By the Light of His Lantern Read online

  “You should eat something,” Lara said.

  “I have no appetite.”

  “Because you’re sick. You should still eat.”

  “I don’t eat breakfast most days anyway.”

  “I’m sure that doesn’t help…” she muttered through her last bite of bagel.

  Catherine was too tired to defend herself any further.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  She used Lara’s phone to call in sick to work.

  “Sick, huh? Or are you addicted to the time off now?” Mr. Dougherty laughed over the phone. “No, you sound terrible. Don’t come back until you’re feeling better. What’s a couple more days, anyway?”

  Catherine had learned a lot could happen in a couple days.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “You’re not fine,” Lara said, watching Catherine who was stooped over the toilet.

  “It’s the flu or something,” Catherine said.

  “You felt just fine yesterday, yeah?”

  “It happens…” She wiped the vomit from her mouth and sat against the side of the bathtub next to the toilet. “I’ll be okay.”

  “She did this to you. After she took your phone and told you that was the end of it, she sent you a bug in a box. A literal bug. And now you’re puking your guts out.”

  “She didn’t do this to me… It’s just…”

  Catherine couldn’t finish before another cramp took hold of her. She grabbed onto the toilet rim, knuckles white, arms shaking. She wretched and heaved. Lara watched, biting her nails.

  “Oh god…” Catherine said, peering into the toilet.

  “What is it?”

  Lara bent over Catherine’s shoulder, grimacing. The toilet bowl was painted black, like tar.

  “I’m taking you to the hospital,” Lara said, and she grabbed Catherine’s bicep to haul her to her feet.

  “No,” Catherine said. She jerked out of Lara’s grip. “No, you’re not.”

  “Something’s wrong with you! You’re puking up… what is that? Blood?”

  “It’s not blood,” Catherine said. And it wasn’t. Or at least she couldn’t taste anything resembling blood, but then maybe she wouldn’t in her vomit. “I don’t know what it is.”

  “All the more reason. You could be dying for all we know.”

  Catherine slouched against the tub again, wheezing. She looked at Lara for a mere second, closed her eyes. She thought.

  “Let me use your phone. I need to call Beth.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Beth didn’t answer, but her husband did.

  “Catherine? Is that you? You sound terrible.”

  “It’s me. And I do.”

  Ned was silent for a moment. He whispered when he spoke again.

  “What did you and Beth do yesterday? She’s sick as a dog, too. Completely fine last night before bed and woke up with it this morning.”

  “Sick? What do you mean?”

  “Throwing up. Her eyes are both swollen shut, too. It’s like an allergic reaction or something. We’re going to the doctor here in a bit, you just caught us on our way out the door.”

  “Could I talk to her?”

  Ned hesitated. “Sure.”

  Catherine waited as he must have made his way through the house to Beth and handed her the phone. She heard him whisper her name.

  “Hello?”

  “Beth, it’s me. What happened?”

  Beth asked her husband to give her a minute, then waited as he must have left the room.

  “It was her,” she said.

  “You mean Rosaline.”

  “Whatever it was she gave me…” She paused. “When she sedated me, before the bar…” She paused yet again. It sounded almost like she was distracted by something. Catherine pressed the phone closer to her ear, her voice was so low. “Um… I don’t know. Maybe there was more. And then, um…”

  “Is something the matter?” Catherine asked. Beth ignored her.

  “…I woke up nauseous this morning and it’s only gotten worse since. My eyes are nearly swollen shut… and…” She quieted. “Catherine, something’s wrong…”

  “What do you mean?”

  Beth paused. She whispered very carefully. “I’m hearing things.”

  Catherine didn’t say anything at first. It was a chilling thing to hear—confusing as well. When she realized she didn’t understand exactly what she meant, that she must have misheard her, she said, “Hearing things?”

  “Voices. Other things. I know they’re not real, but I can hear them. Constantly. I don’t… I don’t—”

  “What are they saying?”

  “I’m afraid to tell Ned,” Beth said. “We’re going to the clinic in a bit, for everything else. I don’t know what to say. I’m… I’m hoping it goes away.”

  “What are they saying?” she asked again.

  Beth was starting to cry on the other end. “It was her. I know it was. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening to me. She did this. I don’t know what’s going on… but… I’m hoping it just goes away…”

  “Beth—”

  “Sorry, I have to go. I’ll call you when I get back. I have to go.”

  Before Catherine could say anything else the call was ended. She handed Lara her phone back.

  “What’s going on?”

  Shocked, feeling almost out of body, Catherine said, “I need to go to Rosaline’s.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “What are you doing?”

  Catherine, half-naked, swayed side to side as she attempted pulling her jeans on. She fell against the end of her bed and stayed there.

  “I’m getting dressed.”

  Lara, bewildered, helped Catherine pull up her jeans and then put a shirt on. When she was done, she sat on the bed for a minute to catch her breath.

  “You didn’t need to change.”

  “I wasn’t going out looking like I did. In sweatpants.”

  Lara shook her head. “You’re… something else.”

