Motherless Child Read online

  Shrugging once more, Sophie crept off into the shadows. Maybe she could use the Natalie-stupidity to her advantage. Edging up against the seawall, she peered over and saw her best friend sailing silently down the steps, flying toward the group. Which hadn’t seen her. Not yet.

  Then, instead of continuing down to help, she turned to the pier and slipped out along it, directly over their heads.

  22

  In The Oresteia, Natalie remembered from ninth-grade English, the avenging demons were called Furies. And once they came for you, they kept coming. Could not be shaken. Ever. And what infuriated them or brought them down upon you was matricide. Which, she thought as she flew, her feet barely seeming to stir the sand and making less sound than the floating moisture in the air, makes them roughly half as Furious as I am.

  Even in full sprint, Natalie realized the woman should have heard her coming. That woman should have. But she had already launched herself, was knifing through the air with her hands out and her fingers curled like the claws of a diving osprey, before she figured out why the woman hadn’t.

  She was too busy talking to Jess.

  23

  Who could barely stand, now, whose knees dragged earthward as though they had magnets in them, whose splintered ribs were poking at least five distinct shards deep into her lungs, which didn’t seem to be catching any of the air she kept trying to suck down. Ever since they’d left the apartment—really, since the moment the woman had clubbed her to the bedroom floor—Jess had been trying to come up with any idea that might save them. Had, in fact, come up with one or two pretty good ones. The scissors had almost worked.

  But now she had nothing. Wouldn’t have had the strength to wield anything, anyway, let alone drive whatever that might have been deep enough into the creature before her to do enough damage. As in, more than a scissors through the top of the spinal column apparently did.

  And so, for the last few minutes, she’d forced herself to focus, as ferociously as she could, on the woman’s babble. On the fact that she seemed compelled to keep it up, for some reason. Maybe, Jess made herself think, if she could figure out what that reason was, she might gain some leverage. Something she could use. Or just cling to, while she watched her lover and her grandchildren murdered.

  Grandchildren.

  The word surprised her. She hadn’t even let herself think of Natalie’s baby that way until right now, let alone Sophie’s. Not consciously. And yet, that’s what they were, as far as she was concerned. Both of them. Hers.

  “What do you think?” the woman asked, herding Jess out of the moonlight into the crisscrossed shadows under the pier. Mist-clouds trailing everywhere, piles of kelp heaped on the sand like newly dug graves. The woman waited for Jess to turn before she gestured with the bundles under her arm. One of which—Eddie’s, in his Baltimore Orioles blanket—stirred slightly. Not as much as it should have. The other one—Roo’s—made a pitiful squeaking sound. “I could string them up right here. And by ‘string’ I mean ‘hang.’” Again, she paused; again, Jess suspected this was for dramatic effect.

  But not because she’s enjoying herself, Jess realized. She literally knows no other way. Not anymore. Carefully, she produced the wince she thought the woman wanted.

  Sure enough, the woman smiled. “And by ‘hang,’ I of course just mean in their blankets. Like little weaver chicks in a nest, see? Safe and out of harm’s way. Unless you think I’ll have reason to harm them?”

  Again, the pause. Jess just left her wince where it was. Easier than reproducing it every few seconds. She glanced at Benny draped over the woman’s shoulder. For a second, she thought his head had moved. But now she suspected the wind had moved his hair. Nothing more.

  “Hmm,” said the woman. “In that case, maybe I should just go ahead and bury them right here, right now. That could be the best thing for them, really. Maybe a mama crab will take them in. Turns out mama crabs are so much better at burrowing out of sight than you are. Better mamas than either one of us, I’d say.”

  There it was again. That curious quality to the woman’s chatter. Audible just at the end of every phrase, like breath in a bottle when the note gives out. Hopelessness? Was that what that was? Jess couldn’t have said for certain. But it sounded like hopelessness and came accompanied, almost rhythmically, by the sickening clink of scissors against spine.

  Jess was still turned halfway around, so the woman could see the grimaces she clearly hoped to elicit. And so she saw Natalie coming a split second before the woman heard.

