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I’m afraid to write this. Afraid doing so will summon the muse. My innermost evil. That it will take these words as an invitation. Pervade my sleepless nights with vile contemplations, pollute clarity with its foul breath, whisper wrongs against my eardrum. I can feel the worm of a loathsome thought writhing to the surface. Marching like fire ants up my arms. The itch is unbearable. I clench my fingers, but my thoughts cannot be crushed. Only ground into finer atrocities.
This story is no longer mine to tell. I matter less than the pencil I hold. Just as easily snapped.
I hate that I find some joy in it. Writing such horrors. That such depravity is in me. Under my skin, contentedly constricted around my bones. What filth may spill out of me next is unimaginable. A slopping bucketful most likely. Sorry if I get some on you.
So do be careful.
Don’t accidentally gasp this horror down your throat.
That’s what the muse wants. To get under your skin. That spidery tickle on the back of your neck? That’s the muse. Fiddling with your nerves. Turning your stomach this way and that. It’s taken over the voice inside your head. Lent it a raspy growl. It wants you to think the tick of a clock is a claw upon your window. It wants your eyes to gather shadows into a crouched figure in the corner of your room. Scare the cat off the bed for no damn reason. The muse can and will make it hard for you to swallow. To catch your breath. To think rationally.
It might already be happening.
That uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomach. A sinking sense that you should set this book aside. It’s too late for that. Your eyes have already absorbed the muse’s foul essence. It’s a part of you now. It’s peering through your pupils to read this. Nervously licking your lips with its tongue. Sending a chill up your spine. Spinning you round and round. Unleveling that good head on your shoulders.
Hopefully, you’re stronger than I was. Not so easily carried away. Still, you might want to grip the book a little tighter at this point. For this is your horror story now. The reader is the main character in this nasty tale.
And for that, I am truly sorry.
A shriek bursts through a set of swinging doors to Jewel’s left and escapes down the hall on a fast-moving gurney. Spun around, the directions hastily spat at her by the front-desk nurse seem incomplete. Jewel traces a hand across the achingly white walls and counts down the room numbers of the ICU at Ware Memorial Hospital.
Ghosts of irrational thoughts clutter the empty hallway as Jewel turns right.
What if Deidre is dead?
What if she’s not?
Jewel is fairly certain her sister died while the Enterprise clerk transposed War and Peace from the one-page car-rental agreement Jewel filled out with a golf pencil. Deidre flatlined at every red light Jewel managed to catch between Washington Dulles International Airport and the Shenandoah Valley. Went into cardiac arrest while she searched for a parking spot. As she turned right down the wrong hospital corridor.
Time of death: the exact moment a uniformed police officer extends her arm and halts Jewel’s advance.
Though Deidre had been dubbed the Queen of Fantasy Fiction in many trade publications, it was purely an honorary title. Deidre hadn’t sat atop the New York Times bestseller throne in years. Her legions of fans had overthrown her for authors who could meet their insatiable reading needs. One book every five years wasn’t going to keep her in their good graces. And though Deidre Baldwin might still be considered royalty in a Podunk town like Ware, Virginia, Jewel didn’t think her level of fame warranted a security detail.
“May I help you?” the officer says.
“I’m here to see Deidre Baldwin.” To identify her body, a hitched voice in the back of her mind amends. Jewel closes her eyes to suppress the defeatist side of her. The side that, for whatever reason, not only expects the worst to happen but welcomes it with an open mind. The big picture she sees has always been a horror show. Her sister is the star of this one. At least what is left of her.
“And you are?” the officer asks.
“Jewel Maxwell. I’m Deidre’s sister.”
“Maxwell?” the officer questions with a curious frown. “Does Deidre have another sister? The nurse told me she contacted a Miss Baldwin about the situation. I can’t recall her first name. But I don’t think it was . . .”
When the officer’s eyes draw a blank, Jewel reintroduces herself.
“Jewel. Maxwell.” She touches her chest to prevent any further misunderstanding. “I’m Deidre’s sister. Her only sister. I changed my name when I got married. I guess Deidre hasn’t updated her emergency contact information with the insurance company yet. I just got married last year. Deidre was my
maid of honor.” Jewel covers a small gasping weep with her hand before asking, “Is she okay? What happened? They wouldn’t tell me anything over the phone.”
“The doctor will explain everything to you. He should be here any minute.”
“Can I see her?”
