He didn’t respond to her question, but he’d noticed a softening in her eyes. He was about to try and explain himself when she spoke again, this time in a quieter voice.

  “Wish I’d had somebody like you around when I was growing up, someone to keep me away from Colleen,” Angie said.

  Was that an apology? She was expressing appreciation for what he’d done for Kaya. That was something.

  Angie’s mouth continued to move after her voice stopped. Curtis could almost make out the syllables, but no sound came out. He saw the fear in her eyes.

  “Did you hear that?” she asked, turning wide, desperate eyes to him.

  Fucking great, Curtis thought, now she’s having a psychotic episode. Probably best to ignore it.

  “Get the mushrooms out of the crisper,” he said, “and wash them for me.”

  Angie seemed to relax and she moved to do as he asked.

  As long as Angie isn’t dangerous, I have to care about what she thinks when it comes to Kaya. She is Kaya’s Mother. If she trusts me with her daughter, maybe she’ll learn to love me too.

  ~~~

  That night Curtis allowed Angie to sleep in his room while he took the sofa. He hoped she’d sleep naked in his bed. In a half-asleep state, he heard strange voices in muffled blurts and gasps coming from his bedroom. He fell deeper into sleep and dreamed Angie had seen countless whispering strangers at her window and invited them into her bed.

  ~~~

  On Saturday morning they went to Houarner’s Department store to buy furniture and other material for Kaya’s new bedroom. Kaya clung to Curtis during most of the shopping spree, walking up and down the aisles right next to the shopping cart he was pushing, or hugging him when they were not in motion. Angie asked her what colors she liked, what style of furniture she might prefer. She held up one stuffed animal after another to see if her daughter might respond favorably, but Kaya was as quiet and withdrawn as usual.

  Curtis knew she was trying hard to be a real mother. The way she went about it was strangely endearing, despite Kaya’s lack of interest.

  He began to see everything he’d ever seen as attractive in Kaya was there in Angie. Her ass looked good in those tight little sweat pants, too. The shirt he’d loaned her looked good filled out with her tits. Being too large for her, she’d tied the shirt tails in front so that her nice flat stomach and belly button showed. He liked the idea that later he would be able to put on the shirt that had touched her breasts. He had already decided to put it aside after she took it off so it wouldn’t get washed before he could smell it and put it on.

  She was still getting nowhere with Kaya. Finally, Angie became despondent and sat down on a child’s bed in the furniture department.

  Curtis sat down next to her and tried to think of something to say. Kaya wandered over to the next aisle.

  “I’m nothing to her,” Angie said quietly so that only Curtis could hear her. “I came back here to make sure she was safe. But she’s got you now. She doesn’t need me.”

  “I don’t think they’re going to let me keep her.” Curtis hadn’t intended to admit that to Angie—hell, he didn’t want to admit it to himself, but somehow he couldn’t help it. He’d had fantasies about going off with Kaya, disappearing and the both of them taking on new identities and living out their lives together somewhere. Just then he knew it was only a dream—they’d never get away with it. The authorities would never stop looking for her. If Kaya was going to be family, then he would have to be seen by her and, he supposed, by Angie as family. He knew now that he’d have to earn that.

  “You and Kaya... well... that will take time,” Curtis said. “You can both stay with me for a while if you want.”

  Angie didn’t respond, so he didn’t push it.

  He tried to see the three of them as a nuclear family, but the image it conjured was more apocalyptic than what he’d been shooting for.

  “This shopping thing—let me show you how it’s done,” Curtis said. He loaded their shopping cart with colorful bed clothes, curtains, stuffed animals, toys and a few books.

  While Curtis was picking things out he noticed that Kaya followed along beside Angie and looked at her once or twice. Angie blew it by turning her attention to the girl and trying to talk to her. Kaya retreated, standing off on her own until the shopping was done.

  Curtis found a clerk and ordered a canopy bed, shelves, a dresser and mirror and asked for them to be delivered to his address by the end of the day. He paid for everything and they left the store.

  On the way home, he saw Kaya smile once or twice. He knew that Angie saw it too.