  Then the woman whirled, so impossibly fast.

  So Jess did the only thing left she could think of.

  24

  The window, Mother thought, letting her eyes linger one moment longer on the little mama’s face. That’s why she’d been looking there. There had indeed been someone peering in. And yet, she’d betrayed nothing. Was betraying nothing, even now, as though she actually thought Mother couldn’t hear, didn’t know. A formidable creature, this one. Clever little mama. It would be almost a shame, later, feeding her shreds to the sand sharks.

  Mother let the little mama believe just an instant longer. Let her imagine she didn’t hear those pounding feet coming up behind, loud as tympani blasts even over the churning waves, the mindless, effortless, useless roar of the world.

  Only as she turned did she allow herself a grin. Thinking, Okay, fickle, fearful little mama’s daughter. Imaginary, accidental Destiny, who stole my lover. Come to Mama.…

  25

  Even in midair, Natalie wondered whether she’d been suckered and the Whistler’s woman really had heard her. Then she wondered what the hell her own mother was doing, diving like that at the woman’s knees. Then she saw the woman start to tip backward and had to adjust at the last possible moment.

  But she managed. Catching Mother about the shoulders as she tumbled over Jess’s back, Natalie dragged her the rest of the way prone. The woman’s arms jerked up, and both bundles she’d been carrying flew from her, one smacking into the sand a few feet away while the other hit the nearest piling with a wet splat. Benny’s limp form, meanwhile, had slid down onto the woman’s chest, and it pinned her long enough for Natalie to get her own feet under her, shove that squishy sound out of her head for just a few moments more, and drop down beside her.

  Same motion as CPR, she thought as she drove her head downward like a chicken after seed. Check the airwaves for breathing. Then head tilt, chin lift …

  A long time went by before Natalie even realized she was growling. Or purring. Had been the whole time, as she tore Mother’s throat completely out and then kept right on going, submersing her whole face in blood, so much blood, so cold, so still, so deep, like a dead pond. Natalie had no need to breathe, experienced no compulsion to, but even still, the whole experience felt way too much like drowning. Seized every muscle she wasn’t consciously commanding and locked it. It took all the remaining will she had to ignore the urge to get up, get away, grab her babe and run, but she forced herself to stay put, push deeper, gnashing at every squirty tendril of anything she encountered, until, with a clank that jarred her whole jaw, her teeth hit metal.

  Even then, she kept grinding a little longer, severing, finishing. Gnawing around the metal blades.

  Scissors?

  When at last she straightened—after, what, thirty seconds? Less?—she saw her mother, half-prostrate, pulling herself with one arm over the sand toward the kid who hadn’t hit the dock piling, using the other to clutch a wrapped bundle to her breast.

  A bundle that whimpered? Had it really? Natalie couldn’t tell for certain over the boom of the surf, and she couldn’t see clearly through the patchwork quilt of floating mist and dock shadows and moonlight, had to suck furiously at the froth around her lips and coating her teeth before she could even call out. Still gurgling in frustration, anguish, terror, and maybe, just maybe, relief, she kneed Mother’s corpse aside, and Benny’s just-stirring form along with it, and scuttled toward Jess and the childr
en. She had her hands out again. Was going to rip whichever kid that was right out of her mother’s hands—because the other one was facedown where he had landed, but that one was definitely screaming—when she heard something splinter, directly overhead. Instinctively she ducked, thinking some piece of pier might crash down.

  Then she heard the grunt. In that voice. So familiar. As familiar as her own child’s. As of course it should have been, because she’d known it so much longer. Almost all her life.

  Kneeling there, the mist flowing around her, Natalie half-believed she even recognized the displacement in the air, the precise weight of Sophie’s torso as it tumbled into view and plummeted to earth. It landed not twenty feet away with a quiet thud—too quiet, so much quieter than that little bundle smacking against the piling moments before—and, for one absurd second, it stuck upright in the sand, arm out, eyes still open. As though Sophie had simply jumped feetfirst and plunged waist deep but no deeper. As though there really were still legs under there.

