Microsoft word winterb.., p.26
Microsoft Word - Winterborn_final-ADRoland, page 26
She rolled over and hugged Sean’s pillow to her chest. She missed Sean, his warmth, the fact that
she wasn’t alone. There wasn't anything left between them except a few lies and half-hearted attempts
to stay together.
There’s nothing left.
Yet, there was everything. Her world would always be wrapped up in his blue-gray eyes, his not-
quite-lies. And she was so screwed up, he was the only man who would tolerate her.
Even if he lets me stay the way I am just so he can keep on, keepin’ on.
She slipped into a sleep that was blessedly dreamless.
****
Tam slept until the phone rang, a jarring alarm that shot her out of bed before she was even fully
awake. With her head foggy with sleep and her body tingly from the sudden start, she fumbled for the
handset on the nightstand.
“Hello?”
“Tam?”
Sean.
“Yeah. Who else would it be?” She yawned. “Are you okay?”
“I'm good. They're releasing me in about an hour.”
“Good, good. I'll be there in a few minutes, then.”
The connection crackled and fizzled. He said something else, but she couldn't make it out.
“What?”
“...missed you.”
Was that his voice? It sounded odd. Of course it was his voice. Who else would it be?
“I missed you, too,” she replied. “Hello? Hello? Sean?”
Silence. The line was dead. She hung up. Instantly, the phone rang again. Tam yelped and
jumped, knocking the handset off the bed with her knee. It hit the ground, the back popping off and
the batteries flying in a couple different directions.
It kept ringing.
With a deep groan, Tam bounced off the bed and kicked the phone. Even as it rebounded off the
wall, the shrill, insistent ring echoed through the house, again and again.
“Stop it, stop it!” she growled at the cracked remains. She jammed her foot into one of Sean's
work boots lying near the closet door and stomped on the phone casing. Under her furious assault, the
plastic cracked and shattered. Wires and little metal bits flew out from underfoot.
The wires stretched, thickened, quested for her barefoot. The first one, a red one with the rubber
coating scraped away from the copper wire, jabbed into the fleshy part of her big toe. She yelped again
and jerked away.
Little tings and clicks still issued from the demolished phone. Tam dropped to her hands and
knees. She kicked off the boot. With her hand stuck inside it, she slammed the boot down over and
over again on the part that the little noises issued from.
Sweat rolled down her forehead and her back and from her armpits when she felt finished. Only
bent and broken bits of metal and plastic and copper wires that writhed and twisted with a life of their own remained.
“This isn't real,” Tam said aloud. She brought the boot down one more time on an especially
inquisitive yellow-wrapped wire. “This isn't real, and I know it.”
Slam slam slam.
One more time for good luck.
The wires didn't stop moving. The sounds still came out of the scattered metal bits. Tam stood up
and backed away.
The fact that this weird little hallucination hadn't ended unnerved her. Tam squeezed her eyes
shut and rubbed her face with her hands. “Time for this to be over with.”
She opened her eyes.
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The wires still twitched and writhed.
Tam locked herself in the bathroom and tried not to cry. Pretend everything is okay. Pretend this
isn't happening. Pretend, pretend, pretend.
She turned on the shower, much too hot, and stayed in until her skin felt tingly, then numb. She
got out and scrubbed her sensitive skin too hard, so hard that it turned her bright red. The pain made
things ease into focus a little better.
She turned the water off and stepped out of the tub. The shower curtain clung to her arm. She
fought it off, screaming angry curses at it, until she realized she had brushed against it.
As she brushed her teeth, she had to laugh at herself. Sean had quite a surprise waiting for him
when he got home. Cabinets nailed shut. Phone destroyed. Missing son. Dead monster in the
backyard, and—even more fun—a mama-monster on the prowl!
She giggled and applied her makeup a little too heavily. She smudged her eyeliner, so she didn't
look quite so...insane. Didn't help much. She couldn’t tame the glittery look of her eyeballs.
Clean underwear, clean jeans, clean tank top. She found her biggest bag in the closet, a shapeless
sack-type affair that she made years ago, and dumped the contents of her purse into it. She looked
around the room, thinking. There’s a bag here, somewhere, with Tam-tam’s happy fun-time pills in
it. She ventured into the office and plundered around in her art closet. She dragged out a bag of old clothes, both hers and Sean’s. She rubbed her hands over a pair of his old jeans, worn to nothing at
the knees, with stringy holes at the top corner seams of the back pockets.
Oh, right there…
She dragged the small leather purse from the jumble of clothes and dumped it out on the floor.
Old keys, tiny, hard rectangles of gum, pens, pencils, receipts, a gym membership card…and a round,
tortoiseshell-print plastic pillbox that rattled in her hand.
“Yes!”
She stuck the container in her pocket and kicked the junk back into the closet, jubilant. Today,
Kevin would be going straight to his grandparents' house, whether Sean okayed it or not.
I’m done with the kid.
Done with being scared. Done with the monsters, done with the dead whore.
