She watched her hand resting in Megan’s bonier, older hands. Megan turned her hand palm up and spread the fingers. With one hand she held Heidi’s hand in place. With the other, she began to run her fingers gently over the lines of Heidi’s palm, up and back, up and back. It was a little weird, slightly sexual, and reminded her of the way Lacy had held her hand so long the first time they’d met. The light touch made her skin tingle and seem to come alive. All the women were leaning in now, peering at Heidi’s palm.
“The lines are formed at a subatomic and cellular level,” said Megan. “These are the lines of your life.”
“I thought these lines were just from the stress of my life,” quipped Heidi.
Beside her Sonny pointed to her forehead. “No, these are stress lines,” she said, and smiled.
“Please, sister,” said Megan, and Sonny fell silent. Megan’s fingers continued running over Heidi’s palm, up and back, up and back. “No, no, these are formed in the womb and continue to control the thoughts,” said Megan. “Give me your right hand. The right hand is the future.”
Heidi drained the glass of wine in her other hand and set the glass down on a rickety old wooden end table. She held out her right hand and Megan released the left and took it. She took her hand and ran her finger up the center of the palm.
“Is that the life line?” asked Heidi.
“No,” said Megan. “This is the fate line. This is the only line of concern to me. The length of your life is inconsequential. It is what you do with your time here that matters.”
She saw Lacy and Megan exchange a strange look. What was going on? Were these women messing with her somehow?
“Oh, okay, so tell me then, what is my destiny?” she asked. And then she turned it into a joke. “Please don’t tell me that I’m going to meet a tall dark stranger? I’ve had more than enough of those lately.”
But the sisters didn’t laugh. “It reads your fate, Adelheid,” said Sonny. “Not your destiny.”
How does she know my full name?
wondered Heidi. “Is there a difference?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Lacy, quite serious now. “A crucial difference.”
Heidi was tempted to pull her hand away, but she felt Megan’s grip tighten on her wrist. “With destiny you participate in the outcome, but fate… ah, fate leaves you no choice. It is predetermined by outside forces greater than ourselves.”
No,
thought Heidi. What the hell had been going on the last few days? She couldn’t even walk into her own house without someone trying to freak her the fuck out. It was like the whole world was conspiring against her. “Oh, I don’t think I like that,” she said. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to know. I’ll keep my fate a mystery. A mystery to me, anyway.”
She tried to pull her hand away, but Megan held on.
Freaky old bitch
, thought Heidi. Megan was staring at her, trying to look deep into her eyes. She turned away and saw that Sonny was staring hard at her as well. So, on the other side, was Lacy.
“You must make peace with your subconscious desires,” said Megan in a slow, deep voice.
She pulled at her hand again, but Megan wouldn’t let go. She was starting to feel trapped. If she didn’t get out of there soon, she was likely to start yelling. Or screaming even.
She pulled again. “What desires?” she asked, hoping just to get it over with.
“The wicked thoughts burning inside your head and exploding in the juices between your legs,” said Megan, her voice perfectly controlled. “The darkness inside your very soul, Adelheid. The only reason you exist.”
What the fuck?
thought Heidi. Megan suddenly slackened her grip and Heidi pulled free, more than a little stunned by Megan’s words. She started to stand, nearly tipping the chair over, knocking the end
table askew so that Sonny had to dart forward to keep her wineglass from falling.
“Um, maybe I’ll make peace with those desires later,” she said, already backing to the door. “Right now, I better get going.” She turned to Lacy. “I really should go back upstairs. I have to get some sleep.”
“Pleasant dreams,” said Megan.
Fuck you, too
, thought Heidi.
Lacy followed her out. “Sweets,” she said. “I’m sorry if Megan upset you. She is a little… adamant about things sometimes. And she can be a little intense.”
“And a little wasted,” shouted Sonny from within the room, humorous again. Whatever had been off about the mood of the room had broken now. Had she just imagined it? Or had something shifted there? Had something odd happened?
“It’s nothing to worry about,” said Lacy. “Don’t pay any attention to what Megan says if it bothers you.”