  Angie was very sexy when she smiled.

  ~~~

  In the afternoon, Curtis and Angie hauled everything out of Kaya’s room and painted the walls and ceiling, waited two hours and then gave it another coat.

  Then the furniture arrived from Houarner’s.

  While Kaya hugged her pillow and watched from the doorway, Angie and Curtis set up Kaya’s new room, moving the furniture into place and, arranging toys and books, hanging the curtains and making the bed.

  Kaya looked worried. Curtis put it out of his mind.

  ~~~

  Again, in the night, while Curtis was drifting off to sleep on the couch, he heard voices coming from his bedroom. This time he had the impression they came from somewhere deep in the earth itself, somewhere in the shadows.

  ~~~

  Sunday morning Kaya sat next to Angie at the breakfast table and asked her what she liked to eat for breakfast.

  Angie clearly didn’t know what to say. People who lived the way Angie did, Curtis thought, probably didn’t eat much breakfast, let alone have much choice. Angie started to say something, then stopped, perhaps afraid she might scare her daughter away again.

  Kaya turned away, got up from the table and went to the bathroom.

  “She hates me for abandoning her,” Angie said.

  “She doesn’t even know you. How can she hate you?”

  Angie’s mouth moved as if she were responding to Curtis, but nothing came out. She seemed surprised, a bit frightened and embarrassed. She buried her face in her hands.

  ~~~

  Sunday afternoon Curtis cleaned house in anticipation of Miss Martinez’s inspection the next day. Angie helped out here and there. Afterward, Curtis relaxed in his easy chair and read a book for about an hour and a half. Kaya took a nap in her new room.

  Curtis put his book down when Angie entered the living room with a fist full of papers and an angry look on her face. She was holding his print-outs on the Smith family. He had given her the run of the house, but he didn’t expect she’d go through his stuff.

  “What the fuck is this?”

  “I wanted to know about our family. “

  “What do you mean our family?”

  “I mean your family,” Curtis said, and it hurt a little when he said it. “I found all that stuff online, on genealogy sites.”

  Angie looked horrified. “You didn’t just make this stuff up? This shit is real?”

  As he nodded his head, Curtis could see some of the more outrageous stories from his notes reflected in her eyes.

  “No way is this one about the swamp lady true.”

  “Oh, yeah, the one about Margaret Smith.”

  The web site Curtis had taken the story from said that during the Civil War Margaret Smith had lured soldiers on both sides to her home in the Ghost River Swamp of Tennessee to become food for her and her children.

  “She fucking ate people?” Angie asked.

  The site claimed that all the men of Margaret Smith’s backwoods family had died at the battle of Shys Hill in Nashville and she was desperate for some way to provide for her youngsters.

  “Well, yes. It was for her family. Surely you can understand that.” He regretted saying it even as he spoke the words.

  “No, I can’t.”

  Neither could her neighbors, Curtis thought.

  When the nearby community of Bardsville got wind—literally—of what was going on in the Ghost River Swamp and went to investigate, they found at least fourteen corpses in and around the Smith cabin, tangled in the brush, or half submerged and rotting in a fetid morass that surrounded the property. Those who discovered the scene said that in some cases they couldn’t tell where corpse left off and vegetation began. They burned the cabin and the immediate area around it before a final determination of the number of dead could be made.

  But then there were plenty of other Smith family weirdoes listed in those pages. The entries concerning the countless murder victims, murderers, rapists, child molesters and necrophiliacs were among the tamest.

  “Yes, but it’s not as bad as it sounds,” Curtis said, trying to think of something reassuring to say.

  “What are you talking about? How could it be any worse? This is some of the weirdest shit I’ve ever read, and you’re telling me it’s about my family? No fucking wonder I can’t make it in this world.”

  “There are probably lots of mistakes in the records. It’s not like your family name is rare or anything, and you can’t believe everything you read.”

  “Yeah, but if half this shit is true...”