With the bag on her shoulder, Tam headed out of the office and down the hall and approached
Kevin’s closed door. She pushed open the door, half-expecting to find the room empty.
But there he lay, sprawled across his bed. Snoring like a buzz saw. Filth crusted his pajamas. Big
clods of dirt littered the floor and the sheets.
“Kevin, get up.” She marched into the room and shook his shoulder. He groaned and rolled over.
“Get up, Kevin. Time to go.”
“Wha?” he mumbled. For a second, he looked like he was about four years old, waking up from a
nap.
“Get up. Time to go.”
“Where?” This time, he sat up and rubbed his eyes. “I just went to bed.”
“You're going back to your grandparents.” Tam grabbed his backpack off the floor and yanked
open dresser drawers. She crammed three full outfits in the pack and held it out to him. He stared at
it, forehead wrinkling in confusion.
“Tamsyn, what are you doing?” he groaned. He sounded like he was still mostly asleep. He tried to
lay back down, but Tam grabbed his shoulder and held him upright. “I wanna stay here with my dad!”
“You should have thought about that before you start sneaking off to the Estate. Or before you
called your monster. I can't deal with this, Kevin. If you loved your dad, you wouldn't have started
this. Your mom is dead, and nothing's going to change that.” She manhandled his shoulders into the
backpack's straps and grabbed his shoes off the floor.
He seemed to wake up. His eyes flashed angrily. “I'm not going with you! I'm staying here!”
“No, you're going to your grandparents. I can't deal with this, Kevin. You have some major issues
that I don't want to touch with a ten-foot-pole.”
“You're crazy, Tamsyn.”
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She shrugged. “That's not news, Kev.” She marched him down the stairs, toward the front
door. All the way down he dug his feet in and grabbed doorways and furniture. In the living room he
grabbed the coffee table and dragged it halfway to the door. It left deep black scrapes on the floor.
Tam gave him a rough shake.
“Stop it!”
“Let me go! I'm telling my dad!”
“Tell him.” She paused and then hollered. “Sean! Sean! Kevin's gotta tell you something!” Another
second passed. “Oh, uh-oh. I don't think he's here. You know why?” She grabbed the kid by the
shoulders and bent down, right in his face. “He's not here because of something that your mother
woke up eighteen years ago. Do you think he wants to face that again? You brought them back.”
Kevin tried to squirm away but she held on tightly, twisting her hands in the slack fabric of his
shirt. “I’m doing it for my dad! Let me go!”
“Keep yelling that. You're going back to your grandparents' house.”
“My dad will come get me.”
Tam couldn't see around the red fuzzy cloud of rage and confusion that tinted her world. She
ignored the protesting, fighting kid and continued dragging him out of the house. On the porch, she
froze.
A flat black sky hung overhead, a weird black, like a film negative. Clouds glowed bright greenish
white, still as photographs in the sky. The trees moved, though. They thrashed and whipped in a wind
she couldn't feel as if a hurricane blew around them.
And the things that moved in the trees, blending with the chiaroscuro of light and shadow and
leaves and branches...
Mottled black and green and blue, the colors of rotting corpses left in swamps, smaller beasts
swung from the tree branches, their limbs stretching over the distances. In the bizarre, time-lapse
photography flickers of light in the black sky, they changed colors, from black to red to brown, the
color of old blood. Some were taller than the trees, others short enough to use them as camouflage.
These things looked like dinosaurs, except they appeared nearly skeletal, with gnarled skin like
slimy tree bark. Fluids oozed down their hides, like sap, like pus.
They stayed in the woods, pausing at the edge of the yard. Waiting. The smell of them reached
Tam, the smell of rot. Sulfur. Old, old dirty diapers. It was the smell of moist dirt, a compost heap.
Dizziness whipped around her skull, making her stomach spin. Tamsyn gagged and held Kevin at
arms' length, one hand still tangled in his shirt, while she retched over the edge of the porch. He was a horrible kid, but he didn't deserve getting puked on.
And if I puke on him, it means I have to take him back upstairs, so he can get clean clothes.
A cool breeze chilled the sweat on Tam's brow. Slowly, she opened her eyes to a bright blue sky,
white clouds, and winter-faded trees. The day glowed bright and crisp, unmarred. Tam breathed in
slowly and spat in the dirt a few times to clear her mouth of bitter bile. The taste remained. She had
water bottles in the fridge. Her throat burned, and the just-vomited feeling coated her teeth and
tongue.
But the car was just a few yards away, and she didn't feel like dragging Kevin back into the house
and then back out. If she remembered correctly, there was a water bottle in the floorboard of the car,
an unopened one.
She marched Kevin to the car and ordered him to get in. After a short protest, he got in and
slammed the door. Tam hit the button on her keychain that made the doors lock. At ten years old, the
car's electronic entry system shorted out in the passenger door. It only opened from the outside, once
it was locked from the outside.
“Strap in.”
He glared at her from under his too-long bangs.
“Quit being a brat and strap in.”
Kevin turned his head and stared out the window, arms crossed over his chest.
