My Soul to Keep (41 page)

A
LABAMA.
M
ISSISSIPPI
. N
OW
, a new sign said L
OUISIANA
. Jessica was in a new state every time she opened her eyes.

She hadn’t realized she’d been sleeping until the car jolted to a stop in the parking lot of a strip-style, one-story motel called the I-Ten Inn.
WELCOME TO LOUISANA,
the red letters on the marquee read. The row of look-alike doors and windows stretched in front of her, and there were few other cars in sight. David must have picked the most out-of-the-way motel he could find.

David dangled a motel key in front of her, cutting off the car’s engine. When had he gotten out to register? She must have slept through that too. And she was still so sleepy that everything played in front of her like a dream.

Kira, ecstatic to be out of the car, was racing back and forth across the walkway, half skipping, half running. She’s going to fall and break her neck, Jessica thought, but she didn’t have the strength to lean over to call to her through the open window.

The heat. Jessica couldn’t move. She was so hot, her clothes clung to her skin. She knew Teacake was lying on the seat beside her, and she couldn’t stand to look at him. She didn’t want to deal with one more bad thing, today or ever.

“Where are we going?” she asked David in a cracked whisper.

“Nowhere right now. We’re stopping to rest.”

“I have to call my mother,” she said in the same frail voice.

“I already took care of that. I called security at Jackson and threatened to come back and finish the job I started when I pushed Alex off her balcony. And I said I’d get the old lady too. I’m sure I sounded convincing, since you’ve already made me a fugitive. They’ll have plenty of protection.”

Jessica stared at him, confused, blinking. “You pushed Alex?”

David sighed. “No,” he said patiently, as though he were speaking to Kira, keeping his voice low, “I said that so they would pay attention, Jess. You know what really happened to Alex.”

Jessica no longer knew what to believe of David. He could be claiming he’d called her mother just to placate her. All the world was a lie. Even God, apparently. Her so-called God had abandoned her. She felt tricked. After David’s recovery at the cabin, she’d believed he was touched by holiness, and nothing could be further from the truth. So much for faith. Why had God led her to David at all in the beginning, and now led him back to her?

“I still have to call her, David. I know she’s worried …”

“Later. Not now,” David said. He got out of the car and opened her door for her. Always the gentleman. “Come on out.”

No. She couldn’t go that way. If she did, she’d have to climb past Teacake on the seat. “The cat…” she began.

David was silent, apparently examining Teacake. He sighed, and she could only imagine what he must be seeing. “The cat’s fine,” he said inexplicably.

The cat was fine? Her heart leaping, Jessica ventured a glance. Teacake’s blank eyes met hers. Jesus help. Teacake didn’t even look like a real animal anymore, he looked like something somebody had stuffed. His mouth was horrid, frozen slighdy open. She turned away, nauseated. “He’s dead, David.”

“Shhhhhh. Don’t say that. Kira will hear. I’ll take care of Teacake. Come on out. I can’t leave you in the car.”

It all felt so painfully familiar, just as when Jessica had walked into her house for what she’d known would be the last time. Inside the cramped motel room, as Jessica dropped her purse on top of the plain bureau, she thought of their countless family vacations that had begun this way. The room was bare and smelled clean in the way motels could, a smell that was foreign and new and full of promise.

Her eyes shot toward the nightstand between the double beds right away, looking for the telephone. Nothing there except a brass banker-style lamp. Not even a Bible.

“No phone. Sorry, this isn’t exactly the Fontainebleau. We get what we pay for,” David said evenly, following her gaze. He clapped his hands together once, turning toward Kira. “But there’s a TV. Let’s see if we can find any afternoon cartoons.”

“It’s time for Muppet Babies, Daddy. The clock says two!”

“They might have different cartoons in Louisiana, Duchess.”

“Lew-see-ANNA …” Kira repeated, bouncing on one of the beds.

While David fumbled with the television knobs to try to clear up the reception, Kira scooted off of the bed and began to creep toward the closet. “No, Kira,” Jessica said, speaking for the first time since they’d walked into the room.

Kira looked back at her, sticking out her lip. “I want to play with Teacake.”

“Teacake’s still sleeping,” David said, walking over to lift Kira up and carry her back to the bed. “You stay put. You can play with him in a few hours. Maybe when it gets dark.”