Heidi pressed her hand to her forehead. “No, no, I’m fine,” she said. “I just need to get a decent night’s sleep. Haven’t had one in a few days for some reason, and I’ve got a couple of crazy days ahead of me.”
“Yes,” said Lacy. “I’m sure you do.” Her tone was a little odd, too, thought Heidi, but maybe it was just a result of the drinking, or of Heidi herself being a little rattled. Lacy’s expression was polite but otherwise unreadable. “Good night, then.”
“Good night,” said Heidi.
Half smiling, Lacy slowly closed the door, leaving Heidi alone in the hall. Alone, she slowly let out her breath.
What the fuck?
she wondered.
The handle of the door was sticky. Maybe she’d touched it when her hands were dirty or something. She wiped it off with the corner of her shirt and opened the door. She went in, her head reeling a little, and stumbled into the bathroom. Steve was nowhere to be seen. Probably curled up and sleeping already, she thought, or sulking and mad at her for leaving him.
She switched on the portable television on the counter. She turned the tub faucet, the water hot enough that the room began to fill with steam.
On the television was a black-and-white film, the tube of the TV casting it slightly blue. Two people danced around an arena. The image was far from crisp and kept fuzzing out. Heidi reached for it, and when her hand got close the image became sharper, the man becoming Fred Astaire, the woman Ginger Rogers. She drew her hand back and the image went fuzzy again, making it hard to tell who was who.
Ah well,
she thought, maybe once she was in the bath it’d come in clear. Usually it worked that way.
She poured herself a glass of wine and set it on the sink next to the TV, then carefully tied up her hair, watching herself in the mirror as she did so.
Tough day
, she thought.
And yesterday, too.
But now she could just relax, wind down. The day was over.
She turned off the tap and then slipped out of her clothes. She took one last moment to position the TV and then took her wineglass and
climbed into the water. Wow, it was really hot. For a moment she just stood in it, letting her legs get used to it, and then she slowly eased her way in.
She lay in the water, the steam rising up around her. Yes, now that she was in the bath the portable TV was doing better. Picture wasn’t perfect, but she could make out who was who at least. She watched Fred and Ginger twirl their way around the dance floor. Beyond, she could see the open bathroom door leading out into her dark apartment. She should have closed that, she realized, to keep the heat in, and to keep Steve out. Not that he was likely to come in anyway, considering how asleep he must have been when she came in.
She watched the movie for a while, sipping the wine, but then the dance number ended and the sound wasn’t quite loud enough for her to follow the dialogue. It took too much attention. She took a washcloth and dropped it into the water near her belly, watched it slowly grow sodden and begin to sink. When it had taken on the heat of the water, she wrung it out and draped it over her face. Ah, it felt good. Finally she could relax.
Across the room, something changed. Heidi, washcloth still draped over her face, remained oblivious, unaware. At first it was only a change in light, a strange thickening of the darkness somewhere within the frame of the door. And then the bathroom itself started to feel cut off from the rest of the world, the sounds of the outside world—the wind outside, the settling of the house, the noise of the landlady and her sisters still laughing downstairs—were simply gone. Heidi didn’t notice. Steve was awake and in the kitchen now, scratching at the outside door and whimpering, but Heidi couldn’t hear him. She continued to hear from the TV the sound of Fred and Ginger continuing to chat, filling time before their next dance number. But if she’d taken the washcloth off her face, she would have seen that the images on the screen were no longer the same.
Instead of the two dancers, the TV depicted a strange hovel-like
structure surrounded by woods. In front of it was a roaring bonfire, around which danced a ring of women who one by one stripped off their clothing until they were dancing naked. Their bodies were covered with symbols, written on their flesh in paint or blood, and they cavorted around and finally fell into one another’s arms and began to rub themselves and writhe in the dirt, attempting to couple with the ground or with each other. One of them came too close to the fire and her hair caught flame and she ran howling and mad and foaming at the mouth around the hovel until that, too, caught flame. She fell on the ground and came up again with her hair burned away and the fire extinguished and her scalp blistered and smoking, a crazed ecstatic smile on her face. The hovel was soon roaring with flame and from it stumbled a figure whose body seemed made strictly of fire and who stood there in the door of the hovel, calmly burning, in the shape of a man but larger than a man should be. The women around the fire stopped dancing and prostrated themselves before the blazing figure, crying out something that could not be heard as Fred and Ginger’s voices talked calmly on.