“Sorry. I’m not supposed to let anyone in until the doctor arrives.”
“Isn’t anyone in there with her now?”
“A nurse was in with her just before you arrived, but she got called away. Her car alarm was going off. She told me Deidre was in stable condition before she left. Don’t worry. They have her hooked up to monitors, so they’ll know right away if there’s an issue.”
“Still, she shouldn’t be alone.”
When Jewel reaches for the doorknob again, the officer blocks it with her hip.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you in.”
“But I’m her sister!”
“I’m just following orders.”
“Whose orders?”
“The hospital’s. They’ve never had someone this famous as a patient before, and they want to make sure her privacy is protected. That’s why I’m here. They assigned me to watch her door. No one gets in or out without a doctor present. Not even a family member. Sorry.”
“Look, Officer . . .” Jewel squints at the bronze star pinned to the lapel of the officer’s brown bomber jacket, but it only designates the bearer as Deputy Sheriff.
“Kerns,” the officer supplies.
Jewel blinks as the name rings a bell. But not the face. Having lived in Ware when she was a child, she might have gone to school with one of Officer Kerns’s relatives. Or been taught by one. The name brings a stern
woman to mind. Thickset. Broad shouldered. Eyes of steel. Though Officer Kerns appears tough as nails, the Kerns Jewel recalls had silver hair to match.
Jewel takes a deep breath to modulate her tone. “Look, Officer Kerns. I appreciate you looking out for Deidre. I know you’re just doing your job. But I just want to peek my head in for a second and let her know that I’m here.”
Officer Kerns slides in front of the door as Jewel takes a step forward. “She won’t know you’re here anyway. So you might as well wait for the doctor.”
“What do you mean she won’t know that I’m here?”
Officer Kerns glances down the corridor, then at her watch. She expresses her frustration in a sigh and shakes her head. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but . . . your sister is in a coma.”
“Coma?” Jewel gasps as the word cramps her lungs, slams a soundproof lid over her thoughts, and pounds tiny fists against the backs of her eyes. She can’t imagine anything more horrible than being trapped in your own mind.
“She was the victim of a hit-and-run accident,” Officer Kerns explains.
“Hit-and-run!” Jewel slaps a hand to her heart. “You mean Dee got hit by a car?”
“Yes. A trucker spotted her lying in the street. Luckily, he saw her in time to stop. He almost drove right over her. He thought she was a deer until he noticed her long black hair.”
“Oh, my god.” Jewel presses a hand to her forehead to contain her disbelief. “When was this?”
“Around two a.m. this morning. It appears she might have woken to find an intruder in her home. She was still in her pajamas and the door to her apartment was left ajar. We think she might have been running from them when she was hit.”
The big picture switches to a rape scene in Jewel's
mind and chokes a sob from her.
“Was she . . . ?” Jewel can’t bring herself to say it, but Officer Kerns reads the fear in her eyes.
“I don’t believe she was physically assaulted. Most of her injuries were caused by the accident.”
Most? Jewel wonders. She’s about to ask for clarification when the squeak of shoes turns her attention to the end of the corridor.
Skidding around the corner in a rush, the man who drew Jewel’s attention away from Officer Kerns’s cryptic comment is attempting to work himself into a lab coat while managing a cup of coffee.
“Sorry, sorry,” the man says, flustered. “I got lost looking for the cafeteria.” He stutter-steps as he spots Jewel and sloshes coffee over his fingers. “Oh, good morning,” he says, shaking his hand dry as he approaches.
“Dr. Leonetti,” Officer Kerns says. “This is Jewel Maxwell. Deidre Baldwin’s sister.”
Dr. Leonetti stares at Jewel for a moment before recovering his manners. “Oh, yes! Of course. It’s very nice to meet you.” The pout he offers Jewel is almost as warm and wet as his handshake. “Though I wish it were under better circumstances.”
Though Dr. Leonetti’s toupee is in its twenties, the laugh lines around his eyes and mouth haven’t been let in on the joke. But his eyes are as clear and blue as the Caribbean, which is probably where he refines his tan. And buys his pinkie rings.
He must not be from here, Jewel thinks. Though Ware, Virginia, isn’t so far in the backwoods that a man couldn’t get himself a nice watch, he’d be hard-pressed to find a Rolex at Selby’s Discount Emporium.
sister?”
