She needed to talk to Spider.

In the morning, her stump had swollen too much for her to even consider fitting it into the socket of her prosthetic. Black bruises painted her thigh, and the skin had split along the length of her suture scar. Blood crusted the edges of the cut, which still seeped. She’d wrapped the stump in several layers of gauze bandage and covered it with a cotton stocking, but it ached so fiercely she thought about taking a painkiller. Her prosthetist would probably scold her for her carelessness, but she didn’t want to visit her doctor for treatment.

By the time she got to the Sisters of Mercy, the phantom pains had set in. Fire consumed her missing leg, her toes relentlessly cramping, and needles and pins stabbing the sole of her foot. She parked crookedly in the lot and pushed her seat back to stretch out, biting her lip against the pain and wishing desperately for the pill that would take it away.

Later.

Now she had to get inside and drive herself home afterward. She couldn’t afford to be under the influence. Still, by the time she got her car door open and hauled herself out onto the aluminum crutches she hated, chill sweat had begun its conquest of her forehead and down the line of her spine. The foam crutch handles tucked beneath her armpits exacerbated the dampness all over her skin. Her clothes bunched unpleasantly under the handles, but she ignored it and managed to hobble across the parking lot and into the lobby.

She’d been proficient on her crutches, though never graceful. Today, each hop-step shot stabbing pain all the way up her phantom limb and into the bruised and bleeding stump. She managed to navigate the elevator buttons but, once inside, slumped against the wall and swallowed hard against the slow-rolling waves of nausea.

The elevator door started to close on her as she tried to get off on Spider’s floor. She was too sluggish. The door banged against her crutch and lumbered open again, giving her enough time to gather her energy and move. She had to stop and rest again as soon as she made it to the hall.

It wasn’t a Sunday, and that made all the difference. Things were louder today, with more staff bustling about and more patients walking the halls. Tovah didn’t even earn a curious glance as she made her way down the hall to the nurses’ station to sign in. Someone on crutches and missing a limb didn’t seem to garner the same sort of attention here as it did outside.

She didn’t know the nurse behind the desk, which was something of a relief. She didn’t need to explain herself, or chat, like she’d have had to do with Ava. She signed her name and turned herself toward Henry’s room.

“He’s not in his room,” said the nurse, who looked like she’d just graduated from nursing school. Yesterday.

Tovah stopped. “He’s not?”

The nurse shook her head and pointed toward the lounge. “No. He’s in there today.”

“He’s not in bed?”

The nurse shook her head. “Nope.”

“Is Dr. Goodfellow here today?”

“Dr. Goodfellow?” The nurse frowned a little. “Not that I know of.”

Tovah turned herself toward the lounge, calling a thanks over her shoulder as she made her way toward the room. Henry wasn’t in bed. He was up. Which might explain why he wasn’t in the Ephemeros. And though she knew they needed him there, Tovah couldn’t stop herself from grinning as she went to find him.

Today the lounge was cacophony and chaos. Several of the residents circled the room repetitively, one of them making distinctive chicken-wing flapping motions with her arms. The television, set to an inane soap opera, blared in Spanish. Puzzle pieces were scattered on the games table, but nobody sat to piece them together into a whole.

She didn’t see Henry at first but when she did, Tovah’s smile faded immediately. He stood rigid against one of the room’s pillars, his face contorted into a grimace. He didn’t blink as the flapping woman passed him, but after a second he, too, flapped his arms just as she had.

“Henry.” Tovah put herself in front of him. “It’s me. Tovahleh. Hi.”

“Hi.”

Relieved that he’d answered, even though he didn’t appear to be paying attention, Tovah couldn’t stop herself from hugging him. The crutches made it awkward, as did the fact Henry didn’t hug her back. She let go after a moment, her throat tight with emotion, and looked up at him.

“Hey. Henry.”

“Hey.”

Hugging him was like hugging a statue. His body had no give to it. The flapping ceased, he’d gone back to his stiff stance. Her back hurt in sympathy just looking at him.

“Talk to me,” she said quietly, aware they weren’t alone even if nobody seemed to be paying attention to them.

“Talk to me,” Henry repeated.

“Oh, Spider,” Tovah whispered, but that didn’t reach him, either. She really needed to sit and take the weight off her sound leg. Her arms had begun to ache, and exhaustion threatened to topple her.