  Then Sophie’s torso tipped forward. One arm still flung out. Fingers still twitching. Still twitching.

  Not twitching, Natalie realized, letting loose a sob but somehow choking back a scream. Still scrabbling. Because Sophie is still in there.

  Or Thing-Sophie was still in there. Alligator-Sophie. The thing that had been Sophie and now was something else.

  As Natalie watched, Sophie’s head lifted slightly. Tilted over on her broken neck, so that Natalie could see her face. Lips working uselessly, like a fish gulping at the air.

  But calling for her, Natalie knew. Even without sound. Or hope. Or legs. Reaching for her friend. Calling her name.

  Tears in her eyes, scream still in her throat like a peach pit she would never again dislodge, Natalie turned away. Toward the children.

  26

  Jess had heard the slobbering, slurping sounds her daughter made as she sucked that woman’s life—if you could call it that—out of her clearly enough. She’d heard the thud as Sophie’s body hit, too. But she never even glanced in that direction, couldn’t have cared less what it was, didn’t spare so much as a thought on figuring it out. She just kept digging her free hand into the sand, pulling herself sideways toward that squawking, squirming bundle not more than ten feet from her grasp. She did, however, pause just long enough to peer into the blanket she’d already collected. And another to close her eyes, for a silent, screaming second.

  And that was all the time the Whistler required, having already shimmied down a piling, to take stock, see what needed doing next, and lift the squirming bundle away just as Jess reached it.

  27

  So perfect. So, so perfect. More perfect than he could possibly have dreamed dreamed dreamed, let alone orchestrated. Like in a song. A song he could have written himself, and maybe he should start writing them, now, instead of just singing them. His Destiny’s child in his arms. His Destiny’s mother at his feet, at his mercy, supplanted already in the rush of fated love that not even death could deny. Moonlight and mist everywhere. The empty beach blank, awaiting racing lovers’ footprints. His old, cruel lover’s corpse, with its lifeblood leaking into the living, wriggling sand. His Destiny herself kneeling there, having already, by her own hands—teeth, anyway—freed him. So that she could be his, be his baby. His one and only baby.

  But not quite yet. There was one step more. And even that lay mapped out exquisitely before him. His Destiny had even left him a role to play, though she’d never admit to intending it. A role only he could play, one only he would have the courage to fulfill. God, but he loved her already. Would show her the wonders of the night world as they fled forever down its face, leaving their ghost prints for the waters of the world to swallow. Leaving no trace but melody. A whistling in the wind.

  Planting his feet apart, ignoring the woman at his feet except to kick her aside, he stared at his Destiny where she knelt. By the look on her face, he realized, with a positively electric shudder, that she already understood. Knew, already, what had to happen next. What he was about to ask of her. Because she was a woman like no other. Was his Destiny, even before she was His.

  Smiling—glowing, he was sure, like the walking, whistling moon—he freed his Destiny’s child from its wrappings and lifted it, squirming and squealing, high over his head.

  28

  “Finish,” he said, holding Eddie—and it was definitely Eddie; Natalie could feel his cry all the way down in the soles of her feet—aloft in his blood-drenched hands. The Whistler had shed his sombrero somewhere and stood before her, now, pale and thin, like a stalagmite made of moonlight. He really was beautiful. Monstrously so.

  “What?” she somehow made herself whisper. Pretending, for just a little longer, that she didn’t understand what he meant. For her own sake, for her sanity, not because she imagined any tactical advantage. Tactics were over. The Whistler had Eddie.

  “My Destiny,” he said. “My poor, tired Destiny. Hungry Destiny. Eat.”

  “Who?” Natalie whispered. Out of habit. Stalling, just to stall. “Who should I eat?”