“I told her about Deidre being in a coma,” Officer Kerns interjects. “Sorry. I should have waited for you to tell her yourself, but you were taking so long.”
“I do apologize for that,” he says. “I’m fairly new to this hospital and still get turned around. It’s no Mount Sinai, but at least those hallways are clearly marked.”
That he was from a big city like New York explained a lot—his glib attitude and flashy jewelry—but it provided no insight into Deidre’s condition.
Jewel shakes her head in frustration. “You were saying about my sister . . . ?”
“Oh, yes.” Dr. Leonetti clears his throat to recoup his bedside manner. “Your sister is resting comfortably. She suffered multiple broken bones as a result of the accident. She underwent surgery to fix a broken tibia. She also has three broken ribs, but those will mend on their own. Her head injury is our primary concern. It’s caused her brain to swell, which we believe is the reason for her coma. I know that’s a scary word, but we’re very optimistic that she will awake once the swelling reduces.”
“Can I see her now, please?” Jewel says.
“Of course.” Dr. Leonetti sets an unbearably heavy hand on Jewel’s shoulder. “But I think you should prepare yourself first.”
“For what?”
Dr. Leonetti flicks an anxious look at Officer Kerns, then fastens a steadier gaze on Jewel. “Your sister was admitted with a skin malady of some sort. Completely aside from her accident. It isn’t anything to concern yourself with, but it has altered her appearance somewhat. Frankly, it’s a bit . . . unsettling.”
Jewel’s knees falter, then faint out from under her midway across the hospital room as she spots Deidre. She expected to be shocked by her sister’s appearance. Deidre’s face to be fractured and swollen. Cheeks pitted with gravel. Chin scraped to the bone. But nothing could have prepared her for what’s lying in the hospital bed.
Literally sweating pus, the inflamed rash encasing Deidre’s face has reached the breaking point. Split across her brow, blood-laced mucus dribbles along her temples. Dried to a crusty glue, her long black hair, once the envy of her younger sister, now looks like a cheap wig. Adhered to the top of a rotten potato and jammed on the tip of a withered stick, the only bulk to Deidre’s frame is the cast around her left leg. Uncovered and propped on a pillow, the opening around her toes nests five half-starved, featherless birds with expensively pedicured beaks.
Somehow Deidre’s fancy toenails are the one thing Jewel can’t stomach. She looks briefly around for a receptacle, then vomits into the leaky bowl of her hands.
“Oh, shit,” Officer Kerns exclaims, grabbing a box of tissues off the bedside table. She snatches out a few sheets and hands them to Jewel.
Dr. Leonetti, having jumped clear of the spew, plucks a tissue for himself and blots the right toe of his black wing tip.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I tried to warn you.”
“What happened to her face?” Jewel cries, mopping vomit from her hands.
“An allergic reaction is my best guess. We’re still running some tests.” Dr. Leonetti sidesteps the puddle Jewel created and looks down at Deidre. “The rash is quite extensive. It covers most of her body. It appears she scratched herself with some sort of implement. Possibly a knife or fork. We were able to address most of the wounds, but the skin around some of the lesions was too necrotic to work with. We cleaned them out the best we could and packed them with antiseptic gauze.”
Jewel tweezes one word from the diagnosis and holds it up for inspection. “Necrotic? Doesn’t that mean dead?”
Dr. Leonetti inhales the courage to say, “Yes.”
“I see,” Jewel says, though she doesn’t. “I can’t believe this is happening. Dee’s all I have left. Our father died just last year.”
The heart attack hit him like a speeding car too. One second he was mowing the lawn, and the next they were burying him under the one at Prospect Memorial Gardens. Like Deidre, he had been mistaken for roadkill. The unpiloted John Deere finished off the last thirty feet of grass before bucking him into a ditch. He lay there for several hours before a UPS driver slowed to see what the buzzards were all about. Ironically, inside the last package their father received was a Fitbit health tracker.
“Do you have any additional questions for me?” Dr. Leonetti says. “I have rounds to make.”
With too many questions to sort through, Jewel
shakes her head.
“Well, if you do, please feel free to contact me directly.” Dr. Leonetti picks up a small notepad from the bedside table and jots down a quick note. He tears the top sheet from the pad and hands it to Jewel. “This is my private phone number. You can call anytime.”
Jewel looks down at the page in her hand in wonder. “I didn’t think doctors gave out their private phone numbers.”