Henry didn’t move. When she reached to tug his sleeve, his body tightened at once, resisting even the slightest pull. She didn’t have the balance to really yank him, and even in his fragile state Henry was taller and broader than she was. Frustrated, the couch only a few feet away, Tovah tried again. Pulling on Henry was like pulling on a block of stone.

She crutched over to one of the games tables and pulled a chair away from it, but carrying a chair was next to impossible without the full use of her hands. Frustration stung her further, making her angry enough to grit her jaws. Her stump throbbed and her head swam with the discomfort. All she really wanted to do was sit and talk to Henry, but nothing was cooperating. She looked for an orderly or an aide, but saw none.

“Dammit,” she whispered harshly.

From his place by the pillar, Henry muttered, “Dammit.”

“Don’t do this,” Tovah whispered.

She leaned against the back of the chair to give her armpits a break from the crutches. Grabbing them in one hand, the other on the back of the chair, she hopped and pushed. Hop, push. Hop, push, using the chair like a walker. She only managed two steps before the pain shooting up from her bruises made her stop, but she was two steps closer to Henry than she’d been before. The chill sweat became heat pooling along her brow and in her armpits, in the crack of her butt and between her breasts.

Now she’d drawn an audience. It wasn’t so much that she cared about being stared at—Tovah had spent enough time in this place to understand that the social boundaries of the outside world didn’t apply. What pissed her off was they were all staring, but nobody was helping. Hop, push.

“Henry,” she said sharply. “I need to sit. You need to talk to me.”

Nothing from Henry, but the woman standing behind him, the one who’d been flapping, let out a nervous titter. Tovah looked at her, and she ducked behind the pillar. The TV let out a blast of canned laughter. A young man in a faded flannel shirt, his hair mussed but for one smooth section straight down the center, approached her.

“What happened to your leg?”

Tovah looked up at him. “I lost it.”

“God, that sucks,” said the young man. “I hope you find it soon.”

His question prompted more attention from some of the other patients, who now gathered around her. They weren’t crowding her, not yet, but neither were they making it easy for her to move the chair. Tovah shifted her grip on the crutches and took another hop. The chair scraped loudly on the linoleum floor. The flapper covered her ears with her hands.

“Does it hurt?” asked an older man wearing a navy bathrobe. “It looks like it hurts. It looks like it hurts very much. Does it hurt? It looks like it hurts. It looks like it hurts a lot—”

“It hurts,” Tovah said. “A lot.”

The man in the bathrobe nodded, like he’d expected no other answer. “It looks like it hurts.”

“It hurts!” The flapping woman peeked from behind Henry. “Jesus, Alonzo, she already said it fucking hurts!”

Alonzo drew himself up, his dignity clearly wounded, and turned on his heel to face the woman. “Shut up, Sandra. Just shut up. You shut up.”

“No, you shut up!” Sandra ducked behind the pillar. “You!”

“Shut up,” said Henry.

“Don’t tell him to shut up,” said the young man who’d first asked about her leg.

“All of you be quiet!” Tovah hop-pushed. “I’m trying to talk to Henry.”

“Henry’s not talking today.” Sandra peeked around again. “You might ask to talk to Spider, but he’s not here, either.”

Tovah stopped her journey with no more than one step to go. “What did you just say?”

Alonzo muttered something vaguely antagonistic and stalked away. The young man with the funky hair gave a little squeak and also backed off. Henry said nothing, but Sandra scuttled around from behind the pillar.

“Spider,” she said. “He’s not here.”

“Spider,” said Henry. Then again. “Spider. Spider. Spider.
Spider!
”

With each repetition, the word got louder and more frantic, until at the last he was shouting and striking out with his hands. Tovah was glad she hadn’t actually made it all the way over to him. In light of this, though, she couldn’t keep going. She had to sit. Settling the crutches alongside the chair, she got her butt into place and collapsed with a groan of pure relief.

“Henry, stop,” she murmured.

“Spider! Spider! Spider!”

Sandra ducked out of the way of Henry’s flailing hands. Tovah wanted to shake the laugh right out of the other woman. Sandra danced a little, back and forth, clapping.

“Stop it,” snapped Tovah. Then more gently, “Henry, love, stop.”

“He’s not listening,” Sandra chanted. “He’s loony fucking toons.”