Jessica glared at David, feeling a fluttering across the back of her neck. He was insane. If she’d ever doubted it, she knew it now. Why the hell had he carried a dead cat into the room and hidden him behind the mirrored closet doors? He should have left Teacake in the car, then gotten rid of him and told Kira he ran away. Anything would be better than such a gruesome lie. Teacake must have been dead for at least two hours. What if the carcass started to smell? And what if Kira snuck into the closet? The poor child would be hysterical.

And that would make two of them, because Jessica was about to be hysterical herself. She couldn’t hold it in much longer.

Jessica realized she could barely keep her balance. She shuffled to the bed where Kira sat and collapsed beside her, swaddling her like they were two fetuses in a womb. Could she protect her daughter now? And would someone protect her?

My God, my God, she thought, remembering the Book of Psalms from Sunday school, why hast thou forsaken me?

There is one way, at least, they cannot harm you or Kira.

Why art thou so far from helping me?

Tell me about the Ritual, David.

O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not.

It’s miracle blood.

Jessica couldn’t move. Her thoughts were running wild, zipping circles in her head. And she was so, so sleepy. She wanted to touch Kira’s face, but her limbs felt like they were a dozen times their normal weight. Jessica gazed across the room, and she found David staring at her. Behind him, she could see her own reflection, and Kira’s, in the bureau mirror.

“You put something in my drink,” she said, knowing for the first time as she said it, “the one from the burger place.”

“It was just a Sprite, Jess.” His lies never ended.

“Why do you want me to sleep?”

David didn’t answer. He was leaning against the bureau, his arms folded in front of him. He was still beautiful, and his beauty made him more terrible to her. Jessica’s eyelids fought until they closed, but she forced them open again. “Not Kira, David. Don’t give her anything. Promise me,” she said.

“Don’t give me what?” Kira broke in, pulling her attention away from the crashes and frenzied classical music playing on the cartoon. It sounded like Bugs Bunny. Kira nudged against Jessica. “Don’t give me what, Mommy?”

“Promise me, David.”

“Will you stay with me?” David asked Jessica. A soft plea.

Tears came to Jessica’s eyes. She hoped Kira wouldn’t look at her face and see the tears, since Kira’s happy oblivion was the only joy Jessica had. What was David asking of her? And what was she agreeing to by not running from him?

“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” David said slowly. “And nothing is going to happen to Kira. Trust in that.”

“What’s going to happen, Daddy?” Kira asked, bouncing impatiently. She hated it when they talked around her.

“Nothing, Duchess,” David said.

Jessica’s eyelids won. Again, she slept.

She didn’t know how much time had passed. The TV was still on when her mind woke up, but it was playing a news program. Something about a deadly flood in India. Armageddon knocking, her mother always said. She didn’t open her eyes at first, but she stirred because she smelled pizza in the room and heard paper bags crinkling as Kira and David unpacked food he must have had delivered. She was hungry, too, but she was more sleepy than hungry. She wouldn’t get up yet. Just a little more rest.

Something heavy landed with a thump on Jessica’s chest, and her startled eyes flew open.

There, in her face, were Teacake’s green eyes. He meowed.

Jessica screamed. And then she screamed again, watching her dead cat scamper across the floor in a blur of bushy orange fur. Once her mouth was open, her screams couldn’t stop.

“Baby? Honey? Listen to me. Please be calm and listen. I gave Teacake some of my blood. Do you understand? I never told you, but he’s undergone the Ritual. That’s why he woke up after he died. The same thing happened with me, remember? It takes a few hours. Just like at the cabin. Okay, Jessica? Tranquilo, sweetheart. Please?”

In an instant, the muddy cloudiness gave way to clarity.

David had been repeating the same words again and again, breathing fast. They were scuffing the motel’s cheap plastic bathtub, where Jessica had tried to hide herself behind the smudged curtain. David was wrapped around her, nearly on top of her, smoothing her hair back with his palm. The top of her forehead, by now, felt raw and irritated from his touch. She shook her head away from him, resting her cheek against the plastic shower wall.

“When did you do that?” she said, barely loud enough to hear.