“I don’t usually, but I’ve never had such a famous patient before. I want to ensure Deidre Baldwin gets the VIP treatment. Which also extends to you. I don’t want you waiting on hold while the switchboard tries to track me down. If I don’t answer immediately, leave a message and I’ll call you back as soon as I can. I’ll be overseeing Deidre’s treatment during her stay, so I’ll be able to provide you with the most up-to-date prognosis of her condition.”
“Thank you.”
“I need to be going now, but feel free to visit as long as you’d like.”
Jewel touches her head to keep it from spinning. “Actually, I think I need to lie down for a bit. I’ve been up all night.”
“I’ll follow you over to the apartment house,” Officer Kerns says. “I’d like you to look around Deidre’s apartment and see if you notice anything missing.”
“Was she robbed?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I would like to determine.”
“Oh.” Jewel blinks. “I wasn’t planning on going over to the house today. I need to find a hotel.”
“Why don’t you just stay at Deidre’s?” Officer Kerns suggests. “It’s right down the road.”
“I don’t know if I should” stay in the attic of my family’s old haunted house. Not that it had been haunted before their mother died there.
But if her ghost was anywhere, it was going to be in the rafters of the attic. Her old office. The one she went crazy in. The one Deidre had been crazy enough to move back into twenty-six years later. “Deidre’s a very private person,” Jewel goes on. “I think she would prefer that I stay at a hotel.”
“Why don’t you decide after we check it out,” Officer Kerns says. “It won’t take long. I need to clear the apartment as a crime scene.”
Jewel relents with a nod, dropping her gaze downward to picture the condition of Deidre’s apartment. If it matched the condition of her skin, they might want to slip on some hazmat suits before exposing themselves to its walls. “I guess we can go over there. If you think it’s safe.”
“You’ll be safe with me.” Officer Kerns pats her sidearm, then follows Dr. Leonetti into the hall. “I’ll wait for you in the lobby,” she says.
“Stay as long as you’d like, Ms. Maxwell,” Dr. Leonetti advocates, reaching in to pull the door closed as Jewel takes a step toward it. “Visiting hours aren’t limited for immediate family.”
Jewel touches the door imploringly as Dr. Leonetti shuts her in with Deidre. She sets an ear to it to listen for the dissipating clop of footsteps, the tail end of Officer Kerns and Dr. Leonetti’s conversation whipping around the corner of the corridor, but the thing in the bed behind her is panting too loudly to hear over.
. . . AHH-UHH . . . AHH-UHH . . .
Was Deidre breathing like that a moment ago? Or was she as nervous as Jewel to be left alone with her sister?
Five minutes, Jewel thinks, checking her watch. Five minutes and I’ll go. That’s plenty of time for it to seem like I tried to be a good sister.
“I’m sorry, Dee,” Jewel says, eyes locked on the minute hand, or whatever it’s called on a digital watch. Deidre would probably know.
Sorry,” Jewel says. “I’m sorry this happened to you. Sorry I can’t look at you. I know you need me to be strong for you right now, Dee, but I can’t. I just can’t. It’s just too awful. You understand, don’t you?”
. . . AHH-UHH . . .
The insectile rasp of Deidre’s labored breathing conjures a scene from the movie The Fly. Jeff Goldblum, mid-metamorphosis, skull warped and dripping with slime, unable to control his base urges. Deidre looks incredibly similar to that. As if she were deteriorating. Transforming into something else. Maybe not a human fly, but something just as grotesque.
“I know that seems harsh,” Jewel admits. “But if you were awake, Dee, you wouldn’t want to look at yourself either. I guess it’s a blessing that you’re in a coma. At least that might give your face time to heal.” Jewel sneaks a peek over her shoulder at the rancid gob of hamburger propped on the pillow, then turns away before it can bare its teeth at her.
Deidre sits slowly upright in Jewel’s imagination and gives her back a horrible smile. Eye teeth just a little longer than they should be, her gums are a necrotic black. The bed creaks as Deidre swings her feet to the floor. A shadow crosses the window and falls over the wall to Jewel’s right. She closes her eyes to banish the sight from her mind. Though she’s almost positive Deidre will be lying flat on the bed if she were to look, she can’t bring herself to. Fear has her by the shoulders. The grip of its fingers pierces her goose bumps and drains an icy sweat down her spine. She’s had these waking nightmares before, but never before has a real monster been so close at hand when one occurred.