“Oh, really?” Tovah glared. “Pot, have you met kettle? You’ve got a lot in common.”

Political correctness didn’t really have a place here. Not among the patients themselves. It hadn’t been so long ago that Tovah had been one of them herself.

“Ooh,” said Sandra. “Bitch.”

Tovah ignored her and raised her voice to be heard over Henry’s muttered yelps. “Henry! It’s me, Tovah. I need you to listen to me. I need you to hear me.”

“He can’t hear you, stupid. He’s not here. I fucking told you.”

Tovah looked at Sandra. “You said Spider’s not here.”

“Well, he’s Spider, ain’t he?” Sandra jerked her thumb at Henry, who’d contorted his body into an awkward position against the pillar.

“How do you know Spider?”

“Listen, dummy, I might be crazy but I’m not retarded, okay? Who doesn’t know Spider? You know Spider. I know Spider. Henry knows, but he’s not here. Spider’s not here.”

“Where is he?” Tovah cried, thankful for the first time all day she was effectively hobbled, or else she’d probably have jumped up and throttled Sandra.

“The fuck should I know? You got any cigarettes? Maybe if you gave me some smokes—”

“No.” Tovah cut her off and focused again on Henry. “Henry. Look at me.”

“Fuck you, then!” Sandra backed off behind the pillar again until the only sight of her was the occasional flap of her hands to either side.

“Spider,” said Henry, mournful. “Spider, Spider…”

“Shh. Henry, you’ve got to calm down.”

“Calm down!” His shout echoed in the room. He looked for the first time at Tovah, his face twisted. He looked, but she was pretty sure he didn’t see her. “Down! Down! Down!”

He wasn’t getting better. In fact, the posturing was getting worse, and the shouting had finally attracted an aide.

“Hey, hey,” Marco said. “What’s going on in here?”

“She’s agitating.” Sandra’s finger pointed from behind the pillar. “She is. That one. She’s agitating.”

Tovah shrugged and indicated her stump, clear proof she’d been innocent of any agitation. The pinned-tight leg of her pale blue sweatpants had bloomed a series of small brown specks. It was bleeding again. She’d have to get home and change the dressings and ice it, if she wanted to be able to use her leg again this week.

“Sandra, am I gonna have to send you back to your room?” Marco’s deep voice rumbled toward the other woman.

No matter how long it had been since Tovah had been the one in the bathrobe watching television in a language she didn’t speak, small and simple things could take her back to that time at once. The threat of being sent to one’s room and the scent of peppermint coming from a deep, rumbling voice were two of those things. She too well remembered the triumph of being one of the “good patients who never got into trouble,” and the petty squabbles. Like siblings under the care of one stern parent.

Sandra shot Tovah a look of pure loathing. “But she—”

“Spider!” shouted Henry. “Spider! Oh, no! No, no, no!”

Marco moved at once, his big hand reaching for Henry’s shoulder. Henry ducked the touch. He was fast, less clumsy than he looked, and he made it away from Marco’s grasping hand without much effort. Sandra yelped, clapping her hands and dancing, but Tovah could do nothing but watch as Henry stumbled toward her.

The solid smash left Tovah gasping, breathless in agony as Henry’s leg connected with her already abused stump hard enough to move the entire chair half a foot across the floor. She forgot everything else as she rocked in the chair and grabbed at her injury.

There had been pain like this just after the accident, during the times she swam up out of the haze of meds. And later, during physical therapy, when she’d spent hours in agony learning to walk again. She’d been careful since then to keep herself from fresh injury, and though she’d had some bumps and sore moments, nothing compared to this.

She was, she realized, graying out, and she put her head down to her thighs. The world tipped. As though from far away, she heard the scrape of chairs being moved and the patter of running feet. Shouts. She heard the deep rumble of Marco’s voice and smelled peppermint. The world edged itself in gray, then red, then finally, black.

“Tovahleh. Look at me.”

Blearily, she opened her eyes. Henry knelt in front of her, his hands on her knees, two of them. His eyes were clear and focused, his mouth thin with anxiety. Tovah blinked, weaving even as she sat upright.

“I don’t have much time,” Henry told her with a glance over his shoulder. “They’ll come right away if they know you’re here with me. But listen—”

“Who? What’s going on?” Tovah tried to get up but the chair refused to let her go.