  Catherine stood in front of her full-body mirror, observed herself.

  “I’m like the alien in that movie, the one they put a dress on.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Catherine grabbed her keys from her nightstand.

  “You should let me drive,” Lara said.

  “Drew Barrymore was in it. She was just a kid.”

  Lara, not really listening to what her mother said, extended the flat of her palm to her, demanding the keys. Catherine handed them over.

  They brought with them a large silver mixing bowl for Catherine to vomit into should she feel the need during their drive. A couple times on the way she felt she was about to, felt that sick pain in her stomach, rising into her throat, but nothing came of it. She hoped she wouldn’t any longer. Or if she did, she hoped it could wait until she was home again.

  The purple sedan was there in the driveway, but the work truck was gone. They parked by the curb. Catherine got out of the passenger seat, peered up at the bare, disfigured tree exploding from the center of the yard, knuckle-branches curling like a hand reaching from a grave. The lawn surrounding the tree was pale and wispy and dry.

  Catherine jumped, startled, as Lara slammed her door behind her.

  “This is it?” Lara asked.

  Catherine nodded. Lara joined her on the sidewalk, where they faced the house for an awkward period of time to gather their courage. It was likely anyone home had already seen them and now watched them through the closed blinds.

  “You feel okay? You need to throw up first?”

  Catherine shook her head. “No. Let’s go.”

  They made it halfway to the front door before Catherine started to swoon. She leaned against the tree.

  “You sure you feel—”

  Catherine puked. That same black tar splattered her feet and the base of the tree. She wiped an arm across her mouth, left a black streak there as well. Like black paint.

  “You should leave.”

  They both gasped
. It was Rosaline. She stood atop her porch steps, hands on her hips, her thick hair pulled over one shoulder. The door to her home was left open behind her. She’d come out in a hurry, silent as she was.

  “Before you poison my tree with your death.”

  “You did this to me,” Catherine said, one hand against the tree for support. She tried to stand on just her feet but it was all she could do to not fall down completely.

  “You did this to yourself,” Rosaline said.

  Catherine pushed away from the tree, balanced herself on her wobbling legs.

  “What did you do to Beth? What’s happening to us?”

  Rosaline was stone-faced. “You are wasting your time coming to me.”

  “If you think this will stop me…” Her stomach clenched, threatening to betray her yet again. “If anything happens to Beth…”

  “I mean it,” Rosaline said. “You should do something meaningful, with the little time you have left.”

  “Please.” Lara approached the porch. “Don’t do this.”

  “This is her, not me. Consider yourself lucky she has not poisoned you, too.”

  Catherine leaned on the tree once more. “Lara, get away from her…”

  “I know you did this. You have to stop it.”

  “I will call the police and have you removed from my property if you do not leave now. I will not be harassed at my home.”

  Rosaline turned her back to them, moved toward the front door. Lara climbed the porch steps behind her. She stopped as Rosaline whirled around, a flourish of dark hair and darker eyes.

  “Come any closer and I will send you the way of your mother and her friend. Do not test me.”

  “Is she really dying?”

  After a moment, Rosaline’s expression softened with pity. She opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by Catherine, who staggered toward them from the tree.

  “It’s murder, if this kills me. You know that.”

  “If anyone should be familiar with murder it is you.”

  “I haven’t murdered anyone. That’s why I came to you. I just wanted you to help me.”

  “Nothing is free in this life. I gave you what you wanted, what you paid for. Now you must pay for your indecision. For your trespasses. Nothing is free.” She turned to Lara again. Those hardened, wicked eyes filled with sorrow. “Take your mother home and be with her there.”

  “You can’t!” Catherine screamed. “You can’t…” She doubled over, hacking and wheezing, hands buried in the dead grass. The sun hung over her, bright and dizzying.

  Rosaline stepped inside, turned to Lara a final time.

  “If in the future you wish to speak to your mother again… I charge by the hour.”

  With that she closed the door.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  They were five minutes from Rosaline’s when Catherine found the mental clarity to realize they weren’t heading home.

  “Where are you driving?”

  “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

  “No!”

  Catherine sat up, head flipping left and right as she only now paid any attention to the world passing by outside.

  “You could die!” Lara said

  “I’m not…” Nausea seized her insides again. She swallowed it down. “I’m not dying. I’ve had the flu before. It’ll pass.”

  “This isn’t the flu. It’s…” Lara couldn’t bring herself to say something ridiculous, but Catherine knew what she meant. “She did this to you.”

  “I won’t set foot in any hospital. I’ll be okay…” Her stomach cramped, warm and rising in the back of her chest. She bent and lifted the bowl up from between her legs on the floor of her seat and vomited. When she was done she replaced the bowl on the ground and leaned back, drained. “If you take me to the hospital, you’ll have to drag me inside.”

  Lara growled furiously, teeth bared. “What’s the point of that? The rest of this shit can wait! You need help!”