  But now … good God … he was smiling. Starting to lower her son to his chest. To hand him to me? So that I could … Did he really think I’d—

  Just in time, he seemed to think better of that. Pulled Eddie back to his body. He kept smiling at her, though. Lovingly, she realized. Or damn near that. A perfect facsimile. Like his singing. Like all singing, really. The great approximation. Feeling without truly feeling. Feeling without facing what feeling ultimately cost.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. Reverently. “Just understand. I’m leaving you no more time. For your own good. It’s time. Right now. My love.”

  He made no threatening gesture, just stood there holding Eddie against his heatless body. The threat entirely implicit. She would eat—Finish—or he would kill her son.

  Natalie felt her gaze drift, helplessly, toward her mother, who lay buckled on her side where the Whistler had kicked her, Sophie’s Roo close against her, eyes riveted on her daughter’s. Those knifing, deadly eyes. That gaze Natalie had never been able to escape. And never seriously wanted to.

  Did she understand the choice being offered, too? It seemed impossible to Natalie that Jess could. And also impossible that she didn’t. Natalie thought about apologizing, just once more, for all of it. For the total wreckage of all of their lives. Her mother, though, would have told her not to bother. Because what could apologies possibly help?

  And because Jess loved her. With a ferocity that had cost her most of her own life, long before Natalie’s idiocy had brought them to this beach.

  Maybe Jess’s love would help her understand, Natalie thought. Surely, Mama. You would have done the same.

  With a glance Natalie hoped conveyed at least a little of everything she felt, everything she’d thought, she turned around and saw Benny pushing himself up off of Mother’s body, shaking his head, half-collapsing as he rested on quivering elbows. Silently, without any more dithering and without glancing toward Sophie’s torso—still scrabbling, over there, hopelessly calling for her, in a gesture as inarticulate and unmistakable as her son’s cry—Natalie started on her knees toward him.

  Her mother’s hiss stopped her dead. Natalie turned. Saw her mother, who hadn’t moved.

  “Natalie. Don’t you dare.”

  “Mom—”

  “Not him. Do you hear? Not him. This isn’t his doing. And it isn’t his fight, no matter how hard he’s tried to let me make it his. This is your fight. And mine.”

  “Mom…”

  “Natalie,” Jess said, in that voice that sounded so natural in her mouth, came so naturally, always had. Lips flat. Eyes tear-less. “Come here.”

  Where did that voice come from? Natalie wondered. And how do people learn it? Did I have it, just at the end?

  For a single moment, she wavered, watching Benny sag to the sand. Very possibly dying anyway. Then, not bothering to fight back her tears, she turned and did what her mother demanded.
She managed to keep her eyes away from Sophie’s, but she did look up, once, at the Whistler. His ecstasy had all but overwhelmed him. Set him hopping back and forth. A savage, singing leprechaun, holding the only pot of gold Natalie had ever known. Dangling it before her.

  Go ahead and dance, she thought, savagely. But be careful what you wish for. Because when you’ve given me back what’s mine … when I’m Finished … by the time I’m finished with you …

  Somehow, despite audible cracking sounds from somewhere in her ribs, Jess had pushed herself upright, and as Natalie reached her she straightened further. Even kneeling, Natalie was a full head taller. And felt three feet smaller. She watched her mother hold up a finger, then lay the little bundle in her arms gently in the sand. Hover absolutely still over it a moment, as though it were still Sophie’s Roo, still a child, one she’d finally gotten down to his rest.

  When she straightened again, Natalie experienced a single moment of wavering. A desperation just to get up out of her skin and float away. Not be Natalie, anymore. Be whatever she was now, which could still be whatever she wanted. Stop being this woman’s daughter. Her child’s mother. The Whistler’s Destiny, one way or another.

  Then the moment was gone. Steamed away by the blazing blue light in her mother’s eyes.

  Unless that light was her own.

  “Mom,” she said. “Are you sure?” A rhetorical question, she knew.

  Jess didn’t bother to respond. She shed no tears, offered no final remonstrance or last, completely absurd, reassuring smile. In front of her, Natalie saw only that relentless will. That Jess-ness. Natalie felt her own tears massing and let them come. “I have … I do … love you. Mom.”