With a weary sigh, Tam reached over and grabbed the seat belt. Before she could pull it across his
narrow body, he leaned forward and grabbed her arm with both hands. He chomped down on the
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fleshy part of her forearm, grinding his teeth through her flesh as he tore away a mouthful. He
growled and went for seconds. His teeth pierced muscle like razors.
Tam screamed and punched him in the side of the head. He growled like an animal and just dug
in deeper. She had a terrifying thought: if I jerk my arm away, he’ll rip out another hunk. If she didn't, he would eat her alive. Blood pulsed around his mouth and ran down his chin, staining his
shirt.
He had the strength of two grown men. Nothing she did even loosened his grip in the slightest.
Kevin's fingers dug into her arm like talons. The pain was unbearable! She stopped trying to pry
his mouth away from her arm and slugged him in the side of the head again. Desperate, she planted
her free hand in the middle of his forehead and pushed as hard as she could. His teeth tore through
the last few fibers of flesh, and she was free.
She slammed back against the driver’s side door, holding her gushing arm to her chest. Calmly,
Kevin chewed.
Swallowed.
Swallowed part of her arm.
He ate part of me!
She screamed. Her voice grated, cracked, until the only sound she emitted were harsh, painful
grunts. Kevin bared his teeth at her, bloody lips peeled back like a mad dog's. Blood—her blood—
soaked his shirt, the front of his pants. It splattered on the window, the dashboard, the carpeting.
His teeth narrowed, sharpened. His eyes widened and his pupils turned into slits of black.
Reptilian. Evil. The tiny veins in the whites of his eyes pulsed visibly, thickening. Blood welled up like tears and ran down his face. His skin paled, cracked.
Tam cried out and flung herself against the door. Locked, it held.
Something on the outside flung itself against the other side of the door.
She opened her eyes and saw the monstrous thing that stalked her the night before, staring in,
snarling. Drool ran down long, yellowed fangs. Bits of past meals hung in the gaps between the teeth,
brown and rotting.
It's not real!
Tam smacked her head against the window. Once. Twice. Hard, then harder, eyes clenched shut.
She forced her eyes open.
The monster stared at her. A big crystalline drop of saliva ran down one long, sharp fang. The
thing didn't move. Just that drop of drool, that spiraled down its fang. Tam's breathing hitched in her chest with every breath. Fear left her frozen. Her blood sang through her veins, pricking and tingling
like electricity.
She turned her head. Her neck creaked. Kevin—
He looked normal. Bloody, grinning, but normal. No fangs, no vampire-eyes. Smooth, pre-
adolescent skin.
“Even if I'm not here,” he said. “It is. And it's going to get you.”
“Shut up.”
The monster remained. The gaping, dinosaur-like mouth closed slowly. It leaned closer to the
window, where its hot breath fogged up the glass in rhythmic puffs.
“It'll eat you slow. One part at a time. Then it'll lick up your blood.” Kevin demonstrated by
swirling his own tongue around his lips.
Tam took a deep breath. He had to shut up. She couldn't take any more of his violent threats.
Couldn't deal with the fear anymore. Enough was enough. “Shut up. Now.”
“My mom's going to watch it eat you. Maybe it won't eat you all up. Maybe it'll eat out your insides
and then use your body to hold its baby. You killed Jake-O, so it needs to have another one.”
Tam lashed out and hit him, sending his head crashing against the window.
He didn't move.
Oh God, had she killed him?
“Kevin?”
She nudged his shoulder. He didn't move. But he was breathing, she saw, her concern faded
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somewhat. As long as he’s breathing.
His eyeballs twitched back and forth behind his eyelids. That was good, right?
Ignoring the thing outside her window, she cranked the car and jammed it into gear. She dreaded
the long drive to town. It would be ten minutes or more, even going sixty, before she saw another
house.
Desolate, winter-dulled fields and forests raced past on either side. A few cows grazed in the
fields, and overhead, a V of birds flew by. The radio hummed, monotonous and tuneless, the volume
set too low for her to hear what song played. In the passenger seat, Kevin whimpered softly and
stirred.
“Don't puke in my car,” she warned. Sean puked after he hit his head, and once when she was
younger, she fell and hit hers and puked. Wasn't that a sign of a bad head injury? Or it could have
been the seven cold wieners she ate before hopping on the swing set.
What was she, like seven when that happened?
Why am I thinking about that now?
She finally made it to the main highway. Another ten minutes down the road, it widened into a
four-lane highway. On either side more homes and businesses sprang up. She passed Kevin's school
and turned down the next road. The houses got larger and larger the farther into the winding
neighborhood she drove. These were the houses where the 'old money' families lived, with gated
lawns big enough to land planes in, huge pools in the back, fancy shiny cars in the driveways.
It took her a moment to remember which house belonged to the Murrays. She pulled into the
wide, circular drive and parked right in front of the house. “Be home, be home, be home,” she prayed.
It turned into a chant that matched the beat of her footsteps as she hurried around the car to the