“Just before we went to the Everglades. That same morning, in the shed. I wanted to be certain I could do it.”

“You just … gave him your blood?”

“That’s why you found the syringe. I injected it.”

“And that’s all? That’s all you did?”

When David didn’t answer, Jessica could hear the muffled sound of Kira’s sobs in the next room. She must be standing in front of the closed bathroom door, reeling in terrified confusion. She’d just seen her mother acting like a nut, flinging the lamp to the floor, hiding in the bathroom. Lord have mercy.

“Kira …” Jessica whimpered.

“I know. I’ll go to her in a minute.” He squeezed her shoulder tight, pulling her toward him, not letting go. “I want to make sure you’re all right. I never intended any of this to happen this way, Jessica. I planned to tell you. I wasn’t thinking when I opened the closet to let him out. Kira heard him crying …”

Jessica blinked, swallowing. She would never forget the sight of Teacake’s eyes so close to her face. Remembering, her body trembled. She swallowed back a new sob.

“And it worked just like that? Just by injecting the blood?”

David sighed. He stroked her forehead again, and she couldn’t move to escape his touch. “Basically.”

“But you said something before about … how you had to eat poisoned bread. You told me that.”

“Yes.”

“You did something to Teacake? Something to poison him?”

“That’s not the important thing. You saw the result.”

“But you …”—she could barely speak, so she struggled to swallow again—”… you want to do that to me? And Kira?”

“I want you and Kira to be safe, Jess. Always.”

“You want to kill us?” Jessica whispered.

“No,” David said. He looked so big this way, staring down at her like some demigod out of Greek mythology, his voice reverberating against the stall. “I want to give you life.”

When they opened the bathroom door, Kira wrapped her arms around Jessica’s legs, still crying, like she wanted to touch her and prove she was real, still Mommy. The sound of her child’s cries tore holes inside Jessica. It reminded her of the strangled cries the night of Kira’s worst asthma attack, when she couldn’t breathe. And the morning Princess died. Jessica, dazed and nearly losing her balance, clutched the top of Kira’s head with her hand and struggled to think of how to make the crying stop.

“Don’t worry, Duchess. You poor creature. Mommy is fine,” David was saying, reaching into the Walgreen’s bag he’d left beside the sink. “It’s all better now. Mommy had a bad dream.”

Yes, Jessica thought, and this is it. It hasn’t ended.

David opened his palm to her. He held four red-and-yellow capsules. “To help you relax. You’ve been so excitable,” he explained.

“What … ?”

“Sleeping pills.” He poured tap water into the motel’s plastic cup. The sink’s faucet was a trickle. “Go on.”

Jessica would never recall a conscious decision to take the capsules in her hand and toss them into her mouth, where they felt thick against her dry tongue. Her thoughts were disjointed, hazy. She remembered wondering why he was giving her four instead of one or two. Still, she took them. And, as she drank the water, she felt them glide down her throat, one after the other.

She was trusting him. For the second time in her life, she felt truly wed to David Wolde. The Bride of Frankenstein.

Teacake, her precious little monstrosity, was nowhere in sight. Probably hiding under the bed. Jessica couldn’t blame him. That’s exactly what she wanted to do.

Kira cried on. Jessica crouched to the floor so she could hug her and see her teary, contorted face. Her hair hadn’t been combed in nearly two days, and looked it. Comforting Kira gave her a reason not to cry herself. Jessica even managed a smile, somehow. “Kira, Mommy’s okay. Sorry I scared you.”

“Here. These will calm Kira,” David said.

Jessica looked up and saw that he had three more capsules in his hand. For some reason, she couldn’t believe her eyes. Seeing the pills made her swell with rage, and she panicked as she remembered she had just swallowed four of them herself.

“You’re not giving her any goddamn pills!” she shouted, wondering herself where the loudness had come from.

David shrank away from her, surprised. “They’re just …”

“You don’t give a five-year-old girl sleeping pills, David! What are you trying to do, kill her?”

As soon as she said it, realizing what David was doing, she felt the second wave of terror and hysteria. She had to hug Kira close to keep her screams at bay. They had to get away from him. The sense of urgency felt more keen now than it had when she’d gone home and whisked Kira into the van, when escape seemed so easy. He was going to kill them.