  “It’s just a bunch of stuff some of your family did,” Curtis said. He was scrambling for something to say as he watched the light go out of Angie’s eyes and that manic anger she held close creep into them. “It doesn’t mean you have to be that way too. You have a choice.”

  “Yeah, sure I do.”

  “You can be okay. You’re good like Kaya, you have to be. Everything I love in Kaya, I see in you too,” he said, desperately, but he knew he meant it.

  Angie just stared at him blankly.

  “Mama?” came Kaya’s voice from the bedroom. Was she calling out in her sleep? “Will you come here?”

  “Your daughter’s calling for you. I think she really needs her mother.”

  Now Angie’s transformation was complete—the animal fear was clear to see in her eyes and body language. “I can’t take this shit anymore,” she said hysterically and went into his room and shut the door.

  An hour later, while Curtis and Kaya were fixing dinner, a crashing sound came from his bedroom. When Curtis looked in, he found Angie had pulled the blinds off the window while trying to open them. She had found the pint of bourbon he’d bought to celebrate the holidays with last year. Since he’d had no one to celebrate with, he hadn’t cracked the seal on the bottle. Now it was empty, and Angie sat cross-legged on the floor with her head hanging down.

  Curtis wasn’t surprised when she raised her head and stared at him with hate in her eyes. The same ugliness that had hovered behind Colleen’s dull stare was now filling the room, slowly and heavily, unrestrained.

  Angie spoke. “Get away from me you fucking creep.”

  She grabbed the empty bourbon bottle and lifted it above her head.

  He quickly closed the door before the glass hit the wood. He heard the shattered pieces crash to the floor.

  He walked back out to the kitchen, expecting to find Kaya there. Water boiled unattended on the stove, steam twirling.

  Curtis found Kaya in the living room, pushing his thin blinds aside, looking out the window. She turned at the sound of his footfalls.

  “Curtis, whose car is that?”

  “Which car, Kaya?”

  “The big white one parked in the driveway of my old house.”

  Chapter 11: Swallowing

  Angie’s belly burned and tore at itself, clenching under the barrage of bourbon she’d downed faster than she could control. Her world was spinning but it wouldn’t go black. She felt colorblind, and the whole room wavered before her, a swimming gray. Even the pale moonlight that came in through her window felt artificial, cold and fake.

  They were right. The voices were right. Oh, God, I’ve fought for nothing. Earned nothing. Kaya isn’t even mine.

  GHOST WHEN SHE WAS BORN QUIET NOW QUIET UNDERSTAND FEEL AND FALL FALL QUIET.

  The voice was steady now, a force of nature, like gravity sucked up inside of her skull. Even through the booze, her eyes watered at the pain.

  Even if I fight…

  SEED SPILLS BLOOD SPILLS OVER AND OVER UNTIL QUIET PLEASE NOW JUST NEVER.

  Oh…even if I fight, there’s nothing for her. The whole family, every one of us is wrong.

  ALL OTHER THAN OTHER UNTIL SOFT AND APART CRUMBLING.

  What did I think I could do? I’m not a mother. Running always felt right. I never even should have had her. Now she’ll be like me. I should have killed her before I had a chance to fuck her up. I could have just wrapped her up tight, and warm…

  YOU WILL ALL SLEEP.

  Angie winced at the sound of the voice. It was so sure now that she was listening, so confident that her resolve had collapsed.

  It was right.

  She swayed in her cross-legged position on the floor and steadied herself with one hand. She squeezed her eyes shut as tight as she could, as if she could shut her eyes on the world forever. Just disappear. No body for Kaya and Curtis to find. No proof that Angie had tried to crawl her way into their strangely normal life.

  She felt the voice inside her, staring into her heart, trespassing on the things that should only be known to her. Listening to everything. It knew her.

  It knew she was ready to let go. The voice turned to whisper again.

  You can disappear with us. You can be warm. You’ll never be alone.

  Was the voice really that bad? Had Angie really felt so afraid when she’d embraced it? Maybe this thing that had crawled under her skin was right. It felt so close to her own thoughts, her own doubts.

  We are in you. With you.