Jewel rests her forehead on the cool door and breathes through the panic attack. She counts back from a hundred, like her father taught her to do when she was little, then takes a quick look over her shoulder.
Other than a drop of pus playing Plinko down her pitted cheek, Deidre remains perfectly still.
“What the fuck happened to you, Dee?” Jewel asks.
Though Dr. Leonetti’s diagnosis of an allergic reaction seems logical, and God knows Jewel wants it to be just that, it doesn’t look like an allergic reaction to her. None that she has ever seen before. And though she is woe to make such an extreme, uneducated guess, one conclusion keeps rearing its ugly head. Flesh-eating virus. Surely Dr. Leonetti considered that. Perhaps he already ruled it out. If so, there would be no reason to put those two vicious words in her head. But they had found a way in anyhow. A microscopic nibble at the center of her subconscious. Staphylococcus. E. coli. Ebola. Jewel has watched enough Dr. Mercy on the Learning Channel to know the difference between necrotizing fasciitis and an ordinary skin rash.
“How long have you been dealing with this, Dee? And why didn’t you tell me? I know we haven’t spoken much lately, but I would have tried to help you.”
. . . AHH-UHH . . . AHH-UHH . . .
“That’s not fair,” Jewel replies, deciphering a contrary tone in her sister’s wheezing. “I do care. As much as you care for me, anyway.”
Which, if they were being honest with each other, isn’t a lot. But they have never been close. Though six years isn’t an insurmountable generation gap, it is wide enough for them not to see each other clearly. Deidre has always looked down on her kid sister, and Jewel has never had the nerve to look Deidre
straight in the eye. Still can’t. Even when they are closed.
“Hey, you probably wouldn’t even visit me if I were the one in the hospital.”
. . . AHH-UHH . . .
“Yeah, right. You’d send me flowers and call it a day.” Jewel sighs. “Sorry, I forgot to bring you any, but I was kind of in a rush.”
. . . AHH-UHH . . .
“I’ll bring you a nice bouquet tomorrow. This room could use some cheering up.”
. . . AHH-UHH . . .
“I’ve been working on a new project,” Jewel says, holding up her end of the conversation for—she checks her watch—another three minutes. “The premise is kind of thin. But I think there’s enough there to work with. You only need one seed to grow the most glorious tree. It’s up to the writer to shake its limbs and see what falls out. You told me that, Dee. Back when we used to bounce ideas off each other. You don’t need me for that anymore, though. Your seed grew into a forest they had to chop down to print all your books.” Jewel expels a sighing chuckle. “I’m still shaking my one damn tree. All that ever falls out of mine is a bunch of dead leaves that blow away before I can rake them together.”
. . . AHH-UHH . . .
“This would make the start of a pretty good story though, huh? Woman rushes to be at her estranged sister’s bedside only to find her in a coma.” Jewel lowers her voice to deliver the one-line hook: “Plagued by a mysterious rash that has turned her sister into the monster she always knew her to be, Jewel Maxwell must set her petty jealousies aside and help her famous sister in her hour of need.” Jewel shrugs. “Or something like that. Though the story could take a darker route. A What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? type of thing.”
. . . AHH-UHH . . .
“I know. Be original. Don’t rewrite stories that have already been told. There are plenty of new story ideas out there waiting to be
written. You just have to pay attention to the world around you.” Jewel looks at her watch. Two minutes to go. “I’m going to head over to the house when I leave here. Officer Kerns wants me to take a look around your apartment. She thinks you might have been robbed. I’m also going to try and find what might have given you that rash. Maybe if Dr. Leonetti knows what caused it, he can treat it. I might stay at your place for a few days. Just while you’re in the hospital. I hope you don’t mind.”
. . . AHH—
When the inhalation fails to leave Deidre’s chest, Jewel whips her head toward the bed and slams her nose into the door as it abruptly opens.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” a nurse says, peeking around the corner of the door at Jewel. “I didn’t know anyone was in here.” She flicks a fretful look at the bed. “Oh, my goodness! What happened here?”
Jewel turns as the nurse rushes to Deidre’s bedside, then slaps a hand over her mouth to cover her surprise.
Slid sideways off the pillow, Deidre’s head hangs upside down over the edge of the mattress. Inverted, and floating atop a gown of black hair, it appears a cycloptic dwarf has slipped from her sister’s bed. ...