  Catherine felt all too exhausted to fight her. She put her head back, looked out the window in a daze. She supposed if she did die, she wouldn’t have to worry about any of it anymore.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Lara took them to the nearest urgent care center. It wasn’t a hospital, but maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. There was almost no wait. All in all they were inside for half an hour. Catherine was given antivirals and told to rest as much as possible. Lara emphasized that her mother’s vomit was black, which the doctor noted could mean blood but he wasn’t too worried. His casual response only served to heighten Lara’s anxiety. They left much the same as they’d entered.

  “Are you happy now?” Catherine asked. Nearly too weary to talk, she still managed to inject her words with sarcasm.

  “Fuck off,” Lara said. She drove with both hands, gripped the steering wheel as though it might spin out of her control at any moment.

  Catherine lolled her head toward her, vegetative. “Excuse me?”

  “You don’t get to just give up.”

  She was near crying, Catherine noticed. She watched with mounting guilt and sorrow as her daughter fought back tears.

  “I wasn’t giving up…”

  “Bullshit. You don’t care anymore. I can tell.”

  “Care about what? All I want is to get home and finish this.”

  Lara snorted, nose running. “You care about him. You don’t care about yourself. You don’t care about me…”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “What am I going to do if you die?” She rubbed tears from her eyes before they could roll down her cheeks. “I have nobody else. Nobody. Dad is good as a stranger to me, too…”

  “I’m not going to die.”

  “You want to, though…”

  “I don’t want to die. I just didn’t want to go to the hospital because…” She had to think hard about it, because now that she did, she wasn’t sure why she didn’t want to go. It had seemed like a waste of time? Because… part of her thought that maybe… maybe… “I don’t know why. Because I’m tired and I just don’t feel like dealing with doctors right now. But we did, and it’s over with. I just want to finish this.”

  “Fine,” Lara said.

  Catherine turned back to her window, watched the sunny neighborhood go by in its old, comfortable, mundane familiarity.

  “We’re so close.”

  She didn’t want to die, she thought. Of course not. She wasn’t that far gone. She just wanted things to go back to normal.

  But the more she thought about it, the more she thought maybe that was impossible, too.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  When they arrived home, Catherine announced she would take a short nap, just a few minutes to let her stomach settle if it would. Maybe she could think straight if she gave her mind a small break.

  That short nap turned into a three-hour one.

  When she woke, weaker than she was before, she climbed with aching joints out of bed and dragged her heavy feet down the hall, down the stairs, where Lara sat waiting on the couch. Lara’s phone was off on the table. She was instead holding a framed photograph, and one glance toward the piano told Catherine which it was she looked at.

  “Why did you let me sleep so long?”

  Lara looked up, startled. She glowered.

  “You needed all you could get. He’s still alive down there, so there’s still time for all that.”

  Catherine started to speak and lost her voice to a coughing fit. She sat down on the couch for a minute, coughed some more until she could breathe again.

  “I don’t want to waste any more.” She cleared her throat. “Let’s do it now.”

  First, with what little strength she had, Catherine fed the man another of his smoothies and changed him out of his dirty clothes, including the adult diaper. She cleaned him up—not the most thorough job she could have done—and dressed him in some extra sweatpants she owned, and an old throwaway t-shirt several sizes too big for her. The sweatpants, while they
fit around his slim waist, were several inches too short. But they were something. They were clean. She thought it best he wake up in something clean, at least.

  They gathered all his belongings into a single box. The letters, the dress ties, the photograph, even his keys and wallet which Catherine had kept safe in her bedroom nightstand. Catherine stuffed the remaining witch powder into the pocket of her sweats. They gathered it all and brought it into the basement, sat it on the floor next to his body. He wasn’t breathing as well as he’d been when she first brought him home. She was sure of that now. His breath came as a rattling whisper, bone dry.

  “If this works,” Lara said, kneeling before him with her mother, “what happens then? He wakes up, sees us… then what?” Catherine didn’t have an answer for that. “Should we even be doing this here?”

  It was a valid point. Catherine hadn’t thought much about it. It was part of why she was in all the trouble she was. She hadn’t thought about most of this. The past week had been a falling episode, falling slowly flat on her face, hands reaching out too little too late to catch herself. She was throwing herself into the fire, repeatedly, without first wondering how hot it would be. Was it a sign of getting old, she wondered, that she failed to properly think things through first? I’m not that old, she thought.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this here, you’re right. I don’t know. Or maybe it’s a good thing. He’ll be feeling awful when he wakes up. We’ll have to take care of him, I think. Just for a bit.”

  “You don’t think he’ll be pissed at us?” Lara looked at him like he was a wild animal they were setting loose. “He’ll want to know who we are and what’s happening to him.”

  “We’ll get to that when we get to it. For now… let’s just hope it works in the first place.” Catherine dragged the box of his possessions closer. “Now read me the damn instructions.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Long Time, No See

  Her shape moved carefully down the beach. The closer she came the more he squirmed. It couldn’t be her. But it was. She shouldn’t have been there, but she was. When she finally reached him she closed the distance with her open hands. They found his arms. She felt him, took hold of him. Her flesh was warm against his, real. She was nothing but a silhouette, but he knew.