  Maybe the voice was something good, some clean thing that culled her sick family away from the earth. Angie remembered being pulled beneath the surface of the river. Giving in hadn’t felt right. It felt like being eaten alive. And each time she got close to giving in, thoughts and visions of Kaya had saved her.

  Where is she now? My daughter. My angel. She’s just another sick girl like me. No love for anyone else. I was wrong to expect more.

  The world was wrong to you. You can be with us. Quiet now.

  Part of Angie wanted to fight the voice, to fight for the affection of her daughter, to fight against everything that had kept her from having the life she had tried to earn before Cypher pushed his sick, acid-soaked tongue into her mouth. I can be a good mother. I can make our family right. I can fight. That part of her fought to be heard, but the voice had sunk itself so deep inside her, so deep…

  The voice felt stronger, as if it were knitting the air around her into molasses, making her movements slow and heavy. The light from the bedroom window was brighter now, beaming in through the gray.

  We are waiting for you. Be with us.

  Unsteady, Angie rose to her feet. She reached her hand out to the window and felt a chill trickle through her sweating, drunken body. She knew she could push the window open and crawl out. She could walk silent into the woods behind the suburbs and disappear.

  She was distorting her daughter by being there.

  If I go now, maybe Kaya’s got a chance. Maybe it’s not too late for her.

  She steadied her shaking hand and pushed it closer to the glass. The cold from the other side of the window was numbing her arm. Even with the bourbon, her resolve wavered.

  I’m going to be eaten alive. I will be sucked dry, and disappear.

  She felt eyes on her skin, from every direction. Eyes inside of her, studying every cell of her, wondering which pieces of her to pluck away first.

  The anger she’d turned against the voice so many times now commanded her surrender.

  Fucking do it. Open the window. Go. Get away from this place. You’re not Kaya’s savior. Do what you’d always wished Colleen would do. Just wander off.

  A smaller, fading voice in her head begged her to stay. She didn’t listen.

  As Angie pushed the window open, she felt the evening wind slide across her skin, bringing with it the odor of decaying leaves.

  I’m going to die.

  Before she had the window completely open she saw light spreading across the room, yellow light spilling in from the opening bedroom door. She couldn’t avoid the thought that entered her mind, although it reeked of the hope she’d fought to shed.

  Oh, it’s Kaya. She’s come to pull me back before it’s too late, to hold me and tell me she loves me and push this thing from my head. It’s Kaya.

  She turned her head rapidly. Her vision sloshed into place and she blinked to steady her sight and let her eyes adjust to the light. She could see only a shape moving toward her.

  The silhouette was too large. The footsteps were too heavy.

  “Kaya?”

  There was no answer from the shape, only a swift motion that brought steel smacking against her skull.

  She felt herself bounce once when she hit the carpet, the impact driving the air from her chest. Then she heard the voice.

  “Hey, O’Rourke, I found this sorry bitch. She says the kid’s name is Kaya. Shit, I’d forgotten. I couldn’t forget your name, though, Angie. It’s about all I’ve had in my head since last time I saw you.”

  She felt a heavy, steel-toed boot slam into her ribcage, just as she was regaining her breath.

  “Yeah, Angie, I’ve got to get you out of my mind. I think we’re gonna have to split up.”

  She heard him spitting before she felt the warm saliva rolling off her cheek. She didn’t reach up to wipe it away. She was afraid any movement would prompt another kick, and her chest was aching for a single breath.

  Angie finally inhaled to the sound of a pistol being cocked above her head, and, in the distance, the sound of her daughter’s scream muffled by flesh.

  “Get up, bitch. We’re getting out of here.” Cypher sounded so happy.

  O’Rourke’s voice came from the other room. “Why can’t we just do it here?”

  Cypher was short with him, his breath clipped and controlled beneath his present rage. “Because, if that guy on the floor isn’t the only one that lives here, we’ll have some unwanted visitors. I don’t want any complications. Besides, the stuff is back at her mom’s house. I want to have some fun with this. I think it’s going to mean something this time, O’Rourke. I think I’m going to understand. I know this girl. Her eyes will tell me more.”