And then the darkness in the bathroom doorway solidified, slowly coming into sharper and sharper focus. At first it was a kind of black smoke that billowed around itself and then it gathered and whitened and grew pale. It slowed and solidified and became flesh, and became a woman. And then became Margaret Morgan.
She was stark naked. Her skin was pale, unnaturally so, and crusted over, as if it were flaking and rotting away. She stood completely still, her posture stiff and unnatural, as if possessed. She stared into the room, her gaze wandering slowly here and there before coming to settle on Heidi in her bath.
Her lips parted to show her teeth. She lifted her arms and the skin at her joints cracked and began to seep a white liquid, a pus or ichor of some kind. Her lips were moving, as if reciting something, but no noise came out of them. She stayed there, swaying slightly, eyes on Heidi, but did not move forward.
Suddenly there was movement behind her and a small hand snaked its way along her thigh and up onto her belly. A body followed it, belonging to a small humanoid creature with a sickly swollen head and huge bulbous red eyes. It was deformed and almost fetus-like, but nearly three feet tall, much too big to be a fetus. And though it clung to Margaret Morgan’s leg, it moved with an awareness and intelligence that Margaret’s body did not seem to have. It, too, turned its eyes on Heidi in the bath and watched her carefully and attentively, licking its lips.
The creature pushed Morgan forward and she moved jerkily into the room. Slowly and silently, she approached the side of the tub. Soundlessly, she lifted her leg and stepped into the water. Heidi, behind her washcloth, neither heard nor felt her. The creature lifted the other foot and stepped in, standing now between Heidi’s legs, and then she began to crouch, bringing herself lower and lower, somehow still managing not to touch Heidi despite the lack of space. It was as if the tub was much deeper for her than for Heidi. She folded in on herself, hunched, and descended until she had vanished under the water’s surface. She was gone. From the doorway the creature watched, smiled.
She lay there, the steam rising around her, listening to the slow drip of the tap into the bathwater. On the television, the static stopped, to be replaced again by images of an iron mask, clearer this time. It was being affixed over someone’s head, a woman’s, and was like a kind of cage. The woman’s eyes darted back and forth as strong hands held her in place and forced the mask around her face. She was screaming. You could tell by the way her throat kept clenching and releasing, but her mouth was invisible within the metal mask.
A hand holding a spike moved forward into the shot. It brought it up to rest just above the hole in the mask for the right eye, and then held it there, just millimeters away from the eye itself. The eye below it darted back and forth, desperate to get away. But suddenly a
mallet came down hard and drove the spike in. The eye burst in a spurt of jelly. The mallet struck again and the jelly was followed by a slow puddling of the socket with blood.
A moment later the hand appeared with another spike and brought it to rest just above the other eye.
On the wall high above the tub a drop of blood formed, seemingly out of nowhere. Slowly it began to slide down the wall, becoming a streak of blood and growing larger and wetter the farther it traveled. A foot or two from the tub itself it suddenly thickened, becoming a dense mixture of not only blood but ground organs and flesh, a sort of slurry of bloody flux and disjecta. The stream of bloody goo slid farther down to slop into the tub, where it slowly began to spread through the water. It curled and wound its way through the liquid almost like the tentacle of an octopus feeling its way tentatively forward. It touched Heidi’s leg and looped carefully around it, then wound past it to curl slowly around her body, crissing and crossing on itself until slowly the water became nothing but a murky red stew. Heidi, washcloth still over her face, half sleeping, noticed nothing.
The television burst into static again, silent this time, and then an image formed, this time of a woman in a tub. The tub seemed identical to the one Heidi was in, and the woman in it had a washcloth draped over her face, and the water, too, wasn’t water but a slurry of blood and flesh. But the arms were too drawn and skeletal to be Heidi’s arms.